Free Markets, Free People, and Utter Disgust with Government

The societal value of a good or service — its value to persons other than its producer — is neither intrinsic nor determined by, say, the amount of labor that goes into its production. The societal value of a good or service can be determined only when a free market establishes a price for that good or service. This simple assertion, which I will prove below, explains why government intervention in the economy — through spending, redistribution, and regulation — causes the economy to underperform and creates general harm, as I have shown here, for instance.

Consider this: I may labor skillfully for days on end to carve a miniature portrait of John Stuart Mill on the shell of a walnut, but if no one wants to buy that portrait, it has no value to others. Does it still have a value? Well, if I decide — before setting out on my quixotic carving task — that I would want the carving for myself, whether or not anyone will buy it, then I am ascribing a personal value to the work. My personal value is the market value of the labor I forbore to sell to a willing buyer so that I could carve the likeness of John Stuart Mill. But that value is my value, not a societal value, which is zero because I cannot turn around and sell the carving for the value of the labor that I forbore to sell to a willing buyer.

Some will say “So what?” If I derive value from a carving I can’t sell, at least I have something of value to show for my labor. Here’s “what”: Suppose I do nothing with my time but make carvings that no one will buy. Suppose, further, that a powerful clique of persons wants to encourage me in my artistic endeavors and therefore forces others to buy my carvings at a price and frequency that enables me to feed, clothe, and shelter myself. If you are one of the persons who is forced to buy one of my carvings, you receive nothing of value for yourself, but — thanks to the powerful clique — I deprive you of some portion of the food, clothing, or shelter you might have been able to buy from income you earned from willing buyers of your product or service.

The same powerful clique might as well force you and others to give me money in exchange for nothing. It would amount to the same thing, inasmuch as no one places any value on my walnut carvings. If it happens that your neighbor comes to acquire a taste for walnut carvings, he may be happy with the exchange. But that does you no good; cost-benefit analysis to the contrary, you neighbor’s happiness and yours are incommensurable. If your neighbor wants walnut carvings, let him buy his own; if he wants to give money to indigent walnut carvers, let him give his own. Why should you help subsidize his acquired taste for walnut carvings?

The powerful clique of my metaphor stands for government, of course. The powerful clique’s decisions are analogous to government spending, redistribution, and regulation, which:

Deprive you of a portion of your earnings in order to subsidize the production of government services that you may not want.

Force you to donate some of your earnings to persons who produce nothing for the money they receive.

Effectively dictate the kinds of goods and services that may or may not be produced. (It is but a small further step to dictate how goods and services must be produced.)

Free markets, by contrast, call forth only those goods and services that are of value to you. Unless you are a net beneficiary of government intervention — and relatively few of us are — the powerful clique that is government invariably makes you worse off through spending, redistribution, and regulation.

But, you may ask, what about providing for the aged, the poor, the handicapped, and the elderly; what about protecting the environment, ensuring the safety of drugs, assuring that medical doctors are properly trained, providing for the common defense, and all the other functions that have been assigned to government?

The short answer is this: Read this blog, starting with this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, and this, and following the links and sources cited therein.

The slightly longer answer is this: There is almost nothing government can do for you that you can’t do for yourself, or that you can’t buy in a truly free market, including environmental protection (to name but one supposedly indispensable function of government). With government out of the way we would be so much more prosperous that there would be few needy persons and ample private charity for those who cannot fend for themselves. Asking government to “solve problems” is somewhat like gambling at a casino; the odds are against you because the house takes its cut. But it’s worse than that, because government cannot know what you know about what you want and how to produce what others want. As I wrote here,

think of yourself as a business. You are good at producing certain things — as a family member, friend, co-worker, employee, or employer — and you know how to go about producing those things. What you don’t know, you can learn through education, experience, and the voluntary counsel of family, friends, co-workers, and employers. But you are unique — no one but you knows your economic and social preferences. If you are left to your own devices you will make the best decisions about how to run the “business” of getting on with your life. When everyone is similarly empowered, a not-so-miraculous thing happens: As each person gets on with the “business” of his or her own of life, each person tends to make choices that others find congenial. As you reward others with what you produce for them, economically and socially, they reward you in return. If they reward you insufficiently, you can give your “business” to those who will reward you more handsomely. But when government meddles in your affairs — except to protect you from actual harm — it damages the network of voluntary associations upon which you depend in order to run your “business” most beneficially to yourself and others. The state can protect your ability to run the “business” of your life, but once you let it tell you how to run your life, you compromise your ability to make choices that are right for you.

