Coercion Libertarianism K

Libertarianism Kritik You can change my name as
much as you want but I will always be Kunta

Coercion/Libertarianism Shell..........................................................................................................................3
Link Extensions................................................................................................................................................5
Link Extensions................................................................................................................................................6
Link Extensions................................................................................................................................................7
Link Extensions................................................................................................................................................8
Answers to: “It’s Voluntary”.............................................................................................................................9
Redistribution Morally Wrong.......................................................................................................................10
Redistribution Morally Wrong........................................................................................................................11
Answers to: “We Prevent Coercion”..............................................................................................................12
Answers to: “We Uphold Positive Rights (Right to food/water/etc)” ...........................................................17
The K Turns the Case.....................................................................................................................................21
Value to Life Impacts......................................................................................................................................22
Value to Life Impacts......................................................................................................................................23
Coercion is Immoral.......................................................................................................................................24
Right to Property is Foundational...................................................................................................................32
General Impact Extensions.............................................................................................................................35
Answers to: “Commodification”....................................................................................................................39
Answers to: “Private Coercion Worse” .........................................................................................................40
Answers to: “Private Coercion Worse” .........................................................................................................41
Answers to: “Pragmatism”.............................................................................................................................42
Answers to: “Coercion Ok Because All Resources Were Once Unowned”...................................................43
Answers to: “Profit is Not a Labor Income”..................................................................................................45
Answers to: “Regulations Help Americans so not Coercive..........................................................................46
Answers to: “Absolute Property Rights Allow Slavery”...............................................................................47
Answers to: “Libertarianism Isolationist”......................................................................................................48
Answers to: “Ending Coercion Benefits Elites”.............................................................................................49
Answers to: “Ending Coercion Benefits Elites”.............................................................................................50
Answers to: “Minimal State is Coercive”.......................................................................................................51
Answers to: “State Good”...............................................................................................................................52
Answers to: “We Boost Communitarianism”.................................................................................................53
Answers to: “Need to help people”................................................................................................................59
Answers to: “Need to help people”................................................................................................................60
Answers to: Warlords Turn.............................................................................................................................61
Answers to: Warlords Turn.............................................................................................................................62
Copyright 2006 Harvard Debate, Inc. 1

Altruism Immoral...........................................................................................................................................63
Altruism Immoral...........................................................................................................................................64
Property Rights Are Foundational..................................................................................................................65
Permutation Answers......................................................................................................................................66
Permutation Answers......................................................................................................................................67
Alternative: Non-Governmental Social Control............................................................................................68
Uniqueness Answer: Half The Economy Is Controlled Now.........................................................................69
Link Answers..................................................................................................................................................70
General Answers.............................................................................................................................................71
Property Rights Answers................................................................................................................................72
Libertarianism Doesn’t Protect Rights...........................................................................................................77
Economic Redistribution Good......................................................................................................................78
Taxes Are Moral.............................................................................................................................................81
Taxes Are Moral.............................................................................................................................................82
Charity Doesn’t Solve the Need for Redistribution........................................................................................83
Self-Determination Answers...........................................................................................................................84
Libertarianism Immoral..................................................................................................................................85
Objectivism Bad.............................................................................................................................................86
Objectivism Bad.............................................................................................................................................87
Objectivism Bad.............................................................................................................................................88
Nozick Indites.................................................................................................................................................89
Nozick Indites.................................................................................................................................................90
Nozick Indites.................................................................................................................................................91
Aff: Rand Indites............................................................................................................................................92
Aff: Rand Indites............................................................................................................................................93
Altrumism/Private Charity Doesn’t Solve......................................................................................................94
Altrumism/Private Charity Doesn’t Solve......................................................................................................95
Egoism Answers.............................................................................................................................................96
Reason Isn’t Absolute.....................................................................................................................................97

Coercion/Libertarianism Shell
A. Link: FOREIGN AID COERCES AMERICANS
Murray Rothbard, Dean of Austrian School, Head of Mises Institute, FOR A NEW
LIBERTY, 1973, p. http://www.mises.org/rothbard/newlibertywhole.asp#p263. accessed 5/20/06.
To conclude our discussion, the primary plank of a libertarian foreign policy

program for America must be to call upon the United States to abandon its policy of
global interventionism: to withdraw immediately and completely, militarily and
politically, from Asia, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, from everywhere. The cry
among American libertarians should be for the United States to withdraw now, in every
way that involves the U.S. government. The United States should dismantle its bases,
withdraw its troops, stop its incessant political meddling, and abolish the CIA. It should
also end all foreign aid—which is simply a device to coerce the American taxpayer
into subsidizing American exports and favored foreign States, all in the name of
"helping the starving peoples of the world." In short, the United States government
should withdraw totally to within its own boundaries and maintain a policy of strict
political "isolation" or neutrality everywhere.
B. Impact: A LIFE OF GOVERNMENT COERCION IS NOT WORTH

LIVING BECAUSE IT IS NOT CONTROLLED BY THE PERSON WHO IS
LIVING IT, DEATH IS PREFERABLE.
Joseph Raz, philosopher, THE MORALITY OF FREEDOM, 1986, p. 307
One way to test the thesis of the primacy of action reasons is to think of a person who is entirely passive
and is continuously led, cleaned, and pumped full with hash, so that he is perpetually content, and wants nothing
but to stay in the same condition. It’s a familiar imaginary horror. How do we rank the success of such a life? It
is not
the worst life one can have. It is simply not a life at all. It lacks activity, it lacks goals. To
the extent that one is tempted to judge it more harshly than that and to regard it as a
‘negative life’ this is because of the wasted potentiality. It is a life which could have been
and was not. We can isolate this feature by imagining that the human being concerned is
mentally and physically effected in a way which rules out the possibility of a life with
any kind of meaningful pursuit in it. Now it is just not really a life at all. This does not
preclude one from saying that it is better than human life. It is simply sufficiently unlike
human life in the respects that matter that we regard it as only a degenerate case of
human life. But clearly not being alive can be better than that life.

C. The alt. is to reject coercion in every since especially how
it is perpetuated in the 1AC
We must say no!
Sylvester Petro, professor of law, Wake Forest University, Spring 1974, TOLEDO LAW REVIEW, p.
480.
However, one may still insist, echoing Ernest Hemingway – “I believe in only one thing: liberty.” And it
is always well to bear in mind David Hume’s observation: “It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost
all at once.” Thus, it is unacceptable to say that the invasion of one aspect of freedom is of no import
because there have been invasions of so many other aspects. That road leads to chaos, tyranny,
despotism, and the end of all human aspiration. Ask Solzhenitsyn. Ask Milovan Djilas. In sum, if one
believes in freedom as a supreme value, and the proper ordering principle for any society aiming to
maximize spiritual and material welfare, then every invasion of freedom must be emphatically
identified and resisted with undying spirit.

Link Extensions
1. MANDATORY SERVICE THREATENS FREEDOM
Eric Gorhman, sociologist, State University of New York, NATIONAL SERVICE: CITIZENSHIP AND
POLITICAL EDUCTION, 1992, p. 40
Another, more intractable, problem is that coercive national service violates freedoms and constitutional
protections. While very strong legal cases can be made against such a plan,' the moral case against coercive
service is even stronger. Coercive service violates the fundamental rights of freedom of expression and
freedom from involuntary servitude that are a basic part of what it means to be human. They violate these
basic characteristics which define human nature, and as such infringe upon the capacities of individuals to
live a full life with corporeal autonomy and intellectual integrity. Moreover, coercive service violates the
individual's right to property, and does so without the due process of law.
2. FOREIGN AID COERCES AMERICANS

To conclude our discussion, the primary plank of a libertarian foreign policy

program for America must be to call upon the United States to abandon its policy of
global interventionism: to withdraw immediately and completely, militarily and
politically, from Asia, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, from everywhere. The cry
among American libertarians should be for the United States to withdraw now, in every
way that involves the U.S. government. The United States should dismantle its bases,
withdraw its troops, stop its incessant political meddling, and abolish the CIA. It should
also end all foreign aid—which is simply a device to coerce the American taxpayer
into subsidizing American exports and favored foreign States, all in the name of
"helping the starving peoples of the world." In short, the United States government
should withdraw totally to within its own boundaries and maintain a policy of strict
political "isolation" or neutrality everywhere.
ANY FORM OF GOVERNMENT-SPONSORED NATIONAL SERVICE TURNS

COERCIVE AND TRIGGERS TYRANNY
Bruce Chapman, senior fellow, Hudson Institute, NATIONAL SERVICE: PRO & CON, ed., Williamson
Everson, 1990, p. 134.
Alexis de Tocqueville saw in our own early history that the genius of voluntary association was Alrierica's
superior answer to the leadership energy provided in other societies by aristocracies. But government, he
warned, may seek to direct the voluntary sector in the same way it erroneously seeks to control industrial
undertakings: Once it leaves the sphere of politics to launch out on this new task, it will, even without
intending this, exercise an intolerable tyranny. For a government can only dictate precise rules. It imposes
the sentiments and ideas which it favors, and it is never easy to tell the difference between its advice and its
commands.,

Link Extensions
3. THE DEMAND UPON THE STATE THAT THE AFFIRMATIVE MAKES IN
THEIR PLAN TEXT ENTRENCHES THE COERCIVE FORCE OF THE STATE
ON SOCIAL RELATIONS
Jayan Nayer, law professor, Warwick, Fall 1999, p.
Following this transformation of the material political-economy of the colonized, or

“ordered,” colonialism entrenched the “state” as the symbolic “political” institution of
“public” social relations. The effect of this “colonization of the mind” was that the
“political-economic” form social organization – the state – was universalized as common,
if not “natural,” resulting in a homogenization of “political” imagination and language.
Thus, diversity was unified, while at the same time, unity was diversified. The
particularities and inconveniences of human diversity – culture and tradition – were
subordinated to the “civilized” discourse of secular myths (to which the “rule of law” is
central), n16 while concurrently, humanity was formally segregated into artificial
“states,” enclosures of mythic solidarities and common destinies.

Link Extensions
4.A RADICAL FRAMING OF LIBERTARIAN POLITICS IS CRITICAL BY
RELENTLESSLY ATTACKING STATIST POLICIES WE CAN USHER IN A
CAPITALIST UTOPIA GENDER PARAPHRASED
There is another vital tactical reason for cleaving to pure principle. It is true that day-to-day social and
political events are the resultants of many pressures, the often unsatisfactory outcome of the push-and-pull
of conflicting ideologies and interests. But if only for that reason, it is all the more important for the
libertarian to keep upping the ante. The call for a two percent tax reduction may achieve only the
slight moderation of a projected tax increase; a call for a drastic tax cut may indeed achieve a
substantial reduction. And, over the years, it is precisely the strategic role of the "extremist" to keep
pushing the matrix of day-to-day action further and further in his direction. The socialists have been
particularly adept at this strategy. If we look at the socialist program advanced sixty, or even thirty
years ago, it will be evident that measures considered dangerously socialistic a generation or two ago
are now considered an indispensable part of the "mainstream" of the American heritage. In this way, the
day-to-day compromises of supposedly "practical" politics get pulled inexorably in the collectivist
direction. There is no reason why the libertarian cannot accomplish the same result. In fact, one of the
reasons that the conservative opposition to collectivism has been so weak is that conservatism, by its
very nature, offers not a consistent political philosophy but only a "practical" defense of the existing
status quo, enshrined as embodiments of the American "tradition." Yet, as statism grows and accretes,
it becomes, by definition, increasingly entrenched and therefore "traditional"; conservatism can then find
no intellectual weapons to accomplish its overthrow. Cleaving to principle means something more than
holding high and not contradicting the ultimate libertarian ideal. It also means striving to achieve
that ultimate goal as rapidly as is physically possible. In short, the libertarian must never advocate or
prefer a gradual, as opposed to an immediate and rapid, approach to his goal. For by doing so, he undercuts
the overriding importance of his own goals and principles. And if (the libertarian) he himself values his
own goals so lightly, how highly will others value them? In short, to really pursue the goal of liberty, the
libertarian must desire it attained by the most effective and speediest means available. It was in this spirit
that the classical liberal Leonard E. Read, advocating immediate and total abolition of price and wage
controls after World War II, declared in a speech, "If there were a button on this rostrum, the pressing of
which would release all wage and price controls instantaneously, I would put my finger on it and push!"
The libertarian, then, should be a person who would push the button, if it existed, for the
instantaneous abolition of all invasions of liberty. Of course, he knows, too, that such a magic button
does not exist, but his fundamental preference colors and shapes his entire strategic perspective. Such an
"abolitionist" perspective does not mean, again, that the libertarian has an unrealistic assessment of
how rapidly his goal will, in fact, be achieved. Thus, the libertarian abolitionist of slavery, William Lloyd
Garrison, was not being "unrealistic" when in the 1830s he first raised the glorious standard of
immediate emancipation of the slaves. His goal was the morally proper one, and his strategic realism
came in the fact that he did not expect his goal to be quickly reached. We have seen in chapter 1 that
Garrison himself distinguished: "Urge immediate abolition as earnestly as we may, it will, alas! be gradual
abolition in the end. We have never said that slavery would be overthrown by a single blow; that it ought to
be, we shall always contend." Otherwise, as Garrison trenchantly warned, "Gradualism in theory is
perpetuity in practice."

Link Extensions
5. THE STATE ISN'T FIT TO ENFORCE VIRTUE.
Murray Rothbard, Professor of Economics, Polytechnic Institute of New York, FREEDOM AND VIRTUE,
George Carey, ed., 1984, p. 94.
Which group in society are to be the guardians of virtue, the ones who define and enforce their vision of
what virtue is supposed to be? None other, I would say, than the state apparatus, the social instrument of
legalized violence. Now, even if we concede legitimate functions to the policeman, the soldier, the jailer, it
is a peculiar vision that would entrust the guardianship of morality to a social group whose historical record
for moral behavior is hardly encouraging. Why should the sort of persons who are good at, and will
therefore tend to exercise, the arts of shooting, gouging, and stomping, be the same persons we would want
to select as our keepers of the moral flame?
TAXATION IS FORCED LABOR
Robert Nozick, Professor of Philosophy at Harvard, ANARCHY, STATE AND UTOPIA, 1974, p. 172.
Whether it is done through taxation on wages or on wages over a certain amount, or through seizure of
profits, or through there being a big social pot so that it's not clear what's coming from where and what's
going where, patterned principles of distributive justice involve appropriating the actions of other persons.
Seizing the results of someone's labor is equivalent to seizing hours from him and directing him to carry on
various activities. If people force you to do certain work, or unrewarded work, for a certain period of time,
they decide what you are to do and what purposes your work is to serve apart from your decisions. This
process whereby they take this decision from you makes them a part owner of you; it gives them a property
right in you. Just as having such partial control and power of decision, by right, over an animal or
inanimate object would be to have a property right in it.
ACCEPTANCE OF ANY REDISTRIBUTION SNOWBALLS
If some redistribution is legitimate in order to protect everyone, why is redistribution not legitimate for
other attractive and desirable purposes as well? What rationale specifically selects protective services as the
sole subject of legitimate redistributive activities?

Answers to: “It’s Voluntary”
1. EVEN “VOLUNTARY” NATIONAL SERVICE COMPELS
POLITICAL EDUCTION, 1992, p. 32.
But the distinction between compulsory and voluntary national service is not always a useful one, because
in certain instances one may feel compelled to enroll in the service despite a structure that appears
voluntary. Put in other terms, volunteerism cannot occur in a vacuum, but manifests itself in a particular
socioeconomic context. For instance, a desperately poor individual may feel that national service is his or
her only hope for a steady income. Or an individual who wishes to go to college, but can only afford it if he
or she has completed a term of national service, can be said to have his or her choices constrained, and thus
has not willed his or her participation in complete freedom. Finally, one may experience enormous social
pressure from family or school authorities to enroll in a national service program. In all of these instances,
one could not say that these individuals volunteered for service, without stretching the notion of
volunteerism beyond an acceptable Emit.
2. THE VOLUNTARINESS OF THE PROGRAM CONCEALS ITS

COMPULSORY NATURE
POLITICAL EDUCTION, 1992, p. 58.
Even where federal regulations do not apply, state and local regulations might. For the rest of the program
is to be governed by state and local bureaucracies, and any private agency participating in the program
must comply with guidelines established at these levels. Samuel Halperin of the William T. Grant
Foundation, and a member of Youth Service America, contends that "we must insist on standards for
service that are every bit as rigorous as the standards that govern our best schools, business, and factories.
And these standards can be ensured only through some sort of regulation. At some level the individual
participant, and the agency involved, will be subject to more state power than he, she, or it would be
otherwise. The claims that these individuals volunteer or that the constituent agencies are voluntary conceal
a compulsory structure to the system.

Redistribution Morally Wrong
1. REDISTRIBUTION IGNORES JUST ENTITLEMENTS TO PROPERTY
Things come into the world already attached to people having entitlements over them. From the point of
view of the historical entitlement conception of justice in holdings, those who start afresh to complete "to
each according to his " treat objects as if they appeared from nowhere, out of nothing.
2. NO ONE HAS A RIGHT TO ANOTHER'S PROPERTY
Robert Nozick, Professor of Philosophy at Harvard ANARCHY, STATE AND UTOPIA, 1974, p. 238.
The major objection to speaking of everyone's having a right to various things such as equality of
opportunity, life, and so on, and enforcing this right, is that these rights require a substructure of things and
materials and actions; and other people may have rights and entitlements over these. No one has a right to
something whose realization requires certain uses of things and activities that other people have rights and
entitlements over. Other people's rights and entitlements to particular things (that pencil, their body, and so
on) and how they choose to exercise these rights and entitlements fix the external environment of any given
individual and the means that will be available to him. If his goal requires the use of means which others
have rights over, he must enlist their voluntary cooperation.
3. EFFECTS ON OTHERS DON'T CREATE ENTITLEMENTS TO ONE

PERSON'S PROPERTY
Robert Nozick, Professor of Philosophy at Harvard, ANARCHY', STATE AND UTOPIA, 1974, p. 269-70.
Suppose you own a station wagon or a bus and lend it to a group of people for a year while you are out of
the country. During this year these people become quite dependent on your vehicle, integrating it into their
lives. When at the end of the year you return, as you said you would, and ask for you bus back, these
people say that your decision once more to use the bus yourself importantly affects their lives, and so they
have a right to a say in determining what is to become of the bus. Surely this claim is without merit. The
bus is yours; using it for a year improved their position which is why they molded their conduct around it
and came to depend upon it.
4. REDISTRIBUTION MAKES COMPASSION INVOLUNTARY
Robert Nozick, Professor of Philosophy at Harvard, ANARCHY, STATE AND UTOPIA, 1974, p.167.
We should note in passing the ambivalent position of radicals toward the family. Its loving relationships are
seen as a model to be emulated and extended across the whole society, at the same time that it is denounced
as a suffocating institution to be broken and condemned as a focus of parochial concerns that interfere with
achieving radical goals. Need we say that it is not appropriate to enforce across the wider society the
relationships of love and care appropriate within a family, relationships which are voluntarily undertaken.

Redistribution Morally Wrong
5. REDISTRIBUTION IMPLIES CONSTANT INTERFERENCE IN PEOPLE'S
LIVES
Robert Nozick, Professor of Philosophy at Harvard, ANARCHY, STATE AND UTOPIA, 1974, p.163.
The general point illustrated by the Wilt Chamberlain example and the example of the entrepreneur in a
socialist society is that no end-state principle or distributional patterned principle of justice: can be
continuously realized without continuous interference with people's lives. Any favored pattern would be
transformed into one unfavored by the principle, by people choosing to act in various ways; for example,
by people exchanging goods and services with other people, or giving things to other people, things the
transferrers are entitled to under the favored distributional pattern. To maintain a pattern one must either
continually (or periodically) interfere to stop people from transferring resources as they wish to, or
continually interfere to take from some persons resources that others for some reason chose to transfer to
them.

Answers to: “We Prevent Coercion”
1. NO MATTER WHAT ANOTHER STATE IS DOING, YOU ARE NEVER

JUSTIFIED IN PUNISHING INNOCENTS TO GET THEM TO COMPLY – IF
THIS TYPE OF INTER-STATE WARFARE IS LEGITIMATED, SO IS NUCLEAR
ANNIHILATION.
Murray Rothbard, Academic Vice President of the Ludwig Mises Institute and the Center for Libertarian
Studies, THE ETHICS OF LIBERTY, 1982, p. http://www.mises.org/rothbard/ethics/fifteen.asp DOA
5/20/06.
EACH STATE HAS AN assumed monopoly of force over a given territorial area, the areas varying in size in
accordance with different historical conditions. Foreign policy, or foreign relations, may be defined as the relationship
between any particular State, A, and other States, B, C, D, and the inhabitants living under those States. In the ideal
moral world, no States would exist, and hence, of course, no foreign policy could exist. Given the existence of States,
however, are there, any moral principles that libertarianism can direct as criteria for foreign policy? The answer is
broadly the same as in the libertarian moral criteria directed toward the “domestic policy” of States, namely to reduce
the degree of coercion exercised by States over individual persons as much as possible. Before considering inter-State
actions, let us return for a moment to the pure libertarian stateless world where individuals and their hired private
protection agencies strictly confine their use of violence to the defense of person and property against violence.
Suppose that, in this world, Jones finds that he or his property is being aggressed against by Smith. It is legitimate, as
we have seen, for Jones to repel this invasion by the use of defensive violence. But, now we must ask: is it within the
right of Jones to commit aggressive violence against innocent third parties in the course of his legitimate defense
against Smith? Clearly the answer must be “No.” For the rule prohibiting violence against the persons or property of
innocent men is absolute; it holds regardless of the subjective motives for the aggression. It is wrong, and criminal, to
violate the property or person of another, even if one is a Robin Hood, or is starving, or is defending oneself against a
third man’s attack. We may understand and sympathize with the motives in many of these cases and extreme situations.
We (or, rather, the victim or his heirs) may later mitigate the guilt if the criminal comes to trial for punishment, but we
cannot evade the judgment that this aggression is still a criminal act, and one which the victim has every right to repel,
by violence if necessary. In short, A aggresses against B because C is threatening, or aggressing against, A. We may
understand C’s “higher” culpability in this whole procedure, but we still label this aggression by A as a criminal act
which B has every right to repel by violence. To be more concrete, if Jones finds that his property is being stolen by
Smith, Jones has the right to repel him and try to catch him, but Jones has no right to repel him by bombing a building
and murdering innocent people or to catch him by spraying machine gun fire into an innocent crowd. If he does this, he
is as much (or more) a criminal aggressor as Smith is. The same criteria hold if Smith and Jones each have men on his
side, i.e., if “war” breaks out between Smith and his henchmen and Jones and his bodyguards. If Smith and a group of
henchmen aggress against Jones, and Jones and his bodyguards pursue the Smith gang to their lair, we may cheer Jones
on in his endeavor; and we, and others in society interested in repelling aggression, may contribute financially or
personally to Jones’s cause. But Jones and his men have no right, any more than does Smith, to aggress against anyone
else in the course of their “just war”: to steal others’ property in order to finance their pursuit, to conscript others into
their posse by use of violence, or to kill others in the course of their struggle to capture the Smith forces. If Jones and
his men should do any of these things, they become criminals as fully as Smith, and they too become subject to
whatever sanctions are meted out against criminality. In fact if Smith’s crime was theft, and Jones should use
conscription to catch him, or should kill innocent people in the pursuit, then Jones becomes more of a criminal than
Smith, for such crimes against another person as enslavement and murder are surely far worse than theft. Suppose that
Jones, in the course of his "just war" against the ravages of Smith, should kill some innocent people; and suppose that
he should declaim, in defense of this murder, that he was simply acting on the slogan, “give me liberty or give me
death.” The absurdity of this “defense” should be evident at once, for the issue is not whether Jones was willing to risk
death personally in his defensive struggle against Smith; the issue is whether he was willing to kill other innocent
people in pursuit of his legitimate end. For Jones was in truth acting on the completely indefensible slogan: “Give me
liberty or give them death”—surely a far less noble battle cry. War, then, even a just defensive war, is only proper when
the exercise of violence is rigorously limited to the individual criminals themselves. We may judge for ourselves how
many wars or conflicts in history have met this criterion. It has often been maintained, and especially by conservatives,
that the development of the horrendous modern weapons of mass murder (nuclear weapons, rockets, germ warfare, etc.)
is only a difference of degree rather than kind from the simpler weapons of an earlier era. Of course, one answer to this
is that when the degree is the number of human lives, the difference is a very big one. But a particularly libertarian
reply is that while the bow and arrow, and even the rifle, can be pinpointed, if the will be there, against actual criminals,

modern nuclear weapons cannot. Here is a crucial difference in kind. Of course, the bow and arrow could be used for
aggressive purposes, but it could also be pinpointed to use only against aggressors. Nuclear weapons, even
“conventional” aerial bombs, cannot be. These weapons are ipso facto engines of indiscriminate mass destruction. (The
only exception would be the extremely rare case where a mass of people who were all criminals inhabited a vast
geographical area.) We must, therefore, conclude that the use of nuclear or similar weapons, or the threat thereof, is a
crime against humanity for which there can be no justification. This is why the old cliche no longer holds that it is not
the arms but the will to use them that is significant in judging matters of war and peace. For it is precisely the
characteristic of modern weapons that they cannot be used selectively, cannot be used in a libertarian manner.
Therefore, their very existence must be condemned, and nuclear disarmament becomes a good to be pursued for its own
sake. Indeed, of all the aspects of liberty, such disarmament becomes the highest political good that can be pursued in
the modern world. For just as murder is a more heinous crime against another man than larceny so mass murder—
indeed murder so widespread as to threaten human civilization and human survival itself—is the worst crime that any
man could possibly commit. And that crime is now all too possible.
2. GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION INTO THE MARKET EVEN TO BLOCK

THE SALE OF THE PRODUCTS OF COERCION IS UNJUSTIFIED. WE
SHOULD BOYCOTT THESE GOODS RATHER THEN RELY ON
INTERNATIONAL PRESSURE.
Samuel Bostaph, Head of the Economics Department, University of Dallas, WHO HAS THE RIGHT,
1997, p. http://www.fff.org/freedom/1297e.asp.
What this means to Americans in practical terms is that the federal government's coercive power would be
used to prevent American citizens from freely engaging in trading activity with Chinese people,
institutions, and government agents. Any American violating the specifics of the sanctions would be subject
to criminal prosecution. Thus would the ends of justice in the pursuit of human rights supposedly be served.
But would that indeed be justice? By what right does the federal government of the United States sanction
its own citizens for international trades it deems inappropriate? And if our government fails to do that — or
lacks the power to punish the offending government — is there anything that an individual American can
do about the involuntary use of human beings, innocent of any real crime, in the production process of
another country? The first question is relatively easy to answer. The Congress of the United States has no
legitimate right to forbid or obstruct the international trading activities of its citizens. …. all [people] are
held to be created equal and endowed with certain unalienable rights — among which are life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness. And it is a commonplace that property rights must be protected if the other rights
are to have substance. Property rights have no substance if one cannot freely use or alienate one's property,
given that such use directly violates no one else's rights. Further, the purpose of all nondespotic forms of
government is held to be to protect those political rights, using powers granted by those governed "to effect
their safety and happiness." Rather than using its powers for this purpose, however, our government now
uses the same techniques as those governments it wishes to sanction — imprisonment, confiscation, and
fines. American traders who fail to obey U.S. trade sanctions are robbed of their wealth or consigned to
prison or both — much as is done in China to people convicted of violating Chinese economic laws (as
differentiated from laws prohibiting violence against person or property). It also is argued that current federal government trade policies are legitimate
exercises of its sovereignty. There is no truth to this claim. The United States government is not sovereign; the people are — and the federal government
legitimately possesses only enumerated powers. As argued above, obstructing trade is not among them. In sum, there is no basis in the Constitution of the
United States or in the political philosophy that underlies the Constitution to impose trade sanctions on the American people. It
does not matter
how egregious the human rights abuses are in the countries targeted by those sanctions. Human rights in the
United States cannot legitimately be violated in response to human rights violations in other countries. Now to
the second question: what does a civilized person do in response to the human rights situation in China — or anywhere for that matter? The answer is that he does what he would
. If I believe
do if offered a product by people he abhors, or one he suspects was obtained immorally, or just one he doesn't want. He responds to the offer with a refusal
that Christmas lights made in China have been involuntarily made by people imprisoned (as was Harry Wu)
for exercising their rights of free speech or press or religion or peaceful use of property or peaceful
association or any other human right stemming from their basic rights to life and liberty, I can refuse to buy
it. And I can try to persuade others to boycott it. I can join voluntary associations to boycott and urge others
to do so as well. ,,,,,, the right of individuals to use economic sanctions is part of their freedom. A
nondespotic, legitimate government cannot deny or supplant that right with measures that contradict liberty.
Economic sanctions are not the proper province of the government of the United States. For that matter,
neither is the power to regulate trade in any respect. These are matters of individual freedom and
conscience. So, this Christmas, let's boycott Chinese goods made with slave labor. But let's leave the U.S.
government out of it. Let's fight tyranny with freedom.

