Category Archives: Libertarianism

Recently somebody posted this on FB:

It sparked a fascinating conversation:

Melody: Jesus was speaking to the individual, NOT the government. If your so concerned about refugees, then YOU need to get off your butt and go help them. Leave the safty of your country and go help them. Im tired of people using Jesus to justify more government control.

Dan: You are incorrect and B16 in his encyclical Caritas in Veritate more than denounces you. Then prior to that, there is PP and Mater et Magistra.

You need to learn your faith.

Melody: I know my Faith, I also know that The Catholic Faith (plus others) teaches that it is the individual NOT the government who is responsible for caring for humanity.

Mary: Melody we dont need to do a thing about abortion. Its an individual choice. Is this what you are saying?

Liz: I came to the same conclusion, Mary.

This is like a little microcosm of the American Church. Melody has absorbed the strange libertarian lie that that state is somehow free to ignore the natural law and do Whatever because the natural law applies only to individuals. She, of course, is thinking only of the gospel commands about care for the least of these. And she relies on the lie that things like food, shelter, and elementary demands of basic justice to human beings are charity. She then proceeds to the lie that since these things are charity they are no business of the state.

But in fact, things like food, shelter, and health care are not charity. They are due human beings in justice and ensuring justice is precisely the task of the state. Therefore it is not either/or, but both/and. We are to personally care for the least of these. We are also to see to it that the state does too.

This is ironically illustrated by Mary, who takes Melody at her word and takes it to the conclusion the anti-abortion-but-not-prolife right ever seems to realize by pointing out that if the state is not supposed to help protect the human right of the least of these, then it follows that the whole point of the prolife struggle to get the state to stop its laissez faire approach to abortion is without foundation.

The great irony here is that Liz, a pro-choice atheist who has been rather shocked to discover she has a lot in common with a bunch of devout, Mass-going Catholics with strong empathy for the Catholic social justice tradition finds herself suddenly in bed with Melody, a libertarian, anti-abortion-but-not-prolife Catholic who mouths all the right wing excuses for ignoring the Church on everything but abortion.

I wrote them both and told them I hope they both feel exquisitely uncomfortable being in bed with one another. Liz, at any rate, has enough of a sense of humor to appreciate the irony of her predicament. Melody I dont know and am not sure if she even realizes that she just made the libertarian case for every pro-choice person on planet Earth. But Liz, I think, must realize that her pro-choice philosophy undergirds the libertarian case for the selfishness Melody is advocatinga selfishness Liz loathes.

The way out of their strange bedfellows dilemma is, of course, embrace of the complete and consistent Catholic ethic of life and rejection of the libertarianism they each selectively embrace.

No idea what will happen next.

Continued here:
Libertarians and Pro-Choice Advocates: Peas in a Pod - Patheos (blog)

February 10, 2017 Filed under Op/Ed, Opinions

Back in October, I wrote an editorial urging the Loyola community to check out Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson. The successful entrepreneur turned two-term governor of New Mexico garnered nearly 10 percent of the vote in his home state and 3.3 percent nationally, the most a third party presidential candidate has received since independent Ross Perot 20 years earlier.

OK, Johnson still didnt win and never had a chancewhats your point, Ricardo?

Im so glad you asked.

In 2008, the Libertarian candidate got 523,715 votes or 0.40 percent of the popular vote. In 2012, Gary Johnsons first run for the presidency saw 1,275,971 votes or one percent of the popular vote. And this past election cycle, 4,488,931 American voters thought a Libertarian was a better choice than the Democrat under F.B.I. investigation and the Republican who was a reality TV star Cheeto.

One of the main reasons Johnson didnt have a fair chance was because he, along with Green Party candidate Jill Stein, was excluded from the nationally televised presidential debates. The official reason is that he and Stein didnt have the polling numbers to be admitted.

But the bar gets raised higher and higher. Third party candidates are virtually always excluded.

