Welfare: Who Cares?

By On September 29, 2012 · 31 Comments · In Academic Philosophy, Consequentialism, Libertarianism, Liberty, Rights Theory

Some BHL types seem to think that welfare matters for its own sake. Recently, Kevin suggested that rights are justified by an appeal to the welfare interests they protect. On his telling, classical liberals and welfare liberals agree about the welfarist interests that merit protection, but they just disagree about how we should interpret those interests. Kevin writes,

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.”

He goes on to say “We can’t reduce all rights to one [liberty] right and capture the relevant sense of violation.” And with that Kevin invites us all to embrace our inner welfarists and acknowledge that some welfare rights must exist, because after all, we all care about welfare, right?

I disagree. I think that liberty rights alone can explain my indignation at price controls and limits on organ markets. Though I often appeal to welfarist considerations in order to make my arguments as persuasive as possible, if the welfare-score went the other way I’d always side with freedom. This is because I think that welfare is only valuable when people freely choose to promote welfare. But, when people choose to undermine their welfare, who cares?

One question I have for welfare-sensitive BHL’s is how to balance the value of liberty against the value of welfare if both are morally important. Surely we can imagine some cases where free choices do not promote welfare. Imagine that price controls helped people to pursue their most important projects on balance and restrictions on organ markets against all odds managed to best promote the public health. Even then, I would judge that these regulations were unjust, just as I would judge that limits on free speech or religion were unjust even if such limits made people better off all things considered. The value of liberty does not depend on the role that having rights plays in promoting well-being or even in enabling people to promote their own well-being.

Another question– if welfare is morally significant for its own sake, then could paternalism ever be justified? And if liberty alone can explain our moral judgments then what would a concern for welfare add? It must be that in some cases when a free choice undermines welfare that the alleged importance of welfare does some work. For example, if a relatively unimportant choice greatly undermines welfare, would a welfare-oriented BHL ever side with welfare? Those who defend seat belt laws make this kind of an argument, but they certainly are not libertarian in any sense. This is because giving welfare any moral consideration for its own sake seems to take the liberty out of libertarianism. There is no ‘additional injustice’ as Kevin suggests, when a restriction on liberty fails to promote welfare, just as there is not even a pro tanto injustice when a free choice fails to promote welfare.

One might respond that my view is too extreme—am I saying that welfare alone can never matter morally? Yes and no. On one hand, I am saying that liberty rights are valuable for their own sake, not because of the role they play in promoting welfare. Welfare is often valuable, but only because people happen to value it, not for its own sake. In moral deliberation, freedom should always be the driver’s seat and BHL’s don’t need welfare rights to get us where we want to go.

[Edit: To clarify, by this I just mean that I'm skeptical of welfare rights. In the comments I consider that there might be non-obligating reasons to promote welfare, but that the value of welfare is always outweighed when liberty rights are at stake.]

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  • Aeon Skoble

    Nicely put.

  • http://www.sandiego.edu/~mzwolinski Matt Zwolinski

    Good post, Jessica. Let me respond to just one small part of it.

    You say:
    “One question I have for welfare-sensitive BHL’s is how to balance the value of liberty against the value of welfare if both are morally important.”

    But I don’t see why this should be thought such a serious problem. Two points:
    1) Any but the most absolutist theories of rights will have to concede that there are some circumstances in which welfare considerations justify infringing rights. So the line-drawing problem is one that almost everybody faces.
    2) I don’t see how this is any more challenging than the problem we face when we have to decide how to balance conflicting rights. It’s a trade-off we make that requires the exercise of sound judgment, judgment that can’t be codified in any simple rule.

    • Jessica Flanigan

      This is a good response, i’m worried now that I was too quick in dismissing all welfare in the post, so here goes an attempt at clarification:

      I go back and forth on whether there are some circumstances where welfare considerations could justify infringing on rights, for my purposes I really just wanted to focus on the language of justice and rights not including rights, but it’s true that I sometimes sounded like I was saying the other thing, e.g. when I said that welfare could never matter morally for it’s own sake. Maybe that was too extreme, and that welfare can matter in the realm of what we ought to do consistent with respecting rights. There may be moral reasons to help people in need that derive from their low well-being, but these reasons aren’t the obligating kind.. maybe I should clarify that above? Anyhow, those are my thoughts about how welfare is valuable, we can have moral reasons to promote it, but they aren’t obligating the way that liberty-rights are.

      I’m not as worried about 2, but I feel like maybe that should just be a post of it’s own. Basically, I think the value of particular rights is going to be inherited from the value people confer on those rights, but that the value of all particular rights to whatever stem from a more general moral requirement of respecting people’s choices.

