: Libertarian Quandaries is a slim volume of tight reasoning that makes a resolute case for libertarianism. Libertarianism is “the social philosophy that identifies individual liberty as the most fundamental social value, and by extension treats moral cooperation as the only morally permissible form of social interaction.” More specifically, the book is a compendium of concise rebuttals to ….

: I take issue with the view that libertarian theory does not imply any particular stand on abortion. Liberty is the absence of interference with people’s wills—interests, wishes, and desires. Only entities that have such are eligible for the direct rights of libertarian theory. Foetuses do not; and if aborted, there is then no future person whose ….

Libertarian theories of the normative core of the corporation hold in common the view that is the responsibility of publicity held corporations to return profits to shareholders within the bounds of certain moral side-constraints. Side-constraints may be either weak (grounded in the rules of the game) or strong (grounded in rights). This essay considers libertarian arguments regarding the normative core of the corporation in the context of global capitalism and in the light of actual corporate behavior. First, it (...) is argued the weak side-constraints view is conceptually incoherent when applied in a global context. Second, it is argued that proponents of the libertarian strong side-constraints view lack an adequate theory of rights. Third, both the weak side-constraints view and the strong side-constraints view are shown to be unsatisfactory insofar as they fail to adequately address the coercive power of corporations. The main conclusion of this essay is that a viable libertarian theory of the corporation has yet to be articulated. (shrink)

In a number of recent publications, Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler have argued for a novel approach to the design of public policy. Their proposal has received a great deal of attention, both within academic circles and the public at large. Drawing upon evidence from behavioral economics and empirical psychology, the authors attempt to demonstrate that the conventional antagonism between libertarians and paternalists within political theory dissolves in conditions that obtain widely in public decision-making. Where free choice and the promotion (...) of individual welfare can coexist, the authors believe that designers of public policy ought to be libertarian paternalists. -/- In this paper I criticize their proposal on grounds that the authors are unable to sufficiently motivate the paternalistic element of their approach. I argue that the empirical evidence cited by the authors is capable of supporting a number of competing approaches, including what I call libertarian utilitarianism and libertarian justice. Since the evidence that the authors draw upon does not provide us any grounds for selecting between these rival approaches, I conclude that Sunstein and Thaler are unable to provide us with a convincing guide for the design of public policy. In order to show that this is the case, I consider three arguments in favor of libertarian paternalism, and find each lacking. I end with some comments about what we can properly conclude on the basis of Sunstein and Thaler’s arguments. (shrink)

Libertarian free will is, roughly, the view that agents cause actions to occur or not occur: Maddy’s decision to get a beer causes her to get up off her comfortable couch to get a beer, though she almost chose not to get up. Libertarian free will notoriously faces the luck objection, according to which agential states do not determine whether an action occurs or not, so it is beyond the control of the agent, hence lucky, whether an action (...) occurs or not: Maddy’s reasons for getting beer in equipoise with her reasons to remain in her comfortable seat do not determine that she will get up or stay seated, so it seems beyond her control, hence lucky, that she gets up. In this paper I consider a sub-set of the luck objection called the Physical Indeterminism Luck Objection, according to which indeterministic physical processes cause actions to occur or not, and agent’s lack control over these indeterministic physical processes, so agent’s lack control over, hence it is lucky, whether action occurs or not. After motivating the physical indeterminism luck objection, I consider responses from three recent event-causal libertarian models, and conclude that they fail to overcome the problem, though one promising avenue is opened up. (shrink)

Libertarians are an increasingly prominent ideological group in U.S. politics, yet they have been largely unstudied. Across 16 measures in a large web-based sample that included 11,994 self-identified libertarians, we sought to understand the moral and psychological characteristics of self-described libertarians. Based on an intuitionist view of moral judgment, we focused on the underlying affective and cognitive dispositions that accompany this unique worldview. Compared to self-identified liberals and conservatives, libertarians showed 1) stronger endorsement of individual liberty as their foremost guiding (...) principle, and weaker endorsement of all other moral principles; 2) a relatively cerebral as opposed to emotional cognitive style; and 3) lower interdependence and social relatedness. As predicted by intuitionist theories concerning the origins of moral reasoning, libertarian values showed convergent relationships with libertarian emotional dispositions and social preferences. Our findings add to a growing recognition of the role of personality differences in the organization of political attitudes. (shrink)