3. UTILITARIANISM OF RIGHTS FAILS, HUMAN NATURE AND INCOMPLETE
KNOWLEDGE MEANS WE SHOULD ALWAYS ERR ON THE SIDE OF HUMAN
DIGNITY
Loren Lomasky, philosophy professor, University of Minnesota, PERSONS, RIGHTS, AND THE MORAL
COMMUNITY, 1987, p. 18.
It might prove to be the case that by violating the rights of one person, five equally grave rights violations will be
averted. If so, then a “utilitarianism of rights” will endorse the one rights-violation act while a side constraint account
will reject it. But how can this rejection be presented as anything other than a single-minded fanaticism that
devours its indebted beneficiary in the case of preserving it? “You maintain that the protection of rights is
of great, even transcendent value. Very well then more upholding of rights is better then less. If one
violation is necessary to prevent many others your own principles ought to lead you to prefer the former.
Yet you obstinately resist.” How is this criticism to be countered? The problem that has been identified is
that rights may prove to be inconvient. They set up barriers which neither private individuals nor
governmental bodies may breach at their pleasure. To be sure, that may often be advantageous in a morally
unproblematic way. Human beings are notoriously susceptible to temptations to pursue their narrow self-
interest at the expense of the well-being others. Were sympathy and beneficences the strongest and most
universally shared emotions, it might be feasible to do without barriers of any kind –moral rules, rights,
legally enforceable obligations—and rely instead on the promptings of individuals’ hearts to secure a
decently livable life for all. Unfortunately, the animal we are is much more recognizable in the Hobbesian
caricatures than in this idyllic alternative. So incursions must be prevented if we are to attain a tolerably decent
measure of sociability. By recognizing each individual as a bearer of rights all are afforded some protection against the
predations that would otherwise ensue. Even when arguments for overriding rights are couched in the most high-
minded terms, faced with referenced to the general welfare or the need for mental sacrifice in a just cause one may
suspect that the rhetoric is meant to yield the most for power or personal attainment History is a textbook for cynics.
Having read from it, we may be prompted to insist on undeviating respect for rights, no matter how beckoning are
inducements to the contrary, because we have no confidence in people’s ability to discriminate accurately and
dispassionately between incursions that will maximize public good and those that will debase it. If we are to err either
on the side of too much flexibility or excess dignity, better—far better the later.

4. THE AFF HAS TO WIN ABSOLUTE SOLVENCY, THE LINK TO COERCION
IS 100% EVEN IF THEY WIN THEIR IMPACT IS WORSE, THEY HAVE TO
SOLVE IT COMPLETELY OR THE RISK OF OUR IMPACT IS LARGER.
GOVERNMENT REGULATION FAILS SO OUR POSITION OUTWEIGHS
Tibor Machan, PRIVATE RIGHTS & PUBLIC ILLUSIONS, 1995, p. 146
The general consensus among scholars is that, by the standard economic measure of
cost benefit, the government’s regulatory policies and actions have failed. In a number
of studies it has also been shown that the avowed goals of regulation have not, in fact,
been achieved by regulation. Comparative analyses show, on the other hand, that in
the absence of regulation those same goals are being attained. Despite the wide
acceptance of the methods employed in these studies, the results have not produced the deregulation that
they would appear to warrant. In view of the lack of significant progress in that direction, some have
advanced theories aiming to explain why deregulation is not proceeding. Henry G. Manne, for example,
originally proposed that bureaucrats were acting in pursuit of their self-interest, which resulted, in part, in
their refusal to institute deregulation measures. Having revised his theory in some measure, Manne later
proposed that, in addition to the bureaucrats, the managers of regulated firms were acting in

pursuit of their self-interests, promoted regulatory activities in the face of evidence
showing the failure of these in terms of costs and benefits of their avowed purpose.
5. NOT TREATING RIGHTS AS ABSOLUTE CREATES A HOBBESIAN WAR

OF SPECIAL INTERESTS THAT DESTROYS ALL RIGHTS
Tibor Machan, Philosophy Professor, Auburn,INDIVIDUALS AND THEIR RIGHTS, 1989, pp. 119-21.
By not treating basic human rights as basic, all Gewirth and others do is invite some other set
of
principles we will have to turn to when we need to make principled decisions about
what people are free or not free to do. Or, more likely, they leave the matter to the discretion of those who sit as judges
in the courts. Indeed, the current legal climate, in which any strong political interest group can secure the protection of
some alleged right to well-being — to be provided with medical care, child-care facilities, a museum, the preservation
of an historical building, a subsidy, or the imposition of a tariff upon a foreign import business — suggests what can be
expected of a welfare state, a system that embraces both the limited right to liberty and the limited right to welfare.
The resulting situation is a kind of Hobbesian war of special interests against all other special interests, each
demanding the protection of its alleged liberty or welfare rights. Gewirth, like Gregory Viastos before him, seems to
forget that rights are basic principles of political life and that making them inherently unstable deprives them of their
essential character. To make rights nonabsolute within the legal context is to open a Pandora’s box of
bureaucratic arbitrariness producing the very situation that the moral-political principles we know as human rights
were explicitly designed to render impermissible. Instead of treating human rights as contextually deontological, as
principles rather than piecemeal rules of thumb, Gewirth and Dworkin are inviting the elitism that utilitarianism
requires — that is, certain leaders whose value-judgments must be imposed on the rest whenever they find it
intuitively certain or in some other fashion warranted to override basic human, individual rights. There is a snowballing
effect arising from this kind of utilitarian thinking. Such thinking ought to be avoided and alternatives to solving
the problems for which the violations of rights seemed to be justified should be sought.


6. FORCING MINDSETS CAN’T SOLVE BECAUSE PEOPLE CIRCUMVENT
THE LAW. ONLY CHANGING MOTIVES WITH PERSUASION CAN CREATE
CHANGE.
Tibor Machan, PRIVATE RIGHTS & PUBLIC ILLUSIONS, 1995, p. 131-2.
If people are selfish and greedy, as this defense contends, then their selfishness and
greed will merely show up at a different place in a regulated market—namely, in the
offices of politicians and special interest groups. If persons are selfish and greedy as
a general, persistent trait (instead of merely now and then, off and on, depending on
goodwill that is just as probable as it opposite), it does not appear that this could be
eradicated by passing regulatory statues and by creating government agencies.
Indeed, the law and economic and public choice schools of economic analysis make
exactly this point: Starting with their assumption that all human beings are essentially
utility maximizers, they show that this implies that in the public sector people carry on
just as the would in the private sector—aiming to fulfill their own desires or vested
interest. And that certainly undermines the view that such persons would guard the
marketplace instead of seek whatever economic advantage they could get by their role as
such guardians.

Answers to: “We Uphold Positive Rights (Right to

food/water/etc)”
1. EXPANDING THE ROLE OF THE GOVERNMENT TO PROTECTIONS OF

HUMAN RIGHTS JUSTIFIES ANY COERCION, INCLUDING WAR.
Frank van Dun, Senior Lecturer of Philosophy of Law at the University of Maastricht,
JOURNAL OF LIBERTARIAN STUDIES, Fall 2001, p.
http://www.mises.org/journals/jls/15_4/15_4_1.pdf.
Even in the richest states, budgetary limitations often lead to sharp confrontations between pressure groups and vested
interests in various social, economic, and cultural domains. Using the term “human rights” to describe one’s interests
does not change this fact of real-world limits. Rather, it creates the risk of inflating political rhetoric and passion,
now that the flag of human rights flies over almost the whole arena of government policy. Each policy option can
be interpreted at one and the same time as both a measure to further some human right and as an indication of
the neglect or even violation of any number of other human rights. Therefore, there is at all times unlimited room
for weighing various “rights” and for setting and revising priorities. The political and administrative bodies to
which this weighing of rights has been entrusted or that have succeeded in monopolising it have ample
opportunities for expanding their power and influence. Nothing remains of the old idea that a right is worthy of
respect in all circumstances except, perhaps, the most extreme emergency. The human rights of the UD are not and
cannot be absolute, even in the most normal of circumstances—unless anything short of Utopia should count as
an emergency. By their very nature, they are susceptible to continuous weighing, negotiation, and qualification.
They are a politician’s delight, for every human right translates into “a right to more government intervention
on its behalf.” This is no less true for the ghosts of natural rights that linger in the first half of the UD than for the
economic, social, and cultural “rights” in the rest of it. Of course, we should not confuse the ghost and the real thing.
For example , Article 2 of the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen clearly states what a person’s
natural rights are: liberty, property, freedom from arbitrary arrest, and resistance to oppression. In the UD, on the other
hand, a person is not informed that his life, liberty, security of person, and property are his fundamental rights. He is
told only that he has the right to life, liberty, and security of person (Art. 3) and property (Art. 17). He should not expect
more. For it is obviously inconsistent to claim that everyone is entitled to the full realisation of the economic, social,
and cultural “rights” and at the same time to claim that any person’s fundamental rights are his life, liberty, and
property. The administration of the former requires the concentration of massive coercive powers of taxation and
regulation in the hands of the state, and so must presuppose that a person’s life, liberty, and property are not his
rights. However, this inconsistency evaporates once we realise that the UD’s “rights to life, liberty, property” do
not specify to whose life, liberty, or property a person has a right. It rules out the possibility that he has an
exclusive right to his own life, liberty, or property, but it does not rule out that some or all others have an equal,
or perhaps more pressing, claim on those things in order to enable them, say, to enjoy the arts or a paid holiday.
Thus, a person’s life, liberty, and property are thrown upon the enormous heap of desirable scarce resources to
which all people are said to have a right. As such, they, too, end up in the scales with which political authorities,
administrators, and experts are supposed to weigh the ingredients for their favoured policy-mix. Here we catch
our first glimpse of the shadow of Hobbes behind the contemporary notion of human rights: the person who believes he
has “a right to everything” is likely to find out that there is no thing that is his right. A Hobbesian Predicament The
following thought experiment will bring out the Hobbesian character of the UD’s conception of human rights. Imagine
two people, the only survivors of a shipwreck, who find refuge on a small deserted island. They have with them
nothing but their human rights, in particular their “right to work” and all that it entails according to Articles 23, 24,
and 25 of the UD. One can imagine what will happen if they sit there insisting on their “right” of being employed
by the other at a just and favourable wage, or to receive an unemployment compensation high enough to allow them an
existence worthy of their dignity. One can also imagine what will happen if, instead of just sitting there, they attempt
to enforce their human rights against one another: their own version of Hobbes’s war of all against all. Finally,
one can easily imagine what would happen if one of them won that war: Hobbes’s solution for the
incompatibility of their “rights” would emerge. The winner could then arrange for himself a nice unemployment
compensation (e.g., a tax on an-other’s labour) to match his new-found dignity as a ruler, and keep the other man
quiet by leaving him as much as is consistent with “the organisation and the resources of their state.” Indeed,
starvation, universal war, and the Leviathan State are the only possible outcomes under a regime of human
rights—and only the latter outcome is compatible with survival. Imagining a two-person situation makes this
conclusion clear, but its validity does not depend on the numbers. Large numbers only serve to obscure the logic
of the situation. the burden of taxation and regulation just below the threshold of revolt.

food/water/etc)”
WE MAY HAVE OTHER MORAL OBLIGATIONS BUT THE GOVERNMENT

SHOULD ONLY ENFORCE PROPERTY RIGHTS ANY OTHER SYSTEM
REPEATS THE WORST ATROCITIES IN HISTORY.
Edward Feser, philosophy professor, Loyola, ON NOZICK, 2004, p. 89-90

That last line of the last chapter no doubt scandalizes many readers, as does the conception of politics it evinces.
“Surely there is more to morality than property rights, and more to social life than exchanging property!” they
might be tempted to respond; “And surely there is more to community than the collective safeguarding of that property!
What a cold and heartless — indeed, positively counter- utopian —conception of human life is embodied by such a
view!” They would, of course, be absolutely right to think this. Where they go wrong is in assuming that Nozick
would think, or is required by his position to think, any differently in assuming that Nozick’s political philosophy is
intended to be a complete social philosophy. They go wrong also in assimilating “morality” to justice, “social life”
to politics, and “community” to government. For justice is not the whole of morality; not all of social life is
politics; and genuine human community definitely is not the same thing as government action. Justice the
securing of which is the chief end of political action — is, however important, but one virtue among others. Sometimes
what is called “justice” is not justice at all, but a mask for something decidedly unvirtuous, such as envy. One suspects
that the demand for equality is a case in point; certainly one suspects this when one considers that equality as an ideal is
rarely argued for by it proponents, and is almost never argued for very well (Nozick 1974. chapter 8). There are, in
any case, virtues that are as important as justice, and some that are more important. Temperance, prudence.
fortitude, faith, hope, and love are cases in point, and only a fool could believe that the practice of these virtues will be
guaranteed if only we hit upon the right government program. Government itself, however high-flown the rhetoric
often spouted in its defense, is, it must always be remembered, nothing more than brute force, the getting of people
to do things or to refrain from doing things by the threat of violence. Sometimes, as when the defense of individual
rights is involved, such force is necessary; it remains force nonetheless. And when it involves the imposition of
redistributive taxation or paternalistic regulation, it involves nothing more than some people forcing other
people — innocent people who have violated no one else’s rights — to do things against their will, to submit to the
will of those doing the forcing. Whether or not one thinks such arm-twisting is morally justified, it is dishonest,
indeed perverse, to talk smugly as if it is the quintessence of “community.” Nor can politics — which in a non-
libertarian society amounts to little more than the struggle to be the ones who get to force the others, even if “for their
own good” — plausibly be regarded as a paradigmatically social activity, at least not if “social” is meant to connote an
ideal of high-minded cooperation. A conception of human life that sees all questions of morality, and indeed
everything of value, as necessarily entailing a political program backed by the police power of the state and the
threat of litigation, is one that can only be described, charitably, as deficient; less charitably, as warped. We need,
in Nozick’s view, to learn “to see through the political realm” (1974, x). We need to get beyond the tendency — a very
modern tendency that would have surprised earlier generations — reflexively to think of all problems as having a
political solution, of all progress as dependent on government action. We need in particular to stop thinking in
utopian terms—or rather, to stop thinking of utopia in political terms. The utopias of the past have usually been
implemented in a political fashion, and they have universally failed, often catastrophically — think the French
Revolution, Auschwitz, the Gulag Archipelago. They have also involved the imposition of one group’s vision of
utopia on everyone (indeed, this is part of the reason why they have failed). If utopian thinking is to be realistic and to
have a future, it must avoid these errors.


food/water/etc)”
NEGATIVE RIGHTS ARE THE ONLY WAY TO PRESERVE THE

INVOLIABILITY OF THE INDIVIDUAL AND PREVENT CONFLICTS BETWEEN
RIGHTS
This brings us to a second feature of Nozick’s conception of rights, namely that they are essentially negative. A
right to X just is a right not to be hindered in using something you own, X, as you want to use it. It is not a right
to have X if you don’t already own it and no one wants to give or sell it to you. Your right to your TV set is just
your right not to have it damaged or taken from you against your will; it is not a right that someone should buy you a
TV set. Your right to life is just the right not to be killed; it is not a right that others should provide you with what you
need to live. You own your life, so no one has the right to take it from you. But by the same token, others own their
lives, bodies, labor, and the things they produce with their labor, and thus no one has a right to take those things from
them. In particular, you do not have the right forcibly to take, or have someone else take, other people’s resources
simply because you want or need them, even if you need them to live (just as you have no right to take their body parts
from them even if you needed those to live). A right to what you need in order to live would be a positive right a
right to something that someone else must provide you with, as opposed to a (negative) right that someone
merely refrain from doing something to you. So-called rights to welfare, health care, education, and the like
would be positive rights. But there simply are and can be no such fundamental positive rights on a libertarian
view. For no one has a basic right against other people that they must provide things for him; to assume otherwise
is to assume, in effect, that a person at least partially owns other people’s property, including their labor, if I
claim a right to education, for example, I am in effect claiming that other people must provide me with an education —
it won’t just fall out of the sky, after all — which means I’m claiming a right to a part of their labor, i.e. whatever labor
must go into paying the taxes that fund my state-run school. But no one has a right to anyone else’s labor — people
own their own labor, and cannot morally be forced to give up some of it for others. If you want voluntarily to help me
out in paying my tuition. and sign a contract saying you’ll do so, that’s one thing — in that case, I do have the right to
your money, because you’ve agreed to provide it but if you don ‘t agree, I have no such right, and I and the government
are stealing from you if we take your money anyway. Now many rights that people claim to have are positive rights of
this sort. The United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, for example, is filled with claims not only to
negative rights, but also to many positive rights — rights to education, health care, even “periodic holidays with pay”!
But all such claims are bogus, and the alleged “rights” pure fictions conjured out of thin air. For they conflict with the
fundamental rights of self-ownership, and make people slaves to the realization of others’ desires and needs. Being
essentially negative, a person’s rights function, in Nozick’s terminology, as moral side-constraints on the actions
of others (1974, 28-35). Respecting others’ rights, that is, isn’t to be understood merely as one goal among others
that we might seek to maximize, leaving open the possibility that violating rights in some circumstances for the
sake of achieving some other good is an acceptable trade-off. Rather, one’s rights constitute a set of absolute
restrictions within which all other people must behave with respect to him, and override all considerations of utility
or welfare. They lay down the ground rules for our behavior towards others — telling us that, in anything we do, there
are certain things we must not do. “Side constraints upon action reflect the underlying Kantian principle that
individuals are ends and not merely means,” Nozick says; “they may not be sacrificed or used for the achieving of
other ends without their consent. Individuals are inviolable” (1974, 30-31). Being inviolable, their rights are also
inviolable — those rights cannot be overridden for any reason. Nor, given that rights are negative, is there any danger
that they might conflict, which would put their inviolability in doubt. If your having a right to X just means that I
cannot interfere with your use of X, and my right to Y just means that you cannot interfere with my use of Y,
then there is no conflict between our rights: All we’re required to do is to leave each other alone. But if I also claim
a positive right to Z, and Z requires the use of X, then our rights inevitably will conflict, for the only way I can get
Z is if you give me X. Positive rights will generally, and obviously, lead to such conflicts — surely another reason
to be suspicious of them. Negative rights, however, will not. Such rights are perfectly compatible with one another,
and thus with the notion that rights are inviolable.


food/water/etc)”
POSITIVE RIGHTS ENSLAVE OTHERS
Ayn Rand, philosopher and novelist, THE VIRTUE OF SELFISHNESS, 1964, p. 96.
Jobs, food, clothing, recreation (!), homes, medical care, education, etc., do not grow in nature. These are
man-made values-goods and services produced by men. Who is to provide: them? If some men are enticed
by right to the products of the work of others, it means that those others are deprived of rights and
condemned to slave labor. Any alleged "right" of one man, which necessitates the violation of the rights of
another, i;s not and cannot be a right. No man can have a right to impose an unchosen obligation, an
unrewarded duty or an involuntary servitude on another man. There can be no such thing as "the right to
enslave. "

The K Turns the Case

1. COERCION AND INDUCEMENTS UNDERMINE TRUE SERVICE
Bruce Chapman, senior fellow, Hudson Institute, SERVICE: PRO & CON, ed., Williamson Everson, 1990,
p. 134.
True service, then, has a spiritual basis, even for some outside the Judeo-Christian tradition per se.
Fulfillment of an obligation to government, in contrast, has a contractual basis unless it is founded on an
outright commitment to a coercive utopianism. Either way, it is not true service. Nor can enrollment in a
government-funded self-improvement project or acceptance of a government job be called true service.
Indeed, when coercion or inducements are provided, as in the various national service schemes, the spirit of
service is to that degree corrupted. In practice the service in a federal program of national service would be
contaminated by governmental determination of goals, bureaucratization of procedures, and, inevitably,
government insistence on further regulating the independent sector with which it contracted. National
service would tend to demoralize those citizens who volunteer without expectation of financial reward and
stigmatize the honest labor of people whose fields were invaded by stipened and vouchered volunteers.
Government intervention is always a potential threat to the voluntary sector. When totalitarians have come
to power in other Western countries, they have sought to absorb this sector, conferring official sponsor ship
on certain organizations and scorning others, thereby inculating in the citizenry the government's valuation
even on use of free time. Although in the United States totalitarianism is not a current danger to our liberal
democracy, coercive utopianism is always a legitimate concern.
2. COERCION IS NOT JUSTIFIED TO EVEN DECREASE THE NET

VIOLATION OF RIGHTS: THIS IS A FRAMING QUESTION THAT PRECEDES
ALL OTHER CONSIDERATIONS
Roger Pilon, Cato Vice President for Legal Affairs, Director of the Center for Constitutional Studies,
TWO KINDS OF RIGHTS, December 6, 2001, p. http://www.cato.org/current/terrorism/pubs/pilon-
011206.html DOA 4/20/06.
As the Declaration of Independence says, the main business of government is to secure rights, but
legitimate government can't do it by any means. It can't violate rights in the name of securing them.
That frames the issue. Between those boundaries—and given a world of uncertainty—the devil is in the
details. Governments too restrained leave rights exposed. By contrast, societies that trade liberty for
security, as Ben Franklin noted, end often with neither. Thus, the government's war against terrorism
implicates two kinds of rights—the rights governments are instituted to secure, and those they must
respect in the process. At this writing, it appears that the terrorist attacks of September 11 resulted from
a massive government failure to protect rights of the first kind. Predictably, friends of government are
now saying that an undue regard for rights of the second kind led to that failure. That may be true, but it
may also be special pleading. Were agencies prohibited from talking to each other in the name of
privacy? Or did they simply fail to coordinate efforts? Those are the kinds of questions that need
answering. At this juncture, therefore, it 's difficult to say which civil liberties are most at risk.
Certainly, as September 11 demonstrated, the liberties we created government to secure are at risk. But
can we better secure them and remain free? Yes, if we act smartly. Above all, whether with surveillance
or searches or due process, judicial oversight must be preserved—for citizens and non-citizens. It's the
final safeguard for liberty.

Value to Life Impacts
1. GOVERNMENT COERCION DESTROYS THE VALUE TO LIFE AND

CANNOT BE MORALLY JUSTIFIED
Tibor Machan, PRIVATE RIGHTS & PUBLIC ILLUSIONS, 1995, p. 68-9.
All governmental action that does not serve to repel or retaliate against coercion is
antithetical to any respect for human dignity. While it is true that some people should
give to others to assist them in reaching their goals, forcing individuals to do so plainly
robs them of their dignity. There is nothing morally worthwhile in forced giving.
Generally, for a society to respect human dignity, the special moral relations between
people should be left undisturbed. Government should confine itself to making sure
that this voluntarism is not abridged, no matter how tempting it might be to use its
coercive powers to attain some worthy goal.
2. A LIFE OF GOVERNMENT COERCION IS NOT WORTH LIVING BECAUSE

IT IS NOT CONTROLLED BY THE PERSON WHO IS LIVING IT, DEATH IS
PREFERABLE.
Joseph Raz, philosopher, THE MORALITY OF FREEDOM, 1986, p. 307
One way to test the thesis of the primacy of action reasons is to think of a person who is entirely passive
and is continuously led, cleaned, and pumped full with hash, so that he is perpetually content, and wants nothing
but to stay in the same condition. It’s a familiar imaginary horror. How do we rank the success of such a life? It
is not
the worst life one can have. It is simply not a life at all. It lacks activity, it lacks goals. To
the extent that one is tempted to judge it more harshly than that and to regard it as a
‘negative life’ this is because of the wasted potentiality. It is a life which could have been
and was not. We can isolate this feature by imagining that the human being concerned is
mentally and physically effected in a way which rules out the possibility of a life with
any kind of meaningful pursuit in it. Now it is just not really a life at all. This does not
preclude one from saying that it is better than human life. It is simply sufficiently unlike
human life in the respects that matter that we regard it as only a degenerate case of
human life. But clearly not being alive can be better than that life.

