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Libertarians secretly worried that ultimately someone will figure out the whole of their political philosophy boils down to 'get off my property.' News flash: This is not really a big secret to the rest of us.

Libertarianism is, at its simplest, the antonym of authoritarianism.[2] The term has been around since the beginning of the 20th century or earlier and was primarily used for self-identification with anarcho-syndicalism and labor movements. In the USA, the term was adopted by the Foundation for Economic Education think tank in the 1950's[3] to describe a political and social philosophy that advocates laissez-faire capitalism as a panacea for virtually everything. Non-libertarians view this as synonymous with oligarchic plutocracy after the fashion of the American Gilded Age, while the reality-based community tends to realize that one cannot just yank economic theories out of the air and magically expect them to work.

This anti-government phenomenon is found primarily in the United States, likely due to Americans' extensive experience with dysfunctional government, coupled with their unawareness of the existence of other countries. Historically, and almost everywhere other than America still today, the term has been associated with libertarian socialism and anarchism. The adoption of the libertarian label by advocates of free market economics is an ironic example of their tendency to take credit for other people's ideas.

The US political party most aligned with libertarianism is the Libertarian Party, "America's Third Largest Party,"[4] whose candidate obtained 1.3 million, or 0.99% of the popular vote in the 2012 Presidential election.[5] This, compared to 0.32% of the popular vote[6] in the 2004 Presidential election, was considered by many libertarians to be "an improvement."

There is also an "Objectivist Party," formed as a spin-off from the Libertarian Party by those who thought that the party's 2008 presidential candidate, Bob Barr, was too left-wing,[7] and a Boston Tea Party (no connection other than ideological to that other tea party) formed as a spin-off by those who thought the Libertarian Party had become too right-wing on foreign policy and civil liberties after the LP deleted much of its platform in 2006.

Basically everyone agrees with libertarians on something, but they tend to get freaked out just as quickly by the ideologys other stances.

The dominant form of libertarianism (as found in the US) is an ideology based largely on Austrian school economics, which relies on axioms, rather than empirical analysis to inform economic and social policy. That said, the branch of libertarianism that has had the most success in influencing public policy is primarily informed by the Chicago school.

Proponents of libertarianism frequently cite the "Non-Aggression Principle" (NAP) as the moral basis of their ideology. The NAP states that everyone is free to do whatever they want with their lives and property, so long as it does not directly interfere with the freedom of others to do the same. Under this rule, you may only use "force" in response to prior inappropriate force against the life and/or property of yourself or others. Compare and contrast with John Stuart Mill's "The Harm Principle." The critical difference between the two is that libertarians completely oppose the preemptive use of force. By contrast, Mill and other classical liberals believe that the preemptive use of force to prevent likely future harm can be justified.

Under any logical scrutiny it becomes evident that the precise definition of aggression is highly subjective and supposes a strict libertarian definition of property.[11] The NAP can therefore be used in almost any way its user intends, by changing the definition of aggression to suit their particular opinion/agenda. For example, throwing someone in prison for massive tax evasion is seen as an act of aggression by the state, whereas selling someone cigarettes knowing they will kill that person is not seen as aggression.

Libertarians believe that government is the greatest, and perhaps the only, threat to the freedom of an individual. For this reason, they are closely associated with opposition to gun control, government surveillance, entitlements, and prohibitory drug policy.

The primary functions of government they allow are:

As one moves down the spectrum towards the extremes, more and more things normally handled by the police and criminal courts are instead handled by civil courts, and eventually even the civil courts are privatized.[12]

Libertarians oppose most forms of taxation (as taxes are "theft of property by force"), and any function of government outside of a small wish list of things they like. Additionally, they are against the use of taxes to deal with externalities, commons, or free rider problems. Their most common remedy for these problems involve the use of civil suits to deal with (negative) externalities, and the privatization of all commons, which allows for civil suits to handle harms to this "private" property. Of course, these answers are woefully inadequate in practice.[13]

Libertarians advocate extensive individual rights - a logical consequence of their core beliefs. Libertarians advocate a society where "anything that's peaceful and voluntary" is allowed so long as it does not infringe on anyone else's life, liberty, or property, or engender force or fraud. However, the exact nature of a right as "positive" or "negative" differs among libertarians. For example, one might say smoking in public is a personal liberty that affects nobody, whereas another would say it forces second-hand smoke upon those around them, interfering with their own right to not inhale smoke (note that most libertarians who are fed their talking points from think tanks fall into the former category thanks to second-hand smoke denialism).

The libertarian belief against the prior use of force also extends into foreign policy. This is sometimes referred to as a "non-interventionist" foreign policy. Most of them are not pacifists, however; they strongly promote the concept of self-defense, and usually accept national defense as one of the few legitimate functions of government.

