Economics and Government

In class the other day someone asked whether we would be discussing alternative normative frameworks. We will, later. In the meantime, I think you can find a useful discussion of a topic we will explicitly discuss later, right here:

"As Berlin defined it, negative liberty refers to freedom from coercion. In this sense, liberty is a political concept, which can only be understood with regard to the issue of the use of violence among men. In other words, an individual is free if he can do what he wants to do with what he owns without anyone stopping him from doing so (i.e. using violence or the threat of it against him). As Herbert Spencer explained, this means that everyone enjoying negative liberty also has a duty to respect others doing the same (the law of equal freedom). For those interested in a non-utilitarian version of it, see one of my favorite books by Murray Rothbard’s, The Ethics of Liberty."

The entire piece is worth reading.