Value to Life Impacts
1. LIBERTARIANISM BEST RESPECTS THE NATURE OF HUMANS AS

FREE, RATIONAL INDIVIDUALS
Tibor Machan, Professor of Philosophy, University of San Diego, FREEDOM AND VIRTUE, George
Carey, ed., 1984, p. 48.
Once an individual chooses to live, that individual has committed himself to living well or properly, namely
in accordance with his nature; libertarianism is the political theory which best takes into account man's
nature, namely, his essence as a free, rational living being whose conduct can only be made morally
worthwhile by the individual himself by sustaining his commitment. This kind of life, with all of the
diversity and universality it entails - based on the broad human and highly specialized individual and other
characteristics every individual possesses - is what should be chosen by each individual.
2. LIBERTY IS NEEDED FOR FULFILL OUR HUMANITY
Carey, ed., 1984, p. 47.
When life emerges in reality, objective values emerge too. The living have a lot to lose by dying. And in the
case of human life, value considerations take on a moral component because individual human beings are
responsible to identity the values that will sustain and improve their lives - that is, because of the
phenomenon of free will. Since we are responsible - like it or not - for living well or badly, we must eschew
any substitute for this responsibility lest we shed our very humanity in the process. Thus political liberty.
The philosophy that underlies the robust theory of libertarian politics can be seen, thus, to secure a natural -
as distinct from a supernatural - place for objective personal, social, and political norms.

Coercion is Immoral
1. OUR ETHIC CAPTURES ALL OF YOUR OFFENSE BECAUSE WITHIN A

MINIMAL STATE INDIVIDUALS ARE FREE TO SET UP WHATEVER SYSTEM
THEY PLEASE WHEREAS UNDER A COERCIVE GOVERNMENT
LIBERTARIANISM IS DENIED
Edward Feser, philosophy professor, Loyola, ON NOZICK, 2004, p. 37-8.
. Some individuals within the context of a minimal state may want to do this, of course, and opt to participate, say, in
a community that seeks to emulate the freewheeling entrepreneurs of Gait’s Gulch in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged But
others may prefer to set up a socialist society or a hippie commune, while yet others opt instead for a morally
austere Puritan commonwealth or Buddhist sangha or Muslim umma. In a sense, then, libertarianism
doesn’t even require that people accept the minimal state as the optimal political
system! For people are free to set up, within its boundaries, quasi-states of whatever size
and degree of intervention in people’s lives they wish, provided that people are allowed voluntarily
either to submit themselves, or refuse to submit, to such more-than- minimal quasi-
states. All of these societies will be possible within the larger, encompassing framework of the libertarian minimal
state. The beauty of the minimal state is that it doesn’t require these differences to be settled. Every individual and
group is free to set up whatever arrangements it likes, so long as they do not force everyone else to go along. And this
includes non-libertarians. It is usually thought that libertarianism itself requires that everyone live according to a laissez
faire capitalist ethos, but that isn’t so. Some individuals within the context of a minimal state may want to do this, of
course, and opt to participate, say, in a community that seeks to emulate the freewheeling entrepreneurs of Gait’s Gulch
in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged But others may prefer to set up a socialist society or a hippie commune, while yet others
opt instead for a morally austere Puritan commonwealth or Buddhist sangha or Muslim umma. In a sense, then,
libertarianism doesn’t even require that people accept the minimal state as the optimal political system! For
people are free to set up, within its boundaries, quasi-states of whatever size and degree of intervention in people’s lives they wish,
provided that people are allowed voluntarily either to submit themselves, or refuse to submit, to such more-than- minimal quasi-states.
All of these societies will be possible within the larger, encompassing framework of the libertarian minimal state. The teachings of the
Church, then they can set up their community too, and no one can stop them. Each community can preach to the members of the other
if the others are willing to listen, and try to convince them to defect; but they cannot coerce members of the other group to give up
their preferred ways, nor can they force members of the other group to support the propagation of their own views. B can’t force
members of A to go to Sunday school or to fund the distribution of Bibles; A can’t force the members of B to send their employees to
multicultural sensitivity training or to fund the distribution of condoms. True tolerance is a two-way street it requires those who claim
to be “tolerant” and “open-minded” not to force others to be; it leaves open the possibility that what some people consider tolerance
and open- mindedness, other people have a right to regard as a collapse of ethical and intellectual standards. Some critics of Nozick
acknowledge the attractiveness of this proposal, but suggest that it isn’t as fair to all points of view as it sounds: For wouldn’t
members of a socialist society constantly be tempted to flee to a neighboring capitalist society, with its greater individual wealth?
Wouldn’t people who decide to give up such a life (and thus sell their communally held land) find it difficult to come back to it (due to
a rise in land prices) should they change their minds yet again? (Wolff 1991, 135). But surely this sort of objection is rather pathetic —
a complaint to the effect that “If we let everyone choose what sort of utopia they’d like to live in, they might not choose the way I’d
like them to!” But so what? (Presumably purveyors of Nazi and Communist “utopias” would find it difficult to attract many Jews or
“bloodsucking capitalists” to enter into their villages and voluntarily agree to be liquidated. Should we feel sorry for them on that
account?) Why should we expect that every utopian experiment will be able to get off the ground? No political philosophy could
guarantee that. But libertarianism at least allows everyone to try to attract people to participate in their utopian
experiments. It allows even the socialist and liberal egalitarian to make a go of their proposals. By contrast, the
socialist or liberal would forbid laissez faire capitalists even the chance to do this.

Coercion is Immoral
2. ONLY THE THESIS OF SELF-OWNERSHIP CAN JUSTIFY THE CLAIM THE
SLAVERY IS IMMORAL

In addition to this Kantian principle, however, Nozick appeals to another idea which has a long history in
libertarian thought and which many commentators (e.g. Cohen 1995, 67; Wolff 1991, 7-8) take to be the
more fundamental element of Nozick’s system. This is the thesis of self-ownership, the notion
that each individual human being has complete and absolute ownership of
(themselves) himself -- of his body, talents, abilities, and labor (Nozick 1974, 171-172). Or as John
Locke, an early proponent of the thesis, put it: “Every man has a property in his own person; this nobody
has any right to but himself. The labour of his body and the work of his hands we may say are properly his”
(1963). You are, that is to say, your own property; you own yourself. Probably for most people, this
principle will seem just intuitively correct. But for anyone who doubts it, the main argument given in its
defense is that unless we assume the truth of the thesis of self ownership, we have no
way of explaining the immorality of many practices we all consider clearly immoral.
Take slavery, for example. It is almost universally acknowledged nowadays that
slavery is a very great evil. But why is it, exactly? It cannot merely be for the reason
that slaves are often treated badly. For slaves are sometimes treated very well by
their masters, even forming bonds of affection with them; yet surely, it is still seriously
wrong for even a “kindhearted” master to keep a slave. The only way to explain why
this is so is that in making someone a slave, a slave owner simply violates the slave’s
property rights in himself: No one else can properly own you, because you already
own yourself, and a slave owner is in effect stealing from you.

Coercion is Immoral
3. COERCION IS IMMORAL BECAUSE IT DENIES INDIVIDUALS THE
CAPACITY TO DEVELOP AS MORAL AGENTS.

More hopeful is the strategy, pursued by a large number of libertarian philosophers, of appealing to a broadly
Aristotelian account of morality (Mack 1981; Machan 1989; Rasmussen and Den Uyl 1991; Smith 1995). On
Aristotle’s view, the fundamental moral question is not “What is the right thing to do?” but rather
“What traits of character should I develop?” Only when one has determined what traits these are --
that is, what habitual patterns of action count as virtues can one go on to answer the subordinate question of how one
ought to act in a particular case (the answer being that one should act the way someone possessing the virtue relevant to
that situation would act). What count as the virtues, in turn, are just those qualities most
conducive to enabling human beings to fulfill the potentials which distinguish them
as the unique sorts of beings they are — those qualities, that is, which best allow
human beings to flourish given their distinctive human nature. Given that human beings
are by nature rational animals, we can flourish only if we practice those virtues
governing practical and theoretical reason. It follows that we have reason to acquire intellectual
virtues like truthfulness and practical virtues such as temperance and courage, and to avoid such corresponding vices as
licentiousness and cowardice. Given that human beings are also by nature social animals, we can only flourish if we
practice also those virtues governing interaction with other human beings, so that we have reason to acquire such social
virtues as honesty and loyalty. Though the moral life will involve decision-making about
what to do in a particular concrete situation, then, it involves more basically the
gradual development of a good character by the taking on of the virtues and the
weeding out of vices — it essentially involves, that is, a process of self-perfection.
Only a person who voluntarily decides to do so can carry out this process, however
virtue must be freely chosen if it is truly to count as virtue. Moreover, the specific requirements of virtuous behavior
depend to a considerable extent on the unique circumstances of the situation and the individual person involved,
circumstances knowable only to that person himself in the concrete contexts of moral decision- making. The moral
life, then, is only fully possible under conditions wherein the individual is capable of
self-direction (in Rasmussen and Den Uyl’s terms), the absence of coercion and interference from outside
forces. Allowing others such self-direction is necessary too if the individual is to allow those others also to develop the
virtues; and in general, respecting others’ autonomy is essential if one is successfully to cooperate with them as fellow
citizens, and thus fulfill one’s own nature as a social being. Given the centrality of self-direction to
self- perfection, then, respect for the rights of self-ownership turns out to be
required for the successful pursuit of the moral life.

Coercion is Immoral
HUMAN NATURE MAKES LIBERTARIANISM THE ONLY MORAL SYSTEM
THE FACT THAT HUMANS ARE RATIONAL MAKES THEM DEPENDENT ON
SELF-OWNERSHIP.
Edward Feser, philosophy professor, Loyola, ON NOZICK, 2004, p. 50.
Other libertarian theorists take other aspects of the moral life and of human nature, understood in more or less
Aristotelian terms, to call forth a distinctly libertarian account of rights. Ayn Rand, for instance. argued that the
reality of natural rights, and in particular the possibility of forming rights to the resources one needs in order to
live, is a precondition for the very survival of man as a rational animal (1964). (Nozick, incidentally, rejected this
specifically Randian approach to defending natural rights, though Den Uyl and Rasmussen have challenged his
objections. See the essays by Nozick, Den Uyl and Rasmussen in Paul 1981.) Murray Rothbard and Hans-Hermann
Hoppe argue that the right of self-ownership is presupposed in the very use of one’s body to act within the
world, and in particular in the use of one’s rational faculties and body parts (e.g. one’s mouth) in argumentation, so that
one cannot so much as try to argue against self- ownership without falling into a pragmatic self-contradiction. Loren
Lomasky (whose position is not precisely an Aristotelian one though it shares a certain family resemblance to such an
approach) focuses on the fact that human beings are “project pursuers,” who for the successful execution of their
often radically diverse projects require the sort of autonomy guaranteed by libertarian rights. All these
accounts, however, have in common the notion that the existence of the rights of self-ownership follows from
deeper moral facts that are themselves determined by objective human nature.
THEIR ETHIC IS CHILDISH, SELFISH AND DESTROYS THE ABILITY OF

HUMANS TO TREAT EACH OTHER WITH DIGNITY
As the conservative philosopher Roger Scruton argues with respect to the particular kind of solipsistic fantasy
world occupied by the consumer of pornography: [F]antasy replaces the real, resistant, objective world with a
pliant surrogate. And it is important to see why this matters. Life in the actual world is difficult and embarrassing. Most of all,
it is difficult and embarrassing in our confrontation with other people who, by their very existence, make demands that we may be unwilling to meet. It requires a great force, a
desire that fixes upon an individual, and sees that individual as unique and irreplaceable, if people are to make the sacrifices upon which the community depends for its longevity.
It is far easier to take refuge in surrogates, which neither embarrass us nor resist our cravings. The habit grows of
creating a compliant world of desire, in which the erotic force is dissipated and the needs of love denied. The viewer
of pornography, Scruton argues, is attracted to it precisely because the people who occupy the fantasy are
undemanding, ready to serve the viewer’s whims without question and on his own terms. But real romantic
relationships are not like that — they demand, if they are to succeed, that a person learn unselfishly to put his
lover’s needs, wishes, feelings and vulnerabilities on at least an equal footing with his own, that he move beyond the
self and toward the other. Absorption in pornography makes it difficult to do this, as it ingrains a tendency to remove sex in the
viewer’s mind from the interpersonal contexts that concretely shape it in the real world, with all their complications and emotional attachments — to regard it in a self-gratifying
way that objectifies the other person, rather than in self-giving and other- regarding terms. Hence the stress in traditional conservative thinking on the need for flourishing human
virtue of chastity to confine sexual passion to the context of total commitment to another human being
beings to cultivate the
in marriage. Similarly, human beings need, if they are to flourish in their other (and usually less intimate!) relationships to
other human beings to learn to regard those others as subjects and not objects, as fellow rational beings with their own
needs and purposes, not selfishly and narcissistically as if they were figments of our own imaginations who exist and have
significance only to the extent that they fulfill our own needs. Respecting another’s self-ownership is a mark of moral
maturity, reflecting one’s recognition that that other person does not exist for you, to cater to your needs at your will -
he is not your creation but an objective reality in his own right, and thus cannot be used by you against his will as a resource.
The socialist or liberal egalitarian — who insists, in effect, that others’ efforts and resources be directed or redistributed
to fulfill his own needs and desires — would, on this view, be analogous to the occupant of Nozick’s “experience machine”
world or like the onanist of Scruton’s pornography example, childishly demanding that the world be re-made to
conform to his will. It is he, rather than the Nozickian libertarian, who is thus more plausibly accused of “selfishness.”
Respect for self-ownership is in fact profoundly unselfish — a necessary condition for dealing with other people in a
manner that respects their independence and dignity, making possible the kind of human community that our nature as
social beings requires us to work for.

Coercion is Immoral
OUR ETHIC PREVENTS INDIVIDUALS FROM BEING USED AS A MEANS TO
AN END
In articulating his view of the nature and basis of individual rights, Nozick appeals
to a fundamental moral principle whose best- known formulation derives from the
German philosopher Immanuel Kant. Kant is famous for (among many other things) his
“Categorical Imperative,” the dictum that one ought always to “Act only according to
that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal
law.” That, in any case, is the first formulation Kant gives the Imperative. A second
formulation, more relevant for our purposes, goes as follows: “Act so that you treat
humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another, always as an end and
never as a means only” What does this mean? The basic idea is this: An individual
human being is not a mere object or thing, nor just an animal, but rather a person, a
rational being with the capacity for free moral choice, and has, accordingly, a
special dignity and value. He has his own purposes and ends, and these must be
respected as long as they are consistent with respect for the purposes of others. He is
not to be interfered with in the uncompelled choices he makes, as long as he refrains
from interfering in the choices made by others. He is above all not to be regarded as a
resource for others, an instrument that may be used at will for another’s purposes. Unlike
a piece of unliving matter or an unintelligent brute, he is not properly a means to other
people’s ends; he is, rather, an end in himself. That a person cannot be regarded as a
means only, but always as an end, entails, in Nozick’s view, that a person has certain
rights. In particular, he has a right not to be treated in any way that involves using
him as a resource for others, or which conflicts with his fundamental autonomy as a
free, rational agent. He cannot be killed, or maimed, or stolen from, or taken as a slave.
But he also cannot properly be forced to use his talents, abilities, and labor to assist
others, if he chooses, rightly or wrongly, to refrain from assisting; he cannot be forced to
refrain from engaging in behaviors others regard as self- destructive, even if they really
are self-destructive, if those behaviors do not involve violating anyone else’s rights; and
so forth.

Coercion is Immoral
THE SIMPLICITY OF THE UNDERLYING PREMISES OF LIBERTARIANISM
PUT THE BURDEN OF PROOF ON THE AFFIRMATIVE’S ETHIC

In any case, as we’ve seen, such development is not required to provide Nozick’s libertarianism with a
powerful justification the thesis of self-ownership is plausible enough by itself to do that. But we can end
this long chapter — necessarily long given how crucial individual rights are to Nozick’s project by noting
that even if that thesis were entirely lacking in justification, it is difficult to see why
this would be especially problematic for Nozick. For why should we assume that it is
he who has to justify the thesis? Why not assume instead that it is Nozick’s opponent
who must justify his rejection of it? The burden of proof. I want to suggest, does in
fact clearly lie with the opponent, and not with Nozick. For there are really only three
possibilities: Either you own yourself, or other people do, or no one does. The last
seems plainly false: Are we really to believe that no one owns your hand or your
heart? Not even you — which would entail that you have no more of an entitlement
to them than I do? But then if someone really does own them, it isn’t just obvious
who it is, namely you? They’re attached to you, after all, and not to anyone else;
indeed, your body and its parts seem to be you, or at least are partially constitutive of
you. Are we expected to believe instead that someone else at least partially owns
your hand or heart or other body parts, then Which parts exactly, and on what
terms? Do you own the fingers of your hand, but not the thumb? Or do you co-own them all — in which
case, do you require someone’s permission if you want to use them, or can you use them only on Thursdays
and Sundays, say? And who exactly are the true owners or co-owners if not you? Your family? Friends?
The government? (City, state, or federal?) And what exactly gives them ownership and not
you? Are we really expected to believe that there is a serious problem in justifying your claim to use your
body and labor as you wish, but no problem in justifying the government’s claim to use them as it wishes?!
Why do non-libertarians demand justification of the thesis of self-ownership but not
for, say, the thesis of community-ownership or the thesis of state-ownership? (Of course,
someone might respond that God owns us, so that we cannot own ourselves though presumably most of Nozick’s socialist and liberal
critics wouldn’t say this. But self-ownership is no more inconsistent with belief in God than private property is. In both cases, we can
suppose that God owns everything but allows us to act as stewards of what He owns, and holds us to account for how we use it. God
owns the land your farm is on, say, but allows you to hold that land as your private property and forbids others from stealing it, or
anything else, from you. Similarly, God owns you, but allows you to hold yourself as private property, and forbids others from stealing
that property from you. On this view, “self-stewardship” would perhaps be a more appropriate term than self-ownership.) The notion
that anyone else has a rightful claim, enforceable by law, over your body, its parts, or your abilities, talents, and labor thus seems itself
entirely undefended, and indeed indefensible. At any rate, the assumption that you are the owner of these things seems the obvious
The thesis of self-ownership has a presumption in its favor; it is
default position to take.
“innocent until proven guilty.” But then, so is the libertarianism that Nozick says
follows from it. It is not Nozick who needs to “provide foundations” for or justify his
libertarianism, then — it is his critics who need to justify themselves.

Coercion is Immoral
ONLY FRAMING RIGHTS IN TERMS OF PROPERTY AND SELF OWNERSHIP
CREATES A CONSISTENT SYSTEM, THE AFFIRMATIVES ETHIC SETS
RIGHTS AGAINST EACH OTHER DESTROYING THEIR ABSOLUTE NATURE.

The notion that all genuine rights are property rights is a very important one in libertarian theory; indeed, many libertarians hold that
the
there is no other way in which the notion of rights can coherently be understood. Rothbard, for example, suggests that
reason controversies about whether rights are “absolute” seem so intractable is
precisely because of a failure to understand that all rights are property rights (1998,
113-120). For instance, people often assert that the right to free speech is not
absolute, since it would surely be wrong to shout “Fire!” in a crowded theater; and
they then conclude that rights in general must be rather loosely defined and subject
to any number of qualifications and restrictions by government. Notoriously, where
exactly to draw the line in any principled way becomes impossible to determine. But
when we understand that there is no “right to free speech” over and above the right
to use one’s body parts and other property, the difficulties disappear. The reason I
cannot shout “Fire!” in a crowded theater is not because rights are less than absolute:
I still have an absolute right to use my mouth as I see fit, consistent with your right to use
your property as you see fit. But you, having that absolute right to your property — a
theater, perhaps — also have a right not to allow anyone on it who does not (at least
implicitly) promise not to yell “fire!” If I really want to yell it, I can still do so — as long as I do it on my own
property. In general, the rights we have are just rights to use our property — whether body parts or parts of the external physical world
as we see fit. Thus, if we don’t have a property right in some particular thing, we have no right to it at all. If I don ‘t own any printing
equipment, and no one wants to sell or lend me any, then I will be unable to propagate my views very widely, however much I may
freely use my hands to write them out. No right of mine is violated by this, however — there is no “right of free speech” or “right to a
free press” that is so violated, because those rights are nothing more than the right to use what I do own the way I see fit. As the
libertarian philosopher Jan Narveson puts it, “Liberty is Property” (1988, 66).

Coercion is Immoral
A ETHIC THAT ARISES FROM A JUST SYSTEM BY JUST STEPS IS JUST
THIS EXAMPLE PROVES YOUR SYSTEM ARE ILLEGITIMATE
Nozick elucidates and defends the entitlement theory by appealing to a thought experiment involving
Wilt Chamberlain, the famous basketball player . Suppose there is a society in which a certain
distribution of wealth and income — call it Dl — prevails, and let it be any end-result or patterned
distribution that an opponent of Nozick would insist upon. To keep things simple, let’s imagine that Dl is
an equal distribution of wealth (though the argument will come out the same whatever distribution we
choose). Nozick’s opponent will have to grant that Dl is a just distribution — after all, he’s the one who
decided on it. Now let’s suppose further, that among the members of this society is Wilt Chamberlain.
Chamberlain is popular, and many people want to see him play basketball. Imagine, however, that he
insists on playing only if those who come to watch his games pay him an extra 25 cents, dropping a
quarter in a special box at the gate before entering the sports arena. Some people will prefer to keep their
money and will stay home. But others will happily part with their 25 cents in order to watch him play;
and let’s suppose that over the course of the season, I million of them do so. What we have at the end of
the season is thus a new distribution of wealth, D2; and this distribution breaks the original pattern,
being unequal, since Chamberlain now has $250,000 more than anyone else has. So now we want to ask:
Is Chamberlain entitled to his money? And is the new distribution D2 ajust distribution? The answer,
Nozick says, is obviously yes. For each individual in Dl was entitled to what (they) he had, as Nozick’s
own critic, being the one who chose Dl, must acknowledge; so no one can complain that the starting
point was unjust. But neither can anyone complain that any of the steps from Dl to D2 were unjust.
For some of the individuals in Dl freely chose to exchange some of their holdings with Chamberlain —
they thus have no grounds for a complaint of injustice. The others didn’t make this choice, but they thus
still have the shares they had under Dl — so they have no grounds for a complaint either. But then no one
has grounds for a complaint of injustice, either against Chamberlain or against D2 itself; and thus there is
no injustice. “Whatever arises from a just situation by just steps is itself just,” Nozick says; in
particular, D2 is perfectly just, and Chamberlain has a right to his newly gained wealth. This implies,
though, that all end-result and patterned theories of distributive justice are false. For such theories
hold that to be just, a distribution of wealth must fit a certain pattern. Yet the Chamberlain example
clearly shows that a distribution can be just without fitting any particular pattern. D2 is perfectly just
even though, unlike Dl, it is not an equal distribution; so egalitarian theories ofjustice, which hold that only
an equal distribution can be just, are just wrong. A similar result would follow if we imagined instead that
Dl was a distribution according to need, labor, merit, or what have you. In each case, people freely
choosing to pay Chamberlain 25 cents (even if he doesn’t need it, or doesn’t work as hard as others, or may
not be morally exemplary) will break the favored pattern, and yet this won’t result in an unjust distribution.
So a just distribution does not require that those who need, work, or merit the most get the most. The
Wilt Chamberlain argument shows, then, that criticisms of capitalist societies to the effect that “x% of
the population own much more than x% of the wealth,” or that there are people in them who work hard
but deserve or need much more than they have, are without force.

Right to Property is Foundational
LIFE LIBERTY AND PROPERTY ARE ALL BASIC RIGHTS
John Hospers, Professor of Philosophy, University of Southern California, THE LIBERTARIAN

ALTERNATIVE, Tibor Machan, ed., 1974, p. 5.
It will already be evident that libertarian doctrine is embedded in a view of the rights of man. Each human
being has the right to live his life as he chooses, compatibly with the equal right of all other huma~a beings
to live their lives as they choose. All man's rights are implicit in the above statement. Each man has the
right to life: any attempt by others to take it away from him, or even to injure him, violates this right,
through the use of coercion against him. Each man has the right to liberty: to conduct his life in accordance
with the alternatives open to him without coercive action by others. And every man has the right to
property: to work to sustain his life (and the lives of whichever others he chooses to sustain, such as his
family) and to retain the fruits of his labor.
THE RIGHT TO PROPERTY FOLLOWS FROM THE RIGHT TO LIFE
Ellen Frankel Paul, Professor of Political Science, University of Colorado, READING NOZICK, Jeffrey
Paul, ed., 1981, p. 284.
From the rights to life and liberty (that is, from the essential motility requirements to sustain life, from [1],
comes the right to property, i.e., the right to that with which one has a) mixed one's labor by removing it
from a state of nonownership, or b) acquired by means of a voluntary exchange, bequest, gift or
inheritance. Without property in that which one has labored to attain, one could not sustain one's life. Life is
the good for any individual and property is a necessary requirement for preserving that good.
PROPERTY IS NEEDED TO PROTECT OTHER RIGHTS

People often defend the rights of life and liberty but denigrate property rights, and yet the right to property
is as basic as the other two; indeed, without property rights no other rights are possible. Depriving you of
property is depriving you of the means by which you live.
ANY INTERFERENCE WITH PROPERTY VIOLATES RIGHTS

ALTERNATIVE, Tibor Machan, ed., 1974, p6.
Where do my rights end? Where yours begin. I may do anything :[ wish with my own life, liberty and
property without your consent; but I may do nothing with your life, liberty and property without your
consent. If we recognize the principle of man's rights, it follows that the individual is sovereign of the
domain of his own life and property, and is sovereign of no other domain. To attempt to interfere forcibly
with another's use, disposal or destruction of his own property is to initiate force against him and to violate
his rights.

PROPERTY RIGHTS ARE ESSENTIAL TO A RATIONAL LIFE PLAN

Depriving people of property is depriving them of the means by which they live-the freedom of the
individual citizen to do what he wishes with his own life and to plan for the future. Indeed, only if property
rights are respected is there any point to planning for the future and working to achieve one's goals.
Property rights are what makes long-range planning possible - the kind of planning which is a distinctively
human endeavor, as opposed to the day-by-day activity of the lion who hunts, who depends on the supply
of game tomorrow but has no real insurance against starvation in a day or a week. Without the right to
property, the right to life itself amounts to little: how can you sustain your life if you cannot plan ahead?
and how can you plan ahead if the fruits of your labor can at any moment be confiscated by government?
HISTORICALLY, POLITICAL FREEDOM ACCOMPANIES ECONOMIC

FREEDOM
Mlilton Friedman, Nobel laureate in Economics, CAPITAL.ISM AND FREEDOM, 1962, p9-10.
The nineteenth century and early twentieth century in the Western world stand out as striking exceptions to
the general trend )f historical development. Political freedom in this instance clearly came along with the
free market and the development of capitalist institutions. So also did political freedom in the golden age of
Greece and in the early days of the Roman era.
NO SOCIETY IS FREE POLITICALLY WITHOUT ECONOMIC FREEDOM
Milton Friedman, Nobel Laureate in Economics, CAPITALISM AND FREEDOM, 1962, p9.
Historical evidence speaks with a single voice on the relation between political freedom and a free market.
I know of no example in time or place of a society that has been marked by a large measure of political
freedom, and that has not also used something comparable to a free market to organize the bulk of
economic activity.
NO FREE SOCIETY EXISTS WITHOUT ECONOMIC FREEDOM
Milton Friedman, Nobel Laureate Economist, FREE TO CHOOSE, 1980, p3.

