Daily Archives: February 6, 2017

by Ian Tartt

You may have heard the term libertarianism, but what does it mean? Simply put, libertarianism is the philosophy that says you have the right to do anything you like as long as you dont violate anyone elses rights or cause unjust harm to another person.

This definition comes from the fact thatwe all own ourselves, a concept which cant be logically denied because any attempt to deny self-ownership would involve using the mouth, the body, and the brain; thus, to attempt to argue against self-ownership requires the use of self-ownership, making any arguments against it self-defeating. Because we own ourselves, we have the right to do with ourselves what we like. As such, libertarians oppose laws prohibiting behavior which may hurt the individual engaging in such behavior but does not hurt anybodyelse (i.e. the War on Drugs).

Now, sincewe own ourselves and must make use of the natural world to live, we also have the right to own property. We can come to own property through homesteading (mixing our labor with un-owned resources) or by trading with the legitimate owner of a piece of property. Thus, other essential components of libertarianism include respect for both property rights and the free exchange of property between individuals.

The above are examples of conclusions drawn from deontological, or natural rights, libertarianism. The other main type of libertarianism is utilitarian, or consequentialist, in nature. Rather than focusing on rights, the utilitarian libertarian opposes overreaching laws and supports free exchange because he believes it will lead to the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people. Because the conclusions reached by both deontological and utilitarian libertarians are generally the same, the two are normally happy to work with each other to advance freedom.

Unlike many other ideologies, libertarianism focuses more in individuals than on groups. One reason for this is the fact that groups are merely two or more individuals coming together. There can be individuals without groups, but there cant be groups without individuals. Also, respecting the rights of every individual would lead to the same type of equality before the law that most people want to achieve but go about by trying to help groups rather than individuals. For these reasons, libertarianism is a philosophy based on individuals.

While libertarians are mostly in agreement about the justifications for liberty (whether deontological or utilitarian), they often disagree about how to get to a free society. Some use political action (voting, fundraising for candidates, running for office, etc) while others oppose it. Many, whether they affirm or reject political action, will write articles or books and create videos in which they express their ideas. There are frequent clashes over the best strategy to attaina free society; these clashes usually result in setting back the liberty movement rather than advancing it, and thus making it that much harder to recover freedom.

Another point of disagreement, common to libertarians, is over the proper amount of government, or whether there should be a government at all. There are many different types of libertarians, each with their own thoughts on the subject. Some libertarians want the government to return to its Constitutional limits; others want to see it provide nothing more than courts, police, and national defense; and still others want to see all of the useful functions of government handled insteadby private enterprise. Regardless of their ultimate views on government, all libertarians want to see much more freedom than currently exists, and thus would benefit from working together instead of fighting over their differences.

This has been a basic introduction to libertarianism. While the philosophy is simple to explain and understand, one article is wholly insufficient to cover all the views, arguments, subjects, and people that have been part of the liberty movement over its hundreds of years in existence. For those interested in learning about some of the different types of libertarians, heres an article and a video that explain the major differences between them. Julie Borowski has a lot of funny YouTube videos that cover economics, foreign policy, current events, and numerous other subjects. A few prominent libertarian institutions include the Mises Institute, the Cato Institute, and the Reason Foundation. An article containing many links to books, TV ads, speeches, and radio shows from the amazing Harry Browne can be found here.For the bookworms, some great reads include the works of Ron Paul, Harry Browne, Ayn Rand, and Murray Rothbard. These are a few of the many great resources available for learning more about libertarianism and should be more than sufficient to give anyone interested a better understanding of the philosophy of liberty.

libertarianismLibertynatural rightsphilosophyutilitarianism

The rest is here:
What is Libertarianism? An Examination of it and Some Resources for Further Research - The Libertarian Republic

The Liberty Conservative

A Donald Trump Presidency Indicates The Necessity Of Alt-Right Libertarianism The Liberty Conservative The exit of the TPP should be seen as a welcome sign for libertarians who see the danger in entangling alliances and how the TPP would erode national sovereignty. This bizarre alliance of Neoconservatives, Obama supporters, and Beltway libertarians for ...

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A Donald Trump Presidency Indicates The Necessity Of Alt-Right Libertarianism - The Liberty Conservative

Being Libertarian (blog)

On Love and Libertarianism Being Libertarian (blog) Well, my dear libertarians, here we are at the precipice of a new chapter in American history, desperately trying to keep our eyes and minds clear while everyone else is either punching Nazis or forcing gays into electroshock therapy. And here I am ...

