Essay
Liberties and Markets
Liberties and Markets argues both that libertarianism based on consequentialist moral reasoning is internally inconsistent and that alternative “deontological libertarianisms” face different problems than those emphasized by Jonathan Wolff. Libertarians, I claim, can respond convincingly to most of the arguments advanced against them by Wolff. But these responses are not adequate to defend the libertarian position; for any arguments that could demonstrate the existence of moral rights that would be sufficient to underpin libertarian economic ideals would also imply the existence of rights inconsistent with those ideals.
Libertarianism, Utility and Economic Competition
Libertarianism is defined both by its foundations and by the institutions to which it typically is said to give rise. In this paper it is argued that while a system of economic competition can be defended on consequentialist grounds, such arguments are not available to deontological libertarians. Thus it is concluded that deontological libertarians cannot provide a foundation for the type of economic system they favour.