The one that really grabbed me by the throat was Friedman’s " Capitalism and Freedom" and " The Road To Serfdom". Then Benjamin Tucker’s compilation and Spooner’s “Constitution of Treason” through me off the reformist cliff into an-cap.
Human Action
The Way the World Works by Jude Wanniski. It’s not from the libertarian tradition (though it’s considered an important work to supply siders) but it opened my eyes to the hidden ways the state destroys our society.
“For A New Liberty” and “The Ethics of Liberty”.
None. I don’t think I’ve ever been able to understand why someone would have authority over me (though obviously I grudgingly accept the authority to avoid prison). Later I simply rejected the idea that I could improve other people and by definition became a libertarian.
On a side note, are you still libertarian if you arrive at non-initiation of force through seeing initiation of force as ineffective, as opposed to immoral?
I’d say no. So long as you are consistant with the conclusion, all is well. People can come to the conclusion from different angles and that’s fine. That being said, I myself prefer the moral approach and find it to be more radical and I do see a certain danger of the utilitarian abandoning the principle in practise when they find it to be unpragmatic.
I always had a libertarian bent, but “America’s Great Depression” by Rothbard was the book that made me self-consciously libertarian. Interestingly enough, it didn’t do it right away. I read the book in high school on someone’s recommendation. Not the kind of thing I normally read, but interesting none-the-less. A few months later I took the required course in U.S. history. It was Rothbard’s book that allowed me to realize my government school was deliberately trying to fill my head with total garbage. I have since read almost everything else Rothbard, Hoppe, Hayek, and Mises have written. (Hayek’s “The Fatal Conceit” is, so far, the chewiest.)
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand first made me critical of the state, and Rothbard’s The Ethics of Liberty made me a full-fledged ancap. Since, I’ve read everything by Rand, Rothbard, Mises, and Hayek that I could get my hands on.
Hoppe’s Democracy - the God that Failed.
-Jon
Civil Disobedience (also known by Resistance to Civil Government) by Henry Throeau was kind of a pushing factor.
The strangest part was that I read it in public school.
I’ve never been a fan of morality. Perhaps I’d be willing to put more emphasis on it, if more people actually practiced what they preached. But at the moment, morality in its various forms is more often a convenient justification for something, than an actual narrative to live by. So having grown up seeing the world as a nihilistic free-for-all, I never had a need to incorporate morality into that scheme of things. It would only introduce unneeded complexity.
And I think this applies to everyone. I see the moral approach only as a consequence of understanding properly the utility gained from coercing others. For example, as long as I held to a nationalist view of the world, where I kept imagining a connection between myself and the state, I also held that coercing others to serve the state was advantageous. And similarly a socialist will hold to his forceful doctrine as long as he imagines a connection between himself and the collective. And so will the social liberal as long as he is under the delusion that he can improve others. The only way to libertarianism is through understanding that what is gained from all this is actually very minimal, if not non-existent.
Ayn Rand’s “For The New Intellectual”. When I read that, all sorts of ideas just started connecting–it was just one light bulb after another for me.
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I stumbled upon Voltairine de Cleyre’s Anarchism and the American Tradition. After exhausting her readings, I moved onto other pieces by her. I still feel lacking in knowledge as far as the libertarian front goes; however I’ve begun procuring works of Rothbard. It was inevitable for me to discover the term voluntaryism.
I find it amusing I once identified as an Anarcho-syndicalist. But then I couldn’t reconcile both the destruction of state and commerce. It seemed either one or the other would need be prevalent. In which case, I chose commerce. At this point of self-revelation I debated with a few different anarchist sites/forums and gave up speaking to deaf ears. It was actually rather disheartening.
Now to moralism, isn’t that reasoning based on internalism and consequentialism? And what of practicalism? I thought both morals and pragmatism were necessary otherwise aren’t they both just extremes within the voluntaryist philosophy?
I had always had more or less libertarian leanings. However, John Stossel’s Give Me A Break expanded my libertarianism and several months on Lewrockwell.com turned me into an an-cap.
Spooner’s “No Treason” and Rothbard’s “Egalitarianism as a Revolt against Nature and Other Essays”.
“Defending world capitalism” by Johan Norberg, was an eye opener.
I always had the bent, but How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World by Harry Browne was seminal - Ayn Rand shortly thereafter. OTOH, I’m not all that sure I’m a Libertarian - I’m not a pacifist.
Danno
Most libertarians aren’t pacifists; they advocate only against the initiation of aggression, not aggression per se.
Economic Policy by Ludwig vonMises read side-by-side Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt
The bible