The right to hire whoever you want is not unconditional, it can be signed away. We implicitly do that here, through our legal system. I could never figure what libertarians would have against this, or unions, or prohibition for that matter. As I see it, there’s nothing wrong with the non-violent part of state power.

(btw, the “norwegian libertarian” says “when freedom is outlawed, only norwegians are free” with a little strange grammar)

I don’t know how to code it: http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/LFBooks/Spencer0236/SocialStatics/HTMLs/0331_Pt03_Part2.html#LF-BK0331pt02ch06”

Resources that remain unfound, and in the ground, aren’t worth squat to anybody. And the motivation for looking for them, and digging them up, is that you get to keep them. Take away that motivation, and they stay in the ground, and we stay poor.

Sorry, but this is a bit of fatuous nonsense.

The motivation is not “that you get to keep them”, it is that you get to use them in productive activity, and, thereby, perhaps to make a profit. If there is a common right in land and natural resources, then those who want extraction rights can pay a fee to the commons or royalties on what they extract in return for doing so. Funds thereby raised could be used to finance measures like a universal basic income. On a purely national scale this kind of idea isn’t especially radical: see for example the citizen’s dividend in Alaska. The idea that such resources might properly belong to humankind as a whole and not specially to the peoples who happen to be living in the right places is more radical, but the Alaskan example alone is enough to refute Bellmore’s point.

(Of course, this kind of idea isn’t an especially left or liberal one: Henry George or the early Herbert Spencer were proponents.)

So taxation, redistributive or not, need not imply illegitimate force (“robbers with badges”) or even the violent force which most people thing are legitimate. The problem, as I see it, is that both anti-egalitarian “libertarians” and liberal egalitarianism don’t understand why this difference matters.

c.f. #17, and from #16:

“Poor people in a libertarian state may turn out to be very much constrained by contracts that they never agreed to: namely the contracts agreed between other people in that state.”

What exactly does a “long and sterling record of success” mean? Please provide a particular place and time in history which you deem an example of the “sterling record of success”. We can then examine your assertion on the merits.

And, as I say, property rights are a fabulously successful construct, with such a long and sterling record of success, that it takes stronger reasons than any I’ve heard here to justify setting them aside.

Sure, compromising these principles doesn’t have to cause immediate disaster. But given the profound effects a higher rate of growth can have on long term wealth, compromising them CAN be considered a slow motion disaster.

This is true, and likewise left-liberals hem and haw when faced with the evidence against the minimum wage. Of course people resist evidence that would require us to change our fundamental beliefs—our fundamental beliefs profoundly shape who we are as people.

But: evidence does persuade, however slowly, and in my experience it’s the ONLY thing that ever does. I’ve never met a libertarian who was ever persuaded by deep green rhetoric, nor have I ever seen a libertarian peroration on freedom of association convince a left-liberal to reject the minimum wage. But I have seen actual scientific evidence convince libertarians to support carbon taxes, and likewise for liberals change their minds and agree that a negative income tax is better for the poor than a minimum wage.

From a purely pragmatic standpoint, (Which is the only worthwhile standpoint in a world where you can’t get “ought” from “is”.) property rights have been a fabulously successful mechanism for wealth creation, for just about everybody who has the fortune to live in a country where they’re relatively respected.

Resources that remain unfound, and in the ground, aren’t worth squat to anybody. And the motivation for looking for them, and digging them up, is that you get to keep them. Take away that motivation, and they stay in the ground, and we stay poor.

Further, when somebody proposes to rob Peter to pay Paul, the smart man realizes that when Peter is tapped out, they’ll get around to robbing Tom, Dick, and Harry, too. And thus has the wisdom to oppose robbing Peter to begin with.

I’m not Paul, so I see the wisdom in defending Peter BEFORE you get around to me. Clear?