Welfare Rights for Libertarians

By On September 28, 2012 · 20 Comments · In Libertarianism, Rights Theory

Libertarians have often opposed what philosophers sometimes call welfare rights, or rights to various goods and serves that promote or safeguard human well-being. These include rights to healthcare and education. Libertarians don’t like welfare rights because they appear to give some the moral permission to force others to provide them with goods and services. So welfare rights seem like they permit the subjugation of some to others. This is understandable, but I think it rests on a rather narrow conception of welfare rights. Let me explain.

I’ll begin by recommending that we follow (severely underrated) libertarian political philosopher Loren Lomasky’s distinction between classical liberalism and welfare or egalitarian liberalism. He argues in his (totally great) Persons, Rights, and the Moral Community that it is a mistake to think that classical liberalism is responsive to a narrower set of interests than welfare liberals, as if classical liberals only cared about liberty, whereas welfare liberals care about both liberty and need:

It is mistaken to say that one version is responsive to a narrow array of interests while the other ascribes moral weight to a much wider range of interests. The difference is almost not at all with regard to which interests merit moral protection but rather the manner in which moral protection is afforded. Classical liberalism recognizes right to conditions necessary for the attainment of valued items, while welfare liberalism is concerned to bring about sufficient conditions for their attainment (91).

In other words, both classical and welfare liberals affirm a right to welfare, but offer different interpretations of it. Classical liberals think persons have a right to employment, in that government should remove restrictions on seeking employment. In contrast, welfare liberals think the right to employment requires that the government provide jobs to persons directly. This is not a disagreement about whether there are welfare rights, but rather the form they take.

You might think that the best description of liberty rights makes welfare rights of the sort Lomasky describes superfluous. I disagree. I think that liberty rights alone cannot adequately explain the indignation and outrage we experience when someone is denied access to a good. When we become indignant at price controls, we are not merely upset that liberty is restricted. We are upset because persons were denied welfare. They had a right to secure welfare for themselves, so the violation of the welfare right is wrong on top of the violation of the liberty right.

A similar case is the libertarian indignation at restrictions on organ sales. The problem is not merely that liberty is restricted but rather that people will be denied vital organs, a critical aspect of their welfare.

So libertarians should acknowledge welfare rights of the Lomaskyan sort, if for no other reason than to adequately explain our moral judgments and affects.

I suspect some libertarians will resist my recommendation on grounds of parsimony. Why not think there is simply one ur-right on which all others are based, such as a right of self-ownership? But to my mind, no matter how we cut it, we can’t reduce all rights to one right and capture the relevant sense of violation we postulate the right to explain.

I can’t end without noting that Roderick Long has argued that libertarians think there is fundamentally only one right “the right not to be aggressed against” such that “all further rights are simply applications of, rather than supplements to, this basic right.” While the paper defending this position is subtle and thoughtful, I just don’t think the idea of aggression has enough independent moral content to serve as a ground for all other rights. Aggression is an already moralized idea, and we need a rights-based explanation to account for this moral content.

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  • SkepticalEnlightenment

    If I read this correctly, you are not arguing for a positive right to
    “welfare” but rather the right of a person to seek their welfare?

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Nick-Bradley/632249852 Nick Bradley

    A question I have is on what the difference is between a ‘welfare libertarian’ and a ‘market liberal’, i.e. a neoliberal along the lines of someone like Matt Yglesias. A ‘market liberal’ supports free markets and non-intervention unless there is some overriding concern for inequality or injustice that demands state intervention.

  • http://independent.academia.edu/DannyFrederick Danny Frederick

    Part of the problem in these debates is the loose way in which the term ‘right’ is used. I think the key point of contention in the debate over welfare rights is whether people have (or should have) ENFORCEABLE rights to welfare. Libertarians (perhaps excluding BHLs) think not.

    You are right to point out that libertarian opposition to enforceable welfare rights does not entail that libertarians are unconcerned with welfare. As you say, libertarians often (though not always) argue for ‘negative liberty’ on the grounds that it is a better way of securing welfare than is a welfare state. But I think it is misleading to express this by saying that libertarians affirm a right to welfare, because people who affirm a right to welfare are normally affirming an enforceable right to welfare, which traditional libertarian do not. Similarly, it is false that classical liberals affirm a right to employment (understood as an enforceable right).

