Many modern-day liberals want good things for the world. They want peace. They want everyone to be cared for. They want everyone to be educated. They want everyone to be equal. Although we sometimes have a different emphasis, these are things that libertarians also desire. Libertarians also understand many fundamental truths that lead us to believe that the best way to achieve these goals is not through state control or violence, but through voluntaryism and freedom.

We recognize that man comes into this world with nothing and that poverty, not wealth, is our natural state of being. It is an ancient concept, which is found in Ecclesiastes 3:20 that, “All go to one place. All are from the dust, and to dust all return.” Rather than looking at poverty as a mystery, we should look at wealth as a mystery.

Further, we recognize that money does not create wealth. Only hard work, productivity, creativity and resources create wealth. Thus, the solutions to our problems do not lie in printing more money or even redistributing money. The solutions lie in increasing hard work and creativity, and in renewing natural resources. We can give people all the money possible, but it means nothing if there is nothing for them to do with that money. In order to have increased wealth, we must have increased productivity. What we need then, is a system that incentivizes hard work, creativity and conservation. What we need is a system, unlike our modern-day corporatism, that does not pick winners and losers. Like Thomas Sowell said with his book Applied Economics, we must think beyond stage one.

Libertarians believe that the government will always rig the game in favor of itself and of the elite, so we need less government. There are countless examples of this just from the last two years alone, some of which include the lockdowns which destroyed thousands of small businesses, the stimulus packages which certainly benefited the elite and more broadly the entire federal reserve system and military industrial complex. The Foundation for Economic Education and the Tom Woods show have a large volume of resources on these topics.

“There is an inherent tendency in all governmental power to recognize no restraints on its operation and to extend the sphere of its dominion as much as possible,” Ludwig Von Mises said in his book Liberalism: The Classical Tradition.

Libertarians believe that increasing human freedom is the best way to reward those who are willing to work hard and think outside of the box. Libertarians know that even though we will never eliminate poverty, the only way to decrease poverty is through increased productivity, which is best provided for by a voluntary marketplace.

Many libertarians recognize that life has importance beyond material possessions and wealth. We are not libertarian in spite of this fact, we are also libertarian because of this fact. Being free allows us the ability to live our lives as we please, so long as we remain non-violent. Being free, we can focus on higher things. Even though we will likely still have to devote some of our time to other work in order to survive, we are free to focus on art, religion, music and many of the other beautiful things in this world.