libertarianism

My friend the retired Methodist minister asked me how my positions compared
to libertarianism.

As they say, Wikipedia is the place to start: Libertarianism is a political theory that advocates the maximization of individual liberty in thought and action and the minimization or even abolition of the state.

I would certainly support the liberty part and even a minimal state as long as it does the things that I think a state should do. Probably a lot of people (including many who don’t think of themselves as libertarian) would agree with that. The thing that really classifies you is which things you think the state should do – and if possible – can you define the criteria by which you would determine those things.

So the first criterion is protection. From foreign enemies (military), criminals (police), the unscrupulous (regulators), and the irrational (civil rights laws).

The second criterion is promoting equal opportunity. So in here you get public education (It doesn’t have to be government schools - I would like to see some state try full scale vouchers.) and public health.

Finally I am not as much concerned about how big the government is as I am about how responsible we are about the size that we choose. The American people should choose to tax X% of GDP give it to our governments and then have our governments spend X% of GDP on our behalf. What worries me is that we seem to want to give our governments X% of GDP but we want the governments to spend X+10 % of GDP.

The extra 10% plus interest will come from our grandchildren who (mostly) are unborn and/or cannot vote. That is “taxation without representation”, an expression that sounds familiar!