osan
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A gift for thee on Friday night. Any formatting errors are likely mine and for them I apologize in advance. I struck the appendices, for which no apology shall be forthcoming.
Good stuff.
[COLOR=rgb(0.000000%, 0.000000%, 100.000000%)]PART I: IN DEFENSE OF PROPERTY
IN DEFENSE OF PROPERTY
A NECESSARY DIGRESSION
LOVE IS NOT ENOUGH
ROBIN HOOD SELLS OUT
THE RICH GET RICHER AND THE POOR GET RICHERMONOPOLY I: HOW TO LOSE YOUR SHIRT
MONOPOLY II: STATE MONOPOLY FOR FUN AND PROFITEXPLOITATION AND INTEREST[/COLOR]
[COLOR=rgb(0.000000%, 0.000000%, 100.000000%)]I DON'T NEED NOTHING[/COLOR]
[COLOR=rgb(0.000000%, 0.000000%, 100.000000%)]PART II: LIBERTARIAN GRAB BAG OR HOW TO SELL THE STATE IN SMALL PIECESSELL THE SCHOOLS[/COLOR]
[COLOR=rgb(0.000000%, 0.000000%, 100.000000%)]A RADICAL CRITIQUE OF AMERICAN UNIVERSITIESTHE IMPOSSIBILITY OF A UNIVERSITY
ADAM SMITH U.
OPEN THE GATES[/COLOR]
[COLOR=rgb(0.000000%, 0.000000%, 100.000000%)]SELL THE STREETS
99 AND 44/100THS PERCENT BUILT
A FIRST STEP
COUNTERATTACK
MIGHT HAVE BEEN
IS WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY A CONTAGIOUS DISEASE?IT'S MY LIFE
THE RIGHTS OF YOUTH
CREEPING CAPITALISM
IF YOU WANT IT, BUY IT
SCARCE MEANS FINITE
POLLUTION
BUCKSHOT FOR A SOCIALIST FRIEND[/COLOR]
[COLOR=rgb(0.000000%, 0.000000%, 100.000000%)]PART III: ANARCHY IS NOT CHAOS
WHAT IS ANARCHY? WHAT IS GOVERNMENT?
POLICE, COURTS, AND LAWS—ON THE MARKET
THE STABILITY PROBLEM
IS ANARCHO-CAPITALISM LIBERTARIAN?
AND, AS A FREE BONUS
SOCIALISM, LIMITED GOVERNMENT, ANARCHY, AND BIKINIS
NATIONAL DEFENSE: THE HARD PROBLEM
IN WHICH PREDICTION IS REDUCED TO SPECULATION
WHY ANARCHY?
REVOLUTION IS THE HELL OF IT
THE ECONOMICS OF THEFT, OR THE NONEXISTENCE OF THE RULING CLASSTHE RIGHT SIDE OF THE PUBLIC GOOD TRAP
HOW TO GET THERE FROM HERE[/COLOR]
[COLOR=rgb(0.000000%, 0.000000%, 100.000000%)]PART IV: FOR LIBERTARIANS:AN EXPANDED POSTSCRIPTPROBLEMS[/COLOR]
[COLOR=rgb(0.000000%, 0.000000%, 100.000000%)]WHERE I STAND
ANSWERS: THE ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF LAW
PRIVATE LAW ENFORCEMENT, MEDIEVAL ICELAND, AND LIBERTARIANISMIS THERE A LIBERTARIAN FOREIGN POLICY?
THE MARKET FOR MONEY
ANARCHIST POLITICS: CONCERNING THE LIBERTARIAN PARTY[/COLOR]
[COLOR=rgb(0.000000%, 0.000000%, 100.000000%)]G. K. CHESTERTON—AN AUTHOR REVIEW[/COLOR]
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
Most of this book was written between 1967 and 1973, when the first edition was published. I have made only minorchanges to the existing material, in the belief that the issues and arguments have not changed substantially over thepast 15 years. In some cases the reader will find the examples dated; Chapter 17, for example, was written whenRonald Reagan was governor of California. Where this seemed to be a serious problem I have updated examples oradded explanatory comments, but in most places I have left the original text unaltered. Most current examples will notremain current very long; hopefully this book will outlast the present governor of California as well.
