You never asked if he was a Libertarian or a libertarian.

Of which variety do you want to answer your questions?

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Woodrow Wilson

Objectivism is a comprehensive philosophy with a metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, politics and esthetics, with all positions in each branch genetically dependent on the more fundamental ones. Ayn Rand's politics is a radical capitalism that has only one fundamental principle: no human may initiate the use of physical force to gain, withhold, or destroy a value owned by another human. This principle applies to everyone, including the government. The government becomes the only agent of force and is constituted with checks and balances and specific mandates to guarantee that it may only use physical force defensively to prevent, stop, and punish the initiation of force for gain.

Many Libertarians admire Rand and are influenced by and agree with all but a small portion of her politics. The difference lies in the fact that the Objectivists are capitalists as a necessary consequence of the Objectivist ethics of rational egoism which is in turn a consequence of the epistemology that holds man's rational capacity to be the primary tool of survival as man.

Libertarians are often ex-objectivists who were unable to shed their altruist sentiments, or their religious beliefs, etc. for the sake of Objectivisms strict rational consistency. They are also often a-philosophical or only superficially philosophical laissez-faire capitalists who think that a 'big tent' policy will bring them a chance at the golden ring of political success much sooner. Ultimately, those reasons make them all pragmatists, a position more antithetical in the long run to Objectivism than either the left or the right.

Without the ethical underpinning of Objectivism, Libertarians have little to restrain them from compromising their principles. The best test is the issue of taxation. As is evident in the principle stated above, an Objectivist government would not be permitted to coerce taxes from the governed. Libertarians almost always are willing to have something taxed to fund government like excise taxes.


The right to property is not primarily the right to an object, but rather the right to an action, namely the right to produce values with which to further one's life as well as the right to the consequences of those actions, which are the products earned by them. In other words, one earns the right to control objects that are the repository of value created by one's ideas and efforts.

In Ayn Rand's words:

"Any material element or resource which, in order to become of use or value to men, requires the application of human knowledge and effort, should be private property -- by the right of those who apply the knowledge and effort." (Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal", 122)

This is in line with the classical view manifested in the homesteading of land in the populating of the American West: To claim it, you must improve it. You get to control the land that is the repository of the values you create. If you sell it, the new owner gets to control it for the same reason. It is the retainer of the wealth paid for it which is itself a retainer of values created by his ideas and efforts at a prior time. If it is deeded to you unimproved (as in sub-division of otherwise improved land), or inherited, it is the retainer of the value you represented or provided to the one who transferred it to you.

Great response, MichaelM!

A few issues, though. How would objectivists fund a government if not through taxation? Is it through a 'recognised agreement' that a government is in their interests, and subsequent donations? I don't think that's a very feasible way of setting up a state, even a very limited one.

You use the word 'value' frequently, as in:
But the definition of value here is a bit vague. Do values include ideas, ethics, etc.? Are they only referring to physical properties? Are you referring to 'rights'? Could you go into it further?

Finally, you say that ownership of land is established by the principle of 'whoever has improved the land, claims it'. Doesn't this just present a simplistic 'first come first served' argument for land ownership? Who adjudicates what constitutes 'improvement', and who divides up two miles of a stream because one has been used for irrigation and the other for fishing? It's a fine principle, but the nitty gritty of it doesn't seem to hold up.

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it is a mistake to throw out the language of equal worth because of its contingent historical association with Western power.

Before I answer your questions, allow me to put my positions in context, with the hope that it will facilitate understanding my answers.

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Knowledge is an inverted pyramid. Specific, concrete ideas about facts are spread out over its largest (horizontal) surface at the top. The most fundamental, all-encompassing (self-evident) truth one can grasp about the universe is on the point at the bottom. All knowledge from the most fundamental at the bottom to least fundamental at the top is (and to be valid, must be) interconnected by the stairs and hallways of logic.

Hence a pair of maxims: You cannot resolve any difference in two opposing ideas if it stems from a disagreement on a more fundamental level. Similarly, any idea that is genetically dependent on a more fundamental erroneous principle is itself ipso facto an error as well.

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With that in mind, the short answer to the question "how could a society of men finance a government without taxation? is however they want to do it, as long as they do not coerce values from any other human being.

