11/06/2020The Journal of Libertarian StudiesWalter Block
What is the correct analysis, from a libertarian point of view, of governmental action in the face of the coronavirus? Is the state justified in imposing quarantines or vaccines to cure this disease?
Rothbard’s principal conclusion that libel and slander laws have no place in libertarian law is correct. But how does a reputational right operate? Who, properly, owns such a right? Is this property right alienable—transferable, and how would this work in practice?
Today’s progressive humanist movement transcends freedom, liberty, and reason by seeking utopian perfection through flawed secular dogma and compulsory communitarianism. Humanism’s progressive values cannot be achieved via compulsory means, as evinced by the repeated failure of intellectual...
The freedom of association argument is a strong argument against open borders and thus libertarians are not necessarily committed to unrestricted immigration.
11/05/2020The Journal of Libertarian StudiesLamont Rodgers
Agents have rights to stop those who are violating their rights and to rectification when their rights are violated. But in pursuing these rights, agents may also have an obligation to inform others of the extent to which they are prepared to go in enforcing these rights.
The slave is a slave because his body is owned by someone else, and that owner is not the rightful owner. Slavery is theft, and theft is also slavery. Slavery exists wherever theft exists, and socialism is theft writ large.
While the present democratic social order may be the technologically most advanced civilization, it most certainly is not the most advanced socially. The principal counterstrategy of recivilization must be a return to “normality” by means of decentralization.
11/05/2020The Journal of Libertarian StudiesCarl Watner
This paper recounts the history of food inspection from a voluntaryist perspective. In England and the United States, the efforts to achieve food safety have relied upon two main methods: education and legislation. Governments did nothing that could not be done on the free market.
