The Moral Argument in Favor of Property Rights

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In 2008 I was the keynote speaker at the libertarian national convention in Denver, Colorado. And my speech which was only tepidly received was the theme was what are we for. The view of property rights tends to be a human, which means that it's a convention and that property do better than societies that don't use property. That argument is not taught pretty much anywhere in philosophy classes. Most economists have literally never heard of von Mises unless they've seen him in some quote about the socialist calculation of the state. They've never seen any of the moral arguments. So the, in writing this essay, I actually came to question my own sort of self assurance that destination is the

Is the perfect really the enemy of the good? Or is it the other way around? In 2008, Duke University economist Michael Munger ran for governor and proposed increasing school choice through vouchers for the state's poorest counties. But some lovers of liberty argued that it's better to fight for eliminating public schools instead of trying to improve them. Munger realized his fellow free-marketers come in two flavors: directionalists--who take our political realities as given and try to move outcomes closer to the ideal--and destinationists--who want no compromises with what they see as the perfect outcome. Listen as Munger talks to EconTalk's Russ Roberts about two different strategies for achieving political goals. Along the way, they discuss rent control, the minimum wage, and why free-market policies are so rare.