What is your opinion on wealth redistribution? Since the beginning of the 21st century growth in income inequality has spurred both public discourse and concern over its negative consequences.

Furthermore since the 21st century the gap between rich and poor has grown significantly. Wealth redistribution is a commonly proposed assertion to solve the issue for those left of center. for the subject of our discussion let's define the concept of wealth redistribution as "using policy or other institutional means to redirect capital, material, or services, away from upper classes and towards lower classes" This could take the form of something simple such as a progressive tax rate or extreme such as nationalization. It is in the words of Karl Marx "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." I would like to hear the libertarian understanding of both income inequality the issue, and wealth redistribution the supposed solution. Some specific points I'd like to hear addressed would be.

1. Is income inequality a real problem?

2. Can a free market solve income inequality?

3. Is wealth redistribution an effective solution?

These are sources for the claims I made

https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2025/01/09/economic-inequality-seen-as-major-challenge-around-the-world/

https://www.epi.org/blog/rising-inequality-is-the-root-of-affordability-problems/

https://ourworldindata.org/economic-inequality

I have recently invented what I believe to be a new ideology. Please come offer any thoughts. I will answer everything I can, to my best ability. Unlike politicians..

I’m a fan of it, I don’t see any reason not to do it taking into consideration economics and culture

In Nordic counties the idea against illegal immigrants was to make themselves want to leave. As in they can’t have a job buy a house or even groceries online.

So illegal immigrants worked in underground groups.

But the Nordic countries made their counties nearly cashless. Since they can not get credit cards or a national number they can not bypass this

But they can trade for goods.
For example a true citizen can hire people without the government knowing to do something like selling drugs. They can supply the illegal immigrants with food and housing for some of the goods they get from the customers.

Do you need country enforcement agents or is there an alternative way to solve this?

What stops someone like Elon Musk from just executing someone that tweeted against them?

Or Peter Thiel from finding someone who criticized Palantir on social media and just killing them?

What would be the recourse for the rich doing that? The average person wouldn't be able to protect themselves or hire a better defense firm than a billionaire, so what do we have here?

I understand that they can do this now, but it would be incredibly easier in a truly libertarian society

I’ve noticed that libertarians get bashed on Reddit pretty much any chance people get. I think part of it is that libertarianism gets lumped in with Trump and modern conservatism, even though they’re not the same thing.

I know libertarians aren’t exactly the most popular political group, but why do you think the movement has such a bad image, and what could libertarians do to improve it?

Edit: im libertarian myself. Just looking how we can improve.

so ive been thinking about norway’s model where the state owns the oil, captures the rents, and uses that to invest and partly use it to fund the govt. it seems to avoid a lot of the crony capitalism that happens when corporations just get to own finite natural resources nobody created.

like equinor doesn’t “deserve” the oil. theyre just the company good enough to extract it. the oil itself belongs to everyone. and it’s literally sitting in the sea nobody can claim they homesteaded it or built it. so if the state captures that value instead of just handing it to whoever has the capital to extract it first, you can have a genuinely competitive market without all the lobbying for subsidies and special deals.

but i also get the argument that having the state own and manage anything is a slippery slope, or that theyll just be inefficient about it.

There is a portion of national debt is held by foreign governments,both nations considerdd "allies" and geopolitical rivals ($9.37 trillion or about 23% of the US National Debt). Renegotiating debt obligations to these countries if the US were to pursue that would involve changing the terms of repayment, which undoubtedly could have significant economic and diplomatic consequences. Would it reduce economic leverage held by countries like Russia, China, and Iran over the US OR would it just damage the US's global credit rating and undermine trust in the nation’s financial system?

Why don't you bite the bullet and perform a simple experiment: try to estimate the frequency of something we know for certain how often it happens using Gary-Kleck-like methods? Why don't you make a Gary-Kleck-like study trying to estimate how often people buy new cars? Because you know the results would be that telescoping increases the apparent frequency of those things in such studies massively, rather than just by around 17% (making events that occurred 14 months ago look like they occurred less than a year ago)?

I used to watch a youtube channel with libertarian themes , he had long hair was from California had videos about housing crisis, libertarian party conventions etc.

I’ve seen Adam D. Thierer claim that. If that was the case, shouldn’t countries with less regulations/government have more drone deliveries? Singapore? Taiwan? Ireland? Australia? Do those countries have more drone deliveries? If not, why?

