As issues evolve in the political world all parties oscillate along a continuum of what is typically described as the right and left, the libertarian perspective often finds solution anywhere between the two extremes. The common theme is the absence of coercion. The libertarian has the focus of thought which seeks to construct a society that expels all foreign influences over the individual; it is in this context that the absence of coercion ranks highest in all matters related to governance. The liberal also seeks to deliver free agency to the individual but seeks to do so by intervention and is willing to compromise free agency. The conservative seeks to maintain social stability through tradition and convention and is willing to compromise free agency in the process. The libertarian says “leave me alone to make my way” absent exploitive circumstance. The liberal says “there is an obligation to provide means”. While the conservative says “one needs to be reliant on one’s self and execute actions with strong adherence to convention”.
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The creep toward “collectivism” that is permeating the Canadian political liberal movement repels libertarians. Liberals in Canada have many of the same traits as Trotskyism, as expressed in strong redistributionist tendencies. The imposition of state on the actions of the individual is repugnant to a libertarian, so redistributionist policy is opposed by libertarians because it’s viewed as being coercive and taxing to the autonomy of the individual. While most libertarians understand and support the necessity of government as a means of facilitating human exchange, they seek to minimize the effect of the government on the actions of people. Libertarians seek neutrality and minimalism in government. Liberals are willing to forfeit autonomy by allowing the government to encroach on personal choice in the context of the collective influencing the choices of the individual. Conservatives find accord with libertarians in their inclination toward self-reliance and the constraint on the size of government but tend to lose accord on matters related to regulating the individual – particularly in the realm of conservatism as it relates to social issues. Libertarians seek to constrain the size of government in the interest of maintaining an autonomous sovereign individual and conservatives want to constrain the size of government in the interest of efficiency or to prevent overtaxing the individual and the liberals are more willing to allow the government to grow in the interest of effecting social equity.
Sweden recently restructured its pension system from a generalised government pension plan to a plan that accumulated pension contributions attributed to the individual. The individual was then extended the choice to manage their own contributions or they could opt to let the government manage their contributions. The presence of choice for an individual to influence the outcome of their own resources is an element in the legislation a libertarian would look for; the forced and coerced contribution to the pension plan in the first place would be completely offensive to a libertarian, as a libertarian wants the choice to save when it is most beneficial and as they see fit. A liberal views this intrusion as acceptable because there are people absent the discipline to save for themselves and it is just more practical to force them to save now than pay to keep them later. It is evident in the liberal acceptance of such policy that over time state paternalism will rise, as it has in Canada. Increasingly, the government in Canada is sacrificing personal choice for collective action; the question for people is how far do we want this trend to go?
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Libertarians find harmony with liberals on government’s actions as it relates to morality. Libertarians may be socially conservative themselves, but want that choice to be theirs and reject paternalist dictates from governments in this regard. Liberals are in the main “socially” liberal and less constrained morally. So while the genesis of thought regarding the direction of policy relating to morality may be different, the outcome often is the same. Conservatives are willing to encroach on the individual with respect to social issues, more so than the libertarians find palatable. Libertarians see contractual law focused on managing human exchange as valid, where laws related to morality or personal conduct are viewed as invalid – Libertarians favour free action in the absence of harm to others.
There is an absence of direct political expression of libertarian perspective, so finding a means to promote and preserve the sovereign person is difficult. There is a willingness throughout the political spectrum to encroach on the individual, the conservatives tending toward being morally paternalistic and the liberals tending to be generally paternalist. In the full spectrum of political thought, only libertarians are seeking to give the highest priority to the absence of coercion. When one examines our life in Canada, one sees governments’ influence in every aspect of their daily life, at some point the level of government involvement reaches diminishing returns socially and monetarily. It is apparent we have breached acceptable bounds of government involvement in many cases on both scores. What is more concerning in Canadian society is a cultural inclination to acquiesce to state authoritarianism. We are polite which is fine but, we’re too compliant – we need to introduce a higher measure of the individual into our culture.
