In 1997 Critical Review editor Jeffrey Friedman published his paper, “What’s Wrong with Libertarianism” in Critical Review. In sum, Friedman argued that libertarians are guilty of lapsing into “philosophical” defenses of liberty when they run into trouble on consequentialist grounds. He called this move the “libertarian straddle.”

Eleven years later, Friedman still seems firmly committed to the relevance of his argument. His comments on this blog attest to this. Here, Friedman suggests that “Rothbardian philosophy” ultimately motivates and characterizes the contributions of younger “libertarian economists,” such as Chris Coyne, Ben Powell, and others.

But are the younger economists really guilty of the “libertarian straddle,” or has Friedman just fallen into the unfortunate habit of seeing the “straddle” everywhere he looks?



The evidence suggests he has and that it’s time let the “libertarian straddle” trumpeting go. For younger “libertarian economists,” who are economists first and foremost and libertarians only second, the “straddle” is irrelevant.

The younger crop of self-described libertarian economists is consequentialist in its argumentation, not natural rights-oriented. Having learned from the generation before them, for which this is also true—economists such as Pete Boettke, Steve Horwitz, Marrio Rizzo, Roger Koppl, and others—the libertarianism of the younger generation is an outflow of their positive economics, which when combined with a normative stance that sees improving standards of living as a “good” thing, makes their worldview “libertarian.” Their argumentation is consequentialist the whole way through. There’s no “straddling” here.



Consider, for example, Chris Coyne’s work on post-war reconstruction. Chris objects to foreign intervention, not because of some principled stance against it, but because he finds the evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates that intervention fails to achieve its ends, often making things worse from the perspective of the interveners’ stated goals rather than better. Notably, Chris does not claim that this is true in all cases. He points to post-WWII Germany and Japan as examples of successful intervention and through positive analysis identifies the factors that made this so.



Benjamin Powell’s work on Somalia is another excellent example. Ben’s argument isn’t that life is good in Somalia because Somalia doesn’t have a government and therefore doesn’t have coercion. His argument is that there’s plenty of coercion in Somalia, but compared to surrounding countries with similar backgrounds that have governments, Somali anarchy has produced greater welfare improvements for Somalia than government has in neighboring countries.



J. Robert Subrick’s and Scott Beaulier’s research on Botswana is another example of straight-up, consequentialist reasoning. Subrick and Beaulier applaud Botswana’s post-colonial embrace of private property rights and limited government, not because of any alleged inherent “goodness” or “rightness” of private property rights and limited government, but rather because private property rights and limited government in Botswana led to the highest economic growth rate in Africa for thirty years.



Through such research, the younger generation of libertarian (“second) economists (“first”) is contributing important empirical work that finds markets tend to do better than governments when it comes to enhancing prosperity.



Ludwig von Mises deserves much credit here, as he has had an impressive influence on these young scholars and the generation that preceded them in this regard. To paraphrase Mises, capitalism is desirable in a normative sense because of its superiority in producing wealth, which economics demonstrates in a positive sense. If socialism were the superior wealth creator, Mises points out, he would embrace socialism instead of capitalism. Many in the younger generation agree wholeheartedly with Mises. Thus, thorough going consequentialism is embedded in the thinking of young economists who work in this tradition.



Ironically, what J. Friedman has called “economic imperialism” also deserves much credit for this. It’s precisely this unswerving devotion to economic logic that has produced an unswerving devotion to consequentialist analysis. “Economic imperialism” means there’s no room for “philosophical” justifications. “Philosophical” justifications are squeezed out by the pure logic of choice.



Most recently, in an effort to rescue the relevance of the “straddle” argument, Friedman has expanded his definition of “libertarian straddling” to include:



1. Analyses of foreign intervention.



2. Analyses of decentralized institutions of order.



Thus, “straddling” under his new and expanded definition refers not only to marshaling “philosophical” arguments when consequentialism puts one in a tough place, but also to a set of specific topics that are themselves “off limits” for some reason—even if their analyses are purely positive and fully consequentialist.



This is a curious way to redefine “straddling.” Indeed, if taken seriously, this redefinition would have the bizarre effect of making the sizeable number of *explicitly non-libertarian* social scientists who analyze the topics J. Friedman points to guilty of “libertarian straddling.” (See, for instance, the important work of Jack Hirshleifer, Avinash Dixit, Avner Greif, Robert Ellickson, Lisa Bernstein, and Karen Clay, among other top-flight scholars).



If this is what it takes to save the relevance of the “libertarian straddle” argument, its modern irrelevance could hardly be plainer. It’s time to put the “straddle” argument to bed.