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A review by skylarh
Defendiendo Lo Indefendible by Óliver Serrano Gil, Walter Block, Murray N. Rothbard
2.0
I’ve heard all of the economic arguments made in this book before, and I have in fact heard even better ones. The only thing new is the author’s sensationalist approach to the topics. I have often said that I “lean libertarian,” but this book reminded me of why I don’t fall over. It certainly didn’t lean me farther over into the libertarian camp, and, if anything, it straightened me up a little.
While I can buy many of the economic and political arguments made in this book, I cannot buy most of the moral ones. The author seems not to recognize that one can, with good reason and justification, find an act morally reprehensible and worthy of verbal condemnation without, at the same time, insisting it be illegal. Instead of merely defending the right to engage in certain behaviors, or showing how the benefits of allowing them outweigh the harms of prohibiting them, the author tries to argue that the harm doesn’t exist, or at least not to anyone but the individual, who has a right to harm himself. But this is absurd, this idea that any man is an island, and that what he does with regard to drugs or prostitution or gambling or the like affect no one in the world but him. Had the author kept his arguments in the political and economic realm, and not gone about calling drug dealers and pimps "heroes," or saying “the institution of child labor is an honorable one, with a long and glorious history of good works,” I might have been more inclined to be persuaded. You may tell me that it is better that the poor child in India be legally free to work for a few cents an hour in a factory than that she suffer the alternatives of starvation or prostitution that would likely result from a prohibition of child labor, but please do not feed me this nonsense. You may tell me that crime and societal costs, in the overall, will be reduced by the legalization of drugs, but please do not tell me the addict harms no one but himself or that addiction does no real damage.
The author’s arguments often leave many questions and objections unanswered and have holes one could step through. When arguing against the prohibition on child labor, for instance, he refers to Murray N. Rothbard’s homesteading theory to establish that child labor is in fact voluntary, but he completely fails to address the fact that this picture does not reflect the majority of cases of child labor, that child laborers are not in fact leaving home and becoming able to support themselves but are instead remaining at home and kicking back a share of their income to their parents. What of these (majority) cases? Part of his argument for child labor also inolves an argument against the existence of parental responsibility, and this argument in turn hinges on an obscure point involving rape and consent to conceive that is completely overturned by the current easy and legal availabilty of abortion, which makes any birth a choice. His arguments regarding slander, libel, and many other issues are equally thin in places. It's as if he builds his arguments with precariously stacked Jenga blocks - remove one and the whole structure will topple.
This book reminds me of how truly lost in the realm of pure ideology the libertarian is. This is what divides the pure libertarian and the libertarian-leaning conservative, I suppose: the libertarian thinks you can take a single idea, make it your standard, and everywhere apply it with merciless consistency and thereby achieve objectively good results. In the libertarian’s case, the standard is (and Walter Block encapsulates this in this book) that the ONLY wrong is the initiation of violence against person or property, and the initiation of violence against person or property is ALWAYS wrong. That’s it. Libertarianism in a nutshell. Now apply that one thought to every human, moral, political, and economic interaction. It’s a single mindedness and consistency that is at once impressive and a little frightening. Just do this one thing, ever and always, and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well. Yet this ideology, pure and consistent though it may be, does not comport with reality as conservatives (or liberals for that matter, but I talk of conservatives here) know it. Reality, as conservatives know it, involves constant trade-offs. And these trade-offs are not between that which is “good” (as all the “undefendable” actions in this book are defended as being) and that which is “bad,” but rather between that which is “bad” and that which is “worse.” You may perhaps convince the conservative that by prohibiting the “undefendable,” he is making matters worse, but do not try to convince him that the undefendable is, in and of itself, a good. I think the same thing may be said of the liberal, but I am not sure, because the liberal perspective does not so much involve this bad/worse trade-off view of the world. Still, I think you’d have a better chance convincing the liberal, for instance, that profiteering is “better” than the alternative than convincing him that profiteering is “good.”
While I can buy many of the economic and political arguments made in this book, I cannot buy most of the moral ones. The author seems not to recognize that one can, with good reason and justification, find an act morally reprehensible and worthy of verbal condemnation without, at the same time, insisting it be illegal. Instead of merely defending the right to engage in certain behaviors, or showing how the benefits of allowing them outweigh the harms of prohibiting them, the author tries to argue that the harm doesn’t exist, or at least not to anyone but the individual, who has a right to harm himself. But this is absurd, this idea that any man is an island, and that what he does with regard to drugs or prostitution or gambling or the like affect no one in the world but him. Had the author kept his arguments in the political and economic realm, and not gone about calling drug dealers and pimps "heroes," or saying “the institution of child labor is an honorable one, with a long and glorious history of good works,” I might have been more inclined to be persuaded. You may tell me that it is better that the poor child in India be legally free to work for a few cents an hour in a factory than that she suffer the alternatives of starvation or prostitution that would likely result from a prohibition of child labor, but please do not feed me this nonsense. You may tell me that crime and societal costs, in the overall, will be reduced by the legalization of drugs, but please do not tell me the addict harms no one but himself or that addiction does no real damage.
The author’s arguments often leave many questions and objections unanswered and have holes one could step through. When arguing against the prohibition on child labor, for instance, he refers to Murray N. Rothbard’s homesteading theory to establish that child labor is in fact voluntary, but he completely fails to address the fact that this picture does not reflect the majority of cases of child labor, that child laborers are not in fact leaving home and becoming able to support themselves but are instead remaining at home and kicking back a share of their income to their parents. What of these (majority) cases? Part of his argument for child labor also inolves an argument against the existence of parental responsibility, and this argument in turn hinges on an obscure point involving rape and consent to conceive that is completely overturned by the current easy and legal availabilty of abortion, which makes any birth a choice. His arguments regarding slander, libel, and many other issues are equally thin in places. It's as if he builds his arguments with precariously stacked Jenga blocks - remove one and the whole structure will topple.
This book reminds me of how truly lost in the realm of pure ideology the libertarian is. This is what divides the pure libertarian and the libertarian-leaning conservative, I suppose: the libertarian thinks you can take a single idea, make it your standard, and everywhere apply it with merciless consistency and thereby achieve objectively good results. In the libertarian’s case, the standard is (and Walter Block encapsulates this in this book) that the ONLY wrong is the initiation of violence against person or property, and the initiation of violence against person or property is ALWAYS wrong. That’s it. Libertarianism in a nutshell. Now apply that one thought to every human, moral, political, and economic interaction. It’s a single mindedness and consistency that is at once impressive and a little frightening. Just do this one thing, ever and always, and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well. Yet this ideology, pure and consistent though it may be, does not comport with reality as conservatives (or liberals for that matter, but I talk of conservatives here) know it. Reality, as conservatives know it, involves constant trade-offs. And these trade-offs are not between that which is “good” (as all the “undefendable” actions in this book are defended as being) and that which is “bad,” but rather between that which is “bad” and that which is “worse.” You may perhaps convince the conservative that by prohibiting the “undefendable,” he is making matters worse, but do not try to convince him that the undefendable is, in and of itself, a good. I think the same thing may be said of the liberal, but I am not sure, because the liberal perspective does not so much involve this bad/worse trade-off view of the world. Still, I think you’d have a better chance convincing the liberal, for instance, that profiteering is “better” than the alternative than convincing him that profiteering is “good.”