Roberta A. Modugno — The Levellers: The First Libertarians

Some interesting history.

The Levellers were one of the inspirations for classical liberalism and laissez-faire. Libertarianism is a contemporary manifestation of classical liberalism, in contrast to neoliberalism, which incorporates a role for the state in promoting commerce and capital formation.

Mises Institute — Mises Wire
The Levellers: The First Libertarians
Roberta A. Modugno

Bryan Caplan — Why Do Government Enterprises Work So Well?

Even the best government enterprises are slow to cut costs. They're bad at innovation. And they're almost uniformly terrible at putting aside Social Desirability Bias to answer every enterprise's most fundamental question: Is this worth doing at all? Yet the anomaly remains: Simple economics implies that government enterprises should be far worse than they really are.

Unfortunately, I doubt the economics profession will ever take this anomaly seriously. Left-leaning economists don't want to grant the obvious case against government enterprise - and market-leaning economists would rather reiterate the obvious case against government enterprise than calmly test it against the facts.

EconLog
Why Do Government Enterprises Work So Well?

Bryan Caplan | Professor of Economics at George Mason University, research fellow at the Mercatus Center, adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute

David Edwards — Fox Business’ John Stossel ‘upset’ poor people aren’t selling kidneys for $1,200 (via Raw Story )

Fox Business’ John Stossel ‘upset’ poor people aren’t selling kidneys for $1,200 (via Raw Story )

Libertarian Fox Business host on Thursday said he was outraged that most government services like the military and “organ selling” had not been turned over to private business. In a segment titled “Time to Privatize,” Stossel told the hosts…

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Lord Keynes — Rothbard on Private Protection Agencies and Justice in his Libertarian World

Lord Keynes follows up on his post about degrees of laissez-faire, with the Rothbardian system being postulated as the most liberal.

Social Democracy For The 21St Century
Rothbard on Private Protection Agencies and Justice in his Libertarian World

Lord Keynes


In a laissez-faire economic system, monopolies and oligopolies will emerge owing to collusion and economies of scale, eventually favoring wealth. Thus, a power hierarchy will emerge along neo-feudal lines. Those who are not able to afford the security and legal system will be shut out of it, and those who can afford it will be out-competed by those able to afford more skilled, hence more costly, representation. Since there is not overarching legal system, there is no way to prevent bribery either, or even to define it when the basis of the system is "money talks."

In the absence of an overarching rule of law that is definitive on some institutional basis and which applies equally to all, law and justice would be arbitrary and result in imposition of settlement terms by a power elite determined by wealth.

Any ideology that doesn't sufficiently take into account the will to power and institutions based on power, however, it arises, is doomed to failure — unless its objective is to justify a particular power elite.

Rothbard's system the justification of a system of power based on economic power rather than military power or political power. The result will be essentially the same.

In fact, it is likely to result in a great many people have no recourse but to sell themselves and their posterity into slavery, which is permitted by the system since this is voluntary and individuals are sovereign and can dispose of themselves and their production as they wish.

It is not a curious fact that such a proposal is novel. No one in the history of political thought has had the temerity to propose such a thing, for the simple reason that it is ridiculously ill-conceived in light of humanity's development.

The only way that such a proposal seems credible at all is by abstracting from personal dispositions and habits, as well as culture and institutions, as the basis for human relationships.

Human societies are neither aggregates of individuals irrespective of their relationships, nor collectives in which relationships are determined by nature as is the case with a hive. Rather, human societies are complex systems resulting from the interaction of individuals based on personal disposition and habit and social rituals and institutions.

Unlearning Economics — Yes, Libertarians Really Are Lazy Marxists

I have only really just started studying Marxism in depth (though I am stopping short of Capital for now). Subsequently, while reading Bertell Ollman‘s Alienation: Marx’s Conception of Man in a Capitalist Society, it once again struck me that (right-)libertarianism is really just lazy Marxism. In many ways libertarianism reads like the first third of Marxism: the area which explores methodological questions and the nature of man. Both libertarianism and Marxism are generally fairly agreeable – and in agreement 0 in this area, but the former never really fleshes out its arguments satisfactorily. Often I find, after describing some basic principles (non coercion etc.), libertarians make jump to property rights and capitalism being the bestest thing ever, without fully explaining it.*

I will focus primarily on Robert Nozick and Ludwig von Mises here, as they are the only two libertarians who really explored libertarianism from basic principles of man and his relationship to both nature and economic activity (Murray Rothbard was really an interpretation of Mises in this respect). Overall, I think Nozick and Mises combine to form a fair reflection of minarchist libertarianism.