The government that forbids you to raise cannabis for your own use and that can seize your property at will is the same government that’s here to “help” you “solve” your problems. It’s “help” like that which makes us less free and less prosperous, day by day.

As the character Howard Beale said in Network, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore.” Well, I won’t take it quietly. In fact, I am close to changing my mind about defense, which I have long argued is a legitimate function of government. Look what happens: We create a government for self-defense and the next thing we know it’s telling us how to run our lives. Enough is more than enough. We are careening down the slippery slope toward serfdom.

Rights and the State

For reasons detailed here, I deny that rights are innate to humans. Rights may arise from urges that are innate to humans, but a person possesses rights only to the extent that those rights are enforced or enforceable through self-defense, common consent, or state power.

Moreover, not all rights comport with liberty, which is the right to be left alone in return for leaving others alone. For liberty conflicts with the contrary desire to control others. That desire arises from instincts that are just as deeply seated in humans as the yearning for liberty — aggressiveness, avarice, envy, fear, mistrust, and sloth, for example.

Absent coercion, the conflicting desires for liberty and for control are reconciled through political bargaining. The term “political bargaining” does not connote the creation of a state or the use of state power to strike a balance between liberty and control. For politics is “the process and method of decision-making for groups of human beings [which is] observed in all human group interactions.” Each party to a political bargain acquires certain rights, that is, claims on the other parties to the bargain, which the other parties acknowledge and for which they receive reciprocal claims of one kind or another.

Political bargaining becomes more complex as a group’s numbers grow. Factions arise, with each faction preferring a package of rights that differs from the packages preferred by other factions. If the resulting centrifugal force is not great enough to cause the group to splinter, a shifting coalition of factions will dominate the group’s decision process. And from that shifting coalition will emerge a shifting package of rights.

As long as the then-dominant coalition operates through persuasion and without resort to force or the threat of force — and as long as no member of the group is compelled to remain in the group — the resulting package of rights is consensual. Each member of the group, by remaining a member of the group, effectively agrees to accept certain rights (e.g., mutual defense) as compensation for the loss or diminution of other rights (e.g., a reduction of personal autonomy because of the demands of mutual defense).

At some point, however, a state arises,

as the outcome of a struggle between competing coalitions, in which the coalitions resort to force to settle their differences,

as an antidote to violent anarchy, or

because the then-dominant coalition seeks to perpetuate its particular conception of rights.

Rights then lose their consensual basis; instead, they are determined by the coalition that controls the state’s decision process, which is backed by superior force. That coalition — not the community as a whole — decides the package of rights and the distribution of the cost of securing those rights. Members of the group may opt out only by leaving the geographic territory controlled by the state, that is, by leaving their homes, their jobs, and their friends and relatives.

The state may lack sufficient power to force all of its subjects to adhere to its dictates, but the state’s ability to discipline blatant violations of official norms keeps most of its subjects in line. Some small groups (e.g., polygamous communes) may form for the purpose of evading state control and adopting group-specific packages of rights to which their members give common consent. But the state, in an effort to deter such rebelliousness and to maintain its dominance, seeks to suppress or destroy such groups whenever they gain notoriety.

The state could create and enforce a package of rights that is biased toward liberty — if the proper coalition controls the state’s decision process. That is what happened in the American experience, for a time. But that time has passed, as the package of rights envisioned by the Founders and enshrined by the Framers has been discarded by power-seeking politicians who have pandered to avarice, envy, fear, mistrust, and sloth.

Would we be better off with anarchy? Only as long as it is non-violent and fosters consensual decision-making. But, given human nature, anarchy leads to violence and violence leads to the creation of a state.

The choice then, is not between anarchy and the state, but between a minimal state that is disposed toward liberty and a state that is more or less disposed toward control. History and current events suggest that a repetition of the American experience would be nothing more than temporary good luck.

I Dare Call It Treason

The New York Times today reports on a CIA cover operation. Winds of Change summarizes:

Today’s New York Times provides intimate detail on the charter flights used by the CIA to ferry prisoners across the globe. The names of the charter companies are disclosed. The types of aircraft flown are revealed. The points of departure and destinations of these flights are stated. There is even a picture of one of the charter craft, with the identification number of the aircraft in full display.

