To serve and protect? Gruesome video of police murdering an innocent person.
Institute for Justice: Should You Need Permission to Work?
Steve Horwitz on the personhood of corporations. Wilkinson pithy critique here.
And, for fun, here’s V explaining why bad government is your fault. I agree.
I don’t believe the following three arguments are definitive, but I think they are interesting. I have taken them–or the roots of them–from an article on the topic by D.W. Haslett (“Is Inheritance Justified,” PAPA, Vol 15 #2, 1986: 122-155; I don’t know if Haslett would approve of my formulations).
I believe that adults should be, or should strive to be, self-sufficient and that parents are morally obligated to seek to raise their children in a way that makes it likely that they will, as adults, be self-sufficient. I don’t want, though, to discuss those claims here. I will note that by “self-sufficient,” I do not mean living in such a way that one never depends on or cares for any other. Perhaps some are capable of living a good life without doing so, but most of us fare better having loved ones. Nor do I mean, of course, that one should seek to never trade with others. Trading with others obviously helps most of us live well. What I mean, then, is taking care of oneself, given the way one finds oneself in the world, with the participation of others that one voluntarily engages with with who are not themselves morally or legally required to do as they do. (That last is vaguer than I would like, but will have to do.)
If government provides one the resources to live one’s life, one is not self-sufficient (taxpayers are legally required to provide the aid). So too, if one’s parents (or other family members) provide one the resources to live one’s life, one is not self-sufficient (presumably they are–or feel–morally bound to do so). It may be the case that with family, but not with government, there is no force involved. That is not to the point here. One is not taking care of oneself if one’s parents are. When we are young, of course, our parents should take care of us; when we are adults, this is no longer the case. If this is right, adults should not receive inheritances. At least absent other considerations.
The previous paragraph was a simple (perhaps too-simple) argument from self-sufficiency to absence of inheritance (for adults). What follows is an argument from equal opportunity and an argument from productivity to absence of inheritance (again, for adults).
First the argument from equal opportunity. I think equal opportunity is, in itself, valuable. I think this for the simple reason that I do not think one enters the world deserving unequal opportunities. Bill Gates’ children are lucky that they were born to someone able to provide them many opportunities. Many people are unlucky because born to parents who cannot. The former no more deserve opportunities than the latter. Of course, they have far more opportunities–because they inherit wealth from their parents. Inheritance is clearly opposed to equal opportunity, so if you value the latter, you should (to the same extent) dis-value the former. But even if one does not think equal opportunity is valuable in itself, its instrumental value is important.
So, now the argument from productivity. More wealth is produced in a society when there are more people to come up with new ideas of things to produce and new ideas of how to produce things already being produced. Innovation drives wealth-creation. Whoever invented the mp3 made carrying music far easier and less expensive–thus allowing for wealth creation. When Henry Ford designed the assembly line, making production of cars quicker and less expensive, he made possible much wealth. People are more likely to innovate–both with new things and new ways to produce things already produced–when they have opportunities to be educated, to travel, to experience a variety of things, etc. When people live in poverty, they lack opportunities. If we could alleviate the poverty we would increase their opportunities and, all else equal, the innovations they could bring to market–and thus the wealth in society. It would seem that removing inheritance–which, I grant, gives many opportunities to those who are lucky enough to receive them–would allow a greater (wider) distribution of resources, thereby increasing the opportunities for all (and arguably, the freedom). Of course, this is contingent on (a) it being true that lack of inheritance means greater distribution and (b) the decreased incentives to produce (of those who would otherwise be able to bequeath inheritances) not being too significant or being offset by other considerations (like the increased productivity of those with opportunities they would not otherwise have). I suspect (a) and (b) are both possible, so I suspect we can increase the average number of opportunities available for all by removing the possibility of inheritance. Doing so, as I indicate above, would increase the innovations and thus wealth in society, so would be good. (I grant, by the way, that wealth is not the only factor involved in individual welfare. It is nonetheless clear that wealth contributes to welfare.)
As I said, I am not sure these arguments are definitive. If the system they support genuinely involves violating individual’s rights, for example, that would matter. I am not sure it would do so, though, as in a society where no one expected to be able to bequeath or receive inheritances, its unlikely that anyone would think there was a right to do so–and, arguably, unlikely that there would be such a right. (This sort of thinking fits, I think, with Michael Otsuka’s left-libertarianism.)