I have followed the same policy with regard to numbers. Figures for the number of heroin addicts in New York or U.S.Steel's share of the steel industry describe the situation as of about 1970, when the first edition was being written.When looking at such numbers, you should remember that prices and nominal incomes were about a third as high in1970 as in 1988, when this preface is being written. Numbers that are purely hypothetical ("If a working wife can hirean Indian maid, who earned_______dollars a year in India . . . "), on the other hand, have been updated to make themmore plausible to a modern reader. The appendices have also been updated, mostly by my friend Jeff Hummel.
These are all minor changes. The major difference between this edition and the first is the inclusion of eight newchapters, making up Part IV of the book.
One thing I should perhaps have explained in my original preface, and which has puzzled some readers since, is theapparent inconsistency among the chapters. In Chapter 10, for instance, I advocate a voucher system, in which taxmonies are used to subsidize schooling, but in Part III I argue for a society with no taxes, no government, and thereforeno vouchers.
Part II of the book is intended to suggest specific reforms, within the structure of our present institutions, that wouldproduce desirable results while moving us closer to a libertarian society. A voucher system, which moves us fromschooling paid for and produced by government to schooling paid for by government but produced on a competitivemarket, is one such reform. In Part III I try to describe what a full-fledged anarcho-capitalist society might look likeand how it would work. Part III describes a much more radical change from our present institutions than Part II whilePart II describes how the first steps of that radical change might come about.
One reason for writing a book like this is to avoid having to explain the same set of ideas a hundred times to a hundreddifferent people. One of the associated rewards is discovering, years later, people who have incorporated my ideas intotheir own intellectual framework. This second edition is dedicated to one such person. I cannot honestly describe himas a follower or a disciple, since most of our public encounters have been debates; I believe that his best-known viewsare wrong and possibly dangerous. He is merely someone who starts out already knowing and understandingeverything I had to say on the subjects of this book as of 1973, which makes the ensuing argument very much moreinteresting.
For which reason this second edition is dedicated to Jeffrey Rogers Hummel.
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
My political views seem natural and obvious—to me. Others find them peculiar. Their peculiarity consists largely ofcarrying certain statements, familiar enough in political oratory, to their natural conclusions.
I believe, as many say they believe, that everyone has the right to run his own life—to go to hell in his own fashion. Iconclude, as do many on the left, that all censorship should be done away with. Also that all laws against drugs—marijuana, heroin, or Dr. Quack's cancer cure—should be repealed. Also laws requiring cars to have seat belts.
The right to control my life does not mean the right to have anything I want free; I can do that only by makingsomeone else pay for what I get. Like any good right winger, I oppose welfare programs that support the poor withmoney taken by force from the taxpayers.
I also oppose tariffs, subsidies, loan guarantees, urban renewal, agricultural price supports—in short, all of the muchmore numerous programs that support the not-poor—often the rich—with money taken by force from the taxpayers—often the poor.
I am an Adam Smith liberal, or, in contemporary American terminology, a Goldwater conservative. Only I carry mydevotion to laissez faire further than Goldwater does—how far will become clear in the following chapters. SometimesI call myself a Goldwater anarchist.
These peculiar views of mine are not peculiar to me. If they were, I would be paying Harper and Row to publish thisbook, instead of Harper and Row paying me. My views are typical of the ideas of a small but growing group ofpeople, a 'movement' that has begun to attract the attention of the national media. We call ourselves libertarians.
This book is concerned with libertarian ideas, not with a history of the libertarian 'movement' or a description of itspresent condition. It is fashionable to measure the importance of ideas by the number and violence of their adherents.That is a fashion I shall not follow. If, when you finish this book, you have come to share many of my views, you willknow the most important thing about the number of libertarians—that it is larger by one than when you started reading.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Most of the material in Chapters 12-15, 17-20, 22, 23, and 25 first appeared in The New Guard in slightly differentform. Most of Chapter 34 was originally published in The Alternative. Chapter 10 was written for the Center forIndependent Education and later published in Human Events. My thanks to all of the editors and publishers involvedfor permission to use the material here.
Chapter 38 was originally published, in considerably different form, in the Libertarian Connection; since, in thatpeculiar journal, authors retain ownership of what they write, I need not thank the editors for permission to use thematerial here. I instead thank them for generating useful ideas and maintaining a convenient and productive forum.
Chapter 47 first appeared in Frontlines, vol. 2, No. 6, March 1980.
Thanks are also due to those who read and commented on my manuscript: Emilia Nordvedt, Larry Abrams, andespecially Milton Friedman. Also, for sporadic criticism and general forbearance, to Diana.
