Talking About Libertarianism on the Air and Online

Podcasts, The Basics
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The publication of my new book, Libertarianism Today, has given me an opportunity to appear on several radio shows to talk about libertarianism.

On August 4, I was on the nationally syndicated Michael Smerconish Program with guest host Brian Wilson.  Highlights of this interview include our discussions of education (at 27:00) and intellectual property (at 30:00).


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On August 10, I was on Wilson’s own show:


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And on August 2, I was on Antiwar Radio with Scott Horton, where we talked about libertarianism and war:


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TLS Q&A: What is Austrian Economics?

(Austrian) Economics, Education, History, The Basics, TLS Q&A
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Reader Ryan reminded us that not everyone who happens upon The Libertarian Standard will know what Austrian Economics is. Since an understanding of sound economics is so important to understanding the case for liberty, and Austrian Economics just is sound economics, we decided to make this the first question-and-answer for our Q&A series and the first addition to our Libertarian FAQ. Remember, you too can submit questions to us that you would like us to answer, if not for yourself then for the benefit of others. Inspire us!

What is Austrian Economics?

Austrian Economics is paradigm, a way of analyzing economic and social phenomena that is sometimes completely at odds with the “mainstream” of Economics both in academe and among the ruling elites. AE is centered in the acting human being and thus follows a strict causal-realist that -claim its enthusiasts- render a far deeper and truer comprehension of what goes on in human societies.

This tradition or school of thought is the culmination of centuries and perhaps even millenia of (European) continental subjectivist notions that can be traced back to the ancient Greeks and all the way through Roman thinkers, Medievalists, Renaissance and finally modern authors. What makes it distinctive is the focus on human action rather than in objective (materialistic), aggregated additions and substractions of actors and goods (viewing the forest but losing sight of the trees or ignoring them altogether) as well as idealized mathematical and geometrical models (in a supposed desired to seem “more scientific” that otherwise).

The Austrian School’s founder, Carl Menger, wrote his “Principles of Political Economy” as a structured marginalist1 answer to the Methodenstreit (a debate on method) that he was having with the German historicists, who claimed that there are no economic (reality) laws but rather recipes that may or not work depending of time and place. His successor, Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, used the same marginalist approach to explain capital, savings, investment, interest and time preference. His contenders of the time were the Marxists but also the clearly stuck “Classical” economists of the British islands who were making mistakes as grave as to have engendered -at least partially- the bases for Marxism and Keynesianism. Böhm-Bawerk’s most brilliant student was Ludwig von Mises, considered by many as the best economist ever. Mises predicted as early as in 1921 that socialism was an untenable ideas because it kills the possibility of economic calculation (the final products being more than the intermediate goods and other things spent used to make them) and thus renders the whole of society (qua division of labor) a chaotic and inharmonious cluster of errors.

Mises also demonstrated that economic booms and busts are caused by an easy credit (no previous savings backing it up) policy mainly coming from States. Finally Mises demonstrated the universal character of economic laws as features of human action thus recouperating Economics from the relativistic pitfalls of empirism and historicism once again popular in his time. Mises’ most famous student, Friedrich A. von Hayek was awarded a Nobel Prize in Economics in 1974 in big part due to this work with Mises on the direct threat that Intervencionism and Inflationism pose for free societies. The Austrian School found a Misesian revival after Hayek abandoned Economics to pursue other intellectual interests under the influence of Karl Popper and others, when Murray N. Rothbard wrote his treatise “Man, Economy and State”. Rothbard went beyond his teacher not only on strict Economics matters such as monopoly or Interventionism but mainly he set a foundation of Ethics that would resist any utilitarian attempt to seek anything but freedom because of special considerations of any kind. Other students of Mises that need mention are Hans Sennholz, a prolific writer on the subjects of money and inflation; Henry Hazlitt -the NYTimes Economics editor- who although wasn’t a student of Mises personally, was tremendously influenced by him; Israel Kirzner from NYU, with a clear Hayekian strand of analysis of entrepreneurship and coordination, Ralph Raico a revisionist historian of prime qualities and George Reisman, whose attempts at an Austrian + Classical synthesis are controversial but very interesting nonetheless.

