Environmentalism poses a problem for libertarian ideology

By Matt Bruenig On December 21, 2011 · In Environment

George Monbiot had an article in the Guardian on Monday about bastardised libertarianism and its inability to understand the real freedoms being fought for by environmentalists and social justice advocates. However, Monbiot’s treatment of environmentalism’s threat to libertarianism was a bit sloppy. He got sucked into the negative freedom and positive freedom debate, and although he worked his way to the correct conclusion ultimately, I felt like the clarity was lacking.

So I want to explain more clearly just how much environmentalists stick in the side of libertarian ideology. First, consider what libertarians of the sort Monbiot criticizes are really about philosophically: they favor a procedural justice account of the world based heavily on property rights. This is the newest face of libertarianism. Gone is the appeal to utility and desert. The modern libertarians try to prop up their political ideas almost solely through a rigid formalism of property rights.

I have written before about the problem with the procedural accounts of property rights, but here I want to just accept the libertarian property rights premise. Somehow individuals can grab up pieces of the world and exclude those pieces from everyone else forever. Once those individuals become owners of their respective property, nobody else can touch that property or do anything whatsoever to that property without their consent. Coming onto my property without my consent is a form of trespass under this picture. Doing anything to my property — whether it be painting it, dumping stuff on it, or causing some other harm to it — is totally off limits.

So environmentalists point out that carbon emissions are warming the planet, one consequence of which is that harm will be done to the property of others. Most environmentalists — being the leftists that they generally are — do not make too much of the property rights issues, but one certainly could. Coal plants release particulates into the air which land on other people’s property. But no permission is ever granted for that. Coal plants do not contract with every nearby property owner to allow for them to deposit small amounts of particulate matter on their neighbors’ land. They are guilty of a form of property trespass.

Beyond that, all sorts of industrial processes have environmental externalities that put things into the air or the water that ultimately make their way into the bodies of others. This is a rights-infringing activity under the procedure-focused libertarian account. The act of some industry is causing pieces of matter to land on me and enter into my body. But I never contracted with them to allow them to do so.

The air and the atmosphere is an especially problematic issue for libertarians. Who owns those things? Libertarians might try to argue that you own the air above your land, but air — or the matter that it is made up of — does not stay above your land; it moves around the world. Any matter released into the air is sure to find itself to someone else’s property, causing a violation. The atmosphere might seem like something nobody owns and therefore something anybody can dump things into. But with climate change, we know that greenhouse gas emissions are causing the world to warm, the consequences of which will include damage to the property of others all over the world. Yet again though, greenhouse gas emitters have not contracted with every single property owner in the world, making their emissions a violation of a very strict libertarian property rights ideology.

The short of is that environmentalists totally smash open the idea that property rights theories can really account for who is permitted to do what with the land that they own. Almost all uses of land will entail some infringement on some other piece of land that is owned by someone else. So how can that ever be permitted? No story about freedom and property rights can ever justify the pollution of the air or the burning of fuels because those things affect the freedom and property rights of others. Those actions ultimately cause damage to surrounding property and people without getting any consent from those affected. They are the ethical equivalent — for honest libertarians — of punching someone in the face or breaking someone else’s window.

That is why environmentalism is such a huge problem for libertarians, and it is no doubt why so many of them are skeptical of the effects of climate change or other environmental issues. Admitting that someone’s use of their own property almost certainly entails an infringement on someone else’s property makes the whole libertarian position basically impossible to act out in the real world. A landowner could never get individual contracts with literally every single person that might ever be affected by the owner’s land-use (e.g. operating a coal-burning power plant). But a libertarian that was honest about environmental externalities would require such a landowner to undertake precisely that impossible task.

Watoosh

David Friedman, a consequentialist anarcho-capitalist, actually makes a similar criticism of a strictly rights-based account of libertarianism. Exhaling carbon dioxide (in small amounts) towards my neighbor’s property does not constitute a violation of his rights, but shooting at it with a minigun definitely does – where does the line between these two lie?

Deontological libertarianism isn’t the only flag in the libertarian tent, thankfully. Many left-leaning libertarians take the issue of environmentalism seriously and tend to be friendly to ideas like Georgism or Pigovian taxes. It’s also worth mentioning that a big reason (though not the primary one) why libertarians tend to reject large infrastructure projects like roads and suburbs is the way they subsidize car use and subsequently carbon emissions. But sadly it seems most right-leaning libertarians are very much like conservatives in that they either ignore, downplay or deny the environmental destruction capitalism causes.

http://www.libertarianview.co.uk Murray Rothbard

The line between the two as far as many Libertarians are concerned is explained in this paper by Walter Block, which tackles David Friedman’s arguments head on. http://libertarianpapers.org/articles/2011/lp-3-35.pdf
piglet

“… libertarians tend to reject large infrastructure projects like roads and suburbs…”

Really? Can you point to any evidence of that claim? In the debate about sprawl and suburbanization, libertarians regularly crop up defending the “right to sprawl”. This rhetoric of “let them build subdivisions where they want to” doesn’t prevent them from being NIMBYs when it suits them. But the general rhetoric is that development should not be hindered by any kind of regulation.

http://profiles.google.com/byrongsmith Byron Smith

Thanks – an important insight.

PS Is there a missing verb in this sentence: “consider what libertarians of the sort Monbiot [???] are really about philosophically”?

Anonymous

Haha yeah. Changed it to “consider what libertarians of the sort Monbiot criticizes”

The pitfalls of having no editor. Thanks.

http://priggy.wordpress.com/ Nicola

I think thats why liberals are far more sensical than libertarians. Libertarians say that the individual is king whereas liberals realise that society and other factors can harm people’s freedoms. Its why liberals seek to use the state to regulate what is and what is not allowed. Its to allow people to be equally free.
Libertarians, i think are generally against the smoking ban. After all why can’t someone smoke, it is their individual choice to do so but because the smoke travels through the air and harms others. It harms them just as much as a punch in face does.

http://paul-lockett.co.uk/ Paul

“Libertarians, i think are generally against the smoking ban. After all why can’t someone smoke, it is their individual choice to do so but because the smoke travels through the air and harms others. It harms them just as much as a punch in face does. ”

That’s a bit of an over-generalisation.

Most opposition to the smoking ban from libertarians/liberals is around the banning of smoking in private clubs and drinking establishment where people might go to smoke and be perfectly willing to inhale the smoke produced by others.

With the punch in the face analogy, it is a bit like saying that because a non-consensual punch in the face harms, boxing should be banned.

Peter

Why? A boxer consents to go into the ring and knows what to expect.

http://paul-lockett.co.uk/ Paul

That’s precisely the point.

Peter

Ah, I see now – thank you.

John Miller

Private clubs and and drinking establishments are also work places for some. Smoking in your own home with consenting adults is not an issue, yet.

http://paul-lockett.co.uk/ Paul

Tobacconists, care homes, hospices and prisons are also workplaces for some, but they have exceptions, so the law is not even consistent on that point.

http://www.libertarianview.co.uk Murray Rothbard

The Libertarian View on the smoking ban.
http://www.libertarianview.co.uk/current-affairs/smoking-ban

Rupertreadrules

Liberals are just less honest libertarians. We need to be radicals, ecologists, or socialists – not liberals.
Anonymous

Sensical? Tuppence worth coming up.

The Libertarian requires property law. He must therefore respect property. That which is not his must be someone else’s and is therefore a thing to be protected. If he doesn’t protect that which is not his how can he expect others to protect what is not theirs? We are not anarchists!

It is a self-fulfilling and self-perpetuating prophecy, and yes I am comparing us to Jesus.
Metro70

Is that why liberals used the State to create the sub-prime loans and to create the megabanks that were mostly run by liberals—the liberal megabankers[ including the former Democrat Treasury Secretary]who became as rich as Croesus on the back of the mortgage-based securities and credit default swaps that they enabled, and that caused the massive financial crisis and economic mess that still bedevils the world ?

The mess the world is in is due primarily to liberals—Democrats in the Clinton administration who socially -engineered the banks into lending to people who weren’t employed–no income—no prospect of it—no ability to make payments on the mortgages that backed the securities that were sent around the world—and to Democrats who were running Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac into the ground—and to liberals in Europe , who created the European nanny states.

http://www.libertarianview.co.uk Murray Rothbard

This is a distortion of the Libertarian position:
http://www.libertarianview.co.uk/current-affairs/more-nonsense-from-monbiot-about-libertarians-and-climate-change

Anonymous

Your link does not attack my article; it attacks Monbiot’s. I wont go through it all, but here lies your biggest problem:

“The damage must not be too remote. i.e. It must be caused wholly by the action of the polluter or interactions of the polluter with things on the damaged property, without the intervening action of a third party.”