INTRODUCTION
From Ayn Rand to bushy anarchists there is an occasional agreement on meanscalled libertarianism, which is a faith in laissez-faire politics/economics.... How tohate your government on principle.
SB, THE LAST WHOLE EARTH CATALOG
The central idea of libertarianism is that people should be permitted to run their own lives as they wish. We totallyreject the idea that people must be forcibly protected from themselves. A libertarian society would have no lawsagainst drugs, gambling, pornography —and no compulsory seat belts in cars. We also reject the idea that people havean enforceable claim on others, for anything more than being left alone. A libertarian society would have no welfare,no Social Security system. People who wished to aid others would do so voluntarily through private charity, instead ofusing money collected by force from the taxpayers. People who wished to provide for their old age would do sothrough private insurance.
People who wish to live in a 'virtuous' society, surrounded by others who share their ideas of virtue, would be free toset up their own communities and to contract with each other so as to prevent the 'sinful' from buying or renting withinthem. Those who wished to live communally could set up their own communes. But nobody would have a right toforce his way of life upon his neighbor.
So far, many who do not call themselves libertarians would agree. The difficulty comes in defining what it means to be'left alone'. We live in a complicated and interdependent society; each of us is constantly affected by events thousandsof miles away, occurring to people he has never heard of. How, in such a society, can we meaningfully talk about eachperson being free to go his own way?
The answer to this question lies in the concept of property rights. If we consider that each person owns his own bodyand can acquire ownership of other things by creating them, or by having ownership transferred to him by anotherowner, it becomes at least formally possible to define 'being left alone' and its opposite, 'being coerced'. Someone whoforcibly prevents me from using my property as I want, when I am not using it to violate his right to use his property,is coercing me. A man who prevents me from taking heroin coerces me; a man who prevents me from shooting himdoes not.
This leaves open the question of how one acquires ownership of things that are not created or that are not entirelycreated, such as land and mineral resources. There is disagreement among libertarians on this question. Fortunately, theanswer has little effect on the character of a libertarian society, at least in this country. Only about 3 percent of allincome in America is rental income. Adding the rental value of owner-occupied housing would bring this figure up toabout 8 percent. Property tax—rental income collected by government—is about another 5 percent. So the total rentalvalue of all property, land and buildings, adds up to about 13 percent of all income. Most of that is rent on the value ofbuildings, which are created by human effort, and thus poses no problem in the definition of property rights; the totalrent on all land, which does pose such a problem, is thus only a tiny fraction of total income. The total raw materialvalue of all minerals consumed, the other major 'unproduced' resource, is about another 3 percent. There again, muchof that value is the result of human effort, of digging the ore out of the ground. Only the value of the raw resources insitu may reasonably be regarded as unproduced. So resources whose existence owes nothing to human action bring totheir owners, at the most, perhaps one-twentieth of the national income. The vast majority of income is the result ofhuman actions. It is created by identifiable groups of people, working together under agreements that specify how theirjoint product is to be divided.
The concept of property allows at least a formal definition of 'letting alone' and 'coercing'. That this definitioncorresponds to what people usually mean by those words—that a libertarian society would be free—is by no means obvious. It is here that libertarians part company with our friends on the left, who agree that everyone should be free todo as he wishes, but argue that a hungry man is not free and that his right to freedom therefore implies an obligation toprovide food for him, whether one likes it or not.
The book is divided into four sections. In the first, I discuss property institutions, private and public, and how theyhave functioned in practice. In the second, I examine a series of individual questions from a libertarian viewpoint. Inthe third, I discuss what a future libertarian society might be like and how it could be achieved. The final sectioncontains new material on a variety of topics added in the second edition.
The purpose of this book is to persuade you that a libertarian society would be both free and attractive, that theinstitutions of private property are the machinery of freedom, making it possible, in a complicated and interdependentworld, for each person to pursue his life as he sees fit.
Good stuff.
THE MACHINERY OF FREEDOM
GUIDE TO A RADICAL CAPITALISM
GUIDE TO A RADICAL CAPITALISM
second edition
David Friedman
This book is dedicated to
Milton FriedmanFriedrich HayekRobert A. Heinlein,from whom I learned and to Robert M. Schuchman,who might have written it better
Capitalism is the best. It's free enterprise. Barter.Gimbels, if I get really rank with the clerk, 'Well Idon't like this', how I can resolve it? If it really getsridiculous, I go, 'Frig it, man, I walk.' What can thisguy do at Gimbels, even if he was the president ofGimbels? He can always reject me from that store,but I can always go to Macy's. He can't really hurtme. Communism is like one big phone company.Government control, man. And if I get too rank withthat phone company, where can I go? I'll end up likea schmuck with a dixie cup on a thread.
