What It Means to Be a Libertarian | Charles Murray | Great Help for a Beginning Libertarian

What It Means to Be a Libertarian | Charles Murray | Fantastic, clearly written book!

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What It Means to B...

	What It Means to Be a Libertarian Charles Murray Broadway, 1997 - 196 pages average customer review:based on 42 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Charles Murray believes that America's founders had it right--strict limits on the power of the central government and strict protection of the individual are the keys to a genuinely free society. In What It Means to Be a Libertarian, he proposes a government reduced to the barest essentials: an executive branch consisting only of the White House and trimmed-down departments of state, defense, justice, and environment protection; a Congress so limited in power that it meets only a few months each year; and a federal code stripped of all but a handful of regulations.

Combining the tenets of classical Libertarian philosophy with his own highly-original, always provocative thinking, Murray shows why less government advances individual happiness and promotes more vital communities and a richer culture. By applying the truths our founders held to be self-evident to today's most urgent social and political problems, he creates a clear, workable vision for the future.

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Great Help for a Beginning Libertarian

Murray is able to condense the main principles of libertarian government down to a few basics in brief paragraphs and simple language free of jargon. The overriding basic principle is: freedom. "When did you last hear a leading Republican or Democratic politician argue that preserving individual freedom is government's primary responsibility, even if it prevents government from achieving some other worthy goal." (p. 4) he asks and suggests we "meditate once again on the proposition that freedom, classically understood, is the stuff by which we live satisfying lives.... Much of it has been taken from us. We must reclaim it." (p. 4). Government should, therefore, limit itself to only that which government can do well and should be as local as possible, e.g., the federal government should not do anything that a state government could do which should not do anything a county government could do, etc.

What government should do is exert its one power, which he calls, unfortunately, "police power" and which takes three forms 1) restraining people from injuring one another (criminal law); 2) enabling people to enter into enforceable voluntary agreements, i.e., contracts (civil law) and 3) maintaining/fostering the public good.

The latter is an elusive concept and not acknowledged by all libertarians. Murray, however, believes it can be defined as a legitimate function of government if it is a "nonexclusive, jointly consumable" good (p. 13). One fairly clear instance is that of transportaion and the need for a cohesive system of roads.

Libertarians believe that we must trust that most people, barring some actual mental disability, are capable of running their lives. Government protection is limited to criminal acts, including such intangibles as fraud or slander. There is little tolerance for "I couldn't help it." This is because taking responsibility for one's own life is a big factor in libertarian government and it is assumed that, unhindered, people will do just that. Responsibility is not the price of freedom; it is the reward of freedom.

The middle and longest section of the book shows how such a government would work in the areas of economic life, tolerance/discrimination, education & health care, darker issues such as addictive substances and gambling, porn and prostitution, and environmental protection and social services. Each of these chapters presents a proposal, description of current practice and problems and the libertarian solution. The scope of the book being small these are not exhaustive studies, but possible scenarios with just enough detail to support his argument convincingly.

At just 170 pages this book is a wonderful introduction to libertarianism - so it proved itself to this reader who came from a background of nearly complete ignorance about the subject. An added bonus for such a beginner is a final, bibliographic chapter which leads one to follow-up reading in the classic texts and what it means to be a libertarian. This is particularly helpful to a beginner wanting to know more but unsure of where eto go next.

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Fantastic, clearly written book!

Charles Murray eloquently explains the reasoning and ideals of Libertarians in a straight-forward, no-nonsense fashion. Easily the best book I've read this year.

A Solid Introduction

It is rare to find a political book that is free enough from pointless rhetoric and mundane argumentation to be this effective of a read. Charles Murray writes in a way that is simple and never deviates from the cause of explaining Libertarianism. He covers all bases, first by defining the idea, then explaining its principles, and finishes by addressing its more complicated nuances. I write this review from the perspective of someone who knew very little about Libertarianism before reading this book and now feel thoroughly informed about the basics of Libertarianism.

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Murray The Part-Time Monster Shrinker

What it Means to Be a Libertarian is a clear, concise and compelling account of Murray's brand of libertarianism. Murray fluidly moves from point to point, covering the broad range of social and political topics that concern libertarians.

Murray makes particularly good use of his "trendline test" to argue that government interventions are almost always ineffective. His claim is that we can spend a lot of money on government programs to solve what ails us (with respect to crime, poverty, health care, safety, education, etc.) but when you compare trends before government intervention and after intervention, there is usually no positive change. We are wasting our resources. Worse, by intervening, government agencies strip communities and citizens of important functions. Since, "to live a satisfying life, you have to spend a goodly portion of your waking hours doing important things," the pernicious effect of government "help" is incalculable. Murray shows heightened sensitivity to the actual places people live. "When the government stripped neighborhoods of functions, the consequences were most devastating where the geographic neighborhood was most important." 167

Murray separates himself from the strictest libertarians by allowing for legislation in matters where the public good is at stake and the transactions costs of solving problems through common law prohibit tort solutions. For example, "zoning rules provide a way for collections of people to shape the future of their neighborhood and are based on the consensual agreement of the people already living there." "The smaller the municipality, the more likely that the services have consensual support. The larger the municipality, the more likely that they are political arrangements for taking from one set of citizens to benefit another." Murray makes a convincing case for appropriately scaled government under local control of the people.

