There is only one thing socialists could possibly mean by claiming that a given good or service of another human is a "right", be it healthcare, education, food, or the near-endless list of what someone should have a “right” to, is that self-defense is not. How could it be any other way? Either rights are rights to someone else’s property, or they’re to self-defense of one’s property in their person or physical resources; either they’re to taxation, or it is that we have the right to not be taxed. Libertarians of course uphold the latter position: rights are negative, not coming with an obligation to act. As such, they can be universalized; they can be enjoyed by all the at the same time. Not everyone, though, can have positive rights at the same time. Not everyone can be tax-recipients, but everyone could not be tax-payers.
We can easily see why the socialists, believing in “positive rights”, would also like to concentrate guns, if not all of them, in the hands of a sole monopoly-provider, the State, whom they entrust with their lives on everything else. They don't believe our primary right is to self-defense, but "rights", to them, are rights to other people's property; rights are not the freedom to deny uninvited aggression against yourself, but you’re actually the “aggressor” if you attempt to. Obviously, as libertarianism states, it is taxation which is theft; it’s the taxman that is the thief and aggressor, not the person who doesn’t want to have their property stolen. This person has harmed no one by their inaction, and so has committed no crime. The property owner should have every right to defend themselves. Most people would agree were it a neighbor committing this act or any individual-on-individual crimes, but most people as well abandon this logic when it comes to the State, which is fully exempt from being seen as the thief and criminal. Indeed it was the original contention of the State that it was needed to protect private property, in which now it is the biggest violator of. Socialists, though, don’t believe that rights are natural, but that they are gifts from government.
Moreover in this view of the Non-Aggression principle, the central axiom of libertarianism which opposes the initiation of aggression, but not the use of violence in response to it, we have an inherent right to defend our bodies and property from uninvited external injury. (For those into voluntary abuse, like BDSM, "to each his own.") This is denied under government when you’re taxed and told it is to protect you from theft. This self-ownership, which anarchists hold, is only pretended to be the theory of justice of the State, which is undoubtedly socialist and not based in an ethic of private property. Libertarianism holds that if one owns themselves, then they must have the right to own external goods on nature, or, private property. Being denied this right is an assault equally on one’s self-ownership. Taxation, or, slavery, is a denial of self-ownership. It is for this reason, by the way, that anarcho-capitalism is an inextricable concept to us: The right to self-ownership (anarchism) and property (capitalism) are one and the same.
But “freedom” to socialists isn’t the state of being free, and thus the freedom to not hand over your property, but it is that men are “free” when they receive the “free” property of someone else. The socialists idea of freedom is when: “rights [to other people’s property] are guarantees.” All serious proponents of liberty should reject this position consistently—all the way—to the freedom to choose your provisions for security as much so as anything else: Food, clothing, shelter, schooling. In short, in total abolition of the monopolist State and the private procurement of all goods and services, including law and defense. We should oppose a defense and law monopoly on the same grounds that we would the nationalization of healthcare, education, or any other industries already heavily subsidized and protected special interests of the State, which is unquestionably incompatible with liberty and the freedom of association.
If both socialists, Democrat and Republican, were consistent, then why would those generally favorable to capitalism (Republican) stop short at the privatization of everything? Do they think the market mostly works, but not for everything? More importantly, do (Democrat) socialists concede that the market works sometimes, but in special cases it requires compulsory government monopolies to take over? What i’m getting at is: Why don’t socialists take their ideology to its logical conclusion of go full communist, nationalizing everything, and why don’t those who say they’re capitalists become anarchists and believe everything could be provided privately and that there’s no need for a government to provide anything? Instead, most are stuck somewhere in the socialist middle, a position which inevitably tends toward totalitarian statism.
But why would economic principles change from industry to industry? Why would we need a monopoly in schooling but a market for food? Or why could be have freedom for computer production but coercion for libraries? Supply and demand, the function of the price system, profits and losses, subjective value, and all the market forces apply equally everywhere. There are not some things which work better as government-ran and some thing that are better left to the market. All services under government’s arbitrary control face the same problems. The real laws of economics do not change when government writes what is calls a “law.”
