Libertarian Papers

Abstract: E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India presents Brahman Hindu jurisprudence as an alternative to British rule of law, a utilitarian jurisprudence that hinges on mercantilism, central planning, and imperialism.  Building on John Hasnas’s critiques of rule of law and Murray Rothbard’s critiques of Benthamite utilitarianism, this essay argues that Forster’s depictions of Brahman Hindu in the novel endorse polycentric legal systems.  Mr. Turton is the local district collector whose job is to pander to both British and Indian interests; positioned as such, Turton is a site for critique and comparison.  Forster uses Turton to show that Brahman Hindu jurisprudence is fair and more effective than British bureaucratic administration.  Forster’s depictions of Brahman Hindu are not verisimilar, and Brahman Hindu does not recommend a particular jurisprudence.  But Forster appropriates Brahman Hindu for aesthetic and political purposes and in so doing advocates a jurisprudence that does not reduce all experience to mathematical calculation.  Forster writes against the Benthamite utilitarianism adopted by most colonial administrators in India.  A tough figure to pin down politically, Forster celebrates the individual and personal relations: things that British rule of law seeks to suppress.

In this discussion I want to briefly reflect upon remarks from the Declaration of Independence.

Abstract: Milton Friedman had long declared himself a small “l” libertarian (to distinguish himself from members of the Libertarian Party). But, libertarianism is based on the twin pillars of the non aggression axiom and private property predicated on homesteading and peaceful exchange. Friedman adopts none of this. Instead, he undergirds his philosophy on “tolerance,” which is no part of libertarianism. Thus, his claim to the mantle of libertarianism, big or small “L” it matters not which, is called into question.

Abstract: If property is defined as something over which an individual should have exclusive control, then the traditional notion of property must be abandoned. Specifically, the idea that a physical object is someone’s property fails to meet the definition given. This paper examines why an individual should not always have exclusive control over physical things, and, if not objects, what exactly an individual should have exclusive control over.

The proposed solution is that property be delineated not by physical boundaries, but by human action. This does not include all action, for scarcity makes certain actions mutually exclusive. Therefore, property is conceived of as proper action, i.e., action consistent with the non-aggression principle. Those physical objects traditionally considered property are then simply means of proper action.

The benefits of this change in perspective are then examined with regard to production, exchange, aggression and other related topics.

Abstract: What this paper attempts to demonstrate is that, in his treatise Liberalism, Mises’s defense of liberty is incomplete because his reasoning in favor of liberty for all is–not of a moral, but–exclusively of an economic kind. Without a moral justification, Mises’s defense–once the aim of productivity has been abandoned–is forced to affirm with cold indifference that a society of slaves is no better or worse than one of free men. There exists a more comprehensive defense.

Some would have it that we can have a philosophy of freedom without, well, a philosophy.

Abstract: The present paper is an attempt to show that Walter Block’s defense of the ostensibly libertarian character of evictionism against my original criticisms is unsuccessful, thought certainly informative and thought-provoking. In my exploration of Block’s counter-criticisms, I focus in particular on the role played in his account by the principle of proportionality, as well as on the putative disanalogy between cases of abortion and child abandonment on the one hand and my airplane thought experiment on the other hand.

Jakub Bozydar Wisniewski

Abstract: In Block (2010) I offered a compromise between the pro choice position that fervently supports stem cell research, and the pro life philosophy which bitterly opposes it. The compromise was a contest: allow would be researchers to create as many fertilized eggs as they wished. But, also, these should be offered up to would be parents to adopt all of these “children” as they wanted. If and only if there were any unadopted fetuses remaining in the laboratories of the nation would it be licit, on libertarian grounds, for research on them to take place. In the present paper I respond to several objections to this “modest proposal.”

Abstract: This article presents a skeleton of a potential paradigm of human flourishing and happiness in a free society. It is an exploratory attempt to construct an understanding from various disciplines and to integrate them into a clear, consistent, coherent, and systematic whole. Holding that there are essential interconnections among objective ideas, the article specifically emphasizes the compatibility of Aristotelianism, Austrian Economics, Positive Psychology, and Ayn Rand’s Objectivism arguing that particular ideas from these areas can be integrated into a paradigm of human flourishing and happiness based on the nature of man and the world. Such a paradigm will help people to understand the world and to survive and flourish in it. It is hoped that the paradigm will grow and evolve as scholars engage, question, critique, interpret, and extend its ideas. Our goal is to have a paradigm that accords with reality and there is always more to learn from reality.

