I agree that these aren't new concepts, but I also think that sometimes new words, new labels are helpful for breaking free from ones whose common usage has shifted.

To this end, a few of us who self-identify as “liberaltarians” are starting an open, group blog over at http://www.liberaltarian.net — still in the very early stages of figuring out what to do with it, but if you're interested in contributing via posts, comments, or even reposting what you've written here, we'd love to have you as part of the discussion.

“Hayek himself made the slippery slope argument powerfully, though unsoundly.”

I think these initiatives at creating international order are far closer to a form of central planning or an agreement between cartels than they are to leaving it all up to the market. Perhaps the success of the EU is that it involves both deepening markets and co-ordinating the rules under which markets operate across countries.

If this is what you mean by central planning, then sign me up as an advocate of central planning! Of course, these sorts of agreements ultimately rest on unanimous consent (on the part of the political leaders if not individual citizens), and without that consent, the agreements have no force. So if this is what is meant by central planning, I am all for it.

Does your dog own your house?

Incidentally, all of the government interventions which you think justify even more interference on compensatory grounds are interventions that libertarians consistently argue against, including the limited liability of corporations. Government interventions no more justify compensatory interventions than the existence of the welfare state justifies restrictions on immigration, a canard that all too many libertarians fall for themselves.

In any case if property rights for individuals where weak as a matter of natural rights, the right for the government to control, seize, or dispose of the property would be similarly weak. Even if the individuals right to the property is in question, that doesn’t mean the government has a right to it.

“The world as a whole is not a planned society. There is no central planner who implements international property rights. Yet individual sovereign nations generally respect each other’s property rights, and there is a large body of law that developed to govern these sorts of international property disputes. Yet this law and this legal system was never centrally planned. How can this be?”

I would have thought that about 500 years of war in Europe helped produce our current happy situation where individual sovereign nations so clearly respect each other’s property rights (disregarding Iraq).

Now, how did Europe attempt to get out of its history of war – well there was the Treaty of Westphalia (1648), the Congress of Vienna (1815), the League of Nations and then the United Nations, and most successfully – albeit only for a comparatively short time so far – the European Union.

I think these initiatives at creating international order are far closer to a form of central planning or an agreement between cartels than they are to leaving it all up to the market. Perhaps the success of the EU is that it involves both deepening markets and co-ordinating the rules under which markets operate across countries.

1. I’m a cultural libertarian who is convinced that anti-X legislation (where ‘X’ isn’t fundamentally about money) is ‘bad’. Specifically, the ‘War on drugsgunsabortiongayshorsemeatsex’ waged at the behest of ‘cultural conservatives’ is ‘bad’.

2. I’m even sympathetic to the idea that anti-X legislation (where ‘X’ IS about money) should be viewed with profound skepticism. But that’s because;

3. What I share with many modern ‘liberals’ (and anarchists) is the notion that the modern capitalist ‘corporation’ has become so powerful that at times it eclipses ‘the state’ as a threat to freedom because it has become so effective at manipulating ‘the state’.

4. That said, I’m really open to ideas like negative income tax brackets, free trade, and reducing regulations on the self-employed.

But then, I’ve read Hayek, and I submit his motivation in opposing things like unemployment assurance and food stamps had more to do with his convictions about the need for clear labor market price signals than an aversion to income re-distribution.

Then there’s the special privilege of legal personhood and limited liability granted to corporations, the public has every right to “charge” a price for granting that since it is not (pace the phony SCOTUS decision that is actually based on misrepresentation of the judgment anyway) a natural right. Also, those acquiring gains could not have, could not even talk or use numbers, without the “intellectual property” of all prior civilization.” The public thus has the right to demand quid pro quo for the general welfare for such a gift.

I could go on, but one thing you can be sure of: although articles in Wikipedia about libertarianism, anarcho-capitalism etc, will reveal these sorts of little caveats, public expressions by libertarians give the pretense that there’s no quid pro quo, no unnaturalness in the “private” economy to justify compensatory government “interference”, to produce quite rightly the classic modern liberal state with its safety-nets

tyrannogenius

Well I suppose you could consider the special interest benefits the government doles out to amount to something of a kleptocracy, but that is probably too strong of term. Also its the functioning of our democracy that is rewarding special interests not any move towards monarchy. The stealing of the wealth may sometimes be for corporations, but its done by politicians, and it would be reduced by reducing the role of the government in trying to control and direct the economy.

That’s statement is just bizarre. You don’t have 1 percent of 1 percent in the US, either in general or just looking at the very wealthy, who support a monarchy for the US.

Plutocracy, cleptocracy or Monarchy….. pretty much all the same and pretty much what are politicians cater to. The statement is not bizzare but the stealing of democracy is bizarre and wrong. For the common person it doesn’t matter if it’s the King or the Corporate CEO who steals their wealth. The result is the same.