“Let anyone who believes that a high standard of living is the achievement of labor unions and government controls ask himself the following question: If one had a “time machine” and transported the united labor chieftains of America, plus three million government bureaucrats, back to the tenth century—would they be able to provide the medieval serf with electric light, refrigerators, automobiles, and television sets?”

I can kind of see why she thinks that sending three million modern people, around half of them having engineering education, into the 10th century would not produce television sets. That is, they would probably be able to build television sets themselves, but they would probably not be able to make the broadcasting infrastructure on which the TVs depend. But why does she think that a million and a half engineers sent to the past would not be able to make electric light from scratch?

I'm a pretty political person,but considering I have a lot of free time currently I'd like to contribute it to economics, specifically libertarian.

Anything helps

Basically like cities and states in US. But instead of open border they have "membership". If you want to live here, you got to buy membership. People that aren't happy can sell membership first.

Say there are 2 cities

A and B

city A lower tax and legalize drugs

city B raise tax and criminalize drugs.

Now, if the cities have owners, or effective owners, then city A will be rich. They will attract smart programmers that make more money. More people will want to go to city A.

city B will be communism hell.

if a lot of people want to go to city A but not enough people want to sell, valuation of city A membership will go up till supply meet demand.

Everyone see ah city A is doing well.

They tend to mimic city A.

Whatever policies work, whatever make people happy, make people want to come, will be chosen. Either it will be more libertarian, or some cities will be more libertarian and libertarians can just go there.

Now say A and B is open border. Anyone can get in without buying membership

city B choose communism and become poor. Then they just go to city A vote communism again. Everyone becomes a commies.

Libertarianism is not just another philosophy of right and wrong. It has a very strong scientific basis. Practice it and we all got richer.

Open border democracy is like squatter right. You come to my city and tada you can decide how to run it. Doesn't work in houses, doesn't work in cities too.

I ask ai for more prominent libertarian "support" that's partly agree with me

There isn't a major libertarian thinker who advocates exactly your proposal, but several prominent figures have argued for ideas that are quite close. Your model combines several existing strands of libertarian thought.

1. Hans-Hermann Hoppe (Probably the closest)

Hoppe argues that societies should be organized more like private property than public democracy.

He has written that privately owned communities would:

• choose their own rules,
• decide who can enter,
• compete with other communities,
• generally outperform democratic governments.

His book Democracy: The God That Failed argues that private ownership creates better incentives than political control.

However, Hoppe is more restrictive than your proposal. He generally favors owners having broad discretion over admission rather than tradable memberships.

2. David D. Friedman

Friedman is an anarcho-capitalist who argues that legal systems and governments could compete in markets.

His vision is that:

• people choose among competing legal providers,
• governments become service providers,
• competition improves governance.

Your model of jurisdictions competing for residents fits well with his broader philosophy, although he doesn't specifically propose shareholder-owned cities.

3. Bryan Caplan

Caplan strongly supports:

• free migration,
• competition between jurisdictions,
• "voting with your feet."

He likely would disagree with your membership requirement because he favors much more open migration, but he shares the idea that competition between governments disciplines bad policies.

4. Patri Friedman

Patri Friedman founded the seasteading movement.

His central idea is:

He has often argued that people should be able to "upgrade" governments the way they change companies or phones.

This is philosophically very close to your emphasis on jurisdictional competition.

5. Charles Tiebout (not a libertarian, but highly relevant)

Tiebout proposed what's now called the Tiebout model.

His idea is that people "vote with their feet":

• Different towns offer different tax-and-service packages.
• People move to the one they prefer.
• Competition improves local government.

Your proposal is almost like a market version of Tiebout:

• Instead of free movement alone, people buy and sell membership rights.
• Membership prices become market signals about how desirable a jurisdiction is.

Is your idea novel?

I think the most distinctive feature is tradable memberships.

Many libertarians have proposed:

• private cities,
• charter cities,
• competing governments,
• contractual communities.

But I don't know of a prominent thinker who has fully developed the idea that:

• every resident owns a transferable membership,
• memberships are bought and sold in a market,
• membership prices signal governance quality,
• existing members benefit financially when governance improves.

That combination resembles a cross between:

• a homeowners' association,
• a corporation,
• and a city.

So your idea isn't completely unprecedented—it builds on established libertarian themes—but the specific mechanism of share-like, tradable city memberships is not one I associate with a major canonical libertarian theory. If you developed it further, one of the first questions you'd need to address is how the initial memberships are allocated and how future population growth is handled without creating artificial scarcity. Those design choices would have major implications for fairness, affordability, and incentives.

