Gratitude, duty, institutions

By On October 26, 2011 · 70 Comments · In Current Events, Rights Theory

This is going to be a quick impressions post– and I hope that getting the conversation started in a public setting will lead me (or someone) to develop the arguments in greater depth soon.

I think that there are some oddities in public debate right now about attitudes toward gratitude and debts to big impersonal institutions and social forms such as states and markets. I think I’ve seen something like this on both sides– Elizabeth Warren’s speech and the associated commentary, anti-OWS essays and snark, the 99% tumblrs and the 53% tumblrs and the anti-entitled-college-student blog post, and more.

Everyone who isn’t a paleolithic hunter-gatherer has benefited from countless actions by other people, organizations, and institutions. Some of these have been provided by the state that currently governs the territory where the person resides. Some have been provided by markets in which currently-existing corporations have played important roles. Some have been provided by scientists and engineers inside the society the person inhabits. And these are not mutually exclusive (or jointly-exhaustive) possibilities.

But many have been provided by markets and market processes from around the world and from across centuries of history. Many have been provided by the political acts of other states, or other armies, or states that governed the same territory but are morally and organizationally discontinuous with them. The relative material wealth enjoyed by most inhabitants of western liberal societies has contributing causes from democratic governments building roads to markets organizing financial capital to long-dead empires expropriating land and killing its inhabitants. Establishing but-for causation and counterfactual history is even more complicated than establishing all the causal contributions that got us to where we are in this universe.

None of this mean that anyone “owes” the whole difference between their lives and the paleolithic one to some particular contemporary organization or person. Neither some particular local state nor some particular manifestation of the market can legitimately stand in for everything outside the individual’s [comparatively meager] contributions, nor present a bill on behalf of the rest of human society and human history, nor claim duties of gratitude and loyalty for unasked-for and unintentionally-conferred benefits. When, to the best of our current ability to reason, we think that some part of the processes or institutions that brought about the current world were or are or will be unjust or unsustainable or counterproductive, we have no duty of gratitude or loyalty to refrain from criticizing them or trying to reform them. When we live in the world as it exists now and enjoy its benefits, we do not owe debts of loyalty or gratitude to the whole mix of forces that brought it about. To take what I hope is an easy example: a white man in the antebellum or Jim Crow south who *genuinely has* benefited greatly from the oppression of blacks– and surely there were some such, even if many whites benefited not at all or much less than racial ideology led them to believe– has, I believe, no duties of loyalty or gratitude or repayment or maintenane on that basis. None. Not duties that are outweighed, or defeasible duties where the threshold of defeasibilty has been met; no duties. The benefits were unasked-for, inadvertently provided to the particular person, and illegitimate; pointing to their reality for the person who benefited doesn’t create a duty.

But note, too, that the descendant of such a person may continue to benefit. The hypothetical factory-owner Elizabeth Warren addressed, or the hypothetical iPhone-using middle class OWS protester occasionally mocked by market-oriented bloggers, might owe what they have not only to the democratic state that built the roads or the marketplace in which Steve Jobs operated, but also to past processes of grave injustice. If they owe nothing to those past processes, then they don’t automatically owe anything, not even a duty of grateful non-criticism, to the present institutions. And, of course, since our lives have been massively and complexly affected by states and markets, at home and abroad, there can’t really be duties of loyalty or gratitude or repayment to any one of those to the exclusion of the others. In short, it can’t really be an argument against any position in a states-vs-markets argument that “you owe so much to” [the state] [the market]. Any living person has been causally affected, and probably benefited, by many states and many markets. Using the causal effect of one to generate a moral debt to it, and certainly a moral debt that excludes the other, doesn’t make sense.

The fact that many people have benefited from an institution has epistemic relevance: it tells me that there’s some good from it, that it maybe shouldn’t be lightly cast aside, that there are benefits to keep count of in my balance of reasons. But the fact that I’m one of the people who has benefited in an unasked-for, inadvertent way doesn’t have direct moral relevance

We should be humbly aware of how little our efforts amount to as a share of our own overall lives… and skeptical of anyone else purporting to stand in for the other share.

 
  • http://twitter.com/UserGoogol UserGoogol

    Buying has nothing to do with it. Buying is a transaction by which people acquire access to goods and services in exchange for money. The whole definition of public good is that people can access it whether or not they pay, and in fact quite often they have little choice in the matter. (It’s exceedingly difficult to opt out of benefiting from clean air, for instance.)

    When a person gives money to a public-good-providing-organization, they are not buying that public good. They are instead “buying” the sense of satisfaction which comes from contributing to something which they value. This does sort of measure how much society values those organizations, but it’s a fairly indirect one, and by no means is it “the only objective way to measure how much society values those organization.”

    Non-libertarians too often gloss over the logical jump from enjoying something to paying for something, but the argument you’re making is going way too far in the other direction.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Dan-Kervick/100000673155327 Dan Kervick

    Perhaps you don’t owe those debts; but neither are you therefore entitled by some prior moral right to all that society’s rules have permitted you to acquire and declare as yours under laws as they happen to exist.   Both claims are too bound up with concepts of property – of mine and thine.

    Reflection on the web of interconnections among human beings and the complexity of the ways in which our well-being depends on others, for good or ill, just suggests to me that it is futile to attempt to delineate spheres of natural property and entitlement around the things we make use of.   The rules of property and justice in exchange are social norms, forged by human communities for the resolution of conflict and the promotion of value, and should be evaluated on that basis.