    I get indignant about price controls and restrictions on organ sales. And you are right that there are two components to this: that people are suffering and that what should be enforceable rights are violated. But I don’t conceive this in terms of a right to welfare. It is indignation first at the right-violation (interference with open markets), and then, second, at the adverse consequences of that right violation (which compounds the offence of the right-violation).

    • Kevin Vallier

      So you wouldn’t say there’s an additional *injustice* done by restricting organ sales due to the denial of welfare? It seems to me (a) that there is, and (b) that a good way to explain why there is an additional injustice is that there is an additional right.

      • darius404

        So you wouldn’t say there’s an additional *injustice* done by restricting organ sales due to the denial of welfare?

        He clearly feels there are two wrongs involved:

        I get indignant about price controls and restrictions on organ sales.
        And you are right that there are two components to this: that people are
        suffering and that what should be enforceable rights are violated.

        What he’s saying is that it’s a mistake to term all morality in terms of “rights”. When I think “rights”, I think “freedoms”. That’s what “negative rights” are, yes? But there is more to morality than being free to do things, and defining everything in morality in terms of “rights” undermines a clear understanding of what “rights” are, which isn’t conducive to arguing against the abrogation of those rights.

      • http://independent.academia.edu/DannyFrederick Danny Frederick

        Let’s go through it step by step.

        Mr. A needs a kidney to stay alive and is willing to pay for one. Mr. B, who has two kidneys and only needs one to stay alive and healthy, is willing to sell one kidney to Mr. A. Mr. B has a right to each of his kidneys. He is at liberty to sell one to Mr. A. The latter has a right to his money and is willing to give as much of it as he wants to Mr. B. They negotiate and agree on a price; and Mr. A. has already secured the services of medical personnel to carry out the transplant. Then John Rawls steps in and says that, on egalitarian grounds, the transplant cannot take place. The government, as is usual, backs John Rawls and prohibits the transaction. Mr. A has to pay for expensive dialysis while a government bureaucracy tries to obtain a kidney from a very restricted list of possible donors; but he dies before a kidney becomes available for him. Mr. B. has to forget about paying for his son’s university education.

        What moral entitlements have been violated? If A and B had agreed a contract, their contractual rights would have been violated. But it probably would not have got that far. Both A and B were forcibly prevented from exercising his liberty to swap assets that he had a right to. That was bad. As a consequence of that, A suffers and dies, and B cannot pay for his son’s education. That is tragic for A and possibly tragic for B and his son. That is bad, too.

        What do you want to say in addition to that? That A had a right to B’s kidney even if B did not want to give it up? That B had a right to A’s money so that B’s son could get indoctrinated in Rawlsian political philosophy? I don’t think you do. But if you say that A has a right to a kidney, or that B’s son has a right to a university education, it does SOUND as if that is what you are saying.

        I trust you don’t mind my little digs at Rawls. It is meant as friendly teasing.

    • martinbrock

      Libertarians differ over the meaning of “welfare rights”.

      Since I require fruits of my labor to be healthy and happy, securing my exclusive use of these fruits, including their use in trade, secures my welfare. Since I require natural resources to be fruitful, securing my use of these resources secures my welfare.

      Forcible standards of propriety are welfare rights. My right to fruits of my labor obviously differs from your putative right to fruits of my labor, but a contribution of these fruits to our welfare is not the difference.

      My putative right to particular natural resources also differs from your putative right to the same resources, but the difference is not always so obvious, and libertarians differ over who ought to possess these rights and when and how they ought to possess them; however, the rights are always welfare rights. If the rights don’t contribute to welfare, no one bothers to enforce them.

      Libertarians advocating force typically advocate enforcement of self-determination rather than welfare rights. I may enforce my exclusive use of fruits of my labor, and you may enforce yours, because these fruits are consequences of our respective actions and thus extensions of ourselves. Governing these fruits exclusively is governing our selves.

      I may want to share my fruits with you, without an exchange of fruits, when you suffer privation, and you may want to share similarly with me, but we both reject a third party’s enforcement of particular terms of sharing, just as we reject a third party’s enforcement of particular terms of trade absent any privation. The issue is our self-determination, vis-à-vis the third party, not our welfare.

      Why should a third party’s terms of our mutual aid, or our terms of trade, be any more reliable than ours? Why would the third party not intervene in the interests of the third party’s welfare, rather than the welfare of either of us? This question is the libertarian’s challenge to a state’s enforcement of particular terms of mutual aid as well as terms of trade.

