The present paper investigates the question of whether right-libertarians must accept easements by necessity. Since easements by necessity limit the property rights of the owner of the servient tenement, they apparently conflict with the libertarian homestead principle, according to which the person who first mixes his labor with the unowned land acquires absolute ownership thereof. As we demonstrate in the paper, however, the homestead principle understood in such an absolutist way generates contradictions within the set of rights distributed (...) on its basis. In order to avoid such contradictions, easements by necessity must be incorporated into the libertarian theory of property rights and the homestead principle must be truncated accordingly. (shrink)

: 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 ….

In Globalization and Global Justice, Nicole Hassoun presents a new andfundamental challenge to libertarian political thought. Her LegitimacyArgument tries to show that natural rights libertarians are committed bytheir own principles to a requirement that their states recognize and meetthe positive welfare rights of certain merely potentially autonomous persons.Unfortunately, this argument suffers from two flaws. Hassoun needs to show,but has not shown, that the libertarian state would have to infringe any ofthe negative rights of the merely potentially autonomous in (...) such a way asto require consent from them. Moreover, the libertarians could arrange theirinstitutions, justifiably by their own lights, so as to expel all indigent, merelypotentially autonomous persons from their territory. This second solution isintuitively unpalatable, but may be no more morally problematic than thebasic natural rights libertarian view itself. (shrink)

Non-consequentialist libertarianism usually revolves around the claim that there are only “negative,” not “positive,” rights. Libertarian nega- tive-rights theories are so patently problematic, though, that it seems that there is a more fundamental notion at work. Some libertarians think this basic idea is freedom or liberty; others, that it is self-ownership. Neither approach is satis- factory.

In 1970 Amartya Sen exposed an apparent antinomy that has come to be known as the Paradox of the Paretian Libertarian. Sen introduced his paradox by establishing a simple but startling theorem. Roughly put, what he proved was that if a mechanism for selecting social choice functions satisfies two standard adequacy conditions, there are possible situations in which it will violate either the very weak libertarian precept that every individual has at least some rights or the seemingly innocuous (...) Paretian principle that an option should be judged unacceptable if there is an available alternative that everyone prefers to it. Many economists and philosophers have proposed solutions to Sen's problem, but there is no general consensus on what solution is correct. In the present paper I argue that Sen's original theorem fails to establish the existence of any conflict between libertarianism and Paretianism. Furthermore, I contend that Sen has misinterpreted certain other theorems which he has used to defend the existence of a paradoxical conflict between these two doctrines. In general, I try to show that whenever Sen posits a Paretian-libertarian conflict to explain an apparently troubling result in social choice theory, the difficulty can be better dealt with either by claiming that the theorem in question imposes overly strong background constraints on the form of social choice functions or by claiming that it relies on an unacceptable construal of individual rights. (shrink)

Thomas Hurka derives rights to punish from what I will term the Libertarian Rights Principle, which is “that there is really only one natural right, namely the equal right of all persons to the most extensive liberty compatible with a like liberty for other persons, and that all other natural rights are species or instances of the right to liberty.” These rights to punish, he says, extend only to punishing violators of rights, never to “punishing” the (...) innocent; extend only to punishing for violations pursuant to intentions publicly announced prior to these violations; are subject to the “upper limit qualification” that a permissible punishment for the violation of a right cannot be an act that would violate a more important right ; and are subject to the “minimum necessary qualification” that a punishment p for violating a right r is not permissible if a punishment p' that would, were it permitted, violate a less important right than would p, would protect r as effectively as would p. (shrink)

