Libertarianism
is committed to individual liberty
conceived as the right to own property and live free from the interference of
others. The free market is justified as the economic system that best
supports individual liberty. Both utilitarianism and libertarianism
support a system of free markets, but when the promotion of utility conflicts
with the protection of liberty, libertarians favor unregulated markets that
protect liberty, while utilitarians prefer regulation in order to increase utility at the
expense of liberty.
Hayek
and Classical Liberalism.
Friedrich von Hayek’s perceptiveness with respect to what is now called
classical liberalism and its implications for understanding the market system
was significantly underappreciated during the majority of his lifetime.
As a staunch critic of planned economies, particularly those of
totalitarian regimes, he advanced a notion of spontaneous order that
conceptualizes the free market as far superior to human planning as regards
economic and political systems. It should be noted that Hayek recognized
that all human activity requires some order. However, the two competitors
for ordering economic and political system seem to involve greater control and
regulation on the one hand and freer rein given to individual liberty on the
other. Within a broad, general set of principles, spontaneous order
is the notion that the only goals within a system are those set by individuals
rather than those set by either governmental or corporate fiat. Corporate
systems, then, are understood to supervene on aggregates of individual agents
exercising free and self-interested choices rather than as basic or
foundational to economic and political development. Hayek called spontaneous
order “catallaxy.” Hayek’s view is consistent with the classical sense
of Millian liberalism. Free exercise of individual liberty will
produce greater positive effect within a society than any of the alternatives.
