Walter Block
American economistWikipedia
14
MENTIONS
5
EPISODES
4
PODCASTS
Search complete. 14 mentions across 5 episodes found for "Walter Block".
Sep 9, 2026
Jorge BesadaGUEST
Right, right.
Jorge BesadaGUEST
And then there are some Jews, like, uh, Professor Walter Block, who's, I think, is a good buddy of mine.
Jorge BesadaGUEST
He'll say, "Wait a minute, the Jews were there 2,000 years ago.
Jorge BesadaGUEST
They'll still have a claim on that property." You know, some, some people will make that argument, you know? But, I mean, that's why we have our, our legal norms and so on.
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Parents can give up a child whenever they want.
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They are free to dump him out, as Block puts it, although the argument is usually that parents have an obligation to find someone who will adopt the child.
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4.
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There is no way in which reluctant men can be held responsible toward any children that they father, since a man may always decide not to volunteer for fatherhood obligations.
27 MINS LATER
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This can include obligations that result from the undesired but reasonably foreseeable consequences of one's actions.
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Some libertarians reject parental positive obligations on the grounds that to accept them would open the door to general positive rights.
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As Walter Block puts it,
speaker_1UNKNOWN
Once we open up the floodgates of positive obligations, there is no logical stopping place.
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This is the argument that parental obligations only apply in cases where the parents voluntarily accept them, and not as a result of causal action.
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Walter Block asserts that parents cannot have obligations if they did not intend to have children.
Walter BlockSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
The father, and the mother too, violated no one's rights by engaging in voluntary sexual intercourse.
Walter BlockSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
All of a sudden, well nine months later, there is another human being in great need of care.
6 MINS LATER
speaker_0NARRATOR
So, one of the positive obligations that parents have is to make arrangements for their children's care in the event that both parents die before the children reach adulthood.
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Another way of framing the net benefit argument is that since being born does not worsen a child's situation, it does not generate obligations.
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Both Walter Block and Łukasz Dominiak have made the argument that creating a child must be viewed as a net positive and so cannot be a source of liability for obligations.
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Their argument is that it is better to be born helpless than not born at all.
Andrew NapolitanoGUEST
He's a brilliant and gifted guy.
Andrew NapolitanoGUEST
As you may know, had a falling out as I did, as, uh, Walter Block has, as many very serious libertarians have, with what has become of the Mises Institute, but that's just one of these things that happens in libertarian, uh, world.
Andrew NapolitanoGUEST
You've been involved in some of these disputes-
Austin PetersonHOST
Ugh
Stephan KinsellaGUEST
I don't know if I totally agree with that because – You can't give up certain rights in a sense.
Stephan KinsellaGUEST
And one example is Walter Block came up with as well.
Stephan KinsellaGUEST
It's called Murder Park.
Stephan KinsellaGUEST
I mean, look, if you want to have people boxing in a ring or fighting a duel with each other, I think that's fine.