Libertarianism

#笔记/书评/ContPP

The Diversity of Right-wing Political Theory

1. Two instrumental ways to defend unrestricted capitalism
Utilitarianism argument for unrestricted capitalism: favour the free market, since its
efficiency allows for the greatest overall satisfaction of preferences.
But there’s declining marginal utility, so retribution can increase overall utility when it
decreases efficiency.
Capitalist freedoms are needed to preserve our civil and political liberties (Hayek).
Countries with an extensive welfare state have sometimes had excellent records in
defending civil and political rights.
For them, market freedoms are a means for promoting maximal utility, or for protecting
political and civil liberties.
2. Libertarianism
The free market is inherently just;
Redistributive taxation is inherently wrong, a violation of people's rights.
Government have no right to interfere in the market.

Nozick's 'Entitlement Theory'

1. Three main principles
a principle of transfer-whatever is justly acquired can be freely transferred.
a principle of just initial acquisition-an account of how people come initially to own the
things which can be transferred in accordance with.
a principle of rectification of injustice-how to deal with holdings if they were unjustly
acquired or transferred.

2. Political conclusion
‘A minimal state, limited to the narrow functions of protection against force, theft, fraud,
enforcement of contracts, and so on, is justified’;
Nozick doesn’t agree with ‘endowment-insensitive’, as 'entitled' means 'having an absolute
right to freely dispose of it as one sees fit, so long as it does not involve force or fraud';
‘Libertarianism without foundations’, but we can generously find two arguments, one is
intuitive, the other is a more philosophical one derived from ‘self-ownership’;
Other libertarianists, defended by an appeal to liberty or mutual advantages.

The intuitive argument: the Wilt Chamberlain example

1. His argument at length
If we have legitimately acquired something, we have absolute property rights over them.
First specify an initial distribution which we feel is legitimate;
Then intuitively everyone is entitled to the control of the resources they held.
He argues that we intuitively prefer his principle of transfer to liberal principles of
redistribution as an account of what people can legitimately do with their resources;
‘By what process could such a transfer among two persons give rise to a legitimate claim
of distributive justice on a portion of what was transferred, by a third party, who had no
claim of justice on any holding of the others before the transfer?‘
This sounds great. It specifies a rather specific situation, while liberal egalitarianism is just
‘talking big’. It’s indeed a question why someone would have rights to take off some
others’ resources, especially when it’s between handicapped and the rich. But we could
assume that, it’s the society who claims to tax those that are naturally talented, because
they’re not deserved to that, and it’s after the people having made their choice. It’s a claim
between the SOCIETY and the TALENTED.
2. Critics
He emphasises that the whole point of having a theory of fair shares is that it allows people
to do certain things with them, but no one have a right to something whose realisation
requires certain uses of things and activities that other people have rights and entitlements
over;
He ignores our intuition about dealing fairly with unequal circumstances;
But he says that ‘the particular rights over things fill the space of rights, leaving no room for
general rights to be in a certain material condition’;
This isn’t part of our everyday understanding of property rights.
He argues that this conception of absolutely property rights is the unavoidable
consequence of a deeper principle.

The Self-ownership Argument

1. From Kant to Nozick
The principle of ‘self-ownership’ is an interpretation of the principle of treating people as
‘ends in themselves’.
Kimlycka argues that Nozick fails to derive either self-ownership or property-ownership
from the idea of treating people as equals, or as ends in themselves.
Nozick claims that people have rights that no one can violate, and the society should
respect them if they agree with the Kantian principle.
Rights affirm our ‘separate existences’, and there are limits to the sacrifices that can be
asked which are expressed by a theory of rights.
A libertarian society treats individuals, not as ‘instruments or resources’, but as ‘persons
 having individual rights with the dignity this constitutes’.
It seems that libertarianism has a ‘rich and thick’ conception to the subject of our
conception of equality, while liberal egalitarianism views human beings as simply a ‘thin’
device which could continently contains any social or natural contents, but which itself and
only itself deserves our moral respect.
2. Nozick and Rawls (Dworkin)
Rawlsian redistribution (or other coercive government interventions in market exchanges)
is incompatible with recognising people as self-owners.
Only unrestricted capitalism recognises self-ownership, and recognising people as self-
owners is crucial to treating people as equals.
Rawls and Nozick differ, however, on the question of which rights are most important in
treating people as ends in themselves.
But the term 'self' in self-ownership has a 'purely reflexive significance. It signifies that what
owns and what is owned are one and the same, namely, the whole person';
There are important continuities here between Nozick and Rawls;
People who are born with a natural disadvantage have a legitimate claim on those with
advantages, and the naturally advantaged have a moral obligation to the disadvantaged.

