Thursday, June 23, 2011

The Difference Between Civil Libertarians and Selfish Jerks, Explained

This piece in Slate about libertarian philospher Robert Nozick has engendered quite a bit of online chatter and it's very much worth reading if you are interested in the intellectual underpinnings of that side of our economic debates. There are lots of responses around the sphere, but this defense of libertarianism called "Libertarians Aren't All Selfish Jerks" by Conor Friedersdorf caught my eye because this argument is so commonly wielded at liberals and it deserves a response. He refers to a number of libertarians who are working on such topics as the drug war and prison reform and terrorism policy etc (along with one of the hip libertarian issues of the day --- onerous licensing of low wage service workers like hairdressers) and then writes:

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