LENNY BRUCE
Why can't you see?
We just want to be free
To have our homes and familiesAnd live our lives as we please.
We just want to be free
To have our homes and familiesAnd live our lives as we please.
DANA ROHRABACHERWEST COAST LIBERTARIAN TROUBADOUR
CONTENTS[COLOR=rgb(0.000000%, 0.000000%, 100.000000%)]PART I: IN DEFENSE OF PROPERTY
IN DEFENSE OF PROPERTY
A NECESSARY DIGRESSION
LOVE IS NOT ENOUGH
ROBIN HOOD SELLS OUT
THE RICH GET RICHER AND THE POOR GET RICHERMONOPOLY I: HOW TO LOSE YOUR SHIRT
MONOPOLY II: STATE MONOPOLY FOR FUN AND PROFITEXPLOITATION AND INTEREST[/COLOR]
[COLOR=rgb(0.000000%, 0.000000%, 100.000000%)]I DON'T NEED NOTHING[/COLOR]
[COLOR=rgb(0.000000%, 0.000000%, 100.000000%)]PART II: LIBERTARIAN GRAB BAG OR HOW TO SELL THE STATE IN SMALL PIECESSELL THE SCHOOLS[/COLOR]
[COLOR=rgb(0.000000%, 0.000000%, 100.000000%)]A RADICAL CRITIQUE OF AMERICAN UNIVERSITIESTHE IMPOSSIBILITY OF A UNIVERSITY
ADAM SMITH U.
OPEN THE GATES[/COLOR]
[COLOR=rgb(0.000000%, 0.000000%, 100.000000%)]SELL THE STREETS
99 AND 44/100THS PERCENT BUILT
A FIRST STEP
COUNTERATTACK
MIGHT HAVE BEEN
IS WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY A CONTAGIOUS DISEASE?IT'S MY LIFE
THE RIGHTS OF YOUTH
CREEPING CAPITALISM
IF YOU WANT IT, BUY IT
SCARCE MEANS FINITE
POLLUTION
BUCKSHOT FOR A SOCIALIST FRIEND[/COLOR]
[COLOR=rgb(0.000000%, 0.000000%, 100.000000%)]PART III: ANARCHY IS NOT CHAOS
WHAT IS ANARCHY? WHAT IS GOVERNMENT?
POLICE, COURTS, AND LAWS—ON THE MARKET
THE STABILITY PROBLEM
IS ANARCHO-CAPITALISM LIBERTARIAN?
AND, AS A FREE BONUS
SOCIALISM, LIMITED GOVERNMENT, ANARCHY, AND BIKINIS
NATIONAL DEFENSE: THE HARD PROBLEM
IN WHICH PREDICTION IS REDUCED TO SPECULATION
WHY ANARCHY?
REVOLUTION IS THE HELL OF IT
THE ECONOMICS OF THEFT, OR THE NONEXISTENCE OF THE RULING CLASSTHE RIGHT SIDE OF THE PUBLIC GOOD TRAP
HOW TO GET THERE FROM HERE[/COLOR]
[COLOR=rgb(0.000000%, 0.000000%, 100.000000%)]PART IV: FOR LIBERTARIANS:AN EXPANDED POSTSCRIPTPROBLEMS[/COLOR]
[COLOR=rgb(0.000000%, 0.000000%, 100.000000%)]WHERE I STAND
ANSWERS: THE ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF LAW
PRIVATE LAW ENFORCEMENT, MEDIEVAL ICELAND, AND LIBERTARIANISMIS THERE A LIBERTARIAN FOREIGN POLICY?
THE MARKET FOR MONEY
ANARCHIST POLITICS: CONCERNING THE LIBERTARIAN PARTY[/COLOR]
[COLOR=rgb(0.000000%, 0.000000%, 100.000000%)]G. K. CHESTERTON—AN AUTHOR REVIEW[/COLOR]
Most of this book was written between 1967 and 1973, when the first edition was published. I have made only minorchanges to the existing material, in the belief that the issues and arguments have not changed substantially over thepast 15 years. In some cases the reader will find the examples dated; Chapter 17, for example, was written whenRonald Reagan was governor of California. Where this seemed to be a serious problem I have updated examples oradded explanatory comments, but in most places I have left the original text unaltered. Most current examples will notremain current very long; hopefully this book will outlast the present governor of California as well.