The debate commission calls itself non-partisan and yet the way it operates benefits the two major parties to the detriment of the American people who deserve to hear another voiceone that might actually reflect what they think and feel.

Many voters are afraid to vote for a third party candidate because of whats called the spoiler effect. They fear that by voting for a less popular candidate who actually represents a majority of their views, they are taking away votes from a more popular candidate who doesnt represent a lot of what they want but is better than another major party candidate who is the polar opposite.

Ralph Nader, who ran as a Green in 2000, is often criticized as stealing the election from Al Gore and enabling George H.W. Bush to win, despite evidence to the contrary.

The takeaway message: research the philosophy of libertarianism, see if you agree and when youre ready to fight the two-party system and promote policies of freedom, register to vote as a Libertarian.

Our national platform states that Libertarians stand for the political freedom of everyone, including our ideological opponents.

For more information, visit the College Libertarians at Loyola University New Orleans Facebook page.

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In my opinion: Ditch the two major parties register Libertarian - Maroon

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Reagans answer was to send in the National Guard, armed with buckshot and batons. Contrast this with Berkeleys more recent approach, which was to give professor and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich a platform to spew a hysterical conspiracy theory in which Breitbart and I hired domestic terrorists to beat upmy own fans and the residents of Berkeley and smash up Bank of America ATMs, Starbucks and trashcans.

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But back to Reagan.He then gave a news conference, where, in Daddyesque fashion, he slapped down members of the media for encouraging the lawlessness.

The good news for President Trump and others interested in maintaining law and order in the face of leftist anarchy is that police crowd-control has advanced since the 1960s, and thereis no need to send in the National Guard with shotguns, as Reagan did, which ended up killing one student. In the twenty-first century, pepper spray and foam cannons can accomplish the same job without fatalities.

And theres even better news. Theres a way to defeat protests without buckshot, foam cannons,orpepper spray. A way to beat them before they even begin. Its simple: defund UC Berkeley, and any other campus that encourages the mad, radical politics that is now causing violence on Americas streets on a daily basis.

The Department of Education largely controls the purse-strings of American colleges. At UC Berkeley last year, federal funding came to $370 million more than half the universitys budget.Colleges fear the withdrawal of federal funds so much that when the Obama administration merely hinted at doing so in 2011 over the largely fabricated campus rape epidemic, it led to one of the greatest outbreaks of panic and miscarriages of justice in American history, as colleges set up kangaroo courts which frequently expelled students for sexual assault based on threadbare evidence.

The left are well aware of the existential threat they face. Thats why its Betsy DeVos and not, say, Jeff Sessions who is facing the toughest confirmation hearing. Jeff Sessions is important, of course, andwill no doubt do extraordinary work in foiling the mad globalist dream of open borders, but its what Trump might do in education that really strikes terror into the hearts of the left.

Higher education is their ideological breeding ground; the mad leftist displays that you see in Hollywood and Silicon Valley start on college campuses. Sessions is a problem for the left on a number of fronts, notably law and order and immigration. But if DeVos is bold and aggressive enough, she could tear out the beating heart of leftist power college ideological indoctrination. If colleges were effectively de-radicalized by DeVos, the left would take generations to recover.

At this point, some libertarians like the American partys cretinous chairman will be clutching their pearls at the thought of using the federal government to influence colleges. Once again (and this is why the right and why libertarians so often lose) they fail to grasp the cultural libertarian argument libertarian ideals will come to nothing in a culture that doesnt respect liberty.

This is what the do what you want, just leave me in peace to mine bitcoin and smoke weed faction of libertarianism I.e., most libertarians dont understand. A similar argument obtains when talking about protecting the first amendment from sources of hostility to free speech, such as Islam, feminism and most of the media.

And where are cultural values incubated? Colleges, of course! As long as campuses are churning out students who hate free speech and free markets, what hope is there for libertarian policy priorities? If libertarians want to live in a free society, theyd better get ready to tread on their opponents.

