Left2Right

By On August 14, 2012 · 16 Comments · In Liberalism, Libertarianism, Links

Many of our readers appreciated Elizabeth Anderson’s contribution to this blog a few months back, critical though it was of many key libertarian claims. I did too, though that’s no surprise as I’ve long been a fan of her work. For those of you who haven’t read it, her 1999 Ethics piece, “What is the Point of Equality?” is simply masterful. Tell me this opening line doesn’t pique your interest:

If much recent academic work defending equality had secretly been penned by conservatives, could the results be any more embarrassing for egalitarians?

And it just gets better from there.

A lot of you probably don’t remember it, but Anderson was a frequent contributor to a short-lived blog called “Left2Right,” the conceit of which was to bring together a bunch of mostly left-leaning academic philosophers to engage in reasoned dialogue with those on the political “right.” The posts were infrequent and overly-long for the medium, but the lineup included some real superstars. In addition to Anderson, David Schmidtz, Gerald Dworkin, David Velleman, Stephen Darwall, and Joshua Cohen were all fairly regular participants.

But Anderson’s posts stole the show. And they hold up really quite well. For instance, I’m sure BHL readers would appreciate her piece on “What Hayek Saw” about the nature of a free society. Here’s a taste:

What is needed is a set of rules that leave people free to offer mutually advantageous exchanges, so as to systematically give people incentives to behave in ways that overall enhance the liberty and opportunities of everyone else.  Markets play an indispensable role in this, because prices signal to people where their productive efforts will be most valued by other people.  In contrast with a command economy, individuals in a market system are free to take or leave any particular opportunity open to them, free to respond to or ignore any particular bargain or incentive offered to them.  Moreover, market prices reflect the aggregate result of everyone’s free decision to demand this or that, rather than some bureaucrat’s notion of what they ought to be consuming.  These are two extremely important ways in which a system of procedural justice based on voluntary market exchange secures everyone’s freedom.  However, the most important way in which reliance on markets enhances everyone’s freedom concerns the dynamic effects of market competition in a private property regime in producing ever-expanding opportunities.

Less resonant with our biases here, but still excellent, is her series of posts on “How Not to Complain About Taxes,” in which she takes on arguments based on natural property rights, desert, and production and self-sufficiency. Good brain food in these days filled with cheap “You Didn’t Build That” memes.

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  • famadeo

    Maybe off topic, but I’d like to see how people in this blog were to respond to Bob Black’s take on libertarianism:

    http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/bob-black-the-libertarian-as-conservative

  • David

    The 99 Ethics piece is a remarkable combination of erudition and incredibly clear and direct writing. I once taught it to freshman art students with no background or training in philosophy, and they did just fine with it.

    • http://frankhecker.com/ Frank Hecker

      As someone else with no philosophical training or background, I second this comment. I thought it was a great essay, not just clear but rising to eloquence in several places.

      It also has a interesting paragraph (p. 330) relevant to the recent debate over the individual mandate of the Affordable Care Act. Anderson contrasts the attitude expressed by a mandate to purchase insurance (“‘You are too stupid to run you [sic] own life. Therefore, we will force you to purchase health insurance, because we know better than you what is for your own good.’”) with a justification we might offer to someone for taxing them to fulfill a collective obligation we owe to “come to the aid of others when their health needs are urgent”, “part of your rightful claim as an equal citizen”. She concludes, “Which rationale for providing health insurance better expresses respect for its recipients?” (This, of course, was written well before passage of the ACA, at a time when a number of Republican politicians supported an individual mandate as part of a free-market alternative to “Hillarycare”.)

      • ThaomasH

        This gets the rationale for the mandate
        exactly, 180 degrees wrong. The mandate, or tax if you will, exists in ACA so
        that individuals will NOT act in their individual self interest and purchase
        health insurance only when they, based on private knowledge of their own health
        status, know it is likely they will soon need health care.

      • http://www.facebook.com/people/Jerome-Bigge/100003095962760 Jerome Bigge

        We could have considered reducing the cost of health care by getting rid of the government regulation that make health care so expensive. One of these being prescription laws that give doctors an effective government enforced monopoly over access to medical drugs. Without prescription laws, people would be able to take of their own health for far less money. For example, the cost of blood pressure medicine at Walmart (generics) is $40 a year. As high blood pressure is one of the driving factors in a lot of medical problems, being able to control it at such a low cost would certainly be of benefit. Additionally, high cholesterol is another example of a condition that can lead to serious medical problems, even death in some cases. Again, using Walmart prices, the cost of the medication I’m on for this condition would run $80 a year at Walmart. As high blood pressure and high cholesterol are the major causes of heart attacks and strokes, right there a person could considerably reduce the risks of such things for a cost of only $10 a month. However, because of prescription laws, the actual cost will be two to three times as high since you will have to pay a doctor his or her office fee, have blood tests, etc., in order to obtain “permission” (a prescription) to treat these two conditions. As a Libertarian I’ve been posting this information everywhere I can in the hope that perhaps others will follow with a demand to end these laws and return to us the medical freedom that we once enjoyed…

  • GU1

    Anderson really is one of the good [gals], even though I often disagree with her conclusions.

