The Ethics of Liberty by Murray N. Rothbard

Author:Murray N. Rothbard
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781610162449
Publisher: New York University Press
Published: 1998-08-16T07:00:00+00:00

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1. On the crucial legal and philosophical distinction between patents and copyrights, see Murray N. Rothbard, Man, Economy, and State (Princeton, N.J.: D. Van Nostrand, 1962), vol. 2, pp. 652–60. Also see Murray N. Rothbard, Power and Market (Kansas City: Sheed Andrews and McMeel, 1977), pp. 71–75. For instances of independent inventions of the same item, see S. Colum Gilfillan, The Sociology of Invention (Chicago: Follett Press, 1935), p. 75.

2. When I first briefly adumbrated the right to blackmail in Man, Economy, and State, vol. 1, p. 443, n. 49, I was met with a storm of abuse by critics who apparently believed that I was advocating the morality of blackmail. Again—a failure to make the crucial distinction between the legitimacy of a right and the morality or esthetics of exercising that right.

3. Walter Block, “The Blackmailer as Hero,” Libertarian Forum (December 1972): 3. Also see the version in Block, Defending the Undefendable (New York: Fleet Press, 1976), pp. 53–54.

4. For a critique of Professor Robert Nozick’s argument for the outlawry (or restriction) of blackmail contracts, see pp. 248–50 below.

5. Or, to take another example, suppose that Robinson publishes an investment advisory-letter, in which he sets forth his opinion that a certain corporation’s stock is unsound, and will probably decline. As a result of this advice, the stock falls in price. Robinson’s opinion has “injured” the reputation of the corporation, and “damaged” its shareholders through the decline in price, caused by the lowering of confidence by investors in the market. Should Robinson’s advice therefore be outlawed? Or, in yet another example, A writes a book; B reviews the book and states that the book is a bad one, the result is an “injury” to A’s reputation and a decline in the sales of the book as well as A’s income. Should all unfavorable book reviews therefore be illegal? Yet such are some of the logical implications of the “property in reputation” argument. I am indebted for the stock-market example to Williamson M. Evers.

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