Libertarians: The Good, Bad, and Ugly

The doctrine, the people, and the movement must evolve if these are to maximize freedom.

I have no beef with Mr. Supreme. This is just what people see.

The libertarians, whose number you can count on fingers and toes, are fractured too. One branch is a remnant dedicated to flogging the non-aggression principle (NAP), another branch sits comfortably in ineffectual beltway jobs, churning out little more than TDS articles and whitepapers no one reads, and a third branch sits around sending their friends Michael Saylor videos so they’ll buy bitcoin. In short, the libertarian movement is thin and useless. Their brand is toxic. Their principles are too abstract. And they have about as much culture as a cardboard box in the rain. —MB, from “Getting up with Fleas”

Some of my best friends are libertarians, he writes after insulting them. The above epigraph was the offending passage.

My late father had three sage pieces of redneck advice:

• On credit cards. “Don’t ever go into debt, but pay it off first when you do.”

• On women at work. “Don’t get your honey where you get your money.”

• On strategic relationships. “Don’t sh*t where you eat.”

With the above passage, buried in a critique of right-wing indie media, I violated the third piece of my dad’s advice.

Please understand that this article is not an apology. Instead, it is a heartfelt explanation and brutal, but hopefully constructive, criticism. Even if you identify as such, I hope you can empathize with my frustration with libertarians, as well as libertarianism and the libertarian movement.

The Scarlet L

When F. A. Hayek wrote “Why I am Not a Conservative,” it had become necessary for the thinker to distinguish himself and his ideas. Perhaps too many sloppy pundits had referred to him as a conservative too many times.

• Hayek argued that conservatives have an inherent fear of change and prefer to preserve existing institutions simply because they exist.

• He criticized conservatives for relying too heavily on intuition, tradition, and instinct rather than systematic reasoning and evidence.

• While both classical liberals and conservatives oppose socialist central planning, Hayek noted that conservatives were too comfortable with state intervention in other spheres (e.g., censorship; behavior restrictions).

• Hayek argued that conservatives tend to distrust democratic processes and popular will, preferring rule by established elites or traditional authorities. (Speaking of elites, I suspect today’s progressives would give him saucer eyes.)

• Conservatives typically idealized some past golden age and sought to restore or preserve it. In contrast, Hayek looked toward a dynamic, open-ended future where spontaneous order and individual initiative could flourish.

Like Hayek and the Big C moniker, I have long wished not to have my tunic emblazoned with the Scarlet L. It’s not because I’m closer to progressives, conservatives, moderates, or authoritarians in my outlook; it’s because the label has become a liability. With the following, I want to tell you why.

But first, I want to explore what’s still valuable to me about libertarianism.

The Good

Libertarianism, as a big-tent doctrine, still offers features that continue to resonate with me. Though libertarian had been a replacement for the term liberal, which the Old American Left had purloined in the first half of the twentieth century, it still managed to carry the root libertas, meaning freedom.

In particular, libertarians value negative freedom, which amounts to freedom from constraint or threats of violence, not positive freedom, which is freedom to anything that requires making others worse off through crime or policy. Such a basic conception has all manner of implications for culture, morality, and law.

For culture, it requires us to change our habits of mind, tell stories of liberation, and reinforce new habits that depend on a commitment to voluntary association.

For morality, it requires us not just to consult an abstraction like the non-aggression principle (NAP); it also encourages us actively to practice the virtue of nonviolence and nonconstraint, where possible, in thought, word, and deed.

For law, it means that we must take care to craft and live by those rules that instantiate both the morality of freedom by legal deference to adult relationships of consent, freely-entered contracts, and institutions of private property.

Critics often say that libertarians hold too much of an atomistic conception of the person. And some do. But the brightest libertarians appreciate the nature of both atoms and people to self-organize. Real community is not a bureaucratic plan. Genuine compassion is not compulsion.

So far, so good.

Libertarians also possess a deep skepticism about state authority, which means resisting the concentration of power and authority in the hands of the few. Centralization seldom goes well in the end. And frankly, libertarians don’t want to be ordered around by people who fancy themselves gods or masters. Suspicions that libertarians hold about power can be wise, as long as those suspicions don’t remain too abstract, outside time and place, or context-free. (More on this soon.) Generally speaking, just as Gollum and the One Ring fall into the fiery lava of Mount Doom, Central Authority should suffer a similar fate. Otherwise, it will attract all the sociopaths and ideologs into imperial ambitions that require an ever-expanding monopoly on violence.

Libertarians see that power corrupts, and absolute power? Well, you know the rest.