This paper argues that mandatory, government-enforced vaccination can be justified even within a libertarian political framework. If so, this implies that the case for mandatory vaccination is very strong indeed as it can be justified even within a framework that, at first glance, loads the philosophical dice against that conclusion. I argue that people who refuse vaccinations violate the ‘clean hands principle’, a moral principle that prohibits people from participating in the collective imposition of unjust harm or risk of (...) harm. In a libertarian framework, individuals may be forced to accept certain vaccines not because they have an enforceable duty to serve the common, and not because cost–benefit analysis recommends it, but because anti-vaxxers are wrongfully imposing undue harm upon others. (shrink)

Libertarians in the contemporary free will debate find themselves under attack from two angles. They face the challenge of defending the necessity of indeterminism for freedom against the philosophical mainstream position of compatibilism. And second, they are increasingly forced to argue for the very possibility of indeterministic free will, in the face of the so-called luck objection. Many contemporary libertarians try to overcome the second problem by adopting the causal theory of action. We argue that this move at the same (...) time undermines their ability to answer the first challenge. On the basis of this, we suggest that CTA might be a theory of action that is biased towards compatibilism. We thus argue that the best strategy for the libertarian is to insist that intentional action itself requires indeterminism. Recent agent-causal accounts offer a promising way of developing such an alternative libertarianism, but we argue that they currently suffer from problems similar to the ones we identify for the event-causalist. If we are correct, then this has an important implication for the contemporary free will debate: action theory should take centre stage. (shrink)

I show that the standard libertarian conception of justice is vulnerable to a kind of basic collective self-defeat not characteristic of its rivals. All deontological liberals, including the libertarian, ought to be committed to two very general claims regarding the nature of justice. The RSC (Reasonable Stability Criterion) is the requirement that in the just society, human beings will typically exhibit genuine literacy with the relevant conception. The MEC (Moral Education Condition) consists in the thought that a necessary (...) condition for any such literacy is a proper moral education. It is consistent with full respect for standard libertarian justice that a society living under its auspices will fail to satisfy the RSC, by failing to provide moral education to those who need it. This issues in the collective self-defeat of the conception, for by respecting all and only the constraints constitutive of libertarian justice, the group will have undermined the achievement of a characteristic aim. (shrink)

As the use of nudges by governmental agencies becomes more common, the need for normative guidelines regarding the processes by which decisions about the implementation of specific nudges are taken becomes more acute. In order to find a justified set of such guidelines one must meet several theoretical challenges to Libertarian Paternalism that arise at the foundational level. In this paper, I identify three central challenges to Libertarian Paternalism, and suggest that Susan Hurley's political philosophy as presented in (...) her Natural Reasons (1989) can be viewed as offering powerful responses to them. (shrink)

As readers of Libertarian Papers know, all LP articles are published free and in PDF and in the original Word source file. We use the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License so people are free to do what they want with our articles–reprint them, incorporate them into new works, include them as chapters in books–just grab [...].

While libertarians affirm personal responsibility as a central moral and political value, libertarian theorists write relatively little about the theory and practice of this value. Focusing on the work of F. A. Hayek and David Schmidtz, this article identifies the core of a libertarian approach to personal responsibility and demonstrates the ways in which this approach entails a radical revision of the ethics and American politics of personal responsibility. Then, I highlight several central implications of this analysis in (...) the American political and economic status quo. First, this analysis makes a mockery of so-called libertarian/conservative ‘fusionism’, such that libertarian personal responsibility cannot partner with meritocratic conservative thought to provide a plural grounding for rejecting progressive or redistributive economic policy. Next, preferred libertarian policies threaten the status, esteem and social bases of self-respect of citizens who are worse-off through little or no fault of their own. Finally, these policies undermine the ethics of personal responsibility that Americans from across the ideological spectrum value and many conservatives and libertarians celebrate. In the American status quo, those who value personal responsibility must reserve a central place for policies that mitigate opportunity and distributive inequalities. (shrink)