Self-ownership and property-ownership

1. How does self-ownership yield property-ownership?
Market exchanges involve more than the exercise of self-owned powers;
In Nozick’s theory as long as the earlier owner had legitimate title, then according to his
principles it’s fair now.
The beginning of the series of transfers is when it was first appropriated by an individual as
her private property.
This question about the initial acquisition of external resources is prior to any question
about legitimate transfer.
Nozick’s strategy is that, if we assume a prior fair distribution, say Rawls’s difference
principle, which counts only the thin device as moral agents, we could then shift to his ‘self-
ownership’ distribution. In this way we could evade the criticism aroused by the initial
distribution. Of couse we may ask why the shift of our theory is necessary. But this shows
that the most important question, at least in my opinion, initiated by Nozick, is what should
we conclude when talking about ‘moral agents’, and how should we deal with our ‘output’
morally.
2. Initial acquisition
The use of force makes acquisition illegitimate, so current title is illegitimate;
Nozick suggests that we could rectify the illegitimacy of existing title by a one-time general
redistribution of resources in accordance with Rawls's difference principle;
Some theorists argue that we shouldn’t rectify past injustices, because what matters is the
 end result.
He rejects liberal and socialist theories precisely because they define justice in terms of
'end states';
Nozick’s theory cannot protect existing holdings from redistribution.
And despite this problem, we must know how acquisition could have arisen legitimately
without denying other people’s claim, or we should reject his theory.
3. The proper test and Lockean proviso
The problem of initial distribution is an old problem for libertarians.
Nozick cités Locke’s answer, that is the proper test of a legitimate appropriation: that it
does not worsen anyone's overall condition. Nozick calls this the 'Lockean proviso'.
And he believed that enclosing the commons would indeed make everyone better off
overall, even those left without any land available to them (labour distribution, the tragedy
of commons)
Nozick argues that appropriation of a particular object is legitimate if its withdrawal from
general use does not make people worse off in material terms than they had been when it
was in general use.
But what exactly does it mean to make someone worse off?
Nozick’s argument simply exclude the worst condition, and it’s never what we understand
as ‘justice’!
4. The Lockean proviso
People own themselves.
The world is initially unowned.
You can acquire absolute rights over a disproportionate share of the world, if you do not
worsen the condition of others.
It is relatively easy to acquire absolute rights over a disproportionate share of the world.
Therefore once people have appropriated private property, a free market in capital and
labour is morally required.
4. Material welfare
Self-ownership protects our ability to pursue our own goals, our 'conceptions of
ourselves';
Nozick’s criteria that no one is made worse off emphasise people’s ability to act on their
conception of themselves.
But he ignores those non-material dimensions of ‘worse off’.
But his justification of the initial appropriation of property treats Ben's autonomy as
irrelevant;
This includes ‘consent’ of myself, and the weight of autonomy.
And we cannot argue for him by paternalism.
It seems that both Rawls and Nozick’s refusal to the detailed disadvantage of natural
talents show the intricate difficulty to figure out all the natural disadvantages.
6. Arbitrary Narrowing of the Options
There’s plenty of morally relative distribution which could make people better off, but
Nozick never say anything about them.
These problems with Nozick's proviso are made clearer if we move to the level of
capitalism as an ongoing system.
It is odd to say that a person who starves to death is not made worse off by Nozick's
system of appropriation when there are other systems in which that person would not have
died.
We cannot modify the proviso, saying that ‘a system of appropriation worsens someone's
condition if there is another possible scheme in which they would do better’, because no
one has a legitimate claim that the world be maximally adapted to suit their preferences.
John Arthur argues that the appropriate test is an egalitarian one’. Van Parijs argues that
appropriators should be required to fund a basic income scheme as a condition of
legitimate appropriation.
But virtually no one thinks that a plausible test of fair acquisition would generate Nozick's
view
Nozick’s arguments is quite similar to Hobbes’s argument for the Leviathan, in which
people shouldn’t choose to disobey the sovereignty and return to the state of nature as
they’re made better off no matter how bad their condition in the Leviathan is. But is it a
really ‘justice’ unity? Notice that we wouldn’t choose the utilitarian standard of justice, as it
violates our conception of equality. Then what is the middle way? How do we find the truly
‘justice’ distribution?
