Many libertarians practice a religious dogma which I'll term "Monovelism."
The Sacred Creed of the Monovelist is "There is But One True
Novel, It's Name Is Atlas Shrugged, and I Will Have No
Other Novels Before It."
Or after it, judging by the depressing sales figures Laissez Faire
Books has had on novels by myself, Victor Koman, L. Neil Smith,
and Brad Linaweaver, as compared to Laissez Faire's sales on Atlas
Shrugged -- or compared to its sales figures on its more popular
nonfiction books, for that matter.
Let me be blunt about this. If you think Ayn Rand's novels are
the last word on libertarian fiction, then you are as bigoted
in your thinking as any TV evangelist who preaches that the only
stories we need to read are in the King James Bible.
For me, libertarianism didn't start with Ayn Rand. In fact, Atlas
Shrugged was recommended to me when I was 14. I lifted it
off the library shelf, saw how many pages were in the damn thing,
and put it right back. I didn't pick up a copy again for another
four years, and by that time I had already started a libertarian
group on my college campus.
The author who made me a libertarian wasn't Ayn Rand but Robert
A. Heinlein.
Of his 45 or so books, the novel which was most influential in
getting me to start thinking like a libertarian, and instantly
to recognize libertarians as ideological kin when I first
encountered them, was The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress.
The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress tells the story of a revolutionary
war fought against the one-world government of Earth by colonists
on Luna, Earth's moon, in the year 2076. It's no coincidence
that Heinlein set his parable precisely three centuries after
the American Revolution because much of Heinlein's future parallels
our nation's past: a repressive absentee government set on economic
exploitation of a new world for its own benefit and only
its own benefit.
The story of the revolution is told first person by Manuel Garcia
O'Kelly, a computer tech working for the Lunar Authority. In a
1973 interview I did with Heinlein, he confessed how surprised
he was by the speed of computer progress; Moon reflects
this in a future without an Internet of personal computers, but
instead a central mainframe with as many connections as the neural
network of the human brain. Heinlein had asked scientist Herman
Kahn whether a computer with equivalent connections might think;
Kahn had answered, "That seems plausible." Kahn's plausibility
became the nexus of Heinlein's novel. The computer, a "HOLMES
Mark IV" computer which Manuel O'Kelly names Mycroft after
Sherlock's brother and addresses as "Mike" (the computer
returns the favor by nicknaming Manuel "Man") -- is
much smarter than HAL in 2001 -- smart enough to become
the eyes, ears, Internet server, and brain of a revolution.
The plot takes shape when O'Kelly -- in consultations with friends
including Mike, a Benjamin Franklin-type revolututionary named
Professor Bernardo de la Paz, and a rabble-rousing feminist named
Wyoming Knott -- learns that the lunar colony is just a few years
from planetary starvation caused by the Earth authority's economic
policies. There is no institutional means of staving off impending
doom which leaves revolution as the only chance for colonial survival.
Heinlein uses the causes and situations of this future society
as blueprints for political and sociological change. In Heinlein's
future Luna, a fully privatized social system has been
developed, one where custom and market institutions have entirely
replaced government.
Any marriage contract -- polyandry, group marriages, whatever
-- is socially accepted. Private arbitration has replaced courts, and decisions including the death penalty are enforced by popular acclaim. Education, insurance, and banking are entirely private matters. Heinlein's anarchic legal system is so well worked out that the Tennessee Law Review examined it seriously, in a Fall, 1995 article by Dmitry Feofanov titled "Luna Law: The Libertarian Vision in Heinlein's The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress."
Here you'll learn that the essence of "rational anarchism"
is the understanding that personal responsibility for one's actions
are neither increased nor lessened by hiding an action behind
the curtain of governmental sovereignty.
You'll discover the principle of TANSTAAFL -- "There
Ain't No Such Thing As AFree Lunch" -- which demolishes all socialist
schemes which try to increase the public good by redistributing
wealth.
The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress mines as rich a vein of ideas
on both political and social concerns as Atlas Shrugged.
If you decide to break free from the chains of Monovelism, there's
no better place to start.