Who would you pick..

Miscellaneous General
1

…to defend libertarianism in a (hypothetical) big, gigantic, ‘all topics are open’ debate between the debates and ‘the rest of the world’?

Some limitations.

  • They still have to be alive and able to speak.

  • Maximum 5 debaters.

  • You can ignore ‘people skills’; they all magically gain great debate skills.

  • The debate can take all kinds of turns: history, philosophy, economics, political science, etc.

I haven’t given it much thought; but I would choose these five.

  • David Gordon; great on philosophy and logic. Very well read. Good on history too.

  • Peter Boettke; ‘knows’ the Mainstream and Austrian Economics. Knows a lot about real existing socialism.

  • Robert Murphy; excellent on the current crisis. Knows a lot about monetary and other kinds of economics.

  • Robert Higgs; great on history and the political relevance of (modern) history.

  • David Beito; great on history. Knows a lot about the welfare state and it’s effects on poverty.

Who would you pick? And why?

Also interesting: who would you pick from the Mises forum?

2

Molyneux seems to jump out at me.

3

Ignoring people skills makes this less interesting. Without that clause your question at least has some potential use.

4

Feel free to make a list deleting that clause. I’m not stopping you. :slight_smile:

5

Anthony de Jasay.

6

William, Ricky James Moore, Student, and Esuric from this forum…

7

student is a libertarian?

8

I think it would be best to pick and expose 5 authoritarians to show that their views are wrong.

Lincoln

FDR

The guy from the Fed who called Dr. Paul a pinhead (idiot says money is neutral yet he demands inflation)

Raygun

Churchill

Edit: Didn’t see that they have be alive.

9

No, Danny, but just one who is committed enough to the truth to give libertarians a fair representation. Right?

10

My ears are burning, but I have to agree with Natalie that de Jasay wrecks all statism with his mighty mace of logic.

11

Bizarre, Prateek.

12

Seriously Prateek, I wonder who you read around here.

Some folks from here who would do a good job are Stephen, Solid Choke, Jon Irenicus, Angurse, Jack Cuyler, Physiocrat, AJ, the list is long.

I’d pick voluntarists and anarchists.

Doug Casey, Stefan Molyneux, Marc Stevens and maybe John Harris. None of them are public intellectuals, none of them are Hayekians, all of them live and die in the private sector.

13

It’s hard for me to think of anyone better than Hulsmann, if we include people skills. He can rise above the situation and not allow himself to get upset, while appealing to the audience (sense of humor) and have great enthusiasm, AND understand the material extremely well.

14

Agreed on Hulsmann. I would also add Jesus Huerta de Soto, Jeffrey Tucker and Walter Block.

15

I found Prateek’s post during one of the many time I google myself per day and was glad to see someone appreciating my work.

You’re welcome!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEKEjpTzB0Q

16

Clearly Hoppe.

17

Hoppe is great, but I don’t think many people understand the implications of his ideas.

18

And they wouldn’t want to, imo (most of them), if they did understand the implications.

19

As a non libertarian, the five libertarians I find most convincing are Cowen, Tabarrok, Friedman Sr. (dead) and I can’t think of any others off the top of my head so I guess Cowen twice more.

20

Those choices might explain why you are a non-libertarian.