A predominantly voluntary exchange economy, on the other hand, has within it the potential to promote
both prosperity and human freedom. It may not achieve its potential in either respect, but we know of no
society that has ever achieved prosperity and freedom unless voluntary exchange has been its dominant
principle of organization.


ECONOMIC FREEDOM IS ESSENTIAL TO PRESERVING POLITICAL
FREEDOM
Milton Friedman, Nobel Laureate in Economics, CAPITALISM AND FREEDOM, 1962, p8.
Economic arrangements play a dual role in the promotion of a free society. On the one hand, freedom in
economic arrangements is itself a component of freedom broadly understood, so economic freedom is an
end in itself. In the second lace, economic freedom is also an indispensable means toward the achievement
of political freedom.
LOSS OF ECONOMIC FREEDOM ENSURES TYRANNY
Milton Friedman, Nobel Laureate Economist, FREE TO CHOOSE, 1980, p.xvi-ii.
Economic freedom is an essential requisite for political freedom. By enabling people to cooperate with one
another without coercion or central direction, it reduces the area over which political power is exercised. In
addition, by dispersing power, the free market provides an offset to whatever concentration of political
power may arise. The combination or economic and political power in the same hands is a sure recipe for
tyranny.

General Impact Extensions

EACH USE OF COERCIVE FORCE PAVES THE ROAD FOR MASSIVE
ATROCITIES
Harry Browne, former Libertarian presidential candidate, executive director of public policy at
American Liberty Foundation, editor of Liberty Magazine, financial advisor and economist, WHY
GOVERNMENT DOESN’T WORK, 1995, p. 66-7.
The reformers of the Cambodian revolution claimed to be building a better world. They forced people
into reeducation programs to make them better citizens. Then they used force to regulate every aspect of
commercial life. Then they forced office workers and intellectuals to give up their jobs and harvest rice,
to round out their education. When people resisted having their lives turned upside down, the reformers
had to use more and more force. By the time they were done, they had killed a third of the country’s
population, destroyed the lives of almost everyone still alive, and devastated a nation. It all began with
using force for the best of intentions—to create a better world. The Soviet leaders used coercion to
provide economic security and to build a “New Man”—a human being who would put his fellow man
ahead of himself. At least 10 million people died to help build the New Man and the Workers’ Paradise.
But human nature never changed—and the workers’ lives were always Hell, not Paradise. In the 1930s
many Germans gladly traded civil liberties for the economic revival and national pride Adolf Hitler
promised them. But like every other grand dream to improve society by force, it ended in a nightmare
of devastation and death. Professor R.J. Rummel has calculated that 119 million people have been killed
by their own governments in this century. Were these people criminals? No, they were people who
simply didn’t fit into the New Order—people who preferred their own dreams to those of the reformers.
Every time you allow government to use force to make society better, you move another step closer to
the nightmares of Cambodia, the Soviet Union, and Nazi Germany. We’ve already moved so far that our
own government can perform with impunity the outrages described in the preceding chapters. These
examples aren’t cases of government gone wrong; they are examples of government—period. They are
what governments do—just as chasing cats is what dogs do.


THIS SOVEREIGN MANAGEMENT IS FUNDAMENTALLY VIOLENT: THE
DESIRE TO CONTROL OTHERS BY FORCE IS THE ROOT CAUSE OF
CONFLICT
Dr. Mary J. Ruwart, PhD, former pharmaceutical research scientist, former Assistant Professor of
Surgery, HEALING OUR WORLD: THE OTHER PIECE OF THE PUZZLE, 1993, p.
http://www.ruwart.com/Healing/ruwart_all.html.
Humankind is poised on the brink of an evolutionary leap. In the last few decades, we have become
increasingly aware of the source of our inner peace and enrichment. Depending on our personal
background, we express this great discovery differently. The practical, down-to-earth individuals among
us "take responsibility for our lives" as described in Wayne W. Dyer's Your Erroneous Zones. Those of
us with a metaphysical outlook "create our own reality" as Shirley MacLaine did in Out on a Limb. The
spiritual among us know that "the kingdom of God is within" and follow The Road Less Traveled (M.
Scott Peck). Sometimes we simply "find ourselves" through the power of love as Richard Bach did in
The Bridge Across Forever. Ultimately, our inner harmony and abundance depend on how we react to
our outer world. The creation of peace and plenty in our outer world, however, frequently seems
hopelessly beyond our control. In the past century, we've supported widespread social reform.
Nevertheless, people are still starving in a world capable of feeding all. In our own country,
homelessness and poverty are on the rise. Violence is no longer limited to overseas wars: our streets,
even our schools, are no longer safe. The environment that nurtures us is ravaged and raped. When we
acknowledge how our reactions contribute to our inner state, we gain control. Our helplessness
dissolves when we stop blaming others for feelings we create. In our outer world, the same rules apply.
Today, as a society, as a nation, as a collective consciousness, "we" once again feel helpless, blaming
selfish others for the world's woes. Our nation's laws, reflecting a composite of our individual beliefs,
attempt to control selfish others at gunpoint, if necessary. Striving for a better world by focusing on
others instead of ourselves totally misses the mark. When others resist the choices we have made for
them, conflicts escalate and voraciously consume resources. A warring world is a poor one. Attempting
to control others, even for their own good, has other undesirable effects. People who are able to create
intimacy in their personal relationships know that you can't hurry love. Trying to control or manipulate
those close to us creates resentment and anger. Attempting to control others in our city, state, nation,
and world is just as destructive to the universal love we want the world to manifest. Forcing people to
be more "unselfish" creates animosity instead of good will. Trying to control selfish others is a cure
worse than the disease. We reap as we sow. In trying to control others, we find ourselves controlled. We
point fingers at the dictators, the Communists, the politicians, and the international cartels. We are
blithely unaware that our desire to control selfish others creates and sustains them. Like a stone thrown
in a quiet pond, our desire to control our neighbors ripples outward, affecting the political course of our
community, state, nation, and world. Yet we know not what we do. We attempt to bend our neighbors to
our will, sincere in our belief that we are benevolently protecting the world from their folly and short-
sightedness. We seek control to create peace and prosperity, not realizing that this is the very means by
which war and poverty are propagated. In fighting for our dream without awareness, we become the
instruments of its destruction. If we could only see the pattern! In seeking to control others, we behave as we once did as children, exchanging our dime
for five pennies, all the while believing that we were enriching ourselves. When a concerned adult tried to enlighten us, we first refused to believe the truth. Once awareness
dawned, we could no longer be fooled, nor was laborious deliberation necessary for every transaction. Once we understood how to count money, we automatically knew if
we benefited from such a trade. Similarly, when the fact and folly of controlling others first come to our attention, we're surprised and full of denial. I certainly was! When
we care about the state of our world, however, we don't stop there. I trust you are concerned enough to persevere and to consider seriously the shift in consciousness this
Once we have the courage to accept responsibility for our part of the problem, we
book proposes.
automatically become part of the solution, independent of what others do. We honor their non-
aggressive choices (even if they are self-ish) and stop trying to control them. In doing so, we dismantle
their most effective means of controlling us. Others only ignite the flames of war and poverty. We feed
the flames or starve them. Not understanding their nature, we've fanned the sparks instead of
smothering them. Not understanding our contribution to the raging inferno, we despair that a world full
of selfish others could ever experience universal har-mony and abundance. Nothing could be further
from the truth! Widespread peace and plenty can be created within our lifetime. When we understand
how to stop fueling the flames of war and poverty, we can manifest our dream.

GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION THREATENS THE SEPARATION OF
CHURCH AND STATE
Bruce Chapman, senior fellow, Hudson Institute, SERVICE: PRO & CON, ed., Williamson Everson, 1990,
p. 135
Government's undue influence and controls on the volunteer service se r are especially dangerous to the
country's religious institutions. The largest share of the money (46 percent)6 and likely the largest share of
service activities in the volunteer service sector come from churches and synagogues. Government cannot
tread in this field except with big feet, and the ground is filled with the landmines of the separation-of-
church-and-state issue. As government intervenes in the roles of religious institutions, it diminishes them.
Worse, it may chose to play favorites, providing paid volunteers for the service activities of one church
because its activities are considered constitutional (for example, day care) while denying them to another
(for example, day care where religion is part of the schooling). "Without intending" it, in Tocqueville's
phrase, the government's use of tax monies in this way can distort churches' choices, tempting them to
follow the government's money rather than their own consciences.

Answers to: “Capitalism is Naziism”
NAZI GERMANY WAS BUILT ON ECONOMIC STATISM
George Reisman, Professor of Economics Pepperdine, THE ECONOMICS OF

FASCISM, 2005, p. http://www.mises.org/story/1937 accessed 4/18/06.
When one remembers that the word "Nazi" was an abbreviation for "der Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiters
Partei — in English translation: the National Socialist German Workers' Party — Mises's identification might not
appear all that noteworthy. For what should one expect the economic system of a country ruled by a party with
"socialist" in its name to be but socialism? Nevertheless, apart from Mises and his readers, practically no one thinks of
Nazi Germany as a socialist state. It is far more common to believe that it represented a form of capitalism, which is
what the Communists and all other Marxists have claimed. The basis of the claim that Nazi Germany was capitalist
was the fact that most industries in Nazi Germany appeared to be left in private hands. What Mises identified
was that private ownership of the means of production existed in name only under the Nazis and that the actual
substance of ownership of the means of production resided in the German government. For it was the German
government and not the nominal private owners that exercised all of the substantive powers of ownership: it, not
the nominal private owners, decided what was to be produced, in what quantity, by what methods, and to whom it
was to be distributed, as well as what prices would be charged and what wages would be paid, and what
dividends or other income the nominal private owners would be permitted to receive. ….socialism is not actually
a positive economic system. It is merely the negation of capitalism and its price system. As such, the essential
nature of socialism is one and the same as the economic chaos resulting from the destruction of the price system
by price and wage controls. (I want to point out that Bolshevik-style socialism's imposition of a system of production
quotas, with incentives everywhere to exceed the quotas, is a sure formula for universal shortages, just as exist under all
around price and wage controls.) At most, socialism merely changes the direction of the chaos. The government's
control over production may make possible a greater production of some goods of special importance to itself, but it
does so only at the expense of wreaking havoc throughout the rest of the economic system. This is because the
government has no way of knowing the effects on the rest of the economic system of its securing the production
of the goods to which it attaches special importance. The requirements of enforcing a system of price and wage
controls shed major light on the totalitarian nature of socialism — most obviously, of course, on that of the German or
Nazi variant of socialism, but also on that of Soviet-style socialism as well. We can start with the fact that the financial
self-interest of sellers operating under price controls is to evade the price controls and raise their prices. Buyers
otherwise unable to obtain goods are willing, indeed, eager to pay these higher prices as the means of securing
the goods they want. In these circumstances, what is to stop prices from rising and a massive black market from
developing? The answer is a combination of severe penalties combined with a great likelihood of being caught
and then actually suffering those penalties. Mere fines are not likely to provide much of a deterrent. They will be
regarded simply as an additional business expense. If the government is serious about its price controls, it is
necessary for it to impose penalties comparable to those for a major felony. But the mere existence of such
penalties is not enough. The government has to make it actually dangerous to conduct black-market transactions.
It has to make people fear that in conducting such a transaction they might somehow be discovered by the
police, and actually end up in jail. In order to create such fear, the government must develop an army of spies
and secret informers. For example, the government must make a storekeeper and his customer fearful that if they
engage in a black-market transaction, some other customer in the store will report them. Because of the privacy and
secrecy in which many black-market transactions can be conducted, the government must also make anyone
contemplating a black-market transaction fearful that the other party might turn out to be a police agent trying
to entrap him. The government must make people fearful even of their long-time associates, even of their friends
and relatives, lest even they turn out to be informers. And, finally, in order to obtain convictions, the government
must place the decision about innocence or guilt in the case of black-market transactions in the hands of an
administrative tribunal or its police agents on the spot. It cannot rely on jury trials, because it is unlikely that
many juries can be found willing to bring in guilty verdicts in cases in which a man might have to go to jail for
several years for the crime of selling a few pounds of meat or a pair of shoes above the ceiling price. In sum,
therefore, the requirements merely of enforcing price-control regulations is the adoption of essential features of a
totalitarian state, namely, the establishment of the category of "economic crimes," in which the peaceful pursuit of
material self-interest is treated as a criminal offense, and the establishment of a totalitarian police apparatus replete with
spies and informers and the power of arbitrary arrest and imprisonment. Clearly, the enforcement of price controls
requires a government similar to that of Hitler's Germany or Stalin's Russia, in which practically anyone might
turn out to be a police spy and in which a secret police exists and has the power to arrest and imprison people. If the
government is unwilling to go to such lengths, then, to that extent, its price controls prove unenforceable and simply
break down. The black market then assumes major proportions.

Answers to: “Commodification”

MARKET COMMODIFICATION OF INDIVIDUALS ENHANCES HUMAN
DIGNITY AND SOCIAL INTERCOURSE
Michael Shapiro, law professor, University of Southern California, UNIVERSITY OF

PITTSBURGH LAW REVIEW, 1994, p. 760-1.
The aim here is to elaborate briefly on matters suggested earlier concerning the effects of markets on the
ways in which their inhabitants view each other. Markets are often criticized because they are
thought to commodify its members and their interactions: the contingent bonds associated
with fungible things seem to become associated with persons. On the other hand, our
bonds to persons outside our group may be as thin as those to objects--although we may
bond in certain ways to special objects, in markets or out. (Market critics speak of human
alienation and fetishism of commodities. Yet the market's commodification of medical
care, despite the contingencies it reflects and the restricted fungibility it promotes, is
hardly an unrelieved disaster. There are advantages associated with being dealt with in
limited ways as a commodity. Markets are regimes in which people have choices they
might otherwise not have. Of course, they may "lose" choices by comparison with other
systems: nonmarket regimes bear their own sets of options which may not be available in
markets. Final comparative evaluations are not offered here--only the promotion of
comparisons. To transform a formerly nonsalable entity into a commodity (one's organs,
for example) creates obvious options. More generally, markets may enhance possibilities
of certain forms of social intercourse, community, beneficial exchange, and human
respect by replacing some highly restrictive criteria of association (e.g., kinship) with
ability to pay. No doubt these enhancements are not always pure benefits. And it is hard
to compare the restrictiveness of an ability-to-pay criterion with kinship or status criteria
characteristic of other distributional systems. (As always, issues about markets should be
evaluated in light of the hovering question: "Compared to what?") Nevertheless, a
practice of viewing people indifferently as fungible, anonymous sources of supply
(though not necessarily as themselves commodities) is one way of reinforcing equality,
autonomy, and even community (all in certain senses). Fungibility is not the same as
objectification. Moreover, many recommendations for health care reform reflect the felt
necessity of structuring behavior through marketlike incentives in this way.
Commodification in a sense? Perhaps so, and perhaps properly so.

Answers to: “Private Coercion Worse”

GOVERNMENT’S MONOPOLY ON FORCE COMBINED WITH STRUCTURAL
BIASES AGAINST POSITIVE CHANGE ENSURE THAT IT IS MUCH WORSE
THEN PRIVATE COERCION
Those who bemoan the power of big business are thus naïve if they suppose that
government agencies are somehow immune to its corruptions — indeed, they are
less immune. If you think Microsoft is too powerful, imagine a Microsoft that was
able to force you to pay for its software, under threat of imprisonment, that was able
to force (again through imprisonment) other companies not to manufacture any competing
software, and that was inclined to change the things about its services you didn’t like
only if you could convince 51% of its other “customers” to make the same
complaints (and probably not even then); imagine also that Microsoft has a monopoly not
only on software but on dozens of other services (social security, postal services, etc.), an army,
police, courts of law, and exclusive rights to try and punish you for refusing to comply with
its directives — imagine all this, and you’ve begun to imagine the power of the state. The real Microsoft, on
the other hand, is powerless compared to all that — regardless of how many other people buy its
software, if you don’t like Bill Gates or his products, you can tell him to buzz off and then go buy a Mac, and
he can’t do a thing about it! The inherent inefficiencies of governmental agencies, and their
tendencies to act in ways not in line with — indeed, even contrary to — the reasons for which they were created, are
the subject of a whole branch of economic research known as public choice theory (Buchanan and
Tullock 1962). This research sheds light on why the complaints one hears today about
government services — about the post office, public schools, the management of public lands, and so on —
are the very same complaints one hears year after year, election cycle after election cycle. The
problems never seem to get fixed, and it is no accident that they don’t. For as we’ve seen, given the
incentives governing the actions of the state and its officials incentives very different
from those governing the market — there is every reason to expect that such problems will arise, and that
far from being solved by the state, they are likely to get worse.

Answers to: “Private Coercion Worse”
GOVERNMENT FORCED CHOICE IS WORSE- IN A SOCIETY A PERSON

CAN USE THEIR OWN PROPERTY INCLUDING INTELLIGENCE AND
PHYSICAL SKILLS TO INFLUENCE FACTORS AGAINST THEM. THE
PROSPECT OF EXCHANGE OF GOODS FOR THE PERSON’S SERVICES
ALWAYS MEANS THE PERSON HAS A CHANCE OF PERSUADING
OTHERS. WITH THE GOVERNMENT, THE PERSON HAS NOTHING TO
PERSUADE BECAUSE THE GOVERNMENT CAN ACQUIRE WHATEVER THE
PERSON HAS TO OFFER WITH GUNS.
Richard Epstein, law professor, University of Chicago, FORBIDDEN GROUNS, 1992, p. 79.
With discrimination in ordinary markets, each person gets to sell his labor to the parties most favorably disposed to
him, and need not transact with any other person. With force, he risks life and limb at the hands of his worst enemy,
and he secures no permanent peace by buying off that enemy if others threaten harm as well. In a world in which there
is a large number of individuals, all with different tastes, temperaments, and abilities, the spread in sentiment from the
most sympathetic to the most hostile is likely to be very substantial. Potential victims can adopt strategies if evasion to
escape the string of discrimination, no matter how irrational and prejudiced. It is far harder to outrun a bullet.

Answers to: “Pragmatism”

PROTECTING RIGHTS IS PRAGMATIC ANY OTHER WORLD VIEW
JUSTIFIES GROSS VIOLATIONS OF LIBERTY
Tibor Machan, philosophy professor, Auburn, LIBERTY AND THE HARD CASS, 1992, p. xv-xvi.
Is the championing of flexibility a good idea? Is it a valid approach to politics and law
making? A hint that it might not be is the fact that even pragmatists may recoil from their
own approach when they think the values at stake are too important to be forsaken even a
little. No self-respecting moral theorist would propose that when a man forces a woman
to have sex with him, the moral and legal status of the act should be mulled anew with
each case. Instead everyone accepts the principle that a person has the right to choose
with whom he or she will have sex and thus that any clear violation of this right is
grounds for sanction. But this is the opposite of being pragmatically flexible without
regard for principle. Imagine how members of a jury in a rape case might deliberate if
they were eager to be flexible and avoid being “rigid.” They would steer clear of blind
obedience to “dogmatic” principles— such as the need to respect the rights of the victim
or to be objective about the evidence for the guilt of the defendant. Rather, the jurors
would attend to such emotionally resonant considerations as whether the perpetrator is a
nice person, has appealing attributes, serves the community vigilantly, promotes
economic prosperity, paints well, or throws a football well. The distress of the victim may
or may not enter into such a calculation. After all, what if the victim has a checkered past,
is rude to the bailiff, or just doesn’t emote well on the stand? By the standard of
pragmatic flexibility, basing decisions on such factors may well be unimpeachable. By
contrast, a principled approach would not gainsay that it is a violation of basic human
rights to rape someone or that determining the guilt of the defendant on this score is the
only purpose of the proceedings. Is being principled “mere ideology”? Is it “simplistic”?
Is it deficient in appropriate flexibility? No. Nor would it be simplistically ideological
and excessively rigid to judge various other social matters by reference to certain tried
and true principles, ones we have learned over many years of human experience with
community life.

Answers to: “Coercion Ok Because All Resources Were

Once Unowned”
Even If This Is True It Does Not Deny Our Arguments Since Individuals
Could Be Destitute For Other Reasons And It Doesn’t Matter Since It Relies
On An Absurd Notions Of Property Rights
Edward Feser, Loyola Marymount Philosophy Professor, ON NOZICK, 2004, pp. 81-2
The critique of taxation as theft, unlike the argument about forced labor and self-ownership, might indeed seem to depend upon a
controversial theory of property rights; and thus here, Nozick’s critics often claim, there is a serious weakness in his position. For
whatever Nozick says about just transfers of wealth, why (it is asked) should we assume that the more fundamental principle of just
acquisition of previously unowned portions of the natural world gives people absolute property rights in those portions? Why can’t we
take at least some of it in taxes? Indeed, doesn’t the Lockean Proviso require us to do so, given that “enough and as good” has clearly
not been left for others to acquire, most if not all of the earth’s natural resources having been acquired long ago? And should we really
grant that the world is initially unowned in the first place? Don’t we all collectively own it (Ky’mlicka 1990, 117-118)? The first thing
are exasperatingly unspecific about what exactly it is
to note in response to such objections is that they
they are supposed to show. Precisely how much taxation is entailed by these
considerations, of what type and for what purposes? If the idea is that there ought to
be taxation for the purposes of funding welfare programs for those destitute persons
who have presumably been disadvantaged by violations of the Lockean Proviso, how
are we to determine exactly who these persons are? After all, most people around
today never had a chance to acquire previously unowned resources, yet most people are
not destitute. Why assume that those who are destitute are destitute because of
violations of the Lockean Proviso? (Maybe they would have been destitute in any case — perhaps the bad
decisions or bad luck that led them to destitution in the actual world would have led them to destitution even in a world where they
even if this would justify taxation for welfare
had a chance to acquire unowned resources.) Furthermore,
programs and the like, how would it justify government spending on arts and
research, schools and museums, and all the other things egalitarians typically want
government to fund? (Are we to suppose that all presently destitute people would have flocked to art exhibits if only they
had had a chance to acquire land in the state of nature?) Moreover, how would it justify a strictly equal distribution wealth, or
distribution according to need, merit, or the like? And would it justify an income tax, a sales tax, or both?
How about tariffs? An what rate of taxation, exactly? Thirty percent? Fifty percent? Sixty (Why?) Not only do
Nozick’s egalitarian critics not answer such questions, they never even consider them. In any case, such objections in fact have
the notion that all of us collectively
nothing like the force Nozick’s critics assume them to have. To begin with,
own all natural resources is a non-starter. For one thing, it is simply implausible:
Are we really to suppose that we all collectively owned Greenland, say, before
anyone set foot on it, or own the center of the earth now — or for that matter, that we
all collectively own Pluto or the Andromeda galaxy? What would it mean to claim
ownership, collective or otherwise, of places on which no one has in any way had
any impact, or of places no one can even get to? If an individual person or corporation claimed ownership of the
center of the earth, they’d be laughed at, and rightly so. But wouldn’t the claim that all of us own it be equally laughable? Surely these
claims are manifestly absurd, not because there is anything intrinsically absurd or unjust about ownership of the center of the earth —
or of Pluto or Andromeda — per se, but rather because, given that no one currently has anything like the influence or power over such
places that are in ordinary cases constitutive of ownership, there’s no sense to be made of the suggestion that anyone (yet) owns them
at all. Until someone does something with a resource, that is, it seems obvious that there can be no question of anyone, either
collectively or privately, owning it.

Answers to: “Need to Help the Poor”
MARGINALIZATION IS INEVITABLE- PHILANTHROPIC CAPITALISM SOLVES BEST
Richard Hiskes, specialist in political theory and public policy, COMMUNITY WITHOUT COERCION: GETTING
ALONG IN THE MINIMAL STATE, p. 138.
Nozick's in-principle acceptance of "total communities" not founded on interest also serves to refute a particularly
odious criticism of his utopia, and by extension, of his whole theory of individualism. This criticism has been cited in
review after review and essentially refers to the possibility that those in society with little to offer a utopian
association in the way of useful goods or abilities, such as the aged, sick, poverty-stricken, or intellectually deficient,
will simply be left out in the cold to live out their lives in misery and solitude. Obviously, there is something rather
fatuous and petulant about this accusation in the first place, for as Charles King points out, "there is no reason to
suppose that individuals in his [Nozick's] state would be cold and unfeeling in any greater proportion than in any
other arrangement." In addition, however, the total communities that Nozick suspects will emerge in the utopian
framework clearly refute this charge, for in such associations helping others and "caring" may be the reason for
cooperating in the first place, and might even necessitate (and justifiably so in Nozick's view) considerable
redistribution of wealth."
LIBERTARIANISM IS THE MOST FLUID SYSTEM HIERARCHIES ARE CRUSHED BY FREEDOM OF

EXCHANGE
Johan Norberg, fellow, Timbro institute, IN DEFENSE OF GLOBAL CAPITALISM, 2003, p. 90
That economic freedom is not an enemy of equality comes as a surprise to everyone who has been told that
capitalism is the ideology of the rich and the privileged. In fact, this is precisely backward. The free market is
the antithesis of societies of privilege. In a market economy, the only way of holding on to a good economic
position is by improving your production and offering people good products or services. It is in the
regulated economies, with their distribution of privileges and monopolies to favored groups, that privilege
can become entrenched. Those who have the right contacts can afford to pay bribes. Those who have the
time and knowledge to plow through bulky volumes of regulations can start up business enterprises and
engage in trade. The poor never have a chance, not even of starting small businesses like bakeries or corner
shops. In a capitalistic society, all people with ideas and willpower are at liberty to try their luck, even if they are
not the favorites of the rulers. Globalization contributes to this tendency because it disturbs power relations
and emancipates people from the local potentates. Free trade enables consumers to buy goods and services
from a global range of competitors instead of the local monopolists. Free movements of capital enable poor
people with good ideas to finance their projects. Freedom of migration means that the village's one and
only employer has to offer higher wages and better working conditions in order to attract labor, because
otherwise the workers can go elsewhere .

