1) Consequentialist Considerations Are Crucial for Libertarians

In a recent post, Kevin Vallier suggests that libertarianism cannot be justified by either utilitarianism or self-ownership. The first is said to be too distributionally-insensitive; the second, too consequence-insensitive. In a sense I agree, but for somewhat different reasons. Libertarianism is a thesis about the proper role of the state. A libertarian supports libertarian institutions. By libertarian institutions I mean laws and political arrangements that allow a greater amount of individual liberty than our current liberal democracies typically do. A libertarian supports less regulation,  freer markets, and more robust civil liberties such as the rights of privacy, speech, the rights of the criminal defendant and so forth. Now the reason why utilitarianism cannot justify libertarian institutions is that it would countenance sacrificing the freedom of some if that would be conducive to overall freedom –as Kevin says, it is not sensitive enough to moral constraints.

But this does not mean that the defense of libertarian institutions cannot be consequentialist. In fact, I think it has to be (among other reasons, because moral principles are too abstract to allow us to tell good from bad laws: empirical knowledge is required for that.) Simply put, libertarian institutions improve persons’ well being, both in the aggregate and computing appropriate distributional demands, such as improving the well-being of the poor. The libertarian supports these institutions because they produce good consequences, measured not in terms of overall human welfare (as utilitarians would do,) but in terms of deontically-qualified human welfare. A commitment to a consequentialist defense of libertarian institutions, then, is not a commitment to utilitarianism.

Consider the central consequentialist argument for libertarian institutions that there is an impressive empirical correlation between those institutions and economic prosperity. This argument sounds utilitarian, but on closer inspection it typically is not. Most people want to say that wealth is an instrumental value, not an intrinsic one.  They assume a hidden premise about the importance of material wealth for individuals to flourish, pursue their personal projects, or some other deontic value (this is why I find Roderick Long’s approach attractive.) It is thus unfair to accuse someone who defends libertarian institutions on the grounds that they create wealth of being a utilitarian (unless, of course, the person confesses to his utilitarian creed!) I don’t even read Milton Friedman as a utilitarian in that sense: he repeatedly underscored the fact that free markets help the poor. When libertarian economists defend open markets, they don’t say that growth is fine regardless of its impact on the poor. Rather, they sensibly believe that, other things being equal, economic growth is a good thing. I take it that not even the most fanatic Kantian would deny this.

2) Libertarians Should Endorse Self-Ownership

Self-ownership cannot alone justify libertarian institutions for two reasons. First, it is insufficient to justify property of external goods; that is, as Michael Otsuka and others have shown, the Lockean transition from self-ownership to land ownership is problematic. And second (as I think Kevin intimates) it cannot be considered an absolute principle.  But it is still an important principle for libertarians to embrace. That someone owns himself means that he should have a primary say over what may be done to his body and mind because, as the late Warren Quinn put it, “any arrangement that denied him a say would be a grave indignity” (Morality and Action (1994): 170-71.)  Self-ownership (the view that my body and my mind are mine) is a reason against expropriating the income I make with my talents, but it is just that, a reason-providing principle (in Ronald Dworkin’s sense.) The fact that the fruits of my labor are mine always counts against expropriation, but sometimes self-ownership may yield to more urgent moral demands, such as the imperative to prevent someone from starving (as Matt has often reminded us.)  Yet, the fact that self-ownership should not always carry the day does not mean that it shouldn’t be embraced by libertarians as one important principle that in most cases will trump the state’s desire to tell us how to run our lives.

So, as I wrote in my very first post, libertarian institutions are supported by different kinds of reasons. Some are consequentalist (though not utilitarian) reasons; others are reasons of principle (although not, or not always, absolute principle.)  Indeed, this multi-faceted rationale for libertarianism is one its strengths.