Marxism found is origins from the injustices of the sanctioned exploitation of the working class through the evolution of the industrial revolution. Governments, heavily controlled by corporate interests permitted, either through legislation or the absence of action, an extended period of exploitation to occur; people's basic human requirements left wanting in spite of dawn to dusk work day. Unflinching government commitment to business interests in the face of corporate coercion absent any mitigating influence is a blight on humanity - a testament to humans’ ability to subjugate “others” through separation; this reality is a persistent thorn in the side of those wanting to promote an enlightened capitalist perspective. It is important to recognise that the libertarian perspective seeks to generate a circumstance where people are at liberty, and so the circumstance of the working class coerced to subservience is precisely what libertarian thought seeks to curtail – the libertarian seeks the absence of all subservience. This is very likely the only point of commonality that exists between Marxists and Libertarians, the desire to see people absence exploitation through coercion. Where Marxists seek equality through government intervention, Librarians seek prosperity through government facilitation.
The legitimate fear of a generalised exploitive circumstance, similar to what occurred during the initial stages of industrialization, looms large in the psyche of the socialist movements. There is a cultural meme that remains constant from one generation to the next, which transmits this fear into an era where the breadth of influence renders it irrelevant and in fact harmful to progress.
There is, the world over, an overabundance of people to perform menial tasks, this reality results in labour being unable to garner sufficient remuneration for subsistence. This has been a chronic fixture of humanity for thousands of years. The ongoing observation of this reality perpetuates the Marxist doctrine as valid in the minds of many. The Marxist doctrine inappropriately directs blame for this circumstance on the misallocation of capital and hence the capitalists, when it is the fact that there is too much supply of labour relative to the capacity of the economy that is to blame. The Marxist response is to effect redistributionist actions in the pursuit of equality which results in the punishing of those who have found productive means to affluence. As someone who values the unfettered pursuit of self-interest, but recognises this chronic challenge, I would choose to find a means put a floor on human existence and allow the market to assign relative value to a given good or service. The floor on human existence would include the resources to subsist and a means to advance. As asserted in other places in this document, governments best way to contribute to the betterment of the individual and by extension society as a whole is the provision of education. Education requires little in the way of physical resources and builds the most critical element of society: human capital.
The Marxist, Socialist and to a lesser extent Liberals are still holding on to equality as a focal point for governance. Equality is an errant pursuit for a host of reasons, where equity is laudable and achievable. The pursuit of equality, particularly at the point of actuation, has built into it so many disincentives to action that any society premised on equality has failed. Human beings are divergent creatures whose pursuits follow an infinite number of vectors, levels and outcomes; equality is a frighteningly stifling perspective when seeking the course that allows humanity to find its full expression. The hallmark of any society espousing equality as its primary focus for action has resulted in, firstly the emergence of a concentrated authoritarian government operated by “elevated” equals and then secondly it evolves to a plutocracy.
While equality is desirable, when it is pursued, dynamics emerge that result in detrimental effects. The progressive tax structures typical of western societies generate an inhibition to the most productive in society to pursue vigourously their area of endeavour. The better you do the more you pay, the less you do the less you pay – the existence of this pressure impairs action in society as a whole, with the net result being less opportunity in aggregate and hence less opportunity for the impoverished to find their way to prosperity.
The libertarian focus is to provide people with a circumstance that allows the populous to engage freely with its environment and let whatever relative outcome that emerges be commensurate with a given individuals production as it is valued by the society at large. One person may choose to cut grass, another to build rockets. Society will value their respective contribution and that value is expressed in the abstract representation of human action, commonly money. By allowing a variance in action to result in a variance value, ergo life outcome, more attention flows to what is important and or interesting for people. The libertarian perspective accepts the existence of inequality, it seeks, however, to prevent its entrenchment for a given individual or group - it is inherently disruptive and dynamic.
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