At my UC Berkeley show last week, anti-fascistsset college property on fire, smashed up bank windows and ATMs,jumped on peoples cars, andlooted downtown stores, including the much-beloved liberal Starbucks.

They alsoassaulted dozens of my fans,who were falsely accused of being Nazis.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that left-wing rioterscaused around $600,000 in damages that night, with the riot starting at the college before spreadingto downtown Berkeley. $600,000. Thats an awful lot of money for a communist tantrum.

The day after,my tour bus was tracked and my hotel location was leaked online. Left-wing Berkeley activists took out the remainder of their frustration on the bus, which was vandalized with spray paint.

Following the chaos,only one suspect was arrested, and celebrities, the mainstream media, the Mayor of Berkeley, and UC Berkeley administrators blamed the damage on me a homosexual conservative who was unable to deliver a speech becausestudents, brainwashed by their Marxist professors, decided to set their campus on fire.

For decades, the university campus has been a hotbed of dogma, brainwashing generation after generation in the most fashionable and foolhardy leftist ideas of the day. From professors offering extra credit to attend anti-Trump rallies to courses on The Problem of Whiteness, leftists on campus are teaching younger generations how to hate. Is it any wonder that they then go around smashing windows and punching people in the face? And if that isnt bad enough, these thugs are absolutely terrible at identifying their ideological enemies according to the account of Malini Ramaiyer in the New York Times, one person called a Nazi and assaulted was a Syrian Muslim student. Oops! Who could have predicted training young people to attack instead of argue could turn out badly?

And by the way, if youre a NYT or Buzzfeed or CNN journalist reading this, youre to blame too, for creating an environment in which its okay to call conservatives Nazis and white supremacists. What did you think was going to happen?

The current atmosphere is also terrible for college students themselves. Theyre paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to attend what are effectively progressive madrasas, turning them into little more than brainwashed street fighters. Today, a gender studies graduate seems more likely to end up in jail for destruction of property than in a stable job. Perhaps that is part of the plan striking fear into the patriarchy one load of prison laundry at a time.

It can end, and it must end, or America will face eight years of violence on its streets, and who knows what state the country will be in after that? all because public universities refuse to honor their first amendment responsibilities.

It starts with Berkeley. President Daddy, tear down their funding.

DANGEROUS is available to pre-order now via Amazon, in hardcover and Kindle editions. And yes, MILO is reading the audiobook version himself!

FollowMilo Yiannopoulos (@Nero)on Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat. Hear him every FridayonThe Milo Yiannopoulos Show. Write to Milo atmilo@breitbart.com.

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MILO: President Trump, Here's Why You Must Cut Federal Funding From UC Berkeley - Breitbart News

Kansas City Star

Sharon DuBois: Libertarians offer a choice of freedom Kansas City Star Frederic Bastiat, whose political and economic ideas strongly influenced libertarianism, once wrote, Every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. Indeed, modern-day ...

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Sharon DuBois: Libertarians offer a choice of freedom - Kansas City Star

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

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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)

Election day sees a great many Americans behaving immorally, and Im not talking about the ones who refuse to vote. Its a day when millions head to the polls to flip a switch for a vanishingly small chance to force their preferences, via violence, upon everyone else.

Maybe you think thats okay. Maybe you believe youre morally justified in exercising the awesome might of government to make neighbors and strangers teach their children in ways you prefer or eat foods you happen to like or do business only with people you approve of. Maybe, in the end, youre right. But on election day especially, we should take a moment to consider the moral questions raised by exercising that right to vote.

Start by noting that the right to vote really means two things. Only one of them can legitimately be labeled a right. First, theres the right to participate in decisions about what the state will do to you. This stems from our basic dignity and from the autonomy that dignity demands. You have a right to control your own life and make your own decisions, provided those decisions dont entail violating the rights of other people. When you vote, youre articulating, to however small a degree, this personal autonomy. If youre going to be ruled, you at the very least have a right to some say in how youre ruled.

