12,163 research outputs found
A Libertarian Response to Macleod 2012: âIf Youâre a Libertarian, How Come Youâre So Rich?â
This is a response to Macleod 2012's argument that the history of unjust property acquisitions requires rich libertarians to give away everything in excess of equality. At first, problematic questions are raised. How much property is usually inherited or illegitimate? Why should legitimate inheritance be affected? What of the burden of proof and court cases? A counterfactual problem is addressed. Three important cases are considered: great earned wealth; American slavery; land usurpation. All are argued to be problematic for Macleod 2012's thesis. Various problems are explained concerning using the Nozickian argument to decide the alleged excess that rich libertarians own. The essay's main error is the presupposition that free markets do not help the worst-off. The majority of unjust holdings today are not the result of historical injustices but arise through continuing transfers enabled by taxation and state-regulation. More study of libertarian contributions to the social sciences and philosophy would appear to be desirable "personal behavior" among socialists
Popper's epistemology versus Popper's politics: A libertarian viewpoint
What is my thesis? It is not that radical experimentation by the state, rather than liberal democracy, is more in accord with the spirit and logic of Popperâs ârevolutionaryâ epistemology. It is the opposite criticism, that full anarchic libertarianism (individual liberty and the free market without any state interference) better fits Popperâs epistemology and scientific method
What's Wrong with "What's Wrong with Libertarianism": a reply to Jeffrey Friedman
This essay explains Jeffrey Friedman's two fundamental and persistent philosophical errors concerning the libertarian conception of liberty and the lack of a "justificationâ of
libertarianism. It is ironic that Friedman himself is thereby revealed to be guilty of both
an âa prioriâ anti-libertarianism and an anti-libertarian âstraddle.â Critical-rationalist, proactive-imposition-minimising libertarianism remains completely unchallenged by him
Apriorist self-interest: How it embraces altruism and is not vacuous
This essay is part of an attempt to reconcile two extreme views in economics: the (neglected) subjective, apriorist approach and the (standard) objective, scientific (i.e., falsifiable) approach. The Austrian subjective view of value, building on Carl Mengerâs theory of value, was developed into a theory of economics as being entirely an a priori theory of action. This probably finds its most extreme statement in Ludwig von Misesâ Human Action (1949). In contrast, the standard economic view has developed into making falsifiable predictions about economic phenomena whereby the truth of the assumptions, especially about economic agents, is relatively unimportant: predictive fecundity is all. This finds an extreme statement in Milton Friedmanâs introductory essay in his Essays in Positive Economics (1953). However, many economists fall somewhere between the two extremes, such as McKenzie and Tullock (1978)
The Three Great Errors of Most Libertarians: a Concise Philosophical Analysis
Libertarians are mistaken to seek foundations, to take sides over moral approaches, and to have no proper theory of liberty
Against _Against Intellectual Property_: a Short Refutation of Meme Communism
This essay is intended to be a refutation of the main thesis in Against Intellectual Property, Kinsella 2008 (hereafter, K8). Points of agreement, relatively trivial disagreement, and irrelevant issues will largely be ignored, as will much repetition of errors in K8. Otherwise, the procedure is to go through K8 quoting various significantly erroneous parts as they arise and explaining the errors involved. It will not be necessary to respond at the same length as K8 itself
A Critique of âA Critique of Lesterâs Account of Libertyâ: A reply to Frederick 2013
Frederick 2013 (the critique) offers criticisms of the Escape from Leviathan (EfL) theory of libertarian liberty and also of its compatibility with preference-utilitarian welfare and private-property anarchy. This reply to the critique first explains the underlying philosophical problem with libertarian liberty and EfLâs proposed solution. It then goes through the critique in detail showing that it does not grasp the problem or the solution and offers only misrepresentations and unsound criticisms
A Critical Commentary on the Zwolinski 2013 "Libertarianism and Liberty" Essays
The Zwolinski 2013 "libertarianism and liberty" essays on libertarianism_org are argued to have the following problems: taking libertarianism to be a "commitment" to the view that "liberty is the highest political value" ; examining and rejecting the maximization of liberty without a libertarian theory of liberty; accepting a persuasive sense of "coercion" ; misunderstandingliberty in the work place; conflating, to varying degrees, freedom of action and freedom from aggression and justice/rights/morals; focusing on logically possible clashes instead of practically possible congruence among utility, liberty, and justice â in particular, that "rule (preference-)utilitarianism" fits "rule libertarianism" ; failing to distinguish liberty from license (and power) concerning slavery, and so-called "civil and democratic liberties" (and everything else); the idea that any coherent reference to a quantity of liberty requires precise cardinality; failing to see that the quantity of liberty has an inherently qualitative aspect; misunderstanding property as about limiting freedom; mistaking clashing Hobbesian freedom for non-clashing Lockean liberty; adopting G. A. Cohen's confusion about freedom as the libertarian conception of freedom; assuming the â illogical â epistemology of justification" ; not realizing that both allowing and prohibiting pollution "aggresses" and so "aggressions" need to be minimized; the failure of all six of its reasons for rejecting the non-aggression principle
The Uncogent Auxiliary Hypotheses of Gordon and Modugno: Reply to a Review
Lesterâs
reply to the review by Gordon and Modugno of
Escape from Leviathan was due to appear in a later edition of the same periodical, but it was eventually dropped without notice or a reason being given. Subsequently, their review has occasionally been cited in isolation as a refutation of
that bookâs theory of liberty, the compatibility of such liberty with welfare maximisation, and the use of "Popperian views" as though a complete reply did not exist and were not freely available and easily found online. To make it harder to avoid the reply, whether by accident or design, it is reproduced here (but with sundry small emendations for greater clarity)
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