What keeps this from being just another flippant forum answer, is that taxation of any kind violates a political principle that is genetically dependent for its validity on an ethical principle that is dependent on an epistemological principle dependent on a metaphysical axiom. Without demonstrating a flaw in that logical chain, one must conclude that if men cannot find a way to fund government without taxation, they must choose between having no government or being immoral (acting contrary to their nature and the nature of the rest of existence by violating the property rights of the governed in order to form a government that is supposed to protect their property rights - a blatant self-contradiction).

Now that does not mean one cannot engage in the game of proposing various ways in which it could be actually achieved. And it cannot be much more than a game, because one cannot easily project from the only half-free context in which we live today what a 3/4 or 7/8 free society could achieve. That is the context that would have to exist before there would be enough people who understood in full the potential benefits of real and total liberty for all. The biggest mistake you can make is to apply the concept of no taxation (and no initiated force) within the contemporary context.

Rather than to take time not available to elaborate on the ideas I have gathered over the past 40 years of agreeing with the no force principle, I would prefer to give you a few hints and challenge you to make an honest effort to define how you think it could be done if coercion were removed as an option.

First of all, a government concerned only with the use of force for gain would be microscopic in size and price relative to the statist behemoths we fund today.

The best and most current model is the whole wide world of the internet, where payments by the largest corporations and the richest persons on earth for hyper-complex products of all kinds funds the simpler versions of products the poorest use for free. Look at the value of Google. How much do you pay for that service, even including advertising costs passed on to us in prices?

So, the bulk of the cost would be funded by those who have the most to lose from not being protected, and the most (good will) to gain from providing it for those not able to afford much contribution to it -- meaning those most able to fund it. The danger of them gaining undue influence would be controlled by two factors: a) government would have no benefits or privileges to dispense, and b) every penny spent by their customers is a vote for how corporate giants must behave -- and the masses have the most pennies, as Sam Walton unequivocally proved.

Additionally there are the lesser but valid sources of user fees, lotteries, and donations not to mention charges to other governments for protection provided contractually in conjunction with protecting ourselves.

The definition of value is both simple and specific: a value is that which one acts to gain or keep. That would include both tangible and intangible values. For instance, your reputation was created by the application of your ideas to your actions and an attempt to destroy it by misrepresentation (libel) would be the destruction of a value owned requiring physical force (defensive, not initiated) to restore it or compensate for its loss by the perpetrator.

The quantity and quality of a human being's life depends on the establishment of a code of values in principle to guide the actions that will produce the concrete values necessary to achieve physical well being, self-esteem and happiness.

Simplistic? Do not make it more complex than it has to be. 'First come first served' has been the operative principle forever. By whom acting by what standard could any man or men decree a set-aside for what future arrivals? Furthermore, there are no negative consequences to that principle, provided that no gang or government is allowed to use force to interfere with the market. In a free market, all ownership of values must be continually earned. The value of using land always competes with the value of leaving it unused.

Similarly, the definition and definers of "improvements" that would constitute ownership would be contextual, i.e. dependent on the nature of the property and the nature of the capacity to defend the rights to it. Government's assignment is to protect all rights, but all governments are in that task inherently limited to the protection the protected are willing to pay for. Protection beyond that point could be paid for by user fees, which would be an added source of revenue for the government, and that would in itself add so much to the cost of sustaining ownership of excessive claims that it would constitute an automatic self-regulation of the process.

In the American pioneer days, improvement of land was a fence around it. An improvement on Mars would be necessarily different. Or define the improvement required to own an airwave for communications. Or how about the whales in the ocean? Simply branding them would probably suffice. Then the Russian and Japanese whalers would own most of them and Greenpeace the rest. Eventually Greenpeace would sell theirs off to fund other projects when they realized that ranchers do not kill their last bull and cow. On the contrary, there would soon be buoys in the ocean warning ships: Whale Crossing Ahead!

Similarly, if rivers and lakes and streams had been condominiums from the start, they would not be polluted today - unless, of course the public overwhelmingly concurred. Remember that it was the government that tolerated all that destruction in the name of the public that condoned it and "fairness" to the needs of the companies that caused it.

First come first served is only disastrous when values are publicly owned. Then the one that consumes the most the fastest wins. When such values are privately owned, it is their sustenance as capital that will forever protect their value to man from extinction.

Wow, a great big meaty post! I love it! OK, so...

