Philosophers labeling themselves as libertarians advocate for liberty. They argue that individuals should take the responsibility of self-ownership. This implies that individuals in society should exercise their rights in making personal choices concerning the way of life.
In this group of thinking, individuals live as they deem right. This is provided an individual respects others right to exercise freedom.
In addition, libertarianism seeks to grant each individual the right to property ownership without any barriers from other people or the government.
Property ownership should be a personal choice depending on individual ability. Libertarians believe that a free market is part of liberty. They argue that the government should not impose any policies to govern markets.
In addition, individuals should exercise free trade in the unrestricted market. According to these philosophers, only a small part of the government should exist. This should serve to enforce the laws that govern each individual’s liberty.
Further still, there should be an army in place for defense when necessary. However, the government should not indulge in state property ownership.
This paper will examine the strengths and weaknesses of the versions of free market that libertarians support.
Some libertarians believe in total libertarianism. This implies that the state has the responsibility of formulating laws that protect each individual in exercising the liberty to own property without interference.
Interferences would include cases of fraud and theft of property. In addition, this school of thought associates the breaching of contracts with creating a barrier to an individual’s rights to pursue their purposes.
Such a setting would imply that each individual has absolute freedom to own property with tolerance from other members and society. One strength of total libertarianism is that individuals can pursue their intentions and own property freely.
However, such system of liberty expression has its challenges. It does not define the grounds on which self-ownership will start.
How will a society allocate natural resources to individuals and what will qualify them m for the resource? The thinking has its flaws because it does not define how the self-ownership concept will come into place.
The other group believes in moderate libertarianism. Moderate brings the sense that the state indulges in formulating laws and regulations that promote the existence of competition in markets.
They advocate for “freeness’ and ‘fullness’ of competition in the market. Governments should have regulations that prohibit formation of monopolies and oligopolies. In addition, they believe that only horizontal integrations should exist. In their view, governments should abolish any vertical networks.
The strength of this thinking is that it allows competition in the market and encourages the markets to exist in a free nature. This virtually allows each individual to engage in trade without any limitations by the structure of the market.
However, it presents an additional challenge of what libertarians do not describe. The thinking does not define ownership of the trade outcomes. Although these philosophers argue that the people should accept the trade outcomes, it is not clear how this occurs.
However, moderate libertarianism can help in eliminating unequal property distribution in society through the elimination of monopolies, oligopolies and other networks that hinder free trade.
Tyrants have benefited by establishing monopolies and the abolishment of these will present each individual with a fair chance in trade.
As described above, libertarians advocate for the freedom to exercise freedom and liberty for each individual. This school of thought believes that each individual should make personal choices regarding their preferences.
In addition, there is the principle of tolerating others in their ventures of executing their personal pursuits. However, libertarians differ on several issues.
One of these issues is the nature of free markets that should exist. Such differences have resulted to two classes of libertarianism.