To the individualist Lao-tzu, government, with its "laws and regulations more numerous than the hairs of an ox," was a vicious oppressor of the individual, and "more to be feared than fierce tigers." If social institutions hampered the individual's flowering and his happiness, then those institutions should be reduced or abolished altogether. For Lao-tzu the individual and his happiness was the key unit and goal of society. Unlike the notable apologist for the rule of philosopher-bureaucrats, however, Lao-tzu developed a radical libertarian creed. Little is known about his life, but apparently he was a personal acquaintance of Confucius in the late sixth century BC and like the latter came from the state of Sung and was descended from the lower aristocracy of the Yin dynasty. The first libertarian intellectual was Lao-tzu, the founder of Taoism.
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