Buen artículo de Stephan Kinsella sintetizando las bases del liberalismo. Su discusión de los fundamentos de la ética de la no-agresión y los derechos de propiedad (sobre el propio cuerpo y los bienes externos) es excelente. Es una lectura breve muy recomendable (atención a las notas al pie) para los que todavía no sabéis muy bien en qué consiste esto del liberalismo, y no menos recomendable para los que, sabiendo en qué consiste, queréis explorar cuál es su justificación última y a qué conclusiones nos llevan sus principios.
- What is Libertarianism? (pdf) - Stephan Kinsella
Kinsella responde a uno de sus críticos aquí.
Copio un fragmento relevante sobre la justificación última de los derechos individuales: la preferencia subjetiva por la cooperación y la ausencia de conflictos violentos.
This framework for rights is motivated by the libertarian’s consistent and principled valuing of peaceful interaction and cooperation— in short, of civilized behavior. A parallel to the Misesian view of human action may be illuminating here. According to Mises, human action is aimed at alleviating some felt uneasiness. Thus, means are employed, according to the actor’s understanding of causal laws, to achieve various ends—ultimately, the removal of
some felt uneasiness. Civilized man feels uneasy at the prospect of violent struggles with others. On the one hand, he wants, for some practical reason, to control a given scarce resource and to use violence against another person, if necessary, to achieve this control. On the other hand, he also wants to avoid a wrongful use of force. Civilized man, for some reason, feels reluctance, uneasiness, at the prospect of violent interaction with his fellow man. Perhaps he has reluctance to violently clash with others over certain objects because he has empathy with them.31 Perhaps the instinct to cooperate has is a result of social evolution. (...)
Whatever the reason, because of this uneasiness, when there is the potential for violent conflict, the civilized man seeks justification for the forceful control of a scarce resource which he desires but which some other person opposes. Empathy—or whatever spurs man to adopt the libertarian grundnorms—gives rise to a certain form of uneasiness, which gives rise to ethical action. Civilized man may be defined as he who seeks justification for the use of interpersonal violence. When the inevitable need to engage in violence arises—for defense of life or property—civilized man seeks justification. Naturally, since this justification-seeking is done by people who are inclined to reason and peace (justification is after all a peaceful activity that necessarily takes place during discourse), what they seek are rules that are fair, potentially acceptable to all, grounded in the nature of things, universalizable, and that permit conflict-free use of resources. Libertarian property rights principles emerge as the only candidate that satisfies these criteria.