Unlearning Economics
Yes, Libertarians Really Are Lazy Marxists

Washington's Blog — Ayn Rand Was NOT a Libertarian

Many people assume that Ayn Rand was a champion of libertarian thought.

But Rand herself pilloried libertarians, condemning libertarianism as being a greater threat to freedom and capitalism than both modern liberalism and conservativism.

Washington's Blog
Ayn Rand Was NOT a Libertarian
WashingtonsBlog

"Lord Keynes" — The Horror of Rothbardian Natural Rights

Murray Rothbard adopted a natural rights ethics to justify his system of anarcho-capitalism. I have already written a post here showing the logical foundations of his ethical system are incoherent and unconvincing.

John Maynard Keynes once wrote of Hayek’s bookPrices and Production:

“The book, as it stands, seems to me to be one of the most frightful muddles I have ever read, with scarcely a sound proposition in it beginning with page 45 … It is an extraordinary example of how, starting with a mistake, a remorseless logician can end up in Bedlam.” (Keynes 1931: 394).
With the requisite changes, one can say that same thing about Rothbard’s ethical theory.

When judged by the standards of most other ethical theories (whose starting propositions and arguments are at least not so obviously false as natural rights), the logic of Rothbard’s theory takes him to conclusions that can only be described as moral insanity.

Read it at Social Democracy for the 21st Century
The Horror of Rothbardian Natural Rights
by Lord Keynes

OK, Rothbard can be excused for bad philosophy since he was an trained economist rather than a trained philosopher. On the other hand,philosophers find it rather queer when those without formal training in the subject presume themselves experts capable of jumping to the head of the line without even taking the trouble to understand previously published thought or enter the debate that has been ongoing for millennia now.

But where he left me was in arguing on the economic merits of privatizing the oceans. I may not be an economist by training, but really.

Liberty is a basic principle of ethics since the modern era. Fundamental to it is the view that human beings not only have no natural right of ownership over human beings, but also that ownership of human beings is fundamentally immoral. This is a core principle of liberalism of which libertarianism aka anarchism is an extreme example. In this view, husbands do not own their wives and children as chattel, as previously in human history under various systems of thought, and the concept of "self-ownership" is meaningless nonsense in today's worldview.

The Libertarianism of the right does not begin with liberty but rather ownership. According to this view, ownership and property rights are natural and fundamental, while liberty and human rights are incidental. As a result, anarcho-capitalism is a contradictory oxymoron. It is a worldview that is at odds with the evolution of Western thought and the development of civilization.

John Carney — Balanced Budget Amendment Hoax

John evokes Murray Rothbard's explanation of why a balanced budget amendment is nothing but a hoax. The reason is simple. Politicians will never adopt wording that actually constrains them to balance the budget on a yearly basis. (Most of these folks are lawyers, right?)

Read it at CNBC NetNet
Balanced Budget Amendment Hoax
by John Carney | Senior Editor

James Hamilton — "Why not abolish the Fed and return to the gold standard?"

James Hamilton recites the facts and figures and provides charts showing that the gold standard doesn't ensure either financial stability or price stability, as gold bugs advertise it does. Gold is deflationary and favors creditors. In economic downturns it results in debt deflation and depression.

See it at Econobrowser
Why not abolish the Fed and return to the gold standard?
by James Hamilton

I recommend reading Pennies from heaven: How Mormon economics shape the G.O.P by Chris Lehmann (Harper's Magazine, Oct 2001) in conjunction with this. Explains a lot of what otherwise may seem somewhat mysterious. Combine Mormon economics with Murray Rothbard's Libertarian Austrian economics and traditional fiscal conservatism, and one sees how contemporary GOP economics is constructed. It's just about the opposite of MMT.