Despite (or maybe because of) their extreme reverence for the United States Constitution (particularly an originalist reading of the Bill of Rights), libertarians are rarely elected to office. Cynics have suggested that refusal to provide adequate pork for their district hurts their chances in congressional elections. Other cynics point out that if they don't win an election in the first place, how can their "porcine provision" skills be tested?

The narrow usage of "libertarian" as a label is also a cause, as some who take "moderate libertarian" positions are frequently called a "free-market liberal/Democrat" or a "pro-____ rights conservative/Republican" - or even derisive epithets like "libt kiddies."

Many libertarians found the political philosophy through one of a small number of influential fiction books. The works of novelist Ayn Rand (The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged) and Robert Heinlein (The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress) are often cited. For example, many libertarians in the United States might quote Rand's Atlas Shrugged when they speak of government:

The only proper functions of a government are: the police, to protect you from criminals; the army, to protect you from foreign invaders; and the courts, to protect your property and contracts from breach or fraud by others, to settle disputes by rational rules, according to objective law.

Not that confusing, right?

Other libertarians may point to such works of non-fiction as Libertarianism in One Lesson by David Bergland, which posit a clear set of axioms and then delineate how society might follow them and how it would be best for everyone.

Many libertarians claim to be descendants of "classical liberals" (hence their irritating line about "Who are the real liberals?") though many "classical liberals" were decidedly more moderate than the current U.S. libertarian movement in that they were willing to accept more government regulations and taxes.[15] In light of this, modern libertarianism can be better described as a radical offshoot of classical liberalism.

Internet libertarians tend to be annoying teenagers. As an anonymous commenter on Charlie Stross's Bitcoin rant put it, their concerns precisely mirror those of privileged teenagers:[16]

Pretty much every libertarian position can be understood in that frame of restrictive but benevolent authority being the root of all 'real' problems. It's a rare parent who literally tortures their kids, so torture is, at best, not a 'real' issue, not a priority. But many make them do stuff for their health, so mandatory health insurance is a big deal. Pretty much no parents kill their child with drones, many read their diaries. And so on.

So to libertarians, Bitcoin is like wages from a fast food job as opposed to an allowance; lets you buy what you want without someone else having a veto. Only money that doesn't judge you can be considered entirely yours...

While a preference for maximum personal freedom is pretty much universal throughout most of the political spectrum (though less so on the fringes), libertarianism presents several difficulties:

Systems that attempt to boil themselves down to "a few simple rules" are seldom actually simple; for example, ancient Judaism's Deuteronomic reforms started out as just about half of the modern book of Deuteronomy, but eventually grew to encompass the whole Torah, large swaths of the rest of the Jewish Bible,[29] and ultimately to the vast body of commentary known as the Talmud. Esperanto, though defined in only sixteen grammatical rules, is actually quite a complex language, since its rules are defined in direct relation to established rules in Indo-European linguistics. Even some sports particularly golf have a strong element of common law in their rule systems.

There is essentially no guarantee that a society built on a libertarian legal structure would remain that way without redeveloping some sort of common law structure, or even a statutory structure that codifies all precedents. Given that most societies governed by rule of law already have this, it's hard to see what would be accomplished other than a massive reinvention of the wheel.[30]

The United States, for instance, is technically almost a truly libertarian country, even today, since the only laws it has are to "adjudicate between free men." Starting with a base, at least at the federal level (after the collapse of the Articles of Confederation) of a fairly simple Constitution, and some Roman and English common law, the country's government has evolved as a balance between virtually total liberty, and adjudicating the inevitable conflicts that arise between free men (or, in the case of drug laws, sodomy laws, etc., between the government and one somewhat unfree man). This adjudication has taken the form both of legislation to deal with issues that arose, and judicial analysis of the application of such legislation. Of course, 240 years offers a lot of opportunity for "free men" to need adjudication, so now, to self-styled "libertarians," the results look needlessly complicated. Such is life in the real world.

Typically libertarians argue that people should be free to do whatever they like as long as it doesn't hurt others. While this idea may seem very simple at first glance, the problem is that what "hurts" people and what doesn't is very nuanced. For instance, it is common for libertarians to oppose laws which reduce air pollution even though the latter can have a severe impact on the health of others, even if it is assumed that global warming is a gummint conspiracy to justify raising our taxes; more so than many direct acts of violence. It is also common for them to oppose laws mandating car drivers to wear seatbelts, even though seeing a person die as the result of not wearing one can have a major psychological effect on onlookers. Similarly, they may oppose anti-smoking campaigns as an unwarranted intrusion on personal liberty, while ignoring the financial burden imposed by smoking-related illnesses on both private insurance and taxpayer-funded health care. [31]

While libertarians all generally agree on the premise of the Non-Aggression Axiom, there are internal rifts and disagreement over what extent the Non-Aggression Axiom applies to. On the one hand, there are the Libertarian Party types (colloquially called "minarchists") who take a position of advocating minimal government, and on the other there are the market anarchists who believe that all the services the government provides are unjust monopolies, which the free market can handle better if let go of by the state. Market anarchists can be split into two groups, "anarcho-mutualists" who believe in a free market but not in capitalism or class, and anarcho-capitalists who believe in completely unregulated capitalism.