5. Initial Ownership of the World
Is the world initially unowned?
What would happen if the world were jointly owned, and hence not subject to unilateral
privatisation?
The disadvantaged can use their veto to bargain, so that we could lead to Rawlsian
distribution in the Nozickian way.
As divided equally amongst all the members of the human community?
All of these accounts of the moral status of the external world are compatible with the
principle of self-ownership.
Left-libertarianism recognises the insurmountable difficulties in justifying unequal
appropriation of the initially unowned world, and so accepts nationalisation or
equalisation of natural resources.
Nozick’s distribution is secured if and only if we invoke the weak and arbitrary premisses
about appropriation.
It sounds weird to say that the disadvantage have moral claim on the advantage, as it’s not
the advantage who make the disadvantage worse off. A more plausible interpretation may
invoke Dworkin’s insurance system, I think, but it’s still unclear the subject of the claim by
 the disadvantage.
Self-ownership and equality
1. Other ways to defend libertarianism
They all go beyond ‘self-ownership’.
Because self-ownership neither leads to unrestricted property nor requires people be
entitled to all the rewards of their market exchanges.
One concerns consent, the second concerns the idea of self-determination, the third
concerns dignity.
2. Consent
The choice of economic regime should be decided, if possible, by the consent of self-
owning people;
The distribution that would leads to liberal results in effect undermines people’s ‘self-
ownership’.
Their legal rights of self-ownership are therefore purely formal.
Think about voting in democratic states.
3. Substantive conception of self-ownership
Substantive conception of ‘self-ownership’ requires a ‘determinate domain…free of the
claims of others’, and we should be free to act on our own ‘conceptions of the good’.
Nozick appeals to both the formal and substantive conceptions of self-ownership. He
defends the formal self-ownership at least partly because it promotes substantive self-
ownership.
He argues that it’s the ability gives life meaning, and it’s the meaningful life we lead that
make us the ends in ourself, then it’s the libertarianism regimes that best promotes our
substantive self-ownership.
Of course we can have limited powers on our abilities, or, on our ‘thin device’, which
means that we have moral claims on our unique beings, as long as we don’t hurt others.
But to ensure everyone have equal possibilities to enable their abilities, we have to accept
a fair distribution. Or we could say that, liberal egalitarianism seeks an equal possibilities
for everyone to pursue their own happiness, but never promise to anyone, as any certain
happiness for someone means certain unhappiness for others.
Liberal regimes better interpreted the substantive conception, as we are separate beings
and have an equal claim, and Nozick’s theory just ignored the poor, no extension!
Lack of property can be just as oppressive as lack of legal rights.
Notice that liberal egalitarianism argues for only the fair distribution of the primary goods.
Being subject to taxation on the rewards which accrue from undeserved natural talents
does not seriously impair one’s self-determination.
Are we trying to defend a somehow bizarre utilitarianism-libertarianism theory of justice?
Even if one's income is taxed in accordance with Rawlsian principles, one still has a fair
share of resources and liberties with which to control the essential features of one's life.
4. Dignity
Nozick might argue that welfare redistribution denies people's dignity, and this dignity is
crucial to treating people as equals.
In any event, dignity is predicated on, or a by- product of, other moral beliefs.
It is liberal regimes, not libertarian ones, which best promote each person’s dignity, since
they ensure that everyone has the capacity for self-determination.
2. Weakness of Nozick’s theory
We counts formal self-ownership for it promotes self-determination, and Nozick himself
sometimes treats the substantive conception as the more fundamental;
It may be that the best regime, assessed in terms of self- determination, not only goes
beyond formal self-ownership, but also limits it.
It’s a inner objection to Nozick’s theory, citing on our intuition that substantive happiness is
the most important.
Nozick developed his theory of rights to oppose the enslavement, but of course it’s our
equal control of possessions along with rights that makes us free.
Susan akin argues that Nozick's principle of self-ownership actually leads back to a form of
'matriarchal slavery' and he either ignore the work of women or need to reform his theory
seriously;
Nozick's emphasis on the idea of formal self-ownership may also be due to the
undifferentiated nature of that concept.
His theory is only plausible if it is being compared with the single option of the
undifferentiated denial of self-ownership.
Nozick never answers Rawlsian intuition of the natural talents.
We can get a Rawlsian distributive scheme even without denying self-ownership, but
Rawls’s denial of self-ownership was perfectly sound.