I have followed the same policy with regard to numbers. Figures for the number of heroin addicts in New York or U.S.Steel's share of the steel industry describe the situation as of about 1970, when the first edition was being written.When looking at such numbers, you should remember that prices and nominal incomes were about a third as high in1970 as in 1988, when this preface is being written. Numbers that are purely hypothetical ("If a working wife can hirean Indian maid, who earned_______dollars a year in India . . . "), on the other hand, have been updated to make themmore plausible to a modern reader. The appendices have also been updated, mostly by my friend Jeff Hummel.
These are all minor changes. The major difference between this edition and the first is the inclusion of eight newchapters, making up Part IV of the book.
One thing I should perhaps have explained in my original preface, and which has puzzled some readers since, is theapparent inconsistency among the chapters. In Chapter 10, for instance, I advocate a voucher system, in which taxmonies are used to subsidize schooling, but in Part III I argue for a society with no taxes, no government, and thereforeno vouchers.
Part II of the book is intended to suggest specific reforms, within the structure of our present institutions, that wouldproduce desirable results while moving us closer to a libertarian society. A voucher system, which moves us fromschooling paid for and produced by government to schooling paid for by government but produced on a competitivemarket, is one such reform. In Part III I try to describe what a full-fledged anarcho-capitalist society might look likeand how it would work. Part III describes a much more radical change from our present institutions than Part II whilePart II describes how the first steps of that radical change might come about.
One reason for writing a book like this is to avoid having to explain the same set of ideas a hundred times to a hundreddifferent people. One of the associated rewards is discovering, years later, people who have incorporated my ideas intotheir own intellectual framework. This second edition is dedicated to one such person. I cannot honestly describe himas a follower or a disciple, since most of our public encounters have been debates; I believe that his best-known viewsare wrong and possibly dangerous. He is merely someone who starts out already knowing and understandingeverything I had to say on the subjects of this book as of 1973, which makes the ensuing argument very much moreinteresting.
For which reason this second edition is dedicated to Jeffrey Rogers Hummel.
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
My political views seem natural and obvious—to me. Others find them peculiar. Their peculiarity consists largely ofcarrying certain statements, familiar enough in political oratory, to their natural conclusions.
I believe, as many say they believe, that everyone has the right to run his own life—to go to hell in his own fashion. Iconclude, as do many on the left, that all censorship should be done away with. Also that all laws against drugs—marijuana, heroin, or Dr. Quack's cancer cure—should be repealed. Also laws requiring cars to have seat belts.
The right to control my life does not mean the right to have anything I want free; I can do that only by makingsomeone else pay for what I get. Like any good right winger, I oppose welfare programs that support the poor withmoney taken by force from the taxpayers.
I also oppose tariffs, subsidies, loan guarantees, urban renewal, agricultural price supports—in short, all of the muchmore numerous programs that support the not-poor—often the rich—with money taken by force from the taxpayers—often the poor.
I am an Adam Smith liberal, or, in contemporary American terminology, a Goldwater conservative. Only I carry mydevotion to laissez faire further than Goldwater does—how far will become clear in the following chapters. SometimesI call myself a Goldwater anarchist.
These peculiar views of mine are not peculiar to me. If they were, I would be paying Harper and Row to publish thisbook, instead of Harper and Row paying me. My views are typical of the ideas of a small but growing group ofpeople, a 'movement' that has begun to attract the attention of the national media. We call ourselves libertarians.
This book is concerned with libertarian ideas, not with a history of the libertarian 'movement' or a description of itspresent condition. It is fashionable to measure the importance of ideas by the number and violence of their adherents.That is a fashion I shall not follow. If, when you finish this book, you have come to share many of my views, you willknow the most important thing about the number of libertarians—that it is larger by one than when you started reading.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Most of the material in Chapters 12-15, 17-20, 22, 23, and 25 first appeared in The New Guard in slightly differentform. Most of Chapter 34 was originally published in The Alternative. Chapter 10 was written for the Center forIndependent Education and later published in Human Events. My thanks to all of the editors and publishers involvedfor permission to use the material here.
