John Tomasi > Quotes

“Traditionally, thinkers in the market-liberal tradition have interpreted this to mean that economic liberties should be treated on a par with the civil and political liberties of citizens. Economic rights, like civil and political ones, are basic rights. Recently, though, some thinkers in this tradition have adopted a stronger thesis. They interpret the intrinsic value of capitalistic rights to mean that economic rights are more basic than other rights. At the limit, civil and political rights are not merely less weighty than property rights: such rights are themselves types of property rights.10 Property rights, on this view, are moral absolutes. The stronger interpretation would require the enforcement of almost any contract citizens enter into—for example, contracts for voluntary slavery or the transfer of vital bodily organs. The weaker interpretation of economic liberties would not: it affirms the inalienability of certain basic rights and liberties, including those protecting bodily integrity, and asserts that private economic rights must be protected along with the other basic rights and liberties. This is a significant dispute within the free market tradition. Indeed, within the technical literature, the term “libertarian” is sometimes reserved to mark the position of those who take the stronger/absolutist interpretation, with all others then being cast as (mere) “classical liberals.”
― John Tomasi, Free Market Fairness