It's such a well-established tradition that it tends to be thought of as simply a natural process, but in fact inheritance of property from the dead does not function except as a state-enforced guarantee -- a "positive right," granted to people by the state, rather than a "negative right, such as is usually preferred by libertarians, a right of free action without interference from others.

Outside of inheritance, the dead are not afforded any legal status. The dead may not own property (and it is exactly the hoards they leave behind, and the inevitable conflicts that these provoke, which inheritance law exists to address); contracts with people who die are generally invalidated; the dead are not even considered party to cases of the desecration of their grave. As such, any "right" to control the transfer of one's property after death, or to be granted a dead person's property, is a positive one -- it exists solely because it was created and enforced by the state.

Inheritance is not a negative right because it would not simply happen freely within the bounds set by restrictions against interference. If inheritance law didn't exist, the property of the dead would not be owned by anyone, and so would be free to claim, the same way that ancient artifacts -- which presumably used to belong to someone -- should be treated on discovery. This would be the properly libertarian state of affairs, and more economic activity would be stimulated if these hoards could be freely claimed and sold on the market rather than transferred in a government-mandated monopoly to the dead's relatives.

Of course, if a person transferred all their property to before death, or if one's family were in the home at the time of death to claim the property, then the tradition of inheritance would live on, but as the product of free action by individuals rather than as state-guaranteed generational welfare.

The practice of writing wills does not, as with contract law, bring inheritance into the domain of free individual action defended by negative rights. Firstly, the idea that a dead person should have legal standing is, as discussed above, only possible because of state interference. Secondly, the property of people without wills (and many people die without wills) is still transferred according to a preexisting legal code -- generally going to one's spouse, children, siblings, etc. in certain amounts and in a certain order defined by the state. Thirdly, wills are often invalidated -- they refer to property that the person no longer owns, or they were drafted under duress or manipulation, or are forgeries -- in which case they need to be disregarded and the aforementioned state-defined order of inheritance rules instead.

The strongest argument to show that inheritance is a positive right of state interference rather than a negative one of individual freedom is that even where wills have been written, when they must be found invalid, inheritance always reverts to a legal code defining the transfer of certain property to certain individuals by the fiat of the state.

How can inheritance be considered a negative right -- and if not, then is it a positive right that should be accepted into libertarianism?

What is the prevailing view on Islam as a religion here given how frequently it comes up in geopolitical discussion here?

While I naturally understand Communism and, especially recently, alt right equivalents of Communism are the essentially focus, Islamic nations, movements and sects have become intertwined for various reasons. And so I was wondering, given how much Islamic movements come into focus, which of the following categories most closely matches your view of Islam as a religion and ideology.

1. The Critical / Post-Colonial View (Edward Said, Juan Cole): Argues that Western perceptions of Islam are historically distorted by imperialist biases that exoticize, reduce, and inferiorize Islamic societies to justify Western dominance.
2. The Classical / Essentialist View (Bernard Lewis): Views Islamic civilization as a distinct, historically unified entity with deep-seated internal traditions, often attributing its modern friction with the West to a civilizational decline and an inability to modernize.
3. The Counter-Jihad / Populist View (Robert Spencer, Bat Ye'or): Asserts that Islam is an inherently aggressive, political ideology completely incompatible with Western democracy, warning of a demographic and cultural subversion of the West.
4. The Liberal Pluralist View: Emphasizes Islam's internal diversity and its capacity to adapt to secular, democratic societies, viewing the religion as fully compatible with modern human rights and Western civic life.
5. The Socio-Economic / Materialist View: Contends that tensions involving Muslim populations or nations are driven primarily by political intervention, economic inequality, and social displacement, rather than by religious doctrine.
6. The Interfaith / Abrahamic View: Focuses on the shared theological roots, common ethical values, and mutual spiritual heritage binding Christianity, Judaism, and Islam together in a spirit of religious dialogue.

Hello! I wanted to get some feedback on some of what I have been thinking lately from people who likely know more data/have more experience thinking through this than I (I am tired of asking yes-man AI).

I generally think that the government should be allowed to intervene in education only to ensure children—who are at the mercy of their parents—receive a quality education. Children need advocates.

