Do Libertarians Want Freedom or Not?
Last weekend, I was on Stossel over at Fox Business News to discuss a new path for libertarianism. While much was left on the cutting room floor, I argued that libertarians should abandon their blanket opposition to public assistance, acknowledge that market failures and public goods sometimes demand government action, and speak out as much about excessive military expenditures, war, and civil rights as they do about, say, the Export-Import Bank and corporate income taxes.
Alas, my friend John Stossel—like many hard-line libertarians—disagrees, arguing that I am calling for “libertarianism lite” and a surrender of principle. If libertarianism is about advancing individual liberty, however, these aren’t acts of surrender. They are necessary prerequisites for a free society.
Consider the case for more robust libertarian support of civil rights. Stossel argues that freedom of association should trump all, so if white restaurateurs want to ban African-Americans from lunch counters, or if white businessmen want to ban African-Americans from the workplace, then fine. The right of racists and bigots to act as such in the privacy of their own establishments is sacrosanct.
But does this really advance liberty? History matters. A country with a savage three-century history of state-sanctioned slavery and apartheid can’t just drop the official discrimination and expect members of downtrodden groups to suddenly enjoy anything resembling equal freedom. The point of racist and sexist legal regimes is to coercively shape civil society into an engine of exclusion and repression. Defending unchecked “freedom of association” in a society whose institutions and culture have been built around the goal of denying freedom to most people is, in effect, a slightly less obvious way of continuing to deny freedom to most people. If you doubt that, just ask yourself whether the south is, on the whole, really less free today than it was in the 1950s because whites can no longer treat African-Americans as subhuman, second-class citizens.
Or consider the libertarian case for a social safety net. Stossel, like F.A. Hayek and Milton Friedman, concedes that public assistance to the poor is desirable. Even so, the safety net, Stossel argues, “has become a giant hammock that encourages dependency.” Really?
- Only 23 percent of the families below the poverty line receive any cash benefits from government at all.
- Only 23 percent of low income families receive any public housing assistance whatsoever, and when they do receive it, it drives them to more disadvantaged neighborhoods than those they are trying to escape.
- The average food stamps recipient receives about $4 of food stamps per day.
- The people in the poorest fifth of the United States receive a grand total of about $4,600 per person in direct and indirect public assistance (not counting Medicare or Social Security).
- Fully 1.5 million American households with 3 million children live on less than $2.00 per day (twice the number than it was before welfare reform was passed in 1996).
It should be fairly obvious that one’s freedom is enhanced when one has the resources to act freely. We increase the amount of freedom in this country when we eliminate the greatest obstacle to living freely: poverty.
Accordingly, libertarians should champion public assistance to the poor, but should do so through more efficient and effective vehicles such as wage subsidies or a guaranteed basic income. In so doing, counterproductive work disincentives would be minimized, human dignity preserved, and a great deal of labor and trade regulation—which would be no longer needed to help low income workers—could be jettisoned in the process. Deregulating markets in this fashion would unleash job opportunities and wealth creation, producing a clear increase in economic liberty while simultaneously helping low-skilled workers.
The important point here is that society is a cooperative venture for mutual advantage. We facilitate that social cooperation by eliminating economic deprivation and the social barriers preventing many of us from engaging fully and productively with our fellow man. Liberty and economic wellbeing are enhanced as consequence.
Libertarians ought to cheer policy that will help do that, but Stossel demurs. “We free-market supporters know what really creates prosperity and opportunity: economic freedom!” Quite so. But it’s no coincidence that economic freedom—according even to libertarian metrics—does well in social democracies like Denmark and Sweden, where social safety nets are large. Obviously the latter does not necessarily cripple the former. Indeed, there is some evidence to suggest that the economic freedom Stossel hopes to achieve cannot be politically delivered without some governmental guarantee that those who can’t survive in the capitalist jungle won’t experience deprivation as a consequence.
Sure, making peace with civil rights legislation and public assistance (among other things) represents a politically helpful course correction for a libertarian movement that is, at present, deep in the political wilderness. But it is not an abandonment of principle. It is an affirmation of principle, and a long overdue one at that.
Comments
You said, "what "truths about existence" do you think I am ignoring in this essay?"
Basically that freedom has private property at its core. I would say as a matter of basic reality these two are inseparable. By advocating virtually any government policy at all, implies that you don't really have any property "rights" and that you've got property permissions granted to you by the State.
