Rob Weir on libertarianism

Q: Is libertarianism pseudo-intellectual?

A: No. Libertarianism is really orthogonal to any stance on intellect.

Say you are dissatisfied with the level of obesity in America today. An intellectual approach might to look into its causes, via the scientific method, and find out ways that it could be reduced. An anti-intellectual approach might be to adopt some diet because it came to some guru in a dream. A pseudo-intellectual approach might be to use a bunch of fancy words to hide the fact that one does not actually know anything about obesity whatsoever.

These various stances are all orthogonal to the libertarian program. The real comparison is between statism and libertarianism:

A statist would take whatever solution the state’s experts have devised to reduce obesity, and mandate the solution, on all in the realm. Whether the solution had a sound scientific basis, whether it was anti-intellectual or whether it was pseudo-intellectual does not matter, the statist would have it mandated on all, under penalty of law. (See, for example, the Soviet Union’s promotion of the anti-Darwinian, or the Nazi promotion of “racial science.”) To a statist, these are not questions of the intellect, but political questions, answerable to political will.

A libertarian, on the other hand, would not mandate a solution to obesity. He would allow anyone to offer a solution if they wished, and anyone to consume a solution if they wished. Solutions of an intellectual, anti-intellectual and pseudo-intellectual nature would freely compete, in the market. So would experts, reviewing, rating and recommending one solution or another.

That's the key difference, I think.  Libertarianism is about liberty, not about one group thinking it has a monopoly on knowledge.  Libertarians believe that no one and no group has all the answers.

~ Rob Weir, "Is libertarianism pseudo-intellectual?," Quora, January 31, 2019