All of this is extremely valuable to al Qaeda members who may have an interest in rescuing, or if deemed appropriate, conducting a suicide attack against suspected extraction flights. A successful attack resulting from this story can endanger the lives of CIA, security and civilian personnel involved in these missions, as well as deprive the intelligence and military communities of valuable information that can be gained from interrogations….

What exactly is the purpose of the New York Times in reporting on sensitive issues such as these? Do they even care about the consequences of making such information pubic? It appears the editors of the New York Times feel that breaking a titillating story about sensitive CIA operations is much more important than national security and the lives of those fighting in the war. All to our detriment.

If the Times‘s reporting isn’t “aid and comfort” to the enemy, I don’t know what is. As I wrote here:

The preservation of life and liberty necessarily requires a willingness to compromise on what — in the comfortable world of abstraction — seem to be inviolable principles. For example:

The First Amendment doesn’t grant anyone the right to go on the air to compromise a military operation by American forces…

The NYT article about a CIA operation being conducted in support of an authorized war amounts to the same thing. The right to publish cannot be absolute and should not exempt anyone from a charge of treason.

Anarcho-Capitalism vs. the State

Anarcho-capitalism is a branch of libertarian political philosophy which calls for a free market, private property, and a society without a state. Anarcho-capitalists favor a completely private system of law and order based on common law and explicit contract. [Source: Wikipedia]

But who adjudicates the common law and enforces the contracts? The toughest anarcho-capitalist on the block? What if he doesn’t like free markets or private property (except for himself)?

Or has human nature evolved to the point where the toughest guy on the block can be counted on to prefer free markets and universal private property, and to refrain from imposing his will on others — unlike the state?

Anarcho-capitalism rests on invalid conceptions of human nature and the state. Contrary to the evidence of history, it presumes that no one would or could accrue and exercise enough power to flout the common law and treat other persons coercively. Contrary to the evidence of history — especially American history — it presumes that a properly constituted and governed state cannot increase the quotient of liberty.

There is no choice between anarchy and the state. Anarchy leads inexorably to coercion — except in a dreamworld. The real choice — for American anarcho-capitalists — is between the toughest guy on the block or a state whose actions are capable of redirection through our representative democracy.

The proper task at hand for American libertarians isn’t to do away with the state but to work toward a state that defends free markets, property rights, the common law, and freedom of contract.

OTHER POSTS ABOUT ANARCHY AND ANARCHO-CAPITALISM:

Defense, Anarcho-Capitalist Style
Fundamentalist Libertarians, Anarcho-Capitalists, and Self-Defense
The Legitimacy of the Constitution
Another Thought about Anarchy

The State, a Creature of Love or Fear?

Robert Higgs and Daniel Klein offer complementary views about the state’s hold over us. Klein’s “The People’s Romance: Why People Love Government (as Much as They Do),” acknowledges several factors, then focuses on our communitarian impulse:

If government intervention creates an official and common frame of reference, a set of cultural focal points, a sense of togetherness and common experience, then almost any form of government intervention can help to “make us Americans.” If people see government activism as a singular way of binding society together, then they may favor any particular government intervention for its own sake — whether it be government intervention in schooling, urban transit, postal services, Social Security, or anything else — because they love the way in which it makes them American.

Of course, love of government as a binding and collectivizing force does not exist in anyone’s sensibilities as an absolute. Everyone seeks other goals as well and understands that some government interventions are more costly than voluntary solutions, and people make their judgments according to their understanding.

People may favor government for other reasons: they fancy themselves part of the governing set; they yearn for an official system of validation; they want to avoid the burden of justifying a dissenting view; they fear, revere or worship power. All such factors work in conjunction with self-serving tendencies of less existential nature—privilege seeking, subsidy seeking, and so on—and with the rationalizations of these tendencies. Furthermore, people may be biased toward government because cultural institutions indoctrinate and cow them.

All such tendencies may be part of a general account of “collectivism”—in the sense of statism. In this article, I seek to expand our understanding of just one factor of collectivism that never operates in isolation from the others and not necessarily the most significant: people’s tendency to see and love government as a binding communitarian force.

Klein concludes, hopefully:

[B]arring major war, the prospects for deflating TPR [the people’s romance with government] are looking up (for this reason, I suspect the Democratic Party is in serious trouble). Correspondingly, the prospects for a libertarian enrichment of culture are also looking up. Even if policy isn’t fixed, even if the overall political culture is not improving, wealth and technology are increasingly enabling individuals to resist and withdraw from the dominant political culture. That culture does not engulf people as it did previously. We may look forward to diverse political cultures that accommodate vibrant communities of the mind wise to the statist quackeries and misadventures that surround us.

