A Libertarian Dictatorship

“A libertarian dictatorship? What’s that?” you might ask. Chances are you’ve never heard nor thought of it before. The second question you might ask would be “Isn’t that an oxymoron?” The answer: “No. Not at all.” Before I go into a discussion of a libertarian dictatorship you first have to understand the basics of both libertarianism and of dictatorships.

Libertarianism is a political ideology where people have the maximum amount of freedom possible with the minimum amount of government possible. Libertarians are committed to the belief that individuals, and not states or groups of any other kind, are both ontologically and normatively primary; that individuals have rights against certain kinds of forcible interference on the part of others; that liberty, understood as non-interference, is the only thing that can be legitimately demanded of others as a matter of legal or political right; that robust property rights and the economic liberty that follows from their consistent recognition are of central importance in respecting individual liberty; that social order is not at odds with but develops out of individual liberty; that the only proper use of coercion is defensive or to rectify an error; that governments are bound by essentially the same moral principles as individuals; and that most existing and historical governments have acted improperly insofar as they have utilized coercion for plunder, aggression, redistribution, and other purposes beyond the protection of individual liberty. There are many ideological branches within libertarianism so how much freedom and how little government can vary by a lot, from an anarchist state (no government) to a night watchman state (the only governmental institutions are police, judicial systems, prisons and military) to a state that follows the United States Constitution to the letter. The average libertarian in the United States basically wants a small government, low taxes, only necessary government regulation of businesses to ensure public safety and prevent monopolies, and for the government to stay out of the way of its citizens. Basically libertarians just want the government out of their lives.

A dictatorship is a form of government where all power rests in one person, the dictator. When most people think of a dictatorship they usually picture a totalitarian or authoritarian government or something that is the governmental abomination from George Orwell’s 1984. While this doesn’t necessarily have to be true, nearly all of the time dictatorships do exercise full control over both the government and the populace, usually to their detriment.

Now a libertarian dictatorship is where all governmental power rests in one person whose ideology is libertarian, which means that they use their absolute power over the government to ensure the maximum amount of freedom with the least amount of government needed. They hold the government in check. Unfortunately, while ideal on paper, it’s not practical because of human nature. The problem is that almost no one is incorruptible. Power corrupts and any libertarian dictatorship could quickly turn around and lose its libertarian principles.