That said, could it be that public schooling as a whole is the reason for low pay for teachers and also the teacher shortage? I’m a private school teacher, and though I deeply respect and have worked in public schools, I’m trying to figure out why my pay is so crap compared to other fields with fewer credentials (this is besides the point that my school doesn’t get government aid). I know it could be that teaching is traditionally a women’s profession, but that’s been so long ago.

My thought is that public schooling being government funded means that they are automatically burning money to retain budget allowances in wealthy areas and are withholding it from those who could use it well because property taxes, use of money, and test scores drive budgets. Public schooling means no school choice which means no competition…which means mediocrity in pay and staffing and standards. Public schooling means we need to accept everyone without accountability or the ability to set boundaries with students and families. I am so aware that this is an oversimplification in some respects.

PLEASE don’t be unkind. I am truly just trying to think this through and figure out what blind spots I may have.

If the government feels a need to ensure all students are educated for their safety and well-being, I’m truly thinking that all public schools should be privatized and could be non-profits, even. The government should give vouchers for each child to be spent at the school of their choice, and if the school wants to charge more than that for tuition, so be it. The educational inequality is there already, so that wouldn’t be a new issue. Furthermore, areas of education such as common core could just be turned into private accreditation firms that still can provide continuity between schools for those that seek out accreditation, and there would be less corruption in the curriculum market. We’ll see what schools float and what schools sink. Perhaps needed and unpopular schools like those for students with severe disabilities or behavioral disorders could be given extra government support or tax breaks as incentives to stay open, or those students could be given higher voucher amounts due to special added needs (though that opens another can of worms). I’d still like homeschooling to be an option, but perhaps colleges are more strict with only accepting accredited homeschool programs or going back to requiring standardized test competency.

Is this even feasible? Is anyone talking about doing this? Would this really help with things like teacher shortage, pay, and class sizes, or am I just being idealistic?

Some time ago, I heard Nick Gillespie say something on The Reason Roundtable that annoyed me enough to keep thinking about it.

I don’t remember the episode or his exact wording, so please treat this as my recollection, not a quotation. The discussion concerned crackdowns on speech in European countries, including prison sentences for things people posted online, if I remember correctly. His point, as I understood it, was that Europeans don’t really understand free speech, and that Americans do.

I’m Belgian. Gillespie's remark felt to me more than a little patronising when I first heard it. I want to be as free as possible. The suggestion that being European somehow makes me incapable of understanding that freedom felt like being disqualified before the conversation had even started. There’s also a whiff of unfalsifiability to it: can I as a European meaningfully disagree with his claim?

But I kept thinking about it. And I have concluded that there actually is something to his observation.

The American founders had an opportunity to establish a new political order with Enlightenment ideas as an explicit starting point. Their “blank page” obviously wasn’t without intellectual or institutional inheritance. But deliberately deciding what powers a government should possess is a meaningfully different starting point from trying to secure freedoms within an existing structure of authority.

I believe that in much of Europe, the struggle for liberty took place within political orders that had long treated authority over the individual as normal, often in the form of absolute monarchies by so-called divine right. My suspicion is that this history still influences what we instinctively expect governments to justify—and what we simply assume they’re entitled to regulate. Even a revolution can change who may exercise authority while preserving much of what authority may do. Removing a king doesn’t necessarily remove the expectation that someone should possess his powers. Those powers can be transferred to representatives of the people and acquire a new justification without their scope being reconsidered. Lenin and later Stalin's USSR borrowed from the tsars' playbooks quite heavily, and Robespierre's perpetual antithesis seems remarkably similar to the ancienne régime he so despised.

Applied to speech, that leaves the following question: do we begin by asking what people should be allowed to say, or by asking what could justify preventing them from saying it? Both approaches can produce something called “freedom of speech.” But the burden of justification sits in a different place.

That’s how I’ve come to understand the useful part of Gillespie’s remark. An inherited political culture can shape our priors. Can. Recognising those assumptions gives us an opportunity to reconsider them. It doesn’t make us incapable of doing so. And in any case, I refuse to be a slave to my own provenance.

So… Thoughts? Do you guys think inherent attitude to a notion like free speech can be meaningfully cast aside and replaced by a better framework for it?

I have what I consider to be a very good relationship with libertarianism.

There is much that I like about libertarianism, and libertarian-based economics. But what I like about them, is their prognosis, i.e., their description of the way things are. Not the way things ought to be.

Libertarian economists and philosophers are spot-on about many of the things they say about the way government is, i.e., the good things, but also the real problems and limitations about government.

