WALTER BLOCK vs JAKUB BOZYDAR WISNIEWSKI DEBATING ABORTION: A SUMMARY

Without a doubt, one of the most controversial issues currently being debated is abortion. Several decades ago, philosopher and economist Walter Block offered a compromise of the seemingly uncompromisable problem based on libertarian principles, which he called evictionism. Evictionism is based on the theory of self-ownership and the implications that follow, which are the non-aggression principle and private property rights. It is a principled compromise between the traditional pro-life and pro-choice positions. According to evictionism, it would not be illegal for a pregnant woman to evict a fetus at any time for any reason because she is the one who owns her womb, but it would be illegal for her to kill the fetus unnecessarily once it’s viable. This means that before viability, an eviction that necessarily results in the death of the fetus would be legal. After viability, however, an eviction that unnecessarily results in the death of a fetus would be considered murder and consequently illegal. Unfortunately, though, very few people have heard of this compromise. What’s worse of those who have heard of it, even fewer have been convinced by it. Consequently, there have been several written debates between Block and his critics about their perceived problems with his proposed compromise. The purpose of this paper is to provide a detailed summary of one of the first main debates that Block has had on the topic.

Rejoinder to Dominiak on the necessity of easements

Dominiak (2019) agrees with the Blockian proviso: homesteading in a bagel or donut format is illicit, since it allows the owner to control land (the hole, the territory in the middle) with which he has not mixed his labor. Thus, a person who does so must open up an easement allowing outside home-steaders through his property, and into this so-far virgin land. But, this author claims this proviso of Block’s does not go far enough. It should also be extended further, not only to incorporate the bagel format, but also in justification of easements through private property in emergencies, and so as to avoid entrapment. I strongly support Dominiak in his defense of the Blockian proviso against critics (Kinsella, 2007, 2009C) in the first part of his excellent paper, but find I cannot agree with this second contention of his. In short, Dominiak agrees with Block regarding easements in the bagel case, but wants to extend this concept to when property owners are encircled, and thus trapped. In my view, extending easements to cases other than the bagel is incompatible with libertarianism’s emphasis on the sanctity of private property rights. Certain positive rights (to, in this case, movement) are essential to Dominiak’s argument. And these rights do not exist. Therefore, Dominiak’s argument is unsound.

Trust, Standards of Public Office, and Corruption

The central contention of this chapter is that the legal and political history of trust is also a history of the development of public office. ‘Trust’ helped to define and restrain the abuse of office in the early modern period. Originally a Roman legal concept, fiduciary trust was designed in the sixteenth century to protect private property rights but came to be applied, in the mid-seventeenth century, to public (and commercial) office to help describe, but also tackle, the abuse of powers exercised by officeholders. By the nineteenth century its standards and criteria had become widely shared norms—so much so, that we have largely forgotten their origins and the cultural factors that shaped their genesis. Trust and ‘breach of trust’ had great discursive power but also had juridical reach.

DATA NECROPOLITICS v2

Algorithmic Governmentality’ (A. Rouvroy), ‘Expository society’ (B. Harcourt), ‘Black Box Society’ (F. Pasquale), ‘Surveillance Capitalism’ (S. Zuboff), ‘Techno-Feudalism’ (C. Durand), ‘Radical Anti-Humanism (E. Sadin), increasing literature has been highlighting how our societies and subjectivities are being modified and threatened by new technologies and Big Techs . While these debates are grasping how our social existence and future are being shaped by the development of novel technologies, guided by profit rentability and power struggles, I would like to suggest another critical layer. The current deployment of new technologies also relies on a novel circulation of violence. Borrowing the expression from Achille Mbembe I call this phenomenon Data Necropolitics, which is also the title of the book I am working on. Necropolitics is ‘the generalized instrumentalization of human existence and the material destruction of human bodies and populations.’ My intuition is that Data Necropolitics is at the intersection of these two phenomena. Data and new technologies are reifying human’s lives, through different procedures of ‘mortification of the self’ labour exploitation , and in some cases, and especially among vulnerable populations, they can foster violence and eventually death. Violence should not be understood as ‘mere’ physical aggression or violation of private property rights. It is also socio-economic and symbolic. When I refer to Data Necropolitics, I have in mind not only the physical elimination of given individuals, but also a predatory/digital form of governance that expose and produce social violence, vulnerability and eventually (social) death. It circulates below and set the foundations of our technological ‘welfare’.

Reconciling the Irreconcilable: A Property Rights Approach to Resolving the Animal Rights Debate

Libertarianism is understood to be a “deontological theory of law” that purportedly applies exclusively to humans. According to some libertarians, however, “one of the greatest weaknesses of libertarian theory” is that there are no provisions outlawing the abuse and torture of animals even though this seems to be one of “the most heinous acts it is possible to do”. Moreover, a few of these libertarians go even further and claim that this legal philosophy of non-aggression should actually be extended to include other animals. The purpose of this paper is to reconcile this seemingly irreconcilable situation by arguing that it is a “continuum problem” and offering a principled, libertarian compromise that resolves the animal rights debate using the non-aggression principle (NAP) and private property rights.

