Tag: property
Kyle Platt chats with Sheldon Richman about the recent standoff between the Bureau of Land Management and Nevada Rancher Cliven Bundy. Who has a claim to the land? Can a government own land?
The Bundy ranch saga has been the subject of heated good guy/bad guy framing by both mainstream liberals and mainstream conservatives, who differ only on which roles to assign to Bundy and the feds, respectively. But I can’t really see any good guys in this. The respective echo chambers for the two sides differ on…
In 1997, New York state declared war on the Seneca Nation reservations located upstate near Tonawanda. The war was over a declared power of the state to impose taxes on goods sold on native reservations. As enforcement, New York saw fit to shut down native businesses, cutting off petroleum and cigarette supplies to the Senecas….
Libertarians tend to see two worlds: one with private property that works reasonably well, and one without that farcically implodes. What they often miss, however, is that this dichotomy is conditional. Private property isn’t morally meritorious or great in itself, but only insofar as it is the best and only way to avoid conflict given…
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…
Several states have recently considered passing laws allowing legal discrimination against LGBT people. These laws are based on the notion of religious freedom. What is the proper left-libertarian response to these laws? The answer is advocacy of direct action. If the laws pass, we left-libertarians should engage in sit-ins analogous to what the Civil Rights…
Humans are social beings. We organize ourselves into groups, build relationships, enjoy creative labor and seek fellowship. From childhood to adulthood, who we are greatly depends on our relationships with those closest to us. We are also heavily influenced by the social, cultural and institutional circumstances of our lives. Institutions, then, have major implications for our rights,…
In a previous post; the following was said: You’re more concerned with property values than human freedom. What’s truly destructively selfish is your willingness to use initiatory force to uphold your property values. Freedom matters more. My interlocutor responded to the comment thusly: It’s not that I’m more concerned with property values than personal freedom…
A recent emailing of Roderick Long’s, “An Open Letter to the Peace Movement,” precipitated some criticisms from a non-libertarian and non-anarchist friend. This post will be a response to those criticisms. The author’s name will be withheld. If he so chooses, he can reveal himself in the comments section. The original text of the piece…
Todo ano, nesta época, alguém do mundo libertário de direita, repetindo ritual obrigatório de Ação de Graças, faz voltar à tona a velha ladainha acerca de os Peregrinos, em Plymouth, quase morrerem de fome por causa do “comunismo,” até direitos privados de propriedade e capitalismo os salvarem. Este ano, John Stossel (“Deveríamos Estar Agradecidos pela…
On the popular anarchist facebook page Anarchist Memes, an admin decided to exercise his private property rights in vocalizing his opinion that in a stateless society, unpopular opinions will not be dealt with peacefully. Status: “You think anarchism means we should all have some sort of right to say whatever you feel like? So let…
Each year at this time somebody in the right-libertarian world, reenacting an obligatory Thanksgiving ritual, drags out the old chestnut about the Pilgrims at Plymouth almost starving from “communism” until private property rights and capitalism saved them. This year John Stossel (“We Should Be Thankful for Private Property,” Reason, Nov. 27) gets the honors. In…
Last week’s TGIF, “One Moral Standard for All,” drew a curious response from Matt Bruenig, a contributor to the Demos blog, Policy Shop. In reading his article, “Libertarians Are Huge Fans of Initiating Force,” one should bear in mind that the aim of my article was not to defend the libertarian philosophy, but to show that most people live…
Amia Srinivasan has four questions for free-market moralists, specifically those who accept something like a Nozickian account of individual rights. My own take is more Rothbardian than Nozickian, but that still seems close enough to give her four answers, and to ask four questions in return about the assumptions that underlie her essay. Amia begins by asking: 1….
“Propriedade é roubo!”, era o grito de guerra de um proeminente anarquista francês do século XIX. “Au, contraire, mon frère”, retrucara outro, “Propriedade é liberdade!”. “Vocês dois estão errados”, disse um outro, “Propriedade é impossível!”. Como essas pessoas conseguiram lidar entre si foi impressionante. Ainda mais que foi o mesmo homem, Pierre Proudhon, que disse…
The seemingly unbridgeable ideological gap in America between economic libertarians, on the one hand, and on the other, those who advocate various manners and degrees of redistribution of wealth can be rationally resolved through an understanding of the significance of the concepts of property rights and redistributive justice to those who advocated them in 1640’s…
From the Markets Not Capitalism audiobook read by C4SS fellow Stephanie Murphy.
From the Markets Not Capitalism audiobook read by C4SS fellow Stephanie Murphy.
From the Markets Not Capitalism audiobook read by C4SS fellow Stephanie Murphy.
David S. D’Amato: As an individualist anarchist, however, I define it as something rather different, as nothing more than one of the ways we ensure the law of equal liberty in practice.