Higgs, some of whose writings are in Klein’s bibliography, focuses elsewhere in “Fear: The Foundation of Every Government’s Power?“:

All animals experience fear—human beings, perhaps, most of all. Any animal incapable of fear would have been hard pressed to survive, regardless of its size, speed, or other attributes. Fear alerts us to dangers that threaten our well-being and sometimes our very lives. Sensing fear, we respond by running away, by hiding, or by preparing to ward off the danger….

The people who have the effrontery to rule us, who call themselves our government, understand this basic fact of human nature. They exploit it, and they cultivate it. Whether they compose a warfare state or a welfare state, they depend on it to secure popular submission, compliance with official dictates, and, on some occasions, affirmative cooperation with the stateÃ’s enterprises and adventures. Without popular fear, no government could endure more than twenty-four hours. David Hume taught that all government rests on public opinion, but that opinion, I maintain, is not the bedrock of government. Public opinion itself rests on something deeper: fear.[1]

Higgs’s conclusion is more wistful than hopeful:

Were we ever to stop being afraid of the government itself and to cast off the phoney fears it has fostered, the government would shrivel and die, and the host would disappear for the tens of millions of parasites in the United States—not to speak of the vast number of others in the rest of the world—who now feed directly and indirectly off the public’s wealth and energies. On that glorious day, everyone who had been living at public expense would have to get an honest job, and the rest of us, recognizing government as the false god it has always been, could set about assuaging our remaining fears in more productive and morally defensible ways.

Human nature is complex; both Klein and Higgs’s explanations are therefore plausible: We look to government out of fear (or mistrust in others and in our own abilities) and out of a need for a social bond. Leviathan will wither — if ever it does — only as we become more competent and knowledgeable as individuals, therefore more skeptical about politicians’ motives and the state’s efficacy, and thus less dependent on the state.

A Libertarian Paternalist’s Dream World

I wrote recently — and unadmiringly — of libertarian paternalism. What is it? It’s a “brave new world” in which corporations, acting at the behest of the state, dictate our choices — for our own good of course:

The underlying notion is that people don’t always choose what’s “best” for themselves. Best according to whom? According to libertarian paternalists, of course, who tend to equate “best” with wealth maximization. They simply disregard or dismiss the truly rational preferences of those who must live with the consequences of their decisions. Richard Thaler [an economist who is a leading proponent of libertarian paternalism] may want you to save your money when you’re only 22, but you may have other things to do with your money, such as paying off a college loan.

A libertarian paternalist who isn’t fixated on wealth maximization might prefer the European model, in which the state dictates the amount of leisure one should enjoy. As Chris Bickerton, writing at spiked, explains:

The ‘European social model’ serves to rationalise low growth through the prism of individual wellbeing. In reality, this means that the cost of low growth is paid by Europe’s working population. Governments that find it politically expedient to promote policies for tackling unemployment do so by reducing working hours by diktat and forcing through moderated wage claims or even wage freezes. They get away with this because of the demonisation of growth and productivity as social goals.

Faced with this situation, we should refuse to accept that work can only be conceived of as a limitation to the development of human capabilities. We should also refuse to accept the idea that the path to human happiness is through idleness. Contrary to what Jeremy Rifkin [author of the wrongheaded The European Dream: How Europe’s Vision of the Future Is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream] might think, our modern world is about something more than the number of weeks’ holiday we get each year.

Bickerton, a PhD student in international politics at St John’s College, Oxford, has a much firmer grasp of reality than do economics professor Richard Thaler and his statist collaborator, law professor Cass Sunstein.

It’s true that happiness, for many of us, is about more than wealth maximization. But if wealth maximization makes you happy, you have a better chance of attaining nirvana in the U.S. than in Europe. Not because of libertarian paternalists, but because the choice between wealth and leisure is yours to make (for now). Liberty is all about choice, not about being forced to make the “right” choice by libertarian paternalists.

Where Do You Draw the Line?

How far can you go down the following list before you disagree with a statement?

1. “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” summarizes the American ideal.

2. America’s sovereignty provides a shield behind which Americans may pursue the American ideal.

3. Americans’ ability to pursue the American ideal therefore depends on the successful defense of American interests and America’s sovereignty.