  • Anonymous

    Prof. Levy,
    You are spot on. Folks like Ms. Warren confuse being part of a chain of human causation with the creation of a moral obligation. Consider the following. But for the harsh treatment of the Jews in late 19th century/early 20th century Russia, I would not exist. My two pairs of grandparents would probably have remained in the old country, would never have met here in the U.S. and married, never have given birth to my parents, etc. By Ms. Warren’s logic, I owe some debt to the Tsar not only for my life, but for my economic success, which would not have been possible but for my grandparents’ emmigration. But this is obvioulsy absurd.

    There is a second problem with her argument. Assuming that roads and other public goods create some obligation on the part of the most successful, who is to say that this debt has not already been paid in full. To use as an example a man much in the news these days, suppose Steve Jobs owed some debt to the collective; why isn’t it the case that this obligation was already satisfied by the tens of thousands of good jobs he created through his entrepreneurship, the wealth he created for shareholders, the value of Apple products, etc. Why shouldn’t society at large be writing Jobs (now, his estate) a check and not vice-versa?

  • Anonymous

    “We should be humbly aware of how little our efforts amount to as a share of our own overall lives… and skeptical of anyone else purporting to stand in for the other share.”

    This is not the place I expected to see such a naked attack on the notion of personal merit (and the notion that market awards such), but I love to see it.

  • Anonymous

    Nice post, Jacob. I wonder about a related topic: what should one say about people who display attitudes of contempt towards institutions that have been enormously beneficial? I am thinking of many intellectuals who are contempous of markets and commerce. I think there is something wrong about failing to at least recognize and show some gratitude here. I agree there is no specific duty to any particular persons here, but I suspect there is a serious moral vice here. What do you think?

    • http://blog.hecker.org/ Frank Hecker

      I don’t necessarily disagree with you, but I can’t help thinking: To whom or what should we feel gratitude for the existence of markets? To those who participate in them? Presumably they are doing so out of pure self-interest (“it is not from the benevolence of the butcher, etc., etc.”) and hence gratitude as such is not appropriate. To those who ensure the market’s continued existence and functioning? But wouldn’t that refer to the agents of the state who enforce contracts, etc?

      • Diogo Costa

        One may show gratitude to all of the individuals who, when facing the choice between spoliation and production, chose the later.

        Religious people have an object for their praise of the natural possibility of spontaneous orders. Here’s Bastiat in Economic Harmonies: ”Newton, after he had discovered the law of gravity, never spoke the name of God without uncovering his head. As far as intellect is above matter, so far is the social world above the physical universe that Newton revered; for the celestial mechanism is unaware of the laws it obeys. How much more reason, then, do we have to bow before the Eternal Wisdom as we contemplate the mechanism of the social world in which the universal mind of God also resides.”

  • Anonymous

    I have never been impressed by arguments from gratitude (such as A.D.M. Walker’s), but I do not know many that hold such a view.  I believe that the more prevalent view is that obligations arise, not from considerations of gratitude; rather, they arise out of considerations of fairness, whether on a voluntarist (e.g., Hart, early Rawls) or non-voluntarist (e.g., Klosko) account.  I am not convinced by such accounts (I side with Simmons on this), but I do believe they are more persuasive than the argument from gratitude, and the non-voluntarist fairness theory of political obligation (Klosko) is a better target for serious debate than the one you set your sights on.

    • Anonymous

      Hume22,
      This is a perceptive comment. I actually think Klosko in his 2005 book “Political Obligations” does score some serious points against Simmons. For me the key issue is whether, as Klosko claims, it is just to charge an unwilling taxpayer his/her fair share of the cost of a communal effort to supply a truly indispensible good, like water, when it is physically impossible for the individual to supply it for him/her self. It somehow seems irrational or insincere for the recalcitrant taxpayer to say, “I’d rather die of thirst than be taxed.” You can analogize national defense to this scenario. In my book I argue that from the libertarian perpscetive, the key test if whether the (public) good in question is necessary for the preservation of rational agency.

      • Anonymous

        Klosko’s account will not impress (1) those who view the political community as an external source of oppression, or (2) practical anarchists who are skeptical about the necessity of the state in general and its moral justification in actual instances in particular.  Klosko is thus unlikely to convert the unfaithful by asserting, for example, that the state is necessary to provide the public good of national defense which thereby gives rise to a fairness requirement of obedience.  The anarchist will likely reply that the state itself is to blame for any (supposed) need of national defense.  Moreover, one may pause and wonder just what “national” defense is anyway.  Klosko exploits xenophobia through the hypothetical “hostile” outsider hell-bent on “massacring the X-ites.”  In reality, it is more plausible to argue that most threats from “outsiders” are likely the result of a state’s policies towards such outsiders in the first place.  Furthermore, these threats that are said to produce a need for national defense are in reality threats to the particular state itself.  Rarely do we hear “down with John and Sally and Fred from Idaho!”  Rather, we hear “down with the American government!”  So the supposed threat from which we all have a need for defense is in actuality only a threat to a particular state’s existence itself.  But if we do not have a moral reason to care about this state’s existence in the first place, then there is no need for national defense, and a state cannot justify and legitimize itself by claiming only it can assure its own existence. 