Answers to: “Profit is Not a Labor Income”
CAPITALISTS DO PROVIDE LABOR INCOME
George Reisman, professor of economics, Pepperdine, THE POLITICAL ECONOMY

OF FREEDOM, 1985, p. http://www.mises.org/story/1729. doa 4/20/06, p.
http://www.mises.org/story/1729..
I shall argue that in a capitalist economy, no less than in a pre-capitalist economy, profit is still a labor income—
an income attributable to the labor of businessmen and capitalists—and that this is so even though profits are for the
most part earned as a rate of return on capital and tend to vary with the amount of capital invested. The variation
of profits with the size of the capital invested is perfectly compatible with their being attributable to the labor of
those who earn them, because in a capitalist economy the labor of profit earners tends to be predominantly of an
intellectual nature—a work of thinking, planning, and decision making. At the same time, capital stands as the
means by which businessmen and capitalists implement their plans—it is their means of buying the labor of helpers
and of equipping those helpers and providing them with materials of work. Thus, the possession of capital serves to
multiply the efficacy of the businessmen's and capitalists' labor, for the more of it they possess, the greater is the scale
on which they can implement their ideas. For example, a businessman who thinks of a better way to produce
something can apply that better way on ten times the scale if he (or she) owns ten factories than if he owns only
one. The fact that in the one case the same labor on his part leads to ten times the profit as in the other case is perfectly
consistent with the whole profit still being attributable to his labor. The compound variation of profits with the passage
of time is also perfectly consistent with the fact that they are the product of the businessmen's and capitalists' labor. The
relationship of profits to the passage of time derives from the fact that profits vary with the size of the capital invested
per period of time. If one can earn profits in proportion to one's capital in any given period of time, then if investment
for a longer period is to be competitive, one must earn the profits that one could have earned in the shorter period plus
the profits one could have earned by the reinvestment of one's capital and its profits.
It should be realized that wages, too, which no one disputes are attributable to the labor of the wage earners, vary with
things other than the expenditure of labor by the wage earners—for example, with the state of technology and the
supply of capital equipment and with competitive conditions in other industries. For an income to be attributable to
labor, it is by no means necessary that the performance of labor be the only factor determining its size. In fact,
by such a standard, virtually nothing could be attributed to human labor beyond what people could produce
with their bare hands. Income is to be attributed to the performance of labor, despite its variation with the
means employed and with other external circumstances, on the principle that it is man's labor which supplies
the guiding and directing intelligence in production. It is only on this basis that a worker using a steam shovel,
for example, is to be credited with digging the hole he digs, no less than a worker using his bare hands, for he
guides and directs the steam shovel. Guiding and directing intelligence, not muscular exertion, is the essential
characteristic of human labor. As von Mises says, "What produces the product are not toil and trouble in
themselves, but the fact that the toiling is guided by reason." Guiding and directing intelligence in production is, of
course, supplied by businessmen and capitalists on a higher level than by wage earners—a circumstance reinforcing
the primary productive status of profits and profit earners over wages and wage earners.

Answers to: “Regulations Help Americans so not

Coercive
COERCION IS LEGITIMATELY APPLIED ONLY WHEN IT PREVENTS AN

INDIVIDUAL FROM DIRECTLY HARMING OTHERS, NOT WHEN IMPOSED
TO HELP THE GROUP BEING REGULATED.
Candace Gauthier, Ph.D., philosophy professor, Department of Philosophy and Religion, University
of North Carolina, KENNEDY INSTITUTE OF ETHICS JOURNAL, 2000, p.
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/kennedy_institute_of_ethics_journal/v01
0/10.4gauthier.htmlaccessed 5/20/2006..
Second, based on John Stuart Mill, the choices even of those possessing the capacity for
rational agency need not be respected when the resulting actions pose a risk of harm or
actually cause harm to others or to the society. This limit is best developed in Mill's
distinction between self-regarding and other-regarding conduct and in his defense of the
principle of liberty. Mill's principle of liberty, like Kant's principle of humanity,
establishes a standard for our treatment of others. The principle states that ". . . the only
purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized
community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical
or moral, is not a sufficient warrant."

Answers to: “Absolute Property Rights Allow Slavery”
ONLY THE THESIS OF SELF-OWNERSHIP CAN JUSTIFY THE CLAIM THE

SLAVERY IS IMMORAL (GENDER MODIFED)
Edward Feser, philosophy professor, Loyola, ON NOZICK, 2004, p. 32-3.
In addition to this Kantian principle, however, Nozick appeals to another idea which has a long history in
libertarian thought and which many commentators take to be the more fundamental element of Nozick’s
system. This is the thesis of self-ownership, the notion that each individual human
being has complete and absolute ownership of (themselves) himself -- of his body, talents,
abilities, and labor. Or as John Locke, an early proponent of the thesis, put it: “Every man has a property in
his own person; this nobody has any right to but himself. The labour of his body and the work of his hands
we may say are properly his” (1963). You are, that is to say, your own property; you own yourself.
Probably for most people, this principle will seem just intuitively correct. But for anyone who doubts it, the
main argument given in its defense is that unless we assume the truth of the thesis of self
ownership, we have no way of explaining the immorality of many practices we all
consider clearly immoral. Take slavery, for example. It is almost universally
acknowledged nowadays that slavery is a very great evil. But why is it, exactly? It
cannot merely be for the reason that slaves are often treated badly. For slaves are
sometimes treated very well by their masters, even forming bonds of affection with
them; yet surely, it is still seriously wrong for even a “kindhearted” master to keep a
slave. The only way to explain why this is so is that in making someone a slave, a
slave owner simply violates the slave’s property rights in himself: No one else can
properly own you, because you already own yourself, and a slave owner is in effect
stealing from you.
INDIVIDUALS CANNOT SELL THEMSELVES INTO SLAVERY
Chris Sciabarra, philosophy professor, NYU, TOTAL FREEDOM: TOWARDS A

DIALECTICAL LIBERTARIANISM, 2000, p. 231-2
Rothbard , like Marx, believes that labor , under capitalism, is a

commodity , in the sense that labor service (or, in Marx’s terminology, “labor power”)
can be alienated and exchanged for goods and services. Yet , Rothbard claims that
“a (hu)man can alienate his labor service, but he cannot sell
the capitalized future value of that service . In short , he
cannot…sell (themselves) himself into slavery and have this sale
enforced —for this would mean that his future will over his own person was being
surrendered in advance.” A person cannot alienate his own will, because he (they)
have has sovereign control over (their) his own mind and body.
This will cannot be transferred to another .

Answers to: “Libertarianism Isolationist”
LIBERTARIANISM ISN’T ISOLATIONIST

Carey, ed., 1984, p. 50.
There is another, less fundamental but quite emotion-packed issue on which libertarians and conservatives
are frequently in serious disagreement, namely, foreign policy. The foreign policy of a free society, as its
domestic policy, stresses the social primacy of liberty. This amounts to a strict foreign policy of
defensivism, as explained in a recent essay by Professor Eric Mack. Some libertarians insist on an
isolationist foreign policy, but that cannot be derived from the libertarian political framework, contrary to
their contentions.

Answers to: “Ending Coercion Benefits Elites”
GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION ALLOWS ELITES TO KEEP POWER

COERCION IS KEY NOT MONEY
Tibor Machan, PRIVATE RIGHTS & PUBLIC ILLUSIONS, 1995, p. 126
It was government intervention, not the workings of the free markets, that helped
these people attain their exclusive economic power. It was government
dispensations, in the form of special protection to some against the
forces of competition that gave privileged protection to barons’
wealth and thus enabled them to engage in monopolistic practice ,
thereby driving competitors to the brink of disaster. The railroads , for example,
gained enormous power as a result of the earliest federal
subsidy program .
FREE MARKETS REDUCE CORPORATIONS ABILITY TO COMMIT CRIMES
Johan Norberg, fellow, Timbro institute, IN DEFENSE OF GLOBAL CAPITALISM, 2003, p. 211-12.
What has happened in the age of globalization is not that corporations have acquired more power through free
trade. They used to be far more powerful-and still are-in dictatorships and controlled economies . Large,
powerful corporations have always been able to corrupt public institutions by colluding with rulers and
hobnobbing with them on luncheons and dinners. They have been able to obtain protection through
monopolies, tariffs, and subsidies just by placing a phone call to political leaders. Free trade has exposed
corporations to competition. Above all, consumers have been made freer, so that now they can ruthlessly pick
and choose even across national borders, rejecting those firms that don't measure up . Historical horror stories
of companies governing a society de facto have always come from regions where there has been no
competition . People living in isolation in a small village or a closed country are dependent on the enterprises
existing there, and are forced to buy what they offer at the price they demand, enriching a tiny clique at
consumers' expense. Sometimes capitalism is accused of having created monopolies and trusts, enormous
associations of businesses that flourish, not by being best, but by being biggest and squelching competition.
But this is not brought about by capitalism. On the contrary, free trade and competition are the best guarantees
of a competitor penetrating the market if the dominant firm misbehaves .

Answers to: “Ending Coercion Benefits Elites”

BIG BUSINESS OFTEN USES STATISM FOR CONTROL
LIBERTY: THE LIBERTARIAN MANIFESTO, 1973, p.
http://www.mises.org/rothbard/newlibertywhole.asp#p263. accessed 4/20/06.
Big business support for the Corporate Welfare-Warfare State is so blatant and so
far-ranging, on all levels from the local to the federal, that even many conservatives
have had to acknowledge it, at least to some extent. How then explain such fervent
support from "America's most persecuted minority?" The only way out for conservatives
is to assume (a) that these businessmen are dumb, and don't understand their own
economic interests, and/or (b) that they have been brainwashed by left-liberal
intellectuals, who have poisoned their souls with guilt and misguided altruism. Neither of
these explanations will wash, however, as only a glance at AT&T or Lockheed will amply
show. Big businessmen tend to be admirers of statism, to be "corporate liberals," not
because their souls have been poisoned by intellectuals, but because a good thing has
thereby been coming their way. Ever since the acceleration of statism at the turn of the
twentieth century, big businessmen have been using the great powers of State
contracts, subsidies and cartelization to carve out privileges for themselves at the
expense of the rest of the society.

Answers to: “Minimal State is Coercive”
MINIMAL STATE CAN DEVELOP FROM ANARCHY WITHOUT VIOLATING

RIGHTS, WHICH MEANS IT IS MORAL

Suppose there is no state — people live in an anarchic society, a ‘state of nature,” as political philosophers have traditionally
described it. Being self-owners, individuals have rights, and they will want to protect these rights against infringements by other
individuals. They could do this on their own — standing guard over their property, making sure to stay well-armed while going about
their daily business, and so forth — but this is inconvenient and time consuming, and there are lots of other things they’d rather be
doing. Inevitably, individuals will band together to form mutual protection societies, agreeing to “watch each other’s backs” as it
were, perhaps taking turns monitoring everyone’s property for extended periods of time. Eventually, some will get the idea that
there is money to be made in protective services, and will devote themselves full-time to running protective agencies, private
firms providing protection services to subscribers for a fee. Different such firms will compete with one another for customers.
Larger and more resourceful firms will, because they can provide better protection at a cheaper price, tend to attract more
subscribers. And given that so much is at stake — one’s property, liberty, indeed one’s very life this is one market where bigger will
be seen necessarily to mean better, and most individuals will flock to the most powerful agency. Furthermore, there will,
unavoidably, be conflicts between the clients of different firms. Sometimes, of course, this will be because one party is simply and
clearly in the wrong. But often both parties to a dispute will be well-meaning: Fred may genuinely believe, on the basis of good
evidence, that Bob has stolen his property, while Bob is in fact innocent and has been framed. Fred will reasonably want his protection
agency to arrest and punish Bob, while Bob will reasonably want his agency to protect him against false arrest and undeserved
punishment. How will their respective agencies settle this dispute? They could simply go to war but battle is costly, and will
become increasingly frequent if firms are not careful to determine in the first place whether or not their clients are in fact innocent. It
will thus pay for agencies to agree to settle disputes between clients by appealing to a neutral third party — a private arbitration
firm, say, which numerous firms may retain as well as to require their clients to sign over all rights to finding and punishing the guilty
to the agencies themselves, so that unnecessary disputes between agencies are not caused by some individual client’s ill-considered
vigilante behavior. There will thus be a tendency within the state of nature toward a kind of natural monopoly where protection
services are concerned toward a single dominant agency or a single confederation of agencies united by commitment to common
arbitration procedures (Nozick 1974, 15-17). The ultra-minimal stale So far the society we’re describing is still an anarchist one
— there is no state, though there is an entity that has many of the state’s features, i.e. the dominant protective association. But this
entity will, Nozick argues, inevitably take on the features of a state, and do so in a way that is entirely morally legitimate. How
so? Consider that, however large the dominant agency, there will still be those who do not subscribe to it — independents who
seek to go it alone or to stick with smaller firms which refuse to deal with the dominant agency. How will the dominant agency deal
with disputes between its clients and these independents? Will it simply allow them to arrest, try, and punish its clients on their
own — perhaps using procedures that are unreliable, or exacting extreme and unjust punishments on those found guilty? Nozick
argues that it cannot and will not. The dominant agency has been hired to protect its clients’ rights it cannot allow those rights to
be threatened by hotheads who are not careful enough in determining guilt, or who are prone to excessive punishments. It will thus
have to announce a general policy of forbidding independents and rival agencies from applying procedures and punishments
that it has not itself approved. The dominant agency, then, can and must legitimately engage in prohibition of activities that put its
clients’ rights at risk. But in prohibiting such risky behavior and requiring its own clients to cede to it their rights to punish offenders
— in setting itself up, that is, as the sole authorizer of legitimate violence — the dominant agency has taken on one of the defining
features of a state. It has become what Nozick calls an “ultra-minimal state” (1974, 26). Prohibition and compensation This ultra-
minimal state acts justly in prohibiting independents from engaging in behavior that puts its own clients at risk. But those
independents do, after all, still have a right to protect their own rights — something the ultra-minimal state has now forbidden
them to do. So the ultra-minimal state cannot legitimately rest with prohibition of their self-protection. It must (morally must)
provide compensation for this prohibition. And this means that the ultra-minimal state must itself provide these independents
with protective services. It may charge an independent for providing these services to him, but only an amount the independent
would have had to spend anyway in protecting himself — any costs over that amount must be borne by the ultra-minimal state and
thus, by extension, by the ultra-minimal state’s clients. With this turn of events, however, the ultra-minimal state has taken on a
further feature of a full-blown state, in that it provides protection for everyone in the geographical area it occupies, and charges them
for that protection. It thus engages in a kind of taxation — but this taxation (and only this taxation) does not amount to theft. Its
original clients pay voluntarily to retain its services, after all; and though their payments may end up partially subsidizing the
protection of the independents, this too is simply part of the package they voluntarily agreed to in signing up with the agency, rather
than being a kind of coerced aid to the needy in the form of welfare. The independents are also at least partially charged for protection,
but only an amount they would have paid anyway to protect themselves, and only insofar as they insist on engaging in behavior that
potentially puts others’ rights at risk. So the ultra-minimal state, in providing compensation for prohibited risky activity, violates
no one’s rights. But in doing so, it has in effect moved beyond being an ultra-minimal state to being a full minimal state, full stop.
Our original anarchist community has, then, developed inexorably and in an entirely morally legitimate manner into a
minimal state. There thus can be no principled objection on the anarchist’s part to Nozick’s minimal state. For such a state practically
and morally has to arise out of anarchy itself.

Answers to: “State Good”
EVEN IF YOU WIN A LINK TO THIS ARGUMENT, WE WILL IMPACT TURN IT-
A TRULY ANARCHIST SOCIETY FACILITATES A TYPE OF COMMUNITY
THAT FORCES INDIVIDUALS TO WORK TOGETHER FOR MUTUAL
SURVIVAL- A COMMUNITY BASED ON REPRESSION, HOWEVER, STIFLES
THIS CREATIVITY.
Richard Hiskes, specialist in political theory and public policy, COMMUNITY

WITHOUT COERCION: GETTING ALONG IN THE MINIMAL STATE, 1982, p. 47-
50.
Godwin's statement also indicates the reason why individuals require community in the anarchist view. For Godwin,
ever the thinker of the anarchist camp, the intellectual diversity of persons not only motivates but forces them to
participate in the reciprocal "opening of the soul" that characterizes community, for no person is himself
complete or self-sufficient intellectually, but needs others, their knowledge, and special abilities to complete his
own. Additionally, the anarchist community is one marked by a mutual sharing or reciprocity-not only of one's intellect,
but of one's feelings and very self. Proudhon insists that each member of the anarchist community "recognizes his own
self in that of others, and is completed or fulfilled in that recognition intellectually and emotionally. The
interdependence and reciprocity of the anarchist community demonstrates that even though the goal of anarchism
is, as Kropotkin states, "free play for the individual, for the full development of his individual gifts-for his
individuation ," this goal not be attained by the individual in isolation. Rather, the achievement of true selfhood in
the anarchist sense requires the most intimate kind of interpersonal communion and reciprocal awareness. This
dependency upon others does not threaten individual freedom in their anarchist community, however, for as
Bakunin argues, freedom is not a fact springing from isolation but from reciprocal action, a act not of exclusion, but,
on the contrary, of social interaction-for the freedom of every individual is simply the reflection of his humanity or his
human right in the consciousness of free men, his brothers, his equals. For the anarchists, freedom is the source of
man's dignity and sense of self-worth, but as the quotation from Bakunin points out, freedom and the fruits of its
exercise are only possible in the community. What the anarchists mean by freedom is the opportunity to exercise
one's own reasoning power in making decisions, and the fact that intellectual self-sufficiency is unattainable does
not alter the primary imperative of freedom-that persons make their own decisions. The belief that government
in order to exist must violate this imperative is why anarchists are anarchists forms what is after all the most
fundamental argument of anarchism: the extent that a person prides himself on his unique attribute of rationality
and the ability to reach intelligent decisions is the extent that he must resent government as an encroachment on
the exercise of that ability. The capacity to exercise what Godwin calls one's "independent judgment" is then what
underlies the anarchist idea of freedom and the concomitant repudiation of government, but it is also the source of self-
respect. Because the capacity for independent judgment is what makes man worthy of respect, it is something that
cannot be freely given up or contracted away without compromising the dignity and worth as a human being of
the one who commits such an act. To do so, as in the most common case of submission to government, is in Godwin's
words, to "become the most mischievous and pernicious of animals, to annihilate my individuality as a man."
Suspending one's rational judgment trips the individual of his own sense of self-respect, and it is for the prevention of
such a dehumanizing act that community, for the anarchists, is so essential. By providing the reciprocal exchange
of ideas and the mutual support in the functioning of every person's attribute of reason, the anarchist community
preserves the dignity of all, and most of all, each person's sense of self-respect. Also, the capacity for rational
judgment that others possess stimulates respect for them while it increases respect for oneself, thus making the
communal reciprocity and opening of the soul not only necessary for personal growth but desirable, for as
Kropotkin points out, such an experience is itself an enrichment of the self.

Answers to: “We Boost Communitarianism”

COMMUNITARIANISM ELIMINATES INDIVIDUAL MORAL RESPONSIBILITY
AND TENDS TOWARD THE CREATION OF POTENTIALLY TYRANNICAL,
MAJORITY-DIRECTED SYSTEMS OF SOCIAL CONTROL
As part of the social control provided by praise and blame, the assignment of moral
responsibility operates within a pluralistic democratic society by permitting areas of life
in which the individual may choose and act, free of coercion and constraint, but with the
understanding that these choices and actions are subject to judgment and criticism by
others in the community. However, communitarians sometimes appear to go even farther,
to seek even more social control based on a shared vision of the good life that is
determined either by the majority or by the elites. This tendency is an "excess" of the
communitarian movement that may lead to a "tyranny of the majority." Pushing the
laudable communitarian concern with shared values and the common good to this
extreme would destroy the individual, create persons "constituted by the group's shared
aims," and "leave little or no room for criticism of the group will" (Kuczewski 1997, pp.
106-8). Moreover, without individuals who are free to make choices based on their
traditions, histories, and a variety of communal influences as well as their own
consideration of all of these factors, moral responsibility has [End Page 344] no meaning.
Once the force of law is behind shared values and how they are to be honored in
individual lives and decisions, we would have a level of control through legal coercion
that would leave little room for moral responsibility based on the voluntarily chosen
actions of moral agents. Thus, the imposition of communal values, in all areas of life,
would jeopardize the social practice of assigning moral responsibility for individual
action.


MULTIPLE CHECKS ENSURE INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS WON’T CAUSE SOCIAL
FRAGMENTATION
Allen Buchanan, philosophy professor, University of Arizona, ETHICS, July 1989, p.

858.
If one believes, as John Stuart Mill did, that the best forms of human life, including the
most fulfilling forms of community, may differ for different sets of individuals and that
there still may be progress to be made in developing new and better forms of community,
then the fact that the liberal individual rights facilitate peaceful change is clearly a point
in their favor. Mill also thought – quite correctly, I believe – that the recognition of these
individual rights did not threaten limitless change and uncontrolled fragmentation of
communities. For one thing, he was quite aware of the tight grip tradition has on most
people. For another, to form a new community an individual must attract a significant
number of others to her banner and sustain their allegiance if she is to succeed. If the
human need for community is as strong as communitarians believe, then one would
expect that, in general, new forms of community will emerge and thrive only if they serve
those needs, and participants in failed alternatives will seek to reattach to their previous
communities. Hence, Mill may be right in concluding the flexibility for peaceful chance
provided by liberal individual rights outweighs the risk of excessive fragmentation and
stability.
MULTIPLE CHECKS ENSURE INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS WON’T CAUSE SOCIAL

FRAGMENTATION
COMMUNITARIAN ETHICS ARE INELUCTABLY COERCIVE

858.
A fourth related point is that individual rights are inherently anti-paternalistic in a way
that group rights are not. Within a group right, some one person or subset of the group
has the ultimate say as whether to exercise that right. Even if others decided on the basis
of a sincere commitment to doing what is best for the individual subgroup, it is still they,
not he, who are in control. Unless the radical communitarian can show that group rights
provide such superior protection for community as to outweigh the cumulative forces of
these advantages of individual rights, he will not make good the charge that the cautious
communitarian argument is infected by an individualistic bias.


COMMUNITY OBLIGATIONS CAN BE FULFILLED WITHOUT THE USE OF
COERCION
Mill is especially helpful in responding to the communitarian critique of respect for autonomy because he
is careful to emphasize that his conception of liberty is neither selfish nor indifferent to
the self-regarding behavior of others. Mill (1978 [1859], pp. 74-75) identifies a number
of ways in which members of the community should influence each other toward the
"self-regarding virtues," which include education, conviction, persuasion,
encouragement, and advice. However, he rejects the coercion of the law and the
overwhelming power of public opinion as illegitimate forms of control over self-
regarding conduct (Mill 1978 [1859], p. 9). The practical application of these principles from Kant and
Mill does not require a concept of the self as unencumbered or isolated in its decision making. Kant's
concept of the person, with the capacity for rational [End Page 340] agency, is based on human freedom
from natural forces, not our freedom from attachments and commitments to other persons or the
influence our histories, traditions, and families have on our values, choices, and actions. Kant is pointing
out that we are neither like chairs, without the capacity for choice or action, nor like nonrational animals,
whose actions are determined by instinct and the forces of nature. As persons, we are the products of our
families, traditions, and communities. Yet, because we are persons, our actions may be the result of more
than these influences. They may also be the result of our rational capacities. Moreover, according to Kant,
our choices and actions are not supposed to be based simply on our own goals and ends. Rather, Kant
believes that the moral law will lead us to recognize duties and obligations we have to others, for example,
to respect and further their ends. Such obligations could certainly be directed toward the shared goals of the
community as a whole. For Mill, even self-regarding choices and actions are properly
subject to influence from others, for example through their natural reactions to an
individual's self-destructive behavior. In fact, he advocates our responsibility to help each
other ". . . distinguish the better from the worse . . ." through conviction, encouragement, persuasion, and education (Mill
1978 [1859], pp. 74-76). Furthermore, in the category of other-regarding behavior Mill includes the risk of damage not only to specific
others, but to the society, as well (p. 80). Contemporary characterizations of respect for autonomy clearly reflect the influence of
Kant's principle of humanity and Mill's principle of liberty. Tom Beauchamp and James Childress, for example, recognize this
influence and include elements from both Kant and Mill in their discussion of the principle of respect for autonomy. Beauchamp and
Childress (1994, pp. 125-28) describe what it means to respect an "autonomous agent." It is ". . . at a minimum, to acknowledge that
person's right to hold views, to make choices, and to take actions based on personal values and beliefs." This includes both ". . .
obligations of nonintervention in the affairs of persons . . ." and ". . . obligations to maintain capacities for autonomous choice in
others . . . ." However, they emphasize that this principle is not absolute, but ". . . has only prima facie standing and can be overridden
by competing moral considerations." The moral considerations noted here are based on harm to individuals or to the community. They
include, for example, endangerment to the public health and Respect for
potential harm to innocents. [End Page 341]
autonomy, within the limits described here, is an essential component of a pluralistic
democratic society. It is necessary for the social practice of assigning moral responsibility
to rational agents for their choices and actions. Moreover, this social practice is part of an
important method of social control through which the community's interests and goals
are furthered.

INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS ARE ESSENTIAL TO THE RATIONAL AND
NONVIOLENT MODIFICATION OF EXISTING AND FORMATION OF NEW
COMMUNITIES

858.
First, individual rights to freedom of religion, thought, expression, and association

facilitate rational, nonviolent change in existing communities as well as the rational,
nonviolent formation of new communities. Individual rights do this by allowing
individuals who are dissatisfied with current forms of community to advocate and try to
develop alternatives, even when the majority of their fellow members (or official
members of the community) do not share their views. If rights to freedom of expression,
association, thought, accrued to communities, not to individuals, then they would protect
existing communities from intrusion by other communities or state agencies. But they
would not provide protection for the formation of new communities or for modifications
for existing communities, so far as either of these two types of changes originate in the
beliefs and actions of an individual or a minority
MOST COMMUNITARIANS AGREE; SYNTHESIS OF INDIVIDUALITY AND

COMMUNALITY IS NET BENEFICIAL TO ATTAINING FREEDOM AND
EQUALITY
Susan Hekman, political scientist, University of Texas, JOURNAL OF POLITICS,

November 1992, p. 1106.
MacIntyre and Sandel advance the most comprehensive critique of the subject of
liberalism, but they are by no means the only communitarian critics of liberalism writing
today. An examination of this communitarian literature reveals a definitive pattern of
argument, a pattern that conforms more closely to the work of Sandel than of MacIntyre.
Sandel attempts dialectical synthesis between modernity and communalism, between the
“good” aspects of the modernist subject and a socially constructed subject. Most
communitarian critics also attempt a synthesis between the individualism of modernity
and communitarian values. MacIntyre’s conception of community in which individuals
have a largely ascribed status is rarely expressed in this literature. Instead, most
communitarian writers attempt to argue that individuality and communality are not
antithetical and that the communities they oppose to liberal individualism do not oppose
some of the virtues of individualism, most notably freedom and equality.