Libertarianism as Mutual Advantage

1. Two different interpretations of social contract
Both mutual advantage theories of libertarianism and Rawls’s liberal egalitarianism are
presented in contractarian terms.
For Rawls, the contract device is tied to our ‘natural duty’, as everyone is ‘self-originating
sources of valid claims’ or ‘ends in themselves’.
So we need to treat others as equal not because of benefit but because they’re free and
equal beings, and contract device can help us promote that.
Rawls’s theory ‘substitutes a moral equality for a physical inequality’.
But in mural advantage theorists’ view, there’s no inherent moral status in the modern
world view, the only moral values are just the subjective preferences.
But by refraining from hurting others we can all be better off, so each person gains in the
 long run by accepting conventions that define it as ‘wrong’ and ‘unjust’ in the long run,
While conventions are not really contracts, we can view this bargaining over mutually
advantageous conventions as the process by which a community establishes its ‘social
contract’.
Then from the non-moral premises of rational choice, we generate a ‘moral code’.
2. Agree and compel
‘Moral artifice’, as the society should establish complex mechanisms to actually enforce
those agreement, and it’s completely an artificial way of identifying constraints.
‘Tragedy of the Commons’, and ‘the Prisoners’ Dilemma’, which respectively shows the
one-time bargain and the ‘rational equivalent’ problem.
Whether or not we trust others to cooperate, we face the ‘collective action’ problems.
To ensure collectively rational outcomes, it is not enough to agree to certain conventions.
3. Gauthier and constrained maximisation
Reliance on coercive enforcement is an inadequate and expensive or even impossible
response to the problem of collective action problems.
We use mutual advantage to establish moral rules, which limit what we’re naturally free to
do and is taking precedence over our decision-making procedure.
The mutual advantage theories rely heavily on coercive enforcement and is
psychologically infeasible.
Rawls uses the device of a contract to develop our traditional notions of moral obligation,
whereas Gauthier uses it to replace them, as his idea presupposes that there’s no inherent
moral status.
As we shall view these moral rules as ‘obligations’, Gauthier’s view is close to Rousseau’s
civil religion. And we know that this kind of argument is familiar to us as it has appeared in
Plato’s the Republic. Thrasymachus and Glaucon argue that, as we may think, justice is
established for mutual advantage, but only if people are all too weak to get the best and
fear the worst. But Rawls argues that, there’s no reason for those strong to follow the rules.
We could then go further, saying that given Rawls’s idea is right, there’s no way for
everyone to follow that. That’s why we should use some ‘religion’.
Whether it is advantageous to follow a particular convention depends on one’s
preferences and powers, and thus Gauthier’s use of contracts reflect the bargaining
power.
It’s quite unclear now how Gauthier develop the detailed principles of his theory, and
Kymlicka’s criticism here is quite vague, but we could still find that this kind of use of
contract would arouse a lot of problems.
In both premisses and conclusions, these two strands of contract theory are, morally
speaking, a world apart.
4. Can mutual advantage yield self-ownership?
It cannot, of course, yield self-ownership as a natural right, as it cancels people’s inherent
 moral status.
It’s in everyone’s self-interest to respect self-ownership as long as others’ reciprocate, but
not in everyone’s interest to Rawls’s difference principle.
Using Hobbesian argument, libertarianism argues that everyone does have the power of
defending one’s talents and holdings (quite a negative view).
But this is unrealistic in a given society, and mutual advantage theories would probably
yield ‘slave contract’.
Mutual advantage theories are not that people are in fact equals by nature, but rather that
justiceisonly possible in so far as thisisso.
Treating people as ends in themselves requires more than (or other than) respecting their
self-ownership (contra Nozick); treating people according to mutual advantage often
requires less than respect for self-ownership (contra Gauthier).
5. Who begs the question?
Our moral intuition tells us that there is ‘a real moral difference between right and wrong
which all men [have] a duty to respect’.
Exploiting the defenceless is, on our everyday view, the worst injustice, whereas mutual
advantage theorists say we have no obligations at all to the defenceless.
As mutual advantage theory cancels our duty, there’s no simple way to refute it to just
argues that it challenges our moral intuition.
There are no grounds within the theory to prefer justice to exploitation, and people argue
for justice only because they lack ‘power irresistible’ and so must settle for justice.
Rawls’s approach may be only an intellectual activity, a way of looking at the world that can
have no motivational effect on human action and mutual advantage theorists argues that I
only have the reason if it satisfies some desire of mine.
6. Other approaches
We may argue that different criteria of objectivity should be applied to different concepts.
But it’s still very hard to answer the question of motivation.
Rawls and Barry both come to the ‘internal ethical norms’, which isn’t a ‘real’ motivation for
acting justly.
We may cite Kant’s idea that morality ‘is a sufficient and originalsource of determination
within us’ that does not need ‘a ground of determination external to itself’.
Hobbesian equation of rationality with self-interest may be pure assertion, and proof of
moral equality, therefore, is based on ‘what we might call human consistency’.
But we don’t know how effective these moral motivations are, and one of the major
concerns of communitarians, civic republicans, and feminists has been that liberals offer an
inadequate account of our moral motivation.