The author addresses Robert Nozick's claim that: “The particular rights over things fill the space of rights, leaving no room for general rights to be in a certain material condition.” Hence Nozick insists that rights are violated if citizens are compelled to contribute to others' welfare, however urgent their needs may be. The author argues that it is characteristic of libertarian theories that they invoke the moral sanctity of private property against welfarist or egalitarian conceptions of social justice. Nozick's (...) version of the libertarian critique has three conceptual pillars–“right,”“thing” and “space.” On that basis Nozick claims that talk of welfare “rights” can be condemned on the plane of rights. This is true, Nozick maintains, even of “the right to life.” The author contends that this argument fails. It equivocates over the idea of “rights”; and it misconceives crucial features of property. Nozick deploys exclusive “domain rights,” whilst attacking “important‐interest rights.” His historical‐entitlement theory fails as a justification of private property. The author argues that, so far as material objects are concerned, private property institutions depend upon trespassory rules which do not impose morally binding obligations unless basic needs are catered for. Furthermore, private property institutions also comprise monetary resources to which the spatial metaphor of exclusive rights does not apply. Holdings vested in any particular person at any particular time are stamped, morally, with a mix of contestable and mutable property‐specific justice reasons. Hence it is fallacious to suppose that ownership rights together exhaust all normative space over “things.”The major objection to speaking of everyone's having a right to various things such as equality of opportunity, life, and so on, and enforcing this right, is that these “rights” require a substructure of things and materials and actions; and other people may have rights and entitlements over these. [≡] The particular rights over things fill the space of rights, leaving no room for general rights to be in a certain material condition. (Nozick 1974, 238). (shrink)

Rights-oriented libertarian theory asserts the existence of robust individual rights - including robust rights of property. If these property rights are absolute, then it seems that all taxation is theft. However, it also seems that, if an individual is (faultlessly) in dire straits, it is permissible for him to seize or trespass in order to escape from those straits. It does seem that in this sense property rights are non-absolute. This essay examines what contribution this non-absoluteness of rights makes (...) to the justification of taxation for the sake of rescuing individuals from their dire straits. The essay investigates how dire an individual's circumstances have to be for him to have a dispensation from the normal obligation to respect property. It distinguishes among different dispensations that individuals in dire enough circumstances may have. And it emphasizes how precarious is the path from the premise that sometimes individuals possess one or another of these dispensations to the conclusion that taxation to rescue people from dire straits is justified. Footnotesa I thank Ellen Paul, the other contributors to this volume, and Mary Sirridge for their helpful comments. (shrink)

This essay questions the self-sufficiency of abstract, non-consequentialist, principles as a defence of a libertarian regime. The argument focuses on the difficulties involved in attempts to defend the priority of negative rights if an attractive conception of freedom and an agent-relative view about our reasons to respect rights are to be upheld. The paper closes by suggesting how libertarianism could gain support from various, and perhaps mutually irreducible and even conflicting, considerations in a wide consequentialist system.

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)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Prerogatives, Rationales, and Restrictions The Individualist Prerogative and Self‐Ownership The Individualist Prerogative and the Right to the Practice of Private Property A Self‐Ownership Proviso Conclusion Notes.

right. Unlike incoherent positive rights , such as the “right” to education or health care, the animal right is, at bottom, a right to be left alone . It does not call for government to tax us in order to provide animals with food, shelter, and veterinary care. It only requires us to stop killing them and making them suffer. I can think of no other issue where the libertarian is arguing for a positive (...) class='Hi'>right—his right to make animals submit to any use he sees—and the other side is arguing for a negative right! (shrink)

The traditional Lockean justification of property rights has been argued to be no longer valid in a world in which much wealth does not derive from acquisitions of natural resources, and in which much property, such as money, is intangible. This means that libertarians need to reconsider whether and why property rights are justified for objects that fall outside of the scope of the Lockean justification. This paper gives a justification of property rights in relation to modern money, which uses (...) the self-ownership principle as its central premise. Since modern money is a form of credit, I start with a justification of credit property rights. I then consider both money under gold convertibility and present-day fiat systems, showing that the justification of credit property rights remains valid under these conditions. (shrink)

Maloberti, in “Why Libertarians Should Accept Positive Rights” argues that, as normally presented, libertarianism entails anarchism. He argues that libertarians should, therefore, accept a limited form of positive rights, which will allow for the creation of a libertarian government. In this paper, it is argued that the entailment of anarchism is not a problem for libertarianism, and that the form of positive rights endorsed by Maloberti is unfounded, ill-defined, and inconsistent with libertarian notions of individual freedom. It is (...) further argued that Maloberti’s positive rights, as defined in his paper, cannot withstand the analysis prompted by Austrian value theory. (shrink)

