I wanna start with a simple thought experiment for the libertarians and classical liberals out there. Suppose that the harshest critics of the free market were right and you were wrong about the way in which free markets actually work. Suppose that free market really do lead the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer. Suppose they lead the poor and working classes to live lifes of constant and increasing alienation in which they're continually subjected to exploitation and domination by those of greater economic power. If all this were true, would you still support the free market? If not, or if you had second thoughts, then I want to suggest, that this means you think that how the poor fair in the free markets is more than just an attractive selling point for free market views. It's a crucial element in the moral justification. And if you believe that, and I think many libertarians and classical liberals do, then perhaps you're not so far off from believing in an idea that most libertarians think they reject - the idea of social justice.

Matt Zwolinski "What's Right About Social Justice"

There are different ways of looking at envy in society. There are ways that elevate envy to a kind of a passion that then consumes the society. And really socialism, in my view, is trying to do that. It's an immensely envy conscious, although it doesn't tend to admit this - envy conscious, envy mobilizing movement. I think that if you can draw this into the attention of the person that you're trying to convince, that you're trying to argue with, it will take some of the sense of that person that he or she is on the high ground in arguing for equality away from that. Because (...) you can't congratulate yourself quite as much in arguing for envy, in my view.

Bill Evers "How to Convince a Socialist to Become a Libertarian"

Interesting. Your earth people glorify organized violence for 40 centuries but you imprison those who employ it privately.

Spock ("Star Trek", episode 9)

Government always relies on the notion that there's a certain group of people that has the right to do things that other people don't have. (...) If you actually imagine that we have given this group of people rights to do things that are bad if anybody else does them, you are fabricating an excuse for evil. Literally, by its nature, that is what government is. Whenever you say "those guys have special rights and powers that normal people don't have", what you're saying is "those guys are allowed to do things that are bad if I do them". In other words goverment is permission to commit evil. And that is all it ever is by its very nature.

Larken Rose

The Non-aggression Principle really isn't the essence of libertarianism. The essence of it is, I think, the punishment theory.

Walter Block "Does Spanking Violate the Non-Aggression Principle?"

Having been an econ major, studying economics, my first inclination was always to think about the advocacy or efficiency aspects of all sort of things. And someone finally pointed out to me that what ethics is about, it's about constraints, by which you may first rule out certain actions and then you may take the allowable set and think about the effectiveness of those in whatever goal you might have in mind.

Scott Olmsted "Mapping the Ethical Minefield"

Different approach to defending libertarianism - not the economic argument and not the argument from rights or the non-aggression axiom. Just make this observation - the government does a whole bunch of things that, if anyone else were to do them, would be uncontroversially wrong.

Michael Huemer "Defending Libertarianism: The Common Sense Approach"

I do not want to rely on changes in human morality to make a system work. It's seems to me that what I want to do is to assume human beings are going to be about the way they are and to see if I can figure out institutions that will produce about the results I want. I think that one of the approaches some of the libertarians have used is that we convert everybody to be a libertarian and then the problem disappears. The experiment's been done... A couple of hundreds years ago... Didn't work very well, right? I mean - the constitution was pretty good constitution as such things go but didn't enforce itself. (...) This has partly to do with my disagreement with both Rothbard and Rand, because both of them imagined that the solution is to get the philosophy right and then everybody will agree. And what I want to do is to say - let's actually have a competing market to generate your law rather than having libertarian legal philosophers persuade everybody else what the right law is.

David Friedman "A Consequentialist Theory of Anarcho-Capitalism"

What I say is that the relationship between parents and children is that - you can't own them, but you can hold the rights to homestead them or to bring them up to be their guardians. How do you get the rights to be their guardians? First of all by giving breath to them. And second of all by caring for them.

Walter Block "The Privatization of Roads and Highways - Discussion"

If animals had rights then when a lion kills a zebra we should put the lion in jail.