Libertarianism as Liberty
1. Rival opinions about libertarianism
Nozick’s view is that the scope and nature of the freedom we ought to enjoy is a function
of our self-ownership.
Other libertarians, however, say that libertarianism is based on a principle of liberty.
We value different kinds of freedoms for different reasons, and the idea that we should
maximise freedom as such is neither clear nor obviously desirable.

The value of liberty

1. The role of liberty in egalitarian theories
Both egalitarian liberalism and libertarianism agrees that liberty values in our society.
But they view liberty as a technical way of respect people’s interests.
In their argument, a particular liberty is examined whether it is compatible with the
interests of people and a specific account of weighting people.
The difference between them is whether the way of weighting people’s interests based on
the impartial concern of people or their bargaining power.
Some so-called liberty-based theory also comes to technical way to defend liberty.
2. Liberty-based argument
One aims to maximise the amount of freedom in society;
The other claims that people have a right to the most extensive liberty compatible with a
like liberty for all, and recognising some particular liberties increases each person’s overall
freedom.
The author argues that the first is absurd and unattractive, the second either a confusing
restatement of egalitarianism, or an indeterminate and unattractive conception of
freedom, and they all fail to defend libertarianism.
3. Teleological liberty
Teleological utilitarians argue for the maximisation of utility, but promoting the good
becomes detached from promoting people's interests.
Some libertarian dislike the principle of equality, thus trying to defend self-ownership with
an approach of liberty.
Libertarians reject increasing the overall amount of freedom through increasing the
population and the unequal distribution of liberties;
'To prefer equal liberty to unequal liberty is to prefer equality to inequality, rather than
freedom to unfreedom'.
4. The greatest equal liberty
Each person is entitled to the most extensive liberty compatible with a like liberty for all.
Similar to the Rawlsian approach in that equality cannot be sacrificed for utility, but
different from that in that its standard is the amount of freedom a particular liberty brings.
But Rawls never argues for the interests of freedom or even the relevance of liberty to our
interests.
 It’s a loose sense of liberty-based theory compared to teleological or Rawls’ approach.
5. How to measure freedom
We cannot defines freedom in a moralised common-sense way, as it presupposes a prior
theory of rights.
Libertarians believe that whether we have a right depends on whether that right increases
each person's freedom.
Non-moralised liberty: the presence of options or choices for example, and no prior rights.
Neutral or purposive view of criteria, whether to give different options different
importance.
6. Neutral view
On this view, we are free in so far as no one prevents us from acting on our (actual or
potential) desires.
Our intuitive judgements about the value of different liberties do not seem to be based on
quantitative judgements of neutral freedom.
Some liberties are important because they contains more important freedoms, and some
even cannot be called as liberties.
It’s interesting that some neutral liberties are obviously forbidden in a veil of ignorance,
while some are not. But why? What’s the core principle of people’s choosing in a veil of
ignorance? Is is influenced by people’s given society?
7. Purposive liberty
There remains a question whether purposive approach still calls for a calculation
procedure, otherwise it would seem elitism and absurd.
On such a definition, the amount of freedom contained in a particular liberty depends on
how important that liberty is to us, given our interests and purposes.
Similar to Rawlsian approach that using a qualified procedure but instead in terms of a
single scale of freedom.
Two basic standards: subjective or objective.
The purposive version of the greatest equal liberty is just a confusing restatement of
Rawlsian approach.
It seems that the argument for the liberty is completed with the assessment of its
importance, and the introduction of liberty is just a redefinition.
It’s quite confusing how we could develop an independent definition of importance or
purposiveness.
8. A confusing and unnecessary premise
It falsely suggests that we have just one interest in liberty.