LIBERALISM INCORPORATES THE CONCEPTION OF THE COMMON
GOOD BY DELEGATING POWER AWAY FROM THE GOVERNMENT
DIRECTLY TO THE PEOPLE. THE TWO ETHICAL REGIMES ARE
COMPLIMENTARY SYSTEMS, PARTICULARLY IN THIS INSTANCE, AS
BOTH IDEOLOGIES DISPARAGE GOVERNMENTAL COERCION
The defenders of liberalism have attempted to respond to these charges and to identify
some of the shared interests of a pluralistic democratic community. Joel Feinberg
believes that liberalism includes a conception of the common good and a number of
shared interests such as mutual tolerance, respect, public service, patriotism, charity, and
cooperation. James Childress has defended the principle of respect for autonomy in
health care against attacks by communitarians, describing it as ". . . an important moral
limit and as limited." He explains that this principle is not based on an ideal of the
autonomous person, nor does it disregard the influence of authority and tradition on our
personal decisions. It is actually, Childress argues, "a principle of obligation" because it
calls attention to respect for the autonomy of others. Willard Gaylin and Bruce Jennings
have responded to the distortion of autonomy and individualism that is characteristic of
modern liberal society by recommending a balance between autonomy and social control.
Ezekiel Emanuel believes that a consensus is building among liberals and
communitarians that a shared conception of the good is necessary to resolve political
issues in our society. Moreover, there may even be agreement on the relevant conception
of the good, itself. Emanuel writes, "[b]oth envision a need for citizens who are
independent and responsible and for public forums that present citizens with
opportunities to enter into public deliberations on social policies."


LIBERAL INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS ARE CRITICAL TO THE PROTECTION OF
COMMUNITIES AGAINST THE TOTALITARIAN STATE.

858.
How the liberal individual rights protect community. Consider the rights to freedom of
association, expression, and religion, which the liberal champions. Historically, these
rights have provided a strong bulwark against attempts to destroy or dominate various
communities within nation-states. They allow individuals to partake of the alleged
essential human good of community by protecting existing communities from without
and by giving individuals the freedom to unite with other like-minded others to create
new communities. This “communitarian” argument for the liberal political thesis can in
fact be strengthened. At least in our century, the greatest single threat to communities
probably has been totalitarianism. As the name implies, the totalitarian state recognizes
no limit on its authority, seeking to control every aspect of it’s citizen’s lives. It cannot
tolerate genuine communities within its boundaries because they would eliminate the
individuals independence upon and allegiance to the state. And it is a matter of historical
record that totalitarian regimes have employed the most ruthless measures to undermine
traditional communities – the family and the church in particular – in the name of
achieving an all inclusive political community. The liberal political thesis, in contrast, is a
direct and explicit rejection of the totalitarian state. So to the extent the totalitarian state is
a threat to communities, we should regard the priority on individual civil and political
rights usually associated with liberalism as the protector of community, even if the liberal
political thesis is itself silent as to the importance of community in good life.

Answers to: “Need to help people”
LIBERTARIANISM WOULD BENEFIT THE POOR

ALTERNATIVE, Tibor Machan, ed., 1974, p20.
Should government have no role in assisting the needy, in providing social security, in legislating minimum
wages, in fixing prices and putting a ceiling on rents, in curbing monopolies, in erecting tariffs, in
guaranteeing jobs, in managing the money supply? To these and all similar questions the libertarian
answers with an unequivocal no. "But then you'd let people go hungry!" comes the rejoinder. This, the
libertarian insists, is precisely what would not happen; with the restrictions removed, the economy would
flourish as never before. With the controls taken off business, existing enterprises would expand and new
ones would spring into existence satisfying more and more consumer needs; millions more people would be
gainfully employed instead of subsisting on welfare, and all kinds of research and production, released
from the stranglehold of government, would proliferate, fulfilling man's needs and desires as never before.
It has always been so whenever government has permitted men to be tree traders on a free market.
THE FREE SOCIETY IS BEST FOR EVERYONE
Carey, ed., 1984, p. 49.
So as to achieve such feats as a matter of individual responsible,, it is necessary that everyone enjoy the
freedom in society that human beings can insure for each other without in any way being required to
become indentured to others. Therefore, the free society, via the respect of everyone's naturally derived
rights to life, liberty and property, is the best political order for every human being.
LIBERTARIANISM WOULD STIMULATE PRIVATE CHARITY
Richard A. Epstein, Professor of Law at University of Chicago, REASON, May 1993, p.60.
We have to let go of the allure of universality, which is today treated as though it were an undeniable
ethical imperative. In part the slack will be picked up by a resurgence of private charitable care, which
hospitals could provide if freed of their regulatory burdens.
REDUCED STATISM INCREASES CHARITY
Richard A. Epstein, Professor of Law at University of Chicago, KANSAS LAW REVIEW, Winter 1992,
p.314.
The first of these is to organize some voluntary charitable institutions whereby medical care is given out
free of charge. Before the rise of the public assistance programs, hospitals and private physicians routinely
provide health care on just this basis, in an effort to bridge the gap between utility and wealth.

Answers to: “Need to help people”
WELFARE PROGRAMS DON'T BENEFIT THE POOR
Douglas J. Den Uyl, Professor of Philosophy at Bellarmine College, SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY AND
POLICY, Winter 1993, p.216-7.
In addition, in democratic systems welfare programs become "commodified," that is, traded like other
goods or services in exchange for political concessions and like benefits through a process of log rolling
and interest-group competition. This tends to make welfare less a moral matter of the relief of suffering and
more a political mechanism for catering to middle-class desires for security.
WELFARE CREATES DEPENDENCY
Douglas J. Den Uyl, Professor of Philosophy at Bellarmine College, SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY AND
POLICY, Winter 1993, p.216.
But the problem with this sort of account is that putting it into practice may provide perverse incentives to
free-ride on the provision of welfare by others and to strategically exploit the system, either by
exaggerating one's own need for welfare, or by advancing programs for one's own benefit that others will
have to pay for.

Answers to: Warlords Turn
THERE ARE MULTIPLE CHECKS ON WARLORDS

Robert Murphy, adjunct scholar of the Mises Institute and teaches economics at Hillsdale
College, BUT WOULDN'T WARLORDS TAKE OVER, 2005, p. http://www.mises.org/story/1855,
http://www.mises.org/story/1855 accessed 5/10/06.
Third, people need to really picture the nightmare scenario to see how absurd it is.
Imagine a bustling city, such as New York, that is initially a free market paradise. Is
it really plausible that over time rival gangs would constantly grow, and eventually
terrorize the general public? Remember, these would be admittedly criminal
organizations; unlike the city government of New York, there would be no
ideological support for these gangs.
We must consider that in such an environment, the law-abiding majority would have all
sorts of mechanisms at their disposal, beyond physical confrontation. Once private
judges had ruled against a particular rogue agency, the private banks could freeze
its assets (up to the amount of fines levied by the arbitrators). In addition, the private
utility companies could shut down electricity and water to the agency’s
headquarters, in accordance with standard provisions in their contracts. Of course, it is
theoretically possible that a rogue agency could overcome these obstacles, either through
intimidation or division of the spoils, and take over enough banks, power companies,
grocery stores, etc. that only full-scale military assault would conquer it. But the point is,
from an initial position of market anarchy, these would-be rulers would have to start
from scratch. In contrast, under even a limited government, the machinery of mass
subjugation is ready and waiting to be seized.

Answers to: Warlords Turn

STATES CONSTANTLY COLLAPSE INTO CIVIL WAR A LIBERTARIAN
SOCIETY OFFERS THE BEST DEFENSE
Robert Murphy, adjunct scholar of the Mises Institute and teaches economics at Hillsdale
College, BUT WOULDN'T WARLORDS TAKE OVER, 2005, p. http://www.mises.org/story/1855,
http://www.mises.org/story/1855 accessed 5/10/06.
On two separate occasions in the last couple of weeks, people have asked me a familiar question: “In a system of
‘anarcho-capitalism’ or the free-market order, wouldn’t society degenerate into constant battles between private
warlords?” Unfortunately I didn’t give adequate answers at the times, but I hope in this article to prove the adage that
later is better than never.APPLES AND ORANGES When dealing with the warlord objection, we need to keep our
comparisons fair. It won’t do to compare society A, which is filled with evil, ignorant savages who live under
anarchy, with society B, which is populated by enlightened, law-abiding citizens who live under limited
government. The anarchist doesn’t deny that life might be better in society B. What the anarchist does claim is that,
for any given population, the imposition of a coercive government will make things worse. The absence of a State
is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition to achieve the free society. To put the matter differently: It is not enough
to demonstrate that a state of private-property anarchy could degenerate into ceaseless war, where no single
group is strong enough to subjugate all challengers, and hence no one can establish “order.” After all, communities
living under a State degenerate into civil war all the time. We should remember that the frequently cited cases of
Colombia and now Iraq are not demonstrations of anarchy-turned-into-chaos, but rather examples of government-
turned-into-chaos. For the warlord objection to work, the statist would need to argue that a given community
would remain lawful under a government, but that the same community would break down into continuous
warfare if all legal and military services were privatized. The popular case of Somalia, therefore, helps neither
side.[i] It is true that Rothbardians should be somewhat disturbed that the respect for non-aggression is apparently too
rare in Somalia to foster the spontaneous emergence of a totally free market community. But by the same token, the
respect for “the law” was also too weak to allow the original Somali government to maintain order. Now that we’ve
focused the issue, I think there are strong reasons to suppose that civil war would be much less likely in a region
dominated by private defense and judicial agencies, rather than by a monopoly State. Private agencies own the assets
at their disposal, whereas politicians (especially in democracies) merely exercise temporary control over the State’s
military equipment. Bill Clinton was perfectly willing to fire off dozens of cruise missiles when the Lewinsky
scandal was picking up steam. Now regardless of one’s beliefs about Clinton’s motivations, clearly Slick Willie
would have been less likely to launch such an attack if he had been the CEO of a private defense agency that
could have sold the missiles on the open market for $569,000 each . We can see this principle in the case of the United States. In the 1860s, would large
scale combat have broken out on anywhere near the same scale if, instead of the two factions controlling hundreds of thousands of conscripts, all military commanders had to hire voluntary mercenaries and pay them
a market wage for their services? CONTRACT THEORY OF GOVERNMENT I can imagine a reader generally endorsing the above analysis, yet still resisting my conclusion. He or she might say something like
this: “In a state of nature, people initially have different views of justice. Under market anarchy, different consumers would patronize dozens of defense agencies, each of which attempts to use its forces to
implement incompatible codes of law. Now it’s true that these professional gangs might generally avoid conflict out of prudence, but the equilibrium would still be precarious.” “To avoid this outcome,” my critic
could elaborate, “citizens put aside their petty differences and agree to support a single, monopoly agency, which then has the power to crush all challengers to its authority. This admittedly raises the new problem of
controlling the Leviathan, but at least it solves the problem of ceaseless domestic warfare.” There are several problems with this possible approach. First, it assumes that the danger of private warlords is worse than
the threat posed by a tyrannical central government. Second, there is the inconvenient fact that no such voluntary formation of a State ever occurred. Even those citizens who, say, supported the ratification of the
U.S. Constitution were never given the option of living in market anarchy; instead they had to choose between government under the Articles of Confederation or government under the Constitution. But for our
If, by hypothesis, the vast
purposes, the most interesting problem with this objection is that, were it an accurate description, it would be unnecessary for such a people to form a government.
majority of people—although they have different conceptions of justice—can all agree that it is wrong to use
violence to settle their honest disputes, then market forces would lead to peace among the private police agencies.
Yes, it is perfectly true that people have vastly different opinions concerning particular legal issues. Some people
favor capital punishment, some consider abortion to be murder, and there would be no consensus on how many
guilty people should go free to avoid the false conviction of one innocent defendant. Nonetheless, if the contract
theory of government is correct, the vast majority of individuals can agree that they should settle these issues not
through force, but rather through an orderly procedure (such as is provided by periodic elections). But if this does
indeed describe a particular population, why would we expect such virtuous people, as consumers, to patronize
defense agencies that routinely used force against weak opponents? Why wouldn’t the vast bulk of reasonable
customers patronize defense agencies that had interlocking arbitration agreements, and submitted their
legitimate disputes to reputable, disinterested arbitrators?

Altruism Immoral
EGOISM IS JUSTIFIED BY VIEWING EACH PERSON AS AN END IN HIM OR

HERSELF
The basic social principle of the Objectivist ethics is that just as life is an end in itself, so every living
human being is an end in himself, not the means to the ends or the welfare of others-and, therefore, that
man must live for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. Tc
live for his own sake means that the achievement of his own happiness is man's highest moral purpose.
HUMAN LIFE REQUIRES SELFISHNESS
Leonard Peikoff, Professor of Philosophy, Hunter College, THE OMINOUS PARALLELS, 1982, p. 308-
309.
Man's mind requires selfishness, and so does his life in every aspect: a living organism has to be the
beneficiary of its own actions. It has to pursue specific objects--for itself, for its own s:ike and survival.
Life requires the gaining of values, not their loss; achievement, not renunciation; self-preservation, not self-
sacrifice. Man can choose to value and pursue self-immolation, but he cannot survive or prosper by such a
method.
ALTRUISM INEVITABLY LEADS TO THE AUTHORITARIAN STATE
Leonard Peikoff, Professor of Philosophy, Hunter College, THE' OMINOUS PARALLELS, 1982, p. 302.
If sacrifice is equated with virtue, there is no stopping the advance of the totalitarian state. "It goes on and will
go on," said Howard Roark, the hero of The Fountainhead, so long as men telieve that an action is good if it is
unselfish. That permits the altruist to act and forces his victims to bear it." "The world," said Roark, "is
perishing from an orgy of self-sacrificing. " It was true in 1943, when The Fountainhead was published. It is
just as true and much more obvious today.
ALTRUISM UNDERMINES FREEDOM
Ayn Rand, philosopher and novelist, THE VIRTUE OF SELFISHNESS, 1964, p95.
America's inner contradiction was the altruist-collectivist ethics. Altruism is incompatible with freedom, with
capitalism and with individual rights. One cannot combine the pursuit of happiness with the moral status of a
sacrificial animal.

Altruism Immoral
COERCION IS THE FLIP SIDE OF ALTRUISM
Humility and presumptuousness are always two sides of the same premise, and always share the task of filling
the space vacated by self-esteem in a collectivized mentality. The man who is willing to serve as the means to
the ends of others, will necessarily regard others as the means to his ends. The more neurotic he is or the more
conscientious in the practice of altruism (and these two aspects of his psychology will act reciprocally to
reinforce each other), the more he will tend to devise schemes "for the good of mankind" or of "society" or of
"the public" or of "future generations" or of anything except actual human beings.
CHARITY IS A PERSONAL NOT A COLLECTIVE CHOICE
Only individual men have the right to decide when or whether they wish to help others; society - as an
organized political system - has no rights in the matter at all.
RIGHTS GUARD HUMANS AGAINST VIOLENCE
Leonard Peikoff, Professor of Philosophy, Hunter College, THE OMINOUS PARALLELS, 1982, p310.
Man's rights, Ayn Rand observes, can be violated only by physical force (fraud is an indirect form of force). A
political system based on the recognition of rights is one that guards man against violence. Men therefore deal
with one another not as potential killers, but as sovereign traders, according to their own independent
judgment and voluntary consent. This kind of system represents the methodical protection of man's mind and
of his self-interest, i.e., of the function and purpose on which human life depends.

Property Rights Are Foundational
PROPERTY RIGHTS ARE ESSENTIAL TO ALL OTHER RIGHTS
Ayn Rand, philosopher and novelist, CAPITALISM: THE UNKNOWN IDEAL, 1967, p. 18.
In regard to political economy, this last requires special emphasis: man has to work and produce in order to
support his life. He has to support his life by his own effort and by the guidance of his own mind. If he
cannot dispose of the product of his effort, he cannot dispose of his life. Without property rights, ao other
rights can be practiced.
AN EFFECTIVE RIGHT TO LIFE REQUIRES PROPERTY RIGHTS
The right to life is the source of all rights--and the right to property is their only implementation. Without
property rights, no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man
who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life. The man who produces while
others dispose of his product, is a slave.

Permutation Answers
CANNIBALIZATION DA – WORKING WITHIN THE SYSTEM ALLOWS THE
GOVERNMENT TO CO-OPT LIBRATORY MOVEMENTS AND RE-DEPLOY
THEM TO SERVE THE INTERESTS OF INFINITE EXPANSION – THE
CHRISTIAN RIGHT MOVEMENT IS PROOF OF THE SUCCESS OF THIS
TACTIC
Llewellyn Rockwell, Jr, President of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, WHAT SHOULD FREEDOM
LOVERS DO, April 20,2004, p. http://www.mises.org/fullstory.aspx?control=1499&id=71.
If often happens that an ideological movement will make great strides through education
and organization and cultural influence, only to take the illogical leap of believing that
politics and political influence, which usually means taking jobs within the bureaucracy,
is the next rung on the ladder to success. This is like trying to fight a fire with matches
and gasoline. This is what happened to the Christian right in the 1980s. They got
involved in politics in order to throw off the yoke of the state. Twenty years later, many
of these people are working in the Department of Education or for the White House,
doing the prep work to amend the Constitution or invade some foreign country. This is a
disastrous waste of intellectual capital. It is particularly important that believers in liberty
not take this course. Government work has been the chosen career path of socialists,
social reformers, and Keynesians for at least a century. It is the natural home to them
because their ambition is to control society through government. It works for them but it
does not work for us. In the first half of the 20th century, libertarians knew how to oppose statism. They went into business
and journalism. They wrote books. They agitated within the cultural arena. They developed fortunes to help fund newspapers, schools,
foundations, and public education organizations. They expanded their commercial ventures to serve as a bulwark against central
planning. They became teachers and, when possible, professors. They cultivated wonderful families and focused on the education of
their children. It is a long struggle but it is the way the struggle for liberty has always taken place. But somewhere along the way,
some people, enticed by the prospect of a fast track to reform, rethought this idea. Perhaps we should try the same technique that the
left did. We should get our people in power and displace their people, and then we can bring about change toward liberty. In fact, isn't
this the most important goal of all? So long as the left controls the state, it will expand in ways that are incompatible with freedom. We
need to take back the state. So goes the logic. What is wrong with it? The
state's only function is as an apparatus
of coercion and compulsion. That is its distinguishing mark. It is what makes the state the
state. To the same extent that the state responds well to arguments that it should be larger
and more powerful, it is institutionally hostile to anyone who says that it should be less
powerful and less coercive. That is not to say that some work from the "inside" cannot do
some good, some of the time. But it is far more likely that the state will convert the
libertarian than for the libertarian to convert the state.

Permutation Answers
Contradictions destroy the libertarian program (Gender Paraphrased)
Thus, the libertarian must never allow him (or her)self to be trapped into any sort of
proposal for "positive" governmental action; in his perspective, the role of
government should only be to remove itself from all spheres of society just as rapidly
as it can be pressured to do so. Neither should there be any contradictions in
rhetoric. The libertarian should not indulge in any rhetoric, let alone any policy
recommendations, which would work against the eventual goal. Thus, suppose that a
libertarian is asked to give his views on a specific tax cut. Even if he does not feel that
he can at the moment call loudly for tax abolition, the one thing that he (or she) must
not do is add to his support of a tax cut such unprincipled rhetoric as, "Well, of
course, some taxation is essential . . . ," etc. Only harm to the ultimate objective can
be achieved by rhetorical flourishes which confuse the public and contradict and
violate principle.

Alternative: Non-Governmental Social Control
EFFECTIVE NON-GOVERNMENT MEANS OF SOCIAL CONTROL WOULD EXIST IN

LIBERTARIAN SOCIETY.
Carey, ed., 1984, p.45.
Voluntary approaches to social direction, in the variety of ways we refer to as ostracism, rebuke, boycott,
etc., are available for use to everyone and anyone. These ways can be developed into massive and severe
instruments of social control and change. It would be quite illegitimate to dismiss these methods as
ineffectual, especially in light of the entirely ineffectual character of coercive efforts to promote or stifle
personal and social development. The libertarians cannot and will not give the false promise that coercion
will guarantee the rooting out of evil and the promotion of good. The libertarian is prepared, however, to
spell out realistic noncoercive prospects of achieving these ends. Outside the government's proper peace-
keeping and retaliatory functions, there is ample room for the libertarian to introduce non-political means
so as to cope with the problems and challenges of personal and social life.
LIBERTARIANISM ALLOWS VOLUNTARY ALTERNATIVES TO STATE COERCION
Carey, ed., 1984, p44-5.
Libertarian political theory holds it as a violation of the nature of man to engage in coercive dictation of
other people's social practices, sexual habits, religious affiliations, and so forth. Nevertheless libertarianism
does not preclude other means for advancing social goals. Some of these are close voluntary substitutes for
outright coercion. Moreover, parental responsibility in a free society (along libertarian lines) would not
preclude the use of physical force against a child within the dictates of reason. A child is normally
incapable of making rational decisions concerning its behavior and could, unless at times forcibly yet
reasonably forbidden from doing so, place itself in severe danger. This form of coercion is not excluded in
libertarian theory.
LIBERTARIAN SOCIETY PROMOTES VIRTUE
Carey, ed., 1984, p44.
LIBERTARIAN POLITICAL THEORY implies that a government functions properly when it upholds
justice in human relations by the standard of natural human rights--as initially developed in John Locke's
Second Treatise and given more depth and scope by contemporary libertarians. Such a government would
fulfill both the ancient and the modern role of state, namely, the encouragement of virtue and the promotion
of peace and prcsperity. The former would be achieved by securing liberty for all, which is a necessary
condition for the virtuous life in society. If one acts because of coercion or its threat, one cannot make
moral choices. A legal system in which freedom is not protected and preserved prevents individual moral
responsibility. So government that protects and preserves human freedom encourages individual moral
responsibility and human virtue.

Uniqueness Answer: Half The Economy Is Controlled

Now
Everson, 1990, p. 154.
This is not a market economy. Government spending is 45 percent of total national income. There are
federal, state, and local controls way beyond that-immigration controls, the tariff, minimum wages and
hours. Half the economy is government controlled.

Link Answers
1. CITIZENSHIP REQUIREMENTS ARE NOT COERCIVE
Everson, 1990, p. 187.
A government that requires us to do something endemic to democratic`citizenship is engaged not in an act

of coercion but in an act of training for citizenship. I feel as strongly about democracy as you do about war.
I do not want to see Americans go in unready for citizenship. Our democracy cannot survive unless
Americans are citizens. Most Americans-adults and young people-are inadequate citizens who do not even
bother to use the ballot, let alone do much else. The nation as a whole and our schools in particular have a
responsibility to find ways to make people citizen-ready for the great enterprise of democracy-.-N
NATIONAL SERVICE ISN’T SLAVERY

2.
Donald Eberly, Exectutive Director, National Service Secretariat, NATIONAL SERVICE: PRO & CON, p.
226.
National service would be unconstitutional and a return to slavery. This refers to a form of service that
would put anyone in prison who refused to serve. It may or may not be constitutional, but as an idea with
few supporters and of little interest to congressional advocates of national service, mandatory service is
irrelevant to today's national service debate.
3. NATIONAL SERVICE ISN’T COERCIVE
Eric Gorhman, sociologist, State University of New York, NATIONAL SERVICE: CITIZENSHIP AND POLITICAL
EDUCTION, 1992, p. 41.
This objection can be addressed in a number of ways. First, individuals would be coerced into national service not
because they are human, but because they are citizens of the United States. As such, they have responsibilities to the
state as well as rights, and they must fulfill those responsibilities in order for their rights to be protected. Thus, it is not
necessarily their natural rights that are being violated-for freedom of expression and property can be defined in a
number of ways-rather their civil or societal rights are being earned. Individuals are not only entitled to particular rights
and privileges from government, they are also obliged, through a moral duty, to preserve the social structure and culture
which ensures those rights and privileges." Second, the argument that we must move away from an individualist
conception of the citizen comes into clear relief here. For national service can be a vehicle by which people come to
under stand that they owe duties to the national community, and that they are not merely the recipients of federal
benefits and privileges. That is, national service can be a way for individuals to increase their understandings of their
political communities, and by doing so become more clear about their rights and privileges. Through political education
individuals can come to a more immediate understanding of their capabilities as human beings, and so augment their
freedoms rather than have them restricted. This last point also implies that national service need not be national
servitude. Where people object to coercive service they do so because they assume the program is in some sense
servitude; but a program could be designed which minimizes its servile characteristics. As I discuss below, none of the
contemporary proposals for national service do so, because they emphasize the work and socializing aspects of national
service. These proposals thus presume that most enrollees would serve a particular project or industry that they would
not normally. But were national service to be founded on political education, critics could not easily argue that coercing
people into such a program violates their rights. The purpose of the program would be to apprise participants of their
rights. This could be a program where individuals are taught the workings of government as well as new political ideas;
in such a way they could come to a greater understanding of their capacities as citizens: Indirectly; this may help them
assess their abilities as human beings. )

General Answers
EXTINCTION OUTWEIGHS
Many libertarians are uncomfortable with foreign policy matters and prefer to spend their
energies either on fundamental questions of libertarian theory or on such "domestic"
concerns as the free market or privatizing postal service or garbage disposal. Yet an attack
on war or a warlike foreign policy is of crucial importance to libertarians. There are two
important reasons. One has become a cliche, but is all too true nevertheless: the
overriding importance of preventing a nuclear holocaust. To all the long-standing
reasons, moral and economic, against an interventionist foreign policy has now been
added the imminent, ever-present threat of world destruction. If the world should be
destroyed, all the other problems and all the other isms—socialism, capitalism,
liberalism, or libertarianism—would be of no importance whatsoever.
ANARCHO-CAPITALISM WOULD GIVE RISE TO REGIMES OF DOMINATION

AND OPPRESSION, THIS POSES THE SINGLE GREATEST THREAT TO
HUMAN EXISTENCE
Noam Chomsky, philosopher, CHOMSKY ON ANARCHO-CAPITALISM,2004, p.

P. http://flag.blackened.net/liberty/chomsky-on-ac.txt.
Anarcho-capitalism, in my opinion, is a doctrinal system which, if ever implemented,

would lead to forms of tyranny and oppression that have few counterparts in human
history. There isn't the slightest possibility that its (in my view, horrendous) ideas would
be implemented, because they would quickly destroy any society that made this colossal
error. The idea of "free contract" between the potentate and his starving subject is a sick
joke, perhaps worth some moments in an academic seminar exploring the consequences
of (in my view, absurd) ideas, but nowhere else.