Walter Block "Differing Worldviews on Social Justice"

Libertarianism is the view that the only way we should interact with each other is a voluntary way. That's the only civilised way of interacting with each other. Any other way is barbaric. For example, I just really like this young man's brown jacket. (...) There are only two ways I can get it. One - I come up to him with a gun and I say - give me that brown jacket or I'll shoot you. Or I can be a demagog and convince everyone in the community that I should have that jacket and we all vote for it and - yes, Block should have Thomas's jacket and we all grab it from him and give it to me. These are barbaric, uncivilized ways of me getting the jacket. What are the civilised ways or way? Voluntary. I say - I'll give you ten bucks for it. He says - no. I say - I'll give you five hundred bucks for it, which is way more than I presume he bought it for but his grandmother gave it, it's got a personal attachments. And so he says no again. I say - I'll be your best friend forever if you gave me this jacket. He says no, amazingly. Well, then I just don't get the jacket. It's his jacket. That's libertarianism.

Walter Block "Walter Block Debate with John Clark"

I always like to think - compared to what? Compared to what? Libertarianism does not have a perfect solution for children's rights. I have not resolved children's rights for myself. But compared to what? Does socialism do any better? Does fascism do any better? What system answers this questions better? If in fact you look at libertarianism and say - ah, it really doesn't give me the answer I'm satisfied with. Does it give the best answer of all the answers out there? And I almost always come back and say - yes, it does.

Wendy McElroy

The abolitionists who were in favor of immidiate end of slavery by which they meant as fast as humanly possible they argued that there should be no other considerations which override the slave's right to his own life and freedom. There was another group which became known as gradualists who agreed with the abolitionists, they said it's true the slavery is wrong, it's evil, it should be gotten rid of, but they added on "eventually". What they argued was that should slavery seize immediately it would wreak economic havok on the south in particular but also on the northern industrial states which relied very heavilly on the southern agroculture. (...) It's important to know how the abolitionists responded to it. They did not necessarily try to argue that the immediate abolition of slavery would not have this terrible economic consequences. What they argued was - this economic sort of argument was irrelevant, because what had to take precedence was the right of the slave to his own liberty.

George H. Smith "Ethics vs. Economics"

I think it's fortunate that are economic position is so strong, because unfortunately our philosophic position is very weak. Much weaker that we wish it were. (...) We like to say that you cannot trespass a person's land without his permission however small the trespass is. That should be up to him to decide whether you're injuring him, not up to you. Every time I light a match fotons from that match are trespassing on property four hundred miles around. Every time I light a match a little bits of sulfur are trespassing on land twenty miles around. And therefore if we really took seriously sort of a lot of a simple aprioristic arguments we sometimes like to make in order to proof things we do believe to be true. If we took those things seriously, we would conclude that you couldn't light a match without permission from every land owner within site.

David Friedman "Ethics vs. Economics"

(...) we libertarians IMO ought to define ourselves as simply opposing the initiation of violent force against innocent people--aggression. We should *not* run around saying "liberty is our highest value" b/c that just gives an opening to conservatards to say "oh, we also believe in liberty, but it's just one of 'many values' for us. we are not so simplistic." It lets them avoid saying "we believe in aggression in some cases--you have to break some eggs to make an omelet".

Stephan Kinsella (Facebook post)

Every political perspective eventually has to say "Tough luck" when confronted with well-crafted what-ifs. There's nothing uniquely hard-hearted or cruel about libertarianism.

Bryan Caplan "Tough Luck"

For far too long we've tended to see capitalism as a synonymous for a certain, particular kind of buisness structure. Not true. It should be seen as a synonymous of a certain kind of process, voluntary interaction. If, more or less, we see some rather than others, it may be because people were not inventive enough or some are more efficient or people like them for a variety of reasons.

Roy A. Childs

All choices, all range of choices benefit me as an individual, because it expands the range of what's out there for me.

Wendy McElroy