Currently the hotbead of Austrian Economics is Auburn, Alabama where Llewellyn Rockwell Jr. setup the “Ludwig von Mises” Institute to help spread the Misesian-Rothbardian strand of AE. Scholars close to or directly working with the LVMI are prof. Hans-Hermann Hoppe, a radical and pathbreaking thinker, prof. Jörg Guido-Hülsmann who has made original contributions to several subjects including the Ethics of money production, profs. Joseph Salerno, Peter Klein, Walter Block and Thomas Dilorenzo. Today www.mises.org is a world famous source of economic education in the causal-realist paradigm and is in no small part responsible for the revival of AE and its arrival to countries such as Ecuador, Brazil, Spain, Sweden and Chzech Republic among dozens others that are seeing the formation of Misesian centers for thought and education in the tradition of the Austrian School.

  1. Analyzing the whole from the relevant unit added to it instead of analyzing wholes/aggregates ↩

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Back to Basics: Self-Ownership and Organ Donations

Health Care, Libertarian Theory, The Basics, Victimless Crimes
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Ronald Bailey, over at Hit & Run, asks, “Should a person who is dying of an incurable illness be allowed to donate his organs before the disease kills him?” This strikes me as a very odd question to ask, especially given who is doing the asking. Hit & Run is the blog for Reason Magazine, a publication I have been led to believe has some libertarian bent. Yet, oddly, it seems they are still mulling over the most fundamental principle of libertarianism: self-ownership.

Once it is recognized that the fellow from the story, Gary Phebus, is a self-owner, the answer to Bailey’s initial question becomes blindingly obvious – a resounding yes. What would it mean to be a self-owner but be unable to use one’s body and its parts as one wished? Surely, any libertarian must recognize the right to commit suicide and the right to donate one’s organs after death, which is all this amounts to. Why the struggle?

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The Best Introduction to Libertarianism Ever

Non-Fiction Reviews, Statism, The Basics
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I am not exaggerating: this is what Jacob Huebert’s just-published book Libertarianism Today is [Scribd version; PDF; Amazon; Mises store; online at https://b-ok dot cc/book/1270024/2f0d43]. I’ve been a libertarian for over 25 years, and have read a lot of libertarian books. I am sure I was one of Laissez Faire Books‘s biggest customers in its heyday in the 80s and 90s. Among introductions to libertarianism I’ve read are Murray Rothbard’s For A New Liberty (1st ed. 1973), David Bergland’s Libertarianism in One Lesson (1st ed. 1984), David Boaz’s Libertarianism: A Primer (1997), Charles Murray’s What It Means To Be A Libertarian (1997), Jeffrey Miron’s recent Libertarianism from A to Z (2010), and probably others I’ve forgotten.

Now, among these, Rothbard’s FANL is a classic and stands out, of course. But FANL is more of Rothbard’s own particular vision of libertarianism rather than a more comprehensive presentation of the views of the libertarian movement. And of course it is a bit dated by now, does not cover in detail topics that have risen to the fore in the intervening years (such as intellectual property, the Tea Party movement, nullification, etc.).

Given the rise of the Tea Party and the expansion of the libertarian movement in the last couple decades–and the inadequacies of other introductory books (each of them, other than FANL, has various deficiencies, although some of them are excellent and most of them worth reading too)–it was high time for a good, up to date new treatment. Huebert has done just this. I read the book in manuscript form well before its publication; I readily disclose I’m friends with Huebert (he’s also a co-blogger here at TLS). I read it with growing excitement. Here, finally, was a book that covered all the major issues, and from a solidly Austrian and anarchist-informed base–one that did not reveal (or feign) ignorance of various libertarian perspectives on issues such as democracy and decentralization and drawbacks of use of electoral politics or court battles. I’ve long maintained that an appreciation of Austrian economics is essential to sound libertarian theorizing; without it, there is always something missing; with it, a more integrated and coherent libertarian perspective is possible (and frankly I don’t see how one can be an Austrian and not a libertarian, unless one is a misanthrope). Huebert’s book exemplifies this strength in spades. He is thoroughly familiar with Austrian economics and intertwines it throughout his analysis. Let me also say, as somewhat of a specialist on IP related matters, that Huebert’s chapter on this topic is probably the single-best concise overview and explanation of the proper Austrian-libertarian case against IP, and the related libertarian debates about this matter, that I’ve ever read.