*Edward W. Younkins

Abstract: G.A. Cohen was perhaps libertarianism’s most formidable critic. In Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality he levels several strong criticisms against Robert Nozick’s theory put forth in Anarchy, State, and Utopia. In this paper, I counter several of Cohen’s criticisms. The debate operates at three stages: (1) self-ownership, (2) world-ownership, and (3) initial acquisition. At the first stage, Cohen does not attempt to refute self-ownership, but weaken its force in providing moral grounds for capitalism. Here I argue that Cohen’s attempt to overturn Nozick’s slavery argument is unsuccessful because partial-slavery, while normatively different from full-slavery, is still normatively wrong. At the second stage, Cohen argues for a joint-ownership view of the world’s resources. In particular, he claims that self-ownership is rendered merely formal in a jointly-owned world and in a capitalist world. To rebut this challenge I show that even if Cohen is right about this, libertarian self-ownership is only formal in Cohen’s peculiar case where only two people exist and one owns everything. In contrast, self-ownership in a jointly-owned world is formal in all cases. Lastly, at the third stage, Cohen argues against Nozick’s interpretation of the Lockean proviso, claiming that it is impossible to satisfy. Granting Cohen’s argument here, I go on to defend Jan Narveson’s no-proviso view of acquisition from Cohen’s thus far unanswered criticism. I show that significantly, in his critique, Cohen equivocates between positive and negative rights. Taken jointly, my responses at these three stages ground the anti-egalitarian conclusion that, in Cohen’s words, ‘[e]xtensive inequality of condition is unavoidable, or avoidable only on pain of violating people’s rights to themselves and to things.’ The sequence, then, is from self-ownership, to world-ownership, via initial acquisition.

Abstract: I have published more than just a few papers on the abortion issue. Instead of taking either the pro choice or the pro life position, I offer a third alternative: evictionism. I claim that this perspective, which, as it happens is a principled compromise between the other two positions, is the only one compatible with libertarianism. Wisniewski (2010) offers several not unreasonable challenges to my thesis. The present paper is my attempt to refute each and every one of them.

Walter E. Block

Abstract: Borer (2010) launches a spirited attack on my own promulgation and defense of the non aggression principle (NAP) as the lynchpin of libertarianism, as adumbrated in several of my published papers (Block, 2009A, 2010). The two of us, Borer and me, in my opinion, achieve real disagreement, a goal not always reached in the libertarian debates. That is, Borer (2010) is succinct, on point, and offers a real challenge to those of us in the Rothbardian tradition, who see the NAP as the very basis of the libertarian philosophy. The present paper is an attempt to refute each and every one of the challenges offered by Borer (2010).

Abstract: In this paper I investigate the libertarian account of immigration. In the first section I distinguish between right-libertarianism and left-libertarianism. In the second section I analyze the arguments focused on immigration from the perspective of self-ownership focused on Nozick’s case and Steiner’s analogy. In the third section I discuss the conflict between the collective consent on the issue of immigration and the individuals’ decision. The conclusion sets the libertarian framework as being flawed in its argumentation on the issue of immigration because it fails to provide strong arguments about the fact that the individuals are free to choose to open or close the borders.

Abstract: In the US a dismal truth exists about the citizenry’s lack of understanding of economic fundamentals whether it is amongst our political leaders or our university graduates. This then leads one to ask, “What can be done to help people become literate in economics?” Perhaps the answer lies in the area of systems thinking, which is a way of thinking about the interconnections between the parts of a system and their synthesis into a unified view of the whole system. More specifically, this means incorporating systems thinking and design in primary, secondary, and tertiary curricula. In this paper, the author gives a cursory review of General Systems Theory (GST) as developed by Ludwig von Bertalanffy and extended by others in the systems thinking field to illustrate the confluences of thought among Ludwig von Mises and systems scientists. From this the author argues the need for systems thinking and design in curricula and makes reference to non-prescriptive teaching and learning applications for the fostering of economic literacy.

