What is Libertopia?

Libertopia is a community that espouses and promotes a society of free and responsible people. We believe in the power of individuals to govern their own affairs through voluntary associations without coercion.

Each individual is unique in the universe with inherent dignity. Each possesses free will and the sovereign power to choose his or her own destiny. While recognizing human failures, we believe that the best response to them is to live and let live; letting people experience the consequences of their bad choices rather than trying to control them with violence and coercion.

We believe in the non-aggression principle as a guiding ethical framework for civilization. Any initiation of force or coercion is a violation of this axiom. The only legitimate use of force is in direct defense against acts of violence.

Our mission is to promote peaceful interactions with our fellow man. We encourage responsible conflict resolution by recognizing the value of the individual and respecting the equal rights of others. We support a community within which we can learn from one another and express and share our many gifts and talents.

We believe that order cannot be imposed on society by any ruler(s) but must arise from a shared respect for private property, beginning with a person's ownership of his or her body. The exclusive use of personal property is a requirement of life itself. The recognition of this fact provides order to society by defining voluntary interactions between people as being the only legitimate means of peaceful coexistence.

The reality of life is that individuals have unlimited wants and needs in a world of limited resources. Fortunately, humans are capable of enormous creativity in finding ways to create new resources and to fulfill their desires. The blessings of the scientific revolution have shown that advancing technology can create new resources that not only make our lives easier but weaken the rationale for "redistributing" those resources.

Resources are also called wealth, which is not just money. Centralized rulers claim the authority to create wealth and to redistribute it, but they are incapable of creating wealth, no matter how much "money" they print. And the "redistribution" is simply theft.

Only the voluntary actions of individuals can create wealth. When two people are free to trade their property (including their labor) voluntarily without restriction, each of them ends up better off after each transaction, or they would not have made the trade, which creates wealth. When an individual is free to innovate and to profit from his innovation, he creates wealth. The more voluntary inventions and trades that take place, the more wealth is created. In contrast, every involuntary transaction makes someone worse off, thereby destroying wealth.

A free market (in contrast to the crony capitalism that is called a free market in America today) means being able to trade without restrictions. It solves problems by incentivizing people to create resources for which others will trade. By creating wealth for all, a free market allows a spontaneous order to arise naturally from free people pursuing their happiness peacefully.

Warfare, violence, and coercion are all rationalized as means that are justified by good ends. We believe not only that the ends never justify the means, but that those evil methods will always lead to unwanted results. We visualize a world where all interactions between people are voluntary. In such a world free people flourish, enjoying peace, prosperity, an explosion of creativity, and diversity of lifestyles.

Although centralized power destroys wealth and creates problems for humanity, we do not believe in fighting against centralization. We believe that the world is becoming more decentralized as the benefits of freedom become more apparent to more people around the world. We believe that building communities of people who reject political means in favor of economic means will make the old paradigms of power and violence obsolete. Our mission is to bring together those individuals who want to build voluntary societies.