  • Aeon Skoble

    “They had a right to secure welfare for themselves, so the violation of the welfare right is wrong on top of the violation of the liberty right.” But having a right to _secure_ welfare, as opposed to a right to be provided with it, just IS the usual distinction. I agree with you that Lomasky is underrated, but this particuar point is one that many libertarians make, including, well, me. When most people talk about welfare rights, they’re not talking about the right to _secure_ their welfare, which is a liberty right, they’re usually talking about a positive right to be provided with something. In your organ-sales example, they were denied a needed organ, but no one has a (positive) right to my kidneys except me. If I choose to sell or donate one, and another party interferes with that transaction, then it’s true that both my liberty and the recipient’s have been violated, and that the recipient right-to-secure-his-welfare has been violated, but this can all be understood in terms of negative rights. Welfare rights as the expression is usually used would mean that the recipient has a just claim on someone else’s kidney.

    • Ethan Pooley (furball4)

      And this makes it an odd way to speak. In the sense that I have a right to direct my own actions and to not be interfered with in my peaceful pursuits, I would have a right to try to secure… anything. My own death, for example, would be my “welfare” under some circumstances. When the whole point is freedom of action, naming one of the ends “welfare” doesn’t seem to bring anything to the table.

    • Kevin Vallier

      A right to secure welfare entails the existence of a liberty-right, but not vice versa. A right to secure welfare both permits someone to secure welfare with respect to X and imposes a duty on others to allow one to secure welfare with respect to X. Its content is much more specific, and I think captures a distinct moral element over and above mere liberty.

  • Daniel Shapiro

    I was going to post on this, but Aeon Skoble and Danny Frederick beat Mr to the punch. I would add that in the passages Kevin cites, Lomasky does not take himself to be arguing that classical liberals support welfare rights. The discussion of welfare rights comes later.

  • http://frankhecker.com/ Frank Hecker

    “I think that liberty rights alone cannot adequately explain the indignation and outrage we experience when someone is denied access to a good.” I agree, but I also agree with other commenters that using the term “right” in this context is confusing. Having just finished reading Jonathan Haidt’s “The Righteous Mind”, this seems much more a case of there being different perspectives on the moral issues associated with a particular situation.

    For example, take the case of Mohamed Bouazizi, the Tunisian street vendor who set himself on fire as an act of protest against the government. We might feel outraged because the state committed an act of aggression against him, taking his goods and preventing him from selling them (liberty/oppression moral foundation), because this resulted in Bouazizi not being able to provide for himself and his family (care/harm moral foundation), or because it prevented Bouazizi from reaping the rewards that his work might have earned him in other circumstances (fairness as proportionality moral foundation). Some people might focus on one of these aspects more than others, but we can all share a sense of moral outrage.

    I think the problem comes when a situation doesn’t invoke multiple moral foundations simultaneously: For example, it might involve harm but minimal perceived infringement of liberty (say, someone who exercises their personal choices and becomes impoverished primarily as a result of those choices), or an infringement of liberty but minimal perceived harm (say, a wealthy person whose marginal tax rate is increased by 1%). Since different people weight the various moral foundations differently, they’re going to disagree on the extent to which a moral wrong has occurred, and hence on whether there’s an associated “right” that’s been violated.

  • Counsellor

    I wonder if you will accept that all “Rights” are based upon the performance of Obligations?
    That is, for each Right to exist there is an offsetting Obligation on the part of others to do, or not to do, some specific act; such as, not to interfere with another’s mode of worship; or, in the case of Animal Rights, the obligations of humanness in their relationships with animals (certainly not any “rights” observed amongst specific animals themselves).
    Some goods and services that have come to be known as “Entitlements” are sometimes referred to as *positive* rights due to the fact that they require positive action on the parts of others to provide those types of rights to those seen as entitled.
    The development of morals in some societies ( but not all ) have given rise to commonly held senses of obligations to provide for the welfare of others in a variety of circumstances. . However strong or commonly held those obligations may be, very existence do does, per se, create a right or entitlement.
    A “Right” is dependent upon performance of obligations.
    However, the recognition, acceptance and performance of obligations does not establish a Right to the benefit of their performance.
    In our social order we are still struggling with ” how” and by what means those most commonly recognized and accepted obligations are to be carried out and in what form
    To frame that struggle as the delineation or labeling of ” Rights” is to attempt to politicize a moral issue.