Or in other words, they try to reduce every value to liberty, but only make liberty an
extended and vague term.
It is possible to redescribe these different interests as an interest in a more extensive
purposive freedom, but it is needlessly confusing.
 The relationship between freedom and other values becomes obscure are no longer what
makes some actions truly valuable.
“What we have a right to is not liberty at all, but to the values or interests or standing that
this particular constraint defeats.”
Quite interesting remarks from Kymlicka: So our interest in the freedom to do x may be
instrumental to, intrinsic to, or quite independent of, our interest in x.
Hence our interest in different freedoms varies, not only with our interest in each particular
act, but also with the range of instrumental, intrinsic, and symbolic interests promoted by
having the freedom to do that particular act (cf. pp.164).
Freedom and capitalism
1. The apparent link between freedom and capitalism
Common ideas think what distinguishes left-liberals from libertarians is that the former
favour more government restrictions.
“Libertarianism is ‘opposed to any social and legal constraints on individual freedom.’”
Some defenders of the welfare state agree that redistributive policies are a compromise
between freedom and equality.
Capitalism does provide certain neutral and purposive freedoms unavailable under the
welfare state.
2. The triadic structure of freedom
'X is free from Y to do Z', where X specifies the agent, Y specifies the preventing
conditions, and Z specifies the action.
'Private property is a distribution of freedom and unfreedom'. As a result, 'the sentence
"free enterprise constitutes economic liberty" is demonstrably false’.
Given that they all presume an egalitarian regime, both Nozick and Rawls’s principle needs
continuous intervention into people’s choice (Lockean proviso).
This intervention is applied to make sure that all factors aroused by people’s conditions are
abstracted from their choice.
Inconsistent standard: those libertarians who oppose restrictions on people’s individual
freedom should totally abandon state-enforced property rights.
In fact the approach to defend libertarianism from redistribution failed because the
greatest amount of freedom isn’t consistent with the fair share of liberties.
3. Fallacy of rights
Any claims that argue that capitalism creates no unfreedom presuppose a theory of rights.
This is of course a moralised definition which needs a prior argument for the existence of
rights.
Then liberty can no longer playa role in deciding between competing theories of rights.
We can only choose between their accounts of moralized freedom by first choosing
between their accounts of our moral rights.
Both egalitarian liberalism and libertarianism are using non-moralised definition when
 opposing their rivals, and using moralised definition when arguing for themselves.
In other words they must first prove that their definition is right and superior to their rival.
4. Any approach for libertarianism
It’s hard for libertarianism to defend itself by showing that the gains in neutral liberty from
allowing private property outweigh the losses.
Moreover, even if capitalism did increase one's neutral freedom, we would still want to
know how important these neutral freedoms are.
Certainly control of property is essential to pursing our purposes, but only when we
actually have it.
So whatever the relationship between property and purposive freedom, the aim of
providing the greatest equal freedom suggests an equal distribution of property, not
unrestricted capitalism.
The formal rights of self-ownership is important mostly because it can lead to sufficient
rights.
On a moralised definition unrestricted property-ownership could be deduced from either
moral equality or mutual advantage.
5. Elimination of liberty
Our commitment to certain liberties does not derive from any general right to liberty, but
from their role in the best theory of moral equality.
Contrary to Gordon, it's not the specification of liberty that fails the libertarianism, but the
failure to specify them, that obscures the real issues.
Whenever someone tries to defend the free market, or anything else, on the grounds of
freedom, we must demand that they specify which people are free to do which sorts of
acts;
And then ask why those people have a legitimate claim to those liberties-i.e. which
interests are promoted by these liberties,
And which account of equality or mutual advantage tells us that we ought to attend to
those interests in that way.

