Libertarianism is a political philosophy. It is concerned solely with the proper use of force. Its core premise is that it should be illegal to threaten or initiate violence against a person or his property without his permission; force is justified only in defense or retaliation.That is it, in a nutshell. The rest is mere explanation, elaboration, and qualification.
Source: Libertarianism and Libertinism (1994)
[link] #62Negative rights are independent of time, space, location, and condition. They apply right now, but they were just as appropriate and pertinent ten thousand years ago. They are completely independent of circumstances. It was a rights violation for one caveman to club another over the head in prehistoric times; this will hold true for spacemen ten thousand years in the future.
Source: Neglect of the Marketplace (1987)
[link] #145Voluntary communism, together with laissez-faire capitalism, has nothing to be ashamed of on moral and economic grounds. They can each hold up their heads, high. Far from enemies, they are merely opposite sides of the same voluntaristic coin. Together, they must battle state coercion, whether called State Capitalism or State Socialism. The point is, "left" vs. "right" is a red herring. The reddest and perhaps most misleading red herring in all political-economic theory.
Source: The Case for Discrimination (2010)
[link] #183If we as a society want to cure unemployment, raise real wages, and in other such ways improve this sector of our economy, we will base public policy on private property rights, the non-aggression principle and the law of free association. In the free and prosperous society, everyone may do precisely as he pleases, provided only that he does not initiate violence against non-aggressors.
Source: Labor Economics from a Free Market Perspective (2008)
[link] #219Libertarianism is neither of the left nor of the right. It is unique. It is sui generis. It is apart from left and right. The left right political spectrum simply has no room for libertarianism. Think of an equilateral triangle, with libertarianism at one corner, the left at a second corner and the right at the third corner. We are equally distant from both of those misbegotten political economic philosophies. No, better yet, think in terms of an isosceles triangle, with us at the top and the two of them at the bottom, indicating they have more in common with each other than with us.
Source: Left and Right; And Libertarianism (2013)
[link] #225If it moves, privatize it; if it doesn’t move, privatize it. Since everything either moves or doesn’t move, privatize everything.
Source: The Case for Privatization - of Everything (2016)
[link] #340The true debate is not between left and right. It is, rather, between voluntarism (whether of left or right) and coercivism (whether of left or right). The sooner this lesson is learned, the sooner can we make sense of our otherwise paradoxical political debates.
Source: The Case for Discrimination (2010)
[link] #430To argue that a tax-collecting government can legitimately protect its citizens against aggression is to contradict oneself, since such an entity starts off the entire process by doing the very opposite of protecting those under its control.
Source: The Myth of National Defense (2003)
[link] #442About Walter Block
Walter Edward Block (born August 21, 1941) is an American Austrian School economist and anarcho-capitalist theorist. He was the Harold E. Wirth Eminent Scholar Endowed Chair in Economics at the School of Business at Loyola University New Orleans and a former senior fellow of the non-profit think-tank Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama. He is best known for his 1976 book Defending the Undefendable, which takes contrarian positions in defending acts which are illegal or disreputable but Block argues are actually victimless crimes or benefit the public.
Walter Block was born in Brooklyn, New York to Jewish parents Abraham Block, a certified public accountant, and Ruth Block, a paralegal, both of whom Block has said were liberals. He attended James Madison High School, where Bernie Sanders was on his track team. Block earned his Ph.D. degree in economics from Columbia University and wrote his dissertation on rent control in the United States under Gary Becker. Block identifies himself as a "devout atheist".
In an interview, Block stated, "In the fifties and sixties, I was just another commie living in Brooklyn." Block credits his shift to libertarianism to his having attended a lecture by Ayn Rand while he was an undergraduate student. Block later attended a luncheon with Rand, Nathaniel Branden, and Leonard Peikoff at which Branden suggested that Block read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand and Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt. He says that the final push to his conversion came from having met Austrian School and anarcho-capitalist theorist Murray Rothbard. While Block is an anarcho-capitalist and, unlike the Objectivist followers of Ayn Rand, ultimately opposed to limited or minimal government; and even while criticizing her movement as "cultish", Block still describes himself as "a big fan" of Rand and considers Atlas Shrugged to be "the best novel ever written."
Walter Block has written two dozen books. He is best known for his 1976 book Defending the Undefendable. The book has been translated into ten foreign languages. Fox Business Channel pundit John Stossel wrote that Block's "eye-opening" book inspired him to see that economics "illuminates what common sense overlooks."
Additional Resources
Walter Block - Mises InstituteHow Dr Walter Block Became A Voluntaryist Libertarian - YouTube
