Libertarian Principles

Perhaps the prototypical articulation of 'Libertarianism' is presented by John Stuart Mill in On Liberty--No government has a right to do harm to any person who is not doing harm to someone else. A stronger version might be 'No one has a right to interfere with what someone else is doing, except when the latter is an interference with someone else.' On this basis, 'Liberty' can be defined as 'the right to not be interfered with when one is not interfering with someone else.' One obvious main problem with such a principle is the vagueness of 'interfere'. For example, generally defending a right to 'free speech', Libertarians tend to agree that inciting to riot is an act that leads to harm, while the writing of MeinKampf is not, perhaps drawing a distinction based on a source's causal proximity to the harmful effects. Likewise, in the economic sphere, many contemporary American Libertarians insist that government regulations tend to infringe on business Liberties. and yet they are noticeably silent, or even defensive, when those 'Liberties' are asserted to be a source of public harm, e. g. polluters, reckless investors, etc. But perhaps the greatest challenge to Libertarianism comes from one of Kant's insights. He understood that nothing qualifies as a 'principle' unless it is universally applicable, and so set as one of the tests of soundness of any principle, an assessment of what would happen if 'everyone were to do it'. Mill, for one, indeed grasped that his Libertarianism is subject to his 'greatest happiness for the greatest number' criterion. But, today's political Libertariansim rarely seem to possess the far-sightedness and broad-mindedness to consider all the consequences of the promotion of universal Liberty.