Not only is this a completely arbitrary rule, it is too vague (what is “too remote”) and it leads to totally absurd outcomes. For instance, saying it must be caused “wholly by the action of the polluter” is totally unacceptable. Here is a post sort of about that: http://mattbruenig.com/2012/01/06/one-other-reason-libertarians-fear-environmentalists/

But in short: there are damages to property that have multiple causes, none of which by themselves would do that damage. Think about climate change. One power plant’s carbon pollution does not cause warming that melts ice caps and raises the sea level, which then destroys my beach-front property. That damage is not “caused wholly by the action of the polluter.” But it is caused by the simultaneous actions of millions and millions of polluters. What you are saying then is that if the actions of millions and millions of polluters destroy my property (destroy my farm, sink my land, etc.), then there is no recourse. That is outright absurd.

Acid rain is a great example of this. One plant’s emissions of sulfur does not cause any damage from acid rain to the property of others. But many plants emitting it simultaneously does. So do I have no recourse when my property is absolutely ruined?

I mean, the libertarian position is so ridiculous from the very beginning (the strange property rights stories never make any sense) that it almost doesn’t matter. But even once you somehow grant that premise, it all just keeps falling apart because pieces of matter — which is what property is — do not stay put. Atoms from your land move to my land, but I never said they could.

http://www.libertarianview.co.uk Murray Rothbard

The argument was that Libertarians have to deny climate change because they believe that any damage to property values is an infringement of property rights and must be prevented.

That argument is not true, as I have shown, because the Libertarian view of property rights is not as simple as it has been misrepresented.

You are now putting forward an entirely different argument which is that Libertarian property rights theories are ridiculous. Even if that were true, which of course I don’t agree with, it does not provide any support for the original conclusion which is that Libertarians have to deny climate change.

Perhaps a more interesting and difficult to answer question for Libertarians is, how can the problem of climate change be dealt with, without violating individual property rights.

The problem of how to solve climate change is clearly not simple, nor is it unique to Libertarianism.

In order to stop climate change in any form of democracy the majority of the people have to vote to enact laws that will punish people who continue to emit greenhouse gases.

However, once you have a majority of people wanting to stop the emissions of greenhouse gases then it is no longer necessary to pass laws that infringe property rights. If that majority simply stop emitting themselves and boycott (Which is perfectly legitimate under libertarianism) people or companies that do emit then market forces and self interest will make the reluctant minority follow.

The only solution to the problem of climate change in any form of democracy or Libertarianism is to convince the majority of the population that it is a real danger and that they must take action.

Once that has been achieved Libertarianism has no more difficulty with implementing a solution than does a democratic state one.

Peter

The problem there is that the above solution to the problem of climate change is utopian. The idea that people will change their minds and everything will follow happily from that is pretty naive, and even more simplistic than Bruenig’s treatment of Rothbard’s Libertarian theory of property (incidentally our author was probably attacking more run-of-the-mill Libertarians who crop up saying the last thing anyone should do is interefere with private property).

Market forces don’t encourage a reduction in consumption, and they have yet to do so even when we are faced with a cataclysmic threat. Capitalism requires expansion, and a reduction of consumption is incompatible with economic growth. Combine that with the need to keep consumption high to keep the cycle going – witness the (utterly idiotic and necessarily bound to fail imo) attempts to stave off recession in the EU by quantitative easing – and we’re looking at a lot of vested interests to overcome.

Then for the Libertarian solution we also need a rational public willing to sacrifice now for the benefit of the future… At a time when many of the public are either apathetic in general or outright deny climate change, I don’t see this is a particularly viable option. A clue lies in, for instance, Monbiot’s need to combat climate change denial which owes to the state of what some kid themselves is a “national debate”.

However, whilst this Libertarian framework for discussion purports to centre the decision around democratic choice, we hit a brick wall: The idea that the market system happily cow-tows to consumer’s demands is over-optimistic to put it mildly. Consumers select from the choice they are offered, and the choice presented will obviously correspond with what sellers have calculated will maximise their profit. Demand doesn’t magically translate into a viable supply (I’m sure it’s not so simple in theory, but that is the substance of the conclusion we are usually given). Expecting it to do so in the manner you suggest above flies in the face of, for instance, the structural forces I’ve defined above.

What does make sense however, is that those seeking to defend particular private property interests would stall encroachments on their rights by claiming that our society is so damned democratic that we would straightforwardly get what we ask for if only we had a majority – with the further implication that that is what their opponents lack, and that the opponents are therefore a minority seeking to gain undemocratically what they cannot gain democratically. Problem is, that premise about our society is bollocks.

Think about it, it’d be hard enough to even get to the stage you reject in favour of the Libertarian market argument, which is that ‘the majority of the people have to vote to enact laws that will punish people who continue to emit greenhouse gases’. Think about this too – if most people agree greenhouse emmissions need to be reduced, that doesn’t necessarily equate to them identifying themselves as needing to reduce their own. Humans are great at identifying problems elsewhere from themselves!
Anonymous

Rothbard’s totally indefensible assertion that the cause of property destruction need not be “too remote” or “too complex” is not the libertarian position. He said it, but he does not argue for it. He is being specifically un-libertarian in that ad-hoc effort at propping up libertarianism in practice. After all, he is saying aggression is permissible there so long as that aggression is sufficiently complicated.

In that quoted portion I responded to, Rothbard no longer advocates libertarianism. At best, you might try to say that is his effort to flesh out libertarianism to make it practical to the real world. But that does not actually make his rule a libertarian one. Libertarianism is supposed to follow from certain baseline principles (non-aggression principle being one of them). It is not a cult of personality (although your obsession with Rothbard calls that into question). Just because a libertarian personality like Rothbard writes something down, that does not make what he wrote down actually consistent with libertarianism.

That is the case here. Stop quoting Rothbard like scripture, especially when what he is writing contradict libertarian ideas. Libertarianism is not a philosophy revealed by prophecy; it is claimed to be derivable from basic values and axioms. If Rothbard writes something inconsistent with its axioms — as he does here — that does not mean that libertarianism shifts to mean what Rothbard is writing.

http://www.libertarianview.co.uk Murray Rothbard

When you are asserting what the Libertarian position is you should at least reflect that position as put forward by the leading political philosophers of the Libertarian movement.

Whilst you may have a view of what Libertarianism is, you are certainly less qualified than Rothbard to define what it is.

Rothbardian is one of many recognised forms of Libertarianism. I have yet to encounter Bruenigism!

If you would prefer an equivalent analysis with a lot more argument from another prominent Libertarian, try the following article from Walter Block: http://libertarianpapers.org/articles/2011/lp-3-35.pdf

Anonymous

I suspect I am more qualified than Rothbard at talking about libertarianism given that the man had a weak at best understanding of political philosophy and struggled mightily at philosophical argument. It is a testament to the general lack of broad philosophical exposure among the new age of internet libertarians that they focus on him and not Nozick for instance who was simultaneously brilliant and had read a few political philosophy tracts in his time.

In any case, I am glad to see that we have now at least two schools of procedure-focused libertarian justice. In one, there is the non-aggression principle. In the other there is the non-aggression-except-when-the-aggression-is-kind-of-complex principle.

I am going to round up some of my friends and think of complicated ways to start tearing apart your house in honor of Rothbard. What a joke.

http://www.libertarianview.co.uk Murray Rothbard

I admire your ego in asserting you are more qualified than Murray Rothbard to talk about libertarianism! It’s a bit like me saying I am more qualified than Karl Marx to talk about Marxism. (Fortunately I do not have such a high opinion of myself).

Interesting that you quote Nozick, (who I agree was brilliant) as an alternative.

In the acknowledgements to his master work, “Anarchy, State & Utopia” he states:

“It was a long conversation about six years ago with Murray Rothbard that stimulated my interest in individualist anarchist theory”

The first part of his book was his attempt to answer Rothbards claim that no state was possible without coercion. (Which whilst a noble was totally refuted by Rothbard: http://mises.org/journals/jls/1_1/1_1_6.pdf)

Matt Bruenig’s assessment of Rothbard’s philosophical ignorance is hardly a compelling argument for anything other than the ignorance of Matt Bruenig.

However, we are now making progress.

You are correct that there are two schools, those that understand the meaning of the non-aggression principle and who are called Libertarians. This would include:

Murray Rothbard
Robert Nozick
Howard Block
Hans Hermann-Hoppe
Robert Murphy
Stephen Kinsella
Israel Kirzner
David Gorden
Anthony De Jasay

And every other Libertarian philosopher I have ever encountered.

The other school consists of those who don’t understand the non aggression principle but wish to misrepresent it. This group seems to consist of Matt Bruenig and George Monbiot.

If your initial argument is to have any merit, then I challenge you to find a single Libertarian philosopher who actually espouses the views you attributed initially to all Libertarians.

http://www.meme.co.za/ Aragorn23

1: Out of interest, Nozick explicitly retracted a number of his libertarian views in later life and offered some compelling reasons, even if some of the other views he expressed during this late period were exceptionally shallow.

