A friend of Justin’s told him that many libertarians dispute the existence of free will. That this is a common libertarian position, even. That’s true enough. Although the modern libertarian movement is largely influenced by natural rights philosophy, particularly that of Ayn Rand and, to a somewhat lesser extent, Murray Rothbard, there are also large and diverse strains of utilitarian, consequentialist thought in our midst. And one of the most influential libertarian consequentialists, F.A. Hayek, was an epistemological determinist — he essentially argued that everything we do is predetermined by the unique physical chemistry of our brains acting in response to changing stimuli. But that since we can never predict in advance exactly how our brain will respond to stimuli, we should organize society as though everyone had free will anyway. The Cato Institute‘s Gary Dempsey wrote a very good paper on this aspect of Hayek’s thought. Will you read it? Do you have a choice? Hayek would say no, but that we have the illusion of the choice regardless.

And speaking of Hayek, I shouldn’t neglect to mention his much-neglected and -maligned precursor, Herbert Spencer, a 19th-century libertarian who wrote extensively on a wide range of social & scientific subjects. My pal and former coworker Tim Virkkala has pointed out that Hayek’s entire career pretty much amounts to “an extended riff on Spencerian themes.” People sometimes refer to Spencer as a social Darwinist, although Tim also pointed out that Darwin is more properly called a “biological Spencerian,” since Spencer pioneered evolutionary thought first . . .