Freedom to smoke is part and parcel of overall freedom. The former cannot be abrogated without violating the latter. The present paper applies this insight to the regulations placed on the tobacco industry and smoking in general. We find that government interventions into people’s lives regarding smoking are highly incompatible with libertarian principles. We examine many regulations such as prohibiting youths from smoking, preventing second hand smoke, restrictions on advertising, taxing the industry, and liability issues.

The debate over gun control has taken place in complete isolation from geographical considerations. It focuses on, for the most part, whether legalization would bring about more or fewer accidental deaths, and murders of innocents, than prohibition, and in the USA on the precise meaning of the second amendment to the Constitution. However, these deliberations, argue the authors of the present paper, can be enriched by incorporating into them a spatial context. When this is done, and they are combined with (...) the property rights philosophy of libertarianism, some very different conclusions are drawn. (shrink)

In Chinese history the periods known as Spring and Autumn (770-476 BC) and the Warring States (475-221 BC) were times of conflict and political instability caused by the increasing power of centralized and competing states. During this time of crisis many schools of thought appeared to offer different philosophical doctrines. This paper describes and studies ideas about the limitation of power defended by these different schools of ancient Chinese thought, and suggests some reasons why they failed to prevent the emergence (...) of an authoritarian imperial government in early China. (shrink)