Meeting: A Libertarian Crash Course – Join the UNR Students for Liberty’s first meeting of the year where we will be discussing the basic principles of libertarinism, free markets, and what the club is all about.

Where: JCSU 423
When: 7PM – 8:30PM on Thursday, January 28, 2010

© Travis Hagen for UNR Students for Liberty, 2010.
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Around the middle of high school, however, things changed. I begrudgingly began to believe that I was, in fact, what my father detested. Democrat. It wasn’t something I talked about, because I didn’t want to be disowned and kicked out of my family, but I started having some pretty liberal views. Gay marriage? Marijuana? Abortion? All were subjects that I found I had a very Democratic view on. In my mind they should be legal, because what the hell gave the government the right to tell these people what to do? I mean, I’m not gay, I don’t smoke weed, and I would never get an abortion, but I didn’t think that no one else in the world had the right to.

Thankfully that all started to change when I realized that my dad was completely right: liberals are crazy. If socialized medicine wasn’t proof enough, the BS with minimum wage and gun control certainly helped me see the light. In that way, Republicans had it right, but I was caught with another dilemma. What the hell was I in the political world? Was I some mutant hybrid cross between Democrat and Republican or was I something completely new? Well, I wasn’t vain enough to think that I was quite so unique, so to solve the problem I simply registered as “Independent,” and assumed that, in time, I’d figure something out.

It wasn’t until September 25, 2008 that I did. After being dragged to a meeting for a club to keep a friend company, I sat back and listened to a long and complicated lecture on a theory I’d never even heard of before: Anarcho-captialism. My first initial thought (upon hearing the word “anarchy,” which has always had a negative connotation in my book) was, “What the hell kind of club IS this!?” But the more I listened, the more I learned, and at the end of the meeting I pulled my friend aside and asked her what exactly Libertarianism was.

In a nutshell, this is what I’ve figured out. Libertarians value the right of the individual. Every person, regardless of sex, age, race, or any other quantifying factor you can think to label another human being as, has three essential rights: to life, liberty, and property. Basically, I have the right to live my life the way that I want to as long as it does not interfere with the rights of the people around me. I can do what I want to myself and my property, but I can’t touch a thing you have without your consent.

And this isn’t only on the personal level. It goes for governments as well. The government has no right to say that gays can’t marry, that I can’t own a gun, that the kid down the street can’t smoke pot, or that we all have to buy into a socialized healthcare plan. In essence, the government should keep its nose out of my business, and as long as I’m not doing anything that interferes with another person’s rights, I’ve done nothing wrong.

The more I learned about Libertarianism the more I began to realize that the political stance that I stood under did have a name. I was no longer some random, nonidentity. I was a Libertarian.

I won’t even pretend that I know absolutely everything there is to know about Libertarianism. I’m still a freshling to the fold. But the more I learn the more I agree, and the wider my scope of comprehension becomes. Libertarians are just as varied as every other political party. They range from hardcore Constitutionalists to dedicated Anarcho-Capitalists. As I spend time with the people in Students for Liberty I continue to figure out what exactly it means to be a Libertarian. We don’t always agree, but we can usually agree to disagree, and overall we all stand by the same, basic Libertarian values.

It’s a system that works for me. In fact, it’s the only system that I’ve been completely satisfied by, and I’m still finding out about it. Regardless, I can say this:

I am proud to call myself a Libertarian.

© Mary Hunton for UNR Students for Liberty, 2009.
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It can be read at the above link as well as below. But on the Sagebrush site there have been numerous back-and-forths with those that (for some reason) didn’t like the article. You can have your two cents there or here. Please do enjoy.

A Libertarian Conversation
By Barry Belmont

To be justified in believing in any philosophy means to follow its premises to their logical conclusion. For libertarians there are, at base, two undeniable tenets: 1) the right of self-ownership and 2) all interactions between people (self-owners) must be voluntary.

In short, the entirety of libertarianism can be summed up as “you can do whatever you want, just keep your mitts to yourself.”

In a recent article, Nevada Sagebrush writer Lee Hampton attacked libertarian ideas, claiming they hinge “upon a blind, fanatical and theological faith in ‘free markets’” and that libertarians are somehow bad for doing this.