There is usually little room in between these two, but even then, there are still different branches within these umbrella terms. On the Minarchist side of the libertarian ideology, there are paleolibertarians, who advocate a strong return to the Constitution and are somewhat conservative in their arguments to preserve moral law, much like the Old Right paleoconservatives. Ron Paul, who is often viewed as a libertarian, would more fit the paleoconservative/libertarian framework. Additionally, there exist the geo-libertarians (who advocate simply a tax on all land),[32] neo-libertarians (often regarded not in any sense as libertarians, as their political views conflict with the very principles of the Non-Aggression Axiom), and other branches with their own nuances. On the anarchist side of the spectrum, things tend to be more homogeneous, with the major disagreements usually only amounting to how to achieve a libertarian society and solutions to ethical dilemmas.

This ideological division occurs not only externally in political theory, but philosophically as well. On the one side, there are the deontological natural rights theorists (Murray Rothbard being the most prominent advocate), and on the other are the utilitarian libertarians (David D. Friedman is often the most associated with this view). A few minority nihilists and radical subjectivists exist within these circles, but these views are often seen to be in conflict with the general premises laid out by the Non-Aggression Axiom.

The word "libertarianism" was used before the current usage came about to refer to anarchists, who are against hierarchies brought about by stratified classes and a state controlled by the wealthy elites, and thus oppose capitalism. Many call themselves 'libertarian socialists' a philosophy championed by Noam Chomsky. The use of "libertarianism" to describe anarchy dates back to the late 1850s, with Le Libertaire, Journal du Mouvement Social being the name of a journal published by anarchist Joseph Dejacque. The term 'libertarian communism' originated in the 1880s, when the French anarchist congress adopted it. As late as 1954, a largely anarcho-syndicalist movement named The Libertarian League was set up in the US.

The current Libertarian Party in the US only came into being in early 1970s, well over 100 years after anarchists had begun using the term to describe themselves. In the US, to quote Murray Bookchin:

As late as the 1990s, the Libertarian Labor Review newspaper promoted anarcho-syndicalism while still using the libertarian label. Samuel Edward Konkin III labeled his underground-economy based "agorism" as left-libertarianism, while claiming influence from right-libertarians like Rothbard. The term may also accurately describe Karl Hess, the former Goldwater Republican and Cold Warrior who aligned himself with Murray Rothbard for a few years, then swung to the hard left during the late 1960s and 1970s and joined the New Left.[33]

There are a number of areas where the more "rational" libertarians and liberals have overlapping concerns, notably, opposition to corporate welfare and the military-industrial complex, and valuing personal liberty and freedom of speech. Too bad so many libertarians are anti-environmentalist gun nuts.

There is a good deal of overlap between these groups, but the hardliners tend to lavish hate on each other:

Deontological anarchists that adhere to the teachings of Murray Rothbard. Most anarcho-capitalists adhere to the Austrian School, though David D. Friedman opts for the utilitarian Chicago School. A few others follow the pure pacifism of Robert LeFevre. Modern examples include Adam Kokesh, who claims the only real anarchists are anarcho-capitalists, and Walter Block of the LvMI.

Samuel Edward Konkin III's philosophy of agorism was described by Konkin himself as a particularly concentrated strain of Rothbardianism, but Konkin and adherents consider(ed) themselves part of the libertarian left. This may be fair, since Konkin coinages like Kochtopus have entered the general leftist lexicon.

The more utilitarian of the bunch and usually associated more with the Chicago school than the Austrian school. The term "Beltway" is used as a pejorative by the hardline anarchists and deontological types to paint them as sell-outs because they've gotten some traction in DC. Prominent Beltway types include Thomas Sowell, Nick Gillespie and the late Milton Friedman.

Usually conspiracy nuts, survivalists, Sovereign citizen types, or gold bugs who think the gummint is out to get them. There are white supremacists and dominionists who want to bring back "states' rights" to resurrect segregation or official state religions, or both. Also includes fans of the seasteading, micronation, and vonu movements, "life extension," Galambosianism, Liberty Dollars, and pretty much anything from the Loompanics book catalog. Finally, there are those who take up the mantle of libertarianism because it opposes some federal law they don't like. This usually includes prostitutes, potheads, polygamists, woo-meisters, and peddlers of some form of illegal quackery. May suffer from an excess of colloidal silver in the bloodstream. Alex Jones is the epitome of the crank magnet libertarian.

