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.]