Di Uri Strauss. Originale pubblicato il 21 dicembre 2022 con il titolo Karl Widerquist’s “A Dilemma for Libertarianism”. Tradotto in italiano da Enrico Sanna. “A Dilemma for Libertarianism” (il dilemma libertario, ndt) di Karl Widerquist, un saggio che merita di essere letto, sottolinea una contraddizione propria del libertarismo sostenitore dei diritti naturali, che è un…

Karl Widerquist’s “A Dilemma for Libertarianism” deserves to be better known. It exposes a contradiction in natural rights libertarianism, a set of principles held by those who seek to build a capitalist political philosophy on the basis of property rights.  These principles typically include: That individuals can legitimately own property if the property was justly…

Por Michael S. Rozeff. Artículo original: Silver and Golden Rule Societies, del 20 de octubre de 2015. Traducido al español por Vince Cerberus. Introducción La violencia agresiva se opone a la libertad de acción. Este es un principio libertario central. Entonces, ¿qué vamos a hacer con los medios no violentos de controlar las creencias de un individuo,…

 View or download a PDF copy of Joseph Parampathu’s C4SS Study here: Prison Labor: Capitalism Without Markets, Understanding the Economics of Totalitarian Institutions Abstract Prison labor remains a paradox in many ways. Simultaneously sparsely studied or recorded, and ubiquitous; derided by labor unions and free workers as unfair competition and lauded by businesses as…

Advocating work abolition, I encounter one specific objection very often. “Work,” they say, does not refer to, nor imply, coerced labour. An authoritarian Marxist I recently encountered made the claim that to speak of work abolition is the language of “empty” radicalism. They went on to claim that such “empty” radical language is confined to…

The injustice of developing countries having to pay back extortionate rates of interest that emanate from sovereign debt with colonial-era roots is often rightly made due to the oppressive nature of imperialistic regimes of the time. However, one may wonder why such colonial-era debt cannot be feasibly defaulted upon? The standard argument suggests that this…

According to one defense of government, citizens’ use of government services adequately explains and justifies the existence of political obligations. By attending government schools, walking on government sidewalks, and calling 911, citizens “tacitly agree” to taxation, jury duty, and military registration, or so the argument goes. One tempting rebuttal—that enforceable agreements cannot be tacit—fails pretty…

Everyone loves learning. The thing is that not everyone likes studying and what’s even more frustrating is to be told how we should study, why we should study etc. Making education available to everyone is benevolent but making education compulsory for everyone is something that we are so used to that we do not see…

Classical liberalism recommends, in Thomas Jefferson’s words, “a wall of separation” between church and state. In his case for religious toleration, John Locke argued that separation protects people from the “compulsive force” of individuals trying to inculcate “certain doctrines” through “fire and sword.” Robert Audi later added that “if the state prefers one or more…

by Michael S. Rozeff Introduction Aggressive violence opposes freedom of action. This is a central libertarian tenet. What then are we to make of non-violent means of controlling an individual’s beliefs, such as methodical inculcation of religious, nationalistic, or superstitious beliefs? Do these methods also oppose freedom? How do we characterize such methods and contrast them…

Jacob Huebert’ in Libertarianism Today başlıklı kitabının meziyetlerinden biri, yüksek okuma yazma oranlarının zorunlu eğitim yasalarından önce de var oluşuna kanıttır. Ahlâk ve pratik burada güzelce biraraya geliyor. Çocukları şiddet kullanarak okula göndermek ahlâksızlık olduğu gibi, etkili bir eğitim için gerekli de değildir. Devletciler iyi bir delille kalmıyorlar. Kitabının 114. sayfasındakı alıntıya dönelim: Profesör Lawrence Cremin erkeklerde okur yazarlık…

Non-libertarians often find libertarianism baffling. Notice the fundamentally puzzled tone of so many critiques of libertarianism – like, for example, this one by Don Herzog (I choose it more or less at random): There’s something endearingly toughminded, if that’s not an oxymoron, about libertarianism. At the same time, for the same reason, there’s something unbelievably…

C4SS Media presents Natasha Petrova‘s “Hayek vs Rothbard On Coercion,” read by James Tuttle and edited by Nick Ford. “An expansive definition of coercion allows libertarians to achieve a greater depth of understanding about the various ways in which people can be coerced. If we wish to comprehensively eradicate initiatory coercion; we will have to understand the…

One of the virtues of Jacob Huebert’s Libertarianism Today is that it provides ample evidence for the high literacy rates of Americans prior to the introduction of compulsory education laws. The moral and the practical come together beautifully here. Not only is it unethical to initiate force for the purpose of compelling children to attend…

James Tuttle alerted me to an appendix discussing Hayek’s conception of coercion in Murray Rothbard’s, The Ethics of Liberty. It serves as the jumping off point for a broader discussion of what constitutes coercion. Let us begin by contrasting the definitions of coercion employed by Hayek and Rothbard. Rothbard defines coercion thus: the invasive use…

When I was a young, I remember reading about the difference between cooperative and coercive exchanges. It was a mind-blowing thought, that all interactions could be lumped into one of two categories. And that the implications of the nature of those interactions could be so incredibly powerful and meaningful. While libertarianism certainly encompasses many thoughts…

Matonis: Bitcoin is not a governmental instrument of legal tender that requires regulatory legitimacy and coercion by law in order to gain acceptance.

Consent is always compromised by force; the mere existence of effective force dedicated to some end constitutes coercion toward that end, whatever you may think or want.

Mandatory restitution to the victim is justified on libertarian grounds as an expression of defensive coercion; but punishment, I believe, constitutes not defensive but retaliatory coercion, and so is not permissible.