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The Libertarian Mind: A Manifesto for Freedom - Softcover

Boaz, David

 
9781668084120: The Libertarian Mind: A Manifesto for Freedom
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1668084120 ISBN 13: 9781668084120
Verlag: Simon & Schuster, 2025

Inhaltsangabe

An updated edition of David Boaz’s timeless primer on libertarianism, with a new preface by the author.

Libertarianism—the philosophy of personal and economic freedom—has deep roots in Western civilization and in American history, with increasing appeal to those dissatisfied with the status quo. The growth of executive power, chronic deficits, counterproductive foreign military interventions, protectionist trade measures, a costly drug war, and many other threats to civil liberties have pushed millions of Americans in a libertarian direction.

The Libertarian Mind is a comprehensive guide to the history and philosophy of this movement. This updated edition delves into the principles of libertarianism, exploring its roots and its development over time. It offers a rich collection of ideas that present a compelling case for individual liberty and mutual cooperation. Challenging the notion of top-down governmental control, the book advocates instead for a society built on freedom and individual rights.

But The Libertarian Mind is more than just a book; it’s a manifesto for freedom. It’s a call to action for those who believe in the sovereignty and fundamental dignity of the individual and the importance of political freedom.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

David Boaz (1953–2024) was a distinguished senior fellow of the Cato Institute. For more than four decades as vice president for public policy and executive vice president, he played a key role in the development of both the Cato Institute and the libertarian movement. He is the author of The Libertarian Mind: A Manifesto for Freedom (first edition titled Libertarianism: A Primer) and the editor of The Libertarian Reader. His articles appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and the Los Angeles Times, among other publications.

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An updated edition of David Boaz's primer on libertarianism, a book that "unites history, philosophy, economics and law―spiced with just the right anecdotes―to bring alive a vital tradition of American political thought that deserves to be honored today in deed as well as in word" (Richard A. Epstein, University of Chicago).

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Chapter 1: The Libertarian Promise Chapter 1 The Libertarian Promise
Libertarianism is the philosophy of freedom. It’s the philosophy that has in different forms inspired people throughout history who fought for freedom, dignity, and individual rights—the early advocates of religious tolerance, the opponents of absolute monarchy, the American Revolutionaries, the Framers of the Constitution, the abolitionists, antiwar and anti-imperialist advocates, opponents of National Socialism and communism.

Libertarians believe in the presumption of liberty. That is, libertarians believe people ought to be free to live as they choose unless advocates of coercion can make a compelling case. It’s the exercise of power, not the exercise of freedom, that requires justification. If we followed the presumption of liberty, our lives would be freer, more prosperous, and more satisfying.

The burden of proof ought to be on those who want to limit our freedom.

We should be free to live our lives as we choose so long as we respect the equal rights of others. The presumption of liberty should be as strong as the presumption of innocence in a criminal trial, for the same reason. Just as you can’t prove your innocence of all possible charges against you, you cannot justify all of the ways in which you should be allowed to act.

But too often we’re told that we have to justify each exercise of our freedom. Want to add a room onto your house? Ingest psilocybin mushrooms? Own a gun? Surf the Internet in privacy? Open a new taxi company? Prove that you need such a freedom.

When former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg tried to impose a ban on sodas larger than sixteen ounces, nanny-state activists proclaimed that “no one needs a large soda.” Maybe not, but what if they want one? Don’t people have a right to choose what they eat and drink? The late Indiana Senator Richard Lugar said that he wanted to ban certain firearms “for which I see no legitimate social purpose.” What other products might not have a “legitimate social purpose”—cigarettes? Electric toothbrushes? Light beer? Politicians’ autobiographies? In a free society politicians and political majorities shouldn’t be arbiters of what can be sold by willing sellers to willing buyers.

Similarly, defenders of massive surveillance of our phone calls and web surfing demand that we make the case for our freedom and privacy. They are wrong. The burden of proof should be on those who would compile sweeping databases of our activities. Liberty should be the presumption. Restrictions on liberty need justification.

