They wrap coercive politics in a velvet glove of compromise, then call it responsible governance. through a libertarian lens, the program looks like a patchwork of state management dressed up as pragmatism, pretending to fuse stability with social duty while expanding the very instruments that destroy spontaneous order.
Economy They promise a growth path with stable framework conditions, competitive energy prices, less bureaucracy, and faster planning and permitting. In practice, this is a demand for more predictability via rules and licensing that shield firms from risk, rather than unleashing competitive forces. Hayek warned that central direction gilds the obvious: knowledge is dispersed, and the price system coordinates countless local plans far better than any minister can. When the state acts as planner, it short-circuits innovation and reallocates resources according to political priorities, not consumer demand. Tax relief aimed at small and middle incomes, plus a plan to crackdown on illegal employment and tax fraud, sounds like a hybrid of enforcement and subsidies. Nozick teaches that taxation is coercive; even targeted cutbacks redistribute value without consent. If you want growth, liberate markets, cut regime complexity, and reduce the incentives to game the system rather than refining the rules that legitimate wealth transfer.
The Aktivrente idea—a tax-free top-up of up to 2,000 euros a month for those who keep working beyond retirement—reads like a designed subsidy to extend compliance with a welfare pump. Rand would see this as a tax-financed halo around an entitlement that erodes individual responsibility. It links retirement decisions to state subsidies, distorting incentives and coercively shaping life-plans. A true pro-growth path would empower individuals to accumulate wealth privately, not tether them to a pension regime that grows with political whim.
Defense and Ukraine Accelerated procurement for the Bundeswehr and a new voluntary service model to push the force up toward 460,000 active and reserve personnel rest on the premise that bigger, faster, more integrated military is the path to security. Rand would warn that statism expands in proportion to the appetite for force; Nozick would urge that defense is a legitimate function of a minimal state, but any expansion must be funded by voluntary consent and cannot infringe property rights through forced taxation. The claim that Europe’s future depends on Ukraine’s defense and on “NATO obligations” demanding substantial material, infrastructure, and personnel resources sounds like outsourcing sovereignty to blocs and bureaucracies. A libertarian critique emphasizes protecting rights at home with a lean, accountable military, chosen by consent, not mobilized through broad, generalized coercion. If defense is necessary, it must be financed transparently, limited in scope, and framed as a voluntary duty, not a blanket expansion of state power.
Social policy The package of a substantial pension program, preserving a 48 percent pension level through 2031, reforming Bürgergeld into a “basic security” with binding rights and duties, and punishing those who repeatedly refuse work bundles a moral hazard with moralizing. Hayek would warn that any system promising a guaranteed income but binding duties tends toward bureaucratic coercion and the hollowing out of responsibility. Nozick would reject the moral legitimacy of compelled welfare and the withdrawal of benefits from those who don’t “comply,” since rights do not derive from social grants but from property and contract. Rand would insist that individuals have a right to their own labor and property, and that redistribution is theft by another name. The plan to extend Deutschlandticket with a shared financing key among customers, federal government, and states—then raise user shares from 2029—reads as a bureaucratic carrot for subsidized transit, funded by taxpayers and surcharges alike. A true libertarian market would deliver transit through private competition, price signals, and consumer choice, not cross-subsidies and state-directed pricing.
The zeitgeist here is the belief that the state can engineer fairness by taxing the productive and redistributing to the dependent while pretending to honor dignity and risk-taking. The reality is that every dollar siphoned into a “basic security” or a subsidized ticket is a dollar removed from voluntary exchange, savings, and innovation. Hayek’s rule remains: give people the rules that enable them to use their minds and their lives freely, and let the price system coordinate outcomes. Nozick’s injunction is clear: protect individual rights against coercive taxation and redistribution that violate property rights. Rand’s ethic of rational self-interest demands that you respect each person as an end, not as a means to political goals. A genuine welfare state collapses into bureaucratic tyranny unless bound by the strictest limits on coercion and redistribution.
What to advocate instead - Eliminate centralized planning in the economy; set a simple, predictable, low tax regime anchored in individual rights and private property; trust voluntary markets to allocate resources efficiently. - Privatize retirement and social risk management: personal pension accounts, private insurance, and charitable safety nets funded by voluntary contributions, not compulsory taxation for redistribution. - Defense as a constrained, transparent function: maintain a defense that protects rights, financed by consent and open debate, with limits on scope and no entanglement in indefinite foreign commitments. - Public transit and infrastructure should be funded by user choice and private competition, not by cross-subsidies and multi-layer taxation. - Remove regulatory drag that creates black markets; replace bureaucratic licensing with competitive, accountable private providers; let prices and competition discipline waste and protect consumers.
In the end, the choice is stark: freedom or control. If you want real security, you preserve property rights, reduce coercive taxation, and let individuals organize risk, work, and exchange through voluntary means. The path of coercive social engineering may feel orderly, but it erodes the very liberty that makes prosperity possible.