      • http://www.facebook.com/jbswetnam Joseph Swetnam

        “There may be moral reasons to help people in need… but these reasons aren’t the obligating kind.”

        Agreed, if you replace “may be” with “are.” I think libertarians should put more emphasis on moral imperatives, while arguing that behavior is only moral when voluntary.

  • http://aaronmclin.blogspot.com/ Aaron

    Ms. Flanigan, if I may be allowed to ask, would you then consider that to be a Libertarian that one must consider liberty rights valuable for their own sake?

    By the same token, may anything else be morally significant for its own sake, or must liberty rights hold that place exclusively, to avoid moral conflicts and therefore the possibility of them being subordinated to other considerations?

    Thank you.

    • Jessica Flanigan

      Yeah, I kinda think that there is one big obligation, to respect people. That doesn’t mean that there are no conflicts in our obligations, but they all stem from a single source, which is the value of autonomy or autonomous persons or second personal standing or something like that..

  • martinbrock

    I have never met a libertarian who didn’t think property essential to liberty, so I never never met a libertarian who didn’t think welfare rights essential to liberty.

    A man may always defend himself against a murderous assault by his own force, but this defense is not a right to life. A right to life necessarily involves an association of men agreeing to respect each member’s right to life and to cooperate in the enforcement these rights. Men join civil associations to secure a right that all members value.

    The idea that a man has a right to food, to avoid starvation, within a free association stipulating this right as a condition of membership, is no more nonsensical than the idea that a man has a right to his life. The association may also stipulate that an able, starving man must work for his food, but this stipulation only amounts to a right to work within the association.

    Free men may agree to enforce any rights. The idea that particular proprieties must be enforced while others must not be enforced is arbitrary, capricious and an imposition on liberty.

    • Jessica Flanigan

      If you’re curious about my views on property, may I direct you to my UBI post. It’s a freedom-based argument for a system of redistribution that includes a UBI. But honestly, I don’t really get that worked up about property like other libertarians. Also, there is an important distinction between what system of rights or whatever people actually consent to and the rights that people have just in virtue of their personhood. I’m a Kantian, so I think that the most important thing is liberty rights, but if people use their liberty rights to shape their free associations however they like then of course I’m fine with that.

      • martinbrock

        “Universal” raises a red flag with me, but a minimum income within a free association is consistent with liberty.

        The conventionally libertarian (Lockean, Rothbardian) standards of propriety seem reasonable enough, but I don’t expect free people to choose a Rothbardian monarchy. Maybe most people choose a variation on the theme, but even this expectation is presumptuous.

        An association guaranteeing a decent income is conceivable, but I’m not sure it’s stable. If everyone is independently wealthy, how much do people serve others? If people don’t serve others, they don’t specialize to trade. Specialization and trade accounts for most wealth, so an association with a guaranteed, decent income presumably isn’t very wealthy, possibly not wealthy enough to guarantee a decent income.

        As you say, a state enforced property system seems more a wrong than a right, but I don’t much expect a state to guarantee its subjects a decent income. A state wants subjects useful to the state. As long as we’re assuming a state, we must assume a state organizing its subjects to benefit the state.

        Charles Murray’s proposal for a minimum income, to replace a variety of welfare state programs, is interesting. His minimum income does not provide anyone a decent living without productive trade, but it can sustain a group of people pooling resources. Such a group necessarily involves cooperation and exchange, so the income directs individuals toward a less isolated, cooperative social organization.

        Freedom from the necessity of producing what one consumes can never be a universal right.

      • http://www.facebook.com/les.nearhood Les Kyle Nearhood

        Without property rights the other rights are pretty much meaningless. If the state can control your property, wages, occupation etc. Then the right to vote merely means that you get to select your slavemaster.

    • TracyW

      The idea that a man has a right to food, to avoid starvation, within a free association stipulating this right as a condition of membership, is no more nonsensical than the idea that a man has a right to his life.

      Firstly, I rather think that libertarianism should be concerned with women and children as well as men (indeed, perhaps even more so, given that there’s more of us).
      Secondly, a right to food may not be more nonsensical, but it is different to a right to life. A right to life, in the sense of not being murderously assaulted, merely implies that everyone else has to refrain from trying to kill you. This prohibition is even easier for the disabled to carry out than the fully able-bodied, who might need to exert themselves to keep their temper.
      But a right to food implies an obligation on some other people to provide food. Who? Babies can’t work. At what age should we start expecting people to contribute? How about adults who are disabled? How about people who are fine but would like to spend more time with their kids? Or spend some free time studying a not-practically-useful subject like philosophy even though they are capable of doing something valuable to others?