While the words “blind” and “fanatical” are inflammatory and used for offhand dismissals rather than legitimate criticisms, it can rightly be said that we libertarians do have faith in the free market. Free markets are nothing short of the sum total of all free and voluntary human interactions.

If you can’t have faith in this, then what hope is there of ever improving the human condition?

Some might say that the hope lies in governments and that governments must step in to change individual human behavior for the better. But to believe the government is something different from the same individuals who compose markets is absurd. Who are these angels so full of benevolence? The government is composed of the exact same people as those who make up free markets with one important difference: They have no incentive to do anything well because they can use force.

On free markets, how much a service benefits society correlates to the amount of money gained. This is why Apple and Google do so well and why Paint-a-Pet stores generally go out of business. Where Apple and Google make their money by directly serving customers, governments get the same amount of money no matter how poorly they do their job.

In fact, the converse can be seen: The more poorly a government does its job (that is, by allowing crime rates to rise, causing economic strife, etc.) the more money it gets in the name of “solving” the problem.

In essence, advocating for free markets is advocating for personal responsibility, triumphing personal liberty and holding that though there are some greedy, mean and bad people, the vast majority of people are good. Sure, there might be an Enron or an AIG fiasco on the free and open market, but these singular bad instances are overwhelmed by billions of everyday cooperative interactions.

Think of how much cooperation went in to making what you are reading: I wrote this article, an editor edited it, someone placed it in the newspaper, the paper in your hand was made from trees which were transported vast distances by trucks and planes, the ink had to be manufactured, printers had to place it on the page and so on. Thus, faith in free markets is simply a faith in free individuals.

This is what the University of Nevada, Reno Students for Liberty believe and support.

To learn more, or to read the full version of my lecture “Anarcho-Capitalism II: Justice & Defense,” visit www.UNRforLiberty.com.

© Barry Belmont for UNR Students for Liberty, 2009.
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Please bear in mind throughout this thought experiment, I am in no way advocating creating these institutions or trying to convince you to attend them. And in every exchange I discuss, I assume consenting adults of sound mind. Also I must point out that the seed of this idea comes from Walter Block and his lectures on “Radical Austrianism, Radical Libertarianism” Now let’s get radical.

A young entrepreneur looking into the field of sports and games (the area he wishes to set up shop) comes to the conclusion that there is just nothing new and exciting to do anymore. Basketball, hockey, boxing: it’s all been done. But he is convinced sports can hold the excitement they once did, the thrill, the pleasure. After some thinking he comes up with the idea of letting people kill one another for fun. He could buy some land, build a park, and charge people to enter and participate. He’d make sure no one outside the park could be hurt: bullet proof walls, far enough from other people, signs posted all around explaining the situation. He would obviously set up some rules: maybe he thinks the game should only last an hour at a time and after an hour no one is allowed to kill. To cover his ass (and more importantly, to be a good person) he explains to each customer individually what happens at this park and has them sign a statement saying that they agree. He may choose not to allow children in.

At this park, people will pay to come in and try to kill other people and have other people try to kill them according to the rules of the owner.

Is he allowed to do this?
Are we allowed to go?

Let’s take it from the beginning. 1. The right to self-ownership implies that if we own ourselves, we are allowed to do with ourselves whatever we would like. It also–insofar as it is a basic premise–applies to everybody, thus others are allowed to do with themselves whatever they would like to do. This right, in itself, does not prevent horrible things such as rape, taxation, and torture. To put an end to that we accept another right: 2. All interactions between people (self-owners) must be voluntary. That is to say that I cannot aggress against you and you cannot aggress against me. Anything involuntarily thrust upon you or I is, by definition, wrong. Thus rape, taxation, and torture are wrong while consensual sex, trade, and sadomasochism are fine (from a legal point of view).

It may strike you that if I own myself and I am free to do whatever I want so long as when I interact with others it is voluntary, that I could very well sell myself into prostitution or even slavery. Yes, that’s correct. The only thing wrong with slavery (at least at the basic level) is that it is involuntary. Slavery is a fine institution if you are allowed to stop being a slave whenever you want. Please do not get me wrong, I am not advocating slavery to any degree, but I am saying that if someone wanted to sell themselves and someone else was willing to buy them and they agree on the price, the exchange should not be prevented.