4. Americans, acting through the state, should defend American interests and America’s sovereignty.

5. It is foolish and irresponsible to wait until an enemy strikes a blow before acting in self-defense.

6. The American ideal is subverted when, in the pursuit of specific ends that seem laudable, some Americans use the power of the state in ways that effectively deprive Americans of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

7. There is a slippery-slope effect in human affairs; the acceptance of behavior that had been unacceptable establishes a new “baseline” of acceptable behavior, from which departures then become acceptable, and so on.

8. Abortion and involuntary euthanasia are steps down a slippery slope toward the use of state power to shape human destiny.

9. Heterosexual marriage with a stay-at-home mother is the backbone of a civil society, that is, a largely self-regulating society in which the norms of acceptable behavior are inculcated within a family.

Scoring:

If you disagreed before you get to #5, you probably should live in a different country, or in a Blue State.

If you made it through #7 without disagreeing, you might be a libertarian realist.

If you agreed with all 9 statements, you are a libertarian realist, that is, someone who puts “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” above libertarian cant.

But there’s more, for those of you who agreed with all of the statements above. Do you agree or disagree with the following statements?

1. There are just some things people shouldn’t be allowed to say in the presence of anyone who might be offended.

2. It’s all right to say anything, as long as what you say doesn’t constitute a direct threat to anyone.

3. It’s all right to say anything, period.

4. It’s not all right for anyone — not even the press — to divulge information that would help an enemy harm Americans or their interests.

Scoring:

If you agreed with #1 you are either of the Left or Right. Game’s over. You lose.

If you agreed with #2 you are half-way to being a libertarian realist.

But if you then agreed with #3 you are a libertarian idealist who is wedded to libertarian cant. Game’s over. You lose.

Whereas, if you disagreed with #3 and then agreed with #4 you are truly a libertarian realist. Welcome to an exclusive club.

Another Thought about Anarchy

REVISED 05/11/05 (8:57 AM)

Re the preceding post:

Individualist anarchists (like Lysander Spooner) and anarcho-capitalists believe that we’d be better off in the absence of a state. They’re right, in one respect: We’d be better off in the absence of a state like most of the states that now exist and have existed in human history.

But anarchy isn’t a real option. The urge to control is as deeply rooted in humans as the urge to be free. Anarcy is therefore an unstable state of affairs, one that will always resolve itself into some form of control. The question is: What kind of control? The real choice in the real world isn’t between benign anarchy and a state that’s entirely evil. The real choice is between a state that’s entirely evil (e.g., Soviet Russia), one that’s somewhat evil (e.g., France), one that’s somewhat benign (e.g., the U.S.), and one that’s entirely benign (none that I know of).

We can and should work to make the U.S. more benign, that is, more libertarian. But if we didn’t have our somewhat benign state to protect us it’s quite likely that we’d live under one that’s entirely evil. Remember Hitler and Stalin? Those bad guys were really bad — even worse than FDR, Truman, Johnson, and Clinton. And there are plenty more where they came from. Just look around you at the world we live in.

The Legitimacy of the Constitution

REVISED 05/10/05 (9:18 AM)

Thanks to a pointer from Randy Barnett (The Volokh Conspiracy), I read Lysander Spooner’s 1870 essay, “The Constitution of No Authority.” Spooner’s anarchistic thesis is that the Constitution never was and never will be binding because it isn’t a voluntary contract entered into by those presumed to be bound by it. That is, by Spooner’s reckoning, the Constitution was simply imposed on us.

Spooner’s right: The Constitution was simply imposed on us by those who actually consented to it. But so what? That doesn’t necessarily make the imposition of the Constitution a bad thing. Consider this:

There are two competing systems: one would tax everyone in order to protect people from murderers; the other would require everyone to rely on self-defense, which would be inadequate in most instances.

Those who wish neither to murder nor to be murdered comprise 80 percent of the population, whereas the other 20 percent are of a suicidally murderous bent.

Murderous proclivities are unknowable in advance, so that it’s impossible to create a society that consists solely of non-murderous people and erect a barrier between that society and a society of murderous people.

A powerful fraction of the 80 percent, knowing that they cannot identify the murderers in advance, make a rule that says “murder is wrong and will be punished.”

The powerful minority then collects enough taxes to defray the cost of protecting everyone from murder — even potential murderers. The protection enables non-murderous persons to go about their lives without being constantly on guard. And many non-murderous persons who might have been murdered are not murdered, though their identity is unknowable and they cannot be taxed additionally for the service.