      Specifying a positive right implies obligations on other people to do things. And these obligations cannot be equally shared amongst citizens. People who advocate positive rights never spell out the implications for those who are meant to supply those rights.

      • martinbrock

        Firstly, the word “men” can refer to humankind generally, even if this usage is not politically correct.

        Secondly, women and children are not a homogeneous group. Men and children also outnumber women. Male children outnumber female children. Fair skinned people outnumber dark skinned people in my neck of the woods. So what?

        A right to food differs from a right to life. I don’t dispute this point.

        A right to food and a right to life both require others to respect the right. The rights do not differ in this regard specifically.

        A right to life is not a negative right. The right imposes a positive obligation not to kill other people. The cost of this obligation is not shared equally.

        A lion in the state of nature has no such obligation, so a stronger lion will battle a weaker lion, sometimes to the death, to dominate territory. The stronger lion’s greater strength is a valuable asset possessed by the stronger lion, and nature does deny not the value of this asset to the lion. Whether or not a free association denies this value to its members is my business only if I’m joining the association.

        A civil association denies the value of this asset to its members by imposing upon members a positive obligation not to kill one another. I prefer civil associations myself, but if other people want to join an association permitting battles to the death, even battles in which the victor claims the property of the vanquished, that’s none of my business. If some people want to live by the lion’s rule, what’s it to me?. Maybe the lions are right. Maybe “right” and “wrong” are subjective.

        In a free association, the terms of association describe who provides food to whom and when, where and how they provide it. Countless intentional communities do spell out these terms if you want to investigate.

        • TracyW

          The term “man” can refer to humankind generally, but often it does not. Why not use the more accurate, inclusive, term?

          Secondly, women and children are not a homogeneous group. Men and children also outnumber women. Male children outnumber female children. Fair skinned people outnumber dark skinned people in my neck of the woods. So what?

          Nor are men a homogenous group. I don’t see why you would refer to only them.

          The right imposes a positive obligation not to kill other people.

          if the obligation not to kill other people is a positive obligation, then what would you call a negative obligation?I generally regard obligations “not to” as negative obligations, because they don’t determine what I must do. An obligation to not drive on one side of the road leaves me free to drive on the other, to walk, to stay home, etc. (Note, I say “generally” because it’s possible to word obligations using the word “not” that still oblige people to do something, eg an obligation “not to keep food to yourself when other people are starving” is a positive obligation in effect, I think what I’m thinking about when I say “negative obligation” has some rider like “in the simplest way of stating this.)You are of course not obliged to copy my wording choice, I am asking you here how you define “positive obligation” to understand your position.

          A civil association denies the value of certain strengths to its members by imposing upon members a positive obligation to interact peacefully.

          Not necessarily. We can imagine a civil association that permits members to live alone, avoiding all human contact. Indeed, I think this is the current state of law in NZ.

          In a free association, the terms of association describe who provides food to whom and when, where and how they provide it.

          And I’ve seen this in free associations, such as hiking groups, church groups, etc. However, in the case of hiking groups, church groups, etc, it’s not typically phrased as a “right to food”.

          • martinbrock

            Nothing prevents me using the most correct term, but occasionally, I sin and require forgiveness. Again, “a man has a right to food” in my post above does not refer either to people with a penis or to adults. I beg your forgiveness for the confusion.

            On the other hand, “women and children” in your post does seem to refer to adult people with a vagina and children with either a penis or a vagina.

            The distinction between positive and negative rights common among some libertarians is a political construct. These libertarians define particular rights as “negative” to distinguish rights they would enforce from rights they would not enforce.

            Every right involves an obligation “not to”. Every right also involves an obligation “to”. We could agree that all rights are both negative and positive rights, but I’m not sure where that gets us.

            If a member of a free association has a right to food, then as a member of the association, you have an obligation not to refuse another food that is your property, under the terms of the assocation, under circumstances specified by the terms of the association. You might be obliged to surrender a portion of your food to a food bank available to disabled people, for example, or simply to provide money to this food bank. Administrative details of the obligation are not relevant.

            The terms of an association may not permit you to refuse food to a disabled member, even if you grow all of the association’s food and own it subject only to terms of trade otherwise. If many people become disabled, the association possibly dissolves as able people will not bear the burden, but any association can dissolve this way, including an association guaranteeing people exclusive use of parcels of land under specified circumstances.