        To further demonstrate the implausibility that national defense gives rise to fairness concerns and political obligation, recall that Klosko claims that “the provision of a single presumptive public good is able to trigger extensive political obligations.”  This seems fundamentally problematic. On this account, one may argue that the United States is owed obedience by Canadians and Mexicans because the U.S. government’s foreign policies provide important deterrence considerations against all those states seeking to invade Canada and Mexico.  As a result, the U.S. government may impose itself on the people living within the boundaries of Canada and Mexico, so long as its implementation is substantively just and provides opportunity to participate in “democratic” procedures.  I believe this is implausible, thus providing further reason to reject Klosko’s approach to political obligation.

        • Anonymous

          I agree that Klosko-style arguments will not work against those with a fundamentally different worldview than he (and I) start with. If you believe that the state qua state is intrinsically evil and that all states are equally bad, then his argument will cut no ice. However, if you believe that some states are relatively peaceful and respectful of the rule of law, while others are comparatively nasty, aggressive and capable of waging wars of conquest and, importantly, you are convinced that you live in the former variety, then I believe his argument is more plausible. Since we are speaking of the potential justification of the state in general, it makes no difference for purposes of this discussion into which category you assign the U.S.

          I haven’t thought much about your second point, but I suspect that Klosko could asimilate this case to the example discussed below regarding the lawn mower guy who provides unrequested services. By means of the political process it could be argued that we “ask for” military defense from our state, whle the Canadians don’t.

          My problem with Klosko’s line of attack is different. I’m not sure he is able to confine his rationale for compulsory contributions to “indispensible” pubic goods.

        • Damien S.

          In reality, it is more plausible to argue that most threats from
          “outsiders” are likely the result of a state’s policies towards such
          outsiders in the first place.

          Have you read any history ever?

          Iraq invasion of Kuwait. Hitler’s invasion of Eastern Europe.  Stalin’s invasion of Eastern Europe.  Mongol conquest of most of Eurasia, and attempted invasions of Vietnam and Japan.  Expansion of the Roman Republic-Empire.  The Arab conquests.  European conquest of the Americas, India, and Africa.  Please to be explaining how these threats were the result of Kuwaiti, Eastern European, Japanese, Native American, etc. policies.

          If Klosko says “massacre”, well, that’s not the usual motivation.  Looting, enslavement and extortion are.  Does that differ from one’s own government?  Yes, especially if it’s democratic.  But even without that, native Indian rulers at least re-circulated their surplus; the British carted it off home.  Native rulers were also more sensitive to changing condition and hardship, alleviating high tax rates with holidays; the British were relentless.

          • Anonymous

            Damien,

            I
            do not deny that throughout history there have been conflicts caused by an
            aggressor’s desire to rape, pillage, enslave, and murder. What I do deny,
            however, is that this is the norm. Although I graduated with a history degree,
            I admit that my focus on history was a long time ago and I have since turned to
            law and philosophy, so perhaps I should heed your advice and dust off my text
            books. That being said, I will venture to guess that most armed conflicts are
            jurisdictional disputes between political officials (i.e., disputes over which
            governing “authority” will govern over certain territories and
            populations). Even some of your examples fall into this category (note that
            “Empire Building” is not often a desire of one “Peoples” to
            enslave another Peoples; rather, it is the desire of one government to expand
            their jurisdictional boundaries). As a result, the “defense” needed
            in the claim that “national defense” is a good required by all
            (irrespective of political consent or the voluntary acceptance of benefits) is
            simply a defense of particular governmental institutions and jurisdictional
            claims, the desirability of which is subjective, context-dependent, and
            contingent.

  • http://blog.hecker.org/ Frank Hecker

    I’m not well-versed in the philosophical background of all this, but to my naive self it seems that you can flip this argument around: If I don’t have any obligation to anyone in the present for the actions of people in the past that happened to benefit me, then others in the present don’t have any obligations to me for the actions of people in the past that happened to disadvantage me. So, for example, if my ancestors were subjected to cruel injustices in the past, and as a result I am severely disadvantaged in the present, what reason could I possibly have for objecting to my state, and on what grounds could I possibly ask others for help in improving that state? Or am I missing something here?

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1245756238 Joshua Foa Dienstag

    But we are NOT “humbly aware of how little our efforts amount to as a share of our own overall lives”.  Elizabeth Warren’s speech is not about establishing a debt of gratitude.  Rather it is about defeating a claim of self-sufficiency, in the form “my taxes should be lower because I made all this money myself”.  That that claim is indefensible doesn’t stop it from being made over and over again.  While it may be true that the state isn’t always a good stand-in for the many others that helped you make your money, the position the high wage-earners owe little or nothing to others cannot be allowed to be the starting point for a debate about appropriate tax burdens, redistribution  or anything.  If we all agreed to begin from YOUR position of humble awareness, the reminder would not be necessary. But as things stand, it very much is.

    • http://profiles.google.com/jtlevy Jacob Levy

      Josh, I agree that that’s how she set it up.  The target is the supposed self-perceived Galtian industrialist.  But every piece of what she says the industrialist got from other people was state funding: roads, police, firefighters, army, state education, provided by “the rest of us,” that is, taxpayers in this one society.  Then the industrialist is (graciously) told “Keep a big hunk of it.,” but that there’s a contract-like duty of repayment for the those various public goods whose benefits the industrialist employed.