Price ceilings, we know for an absolute fact, anywhere and everywhere cause shortages. Price floors like the minimum wage, when set above the market-clearing price for labor, all other things equal, will absolutely cause unemployment. We know it to be absolutely true, for example, that a rising supply upon an unchanged demand is going to cause prices to fall. This theory applies equally to money, when the central bank is inflating it, although the “price of money” is its purchasing power in terms of other goods. When it “falls”, it means the price of goods are rising, a consequence of the inflation of the money supply. Nonetheless, the point here is to show that what socialists deny are true are actually universal laws not subject to change by their emotional opinion. The laws governing supply and demand function the same whether in the United States or in China. They exist whether government legislates a $15/hr minimum wage, or no matter what words is scribbles and approves on paper. They can’t be repealed. These realities cannot be wished away.
There’s no reason to believe any of the things which are supposedly necessary that government provide—libraries, postal services, etc.—cannot be done privately, and more efficiently and cheaper at that. Government simply restricts competition in these areas, and subsequently the supply, which is a sure way to cause rising prices for those goods/services they have monopolized. The same principles apply to any regulated industry, like healthcare for instance, where entry, and supply, is restricted with licensure, etc., and so there are rising prices and reduced availability of the service. So much for a right to access health care: no one can afford it already at the rates government has caused for the industry. The U.S. is by no means a free-market in healthcare, or anything else, as the socialists suggest, although they also admit that the U.S. government spends more on healthcare than any other country, and therefore it is quite socialized already.
The government has already denied these principles of the market from freely acting by substituting for them its arbitrary lawmaking, and so distorted any ability for there to be a proper allocation according the real supply and demands of the people subjectively valuing them. Instead, the socialist view is that value can be objectively ascertained and so policy can be crafted around this knowledge. Libertarians see, correctly, that all value is subjective, and allowing the freely operating market to allocate these scarce resources accordingly to these individual’s various valuations is a far superior means than central-planning, even if imperfect.
Aside from these economic problems which can’t be ignored away, the means of assuring these “rights”, or “guaranteeing” them, as if government ever kept a promise anyway, is through the “legalized” use of force against innocent people who otherwise committed no crime. These non-crimes, such as “tax-evasion”, drug-use, prostitution, where no property rights were violated, are, however, punishable by the State’s legislative laws, which diminish anything reminiscent of natural rights. Ironically, although there is no victim in such “crimes” as drug use but the user themselves, who properly own their body, the government is willing to create an actual victim out of “society”, this non-existent abstraction used to take away individuals liberties, by taxing them to put these people in prison for no reason. In an assault on justice, and in reversal of libertarian law, which states victims are owed restitution by their aggressor, the State comes to make taxpayers the victims; and therefore the victims actually pay to lock up the “criminal”, getting burned twice, rather than this person be free and mobile and able to to recompense their victims.
Socialists believe in so-called "positive rights", which require other people to act on behalf of another; they compel other people to labor in the service of someone else, and no longer be free not to. But either the only rights we necessarily have are to non-aggression, which is the libertarian contention that the only things which should be legally prohibited are violations of such rights in property, or you're advocating for some form of slavery, however mild or recognized this is. This negative right to non-aggression, the central axiom to libertarianism, which doesn't compel anyone to serve you, but states that anyone can do as they please so long as they do not disrupt or violate your rights in property or person, cannot exist when "positive rights" enter the scene; you cannot be not-stolen from and stolen from; you cannot simultaneously be not-free and free, or "kind of aggressed against, but not really."
Either freedom is the freedom from being stolen from, or freedom is the rights to other people’s stuff. Socialists contend the latter, libertarians the former.
Libertarians say socialists have no right to our person or property, and it’s that simple. It's either voluntary or it is involuntary, and the issue is for the most part black-and-white: If an action violates property rights, as the State does to come into existence, then it’s both unethical and uneconomical. Taxation being patently coercive, libertarians reject statism for this violation of our right to non-aggression. I challenge anyone believing taxes are voluntary to stop paying them and see what happens.
The socialist’s argument for the alleged voluntariness of taxation and the expropriation of our property is that things the government provides are "collective goods" which no one can be excluded from; they must be provided through the use of force, and cannot be done any other way. As discussed above, they must be monopolized.