The Politics of Libertarianism

1. Complexion in a real world
Libertarianism gains much of its popularity from a kind of 'slippery-slope' argument which
draws attention to the ever-increasing costs of trying to meet the principle of equalizing
circumstances.
They argue that the attempt to rectify natural inequalities will lead to ‘the road to serfdom’.
When applying our principles to individuals (because of natural inequalities), it’s far less
obvious whether those differences are due to choices or circumstances.
This recalls us of the board line between private and public, and of course in classical
 liberalism welfare state could also be viewed as intervention.
2. An inviolable line and the slippery slope
In fact liberals has interfered into the very part of a person’s identity, then to avoid the
slippery slope one must first draw a line between choice and circumstances.
Difference in effort are sometimes related to differences in self-respect, and we may have
to extend the principle to genetic engineering.
It’s quite confusing why we wouldn’t accept the same for all but otherwise choose to make
compensate for them. And in fact if everyone is the same intelligent no one would offer to
do some highly risky work.
On Dworkin’s own theory people’s natural talents are just part of their circumstances while
he also argues that some features of our human embodiment can be both part of the
person (in the sense of a constitutive part of our identity) and part of a person's
circumstances (a resource).
It’s interesting that the proviso ‘endowment-insensitive and ambition-sensitive’ fails to kick
the point, because one’s circumstances would influence his choices, and to rectify the
differences in endowment will lead to the same in ambition. The goal of communism that
‘from each according to his ability’ and ‘to each according to his needs’ may just be a bride
alternative to this eternal dilemma.
In this sense libertarianism in practice just draw a different line or extend this strategy into
circumstances.
My intuition is that we may not make everyone the same but instead treat everyone who’s
the same in a specific standard the same, and never introduce unnecessary points when
judging. And we try to eliminate those unrelated standards. How about, when people
paying the same workforce, we return them the same revenue? Then we come back to
Rawls’ saying that ‘treat everyone as equal socially, and compensate them naturally. But
how to solve the conflicts between a disabled one and his walking dream?
It’s precisely the uncertainty of drawing that makes libertarianism so famous.
3. The trend of New Right
There’s no doubt a shift to the right in the 1980s and 1990s in many countries.
But the core principles lies behind New Right isn’t libertarianism.
the New Right argues that the welfare state has promoted passivity amongst the poor,
without actually improving their life-chances, and created a culture of dependency
(workfare programmes).
The conflicts between welfare state and the right-wing policies is which could best
interprète the principles of egalitarian liberalism, not on whether to protect the vulnerable,
but on empirical questions about who really is involuntarily disadvantaged.
4. Four empirical questions between the application of theories
libertarians insist that the state is prohibited from even trying to remedy such
circumstances, since these attempts would violate sacred property rights.
There’s also decline in 'managerial optimism' widespread throughout the Western
democracies in which citizens don’t trust the efficiency of their government to rectify social
inequality.
They differ in the reasons why people getting poor and whether the system of
redistribution really helps.
They differ in whether the welfare state helps or instead just created a class of dependants.
They differ in which of the choice and circumstances come first when they’re mixed and
whether to make conditional (proved unlucky) redistribution or the revolution of a society.
They differ in the capacity of the state to remedy involuntary disadvantages.