Property Rights Absolutism: Missing a Sense of Tragedy
Elizabeth Corey reviews The Tragedy of Religious Freedom. She writes that the essence of the tragic understanding of politics "lies in recognizing fundamentally competing goods and the consequent realization that the conflict between them is permanent."
In contrast, Rothbard, Block, Hoppe, etc. attempt to achieve a "comic" theory of politics by pretending that there is only one political good: property rights. But that is a falsehood, and so their theories wind up in places that no sane person should go.
In contrast, Rothbard, Block, Hoppe, etc. attempt to achieve a "comic" theory of politics by pretending that there is only one political good: property rights. But that is a falsehood, and so their theories wind up in places that no sane person should go.
Block is the worst offender. I can tell that the man's mind is eyeballs deep in theory when his argument against human shields is that it amounts to "homesteading" the person. Apparently you need a theory to tell you that. Much worse are his ideas on debt slavery and punishment, ideas which I'd consider capital crimes.
ReplyDeleteThis is typical for libertarians who prattle on about the NAP. They do not engage in moral reasoning at all. They have some simple axiom and try to deduce everything from it. That is like trying to deduce flavor from axioms rather than tasting.
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