A Definition Of Libertarianism – Draft Two : From Intuitive Sentiment To Institutional Framework
Libertarianism lih-ber-tair’-ee-un-ih’-zum (noun)
1) SENTIMENT: A sentiment giving precedence to individual liberty above the competing sentiments of care-taking and order — which are the respective priorities of left and right.
2) POLITICAL BIAS: A range of political biases that express the precedence for liberty as the freedom from organized coercion through the minimization or elimination of monopolistic government — and therefore maximizing the self organizing civic virtues and norms.
3) ECONOMIC BIAS: An economic philosophy that seeks to maximize human prosperity by increasing the opportunity for entrepreneurial trial and error by advocating the inviolability of individual property rights, free trade, and sound money.
4) POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY: An explicitly articulated political philosophy that reduces all rights to property rights, where property has been obtained by the processes of homesteading, manufacture, and voluntary exchange, which are necessary for peaceful human cooperation because they facilitate the emergence of a market for goods and services where prices convey information that we can use to determine our actions.
5) INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORK: An framework of political institutions that seeks to replace the monopoly of the abstract state and its attendant bureaucracy with private formal institutions and public informal institutions that are subject to the pressures of market competition.
An individual who demonstrates a preference for one or more of the definitions of Libertarianism.