Chapter 38 was originally published, in considerably different form, in the Libertarian Connection; since, in thatpeculiar journal, authors retain ownership of what they write, I need not thank the editors for permission to use thematerial here. I instead thank them for generating useful ideas and maintaining a convenient and productive forum.
Chapter 47 first appeared in Frontlines, vol. 2, No. 6, March 1980.
Thanks are also due to those who read and commented on my manuscript: Emilia Nordvedt, Larry Abrams, andespecially Milton Friedman. Also, for sporadic criticism and general forbearance, to Diana.
INTRODUCTION
From Ayn Rand to bushy anarchists there is an occasional agreement on meanscalled libertarianism, which is a faith in laissez-faire politics/economics.... How tohate your government on principle.
SB, THE LAST WHOLE EARTH CATALOG
The central idea of libertarianism is that people should be permitted to run their own lives as they wish. We totallyreject the idea that people must be forcibly protected from themselves. A libertarian society would have no lawsagainst drugs, gambling, pornography —and no compulsory seat belts in cars. We also reject the idea that people havean enforceable claim on others, for anything more than being left alone. A libertarian society would have no welfare,no Social Security system. People who wished to aid others would do so voluntarily through private charity, instead ofusing money collected by force from the taxpayers. People who wished to provide for their old age would do sothrough private insurance.
People who wish to live in a 'virtuous' society, surrounded by others who share their ideas of virtue, would be free toset up their own communities and to contract with each other so as to prevent the 'sinful' from buying or renting withinthem. Those who wished to live communally could set up their own communes. But nobody would have a right toforce his way of life upon his neighbor.
So far, many who do not call themselves libertarians would agree. The difficulty comes in defining what it means to be'left alone'. We live in a complicated and interdependent society; each of us is constantly affected by events thousandsof miles away, occurring to people he has never heard of. How, in such a society, can we meaningfully talk about eachperson being free to go his own way?
The answer to this question lies in the concept of property rights. If we consider that each person owns his own bodyand can acquire ownership of other things by creating them, or by having ownership transferred to him by anotherowner, it becomes at least formally possible to define 'being left alone' and its opposite, 'being coerced'. Someone whoforcibly prevents me from using my property as I want, when I am not using it to violate his right to use his property,is coercing me. A man who prevents me from taking heroin coerces me; a man who prevents me from shooting himdoes not.
This leaves open the question of how one acquires ownership of things that are not created or that are not entirelycreated, such as land and mineral resources. There is disagreement among libertarians on this question. Fortunately, theanswer has little effect on the character of a libertarian society, at least in this country. Only about 3 percent of allincome in America is rental income. Adding the rental value of owner-occupied housing would bring this figure up toabout 8 percent. Property tax—rental income collected by government—is about another 5 percent. So the total rentalvalue of all property, land and buildings, adds up to about 13 percent of all income. Most of that is rent on the value ofbuildings, which are created by human effort, and thus poses no problem in the definition of property rights; the totalrent on all land, which does pose such a problem, is thus only a tiny fraction of total income. The total raw materialvalue of all minerals consumed, the other major 'unproduced' resource, is about another 3 percent. There again, muchof that value is the result of human effort, of digging the ore out of the ground. Only the value of the raw resources insitu may reasonably be regarded as unproduced. So resources whose existence owes nothing to human action bring totheir owners, at the most, perhaps one-twentieth of the national income. The vast majority of income is the result ofhuman actions. It is created by identifiable groups of people, working together under agreements that specify how theirjoint product is to be divided.
The concept of property allows at least a formal definition of 'letting alone' and 'coercing'. That this definitioncorresponds to what people usually mean by those words—that a libertarian society would be free—is by no means obvious. It is here that libertarians part company with our friends on the left, who agree that everyone should be free todo as he wishes, but argue that a hungry man is not free and that his right to freedom therefore implies an obligation toprovide food for him, whether one likes it or not.
The book is divided into four sections. In the first, I discuss property institutions, private and public, and how theyhave functioned in practice. In the second, I examine a series of individual questions from a libertarian viewpoint. Inthe third, I discuss what a future libertarian society might be like and how it could be achieved. The final sectioncontains new material on a variety of topics added in the second edition.
The purpose of this book is to persuade you that a libertarian society would be both free and attractive, that theinstitutions of private property are the machinery of freedom, making it possible, in a complicated and interdependentworld, for each person to pursue his life as he sees fit.
