How The New York Times Got Libertarianism Wrong, Yet Again

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Why write an article on a subject you know nothing about? This is a question that Amia Srinivasan might usefully have asked herself. She is a Prize Fellow in philosophy at All Souls College, Oxford, one of the most prestigious academic positions in the academic world; and her webpage at Oxford includes several papers of outstanding merit. You would never guess that she is a serious philosopher, though, from her article Questions for Free-Market Moralists in The New York Times, October 2013. The free-market moralist she has principally in mind is Robert Nozick, the author of Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974). If Srinivasan has read this book at all, the experience appears to have passed her by.

Srinivasan is disturbed by the growth of what she calls a dramatic increase in inequality in the United States over the past five decades.[1] In part, this increase stems from the rising influence of Nozickian ideas. Much better, she thinks, is the theory that John Rawls advanced to great acclaim in A Theory of Justice (1971). The persons in Rawlss original position would also make their society a redistributive one, ensuring a decent standard of life for everyone. By contrast, Nozickians look with indifference on the plight of the poor. Do poor people sometimes face options, all of which are bad? Never mind, says the Nozickian. So long as force is not used or threatened, everything in such cases is morally unproblematic. If you are poor, you deserve to be poor, and likewise if you are rich. You deserve whatever is the outcome of your free choices. Van Gogh, William Blake, Edgar Allan Poe, Vermeer, Melville and Schubert all died broke. If youre a good Nozickian, you think thats what they deserved.

Against the view that people on the free market get what they deserve, she raises some standard objections. How people fare on the market depends in large part on luck. If you have abilities that command a high price on the market, this happy state of affairs mainly comes about because of luck. People, e.g., inherit certain desirable qualities from their parents, or acquire them from the environment. In addition, it is a matter of luck whether people are willing to pay money for the talents you happen to have. The influence of luck is all the more obvious if you, like Mitt Romney, have inherited a large sum of money from your parents. All these matters, in Rawlss phrase, are arbitrary from the moral point of view.

How then can Nozickians claim with a straight face that people deserve all they are able, and only what they are able, to get through free exchange? She acknowledges that even Nozick found it difficult to say this; but it is nevertheless the position that Nozickians are stuck with, according to her. It is precisely for this account of the Nozickian view that I directed against her the harsh comments in my initial paragraph.

She has overlooked one of the key themes of Nozicks book. It isnt just that he finds it difficult to say that you deserve what you get in the market. He doesnt say it at all. A theory of justice in which people were rewarded in accord with morally non-arbitrary characteristics would be a patterned theory. Nozick takes great pains, evidently lost on Srinivasan, to distinguish such patterned theories from his own historical theory. In his account, you get what you are entitled to, a very different matter.

An example will clarify the distinction. Suppose that someone badly needs a kidney transplant, and one of your kidneys would be an ideal match for him. You cant be forced to donate one of your kidneys: Nozick, all libertarians, and, I hope, Srinivasan would agree. Why not? Not because your possession of two healthy kidneys results from your meritorious activities. It is arbitrary from the moral point of view that you have two good kidneys and that the person who needs the transplant does not. Nevertheless, the kidneys belong to you: you are entitled to them. Libertarians view income in the same way. If your services are in high demand, you are entitled to the money you get. Srinivasan may be repelled by all of this; but if she wishes to criticize Nozick, and other libertarians who agree with him, this is the theory she needs to address. Instead, she assails a different account that Nozick explicitly rejects.

She fares no better with the other challenges she issues to the premises or implications of Nozicks argument. He does not hold that any exchange between two people in the absence of direct physical compulsion by one party against the other (or the threat thereof) [is] necessarily free. He does say that if you face severely limited options, and your predicament comes about because others have acted within their rights, your choice is still voluntary. This is a rather more nuanced claim, a matter that escapes Srinivasans attention.

Srinivasans remaining problems for Nozick rest on an elementary confusion. Nowhere does Nozick say that the structure of libertarian rights exhausts morality. Rather, rights tell us when force or its threat may be permissibly used. It is not at all the case that anything you are free to do, according to this structure of rights, is morally permissible. Neither is it the case that moral obligation is confined to freely chosen commitments; again, Srinivasan wrongly conflates moral obligations and enforceable obligations. It would, I suppose, be too much to ask Srinivasan to have a look at Invariances, Nozicks last book; but if she could steel herself to do so, she would find there a detailed discussion of the place of coercion within morality.