            A bilateral contract may also require you to surrender food that is your property to a specified individual under specified circumstances, but this statement presumes both that you have property and a right to contract bilaterally without other contstraints. You have no property rights or any other rights outside of an association.

            A person without any interaction with other people is hard to imagine, but I would call this person’s life “civil”; however, I would not say that he or she is part of a “civil association”. I would say that the person is not part of any association. A subject of the state of New Jersey is part of an association whether the person likes it or not. No subject of this state is free of interaction with other people.

            A hiking group is a very limited sort of association. Many intentional communities exist, and they may speak of “rights” of membership. At the same time, states claiming dominion over members of these communities also speak of “rights”, and the “rights” can conflict. Successful communities avoid conflict with the states claiming sovereignty over their territories.

          • TracyW

            Nothing prevents me using the most correct term, but occasionally, I sin and require forgiveness.

            Thank you for your apology and levelheadedness about this. My forgiveness, if you care for it, is of course granted. :)

            On the rest of this, even if, as a member of an assocation, I “agree not to refuse another member food that is your property”, this does not ensure the other member’s right to food unless I (or someone else) actually have/has food. Which requires someone (not necessarily me) to have grown, or gathered, said food in the first place.

            But refraining from murder is something that’s always physically in my power (controlling my temper might be somewhat problematic, and avoiding manslaughter may be in some circumstances beyond my abilities), indeed refraining from murder is easier the weaker and/or lazier I am. Respecting someone else’s right to food requires active effort on my part.

            That’s the practical difference between positive and negative rights. It may be a political construct, but it’s not just a political construct.

          • martinbrock

            … this does not ensure the other member’s right to food unless I (or someone else) actually have/has food.

            Having a right to food is not equivalent to having food. Having a right to property is not equivalent to having property either.

            Having a right to food is having other people agree to provide you food when you need it and don’t have it otherwise.

            Having a right to property in a possession is having other people agree to respect the right and to assist you in defending the possession against theft when you can’t defend it yourself. You and they may fail to protect a possession against theft. That’s a separate issue.

            Neither you alone nor Nature nor God nor anything other than a group of other people decides what your civil rights are. Within a free association, you and other people agree on what these rights are. An isolated individual has no meaningful “rights” of any sort in this sense.

            But refraining from murder is something that’s always physically in my power …

            Your refraining from killing me is not my right to life. Your agreement not to kill me is my right to life, where you are concerned.

            Respecting someone else’s right to food requires active effort on my part.

            Respecting someone else’s right to food requires you to bear costs you do not otherwise bear. By respecting my right to food, you give up an opportunity to eat the food yourself or otherwise to consume a valuable good.

            Respecting my right to life also requires you to bear costs you do not otherwise bear, assuming that you have a natural strength enabling you to benefit by killing me. No one gains anything by sitting still.

            In other words, the cost imposed on you by my right to life is an opportunity cost. You give up valuable opportunities to kill me, just as you give up an opportunity to food by respecting my right to food.

          • TracyW

            Having a right to food is having other people agree to provide you food when you need it and don’t have it otherwise.

            Yes.

            Having property in a possession is having other people agree to respect the right and to assist you in defending the possession against theft when you can’t defend it yourself.

            People not attacking you is a negative right. The right to assistance from third parties if someone does attack you is a positive right (whether that assistance take the form of a publicly-funded justice system, or your able-bodied neighbours forming a posse to hunt down your attacker).

            Neither you alone nor Nature nor God nor anything other than a group of other people decides what your civil rights are.

            No argument here.

            If I am more powerful than you, killing me (or not killing me) is not within your power. You can’t feed me with with food you don’t have, but you also can’t kill me with strength you don’t have.

            yes, exactly! You’re starting to get it! Refraining from killing someone else is easier the weaker and/or lazier you are, unlike a positive obligation like feeding someone.

            Your refraining from killing me is not my right to life. Your agreement not to kill me is my right to life, where you are concerned.

            If you like, but I’m going to keep saying “right to life” in the interests of brevity.

            Respecting someone else’s right to food requires you to bear costs you do not otherwise bear. By respecting my right to food, you give up an opportunity to eat particular food yourself.

            Yes, and what happens if there isn’t enough food for everyone’s right to food to be fulfilled? (As happens, say during WWII). How do rights to food get allocated then? This is the difference – everyone can physically respect a negative right because a negative right only requires not doing things, positive rights require actual resources.

            Respecting my right to life also requires you to bear costs you do not otherwise bear, assuming that you have a natural strength enabling you to benefit by killing me.