Under President Obama: Three-year-old Helai is at home, learning about Afghani village life from her mother, father, and four older siblings, when a NATO airstrike ordered by Nobel Peace Prize Winner President Obama hits her home, killing her in a fiery flash. Helai joins an unknown but significant number of innocent civilians American forces have murdered under Obama’s command.
Under Mitt Romney: More of the same, more or less.
One of the themes in my recent conversation at Cato Unbound with David Friedman was whether utilitarianism or social justice is a better concept for thinking about the moral obligations we have to the poor. I recently continued that conversation on this blog with a short critique of utilitarianism. In that post, I wrote:
Some [advocates of utilitarianism] … are generally sympathetic to the idea of bleeding heart libertarianism, but think that utilitarianism does a better job explaining and defending its attractive qualities than do appeals to “social justice.” Actually, even though he sounds less sympathetic, I think this is basically David Friedman’s position too.
In the comments, David Friedman wrote a thoughtful and interesting response. Rather than allow it and my reaction to be buried in the comments thread, I thought I’d post both here.
Made me laugh.
A slavery argument for libertarianism holds that some non-libertarian property scheme permits actions that bear strong moral analogies to slavery. Since slavery is bad, the property scheme is bad.
A large majority of us BHLers aren’t much fond slavery arguments for libertarianism. Our glorious DJ MZ has said as much before.
Now enter our blog’s friend and sparring partner, Bryan Caplan. To raise some questions about the BHL project, he constructs a slavery case, the case of Able Abel:
Suppose there are ten people on a desert island. One, named Able Abel, is extremely able. With a hard day’s work, Able can produce enough to feed all ten people on the island. Eight islanders are marginally able. With a hard day’s work, each can produce enough to feed one person. The last person, Hapless Harry, is extremely unable. Harry can’t produce any food at all.
Bryan then asks a number of questions, such as whether the bottom nine have the right to tax Abel to support themselves. He even raises Nozick’s famous question: if we can tax people to provide for welfare, why can’t we force them to work for it? Bryan puts it this way:
Suppose Abel only produces enough food to support himself, and relaxes the rest of the day. Do the bottom nine have a right to force Abel to work more to raise everyone‘s standard of living above subsistence?
In this case, Bryan concludes that Able is “clearly” a slave. And he concludes that Jason Brennan (whose post he was criticizing) can’t be right to hold that if capitalism were bad for the poor that he would support significant redistribution. After all, suppose that private property rights were bad for the islanders; they wouldn’t have the right to enslave Abel, right?
Now in my recent post on the concept and conceptions of social justice, I offered a reply to Bryan. My intention was to diffuse the force of his case against the conception of social justice Jason outlined. Here’s what I said:
A conception of social justice helps to specify what counts as the fruits of one’s labor in a massive system of social cooperation which depends on a vast range of conventional rules. That’s why Bryan’s testing social justice against micro examples is problematic, because it masks indeterminacy in macro-level social norms that we want a standard of social justice to evaluate. Consider the many “incidents” of property rights, such as whether homesteading land means that you own the air miles above your plot. In Bryan’s case, disputes over the “height” of our property don’t matter. But in our complex society, such disputes matter a lot because the efficiency of airline travel depends on how they are resolved. A conception of social justice can help us determinate what system of efficient property rights can be morally justified in this case of indeterminacy.
Bryan was not impressed. He reconstructs this paragraph in argumentative form as follows:
1. There are many questions where property rights aren’t – and perhaps never will – be clear.
2. Therefore, it’s OK to take stuff from the able rich without their consent and give it to the not-so-able not-so-rich.
From what I can tell, I never defended (2). I’m not sure what part of the post led Bryan to think otherwise. But instead of bickering, let me draw a broader moral about libertarian slavery arguments by extending my original point.
In an extended social order, people disagree about the scope and nature of property rights. These disagreements are not just moral and philosophical. They are often boring and concrete: property lines, torts, etc. The political philosopher’s question is this: given that we disagree about how to define and distribute property, what could justify a particular scheme of property rights? Specifically, what considerations might we offer to show that each person has reason to accept a system of general rules and practices that govern property rights claims?
Bryan’s case of Able Abel assumes a background of property norms (norms that may well be justified). Specifically, he draws on the simple, plausible Lockean intuition that people can acquire property through mixing their labor with unowned stuff and that they can legitimately transfer the fruit of their labor to others via free choice. To take Abel’s property is to steal from him (duh). And to make him work, day in and day out, to provide you with goods is to enslave him (obvi).
So if the desert island’s property norms are justified, then Bryan is right: Abel is a kind of slave.