      We can grant the full force of “no, you didn’t make all that money yourself,” but that that’s neither necessary nor sufficient– in fact, is pretty much irrelevant– to the justification of taxes going forward.  If the industrialist genuinely thinks the old system had taxes that were already unjustly high, he’s not estopped from arguing that because of the past benefits.  If as between two Massachusetts industrialists, we could show that one genuinely did owe less causally to the United States government or the state of Massachusetts (say, one’s a recent immigrant, or happens to only employ private school graduates or to have made the initial fortune in an unincorporated swath of land where roads and police protection were substantially privately paid for by the real estate developer, or made the money in the federally prohibited drug trade), that shouldn’t differentiate their tax liabilities to Massachusetts or the U.S. going forward.  And there’s no good reason to think that, of all the many agencies that have causally contributed to the present good fortune, the extant local state is uniquely entitled to repayment.

      • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_NUESFTYFK3DQKCHQHLT2MMINAI Craig

        Granted, the “no self-made men” point does not by itself answer the question of what is an appropriate level of taxation.

        But, echoing Josh’s point above, “the no self-made men” point is very relevant to rebutting a common libertarian position one hears from the more extreme elements of the right.  Those elements espouse something like the following argument: 1.  I earned all my money by dint of my own industry alone.  2.  I have a natural property right to keep what I earned by dint of my industry alone.  3.  Taxation takes away a portion of what I earned.   4.  Thus taxation violates a natural property right of mine; it is theft.

        Warren’s point is that premise 1 is false.  The “No self-made man” point thus performs the negative function of rebutting the argument above.

        True, I said at the start that by itself this point does not perform the *positive* function of answering the question of what is an appropriate level of taxation.  That said, the “no self-made man” point does perform the positive function of acknowledging one’s need for other people’s inputs, which (I would argue) at least *raises* the question of fairness (even if it does not answer that question):  Are others’ inputs getting their due reward?

        Raising the question of fairness is important, since too many libertarians (many of the present company of bleeding hear libertarians excepted) sneeringly dismiss the value of fairness.  To them, it’s all liberty, all the time.  I’d like to think Warren’s point puts the nose of the fairness-camel in the tent, so to speak.

        • Anonymous

          The “no self made man” hypothesis does more than put the nose in the tent, it blows the entire tent down. If, as Jacob says, “we should be humbly aware of how little our efforts amount to as a share of our own overall lives,” then the notion that markets reward “merit” is highly questionable. Instead, they reward some combination of “merit” and blind luck, and distribution according to the latter is much more difficult to defend. 

        • Anonymous

          If you give me something that I haven’t asked for, even though I may benefit from it, I still owe you nothing. We didn’t voluntarily bargain for it. I may feel that I should repay you, and it might be a good thing for me to do so, but I’m not obligated to repay you. If my neighbor mows my lawn without asking me if I want him to do it, then he shouldn’t send me a bill and demand payment.

          • Anonymous

            Yes, exactly. This point is totally obvious to all libertarians, but apparently completely counter-intuitive to blleding heart non-libertarians. Their moral intuitions must completely different than ours, or they have some great argument here that they are not sharing.

          • http://twitter.com/hoosteen Justin Jacoby Smith

            It seems to me that if an adult is capable of escaping from the benefits of taxation (by, say, moving to Peter Thiel’s floating libertarian compound), but chooses instead to enjoy those benefits–voluntarily agreed upon initially or not–an implicit obligation does exist. Quantum meruit.

          • Anonymous

            Justin,

            This is a false dichotomy.  There are many reasons why people choose to live in a certain location that have nothing to do with the supposed “benefits of taxation.”  Think of Wallace, the character in The Wire who decided to return to Baltimore because “this is my home, this is where my friends are.”  It seems implausible to claim that by staying, ”chooses to instead to enjoy those benefits” provided by the de facto governmental authority (i.e, the Barksdale crew).

            The fundamental question is why does a certain class of individuals (e.g., those occupying positions of governmental power or influential members within influential pressure groups) obtain the moral right to impose this choice situation (stay-and-be-obligated or leave) upon individuals who do not wish to be part of (what they see as) an external political community.  Mere residence does not indicate an intention to “stay and enjoy the benefits of taxation.”

          • http://twitter.com/hoosteen Justin Jacoby Smith

            Again, it seems to me that “mere residence” in the midst of actualized benefits of taxation and the use thereof  precisely equals “staying and enjoying the benefits of taxation.” I don’t see the difference in the distinction, but perhaps I’m missing it?

          • Anonymous

            In your post above you wrote “but chooses instead to enjoy those benefits,” insinuating that the individual’s “choice” to remain was motivated by the benefits provided.  Thus, the normative force behind your assertions is provided by the reasons for the choice, i.e., the benefits received.  My reply illustrates that “mere residence” does not illustrate that the choice reflects one’s motivation “instead to enjoy those benefits.”  Rather, there are a whole host of reasons why one may remain in a certain locality, irrespective (indeed, often despite the existence) of particular political institutions.

          • Damien S.

            This is true.

            It is also true that collective defense has to be paid for, and air pollution prevented.  Otherwise you’ll be victimized by those who care even less about your rights and what you deserve or owe.

