Over at Econlog, Bryan Caplan responds to Jason’s query about why libertarians are so often seen as callous with another possible explanation: libertarians, he says, are “relatively unafraid to … make a distinction between the deserving and the undeserving poor.”  That is, libertarians are willing to say that some poor people deserve our help and others do not.  Perhaps people should (voluntarily) help those who are poor through sheer brute luck.  But those who are poor because of laziness or other forms of moral vice are another story.  To shield such persons from the effects of their folly, as Herbert Spencer (perhaps Jason’s missing callous libertarian?) said in another context, is to ensure that the world is filled with fools.

What should us bleeding heart libertarians think about this distinction?    Is it incompatible with a libertarian commitment to social justice, as we’ve described that elsewhere on this blog?

The short answer is that it is not incompatible.   But we should recognize that there are actually two important questions to ask about the distinction.  The first is whether the distinction itself is sound.  The second is how, if at all, the distinction should be reflected in public policy.

Can we soundly distinguish between the deserving and undeserving poor?

There’s a bit of reasoning in John Rawls’ Theory of Justice that might lead us to conclude that we can not.  Whether we are rich or poor, Rawls argues, is determined by our natural abilities and our social environment.  But neither of these are under our control, and both are thus “arbitrary from a moral point of view.”  Even our willingness to work hard and take risks, he says, “is itself dependent upon happy family and social circumstances.”

But this is the kind of metaphysical speculation about determinism that no one can take seriously at the level of practice.  And this is why the mainstream of the egalitarian tradition has rejected it.  People like Ronald Dworkin, Elizabeth Anderson, Will Kymlicka, and Richard Arneson have very different views about what equality means, but they all hold that our lot in life should be in some significant way sensitive to the choices we make.  Maybe there is no one that deserves to be left to starve in the street – or maybe a decent society would not allow such persons to starve even if they did deserve it – but the nature and strength of the claim one has on others for assistance surely depends on the extent to which one has tried to take responsibility for oneself.

How (if at all) should public policy reflect this distinction?

But the mere fact that there is a valid moral distinction to be made does not entail that we want our public policies to make it.  It is, after all, difficult to discern between the deserving and the undeserving – maybe especially for governments, but for private charities too.  And any measures we take to diminish the likelihood of false positives – people getting welfare who don’t deserve it – will probably increase the likelihood of false negatives – people not getting welfare who should.  Most plausible systems of morality, I should think, will hold the latter consequence to be much more troubling than the former.

And there are other problems with implementing the distinction too.  It’s costly, for one.  And it requires nosing around in people’s private affairs.  So one can understand why someone like  Charles Murray would advocate a Universal Basic Income.  I myself have argued elsewhere that there is a reasonably strong case to be made for such a policy on classical liberal grounds.  Not, perhaps, as a first-best alternative.  But as a replacement for the current welfare state, its attractions are significant.