I'm not sure I agree with your philosophising on inverted pyramids of knowledge, so I don't really see how it applies to taxation. What are the ethical, epistemological, and metaphysical principles that taxation is predicated upon? You say that men must choose between having no government or being immoral, but I think this is a false dichotomy. You say that taxation is 'acting contrary to their nature and the nature of the rest of existance', but you are assuming this, rather than proving it. I do not think it is immoral to tax, for example.

What other context is it relevant to apply the concept of no taxation if not to the current one? We are speaking politics, not philosophy here. You ask us to imagine the possibilities of a freer world while asking us not to contemplate how to get there. At least that's how it seems to me. Can you draw a line in the dirt to show at which point people 'understand the benefits of total liberty' enough to make non-taxation viable?


The old idea of voting with your dollar is an attractive one, and in many cases a functional one, but you can't rely on it. A variety of factors such as inelasticity of demand and monopoly power can erode the control consumers have over the corporations they fund. Look at the London Underground, which has seen since its privatisation growing prices, lower standards of service, and lower wages for workers whilst the highest places get higher salaries. But short of government intervention, there is no real way for consumers to 'vote with their pound', as many are financially dependent on the London public transport network. What if the water company jacked up the price of water by 500%? No one really has the money to put down a whole other nationwide sewage and water system to compete with that, but again, consumers can't help but pay. There's always the solution in this case of leaving the country or making water systems local so that communities compete but this relegates the idea to 'voting with your feet', and in any case means a drop in efficiency of service


Who decides what values are valid and which aren't? Am I allowed to 'value' my privacy to the extent that no one can come within a mile of me? Am I allowed to 'value' my reputation to the extent that none can speak nought but praise of me? Allowing individuals to decide their own values and validating their use of physical force to defend them is a recipe for a Hobbesian life, I think. It may be philosophically sound, but again, it is not politically robust enough to be applied.


Contextual to what? The individual? The community? The state? If it is the first, then again, it could and would be taken to unreasonable extremes and physical force would be needlessly used. If it is the second, then you are making a communitarian/anarcho-pastoralist argument. If it is the third, we are in agreement.


You are making an argument here for the privatisation of the commons as a means of protecting the environment. I don't really agree with that line, as I feel that it would be far too easy for the irresponsible/shortsighted to get their hands on land to despoil it, and it would be far too difficult to account for negative externalities and work them into a free market system. You say that a rancher doesn't shoot the last bull and cow, but we as a species have been shooting cattle pretty heedlessly for the past two hundred years or so. I don't have so much faith that the individual naturally knows what is best for all whilst simultaneously looking out for only his own interests.

Sorry if I mangled your arguments by abridging your post, it was just to make everything a bit more concise.

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it is a mistake to throw out the language of equal worth because of its contingent historical association with Western power.

Libertarianism means being in favor of a personal right to make and keep nuclear weapons. Libertarianism means basing one's entire philosophy on the US consitution, as if it were a bible. Libertarianism means being entirely black and white regarding everything and not being able to explain simple things like the original ownership of land in those terms. Libertarianism means no problem with private police forces. Libertarianism means negating the concept of "society", or any obligations to such. Libertarianism means .... well, pure wacko.
You have yet to answer any question I asked relevantly. Your answers may, in you own mind have been ever so confident and certain, but they were evasions to the rest of us. Please try and actually answer them in a relevant manner.
Please, if you are able, try and answer my questions in a knowledgeable and relevant way.

Libertarian, of course.

PART 1 of 2

It applies because in the pyramid (singular) ethics is more fundamental than politics. Political principles imply the ethics that supports them -- the ethics from which they were derived -- on which they rest, as it were. The very definition of politics is that it is the science that deals with extension of individual ethics into the context of a society of individuals.

If it is true that man survives and flourishes by volitionally applying his rational capacity to his actions, then human independence of thought and action is an ethical mandate (minimize dependence on the fallibility of others). And the prohibition of using force to restrain or prevent that independence would be the application of that principle in a political context. That is how one derives a moral political principle. To refute it you cannot throw rocks at the consequences. You have to first refute the ethics that generated it and is, until you do, its proof of validity.

Consequently (continuing from above), if you cannot find a way to fund government voluntarily, you will have only two options: 1) sustain your ethical principle and get along with half or none of the government you need, or 2) abandon your ethics and use force to fund the government you want, i.e. be immoral.

