Is libertarianism luck worship? And why you should believe in peace

last edited 2024-11-05

By far the most interesting critique of libertarianism to me is that it is a sort of *luck worship*: the premise of property rights is that *barring aggression*, people deserve whatever they have; whatever they can get. In other words, *barring aggression*, whatever happens naturally is just; *luck* (or a combination of luck and intelligence) determines who's entitled to what; might makes right.

If we believed, as one might intuitively want to, that luck never affects what anyone's entitled to, we would discard the entire concept of homesteading and essentially believe in redistributing wealth so that everyone gets what they deserve (good people getting more, bad people getting less).

Despite how much conflict this would cause (which isn't a reason for rejecting an axiology - that would be an appeal to consequences), such an ideology of perfect meritocracy (or equality if you're not as big on the merit factor) makes *sense*. It's attractive in exactly the same way as argumentation ethics (a fallacious argument popular with anarcho-capitalists).

And yet, this ideology is undeniably wrong, and for no other reason than that it doesn't match my conscience.

I can make the simplest, strongest scenario to show how clear it is: A is chased by a bear and B could make the bear chase them instead. They don't; they choose their own life over A's. This is obviously not immoral; B isn't obligated to sacrifice themself to save A. Then the other version: it's A who has the power to change who the bear chases, and they choose to make it chase B instead. This one feels less like A refusing to sacrifice themself to save B and more like A sacrificing B to save themself. We just can't honestly deny that there's a massive difference. There's no avoiding the conclusion that A is less entitled to life *because* they're the one who would naturally die here.

To judge the two as morally equal, you would have to have let logic distort your mind to the same extent as argumentation ethics users do to claim you couldn't steal a small amount to save a life.

And that, if you ask me, is the proof that people deserve what they naturally get, that property rights deserve respect.