Srinivasan cannot seem to get Nozick right. She says of his minimal state The seemingly redistributive policy of making people pay for such a night watchman state, Nozick argued, was in fact non-redistributive, since such a state would arise naturally through free bargaining. This is triply in error. People are not forced to pay for the minimal state, though they would find it in their in their interest to do so; and the monopoly prices charged by the dominant agency really are redistributive, not just seemingly so. Further, the minimal state does not arise entirely through free bargaining. The Dominant Protective Association prohibits other agencies and independents from imposing risky decision procedures on its clients. Oh, well ...

It is unfortunate that The New York Times, the most famous of all American newspapers, did not select someone with a better knowledge of libertarianism to write about it. But the article, replete with errors as it is, may do some good. It may bring libertarian ideas to the attention of readers who otherwise might not have encountered them. As Quine once said after Nozick had complained to him of a negative review, I think by Carlin Romano, of Philosophical Explanations, Every knock a boost.

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How The New York Times Got Libertarianism Wrong, Yet Again

The New York Times Got Libertarianism Wrong, Yet Again

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Why write an article on a subject you know nothing about? This is a question that Amia Srinivasan might usefully have asked herself. She is a Prize Fellow in philosophy at All Souls College, Oxford, one of the most prestigious academic positions in the academic world; and her webpage at Oxford includes several papers of outstanding merit. You would never guess that she is a serious philosopher, though, from her article Questions for Free-Market Moralists in The New York Times, October 2013. The free-market moralist she has principally in mind is Robert Nozick, the author of Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974). If Srinivasan has read this book at all, the experience appears to have passed her by.

Srinivasan is disturbed by the growth of what she calls a dramatic increase in inequality in the United States over the past five decades.[1] In part, this increase stems from the rising influence of Nozickian ideas. Much better, she thinks, is the theory that John Rawls advanced to great acclaim in A Theory of Justice (1971). The persons in Rawlss original position would also make their society a redistributive one, ensuring a decent standard of life for everyone. By contrast, Nozickians look with indifference on the plight of the poor. Do poor people sometimes face options, all of which are bad? Never mind, says the Nozickian. So long as force is not used or threatened, everything in such cases is morally unproblematic. If you are poor, you deserve to be poor, and likewise if you are rich. You deserve whatever is the outcome of your free choices. Van Gogh, William Blake, Edgar Allan Poe, Vermeer, Melville and Schubert all died broke. If youre a good Nozickian, you think thats what they deserved.

Against the view that people on the free market get what they deserve, she raises some standard objections. How people fare on the market depends in large part on luck. If you have abilities that command a high price on the market, this happy state of affairs mainly comes about because of luck. People, e.g., inherit certain desirable qualities from their parents, or acquire them from the environment. In addition, it is a matter of luck whether people are willing to pay money for the talents you happen to have. The influence of luck is all the more obvious if you, like Mitt Romney, have inherited a large sum of money from your parents. All these matters, in Rawlss phrase, are arbitrary from the moral point of view.

How then can Nozickians claim with a straight face that people deserve all they are able, and only what they are able, to get through free exchange? She acknowledges that even Nozick found it difficult to say this; but it is nevertheless the position that Nozickians are stuck with, according to her. It is precisely for this account of the Nozickian view that I directed against her the harsh comments in my initial paragraph.

She has overlooked one of the key themes of Nozicks book. It isnt just that he finds it difficult to say that you deserve what you get in the market. He doesnt say it at all. A theory of justice in which people were rewarded in accord with morally non-arbitrary characteristics would be a patterned theory. Nozick takes great pains, evidently lost on Srinivasan, to distinguish such patterned theories from his own historical theory. In his account, you get what you are entitled to, a very different matter.

An example will clarify the distinction. Suppose that someone badly needs a kidney transplant, and one of your kidneys would be an ideal match for him. You cant be forced to donate one of your kidneys: Nozick, all libertarians, and, I hope, Srinivasan would agree. Why not? Not because your possession of two healthy kidneys results from your meritorious activities. It is arbitrary from the moral point of view that you have two good kidneys and that the person who needs the transplant does not. Nevertheless, the kidneys belong to you: you are entitled to them. Libertarians view income in the same way. If your services are in high demand, you are entitled to the money you get. Srinivasan may be repelled by all of this; but if she wishes to criticize Nozick, and other libertarians who agree with him, this is the theory she needs to address. Instead, she assails a different account that Nozick explicitly rejects.

