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The human rights that are defended in libertarian literature tend to be limited in scope, which entails that the duties that people can be compelled to fulfil are similarly minimal. For this reason a commitment to libertarianism tends to be seen as incompatible with support for subsistence rights, enforceable positive duties, and redistributive taxation, since each one of these issues may require the infringement of libertarian property rights. In this thesis I aim to challenge these assumptions about libertarianism and to show that if a more plausible reading of libertarianism is adopted – what has come to be known as left-libertarianism – then this will generate a more substantial range of rights and correlative duties which are not only compatible with redistributive taxation, but in fact entail it. I show that libertarianism, despite its contention that human rights are exclusively negative, does not rule out subsistence rights provided that these are understood as negative rights, for example: a right not to be deprived of the means of subsistence, or deprived of a clean living environment. Negative rights can be violated not only by individuals or by institutions, but also by individuals supporting institutions. In order to respect the negative rights of others it is necessary to refrain from supporting or contributing to institutions that violate these rights. Moreover, failure to respect these rights brings about a positive duty of rectification, demonstrating the potential for positive libertarian duties even in the absence of positive rights. Since the manner in which rights can be violated is extensive, so is the scope of those individuals that owe rectification. The fundamental libertarian rights of self-ownership, which I characterise as three property rights – over the body, over the faculties (including talents, abilities and labour) and over what one can produce through exercising those faculties in conjunction with the body – demonstrate how we can come to have property rights over external objects, but self-ownership does not confer permanent private property rights over unlimited external worldly resources. In fact, a robust right of self-ownership is incompatible with the radically inegalitarian appropriation with which libertarianism is ordinarily associated. Given the equal rights of selfownership of every individual, it is far more plausible to conceive of the world as held in some egalitarian manner, rather than as unowned and available for appropriation in such a way that would disadvantage latecomers. I propose an egalitarian understanding of world ownership which comprises common ownership of land, and joint ownership of other external worldly resources such as oil and minerals. Taking the injustice of radically inegalitarian appropriation in conjunction with a duty to rectify past injustices, there follows a libertarian argument for redistribution, but crucially this redistributive taxation is collected not on income but on natural resource use. On a left-libertarian theory of rights, then, there is no right to appropriate unlimited resources, but there is a right to redistribution in the event of past injustices, including the misappropriation of worldly resources.

This thesis shows that exploitation can arise from a just background, via just steps, when we exercise our moral rights. The theory rests on the idea that exploitation can arise via a special category of luck, which I call socially constructed luck. By taking into account what John Rawls calls background justice and what G.A. Cohen refers to as an accumulation problem, I argue that socially constructed luck is brought about through a cumulative process of people freely exercising their moral rights in the pursuit of their own conception of the good life. Unless the negative effects of this type of luck are offset, exploitative interactions can arise where people have no reasonable alternative but to enter a particular transaction. Socially constructed luck can play a direct role in privileging some individuals at the expense of others and allows for the extraction of surplus benefits. Importantly, by showing that luck egalitarianism should be understood within a conception of exploitation, the thesis not only provides a deeper understanding of how the luck egalitarian and relational egalitarian views align, but also justifies the introduction of a basic right to a reasonable alternative.

Ce travail porte sur le consentement à se nuire. L'état doit-il intervenir lorsque des individus consentent à ce qui parait leur être nocif? Cette question soulève la possibilité du paternalisme et de la neutralité de l'État. Le consentement de nuire est un point aveugle de la théorie libérale, et qui concerne en particulier le monde anglo-saxon. Si tous les pays sont concernés par cette question philosophique sérieuse, les Etats-Unis et le Royaume-Uni, du fait de leur héritage libertarien sont plus enclins à être affectés par cette question, la jurisprudence de ces pays en témoigne. Cette thèse interroge les fondements de la théorie libertarienne et libérale, en montrant les ambiguïtés de la notion de consentement. Elle fonde son analyse sur la jurisprudence contemporaine impliquant le consentement à se nuire, en construisant une approche casuistique au problème du consentement de la victime. Ce travail permet de faire une distinction entre deux types de cas: ceux où le consentement est motivé par les forces du marché - le consentement y est souvent contraint; et ceux où le consentement semble être tout à fait volontaire parce qu'il porte sur la sphère de l’intime. / This thesis focuses on consent to harm, and asks what happens when individuals consent to what appears to be harmful. This raises the possibility of paternalism and state neutrality. Consent to harm is a blind spot for liberal theory, and this issue concerns in particular the English-speaking world. If all countries are affected by this serious philosophical question, the US and the UK, because their libertarian tendencies are more prone to be affected by this question, as is visible in the jurisprudence. This work interrogates the premises of libertarian and liberal theory, by showing the ambiguities of the notion of consent. The analysis is based on contemporary jurisprudence involving consent to harm, and constructed on a casuistic approach to the problem of consent to harm. This methodology permits the author to distinguish between two types of cases: those in which consent is motivated by market forces, where consent is often incomplete and coerced; and those in which consent appears to be entirely voluntary because they take place in the intimate sphere.

In this article, I want to explain Michael Otsuka¡¦s idea of distributive justice, the latest theory of the left-libertarianism. Otsuka argued that self-ownership can be combined with a kind of egalitarian ownership principle and he critics that the conflict between self-ownership and equality is an illusion. I will examine Otsuka¡¦s theory about self-ownership, egalitarian proviso and the framework of political societies of voluntarism. And I will point out what is the wrong and right in his theory.

