Legal System

From the book For A New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, as narrated by Jeff Riggenbach.

When can you respond to force? The four response positions range from “never” to “impose by force some further penalty on them”. A person’s capacity must be considered. Compensation instead of punishment is generally a libertarian society’s choice.

We have a right not to be aggressed against. Any other right has to be an application of my right not to have force initiated against me. Now, we need to do this with property rights. We need to treat the violation of property as aggression against self.

Now we go from ethics to liberty. Justice, narrowly, is a legitimately enforceable claim. What is the consideration between justice, rights and utility? Justice seems more rule-oriented than rights. Libertarian rights theory can consider consequences.

Lay and Skilling are hardly alone. The difference is that they are going to prison. This was not a case of executives looting their company and then hiding those assets in offshore bank accounts and absconding with their ill-gotten gains. Instead, it was a case of executives who believed their own hype — and that of the financial press — and failed to apply the fundamentals of sound business practices to their decisions.

From the book For A New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, as narrated by Jeff Riggenbach.

Government involvement accounts for the internet's continuing problems, while the market should get the credit for its glories.

There is no provision in the US Constitution allowing for a dictator. Yet, Lincoln was one. He suspended habeas corpus. Any disagreement with Lincoln was treated as treason. Political prisoners were everywhere, including the mayor of Baltimore.

The following edited comments are excerpted from a recent email discussion with Walter Block and one of his correspondents, a Philosophy Professor

From the book For A New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, as narrated by Jeff Riggenbach.