My dissertation is concerned with Epicurus' attempt to reconcile libertarianism and atomism. I begin by offering my solution to 'the problem of the swerve,' arguing that Lucretius is claiming that swerves cause volitions 'from the bottom up' and that the attempts of scholars to construct a better position for Epicurus to have held were doomed to fail, since this is the only position open to the libertarian atomist. ;I also examine the swerve's role in cosmogony, arguing that 'the cosmogonic (...) argument' for the swerve is an afterthought, 'the libertarian argument' being Epicurus' chief argument for the swerve. ;I discuss the physics of the swerve as a minimal, oblique deviation of an atom from its course. And I explore its implications: atoms move at a speed greater than one minimal unit of distance per minimal unit of time, and there are no minimal units of space. ;Returning to the question of the swerve's role in action, I argue that a typical action involves a series of volitions each caused by a plurality of swerves by atoms of the mind's 'fourth nature.' And I argue that one's power to move at will is directly sensed, though also known through one's innate $\pi\rho\acute{o}\lambda\eta\psi\iota\varsigma$ of one's freedom. ;In the second half of my dissertation, I turn to the question of responsibility. I examine Epicurus' remarks about 'what is due to us' . I examine Epicurus' argument that Democriteans are self-refuting in espousing determinism and 'eliminative materialism.' I explain that Epicurus rejects only Democritus' ontology, not his epistemology . I examine Epicurus' discussion in On Nature of our 'notion of responsibility' , our responsibility as $\alpha\pi o\gamma\varepsilon\gamma\varepsilon\nu\nu\eta\mu\acute \varepsilon\nu\alpha$ , and our responsibility for our thoughts of the $\tau\acute\varepsilon\lambda o\varsigma$ and 'the criterion' . I explain what Epicurus means by the $\tau\acute\varepsilon\lambda o\varsigma$: pleasure, "katastematic" and "kinetic" . And finally, I argue that Epicurus fails to meet the challenge of 'psychological determinism'. (shrink)

If we have libertarian free will, then it is plausible to believe that the occurrences of certain physical events have irreducible and ineliminable mental explanations. According to a strong version of naturalism, everything in the physical world is in principle explicable in nonmental terms. Therefore, the truth of naturalism implies that libertarian choices cannot explain the occurrences of any physical events. In this paper, I example a methodological argument for the truth of naturalism and conclude that the argument (...) fails. I then consider additional concerns raised against the reality of libertarian freedom. First, I examine the claim that if a physical event E is not causally determined to occur by another physical event, then there is no way to account for the difference between E’s occurring randomly and E’s being causally determined to occur by a mental event. Second, I consider the assertion that the affirmation of libertarianism is a mind-of-the-gaps version of the God-of-the-gaps objection to a divine explanation of a physical event. Third, I take up the question of whether the inability of libertarians to pinpoint precisely where the initial physical effects of libertarian choices occur is a good reason for rejecting libertarianism. Fourth, I examine the claim that belief in the existence of the soul or immaterial mind is the result of an explanatory hypothesis to account for how libertarian free choices can causally produce physical effects. Fifth, I look at the traditional objection to substance dualism from the impossibility of causal interaction between a soul and its body. (shrink)

This comprehensive study offers a balanced assessment of libertarian accounts of free will. Bringing to bear recent work on action, causation, and causal explanation, Clarke defends a type of event-causal view from popular objections concerning rationality and diminished control. He subtly explores the extent to which event-causal accounts can secure the things for the sake of which we value free will, judging their success here to be limited. Clarke then sets out a highly original agent-causal account, one that integrates (...) agent causation and nondeterministic event causation. He defends this view from a number of objections but argues that we should find the substance causation required by any agent-causal account to be impossible. Clarke concludes that if a broad thesis of incompatibilism is correct--one on which both free will and moral responsibility are incompatible with determinism--then no libertarian account is entirely adequate. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

What is the proper punishment from the perspective of the libertarian philosophy? More specifically, in what way, if at all, may a thief benefit from his robbery? The present essay attempts to wrestle with these challenging questions.

Palmer's defense of libertarianism as consequentialist runs afoul of his own failure to provide any consequentialist reasons for libertarian conclusions, and of his own defense of nonconsequentialist arguments for the intrinsic value of capitalism‐cum‐negative freedom. As suck, Palmer's article exemplifies the parasitic codependency of consequentialist and nonconsequentialist reasoning in libertarian thought. Sciabarra's defense of Ayn Rand's libertarianism is even more problematic, because in addition to the usual defects of libertarianism, Rand adds a commitment to ethical egoism that contradicts (...) both her concern for the consequences of capitalism and her commitment to the rights of everyone, not just herself. (shrink)

Deliberative libertarian accounts allow that basic free actions may be causally determined by their immediate causal antecedents; indeterminism is required only at earlier points in the processes leading to free actions. Accounts of this type proposed by Daniel Dennett, Laura Ekstrom, and Alfred Mele are examined here. Given the assumption of incompatibilism, deliberative accounts fail to provide for the sort of difference-making that is distinctive of free action. Further, they fail to evade the problem of diminished control that they (...) are meant to evade. (shrink)