Again I wasn't trying to make an argument about your article, per se. I'm arguing that your views are not consistent with libertarianism and as such you should probably just come clean about that. Rather than changing libertarianism to what you want it to be, accept it for what it is and just be something else.
This is how classical liberalism got turned on its head. If it happens to libertarianism too, we'll just have to establish yet another term for property rights and freedom philosophy.
"seriously, you're so dumb, you believe that producers should charge what the market will bear."
Not sure who you're insulting this time, but I agree that anyone who says "should" on that is confused.
>"And, it doesn't make sense to build out 4-5 competing power lines. "
Which is why nobody would! Have you noticed that Ford and Chevy don't build more cars than the market will bear?
Who said otherwise?
>" We RAISED payroll taxes to account for the Baby Boomer's retirement;"
O-kay. Greenspan Commission
>"INCOME TAX cuts had the General fund, which is funded from INCOME TAXES, borrowed $2.4 trillion from Payroll Tax coffers. "
The income tax cuts essentially broke even, as written by a political economics genius you say doesn't know what he's talking about. Me.
Read it and check all my sources. They're original.
http://libertyissues.com/quacks.htm
Income tax revenues increased a tiny $45 billion over 10 years. But they did increase. (If you need a victory for once, income tax revenues did not skyrocket after the Reagan tax cuts. Revenes skyrocketed -- from six increases in FICA.
>"Monopolies in Utilities markets make regulation of that market easier;"
Can you stay on point?
>>"Monopolies are meaningless; again, you don't understand--it's the market, NOT monopolies vs. competition."
When you follow that link, check my economic creds, and you say I don't understand an issue I did not mention.
>>"Utitilities are inherently NOT competitive. "
I'm out of patience. You're running through some liberal playbook on issues that have no relevance to the simple facts, that I documented every single statement of yours as false.
Now look at the income tax data I link here, which -- may I say "ridicules" --- your false connection between payroll and income taxes.
>" Sorry, you really don't understand anything. "
On issues I NEVER talked about?
>>"but you've bought a bullshit argument made by financiers, for financiers to fool idiots like you"
Give me specifics instead of talking points, and I'll continue my 100% discrediting of your claims. Plus *I* include sources.
Now tell me that Obama got a worse economy than Reagan did. PLEASE.
Where did you get the assertion that payroll taxes subsidized income taxes. It's crazy but I want to see who wrote it. Was it Krugman, the wizard of a "postwar boom at 91% tax rates" ... which was actually five back-to-back recessions, 1945-1957.
12 years. 5 recessions.
I know I'm stupid, but the borrowing from the Trust Fund was not from deficits from the income tax cuts. That leaves one other possibility. Spending was it.
Any questions?
Yes, why do you want to force black business owners to serve members of the KKK? What is libertarian about that?
But, this was a subsidy question. Food Stamp (card) is a good program, cause some bureaucrat isn't making the purchasing decision, rather it's been atomized into the hands/minds of the individual recipient. Thus, this preserves the market/customer dynamic that gives a less perverted demand signal than offering a few subsidized items (again, see WIC)
It would seem, if we took the subsidy card lesson, that if we want to subsidize housing, the Gov't should be hesitant to build and manage "housing projects" which necessarily concentrate subsidized tennants. But, a rent card, that could be used by any number of private rentors and lessors. People would be free to use the card and/or add to that. But, the gov't is not dictating where you live, nor is it such an obvious actor in what we hope is a market driven by supply and demand.
I hope you will notice something else. Many of you argue using absolutes, "never" and the like. Well, guess what, you're wrong. Any idiot throwing around absolutes is easily refuted. So, the fact is reality is nuanced, and till you have a nuanced understanding; you'll be not a libertarian, but just someone too lazy to actually understand economics. I agree with Libertarians on foreign policy, civil rights, and I believe we should legalize guns, drugs, prostitution, abortion and gambling (though these things need to be regulated) I think most of you realize this, but don't ever address it. We regulate alcohol, surely we'll regulate these others. I want to do that lightly and effectively. You wanna have a grown up conversation; or are you just absolutist adolescents who don't really understand what you're talking about. Cause, anything you know anything about isn't black and white. You know this
Utilities markets are different from free markets. Conflating them shows utter ignorance of economics. So long as you conflate them, your arguments will fail. The failure is yours, as libertarian ideal apply to "Free markets" but not all are free markets. You have utilities and Fiduciary markets--these are legally distinct. You're a "customer" in the free market (and always right) you're a "client" in the fiduciary market (law, medicine, finance--since you're buying advice, you can't be "right") Finally, you're a "consumer" in the utility market.
