Ludwig von Mises Tuesday

Libertarianism Today • By Jacob H. Huebert • Praeger, 2010 • Vii + 254 pages

Jacob Huebert's outstanding survey of libertarianism ranks as the best work of its kind since Murray Rothbard's For a New Liberty. Huebert navigates successfully difficult waters. Many people, when they first hear of libertarianism, dismiss it as extreme and irresponsible. How can libertarians seriously propose to end public and compulsory education, repeal all regulations on drugs, and consign medicine entirely to the market? Huebert brings to bear a wealth of argument and historical evidence to show that, in these and other instances, libertarians have a convincing case.

[A]nyone should be free to do anything he or she wants, as long as he or she does not commit acts of force or fraud against any other peaceful person. Libertarians call this the "non-aggression principle."…Taken all the way, the libertarian idea means that no government is justified — any government is a criminal enterprise because it is paid for by taxes and people are forced to submit to its authority. Many libertarians (including this author) do go this far. But many others … stop just short of this and are willing to accept a minimal "night watchman state," as philosopher Robert Nozick put it, to provide for common defense, police, and courts, because they believe that only government can successfully provide these services. (pp. 4–5)[1]

 

Historically, war did not necessarily involve killing innocents on a large scale. War was always terrible and undesirable, but by the eighteenth century, Europe had developed rules of "civilized warfare"… Modern warfare is another story. Modern governments, including but not limited to democracies, claim to represent "the people," so modern wars are seen as being fought, not just between rulers, but between whole peoples (p. 176, emphasis in original)

 

[O]ne can safely say that the pro-war position is in direct opposition to libertarianism as we have defined it in this book… In sum, support for the Iraq war is deviation from libertarianism (p. 194).

 

The independent schools would not be killed off by genuine market competition; they would be killed off by government privileges [i.e., approval by the government to receive voucher payments] to some schools — those willing to accept government control — and not others. A program that would do this cannot be called libertarian. (p. 126)

 

Libertarians would say that it is fine for them to think that, but it is hardly a justification for telling people what they can or cannot do with their own bodies, or for condemning 6,000 people each year to death. Why should one person's desire not to have his moral sensibilities offended outweigh someone else's right to life itself?… If you are offended by someone else exercising his or her rights, too bad. (p. 106)

 

 

That is, they are limited in quantity, and one person's use of a piece of property prevents someone else from using it. Two people cannot occupy the same space or eat the same orange. Without property rights, there would be irresolvable conflicts over who can use what land and objects, and how they may use them. … on the other hand, if certain things were not scarce — if we could reproduce them infinitely at no cost, or if they were somehow abundant — there would be no conflicts over those things, and no need for ethical rules, property rights, or laws to govern such conflicts. As it happens, ideas fall into this latter category." (p. 107)

 

So according to libertarian theory, IP rights are not "property rights" at all, but a government-issued license to attack property rights — and therefore should be abolished. (p. 208)

 

Rothbard thought that copyright could be justified if it were the product of a contract. For example, if when Smith sells Jones a book, Smith marks it '"copyright," then Jones only receives from Smith the right to make and use that physical book, but not the right to copy it … because a person cannot transfer any more rights than he or she owns, any third parties who later get the book after Jones would be subject to the same restrictions Jones faced… Rothbard justified patents of a sort on similar grounds. If Smith sells Jones a new kind of vacuum cleaner and marks it "patented" (or, as Rothbard would have it "copyrighted"), that tells Jones that he is only receiving the right to the physical object, not the right to make copies of it. (pp. 205–206)

 

Copyrights … have their basis in prosecution of implicit theft. The plaintiff must prove that the defendant stole the former's creation by reproducing it and selling it himself inviolation of his or someone else's contract with the original seller. (MES, p. 745, emphasis added)