2: Praxeologists are akin to religious nuts: the entire edifice is built upon a bedrock of hopelessly outdated Kantian metaphysics, whereby neo-Misoids can appeal to a priori synthetic knowledge in order to avoid all critique. Hoppe, by the way, completely fails in his tedious attempts to argue for the validity of these metaphysics…

3: The non-aggression principle, viewed as a deontological absolute, is absurdly myopic and completely in denial of our social being; it operates using a highly impoverished definition of (negative) freedom which precludes any sense of positive freedom (equality).

4: Oddly, most libertarians do think they’re more qualified than Marx to discuss the perceived shortcomings of Marxism. I don’t agree with their critiques, but there’s nothing coherent in the notion that you can’t know someone’s ideas (or the implications thereof) better than they do / did. Surely we understand the implications of authoritarian socialism far better than Marx did, for instance, given the intervening century?

http://www.libertarianview.co.uk Murray Rothbard

Your overdose of sesquipidalian grandiloquence does not make up for a clearly hebetudinous mind

1. Nozick remained a Libertarian until his death. In an interview shortly before his death in 2002 he said:

“What I was really saying in The Examined Life was that I was no longer as hardcore a libertarian as I had been before. But the rumors of my deviation (or apostasy!) from libertarianism were much exaggerated. I think this book makes clear the extent to which I still am within the general framework of libertarianism, especially the ethics chapter and its section on the “Core Principle of Ethics.”
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/NozickInterview.htm

2. This is simply unjustified nonsense!

3. Negative freedom is the only freedom, positive “freedom” is actually the imposition of obligations on others without their consent.
http://mises.org/rothbard/ethics/twentyseven.asp
It is does not deny social being. It is silent on voluntary social interaction but prohibits coercive social obligations.

4. It is an entirely different thing to criticize a view than to alter what it is. It is perfectly legitimate to criticize what Marx actually said. It is however, absurd to assert that Marx didn’t understand Marxism and what he really meant was… which is the approach that Bruenig is taking. He is not attacking what Rothbard or any Libertarian philosopher actually said, he is asserting that Rothbard doesn’t understand libertarianism and what libertarianism actually is, is…

http://www.meme.co.za/ Aragorn23

Sorry for using big words. Which one didn’t you understand?

1: Yes, but what he meant by the term in later life was quite different: he critiqued entitlement theory, saw some room for market regulation, challenged the naive A=A Kantianism of the more Randian wing of libertarianism, talked glowingly about social collaboration…it was a very tempered libertarianism.

2: Why is #2 unjustified nonsense? The appeal to synthetic a priori knowledge is a cornerstone of praxeological thought. Please defend your claim.

3: The last 170 years of anarchist theory disagrees with you: negative freedom, if it is to be worth anything in the real world, relies upon positive freedom. Peter Marshall’s ‘Demanding the Impossible’ has a great analysis of the clunky libertarian notion of freedom and how it inevitably fails when applied in any context as a single moral absolute. The anarchist FAQ also contains an extensive critique.

4: The original claim was that Rothbard was a bit hebetudinous in the philosophy department
http://www.libertarianview.co.uk Murray Rothbard

1. As you say yourself, his best thinking came from his earlier work.

2. I did not say that the statement “the appeal to a priori knowledge is the cornerstone of praxeological thought” was nonsense. What is nonsense are your assertions that praxeologists are like religious nuts or beyond critique. A logical deductive chain from a self evident truth is nothing like religion and of course you can either critique the claim that the truth is self evident or the logical deductive reasoning. http://mises.org/books/ufofes/prelim4.aspx

It is also nonsense to simply assert that Hoppe fails in his justifications. If you think he fails you need to provide an argument.

3. I don’t think I can put it any more simply than Ayn Rand:

Any alleged ‘right’ of one man, which necessitates the violation of the rights of another, is not and cannot be a right. No man can have a right to impose an unchosen obligation, an unrewarded duty or an involuntary servitude on another man. There can be no such thing as the ‘right to enslave.’ ”

4. No the claim was that natural rights Libertarians believe that property rights are absolute and this causes them to deny climate change. No natural rights libertarian supports the view that property rights are absolute: http://libertarianpapers.org/articles/2011/lp-3-35.pdf

http://twitter.com/cayceedeeneely Dee Neely

Aaah. The No True Scotsman ploy or as I like to put it The Not Real Christians method.

http://www.meme.co.za/ Aragorn23

I’m replying to the last post you made. The box was about 2mm wide, so I couldn’t type in it.

1: I don’t remember ever saying Nozick’s earlier work was better. Perhaps you’re confusing me with the author.

2: There are numerous compelling critiques of praxeology’s specific reliance upon a priori synthetic propositions. Here are four rather different ones:

http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com/2010/10/mises-praxeology-critique.html

http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com/2011/02/limits-of-human-action-axiom.html

http://www.philosciences.org/notices/document.php?id_document=2023#

http://www.criticalrationalism.net/2010/05/23/a-recent-critique-of-a-priorism/

On the subject of whether or not Hoppe makes a convincing case, the following is his pithiest argument on the subject. Seems pretty unfalsifiable to me. As a single transcendental axiom it also seems, in isolation, pretty close to tautological.

“This axiom, the proposition that humans act, fulfills the requirements precisely for a true synthetic a priori proposition. It cannot be denied that this proposition is true, since the denial would have to be categorized as an action – and so the truth of the statement literally cannot be undone.” – Hoppe

3: The differences between libertarian and (actual) anarchists positions on freedom warrant a nuanced, lengthy discussion which I’m loathe to begin. I will observe, however, that in quoting Ayn Rand all you’ve done is repeat yourself. You have not responded with any kind of substance to my appeal to the broader notion of freedom as the mutual presupposition of negative and positive freedom.

4: This reminds me that you still haven’t responded to my critique of your reductio ad absurdum (‘CO2: it’s what we breathe out’).

http://www.libertarianview.co.uk Murray Rothbard

1. You said: “even if some of the other views he expressed during this late period were exceptionally shallow.”

2. I have read the first two links and I don’t see much in them that I disagree with. However, I don’t see how they support your claim that ” neo-Misoids can appeal to a priori synthetic knowledge in order to avoid all critique.” Indeed one of the articles itself lists four ways to critique praxeology:

(1) questioning the truth of Mises’ axioms;
(2) showing flaws in the verbal chain of logic used to draw the inferences arrived at in praxeology.
(3) demonstrating unjustified subsidiary propositions or hidden assumptions in Mises’ reasoning that invalidate his conclusions, and
(4) the question of how to choose between competing praxeological systems derived by a priori deduction from (allegedly) certain starting axioms.

The fact that Hoppe’s argument is unfalsifiable is what shows that the premise is axiomatic. An axiom is a statement for which the assertion of its falsity relies on its truth and is therefore a self-contradiction. It is self evidently true.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_noncontradiction#Alleged_impossibility_of_its_proof_or_denial

3. It seems (to me at least) self evident that the freedom to enslave is a self contradiction. If you want to make a case for positive freedoms I am happy to discuss it with you.

4. These should give a clear account of the position:
http://mises.org/rothbard/lawproperty.pdf
http://libertarianpapers.org/articles/2011/lp-3-35.pdf

http://www.meme.co.za/ Aragorn23

I’m replying to the last post you made. The box was about 2mm wide, so I couldn’t type in it.

1: I don’t remember ever saying Nozick’s earlier work was better. Perhaps you’re confusing me with the author.

2: There are numerous compelling critiques of praxeology’s specific reliance upon a priori synthetic propositions. Here are four rather different ones:

http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com/2010/10/mises-praxeology-critique.html

http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com/2011/02/limits-of-human-action-axiom.html

http://www.philosciences.org/notices/document.php?id_document=2023#

http://www.criticalrationalism.net/2010/05/23/a-recent-critique-of-a-priorism/

On the subject of whether or not Hoppe makes a convincing case, the following is his pithiest argument on the subject. Seems pretty unfalsifiable to me. As a single transcendental axiom it also seems, in isolation, pretty close to tautological.

“This axiom, the proposition that humans act, fulfills the requirements precisely for a true synthetic a priori proposition. It cannot be denied that this proposition is true, since the denial would have to be categorized as an action – and so the truth of the statement literally cannot be undone.” – Hoppe

3: The differences between libertarian and (actual) anarchists positions on freedom warrant a nuanced, lengthy discussion which I’m loathe to begin. I will observe, however, that in quoting Ayn Rand all you’ve done is repeat yourself. You have not responded with any kind of substance to my appeal to the broader notion of freedom as the mutual presupposition of negative and positive freedom.