Taking a less extreme example, boxing matches certainly aren’t outlawed. If two men are willing to be paid to beat each other senseless, no one seems to take issue. And if getting paid $100,000 is fine, then so should $100 or even $0. If $0 is fine, why shouldn’t $-500? In other words, if it is ok to be paid for something, then there should be no problem in paying for it either. So conceivably, a business could be made of people willing to pay to box one another. And several boxing gyms do exist around the country. In Nevada alone there no less than 20. So obviously paying for something should not make it illegal.

But what if you do something illegal, say rape, and pay for it, say by leaving $100,000 in her purse? Is that fine? Absolutely not. Without getting into punishment theory as to what the proper course of action to follow is, it can unequivocally be condemned as completely wrong. What makes it wrong is the fact that the act was not voluntary to begin with. If you’ve got an ice cream cone and I steal it from you and then give you $10, I’ve still stolen your ice cream cone. It doesn’t matter if you were willing to give it up for $10, it was not voluntary trade and is illegal.

At MurderPark, you and I pay for the opportunity to kill one another, how is this different from paying to golf? Well, one obvious answer is: IT’S MURDER!? Killing someone is never justified you may say. Another objection may be, if hiring an assassin is wrong, then clearly paying to become an assassin is equally as wrong. Nothing is more sacred than life, it is claimed, thus any price to end it is unjustifiable and down right despicable. However, each of these arguments comes from emotion, not logic, not from our initial premises.

If I own myself, I am free to do with myself whatever I’d like. This would include getting a piercing, cutting off a finger, giving up a kidney, and yes, self-destruction. If I can pay to get my ears pierced or my finger nails cut or a kidney removed, then there is no logical reason why I shouldn’t be able to pay someone to kill me. Conversely, there is no logical reason why someone shouldn’t be able to pay me to kill them. Obviously, if they felt uncomfortable with killing me, I couldn’t force them to, anymore than I could force a pedicurist to cut my finger off. This springs directly from our second premise, every act between people must be voluntary. The thing wrong with killing as it is now is that it is involuntary. The reason assassins are bad guys is that they kill someone against their will, not because they are paid for it.

Even granted that nothing is more than human life (a sensible enough position), that is no excuse to ban attendance to MurderPark: it would just jack up the price. Since we each only get one life, it is a remarkably scare resource. It is also very important, we can’t do much if we’re dead. Given it’s rarity and necessity, the price will sky-rocket, but something being expensive should not make it illegal. If I decided to charge you $10,000 for a soda, you’d think I was nuts and go somewhere else. But if it was the only soda and you *needed* it, someone would pay a lot to get it. That’s one of the reasons we’re willing to pay so much to doctors: they’re saving our only and necessary life.

It may be disgusting to think that some people might be willing to put their lives in jeopardy while trying to kill others, but then again we may gag at how much a celebrity is willing to pay for a diamond encrusted collar for their dog. Our contempt for an activity, no matter how pervasive and deeply-felt, is no justification for it’s ban. That’s why prohibition was wrong on it’s face not just for the havoc it reaped.

So where have we landed? Unfortunately, in a very strange land
. According to libertarian ideals, it cannot be legally wrong for two consenting adults to try to kill one another. This is because people have the ultimate (indeed, only) say in what they want to do. People also are only allowed to engage in voluntary acts. This brings about the strange scenario where it becomes illegal to force someone to MurderPark under the threat of death outside of the park and perfectly fine to entice them to MurderPark under the promise of death inside the park.

Our libertarian world is a strange one. Strange both in the sense that it is clearly not this one and the sense that it should be. This dichotomy will, at least for the foreseeable future, plague us Libertarians and we must cope with it. It may hurt us, knowing that in the world we want, we would have to allow our mothers to commit suicide and our sisters to become prostitutes. But if we are as convinced of our philosophy as we should be (otherwise, why should we hold it), we must follow our ideals to their ends. While most others face the problem of having to justify means to fit their ends, we are left wanting to justify ends to fit means. A truly confusing paradox filled with extraordinary possibilities. In this deep, dark world, full of its immeasurable complexities and subtle simplicities we must valiantly hold our weak candleflames into the darkness and hope to shine on even the smallest grains of truth, regardless of the demons we may stir.