            Yes, but the costs in this case are much smaller than with a positive right.

            Refraining from killing someone leaves open a far wider range of options with what to do with my time, than being obliged to supply someone with food. If people have a right to food, then some people have to spend time growing or hunting or gathering that food. Being stuck on a fishing boat, or ploughing a field, is mutually exclusive with a far wider range of things than refraining from murdering someone is. For example my grandfather wanted to be an engineer, but when his father died his mother insisted he leave school (at age 14) to work on the family farm. He never became an engineer; studying engineering was incompatible with supplying food given the communications technology around in his lifetime. I’ve never murdered anyone, and have an engineering degree, I found the two entirely compatible. But I know enough about farming to know that even with modern technology, it would be far more difficult and take much longer to get an engineering degree while farming on a scale well above one’s own minimum needs.

            So I still say that the distinction between “positive” and “negative” rights is a distinction without a difference.

            You’re not making a good case for it.

          • martinbrock

            People not attacking you is a negative right. The right to assistance from third parties if someone does attack you is a positive right …

            If I agree not to attack you, I am protecting you from my attack. Your right to food from me doesn’t involve third parties either.

            Refraining from killing someone else is easier the weaker and/or lazier you are, unlike a positive obligation like feeding someone.

            If you’re too weak to kill me, you can’t refrain from killing me. An ant does not refrain from killing me.

            If you can’t produce food (either directly or through exchange), I can’t have a right to food from you either. Such a right is meaningless.

            I’m going to keep saying “right to life” in the interests of brevity.

            I have no problem with “right to life”, but this right is meaningless outside of a relationship between two or more people.

            Yes, and what happens if there isn’t enough food for everyone’s right to food to be fulfilled?

            All human rights emerge from a human association, but an association promising members more than the members produce does not persist, as the Greeks are discovering now. The association either reforms itself or dissolves.

            … everyone can physically respect a negative right because a negative right only requires not doing things, positive rights require actual resources.

            Human action always involves a choice between actions, not a choice between acting and not acting. Time itself is a resource, so every action requires resources. We always choose among actions requiring resources. If I produce nothing else, then I produce my own leisure with my own scarce time. Rothbard makes this point explicitly in Man, Economy and State for example.

            Your right to food from me is my obligation to produce food for you instead of producing something for myself.

            Your right to life is my obligation to do something other than killing you, just as your right to food is my obligation to do something other than produce something for myself.

            If I’m a cannibal, your right to life is my obligation to eat something else. If you’re a delicacy (if eating you is high on my value scale in Rothbardian terms), the cost of your right is greater.

            Owing you food requires me to eat something other than the food I owe you. If I’m a cannibal respecting your right to life, then you are the food I owe you.

            Yes, but the costs in this case are much smaller than with a positive right.

            How is the size of the cost relevant?

            If I’m stronger than most, the cost is higher for me. A few males father most of the lion cubs in a given generation. If lions paid this price, the fecundity of dominant males would be much lower, and male and female lions would be more nearly equal in size and strength.

            Refraining from killing someone leaves open a far wider range of options with what to do with my time …

            If killing me is the highest thing on your value scale, all of these other options are lower. If nothing would give you more pleasure than killing me right now, my right to life is extremely costly to you. A month of Sundays might be no more valuable to you.

            If people have a right to food, then some people have to spend time growing or hunting or gathering that food.

            If you’re standing next to me, and if I can’t eat you, then I must spend time hunting other food.

          • TracyW

            If you’re too weak to kill me, you can’t refrain from killing me.

            If you like, this strikes me as matter of how we define the word “refrain”. It remains though, that the weaker I am, the more I can respect your right to not be murdered (by me).

            If you can’t produce food (either directly or through exchange), I can’t have a right to food from you either. Such a right is meaningless.

            Yes! Exactly! But if I can’t produce murder, your right to not be murdered by me is even more secure. That’s a key difference between positive rights and negative rights, the more lazy and/or incompetent I am, the more easily I may respect your negative rights, and the less likely I am to respect your positive rights.

            All human rights emerge from a human association, but an association promising members more than the members produce does not persist, as the Greeks are discovering now. The association either reforms itself or dissolves.

            Yes! Positive rights are different to negative rights, because they are dependent on what the members can produce. That’s the distinction I’m getting at.

            If killing me is the highest thing on your value scale, all of these other options are lower. If nothing would give you more pleasure than killing me right now, my right to life is extremely costly to you. A month of Sundays might be less valuable to you.