4: This reminds me that you still haven’t responded to my critique of your reductio ad absurdum (‘CO2: it’s what we breathe out’).

http://www.meme.co.za/ Aragorn23

Oh dear…that’s a reply to Murray Rothbard by the way O_o

http://www.meme.co.za/ Aragorn23

‘Murray Rothbard’s reply is wholly disingenuous. The predictable libertarian delivery of disparaging, chiding reason conceals a complete lack of any coherent objection to either Monbiot or Matt Bruenig’s key points. In fact, all he offer is a combination of contextually irrelevant pedantry (the ‘value of property’ vs. ‘physical damage to property’), a couple of inapplicable tests (from the real Rothbard, of course) that should be used to determine culpability, and finally a couple of responses to examples which appear to resemble those from the original article but in fact don’t (CO2 from exhalation is now somehow equivalent to CO2 and CO2-equivalent emissions from polluting industries; I guess if I’m ever caught scattering cyanide on my neighbour’s lawn I can simply argue that cyanide is present in the apple trees on their garden anyway).

What fascinates me most about his non-reply is the Rube Goldberg defense he employs: if the means by which you infringe upon someone’s sacrosanct property rights are sufficiently complex, it follows that you are, for some reason, no longer personally culpable, even if the entire causative chain can be demonstrated.

Talk about willfully missing the point! I guess it’s hard to consider the logic of collective responsibility when your world is composed entirely of little self-satisficing Lego people running on game theory.

http://www.facebook.com/curt.doolittle Curt Doolittle

Lots of emotion, lots of pseudo moralizing. But no argument.

http://twitter.com/KerouacDon Julia C.

Very interesting- a new perspective for me.. however, those huge manufacturers, industries, and corporations which pollute everything from one’s favorite park to one’s backyard may say that the ongoing purchases of those goods and services, which come about during and after that pollution, contract the right to do so.. this is wrong, in my opinion, but I’m sure they don’t mind.
http://twitter.com/worstall Tim Worstall

Might be worth looking up the Caose Theorem here. Just a little hint. It looks at exactly this conflict between property rights and pollution. And he was awarded the Nobel for it, so it’s not exactly thought to be trivial.

Anonymous

Correct me if I am wrong, but the Coase Theorem would support a Cap & Trade system then wouldn’t it? That would be a market solution, but it would not be a “Libertarian” solution in the sense that I am talking about above. Friedman would love it (arguably), but Rothbard would not. Such a system would require state actors to construct and enforce it.

http://www.facebook.com/curt.doolittle Curt Doolittle

Separating Rothbardians (anarchists) from classical liberals (minimum statists): systemically, yes, cap&trade is a market method. But it is a market method that compensates for a failure of the government to enforce individual property rights.

From a Propertarian position, Hoppe’s position and Block’s position, the problem is that the air, like the seas is a ‘common’ and as unowned, it is not possible for owners of air or seas to sue polluters. This ‘common’ was created by the government in order to facilitate and subsidize the introduction of factories into the English landscape. (Yes, that’s how we broke down the common law.)

All rights are reducible to property rights. All dispute resolution is reducible to conflicts over property. All attempts to create ‘commons’ are forcible redistributions.

Shonkhor

Is the missing component of the libertarian outlook a (moral) commitment to respect the property rights of others, and not take on responsibility for more than their fair share of property in the first place?

Anonymous

That is the implication of the critics, not the logical conclusion to be drawn from ‘property rights’ .

When one insists that his property rights are inalienable isn’t he insisting that the rights of others also inalienable? Isn’t he going to respect those rights for himself and for others in equal measure?

Dendy2000

You’re a troll. Aren’t you? No one who was literate could write something that stupid.

In case you aren’t. The answer is “No”. Of course he isn’t going to respect the property rights of others where they impinge on his comfort.

Libertarians are as mad as the old Marxists. They seem to think that Man (in the non-sexist sense) can be perfected – can be made virtuous enough to respect the property rights of others.

No we can’t. We’re what we are. Intelligent, stroppy, selfish… Deal with it…

Anonymous

Can you tell me how often you impinge on the comfort and property rights of others?

I only ask because I’m almost certain (of course I’m open to evidence) that the majority of people on the planet, you included, don’t regularly murder, rob or otherwise cause your neighbours, colleagues and the general population, any kind of trouble at all.

If we were all to go around breaking these laws all of the time, as you seem to be suggesting we do, then I would quite happily defer to you. That we don’t, that you are not a murderer, rapist or burglar suggests you are wrong.

Idiot.

Bucky

“Inalienable” property rights amount to a head-in-sand denial of the realities of “social interference” — whether air pollution, noise pollution, or light pollution — or radio-frequency interference, or run-off, etc., etc. — you CANNOT restrict the effects of your action to the boundaries of your own property. The physical world does not work like that.

Anonymous

If you don’t contain the effects of your actions to your own property, or are unable to come to terms with your neighbours, you will be in court.

There will be an increase in the market for innovative solutions to any problems you care to invent, as for the ones you’ve listed; Clean energy, sound-proofing, curtains, they already exist don’t they?

Users of a specific frequency already own that frequency. Anyone interfering with it is already liable to legal action.

Anything else?

Peter

Skimming through the comments I thought I’d make the case that we ought to keep the word libertarian and the (particularly American) group who claim the label ‘Libertarian’ (with a capital L) distinct. For example, at least in my experience, Libertarians refuse to accept a connection or much less roots in anarchism. I find they tend to come from radicalised fringes of the Republican party, still equate anarchism with the bomb-throwing fanatic and therefore see it as something to avoid association with.

However the word itself broadly means an opposition to statism, and it’s a useful one when defined as such. For an example there is libertarian socialism to consider – we can define someone like Noam Chomsky as a libertarian in the broad sense, but equally so someone like GDH Cole. We could make a distinction between “statist” and “anarchistic” libertarians but there’s little point, since both would be clustered around the anti-state pole of a sliding scale between statism and libertarianism.

I also thought that this, if you read between the lines, is quite a damning statement about the British Left, given the socialist history it has: ‘Most environmentalists — being the leftists that they generally are — do not make too much of the property rights issues’. There’s not much better of an indicator that socialism is missing from the Leftthan that property rights aren’t even on the agenda…

Peter

P.S. I’d like to say I agree with the author for arguing that they could and should be on the agenda too. I’m also glad he’s made an effort to both expose the ridiculous claims of the Libertarian movement, and bring property forms back to the forefront of debate
Anonymous

Yeah, at least in the US, the left-anarchist lost the word “Libertarian” to the laissez-faire capitalism folks a little while ago. It’s unfortunate, but it is what it is. Meanings evolve and now it seems like trying to defend the word from being exclusively associated with the small-state, laissez-faire capitalism folks is a losing battle. I do agree with you though.

Peter

Indeed, and at the end of the day it’s only a label. I think the important thing is what you’ve alluded to, that what Libetarianism really amounts to is a smokescreen put out in defence of particular private property.
Rodrigo B Castro

Also in America Liberals lost the word Liberal, in the whole world Liberal is Clasical Liberal only US lefties are Liberals XD XD

Metro70

The word liberal means pertaining to freedom, and it doesn’t fit the Left at all.

The Left want freedoms curtailed by ever increasing dependence on big government—government and liberals minding everybody’s business—indoctrinating our children— controlling all of the institutions[ planned and even announced, as in their policy of 'the long march through the institutions]—and ultimately weakening sovereignty, to pave the way for control emanating from the UN and other world bodies, as spelt out in absolute detail in the Framework for the Copenhagen Convention and subsequent AGW conferences designed for the Left’s ends.

Their own words tell the story loud and clear.

Rupert Read

Great piece Matt, thanks.
There are other ways around for them than climate-denial, to some extent. They can for example deny that anything but the present matters. This bizarre but profoundly-attractive route is taken by some of the less pleasant commenters on my new proposal, here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/damian-carrington-blog/2012/jan/04/climate-politics-future-generation-justice?

Anonymous

The questions surrounding ethical obligations to future generations are very interesting to me. Once again, it does not surprise me that the procedural justice libertarians do not care about future generations. They do not even really seem to care that much about present generations. So long as everything is being done through “voluntary” exchange without force or fraud, they do not seem to care about whatever results. Be that present inequalities and poverty or harms to future generations due to environmental destruction. These kinds of problems are just off their radar because they do not pertain to the purely mechanical view of things that emphasizes only the processes of “voluntary” exchange, not the impact of it.

http://www.facebook.com/curt.doolittle Curt Doolittle

Actually, they argue that we are too ignorant and filled with hubris to design our future, and that through individual trial and error we will discover that optimum future.

Given that the western manorial system discovered the industrial revolution twice, once in Greece and once in England, and that no other country did so, there is strong evidence to support it. The evolution of the only high trust societies that broke the bonds of consanguinity using the mandate of property rights by the church is another unique property of Christendom.

Haakon

I disagree with the conclusion that environmentalism poses a problem for libertarians, at least for those liberatrians who take seriously the ideas and values they claim to believe in.