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On Love and Libertarianism - Being Libertarian (blog)

GuardianThe Guardian has pulled together five pieces from conservatives and libertarians who are critical of President Donald Trump's authoritarian tendencies and policies. I'm happy to be represented in the mix (for my commentary about Trump's awful, inhumane, and idiotic ban on refugees and travelers from seven countries tied to terrorism). It's a good mix of people, including some conservative critics (The New York Time's Ross Douthat, National Review's David French, Commentary's Noah Rothman) and Steve Horwitz of Bleeding Heart Libertarians along with yours truly. Here's a snippet from my piece:

That's certainly the case with Trump and his orders on sanctuary cities and on immigration and refugee policy. The laws were not just poorly phrased and timed, they clearly will not work to address the basic issues they ostensibly are meant to ameliorate. As Anthony Fisher noted here earlier today, the US embassy in Iraq has said that Trump's action is a recruitment tool for jihadists, as pro-American Middle Easterners realize they're being hung out to dry. As for keeping America safe from terrorists entering the country as refugees, the fact is the country has an incredibly safe record.

Read the whole collection of pieces here.

Because no good deed or kind word can go unpunished, I'd like to add a bit of nuance to the way the writer, Jason Wilson, encapsulates his piece. Here's the headline and subhed:

Burst your bubble: five conservative articles to read as Trump riles libertarians

Some libertarians are reacting with alarm to Donald Trump's discriminatory executive orders, his authoritarian tendencies and international sabre-rattling

I think it's accurate to call Douthat, French, and Rothman conservatives, but it's clear that neither Horwitz or I have nothing to do with conservatism.

Yet the confusion is right there in headline: The "conservative articles" are the product of Trump "ril[ing] libertarians"? Wuh?

I just don't get the slowness with which people are fully grokking that libertarianism is as distinct from conservativism as it is from progressivism or leftism. I'm not trying to be pedantic or coy here, but there's a reason why libertarians (certainly those at Reason) were intensely critical of George W. Bush's executive branch overreach and Barack Obama's too, while conservatives and liberals generally stayed silent when their guy was doing the power grabbing. And so it makes total sense that libertarians are leading the attacks on Trump's attempts to be a one-man (or at least one-branch) government. Libertarianism is nothing if not the antithesis of authoritarianism. Always has been, always will be. Be sure to check out Reason's attitude toward whoever eventually replaces Trump. The minute he (or she) starts down an authoritarian road, we'll be on the case.

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*Of Course* Libertarians Are Leading the Charge Against Trump's Authoritarianism - Reason (blog)

A standard assumption in policy analyses and political debates is that classical liberal or libertarian views represent a radical alternative to a progressive or egalitarian agenda.

In the political arena, classical liberalism and libertarianism often inform the policy agenda of centre-right and far-right parties. They underpin laissez-faire policies and reject any redistributive action, including welfare state provisions and progressive taxation. This is motivated by a fundamental belief in the value of personal autonomy and protection from (unjustified) external interference, including from the state.

It is difficult to overestimate the philosophical and political relevance of classical liberalism and libertarianism. President Trumps proposal to repeal the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), for example, is clearly inspired by a libertarian philosophical outlook whereby No person should be required to buy insurance unless he or she wants to (Healthcare Reform to Make America Great Again).

More generally, in the last four decades the political consensus, and the spectrum of policy proposals and outcomes, has significantly moved in a less interventionist, more laissez faire direction. The centrality of classical liberal and libertarian views has been such that the historical period after the end of the 1970s following the election of Margaret Thatcher in the UK and Ronald Reagan in the US has come to be known as the Neoliberal era.

Yet the very coherence of the classical liberal and libertarian view of society, and its consistency with the fundamental tenets of modern democracies, have been questioned. Thanks to the work of Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, for example, it has long been known that classical liberalism and libertarianism may contradict some fundamental democratic principles as they are inconsistent with the principle of unanimity (also known as the Pareto Principle) the idea that if everyone in society prefers a policy A to a policy B, then the former should be adopted.

In a new study, we have analysed the consistency of classical liberalism and libertarianism in the light of the challenges that modern societies face, such as environmental problems and the allocation of resources between generations. In particular, we have adopted the modern tools of economic analysis in order to provide rigorous answers to the following questions:

To be precise, we study a property formally, an axiom capturing a liberal non-interfering view of society, the harm principle, whose roots can be traced back to John Stuart Mills classic book On Liberty (1859).

The basic idea of the harm principle is that: The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others The only part of the conduct of anyone, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. (John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, Chapter I).

Formally, we translate this intuition as follows: suppose that society chooses policy A say, a flat tax over policy B say, a progressive tax. Suppose next that after this choice, but before the implementation of the policy, your welfare decreases for reasons independent of the policy. Perhaps you have been unlucky and have broken your leg. Or maybe you have been careless and your house has burnt down. Either way, nobody else but you is affected. In this scenario we argue that, in a liberal perspective, if after the decrease in welfare you still prefer policy A (flat tax) to policy B (progressive tax), then society should not switch to a progressive tax.

