Current Working Pile
In ancapistan, if you have no property, you have no rights
Ancaps often declare, "All rights are property rights." I was thinking about this the other day, in the context of running into libertarians online who insisted that libertarianism supports "the freedom of movement," and realized that this principle actually entails that people without property have no rights at all, let alone any right to "freedom of movement." Of course, immediately, any ancap readers still left here are going to say, "Wait a second! Everyone owns his own body! And so everyone at least has the right to not have his body interfered with." Well, that is true... except that in ancapistan, one has no right to any place to put that body, except if one owns property, or has the permission of at least one property owner to place that body on her land. So, if one is landless and penniless, one had sure better hope that there are kindly disposed property owners aligned in a corridor from wherever one happens to be to wherever the...
Dear Prof. Callahan,
ReplyDeleteWho is the author of the book on Say's Law ? (I suppose all the books here are worth reading, since they are on your working pile).
Are, in your view, Oakeshott's writings the best way to learn political philosophy ?
"Who is the author of the book on Say's Law?"
DeleteThomas Sowell.
"I suppose all the books here are worth reading, since they are on your working pile."
Some things are there because I *ought* to read them, so I don't yet know if they are worth reading!
"Are, in your view, Oakeshott's writings the best way to learn political philosophy?"
I'd pick Voegelin over Oakeshott.
Thank you for your answers. I have never read Voegelin, I will.
DeleteFor Say's law, I loved Hutt's Rahabilitation so much, I thought of translating the book into french. I couldn't finish Sowell's.
Start at the bottom. You'll thank me later.
ReplyDeleteBlackadder, are you commenting on a general property of working piles, or on my pile in particular?
DeleteMy comment was specifically about the desirability of reading Walker Percy, not about a general strategy for dealing with working piles.
DeleteSo I gave up my blog reading for Lent, and I happened to see the same book Blackadder did, a few months later. What'd you think?
ReplyDeleteSeemed OK, but I haven't been able to finish works of fiction in years now: I have too much work reading. I get 100 pages in and can't get back to it.
Delete