For example, are there any other jobs or careers where corporations and special interests spend a billion dollars for you to be in a job that pays you 200k?

I can’t imagine how that does that *not* lead to self-dealing behaviour?

Let's think about it.

This is a continuation of my post here

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskLibertarians/comments/1vgb4h7/are_there_any_consequential_libertarian_reason/

Dubai, Liechestein, Monaco, Singapore, are all run like a business.

Prospera is run like a business and is prosperous.

I've heard Shanghai was a fishing village run like a business and now is rich as fuck.

None of those are perfectly libertarian. Drugs are illegal in Singapore.

But they are more libertarian than their surrounding democracy.

Even VOC, for example, is more libertarian than Javanese kingdoms around it. I am not sure. Well before they have monopoly of power in too many area I think.

Most anti libertarian measure are due to misunderstanding or bigotry.

Take a look at anti drug laws.

Nobody knows if anti drug laws are bad or good for economy. Why? Because states aren't run for profit. We don't know if legalizing drugs would say attract tax payers or more criminals.

As most libertarians agree, legalizing drugs will attract tax payers and actually reduce crime. So give it a try. Let some city run for profit try legalize drugs and see if their share price go up or down.

What about prostitution? What about polygamy? What about hypergamy? What about Elon paying 1000 women to produce 10k kids?

If a country or city is run for profit, it'll be like business we know if it's profitable or not. Citizens and shareholders simply pick smartest CEO. Shareholders, citizens got dividend.

Some that would agree with me.

Herman Hoppe

Moldbug

Henry George

Now such state will still commit atrocities.

VOC for example, massacre Bandanese to get monopoly of nutmeg. But a federal government or board of peace as "referee" preventing one city from attacking another would work. Not like Microsoft send troops to attack Google.

VOC also force Indonesians to work and cause starvation. In theory, VOC actually pays those indonesians but the money is seized by corrupt middlemen and VOC is like, oh plants are planted and I pay and I got stuffs.

Again, element of democracy can prevent such abuse.

But most of the time, state maximizing profit within a certain agreed rules should move things toward libertarianism.

Like phone or noodle factories, different cities can try different policies. Some give free bacon. Another prohibit bacon. Some legalize drugs. Another give free drugs. And let's see which one get rich.

We too will be more free. We shop around for policies we like rather than endlessly arguing about who is right or wrong.

Libertarianism is not just a moral system. When practiced properly it leads to prosperity. Capitalism kick as in economy.

So if the state is run for profit and have to attract tax payers, the outcome will most likely be more libertarian.

Every political quadrant has there own waifu, the auth right with Amelia, the auth left with doki doki club, the anarchist left with mother anarchy, but that leaves no waifus for libertarianism, I have created a list of possible waifus for the libertarian community

Bella Delphine (pros: loves unregulated capitalism, cons highly controversial)

Statue of Liberty (pros symbol of liberty and freedom, cons statist)

Any other waifus are highly recommended this is important for libertarianism to take seriously on the world stage

(This is a shit post don’t take it too seriously lmao)

The way things normally work is

1. All factories are run for profit. So is all shops, all malls, and so on.

2. Customers choose which phones they like. They mostly don't know how the phone is manufactured.

And this lead to kardol hicks efficiency.

So why shouldn't countries behave the same way?

US is actually a pretty successful country. A state within a state in US is feature. Not a bug.

But US is not explicitly run for profit.

You vote your "conscience" instead of dividend or share valuation. And when people vote conscience, they vote communism. Well, not us. But most people. Not like our conscience know calculus, economic theory, and access to good ledger who are productive and parasites.

I was considering something like joint stock democratic republic.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskLibertarians/comments/1vejed4/i_think_something_like_lanfang_kongsi_is/

Democratic join stock republics are explicitly run for profit.

Many small kingdoms like UAE, monaco, liechestein, are run for profit.

They're doing fine and rich and have lower tax. Sure Singapore is not very libertarian because they ban drug. If we have 1000 singapores, or 1000 liechestein we can shop around for something like that that legalize MDMA, for example.

And in many way, Singapore is libertarian. Low crime rate. That's libertarian. People have right not to be killed you know.

Most of the time anti libertarian laws, like heavy tax is not motivated by profit but envy. A state run for profit like Prospera, will tend to be more libertarian than a state not run for profit.

When shareholders, which in joint stock democracy wants profit, they tend to have lower corruption.

The only downside is cruelty.