Many libertarians understand the twin concepts of a burgeoning civilization: creative destruction and spontaneous order. The former idea from the illustrious Schumpeter means that aggregated human choices can replace buggies with VW Bugs and eventually flying cars—all without anyone mandating the buggy’s obsolescence. It’s the nature of socio-economic progress. The latter idea, from thinkers like Ferguson, Smith, Mises, and Hayek (his coinage), explains how so much of society is the product of human choices, not of human designs. Spontaneous order doesn't imply random or chaotic outcomes, but rather the emergence of orderly, functional patterns and institutions (like markets, language, or legal systems) arising through decentralized processes.

Libertarians at their best get all this, just like they get that pluralism is both a fact and a provision of their doctrine.

Finally, libertarians have a well-justified appreciation for creatives, entrepreneurs, and innovators. They understand that most wealth is generated by individuals who take risks, create valuable products and services, and serve their customers with dedication to generate revenue that exceeds costs. Profitability is sustainability. Losses are death. That doesn’t mean there are no crony capitalists, ruthless exploiters, or economic fascists around to frown upon. There are plenty, and most libertarians are acutely aware of public choice dynamics and the unholy alliances that form between corporations and governments. But libertarians are willing to salute the world’s non-crony value creators without guilt, envy, or indignation.

Now let’s turn to the shadows.

The Bad

Libertarianism, as a doctrine broadly construed, is one thing. Libertarians are quite another. They not only show up with narrower construals with which they’ll bludgeon anyone who seems to stray from the One True Way, they also fail to interrogate their own assumptions. The Devil is almost always in the details. Still, too many libertarians overlook details (or context) out of an errant fidelity to simplistic theoretical abstractions or unreflective blanket moralisms.

For example, many years ago, a brilliant friend of mine (who also happens to be a libertarian) gathered a lot of data and crunched the US numbers. He wanted to see whether increasing police presence had any effect on crime numbers. He was skeptical, but the results of such an investigation had nothing whatsoever to do with his libertarian priors. He just wanted the truth. I suspect my number-crunching friend even prefers David Friedman-esque competing protective associations to public police. But I seriously doubt he prefers a world without cops to one with public cops. While he acknowledges that local police monopolies are a less ideal product of legacy politics, he’s pragmatic.

So, against all the narratives and availability heuristics about America as a “police state,” or instances of excessive force, my friend found a strong correlation between increased police presence and reduced crime. Yet the libertarian peanut gallery at the time didn’t care for that conclusion. In a frame where everything must be judged against the ideal instead of what’s real, they concluded that research of this sort only serves statism. Competing protective associations or defunding the police are the only options for the One True Libertarian.

Like other ideologs, many libertarians go in for slogans. The libertarian who is willing to slap the NAP (non-aggression principle) like a bumper sticker on every challenging or intractable issue creates the impression that libertarians live in la-la-land. And many do. While I believe nonviolence and nonconstraint are essential moral considerations for evaluating the actions of both criminals and the politically powerful—not to mention for building a consent-based world—the NAP cannot be a free-standing answer to everything under the sun, any more than arguing everything government officials do is wrong because they’re state proxies. There are too many instances where actions of state proxies are the only game in town at that moment. For example, while I don’t want to see boots on the ground in the world’s various corners, I’d be glad to have them around if there were a hostile foreign invasion of Charleston harbor—notwithstanding the grotesque military-industrial complex. Otherwise, so-called voluntaryists think in black and white yellow, which means they’re happy to hate the state, but spend too little time conceiving of and building the alternative.

What about crypto libertarians?

As an old-school crypto maven, I've seen it all when it comes to Bitcoin, Ethereum, and a dazzling array of so-called shitcoins. I own some, too. One can argue quite justifiably that the genesis of cryptocurrency is applied libertarian thinking. Satoshi—he or they—is a subversive innovator par excellence. I am also sympathetic to gold-buggery in an age where banks and money printers go brrrrrr. I see *crypto* as an evolving ecosystem with the potential to hasten the social singularity, not as a gambling casino or system to game.

Sadly, most people involved in either Bitcoin or *crypto* have lost their way.

Some of the OGs are hanging in there. But among those who think that Bitcoin is the light and the way, far too large a subset is concerned with pumping its value instead of propagating its values, and far too few are concerned with liberating us from our corrupt financial system. Bless souls such as

Robert Breedlove

who is a freedom maxi as much as a bitcoin maxi. There aren’t enough Breedloves.

