Well, I'm not here to defend Ron Paul's political platform, or the views of Rand, Nozick, or Hayek.

I'm inclined to agree that there are some serious structural reasons why libertarian minarchism is so prone to fetishize state power over every other form of bullying power, and why it is prone to neglect the need for public, democratic responses to entrenched prejudice, corporate power, social and economic forms of domination, etc. To the extent that this is true, I think that's something that sucks about libertarian minarchism. But I am not a minarchist. (And if the author thinks that that's the only kind of American libertarian that there is -- or that American libertarianism was, say, founded by "Nozick et al." (!) -- then I can only gently suggest that they are writing outside of their area of expertise.)

I am an anarchist, and as such I have a fundamentally different picture of what the public is and how it relates to the state. My problem with both conventional minarchism and post-classical liberalism is their shared premise that a public or democratic response necessarily means the use of legal force by a democratically-governed state. Conventional minarchists take this as a reason to narrow public action to the tiny number of circumstances in which they consider the use of legal force acceptable. Post-classical liberals take it as a reason to broaden the sphere of legal force to any circumstance where public action is called for. I take it as a reason to reject the underlying authoritarian theory of politics in favor of a more supple conception, which allows  for the importance of public action through grassroots organizing and radical, non-state social movements.

Whether or not this view is representative of "American libertarian" depends of course on the American libertarian that you ask. Of course there are many people who call themselves libertarians who are quite committed to a relatively conservative, minarchistic view. But there are many others who are not. And I would argue that there is nothing in the core commitments of libertarian politics which would require them to be so. (In fact I would argue that the minarchists are engaged in a fundamental inconsistency, and that the most consistent libertarians must be both anarchists and anti-authoritarians of a very broad and militant sort.)

Hope this helps.

Jefferson Smith: "The point about farms was a bit of Socratic questioning . . ."

That's fine, but Socratic questioning, in order to be effective, needs to start from a view that the interlocutor has expressed, not a view that you've attributed to them without their consent. Radical libertarians do not just hold the theory that whoever has, should keep, no matter how they came to have what they have. They have a particular account of where rightful claims of ownership come from. And if you choose to disregard that theory in favor of the ahistorical fantasy that the conquest of the Americas somehow resembled libertarian accounts of just acquisition, then whatever you're interrogating, it's not the actual libertarian position.

Jefferson Smith: "Where has there ever been a society of any size or complexity that arose without any acts of force or conquest?"

Well, I wouldn't know, but (1) I didn't say anything about justifying "a society," either small or large (*); I said something about justifying particular claims of land ownership.  Now, it's certainly true that given my stated standards (honest labor or consensual transfer, not conquest or arbitrary claim) a great deal, perhaps the overwhelming majority, of all the land claims in every known society are illegitimate claims rather than legitimate ones. But so what? To point out that a radical doctrine has radical conclusions is not exactly an argument against it, and to say that things ought to be different from the way they are is not in and of itself to indulge in an "ahistorical fantasy."

In any case, (2) the fact there are no societies of any size or complexity without murder and rape, is not to prove that we ought simply to accept murder and rape as being just as good a basis for social or sexual life as their opposites as are peace or mutual consent. Perhaps these things are inescapable, but if they are, they are inescapable evils, and the fact that they exist as a social reality is no reason at all against advancing theories of human rights which condemn them unequivocally.

(* I don't actually think that "a society" is the sort of thing that calls for justification . . .)

is off to read True Civilization, and Debt: The First 5,000 Years.

The concern is not about the definition of "choosing to stay," for some possible valence of the term "choosing." The concern is about the attempt to read consent to "an implied contract" off of the choice. If your theory of implicit consent leads to the conclusion that African Americans consented to the authority of the U.S. government simply in virtue of not emigrating after the abolition of slavery (why should they have to? where should they go? nevermind the costs involved, the fact that those costs were imposed by centuries of inhuman violence and coercion, etc.)  -- well, then I take that as a decisive reductio of your theory of implicit consent. The standards you are using for inferring consent are not good standards, since they lead you to find "consent" in circumstances that have nothing to do with consent, and everything to do with a history of massive unrelenting coercion.

Jefferson Smith: "You have no objections to farms, right? Even big farms? . . . Well, who owns Farm USA?"

Nobody.

Rightful ownership is based on honest labor or consensual transfer from a prior rightful owner. Not on feudal privilege, arbitrary claim, violent conquest, or transfer from a prior conqueror. But the U.S. government's claims to authority over the territory within its borders are derived entirely from the latter, not from the former.