This paper compares the capability approach (CA) and libertarian paternalism (LP) to see whether they are compatible. The comparison focuses on rationality, wellbeing, and freedom. The main theoretical framework is Sen’s ‘reason to value’ (RtV). The relevance of this to CA, and LP is analysed, and whether the primacy that CA and LP both accord to reason leads to paternalism is examined. Although the principal focus is on Sen’s, Sunstein’s and Thaler’s original ideas, their key concepts are analysed in (...) the context of the contemporary critical literature on the topic. This critical analysis not only makes it possible to assess whether CA and LP are compatible, but also to see how they perceive rationality, wellbeing, and freedom. The critical analysis further differentiates the various interpretations of RtV in the literature and explains how CA and LP function. (shrink)

Libertarians typically object to having the state deal with law and order for several general reasons: it is inefficient; it is carried out at the expense of taxpayers; and it punishes so-called victimless crimes. Exactly what the observance of liberty implies with respect to the treatment of tortfeasors and criminals is more controversial among libertarians. A pure theory of libertarian restitution and retribution is mainly what is attempted here, without becoming involved in general moral anti-state arguments. However, the pure (...) theory alone will raise practical problems that require immediate response if the theory is to appear at all plausible. (shrink)

Influential libertarians from diverse backgrounds and professions who have worked toward a freer society across the globe share their personal and intellectual journeys, including what their lives and thoughts were before they embraced libertarianism; which people, texts, or events most inspired them; what experiences, challenges, tribulations, and achievements they have had as participants or leaders in this movement, and how this philosophy has affected their private and professional lives. The volume’s 80 contributors span the political-philosophical spectrum of libertarianism, including anarcho-capitalists, (...) monarchists, constitutionalists, classical liberals, and thick libertarians. Their essays express different perspectives on many issues even while articulating such core principles as an appreciation for individual liberty, private property rights, the rule of law, and free enterprise. Together, they represent myriad individual journeys toward libertarianism, however defined. By bringing together a range of contemporary voices from outside the dominant left-right paradigm, this book aims to contribute to the viewpoint diversity that is crucially needed in today’s public discourse. These autobiographies not only offer compelling insights into their individual authors and the state of the world today, but may also inspire the next generation to make our society a freer one. (shrink)

Twice in the _Journal of Business Ethics_, Walter Block provides a libertarian argument that The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is unjust because it is a violation of a business’s property rights and therefore ought to be repealed. No libertarian reply to Block has ever been given, creating the mistaken impression that his argument is the true representation of libertarian theory with regards to civil rights. This paper focuses on Title II and argues that both Block, and (...) this prevailing opinion of libertarian theory, are wrong. There are different types of libertarian theory. Block’s theory of natural rights is one of them, but there is another strain of libertarian thought that embraces the common law, at least as it existed up until the late 1800’s. This paper explicates a libertarian argument, based on the common law, which supports and defends Title II of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Specifically, the evolution of contracts via assumpsit arguments, found in Blackstone’s _Commentaries,_ endogenously and consistently gives rise to the obligation to serve all. Title II of the 1964 Civil Rights Act is consistent with this common law tradition on public accommodations. Libertarian arguments that accept the common law on contracts ought also to accept common law doctrine on public accommodations and, _perforce_, the justness of Title II. (shrink)

The most important difference between contemporary compatibilist and libertarian theories is not the difference in their positions regarding the truth of the thesis of physical determinism, but their different approaches to the causal role of agents. According to libertarians, volitional acts performed by agents constitute a specific type of causes, which are not themselves caused by other causes. In this respect, event-causal libertarianism is similar to the agent-causal libertarianism, because it insists that in performing a volitional act an agent (...) can choose one of the alternative outcomes without being caused to do so by anything else, where ‘anything else’ includes all the facts about the past and the present. Since event-causal libertarians maintain that volitional acts and the causal role of agents can be explained naturalistically, they must solve the problem of luck, i.e., they must explain how an agent is able to control her choices, given that she can choose one way or another without there being any difference in her state immediately preceding the moment of choice. This problem arises not from the indeterminism per se, but from the way it is coupled with the causal role of agents.In section one, I consider the historical development of compatibilist views on physical determinism and indeterminism. In section two, I present an overview of conditional analyses of alternative possibilities. In section three, I analyze the reasons why libertarians reject any type of conditional analysis, and show that intuitive objections against physical determinism, which portrait it as an obstacle to freedom, are untenable. In section four, I consider the consequence argument and show how it is related to the libertarian condition of sourcehood. In the final section, I analyze the problem of luck and show that it inevitably arises for any version of libertarianism. I demonstrate that indeterminism is a problem for libertarians, although they need it. And it is not a problem for compatibilists, who, while they do not need it, can incorporate it in their theories without facing the problem of luck. (shrink)

