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by thiagotomei 2021 days ago
This is a common hard-libertarian talking point.

Consider point 13.6 of Scott Alexander's (Slate Star Codex) Non-Libertarian FAQ:

https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/22/repost-the-non-liberta...

If you assume that "individual property earned through voluntary exchange" is the ultimate value to be upheld, you may end up having to defend a hellscape world. You need at least to temper it with something along the lines of the Lockean proviso.

1 comments

I fully agree with this, I see it as one value to be upheld among many others in a Pareto-like trade-off. Optimizing for only a single value is going to lead to pathological outcomes as you rightly point out.

But I do consider it an important value since a lot of the motivation behind redistribution is self interest and jealousy (this is a finding in social science research), benelovant compassion only explains a small proportion of the variation.