Michael F. Reber*

Abstract: In today’s society, a peculiar understanding of distributive justice has developed which holds that “social justice must be distributed by the coercive force of government.” However, this is a perversion of the ideal of distributive justice. The perspective of distributive justice which should be considered is one with its roots in the school of thought referred to as self-actualization ethics or eudaimonism, which holds that each person is unique and each should discover whom he or she is—to actualize his or her true potential and to live the “good life” within the congeniality and complementarity of personal excellences of his or her fellow members of community. When a eudaimonistic perspective is considered, a definition of distributive of justice could be “the allocation of goods and utilities via the voluntary ubiquitous human interaction of self-actualizing individuals who not only recognize the human dignity of the self and other and the rights which flow from and guarantee it, but also actively will goods and utilities toward the self and other so as to manifest human dignity.” Therefore, with a eudaimonistic understanding of distributive justice, one can argue that the free market is the ubiquitous interactions of self-actualizing individuals who are giving and receiving goods and utilities for one and another’s own “happiness,” i.e. the free market is the socio-economic mechanism by which distributive justice operates. In this paper I first will overview the philosophical foundations of distributive justice. Next, I will propose a eudaimonistic definition of distributive justice. Finally, I will highlight examples of distributive justice operating in a free market economy.

Abstract: Bryan Caplan’s 2007 book, The Myth of the Rational Voter, created some controversy by stating that voters make irrational political decisions. While it has commonly been accepted in public choice discourse that citizens are ignorant of the complexities of politics, Caplan takes the argument one step further and states that citizens hold extreme anti-economic biases that invoke certain irrational demands of politicians. Caplan also asserts that democratic failure is thoroughly a result of the these irrational biases, and that citizens deserve the primary blame for problems within the American political system. This critique analyzes several inconsistencies in Caplan’s assessment of the political condition, which include his doctrine of rational irrationality, his skepticism towards democratic failure, and his apologetic attitude towards politicians. Under closer scrutiny, one can see that Caplan’s main thesis, the concept of rational irrationality, is largely unfounded. Furthermore, the theoretical model he constructs is largely incomplete, since he focuses primarily on the failures of citizens, but does not take into account numerous other factors within the political process that can lead to democratic failure.

Abstract: I offer consequentialist and deontological arguments for a competitive market in human organs, from live as well as dead donors. I consider the objections that a market in organs will frustrate altruism, coerce the desperate, expose under-informed agents to unacceptable risks, exacerbate inequality, degrade those who participate in it, involve a kind of slavery, impose invidious costs, and impair third-party choice sets. I show that each of these objections is without merit and that, in consequence, the opposition to markets in organs is an untenable endorsement of death, suffering and the suppression of freedom.

Abstract: The essay examines Schumpeter’s understanding of the capitalist process and develops a critical analysis of his explanation of why capitalism cannot survive. Part I deals with how Schumpeter understood capitalism. Part II studies why –- from his point of view — capitalism couldn’t survive. Part III analysis why it is actually socialism, as a socio-political alternative, that is impractical and must collapse from contradictions inherent in it. Part IV presents some final reflections, presenting the public choice and the thought of James M. Buchanan, as an alternative to the pessimist Schumpeterian view.

Adrián O. Ravier

Abstract: A grabs B and uses him as a body shield. That is, A hides behind B (A renders B helpless to resist his grasp), and from that vantage point, shoots at C. According to libertarian theory, may B shoot at C, or, is it proper that C pull the trigger at B? In the view of Rothbard (1984), the former is correct: B is entitled to gun down C. In my (Block, forthcoming) view, this is incorrect. Rather, it would be lawful to C to properly kill B. (Both Rothbard and I assume that neither B nor C can end A’s reign of terror). Jakobsson (2010) supports the Rothbardian position. The present paper is at an attempt of mine to refute Jakobsson, and, thus, also, Rothbard (1984), once again.

Abstract: Friedrich von Hayek is mostly known as a staunch critic of naturalist fallacy. It is claimed in the article that having been heavily influenced by Epicurus, he commited an identical error that he himself criticized. This opinion is based on Hayek’s application of Ernst Mach mind-body dualism criticism, Epicurean theory of irrational ethics and falsificationistic theory of knowledge related with atomistic view of the universe.