Your argument could be turned on its head to show that libertarians should care deeply about the environment, more so in fact than many on the left, which is precisely the right answer in my opinion. Hayek wrote in “The Constitution of Liberty” that there was obviously a role for the state where the activities on one person’s land negatively affected others. He didn’t spend a lot of time on the argument, because to him it was obvious, which it is! Of course there are many other things libertarians should belive in, but don’t.

An interesting question is why so few libertarians today accept environmental arguments. I think it is because many libertarians have a dogmatic approach to politics, where the state is always the problem, and they are more vested in this simplistic idea than spreading as much freedom to as many people as possible. I also think that libertarian ideas are used cynically by those who benefit from the status quo. Denying basic scientific facts in order to avoid the obvious conclusions that follow from ones ideology is pathetic and disturbingly common among libertarians.

As someone who a lot about the environment and believes in many (but not all) libertarian ideas, it saddens me that there are so few environmentalist libertarians. I think that environmentalists should take libertarian ideas more seriously, if nothing else in order to gain some allies in their fight.

Anonymous

You are absolutely right. Given the libertarian concern for property rights, you really would expect them to be extremely concerned about global warming. That they aren’t is telling.

We have to wonder — as you do — why they aren’t concerned and why so many of them try to deny its existence. Your theory here is that they are just so anti-state that they can’t stand the fact that real problems in the world like global warming do at least occasionally require a strong state involvement to be solved. I suspect that is true for some. I also suspect — as Monbiot does — that especially the libertarian institutions (think tanks and such) are really just shills for business interests, the wealthy, corporations, etc. That is at least how it is in the United States. The libertarian think tanks get all their money from wealthy interests and their motivated skepticism is no doubt partly to do with their desire to enrich the already wealthy.

Of course, the Randians run strongly in the US libertarian circles — especially the think tanks — too. So that might also explain the desire to just funnel more money to the wealthy no matter the cost to others.

Metro70

Where does the money come from for liberal think tanks?
http://www.facebook.com/curt.doolittle Curt Doolittle

Something cannot be a ‘cost’ to others if they had nothing in the first place. this is a disingenuous and illogical statement.

Libertarians have more knowledge of economics than any other group in the political spectrum. That is most often, the reason why they are libertarians. One of the reasons they are skeptical of complexity arguments, is that they are fully informed about the limitations of our ability to model complex systems.

The data is at best contradictory. I have been over it. I have invested in the AGW movement at scale. And at best it is contradictory and inconclusive. The question is not whether the data is valid or not. The question is, given the current state of the data and the models, are we willing to redistribute wealth from the first world to the third. That is the reason for the libertarian and conservative rejection of the AGW debate.

If instead, the entire world was mandated to follow it, and no taxes were captured by it, then at least the classica liberal libertarians would support it. But as it is structured, it is simply a redistribution from a weakening first world to a rising third world.

FYI: All moral statements are true. And all moral arguments are false. Statements are descriptions. Moral arguments must be reduced to questions of property and the implicit transfers involved in any action in order to determine if they are moral or not.

WW

Indeed, it is this lack of acknowledgement of the realities of the commons, air, water, wildlife, which causes me to question hard Libertarian intentions, and demand that everyone who thinks it’s some solution to look at what cannot be excepted, for these commons are an axiom, and must always be set aside from libertarian exceptionalism of individual or even corporate freedoms. It just doesn’t work… humans have proven themselves to be too pig headed selfish and destructive. I believe environmental protections and consideration for the reality of these commons that could define the major limitations we must impose upon libertarianism, and that it is something that could be worked into the scheme. With such limitations, it’s possible to allow many other aspects of libertarian governance some serious consideration. People expect some one size fits all ism and it’s getting quite old. To people who are guzzling the koolaid of any particular isms, they’d all rather be right than reasoned.

http://www.facebook.com/curt.doolittle Curt Doolittle

This is false.

The libertarian position is that since air, water, and wildlife are not ‘owned’ they are subject to the tragedy of the commons. If air, water and wildlife were ‘owned’ rather than ‘commons’, and subject to limitations, then they would be preserved for the future.

That is the libertarian position. Libertarianism’s premise is that property conveys incentives for preservation and that ‘commons’ create incentives for pollution and overconsumption.

Anonymous

They take the freedom and forget about the responsability. Lazy people!
JonnyCRH

Much discussion as to the meaning of words here – and I believe most of it fairly pointless.

“Libertarian” is a word that has been stolen by the greedy and self-interested because of its obvious association with liberty. This makes the label sound good to anyone who likes liberty (as surely we all do) and wants to be left alone by all the nosey busybodies who might want to meddle in our lives.

However, if you are gay, a pregnant rape victim, muslim – or merely appear to be in one of those categories – it is precisely those who have usurped the word Libertarian who will seek to meddle in your life. Their claim to the word has debased the language.
mtt

In my honest opinion, the great misunderstanding here is caused not much on the definition of the libertarian thought. It rather stems from the “ism” in “environmentalism”. The “ism” stresses a reliance of the chain of thought exposed herewith on ideological dimensions. That is correct and very welcome, but clarity would be enhanced if that specific move takes place in two steps.

The first step is to acknowledge that libertarian thought requires a certain degree of “compartmentalisation” of reality out there. The basic idea, correctly stated in the text, is that – I quote – “Somehow individuals can grab up pieces of the world (…)”. Whatever statement relying on this claim needs to basically ignore the last 50-60 years of natural sciences (specifically: ecology) and social sciences (classical works in the study of institutions, e.g. Veblen, Ostrom, and experimental economics, e.g. Gintis).

To cut a long story short, ecology teaches us the interconnectedness of things (among which, economically-relevant, welfare-determining goods), while the study of institutions as well as experimental economics teach us the interconnectedness of consumption (=you affect my utility with your own consumption pattern, even in the complete absence of physical connections).

Let us now go along with the libertarian though and grant that neither ecology nor modern social sciences apply. By doing so, we make a further ideological choice. More correctly, we extend our line of reasoning by the means of further onthological axioms – we extend our view concerning what is right or wrong to do (let’s call this “morals”) to what is right or wrong to believe about reality out there. In other words, we lay down a further restriction of the explanatory power of the “ism” we are trying to describe.

If this is the case (and here is our second step), environmentalism and libertarianism do not describe the same reality – they move from completely different descriptions of what is it, that we see out there. They are not compatible with one another for a simple matter of consistency.

This said, we can even go one step further and evaluate the situation with a brand new yardstick. Follow me:

1) Endorsing environmentalism or libertarianism is tied to a specific description of reality, before reflections on morals can even enter the discussion.

2) Nobody has correct, ultimate answers in the description of reality, or else we would have perfect knowledge and control over nature, which we obviously don’t have.

3) Therefore, none of these two ontologies is inherently more correct than the other.

4) Nonetheless, by acknowledging complexity, environmentalism has an edge over libertarianism: it is not simply a threat to it, it remarkably less naive at an onthological level. While environmentalism is capable of dealing with a compartimentalised world, libertarianism is not capable of dealing with a non-compartimentalisable world.

It is only from this last, fourth point, that we can start asking the question, what sort of libertarian morals can be constructed in a world of complexity and interconnectedness.

Anonymous

Even if point 2 is correct, point 3 does not follow.

Denying the option of comparing two models of reality goes too far.

While we cannot say that any model is absolutely right, we can say that one model is better than another.

If we could not, then this entire discussion would be pointless.

http://www.libertarianview.co.uk Murray Rothbard

I have just come across this paper by Rothbard, that talks about air pollution specifically and explains the actual Libertarian view.
http://mises.org/rothbard/lawproperty.pdf
MoS

Nowhere is this Big Money double standard more prevalent than in Canada’s Athabasca Tar Sands. There the powerful and influential demand that of which they would deprive others without their consent. And now they move relentlessly in the face of widespread popular opposition to expose my province’s pristine coastline to an environmental calamity that would make Prince William Sound and the Exxon Valdez look like spilled milk.
Anonymous

The left: A political fringe dedicated to destroying the reality that the Human species can evolve socially to a mutually beneficial state.

The Right: A political fringe dedicated to destroying the reality that the Human species can evolve socially to a mutually beneficial state.

The Libertarian: Dedicated, although largely unintentionally, to proving both sides of this argument irrelevant through acceptance of each other’s opinion as belonging to them and by trying to find an apolitical consensus on the issues that affect us all, most commonly by strict adherence to the Rule of Law.

Get with the programme you fools. If you keep arguing about which vision of Utopia you wish to create you are going to fail in challenging the dystopia that you actually exist in.

Stop distracting yourselves with existential theory and get out on the streets and into the offices of government to stop the abuses that each of you agrees is happening. Corporatist corruption of your politicians is no ones idea of social progress.

-http://tiny.cc/vh7fw

http://www.meme.co.za/ Aragorn23

Anarchism: A post-political movement working to ensure that the human species -and all other species, and the natural world – can evolve together to a mutually beneficial state.