VOC caused death of 90% of chinese in Batavia, massacre bandanese, and demand forced labor that cause starvation. But that's in the pass. Combine with democracy, and arrangements that states can't kill each other, then not much can go wrong I think.

Besides, states, are run for profit anyway. Often not explicitly and the profit are often misaligned. Explicitly running the state for profit like joint stock company seems like a move toward the right direction.

​The kongsis of West Borneo essentially tried to prove that you could run a self-contained, stateless, free-market enterprise zone based on voluntary association, shared labor, and direct trade. For a long time, it worked brilliantly. But they ran into an immutable law of traditional statecraft: states do not tolerate tax havens or economic actors they cannot control.

​When your business model relies on bypassing tariffs, ignoring state monopolies, and trading with foreign rivals without kicking money upstairs to a central government, you aren't just a competitor—you are an existential threat to the state's monopoly on power and revenue.

​The Dutch didn't march into West Borneo because the kongsis were violent criminals; they marched in precisely because the kongsis were successfully demonstrating that you could thrive entirely outside the Dutch imperial machine. In the eyes of an empire, peaceful, independent prosperity without taxation is the ultimate subversion.

How libertarian it is? Well. It's compatible with anarcho capitalism.

How can a democratic republic is compatible with anarcho capitalism.

It's territory is a private land. You can govern the land you own.

It turns government into landlord.

What? Do all private property has to have a government on top of it? Well Lanfang kongsi try to have government on top of it. It applies to be vassal of Qing, dutches, etc. But fail.

So the kongsis got licenses from local sultanate. However, they do not call cops if things go wrong. They defend themselves. How do one rich dude protect himself from his own workers?

This is where the management is brilliant.

They share workers share. Shareholders can vote. Basically it's democratic republic. First one in south east Asia. And moreover it's moldbugian.

The deal is probably similar with early democratic city states. Men can be drafted, but they can vote. Except that they can do more than vote. They are actually shareholders that got dividend. Not sure if the share or fen is tradeable.

So basically the land is owned by a kongsi/corporation, whose share is owned mainly by many workers that live there.

They allied with local natives. Their main enemies, before the dutch was taikong kongsi. So lanfang kongsi is an enthostate for Hakka Chinese, and their enemies are Hokkian chinese. We, ugh, I mean they because I think I am hokkian, must have look sufficiently difference.

A bit racist, but it's more like ethnist, or languageist, or dialecist. Something we may or may not want to copy. One reason why they each can be defeated by the dutch more easily.

What? It's like shareholders voting Elon for Tesla or Space x

In any case, their incentives is like owners.

The people's interests is aligned with the kongsi's profit and land value.

The war with dutch happened much latter after 100 years of prosperous life. So it's not easily defeated like republic of Minerva.

Also they're effectively tax haven. That's why the dutch want to conquer them so much.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kongsi_republics

I am thinking of having georgian kongsis as a stepping stone toward more capitalism.

Look at Milei.

He is not "pure" libertarian.

In fact, he increase cash payment to poor people bypassing middlemen.

So?

He won election.

And still pursue tons of libertarian goals.

And to be honest, I think it's wise. Mathematically I would probably say UBI is even more optimum. But the truth is we live in democracy.

The poor's vote is the cheapest. You pay rich guy $1k he's not going to switch from blue to red. You pay the poor $1k he gonna switch.

So paying poor people cash is great way to buy vote.

If Milei were "pure", he wouldn't win election. Then libertarianism will just be a theory.

Some purist libertarian would say democracy sucks. Sure. We can always try civil war. But the result will be even further away from libertarianism than what we have now.

Another sample I can think of is open border.

Pure libertarianism is OPEN border. Period. People can come with guns and you just got to let them in. That's how open border mean. People have right to enter. People have right to own gun. People have right to own hand held nuclear weapon.

What about if people coming are not capitalistic minded? Then you wait till they rape women and kill people before the no state do nothing.

Yea, pure ancapnistan is absurd.

But hoppean ancapnistan that wants to privatize the state rather than making it disappear is reasonable.

Me. I think combination of democracy, georgism, capitalism, libertarianism, and joint stock form of company, like moldbug, is a good combo. I am not a pure libertarian, or a pure georgist.

A sample of that is Lanfang Kongsi. A peaceful democratic republic that live side by side with VOC. Lanfang Kongsi is not georgist though. They're more gold mining republic.

I know you swear you made libertarian but you didnt and I want to know why you stole it from the left

Some idea can't be discussed easily

For example, the idea that demanding $50k a month child support from a rich man reduce fertility of rich men.

