Extra

With the electorate facing two of the most uninspiring presidential candidates in recent memory, talk about the possibility of a 2016 libertarian upset is ubiquitous. An unprecedented 58 percent of voters say they’d consider voting for a third-party candidate. Libertarians are the only ones with experienced politicians leading a ticket that will be on the ballot in all 50 states, and a host of libertarian staples—ideas like criminal justice reform, marijuana legalization, electronic privacy, and sexual freedom—now enjoy a comfortable level of support within the American mainstream. If there was any platform likely to capture both disillusioned Never-Trumpers from the Republicans and disappointed Bernie-or-Busters from the Democrats, the libertarians seem to have it. 

Still, this excitement seems misplaced. Although it’s true that people are increasingly receptive to libertarian ideas, there’s reason why virtually nobody identifies as a libertarian. As anyone who watched the libertarians’ ludicrous nomination convention could attest, the party is a complete mess. Its candidates could manage little more than cathartic ravings about taxes as theft and government as tyranny, and that was only when their attention wasn’t diverted by party delegates stripping naked or parading as Jesus onstage. It’s no wonder people regard libertarians as unmoored dogmatists whose obsession with private property leaves them clueless about struggles of modern life. 

To be fair, there’s more to libertarianism than what was on display at the party’s convention, and the dim view many people hold of it results in part from a misunderstanding of its philosophical underpinnings. 

But only in part. Even if we assume that the unhinged convention participants represent the party’s outer fringe, there’s no doubt that the core of modern libertarianism consists of opposition to any redistributive policy¾taxes on income and capital, estate taxes, eminent domain¾whose purpose is to prevent or redress the increasingly severe concentration of wealth in society. These policies offend libertarians because to them, private property is sacrosanct. Once a person lawfully acquires some sort of property, she generally has an inviolable right to continued ownership over it, and the government had better keep its hands off. 

The problem with this property-rights creed is that it’s based on a fallacy. Private property is a social construct, not a metaphysical truism. It exists not by virtue of natural law or divine bequest, but because society has in a given case recognized a person’s right to exclusive dominion over something. That societal recognition alone is what empowers the person to exclude, even through the force of government itself. 

There is no such thing, in other words, as private property independent of government. And one cannot logically claim a right to society’s keeping its hands off something that by definition only exists by virtue of society’s hands in the first place. 

Of course, none of that is to say that the concept of private property isn’t an important one. It is, which is why government shouldn’t lightly redefine the property interests it constructs or interfere with those interests in ways that retard wealth creation and efficient resource allocation. But when recognition of a particular property interest would accomplish those very evils—because, say, it would further concentrate finite capital in the hands of just a select few—society is often better served by altering the nature or scope of that interest. 

Put simply, not everyone who’s rich deserves to be, so there’s nothing wrong with moving wealth around in a way that somewhat levels the playing field. 

To most, that’s just common sense. Unless we want society to look like Downton Abbey again, some reallocation of wealth over the long term is necessary. So when libertarians scream about the evils of taxes or invoke the hollow mantra of property rights to oppose them, people are justifiably bothered. 

The sad thing is, there’s much about libertarianism as a philosophy that we could benefit from. Apart from the tragic losses to life and basic freedom our oppressive drug wars and related misadventures have wrought, heavy-handed government regulations sometimes really do stifle ingenuity and inhibit economic growth. Wider acceptance of some basic libertarian tenets would go a long way toward scaling back an increasingly intrusive government apparatus. But that isn’t going to happen unless libertarians abandon their metaphysical approach to private property and acknowledge that there’s a proper role for government in correcting the mis-allocations of wealth its tax and property laws engender. 

Judging by the reductive echo chamber that was the libertarian convention, I wouldn’t hold my breath.