According to the libertarian view of free will, people sometimes act freely, but this freedom is incompatible with causal determinism. Goetz has developed an important and unusual libertarian view of free will. Rather than simply arguing that a person's free actions cannot be causally determined, Goetz argues that they cannot be caused at all. According to Goetz, in order for a person to act freely, her actions must be uncaused.1 My aim in this essay is to evaluate Goetz's (...) “noncausal” libertarian view of free will. In section 1, I outline Goetz's view. In section 2, I develop two criticisms of his view. In section 3, I develop an improved “positive” account of the noncausal view, which takes Goetz's metaphysical framework as its point of departure but is not subject to the criticisms that plague his development of this framework. Finally, in section 4, I respond to some objections to my proposed noncausal view. (shrink)

Book-review of Ernesto Screpanti’s Libertarian Communism: Marx, Engels and the Political Economy of Freedom. In this book, Ernesto Screpanti questions the nature and status of freedom within both Marx’s thought and possible forms of communist organisation. By way of an argument which contends that communism should be understood as a theory of freedom, he extracts a deliberately individualistic version of communism from Marx’s work, and proceeds to develop this into a series of recommendations for practical-organisational forms. These forms, and (...) the notion of freedom that they arise from, are, however, closely related to Screpanti’s adoption of an economic approach that consists of the quantification of freedom. This prompts a number of political and theoretical problems. (shrink)

This paper suggests that libertarians should avail themselves of a system of natural and autonomy-friendly motivational foundations—intrinsic motives. A psyche equipped with intrinsic motives could allow for some degree of character-formation that is genuinely and robustly autonomous. Such autonomy would rest on motives that are one’s own in the most direct way: they are part of one’s natural make-up. A model with intrinsic motives can help libertarians in multiple ways: to deal with skeptics regarding the very idea of robust self-making; (...) to explain the importance of autonomy (it helps explain how the agent can set her dominant life-goals on the basis of her own motives); to explain why an artificially induced, albeit rational, autonomy is less than genuine (it would not rely on the agent’s own motives). (shrink)

In a number of recent publications, Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler have argued for a novel approach to the design of public policy. Their proposal has received a great deal of attention, both within academic circles and the public at large. Drawing upon evidence from behavioral economics and empirical psychology, the authors attempt to demonstrate that the conventional antagonism between libertarians and paternalists within political theory dissolves in conditions that obtain widely in public decision-making. Where free choice and the promotion (...) of individual welfare can coexist, the authors believe that designers of public policy ought to be libertarian paternalists. In this paper I criticize their proposal on grounds that the authors are unable to sufficiently motivate the paternalistic element of their approach. I argue that the empirical evidence cited by the authors is capable of supporting a number of competing approaches, including what I call libertarian utilitarianism and libertarian justice. Since the evidence that the authors draw upon does not provide us any grounds for selecting between these rival approaches, I conclude that Sunstein and Thaler are unable to provide us with a convincing guide for the design of public policy. In order to show that this is the case, I consider three arguments in favor of libertarian paternalism, and find each lacking. I end with some comments about what we can properly conclude on the basis of Sunstein and Thaler’s arguments. (shrink)

“Libertarian paternalism” aims to harness cognitive biases in order to improve prudential decision-making. Some critics have objected that libertarian paternalism is wrongly manipulative. I argue that this objection is mostly unsuccessful. First, I point out that some strategies endorsed by libertarian paternalists can help people to better appreciate reasons. Second, I develop an account of manipulation according to which an agent manipulates her target by worsening the target’s deliberative position. The means of influence defended by libertarian (...) paternalists—for instance, the judicious use of default rules—are not manipulative in this way. (shrink)

How can libertarianism—which is thought to be hostile to any redistribution—support universal, unconditional cash transfers in the form of a Basic Income? Surprisingly, many vocal proponents of programmes similar to Basic Income—such as economist Milton Friedman, public intellectual Charles Murray, and eBay co-founder Pierre Omidiyar—are self-described libertarians. As this chapter demonstrates, these and other libertarian proponents are not deviating from libertarian thought: instead, they reflect the nuance and diversity of its theoretical foundations. To that end, this chapter explores (...) several justifications for a Basic Income grounded in libertarianism. By libertarianism, we mean a family of theories that emphasize the right of the individual to be free from coercion, a strong respect for private property rights and the free market, and a presumption that market distributions are just and should be disturbed only in limited circumstances. We argue that each variant of libertarianism justifies, but does not mandate, redistribution, although for differing reasons and at different levels. Because this conclusion runs counter to most readers’ impressions of libertarianism, this chapter focuses on making the libertarian case for redistribution. We further show that once one accepts the case for redistribution, providing such redistribution through unrestricted, unconditional cash transfers best reflects core libertarian principles. (shrink)

(1996). The libertarian concepts of property and their impact on privatization in Poland. The European Legacy: Vol. 1, Fourth International Conference of the International Society for the study of European Ideas, pp. 614-618.