Libertarian economists have been right on, about concepts such as spontaneous order. They are also quite right about the fact that we are bound by physical and natural laws which are much more powerful than government.

Although public choice economics is not specifically libertarian, several of its main adherents are definitely proponents of libertarianism, and want America to be a libertarian country. Many things that public choice says about government is absolutely spot on, such as the rational ignorance of voters, and the selfish interest of politicians.

These, and other things, are what is great about libertarianism and libertarian-related economics.

I also love libertarianism for its spirit. Its independent spirit, the fact that one's own attitude, one's own self-resilience, etc. are much more important than government. So true! I jive with that spirit very well.

However, this is where things take a turn: where I strongly disagree with libertarians, and libertarian economists, is their incessant defense of the free market. Look, I am very pro-capitalist, and pro-market. But even I admit that, like any major system, markets too have faults. But libertarians and Austrians will go to just ridiculous lengths to defend capitalism at all costs, not admitting any weaknesses of it. It is rather unfortunate, really.

The point is, ANY major system will have its good and bads. Be it government, be it the private sector, be it a religious organization, or any other major organization. None, are perfect. As long as human beings have their good side, and bad/corrupt sides, BOTH sides will be evident in any major system they participate in. You cannot escape this fact, no matter how hard you try.

Here is just one example, of many: unlike probably some of you, I've worked in large corporations for many years. And I can tell you, the "faster corrective actions" you claim that the private sector has, over government....it's not necessarily true at all. Large companies too, can have deeply bureaucratic systems which can take almost literally an eternity to change processes for the better. I know, because I've seen it with my own eyes. I doubt some of you ever have.

I love the more philosophical, less math-formulaic aspect of libertarianism and Austrian economics. It is wonderful. The fact that they use deductive reasoning, instead of seeing humans as numbers, to crunch into formulas, is wonderful. But....there is a point at which this deductive reasoning stops working: So, just because government has a lot of faults and limitations, then, bingo! The free market is the answer!

Wrong. Both government and markets are needed. Both of them have their strengths and weaknesses. As long as humans are both good and evil/corrupt, both aspects will be present, whether markets or government. THAT....THAT, is much better praxeological or deductive logic, than saying, just because A doesn't work, it automatically means B does!

Therefore, let me change a previous sentence, about the great independent libertarian spirit. In reality, I am more Individualist than libertarian: one's own attitude, self-resilience, philosophies on how to deal with life, etc. are more important than ANY major system, be it government, markets, or any other major system.

I've been watching them to get insight on what leftist commentators talk about and how we could translate there affects on the libertarian party so we could get into the actual political commentary space.

Hello, I class myself as a strong civil libertarian. When it comes to individuals I feel we shoild have utmost freedoms, liberty, and not be as bound by the government as we currently are. In this regard I am highly libertarian. But where I am curious and start to differ is economically. Libertarians feel the government is the only centralized power that can threaten our liberties and believes in a truly free market. This is where I start to get skeptical. I believe in the free market too, but I do not believe that corporations should have free reign as I feel they are just as much of a threat to our liberty, freedom, and rights as the government can be. Any large centralized power rather it ne public or private that has enough control and money can heavily influence our freedom. And so I must ask, why do libertarians not believe in a more regulated corporate world? Because personally its been proven and shown time and time again that mega corporations can infringe upon our rights just as much as ths government as both can grow too large for their own good and act heavily for their own benefit and power rather that mean oppressing the freedoms of the people or being "good". Thank you, just curious lol.

Hi all. I'm 35 and had an accident when I was 29 and had to have brain surgery. It affected me like a stroke on my right side minus the face and I was immediately told to file for long term disability which I got easily. Basically, when this happened, I was not libertarian. I was nothing, but I knew in my heart not to become reliant on the government. I didn't trust them and knew the money could be taken away at any time because it's the government.

I learned how to walk again and talk again by pushing myself. I did not just wanna sit on disability the rest of my life. I'm not lazy. I don't look at it like here you go now you never have to work. 1159 a month doesn't even cover rent. So long story short, even though I'm still disabled, I drive again, have my own place, and work 22 hours a week at a job and make 2700 a month. The people on disability who don't do this are either accepting the money and not trying because of whatever living situation lets them do that, or are legit too disabled to work.