Anonymous

Sounds like Liberty, welcome on board!

http://www.biggreenbang.co.uk/ Tim Baz

The “property rights” view of the world is more or less the system William of Normandy imposed on the UK after 1066 – feudalism was all about incontrovertible land rights – I’ve long felt that the process of globalisation and the concentration of wealth into fewer and fewer hands represents a kind of “new age feudalism” any views??

Anonymous

Land & Property, are they one and the same?

Anonymous

Environmentalism poses no such problems for libertarians. The evidence of climate change exists, it would be ridiculous for any man to deny it.

The people with the problem are those that would deny a man the right to fruits of his labours.

Anyone that believes the modern Libertarian is anything other than the most upstanding of moral character is deluding their self and others in order to perpetuate the current system of economic and social rape.

The libertarian may garner support from wealthy individuals, this is not a problem. Either those individuals are ignorant of the results of libertarianism or they are fully signed up members of the movement.

As a libertarian property rights are essential. So it follows that a libertarian must respect both the rights of himself and the rights of others.

There is no conflict here.
Barry

Interesting article. However defining environmentalists as ‘lefties’ carries a certain connotation that they are socialist or communist orientated. Whilst it may be true that most would be located left of center, the comment plays into the hands of the right wing who frequently use the label.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_RXKKBKKUTHOEALMONWW3GE2RPA John Sorger

http://moonbattery.com/?p=6662

http://mattbruenig.com/ Matt Bruenig

The strangest thing about the rebuttals like this is that they always strike me as rebuttals against libertarianism. I am not making any positive claims in this article; I am merely following what the precise consequences of a procedural justice picture of property rights would be. One consequence would be that enormous swaths of human activity would be considered impermissible because they cause at least slight trespasses on others. Running a coal plant puts little carbon sediment on my land but I never gave permission for them to do so. Stop trespassing! — Heh.

If you think making enormous swaths of human activity impermissible is problematic, then your beef is with the deontological libertarians whose ideology does that. Not with me. I am not a deontological libertarian. Take your objections to the logical consequences of their views up with them.

http://www.libertarianview.co.uk Murray Rothbard

The consequences of Bruenig’s nonsensical procedural justice of property rights perhaps, but this is not the Libertarian view.

No Libertarian Philosopher claims that property rights are absolute. http://libertarianpapers.org/articles/2011/lp-3-35.pdf

I challenge you to provide a single reference to any libertarian philosopher who actually makes this claim that you assert is the libertarian position.

piglet

Please. If you accept that property rights are not absolute, then you cannot in principle object to taxation, building codes and all the other things that Propertarians do object to. Sorry but you are being extremely disingenuous here. The truth is that real-life Propertarians argue for the supremacy of property rights but are willing to make exceptions whenever it suits them. The result is logically and politically inconsistent. “No you can’t regulate building energy efficiency because that’s a violation of my property rights.” “Yes polluters can use their property in ways that harm other people and violate their property rights but we don’t talk about this and anyway, environmentalism is overrated and climate change is a hoax.”

http://www.libertarianview.co.uk Murray Rothbard

Read the links and you will understand the point. It is not exceptions whenever it suits, the logic is quite simple to understand, but only if you take the time to read it !

Rozina

Matt, you make a big mistake equating environmentalism with so-called leftists. The old Soviet Union and its satellites in eastern Europe never bothered with environmental issues because these were supposedly the outcome of imperfect economic systems like capitalism. The results of this point of view include the devastation of the Aral Sea and the 1957 explosion of underground radioactive waste in the Kyshtym region in the Ural Mountains area.

The Nazi German government on the other hand paid lip service at least to environmental issues in line with its “blood and soil” ideas about humans being ideally connected to nature and the soil. Any group of people who were seeen to be “rootless” (eg Jews, gypsies) was regarded as parasitical and to be got rid of. The Nazis instituted the first government-sponsored anti-smoking campaigns in the world.

If libertarianism is about upholding individual liberty, and individual liberty includes the right to shelter and the other necessities of life so that individuals can exercise their freedoms and the responsibilities that go with them, then libertarians should care about the environment because the environment provides life’s necessities.

http://mattbruenig.com/ Matt Bruenig

All leftists are not environmentalists. Most environmentalists however are leftists.

I agree with your last paragraph though. It is telling that libertarians do not do that though. Makes you wonder why.

Anonymous

Are you going to miss out the second paragraph because it makes uncomfortable reading?

Dendy2000

There is something called Godwin’s law. You should look it up. Matt is obviously being very polite in ignoring Rozina’s Godwin and addressing the rest of her post.

Anonymous

Being polite whilst sticking to assumptions that there must be a coercive force to mould behaviour and outcomes is a very militant & Socialist view is it not?

Not necessarily Nationalism but it’s not many steps from ‘you must disregard environmental concerns’ to ‘you must hate the state’ to ’round them all up, they are a danger to us all’

Dendy2000

I’m not so sure these days Matt. I find it hard to understand what Left and Right mean nowadays. Of course, the Right will tell you that being Right is about freedom of the individual to choose how to live their lives without interference from the state. And then they’ll tell you that they want the death penalty for anyone who has had an abortion…

As for what it means to be Left, well… I think anyone who is not blinded by ideology can see that we have serious problems with the environment and that Libertarian fantasies are not going to fix them for us. Does that mean every rational person is Left? I mean, the solutions proposed are typically market based – emissions trading and the like. That doesn’t really sound terribly Left to me.

Perhaps though Stephen Colbert was right. Reality really does have a left-wing bias.

Dendy2000

I’m pleased you finally got to the right answer, that Libertarians, like everyone else, should care about the environment. But let me say that you invoking Nazism in your answer makes you look an idiot. Are you saying that because Nazis opposed smoking, tobacco is a good thing? That because the Nazis liked hiking it’s a bad thing? They liked strudel and schnitzels as well. And I’ll bet they quite liked raindrops on roses. Does that make them bad things?

There is a stupidity inherent in the Libertarian position that makes me shake my head in wonder. Without the strong legal structures of the state there would be no libertarianism, no property rights, no currency, no freedom. We would be living in fortified compounds and our property rights would last as long as it took someone with more guns than us to decide they wanted it.

Libertarianism is something most people grow out of – like acne. Anyone who is still a libertarian by the time they turn thirty hasn’t been paying attention.

GM

The thought experiment I always offer Libertarians proceeds as such: Suppose we were to be living in your ideal society and I were to buy a piece of land beside your house, purchase a large fan and blow hazardous gases directly across your garden 24 hours a day; how would you respond to this? Invariably they either flap for an answer or claim they would retaliate with violence of some kind, thereby illustrating that, at heart, their philosophy is simply an argument for the replacement of law with unregulated freelance justice, which is really only justice for those with the capacity to hurt others i.e. the powerful.

In short, they are arguing for a transition to a loosely anarchic system, but with a proviso; those who are wealthy now must be allowed to keep their pre-eminent position in the new system, via the maintenance of property rights. It is a transparently and laughably cynical philosophy.

Anonymous

“how would you respond to this?”

That we are living in this ideal society shows that not everyone is against the idea. We’ve made it thus far so the likelihood is that our predictions of mutual respect & co-operation have proved true.

To rectify your crime, it would be publicised and you would be either prosecuted by which ever legal system is in force or you would be co-operatively excluded from the market, thereby limiting your liberty and chances of survival.

Of course your ‘hazardous gases could be taken as an attempted murder, in which case I could justifiably take violent action in self-defence. You sir, wouldn’t last a minute in this world, and good riddance.

‘Death by Cop’ is an analogy that springs to mind.

You must look into the effects of an unbiased free-market system. There would be no hugely wealthy/powerful individuals.

Dendy2000

This is such a dumb response, yet it has the virtue of highlighting how idiotic the Libertarian position is. The “procedural justice” view of Libertarianism assumes an authority of some sort to enforce property rights. Who is that going to be? Unless it’s the local warlord who will let you keep your property until he wants it, it’s going to be the State. There is a deep contradiction at the heart of Libertarian philosophy. Property rights are sacred to them, but the existence of property rights assume an advanced state.

Libertarianism is quite simply, just very silly.

Anonymous

It assumes no authority other than the ‘You scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours’ mentality of the population.

It is a socially co-operative society.

Dendy2000

It is a fantasy. Why should I repay my bank loan? Why shouldn’t I park in the ‘disabled parking’ spot? Why shouldn’t I build my garage on my neighbour’s property? Why should I give a stuff about people who I am never going to have to deal with again? “socially co-operative society” is not a good enough answer.

Before it was fashionable, I was a fan of Ayn Rand. I saw it in all its simplistic beauty. I thought “this is the truth”. But then I grew up. The world is more complicated than the Randian fantasists think. You take away government you don’t get some Randian utopia in the mountains of Colorado, some “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours mentality”, you get war-lords with guns, dungeons and public executions.