            Costly perhaps, but the distinction still remains that you have far more options while respecting a negative right than while respecting a positive right. That’s the distinction. Perhaps the word “costs” was the wrong word for me to use, how about if I rephrase what I said as “Yes, but the opportunties in this case are of a different nature than those associated with a positive right.”, would you be happy with that? Or if not, do you have some other suggestion for wording?

            If I can’t eat you, then I must spend time hunting other food,

            Nope, you have the other options of persuading someone else to find food for you (perhaps in exchange for other services), or going hungry (and sometimes people do choose to go hungry, eg Gandhi).

            The distinction between negative and positive rights is a fuzzy one. You can come up with cases where it’s very costly for someone to refrain from killing someone else, I can come up with restrictions on behaviour using “thou shalt not” rules that are even more limiting than “thou shalt” rules. But that doesn’t mean that the distinction isn’t real. There are a lot of things in life for which the boundaries are fuzzy, but the distinctions are important. Take food, an egg to me is nutricious and yummy food, but to some people eating an egg is literally life-threatening. Similar with many other foods. But that doesn’t mean that food isn’t a useful category.

          • martinbrock

            But if I can’t produce murder, your right to not be murdered by me is even more secure.

            If you can’t possibly murder me, my “right” not to be murdered by you is meaningless. I have no meaningful right not to be murdered by a dead man or a fictional character for example.

            … the more lazy and/or incompetent I am, the more easily I may respect your negative rights …

            The stronger and more competent you are, the more easily you can violate my rights (to kill me though you’ve agreed not to kill me for example). It does not follow that you respect my rights when you are simply unable to violate them.

            If I have rights only when people are unable to violate them, then I have no rights at all. We might as well say that I have a right to sunlight but only twelve hours a day.

            Positive rights are different to negative rights, because they are dependent on what the members can produce.

            People cannot produce anything they imagine, but in a free association, every right involves an agreement to produce particular things rather than other things.

            If no one is able to kill anyone else, no one has a meaningful right to life. In this scenario, life is what Rothbard calls “a general condition of human action and human welfare” rather than a right. If some people are able to kill other people, than life (a right not to be murdered) is a “scarce means” rather than a “general condition” in Rothbardian terms.

            Of course, Rothbard would dispute me here. He would say that life is an “inalienable right” rather than a “general condition” or a “scarce means”. I depart from Rothbard here, because my way of thinking incorporates no “inalienable” or “natural” or “God given” rights.

            I don’t claim to advocate anarchy myself, but I claim to be more libertarian than Rothbard rather than less. Rothbard struggles to be an “anarchist” without abandoning his most cherished proprieties, the ones he wants enforced universally, but he fails in my opinion. The rights he calls “inalienable” presume a state, however minimal. I advocate a state enforcing a right to free association and nothing else.

            … you have far more options while respecting a negative right than while respecting a positive right. That’s the distinction.

            If we are Muslims, you have a right to 2.5% of my income when you cannot provide for yourself, and I also have a right to 2.5% of your income when I cannot provide for myself. If neither of us has any income, then neither of us has a right to anything from the other, but this fact does not render the right meaningless.

            Your right to 2.5% of my income when you cannot provide for yourself doesn’t seem to limit my options severely. It doesn’t prevent me from doing anything specifically, except consuming this 2.5% of my income myself.

            An associational right to life prevents me killing anyone, not just you. If I could be the world’s greatest hired killer, a right to life denies me countless opportunities to improve my circumstances and also to improve the circumstances of wives who hate their husbands for example. If I’m a psychopath with no other useful skills, your association might offer me only a little food in a food bank somewhere.

            … the opportunties in this case are of a different nature than those associated with a positive right …

            You can come up with some sort of distinction between “positive” and “negative” rights that reasonably separates rights into two distinct categories, but I don’t think you’ll end up with the categories that libertarians typically label this way, because the libertarians labeling rights this way only rationalize a distinction between obligations they want enforced and other obligations. A simpler approach is simply to say what we mean.

            Nope, you have the other options of persuading someone else to find food for you …

            If I can’t eat you, then I must spend time hunting other food or persuading someone else to find food for me or …

          • TracyW

            On the issue of me being unable to murder you, I think this a matter of different defintions, not any disagreement about fundamentals. If you don’t like the word “respect”, then would you be happy to agree that if I can’t murder you, you are safe from me violating your right not to be murdered by me?

            If I have rights only when people are unable to violate them, then I have no rights at all.

