Introspection: Libertarianism | Hacker News Reader

Introspection: Libertarianism

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4 pointsCMartucci3 comments

Speaking of Libertarianism, I'm curious what the HN Libertarians think of Murray Rothbard. Based on what Wikipedia says, and what I've seen from occasionally reading of /r/libertarian on Reddit, he seems to be a major Libertarian theoretician with a significant number of followers.

In his book "The Ethics of Liberty" he says some things that I find hard to believe that, frankly, anyone who is not mentally ill could consider acceptable for a government and legal system in a civilized society, so I'm looking to get some other opinions. Is Rothbard really a respected Libertarian thinker, or are his followers just a small subset of Libertarians who happen to be quite vocal (kind of like the Tea Party for Republicans)?

In particular, see chapter 14, "Children and Rights", available online here: http://mises.org/resources.aspx?Id=e407b9ac-8791-4e1e-b23f-6...

He applies the basic libertarian principles of self-ownership and non-interference in property rights to determine what is proper law in regard to children. He reaches the interesting conclusion that the law shouldn't distinguish between children who are not born and children who are born, concluding that the extreme pro-choice conclusion he reaches on abortion (that it should be allowed at any time) must also apply AFTER birth, with the only change occurring at birth being that the parents can no longer actively kill the child. They can let the kid starve if they wish, or decline to provide clothing and shelter. (He does say that morally this isn't good, but it wouldn't happen often because under Libertarianism there would be a free market in children and so the parents would sell the kid rather than let it starve).

Note that the child has the right to leave, so if parents say to their 10 year old, "We aren't going to provide for you any more", the parents cannot stop the child from leaving. You might wonder how a 10 year old who leaves is going to earn a living, but under Rothbard's system there would be no child labor laws. On those, he criticizes them because they have "systematically forcibly prevented children from entering the labor force, thereby privileging their adult competitors" (yup...child labor laws oppress children). (And of course prostitution would always be an option...Libertarianism, at least as envision by Rothbard, it seems to me would be a paradise for those who like their sex partners young, plentiful, and inexpensive).

Very little meat in this post. Also-- the freedom to sexually mutilate young women is a horrible example, because anyone doing that would be violating her right to life & liberty.

libertarians want government to stop force & fraud, and that's it.

But this whole "liberty" concept confuses me. Can't we just say it's a bad example because we'd be violating her right to life? Because when we bring liberty into the picture, we are in fact saying that her liberty is more important than the persecutor's liberty. So it's not really liberty that has the final say, but life. And then, even if we say that, its not always the case that violating the right to life is ALWAYS bad (think trolley example). So I think "consequentialism" suffices.

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