February, 2008

What’s a Libertarian To Root For Now?

by Randy E. Barnett

February 27th, 2008

I appreciate the invitation to participate in this lively debate. Will Wilkinson, the managing editor, has posed a final set of questions that are worth addressing:
Assuming that no transition to ordered anarchy is within reach, what should classical liberal attitudes be toward the status quo? If we’re not going to get a minimal state, or [...]

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Utility, Morality, and the Majority

by Gerald Gaus

February 26th, 2008

I will try my best to engage in close reasoning in response to Anthony de Jasay’s reply to my points. Let me then be very careful, even if this means being a somewhat pedantic. From his previous comments I thought that de Jasay did not wish to engage in a methodological dispute. Obviously I was [...]

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Fairness and Majority Rule

by Anthony de Jasay

February 25th, 2008

Professor Gaus’s contributions of February 21 and 22 to the debate do not seek to answer my charge that his explanation of political outcomes via a holdall “utility function” (whose principal variables are moral sentiments) is both unverifiable and unfalsifiable. He does, however, make a variety of other assertions that do not seem to be [...]

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That Dangerous Invention

by Gerald Gaus

February 22nd, 2008

Mike Munger quotes me as saying: “What de Jasay and so many classical liberals cannot bear is that an expansive welfare state has been supported largely because the majority of voters and politicians believe it is fair and just”. He asks: “Seriously, what kind of riposte is it that?” And he adds “65% of the [...]

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