Property Rights Answers

1. PROPERTY RIGHTS CAN BE OVERRIDDEN
Jeffrey Paul, Professor of Philosophy, Bowling Green State University, READING NOZICK, 1981, p9-10.
Like Scanlon, Judith Jarvis T'homson is skeptical about the possibility of defending the absolutely
inviolable character of Nozickian property rights. This skepticism derives from a number of examples in
which our intuitions incline us toward the view that the property rights in question may be overridden by
other considerations. Thomson then asks what is it, at the margin, which sustains the moral invincibility of
a property claim and conversely, what is it that justifies the infringement of a property right when we are
morally persuaded to ignore it? Property claims are to be sustained, she argues, when, in addition to having
acquired title to an object in suitable ways, we value that object highly. Such claims may be overridden
when a life will be lost in the absence of an infringement of rights. This demonstrates, Thomson argues,
that rights are derivable from human interests and needs and this in turn suggests that the constraints that
rights impose upon redistribution are not as inflexible as Nozick's deontological conception of them leads
him to believe.
2. PRIVATE PROPERLY MAY LIMIT FREEDOM
Jeffrey Paul, Professor of Philosophy, Bowling Green State University, READING NOZICK, 1981, p. 20.
Furthermore it call be plausibly contended, according to Ryan, that private property inhibits freedom rather
than expands it. The transition from common ground to enclosed ground in England rendered large tracts of
land inaccessible to those who formerly had the free use of it. Indeed, Ryan argues against Nozick that the
right to acquire personal property from nature is a source of increasingly constricted autonomy.
3. PROPERTY RIGHTS RESTRICT FREEDOM
Will Kymlicka, Professor of Philosophy, University of Toronto, CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL

PHILOSOPHY, 1990, p 147.
That property-rights increase some people's freedom by restricting others' is obvious when we think of the
origin of private property. When Amy unilaterally appropriated land that had previously been held in
common, Ben was legally deprived of his freedom to use the land. Since private ownership by one person
presupposes non-ownership by others, the 'free market' restricts as well as creates liberties, just as welfare-
state redistribution both creates and restricts liberties. Hence, as Cohen puts it, 'the sentence "free enterprise
constitutes economic liberty" is demonstrably false'.


4. THERE'S NO RIGHT TO PROFIT FROM UNDESERVED TALENTS

PHILOSOPHY, 1.990, p 125.
But there is a deeper problem with Nozick's self-ownership argument. Nozick has not adequately
confronted Rawls's claim that people do not have a legitimate claim to the rewards of the exercise of their
undeserved talents. I have tried to show that we can get a Rawlsian distributive scheme even without
denyirg self-ownership, since redistribution could arise from the requirements of a fair theory of access to
external resources. But I still think that Rawls's denial of self-ownership was perfectly sound. I think that
we can treat people's talents as part of their circumstances, and hence as possible grounds, in and of
themselves, for compensation. People have rights to the possess:ion and exercise of their talents, but the
disadvantaged may also have rights to some compensation for their disadvantage. It is wrong for people to
suffer from undeserved inequalities in circumstances, and the disadvantaged have direct claims on the more
fortunate, quite independently of the question of access to external resources.
5. PROPERTY RESTS ON FORCE, HENCE IT CAN BE LEGITIMATELY

REDISTRIBUTED

The historical answer is often that natural resources came to be someone's property by force, which raises a
dilemma for those who hope Nozick's theory will defend existing inequalities. Either the use of force made
the initial acquisition illegitimate, in which case current title is illegitimate, and there is no moral reason
why governments should not confiscate the wealth and redistribute it. Or the initial use of force did not
render the acquisition illegitimate, in which case we can, with equal justification, use force to take it away
from its current owners and redistribute it. Either way, the fact that initial acquisition often involved force
means that there is no moral objection to redistributing existing wealth.
8. ILLEGITIMATE INITIAL ACQUISITION OF RESOURCES JUSTIFIES

REDISTRIBUTION

Because most initial acquisition was in fact illegitimate, Nozick's theory cannot protect existing holdings
from redistribution. But we still need to know how acquisition could have arisen legiamately. If we cannot
answer that question, then we should not only postpone the implementation of Nozick's principle of transfer
until historical titles are ascertained or rectified, we should reject it entirely. If there is no way that people
can appropriate unowned resources for themselves without denying other people's claim to equal
consideration, then Nozick's right of transfer never gets off the ground.


9. SINCE INITIAL ACQUISITION WAS UNJUST, THERE ARE NO LEGITIMATE
ENTITLEMENTS
Jonathan Wolff, philosopher, ROBERT NOZICK, 1991, p. 141.
Second, initial appropriation remains undefended by Nozick, and this may well be because it is indefensible
on libertarian grounds Allowing people virtually unlimited appropriation of the world will importantly
restrict what others can do, thus undermining their liberty and self-ownership. Thus Nozick's concept of
ownership itself generates conflicts, and so The project of allowing no restrictions upon ownership itself
falls into incoherence.
10. BECAUSE TALENTS ARE UNDESERVED THERE IS NO RIGHT TO

BENEFIT FROM THEM MATERIALLY

PHILOSOPHY, 1990, p.105-6.
There are many ways in which liberals respect individuals' claims over their own talents. Liberals accept
that I am the legitimate possessor of my talents and that I am free to use them in accordance with my
chosen projects. However, liberals say that because it is a matter of brute luck that people have the
talents they do, their rights over their talents do not include the right to accrue unequal rewards from the
exercise of those talents. Because talents are undeserved, it is not a denial of moral equality for the
government to consider people's talents as part of their circumstances, and hence as a possible ground for
claims to compensation. People who are born naturally disadvantaged have a legitimate claim on those
with advantages, and the naturally advantaged have a moral obligation to the disadvantaged. Thus, in
Dworkin's theory, the talented owe insurance premiums that get paid out to the disadvantaged, while in
Rawls's theory, the talented only benefit from their talents if it also benefits the disadvantaged.
PROPERTY RIGHTS AREN'T ABSOLUTE
Tom Beauchamp, Department of Philosophy at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown University,
RIGHTS OF HEALTH CARE, Thomas Bole III and William Bonderson, 1985, p121.
The rights not to he coerced and to private property are rights of great importance, but not so important or
precise in scope as to be absolute. Nothing about either right suggests more than prima facie status.
Accordingly, any moral right - such as the right not to be harmed -- that is weightier in the circumstances
can override the right not to be coerced or the right to hold property.

RADICALLY DIFFERENT INHERITANCES ARE INTUITIVELY UNJUST
Peter Singer, Professor of Philosophy, Monash University, READING NOZICK, Jeffrey Paul, ed., 1981, p.
41.
Both the strengths and the weaknesses of the entitlement theory are immediately apparent. On the one
hand, can it really be just that one baby should come into the world with a multi-million dollar trust fund,
the best possible schooling, and family connections with the nation's leading politicians and financiers
awaiting him, while another baby faces life in a dingy apartment with no money and nothing else to help
him on his way in the world? Neither baby at the moment of birth can possibly deserve anything; an equal
division would therefore seem the only just cne.
MARKET TRANSACTIONS INVOLVE MORE THAN SELF-OWNED POWERS

PHILOSOPHY, 1990, p. 107.
Nozick claims that market exchanges involve the exercise of individuals' powers, and since individuals own
their powers, they also own whatever comes from the exercise of those powers in the marketplace. But this
is too quick. Market exchanges involve more than the exercise of self-owned powers. They also ir:volve
legal rights over things, over external goods, and these things are not just created out of nothing by our self-
owned pawers. If I own some land, I may have improved the land, through the use of my self-owned
powers. But I did not create the land, and so my title to the land (and hence my right to use the land in
market exchanges) cannot be grounded solely in the exercise of my self-owned powers.
OUR NATURAL TALENTS AREN'T OUR PROPERTY
Norman Daniels, Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University, JUST HEALTH CARE, 1985, p121.
Still others (Rawls 1971) challenge the implicit assumption that our natural talents and skills are our
property in the sense that we deserve, and are entitled to benefit from, their use in any way that we can
through free exchanges. They argue that such endowments are themselves 'undeserved' and should work
to true advantage of everyone, not just their possessors.
DESERTS DON'T JUSTIFY PROPORTIONAL BENEFITS
John Christman, Professor of Philosophy at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, PHILOSOPHY AND PUBLIC
AFFAIRS, Spring 1986, p.167.
All that this notion of desert (the concept constitutive of morality per entails is that after a laborer
develops an unowned resource, she or he deserves gratitude or praise (if developing the resource benefits
everyone). But this does not. imply that the laborer deserves a proportional or fitting benefit for the
service. I do not wish to claim that principles of desert overall are without justification (though some
doubts on this score can be raised), but it should be clear that the concept of desert that is necessarily
included in any system of morals leaves open the question of what is deserved besides praise or blame
itself: what is deserved beyond that is a question answerable only with a separate moral argument, one
which takes into consideration the distribution of benefits generally.

LIBERTARIANISM IGNORES THE UNFAIR BARGAINING POWER OF THE WEALTHY
John Christman, Professor of Philosophy at Virginia Polytechnic. Institute, PHILOSOPHY AND

PUBLIC AFFAIRS, Spring 1986, p.175.
Nozick does not take seriously the special disadvantage that beset` a person who is comparatively worse
off than her neighbors. I am not here referring only to envy but for example to the differential bargaining
power among individuals that is made possible by severe inequalities in wealth. By owning all those al
wells you will be able to outbid me for any new object or resource that comes along and thus worsen my
entire life prospects by your presence.
PURE CAPITALISM ISN'T JUSTIFIED BY SELF-OWNERSHIP

I have tried to show that the principle of self-ownership does rat by itself generate a moral defence of
capitalism, since a capitalist requires not only ownership of her self, but also ownership of resources.
Nozick believes that self-ownership inevitably leads to unrestricted property-rights, but we are in fact
confronted by a variety of economic regimes that are compatible with self-ownership, depending on our
theory of legitimate appropriation, and our assumptions about the status of the external world. Nozick
believes that self-ownership requires that people be entitled to all the rewards of their market exchanges,
but different regimes vary in the extent to which they allow self-owning individuals to retain their
market rewards. Some will allow the naturally talented to translate their natural advantages into unequal
ownership of the external world (although not necessarily to the extent allowed by Nozick); others will
redistribute market income so as to ensure that the naturally disadvantaged have equal access to
resources (as in Rawls or Dworkin). Self-ownership is compatible with all these options.

Libertarianism Doesn’t Protect Rights
LIBERTARIANISM UNDERMINES SOCIAL AUTHORITY, LEADING TO

OPPRESSION
Robert Nisbet, Professor of Sociology, Columbia, FREEDOM AND VIRTUE, George Carey, ed., 1984,
p22.
Libertarians, on the other hand, appear to see social and moral authority and despotic political power as
elements of a single spectrum, as an unbroken continuity. If, their argument goes, we are to be spared
Leviathan we must challenge any and all forms of authority, including those which are inseparable from the
social bond. Libertarians seem to me to give less and less recognition to the very substantial difference
between the coercions of, say, family, school, and local community and those of the centralized
bureaucratic state. For me it is a generalization proved countless times in history that the onset of ever more
extreme political-military power has for its necessary prelude the erosion and collapse of the authorities
within the social bond which serve to give the individual a sense of identity and security, whose very
diversity and lack of unconditional power prevents any escape-proof monopoly, and which in the aggregate
are the indispensable bulwarks against the invasion of centralized political power - which of course is
unconditional. But I do not often find among libertarians these days any clear recognition of the point I
have just made.
UNFETTERED LIBERTY LEADS TO SELF-DEFEATING CONCENTRATIONS

OF POWER
Norman Daniels, Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University, JUST HEALTH CARE, 1985, p.120.
Some critics argue that such a system of unfettered liberty will tend over time to accumulate concentrations
of power and wealth which undermine the possibility of there being fair and truly free exchanges between
economic and political unequals. Thus, even in the name of liberty, it is important to constrain liberty.

Economic Redistribution Good
1. INCOME REDISTRIBUTION ENHANCES SELF-DETERMINATION

Libertarians claim that liberal welfare programmes, by limiting property-rights, unduly limit people's self-
determination. Hence the removal of welfare redistribution programmes (Nozick), or their limitation to an
absolute minimum (Fried), would be an improvement in terms of self-determination. But that is a weak
objection. Redistributive programmes do restrict the self-determination of the well off to a limited degree.
But they also give real control over their lives to people who previously lacked it. Liberal redistribution
does not sacrifice self-determination for some other goal. Rather, it aims at a fairer distribution of the
means required for self-determination. Libertarianism, by contrast, allows undeserved inequalities in that
distribution-its concern with self-determination does not extend to a concern for ensuring the fair
distribution of the conditions required for self-determination. In fact, it harms those who most need help in
securing those conditions. If each person is to be treated as an end in herself, as Nozick says repeatedly,
then I see no reason for preferring ;a libertarian regime to a liberal redistributive one.
2. REDISTRIBUTION ISN'T AN AFFRONT TO DIGNITY
Will Kymlicka, Professor of Philosophy, University of Toronto CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL

PHILOSOPHY, 1990, p122-3.
Finally, Nozick might argue that welfare redistribution denies people's dignity, and this dignity is crucial to
treating people as equals (e.g. Nozick 1974: 334). Indeed Nozick often writes as if the idea that other
people have claims on the fruits of my talents is an assault on my dignity. But this is implausible. One
problem is that, Nozick often ties dignity to self-determination, so that it will be liberal regimes, not
libertarian ones, which best promote each person's dignity. In any event, dignity is predicated on, or a
byproduct of, other moral beliefs. We only feel something to be an attack on our dignity if we are already
convinced that it is wrong. Redistribution will feel like an assault on dignity only if we believe it is morally
wrong. If we believe instead that redistribution is a required part of treating people as equals, then it will
serve to promote, rather than attack, people's sense of equal dignity.
3. NOZICK'S CONCEPT OF DIGNITY REQUIRES ACCESS TO RESOURCES

PHILOSOPHY, 1990, p. 150.
But, we have seen, the notion of dignity and agency that Nozick relies on, based on the idea of acting on
one's conception of oneself, requires rights over resources as well as one's person. Having independent
access to resources is important for our purposes, and hence our purposive freedom, but that argues for
liberal equality not libertarianism.


4. IF MEANINGFUL LIFE HAS VALUE, WE HAVE A DUTY TO PROVIDE FOR
ITS MATERIAL BASIS
Jeffrey Paul, Professor of Philosophy, Bowling Green State University, READING NOZICK, 1981, p10-
11.
Scheffler rejects these political inferences drawn by Nozick from the intrinsic value of leading a
meaningful life. For Scheffler, if there is such value then the rights which it sanctions are qualitatively
different from Nozickian ones. Scheffler argues that if a meaningful life has moral value then the capacities
required to nurture them are valuable as well. These capacities cannot be employed unless the material
conditions necessary to their support are met. The provision of those conditions includes that quantity of
distributable goods necessary to ensure a reasonable chance to all of leading a meaningful life. Hence, the
centerpiece of Nozick's axiology leads to the very welfare rights which he set out to oppose, according to
Scheffler.
5. REDISTRIBUTION IS JUSTIFIED ON UTILITARIAN GROUNDS
Peter Singer, Professor of Philosophy, Monash University, READING NOZICK, Jeffrey Paul, ed., 1981, p.
50.
Utilitarianism has no problem in justifying a substantial amount of compulsory redistribution from the rich
to the poor. We all recognize that $1,000 means far less to people earning $100,00 than it does to people
trying to support a family on $6,000. Therefore in normal circumstances we increase the total happiness
when we take from those with a lot and give to those with little. Therefore that is what we ought to do. For
the utilitarian it is as simple as that. The result will not absolute equality of wealth. There may be some
who need relatively little to be happier, and others whose expensive tastes require more to achieve the same
level of happiness. If resources are adequate the utilitarian will give each enough to make him happy, and
that will mean giving some more than others.
6. UTILITARIANISM JUSTIFIES THE WELFARE STATE
Peter Singer, Professor of Philosophy, Monash University, READING NOZICK, Jeffrey Paul, ed., 1981,
p50-1.
None of the arguments Nozick uses against Rawls is decisive when invoked against a utilitarian position.
Utilitarianism gives a clear and plausible defense not merely of progressive taxation, welfare payments, and
other methods of redistribution, but also of the general right of the state to perform useful functions beyond
the protection of its citizens from force and fraud. Utilitarianism also provides an argument in defense of
the claim behind Williams's argument for equality-that society should, so far as its resources allow, provide
for the most important needs of its members.


7. VIOLATIONS OF CIVIL LIBERTIES DON'T JUSTIFY REJECTING THE
WELFARE STATE
Thomas Nagel, Professor of Philosophy, New York University, READING NOZICK, Jeffrey Paul, ed.,
1981, p193.
Naturally any opposition to the power of governments will meet with a certain sympathy from observers of
the contemporary scene, and Nozick emphasizes the connection between his view and the fight against
legal regulation of sexual behavior, drug use, and individual life styles. It is easy to develop an aversion to
state power by looking at how actual states wield it. Their activities often include murder, torture, political
imprisonment, censorship, conscription for aggressive war, and overthrowing the governments of other
countries-not to mention tapping the phones, reading the mail, or regulating the sexual behavior of their
own citizens. The objection to these abuses, however, is not that state power exists, but that it is used to do
evil rather than good. Opposition to these evils cannot be translated into an ot jection to welfare, public
education, or the graduated income tax.

Taxes Are Moral
1. TAXES ARE JUSTIFIED BY SUFFICIENTLY GOOD ENDS
1981, p. 199.
Moreover, there is a big difference between suddenly expropriating half of someone's savings and attaching
monetary conditions in advance to activities, expenditures, and earnings-the usual form of taxation. The
latter is a much less brutal assault upon the person. Whether this kind of limitation of individual liberty
should be permitted, to acquire resources for the promotion of desirable ends, is a function of the gravity of
the violation and the desirability of the ends.
2. TAXATION LEGITIMATELY CORRECTS NATURAL INEQUALITIES

Let us assume that I specified an initial distribution D1 that was in line with Rawls's difference principle.
Hence each person starts with an equal share of resources, regardless of their natural talents. But at the end
of the basketball season, Chamberlain will have earned $250,000, while the handicapped person, who may
have no earning power, will have exhausted her resources, and will be on the verge of starvation. Surely our
intuitions still tell us that we can tax Chamberlain's income to prevent that starvation. Nozick has
persuasively drawn on our intuition about acting on our choices, but his example ignores our intuition about
dealing fairly with unequal circumstances.
3. THE AMOUNT ONE WORKS IS STILL SELF-DETERMINED,

DISTINGUISHING IT FROM FORCED LABOR
Jonathan Wolff, philosopher, ROBERT NOZICK, 1991, p. 91.
Under a modern system of progressive taxation you will be taxed if you earn more than a certain amount of
money, and how much you will be taxed depends in part on how much work you decide to do. Forced labor
rarely includes the option of deciding how much labor to do.
4. TAXATION DOESN'T SIGNIFICANTLY DAMAGE SELF-DETERMINATION

PHILOSOPHY, 1990, p.122.
A liberal regime which taxes the unequal rewards of undeserved talents does limit some people's self-
determination. But it is an acceptable limit. Being free to choose one's own career is crucial to self-
determination, but being free from taxation on the rewards which accrue from undeserved natural talents is
not. Eien if one's income is taxed in accordance with Rawlsian principles, one still has a fair share of
resources and liberties with which to control the essential features of one's life. Taxing income from the
exercise of natural talents does not unfairly disadvantage anyone in their substantive self-ownership, their
ability to act according to their conception of themselves.

Taxes Are Moral
5. TAXATION REDISTRIBUTES FREEDOM RATHER THAN LIMITING IT

PHILOSOPHY, 1990, p147.
As soon as we ask that question, Flew's equation of capitalism with freedom is undermined. For it is the
owners of the resource who are made free to dispose of it, while non-owners are deprived of that freedom.
Suppose that a large estate you would have inherited (in the absence of an inheritance tax) now becomes a
public park, or a low-income housing project (as a result of the tax). The inheritance tax does not eliminate
the freedom to use the property, rather it redistributes that freedom. If you inherit the estate, then you are
free to dispose of it as you see fit, but if I use your backyard for my picnic or garden without your
permission, then I am breaking the law, and the government will intervene and coercively deprive me of the
freedom to continue. On the other hand, my freedom to use and enjoy the property is increased when the
welfare state taxes your inheritance to provide me with affordable housing, or a public park. So the free
market legally restrains my freedom, while the welfare state increases it.
6. TAXES DON'T VIOLATE RIGHTS
John Christman, Professor of Philosophy at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, PHILOSOPHY AND PUBLIC
AFFAIRS, Spring 1986, p.165.
Also, as Kearl has pointed out, persons who gain entitlements through embedded labor may enter into a
market, the function of which serves to reduce inefficiencies, reduce externalities, and lower negotiation
costs which all increase the net social product produced from those entitlements without demanding extra
labor from individual traders Thus, taxation which redistributes that extra product would amount to a
limitation of the ownership rights of the traders over the commodities in question but not constitute an
encroachment on the rights anyone has to her or his labor (since the product redistributed is from the
increased efficiencies of the market mechanism, not increased labor.

Charity Doesn’t Solve the Need for Redistribution
1. CHARITY ISN'T A SUBSTITUTE FOR STATE REDISTRIBUTION
1981, p. 199.
Nozick would reply that such ends can be achieved by voluntary donations rather than by compulsion, and
that people who are well-off and who deplore the existence of poverty should donate significant portions of
their assets to help those who are unfortunate. But this is no more plausible coming from Nozick than it
was coming from Barry Goldwater. Most people are not generous when asked to give voluntarily, and it is
unreasonable to ask that they should be.
2. REDISTRIBUTIVE TAXATION IS PREFERABLE TO VOLUNTARY

CONTRIBUTION
1981, p. 200.
It is acceptable to compel people to contribute to the support of the indigent by automatic taxation, but
unreasonable to insist that in the absence of such a system they ought to contribute voluntarily. The latter is
an excessively demanding moral position because it requires voluntary decisions that are quite difficult to
make. Most people will tolerate a universal system of compulsory taxation without feeling entitled to
complain, where they would feel justified in refusing an appeal that they contribute the same amount
voluntarily. This is partly due to lack of assurance that others would do likewise and fear of relative
disadvantage; but it is also a sensible rejection of excessive demands on the will, which can be more
irksome than automatic demands on the purse.
3. RELIANCE ON VOLUNTARY REDISTRIBUTION THREATENS SOCIAL

STABILITY
Maadison Powers, Senior Researcher at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics YALE LAW AND POLICY
REVIEW, 1992, p. .354.
Social stability may depend upon more than the provision for individual acts of benevolence. It may be
important to the reservation of the bonds of community, not simply that the needs of at least fortunate are
met, but that they are met in a way which emphasizes the communal rather than the purely individual
character of beneficence. If our overriding aim is to preserve individual liberty while maintaining strong
allegiance to public institutions, then it is plausible to argue that commitment to public institutions is most
effectively promoted when then needs of its members are met through collective action undertaken y
government. Leaving the needs of the less fortunate to be met by private charity, for example, may
reinforce in the recipients a sense that society has simply left their fate to the good work of the privileged
few. A collective societal response to individual need, by contrast, affirms a stronger commitment to the
well-being of its members, and it is likely to generate as fragile bonds of loyalty. If this is true, then we
should value public provision for basic needs such as health care over the sum of individual acts of private
charity meeting human needs at the same level of benefit to the beneficiaries.

Self-Determination Answers
1. LIBERALISM, NOT LIBERTARIANISM, MAXIMIZES SELF-

DETERMINATION

What regime best promotes substantive self-ownership? Self-determination requires resources as well as
rights over one's physical being. We are only able to pursue our most important projects, free from the
demands of others, if we are not forced by economic necessity to accept whatever conditions others impose
on us in return for access to needed resources. Since meaningful self-determination requires both resources
and liberties, and since each of us has a separate existence, each person should have an equal claim to these
resources and liberties. But, if to, then the concern for self-determination leads us towards liberal regimes,
not libertarian ones.
2. REDISTRIBUTION PROVIDES THE GREATEST EQUAL FREEDOM

What if libertarians adopt the purposive definition, and claim that the free market provides us with the most
important liberties? Whether or not unrestricted property-rights promote one's most important purposes
depends on whether or not one actually has property. Being free to bequeath property can promote one's
most important purposes, but only if one has property to bequeath. So whatever the relationship between
property and purposive freedom, the aim of providing the greatest equal freedom suggests an equal
distribution of property, not unrestricted capitalism.
3. LIBERTARIANISM UNDERMINES SELF-DETERMINATION
Will Kymlicka, Professor of Philosophy, University of Toronto, COh1TEMPORARY POLITICAL

Libertarianism shares with liberal equality a commitment to the principle of respect for people's choices,
but rejects the principle of rectifying unequal circumstances. Taken to the extreme, this is not only
intuitively unacceptable, but self-defeating as well, for the failure to rectify disadvantageous circumstances
can’t undermine the very values (e.g. self-determination) that the principle of respect for choices is
intended to promote. The libertarian denial that undeserved differences in circumstances give rise to moral
claims suggests an almost incomprehensible failure to recognize the profound consequences of such
differences.

Libertarianism Immoral
1. EXCESS LIBERTY CREATES A MORAL VACUUM
Robert Nisbet, Professor of Sociology, Columbia, FREEDOM AND VIRTUE, George Carey, ed., 1984, p.
20.
For the conservative, individual freedom lies in the interstices of social and moral authority. Only because
of the restraining and guiding effects of such authority does it become possible for human beings to sustain
so liberal a political government as that which the Founding Fathers designed in this country and which
flourished in England from the late seventeenth century on. Remove the social bonds, as the more zealous
and uncompromising of libertarian individualists have proposed ever since William Godwin, and you
emerge with, not a free but a chaotic people, not creative but impotent individuals. Human nature, Balzac
correctly wrote, cannot endure a moral vacuum.
2. LIBERTARIANISM WOULD UNDERMINE THE MORAL BASIS OF THE

LIBERAL STATE
Walter Berns, Professor of Government, Georgetown, FREEDOM AND VIRTUE, George Carey, ed., 1984,
p. 32-3.
I think what I have said above is sufficient to illustrate my point: we were founded on liberal principles, but
we used the public authority in nonliberal ways. We did so partly out of habit, I suppose, and partly because
there were men--Horace Mann, the central figure in American public schooling, is a good example-who
reflected on our situation and who knew that a liberal state could not be perpetuated with simply self-
interested citizens. Men had to be taught to be public-spirited, to care for others, to be at least somewhat
altruistic. In the course of time, and partly as the result of Supreme Court decisions affecting public
education, public support of private education, and, of course, the censorship of obscenity, we have ceased
to use the public authority in these ways. We can now be said to be living off the fat we built up in the past.
I shudder to think of what would happen if we moved all the way from liberalism to libertarianism.
3. NOZICK'S LIBERTARIANISM WOULD STARVE 10% OF THE PUBLIC
Jeffrey Paul, Professor of Philosophy, Bowling Green State University, READING NOZICK, 1981, p3.
While Brian Barry could inveigh in Political Theory, . . . the intellectual texture is of a sort of cuteness that
would be wearing in a graduate student and seems to me quite indecent in someone who, from the lofty
heights of a professorial chair, is proposing to starve or humiliate ten percent or so of his fellow citizens (if
he recognizes the word) by eliminating all transfer payments through the state, leaving the sick, the old, the
disabled, the mothers with young children and no breadwinner and so on, to the tender mercies of private
charity, given at the whim and pleasure of the donors and on any terms they choose to impose. The varied
responses to the Nozick book in contrast to its predecessor, largely reflect the chasm which separates their
respective visions of the good society.