6. Leave It to the Market

Economic rationalism involves the intelligent deployment of market instruments to achieve public ends such as environmental protection and resource conservation. The instruments in question can involve the establishment of private property rights in land, air, and water; “cap and trade” markets in pollution rights (emissions trading); tradeable quotes in resources such as fish; green taxes, such as a carbon tax; and the purchase of offsets to compensate for environmentally damaging behavior. These instruments have been adopted in many countries, though with some resistance from those who believe there is more to life than economic reasoning.

Private Property Rights, Dynamic Efficiency and Economic Development: An Austrian Reply to Neo-Marxist Scholars Nieto and Mateo on Cyber-Communism and Market Process

The Austrian school economics and neo-Marxist theories both have been reviving in recent years. However, the current academic discussion lacks a debate between two schools of economics with diametrically opposed views. This paper is the first and an initial Austrian challenge to Neo-Marxist scholars Nieto and Mateo’s argumentation that cyber-communism and the Austrian theory of dynamic efficiency are consistent to enhance economic development. Their argument focuses on two issues: (a) the existence of circular reasoning in the Austrian theory of dynamic efficiency, and (b) dynamic efficiency and full economic development could be strongly promoted in a socialist system through new information and communication technologies (ICT) and the democratization of all economic life. While cyber-communism refers to cyber-planning without private property rights through ICT, dynamic efficiency refers to the entrepreneurs’ creative and coordinative natures. In this paper, first, we argue that the hypothesis that dynamic efficiency and cyber-communism is not compatible. Contrary to the above cyber-communist criteria, the Austrian theory of dynamic efficiency argues that to impede private property rights is to remove the most powerful entrepreneurial incentive to create and coordinate profit opportunities, the entrepreneurial incentives to create and coordinate profit opportunities are removed to identify human problems and the ability and willingness to solve them. Second, we argue that the cyber-communism system is inconsistent with economic development. In this regard, we explain how the institutional environment can cultivate or stifle dynamic efficiency and economic development. Having briefly outlined the central argument of Nieto and Mateo, we examine the institutional arrangement supporting cyber-communism. After that, we evaluate the implications of cyber-communism in the dynamic efficiency process. It becomes manifest that Nieto and Mateo’s accounts are too general to recognize the complexity of how economic development works.

Resolving Douglass C. North's ‘puzzle’ concerning China's household responsibility system

This paper considers Douglass C. North's ‘puzzle’ concerning China's household responsibility system (HRS) and offers a possible solution. China's HRS, which has evolved over the past four decades to become its dominant form of rural land ownership, has stimulated spectacular economic growth and poverty reduction; however, it is based on a type of ownership which is far removed from the property rights regime which North regarded as essential. Two features of the HRS merit attention. The first is ‘split ownership’: this refers to the allocation of different aspects of ownership, including rights of access, use, management, exclusion and alienation, to a range of individual and collective actors with interests in the land in question. The second is polycentric governance: rules governing land use are derived in part from community-level action and in part from state intervention. We argue that in explaining the functioning of the HRS we need to move beyond the narrow conception of legally enforced private property rights on which North relied. We should instead embrace understandings of ownership as an emergent, diverse and complex institution, of the kind emphasized by A.M. Honoré's legal theory of ownership and Elinor Ostrom's theories of the common-pool resource and polycentric governance.

The material conditions of non-domination: Property, independence, and the means of production

While it is a point of agreement in contemporary republican political theory that property ownership is closely connected to freedom as non-domination, surprisingly little work has been done to elucidate the nature of this connection or the constraints on property regimes that might be required as a result. In this paper, I provide a systematic model of the boundaries within which republican property systems must sit and explore some of the wider implications that thinking of property in these terms may have for republicans. The boundaries I focus on relate to the distribution of property and the application of types of property claims over particular kinds of goods. I develop this model from those elements of non-domination most directly related to the operation of a property regime: (a) economic independence, (b) limiting material inequalities, and (c) the promotion of common goods. The limits that emerge from this analysis support intuitive judgments that animate much republican discussion of property distribution. My account diverges from much orthodox republican theory, though, in challenging the primacy of private property rights in the realization of economic independence. The value of property on republican terms can be realized without private ownership of the means of production.

1. What’s Special About Land?

All books in this flagship series contain carefully selected substantial extracts from key cases, legislation, and academic debate, providing able students with a stand-alone resource. This chapter illustrates the significance of land and, hence, of land law. It concentrates on the features that make land special and the distinctive legal rules produced by those features. The chapter explains that the focus of land law is on private property rights to use land. It then demonstrates some important themes of land law by examining an important land law case involving a dispute between an occupier of land and a bank. It is noted that the special features of land sharpen the court’s dilemma when deciding between competing claims to the use of land. It also considers the differing judicial philosophies that may influence a court’s approach to resolving this dilemma.