Which is best from a libertarian perspective?
@fu I'm thinking slightly more extreme measures, like strong ethics laws with automatic ejection and disqualification when they're violated, and very thorough freedom of information laws.
Specifically, I think transparency is anathema to intrusion (i.e. nobody wants universal surveillance when the feeds are public and any creep can use them).
And both accountability and transparency encourage reductions in government scale. The former reduces corruption, which reduces bloat. While the latter allows for better analysis & reporting by third party civilian researchers, to help people make more informed decisions about which government programs are effective enough to continue supporting.
And both accountability and transparency encourage reductions in government scale.
Over the years I have heard a lot of libertarians say stuff like that, but in my experience being involved in local politics it isn't actually true. It MAY increase it being "more democratic." I think too many American libertarians happen to believe our own propaganda that the majorty of Americans are libertarians, though they might not know it yet, and as such if governments where more democratic they would automatically be more libertarian too.
YMMV