Thus all non-murderous persons become more productive members of society. There is a positive net benefit for everyone — except persons with a strong taste for murdering others.

There’s nothing wrong with that outcome, unless you’re a murderer — or an anarchist. It strikes me as a good thing to impose a set of rules designed to protect life, liberty, and property from those who would deprive others of life, liberty, and property.

The Constitution is such a set of rules. It’s an instrument of self-defense. Even anarchists believe in self-defense.

It’s true that the Constitution isn’t always properly interpreted or enforced, but the alternative is no common set of rules — a state of anarchistic bliss in which Spooner and his ilk repose misplaced faith. As we have seen time and time again — especially in America’s cities — lawlessness spreads like a cancer when the state does not or cannot enforce the rule of law. The ranks of the “20 percent” swell and a barbarous minority holds sway over a peaceable majority. And there’s never an anarchist cop around when you need one.

Redeeming the Promise of Liberty

These are excerpts of Part VII of my series, “Practical Libertarianism for Americans.”

I ended Part VI by saying that

liberty has been vanquished in the mistaken belief (or hope) that government can effectively and efficiently make us better off, salve our woes, and put an end to social and racial divisions. To those ends, the governed and their governors, walking hand in hand, have taken liberty for a stroll down a slippery slope. Every step they have taken down that slope has made more problematic our journey back up the slope.

Is it possible to journey back up the slope — even part of the way — toward something resembling liberty? And if so, by what route?…

At this moment in history, federalism seems the most promising option because the Left is now beginning to understand that the power of the federal government may be used not only to advance its agenda but also to thwart that agenda. Leftists, like conservatives and pragmatic libertarians, may be willing to settle for a “good” solution rather than hold out for the “best” of all possible worlds. But, as I will explain, the way to federalism isn’t through a collaboration between Left and Right….

The Left’s vision of federalism is to devolve the central government’s acquired anti-libertarian powers to somewhat less remote commissars at the State and local level. The Left simply isn’t to be trusted as a partner in the shaping of a new federalism. A pro-libertarian federalism would not only limit the power of the central government but would also limit the power of State and local governments to advance the Left’s anti-libertarian agenda.

The only way to advance pro-libertarian federalism is to ensure that the Left neither controls the central government nor has little influence over its policies. This is especially true of the Supreme Court….

Something resembling pro-libertarian federalism will come about only if a Republican president, aided by a strongly Republican Senate, is able to stock the courts with judges who are committed to the restraint of government power — at all levels of government….

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL POST.

Conservatism, Libertarianism, and Public Morality

In a recent post I reservedly endorsed limited-government conservatism:

I…reserve the right to agree with conservative positions. And I shall, when the consequences serve the general welfare. I also reserve the right to differ with conservative positions. And I shall, when the consequences disserve the general welfare.

In either case, I am confident that the general welfare is served best by liberty, and that liberty is not served when the state recklessly subverts socially evolved standards of behavior in the name of license masquerading as liberty.

That post was inspired by Edward Feser’s post about “Libertarianism and moral neutrality” at Right Reason. Feser there refers to his recent article (“Self-Ownership, Abortion, and the Rights of Children: Toward a More Conservative Libertarianism”), which appears in the Journal of Libertarian Studies. I’ve now read Feser’s article and find that I am in deep disagreement with him. My disagreement hinges on Feser’s constant resort to a particular conception of morality that seems disconnected from a deeper principle.

Feser seems to see morality as a set of a priori prohibitions of certain types of behavior. He argues that libertarians ought to embrace those prohibitions because they follow from the Self-Ownership Proviso (which he attributes to Erick Mack):

[R]espect for others’ self-ownership rights entails abiding by restrictions on the use of one’s own property and self-owned powers enshrined in…the Self-Ownership Proviso (SOP)….

Evens non-invasive us of one’s property and powers can violate another’s self-ownership if it effectively nullifies or disables the other’s ability to bring his self-owned powers to bear on the world….

Taking self-ownership seriously thus entails endorsing the SOP. But this, as we are now in a position to see, means that respecting self-ownership requires taking a decidedly conservative position concerning abortion and the the rights of children.

I reject the self-ownership principle as a valid basis for libertarianism because self-ownership is an a priori concept with no anchor in reality. That is why I am a consequentialist libertarian, who rests his libertarianism on the demonstrable belief that the enjoyment of liberty makes us better off. (For more, go here, then go here and follow the links.)

