# “A libertarian, couple of centuries ago who didn’t think of slaves as complete humans (plenty of them back then didn’t), would be compelled to oppose government intervention and regulation of slave trade. Libertarianism does not enjoy the independence from morality or the historical invariance you accord it.”
Libertarian law is based on the idea of force. Beyond setting up the basic structure of libertarianism, morality doesn’t enter the picture. The only reason why a libertarian would be “in favor” of slave trade was because slaves were considered to be subhuman. And hence, anyone banning slave trade was infringing upon the freedom of the slave trader.

You show me one case where, in a particular era where a particular system of morality was followed, a libertarian has taken a position that is worse than what governments were doing at that time. The only one I can think of is the (comparatively) recent revisionism w.r.t. the Civil War. Even there, those who consider Lincoln to be a villain aren’t saying that slavery is either moral or legal, only that the methods used to abolishing it only helped increase the powers of the federal government. Which it surely did.

For a nice summary of various libertarian positions on voluntarily entered contracts of servitude, see this article. My position is very similar, but not identical, to the author’s.

The key point, in my mind, is that while two people can do anything to each other as long as they have consent, when it comes to enforcing contracts the state or some similar entity funded and propped up by others has to be involved. And as the author of the above article points out, just because a contract is enforceable does not mean it is enforceable by any means necessary. In my view, consent-derived rights that require no external agency (beyond others’ non interference) is a more basic concept than consensual acts that by their nature require enforcement of contracts. I made a similar point in one of my comments to this post.

Anyway, my original critique of ATG is perhaps better paraphrased as the following. A libertarian, couple of centuries ago who didn’t think of slaves as complete humans (plenty of them back then didn’t), would be compelled to oppose government intervention and regulation of slave trade. Libertarianism does not enjoy the independence from morality or the historical invariance you accord it.

And I am only mildly surprised that you are so hopelessly wrong on that.

Libertarians..oh well forget it. I don’t even know why I bother replying to such random statements as the above.

Would you also ban restaurants that only serve Indians, or gays, or Christians, or some other such denomination?”

I dunno about the other commentators on this thread but I sure as hell will (and to the best of my knowledge, that is the legal status quo right now). Not because everything immoral should be illegal but because I choose not to ignore the flows in the other direction. Laws are a very effective means of socially marking certain currently popular means of behaviour as immoral.

A libertarian 300 years ago would have argued that the state has no business banning slave trade. I would only be mildly surprised if one of you guys jump in to tell me that you actually believe the government had no business banning it. You know why, because libertarians just blindly apply the “maximize individual freedom/responsibility” (to the level where they encounter an obvious contradiction in their belief system and then stop 2 steps short of it). That’s basically all they do really.

No agency, whether it is a governmental or Religious, has my best interest at heart. Their only interest is the increase of the number follows under their control .

http://antonpavel.wordpress.com/2009/11/10/its-the-dawning-of-the-age-of-stupidity/