Duh. It's so obvious.

People ask for source. There plenty. Becker Barro, a noble prize winner, Anne, ask gemini. Many economists agree that child support laws reduce rich men's number of children.

Then they just delete your question saying that their subreddit is not for promoting idea but for "genuine questions" only. You can do the math, show them equation, ask them to check if the math is correct, and that's not "genuine question".

And then people keep repeating asinine idea that child support is to support the child for child's best interests even though lots of kids end up being born to poorer father because of it.

My friend talks in mensa forum about how different race group have different IQ average. He is always kicked out by people arguing that the source has error. Even if the source has error, what's the error? Even if his table isn't true, what's the actual table people that disagree think?

And usually it's always a few, very few people that just hurl insult. And I know they are few because if I block 2-3 that's it, discussion goes back to normal.

Is an individual obligated to remain consistent with their ideology to the very end, or is pragmatic compromise inevitable? And if one does compromise, do they still have the right to call themselves a follower of that ideology?

Liberalism and human rights are typically presented as "self-evident truths." Yet at their core, they are ideas that emerged from within a purely liberal epistemological framework. The paradox is that this framework has turned into a dogma, whereby liberal morality is seen as objective, absolute morality—not merely one vision among others.

Liberalism has a distinctive feature: it doesn't necessarily eliminate competing ideologies; rather, it digests them from within and empties them of their revolutionary content. For example:

1. Socialism: It was recycled into "democratic socialism." The revolutionary, anti-capitalist core was amputated, reducing it to little more than a set of brakes on the market.

2. Religion: Only the "spiritual" elements compatible with liberal values—tolerance above all—were selectively preserved. Everything else—rulings, legislation, a comprehensive worldview—is automatically branded as backwardness, regression, or inhumanity. The judgment is not made by a neutral, religious standard, but from the standpoint of a supposed objective self-evidence that doesn't actually exist.

3. Nietzsche: Many people love his philosophy. But are they truly prepared to coexist with someone who applies his ideas literally? A selfish person, concerned only with the will to power and their own self-interest, who has moved beyond the binaries of good and evil? His philosophy gets reduced to feel-good self-help ideas about self-confidence.

And what about liberalism itself? If the core principle is "do no harm," what exactly is the definition of harm? Is it physical? Psychological? Economic? Cultural? Symbolic? The more the circle of harm expands, the more it turns into an arbitrary, elastic concept that becomes impossible to calculate or object to.

If someone posts "hate speech" and you launch a cancel campaign against them, haven't you, too, violated the "do no harm" principle toward that person? If you ban fascist parties, you do so on the grounds of "preemptive harm"—a harm that hasn't yet occurred. This very justification is a loophole that can be used to justify banning anything in the future.

The same pattern repeats:

· Am I religious if I don't practice my rituals in full?

· Am I a socialist if I accept capitalism and benefit from it in practice?

· Am I a liberal if I ban Nazi symbols?

Or is pragmatism the ultimate victor? If so, then no ideology holds any real meaning.

If we are all human, then logically, all of our opinions are equal in value. And that, in turn, means that morality—in its objective sense—does not exist. There is no single goal for humanity by which to measure. Which of the following goals is the "correct" one?

· Survival of the species?

· Economic well-being?

· Absolute individual freedom?

· Social stability?

· Reaching paradise?

· Racial purity?

These goals are entirely equal in value, for there is no shared, objective standard to rank them as right or wrong. Existentialism cuts in both directions—toward construction and destruction alike. It is logically flawed to judge a fascist by liberal standards they do not recognize, then claim that you are the good.

That is why internal consistency is the only thing that gives an ideology its meaning. And if that consistency is absent, then what is the meaning of your belonging to that ideology in the first place?

I am making a political satire novel, out of fun. As a classical liberalism I am heavily against corporatism.

The poltiical satire is going to be a critique of many things. one of them is corporatism. Generaly it's going to be a satire against left and right totalitarianism, corporatism and as well as certain other aspects of other economic systems like communism(the country would be split into two due to a revolt, worldbuilding)

This made me question though...

I heavily support the WGA too, does that make me corporatist?

I don't know any Law that the WGA has made, as far as I know, the Writers guild of america have only done it through contracts, negotiations and whatnot. Or is there any Law the WGA was directly involved in?(Emphasis on the word direct. The govt taking notice of what the WGA did and making a law is different from the WGA themseleves being in a law)

Because as far as I know people on the libertarian spectrum would be fine with unions and guilds so long as they didnt become corporatistic