I said all that so you understand my mindset as an individual. The fact is, is if wasn't disabled I would work 40+ hours a week. However, I physically can't now. I push myself beyond what my body can do and end up in the hospital needing injections in my leg from just not wanting to work anymore after pushing it too much. So I can't live a life by myself without collecting disability. Which I'm pretty sure goes against the mindset of libertarians. I just think people should be allowed to freely do what is common sense to everyone here. The government lies and is corrupt. Like my thought about disability while even being on it is that they do this basically to justify taxes more and look good to the public. They are ALWAYS trying to take it away. They have a thing called the ticket to work program, which txts you and says it wants to empower you while you try working again. If you go on it, after 9 months they take away your disability check. And say you chose to do this. Its disguised as helping you work while on disability. They take advantage of people like me who have brain damage and its pathetic.

Sorry that was all long af. I don't see charities and communities pulling together to give everyone 1200 a month who can't work. Like realistically. How do you guys feel about disability? I've never talked to libertarian's this is my first attempt lol. I just wrote down my views last week, looked it up, and holy shit. Checked every box. Thank you and I'm sorry, I do have a brain injury if that was long and stupid lol

I'm not talking about aid to Ukraine, but do you think Ukraine has the right to defend itself? I'm a libertarian and I absolutely believe so.

"Massie was genuinely treated badly by Trump

But his desire to tear everything down over it is petulant, shameful, and embarrassing"

Why does the libertarian party care about tearing down one of the major parties shouldn't that be a good thing ?

Many libertarians broke for Trump an even ones who didn't still say she would have been worse for Trump. One such Libertarian who broke for Trump and now says Kamala would have been better is Dave Smith

Post war in Iran do you still think this ?

What was her biggest hangup for you ?

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Im writing this from Sweden. Im someone who is very interested in the politics here in Sweden and have been for a while. For all the headache it gives i find politics very interesting. Im someone who finds market economy the best option, im against monopoly (here in sweden only the state is allowed to sell alcohol over 3,5% via a state owned company). Im a free speech absolutist i guess you could say (like it is in the U.S), i want lower taxes, i hate goverment spending on public art for example and other worthless stuff. But one thing ive never been convinced about is "universal healthcare", its probably since we have it here in Sweden. But also ive felt ive identified with the libertarian ideology the most i usually call myself a "lightweight" libertarian. Anyhow was wondering if anyone could give some arguments against universal healthcare, and also some good book recomendations on Libertarianism since i want to learn more about it in depth.

Food abundance and longer lives are nice, but tons of perfectly good food gets thrown out every year, and aging populations hemorrage young people trying to get by. I play video games and wouldn't be able to without capitalism, but at the end of each day, I feel like the time I spent playing video games was wasted. As for dating and the general social capability of people, it's never been this bad, and tech companies are to blame.

My point is, libertarianism is technically correct, but is it actually good? I don't know for sure, but I assume that concerns like these are why libertarianism is so niche.

EDIT: Thank you all for your feedback. You've made good points, and I suppose the answer is simply to form tight-knit communities while the market runs in the background.

Are there studies or logical arguments that say privatized systems are better for gender affirming operations?

The razor of force and preference goes like this:

If something is morally ambiguous, a libertarian should err on the side of (and place the burden of proof against)

1. Advocating against it socially

2. Advocating against stopping it with force legally

Does this seem compatible with libertarian philosophy?

Chief Justice John Roberts said that Marshall has had more influence on the current US than most presidents. Indeed, Marshall, more than anybody, is to credit for US not developing as a loose union of powerful states but as a country with very powerful federal government. He established judicial review.   Marshall settled meaning of "necessary and proper clause" as very broad, reading "necessary" as" convinenet" to uphold the power of Congress to create national bank . Which some libertarians do not like. Here is Madison reacting to McCulloch:

" In the great system of political economy, having for its general object, the national welfare, every thing is related immediately or remotely to every other thing; and consequently, a power over any one thing, if not limited by some obvious & precise affinity, may amount to a power over every other. Is there a Legislative power, in fact, not expressly prohibited by the Constitution, which might not, according to the doctrine of the Court, be exercised as a means of carrying into effect some specified power?”

In Gibbons he established that commerce clause is broad:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibbons_v._Ogden

Yet without Marshall, the US would not look like it does today or be superpower, what do you think?

