Vancouver Libertarian Supper Club Report

by Paul Geddes
Feb 2nd, 2008

The first speaker up was Marc Emery who gave us the latest on the state of his extradition trial. The trial has been postponed as his lawyers and the US and Canadian governments try to work out a deal. The US government is asking for a five year prison sentence but doesn’t like Marc’s price: dropping all charges against his fellow defendants (Michelle and Greg). If a deal isn’t possible, then the trial will resume in about a month. Marc’s pretty convinced that nothing will stop his being shipped south, once the extradition trial starts. Go to www.cannabisculture.com to keep up with for the latest news on this important trial.

Second up was Walter Block who gave a short report on the progress of the Ron Paul campaign south of the border. Brian Daughtery’s Radicals for Capitalism places five great minds (Friedman, Rand, Mises, Hayek & Rothbard) in libertarianism’s pantheon. Walter says the case can be made for Ron Paul’s inclusion in this revered list, mostly for all the attention he has brought to our ideas over the past year. Concerning Ron Paul’s views on kicking out "illegal immigrants, Walter argued that slight imperfections in Ron Paul’s views are nothing compared to the horrible views of all the other candidates. Although he didn’t directly address the controversies about the Ron Paul newsletters, Walter suggested that the best way to explain some of the rhetoric in "TReason" and "Stato"’s views was their think-tank competition with the Mises Institute.

Then came our featured speaker. Michael Cust compared and contrasted the views of Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau with respect to property rights. Hobbes’ argument is that property rights benefited all without making anyone worse off (A Pareto improvement) because in a state of nature, all would be in a war of all against all. Even parasites could be better off in a social order with property because there would be more goods and services available. Cust was more critical of Locke’s idea that property came from mixing labour with land because this was based on an intuitive notion of self-ownership which was not necessarily universal. And if this view wasn’t universal, it could still lead to conflict. And Cust was even more critical of Rousseau’s claim that property created classes and conflict. This he claimed was a sociological argument based on a misinterpretation of history.

The discussion was broad ranging. One of the topics was why Canadian free market sympathizers didn’t pay more attention to the importance of John Locke’s ideas on the founding of Canada. Perhaps because so many American libertarians have emphasized Locke’s influence on the US constitution, we think we have inherited a watered down version of these ideas from south of the border. Michael suggests we pay more attention to Canadian historian Janet Ajzenstat who argues that Locke’s ideas were even more important to the founding of Canada than he was to the US. Recall that confederation occurred after the US’s tragic civil war and the fear of Lincoln’s centralizing ideas must have animated political discussions north of the border..