Mind you, I haven’t entirely given up on Ayn Rand. I think The Fountainhead was a much more significant book than Atlas Shrugged. There are truths there. But I read the drivel pushed by naive Libertarians these days and I just shake my head at their stupidity.

Anonymous

If you fail to repay your loan, you wont receive another, if the bank decides to publicise that you are a poor debtor then it is likely you will receive no help, possibly market exclusion, until you have rectified the problem. If you are excluded from the market you have the option of becoming a hermit or subsistence farming, if I were you I’d repay the loan.

What happens to day if you don’t repay the loan?
Some debt collectors pop round and remove your furniture/TV?

The market exclusion is a more severe punishment, offering greater incentives for not being the prick you would like to pretend you are.

Build a garage on your neighbours land:
Why would your neighbour stand by and watch you do that?

Why would your other neighbours stand by and watch you do that?

Paul

“Coming onto my property without my consent is a form of trespass under this picture. Doing anything to my property — whether it be painting it, dumping stuff on it, or causing some other harm to it — is totally off limits.”

It is interesting to think of this the other way around as well. What limits are there to my rights even over my own property? For example, if I were to buy the original Mona Lisa, do I have the right, or should I have the right – as the legal owner – to burn it?

This is an extreme example of a more nuianced understanding of ownership that would have been more readily understood a few hundred years ago, I think, particularly in relation to land rights. In much of Europe, back then, a person might have one kind of right over a piece of land but not another kind. For example, the right to build but not to fish, to fish or collect wood but not farm, to transit but not hunt.

It seems to be assumed now that once you have been told that someone owns something, you have been told all you need to know about their rights to it (legally, morally, etc). And therefore, by a loose sort of corollary, that no one else has *any* rights to it. This seems to be largely unquestioned – and should be.

Bucky

In the real world we have such things as land-use restrictions, easements, water rights, mineral rights, building codes, etc..

It amuses me deeply that Libertarians can hardly cope with easements, and yet they (at least the extreme ones) want to abolish public roads. It seems to me the libertarian world would end up like a giant game of Go, where all you have to do to conquer someone (or, anyway, imprison them on their property) is buy all the properties surrounding theirs.

David Maddock

Just wanted to comment to say that as a libertarian myself, this has occurred to me and I’ve put some thought into it. To claim otherwise is a caricature of libertarians. “Commons” problems are quite interesting from a libertarian perspective actually, air in particular. Regardless of one’s approach to property rights generally, many environmental problems are the result of the government failing to protect commons, such as land the government owns and allows to be abused by miners/loggers/etc. for example. In such cases, the typical “left” solutions of government intervention seem to me rather silly, since government in cahoots with industry was the cause of the problem in the first place.

http://mattbruenig.com/ Matt Bruenig

These are not commons problem in the traditional sense it deserves pointing out. The atmosphere is “fine” whatever it means for an atmosphere to be fine. More carbon in the atmosphere is not a problem for the atmosphere itself. It has had more carbon it before many times. It is a problem purely for private (non-common) property because of the chain of events putting more carbon into the atmosphere causes.

Or to put it another way. Imagine if someone actually did the atmosphere. There is no reason to suspect that they would act to prevent people from dumping carbon into it. What do they care? They might charge people to do it, but it would still wind up there in that case.

So what would have then is a power-plant contracting with the owner of the atmosphere to dump carbon waste in his “property” which would subsequently cause weather problems that hurt other’s property. The libertarian would be at a loss.

David Maddock

I agree with you, that is exactly the problem we have: either no one owns it or the government owns it on behalf of everyone. If no one owns it, there is a logistical problem of how to stop abusers. If the government controls it, we have the problem of stopping abusers from using the government to do so. All political sides have these same problems, not just libertarians.

http://mattbruenig.com/ Matt Bruenig

No. This would be a problem even if the atmosphere was privately owned. This is a problem that libertarian inherently cannot handle at all. It isn’t a commons issue at all.

David Maddock

This is a straw man argument since no one is advocating for private ownership of the atmosphere. You keep claiming it isn’t a commons issue, please explain your reasoning. It seems to me the textbook case. If the atmosphere is not the quintessential example of the common property of mankind, what the heck is it?

I’ve proposed a libertarian view based on commons. They can be argued against of course, but thry do exist. I suggest you learn a bit more about our view if you want to sound convincing.

Secondarily, even if conceding your points, at best you’ve only shown that libertarianism is not applicable in cases where property rights are unenforcible due to complexity or inability to determine ownership. To me, such cases appear the rare exception than the rule.

http://mattbruenig.com/ Matt Bruenig

I am not saying anyone is proposing that the atmosphere be owned. What I am saying is that this is not a normal commons problem because even if the atmosphere were owned, the problem would persist. Usually, tragedy of the commons is supposed to go away when the commons are privatized (because the person who now owns what was the commons has a vested individual interest in keeping people from messing it up or overusing it or whatever).

But in the atmosphere case, you do not have that. I know the libertarian view (to the extent that there is a unified one on this). The only thing I wanted to point out was that this is not inherently a commons problem. It happens to be the case that the atmosphere is commons, but if it were not commons, the problem would persist anyways because whoever owned it would not have any particular interest in keeping carbon from being emitted into it (what does the owner care after all?).

That’s all I am saying. What you really have here is not actually a commons problem in the traditional sense, but a problem that springs from the limitation of libertarian theorist’s imagination. The sort of mechanical ownership view only really makes sense until you start imagining what we are really talking about. Pieces of land are not separated from one another. Human interaction is not able to be hived off into insular bubbles that only interact when contracts are formed. Everything we are doing is constantly spilling over into the spaces and properties of others. The libertarian view ignores this reality because it starts to think that socially constructed ideas about ownership are actually existing in the material world (and not in our heads).

David Maddock

If somehow the air was owned by someone, they would definitely have an interest in keeping it livable, unless they are aliens I suppose. I know what you are trying to get at though, what I’d think of in math terms as discrete vs. continuous. Your characterization of libertarianism is a common one. Lazy “mechanical ownership” is dangerous and is more often an unfair accusation than what libertarians themselves actually propose.

http://mattbruenig.com/ Matt Bruenig

We are talking about the atmosphere, not the “air.” What interests would they have in keeping people from dumping in the atmosphere? They could charge people to do it, and that is the only revenue they would ever get from their ownership of the atmosphere anyways. So of course they would do it. Warming probably wont annihilate humanity; it will just be very destructive in various ways.

David Maddock

1. Air was shorter to type on my ipad.
2. I own property and get no revenue from it as do many, many other people so your assumption there is wrong. Nevertheless, no one wants to do this so it is merely a thought experiment of little consequence–a political “tree falls in the woods…” if you will.

Most libertarians base the idea of physical resources, such as land, becoming property when a person mixes their labor with it (see John Locke). So there is a very libertarian argument to be made that much “private property” is held illegitimately because it is not being used, incapable of being used, etc.. Again, my point is that libertarians have a much more nuanced view of what does and does not constitute property than you are giving credit for.

http://mattbruenig.com/ Matt Bruenig

This thread is now officially hopeless. If you can’t understand the idea that this is not a commons problem, then there is not much more I can do.

Someone who owned the atmosphere would have no interest in particular in preventing dumping into it. Such dumping would not harm them, and they could charge for it. So the problem would replicate, whether the atmosphere was privately owned or not. So, it’s not a commons problem. Everything else you say is sadly irrelevant on this point. Hypothetically speaking, if the atmosphere was privately owned, this problem would still persist. The same can’t be said for if someone was dumping a bunch of stuff on common land, since land is something that might have some other use and for which someone might have an interest in protecting.

That is all. I am making no arguments above and beyond that, yet you are responding as if I am. Not sure what to do about that, but just give up. So I guess I shall.

Nick Rowley

Excellent, insightful piece. For those who wish to read further on how our personal and political values affect our perspective on the climate problem, Mike Hulme’s “Why we disagree about climate change” presents the tensions well. The libertarian position on property rights is one thing. Worth also thinking about the libertarian position on ‘markets’: it is one of the reasons why carbon pricing and emissions trading schemes look better on paper than how they perform in practice.
David Maddock

Sorry if you thought I wasn’t addressing the substance of your argument. That certainly was not my intent. Though I disagree with some of your conclusions, I found your analysis interesting and thoughtful. I won’t bother you again.
robzrob

In an anarchist/libertarian world, if you had a dispute with someone over any kind of property rights infringement, you could both agree to go to a third party and abide by the decision that third party makes, which could be that the infringement isn’t valid, that the infringement is valid and must stop, that the infringement is valid and the offender must pay the property owner £100/year if he keeps infringing… or whatever. Not really a big problem.

http://mattbruenig.com/ Matt Bruenig

Power plant operators wont agree to arbitration. Let’s be serious.