Among the alt-coiners, a few OGs are hanging in there, too. But a generation of NFT goofballs, memecoiners, rug-pullers, and other grifters set the industry back a decade as a promising ecosystem of liberatory technologies. One can hear the lamentations of those like Charles Hoskinson who are fed up with the circus and want to focus on underthrow. Libertarian-adjacent innovators like

vitalik.eth

and

Balaji

are quietly working to develop network states and special jurisdictions. But too many crypto enthusiasts have decoupled themselves from the moral substrate—that is, the freedom philosophy that once animated the industry.

They prefer to chase mooning tokens.

The Ugly

I promised to discuss reasons why the libertarian label has become a liability and the *movement,* such as it is, seems to be coasting on fumes.

Libertarians tend to be quite good at logic and applied rationality, probably more so than any other group. Libertarians also perform better than the other groups on IQ tests.

According to Jonathan Haidt in “The Largest Study Ever of Libertarian Psychology,”

Libertarians have the most “masculine” style, liberals the most “feminine.” We used Simon Baron-Cohen’s measures of “empathizing” (on which women tend to score higher) and “systemizing”, which refers to “the drive to analyze the variables in a system, and to derive the underlying rules that govern the behavior of the system.” Men tend to score higher on this variable. Libertarians score the lowest of the three groups on empathizing, and highest of the three groups on systemizing. (Note that we did this and all other analyses for males and females separately.) On this and other measures, libertarians consistently come out as the most cerebral, most rational, and least emotional. On a very crude problem solving measure related to IQ, they score the highest. Libertarians, more than liberals or conservatives, have the capacity to reason their way to their ideology.

And this they do. But reason can be a blessing or a curse for a bona fide movement.

I once sat next to Jonathan Haidt at dinner, and he nodded grudgingly as I commented that the mildly offensive term aspergo-libertarian had gotten traction at the time, which his research on libertarians seemed to track. Too many libertarians not only “reason their way to their ideology,’ but they also want to reason their way through persuasion. But going all in on logos means leaving pathos, mythos, and ethos in the toolkit. It’s not that all libertarians fail to see the value of emotional appeals, powerful stories, or the power of charm, reputation, and personality. It’s just that most are congenitally incapable of casting these spells to positive effect.

So you get two groups: Libertarians who try their best to create moving content but stink at it; or libertarians who double down on Reason, but fail to realize that Joe Sixpack and Jill Ivorytower don’t respond well to rational discourse alone, much less bumper sticker versions of libertarian axioms. Joe and Jill feel, intuit, remember powerful stories—and they flock to their tribal bubbles.

Seasons of Persuasive Practice

An ever-shrinking army of Vulcans and Tin Men is never going to inspire. Syllogisms are not like stories. Rationality is not like rage. Logic is not like love. Yet each libertarian imagines he possesses the One True Way in terms of ideological purity and doctrinal dedication delivered with pure reason.

So they busy themselves trying to persuade one another about who is the most correct, morally upright, and insist that some robotic raciocination machine in their mold should run for office. (There are at least two things wrong with this approach.) Then, of course, can the candidate keep his clothes on, the boot off his head, or his dubious career in the basement?

There are exceptions, of course. But there is something about the small-l population that can’t help but stay in counterproductive loops. They’ll argue endlessly about minarchism vs. anarchism, while authoritarians, theocrats, and social justice fundamentalists claim more and more territory in the mindwar.

Yet those who end up straying from ideological purity have tended to do so in the silliest ways.

Those libertarians who veered right were the first to have COVID parties and hurl woke as an epithet against calls for decency. Some have done cognitive contortions to explain why neo-mercantilism is actually a good thing, and far too many have strayed into the neo-reactionary wilderness to imagine CEO-Kings in the mold of Moldbug. Far too many think free speech is a license to be a vulgar pig online, or otherwise start conversations about issues that are on virtually no one’s radar. For right-leaning libertarians, it’s either pick-me contrarianism or fancying that people really should have a *right* to own ICBMs.

Those libertarians straying left proudly triple masked and triple vaxxed, went SJF (social justice fundamentalist), showed their solidarity with Ukraine (Slava Ukraini! They were once antiwar but are now pro proxy war), and complain endlessly about Trump the Vulgar, Populist Authoritarian!!!—all in an effort to match the TDS of the progressive left. This is no cheer for the President as much as it is a way to point out that crying about him as an existential threat is far less effective than seeking strategic opportunities to move the needle, Trump notwithstanding. Populist! Authoritarian! Racist! These are former godwords that have been sapped by people crying wolf.