    The hypothetical letters from the luck egalitarian government to the unlucky in the 99 Ethics article were hilarious and poignant.

    • Sean II

      I’ll go one further than you, and say that she seems like a thoroughly decent and extremely interesting thinker who would, if allowed to tutor the next priest-king of some experimental city state, pretty much turn the place into a living hell.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=193112608 Chris Bertram

    I agree with Matt Z that Elizabeth Anderson’s substantive positions are really quite close to those of some of the BHLers (the right-wing of Rawlsianism would be one way to think about it). The egalitarianism essay tends, in my experience, to divide people sharply. Some people think it a brilliant strike against a silly theory; others find it stridently rhetorical piece that misrepresents its opponents views. I think the truth is somewhere in the middle. Anderson successfully makes the point that egalitarians traditionally make a claim about relationships and that this is lost in the LE treatment. She successfully argues that LE is no good as a comprehensive theory of justice (but it is questionable whether anyone really thought it was). But the LE intuition that it is unfair, other things equal (!!!), if some people are worse off than others, survives as *one* of the ingredients in a wider theory of justice.

  • TracyW

    An interesting article and I agree with others that it is very well-written.

    Some thoughts: firstly, she doesn’t really understand how markets work. For example, she talks about society commissioning people to work in dangerous places, or in dangerous occupations. But in many cases, society doesn’t commission people to do so. I might buy Californian oranges, and I might live in a house made of wood from loggers, but in neither case do I insist on either feature regardless of price. (Actually, where I live at the moment is built from concrete). The people who grow oranges, and sell building supplies to builders, know far more about the relative merits of different locations for growing oranges, or chopping down trees, than I do. And the people who take jobs as loggers, or orange-pickers (or whatever orange farms use), know far more about the merits of those jobs than I do. They’re the ones best placed to decide between the profits offered by growing oranges in California and the costs of doing so, or the risks of logging compared with the benefits of being outside enjoying the weather. Therefore they should be the ones to bear the costs of their risks (which then drives the price of their products up, thus influencing my demand for their products).
    Note, Henderson’s point might apply far more to locavores, who do care about where things came from.

    Henderson states that the very wealthy are those who own the means of production, but does that apply to Buffet and Gates?

    She also states that members of society have an obligation to provide healthcare to others. How does this translate into an obligation to work, above and beyond that necessary to provide for one’s own needs? If I am capable of working a 80 hour week, but prefer to work a 40 hour week, or if I choose to retire at 65 when I could perfectly well keep working, or if I choose to take a job that offers 5 weeks holiday rather than 4, thus reducing the money I have to provide healthcare to others, am I really failing in my obligations as a citizen?

    Her justification for what capabilities society should respect also seems a bit lacking, for example would a reasonable religious enthusiast really accept her argument that society owes him healthcare but not help building a temple?

    • http://frankhecker.com/ Frank Hecker

      I agree that the concept of “commissioning” is a bit confusing but I think I understand what Anderson is getting at: That we collectively (not necessarily all of us, but enough of us) generate demands (via the market or social norms) that result in people undertaking certain tasks, whether that be felling lumber to make furniture, cleaning hotel rooms, acting as unpaid caregivers for family members, or whatever. In some cases we benefit directly from their doing so, in other cases indirectly (as, for example, an employer benefits from the unpaid work of their employees’ spouses, which enables the employees to spend more time working). And that then, given that the people undertaking those tasks are our moral equals and fellow citizens in a democratic polity, we have the obligation (or should have, in Anderson’s argument) to ensure that they have the basic capabilities needed to exercise their freedom as our democratic equals. Speaking personally I find that to be a reasonable argument, though of course there’s plenty of room for debate as to what exactly that entails in practice.

      On the question “would a reasonable religious enthusiast really accept her argument …?”, I think Anderson’s point is/would be that the desires of the religious enthusiast are irrelevant, and there is no requirement whatsoever that she accept the argument. If we collectively decide (i.e., via the standard democratic process) that provision of some amount of healthcare is an obligation we owe to her and others, then the religious enthusiast is free to refuse that healthcare but has no right to demand that she be provided something else instead of it.

      This is sort of the flip side of the argument that if we are to provide assistance we should maximize the freedom of the people receiving it, and therefore should look to something like a guaranteed basic cash income for all as an alternative to other types of government assistance. Independent of the philosophical merits of either argument, I strongly believe that taxing people to provide no-strings-attached cash to others is incompatible with evolved human psychology, i.e., we have a strong innate tendency to punish perceived free riders and defectors from societal norms, like the stereotypical beach bum who would take our tax money and go surfing. I think Anderson’s position is much more compatible with human nature.

