Critiques Of Libertarianism

I believe I owe explicit thanks to Mike Huben's Critiques Of Libertarianism site and blog before I go on further with my own:

http://world.std.com/~mhuben/libindex.html
http://critiquesoflibertarianism.blogspot.com/

Mike Huben's original site (sixteen years old) is the next best thing (after http://www.mises.org/) that could ever have happened to me, as far as my libertarian views are concerned. Don't get me wrong, no irony intended. I'm simply a libertarian that values criticism above anything else. Criticism is what makes most discussions interesting, unless there are some big new insights, which neither I nor Mike Huben pretend to have, we are no economists after all. All the ideas have already been elaborated by much brainier guys before.

Nice feature of Critiques Of Libertarianism site is, it's completely indiscriminate. No consistency whatsoever, critiques written not only by liberals and conservatives, but also by various factions of libertarians themselves. In other words, the critiques originate from virtually the whole political and economic spectrum. As such, obviously, they are often mutually exclusive and cannot all be true, but still, libertarians should not dismiss the site just on this ground. This is a great opportunity for our libertarian development, which no libertarian-biased site can ever provide. Here are all the "best" arguments against libertarianism in one place, even from libertarians themselves! Mike has spent sixteen years to make sure there are! I believe we cannot be true libertarians before we have a consistent set of rebuttals for every one of them. Unless, obviously, given critique is correct, our own views or arguments incorrect, and then we either can figure out how to fix them, or have to... become liberals or conservatives. Mike does make many good points. Libertarian simplistic propaganda of false arguments do exist. Still, so far, I have not found, on Mike's site or anywhere else, a single argument that would actually rebut libertarianism or Austrian School themselves. If I did, again, I would now be a liberal or conservative. However, there are many arguments that do rebut some less sophisticated libertarian ones. This is where the whole benefit of Mike's site lies. It helps you become more sophisticated libertarian. It helps you know better what you stand for. It motivates you to drill down deep down into economics theory. It's a lot of work. But at the end of the day, you'll see everything all the more clearly. You'll be greteful for all the critiques. Libertarian sites give you great theoretical tools and infinite supply of articles that nicely explain all liberal or conservative fallacies, the best one being http://www.mises.org/ But before you really understand any theory, you have to solve many untrivial practical exercises by yourself. And Mike happily provides one central place where you can easily find them all. Wonderful!

That's why I've decided to create this blog, mostly for myself, to organize all my own solutions in one place, but hopefully it will also inspire other libertarians to do the same, for a bright sophisticated libertarian future ;)