          • Anonymous

            Why should anyone be required to move to escape paying for things they didn’t ask for (and may not even want)? That seems absurd to me.

          • http://twitter.com/hoosteen Justin Jacoby Smith

            Things (A) one didn’t ask for, (B) one didn’t want, but that (C) one utilizes nonetheless. It seems to me that C is the crucial point.

          • Anonymous

            I would argue that (C) carries no normative weight.  Two examples.  First, as famously argued by Hume (admittedly in a different context, yet I think the rationale carries over here as well): “We may as well assert that a man, by remaining in a vessel, freely consents to the dominion of the master; though he was carried on board while asleep, and must leap into the ocean and perish, the moment he leaves her.”  In the context under discussion, the man (A) did not ask for the benefit of staying on board, (B) did not originally want it, yet (C) utilizes it in the face of jumping overboard.  I submit that (C) carries no moral weight at all (not to mention that it does not ground the vague, far-reaching, and indefinite duties required by political obligation).

            Second, it can be argued that the U.S. provides deterrence benefits to Canada and Mexico because of the U.S.’s (absurdly) large military, supported by the military industrial complex.  So Canada and Mexico fit (A), (B), and (C).  I submit that those individuals living in Canada and Mexico are under no obligations to U.S. govt. 

          • Anonymous

            What you’re advocating, Justin, is that individuals should not be entitled to make their own choices regarding the benefits they will receive and the amount they will pay for these benefits. It’s an anti-individualist view.

            I take the individualist view, which is that individuals have a right to choose for themselves, and only for themselves. Now that’s the view that all libertarians, including bleeding heart libertarians, should be taking. No exceptions.

          • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_NUESFTYFK3DQKCHQHLT2MMINAI Craig

            OK, so let’s agree that making one’s own choices is valuable.  But let’s go on to ask:  Why is it valuable?  Two possible answers I see:  (1) because if one’s acts are not chosen, then they are coerced, and coercion is wrong;  (2)  because it is only by choosing one’s actions that one can be in control of one’s own life.

            Of the two, I see (2) as more fundamental.  After all, why is coercion bad?  I’d answer: because it cuts short one’s control of one’s own life in whatever sphere affected by the coercion.

            But does it follow that the smaller the state, the less government coercion there is, and thus the more control one has over one’s life?

            Not that I can see.  There are more threats to control-of-one’s-life than just the intentional coercion of government.  After all, in a libertarian society you could be born to poor sharecropping parents, say, who can’t afford to education you, and as a result you have overwhelming odds against you in life, pretty much condemning you to a life of poverty, unless you have some brilliant stroke of luck (say, in the form of charity, or in being born a genius who can teach himself/herself to read, etc.).

            How much control do you have over your life in such a case?  Not a whole lot.  Moreover, this point generalizes; it is not true only of the dramatic sharecropper case.  There are lots of ways in which economic inequality can cut short the opportunities of those on the bottom.

            It’s an empirical claim, but what evidence I have seen suggests that in a market economy with progressive taxation, public education, and a social safety net, more people would have a higher degree of control over their lives than in some laissez-faire system.

            Suppose you reject this empirical claim.  Are you absolutely sure?  If you are not totally sure (and you shouldn’t be totally sure!), then you must confront the question:  What would you say to the child of the sharecropper?  “Hey, you don’t have much control at all over your life, but at least your relations with others will be voluntary / consensual?”  That rings hollow to my ears.

            Long story short:  I would argue that, done right, the state provides citizens the benefit *on balance* of more individual control over their life.  True, you may not have *asked for* this benefit.  But it seems inherent in your nature of being an agent that this control over your life is something you will want.  So the unasked-for benefit is radically different from a case of your neighbor mowing your yard without your consent and then demanding payment.  It’s much closer to the case of your neighbor saving you from drowning and ruining his pants in the process (from mud, say).  Morally speaking it’d be churlish of you not to want to compensate him.  True, enhanced agency (the benefit I am suggesting a good state will provide) is not quite the same as life-as-opposed-to-death.  But it is a hugely valuable good.  And it would be churlish of you to resent the taxes without which this benefit would not exist.

          • Anonymous

            Craig, did I do something to cause the person to be born to poor sharecropping parents? If not, then how can I be rightfully held responsible for making their situation better? (that’s not to say that I wouldn’t want to contribute towards making their situation better – it might even be in my best interest to do so but that should be my choice). To hold individuals responsible for situations they had nothing to do with bringing about seems to me like a recipe for chaos and injustice.

          • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_NUESFTYFK3DQKCHQHLT2MMINAI Craig

            Oops, sorry.  I overlooked this reply, Shemsky; just now saw it.

            When I say “What would you say to the child of the sharecropper?” I don’t mean to suggest that you bear some personal responsibility for causing his or her plight.   The child’s question is NOT “What were you thinking when you did this to me?”  Instead the question is:  “Why are you so gung-ho for this mode of social organization, when this mode has condemned me and many others to a life of poverty?”

            The idea is that whatever mode of social organization prevails in a given society (anarchism, minarchism, welfare state capitalism, socialism, or whatever) ought to be justifiable to all people who live under it. 