Further, in the climate change situation, you don’t have one property owner disputing with one greenhouse gas emitter. You have millions of property owners who are set to suffer potential (but not certain) property damage in the future as a result of the aggregate emissions of millions to billions of actors, none of whom are individually culpable, just culpable in aggregate. The owners are also part of the class of emitters in various ways too. As you can see, arbitration is not exactly a viable option. Once again, denial is the only way forward.

Drew Baker

This is an article that focuses on a non issue, and it is written out of fear of new ideas. Making it the governments job to regulate our means of production and protect the environment is why were fucked to begin with. As soon as there is private relationship between uncle Sam and are larger companies ( our means of production) an incentive is created for corruption, and we’ve demanded the close door. This is what we have tried to do for years and now they are sleeping with both are political parties. Its lazy selfish and cowardice to just push the problem of the gov hands and just expect them to fix it. It doesnt work. Thats why as the people if we want to start saving the environment? get educated and get green people, and start spending our money in a ethical way. it is our comfortable bubble we live that perpetuates this horrid machine. WE NEED REVOLUTION. NEW LEADRS. NEW PARTIES. No more the same people, who all came from the same school and all have the same interests, oh and have easter together with their families. So go ahead liberals be scared and hide on top of your pedestal. I believe in the coming years that liberalism is a disease and the right is just plain wrong. There is no left, There is no right, its a figment of your imagination. A long dead idea that now is being exploited to keep us separated.
U0653449

This is an article that focuses on a non issue, and it is written out of fear of new ideas. Making it the governments job to regulate our means of production and protect the environment is why were fucked to begin with. As soon as there is private relationship between uncle Sam and are larger companies ( our means of production) an incentive is created for corruption, and we’ve demanded the close door. This is what we have tried to do for years and now they are sleeping with both are political parties. Its lazy selfish and cowardice to just push the problem of the gov hands and just expect them to fix it. It doesnt work. Thats why as the people if we want to start saving the environment? get educated and get green people, and start spending our money in a ethical way. it is our comfortable bubble we live that perpetuates this horrid machine. WE NEED REVOLUTION. NEW LEADRS. NEW PARTIES. No more the same people, who all came from the same school and all have the same interests, oh and have easter together with their families. So go ahead liberals be scared and hide on top of your pedestal. I believe in the coming years that liberalism is a disease and the right is just plain wrong. There is no left, There is no right, its a figment of your imagination. A long dead idea that now is being exploited to keep us separated.
Rodrigo B Castro

The question works for both sides ¿Why Liberals, and Socialist embrace Environmentalism? Because it promotes power of the State over Individual there is not evidence a Different Economy could do it better than Capitalism, Example Cuba is a disaster to the Environment in the way they manage their Industry and so China.

Anyway I want to leave here some links about what Libertarians and Liberal Clasic has wrotten about the environment

Julian Simmons The Ultimate Resource
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/

“Free Market Envioromentalism” http://www.amazon.com/Free-Market-Environmentalism-Terry-Anderson/dp/0312235038

Cose about Externalities and Clasic Liberal Ideology http://www.sfu.ca/~allen/CoaseJLE1960.pdf

Geroge Reisman. http://www.liberalismo.org/articulo/293/29/recursos/naturales/medio/ambiente/ these is in Spanish but you can find it in the book Capitalism by George Reisman

There are planty of information and debate in the Clasical Liberal and Libertarian side , libertarian can endorse with enough evidence the Global Warning but we can not support Environmentalism being use as a tool to destroy liberties and propierty.

Rodrigo B Castro

I forget these against Cose by Mises Institute

http://direct.mises.org/journals/jls/16_4/16_4_5.pdf
Bucky

Cuba, globally recognized as a world-leader in environmental protection, ranks #9 among nations on the Environmental Performance Index.

http://www.expatify.com/news/top-10-most-environmentally-friendly-nations.html

The 2010 Environmental Performance Index, which ranks 163 countries on 25 performance indicators tracked across ten policy categories covering both environmental public health and ecosystem vitality, has been released, and it’s worth looking at in closer detail for the aspiring expat or the eco-conscious traveler. These are the places with the most pristine environments, cleanest waters, most startling biodiversity and even some of the best public transportation or health– [...]

http://twitter.com/WarWithEastasia ben

You seem to think all libertarians are contractual libertarians. This is not so; there are consequentialist libertarians, natural rights libertarians, etc. You claim “Almost all uses of land will entail some infringement on some other piece of land that is owned by someone else,” but you never really expand on this, even though its essential. What “infringements” are inherent to land ownership that fall outside the realm of tort law? The only obvious one is messing up a scenic view from your neighbor’s window or something; everything else in this micro/individual/household sense (polluting, littering, etc.) can be resolved in civil court cases. If you’re speaking about libertarian environmentalism in a macro sense (e.g. global warming) consequentialist libertarianism is more adequate. Libertarians in the US would end our world military empire and stop energy subsidies, and the price of gas would go way up to more natural, market levels. This would force entrepreneurs to seek alternative fuels or increase energy efficiency out of necessity, and oil would be so expensive that US consumption of it would decrease significantly. Further, the pentagon is the single largest employer on earth, and it’s CO2 output is greater than most nations; ending that alone would have significant positive environmental effects. You can’t consider these questions in a vacuum; comparing the libertarian approach to the environment to an ideal scenario helps little. Rather, you should compare it to it’s actual, real-world alternatives (i.e. dems and reps). Ending oil subsidies and the empire would have a far more positive environmental impact than anything any president or congress has done for the environment in US history, so while its not ideal, its certainly better than the alternatives. I mean, really, what has Obama done for the environment that has had real, quantifiable, tangible impacts? Or Clinton? Or anyone else?
I’d encourage you to read the global warming/ geo-engineering chapter of Freakonomics. Water vapor contributes at least twice as much to the greenhouse effect as CO2 does, so why aren’t politicians looking for ways to restrict water vapor output? The reason is that CO2 is a by-product of virtually any productive activity, economic or otherwise. If politicians can control CO2 emissions, they control who can have babies, who gets to burn gas to move their products, who gets to use a tractor to grow food, etc. They’ve shifted the focus to CO2 output, even though the real danger we’re trying to avoid is rising temperature. If we focus on treating the causes and symptoms of temperature rise, we could do so cheaply and easily compared to the alternative. Reducing CO2 output would cost trillions of $s and millions of lives from starvation; geo-engineering to reduce atmospheric water vapor could be done for a few million $s, and we could make the earth several degrees cooler in a year.

Bucky

“If politicians can control CO2 emissions, they control who can have babies, who gets to burn gas to move their products, who gets to use a tractor to grow food, etc. ”

In fact access to money controls these opportunities, does it not? Thus, if democracy controls money, then democracy controls who can have babies, who can have food, etc.. Whereas if hereditary property rights control money, then hereditary property rights control who can have babies, who can grow food, etc..

http://twitter.com/WarWithEastasia warwitheastasia

Would it be morally right for 10 people to force a couple to refrain from having children – through violence or the threat thereof – because they thought it was a bad idea? What if those 10 people voted on it? What if it was 100 or 10,000 people voting? Does voting magically confer some moral legitimacy to that act? Why should anyone get to vote on whether someone else gets to reproduce, and how is a vote outcome a better determining factor than a parent’s ability to provide for their children? Why shouldn’t a person’s ability to provide for children constrain the amount they have? What about the people who are taxed to pay for these babies, who may have to forgo having their own children to pay for someone else’s?
Have you ever voted? What if you had voted for a different candidate in every election you’ve voted in (eg if you voted for obama in 08, imagine you had voted for mccain)? How different would your life be if your vote had been different in every case? The answer is not at all, because no election has been decided by 1 vote. Democracy is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for fairness (check out nozick’s tale of the slave). I don’t know what you mean by “hereditary property rights”. If I inherit 50 grand, that doesn’t mean that any other individual has somehow been made less wealthy as a consequence of my inheritance. And the ironic fact is that fertility rates are inversely correlated with intelligence; in other words, the dumber you are, the more kids you are likely to have. Since smarter people make more money, the wealthy actually have less children than the poor. Look it up if you don’t believe me. So impoverished people actually don’t constrain their reproduction on economic grounds. So no, “access to money” does not “control” the opportunity to have kids. And what CO2 reduction scheme do you think would allocate emissions democratically? Carbon tax? Cap and trade? Mandatory offsets? Some UN scheme?

Rodrigo B Castro

I forget these against Cose by Mises Institute

http://direct.mises.org/journals/jls/16_4/16_4_5.pdf
Metro70

I’m no libertarian or liberal, but your plaintive claim that the fact that libertarians can’t reconcile environmentalism with property rights is the reason they don’t buy the AGW phoney ‘consensus’ , takes the cake.

Couldn’t be any other reason—like the extreme fragility of the science that means it has to be propped up by destruction of data, fraud, fudging of graphs, silencing of dissent, corruption of the peer review process, propaganda masquerading as information etc etc??

Environmentalism poses a problem for libertarian ideology

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