DISQUS

The second paragraph assumes for the sake of argument that there are rights.

I'm an enthusiast for apathy, I think we rarely get to hear its case made.

When I hear people talk about reaching for impossible dreams, I reach for my gun. But I reach for my gun for any damn reason.

Reza Aslan tore into Eli Lake in their recent diavlog when the latter pooh-poohed Iran's previous elections. I have earlier declared Aslan a putz. However, I loathe Lake just a bit less than Jamie Kirchick. I feel so conflicted!

Rights talk, unless strictly positive/descriptive, is all nonsense. Otherwise it just mostly is. I recommend reading (surprise, surprise) The Myth of Natural Rights.

States are organizations and may, like corporations (which in a certain sense, they are) be considered by way of "legal fictions" to be persons. Piercing the veil of corporate personhood we may single out the actual agents of the state as violators of rights (assuming for the sake of discussion the existence of said rights). Corey Maye shot a gang-member who was breaking into his home. That gang went by the name "police" and so it was Corey who wound up behind bars. If we consider the gang-members individuals like anyone else and do not evaluate them differently based on the status of their gang, we might deem the officer just another home-invader who got what was coming to him.

Kip Esquire, are you familiar with Greg Clark's argument against the importance of institutions (like governments) in long-term economic growth?

There is indeed little reason to lay off blaming previous immigrants to the U.S. My ancestors, for example, came from Ireland and while they were being ruled by the English at the time, the moment they achieved any rule for themselves they demonstrated their incompetence in self-governance (this has changed recently, but it took quite a while). To my mind it is not at all conclusive that native-born Americans and their descendants benefited from Irish immigration.

The people who are leaving seek better economic opportunities, but that doesn't indicate that they don't support the policies that led to reduced economic opportunities. In relatively democratic countries policies, perhaps even especially the worst policies, are broadly popular. Refuseniks/dissidents/refugees might be a different story, but that does not describe most of our immigrants. Even in that case, I think it was our misfortune to take in the "Forty-Eighters" from Germany in the 19th century.

Actually, Cuba was run pretty well before Castro took over. It had a positive rate of immigration even from Europe back then. Both Batista and Castro were dictators, so it makes less sense to credit Cubans with the performance of either. Perhaps we might fault them for having a society that only produced dictatorship. I am willing to blame Mexicans and many other poor countries for their bad public policies.

So immigrant preferences for redistribution are irrelevant if we ignore taxation and the size of government? I don't quite get the point. Did I overlook data showing immigrants favored Danish levels of regulation and free trade?

Craig, speaking of that the Inductivist has a recent post on preferences among blacks, whites & hispanics for preferential hiring.

By which I mean, as far as I can tell, there is no specific sort of foreign policy that follows from libertarian assumptions.
Sure there is. Hayek doesn't stop at the water's edge. The most thorough-going of libertarians are the anarcho-capitalists. The exemplars who merit the title "Mr. Libertarian" include Murray Rothbard and Walter Block. Would you like to take a guess on what their preferred foreign policy is?

Bob Murphy actually took a look at the Campaign for Liberty website and calls BS on Bartlett.

I had thought Bartlett was an alright guy. His articles used to be featured on Lew Rockwell. That's the site that was lambasting the Iraq War from day one, which Brink "liberaltarian" Lindsey supported.

In the land of cosmopolitan enlightenment, there is no “there goes the neighborhood.”
What great news for Detroit. Just advertise the cheap housing and contract Richard Florida to bring in some cosmpolitans, surely ones as tolerant as Quakers should to the trick.

There are some slights we are just going to ask others to suck up and deal with.if we are to live peaceably together. The libertarian coercion heuristic seems to be the best rule of thumb we've found. Arguments that taxing consumption is no more regressive or harmful than taxing income is another issue.

Steve Walt ponders why the U.S behaves in such a way here.

Mencius Moldbug responds to Will and gives his assessment of Seasteading here.

I think there is a real chance that what we'll end up with will not be so much the somewhat-friendly-to-classical-liberalism traditional American conservativism but authoritarianism. I remember some polls showing that as a result of atomization, but I can't remember where to link to. The saliency of formerly revered figures like the "18th century radical liberals" and the political structures they created are likely to decrease as they are seen as increasingly irrelevant.

Brooks & Frum are neoconservatives, not "realists". "Realists" are concerned with national interest, not "national greatness". Frum has specifically held up "realism" for ridicule.