      • TracyW

        In terms of the “commissioning”, Anderson says: “It cannot be just to designate a work role in the divison of labor that entails such risks, and then assign a package of benefits to performance in the role that fails, given the risks, to secure the social conditions of freedom to those who occupy the role.”

        But why put the responsibility for those choices on the buyers, and not the sellers? How about the principle: “It cannot be just to accept a work role in the division of labour that entails such risks, when the package of benefits is insufficient to secure the social conditions of freedom to yourself for occupying the role.”?

        If it is very important for people to have such basic capabilities, then individuals must have some responsibility for achieving them. Anderson says it’s very important for people to have access to certain basic capabilities. She also supports a range of measures for letting people have a lot of choices over what work they do (as do I, though we might differ on exactly what policies best achieve this). Given that someone has a choice of jobs, or farming locations, shouldn’t they be obliged according to Anderson’s logic to only accept a dangerous job, or living location, if it pays enough to cover the costs of insuring themselves against the increased risk? If someone prefers being a risky logger to a safe childcarer, say because the logging is outdoors, but being a logger doesn’t pay sufficiently to cover the insurance costs, then tough biccies.
        As I’ve stated, the person doing the job generally knows far more about the benefits and risks of it than society does.

        (Note, for government employees the situation may be different, as politicians set the total package of compensation. I’ve never come across anyone who has a good formula for calculating what government employees should be paid when there is no equivalent job in the private sector.)

        On the religious enthusiast point, if what matters is simply that a decision has been agreed on thorugh a standard democratic process, then that implies that in a country where the majority of people belong to one religion and think that everyone should be obliged to contribute towards temples for that religion, it’s just that they oblige everyone to contribute, regardless of religion. So for example, a Christian in Thailand could justly be required to contribute towards a Buddhist temple (I don’t know what Anderson’s perspective is on the US constitution). But Anderson apparently doesn’t think this, she says: “…reasonable persons need not recognise the desire to build a temple to their god as a legitimate basis for a claim to public subsidy.” (page 330). I can’t see anywhere where she says that this turns around a democratic majority.

        • http://frankhecker.com/ Frank Hecker

          Re the responsibility issue, I can’t speak for Anderson, but my personal thought is that not everyone is fully free to exercise this responsibility, being constrained in many cases by social norms and circumstances: the son who stays in a small town with limited employment prospects in order to care for his aged parents, the mother who works only part-time because she doesn’t want to leave her children at home unattended (and can’t afford child care even on a full-time salary), and so on. Sure, there will be others who take no personal responsibility at all (“all complex systems have parasites”); that’s IMO why Anderson advocates limiting the scope of assistance and not just handing people a blank check to spend as they wish.

          • TracyW

            If a “social norm” is a sufficient excuse for avoiding your responsibilities as a citizen to ensure your fellow citizen’s basic capabilities, then I don’t see how Anderson’s point leads to any changes. Anything could be justified by calling it a “social norm”. “Oh, I’d love to pay for my fellow citizen’s healthcare, but it’s a social norm that I spend all my spare cash on drinking and drugging at expensive nightclubs. So sorry, no can do.”
            Or, “I’d love to support my fellow citizen’s healthcare, but it’s a social norm in my religion that we only help our co-religionists. And if I leave this religion I’ll lose my whole social circle. You can’t expect me to defy this social norm.”

            I don’t quite get your points of the son who is caring for aging parents, or a mother who works only part-time, and how they relate to social norms. If you mean that the mother’s children are old enough to be left at home by themselves in terms of physical safety and she’s merely feeling a social norm to be around for emotional reasons (anyone who has been in charge of a 2 year old knows that the need to monitor them is not merely a matter of a social norm), doesn’t this come back to my question about how productive we are obliged to be? According to Anderson, we have an obligation to provide healthcare to our fellow citizens, so isn’t this mother violating her duties to her fellow citizens as much as someone who retires at 65 when they could well keep working, or takes 5 weeks holiday a year when they could function perfectly well with 3 weeks a year?
            Or the guy who cares for aging parents in their home-town, aren’t his parents violating their obligations to other citizens by insisting he lives there, rather than moving with him to a place with better employment prospects?

            If we are talking about circumstances limiting people, not just social norms, then I don’t see how it applies to my line of argument. Both Anderson and I agree in favouring policies that favour people having a variety of jobs to do.

            I agree with you that Anderson doesn’t see having the ability to build a personal temple to one’s god as a requirement for democratic equality. I also actually agree with her. I just suspect that both of us (and you) might well be merely reflecting the biases of our own upbringings.