She fares no better with the other challenges she issues to the premises or implications of Nozicks argument. He does not hold that any exchange between two people in the absence of direct physical compulsion by one party against the other (or the threat thereof) [is] necessarily free. He does say that if you face severely limited options, and your predicament comes about because others have acted within their rights, your choice is still voluntary. This is a rather more nuanced claim, a matter that escapes Srinivasans attention.

Srinivasans remaining problems for Nozick rest on an elementary confusion. Nowhere does Nozick say that the structure of libertarian rights exhausts morality. Rather, rights tell us when force or its threat may be permissibly used. It is not at all the case that anything you are free to do, according to this structure of rights, is morally permissible. Neither is it the case that moral obligation is confined to freely chosen commitments; again, Srinivasan wrongly conflates moral obligations and enforceable obligations. It would, I suppose, be too much to ask Srinivasan to have a look at Invariances, Nozicks last book; but if she could steel herself to do so, she would find there a detailed discussion of the place of coercion within morality.

Srinivasan cannot seem to get Nozick right. She says of his minimal state The seemingly redistributive policy of making people pay for such a night watchman state, Nozick argued, was in fact non-redistributive, since such a state would arise naturally through free bargaining. This is triply in error. People are not forced to pay for the minimal state, though they would find it in their in their interest to do so; and the monopoly prices charged by the dominant agency really are redistributive, not just seemingly so. Further, the minimal state does not arise entirely through free bargaining. The Dominant Protective Association prohibits other agencies and independents from imposing risky decision procedures on its clients. Oh, well ...

It is unfortunate that The New York Times, the most famous of all American newspapers, did not select someone with a better knowledge of libertarianism to write about it. But the article, replete with errors as it is, may do some good. It may bring libertarian ideas to the attention of readers who otherwise might not have encountered them. As Quine once said after Nozick had complained to him of a negative review, I think by Carlin Romano, of Philosophical Explanations, Every knock a boost.

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The New York Times Got Libertarianism Wrong, Yet Again

AVN | Libertarian, Tea Party, Patriot, Independant – Whats in a name? – Video

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AVN | Libertarian, Tea Party, Patriot, Independant - Whats in a name?
AmericasVoiceNow.org | facebook.com/AmericasVoiceNow 10/29 The desire and attempt to divide by the propagandists is beyond the pale. How about a unified prin...

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AVN | Libertarian, Tea Party, Patriot, Independant - Whats in a name? - Video

Report: Tea Party More Christian Right Than Libertarian

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(Photo: Public Religion Research Institute)

The relationship between libertarians, the Tea Party and the Christian Right, Public Religion Research Institute's American Values Survey, Oct. 2013.

October 31, 2013|3:39 pm

Americans who identify with the Tea Party are more likely to identify with the Christian Right than to hold views consistent with a libertarian philosophy, according to a new report by the Public Religion Research Institute.

Of the 10 percent of those surveyed who identified themselves as part of the Tea Party, about half, 52 percent, also identified with the Christian Right. Christian Right identifiers comprised 18 percent of the sample.

PRRI constructed a libertarian-communalist scale based upon nine questions dealing with national security and international intervention, economic policy, and personal liberty (such as gun control, access to pornography and marijuana legalization). Using this scale, the report found that seven percent of the sample was consistently libertarian and 15 percent leaned libertarian.

The report uses the libertarian scale to identify libertarians because those who self-identify as libertarian were not consistently libertarian in their views.

Of the seven percent who were classified as consistently libertarian, 39 percent identified with the Tea Party. Twenty-six percent of those who identified with the Tea Party were classified as libertarian. And, 22 percent of libertarians identified with the Christian Right.

Together, these data suggest the Tea Party has more ties to the Christian Right than libertarianism, but there is also a large portion of the Tea Party that neither identifies with the Christian Right nor holds consistent libertarian views.

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Report: Tea Party More Christian Right Than Libertarian

Libertarian Party qualifes for 2014 ballot

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LITTLE ROCK The Libertarian Party of Arkansas was certified for the 2014 ballot by the secretary of states office Friday.

The party last month turned in more than 16,000 signatures in an effort to qualify for the ballot. The party needed 10,000 verified signatures to secure ballot access and party officials were notified Friday that they had met the threshold.

While we are excited about the prospect of running candidates in 2014, I must say, this has been an exhausting process, said Jessica Paxton, the partys chairwoman.

