My comments for the upcoming Molinari Society session in New York this coming week are now online.
I can’t remember if I ever posted that paper on Nozick and class conflict that I presented at the last Alabama Philosophical Society meeting, but if not, that’s online too.
Check out Kevin Carson on Rachel Carson, DDT, and global warming. (And don’t miss ex-agorist J. Neil Schulman’s creative interpretive stylings in the comments section.)
The papers for the Molinari Society’s upcoming IP symposium at the APA are now online. (For those planning to attend, I’ll announce the session location here as soon as I can wrest the information from the APA’s bony fingers at registration.)
I notice that the Ayn Rand Society session at the APA is also devoted to intellectual property. So hours of libertarian IP debate await us in New York! (Well, using “us” loosely; something else I’m committed to conflicts with the Randian meeting, so I will have to miss it. But, y’know, them us.)
Addendum, 9-30-2010:
Ironically, this very post announcing our panel opposing the form of censorship known as “copyright” has today been victimsed by the form of censorship known as “copyright.”
Brad Spangler has an excellent post on the relationship between thick libertarianism and anti-electoralism.
Today is the eighth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. I haven’t got a goddamn thing new to say about them – but check out my previous comments here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
Today is also the seventh anniversary of this blog, pursuant whereto I present the latest batch of Austro-Athenian Imperial Statistics. (For previous blog stats see here.) Thanks, Brandon!
Orange Beach
In addition, today is the seventh anniversary of the Molinari Institute, so it seems appropriate to announce (even though the detailed schedule won’t be posted online for another few days) that Charles Johnson and I will both be speaking on Molinarian topics at the Alabama Philosophical Society meetings in Orange Beach, 2-3 October.
Here are the abstracts:
Charles Johnson (Molinari Institute): “Can Anyone Ever Consent to the State?”
I defend a strong incompatibility claim that anything which could count as a state is conceptually incompatible with any possible consent of the governed. Not only do states necessarily operate without the unanimous consent of all the governed, but in fact, as territorial monopolies on the use of force, states preclude any subject from consenting – even those who want it, and actively try to give consent to government. If government authority is legitimate, it must derive from an account of legitimate command and subordination; any principled requirement for consent and political equality entails anarchism.Roderick T. Long (Auburn University): “Left-Libertarianism, Class Conflict, and Historical Theories of Distributive Justice”
A frequent objection to the “historical” (in Nozick’s sense) approach to distributive justice is that it serves to legitimate existing massive inequalities of wealth. I argue that, on the contrary, the historical approach, thanks to its fit with the libertarian theory of class conflict, represents a far more effective tool for challenging these inequalities than do relatively end-oriented approaches such as utilitarianism and Rawlsianism.
In imperial China it was common to describe officials as “Confucians when in office, Taoists when out of office.” Similarly, in modern western democracies whichever party is out of power tends to ramp up the libertarian rhetoric. Hence we hear all this anti-government talk from the Republicans during the Clinton and Obama eras, but (apart from a few honourable exceptions) where was it during the Bush era? And likewise for the Democrats, in the Bush era suspicion of government power was the order of the day, but now (again, apart from a few honourable exceptions) such suspicion is dismissed as evidence of lunacy.
Keith Olbermann
Olbermann and his ilk are perfect examples. Last year Olbermann used to address President Bush in terms such as these:
If you believe in the seamless mutuality of government and big business, come out and say it! There is a dictionary definition, one word that describes that toxic blend.
You’re a fascist – get them to print you a T-shirt with fascist on it! …
The lot of you are the symbolic descendants of the despotic middle managers of some banana republic to whom “freedom” is an ironic brand name, a word you reach for when you want to get away with its opposite.
Thus, Mr. Bush, your panoramic invasion of privacy is dressed up as “protecting America.”
Thus, Mr. Bush, your indiscriminate domestic spying becomes the focused monitoring only of “terrorist communications.”
And so on, quite enjoyably. But nowadays anyone expressing similar sentiments toward our current President Incarnate would get nothing from Olbermann but ridicule, outrage, and probably some veiled threats of violence.
Which bring me to my point (and I do have one, right on top of my head), which is to recommend Kevin Carson’s critique of Olbermann-style liberalism.
Also check out the latest installment of Kevin’s critique of Sloanism.
And, in mostly unrelated news, check out Stephan Kinsella’s latest piece on IP.