With any general philosophy or morality, one can tie it in a knot by asking how it applies to itself. What is the empirical evidence for empiricism? Does positivism satisfy its own verifiability criterion? What is the utility of utilitarianism? What is the inductive evidence for induction?
Libertarianism places a high, even paramount value on freedom, and a correspondingly negative value on coercion. So, playing the circularity game, we can ask: does freedom include the freedom to give up one’s freedom? Is coercion allowed if it was previously agreed to but is against one’s current will? Whatever institution is set up to provide resistance to coercion for those unable to resist it themselves, should it not merely ignore, but join in with such coercion? Either way, it will be applying coercion against one party or the other. I don’t see a slippery slope when the state decides to cut off the entire tangle without going even one turn around the loop, and decides that such contracts are void.
Finally, what about my own disagreement with the libertarian principles? I don’t consider them workable in any general and absolute formulation, for a multitude of reasons, one of which is that all realistic human societies will consider many (though possibly different) things implied by them as impermissible.
This is true of all principles. None of them are workable in any general and absolute formulation.
The argument is vanishing up its own fundament.
With any general philosophy or morality, one can tie it in a knot by asking how it applies to itself. What is the empirical evidence for empiricism? Does positivism satisfy its own verifiability criterion? What is the utility of utilitarianism? What is the inductive evidence for induction?
Libertarianism places a high, even paramount value on freedom, and a correspondingly negative value on coercion. So, playing the circularity game, we can ask: does freedom include the freedom to give up one’s freedom? Is coercion allowed if it was previously agreed to but is against one’s current will? Whatever institution is set up to provide resistance to coercion for those unable to resist it themselves, should it not merely ignore, but join in with such coercion? Either way, it will be applying coercion against one party or the other. I don’t see a slippery slope when the state decides to cut off the entire tangle without going even one turn around the loop, and decides that such contracts are void.
This is true of all principles. None of them are workable in any general and absolute formulation.