But wait. Bryan is right only if the desert island’s property norms are justified. That means to figure out whether Bryan is right, we must ask whether the desert island’s property norms are justified. Surely that question must be answered before we can assess Bryan’s claim that redistribution is on par with slavery.
That was my point: claims of social justice must be assessed first. Bryan’s slavery judgments depend on social justice judgments.*
In defending this claim, I in no way deny that Bryan may be right that Abel is a slave. After all, the correct conception of social justice might very well vindicate Bryan’s claim. In fact, in many cases, I think it will!
That aside, I hope that we can now see the hazard of hard libertarian arguments from slavery. In an important sense, they beg the question against the advocate of social justice.
Let me end by quoting one of the great living libertarian political philosophers, Loren Lomasky, making basically the same point:
“It seems impossible to frame acceptable principles for the allocation of property rights by reference to the standard of noninterference. That is because what will count as interference is itself a function of rights to property and so cannot noncircularly be employed to establish those rights” (Persons, Rights and the Moral Community, 133).
* I don’t mean to deny that any and all slavery judgments are dependent on social justice claims. Of course, some slavery judgments can feed into determining what counts as socially just. No chattel slaves, for one.
Gerald Cohen claims that libertarians are hard deontologists. Libertarians believe everyone is a self-owner, that our rights derive from self-ownership, and that only libertarian political regimes are compatible with our self-ownership. He portrays libertarians as insensitive to the consequences of private property regimes. If a system ends up leaving many people destitute–not because they are lazy or lack skills, but just because they are unlucky–libertarians say, “Too damn bad.”
As far as I can tell, hardly any libertarians actually believe this. Instead, most think that the consequences of private property regimes matter. They think that one–if not the only or even the primary–test that a property rights regime has to face is that it tends to make people better off. Most libertarians care about the consequences of economic rights.
In what way do they care? Well, they aren’t utilitarians, or, at least, they aren’t modern act utilitarians. Many consequence-sensitive libertarians claim to be utilitarians, but they misidentify their own moral views. Here’s a simple test. Read “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.” If you think Omelas is an unjust society, then you aren’t an act utilitarian.
Libertarians are not simply concerned with maximizing total economic output, either. I’ve never met one who thinks pushing the production possibility frontier outward is intrinsically valuable. Instead, they view economic growth as a means to making people’s lives go better.
Many libertarian think tanks, intellectual centers, policy institutes, and scholars focus on economic issues. They repeatedly try to show that free markets (economic liberty, property rights, etc.) generate good consequences. In particular, they try to show that free markets generate good consequences for the least advantaged and downtrodden. Why bother?
Libertarians argue that minimum wage laws hurt the poor. Why not instead just argue that minimum wage laws interfere with employers’ economic rights and leave it at that?
Libertarians argue that state socialism tends to immiserate most people, especially workers and poor farmers. Why not instead just argue that it violates people’s economic rights and leave it at that? Libertarians argue that command economy socialism cannot make efficient decisions. Who cares?
Libertarians argue that private savings regimes work better than social security. Why not just argue that social security violates people’s economic rights?
Libertarians argue that free trade helps poor countries grow richer. Why not just argue that protectionism violates people’s economic rights?
Etc. Look at the range of issues discussed here. Or, since David Henderson recently approved of Stephen Hicks’s straw man attack on this blog, look at what Henderson chooses to write about. Why does Henderson care? If he were a self-ownership hard libertarian, none of the stuff he writes about matters at all from a moral point of view.
The best explanation for why libertarians focus on these issues is that they think, in one way or another, that it’s important that an economic regime tends to serve everyone’s interests, including the poor. (Sure, put in caveats, such as that we don’t blame a regime if unconscientious or lazy people squander their wealth or opportunities. Even Rawls and even some Marxists say that.) Now, given what the left means by “social justice”, that means that most libertarians actually count as accepting principles of social justice.
The problem, though, is that F. A. Hayek misunderstood what a bunch of leftist philosophers were fundamentally getting at. In light of his misunderstanding, he wrote a book where he mistakenly said social justice is a mirage. Now, as a result, many libertarians will reflexively dismiss any explicit appeals to social justice even though most of them are implicitly committed to it.