Haven't the "national greatness conservatives" always been saying that? And remember, John McCain thought there was a huge threat of "isolationism" taking over the party. Of course, none of them must ever question warmongering, it's them dang earmarks & freedom what done did it!

Please, mtraven, it's a hell of a lot more than half the population! We're much more discriminating than you give us credit for.

How much do you want to bet that libertarians will have any success in the culture war and succeed in abolishing any government agencies? The State already has the huge advantage of indoctrinating children K-12, and even someone in the culture business who'd like to confront the worst crimes of Uncle Sam has to break down and apologize for what he said about Truman nuking the Japs. It is the sacred "Good War" after all, and we wouldn't people to think we were some kind of malcontents who don't worship the victors of history. What Friedman & Thiel have concluded is that it's a mug's game, with the deck stacked against us. Persuading voters that libertarianism is as inoffensive as Muzak is not of their concern, taking their business elsewhere and creating something better is.

Sooner or later the problem of pluralism and moral disagreement will rear its head,
That's why the structures are modular and can be withdrawn, inspired by David Friedman's story of the war where nobody came.

I cannot see how anyone who accepts basic liberal assumptions about freedom and equality can see the establishment of equal political rights as anything but an unequivocal good
One of the reasons it is sometimes claimed that Israeli Arabs are second-class citizens is that they are exempt from the draft. Would it be an improvement if that exemption was removed? From a libertarian perspective, of course not! We'd have to accept that the draft was good in the first place, and following Lysander Spooner we don't think much of voting. In creating a system we may keep in mind reciprocity and widely applicable standards simply because deviation generally implies some inefficiency, but there is nothing for a libertarian to value in equality per se rather than liberty.

Toronto is genuinely multicultural, which is a lot better than bicultural. I discuss that in my Putnam/diversity post.

I agree with Murray Rothbard: parents have no obligations to their children. I go further in pro-choice stridency to advocate legalization of infanticide.

It is actually not necessary to have law at all. Robert Ellickson's book Order Without Law discusses this. "Common" law was an unfortunate centralized standardization and power grab by the king, whose history is discussed in Bruce Benson's "Enterprise of Law".

By trick do you mean cost-benefit comparisons? Yes, I do. I do not think one necessarily loses sight of the goal line when asking how to gain a few yards. Just remember to reiterate that goal after stating a possible marginal improvement. Libertarianism is about liberty, not signalling a socially acceptable form of classist racism, less stuck-up progressivism or hipper conservatism.

I approve of limiting torture to water-boarding (unless there's another form of torture I should prefer to it).

I would prefer limiting the War on Drugs to ONLY marijuana. It is the war on heroin, crack and meth that is causing the most problems. Similarly the main problem is the focus on the supply side of the drug market. I would prefer restricting it to only locking up small-scale buyers (reverse decriminalization?). Consumers do not form gangs to obtain monopsonistic status over a turf. Of course, as with torture, I would optimally prefer the government not be doing any of this.

War is an act taken by states. The anarchist position is that if the state is fer doin' sumpin, ah'm agin' it. State recognition of marriage and the granting of benefits is an act taken by states. Because anarchists are against the state doing anything, and it is something, they would logically be opposed to that (although for second-best reasons they might favor it in imperfect circumstances like the present).

Another analogy might be what is taught in public schools. I generally stay away from the subject because I oppose public education. There is no "libertarian" position on what should be taught there. To stay away from the subject doesn't make you objectively pro-evolution/sex-ed/whatever. Vouchers may arguably be a more libertarian second-best solution in that they grant more choice to consumers.

Rule of law is generally a good idea, as I have argued against some radicals who attack it, because rulers not restricted by law tend to behave much worse. Equal protection under the law is a very similar idea. However, it is easy to conceive of situations in which libertarianism would advise against it. Imagine that there is a law that requires left-handers to have their sinister digits cut off. It is pointed out that this unfairly singles out the left-handed, should we not do the same to right-handers? The libertarian point would be that it is the violence against our persons which is objectionable, and so to cause an additional wrong to right-handers would be worse than only harming left-handers (though that too is objectionable). My proposal to only permit gay-marriage is analogous to the restricting of amputation to left-handers (full disclosure: I'm left-handed but straight).

On a side note, Will's post here reminds me a bit of the claim that opponents of war were "objectively pro-fascist" in WW2, which was echoed in the cold war and "global war on terror". Doesn't sit well with me.

I have proposed a grand bargain for the culture wars: abolish state-sanctioned straight marriage, legalize it for the minority. The total amount of state interference is thus reduced. We could also legalize only interracial marriage, claiming it is has positive externalities or something.