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Where should I start?
Hello all! I am very excited to have joined liberty.me. I have only been a “libertarian” for about 2 years. I was wondering if any of you had suggestions on which books or ideas to explore first? I’m fairly certain I’m more of the minarchist persuasion but am eager to learn more about all the different flavors of liberty. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Bastiats The Law is a great book. Also FEE (The Foundation of Economic Education) has some great resources. Hope that helps.
mises.org has a wealth of material and many books free in pdf form.
Tom Woods has a great daily podcast, he has a eclectic bunch of guests and is able to get the best out of all of them, all of his 666 podcasts are available online. For a small fee you can access his Liberty Classroom with lectures on a range of historical, philosophical and economic topics.
Until some time ago I would have suggested the same. After reading some stuff, and connecting some dots, that’s not my suggestion anymore. Until Lew Rockwell controls the Mises Institute I think it’s better to concentrate on other primary resources, instead of listening to the bullshit nazi propaganda Tom Woods and Lew Rockwell are spreading lately.
Welcome aboard Addison! Jeff’s list of classics is not a bad place to start: https://liberty.me/library/25-life-changing-classics/
Addison, I’d say:
After reading them, I think you’ll find some really good references to other works and be able to feel your way around the materials further. Happy reading!
All mentioned are good especially The Law as an introduction. If you want to take the harder route like learning C++ as your first programming language, I would read Herbert Spencer’s works(Social Statics, The Man Versus the State). Menger, Hayek, Rothbard, Nock, even Rand were influenced by his philosophies.
Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt
Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell
Chaos Theory by Robert P. Murphy (Audio)
Anatomy of the State by Murray N. Rothbard
For A New Liberty by Murray N. Rothbard (audiobook)
The Machinery of Freedom by David Friedman (e-book) and (audiobook).
The Market for Liberty by Morris and Linda Tannehill (audiobook)
The Problem of Political Authority by Michael Huemer
Lot’s of good book recommendations!
Personally I wouldn’t recommend a Classical Liberal text as an introduction to Libertarianism, partially because stylistically they tend to be dated but principally because I see Classical Liberalism as a failed political philosophy and the libertarian response addresses those failures. Not to say that Bastiat et al are not a good read but not as an introduction IMO.
A couple of more recent suggestions might be Gerard Casey’s “Libertarian Anarchy” and Chase Rachel’s “Spontaneous Order” which has a good introduction by Stephan Kinsella.
A book unknown to most libertarians is The Adventures of Jonathan Gullible by Ken Schoolland.
Also, if you want a strong individualistic basis read Ayn Rand‘s The Virtue of Selfishness.
One of the first books that influenced me was The Open Society and its Enemies by Karl R. Popper.
