I think that apocalypse insurance isn’t as satisfactory as you imply, and I’d like to explain why below.
First: what’s a hardline libertarian? I’ll say that a hardline libertarian is in favour of people doing stuff with markets, and there being courts that enforce laws that say you can’t harm people in some small, pre-defined, clear-cut set of ways. So in this world you’re not allowed to punch people but you are allowed to dress in ways other people don’t like.
Why would you be a hardline libertarian? If you’re me, the answer is that (a) markets and freedom etc are pretty good, (b) you need ground rules to make them good, and (c) government power tends to creep and expand in ill-advised ways, which is why you’ve got to somehow rein it in to only do a small set of clearly good things.
If you’re a hardline libertarian for these reasons, you’re kind of unsatisfied with this proposal, because it’s sort of subjective—you’re punishing people not because they’ve caused harm, but because you think they’re going to cause harm. So how do you assess the damages? Without further details, it sounds like this is going to involve giving a bunch of discretion to a lawmaker to determine how to punish people—discretion that could easily be abused to punish a variety of activities that should thrive in a free society.
There’s probably some version that works, if you have a way of figuring out which activities cause how much expected harm that’s legibly rational in a way that’s broadly agreeable. But that seems pretty far-off and hard. And in the interim, applying some hack that you think works doesn’t seem very libertarian.
I think that apocalypse insurance isn’t as satisfactory as you imply, and I’d like to explain why below.
First: what’s a hardline libertarian? I’ll say that a hardline libertarian is in favour of people doing stuff with markets, and there being courts that enforce laws that say you can’t harm people in some small, pre-defined, clear-cut set of ways. So in this world you’re not allowed to punch people but you are allowed to dress in ways other people don’t like.
Why would you be a hardline libertarian? If you’re me, the answer is that (a) markets and freedom etc are pretty good, (b) you need ground rules to make them good, and (c) government power tends to creep and expand in ill-advised ways, which is why you’ve got to somehow rein it in to only do a small set of clearly good things.
If you’re a hardline libertarian for these reasons, you’re kind of unsatisfied with this proposal, because it’s sort of subjective—you’re punishing people not because they’ve caused harm, but because you think they’re going to cause harm. So how do you assess the damages? Without further details, it sounds like this is going to involve giving a bunch of discretion to a lawmaker to determine how to punish people—discretion that could easily be abused to punish a variety of activities that should thrive in a free society.
There’s probably some version that works, if you have a way of figuring out which activities cause how much expected harm that’s legibly rational in a way that’s broadly agreeable. But that seems pretty far-off and hard. And in the interim, applying some hack that you think works doesn’t seem very libertarian.