Libertarian theories of justice hold that agents, at least initially, own themselves fully, and thus owe no service to others, except through voluntary action. The most familiar libertarian theories are right-libertarian in that they hold that natural resources are initially unowned and, under a broad range of realistic circumstances, can be privately appropriated without the consent of, or any significant payment to, the other members of society. Leftlibertarian theories, by contrast, hold that natural resources are owned by (...) the members of society in some egalitarian manner, and may be appropriated only with their permission, or with a significant payment to them. Left-libertarian theories have been propounded for over two centuries[i], but in recent years there has been a revival of interest in them. Theories roughly of this sort have been explored by Kolm [1985, 1986] and Gibbard [1976], advocated by Steiner [1994], Grunebaum [1987], and Van Parijs [1995], and criticized by Cohen [1995]. (shrink)

Libertarianism deals with what the law should be. In this article, we focus on what the appropriate law to punish criminals should be in a libertarian society; that is, one that respects the Non-Aggression Principle and property rights. We examine various theories of punishment and explain why some are incompatible with libertarianism. We contribute to the latest libertarian theory of punishment suggesting the necessity to take time preference into consideration. We conclude stating a limit and a limitation to (...) libertarian punishment theories. (shrink)

A critique of Milton Friedman's thesis that corporate executives have a fiduciary responsibility not to pursue socially desirable goals at the expense of profitability. The author argues that even under a libertarian conception of the nature of corporate property, Friedman's thesis does not follow. In particular, an executive's decision to prize "socially responsible behavior" above profit maximization does not necessarily violate the contractual rights of dissenting stockholders. Whether executives have obligations to refrain from such behavior depends entirely on the (...) content of the contract which actually exists between stockholders and executives. After an examination of the body of legal precedent which informs the content of that contract, the author concludes that there are clearly recognizable circumstances in which executives may legitimately pursue corporate altruism at the expense of profits, stockholder protestations notwithstanding. Since this contractual relationship with management is one in which stockholders have voluntarily engaged, libertarians have no grounds for complaining that the behavior of such executives constitutes a form of theft of the stockholders' property. (shrink)

In this paper I criticize a growing movement within public policy circles that self-identifies as neoliberal. The issue I take up here is the sense in which the neoliberal label signals a turn away from libertarian political philosophy. The are many import ant figures in this movement, but my focus here will be on Will Wilkinson of the Niskanen Center, not least because he has most prolifically written against libertarian political philosophy. Neoliberals oppose the idea that the rights (...) that libertarianism claims people have are useful guides for making the world a freer place because they forestall too much governmental/democratic political action that they purport to be necessary for increasing freedom. Wilkinson mistakenly takes libertarianism to be a set of ideal public policies for achieving a perfectly free society. If it were, he would be right to turn away from it. But placing rights to freedom at the center of their theory of justice does not commit libertarians to an all-or-nothing approach to political change. Consequences and strategy matter – particularly in a non-ideal world – without abandoning the idea that each individual has a right to freedom. In mistaking libertarian moral claims as a set of policy prescriptions, Wilkinson complains that idealistic policy prescriptions not only fail to take account of how those who disagree will respond to such policies if implemented, but also thereby undermines the justice of those policies in the first instance. Wilkinson proposes that change in the direction of freedom must go through the proper channels of actually-existing democratic legitimacy. It as this stage that Wilkinson’s project comes into direct conflict with libertarianism. Whilst libertarianism is not committed to any particular method of creating a free society under non-ideal conditions, and therefore does not rule out democratic political activism as one among many means of doing that, it cannot be committed to the permanence of democratic political authority, and this is what Wilkinson’s neoliberalism demands above all else. It turns out that Foucault’s characterization of neoliberalism long ago is still accurate to Wilkinson’s own view: that neoliberalism is not about creating a society of free individuals, it is about designing the state apparatus in ways that are inspired by the workings of free society – it is about legitimizing the chains, not breaking them. Neoliberalism is not a pragmatic alternative to libertarianism, but rather a gross misapplication of it. (shrink)

