The title of my post says most of it for me. Silber is spot on as to the biggest and most frustrating theoretical blind spot in almost every libertarian writer I have read. I think a refusal to look at context as important also helps explain the inability to empathize much with those oppressed by cultural values and practices. Perhaps this is why so many libertarians justify their libertarian views solely in some combination of economics - the most abstract and depersonalized of social sciences in my opinion - and theories of rights that are all thumbs when dealing with anyone other than competent rational self-supporting adults. Rothbard's comments on children are an example here, but unique only in their extremism.
I no longer call myself a libertarian, not because I turn my back on non-coercive social relationships, or Austrian theory, or the superiority of markets. I share all that. But I cringe when some identify me with a position that in so many cases is utterly blind to so much that profoundly influences the quality of human life. A position that seems to feel that whatever does not easily fit the theoretical framework they support simply does not exist as a matter of importance.
A simple but revealing example: the only people I have ever heard justify (voluntary ) slavery are libertarians. As if slavery could ever be voluntary. And in complete blindness to the circumstances that might bring a person to sell themselves into slavery to support their family or some such. Twice I encountered this attitude at IHS conferences years ago. Once more recently from a libertarian grad student a few years ago. For those who say this is an aberration - why is it an aberration that I ONLY find among libertarians? Why did the two at the HIS conferences need to hear some scholar in authority (I can't remember who) to tell them it wasn't really a libertarian position in order for them to abandon the idea?
by Gus diZerega on February 1, 2005 at 10:19 AM