The book is great for the intelligent person looking to learn more, but has enough insights to interest even seasoned libertarian intellectuals. This is one of the first books I can imagine giving to intelligent, almost-libertarian friends, who have some interest in our ideas (others include Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson, Rothbard & Rockwell’s The Free Market Reader, Bastiat’s The Law, Woods’s Nullification and Meltdown; for more ideas, and links to some of these, see my The Greatest Libertarian Books). The book is punchy and well written, not boring; but it doesn’t talk down to the reader either. It’s got exactly the right tone, and covers all the major, modern libertarian issues–and fairly and objectively, to boot. It’s going to be very useful and popular among seasoned libertarians; the growing young generation of emerging libertarians; and with potentially interested people among the civil libertarian left and among the anti-bailout right/Tea Party types. I highly, highly recommend this wonderful book.

Update: More reviews:

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Mythbuster: Libertarianism and Unchosen Obligations

Libertarian Theory, Statism, The Basics
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It is a common mistake, made even by some libertarians and former libertarians, that libertarians reject the idea of unchosen obligations. Gene Callahan, apparently a former libertarian turned communitarian, is the latest to make this mistake. He says:

Obligation . . . is the crucial idea denied by libertarian political theory.1

Well, this is just patently absurd. Libertarians, of course, do not deny that individuals can have obligations to others, including non-humans.

Fortunately, Callahan goes on to clarify what he means:

We can have obligations that we did not agree to take upon ourselves.

But this is something that not all libertarians deny, as a wide and deep enough perusal of libertarian literature will demonstrate.

At the very least, libertarians recognize the unchosen obligation not to threaten or use initiatory physical force against other rational beings (i.e., to refrain from what we call aggression).

Libertarians generally make two important sets of distinctions regarding obligation: that between negative and positive obligations and that between enforceable and unenforceable obligations. One can go further and recognize that obligations can have different weightings relative to one another such that one obligation can override or delimit the legitimate means of fulfilling another.

Rights, at least as I define the term, are legitimately enforceable2 moral claims against another’s prior obligation not to threaten or use initiatory physical force. The Non-Aggression Principle (NAP)3 and corresponding rights4 are unchosen, enforceable negative obligations.

Can we have unchosen positive obligations? Libertarians need not deny this, and not all do. It should be easily recognized that unchosen, unenforceable positive obligations are strictly compatible with the NAP/rights.

What about unchosen, enforceable positive obligations? Provided they are compatible with the NAP/rights, if there are any that meet this description, then libertarians need not deny unchosen, enforceable positive obligations outright. I’ll leave it up to the reader’s imagination to come up with possible examples of unchosen, enforceable positive obligations that are compatible with the NAP/rights. If you take the challenge, bear in mind what I wrote about how one obligation can override or delimit the legitimate means of fulfilling another.

Suffice to say that it is a myth that libertarians (need to) deny unchosen, even positive, obligations. Callahan is attacking a straw man.

To criticize libertarians in general for denying unchosen, enforceable positive obligations, or just certain of them, would be more accurate. But to do so would be to take the position that the threat or use of initiatory physical force (i.e., aggression) is at least sometimes justified — that, for example, what is usually thought of commonsensically as theft or trespass or murder in everyday life, is not theft or trespass or murder in the “political” sphere, i.e., when the state or the “community” does it.5

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  1. It doesn’t help interpretation that Callahan started this sentence in the title of his post. ↩

  2. The presence of the term ‘legitimately’ here but not elsewhere in the post should not be taken to imply I am making a different claim here. I add it here in a definition for greater clarity. ↩

  3. It’s not an axiom. ↩

  4. Most fundamentally, the life, liberty, and property triad. Of the three, I think liberty is the most fundamental (at least at the individual level of analysis, from the perspective of moral theory; at the structural level of analysis, that of political and legal theory, the right to property may be the most fundamental; rights cannot be fully understood exclusively from either perspective, but rather must be conceived from a dialectical perspective that encompasses both as well as the cultural level (see Chris Sciabarra’s Total Freedom: Toward a Dialectical Libertarianism for more on these three levels of dialectical analysis, which I adapted to conceptualizing rights in chapter 3 of my dissertation) ) but it cannot be exercised or properly understood without the right to private property. ↩

  5. In chapters 6 and 7 of my dissertation, I deny that this is truly the political sphere. I conceive of genuine, immanent politics as discourse and deliberation between equals in joint pursuit of eudaimonia (flourishing, well-being). By ‘equals’ I mean ‘equality in authority’ as in Locke’s state of nature, though I do not conceive of ‘nature’ in Lockean, social-contract theory terms but rather in Aristotelian terms, i.e., of teleological completeness or perfection. In short, politics presupposes liberty. Hence, the term ‘vulgar politics’ (or vicarious politics) used as a category on this site as a synonym for statist “politics.” ↩

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