Category: Commentary, Critique, and Response

THE BHL’S, SENTIMENT VS REASON, AND ASKING FOR AN ARGUMENT

Stephan Kinsella has me thinking about our socially conscious friends: the BHL.

And, again, I enthusiastically support ANY pursuit of liberty, wherever possible, by whomever possible. The more the merrier. The more positive the better.

I think that, sure, adding ‘social compassion’ it’s an attractive means of making libertarianism palatable for the mainstream. If you can’t fight off the proletarians, then you can simply buy them off. I’ve certainly advocated the same strategy.

Social compassion is certainly a way to destroy the myth of equality, and destroy the nuclear family, as well as the pressure to create and keep the nuclear family. So, that helps correct the erroneous assumptions of equality of interest, and that liberty is a universal desire, instead of the priority of a permanent minority.

I mean, but, I think that the most likely outcome, without a ‘package deal’ is that we would both redistribute more money, AND get less freedom in exchange. Because the moral hazard would increase the weight of the unproductive, and the state would use that lever to increase extraction from us.

I guess, what I’d like to see from the BHL’s is, some argument that supports their position by rational rather than sentimental means.

Propertarianism can be used to rationally defend the BHL’s objective WITHOUT sacrificing, any way, the sanctity of individual property rights, or requiring charity. Compassion is a camel’s nose and there is no end to its infiltration of the tent of liberty.

Propertarianism requires that you decide whether the reward for respecting property rights (and manners, ethics, morals and norms) is simply access to the market, or whether additional dividends are warranted for that investment.

I think, intuitively, people feel that they are due more than access. And that (a) commissions are due on production and (b) dividends are due to ‘shareholders’, where shareholder-ship is obtained by, respect for property rights.

This is a descriptive, not normative ethical explanation of what people actually think, feel, and do. It asks ‘at what point have I paid for my property rights? And what is my dividend on that ownership?

But this strategy is incompatible with open immigration. And open immigration is incompatible with property rights – at least without full and immediate adoption of all manners, ethics, morals and norms. The most important of which, is the norm of private property, without which, the formal institutions of private property cannot exist.

At least it is not possible to demonstrate otherwise.

Give them some love too:

http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/