Libertarianism is a controversial political theory. But it is often presented as a resting upon a simple, indeed commonsense, moral principle. The libertarian “Non-Aggression Principle” (NAP) prohibits aggression against the persons or property of others, and it is on this basis that the libertarian opposition to redistributive taxation, legal paternalism, and perhaps even the state itself is thought to rest. This paper critically examines the NAP and the extent to which it can provide support for libertarian political (...) theory. It identifies two problems with existing libertarian appeals to the NAP. First, insofar as libertarians employ a moralized understanding of aggression, their principle is really about the protection of property rights rather than the prohibition of aggression. Second, the absolutist prohibition on aggression, which libertarians typically endorse and which is necessary to generate strongly libertarian conclusions, is grossly implausible. The paper concludes by setting forth a version of the NAP that does not suffer from these problems. It argues that this more moderate and defensible version of the NAP still has important libertarian implications, but that a full defense of libertarianism cannot rely upon appeals to non-aggression alone. (shrink)

This book provides a systematic and comprehensive survey and evaluation of the problems of incorporating individual and group rights and values into social procedures and judgements, and examines the solutions that have been proposed. The book begins by defending the presence of libertarian requirements in social choice. A framework for incorporating individual rights into social choice is then formally presented, and libertarian conditions are formulated which can be satisfied for all conceivable sets of individual preferences. Further chapters then (...) show how such libertarian conditions can conflict with other well-known social conditions in social choice, in particular the Pareto condition. Resolution approaches to this latter conflict are evaluated, and are shown not to be appropriate for all types of conflict environments. Instead a more pragmatic approach is called for, based on more information regarding the environment from which choice is to be made. (shrink)

I am seeking volunteer referees to review 7 draft articles submitted to Libertarian Papers. I list the titles and Abstracts of a few of them below. If you are potentially interested in reviewing any of these, or if you have any particular referee suggestions for any of them, please contact me. I’d be happy to [...].

This essay will canvass recent philosophical accounts of human agency that deploy a notion of “self” (or “agent”) causation. Some of these accounts try to explicate this notion, whereas others only hint at its nature in contrast with the causality exhibited by impersonal physical systems. In these latter theories, the authors’ main argumentative burden is that the apparent fundamental differences between persona and impersonal causal activity strongly suggest mind-body dualism. I begin by noting two distinct, yet not commonly distinguished, philosophical (...) motivations for pursuing an agent-causal account of human agency. In the course of discussing the account developed by some philosophers in response to these consideration, I reconsider both the linkage of agent causation with mind-body dualism and its sharp cleavage from impersonal (or “event”) causation. (shrink)

Libertarians favor a free market for intrinsic reasons: it embodies liberty, accountability, consent, cooperation, and other virtues. Additionally, if property rights against trespasses such as pollution are enforced and if public lands are transferred as private property to environmental groups, a free market may also protect the environment. In contrast, Terry Anderson and Donald Leal's Free Market Environmentalism favors a free market solely on instrumental grounds: markets allocate resources efficiently. The authors apparently follow cost‐benefit planners in endorsing a specious tautology (...) that “defends” allocative efficiency by defining “social welfare” in terms of it. They make no attempt to show that allocative efficiency is a good thing or that it is consistent with environmental protection. By regarding pollution as a compensable external cost rather than as an enjoinable nuisance and by arguing that the government should auction rather than give public lands to environmental groups, moreover, Anderson and Leal offer far less protection of the environment than libertarians do. (shrink)

