Libertarianism 101: What's the libertarian position on consumer protection?

September 17, 4:08 PMDallas Libertarian ExaminerGarry Reed

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Mall of America, outside Minneapolis MN (Dawn Villella/AP)

In 300 words or less...

If you're an adult and a consumer why would you ask the Mommy and Daddy surrogates of gargantuan government to protect you from yourself?

As an adult you vote for the goods and services that are right for you and against the ones that are not. You vote with your dollars, with your continued patronage, with your word-of-mouth endorsements to others.

Free people freely trading in a free market is the absolutely best way to guarantee the best products and services at the lowest prices while driving out the dregs.

What government protection guarantees is the exclusion of innovation and improvement while protecting politically-purchased profits.

In a libertarian society, if you screw up and buy a bum brand, or get screwed by soft-soaping sales saps, you learn. You get smart. You don't do that again. In this age of instant information from the Internet there is no reason for you not to research your purchases and services before coughing up the cash – except for your own laziness.

But some people's thought processes have been thoroughly governmentalized. They think if there's no government protection there's no protection.

But a free society is a fluid society. Again, in this age of instant Internet information flow, you can absolutely count on a flood of safety and security and consumer advocacy and market watch groups and organizations and unions springing up everywhere to fill the void left by a government banned from the marketplace.

And what about big monopolizing businesses? That's what Wall Street is for, to rapidly ramp up new companies to challenge the high prices and shoddy products of the would-be monopolizers.

Bottom line: one person's inability to make intelligent decisions does not justify government coercion against everyone else.

Individuals working voluntarily together, not governments, are the best consumer protectors of all.
 

(Read the Reed interview at The US Report)