© Barry Belmont for UNR Students for Liberty, 2008.
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The Libertarian Party is your representative in American politics. It is the only political organization which respects you as a unique and competent individual.

America’s Heritage

Libertarians believe in the American heritage of liberty, enterprise, and personal responsibility. Libertarians recognize the responsibility we all share to preserve this precious heritage for our children and grandchildren.

Free and Independent

Libertarians believe that being free and independent is a great way to live. We want a system which encourages all people to choose what they want from life; that lets them live, love, work, play, and dream their own way.

Caring For People

The Libertarian way is a caring, people-centered approach to politics. We believe each individual is unique. We want a system which respects the individual and encourages us to discover the best within ourselves and develop our full potential.

Principled; Consistent

The Libertarian way is a logically consistent approach to politics based on the moral principle of self-ownership. Each individual has the right to control his or her own body, action, speech, and property. Government’s only role is to help individuals defend themselves from force and fraud.

Tolerant

The Libertarian Party is for all who don’t want to push other people around and don’t want to be pushed around themselves. Live and let live is the Libertarian way.

America’s Third Largest Party

The Libertarian Party is America’s third largest and fastest growing political party. Libertarians engage in a variety of projects, working for everyone’s liberty on every issue.

The Libertarian Party was created in December of 1971 by people who realized that the politicians had strayed from America’s original libertarian foundation, with disastrous results. Their vision was the same as that of America’s founders — a world where individuals are free to follow their own dreams in their own ways, a world of peace, harmony, opportunity, and abundance.

Libertarians are practical; we know we can’t make the world perfect. But, it can be better. Libertarians will keep working to create a better, freer society for everyone. As William Allen White said: “Liberty is the only thing you cannot have unless you are willing to give it to others.”

Why Not Stick With The Establishment?

“Given the low level of competence among politicians, every American should become a Libertarian.”

– Charley Reese, Alameda Times-Star (California), June 17, 2003

The politicians in Washington and our state capitals have led us away from the principles of individual liberty and personal responsibility which are the only sound foundation for a just, humane, and abundant society.

Government at all levels is too large, too expensive, woefully inefficient, arrogant, intrusive, and downright dangerous. Democratic and Republican politicians have created the status quo and do not intend to change it.

The Libertarian Option

Consider the Libertarian option:

• Substantially reduce the size and intrusiveness of government and cut all taxes.
• Let peaceful, honest people offer their goods and services to willing consumers without a hassle from government.
• Let peaceful, honest people decide for themselves what to eat, drink, read, or smoke and how to dress, medicate themselves, or make love, without fear of criminal penalties.
• The U.S. government should defend Americans and their property in America and let the U.S. taxpayer off the hook for the defense bill of wealthy countries like Germany and Japan.

What Americans Want

Americans want, and deserve, a political system which respects them as unique individuals; as people who can make their own plans, who can take responsibility for themselves, who are compassionate, and who can and will solve their own problems if allowed to do so.

Most Americans, after some thought, prefer the Libertarian option in politics. Most people in their private, non-governmental, affairs deal with each other on the libertarian premise of mutual respect. You don’t threaten your neighbors with fines or jail just because they choose careers or lifestyles different than yours.

Let’s hold government to the same standard. Protect us and our rights, and give us the respect we deserve.

Time For Action

We hope you can see the benefits of living in that America envisioned by the founders and by their political heirs, today’s Libertarians.

We hope you will want to join the Libertarian Party and become involved in our many activities at the national, state, and local levels.

Are you ready for a change in American politics?

For as long as most of us can remember, Republican and Democratic politicians have talked about solving the problems that face Americans; but their “solutions” have only worsened the situation — higher and higher taxes; greater intrusions into our personal lives; more rapes, murders, and muggings; and a crumbling public school system graduating fewer and fewer people who can read.

We believe the American people — like their counterparts in Eastern Europe — have seen through the charade of big government. We believe the American people are ready for a fresh approach to the problems that plague us. Libertarian ideas were instrumental in the birth of our country, and they can inspire a return to the individual initiative, responsibility, and prosperity that were once part of the American dream. If you agree, we hope you will join us.

© Copyright 2006 National Libertarian Party

© John Russell for UNR Students for Liberty, 2007.
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