The central thesis of my article is that people live a life worthy of a human being only as self-ruling members of some autarchic (or self-governing) communities. On the one hand, nobody is born as a self-ruling individual, and on the other hand, everybody can become such a person by observing progressively the non-aggression principle and, ipso facto, by behaving as a moral being. A self-ruling person has no interest in controlling her neighbors, but in mastering his own impulses, needs, (...) wishes, desires, behaviors, etc. Inasmuch as he is an imperfect being who lives in an imperfect world, he needs to share certain interests, beliefs, values, customs and other characteristics with other people, i.e. to be involved in some communities. Depending on the following four criteria – the regulatory principle, the essential resources, the specific feedback and the fundamental values –, the countless and manifold human communities can be grouped in three categories: (1) affinity communities, (2) economic communities, and (3) civic communities. In other words, every community or human behavior has an affinity, an economic, and a civic dimension. If a civic community is merely a state shaped society, it can be called a political community. All communities are intrinsically variable. Throughout time, they ceaselessly change their composition, values, interpersonal processes and relations, territory, etc. Interestingly enough, the variability is unanimously recognized and accepted in affinity and communities economic, but is denied or abusively interpreted in the case of state shaped societies. If we confuse two types of order − cosmos and taxis – and two types of rule – nomos and thesis –, as well as we exaggerate the importance of certain type of community we bring some social maladies, namely the traditionalism, the commercialism and the civism, (with the worst form of it – the politicality). Whatever the communities they are involved in, all persons relate (implicitly or explicitly) to the libertarian non-aggression principle, living their life in strict accordance with the logical implications of the position they adopt. People who respect the non-aggression axiom necessarily manifest self-control, consideration for the life and property of the others, commitment to offer value for value, love of freedom and a high level of individual responsibility. By contrast, people who violate this axiom – the villains and the statists – invariably strive to control their neighbors, behave as parasites or predators, prefer forced exchanges, reject the personal responsibility (at most accepting the idea of social responsibility), and apply double moral standards. The first category of people generates a libertarian civic discourse as a spontaneous order, and the second creates a political/ statist civic discourse as a result of the human design and will to power. As a spontaneous order, the libertarian civic discourse implies free involvement, peaceful coordination, free expression, free reproduction of ideas and the power of one. Every communication performance in the frame of the libertarian civic discourse is important and has relevant results. All participants to the libertarian civic discourse are automatically members of some self-governing communities (at least members of the general libertarian community). The most important thing for these communities is to be connected to a communicational infrastructure which would make possible free involvement, free expression and the free reproduction of ideas. Inasmuch as today democracy means the tyranny of majority and participatory democracy the tyranny of majority plus the power of vested (and illegitimate) interests, only the emergence of self-governing communities by libertarian discourse offers us a little hope. It’s high time to fall in love (again) with liberty and to embrace the non-aggression principle. We don’t have to create a perfect world, but we can strive to develop our human nature. (shrink)

The prevailing trend of deeming subjective experiences causally idle obfuscates consciousness research as epiphenomenal entities cannot be studied. The most flexible way for conscious experiences to be efficacious is for them to serve as a basis for free action. Regrettably, no objective evidence testifies for this possibility. In this paper I explain that if we seek the truth we must, for purely logical reasons, irrespective of theoretical ideas and empirical data about the origin of our activity, follow the Libertarian (...) Imperative -- the demand to try always to act in accord with the belief that one exercises the incompatibilist free volition. The Libertarian Imperative urges us to try to reject any conception about our nature -- including the modern scientific picture of human beings -- which claims that we are entirely law-governed creatures. (shrink)

I argue that libertarian paternalism is in fact paternalism, or hard paternalism, rather than a form of soft paternalism. I do so on the basis of an analysis of the paternalist act according to which the paternalist act needn’t violate the will of the agent who is the target of that act and the paternalist actor need only suspect that her action may improve the welfare of that target. The paper considers and rejects interpretations of libertarian paternalism as (...) soft paternalism. I then provide an outline as to how libertarian paternalism may be reformed in light of the finding that current libertarian paternalism is hard paternalism. The proposal is to require that the enactment of libertarian paternalist policies be conditional on opinion polling indicating support for those policies from the agents they target. (shrink)

We provide a survey of significant libertarian contributions to the discussion surrounding ethics and taxation. By significant contributions, we mean those which have exerted a strong influence both on libertarianism, popular and academic, and on political and ethical discourse more broadly. Our discussion centers on the work of three prominent libertarians: Robert Nozick, Ayn Rand, and Murray Rothbard. For each, we present his or her position concerning some ethical aspect of taxation and evaluate objections to it. Section 4.2 discusses (...) Nozick’s analogy between taxation of labor from earnings and forced labor and applies his argument against the fairness principle to fairness-based justifications of such taxation. Section 4.3 focuses on Rand’s view that compulsory taxation as such is unjust and considers her proposed scheme of voluntarily-funded minimal government. We argue that she failed to convincingly argue for either the feasibility or desirability of the latter. Section 4.4 addresses Rothbard’s similar position concerning the injustice of taxation per se and defends his view against possible justifications of that institution. (shrink)

Given the growing prominence of nudge economics both within and beyond the academy, it is a timely moment to reassess the philosophical and political arguments that sit at its core, and in particular what Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein call libertarian paternalism. The first half of this paper provides a detailed account of the main features of this form of paternalism, before moving, in the second half, to a critical evaluation of the nudge agenda that questions, among other things, (...) the gendered basis of paternalistic governance; the idea of ‘nudging for good’; and the political values that underpin nudge. The final section of this paper builds on the existing work of John McMahon by asking whether libertarian paternalism should be understood as a new, hybrid form of neoliberalism, or, rather, as a post-neoliberal form of governance that has emerged out of, and flourished in, the post-crisis situation. (shrink)