A consequentialist libertarian may — as I have done — reject abortion as a step down a slippery slope toward involuntary euthanasia. As for children, here is a sensible consequentialist principle: Bad behavior toward children breeds bad behavior in adults. Children should be treated well and brought up properly for the sake of general well-being (less crime, greater prosperity, etc.).

I am certainly not ruling out love — which matters greatly to the proper upbringing of children — nor empathy — which causes most of us instinctively to protect children. But empathy and love are human instincts that seem to operate independently of one’s political leanings.

Conservatives, a priori libertarians, Democrats, Republicans, and socialists all may feel love and empathy toward others, but each adheres to, and wishes to enforce, a different (if inchoate) code of behavior on others. It is that enforced code of behavior — that public morality — which shapes our ability to pursue happiness through social and economic intercourse.

I do not trust any public morality whose first principles are demonstrably inconsistent with the general welfare — general happiness, if you will. That is why I will stick to consequentialist libertarianism and leave the other “isms” to “true believers.”

The Origin and Essence of Rights
A Footnote to My Theory of Rights
Why I Am Not a Conservative
Libertarian Conservative or Conservative Libertarian?
The Trouble with Libertarianism?
Does Libertarian-Conservative Fusion Have a Future?
Libertarianism and Conservatism
Judeo-Christian Values and Liberty
Libertarianism, Marriage, and the True Meaning of Family Values
Where Conservatism and (Sensible) Libertarianism Come Together
Getting Neolibertarianism Wrong
Fundamentalist Libertarians, Anarcho-Capitalists, and Self-Defense

Libertarian Paternalism

UPDATED TWICE BELOW

There’s a fuss about “libertarian paternalism,” which its proponents (Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein of the University of Chicago) say is intended to help individuals make better decisions by having corporations and governments shape choices more artfully. Zimran Ahmed (Winterspeak) defends the concept because he

spoke to Thaler about this and read the monograph he [Thaler] wrote with Sunstein.

“Libertarian Paternalism” is noting that people often just take whatever default choice is offered and therefore working hard to come up with good default choices. This does not limit choice because you don’t need to stick with the default. But since *something* has to be the default, you might as well put effort into making it something good.

I don’t think it’s quite that easy to defend libertarian paternalism, which strikes me as another paving brick on the road to hell.

Consider an example that’s used to explain libertarian paternalism. Some workers choose “irrationally” — according to libertarian paternalists — when they decline to sign up for an employer’s 401(k) plan. The paternalists characterize the “do not join” option as the default option. In my experience, there is no default option: An employee must make a deliberate choice between joining a 401(k) or not joining it. And if the employee chooses not to join it, he or she must sign a form certifying that choice. That’s not a default, it’s a clear-cut and deliberate choice which reflects the employee’s best judgment, at that time, as to the best way to allocate his or her income. Nor is it an irrevocable choice; it can be revisited annually (or more often under certain circumstances).

But to help employees make the “right” choice, libertarian paternalists would find a way to herd employees into 401(k) plans (perhaps by law). In one variant of this bit of paternalism, an employee is automatically enrolled in a 401(k) and isn’t allowed to opt out for some months, by which time he or she has become used to the idea of being enrolled and declines to opt out.

The underlying notion is that people don’t always choose what’s “best” for themselves. Best according to whom? According to libertarian paternalists, of course, who tend to equate “best” with wealth maximization. They simply disregard or dismiss the truly rational preferences of those who must live with the consequences of their decisions. Richard Thaler may want you to save your money when you’re only 22, but you may have other things to do with your money, such as paying off a college loan.

Libertarian paternalism incorporates two fallacies. One is what I call the “rationality fallacy,” the other is the fallacy of centralized planning.

As for the rationality fallacy, I once wrote this:

There is simply a lot more to maximizing satisfaction than maximizing wealth. That’s why some people choose to have a lot of children, when doing so obviously reduces the amount they can save. That’s why some choose to retire early rather than stay in stressful jobs. Rationality and wealth maximization are two very different things, but a lot of laypersons and too many economists are guilty of equating them.

Nevertheless, many economists (like Thaler) do equate rationality and wealth maximization, which leads them to propose schemes for forcing us to act more “rationally.” Such schemes, of course, are nothing more than centralized planning, dreamt up by self-anointed wise men who seek to impose their preferences on the rest of us. As I wrote more recently:

The problem with [rules aimed at shaping economic behavior] is that someone outside the system must make the rules to be followed by those inside the system.

