Abstract: I am grateful to Fabian Wendt for responding to my evaluation of his work on Moderate Libertarianism. Wendt’s efforts are important because they focus on foundational issues of justice and there is a dearth of quality work on those issues these days. Due to lack of space, the most productive way to structure this brief rejoinder is to focus on two general issues before touching on one smaller point. First, I explain why Wendt offers something like an empirical justification of libertarianism. Here I will be clearer than I originally was about why this is a problem that Wendt needs to address better than he has. It is my hope that this initial discussion paves the way for me to demonstrate my second point—namely, that Wendt’s statement of his own argument for the proviso is either question-begging or unsurprising. I conclude by saying a little bit about Wendt’s discussion of positive obligations.

Keywords: sufficiency proviso, consequentialism, positive rights, self-ownership

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Abstract: Fabian Wendt proposes combining libertarian foundations with a proviso that requires a just system of private property to ensure that everyone has a sufficient amount of resources to pursue projects. He calls this proviso a sufficiency proviso. This proviso is said to have advantages over all rival provisos “because it better coheres with the most plausible rationale for endorsing a libertarian theory of justice in the first place” (Wendt 2018b, 169). Given these advantages, he expresses surprise that no other libertarians have defended a sufficiency proviso. I trace Wendt’s argument and identify several weaknesses in it. I argue that, at is stands, the argument for a sufficiency proviso fails.

Keywords: sufficiency proviso, consequentialism, justice, care, self-ownership

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Abstract: Jennifer Bird-Pollan has recently argued that Nozickians are wrong to oppose the estate tax. Promising to argue from within the Nozickian framework, she presses the fundamental point that the estate tax does not violate anyone’s rights: neither the deceased nor their would-be heirs can claim a right to any holdings subject to the estate tax. This paper shows that Bird-Pollan’s discussion fails on three fronts. First, she frequently misinterprets Nozick, and thus does not defend the estate tax from a Nozickian perspective. Second, even if Bird-Pollan is correct in denying that the deceased and their potential heirs have a right to the holdings in question, it does not follow that the estate tax is licit, because Nozickians can oppose it on other grounds. For example, Nozickians may hold that the enforcement of the estate tax will violate other rights people have. The government’s preemptive claims to holdings subject to estate taxes, along with the force required to enforce those claims, are unjustified. The crucial premise motivating these conclusions is the Nozickian denial that our current state possesses the authority to enforce the estate tax. This is the third front on which Bird-Pollan’s argument fails: she must show that Nozickians ought to believe government has the moral authority to enforce the estate tax, yet she makes no effort to do so.

Keywords: Robert Nozick, estate taxes, minimal state

JEL Codes: H24, K34

Download Paper: “Death, Taxes, and Misinterpretations of Robert Nozick: Why Nozickians Can Oppose the Estate Tax”

Abstract: Karl Widerquist has recently argued that libertarians face two dilemmas. The first dilemma arises because, contrary to what Widerquist takes libertarians to suggest, there is no conceptual link between robust property rights and the libertarian state. Private property rights can legitimately yield non-libertarian states. Libertarians must thus remain committed either to robust property rights or the libertarian state. I call this the “Conceptual Dilemma.”

The second dilemma is empirical in nature. Libertarians can try to undermine state property rights by showing that the means by which all present states came to have their property was unjust. However, doing so would presumably undermine almost all the property claims of private individuals. So the dilemma is that libertarians can undermine state property rights only by undermining individual property rights, on the one hand. On the other, libertarians can vindicate private property rights of individuals only by vindicating state property rights. I call this the “Empirical Dilemma.”

I attempt to diffuse both of these dilemmas here. I argue that the Conceptual Dilemma relies on a misunderstanding of the libertarian’s commitments. In particular, I show that libertarians need not think robust property rights can yield states more extensive than Nozick’s minimal state. I then argue that Widerquist ignores libertarian scholarship aimed at meeting the Empirical Dilemma. Many libertarians have attempted to demonstrate that there are legitimate private property rights which are illegitimately disregarded by current states. The upshot of this discussion is that there are no genuine dilemmas posed by Widerquist’s “A Dilemma for Libertarians.”

Download Paper: “Why There are No Dilemmas in Widerquist’s ‘A Dilemma for Libertarians'”