Joshua Paschal

Most of the people that read this post will either love or hate what I am going to argue, so oh well in advance. What I want to argue is relatively specific today: when it comes to right-wing libertarians in a liberal democracy, they often simply miss the point with the justifications they provide for their positions. I will give my general argument and throughout I will elucidate with a number of examples.

We choose liberal democracy, in my view, for the sake of civil pluralism, as I have discussed before. This means that our democracy requires a fair balancing of the extension of rights. The rule of thumb is simple: my rights go only so far as they do not begin to infringe on your rights. Libertarians completely ignore this, and instead stubbornly double-down on their own doctrine of restricted and sweeping rights.

I will provide an example that I believe shows this, and then I will explain what grounds my position above.

Consider the case of drug production. A crudely libertarian position would look something like this: ownership of property is the highest kind of right that supersedes all other kinds of concerns. Individuals should be empowered to do what with their property as they so please. This should include not only using drugs, but also producing drugs as they so please. Any regulation is a violation of the property rights of the individual.

But in this case, the libertarian fails to be informative. The production of some drugs is very obviously dangerous, as accidents with drug labs often show. Not only does the libertarian argument above risk infringing on the property rights of surrounding people from sheer risk: the analysis itself is lacking. It isn’t purely about property rights, as it also concerns the materials used to produce the drugs, the danger of producing such drugs, and the possible externalities and costs imposed on society from the production of the drugs (this does not necessarily entail distribution: I am more-so thinking about the medical costs of drug addiction and overdose even in private settings).

So, one can reasonably be a libertarian about the private use of drugs, but cannot be perfectly libertarian about drug production. But, this libertarianism about drug use is not sufficient for using the term ‘libertarian’, as plenty of liberals and conservatives in the United States are fine with personal drug use. Libertarianism is, fundamentally, about the markets.

This is the basic mistake libertarians make: they reject democratic authority over the marketplace. They convolute natural rights with some monstrous form of marketplace rights, something that simply does not follow. The establishment of democratic authority, or government more generally, is about the regulation of the public sphere of light (contrary to a perfectly private society). Engaging in the free market is necessarily a public activity, and thus within the scope of legitimate regulation categorically. I admit this argument is crude, so let me give an example.

Consider the Colorado bakeshop case: long story short, a Colorado cake baker refused to produce a generic wedding cake for a gay couple on religious grounds. This obviously confuses the scope of personal rights: the baker was not engaged in a private activity–by operating a public business, the baker necessarily is performing a public activity not of the type rights claims even apply. By being a public producer of goods, discrimination law kicks in. This does not hinder the baker’s private right to practice his religion: the baker should expect to be held to the public standards when engaging in public activity. That is simply how the public-private relationship works. The gay couple, as private citizens seeking a publicly available service, are due to fair access to such services. This does not mean the gay couple can compel the baker to make explicitly pro-queer cakes: but the baker is compelled to provide the services he would be willing to give to straight couples (neutral looking cakes).

Libertarianism stubbornly rejects the dynamic between the private and the public–but this distinction is vital to civil society and liberal democracy. In this regard, the right-wing libertarian in a liberal democracy simply misses the point.

This isn’t to say all libertarians are like this: I specifically think the Libertarian Party of the United States is guilty of this, not individuals that casually identify as “fiscally conservative but socially liberal.” Ordinary people aren’t arguing in favor of selling heroin to children, per this infamous throwback:

https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4602730/user-clip-you-sell-heroin-5-year-old-boos