          • http://frankhecker.com/ Frank Hecker

            Here’s my response, for what it’s worth; it may be I don’t understand your concerns well enough to address them.

            Focusing on the example of the son and his parent’s, I take your argument to be (paraphrasing somewhat) that the son (like the rest of us) has an obligation to not work at a risky job, or in a particular location, or whatever, unless he’s able to adequately insure himself against any risks associated with the job (or, more broadly, against any vicissitudes of life that might reasonably affect him). I think requiring people take personal responsibility for themselves and their lives is a reasonable baseline position, and is consistent with our innate attitude toward would-be defectors and free riders.

            However, let’s suppose that the son’s parents aren’t able to take care of themselves in all respects (maybe they need some personal attention each day to keep their lives in order), and due to their own circumstances or dispositions they’re not able or willing to purchase such attention and care via the market. They also don’t want to (or can’t) move elsewhere. (Maybe moving them would cause them psychological distress, and make things worse instead of better.) So what’s the son to do?

            He could certainly say, “Hey mom and dad, not my problem: you should have made sure you were insured against these eventualities, and you didn’t. You want to stay here, fine, but I’m off to the big city to find a job that pays enough for me to exercise the personal responsibility that you apparently weren’t and aren’t willing to exercise yourself.” However I think both filial loyalty and the fear of violating social norms (i.e., concerning what children owe their parents) would likely keep him from doing this. Instead he’d likely stay near his parents and take the best job he could find, even if it didn’t pay sufficiently to allow him to insure himself against all likely risks.

            My overall point is that this is not an uncommon scenario: Lots of people undertake tasks that aren’t just a function of their own desires but are partially determined by social norms (enforced by others) and general circumstances to which they’re subject; social norms often can’t be violated without incurring significant personal costs (assuming people even want to violate them), and people can’t always change their circumstances. So even people who are otherwise responsible in their actions are often going to find themselves in a position where the compensation they’re able to command in the market isn’t enough to make them fully self-sufficient in all respects (e.g., in terms of being able to self-insure or whatever).

            The question then is, what (if anything) should we collectively do about that? Anderson’s “ensuring democratic equality” offers one approach, and I think it’s a reasonable one to consider. Is it one with which a libertarian could agree? I doubt it, but I don’t consider that a drawback given that I myself am not a libertarian. (Though my sympathies do tend toward John Tomasi’s concept of “market democracy”.)

          • TracyW

            I keep coming back to the parents here. What’s their personal responsibility?Aren’t you, in this way, doing what Anderson criticises in her article, by rewarding people for being psychologically pathetic, rather than resilent? (I think by contrast of my gran, who as she aged left the farm she’d lived her entire married life in and moved herself into situations more suitable as her mobility grew more limited, always keeping an eye on the likely risks of the next situation).

            Let’s say the son says: ” “Hey mom and dad, not my problem: you should have made sure you were insured against these eventualities, and you didn’t. You want to stay here, fine, but I’m off to the big city to find a job that pays enough for me to exercise the personal responsibility that you apparently weren’t and aren’t willing to exercise yourself. If you decide to come along, I’ll support you in every way I can.“. That strikes me as a reasonable thing for society to expect of the son. (And I note that my uncle made such an offer to my mentally-frail grandma, when he wished to move for career reasons, and she did come along, and lived another 15 years – my father had moved away from his home city for job reasons years earlier.)

            As you say, this isn’t an uncommon scenario. Every person in the son’s situation, that is insured against the risks of their situation, increases the costs that everyone else bears, and makes them slightly more unable to support their own obligations. It also tends to increase the rigidity of the market economy, and sends bad price signals.

            Furthermore, it’s not just this one situation. The son sacrifices his job to live in his home town. His parents live for another 20 years. By the time they die, he’s married, settled down, no desire to move. Eventually his own kids face the same choice he did…

            social norms often can’t be violated without incurring significant personal costs

            Yes, but there are situations where those costs should be incurred. If social norms mean an inflexible economy and subsidies from outsiders, then eventually the costs build up so much that they have to be broken, generally at far higher cost. I lived through the economic reforms of NZ in the 1980s and early 1990s, they were very painful for people involved. But the situation of Greece or Spain – having to cut because no one will lend you any more money – is even more painful.

            (This is separate to circumstances – everyone with experience of small children and two brain cells to rub together agrees that the need to constantly supervise small children is not merely a social norm.)

  • ThaomasH

    “What is needed … ” is spot on for the debate of the 1930′s and as good a smackdown of a “command economy” as you’re likely to find. Fortunately the debate has moved on and theorizing at this level of generality does not seem relevant to a decision about whether ECB should expand or contract the Euro money supply or whether the US income tax code’s marginal tax rate those who earn a more than $250000 should rise, stay the same, or fall.