            My suggestion is that the value of consensual interactions — which I take you to be treating as supremely important — is not quite the trump value you think it to be.  It is important, yes,but not important enough to justify your preferred mode, given that mode’s costs to the child in freedom (i.e. control of his/her life), and given that mode’s costs in fairness (surely it’s impossible to believe the child in this case has a fair go in life).

          • Anonymous

            Craig,
            While I respect the pedigree of “freedom as ability to control” interpretation, I’m not sure I buy into it.  And I believe my skepticism is reasonable.  So now we face reasonable disagreement about the interpretation of a fundamental value.  So now things get tricky.  My question is this: if you are willing to constantly revisit the justifiability of the basic structure (the fundamental point of Rawls and Marx), why are you not willing to revisit the justifiability of the boundaries of ”society”? (I am assuming this as your position, which Rawls assumes (closed, non-voluntary, etc.).  Society is not natural in the same way the basic structure is not natural.  So it seems to me that if “society” is to force itself onto people through a political system and the basic structure, society itself must be legitimized in some way.  Now things are really tricky.  I take this to be the basic problem instantiated in the particularity problem: what legitimizes a political society?

          • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_NUESFTYFK3DQKCHQHLT2MMINAI Craig

            This is an interesting question that a tiny post in a very narrow column won’t do justice to.

            I am guessing you are envisioning either of the following alternatives:   (i) an anarchist situation in which there is no society at all, just individual producers making consensual arrangements with each other; or (ii) there is a minimal state with defined borders, but if you (perhaps along with others) want to take your land and secede (i.e. form your own minimal state), you are permitted to do so.

            In both cases i and ii I would argue on empirical grounds that the risks to human well-being inherent in either case are too great to be morally acceptable.  Obviously, I can’t make that case here.

             

          • Anonymous

            Craig, how has my mode of social organization, freedom of choice and freedom of association, condemned a sharecropper’s child and many others to a life of poverty?

          • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_NUESFTYFK3DQKCHQHLT2MMINAI Craig

            No public education system, dirt poor parents, thus the child gets no education, no literacy, no basic arithmetic.  Perhaps malnutrition too.  Perhaps a member of a despised minority no one wants to hire (that would cut short the hopes for charity too).

            This is an extreme case.  But if you can’t see how poverty restricts a person’s ability to be in control of his or her life, a short blog comment post from me won’t fix that.

            I know you’re probably assuming that a libertarian society will be a land of plenty for everyone.  But you can’t know that for sure, so you have to consider what you might say about a case like this.

          • http://www.facebook.com/people/Russ-Tavares/506875834 Russ Tavares

            there’s no public college education system either. We know that society has addressed this, in the form of scholarships, apprenticeships, loans, grants, and other forms of patronage.
            Patronage is arguably older than taxation, and it’s kinda the tax man’s dirty little secret they keep trying to sweep under the rug.

          • Anonymous

            Craig, why do you make the assumption that without government schools there will be no education? Government schools have been around in the United States for about 170 years. Did you think that before 170 years ago no one in the United States could read or write or understand arithmetic?

          • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_NUESFTYFK3DQKCHQHLT2MMINAI Craig

            Of course not.  I know that private schools exist (and existed).  But without public schools (or vouchers) and compulsory education laws I think some kids will not receive an education, whether through parental neglect or poverty.  Do you think otherwise?

          • Anonymous

            Craig, even with public schools and compulsory education laws many children do not receive an education.According to the U.S. Department of Education the bottom 25% of American adults are functionally illiterate, and the next 25% of American adults operate at a junior high level or lower. That’s not very impressive.

          • Anonymous

            To paraphrase Roderick Long in an excellent  response he made to Gene Callahan on his blog a few months ago; you accept the moral absurdity that individual freedom can be legitimately suppressed for the sake of the collective, and the pragmatic absurdity that allowing such suppressions could be restricted to the “right” occasions, without generating endless abuses. I reject both of those absurdities.

          • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_NUESFTYFK3DQKCHQHLT2MMINAI Craig

            A few points:

            *  Consider my example from my previous post.  If on your definition of freedom, the poor child of sharecroppers in your “free society” is more free than I currently am now in our current non-libertarian system of government, then I reject your definition of freedom.  (As a rough and ready proposal, I’d suggest that the more control you have over the shape of your life, the freer you are).

            *  You put my point tendentiously by saying I accept “that individual freedom can be legitimately suppressed for the sake of the collective.”  I am saying the freedom of individuals is on balance enhanced by the government I sketched.  An analogy (albeit a rough and ready one):  traffic lights restrict your individual freedom, but your “traffic freedom” (the control you have in getting from A to B) is actually enhanced overall by the existence of traffic lights.

            *  Your reference to “endless abuses” borders on paranoia.  Millions of people are leading flourishing lives as members of non-libertarian states in the developed world.  Are their lives blighted by endless government abuses?  No.  Are these systems of government perfect systems?  No, no human systems are.  Do people have more control over their lives on balance in these systems than they would under minimal state capitalism?  My empirical judgment, looking at cross country data such as the sorts gathered by the OECD, is Yes.
             

          • Damien S.

            The people who insist on making no exceptions will be conquered for lack of organized defense.   Libertarianism should not be a suicide pact.

            Anarchy suffers from the fallacy of composition.  Individuals following their own rational self-interest need not lead to optimal outcomes for those individuals.  Prisoner’s Dilemma, externalities, etc.

