A blogosphere kerfuffle has erupted over this Volokh Conspiracy post:
I think there’s a good case to be made that taxing people to protect the Earth from an asteroid… is an illegitimate function of government from a moral perspective…. [I]t’s O.K. to violate people’s rights (e.g. through taxation) if the result is that you protect people’s rights to some greater extent (e.g. through police, courts, the military). But it’s not obvious to me that the Earth being hit by an asteroid (or, say, someone being hit by lightning or a falling tree) violates anyone’s rights.
- Jonathan Adler, What Bias Looks Like
- Brad DeLong, Empirical Proof that America’s Libertarians Are Completely Insane…
- Mark Kleiman, Left Hand, Meet Right Hand
- Ilya Somin, Libertarianism and Asteroid Defense
- Brad DeLong, Insanity Continues Over at the Volokh Conspiracy…
- Ilya Somin, Brad DeLong Misrepresents My Position on Libertarianism and Asteroid Defense
- Brad DeLong, Higher-Order Insanity from the Volokh Conspiracy
- Robert Murphy, Empirical Evidence That Brad DeLong Is Completely Obtuse
- Brad DeLong, Robert Murphy Joins the “It’s Immoral to Tax Americans to Destroy an Asteroid” Caucus
(Hat Tip: Brian Leiter.)