The principle captures the idea that an agent can veto society from switching choices after a negative change that affects only her and nobody else. A switch in societys choices against someone after she has incurred a welfare loss would represent a punishment for her which does not yield any benefits to others. This would run directly counter a liberal ethics.

The Harm Principle, as we formalise it, is intuitive and not particularly demanding. For example, it does not impose the adoption of a flat tax in our example: it says that if a flat tax was chosen, then it should still be chosen in the circumstances described. Although it does not outline the boundaries of a complete liberal theory of the state, the Harm Principle does capture some of the core liberal intuitions, and in particular a liberal view of noninterference whenever someone suffers a welfare loss and nobody else is affected. This mild and reasonable principle has some rather startling implications.

We show that, unlike in Amartya Sens seminal contribution, classical liberal views of individual autonomy and freedom as embodied in the harm principle can provide consistent foundations for collective evaluations, and are consistent with the fundamental democratic principle of unanimity.

In particular, a liberal non-interfering approach can help to adjudicate some fundamental distributive issues, including those related to intergenerational justice. This is a key policy area in the light of current debates on climate change and carbon emissions, and a natural application of the harm principle, which embodies some important aspects of the very idea of sustainability as defined in the United Nations Brundtland Report.

Yet, the harm principle has a surprising and counter-intuitive implication when coupled with the principle of unanimity and a basic notion of fairness, known as the principle of Anonymity, according to which policies should not be ad hominem and be designed independently of individual identities.

We show that, together with Anonymity and the Pareto Principle, the Harm Principle leads straight to the adoption of strongly egalitarian policies more precisely, policies promoting the equality of welfare among all members of society, as advocated by the American political philosopher John Rawls. In other words, contrary to the received view, classical liberalism and libertarianism do not provide a radical alternative to egalitarianism: rather, this analysis can be interpreted as showing that if one adopts a liberal view of non-interference (and the fundamental democratic principle of unanimity), then one is forced to embrace egalitarian redistributive policies, including progressive taxation and the welfare state.

Some important implications derive for both of the main contending approaches in political philosophy. Our result can be read as suggesting that classical liberals and libertarians need to reconsider the philosophical foundations of their political outlook: if they want to escape the egalitarian implications of our result without rejecting the fundamental democratic principle of unanimity then they must reconsider the central role traditionally attributed to John Stuart Mills Harm Principle.

Alternatively, and perhaps more provocatively, our results can be seen as shedding new light on the normative foundations of egalitarian principles and progressive politics. For a strong support for redistributive policies derives from a combination of a belief in democratic procedures and a liberal principle of non-interference and individual autonomy. So perhaps our work provides a rigorous, novel justification for the label `liberal egalitarianism usually associated with modern approaches to progressive politics.

Notes:

Michele Lombardi is a senior lecturer at the Adam Smith Business School of the University of Glasgow. An Italian citizen, he taught at the University of Warwick, University of Surrey and Maastricht University. Michele received his BSc from the University of Foggia in 2002 and also spent time as a Master student at Queen Mary University of London. He completed his Ph.D. in Economics at Queen Mary University of London in 2007. Micheles research interests include the design of mechanisms for resource allocation (fair allocation) as well as for group decision making (social choice), bounded rationality, psychology and philosophy. He is also interested in experimental works and applications in these areas. Michele has published articles in a number of economic journals such as theEconomic Journal,Economic Letters,Economic Theory,International Journal of Game Theory,Journal of Economic Theory, Journal of Mathematical Economics, Mathematical Social Sciences andSocial choice and Welfare. He has also acted as a reviewer for more than twenty different journals in economics, game theory, political science and mathematics.

Kaname Miyagishima holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Hitotsubashi University. He is an Associate Professor at the Department of Economics, Aoyama Gakuin University. His research interests include topics of axiomatic approach to fair resource allocations and social evaluation criteria. He has published articles in peer-reviewed academic journals such as the Economic Journal, Social Choice and Welfare, Mathematical Social Sciences, and Review of Economic Design.

Roberto Veneziani holds a Ph.D. in Economics from LSE. He is Reader in Economics at the School of Economics and Finance, Queen Mary University of London. His research interests include topics of liberal principles of distributive justice, axiomatic exploitation theory, macrodynamic models of growth and distribution, egalitarian principles, distribution of resources between generations, sustainable development, and normative principles in economics. He is also interested in the history of economic thought and in political economy from a mathematical perspective. He has published articles in a number of outlets in economics, political scienceand philosophy. He has refereed for more than thirty different journals in economics, political science and philosophy. He is a co-founder of the Analytical Economy Workshop, which has met annually since 2007, and an Editor of Metroeconomica, the Journal of Economic Surveys, and the Review of Social Economy.

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The contradiction of classical liberalism and libertarianism - USAPP American Politics and Policy (blog)