At Politics & Prosperity, the author (read his bio here) writes:

The BHL proponents of “social justice” are intelligent and clever persons. They know what they are doing by wrapping their statist agenda in the banner of libertarianism

I’ve seen other posts by hardcore libertarians like that. They assume that we’re all really a bunch of leftists dishonestly calling ourselves classical liberals in order to trick classical liberals into become statists.

The argument they give for this position goes something like this:

1. Most of the BHLers think that the consequences of different kinds of institutions matter sufficiently that, under at least some hypothetical circumstances, they would not advocate anarcho-capitalism or minimal statism.
2. If 1, then BHLers are left-statists.
3. Therefore, BHLers are left-statists.
4. Either the BHLers are stupid and don’t know they are left-statists, or they are conniving and know they are left-statists.
5. The BHLers are not stupid. [Thanks for the bone!]
6. Therefore, the BHLers are conniving and know they are left-statists.

The problem with premise 2 in this argument is that, if it’s true, almost every libertarian and classical liberal thinker ever counts as a left-statist. (The author of the above blog dedicates it to the memory of Hayek, though Hayek was more “statist” than Zwolinski or I.)

A useful antidote to this bad argument can be found here.

As for my own work, you can regard me as doing the equivalent of public choice theory for philosophy. I don’t just mean that I apply public choice insights to philosophical problems, though I do do that. Rather, I see plenty of (often unwitting) romance for the state and for democracy in political philosophy. I want to remove that romance.

Regarding the “BHLers are trying to trick us” bit: If I were a left-statist, I wouldn’t be a closeted left-statist. I’d be out in the open. Being a left-statist would make my life slightly easier overall. Second, I’m not sure whom I’m supposed to be tricking that’s worth tricking. I don’t mean this as an insult to the Politics and Prosperity author, but suppose I succeeded in tricking him and everyone like him into accepting BHL’s furtive left-statism. What difference would that make? Suppose I am an agent of the Democratic Party, and my goal is to convince all Libertarian (big “L”) voters to vote Democrat. Even that would have only a minimal effect on real-world political results.