          • Anonymous

            I don’t know of any anarchist who ever claimed that allowing individuals to follow their own rational self-interest would always result in optimal outcomes for those individuals. But I believe that anarchism inproves the odds of that happening, and that (libertarian) anarchism is morally superior to statism.

          • Anonymous

            So when you sell your house and get a premium price for it how much are you going to pay your neighbors who keep their houses and yards well groomed?

          • http://www.facebook.com/people/Russ-Tavares/506875834 Russ Tavares

            oh, they should be paid by the OTHER neighbors who have cars on blocks in the front yard, I’ll break even.

          • Anonymous

            Unless you’re a native American, whatever property you own was likely acquired by the state before you purchased it.  The state set up the conditions of ownership that apply to you.  Your complaint is akin to a condominium owner complaining about fees when it was widely known that the fees were a part of the contract he or she signed.

          • Anonymous

            How did the state acquire the property, Jay_Z? Was it by legitimate means, or did the state use coercion to acquire the property or the means to purchase the property?

          • Anonymous

            Of course they used coercion.  Virtually all of the property in the world has been obtained through coercion.  It’s the way of the world.

          • Anonymous

            It’s not my way, Jay_Z. And I’ll guess that it’s not your way either. But it is certainly the way of the state.

          • Anonymous

            It was the way I obtained all the property I have, yes.  Through the state.  The only other way is to start your own state or create a stateless area, which likely also involves coercion.  All property requires coercion, all laws require coercion.  The difference is in the details.

          • Anonymous

            Justin,
            Sorry, but I  believe your argument is fatally flawed, as shown by the example below. Suppose the world is divided into two states. Both are horrible police states run by insane dictators. In both, all residents must pay taxes in the form of forced labor, and the tax rate is 99.999%, But in state A you work 365 days a year, while in B you get one day off to celebrate the birth of the “Great Leader.” The dictator in B, in an effort to prove to his subjects that they live in the best of all possible worlds, has an open borders policy, knowing that since A is worse, nobody will leave. Do you seriously contend that simply by remaining in state B its subjects incur a moral obligation to obey its laws, i.e. remain slaves?

            Of course, you might say that your claim only applies to minimally decent states, but that still begs the question against the anarchist who holds that even the minimally decent state provides no benefit to him.

          • http://www.facebook.com/people/Russ-Tavares/506875834 Russ Tavares

            Not leaving a physical location ≠ consent to what then befalls you by people’s voluntary action. Now, if you refused to budge for a landslide, yeah, you get dead and buried. But a landslide is not a moral agent. Consider it an ethical extension of the “stand your ground” laws.

          • Anonymous

            This is just an assertion, not an argument. 

          • Anonymous

            So what, Farstrider? Do you have an argument to show why stealing is wrong, or do you merely make that assertion?

  • Anonymous

    OK.  I stumbled on this blog a few weeks ago and I absolutely love it.  Compelling arguments, vivid examples, thought provoking.  I’ve got a few other libertarian sites, blogs and podcasts I tap into, but this one brings a different perspective on the subjects and I find that it gives balance to my own thinking as well.  This is generating significant value for me as a person, but I didn’t ask for it, so….

    The logic and ethic of the argument is convincing to me.  Another supporting example, all of us in the free world owe a debt of gratitude to Athens for discovering democracy, and to the Irish clergy for preserving the manuscripts.  If we allow for nonvoluntary and hereditary rent seeking, we should be sending nice fat checks their way.  And lets not forget the Roman Republic too, and any of John Locke’s descendants   

    Now a possible counter example.  Most would agree that we need a military to protect us, but not all would.  If we allow some to exclude themselves from paying, many more would likely jump on the bandwagon and do so as well, since that choice would always benefit the next individual to choose it.  And so if you follow this ideology (I don’t disagree with it directly) to it’s conclusion, it seems like you end up with a society which is easily conquered by a society with less freedom, see case of Philistines vs ancient Israelites and the subsequent founding of a Jewish monarchy (myth/truth, the logic in the story makes sense.)  So then, pragmatic exceptions begin to be made to the ideal.  That’s the part that always trips me up then.  Ideologues call for a return to purity and the subsequent mainstream shunning, but this crowd seems more pragmatic.  But now I started a “hello” and “thank you” post, and it looks like my Cardinals aren’t gonna make it tonight.  

  • Anonymous

    Maybe Friedman answered my national military questions above with “whether the (public) good in question is necessary for the preservation of rational agency”.   Hey Mark, send a few links my way.  I’d love to chew on the thought.  And now I feel like a bad Cardinals fan since they drove it into extra innings.

    • Anonymous

      OK, only since you asked, and not by way of self-promotion on another party’s site, you can visit me at http://naturalrightslibertarian.com/. All comments and critiques are welcome.

  • Fernando Teson

    Well Put, Jacob. The question of gratitude arises also with respect to the brain drain phenomenon, where critics of the migration of talented persons claim that it is immoral of them to leave because they owe a debt of gratitude to the country that educated them (this is not the only argument; there’s also the argument that emigrating harms those left behind, and the argument that the talented citizen is a “human resource” of the state).  
    My take on this is quite extreme: if the person paid for her education, she does not owe anything “to the state” above and beyond what she paid. If the person, on the contrary, received education from the public treasury, (a) she already paid her share through taxes, and (b) at any rate, the “transaction” was coerced, because the benefits provided were coercively extracted from the taxpayers and (usually in developing countries) the student did not have any option but attend the public institution. While one can think of cases where emigrating is morally questionable (imagine a doctor in a poor country working to alleviate an epidemic who decides to move to Beverly Hills to do face-lifting for millionaires), arguments from gratitude are particularly out of place. 

