Jim Roye
Jim Roye
Jul 27, 2017 · 3 min read

Your hypothetical situation has a few holes in it.

Despite arguing that an education would be a good and worthy investment Charlie will not give in. Alex gets Ben involved and the two of then agree that Charlie should pay up, essentially forming a 2 to 1 majority. Still Charlie refuses. Alex and Ben ask more of their friends: Daryl; Ernest; Friedrich; Glenn. All unanimously agree that he should pay but still Charlie remains steadfast. Taking the situation in to their own hands the majority elects to extract the money from Charlie by force.

If the hypothetical situation was an accurate representation of a libertarian society, Alex, Ben, Daryl, Ernest, Fredrich and Glenn would all realize that they had no legal or moral authority to decide what Charlie “should” do with his own property. Being that they are all upstanding members of society, they would all respect that, leave Charlie to himself and figure out how to raise the funds from their own assets and pay for what they can afford to purchase. And if they chose to do that, they would have the legal and moral ability to exclude Charlie from benefiting from the education system they establish.

In this respect, there is overlap between the Libertarian and Liberal/Progressive minds. The Progressive typically argues that you can’t vote away someone’s rights (this was a fairly common refrain during the LGBT marriage equality debate in recent years). The Libertarian is making the same claim. You can’t vote away their property rights.

However, we can’t just force poor Charlie to defend his property from villains and scoundrels alone.

Well, of course not. This *is* a civilized society after all.

Charlie might get some people to help him, such as his six friends Patrick, Oliver, Lenny, Isaac, Carl and Egbert. The POLICE, as they shall be abbreviated to, will allow justice to finally be served, at a price.

At a price? Nooo… The POLICE would act free of charge because they would recognize that it is in their own best interest to do so. After all, When Alex and his band of thieves shows up to rob one of them, they’ll want Charlie to come to their aid, won’t they? And, of course, they are all upstanding men of morality that want to right a wrong.

In practical terms society would become survival of the fittest as vulnerable people would lose any way of owning property.

Hmmm.. That is a bit of circular thinking. “I’m going to take your property from you because if I don’t someone else might come and take it from you!”

Either way, the property is taken from them, no?

I therefore think that we can argue that all citizens should contribute towards this institute.

Why is paying taxes the only way for someone to “contribute”? The Libertarian would argue that they could contribute their time/energy as a member of that police force. But if they did collectively agree to hire a professional police force, they would do so voluntarily and each person as a member of that collective would pay in equal shares towards the cost. If you choose not to pay, the police have no obligation to respond to your needs/desires.

That is why, I believe, the right to own property is conditional of the existence of a central organisation for protecting these rights. A government.

I’ve never heard of a Libertarian that doesn’t believe in government so I’m not quite sure what is being demonstrated here. Most Libertarians would agree with you that protecting individual rights *is* the purpose of government.

Where they would disagree with you is on the right of a portion of society to force them into participating in the aspects of government they disagree with and at what point government enters into any decision.

Libertarians tend to see the need for government as a reactive entity that ensures any infringement on an individual’s rights are corrected/remedied. Liberals/Progressives tend to view government as a proactive entity to prevent any infringement from happening to begin with. The end objective of both is the same — the protection of individual rights.

    Jim Roye

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    Jim Roye