Author: Curt Doolittle

DEFINING THICK HUMANITARIAN, ARISTOCRATIC SCIENTIFIC, AND THIN PARASITIC LIBERTARIANISM AS A SPECTRUM.

“Thick and Luxurious , Scientific and Sufficient, and Thin and insufficient.”

I haven’t really spent much time attacking the BHL/Humanitarian/Left libertarians because their arguments are moral, emotional, and aspirational, but not rational, propertarian, and empirical. There really isn’t anything substantive to attack other than their lack of rational, propertarian, and empirical arguments in favor of their moral intuitions. I can’t attack sentiments. Right now, they are simply saying that luxuries are nice to have. They say nothing about how to select when we may or may not have them without creating negative externalities.

I’m actually kind of impressed at how well Tucker is framing his argument. I originally found it weak but he’s honed it a bit and it’s getting there. Like all the left libertarians, he has no rational, propertarian, or empirical argument. But he, like most left libertarians, does have a criticism of ‘brutalists’ as ‘insufficient’. Now, he doesn’t say ‘insufficient for what’. But I agree with the left libertarians that rothbardian ghetto ethics are insufficient. I just argue that they are insufficient for the formation of a polity reliant upon the common law for dispute resolution in the absence of a state. ANd moreover, that sufficiency for formation of such a polity is less than the luxuries that left libertarians demand.

This is the key difference between rothbardians, my ‘middle ground’, and the BHL left libertarianism. That is, that there are necessary and sufficient institutions for the formation of a voluntary polity in the absence of the state. But that BHL is advocating luxuries that are not necessary. As such, one can only institutionalize formally, in the common law, that which is both necessary and sufficient. But BHL’s luxuries REQUIRE A GOVERNMENT, a body that negotiates contracts for the commons, bound by rules of ‘calculability, volition, and operationalism’ as well as the law.

And, now that I’ve attacked the rothbardian “Brutalist” position for six months as an antagonist, I’ve been able to produce pretty damning criticisms and solutions that the BHL’s have not.

So I can move away from critic and into solution provider. it’s time to start rolling out the positioning of the different libertarian arguments in Propertarian terms. :

1) Necessary and insufficient (Thin, Rothbardian – Ghetto Libertarianism – Brutalists)

2) Necessary and sufficient (Scientific, Aristocratic Liberty – Aristocratic Egalitarians – Propertarians.)

3) Necessary, sufficient, and preferential. (Thick, Left/Classical Liberalism – BHL’s – Humanitarians.)

It took me a lot longer to synthesize the argument than I thought it would. It’s really only been in the past month that I’ve understood how to really unite the movement with an analytical argument that’s practicable (implementable).

1) “Thin” Rothbardianism may be necessary but it’s insufficient for the formation of a voluntary polity.

2) Aristocratic egalitarianism is both necessary and sufficient for the formation of a voluntary polity under the rule of law. I say nothing about preferences. Only about that which is necessary for the formation of a polity in the absence of the state.

3) “Thick” Humanitarian Libertarianism is a preference for luxuries that require a government if not a state – and some formal argument to constrain it from the classical liberal fallacies.

Curt Doolittle

The Propertarian Institute

Kiev Ukraine.