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Yes, it is when and where rational egoists outnumber mystical altruists enough in any particular region that they can wrench the government from their control. If and when that happens anywhere, it is (short of some cataclysmic event) likely to be by a gradual process over many years as the culture changes.

Politics is a branch of philosophy. Considering politics disintegrated from the philosophy on which it is based is a superficial and pointless waste of time. Why else do you think that posters on forums never change their minds because of someone else's posts. It is because none of them are capable of descending those stairways into the fundament of the pyramid to discover the true source of their disagreement. Our discussion will be different from theirs only if you are willing to go there.

You can only get there by persuading others to recognize the efficacy of their rational capacity, their absolute right to use it as they see fit, and their responsibility to let others do likewise. There, capitalism will emerge automatically.

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I could write 20 pages or more detailing the litany of false assumptions in the rest of this quote, but the error that is most irksome, though not unexpected, is that it is an instance of precisely what I warned you not to do. Every example in this quote exists entrenched in the contemporary philosophies and cultures and the politics of the semi-statist mixed economy government they sustain. Privatization in these countries is only the first pitiful step towards capitalism, and it is a step only grudgingly enacted because of the utter and inevitable failure of state intervention. You can save yourself hours at the keyboard if you will avoid long specific examples such as these and focus first on the principles of government. There will be plenty of time for water, roads, and such later.

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Your property by right is only that which is a product of your ideas and actions. The relative value of your property in a market exchange for the values of others is solely at your discretion. In a voluntary exchange of values, both parties profit. Each gives up something valued less in order to get something valued more. The exchange occurs because the two parties place different values on the items exchanged. The government will protect what you own regardless of what value you place on it. In a capitalist society, the government may not do anything that cannot be objectively defined by laws. It can therefore protect only the truth of your reputation that can be demonstrated to be a product of your ideas and actions. That is all you own of it regardless of what you might fantasize it to be.

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PART 2 of 2

None of the above. Just simple things like what it is, where it is, when it is defined. This is not an issue of much import. The amount of improvements should only be enough that the control of the property does not fall to the claimant gratuitously. Requiring the fencing of a claim in the American pioneer days was reasonable, sufficient, and particularly appropriate to the primary value of controlling land at that time. Objects have no intrinsic value. The value of something is no more than its value to a specific entity for a specific purpose. The ultimate protection against abuse of the definition is that property owned must continually be earned. To the extent that initiated force is absent from a society of men and all interactions among them are voluntary, all ownership and all prices and all values are inherently just.

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True, but for the sake of your deeper understanding, just in case you don't fully, I am beyond mere return of the commons to private hands because it is more "practical". I am talking about a politics in which the word "commons" and "public property" and "good of the public" do not even exist. Those words are the little tricks of statists who need to con you into believing there is some unit of humanity for which only they can speak and act. The public is a collection of individuals that is never unanimously in agreement. Something can be said to be good for some of them and bad for the others. But nothing can be said to be good for a whole collective of any type in the absence of ethical unanimity. Good is an ethical term. The public cannot have a philosophy or an ethics.

OK, you now live in a region governed by a capitalist government from the Objectivist mold. Everything is owned by someone and all actions and interactions you choose are allowed so long as you do not initiate force for gain. Back in my favorite model, consider the world wide web, within which you are about as close as you can get to capitalism. Picture the all-but-infinite number of interrelationships that are joined in that web and imagine a similar web of relationships in that capitalist society I dropped you into.

Compare their operative principles and note the similarity. For instance, consider the governance of this forum, and how "irresponible/shortsighted" individuals are unable to "despoil" it. Note the tightrope the owners of this forum must walk every moment of every day it exists. To protect it, they must often treat the violators harshly, but to sustain it, they cannot treat them irrationally for fear of losing you and all the rest of the civilized posters. Civility is a natural product of voluntary interdependence.

Now consider the plight of the polluter of owned lakes and rivers. In this capitalist society, to whom does he have to answer with no government regulators? He has to answer to you and all of the people on earth who think that is wrong and either own part or all of some source of his sustenance or who buy from a source of his sustenance.