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 his “Freedom, Self‐Ownership, and Libertarian Philosophical Diaspora, “Justin Weinberg attempts to show, by using arguments from G.A. Cohen, that philosophical defenses of libertarian natural rights are doomed to failure, because they are either circular (by basing libertarianism on the value of “freedom") or invalid (by basing libertarianism on a self‐ownership premise that actually leads to some form of egalitarianism). In fact, however, a natural‐rights libertarianism based on the self‐ownership premise is not inconsistent if it holds that the (...) earth is initially unowned, rather than collectively owned by all humanity. Under this thesis, the self‐ownership assumption may lead to libertarianism, though other hurdles (such as social‐contract theory) stand in the way. Finally, ordinary usage of the term ‘freedom” permits its application as a moralized concept to a political philosophy that has been demonstrated true. (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)

Imagine two friends. Anna inherits nothing and works for every penny she has, while Mary inherits millions. How should a world that respects individual autonomy and private property rights treat Anna’s earnings and Mary’s inheritance? Should it tax them the same, or tax one more heavily than the other? If the latter, which one? The conventional wisdom holds that although some “right” libertarian theories justify taxing income, none justify taxing inheritances. Such taxes are “expropriations” and “an especially cruel (...) injury” that “run[] roughshod over [a] deceased’s interest in the ends his property will serve.” This essay explores the standard libertarian objections to taxing gifts and bequests and argues that libertarians overstate their case when distinguishing the taxation of gratuitous transfers from other types of taxation. At minimum, the benefit theory of taxation embraced by many minimal statists and classical liberals mandates that the receipt of gifts and bequests should be taxed to the recipient. Moreover, the goals of curbing inherited political power and preventing wealthy families from insulating their members from market competition provide two additional explanations for why taxing inheritances to recipients is compatible with classical liberal values. (shrink)

Aeon Skoble and other libertarians fail to show that libertarianism supports anarchism. The focus on whether persons would rationally consent to the state misses the issue. Instead, the truth of anarchism depends on whether all or most persons actually have consented to the state. Tacit consent to the acquisition of property rights in previously unowned things provides us with a model as to how valid consent might occur. However, whether persons actually have done so is an empirical issue.

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)

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)

Ecosystem services are the benefits people obtain from ecosystems. Many of these services are provided outside the borders of the land where they are produced. This article investigates who is entitled to these non-excludable ecosystem services from a libertarian perspective. Taking a right-libertarian perspective, it is concluded that the beneficiaries generally hold the right to use non-excludable ecosystem services and the right to landowners not converting ecosystems. Landowners are only at liberty to convert ecosystems if (...) they appropriated their land before any beneficiary used the services and converted the ecosystems before or shortly after the beneficiaries started using the services. This means that the beneficiaries generally hold the right to compensation payments by the landowners in the event of service losses, instead of the landowners holding the right to payments for ecosystem services by the beneficiaries. Taking a left-libertarian perspective, it is concluded that landowners ought to pay for the non-excludable ecosystem services lost as a result of their activities as well as beneficiaries paying for the non-excludable ecosystem services they use. These payments are not made mutually, however, but to a central authority that distributes the returns to the community on an equal per capita basis. (shrink)

Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler's proposal that social and legal institutions should steer individuals toward some options and away from others-a stance they dub "libertarian paternalism"-has provoked much high-level discussion in both academic and policy settings. Sunstein and Thaler believe that steering, or "nudging," individuals is easier to justify than the bans or mandates that traditional paternalism involves. -/- This Article considers the connection between libertarian paternalism and the regulation of reproductive choice. I first discuss the use of (...) nudges to discourage women from exercising their right to choose an abortion, or from becoming or remaining pregnant. I then argue that reproductive choice cases illustrate the limitations of libertarian paternalism. Where choices are politicized or intimate, as reproductive choices often are, nudges become not much easier to justify than traditional mandates or prohibitions. Even beyond the context of reproductive choice, it is not obvious how much easier nudges are to justify than bans or mandates. -/- Part I of this Article briefly introduces Sunstein and Thaler's libertarian paternalism. Part II then turns to the context of reproductive choice. Part II.A reviews restrictions on the right to choose an abortion-particularly post-Casey regulations such as waiting periods, requirements that women receive certain types of information, and requirements that women undergo ultrasound-that pitch themselves as steering choice without entirely closing off the right to choose an abortion. This distinction between nudges and prohibitions echoes Sunstein and Thaler's proposals, but works to subordinate women's choices to the judgment of (often male) experts and administrators-hence my term "libertarian patriarchalism." Part II.B reviews efforts to nudge women-particularly teenagers, HIV-positive women, and others thought to be unsuitable mothers-to avoid pregnancy. -/- Part III considers the normative implications of nudging reproductive decisions. In Part III.A, I argue that the political nature of reproductive choices presents a problem for nudges. I do so by considering a parallel with voting rights. Empirical research shows that voters are more likely to choose the candidate listed first on the ballot. Yet we do not empower the administrator in charge of ballot design to choose a default rule that nudges individuals toward the candidate he sincerely believes would promote choosers' welfare. Given the political nature of reproductive choices, a policymaker's attempting to nudge reproductive decisionmaking in the direction he prefers-or indeed in any direction-fails to show adequate respect for the chooser's agency. In Part III.B, I offer an argument that targets the use of nudges in the context of pregnancy. Finally, in Part III.C, I argue that nudges do not merely add choices to an existing menu, but change the substantive choices available to individuals and thereby impose more-than-trivial costs on them. I conclude by exploring the implications of my arguments for nudges more generally. (shrink)