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  • Damien S.

    We’re not condemned to stay in the tiny columns, people, just quote what you’re responding to.

    Craig, how has my mode of social organization, freedom of choice
    and freedom of association, condemned a sharecropper’s child and many
    others to a life of poverty?

    Your “mode of social organization” includes far more than “freedom!”, in particular the system, a of unjust property appropriation and inheritance, and clearly condemns the child to poverty in contrast to a system which guarantees an equal share in natural resources to all living.   The non-coercion principle is the explicitly and proudly presented assumption of anarcho-capitalism, but the system of private property is the hidden one, undermining the logic when not fully acknowledged and justified.

    But I believe that anarchism inproves the odds of that happening

    What evidence justifies that belief in light of the Prisoner’s Dilemma, pollution, overfishing, and defense problems?

    Government schools have been around in the United States for about 170
    years. Did you think that before 170 years ago no one in the United
    States could read or write or understand arithmetic?

    Public schools in Massachusetts and the rest of New England go back to the 1600s; more like 350 years.  Did that result in higher literacy rates in the NE than in the South, say?  AFAIK, yes it did.

    • Anonymous

      You have a system which guarantees an equal share in natural resources to all living? No, you don’t. Human nature won’t allow it.

      • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_NUESFTYFK3DQKCHQHLT2MMINAI Craig

        Shemsky,

        Above you wrote:

        “Craig, even with public schools and compulsory education laws many
        children do not receive an education.According to the U.S. Department of
        Education the bottom 25% of American adults are functionally
        illiterate, and the next 25% of American adults operate at a junior high
        level or lower. That’s not very impressive.”

        Yes, we must do better.

        But I see know reason to think a private-school-only-plus-no-compulsory-education regime would fare better.  Two points:

        ** As I said above, in such a regime some kids would get NO education, whether through parental poverty or parental neglect.  Do you really deny this?

        **  I strongly suspect that current US class-based poverty divisions lie behind the functional illiteracy statistic you mention.  These problems would only get worse in a class-stratified libertarian system, I strongly suspect.

        Relevant (though not decisive) here are cross country education data.

        Regarding adult literacy, the nicest graph I found is on page 11 of this report:

        http://nces.ed.gov/pubs97/9733.pdf

        The countries with the highest levels of adult literacy?  Sweden and the Netherlands.  No libertarian paradises, those.

        Those data are from the 1990s, though.  Some more recent data:

        http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2006/2006073.pdf (see page 11 in particular)

        You’ll see countries with stronger welfare states than the US perform well.

        I know, I know, correlation is not causation and this is a complex matter.   But surely the burden of proof is on those who belief literacy (and other measures of educational obtainment) would be higher in a regime of private-school-only-plus-no-compulsory-education.

        I suspect your empirical views and mine are too far apart to reconcile via blog posts, so I’m going to end my part of the conversation here.

  • Damien S.

    It’s not my way, Jay_Z. And I’ll guess that it’s not your way either. But it is certainly the way of the state.

    No, it’s the way of people.  Hey, we can link this back to the society fundamentalism thread.  If you want to say there’s no free-floating society, just individuals, well, there’s no free-floating state doing bad things, either, just individuals.  Get a bunch of people together and some will tend to be nice and some tend to be aggrandizing assholes and many tend to go one or the other based on circumstances and surrounding people.  And usually they’ll end up in a group of some sort, whether family, clan, gang, religion, state, or (in rare and special cultures) business partnership, any of which is capable of nice or assholish behavior.  Not just states.

    And pretty much all the landed property, and much of the monetized wealth, that libertarians like to sanctify, is tainted by past coercion if not drenched in it.  States have a role in that but by no means a unique one.

    • Anonymous

      I didn’t say that coercion was unique to the state, Damien. But not all individuals deal by coercion. They don’t have to. ALL states deal by coercion. That’s what states are set up to do.

      I don’t disagree with you that pretty much all the landed property is tainted by past coercion. And if we can right that wrong then I’m all for doing so.

      • Anonymous

        Just to add a tiny bit, it is a defining characteristic of the state that it declares for itself a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. In other words, you can’t have a state that does not assert that it alone may legitimately use force and coercion against its citizens. Otherwise, you have a group of people who have all consensually decided to act in concert, with the liberty to withdraw from the association at any time.

  • Anonymous

    This is a bit off topic, but I have a question.  If justice is an “over the course of a lifetime” concept, what is the remedy recommended by liberal egalitarians for those who have received way way more than their “fair share” for years, even decades?

    • Damien S.

      Progressive income tax, inheritance tax, and sometimes a wealth tax.  Next!

      • Anonymous

        How do you deal with 22 year old unemployed children of privilege? They’ve had 22 years of excessive resource consumption (private school, no need to work, etc). They are 22 years in debt, living the easy life while others work as coal miners, mechanics, etc. The same must be said about most professors. They have lived a quality of life well above what liberal egalitarian justice permits (unfair educational opportunities).