This study addresses the dialectic between two kinds of liberal political philosophy which have strongly influenced Western politics, and remain highly relevant to current debates – libertarian theory and social-liberal theory. In particular, it examines how representative theories on both sides are based on claims about our human nature as reasoning, self- determining, individual agents; and claims about how this nature may be fulsomely expressed or inhibited under different kinds of socio-political conditions. I show that broadly naturalistic claims of this sort support normative claims about aspects of our nature we ought to value, and about the kind of political system we ought to prefer. Social-liberals and libertarians disagree about how human capacities for reasoning, self-determining agency will tend to fare within a liberal State-free market political system. This leads them to different conclusions about the role of the State. The overall approach is to test the relevant claims about our nature and social psychology against current theory and evidence in cognitive neuroscience and epidemiology, and then to interpret the normative implications for each political position. At the heart of the project is a neuroscience-based model of capacities for everyday social reasoning and decision making (‘SRD’ capacities), which I claim offers a plausible, evidence-based account of universal human capacities which both social-liberals and libertarians claim to value. Once in place, the model is employed for critical analysis of data in epidemiological research into aspects of mental health within Western populations. I conclude that certain socioeconomic circumstances commonly encountered within Western societies causally contribute to detrimental impacts on SRD capacities, in the form of psychiatric disorders or diversion behaviours. This material is then used to reinterpret the normative claims of libertarians and social- liberals. I argue that the kind of political system recommended by libertarians will tend to generate conditions which have significant detrimental effects on SRD capacities, which they claim to value; and do so to a greater extent than a social-liberal system. This puts libertarians out of step with their own basic values and initial arguments justifying a liberal State. The libertarian system will also tend to create significant social risks and costs, to the point of being self-undermining. A social-liberal system will tend to mitigate these risks and costs. Thus I argue that, if SRD capacities are regarded as valuable, we have reason to prefer a social-liberal system over a libertarian system. However, in the light of the proposed model, I claim that the ‘standard’ form of contemporary social-liberal politics and programs also has weaknesses. Familiar forms of egalitarian social program partially address some social conditions implicated in undermining SRD capacities, but there are other aspects of the problem which are outrunning the usual methods. The associated risks and liabilities are still cause for prudential concern. A more creative and psychologically astute politics is required. In conclusion I make a number of proposals in that direction, and claim that the project as a whole offers elements of a new social-liberal theory. / http://proxy.library.adelaide.edu.au/login?url= http://library.adelaide.edu.au/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=1457630 / Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Adelaide, School of Humanities, 2009

The goal of my Master's Thesis is to analyze the reasons of Congressman Ron Paul's unsuccessful nomination in US 2012 Presidential elections. The paper is divided into two main chapters; theoretical and applied. The first one is focused on economic policy aspect of his election program, whilst the second is mainly concerned with his communication campaign. In this analysis, I will combine outputs of particular observations of both his presidential campaigns, in 2008 and 2012, with respect to its consistency. Using the political marketing methodology, we should be able to decide whether his fail was caused by the inappropriate selection of election topics, or by the communication campaign itself, or even by combination of both factors.

Political theorists disagree on the origin of justice. According to the cosmopolitan conception of justice, duties of justice are pre-political and universal. According to the political conception of justice, on the other hand, full duties of justice arise within and only within the context of a political community. Which one of these conceptions one adopts will have a comprehensive impact on ethical issues concerning global justice, such as migration ethics and foreign assistance. In this paper I argue that the political conception is problematic, since it cannot be applied in cases of anarchy. Since anarchic societies are not politically organized, the political conception implies that they are not bound by full duties of justice. Thus, the political conception is unable to criticize some rival theories of justice, such as anarchistic libertarianism, for being unjust. Reversely, if one does find anarchic societies unjust, this intuition speaks against the political conception of justice, but in favor of the cosmopolitan conception. I illustrate my argument by applying it in the case of liberal egalitarianism.

It is commonly believed that paternalism is at odds with libertarianism. Recent literature has suggested that there are forms of paternalism which are acceptable to libertarians: namely “nudging”, sometimes even referred to as “libertarian paternalism”. The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, to investigate the taxonomical question of how libertarianism, paternalism and nudging relate to each other. Secondly, to investigate whether, and if so when, paternalism is compatible with libertarianism. I argue that any action which is not coercive is compatible with libertarianism. Thus, any non-coercive paternalist action is compatible with libertarianism. I also argue that there are several paternalist action types, such as nudges, informing and incentivizing, which are not coercive, and thus are compatible with libertarianism.

The diploma thesis aims to confirm whether Pirate parties are liberal and left-libertarian parties and that they are similar to green parties in this way. After 2006 Pirate parties emerged gradually as a new alternative to manage the politics and democracy in Western democracies. Pirates came up with themes such as the fight against copyright or the protection of individuals within the internet. In the first theoretical part of this thesis both liberalism and left-libertarianism as well as Green parties are discussed. The second empirical part deals with Pirate parties. First, their origin and development are described and, with an emphasis on Swedish, German, Icelandic and the Czech Pirate Party - because of their relevance associated with electoral successes -, basic elements of their programmes are introduced. Based on those findings the analysis confronting the elements of liberalism and left-libertarianism with programmes of Pirate parties is performed in the final section of the thesis. The hypothesis that Pirate parties are predominantly left-libertarian parties is proved. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)