[P2P-F] Libertarians

Wed Oct 19 23:49:50 CEST 2011

On Wed, Oct 19, 2011 at 3:57 PM, Sandwichman <lumpoflabor at gmail.com> wrote:
> The following article does not argue against either the value of individual
> liberty or a preference for limited government but demonstrates that
> attempts to derive the latter from the former are illusory. Scanlon's
> remarks on what is natural and what is not about property rights [follow
> link] are germane to this discussion.
>
> http://www.bostonreview.net/BR36.5/ndf_t_m_scanlon_libertarianism_liberty.php
>

This does not IMO invalidate attempts at such a derivation.  It just
complicates it.  The core principles of libertarianism are
self-ownership and non-aggression.  But no particular property rights
template can be deduced directly from these principles.  What
constitutes aggression or defensive force, in any particular
circumstance, depends on the property rights template chosen.  And
property rights templates -- Lockean, non-proviso Lockean,
Ingalls-Tucker occupancy-and-use ownership, Georgism,
anarcho-communist, etc. -- are a matter of local community mores,
based largely on consequentialist grounds.
-- 
Kevin Carson
Research Associate, Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
Homebrew Industrial Revolution:  A Low-Overhead Manifesto
http://homebrewindustrialrevolution.wordpress.com
Desktop Regulatory State:  The Countervailing Power of Super-Empowered
Individuals http://desktopregulatorystate.wordpress.com
Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html