But theres another side to voting, one thats considerably less virtuous. When we vote, we arent just deciding for ourselves. Were attempting to decide for others, too. Were not just expressing a preference (I prefer traditional taxis to ride sharing services.), but also expressing a desire to see that preference made, through the application of violence or the threat of violence, the law of the land. Were saying our opinions are so informed, correct, and important that were willing to have men with guns make our fellow Americans obey them, even if our fellow Americans also believe their own opinions are informed, correct, and important.

Imagine you and some friends corner an old man on the street with the intent to take his money. Youve got an opinion about whats best for that money, and it isnt staying in that guys wallet. But beyond that shared interest in taking his cash, you cant settle on what youll use it for. So you put it to a vote. To be nice, you let him participate. You can vote what well use the money for, you tell him, and if you want to, you can even vote to keep it. Still, there are ten of you and one of him, and you all want to take the money.

In this case, clearly we wouldnt applaud your participation in the vote, because no matter what you and your friends decide to do with the mans money, youll commit a moral wrong. Whatever your opinion of its best use, its not your money to begin with. Nor would we view the harm as ameliorated by the victims participation in the vote. What choice did he have? At best, hell find enough allies that he gets to keep the contents of his wallet, which is exactly where hed be if you and your friends had exercised even the most minimal virtue.

The obvious objection here is to say, But the states not like that! Its authority is legitimate, and the will of the majority, exercised through the institutions of the state, creates its own moral justification.

Anarchists, of course, reject this argument, because they reject the state entirely. Typically, they offer two reasons. First, theres a utilitarian belief that a society without a state would be betterhappier, freer, wealthier, more equalthan one where some rule and others are ruled. Second, theres a moral claim that the necessary condition for a state to exist, namely that certain people get to tell other people what to do and get to enforce their commands via violence, is a moral wrong without justification.

The first we can set aside because the simple fact is no one knows. There are no existing anarchist societies, history records only a few, and the world and its technology are sufficiently different from the past that we cant be certain how well historical examples apply today or in the future. But the second, moral objection to the states legitimacy is a good deal stronger than most give it credit for. Ive written about this problem of political obligation at length. I wont repeat the arguments here. Its a rich literature, and one well worth exploring. The upshot, though, is that among scholarsoverwhelmingly non-libertarianswho have given the matter a great deal of thought, the majority see every existing state, and likely every possible state, as morally unjustifed. There may be reasons to go ahead with creating or maintaining a state in the face of that, but at best the state will be a helpful moral wrong.

Even among those philosophers who deny this philosophical anarchist conclusion, the dominant conclusion is that the states legitimate authority is, at most, extremely limited. If the anarchists are wrong about the moral impermissibility of any state, theyre right about the moral impermissibility of very nearly everything done by, for example, the government we have today in the United States.

Which brings us back to election day. Almost every politician with his or her name on the ballotand certainly every politician with much of a chance of winning office at the state or national levelwill use that power to engage in political acts via the state that clearly lack moral legitimacy. Thats because he or she will use government to enforce preferences instead of limiting the state to that narrow role theres even a chance of justifying morally. What about voting defensively, like the old man hoping to keep his money? Except for those who genuinely embrace the radically limited government that has a prayer of passing moral muster, every politician represents a bundle of policies. Some are the political equivelant of Lets not take his money, but most arent. Most are rights-violating and immoral. Even by voting defensively, you endorse innumerable wicked aggressions against your fellow men.

If you cast a vote today, theres a pretty high chance that in morally significant ways youre acting just like those friends mugging the old man. You may think there are good reasons for doing this, that a world where you vote for violations of basic human dignity and autonomy will be more livablehappier, freer, wealthier, more equalthan one where you dont. But youre still party to countless immoralities. Youre still expressing approval as politicians fail to live up to basic moral standardsand as they do so in your name.

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Voting as a Moral Wrong | Libertarianism.org