The first book that I would recommend as an introduction to libertarian thought is The Road to Serfdom (Friedrich Hayek), a warning of the hazards of economic planning. Bureaucrats can plan while facing few consequences for the destruction that such planning can do to those obliged to fit the plan. Planning underrates specialized skills and denies the capacity of economic actors to improvise solutions to economic problems. Although one can dissent with Hayek's call for all power to the capitalists, one needs recognize that a market is far preferable to a planned order. In a planned society, the workers pay for the failures of the planners, but the planners are generally exempt from the consequences of their failures except for a proltarian revolution that topples and exterminates them.
Ayn Rand is a favorite among some right-wing intellectuals, but beware: my libertarian brother tells me that people who have read Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead all the way through are insufferable jerks for six months. Such should warn us of her flaws as a novelist. I might suggest Anthem for suggesting a positive sequel to George Orwell's 1984 -- with assertion of Self as the sole way to achieve freedom after living in a world that obliterates all self-hood. Anthem is eminently readable, unlike her bloated 'masterpieces' and her cranky efforts at philosophy.
Ayn Rand is a favorite among some right-wing intellectuals, but beware: my libertarian brother tells me that people who have read Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead all the way through are insufferable jerks for six months. Such should warn us of her flaws as a novelist. I might suggest Anthem for suggesting a positive sequel to George Orwell's 1984 -- with assertion of Self as the sole way to achieve freedom after living in a world that obliterates all self-hood. Anthem is eminently readable, unlike her bloated 'masterpieces' and her cranky efforts at philosophy.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.