Since my last post here on libertarianism and Basic Income Guarantees (BIGs), I’ve written a few more pieces on the topic over at Libertarianism.org. Now that the holidays are over, I thought I’d link to them here, and also link and briefly respond to some of the discussion that’s ensued elsewhere on the web.

The first of these posts elaborated on the (quasi-Nozickian) argument that a BIG could serve as a kind of rough-and-ready compensation for past injustice. David Friedman and David Henderson both took issue with this argument as I articulated it in my original essay. But I’m not convinced. The federal government was directly responsible and/or culpably complicit in the commission of a long series of gross injustices, and many currently existing Americans continue to suffer the effects of those injustices. The government owes those who were harmed by its wrongdoing some form of redress, and I think there are plausible grounds for using a BIG to make that redress. I haven’t seen any published responses to this essay yet, but I’d be interested in talking more about the issues of historical redress, collective responsibility, and second-best theory that it raises.

My second post tried to explain why Friedrich Hayek supported a basic income. Or, perhaps more accurately, it tried to develop an argument based on Hayekian considerations. It’s not an argument that Hayek actually made. But it’s an argument that’s rooted in the quasi-republican account of freedom and coercion that he developed in The Constitution of Liberty, and I think it’s an argument he probably would have endorsed. Essentially, the argument is that a basic income is necessary to keep people out of the kind of poverty that could render them vulnerable to coercion by employers and others with economic power. I’m sure a lot of libertarians will bristle at the notions of “coercion” and “freedom” employed in the argument, but I think that there’s a lot to be said on their behalf, and that they’re worth taking seriously.

Here are some of the other discussions about the basic income idea from around the web. I’ll update this as I discover more.

• First, there is the really interesting series of essays by Josh McCabe right here at BHL, examining the past political failure and prospects for future success of a BIG from a sociological perspective.
• It’s not in the blogosphere, and it’s not a response to my stuff, but one excellent source that I forgot to mention in my original post  is Guinevere Liberty Nell’s edited collection on Basic Income and the Free Market, which focuses on arguments for and against a BIG from with special emphasis on Austrian economics.
• Over at Cato’s Libertarianism.org, Dan Mitchell suggests a federalist approach to a testing the feasibility of a basic income in the United States.
• At EconLog, Alberto Mingardi suggests that Hayek’s real concern in advocating a basic income was to minimize the interventions and discretionary powers of the state.
• At Pileus, Marc Eisner has some kind words for Milton Friedman’s Negative Income Tax proposal.
• Finally, at Club Troppo, Don Arthur has a fantastically well-documented essay casting doubt on whether Hayek actually supported a basic income at all! The issue, of course, isn’t whether Hayek supported some kind of minimum income for those who were unable to provide for themselves. He clearly did. The issue is whether Hayek’s proposal was unconditional in the way that Basic Income Guarantees characteristically are. Arthur claims that Hayek’s minimum income was conditional in two ways: first, it was a means-tested policy intended only for people who lack the financial resources to support themselves, and second,  it was conditional on a willingness to work.

Arthur’s produced a terrific piece of scholarship here, and I encourage you all to read it. That said, I’m not sure how much of a gap he’s ultimately established between what Hayek endorsed and a BIG. The issue of means-testing, it seems to me, is a red herring. It’s true that under most BIG proposals, everybody gets a check, no matter how rich or how poor. But it’s also true that on many BIG proposals – including Milton Friedman’s and Charles Murray’s – how much of that check you get to keep as opposed to pay back in taxes depends on your overall level of income. So the means-testing is there; it’s just on the back-end rather than the front.

The issue of willingness to work is trickier. Would Hayek have favored writing checks for people who are able but unwilling to work? Arthur has gathered some passages from Hayek that suggest that he would not, at least as a matter of principle. But even if as a principled matter Hayek thought that these “undeserving poor” ought not get a check, the question of policy is another matter altogether. After all, distinguishing those who are able and unwilling from those who are unable but willing is tremendously difficult on a practical level, and would require precisely the sort of intrusiveness and discretion on the part of agents of the state to which Hayek rightly objected. And even as a matter of principle, it’s not entirely clear that Hayek objected to giving aid to the undeserving poor. As Arthur notes, Hayek quotes approvingly a passage from Nassau Senior which says that

… to guarantee subsistence to all, to proclaim that no man, whatever be his vices or even his crimes, shall die of hunger or cold, is a promise that in the state of civilisation of England, or of France, can be performed not merely with safety, but with advantage, because the gift of mere subsistence may be subjected to conditions which no one will voluntarily accept (p 275, emphasis added).

In other words, even if the reason you’re starving is that you’re stupid, lazy, and irresponsible, the state should and ought to provide you with the means of subsistence. Whether it was Hayek’s position or not, that seems a pretty reasonable position to hold, especially once we take into account the practical and philosophical difficulties in distinguishing “vice” from mere “bad luck.”

UPDATE 1/13:

A few more links

• At National Review, Jonah Goldberg suggests suggests giving people the choice to opt out of the welfare state, and in to a basic income.
• Ed Dolan has an excellent two part series on the basic income, with part one laying out the basic economic case in its favor, and part two giving a detailed look at the issue of affordability.