Category: Philosophy

Whenever libertarians talk about the evils of liberty-restricting paternalism, I can’t help but recall that the endorsement of paternalism is the only plausible way their theory of laissez-faire property is supposed to get off the ground in the first place. As Nozick notes, the appropriation of property is inherently liberty-destroying: It will be implausible to… Continue reading A Note On Libertarian Anti-Paternalism

Every time you attack libertarianism, libertarians respond by saying you haven’t actually attacked libertarianism. You’ve only attacked one libertarian or one perspective, but that’s not the right one to look at it. You are engaging in a straw man argument. And so on. It never ends. You can’t ever deliver a square blow against it… Continue reading #NotAllLibertarians: An Illustration

Long-time readers will be familiar with my point that the most libertarian world is one in which people are free to do anything short of acting on the bodies of others. This is the world that perfectly implements the idea of negative liberty, non-aggression, and self-ownership. Naturally, this world does not have property, since property… Continue reading Handling Disputes Without Property Rights On Public Basketball Courts

In response to Rand Paul’s hilarious claim that parents own their children, Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig (ESB) posted at The New Republic about a slew of libertarian views about parenting that are stranger than even that. One of those views comes from Rothbard’s book Ethics of Liberty. In the book Rothbard applies the non-aggression, “no positive… Continue reading Rothbard’s Point About Child Neglect

There is a funny group of people out there who became laissez-faire propertarians for secular reasons but then later had to backfill ways to reconcile it with their Catholic religion. One of the things these people often do is concede that, as Locke famously wrote, the poor have a right to the surplus of the… Continue reading Should the State Steal from the Poor?