Investing in the free market is highly speculative, will you have any customers? Whereas building a powerplant doesn't entail the same questions. Further, the scale would limite where you can build... Look, when you conflate these markets, you only expose your ignorance. You do it yourself, try defining your terms first.
Monopolies in Utilities markets make regulation of that market easier; in the free market regulation is irrelevant. Monopolies are meaningless; again, you don't understand--it's the market, NOT monopolies vs. competition. Utitilities are inherently NOT competitive. Define "free market" and you pretty quickly get to "competition and alternatives" as essential definitions; which are both inherently absent in utility markets. Sorry, you really don't understand anything. It was progressive policies that ended the last age of Serfdom, aka the Gilded Age, and it was adoption of this bullshit economic theory, which only helps bankers and finance that returned us to the new Gilded Age. Libertarianism is the ROAD TO SERFDOM. It is progressive taxes and high cap gains that encourage production over finance--but you've bought a bullshit argument made by financiers, for financiers to fool idiots like you
Regardless, we can make an acceptation for "participatory services" if we must while holding to the general rule of non-discrimination.
Yes he did. Not 'fine' in quotes, but he did say Rand was right to object.
>"He (meaning Jerry) criticized Rand Paul for saying that in 1964 he would've voted against the Civil Rights Act. Actually, Rand didn't say that. He supported the act's ban on government racism, like Jim Crow laws. He objected only to the act's ban on private discrimination. **Rand was right to object.** If owners of a private business want to serve only gays, basketball players or bald men, that should be their right."
http://reason.com/archives/2016/03/09/libertarian-lite
But I'd agree that Rand never literally said he'd have voted against the Act, but he didn't clarify his objection until after it exploded. He's not the best tactician as we saw in his campaign. He did GREAT outreach at Berkeley on civil liberties and anti-intervention, then destroyed it by calling for religious tent revivals to oppose marriage equality. Bizarre.
"ignoring the payroll tax portion is duplicitous in
the extreme."
Yeah, but we're stuck with him as President for now. And the payroll tax would change the numbers to 14% at $50,000 and 29% at million plus.
>>" Particularly since the payroll tax payers have subsidized income tax cuts for decades."
The opposite is true, and all the tax cuts are slanted to the middle-class anyhoe (since Reagan and Kenendy). 85% of the Bush tax cuts went to taxpayers with UNDER $250,000 gross income, who paid only 45% of the tax -- the greatest income redistribution since FDR. "Tax cuts for the rich" is the scam of the century!
And. of course, Medicare is subsidized by a quarter trillion per year in income taxes which, as you admit, the middle class barely pays.
>"Include total income taxes paid, and the middle class those making $100k pay the highest effective rate."
Sorry, the same IRS link shows income tax is mere 10% at $100,000. Add FICA and 16%, is still MUCH lower than 28%, eh?
>"What your further omit is the relative burden of other taxes which are all regressive."
Also wrong, and we're talking about Obama's blatant dishonesty.
We hear that mostly about sales taxes, which conveniently ignores all the exempt consumption for the basics. Lower and middle incomes, of course, spend much more on exempt housing, food, utilities, public transit, etc.
Pension fund assets of $25 trillion are greater than the NYSE and NASDAQ combined -- with all gains tax exempt. Taxed at retirement, but at a much lower rate and after 30 years of massive interest on borrowing.
Other middle-class loopholes include health insurance, capital gains on home sales and at death. I haven't published since the 90s, but middle-class loopholes alone were 1/3 of all personal income, 1300% greater than so-called Corporate Welfare, 200% greater than corporate profits. Loopholes alone were greater than ALL reported personal income above $90,000 per year.
http://libertyissues.com/loophole.htm
Both parties have been looting the federal treasury to buy middle-class votes since 1986 -- when Democrats killed our industrial base to pay for a middle-class tax cut. The 1970s sent a message to politicians. They can increase sending as much as they want -- for welfare and warfare -- as long as the middle-class never pays for it, or we'd revolt again. If you're not old enough, even Taxachusetts was forced to cut property taxes. In other words, libertarians and Republicans are getting bamboozled as badly as Democrats, so I'm not picking on you. Tribal loyalties are destructive across the board in a totally corrupt political class.