They contend that things which create “positive externalities”, which are actions where everyone is said to benefit from, such as people getting smarter in a school, but where not everyone pays the cost, are therefore “collective goods “which must be produced coercively. “Positive externalities”, though, which are arguably created all the time, do not constitute an act of aggression to the libertarian, and so do not justify the theft of someone’s property. To reiterate, we only wish to prohibit as illegal the violations of a persons property rights; not to make illegal non-actions of not paying your taxes, or not paying for the school since you benefited from a “smarter society”, an argument that wholly ignoring the types of kids the socialist school system as produced. There’s simply no reason to the libertarian that one cannot be excluded from funding these services. What is freedom if not the right to be excluded from something? What is freedom if interactions and encounters with others are not all voluntary?
The socialists are telling us that cooperation cannot be had without coercion. That, if you don’t want to “pay your fair share”, you should “move to the woods” and leave the market. Well I say socialists should leave the market as its production is what they subsist on. We libertarians are not isolationists and do not believe, like the communists, in self-sufficiency and self-sustainability. We very much acknowledge the necessity of the division of labor in our lives, and wish to engage in it as a means of making ourselves wealthier. Because we oppose forceful associations, such as the government monopolies, does not mean we should be the ones who have to head for the mountains. Indeed, socialists should go form their “voluntary government” or democracy somewhere else and leave me out of it. I believe in a voluntary society, not one where your best excuse for ruling people is that they tacitly consented to the “social contract.”
Socialists believe that government's territorial monopoly over the whole of the land is not only legitimate, but that anyone born under it has implicitly agreed to be subjugated by mere accident that they found themselves here, and so have tacitly signed the “social contract”, an invalid document with no consenting parties’ signatures on it could you even show anyone proof of it. Opposed to the voluntaryist-anarchist position, that human associations should be voluntary, i.e., if you don’t want to give money to the school, etc., you don’t don’t have to, they see it as everyone has “agreed” to be expropriated of their originally and voluntarily appropriated resources and property because of this excuse they call “the social contract.”
In the moral-relativist statist’s general backwards view of the world, the initiation of aggression is moral, and the self-defense of it is aggression; taxation isn't theft, not paying your taxes is; freedom is "free" stuff, not freedom from giving someone your property; "war is peace, peace is war", etc. Supply and demand doesn't exist, and costs and scarcity and resource allocation vanish at the stroke of government's pen.
The State is the perversion of justice and they see it. Unable to break out of the political paradigm they live in, they cannot conceive of any alternatives. It’s a government solution, or there isn’t one. They simply do not believe in liberty. Socialists have turned ethical and economic principles totally around, and have devoted considerable energies to making the case otherwise. They’re not very sophisticated, some are intellectually respectable, but nonetheless all fail with further analysis.
Ironically, though, they’re the ones who want more laws while denouncing “police brutality”, while the job of the socialized police is to use force against anyone unwilling to comply with such needless aggression, to enforce every man-made law coming down from the State.
If you want to know the definition of socialism, which they always press that your definition isn't "real socialism", then just simply ask a socialist “what is capitalism?” They’ll tell you all about socialism! “It’s monopolies, greed, one person gains at the other’s loss, the rich get richer while the poor get poorer, etc.” All these are, in fact, true of socialism; but apparently the only "real socialism" is when every single socialist has personally got the chance to be the dictator who decides what it actually is or was supposed to be.
In the mistaken analysis that statism and capitalism can co-exist, most everyone has come to believe that capitalism is everything that is only true of government.
They tell you that, in the free market, monopolies will form and take over and exploit everyone. What's their solution? Monopolies! It is worth a tireless effort to demonstrate that the bank cartel could never have formed without the assistance of the Federal Reserve and the government to protect these established banks for vying for protection through the State. Banks cannot form cartels in the free-market, and failed to do so every time. The socialist view though is that “regulations” are to protect “the people”, since they sometimes think the State is “us”, when the truth is that regulations, even if sold to the public in the name of keeping them safe, were always industry stepping into the State to use the political means to protect themselves from competition, and to hurt consumers as a result.
Holding no proper view of what is now, thanks to them, known as “the business cycle”, they assume these problems that arise, these “recessions”, are endemic of the market itself. In their naivety, the “boom-bust” is caused by “greed”, or “deregulation”, or some other forces that are running wild absent government interference. If they’re aware of central-banking and inflation at all, it surely had nothing to do with it. Recessions to them are a “capitalist” thing, not a government-induced problem. Of course, their solution is more of the cause.