A polluter has to be as careful in a capitalist society as a person who would pollute a thread with ad hominems and foul language has to be in this forum. Under capitalism the freedom of association is absolute, and a polluter could potentially find himself without access to a road between his home and the grocery store (that will no longer sell to him). On the other hand, all who could or would cut him off from the benefits of the division of labor among men would also have to be careful that their acts to influence the behavior of others are rationally defensible lest they suffer the same fate.

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You may shoot your own. If you shoot other's cows, restitution is in order. But you have evaded the point, which was that whales are in greater danger of extinction than cows, because statist governments prevent their ownership. The operative principle is: reality severely punishes men who intentionally destroy to extinction their own capital assets. As a sustainable human action, it has a very short shelf-life.

The idea here is that the individual should not be concerned in that way about "all". The individual should be exclusively concerned about how to create and produce values that will sustain and improve his own life and which he can trade to others for those other values he cannot produce. In order to create values to trade with others, he must accurately identify what others desire and how much they really want to pay. Meaning, the only way a rational egoist can become wealthy in a free capitalist society where government is unable to dispense subsidies or special privileges is by satisfying the desires of others better than anyone else. Those who do not know what is best for all will have a hard time having an effect of any kind on anyone at all. Not to worry!


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Nothing wrong with mangling for speed and space!

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A request: If you reply to everything here, size will soon overwhelm both of us. Save some of your comments; we will get back to all of them later if you still think it necessary then. I packed this post just to try to give you an quick overview.

Pick out the one or two most fundamental differences that you want to discuss first and let's deal with them before going on to the rest. Thanks.

Thanks for the great posts!
Since you seem to be speaking ontology here, let's tackle that first. I challenge your premiss that man survives and flourishes by volitionally applying his rational capacity to his actions as incomplete, and I subsequently challenge your conclusion that human independence of thought and action is an ethical mandate. It seems like sloppy philosophising to me. First of all, I assert that man survives and flourishes by gathering in communities, building culture and engaging in the chaotic crucible of politics. Of course individual assertion is an important part of this, but it is not the only part. Secondly, I agree that human independence of thought and action is of ethical importance, but you presume that it follows from this that government is immoral, and I do not think it follows. Humans ARE political animals, and there must always be a compromise between the identity of the individual and the identity of the community (call it culture, politics, the nation, or whatever).

Mathematics is also a branch of philosophy, but I would berate you if you brought Aristotle into my arithmetic. Politics may be related to philosophy, but we are not speaking about post-Nietzschean theories as they relate to Derrida. There is a place for political philosophy, but I do not believe it to be relevant to every argument.

Again, I don't understand. I'm sorry if it irks you, but you seem to expect us to overlook the glaring failures of privatisation and increased capitalism in the faith and hope that when capitalism is complete, it will all suddenly 'click', and be perfect. The same argument was propounded by utopian socialists. It is a chimera.

I challenge you to objectively define any esoteric value such as reputation or privacy, or dignity. You say that the government will be able to discern the 'truth' of your reputation. I say that is impossible, as truth is relative ( a tired hand, but still valid ). The closest to 'truth' we can get in this situation is through community dialogue and consensus. The same applies to your later arguments about ownership of land. You use terms like 'reasonable', and 'gratuitous' as if they have a self-evidently objective definition, but they do not. You say that the principle of 'continually earning' the land will prevent abuse, but again, this is a subjective parameter, itself open to abuse. The only solution to this is community politics.


This is wrong, and it springs from your premisses, which differ from mine. The public IS a collection of individuals that is never unanimously in agreement. The community is much more. Something CAN be said to be good for a whole collective even in the absence of ethical unanimity. I consider the community as an entity which, although not separated from its constituent members, nonetheless has distinct values. The public can have an ethics. This is what community politics accomplishes. It attempts to hammer out the closest we can get to the 'common good', which is ever elusive. We try, most often we fail, but sometimes we get it right.


I don't think comparing the internet to the environment is an accurate analogy. I was referring specifically to the economic effects of negative externalities such as air or stream pollution. The difficulty with this is that it is impossible to quantify in terms of responsibility or ownership. The pollution the USA causes manifests itself as acid rain over Africa. Where to begin the restitutions? It doesn't work without not only community politics, but a unified world politics.

That's mostly what I wanted to address this post. Whew, got it all in one go!

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it is a mistake to throw out the language of equal worth because of its contingent historical association with Western power.