December, 2010

What Surveys Tell Us about Liberal Views of Property Rights

by Ilya Somin
The Conversation
December 27th, 2010

In his most recent rejoinder, Daniel Klein helpfully clarifies his position on liberal views of property rights. He argues that liberals do not believe that “government owns everything,” as he suggested at one point in his original essay, but merely that they think that we have all consented “to an implicit contract with the overlord [...]

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Reply to Ilya Regarding Evidence on How Leftists See Things

by Daniel B. Klein
The Conversation
December 22nd, 2010

I have been arguing that leftist thinking typically involves a preconception of overlordship, with “the people” or “the state” (in the Hegelian sense, not merely the government) being the overlord. The best way to think of it is that the American people collectively own what I have called the “substructure” of the United States of [...]

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The Financial Crisis as Political Football

by David D. Friedman
The Conversation
December 21st, 2010

Matthias Matthijs writes: Firstly, nowhere in my original response to Daniel Klein’s essay did I argue that the trend in the United States over the past thirty years has been towards a smaller state. Unfortunately, both Republicans and Democrats find it quasi impossible in a mature democracy as this one to cut spending and public [...]

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More Empirical Evidence for Property Rights Beliefs

by Ilya Somin
The Conversation
December 21st, 2010

In his most recent essay in the conversation, Daniel Klein continues our debate over the question of whether most contemporary liberals assume government “overlordship” of all property — that, in Daniel’s words, “everything is owned by the state.” In my view, outlined in my two previous contributions, most modern liberals don’t make any such assumption. [...]

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Social-Democratic Feudalism and Its Upper Paleolithic Impetus

by Daniel B. Klein
The Conversation
December 20th, 2010

I think I am understanding Matthias better than he is understanding me. If so, it might be because he is better at making himself understood. In his last response to me, he declares in the title “Freedom Is Not an Absolute,” something I said plainly in my opening essay. Similarly, he says that “taxation in [...]

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You Cannot Put All the Blame for the Financial Crisis on Fannie and Freddie: A Response to David Friedman

by Matthias Matthijs
The Conversation
December 20th, 2010

I want to thank David Friedman for his comments and would like to write a brief response. Firstly, nowhere in my original response to Daniel Klein’s essay did I argue that the trend in the United States over the past thirty years has been towards a smaller state. Unfortunately, both Republicans and Democrats find it [...]

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Freedom Is Not an Absolute: A Response to Daniel Klein

by Matthias Matthijs
The Conversation
December 15th, 2010

It is my pleasure to respond to Daniel Klein’s questions, many of which go to the core of our disagreement. But before I answer his questions directly and one-by-one, I first want to make four observations that will provide the analytical framework through which libertarians can better understand the social democratic argument. Firstly, I did [...]

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Rejoinder to Daniel Klein on Consequentialist Social Democrats

by Ilya Somin
The Conversation
December 15th, 2010

There is only limited disagreement in this exchange between Daniel Klein and myself. We both favor strong protection for private property rights, and we both reject claims that the government should have largely unconstrained authority to override those rights because it supposedly “created” them or because the owners have consented to it. However, I do [...]

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