Does Libertarian Law Allow Us To Hurt and Harm Other People? Yes.

June 24, 2019

From: K
Sent: Friday, February 22, 2019 9:20 PM
To: Walter Block <[email protected]>
Subject: Quintessential Libertarian Slogan

Walter-

What do you think of the slogan below?

“Cause no harm to a peaceful person’s body or property.”

My friend, the party secretary, came up with it after the last XYZ Libertarian Party meeting. I think it is a very good encapsulation of the NAP. Do you see any problem with it? K

On Fri, Feb 22, 2019 at 9:20 PM Walter Block <[email protected]> wrote:

I oppose it. Under libertarianism, we are allowed to harm people, to hurt them. By competing against them for marriage partners, for business contracts, etc. I think this is a mis-specification of our libertarian philosophy. We are allowed to hurt and harm people in all sorts of ways: hurt our parents by becoming poets and not going to medical school as they wanted us to do; write bad book and movie reviews, hurting the feelings of the authors, producers, actors, etc., and harming their financial position. Instead, I prefer to couch libertarianism in terms of rights violations, and none of these violate rights. I think we should be more careful with our language, be more precise than that.

Best regards,

Walter