If Murray's principle is the greater the power, and the further removed the power is from local control, the more objectionable the power is, then it is fair to ask whether this principle applies to all powers that are great and removed from local control, or whether this principle is to apply only to government. Murray asserts that "over time, political and social freedom invariably correspond to the degree of economic freedom that people have retained." Is local control less important if the power is organized in the form of a corporation as opposed to a government?

In our current version of what passes for a "free market" with the putative benefit of unrestrained economic competition between individuals, Wal-Mart, because it enjoys the legal status of a person, is considered the theoretical equal of Bob the local appliance store owner. And if Bob happens to lose in the retail competition because he can't order 50,000 coffee-makers at a crack from a factory 12, 000 miles away, and receive a deep discount for being such an important customer, well, at least Bob was "free" to compete. Right? (Kunstler, The Long Emergency). Bob might expect Charles (Murray), a lover of freedom and defender of the locals against the imposition of remote power, to say something about his plight. Murray, however, gives no indication he is interested in shrinking the monster unless the monster is a government.

Murray gives a couple clues as to why this is the case. "The reality of daily life [Murray says] is that, by and large, the things the government does tend to be ugly, rude, slovenly - and not to work. Things that private organizations do tend to be attractive, courteous, tidy - and to work. That is the way America really is." This is the first clue - corporations (power and location not otherwise specified) come out on the happy side of the attractive / ugly split. The second clue is Murray's working hypothesis with respect to the psychology of human beings. "Libertarians assume that, absent physical coercion, everyone's mind is under his own control." And, "if I cannot use force, everything I get has to be given voluntarily."

With rose colored glasses and a simple psychology, Murray is able to decry the evils of governmental regulation while oblivious to the impact of mega-corporate bullies on the environment and local communities across the country. The attractive products courteously delivered from mega-corporations that have no real stake in any particular local community come with costs that are hidden only from those who do not want to see. And if Murray really thinks that a mega-corporation is powerless to shape his world against his interest and will merely because the mega-corporation does not wield police-power, then he is enjoying quite a fantasy.

I recommend What it Means to be a Libertarian. If Murray had applied his principle of local control to corporate as well as governmental power, he would have written a five star book. He stops short so he gets four stars.

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Well written, but doesn't address the challenging questions

I give this book a mixed review because I have mixed feelings about it. I think the author does a reasonably good job of explaining the Libertarian position, as I have encountered it elsewhere. I found his style easy to follow, and the flow of the book smooth and logical.

However, I was disappointed in several areas. There were a number of points that he tried to finesse, rather than deal with. He made a number of arguments in which he addressed a major point, but then did not address any of the obvious counters points to his arguments. Finally, he places assumes that many people will not choose their own short-term benefit over the long-term benefit of others.

Throughout the book he based many arguments on the assumption of a free market, both in general and in specific fields. He does not examine the assumptions upon which free markets are based (perfect knowledge on the part of all parties, no barriers to entry into the market, and a long-term viewpoint on the part of all participants). If he had, he might have been forced to recognize that often one or more of those assumptions are so far from being true that one cannot assume that a free market exists in a particular field. Gasoline is an example. The barriers to entry for a new supplier are huge, in terms of capital costs. The customer lacks the highly technical knowledge to be able to compare choices in an informed manner, and decisions that have negative long-term consequences for all others in the marketplace can have some very nice short-term payoffs for those making the decisions.

He uses trendlines as if the trends were something driven by physical constants, such as gravity, rather than made of discrete factors. He argued that when the law requiring seatbelts to be worn was introduced highway fatalities were already on a downward trend. He did not, however, address whether the law requiring seatbelts be installed in all new cars might have been partially responsible for that trend (and no, the manufacturers were not going to make them standard without being required to).

He would have most regulations replaced with civil suits in the case of damages, without considering that lawyers often seem to be more of the problem than the solution at reaching just decisions. He would give parent $3000 per year per child for education, without considering the effect on children whose parents "home school" them, spend the money on themselves, and don't educate their children. He addresses the need for some type of control over natural monopolies, but doesn't even mention the unnatural monopolies that are the endpoint of Capitalism in an unregulated marketplace.

All in all, it is not bad, but it is also not convincing. I would encourage the author to try again, this time with a co-author who does not agree with him, so objections can be raised and answered.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

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