Category Archives: Blog

The Supreme Court’s recent decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, 573 U.S. ____ (2014), has provoked a firestorm of criticism from those who apparently regard it as an affront to all human decency that closely-held corporations cannot be forced by the state to pay for health insurance that covers abortifacients, when the prescription and use of such drugs violate the corporate owner’s sincere religious beliefs and moral convictions. Those who object to the decision in Burwell are prone to invoking the plain fact that “corporations aren’t people,” as if this is somehow relevant to the morality of the policy under debate. As shown below, it is not. Continue Reading »

It is often claimed that the libertarian conception of property rights is so stringent as to make it impossible for holders of this view to formulate plausible rules for regulating environmental pollution. In a recent essay, Matt Zwolinski summarizes the problem as follows:

On the libertarian view, property rights can be justifiably overridden only in very unusual situations and only by the very weightiest of competing moral concerns, if at all. Libertarians hold, for instance, that a person’s property right in his justly acquired wealth is so strong that it would be impermissible to steal (or tax) even a nickel from him, no matter how great a social benefit we could produce by doing so. But this seems to commit libertarians to the extremely demanding view that it is equally wrong to impose a nickel’s worth of damage on one’s neighbor through pollution. In the same way that the libertarian’s property absolutism leads her unable to recognize any morally significant difference between excessive and acceptable levels of taxation, so too is she unable to distinguish between relatively serious and relatively trivial forms of pollution. (footnotes omitted).[1]

In reviewing Nozick’s treatment of this issue, Professor Zwolinski notes an apparent contradiction between his conception of rights as side constraints, and his willingness to endorse the use of cost-benefit analysis (“CBA”) for purposes of determining what forms of pollution should be permitted. According to Zwolinski, “Nozick’s position seems to abandon the intuitive idea with which he began that individuals are ‘inviolable,’ and replace it with the idea violating individual rights is perfectly fine, so long as you are willing to pay the price.” (footnote omitted). Zwolinski, 13-4. Continue Reading »

Robert Nozick’s classic defense of natural rights libertarianism, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, was published forty years ago. Given the strong, continuing academic and popular interest in this work, the publisher’s decision to bring out a new edition to commemorate this milestone is hardly surprisingly. However, what is a bit startling is its choice of Thomas Nagel to contribute a Foreword to it.   Continue Reading »

Is there anything intrinsically valuable about an equal, or at least more equal, distribution of wealth or other resources among members of a given community? In other words, are there any circumstances where it would be just to reduce the holdings of some persons simply to reduce the disparity between what they have and what others do? What has come to be known as the “leveling down” argument answers these questions in the negative. Continue Reading »

Dr. Thomas Szasz, who passed away in 2012, was (and still is) widely admired in  libertarian circles. He was given a platform in libertarian journals and periodicals, and was the subject of numerous accolades upon his passing. He merits a full 11-page discussion (pp. 499-509) in Brian Doherty’s chronicle of the libertarian movement, Radicals for Capitalism (PublicAffairs, 2007).  Although it easy to fathom the reasons for this fame and respect, it is misplaced. Even from a purely rights-based perspective, Dr. Szasz is no hero. Continue Reading »

I am pleased to say that the manuscript for my new book, Libertarian Philosophy in the Real World: The Politics of Natural Rights, has been submitted to my publisher, Bloomsbury Academic, with an expected release date of late January, 2015. Bloomsbury has been kind enough to prepare a little preview here: http://www.ecampus.com/libertarian-philosophy-real-world-politics/bk/9781472573407.  This now frees me up to be a little more active here on the blogging front.

I have taken a vacation from blogging in order to complete the manuscript of my second libertarian philosophy book, to be published by Bloomsbury Academic late this year. It is a work of applied philosophy that starts with Nozick’s moral framework, then critiques the welfare/regulatory state on that basis. However, I hope the following may be of some interest. Continue Reading »

The title of one of Ayn Rand’s collections of political and philosophical essays, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, expresses her frustration at the public’s shocking ignorance of the ethical foundations of capitalism. Since its publication in 1967, I daresay that the situation has only gotten worse, as demonstrated by the politics surrounding our healthcare system.

I am not a consequentialist, so my criticism of our system–as modified by the ACA–is not that it is enormously wasteful, inefficient and riddled with fraud, although it certainly is. Rather, I condemn it because it violates the rights of virtually all participants on a massive scale, including laws against the “unauthorized practice of medicine;” nonconsensual participation in Medicare;   tax discrimination against individual insurance plans; insurance mandates, and restrictions on the interstate sale of policies; the FDA’s power to deny competent adults access to medicines they wish to purchase; and so on. Nonetheless, it is typically the case that governmental interference with freedom of contract produces perverse incentives, and medical care is no exception. Continue Reading »

In my last post I argued that anti-discrimination laws could not, absent extraordinary circumstances, be countenanced under natural rights principles. A similar argument applies to the affirmative action programs instituted by all of our leading public colleges and universities.  In both cases, social policy is pursued by impermissible means, violating basic moral principles.

Anti-discrimination laws contravene our right to associate (or not) with whom we please, while affirmative action offends every person’s right to be treated justly  under the rule of law. If a state is going to undertake the production of certain goods, say roads and highways, it must–if it respects the rule of law–do so in a way that does not consciously favor one group of citizens over another.  It can’t build safe, well-engineered roads in communities where one ethnic group predominates, and shoddy, unsafe roads in others. By the same token, public colleges and universities must apply the same criteria for admission to all citizens.[1]  Continue Reading »

One of the undesirable side-effects of the drive toward marriage equality under law (which I support) is that it has given new momentum to the enforcement of anti-discrimination laws.  All states have them, and they prohibit businesses, charitable groups and civic organizations from discriminating on the basis of certain specified characteristics; twenty-one states include sexual orientation in the list.  As argued below, all of these laws are inconsistent with basic notions of individual liberty.  

The latest high-profile case involves a New Mexico commercial photographer who refused to memorialize the commitment ceremony of a same sex couple (marriage being currently unavailable to them in this state), because such relationships clashed with her sincerely held religious convictions. The NM Supreme Court held that the law applied to her, and that she may therefore be coerced into compliance by fines. See http://verdict.justia.com/2013/09/04/new-mexico-supreme-court-anti-discrimination-law-to-wedding-photographere Thus, dissenters from the “official” moral stance taken by New Mexico may be put to a choice between adhering to their beliefs and earning a livelihood. Continue Reading »