Despite what you may have read by Veronique de Rugy and too many other libertarians, Friedman did not propose a guaranteed minimum income per se. His negative income tax is much smaller and narrower, essentially only for those on public assistance. It would replace all the programs (and bureaucrats and overhead) with a single cash benefit. As they work their way out of poverty, their benefits are reduced by the "negative income tax" -- think of a fixed low marginal tax rate, versus as many as a dozen different thresholds and phase-outs. As I'm sure you know, people working up from zero face "marginal tax rates" at different percentages for every program, up to 100%. I forget Friedman's percentage, but in today's tax climate, 8-10% would likely work best (ideally less than the lowest positive tax rate.)
One of many sound ideas not really grasped by what I call the libertarian establishment. But I'm following the new and public Kochs, and you Niskanen with hope.
President Obama says a $50,000 school teacher should not pay a higher tax rate than millionaires and billionaires. But at the IRS link below, in the far right, you'll see the average tax rate is 8% at $50,000 and 27% at 1 million+ Hmmm.
https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/13in11si.xls
While you're there, if you have a calculator, I've been tracking the core middle class for about 25 years, currently defined (by me) as $40k-100k adjusted gross. As you'll see, they report 30.9% of personal income but pay only 18.8% of the personal income tax -- so somebody subsidizes 39% of their entire share, and they'd need a 64% tax increase just to pay their own way. You might rethink your strawman shenanigans, eh?
Copyright 1994-2016 by Michael J Hihn, all rights reserved and defended.
You say that public assistance does not necessarily need caveats. My concern is that while that statement may be true, it does not seem as if that is actually how things are end up being implemented.
For one example, the federal government recently began placing restrictions on the use of "trans fats." Other such restrictions are being examined in areas such as salt and sugar levels in food. One does not have to look very hard to find people and organizations who support these measures, in part, because society as a whole incur some of those costs due to our system of socializing the cost of health care. Whats more, they have a point. If we do socialize these costs, people will change their behavior, which provides at least a reasonable argument for government restrictions for the public as a whole.
In the end, I think I am a little more concerned about the level of infringement that will actually occur, even if there is no necessary reason why those infringements would HAVE to occur.
I am talking more on a societal level. Everyone who rides a motorcycle in most states must wear a helmet because the taxpayers will have to pay for the brain surgeries for those who don’t have insurance . The mayor of New York tells it citizens what size sugary drink that any of them can buy because the tax paying citizens subsidize the treatment of diabetes for those who can’t pay for their own medical care. Some drugs are illegal for everyone because we must subsidize medical treatment for those who abuse drug use. In all these cases and way too many to mention all of us have lost are right to choose because of our expanded social welfare system.
Also on another of your points. Libertarians champion voluntary cooperation and oppose coercion. Forcing someone to participate in someone else’s marriage against their will is coercion.
Interesting debate. Thanks for the platform
Now, the caveats are not always bad. "I will give you food and shelter at this public facility but, if I do, you will not be allowed to drink or do drugs on he premises," or "you must see a mental health professional," or "you must enter into drug or alcohol treatment." But I will grant that they can be. It really depends on program design, and those things are in our policy control.
Potential recipients of public assistance, however, who don't like the trade-offs involved are always free to refuse the assistance. So to the extent it is a contract freely accepted (I give you this but then you give me that), I don't think it is an infringement on individual liberty as you mean the term. Accordingly, I support public assistance with the explicit opportunity for exit for those who do not like the caveats (or services) at issue.
No, he didn't say 'fine'; libertarians don't say 'fine'. They do say that there is a better way to handle this problem than state violence.
...
"Fully 1.5 million American households with 3 million children live on less than $2.00 per day (twice the number than it was before welfare reform was passed in 1996)."
Anyone else see the irony?
I think the reason libertarianism is beautiful is that it's based on certain facts of existence. It isn't about opinions, its about reality. For instance, Hoppe's Argumentation Ethics doesn't bridge the Is-Ought gap, it simply says what is, is. To deny it is to engage in a contradiction. Likewise Praxeology is about what is and must be. Any empirical data that appears to invalidate praxeological law are merely a product of a poor theory of cause and effect. Any findings outside the expectation simply show there are other causal factors at work which must be responsible.