Objectivism Bad
1. OBJECTIVISM HAS TOO NARROW A VIEW OF THE SELF
Hazel Barnes, Professor of Philosophy, University of Colorado, AN EXISTENTIALIST ETHICS, 1967, p,

140.
I reject Objectivism, not because it is self-centered or because it seeks self-aggrandizement. I criticize it for
being selfish in the pejorative sense of restricting the horizons of the Self so as to leave the self-center, not
enriched but impoverished, not blown up but withered and blighted. The Self of the Objectivists runs the
risk of the only child-it is not unloved, but it is likely to be spoiled, ailing, and fretful, due to overprotection
and the too close attention which prevents the growth of responsible freedom.
2. OBJECTIVISM IGNORES AUTHENTIC CHOICE AND SOCIALITY
Hazel Barnes, Professor of Philosophy, University of Colorado, AN EXISTENTIALIST ETHICS, 1967, p.

148.
Objectivist Man is both an ideal and a reality. He represents only one of the possibilities for the human
species. Existentialism rejects Objectivism because it ignores the two sources of existentialist despair
instead of seeking some way to overcome them. Objectivism hides the fact that to be free to become what
one chooses means also that one must choose what one feels one ought to become. Objectivism tries to
evade the knowledge that to exist means not only to be-in-the-world but to-be-with-others.
3. OBJECTIVISM LEADS TO ANARCHY THEN TYRANNY
John Robbins, ANSWER TO AYN RAND, 1974, p. 133.
I must conclude, then, that as Rand has failed to present a coherent ethical theory, so she has failed to
present an intelligible political theory. Her political philosophy, like all secular political philosophies, leads
logically to anarchy and/or totalitarianism. It cannot furnish the basis for a free society, despite the brilliant
rhetoric that seeks to persuade in lieu of pedestrian logic. Its acceptance by a large segment of the American
citizenry will hasten the future of the "boot stamping on the human face forever, " for it will first fire the
flames of anarchy, and, second, load the guns of tyranny.
4. OBJECTIVISM LOGICALLY LEADS TO ANARCHY
John Robbins, ANSWER TO AYN RAND, 1974, p. 125-6.
Objectivism leads logically to anarchy, because if the individual is sovereign he may not properly be forced
to "delegate" his rights to the state or government. The Sovereign Individual has every right to refuse to pay
taxes, ignore subpoenas, refuse to serve in the armed forces, ignore courts of laws avoid jury duty, retaliate
against the police force, and take all measures necessary to the preservation of his rights, including, one
supposes. since government is entirely derivative, issuing subpoenas, forming his own armies, and
establishing his own courts and judicial procedures.

Objectivism Bad
5. OBJECTIVISM WOULD LEAD TO A POLICE STATE OR GENOCIDE
William O'Neill, Professor of Philosophy„ University of Southern California, WITH CHARITY TOWARD
NONE, 1971, p, 217-8.
This being the case, Miss Rand is once again, faced with two alternatives: (1) the maintenance of a police
state (a sort of free enterprise Sparta, characterized by the passive elimination of the helots as a logical and
therefore unavoidable consequence of progressive penury) or (2) the active elimination of the depraved
poor in a morally-legitimized purge in retaliation against real or threatened revolution.
6. OBJECTIVIST WOULD LEAD TO GENOCIDE
John Robbins, ANSWER TO AYN RAND, 1974, p. 132.
Since infants, as well as unborn children are not human by Rand's definition, there would be no immorality
in infanticide. To my knowledge Rand has not publicly endorsed that position, but on pain of inconsistency,
she must. For the same reason, her philosophy leads logically to the approbation of euthanasia. In fact,
because men make themselves, some are better made than others, who are rather poorly made. Logically,
then, Rand will be forced to approve the liquidation of imbeciles, morons, idiots, the retarded and mediocre
who don't think, the men who . . . do not choose to think, but survive by imitating and repeating, like
trained animals, the routine of sounds and motions they learned from others, never making an effort to
understand their own work, . . . mental parasites....
7. OBJECTIVISM FAILS TO VALUE OTHERS
Ayn Rand, philosopher and novelist, CAPITALISM: THE UNKNOWN IDEAL, 1967, p. 146.
The indifference with which Objectivist heroes regard all who do not minister to their own self-interest
amounts finally to regarding them as objects. Rand and Branden may caution us to remember that the other
is an end in himself; somehow he never becomes an end to anyone except himself.
8. OBJECTIVISM CAN'T ENSURE EQUAL OPPORTUNITY
Hazel Barnes, Professor of Philosophy, University of Colorado, AN EXISTENTIALIST ETHICS, 1967,

p146.
There is no way to insure that a free market will actually foster the potentialities of all free minds. Since the
family structure is left intact, Objectivism certainly makes no provision for equal opportunity for all
children. The intellectual elite, whose superior talents and rational morality will have won their place at the
top, will owe a large part of their success to chance. Rand's rejection of the demand to love and look after
the worthless members of one's family might reduce nepotism a bit; it seems unlikely that leading
industrialists will try hard to seek out and develop those who can't make it in their given circumstances but
who might if help were given.

Objectivism Bad
9. OBJECTIVISM LETS US IGNORE VIOLENCE AGAINST OTHERS

145.
Some time ago, a large number of people in a New York apartment house watched while a man attacked
and killed a woman on the sidewalk In such a situation, an Objectivist in that apa:-tment might have come
to the woman's aid either because he valued her or because he was righteously indignant over the violation
of a principle which he valued. Nothing in his philosophy would make him feel guilty if he did not decide
that intervention ministered to his own self-interest. He might simply pull the drapes and complain of the
inadequacy of the police force and the faulty education system. If we allow this incident to symbolize the
broader social environment, we must say that Objectivism goes beyond nonintervention. It comes
dangerously close to defending the right of the attacker to act in the light of his own mistaken doctrine. This
fact I insist upon despite the fact that one of the frequent Objectivist laments is directed toward our
leniency toward the criminal.
10. OBJECTIVISM CREATES A NEW HIERARCHICAL CONFORMITY

141.
"We do not live or work with any form of the non-objective," John Gait says of himself and his
companions. That is true for Rand as well, and it is what is fundamentally wrong with her Objectivist
ethics. In turning her eyes away from whatever cannot be reduced to the objective, she cancels out vast
areas of human experience. Subtly a new conformism is introduced. Those who approve of this portrait of
man and who have the best ability to liken themselves unto it form a distinct elite at the top. Those with less
talent but who accept the validity of the model have smaller rewards but dwell in relative content lower
down in the pyramid. Anyone else lives as discarded rubble on the surface. He is not incorporated into the
structure of things. He is tolerated and ignored-so long as he does not interfere.
11. OBJECTIVISM WON'T LEAD TO AN OPEN SOCIETY

148.
Finally we see that existentialism and not Objectivism is really in favor of an open society to foster the
growth of unique self-centers, each one pursuing its genuine self-interest and allowing every other to do the
same. Objectivism is for free enterprise but not for the free creation of values.

Nozick Indites
NOZICK DOESN'T JUSTIFY HIS MORAL ASSUMPTIONS
Jeffrey Paul, Professor of Philosophy, Bowling Green State University, READING NOZICK, 1981, p5.
Williams quarrels, as well, with the plausibility of Nozick's hypothetical narrative which depicts the
development of the minimal state. It represents, according to Williams, a bizarre departure from any
common sense account. Finally, he makes the point that Nozick's view of distributive justice relies on
normal intuitions rather than on argument and that competing intuitions can always be found with as great
a claim upon our moral sensibilities as those propounded by Nozick.
NOZICK DOESN'T DEFEND HIS BASIS FOR NATURAL RIGHTS
1981, p192-3.
To present a serious challenge to other views, a discussion of libertarianism would have to explore the
foundations of individual rights and the reasons for and against different conceptions of the relation
between those rights and other values that the state may be in a position to promote. But Nozick's book is
theoretically insubstantial: it does not take up the main problems, and therefore fails to make the kind of
contribution to political theory that might have been hoped for from someone of his philosophical
attainments. In the preface he announces that he was converted to libertarianism by the decisive force of the
arguments, but no such arguments appear in the book. He has left the establishment of the moral
foundations to another occasion, and his brief indication of how the basic views might be- defended is
disappointing.
NOZICK'S INTUITIONS CONCERNING ENTITLEMENT AREN'T WIDELY

SHARED
1981, p. 195
Nozick's intuition is that each person is entitled to his talents and abilities, and to whatever he can make,
get, or buy with his own efforts, with the help of others, or with plain luck. He is entitled to keep it or do
anything he wants with it, and whomever he gives it to is thereby equally entitled to it. Moreover, anyone is
entitled to whatever he ends up with as a result of the indefinite repetition of this process, over however
many generations. I assume that most readers of Nozick's book will find no echo of this intuition in
themselves, and will feel instead that they can develop no opinion on the universal principles of
entitlement, acquisition and transfer of property, or indeed whether there are any such universal principles,
without considering the significance of such principles in their universal application.

Nozick Indites
NOZICK DOESN'T DISTINGUISH BETWEEN THE RELATIVE IMPORTANCE

OF RIGHTS
1981, p. 196.
The fact is, however, that Nozick's moral intuitions seem wrong even on a small scale. He denies that any
of the rights he detects may be overridden merely to do good or prevent evil. But even if it is not
permissible to murder or maim an innocent person to promote some highly desirable result, the protected
rights do not all have the same degree of importance. The things one is supposed to be protected against
are, in order of gravity; killing, injury, pain, physical force, deprivation of liberty of many different kinds
(movement, association, and activity), destruction of one's property, taking of one's property, or the threat
of any of the above (with all their variations in gravity). It is far less plausible to maintain that taking some
of an innocent man's property is an impermissible means for the prevention of a serious evil, than it is to
maintain that killing him is impermissible. These rights vary in importance and some are nofi absolute even
in the state of nature.
NOZICK DOESN'T MORALLY JUSTIFY THE MINIMAL STATE
1981, p. 203-4.
Nozick's attempt to refute the anarchist view that even a minimal state will violate individual rights is not, I
think, successful. He argues at length that a minimal state could arise by an invisible process from a state of
nature without the process violating anyone's rights people could voluntarily join private protective
associations, one of which would naturally achieve dominance over a territory even if not everyone had
agreed to join. It could then exercise limited control without violating anyone's rights. This is supposed to
show that a minimal state is morally permissible. But why should the mere conceivability of such a process
persuade an anarchist of that conclusion? He would already have been prepared to admit that a minimal
state established by unanimous agreement of the participants would be allowable. He just believes no actual
state will he of this sort. Similarly, he may credit Nozick with having imagined another way in which ;t
minimal state "could" arise which violated no one's rights, even though based on less than unanimous
agreement. But the likelihood of any actual state meeting these moral conditions will he almost as low. The
rejection of anarchism requires the rejection of its moral premises.
THE UTILITARIAN ARGUMENTS REQUIRED TO REJECT ANARCHY

UNDERMINE NOZICK'S LIBERTARIANISM
Jeffrey Paul, Professor of Philosophy, Bowling Green State University, READING NOZICK, 1981, p. l l.
In his essay, "Nozick on Unproductiviry: The Unintended Consequences," Eric Mack draws a still more
startling conclusion. He argues that the deontically fixed moral boundaries delineated in Nozick's theory of
rights are systematically undercut by him through the introduction of the utilitarian criteria for
compensation that he employs to support his rejection of anarchism in Part I of Anarchy, State, and Utopia.
If Mack is right, then Nozick has eviscerated his own libertarian-entitlement theory of rights in ways that
would delight many of his critics but are clearly unintended.

Nozick Indites
NOZICK'S UTOPIAN EXPERIMENTS WOULD PROBABLY FAIL
Peter Singer, Professor of Philosophy, Mona.sh University, READING NOZICK, Jeffrey Paul, ed., 1981, p.
38.
All three sections are well worth reading, although the third is the slightest. Here Nozick, finding incredible
the supposition that there is one best form of society for everyone, proposes instead a "metautopia"-a
framework for many diverse utopian experiments, all formed of voluntary communities, so that no o:ne can
impose his version of utopia on others. Within a community people may voluntarily adopt redistributive
measures, and those refusing to participate may be excluded from the community; but within a nation,
which would include many communities, there should be no compulsory redistribution. The idea is
appealing because it enhances individual freedom. But there; are serious objections that are not adequately
considered. Could a community that wanted a lot of redistribution survive the departure of the wealthy
members whose moral principles are weaker than their desire for wealth? Could it withstand the pressure of
applications to join from the down-and-outs left to starve in neighboring communities run by ruthless
capitalists?

Aff: Rand Indites
RAND FALSELY ASSUMES THAT ACTS HAVE OBJECTIVE VALUE

147.
Rand argues that in all human relations one must give justice, not mercy. A man's success is measured by
the objective value of what he has produced. Clearly implied here is the idea that the man himself is
measured, that he has his objective value. It is on this basis only that any absolute justice or absolute
judgment can be based. Such absolute judgments could be defended only if acts were in themselves
tangible entities which could be weighed without reference to their inner subjective environment. This the
existentialist denies while Objectivism surreptitiously assumes it to be true.
RAND FALSELY ASSUMES THE CERTAINTY OF MORAL STANDARDS
Hazel Barnes, Professor of Philosophy, University of Colorado. AN EXISTENTIALIST ETHICS, 1967, p.

132-3.
Rand goes much farther than this. For her, values and morals are subject to the same sort of rational
appraisal as tables are. In many ways, it would be a great relief if this were so. It would all be so easy. The
stakes are as clearly outlined as the First National Bank. The rules are laid down and written out. Best of
all, one need never ask whether the game is really worth playing or what constitutes good sportsmanship.
The existentialist, on the other hand, confronts his freedom in anguish. What he sees is not a twofold choice
as definite as the old one which Christianity proffered. He realizes that all is open. His freedom is not just
the choice between thinking and not thinking, between seeing what is right or refusing to see it. He knows
that being free means creating standards of right and wrong. It means that there is no one right pattern for
man, but many possible patterns to be discovered and invented. God Almighty has not been deposed merely
in order that Mother Nature-or Daddy Warbucks-might sit there, passing out the blueprints.
RAND FALSELY ASSUMES AN ABSOLUTE OBJECTIVE POINT OF VIEW

131.
There is always in Rand's work an implicit reference to an absolute judgment which stands outside the
immediate involvements of the individual life, which remains human and yet is never caught up in human
affairs. The truth is that her system needs Aristotle's Unmoved Mover. John Galt cannot replace him. The
assumption that the totally objective point of view exists and is accessible for everyone is only wishful
thinking.

Aff: Rand Indites
RAND DOESN'T OBJECTIVELY ESTABLISH HER CONCLUSIONS
Robert Nozick, Professor of Philosophy, Harvard, READING NOZICK, Jeffrey Paul, ed, 1981, p222.
Let me, in closing, reiterate that my purpose has been to examine Miss Rand's arguments for her
conclusions. It has not been to argue that death is a value, or that we should sacrifice others to ourselves, or
that people don't have rights to our non-interference in their lives, or to demean the virtues of rationality,
honesty, integrity, productiveness, pride independence, justice. It has been to see whether, in her published
work, Miss Rand indeed objectively establishes her conclusions. She doesn't.
RAND FALSELY ASSUMES AN A PRIORI HUMAN NATURE

128.
Rand's view of man retains the old acorn theory. Man's potentialities may be hidden, but they resemble the
embryo oak tree. The question is simply whether the individual will be, as it were, a bigger, stronger oak or
a more feeble one. Everyone knows what a good oak tree ought to be and how to judge it. Oak tree nature
and human nature are equally limiting. Sartre has pointed out that it is precisely this ideal pattern which is
in question. Being a man means deciding what man will be.

Altrumism/Private Charity Doesn’t Solve
PRIVATE CHARITY DOESN'T PRODUCE SOLIDARITY
Robert Nozick, Professor of Philosophy at Harvard, THE EXAMINED LIFE, 1989, p.289.
"Well, why don't those who want and need such a society voluntarily contribute to pay for its public programs
rather than taxing the others, who don't care anything about it"? But a program thus supported by many
people's voluntary contributions, worthy though it might be, would not constitute the society's solemn
marking and symbolic validation of the importance and centrality of those ties of concern and solidarity. That
can occur )nly through its official joint action, speaking in the name of the whole.
RAND'S CONCEPT OF ALTRUISM IS DEFECTIVE
William O'Neill, Professor of Philosophy, University of Southern California, WITH CHARITY TOWARD
NONE, 1971, p201.
At basis, Miss Rand's concept of altruism is defective on three grounds: 1) Altruism is neither the opposite nor
the contrary of egoism. It is merely one way in which egoism manifests itself. It is, in essence, that type of
self-gratification which is achieved by identifying oneself with, and subsequently participating in, the well-
being of others on a psychological level. 2) The goal of altruism is neither "suffering" nor "pain" but the active
elimination of suffering and pain-which is a substantially different thing altogether. 3) Altruism does not
require the creation of suffering (pain) as a condition for its alleviation, because suffering is a continuing
aspect of the human condition. In addition, altruism does not exclude a concern with additional non-altruistic
(or extra-altruistic) values. Since it is basically a manifestation of egoism, it in no sense excludes non-
contradictory types of purely personal commitment, and there is no particular reason why altruism cannot be
supplemented by other, and essentially non-altruistic, types of behavior as well.
RAND ARTIFICIALLY SEPARATES EGOISM AND ALTRUISM
William O'Neill, Professor of Philosophy, University of Southern California, WITH CHARITY TOWARD
NONE, 1971, p. 201.
Miss Rand's definition of the term "altruism" is both untenable and slanted. To begin with, she sets up a
totally, artificial dichotomy between egoism and altruism. There are few modern philosophers who are
willing to accept the basic findings of contemporary empirical psychology who would not agree with Miss
Rand's basic contention that man is at basis self-seeking and capable of realizing value only through the
medium of subjective (and therefore personal) satisfaction. To say, however, that subjective satisfaction
precludes a realization of pleasure through some sort of ego-identification with the well-being of others
simply does not follow.

Altrumism/Private Charity Doesn’t Solve
Rand's idea of altruism is too simplistic

p135.
One can be concerned for and attach value to what pleases others without thereby giving up all interest in
oneself. Rand uses "altruism" as though it always and only meant preferring another's good at the expense
of one's own. Rand, in denouncing altruists, includes such diverse groups as the early Christians, the
Medieval Church, nineteenth-century Utilitarian,s and the Democratic proponents of the New Deal. (For
the Kennedy administration, she adds the epithet "Fascist.") When she uses "altruism" in argumentative
passages like the one just referred to, Rand presents altruism as a concept closely related to the Christian
idea of Original Sin.

Egoism Answers
EGOISM IS SELF-CONTRADICTORY
G.E. Moore, Professor of Philosophy Cambridge University, PRINCIPIA ETHICA, 1903, p99.
The only reason I can have for aiming at 'my own good,' is that it is good absolutely that what I so call
should belong to me - good absolutely that I should have something, which, if I have it, others cannot have.
But if it is good absolutely that I should have it, then everyone else has as much reason for aiming at my
:having it, as I have myself. If, therefore, it is true of any single man's 'interest' or 'happiness' that it ought to
be his sole ultimate end, this can only mean that man's 'interest' or 'happiness' is the sole good, the
Universal Good, and the only thing that anybody ought to aim at. What Egoism holds, therefore, is that
each man's happiness is the sole good - that a num:)er of different things are each of them the only good
thing there is - an absolute contradiction! No more complete and thorou;,gh refutation of any theory could
be desired.
EVEN RAND CAN'T CONSISTENTLY DEFEND EGOISM
"To live for his own sake means that the achievement of his own happiness is man's highest moral
purpose". Is it? 'We have action, endorsed by Miss Rand, in the novel Atlas Shrugged, which appears
incompatible with this. In the novel, John Gait risks his life to save that of Dagny Taggart, whom he loves,
and he says that he will kill himself if she is tortured to make him talk.

Reason Isn’t Absolute
REASON DOESN'T ANSWER ALL PROBLEMS

p130
What Rand ignores is that there is a wrong, avoidable manner of employing emotions instead of reason and
a necessary and proper way in which emotions must come to the aid of reason in all fully conscious and
significant living. One must, for example, choose between the possibilities of a low-keyed existence and a
life of more intense happiness but with more anxiety and suffering. One must somehow balance a short-
time peak of happiness against a longer-term possession of more subdued content. One may be obliged to
choose between a higher salary with greater prestige in an unattractive location against less money and
fame in a place one loves. Reason cannot decide here. Even if someone claims that the qualitative may
somehow be transformed into a quantitative calculation, the process of decoding is not a mathematical one.
REASON ISN'T THE HUMAN ESSENCE

p128.
Reason, instead of being essence and self-evident guiding principle, is but one part of man. Rand, like
Aristotle, sees man as differentiated from other animals by his reason and so concludes that reason, being
the essentially human, is that which mankind should most develop. Without quibbling as to whether
animals in reality do or do not possess a rudimentary reason, we may point out that reason is not the only
distinguishing factor of the human. It seems equally clear that human emotions are not all or always the
same as animal emotions. The primary difference appears to be the emergence of self-consciousness in the
human being, but to equate self-consciousness with reason is simply wrong.
RATIONAL EFFORT ISN'T NECESSARY; ONE CAN LIVE AS A PARASITE
There are two forms to the parasite argument, a consequential one ;and a formal one. The consequential
argument is that being a parasite won't work in the long run. Parasites will eventually run out of hosts, out
of those to live off, imitate, steal from. (The novel Atlas Shrugged argues this view.) But in the short run,
one can be a parasite and survive; even over a whole lifetime and many generations. And new hosts come
along. So, if one is in a position to survive as a parasite, what reasons have been offered against it?

Coercion Libertarianism K

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Libertarianism Kritik You can change my name as

much as you want but I will always be Kunta

Copyright 2006 Harvard Debate, Inc. 1

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To conclude our discussion, the primary plank of a libertarian foreign policy

B. Impact: A LIFE OF GOVERNMENT COERCION IS NOT WORTH

Joseph Raz, philosopher, THE MORALITY OF FREEDOM, 1986, p. 307

Copyright 2006 Harvard Debate, Inc. 3

Copyright 2006 Harvard Debate, Inc. 4

2. FOREIGN AID COERCES AMERICANS

To conclude our discussion, the primary plank of a libertarian foreign policy

ANY FORM OF GOVERNMENT-SPONSORED NATIONAL SERVICE TURNS

Copyright 2006 Harvard Debate, Inc. 5

Jayan Nayer, law professor, Warwick, Fall 1999, p.

Following this transformation of the material political-economy of the colonized, or

Copyright 2006 Harvard Debate, Inc. 6

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5. THE STATE ISN'T FIT TO ENFORCE VIRTUE.

TAXATION IS FORCED LABOR

ACCEPTANCE OF ANY REDISTRIBUTION SNOWBALLS

Copyright 2006 Harvard Debate, Inc. 8

Answers to: “It’s Voluntary”

1. EVEN “VOLUNTARY” NATIONAL SERVICE COMPELS

2. THE VOLUNTARINESS OF THE PROGRAM CONCEALS ITS

Copyright 2006 Harvard Debate, Inc. 9

Redistribution Morally Wrong

1. REDISTRIBUTION IGNORES JUST ENTITLEMENTS TO PROPERTY

2. NO ONE HAS A RIGHT TO ANOTHER'S PROPERTY

3. EFFECTS ON OTHERS DON'T CREATE ENTITLEMENTS TO ONE

4. REDISTRIBUTION MAKES COMPASSION INVOLUNTARY

Copyright 2006 Harvard Debate, Inc. 10

Copyright 2006 Harvard Debate, Inc. 11

Answers to: “We Prevent Coercion”

1. NO MATTER WHAT ANOTHER STATE IS DOING, YOU ARE NEVER

Copyright 2006 Harvard Debate, Inc. 12

2. GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION INTO THE MARKET EVEN TO BLOCK

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Answers to: “We Prevent Coercion”

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5. NOT TREATING RIGHTS AS ABSOLUTE CREATES A HOBBESIAN WAR

Copyright 2006 Harvard Debate, Inc. 15

Answers to: “We Prevent Coercion”

Copyright 2006 Harvard Debate, Inc. 16

Answers to: “We Uphold Positive Rights (Right to

1. EXPANDING THE ROLE OF THE GOVERNMENT TO PROTECTIONS OF

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WE MAY HAVE OTHER MORAL OBLIGATIONS BUT THE GOVERNMENT

Edward Feser, philosophy professor, Loyola, ON NOZICK, 2004, p. 89-90

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Answers to: “We Uphold Positive Rights (Right to

NEGATIVE RIGHTS ARE THE ONLY WAY TO PRESERVE THE

Copyright 2006 Harvard Debate, Inc. 19

Answers to: “We Uphold Positive Rights (Right to

POSITIVE RIGHTS ENSLAVE OTHERS

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The K Turns the Case

2. COERCION IS NOT JUSTIFIED TO EVEN DECREASE THE NET

Copyright 2006 Harvard Debate, Inc. 21

Value to Life Impacts

1. GOVERNMENT COERCION DESTROYS THE VALUE TO LIFE AND

Tibor Machan, PRIVATE RIGHTS & PUBLIC ILLUSIONS, 1995, p. 68-9.

2. A LIFE OF GOVERNMENT COERCION IS NOT WORTH LIVING BECAUSE

Joseph Raz, philosopher, THE MORALITY OF FREEDOM, 1986, p. 307

Copyright 2006 Harvard Debate, Inc. 22