Frank Gilbert, constable of DeKalb Township in Grant County and former mayor of Tull, announced last month he will seek the Libertarian Partys nomination for governor.

Gilbert is the only member of the Libertarian Party currently holding elected office in Arkansas. He also has served as Grant County coroner and president of the Bauxite Education Association.

Former Congressman Mike Ross is seeking the Democratic nomination for governor. Republican candidates are former Congressman and deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Asa Hutchinson, state Rep. Debra Hobbs and businessman Curtis Coleman.

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Libertarian Party qualifes for 2014 ballot

Libertarian Party qualifies for 2014 ballot

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LITTLE ROCK The Libertarian Party of Arkansas was certified for the 2014 ballot by the secretary of states office Friday.

The party last month turned in more than 16,000 signatures in an effort to qualify for the ballot. The party needed 10,000 verified signatures to secure ballot access and party officials were notified Friday that they had met the threshold.

While we are excited about the prospect of running candidates in 2014, I must say, this has been an exhausting process, said Jessica Paxton, the partys chairwoman.

Frank Gilbert, constable of DeKalb Township in Grant County and former mayor of Tull, announced last month he will seek the Libertarian Partys nomination for governor.

Gilbert is the only member of the Libertarian Party currently holding elected office in Arkansas. He also has served as Grant County coroner and president of the Bauxite Education Association.

Former Congressman Mike Ross is seeking the Democratic nomination for governor. Republican candidates are former Congressman and deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Asa Hutchinson, state Rep. Debra Hobbs and businessman Curtis Coleman.

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Libertarian Party qualifies for 2014 ballot

The Libertarian Party is Officially Back on the Ballot

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LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (LPAR) - The Libertarian Party of Arkansas (LPAR) is officially a recognized political party for the second time in history and will now be able to run candidates for office in 2014.

Last month, the party submitted signatures to the Secretary of State's office in order to fulfill the requirement of collecting at least 10,000 valid signatures from registered voters in the state. According to Martha Adcock at the Secretary of State's office, more than 12,000 of the 16,000 submitted signatures were verified as signatures of registered AR voters.

During the 2012 general election, more than 100,000 votes were cast for Libertarian candidates in AR. However, the Libertarian Party was required to re-petition the state after Gary Johnson, the Libertarian presidential candidate, did not receive three percent of the vote in 2012.

Dozens of potential candidates have already come forward, hoping to receive the party's nomination to run for office in 2012. Frank Gilbert of Tull, Glen Schwarz of Little Rock and Shawn Hipskind of Alexander have all announced that they plan to seek the party's nomination for Governor.

The LPAR will nominate candidates at their convention, scheduled for February 21-23 in Little Rock.

"While we are excited about the prospect of running candidates in 2014, I must say, this has been an exhausting process," said Jessica Paxton, LPAR Chairman. "The ballot access laws in our great state were written by Democrats and Republicans who have a vested interest in imposing crippling requirements on anyone who dares to challenge them." Libertarians advocate lower taxes, more personal freedom and less government intervention.

"A major issue here is that hundreds of thousands of voters cast their ballot for third party and independent candidates every two years here in Arkansas," said Paxton. "And the powers that be are trying to silence that dissenting voice by requiring this petition process that costs tens of thousands of dollars, takes thousands of man-hours and then, by the time we have access to the ballot, our resources have been exhausted before campaigning even begins."

The LPAR is now seeking candidates to run for office in 2014. "Whether running for city council or congress, we want liberty-loving Arkansans to take advantage of our efforts and represent true freedom on the ballot," says Debbie Standiford, Chairman of the Pulaski County Libertarian Party.

If the Libertarian Gubernatorial nominee earns three percent of the vote in the 2014 election, the party will automatically retain ballot access for 2016. If less than three percent is earned, the party will have to again submit 10,000 signatures to the Secretary of State's office for verification, a process that cost the LPAR almost $40,000.

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The Libertarian Party is Officially Back on the Ballot

The Senkaku Islands – Seeking Maritime Peace based on the Rule of Law, not force or coercion – Video

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The Senkaku Islands - Seeking Maritime Peace based on the Rule of Law, not force or coercion
Produced by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan http://www.mofa.go.jp/region/asia-paci/senkaku/index.html http://www.mofa.go.jp/index.html.

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The Senkaku Islands - Seeking Maritime Peace based on the Rule of Law, not force or coercion - Video