The point I'm driving at is that any attempt to make libertarianism conform to your ideal instead of conforming to a set of truths about existence is corruption of language. It's ok for you to believe as you want, advocate what you want, and call it what you want. But if you're trying to call libertarianism something other than what it is, you're hurting the discussion. Call your beliefs what they are--Social Democracy.
Bottom line, will you force me to acquiesce to 'your' ideas of inequality, your ideas of justice? If so, you still do not understand liberty.
http://www.amazon.com/Independent-Man-Senator-Couzens-Series-ebook/dp/B00KB4E1IC
In the UK, the Prime Ministers Disraeli, Stanley Baldwin, Neville Chamberlain, Winston Churchill, Harold Macmillan,[4] and present Prime Minister David Cameron have been described as progressive conservatives.[5][6] The Catholic Church's Rerum Novarum (1891) advocates a progressive conservative doctrine known as social Catholicism.[7]
In the United States, Theodore Roosevelt has been the main figure identified with progressive conservatism as a political tradition. Roosevelt stated that he had "always believed that wise progressivism and wise conservatism go hand in hand".[8] Some people considered the administration of President William Howard Taft to be progressive conservative. Taft described himself as "a believer in progressive conservatism".[9] President Dwight D. Eisenhower declared himself an advocate of "progressive conservatism".[10] In Germany, Chancellor Leo von Caprivi promoted a progressive conservative agenda called the "New Course".[11]
It's competition and alternatives that give the "customer" all the power in the free market, but there is no alternative for "clients" in the professional market, where he can't be "right" (as customers in a free market are,) he's buying expertise after all. In the utilities markets the "consumer" has no real choice, no real alternative.
The gov't is needed to make efficient (straight) powerlines, gas lines, roads; commands control of drainage and floodways; these are inherently one off systems that everyone uses. Investments in a powerplant or a sewage treatment plant isn't speculative like opening a restaurant, or a landscaping business; and so traditionally we limit profits as well. How much would the market bear for electricity? water? In the aggregate, we're better off if they earn a modest profit, leaving more money for the rest of the economy.
If Coca-cola had a monopoly on soda pop, and could get $100 a bottle, good for them; there's water, the wide range of ades--both natural and synthetic... It's a CHOICE. But, we don't really have a choice with utilities, they DON'T have the right to refuse service to anyone. We can't conflate these markets. We are more free with lean, well regulated, if not socialized utilities. We can argue about whether these change or evolve; but we MUST not confuse them with the free market
I gather that you are making a point about affirmative action, however, an issue I didn't address in my piece and a policy that does not necessarily follow from my argument. But as far as the more general point regarding restitution is concerned, even libertarian fundamentalists such as Robert Nozick, Herbert Spencer, and Lysander Spooner explicitly embrace wealth redistribution as a remedy for wealth that was unjustly appropriated. And if slavery in the south and subsequent Jim Crow laws did not "unjustly appropriate" wealth, then nothing did. See Matt Zwolinski's discussion of Nozick's argument on p. 13 in the subsection titled "Strict Libertarian Arguments."
Of course, not all people in poverty are African American or were the victims (directly or indirectly) of unjustly appropriated wealth, so this is not necessarily a great argument for wealth redistribution broadly construed. But it does qualify your claim that libertarians cannot possibly embrace the project you suggest I am embracing.
Makes perfect libertarian sense to me.
/sarcasm if you couldn't figure that out
Discrimination, which implies that members of one group are asked a higher (perhaps an infinite) price than members of another group, is antithetical to this.
I'm very curious to know what article you think grants Congress that power, since James Madison could find no such article...and when I do a Google search for "father of the Constitution," his portrait shows up as the first item.
What part of the Constitution do you think gives the federal government the power to require a baker to make a cake for a wedding? Or a black business owner to serve a member of the KKK?
How's this: The welfare state doesn't need to be any bigger and should be shrunk. Taxes should be no higher and could stand to be trimmed. Spending should be cut.
MOREOVER, welfare state innovation about how to get aid in people's hands ala Charles Murray's "In our Hands" would be more helpful than pretending it's going eliminated or slashed drastically.