This chapter shows how libertarianism can be seen to be a moral theory that explains exceptions to earlier moral norms and principles and the chapter shows how various exceptions to libertarian principles, including necessity and unconscionability exceptions, can be seen to lead beyond libertarianism to contractarian theories of morality and justice. The chapteer raises a general problem for contractarian theories and shows how the problem applies to the theories of Rawls and Habermas. This sets the stage for the book’s (...) own meta-level consequentialist explanation of the exceptions in the next chapter. (shrink)

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)

Many libertarians ground their theory of justice in a non-aggression principle. The NAP is often the basis for the libertarian condemnation of state action – that it is necessarily aggressive and therefore unjust. This approach is often criticised insofar as it defines aggression, in part, as the violation of legitimate property rights, and is therefore parasitical upon a prior – and unjustified – theory of property. While it is true that libertarians who defend the NAP sometimes fail to give (...) a satisfactory account of its relationship to libertarian property rights, such an account is in fact available. A commitment to property rights and to non-aggression can both be grounded in a commitment to non-interference. Such a principle, then, brings together the NAP and the theory of property it is parasitical upon, thus saving the unity and austerity of the overall approach. (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 agreed to come here today to speak on some such subject as "The Libertarian as Conservative." To me this is so obvious that I am hard put to find something to say to people who still think libertarianism has something to do with liberty. A libertarian is just a Republican who takes drugs. I'd have preferred a more controversial topic like "The Myth of the Penile Orgasm." But since my attendance here is subsidized by the esteemed distributor (...) of a veritable reference library on mayhem and dirty tricks , I can't just take the conch and go rogue. I will indeed mutilate the sacred cow which is libertarianism, as ordered, but I'll administer a few hard lefts to the right in my own way. And I don't mean the easy way. I could just point to the laissez faire Trilateralism of the Libertarian Party, then leave and go look for a party. It doesn't take long to say that if you fight fire with fire, you'll get burned. (shrink)

In the so-called “international credit market crisis,” which started in the second half of 2007 in the US subprime mortgage market, financial derivatives, most notably credit default swaps (CDS), have been publically blamed for having caused, or at least aggravated, the economic and monetary debacle. However, sound economic [...].

This essay explains various significant errors, imprecisions, and omissions concerning libertarianism in Long 2013. The “right not to be aggressed against” is not, as such, the libertarian right because the ‘right to liberty’ must be that right (although not being aggressed against can charitably be interpreted as equivalent). There are non-libertarian rights, but they don’t override the right to liberty. Unsupported assumptions are inevitable because justifications are impossible. Rights should not be “defined” but, (...) rather, morally and metaphysically theorised—with criticism permanently invited. Moral and legal permissibility need to be clearly distinguished. The conceptions of “aggression” and “force” are normative and confused. It is possible to advocate the right to liberty on no grounds whatsoever and also to conjecture that liberty (deontologically) and welfare (consequentially) are systematically compatible in practice for theoretical and causal reasons. The rejection of positive rights is “privileging” and not “conceptual”. Libertarian property needs to be derived from an explicit, non-normative, theory of libertarian liberty. Long 2013’s overall account is “mysterious” and “one-sided”. (shrink)

