Friday Philosophy

Not only could the state use the UBI as an instrument of social control; we have every reason to think those in charge of the state would exercise their power for bad motives.

Hayek began as a socialist, but he came to believe that the ends of socialism could not be realized by socialist means, and he deemed it his duty to convey this view to a wide public.

A right to exclude others from one's property does not mean one is also motivated to repeatedly do so.

Quinn Slobodian really dislikes Ludwig von Mises. So it's not shocking that Slobodian has repeatedly misstated and distorted Mises's consistent opposition to imperialism and wars of conquest.

The problem with Strauss is that while favoring what he considers to be the classical and Christian concepts of natural law, he is also bitterly opposed to natural rights such as liberty and property.

At what point does a "trivial" violation of property rights become a major problem? There is not an easy answer.

Opponents of natural rights often claim that natural rights aren't real because these rights have no clear boundaries. They claim we need a state to set these limits. Rothbard demonstrated that this claim is weak at best.

In my view the language of “homesteading” of persons (i.e., children) is best abandoned. Retaining it causes confusion, and nothing essential to the theory is lost by giving it up.

William Graham Sumner did not believe in "social Darwinism" as his critics think, but rather that to survive, people must organize themselves in a society. Sumner is right.

Many say economics must focus on preserving resources for distant future generations. They say climate change is why. That's may seem convincing in the abstract, but we soon learn how hard it is to predict future needs, and to ignore present ones.

Given that so much of the world is in the grip of false ideologies, what can we do? Mises says that the answer does not lie in international organizations or treaties. “It is futile to place confidence in treaties, conferences, and…bureaucratic outfits" 

Manent insists that if political leaders don’t lead society, we will have a society that isn’t led by political leaders. So what?

Many support democracy because for them the collective or “republican” liberty they favor far exceeds individual liberty in importance. Those of us who follow Mises and Rothbard will disagree.

Mises defends praxeology using philosophical minimalism, that is, by sticking to the core fact that people act and make choices.

Though he was generally a Ricardian, John Stuart Mill thought that the main obstacle to socialism is that people might not yet be civilized enough to put it into practice. 

Hurting innocents is never okay, but apologists for the bombing of Hiroshima and other state atrocities find this "purist" position inconvenient.

Rawls’s doubts about global justice make him an effective critic of his own theory of justice.

Contrary to popular assertions, the Nazis weren't only trying to expropriate Jewish wealth. They wanted the German people to come together as a collective entity, and this entailed socialism.

"With regard to the doctrine that God is wholly other than man and that his essence and nature cannot be grasped by mortal man, the natural sciences and a philosophy derived from them have nothing to say."