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Matt Zwolinski joins us to talk about pollution. What does it mean for libertarians to treat pollution as a violation of property rights?
Matt Zwolinski joins us this week to talk about his recent paper, “Libertarianism and Pollution,” available on the Social Science Research Network. In it, he examines how various libertarian philosophers and economists, including Nozick, Rothbard, Ronald Coase, and Eric Mack have dealt with the problem of pollution.
In a system of strictly enforced rights to private property, how should one account for pollution? Should it be allowed at all? And in either case, how can the term “pollution” be defined?
Show Notes and Further Reading
Matt Zwolinski, “Libertarianism and Pollution” (SSRN paper)
Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (book)
Murray Rothbard, “Law, Property Rights, and Air Pollution” (Cato Journal article)
Michael Huemer, The Problem of Political Authority (book)
Ronald Coase, “The Problem of Social Cost” (Journal of Law and Economics article)
Eric Mack, “Locke on Property” (Liberty Matters essay)
Matt Zwolinski is Professor of Philosophy at the University of San Diego and director of USD’s Center for Ethics, Economics, and Public Policy. He is the editor of Arguing About Political Philosophy and, with Benjamin Ferguson, The Routledge Companion to Libertarianism and Exploitation: Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (both in progress). He is currently writing a book on the history of libertarian thought with John Tomasi, and a book on the idea of a Universal Basic Income with Miranda Perry Fleischer.
Aaron Powell founded Libertarianism.org. He is now the host of (Re)Imagining Liberty, a podcast about the case for radical freedom.
Trevor Burrus was a research fellow in the Cato Institute’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies and editor-in-chief of the Cato Supreme Court Review. His research interests include constitutional law, civil and criminal law, legal and political philosophy, legal history, and the interface between science and public policy.
He is the editor of A Conspiracy against Obamacare (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) and Deep Commitments: The Past, Present, and Future of Religious Liberty (Cato, 2017). Burrus holds a BA in philosophy from the University of Colorado at Boulder and a JD from the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. He also contributed a chapter to Libertarianism.org’s Visions of Liberty.