    • http://independent.academia.edu/DannyFrederick Danny Frederick

      What you are saying here sounds similar to what I was saying. I would put the point this way.

      We must distinguish between obligations in general and that subclass of obligations which are enforceable. Every obligation is correlative with a claim, namely, the claim that the obligation be fulfilled; but not all claims are enforceable. Rights are enforceable claims.

      For example, if people are suffering and we can help them without too great a cost to ourselves, we have an obligation to help them, and thus they have a moral claim upon us. But the claim is not enforceable. Whether or not we help them is up to us. In contrast, if I owe someone money, and I have the money, the creditor has the right to the money: I can be forced to pay it to him (my assets can be confiscated).

      • martinbrock

        I reject Rothbard’s notion that a promise may not be enforced, that forcible propriety may only recover goods previously exchanged when a promise is broken. If I pay you a hundred dollars in exchange for your promise to pay my children a hundred thousand dollars upon my death in the next thirty days, and if I die in the next thirty days, then if you have a hundred thousand dollars, my children may force you to hand it over.

      • Counsellor

        You state:
        “Every obligation is correlative with a claim, namely, the claim that the obligation be fulfilled; but not all claims are enforceable. Rights are enforceable claims.”

        No, not only is that not close, but contrary, to my positions on obligations or Rights.

        If I analyze your statement correctly, you are asserting that for every Obligation there is a correlative “claim” (a clarification of “claim” is needed); you further assert, that if the claim is “enforceable” it becomes a Right.
        You continue by exemplifying “enforcement” by social (presumably judicial) action (in the case of resolution of debt).

        On that basis, any “claim” by some that can gather sufficient military, political or social powers for “enforcement” that imposes obligations on others (we see this widely via taxation) creates a “Right” possessed by those making the “claim.”

        Such was the conclusion asserted bt Richard Plantagenet (…Mon Droit)

        That assertion supports the position of those claim these “Rights:”

        To Healthcare

        To “Affordable” Housing, Insurance, Post-Secondary Education, etc.

        To “Public” education.
        Those propositions all call for the imposition of obligations on some, usually to be enforced through the mechanisms of governments for the benefits of others for whom these claims are made.

        Again:The development of morals in some societies ( but not all ) have given rise to commonly held senses of obligations to provide for the welfare of others in a variety of circumstances. . However strong or commonly held those obligations may be, their existence does not, per se, create a right or entitlement.

        Where societies, such as ours, have evolved commonly recognized, accepted, obligations, adequately performed,
        with sufficient significance to its members, those obligations in human conduct (the shall and shall not, ought and ought not), positive and negative will come to be enforced socially and politically, even through governments and their constitutions. Those will be Rights.

        That is when the “ought and ought not” become the “is” of David Hume’s concern.

        • http://independent.academia.edu/DannyFrederick Danny Frederick

          I am not sure I get your point entirely, but you do seem to have misinterpreted me to some extent.

          The correlation between claims (rights) and duties is in Hohfeld. He is talking about legal notions, and the duties correlative to legal rights are usually legally enforceable. Many philosophers have generalised Hohfeld’s discussion to moral notions, as Judith Thomson does. She talks about moral claims and moral obligations (or duties). Now, legitimate legal rights are also moral rights (that is what makes them legitimate). But not all moral rights are legal rights (nor should they be). But moral rights which are not legal rights are not enforceable.

          Enforceability does require appropriate institutions (individuals cannot sensibly be judge and jury in their own case); and those institutions will plainly have the character of legal institutions. But they need not involve the state.

          I prefer this terminology:
          moral claim is correlative to moral duty;
          moral right is correlative to moral duty which should (morally) be enforceable.

          There is a tendency for people to demand that moral duties in general should be enforceable. That is just a mistake. There is also a tendency for people to invent all sorts of moral duties and then claim that they should be enforceable. That is politics, and it too is a mistake.

          • Counsellor

            I fear our thoughts are following separate tracks.

  • Roger

    This entire post is confusing.

    Rights needs to be first defined. Rights, as Schmidtz and others in this site have clarified, are useful social conventions. However, they are conventions that are so instrumentally useful, that they are better off being viewed as sacrosanct.

    Once we define rights as sacrosanct social conventions, I have no idea what a social convention for welfare even means. Asking if we have a right to a natural outcome is like asking if two plus two is green.

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