Re: What to call "Econ-Libertarians"?
Daniel C. Burton (dburton@.berkeley.edu)
22 Oct 1997 04:59:03 GMT
Strangely enough, I've noticed that, though it's almost impossible to
prove natural rights arguments on positive grounds, if you turn things
around and make argue negativel, moral arguments can be mildly effective.
For example: Instead of "Income taxation is wrong because it violates
individual liberty," try "It would be wrong if you came and took your
neighbor's money personally, so why should it suddenly become right if
it's done through the government? Why should government agents be judged
on moral terms any differently from anyone else?"
This then puts your opponent in the bind of having to prove their system
of morality on positive logical grounds which is just about as hard as it
would be for you. Maybe you couldn't prove yourself right this way, but
you could prove your opponent more likely wrong.
Paul Torelli <paulto@uclink4.Berkeley.EDU> wrote:
: Also, one other issue is whether or not "econ-libertarian" or
: "utili-libertarian" should be used to describe how people defend their
: libertarian beliefs or how people actually believe. For example, there
: may be some libertarians (though I cannot think of any right now) who
: believe very strongly in a natural rights theory along the lines of
: Rothbard or Rand, but who realize that arguing for libertarian
: institutions on these grounds is not very effective--so they argue for
: libertarian institutions on utilitarian grounds.