Though the "free market monopoly" is a total myth, as monopoly privileges from government are not defined by market share, even is we supposed they could exist, which of course it would lose its market share by the threat of competition the moment it raised its prices, which is the socialists contention that they will cut production and raise prices, then this large firm could have only came about through voluntary means, by making a profit and proving that they make the most efficient use of scarce resources. Unlike the government, they succeed only as long as they provide something everyone values. When government loses, it simply taxes you more and sustains the wasteful use of resources. The government cannot overcome its inability to calculate even if you wanted to ignore the ethical problems of government.
As Henry Hazlitt simply put:
“The 'private sector' of the economy is, in fact, the voluntary sector;
and the 'public sector' is, in fact, the coercive sector.”
With the private property ethic as my guiding moral philosophy, it is my view that any violations of such are both unethical and uneconomical; and that even if the statist-means could be justified as moral, they still could not produce economical ends that are greater than if individuals were left freely to their own devices.
In saying that it’s capitalism where one person gains at the other’s expense, in their whole view of the economy being zero-sum game, this is precisely the system socialism enacts: One group of people, who meets their arbitrary announcement for theft, are the taxpayers; the others, the tax-recipients. It is the market where all exchange is mutually-profitable, or else wouldn’t occur at all. But in seeing only the monetary profit, they forget altogether that the person relinquishing their money did so because they because they had a reverse-valuation, and so made their profit in terms of goods or services received, while money was merely the medium of exchange. It is, in fact, the State where there’s not only not net-gain or break-even consequences to their actions, but a net-loss.
Government does not operate on or adhere to any principles of the market. When revenues aren’t earned voluntarily, there’s no way to know how much of a service should be provided. Without the test of profit-and-loss, and unrestrained by market forces, the government knows no limits to its plunder and waste. Their ideas are unsustainable, and will fail.
There is no time here to add the complications of the “anarcho-socialists” who also believe that the State protects capitalism, or that somehow capitalism requires a State, but suffice it to say that “you can’t have capitalism without socialism” is a contradiction. We anarcho-libertarians obviously disagree, and indeed believe you can’t have genuine capitalism unless their isn’t a State whatever. (Frankly, I have ignored for this discussion "libertarian socialism", which I find to be a contradiction. As opposed to Western, capitalist libertarianism which is anti-State but not anti-capitalist, they "advocate a cooperative economy managed by workers syndicates and community councils, and believe that the people themselves should manage their communities through direct democracy", and so therefore I find democracy and liberty to be incompatible. Lacking in economic understanding, and adopting the Labor Theory of Value, they theorize their money could be a sort of "labor notes", where apparently value is an objectively definable unit of the labor input into a product, and so therefore these would be redeemable for a certain quantity of another good at a certain price. They see no problems with these "worker cooperatives", assuming everyone wants ownership. They never express how far outside their community they're willing to go to abolish private property, usually suggesting they're voluntaryists too. And they hardly speak of how these things will be achieved, and how their arbitrary system, say, of the need for a distinction between "personal" and private property, will work without this effectively being the centrally-planned State. When, for instance, should one gain title to someone's property when working rather than exchanging labor or money wages? When does something like a grill, say, become a capital good versus a personal good? They use deliberate ambiguity it would seem to dodge any questions regarding their philosophy, and so there's little chance in pinning them down. These "libertarian socialists" stand on the side of "labor", seeing this fight embodied in the State, as winning concessions for the working-class against the capitalists. I can't consider them anything else but statists, sadly. If they're anarchists politically, they are without economics and so fail to conceptualize a free society based on private property rights, and so sneak back in a government anyway, albeit considered to be "democratic" this time and of "the people.")
Libertarianism – that of private property and individual liberty – will triumph over evil whether the statists like it not, and we will not be silenced. The liberty movement is real, alive and well. Its modern run is no longer in mere infancy, but is kicking and screaming for attention and to be heard. They cannot ignore us out of existence anymore, and socialism will once again be proven to be an absurd idea on every front. Whether we’re successful or not, socialists will have to deal with libertarians in the present time, where we’re mounting our assault on their pronouncements for continued slavery.