Loi recently proposed a libertarian right to direct to consumer genetic testing — independent of autonomy or utility—reflecting Cohen’s work on self-ownership and Hohfeld’s model of jural relations. Cohen’s model of libertarianism dealt principally with self-ownership of the physical body. Although Loi adequately accounts for the physical properties of DNA, DNA is also an informational substrate, highly conserved within families. Information about the genome of relatives of the person undergoing testing may be extrapolated without requiring direct engagement with (...) their personal physical copy of the genome, triggering rights and interests of relatives that may differ from the rights and interests of others, that is, individual consumers, testing providers and regulators. Loi argued that regulatory interference with exercise of the right required justification, whereas prima facie exercise of the right did not. Justification of regulatory interference could include ‘conflict with other people’s rights’, ‘aggressive’ use of the genome and ‘harming others’. Harms potentially experienced by relatives as a result of the individual’s exercise of a right to test include breach of genetic privacy, violation of their right to determine when, and if, they undertake genetic testing and discrimination. Such harms may justify regulatory intervention, in the event they are recognised; motives driving ‘aggressive’ use of the genome may also be relevant. Each of the above criteria requires clarification, as potential redundancies and tensions exist between them, with different implications affecting different groups of rights holders. (shrink)

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)

Libertarians believe certain things about rights and responsibilities, about when one person is to be held responsible for invading the rights of another. Libertarians also believe certain things about consent, about when someone should be held to a contract he has entered into. What they don't realize is that the first set of beliefs doesn't mix well with the second set of beliefs—that their intuitions about rights and responsibilities quite simply don't square with their intuitions about consent. Or so I (...) shall be trying to show in this essay. (shrink)

Justice and Libertarianism The term ‘justice’ is commonly used in several different ways. Sometimes it designates the moral permissibility of political structures (such as legal systems). Sometimes it designates moral fairness (as opposed to efficiency or other considerations that are relevant to moral permissibility). Sometimes it designates legitimacy in the sense of it being morally impermissible for others to interfere forcibly with the act or omission (e.g., my failing to go to dinner with my mother may be wrong but nonetheless (...) legitimate). Finally, sometimes it designates what we owe each other in the sense of respecting everyone’s rights. Of course, these notions are closely related. What we owe each other may, but need not, be partly based on issues of fairness. Legitimacy and permissibility of political structures are largely, but perhaps not entirely, determined by what rights of non-interference individuals have. Nonetheless, these are distinct notions and we shall focus only on what we owe each other. Justice as what we owe each other is not concerned with impersonal duties (duties owed to no one, i.e., that do not correspond to anyone’s rights). If there are impersonal duties, then something can be just but nonetheless morally impermissible. For brevity, we shall often write of actions being permissible or agents having a moral liberty, but this should always be understood in the interpersonal sense of violating no one’s rights. Libertarianism is sometimes advocated as a derivative set of rules (e.g., derived from rule utilitarian or contractarian doctrines). Here, however, we reserve the term for the natural rights doctrine that agents initially fully own themselves. Agents are full self-owners just in case they own themselves in precisely the same way that they can fully own inanimate objects. Stated slightly differently, full self-owners own themselves in the same way that a full chattel-slaveowner owns a slave. Throughout, we are concerned with moral ownership and not legal ownership.. (shrink)

This book explores how traditional theories of economic justice, both from the libertarian right and the egalitarian left, have failed to appreciate the objection against exploitative behavior that would be possible through the exercise of property rights. This failure also underlies the recent plea for a so-called unconditional basic income.

The case for reparations for grievous acts of historical injustice has been getting a lot of attention lately. But I aim to broaden the discussion in two ways. First, I am not only going to talk about reparations as a means of rectifying the injuries inflicted by slavery and the genocide of indigenous peoples, the theft of their land, and the ongoing ripple effects of these historic wrongs. I am also going to talk about reparations for a wider variety of (...) historical injustices, including, most importantly, the long-term economic oppression of women, and the historical exploitation of labor. Second, I am not going to base my argument on the principle of equality, as most people currently do, but on the principle of liberty, as it is understood by libertarians on both the right and the left, at least as long as they believe what they say they believe. Not because I think that egalitarian demands for reparations are wrong. Rather, my point is that the principle of liberty, which is often raised as a defense to claims based on the principle of equality, actually leads to exactly the same place. Finally, I will discuss one possible form of reparations that has largely been ignored, but which has a special connection to libertarian principles, and I will show how it can provide some real relief without provoking the opposition that society-wide redistributive remedies usually face. (shrink)