Too many beltway libertarians fall into this group and routinely telegraph their left-tinged sanctimony, perhaps to keep getting invited to DC cocktail parties. When there were equally horrible illiberal threats and acts just five minutes ago, most remained conspicuously silent. (For example: on the breadth and depth of the Bidens’ corruption, COVID coverups, NGO-DNC money laundering, the censorship-industrial complex, the Russia hoax, the Hunter Biden laptop suppression, strategic uncontrolled immigration, and all the lawfare waged in the interregnum. («See what I did there?)

Beltway libertarians are only marginally better when it comes to all the binary thinking and sanctimony, but the Death Star’s culture pulls them in with its tractor beams. All the District’s resume reciting and relevance peddling must surely leave them with existential dread. By day, they burrow down in the three Ps (politics, policy, and punditry) to perform for an audience of frustrated donors. Having already produced reams for the whitepaper-industrial complex, they have become an effete elite among their kind, despite neither wins nor laurels to show for all that time and money. They proudly set out firm opinions on sticky issues, but seldom scratch their heads and say This is a tough one. Rectitude sells, I guess. To the extent that libertarian policy analysts ought to do more than run, waving, alongside a train that’s about to wreck, you’d think there might be a few policy wins for these Beltway dandies.

Alas. Public choice is a b*tch, and they know it. Yet they refuse to change, except perhaps to go from Republican Lite to Democrat Lite. There is a sweet spot between applying ideological litmus tests and abandoning one’s principles, which most libertarians can’t seem to find.

Which brings us to the capital L Libertarians of the LP. They managed to free Ross in 2025 and to get an fella named Marshall Burt elected to the Wyoming state legislature back in 2020. (Huzzah!) Otherwise, they’ve managed to elect a handful of local yokels here and there, and some say they influenced Gov. Jared Polis of Colorado (D) by prompting a couple of vetoes. (Golf clap.) Otherwise, their forgettable top-of-ticket candidates have been steamrolled by a duopoly that outspends them, outwhores them, and has made ballot access difficult and costly.

There is no David versus the Goliaths story here. It’s just ugly.

Internally, the Libertarian Party has faced its share of dysfunction—ranging from the ridiculous to the damaging. One particularly infamous episode occurred at the 2016 national convention, when party chair hopeful stripped down to a thong onstage during a live C-SPAN broadcast “because I thought we could use a little bit of fun.” Yet their idea of fun seems to be embarrassing antics or bad timing.

Internal power struggles and organizational misfires also plague the party. Since 2022, the Mises Caucus effectively took over the Libertarian National Committee (LNC)—prompting several state parties (like New Mexico, Virginia, and Massachusetts) to bolt or splinter away amid infighting and ideological catfights. I don’t know what the nature of their infighting is, so I won’t choose sides. I dare say none of the LP factions has a clue about how to develop a viable political insurgency. (Admittedly, I’m skeptical of electoral politics, so I don’t claim to have the answers.)

The party’s infrastructure has been plagued by operational incompetence, too. After the 2022 convention, the LNC tried to use two overlapping CRM systems—with plans to migrate to a unified system. Instead, the bungled switch cost them revenue, which led to the CRM lead finding the door.

More recently, internal governance issues came to the fore when the national secretary sued the party chair in late 2024, alleging misuse of resources and improper support for non-Libertarian candidates. The secretary resigned in mid‑2025, citing dysfunction and internal disputes.

The New Hampshire LP is full of social media shock jocks, apparently, with one poster writing, “Anyone who murders Kamala Harris would be an American hero.” Seems like this sort of nonsense is the only way the LP can get attention, making the party an ongoing punchline for everyone else’s jokes.

Taken together, these examples—nude onstage antics, ideological takeover drama, botched tech infrastructure, lawsuits between top leaders, and incendiary rhetoric—paint a picture of a party chronically plagued by a lack of vision, poor organization, and a want of any serious, cohesive coordination.

The Question

Occasionally, I admonish Underthrow readers to “Criticize by Creating,” a term I cribbed from the venerable

Michael Strong

years ago, so I hesitate to offer what seems like an extended criticism. If I knew just how to fix the libertarians and their cramped doctrine, I’d probably never earn the big bucks, because, sadly, I can count on one hand the number of people who matter that would listen.

Most of the libertarian donor class—especially the megadonors—are set in their ways. Most wouldn’t recognize a creative approach if it slapped them with a wet cod at the annual Milton Friedman Dinner. (To be fair, though, I wonder how many creative approaches even come across their desks.) Their path dependency, including ongoing investment in the grand ole op-ed mills and the whitepaper-industrial complex, means they keep pouring money into losing approaches.

