Shades of Libertarianism

David Friedman

I recently came across an illustrated video of David Friedman discussing his libertarian ideas. Friedman's ideas were published in his book The Machinery of Freedom (full text is available here). Friedman's version of libertarianism is called market anarchism or anarcho-capitalism. Don't be scared off by the radical sounding terms. Essentially it is a look at what a society might look like if the functions of government were privatized by markets and voluntary exchange. I read the book many years ago and found that it opened up my mental horizons. Just as there are many shades of other political and economic philosophies, there are many shades of libertarian philosophies. Let the marketplace of ideas sort it out.

By the way, David Friedman is the son of Nobel Prize winning economist and libertarian Milton Friedman. Interestingly, Milton's libertarianism is a different shade than David's.

Milton Friedman