A term coined by Lew Rockwell. Their policies are mostly the same as the "Taft Republicans" of the Old Right. They are advocates of the Austrian school, originalism, states' rights, strict Constitutionalism, and generally socially conservative despite opposing the drug war and "bedroom laws." Ron Paul falls into this camp. Many conspiracy nuts are also paleolibertarians, such as the almighty Alex Jones mentioned above, Texe Marrs and Mark Dice.

Largely the venerable predecessors of the modern libertarian movement, who were an influence on Rothbard but rejected anarchism, influenced Rand but rejected orthodox Objectivism, etc.

Usually generic deontological minarchist libertarians, the only difference being that they identify themselves with the tenets of Objectivism. Rand herself hated the Libertarian Party and denounced them as poseurs.[34]Alan Greenspan is probably the most famous Randroid, and we all know what happened there.

Generally Silicon Valley inhabitants who attempt to apply hacker culture to politics. Lots of overlap with techno-utopian movements like transhumanism and Singularitarianism. Also overlaps with the seasteading, life extension, and digital-currency crank magnets. The most likely of any of these groups to oppose intellectual property rights, traditionally supported by other types of libertarians. See also Eric S. Raymond, Bitcoin, and Anonymous. Ironically, technological leaps have made surveillance of citizens easier than ever before in human history.

Their true ideological motivations are unknown, but they use the language of the "free market" to shill for corporations that don't want to deal with regulations or taxes. They can usually be found at some DC think tank cranking out bogus research while being bankrolled by Koch Industries or Exxon. Steve Milloy is a prime example.

People who say they are libertarians, but dutifully pull the lever for most anyone with an "R" after their name (not, however, for Ron Paul) every election. In between elections they shill for military interventionism, and attack liberals, but never conservatives, for being enemies of liberty. And lot of Al Gore bashing. Their idea of a "libertarian Republican" is Rudy Giuliani. Their only real claim to being libertarians is their irreverent attitude, but this really just boils down to being a jerk for the sake of being a jerk. Glenn Reynolds and Matt Drudge have made a lucrative career pushing their buttons.

Those whose main attraction to libertarianism is civil liberties of the ACLU sort, anti-war issues, gay rights, marijuana, privacy, police abuses, womens lib, conscription, and so forth. They may view liberals as unreliable on these issues, or they may hold conservative economic views, and prefer to align with libertarians. The Cato Institute used to emphasize outreach to them in its early years via Inquiry magazine and The Libertarian Review. Today, Radley Balko and Carol Moore might be prominent examples, as was (until his recent death) American Indian Movement activist Russell Means. Arguably the most reasonable out of the bunch.

Those for whom the Libertarian Party and the libertarian movement are one and the same thing. Ideologically suspect to the more hard-core, they differ from Beltway libertarians primarily in that they prefer to throw all their effort into building the Libertarian Party instead of trying to get cred inside the Beltway. They typically want to trim and gut the party platform to attract more people, and/or disseminate an oversimplified version of the libertarian message in the name of "effective communication." Fond of using the World's Smallest Political Quiz and other materials from the Advocates for Self-Government. See Michael Cloud, Carla Howell, former Alaska state representative Dick Randolph, 1980 LP presidential nominee Ed Clark, and 2013 Virginia gubernatorial candidate Robert Sarvis.

Usually refers to fans of Ron Paul, who express their rabid support for him through the Internet. More recently, it has come to refer to irritating "Internet libertarians" in general who find a home for themselves on certain Internet sites, especially YouTube, and proceed to "upvote" everything that agrees with their worldview while "downvoting" anyone who disagrees with it en masse. Any site with an upvote/downvote system (i.e. Urban Dictionary, ABC News... hell, it's easier to list sites they haven't taken over at this point) is up for grabs for these people, and there tends to be heavy overlap with the crank magnets, Austrian schoolers, and, oddly, the online MRA movement. When not shilling for Ron Paul, being conspiracy nuts, or just being unbelievably self-righteous in general their favorite pastimes usually include rambling about Barack Obama, excessive quote mining of Paul Krugman (and it's always Krugman), and using snarl words such as "fascist," "sheeple," "statist," etc.

Refers to conservatives, neocons, Christian rightists, etc., who have no clue what libertarianism is, but simply identify as "libertarian" because it "sounds more hip," or to avoid association with the Republican Party. Many of these fake libertarians think that anti-federalism and libertarianism are the same thing (ex. a Christian fundamentalist "libertarian" who complains about the Nanny state and cries for smaller federal government - so that Alabama can criminalize homosexuality, pornography, and abortion on the state level). Another example would be right-wing talk radio host Neal Boortz who identifies as a libertarian, but supported the federal government spying on anti-Iraq war protesters.

The following institutions and groups are closely or loosely associated with modern libertarianism:

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Libertarianism - RationalWiki