| Mr Khan said: The entire problem with libertarianism is that it thinks freedom is a good in and of itself. It really isn't. Freedom, within limitations, tends to lead to public goods than public bads, which is why the liberal-democratic ideal has been so successful. |
Can this be substantiated deductively or inductively? Most of the later classical liberals used utilitarian arguments, and even today you have consequentualist libertarians (Milton/David Friedman) who use empirical data in addition to deduction (unlike a deontological austrian) to determine more freedom does lead to higher utility. This isn't to say that, libertarians espouse total individual freedom (one doesn't have the freedom to kill a person, harm their property, or enslave them.) Obviously it isn't as clearcut as you make it seem, especially since modern liberal society has many failures of its own both when addressing the problems of subsets and the total set of populations.
