Publisher's Synopsis
"The most relevant and plausible conceptions of economic rationality, interpersonal liberty, human welfare and private-property anarchy do not conflict in theory or practice."
Using philosophy and social science, Escape from Leviathan defends this bold, non-normative thesis from contrary positions in the scholarly literature.
Considering authors such as David Friedman, John Gray, R. M. Hare, Robert Nozick, Karl Popper, John Rawls, Murray Rothbard, Alan Ryan, Amartya Sen and Bernard Williams, the rationality assumptions of neoclassical and Austrian School economics are reconciled and related to liberty and welfare. A new pre-propertarian theory of interpersonal liberty as the absence of (initiated or proactively) imposed cost is argued to be libertarian. Human welfare is defended as the satisfaction of unimposed wants. Practical anarchy is simply unconstrained private property. Related topics include free will, weakness of will, the nature of moralising, intellectual property and restitution and retribution.
This is a ground-breaking piece of work, functioning as an excellent introduction to libertarianism and social thought.