We do get exercised about limits on our freedom, but not often enough. Just look at the restrictions government has imposed on us. Government takes as much as half the money we earn. It tells us where to send our children to school and how to save for retirement. It tells us what we may eat, drink, and smoke.

Fortunately, we do still have a lot of freedom, in the United States and in more and more parts of the world.

Sometimes we forget just how much of our life is in fact free. We make thousands of choices every day, engage in thousands of interactions with others, without any coercion. We don’t ask Congress where we should work. We don’t expect the police to get our kids out of bed in the morning. We don’t call the mayor to fix our cars. We don’t go to city hall to buy a new computer. We don’t want the federal bureaucracy to write books, make movies, compose music, or provide us with a place to worship. Freedom has a central place in our lives, and every day people create peace and order without central direction.

It’s not easy to define freedom. The author Leonard Read said, “Freedom is the absence of man-concocted restraints against the release of creative energy.” The Nobel laureate F. A. Hayek referred to “a state in which each can use his knowledge for his purpose” and also to “the possibility of a person’s acting according to his own decisions and plans, in contrast to the position of one who was irrevocably subject to the will of another, who by arbitrary decision could coerce him to act or not to act in specific ways.” Perhaps it’s best to understand freedom as the absence of physical force or the threat of physical force. John Locke offered this definition of freedom under the rule of law:

[T]he end of Law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge Freedom: For in all the states of created beings capable of Laws, where there is no Law, there is no Freedom: For Liberty is to be free from restraint and violence from others which cannot be, where there is no Law: But Freedom is not, as we are told, A Liberty for every Man to do what he lists: (For who could be free, when every other Man’s Humour might domineer over him?) But a Liberty to dispose, and order, as he lists, his Persons, Actions, Possessions, and his whole Property, within the Allowance of those Laws under which he is; and therein not to be subject to the arbitrary Will of another, but freely follow his own.

That is, a free person is not “subject to the arbitrary will of another” and is free to do as he chooses with his own person and property. But you can have those freedoms only when the law protects your freedom and everyone else’s.

However we define freedom, we can certainly recognize aspects of it. Freedom means respecting the moral autonomy of each person, seeing each person as the owner of his or her own life, and each free to make the important decisions about his life.

Freedom allows each of us to define the meaning of life, to define what’s important to us.

And thus each of us should be free to think, to speak, to write, to paint, to create, to marry, to eat and drink and smoke, to start and run a business, to associate with others as we choose. When we are free, we can construct our lives as we see fit.

The social consequences of freedom are equally desirable. Freedom leads to social harmony. We have less conflict when we have fewer specific commands and prohibitions about how we should live—in terms of class or caste, religion, dress, lifestyle, or schools—as we’ll see throughout this book.

Economic freedom means that people are free to produce and to exchange with others. Freely negotiated and agreed-upon prices carry information throughout the economy about what people want and what can be done more efficiently. For an economic order to function, prices must be free to tell the truth. A free economy gives people incentives to invent, innovate, and produce more goods and services for the whole society. That means more satisfaction of more wants, more economic growth, and a higher standard of living for everyone.

That process has taken us in barely 250 years of economic freedom from the backbreaking labor and short life expectancy that were the natural lot of mankind since time immemorial to the abundance we see around us today in more and more parts of the world (though not yet enough of the world).

Not everyone realizes just how poor the world was for so long. The living standard we enjoy today did not build steadily over the centuries. In fact, average GDP per capita—the standard of living of the average person in the world—was essentially stagnant from the year 0, or maybe even from ten thousand years before that, until around 1800 in northern Europe. And then a wealth explosion happened: Real income per person grew by a factor of ten, twenty, maybe even one hundred in the space of three centuries, first in northwestern Europe and the United States and then in more parts of the world. This chart is based on the work of the economic...

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Verlag
Simon & Schuster
Erscheinungsdatum
2025
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1668084120
ISBN 13 
9781668084120
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
432
Kontakt zum Hersteller
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