Para Bryan Caplan, la libertad es una presunción: mientras no se demuestre que vale la pena restringir la libertad en una situación concreta, es mejor respetarla. La economía sirve para demostrar que en la inmensa mayoría de casos no es eficiente restringir la libertad.
[I]sn’t libertarianism just another “abstract grand moral theory” subject to all kinds of devastating counter-examples? If you take libertarian principles as absolute, then the answer is Yes. As I speak, everyone in this room is shooting carbon dioxide molecules at other people without their consent.
Note, however, that I was careful to say that it is “normally” wrong to violate the liberty of others. If you’ve got a good reason to violate liberty, I’m open to it. “We’ll all die if we stop breathing” is a pretty good reason. In contrast, “Most of us want to rob them,” is an embarrassingly bad reason.
If this is really my view, why bother to study economics? My answer: When someone says there is a “good reason” for a regulation or a tax, we can use economics see whether the story holds water. If someone says that we need to restrict the liberty of American consumers to buy Japanese goods in order to prevent the destruction of the U.S. economy, we can see if the textbook chapter on international trade agrees. The same applies if someone says it would be more efficient to raise taxes and spend the revenue on education. Maybe the economics will check out, and we’ll have to think about whether we have a good enough reason to violate liberty. More often, though, the economics doesn’t check out – and we avoid violating the liberty of another human being for less than no reason at all.
Este debate entre Caplan y Robin Hanson sobre el mismo tema es bastante interesante.