This should not be surprising: while libertarians usually accept no de jure restraints on the size of landholdings or the accumulation of resources, there are natural and social pressures which will tend to impose some de facto limits. It's pretty hard to amass an empire the size of a fricking continent if you can only amass what you've earned by your own labor and by the consensual cooperation of others. If on the other hand the liberal response to radical libertarianism is that you could model our political obligations by reconsidering us all as perpetual tenants of the biggest, nastiest landlord in the history of the earth -- a landlord with accumulated holdings spanning the globe, with trillions of dollars in resources, millions of hired enforcers and a nuclear arsenal -- with the consolation is that each of us tenants has a fraction of a fraction of a share in the ownership of the landlord's holding company, and every four years or so the tenant can always put this less-than-a-millionth vote towards an attempt to constrain the landlord's worst excesses over the next four years -- then I have to wonder who here is defending a doctrine of social and economic inequality.

Well. I'll argue otherwise. Personally, I'm of the opinion that if your theory of political legitimacy
leads you to the thought, "Well, if the blacks don't like it why don't
they go back to Africa?" then your theory of political legitimacy kind
of sucks. And certainly hasn't got much to do with what anyone would
recognize as meaningful consent  in any non-political relationship.

Anyone here have contacts with radical or independent community bookstores in Texas — especially in San Antonio, Houston, or the D/FW metroplex — which might be interested in hosting a book event for Markets Not Capitalism during the first couple weeks of February? Anyone interested in helping us get the book event set up?

If so, let me know! I am going to be driving out that way with a trunk full of anarchist agitprop and would be happy to stop off at as many places as possible along the way . . . .

is enjoying the Christmas gift of new solar charger for cell phones / Kindles / MP3 players / etc. Currently trying to figure out a good place to actually charge it during the day.

Joshua House: I am afraid that the type of individualistic non-labeling advocated
here, though useful in philosophical circles, will impede any kind of
political movement. . . .  Whatever the reasons for it, hipster libertarianism is detrimental to
any kind of political movement. Successful political movements will
require a big-tent approach. . . . Insofar as political movements go, this kind of hipster individualism
needs to be stopped if libertarians, like Gary Johnson or Ron Paul, are
going to win any kind of election.

O.K. So then maybe we won't have a "political movement." And maybe Gary Johnson or Ron Paul might not win any elections, either. Maybe we will just have philosophical circles. Is this a big loss? If it seems like one, then that may have something to do with the theory you hold about how people ought to talk and interact with each other. I am pretty much fine with saying that if the cost of a movement or a party is oversimplifying, lumping, papering over real differences or swallowing our debates in the name of political expediency, then that movement or that party sucks, and necessarily has very little to do with the sort of society that I should like to live in -- because the sort of society I should like to live in is one which, inter alia, supremely values honest debate, serious inquiry, intellectual experimentation, individuality and principled and creative dissent over conformity, political palavering and partisan rhetoric. I am not sure that that really need be the cost of a movement, but if it isn't, then they can pretty well cope with some idiosyncrasies and philosophical debates about self-labeling or the lack thereof, even if it complicates the "messaging" or some similarly cheap bit of psychosocial manipulation.

I agree with almost none of the stances that Will takes in the above post (aside from being at least as hesitant as he is to see my views conflated with Ron Paul's). But if the argument against those stances is supposed to be that he ought to get over his qualms and take one for the party if "we" are ever going to win elections, then slap me silly and call me "liberaltarian." I sure didn't sign on to this gig in order to make it easier for Republican politicians to win elections.

As long as we're getting a libertarian club together here's my laundry list of things I want fixed...

I don't know where "clubs" come into this; nothing in Matt's article or in mine has anything in particular to do with things like movement strategy.  It has to do with the logical relationship between a philosophical commitment to libertarianism and a philosophical commitment to other social or philosophical beliefs. The best way to pursue these beliefs -- if you want to pursue them at all -- is a separate question.

That said, the "laundry list" approach that you criticize here is specifically discussed and rejected (or put over to the margin) in the discussion of "entailment thickness" and "conjunction thickness." (The "laundry list" approach being an instance of "conjunction thickness," which is not really a thick conception of libertarianism in any particularly interesting sense.)

But the point of the article is specifically that there are ways in which a "social preference" might be meaningfully connected with a commitment to libertarianism, even though it is neither identical with the libertarian commitment, nor something which is just tacked on alongside libertarianism. There are at least four other broad ways in which the commitment and the preference might be logically connected with each other (I discuss them as thickness for application, thickness from grounds, strategic thickness, and thickness from consequences; Matt's discussion in this post is mainly drawing on what I called "thickness from grounds"). Maybe you think that these sorts of reasons are illegitimate, inadequate, irrelevant, or just a bit silly; but if you, you haven't yet given an argument for that view.