There was an episode from the Bob Murphy Show several years ago where Bob raised what he considered particularly difficult questions for libertarians. At the time, I of course gave some quick thought to how to answer them, but I never wrote anything down. I always meant to, though.
I think Stacker News has a great format to attempt to answer these questions as a series and the ~libertarian territory is the place to do it.
Today, I'm just going to lay out the questions. Then I'll attempt my answers and related thoughts one at a time over the next couple of weeks. Some of these were hard to word succinctly, because Bob gives long elaborations on his podcast.
The Questions
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Is there a similarity in the way many libertarians dealt with their false price inflation predictions after the financial crisis (2008) and how climate activists often deal with false predictions about climate change?
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Does Hoppe's Argumentation Ethics framework imply that animals have self-ownership?
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Does Argumentation Ethics imply that everyone is entitled to enough land to have an argument from?
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For libertarians who subscribe to the evictionist view on abortion, do you think it would be legal in a libertarian society to throw child stowaways off of ships in the middle of the ocean or would some other legal principles enter in?
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If someone has fallen off of the roof of an apartment building you live in and they're precariously hanging just outside your window, should it be legal to not allow them into your apartment when they'll likely die otherwise?
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If the God of the Bible exists, wouldn't he be the owner of the entire universe by standard homesteading arguments?
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For libertarians who spend time making fun of conspiracy theorists, why do you do that?
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For Gary Johnson supporters, were you mostly arguing that he was the lesser of three evils and wouldn't that imply people should just vote for the lesser of the two evils that actually have a shot?
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When it comes to talking about whether or not "the rich" pay "their fair share" in taxes, why do libertarians focus on the nominal amount the rich paid, rather than actually analyzing the tax incidence like we do for other issues like tariffs?
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Is "The Non-Aggression Principle" an odd name for something that considers a child stealing a pack of gum "aggression", but two MMA fighters nearly killing each other not "aggression"?
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If you're into libertarian philosophy and you're a minarchist, what the heck is wrong with you?
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Do you think people might be opting for the cultural right, instead of libertarianism, because so many libertarians seem to side with the people normalizing "minor attracted persons" and other sexualized behavior directed towards children?
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Since libertarians are not collectivists, shouldn't we stop complaining about how "the media" or other collectives are "acting"?
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Should libertarians use the term "corporate press" or "corporate media" to disparage the legacy outlets, since we don't generally have a problem with corporations?
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Similar to how a professional athlete doesn't despair for humanity's lack of athleticism, should libertarians go a little easier on people for not being at our level of understanding the depravities of the state?
Wow! There are more of these than I realized, so I guess this will have to be a daily effort. In my posts answering each individual question, I'll clip that part of the episode to make it easier to follow along. I'll also provide a bit more of the context of the questions.
Let me know if you have any preliminary thoughts about these questions. My plan is to put all the posts and any valuable insights I pick up from the comments together into one piece and send that off to Bob. Maybe, I'll be able to lure Bob over to SN in the process.