March, 2007

Liberty May Make Us Wealthy, but Liberty Is Not Wealth

by Tom G. Palmer

March 29th, 2007

I’ll start where my colleagues have ended, and congratulate Brian for his accomplishment in writing such a fine work and encourage everyone to go out and buy a copy. I’ve expressed my reservations about the book, but they’re quite minor. Radicals for Capitalism is a serious accomplishment and a genuinely good book.
I [...]

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Virginia Postrel: Recorded Live!

Virginia Postrel takes the Cato Unbound conversation to an audio device near you with a chat about “The Cultural Tradition of Libertarianism” [.mp3] in today’s Cato Daily Podcast.

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Post-Apocalyptic Libertarianism

by Brink Lindsey

March 29th, 2007

Much of the current confusion about libertarianism’s future, and many of the deepest conflicts within libertarian circles today, can be chalked up to this fact: the world didn’t come to an end.
As Brian’s wonderful book makes vividly clear, the modern libertarian movement emerged as a prophecy of doom. Libertarians held vital knowledge about [...]

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What Was Wrong With Socialism?

by Virginia Postrel

March 28th, 2007

Reflecting on our exchanges, I’m struck by the lingering division over what was wrong with socialism, and with socialists. Libertarians agree that socialism was wrong. We disagree on exactly why. So in part what we’ve been calling a division between the empiricist and deductivist strands of libertarianism also reflects different diagnoses of the nature of [...]

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Principles, the Welfare State, and Libertarian Cultural Traditions

by Virginia Postrel

March 28th, 2007

Like Tom Palmer, I am “not a pure instrumentalist. I think that being free is a constituent part of a happy life, which is something desirable for its own sake and not for the sake of something else.” Unlike Tom, I’m not a philosopher, so perhaps my language suggested baggage I did not mean to [...]

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Quick Hits

by Tyler Cowen

March 27th, 2007

Many issues have been raised, let me offer a few comments:
1. In response to Tom, I am a pluralist and I also value (libertarian) freedom for its own sake. But in most settings I value “positive freedom,” or capabilities, a good deal more. Positive freedom or positive liberty are common philosophical concepts, and [...]

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Oddballs vs. Scholars, For Negative Liberty, Against the Welfare State

by Tom G. Palmer

March 25th, 2007

There are so many threads crossing one another that it’s hard to know where to start. So I’ll just pick on Brian, our author (of a terrific book) and then go on to disagree with my other commentators.
For Brian: I do think that Armen Alchian has had a big influence on libertarians, [...]

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Cato Unbound: Now in Living Audio!

Put voices to words as Tyler Cowen and Tom G. Palmer continue the Cato Unbound conversation as Cato Daily Podcasts, and lead essayist Brian Doherty goes further in depth about his new book, Radicals for Capitalism.
» Tyler Cowen, “Are Libertarians in Intellectual Crisis,” [.mp3] March 20, 2007.
» Tom G. Palmer, “In Defense of Negative [...]

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Liberaltarians, the Non-Inevitable Welfare State, the Value of Libertarian Kooks, and the Limits of Consequentialism

by Brian Doherty

March 23rd, 2007

Here are some scattered reactions to the first round of thoughtful comments, which I hope are the beginning and not the end of the conversation.
Brink Lindsey: I recognize the factual reasons for the pessimism he expressed; I share the optimism he expresses. I think it likely that the (short term) strategy he proposes toward the [...]

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Collectivism Isn’t in Our Genes

by Brink Lindsey

March 22nd, 2007

Brian has been on a manic schedule of traveling and speaking this week (including a fine talk today at Cato), and as a result he’s been delayed in responding to the reaction essays. He should be weighing in tomorrow, but in the meantime I’ll invoke editor’s privilege and get the discussion started. In particular, let [...]

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Best of the Blogs: Somin on Libertarian Despair

George Mason law professor and Volokh Conspirator Ilya Somin argues that counsels of libertarian despair and semi-capitulation (he has Tyler Cowen and Brink Lindsey in mind) are “heavily influenced by two important fallacies that lead many libertarians to be more pessimistic than is warranted.” And the fallacies are . . .

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Best of the Blogs: Jason Kuznicki on Libertarians’ Unfinished Revolution

At Positive Liberty, Cato’s own Jason Kuznicki–a Johns Hopkins-trained intellectual historian–offers an illuminating meditation on the the place of libertarianism in modern life in response to Brian Doherty’s lead essay. “The general ignorance, and dismissal, of the libertarian movement among mainstream Americans is one of the great paradoxes of our time,” Kuznicki writes. “From roughly the mid-twentieth century up to the present, something remarkable has happened. A way of thinking about social and political questions, a disposition of mind that lay dormant for decades, has reasserted itself. Quietly, it has influenced even those who have nothing but scorn for libertarians and their ideals.” Kuznicki explains how. . . .

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Best of the Blogs: Kevin O’Reilly Riled

According to Kevin O’Reilly, Tyler Cowen is “is a brilliant, brilliant man and one of contemporary libertarianism’s brightest lights,” whose contribution to this issue was “shockingly, embarassingly bad.” He explains why he thinks so in this thoughtful post from Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Blog. . .

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