I was not planning to blog about this, but I must take the pen to support Ilya Somin and Jason Brennan against their critics, in particular fellow blogger Roderick Long (whose work I admire.) Unlike Rod and those he cites, I do not romanticize worker’s movements. Throughout history, worker’s movements have been the origin of, and breeding ground for, all kinds of populist demagogues, tyrants, and other enemies of liberty. Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, Vladimir Lenin, Juan Domingo Perón, Hugo Chávez, Mao Tse Tung, Fidel Castro, and even Pol Pot were the products of worker’s movements. In fact, I’m hard pressed to think of any worker’s movement (or any mass movement, for that matter) that supported libertarian principles. If we move from history to theory, we can ask: what would be a worker’s movement libertarians can endorse? The answer is obvious: a worker’s movement in support of free markets and political freedom. For example, a worker’s movement against oppressive employers in cahoots with the government would be a movement libertarians should support. But these are not the worker’s movements I know. Those I know support government’s nationalization of private enterprise, increased regulation of markets, erection of trade barriers, persecution of political enemies, mob justice, and a variety of nationalist and populist causes, including sometimes aggressive war, that, to put it mildly, are inconsistent with principles libertarians hold dear. Moreover, those movements indulge in a form of communication that Guido Pincione and I have called discourse failure. They use slogans that rely on short and simple causal connections that the populace can understand. Those movements (or rather, their leaders,) in their pursuit of political change, tend to overlook the complex and counterintuitive economic arguments in support of markets that libertarians endorse. And with good reason: there is little chance these leaders will motivate the political changes they seek by invoking Hayek or Friedman. Perhaps my own experience colors my skepticism: the worker’s movement in my native Argentina ranks second only to the fascist Junta of the 70′s in the systematic destruction of the Argentine social fabric and, especially, of the once highly competitive Argentine private sector. I do not deny that a worker’s movement on behalf of liberty is possible; however, history does not warrant much optimism. I’m not big on symbolisms, but for my money, using May Day to honor the millions of victims of communism (obsolete and outmoded as that may sound to our younger readers) is a better use of our symbolic energies.
I strongly disagree with the suggestion by Jason, Ilya, and others to rename May Day “Victims of Communism” Day.
The fact that Communist regimes have attempted to co-opt May Day is no reason to imitate them in a second co-opting attempt. May Day not only originally was, but still is, primarily a celebration of workers’s movements generally, not of the butchers of Kronstadt. The holiday is commemorated all over the world; it is not now and never has been mainly a Communist regime holiday.
I think Shawn in the comments (here and here) hits the nail on the head when he describes “the attempt to make International Labor Day about the crimes of governments rather than the struggles of individuals, to turn a workers’ celebration into a day of mourning,” as making a “false parallel between popular struggles and state crimes.” (See also some of the commentators at Radley Balko’s May Day blog post.)
Also: if we’re going to remember victims of the state on May 1st, surely the Haymarket martyrs have a claim to precedence.
Jacob adds, rightly, that the war on May Day is “pointlessly antagonistic toward social democrats”; but I would just add to this that it’s not just social democrats who would be pointlessly antagonised. Free-market libertarians have been part of the labour movement since the beginning, from the individualist anarchists of the 19th century (including Thomas Hodgskin, Benjamin Tucker, Lysander Spooner, Ezra Heywood, Francis Tandy, Dyer Lum, Voltairine de Cleyre, and even to some extent Herbert Spencer, Gustave de Molinari, and Wordsworth Donisthorpe) to the ALL/C4SS crowd today. (C4SS went on strike to commemorate May Day yesterday.)
For free-market libertarian defenses of May Day, see David D’Amato here, Kevin Carson here, and Charles Johnson here, here, here, and here.
A day for remembering the victims of state Communism is a fine idea. But, as Jacob reminds us, there is already a Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism. Wouldn’t it make more sense to fold a remembrance of victims of other communist and fascist regimes into that, rather than trying to imitate the Stalinists by seeking to co-opt May Day?
Workers of the world, unite to defend May Day!
A lot of very smart non-philosophers are attracted to some form of utilitarianism. Some of these people, like Ilya Somin and Mike Rappaport are generally sympathetic to the idea of bleeding heart libertarianism, but think that utilitarianism does a better job explaining and defending its attractive qualities than do appeals to “social justice.” Actually, even though he sounds less sympathetic, I think this is basically David Friedman’s position too (even though he ultimately rejects utilitarianism as a fully adequate moral theory).
In contrast to these fellow travelers, most philosophers do not believe that utilitarianism is an adequate moral theory. In this post, I want to set out a few reasons why. But first, it’s important to clarify two points that non-philosophers sometimes fail to appreciate about utilitarianism and moral theory.
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