            Utterly agree. I never said that we only have rights when people are unable to violate them. I simply have been saying that one of the important differences between negative and positive rights is that the more incompetent or lazy I am, the easier it is for me to not violate other people’s negative rights (well, I used the word “respect”, but evidently you have a different definition of that word), and the more difficult it is for me to fulfil any obligations other people’s positive rights imply.

            If no one is able to kill anyone else, no one has a meaningful right to life.

            Again, I think we are merely disagreeing about definitions, not anything concrete.

            Your right to 2.5% of my income when you cannot provide for yourself doesn’t seem to limit my options severely.

            Indeed, not in this case, after all, 2.5% of nothing is nothing. The right to 2.5% of someone else’s income, unlike the right to food, or the right to healthcare, or the right to an education, strikes me as a very weak positive right. (Obviously, the more the percentage increases, and/or the greater the number of people who have this right, the stronger that positive right gets in terms of the limits it puts on the life of whomever has the obligation).

            An associational right to life prevents me killing anyone, not just you. If I could be the world’s greatest hired killer, a right to life denies me countless opportunities to improve my circumstances and also to improve the circumstances of wives who hate their husbands for example.

            Yes, but a positive right to say, provide healthcare, if it fell on your shoulders to do this and during the time you were meeting your obligation, would also deny you countless opportunities to improve your circumstances and those of your potential customers. It would also deny you countless opportunities to do non-murderous things, such as play the violin, or climb Mt Everest, or use your assassin training to advise on Hollywood films, or to use your knife skills as a chef.

            You can come up with some sort of distinction between “positive” and “negative” rights separating rights into two distinct categories, but I don’t think you’ll end up with the categories that libertarians typically label this way, because the libertarians labeling rights this way only rationalize a distinction between obligations they want enforced and other obligations.

            You have a more negative opinion of said libertarians than I do.

            If I can’t eat you, then I must spend time hunting other food or persuading someone else to find food for me or …

            Yep. Respecting negative rights does involve a cost. The distinction however between positive and negative rights remains, even if it’s fuzzy at the edges (like the concept of food is important, despite that allergies mean some substances that are food to some people are life-threatening to some others).

  • http://twitter.com/msccust Michael Cust

    “I disagree. I think that liberty rights alone can explain my indignation at price controls and limits on organ markets. Though I often appeal to welfarist considerations in order to make my arguments as persuasive as possible, if the welfare-score went the other way I’d always side with freedom.”

    Isn’t this merely to be bigoted in favour of liberty?

  • http://www.facebook.com/jbswetnam Joseph Swetnam

    For humans, liberty=welfare. For ants, hierarchy and structure=welfare. So yes, if we were anything other than what we are, I would be against liberty. But if we were anything other than what we are, you and I wouldn’t have opinions, either.

    • martinbrock

      There is no hierarchy in an ant colony. The “queen” ant is not a hierarchical authority any more than a woman’s ovaries are her liver’s authority. All ants follow the same genetic rules. No ant makes the rules any more than another.

      A significant component of human social organization is similarly genetic, but humans also follow non-genetic (memetic) rules. These rules emerge from more or less hierarchical systems.

      Less hierarchical systems are more productive empirically, but highly hierarchical systems are not the most ant-like. They are the most distinctively human.

      • http://www.facebook.com/jbswetnam Joseph Swetnam

        It seems I’ve made the same mistake as I thought E.O. Wilson and his interviewer made here:

    • Sean II

      Obviously you guys are unaware that Murray Rothbard kept an ant-farm when he was nine years old. He removed the queen to end centralized control of egg production and he abolished the soldier caste (although many ended up working as security contractors later). The result was a giant pile of clay and ant-shit improved and made beautiful through homesteading. Interestingly, the distinction between big-jaw workers and small-jaw workers did not wither away after the colony was set free, but young Murray evidently didn’t find that troubling at all.

      At the moment I’ve forgotten the precise book title, but he wrote in great detail about the findings of this experiment.

