Cato Institute Publishes Leftist Screed!, Pars Quarta

Nov 25 by Roderick | 9 comments

Cato Institute building with Alliance of the Libertarian Left logo superimposedNow up at Cato Unbound: my latest response to Yglesias and Baker, Horwitz’s latest response to Yglesias, and most recently my response to Peter Klein, Will Wilkinson, and J. H. Huebert and Walter Block.

Charles Johnson also has a reply to Walter and Huebert up; I sent in my response before I saw Charles’s, but we ended up making similar points.

I hope Yglesias responds before things wind up; he’s only spoken twice so far.

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9 comments

  1. Gabriel’s avatar

    Gabriel on November 25, 2008 at 2:00 pm

    Speaking of state barriers to small business, check this out:

    http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3017870

    Apparently selling raw milk or transporting it across state lines for selling is illegal in half the 50 states!

  2. Administrator’s avatar

    Administrator on November 25, 2008 at 2:02 pm

    We can’t have people transporting raw milk across state lines for immoral purposes. Otherwise there would be anarchy.

  3. Gabriel’s avatar

    Gabriel on November 25, 2008 at 2:53 pm

    Actually some of the people in that thread made some vague references to typhoid and disease. Have you written anywhere about the rights of people with contagious diseases? (A man was briefly imprisoned a few years ago for having antibiotic-resistant TB I believe.)

  4. Administrator’s avatar

    Administrator on November 25, 2008 at 4:41 pm

    Charles also has a post on (inter alia) Yglesias.

  5. Administrator’s avatar

    Administrator on November 25, 2008 at 4:52 pm

    Have you written anywhere about the rights of people with contagious diseases?

    I can’t recall whether I have. But I suppose the short version would be a) people do have the right to defend themselves against innocent threats, but b) the defense must not be disproportionate to the severity of the threat (where severity includes both badness of outcome and likelihood of outcome).

    How to apply that test in any specific case? Easy, just ask the phronimos.

  7. Michael Wiebe’s avatar

    Michael Wiebe on November 25, 2008 at 9:43 pm

    Good response to the Walter/Huebert piece.

    Their article was very bizarre.

  8. Black Bloke’s avatar

    Black Bloke on November 25, 2008 at 9:53 pm

    I remembered this interesting piece from Robert Murphy about quarantines that suddenly seems relevant:

    How the Free Market Would Handle Quarantines
    http://mises.org/story/2635

  9. Administrator’s avatar

    Administrator on November 25, 2008 at 11:12 pm

    Mike — thanks for reminding me.

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