Some have doubled down over the years on building free-market academic centers that orbit (but hardly penetrate) the universities, and their jobs seem to be to replicate GMU Econ PhDs so that subsequent generations of GMU Econ PhDs can be minted and write journal articles for each other to read—ad infinitum. Seeing this ouroboros has caused some to navel-gaze, so a few have attempted *outreach* by subsidizing the enemy.

I’m doing it again (criticism). So what, at least in broad strokes, does an upgraded libertarianism need?

Brand. I’m not sure the name can be salvaged from the reputational morass. But once a tentatively effective (and affective) approach is discovered, new branding is in order. Not only should brand-building be a pragmatic discovery process, it must carry a more profound, more holistic sense of mission and means (more on this in a moment).

People. Movements need people with personalities. The late Bob Chitester was on this mission like a rabid dog, which is how he launched Milton Friedman into the spotlight in 1980. When the most visible exponents of your ideas are Dave Smith, who is predictably strident, and Ron Paul, who is in his nineties, you have a shallow bench and—no pun—that’s just comical. The last memorable LP presidential candidate is remembered for his “Aleppo moment.” Cultivate new voices with raw charm, intellect, and magnetism across various change modalities.

Message. Instead of talking like manichaean fundamentalists or spraying-then-hiding like unneutered housecats, coalesce around resonant, empowering messages. These should not only speak to people’s real concerns but also inspire them to join in solidarity with you. That means finding somebody, anybody, who can help them combine logos, pathos, ethos, and mythos in a manner that is neither vulgar nor Vulcan. That doesn’t mean one has to jettison her principles. It means she has to transmit them so normie receivers can pick them up and create a broad coalition without selling her soul or alienating the noobs. This will be an experimental process, not a silver bullet. And it will require compromise.

Means. There are sadly few examples of non-political means, but freedom lovers need to invest in people and projects that show liberatory promise. In other words: less politics, policy, and punditry and more creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation. But those who insist on the three Ps must take risks and get more creative, too. With the exception of Satoshi Nakamoto, I don’t see much evidence that libertarians have made significant improvements since the seventies.

Mission. The big objective—maximum human liberation—is the same. Libertarians need to view that mission through a different lens, then devise new subsidiary missions and therefore new means. The mission will never be realized in a single moment or election, much less in the Journal of Mutual Onanism. It is an ongoing process of trench warfare in multiple layers of the social stack. The new lens must be to find new ways and new opportunities to help the masses adopt the mission, all while equipping them with new means to liberate people.

Values. Freedom isn’t the only significant value. So is community. So is order. So is building trust/asabiyyah/solidarity in the sense of Durkheim, Putnam, Ibn Khaldun, and Fukuyama. Such social values must be woven into the goal of maximizing human freedom. Because without them, you will lose freedom.

Strategy. The evolved libertarian needs to learn to read the room, pick his battles, think strategically, and in less black and white terms. The new doctrine must not put all matters at the level of self-evident truth, because too frequently the issues are subjective and sticky, strategy requires tradeoffs, and subtlety requires OODA looping before reasoning a priori.

Spirituality. Saving the most controversial point for last, libertarianism is a narrow, hollow doctrine. As I suggested above, adoption is usually an invitation to think about it, but neither to feel it nor to submit to it spiritually (psychologically). That is a problem, especially in a world dominated by movements that can pour inspiration right into people’s veins and offer a more holistic philosophy on which to build. Even Islam, awful as it is, offers to nourish your spirit before instructing you to tax or kill infidels and erect the califate. Socialism, evil as it is, offers the illusion of free sh*t and the eely lie that joining up makes you a compassionate person.

Why do you think the red-green axis has been so successful as invasive species in the West?

Holism means a doctrine should start with the ancient question: How are we to live? Not: How are we to organize ourselves politically? A political philosophy that is not contained within a life philosophy is a dead letter. So we endeavor to build a life philosophy that helps people set their sights on noble ambitions and become more excellent, more virtuous, more efficacious, and know what it’s like to bask in the mystery while reaching for, and occasionally touching, the sublime.

Before the aspergo-libertarians try to have a debate with me about God or souls or scientific materialism, I don’t use spirituality as a religious term per se. I’m using it as a term that means the doctrine must evolve such that it aligns our heads, hearts, and guts in a manner that respects the complete human being.

Libertarianism must evolve into a doctrine that promises better people, stronger communities, and human flourishing across multiple dimensions.

It must become a doctrine people are willing to build upon.
It must become a doctrine people are willing to die for.
It must become a doctrine people are willing to live for.