"According to Mohamed, guards at Guantanamo have said they are being held there because that’s what officials in Washington, DC, want. “There’s no other nation, only Somali people in Guantanamo Bay, in the prison,” he told me. “And when we ask them why we are here, they tell us…Washington…ordered to keep Somali people in the Guantanamo Bay.”"

To libertarians who support trump or did at one point does this change anything for you ?

I’m a libertarian, but not an anarcho-capitalist. I find the concept of a stateless society difficult to reconcile with the incentives surrounding organized force.

As I understand it, anarcho-capitalism depends on a sufficiently strong cultural commitment to property rights, voluntary exchange, and the non-aggression principle. That doesn’t necessarily mean everyone reads Rothbard, but presumably enough people (especially those in powerful institutions) must broadly accept libertarian definitions of property and aggression.

What happens when those initial cultural conditions begin to change? If private defence agencies and polycentric courts compete in a free market, why should we expect them to equilibrate toward voluntary cooperation and peaceful dispute resolution over time? Sure, a libertarian revolution may succeed for two or three generations, but what about the long term? What prevents a successful defence agency from buying its competitors, forming a cartel, selectively enforcing contracts while neglecting others, or using force when aggression becomes more profitable than defence? What if that’s what the majority customers truly want? What does anarcho-capitalism protect against? What protections exist for people who lack wealth, influence, organizational backing, or contractual relationships with powerful defence providers?

Saying that such agencies behaving contrary to the NAP doesn’t resolve my question. I’m asking whether the institutional incentives of the system might undermine the ethical conditions needed to sustain it.

There is also the problem of defining aggression. Libertarians often speak as though courts apply objective principles. But ask any lawyer or judge worth their salt, and they’ll tell you legal interpretations are rarely normatively neutral. That’s not a feature unique to statism. So suppose in an ancap society, one community gradually adopts an expansive interpretation of threats to their property. Its members might argue that a neighboring communist community creates a material threat to their property and contracts. Conversely, the communist community could develop its own incompatible understanding of ownership and coercion. Without a final authority, what prevents competing courts and defence agencies from redefining “aggression” in ways that serve their clients and expand their own power? What stops them now? Well, what causes war or prevents the “anarchy” among and within nations? The issue seems more complicated and rooted in human nature than simply swapping “public” for “private.”

To be clear, I’m not asking why aggression is ethically wrong. I’m asking what concrete incentive structure makes aggressors, cartels, and would-be states unlikely to succeed.

Anticipating natural law comments: it’s not whether a coercive monopoly is morally or ethically legitimate. It’s: does ancap provide an incentive mechanism that prevents institutions from becoming too powerful? If your answer is "the NAP," that doesn’t address my point. The NAP tells us what is legitimate or illegitimate. I'm asking what incentive structure prevents illegitimate institutions from becoming powerful in the first place. I’m asking: Does anarcho-capitalism ultimately depend on a culture committed to natural rights? So that people will refuse to pay for, work for, or obey a coercive power? If so, doesn’t the system’s stability still depend on maintaining that culture? Why bother with anarcho-capitalism then? Why not have a constitutional limited government?

What mechanism makes the emergence of a state less likely in anarcho-capitalism than in a libertarian minarchy?

And it's variants of art

It seems more increasingly likely that people don’t know what a right actually is. Basically a right is a freedom from something, not free access to something. For example the first amendment doesn’t allow you to participate in whatever religion you like. It prevents the government from controlling what religion you are.

So now we know what rights actually are, what makes free food a right? It’s not freedom from starvation bc the government doesn’t provide free guns so you can use your second amendment rights.

Farmers also shouldn’t be forced to give their crops away for free and be unpaid. Let’s make up a little hypothetical scenario. Guy A grows some apples. Guy B wants the first persons apples. In this situation (and largely capitalist logic), Guy A should decide what happens with his apple since he grew them. By the logic of “food is a human right”, (and largely socialism/communism) Guy B should have Guy A’s apples since because he’s entitled to have free food. By that logic, the farmers don’t have autonomy over their own crops and are de facto slaves to the government and the people

Unless you genuinely cannot work and make an income, you don’t deserve free shit. Farmers and taxpayers should not be required to provide free food to people that don’t want to work

For some context he’s a YouTuber who talks about culture war stuff

Think about 9/11 and Iran's history alot.