  • John Alexander

    Why not look at welfare rights in a Rousseauean framework? (I
    know, because you do not believe in positive rights.) It
    seems to me that liberty must be understood and practiced within a framework
    that places it in an adequate understanding of how we interact with others
    versus how we should interact with others. You mention is a comment that you think we
    should ‘respect people;’ but what is it that we should respect? If we should respect people is it permissible
    to take advantage of them because they are in a situation that puts them at a
    disadvantage to us? Example: Imagine that a person needs to find a way to
    provide for her family. She is working at
    a job that does not pay a livable wage.
    She is offered 20k for one of her kidneys and decides to sell it in
    order to secure income needed to ensure her family’s well-being. She meets the criteria for autonomy put forth
    by Zwolinski, but is it fair? Would she
    make this decision if she were earning a livable wage? We cannot stipulate that she would, or would
    not – we do not know. We really cannot
    argue that because she meets some criteria for autonomythat the decision is morally justified as that seems to beg the
    question that making a choice within a context somehow validates the context
    itself. I think that her freedom to
    choose would be fairer if she made it in a condition that did not ‘force’ her
    to make one over the other; where she could choose to do either one without
    harming others regarding the others’ on-going basic sustainability. Now, I happen to think that she has a right
    to sell her organs based on liberty and property considerations, but this does
    not entail that the choice situation is thereby validated. Hence, I think that the ‘choice situation’
    needs to meet some minimal social/economic standard below which no one is
    allowed to fall; there should not be ‘free-loaders.’

  • Roger

    As with the prior thread, the debate seems askew.

    I view rights as instrumental social conventions. They are instrumental in achieving the types of outcomes we pursue in our lives. Obviously people tend to pursue things that will improve their welfare. Not always, but as a general rule.

    The reason we establish social conventions such as property rights and liberty is that they have proven themselves effective at promoting human welfare. If they didn’t, then I would see no reason to support them. Indeed, if liberty and private property tended to lead to Armageddon then I would oppose them. Wouldn’t you? Any other position seems like mystical dogma.

    That said, let me clarify that social conventions do not guarantee results or outcomes, just process, procedure and protocol. There cannot be a right to welfare. There can be a right to do as you would like as long as you do not harm others, and the reason we adopt it is that it tends to optimize our welfare. To use the traffic metaphor, we have no right to get to our designation on time. We just have rights of way, because these help us to arrive safely to our destination on time.

    • martinbrock

      … a right to do as you would like as long as you do not harm others … tends to optimize our welfare …

      Does this right optimize our welfare, or is it the definition of an individual’s welfare? If the former, how do you know? What does “our welfare” mean exactly? How do you incorporate an individual’s welfare into an aggregate?

      I was once an avid skydiver. I was seriously injured twice but recovered fully. I dislocated both of my elbows on separate occasions. I saw skydivers die and suffer more serious injuries. I don’t jump much anymore, but I don’t regret the experience including the injuries. If you’ve never jumped, you’ll never know the exhilaration.

      Life involves risk. When I pursue welfare by making choices, I necessarily pursue only an expectation of welfare, some product of the value to me of possible outcomes and the likelihood of these outcomes. I never have the option of choosing any outcome with complete certainty. Every course through life involves tradeoffs between present satisfaction and expectations of future satisfaction.

      Can we ever say that a tragic outcome demonstrates that a free, informed person did not optimize his welfare?

      • Roger

        Martin,

        Yes, a tragic outcome would demonstrate that one did not optimize her welfare. But no action is ever guaranteed to solve a problem. Everything we do is experimental or conjectural. So the question is who tends to be in the best position to decide which actions are most likely to lead to the desired result? The key is to align the interest of the decision maker with the decision beneficiary. We can be reasonably sure their interests, values, context and goals align, as they are one. Furthermore they receive feedback and can learn from their decisions.

        Liberty (and property rights) can be seen as ways to determine who gets to make the decision. For decisions which only affect one’s self, the rule of thumb or convention is that the individual herself is the best decision maker. Where people interact, the proven best convention is for the action to be mutually voluntary, as it will tend to be mutually beneficial. Where property is involved, the best convention is to create a system where individuals can gain property rights and determine what should be done, as long as not used to directly harm others.

        The individual decisions aggregate into total utility because expected actions meeting the above requirements are all positive sum, or at least expected to be by the person best equipped to decide.

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

    “This is because I think that welfare is only valuable when people freely choose to promote welfare.”

    You cannot really mean this, though I think it is interesting that you have managed to persuade yourself that you do (Kant has a lot to answer for). Imagine someone who is incapable of choice (because too young, suffering from Alzheimer’s, whatever) but who is in a state of great suffering and distress. Is such a person in an intrinsically disvaluable state that you have reason to relieve? The answer ought to be obvious to you.

    So your initial claim is too strong, and, in any case, you don’t need to make it since it is compatible with welfare having intrinsic value that freedom nevertheless have lexical priority over it.

    However, I’d go on to ask you whether, in the event that you can relieve the suffering of such a person only by making a small infringement on the property rights of a third party, you don’t have reason to do so. (You can use one pill from a stash of a billion pills that belong to the Koch brothers.) I bet you’d take that pill and relieve the suffering patient Jessica. Am I wrong?