In the meantime, what even moderate libertarian can really argue with the rest of what Taylor talks about?? This is where you see how alike we really are. Pedantic parsing between hard-core anarcho-capitalists, agorists, minarchists, anarchists, left libs, right libs, pragmatic moderates or whatever labels you have, distracts from the common theme of more individual rights protections, less intrusion and smaller scope of government in all areas of life.
I don't think you'd get much disagreement when we talk about reforming the system as it exists instead of grandiose ideas that have no bearing on feasible possibilities.
A baker MUST bake for a wedding he abhors?
A black business MUST serve the KKK?
A baker MUST bake a cake for a wedding he abhors?
A black-owned business MUST serve the KKK?
Absolutely not.
Excellent piece. It's the apparent unwillingness to acknowledge the forces of history that turns a lot of people, particularly those that felt the effects of historical marginalization, off regarding libertarianism.
My attempt to get the Libertarian Party open to such ideas back in 2006 was, alas, a bit of a mess. I think a new word is needed.
The political left has liberal, progressive, social democrat, socialist and communist to categorize its flavors. And there are categories within those categories (Maoist, Trotskyite, etc.) We are stuck with classical liberal and libertarian. The first is a confusing brand; the latter results in endless wars over definitions.
For instance, I *advocate* replacing a huge section of the welfare state with a minimum basic income. By contrast as an anarchist I *believe* in replacing state authority with voluntary relations. I just don't believe it's happening before tomorrow evening, and the short term does exist.
Similarly I *advocate* the state trying to minimize the severity of public goods problems, in part *because* I believe the state creates more such problems than it solves and the majority of such problems that currently exist -- it is reasonable to advocate that the state clean up its own messes from time to time, even though I believe those are in fact its messes.
If the argument is that the incremental path to statelessness is through nondestructive welfare state reform, I certainly agree. If the argument is that I ought not to believe in a stateless ideal, I (definitionally) disagree.
Perhaps you need to outright say either "advocate for second-best solutions while still believing in your first-best ideals" or else "abandon all of your ideals." As it is, you seem to be trying to have it both ways and thereby confusing and aggravating in both directions at once.
But I did define a modification that satisfies all flavors of lib. I can do that because I've actually been elected and achieved however small advances on liberty. Launching a winning tax revolt was pure liberty! We drove the school district into receivership before they folded.
Libertarian purists even disdain needing to get elected. But even most of us cannot grasp that government can be reduced very little, without first restructuring it. That's intentional (by government)
So it's critical to get all the dollars lined up properly, which can then be privatized. Not as crazy at it sounds. Give people a tax credit for cash contributions to "life support" charities. Taxation for the safety net is then defacto voluntary. Private charities did it all once, and better. Liberals could support charities for people who walk in the door. Conservatives for charities that demand some level of responsibility.
The ultimate liberty is when everyone wins. not when they do what we want them to do. Libertopia has never been a free society for everyone, only libertarianism for us. Such a wasted opportunity, says this 40+ year libertarian.
Housing regulations such as zoning and other land use laws drive up the costs of housing which adds to the expenses that all people have to deal with but for the poor these regulations are a significant drawback.
More than anything else we need to get out and push the government for some relief on these and other related issues. Once we get to that place where the market is open then we can look at what we still need and adjust accordingly.
When libertarians promote the protection of life, liberty, and property. Stossel is correct that the libertarian position is that private businesses have the right to freedom of association and consequently have the right to deny service for anyone, for whatever reason.
Freedom isn't measured by how many people are forced to associate with you, as the author seems to think.
In regards to the social safety net, it also is clearly anti-libertarian. It involves coercively taking money from some people and giving it to people who did not earn it. The author of the article doesn't recognize this reality.
While poverty is an obstacle to material possession and well-being, it is not an obstacle to people living freely. Indeed, poverty is often the consequence of freedom, because, for example, allowing people to make bad choices often leads to poverty.
Seemingly, according to the logic of the author of this article, restricting people's ability to make bad choices actually makes them freer since they are freed of the consequences of those choices (i.e poverty, addiction, etc) which supposedly are an obstacle to freedom.
Libertarians believe that someone is free when they can do as they please with their own body and own property so long as they harm no other. The author of this article seems to think you are only free if are materially well off and you have the ability to force others to associate with you against their will.
You can disagree with libertarian principles, but lets not pretend that what the authors advocates is actually consistent with libertarianism.