And that’s precisely where [central] planning and regulation always fail. At some point not very far down the road, the rules will not yield the outcomes that spontaneous behavior would yield. Why? Because better rules cannot emerge spontaneously from rule-driven behavior….

Of course, the whole point…is to produce outcomes that are desired by planners…

…and to hell with what the individual thinks is in his or her own best interest.

“Libertarian paternalism” consists of paternalism and a rather subtle form of socialism. There’s no libertarianism in it, no matter what its proponents may say.

Free people, free markets, no compromise.

UPDATE: And here comes “libertarian” paternalism — from the left, of course:

Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., who this year has proposed three pieces of retirement savings legislation, said Monday, “We need to work on strengthening Social Security, but if you look at where the immediate problems are, it’s not in Social Security, it’s in their ability to save for retirement and the amount they have saved.”….

…Peter Orszag, an economic policy adviser in the Clinton administration who now heads the Retirement Security Project.

…is recommending Emanuel’s proposals to extend the savings tax credit and automatically enroll workers in 401(k)s. Orszag also wants automatic increases in the percentage of income directed toward 401(k)s and the automatic diversification of assets in them as workers near retirement.

“This is an area where there is strong bipartisan interest,” Orszag said. “Why not do something that both sides agree on, and do something that will build a sense of bipartisanship, as a precursor to dealing with some of the more difficult issues down the road?”

So, instead of allowing workers to invest 12.4 percent of their income in a real retirement plan, they will be forced to continue paying that amount into the Social Security Ponzi scheme. On top of that, a chunk of their income will be forcefully diverted to 401(k) plans — because Big Brother thinks that’s the “rational” thing to do. Workers will have no say in the matter, because socialist paternalists know what’s best for them.

UPDATE II: Then there’s this, from an article about “neuronomics”:

The problem, of course, is that people don’t always behave rationally. They make decisions based on fear, greed, and envy. They buy plasma TVs and luxury vehicles they can’t afford. They don’t save enough for retirement. They indulge in risky behavior such as gambling. Economists understand this as well as anyone, but in order to keep their mathematical models tractable, they make simplifying assumptions.

As Steve Antler (EconoPundit) explains:

Look: economics teachers with good sense tell students they’re talking about how people would behave if they were rational.

Whether people actually are rational is another matter entirely.

And, to repeat myself, rationality isn’t the same thing as wealth maximization.

Fundamentalist Libertarians, Anarcho-Capitalists, and Self-Defense

I recently chided another blogger for getting all hot and bothered about neolibertarianism. That blogger, you see, is a member of a strange sect that I call the fundamentalist branch of libertarianism. Fundamentalists — who tend to be anarcho-capitalists — believe that rights are somehow innate to humans. Those mysterious “natural rights” give us “self-ownership,” which is just another way of saying that rights are innate to us. Fundamentalists never explain — to my satisfaction — how rights invade our being, who decides precisely what those rights are, and why they are negative (e.g., the right to be left alone) and not positive (e.g., the right to be fed at the expense of others). (I agree that rights ought to be negative, but that’s the extent of my agreement with fundamentalists. For an exposition of my views on the origin and essence of rights, go here.)

In any event, fundamentalists derive from innate rights and self-ownership the principles of non-coercion and non-aggression: If everyone has innate rights and self-ownership, no one has the right to coerce or commit aggression against anyone else. (The fact that coerciveness and aggressiveness seem to be innate human behaviors doesn’t faze fundamentalists.)

The principles of non-coercion and non-aggression lead fundamentalists — anarcho-capitalists, in particular — to the position that the state shouldn’t exist, even if solely for the purpose of collective self-defense. Further, state or no state, it’s wrong to act aggressively against anyone, anywhere, until that someone already has acted against you. Wikipedia explains:

Anarcho-capitalists hold that a modern territorial state by its nature initiates coercion (for example, by implementing taxation), and therefore oppose the existence of such a state and argue that markets and individuals should operate free from this type of interference. If individual liberty is to be defended by an organization, they insist that it be in the form of a private business who [sic] sells its services to private individuals rather than a public institution that relies on taxation to fund its operations. Individuals unable to pay for their protection in such a system are left to the auspices of charity. Anarcho-capitalists reject all coercive aggressions of the state, from initiatory war to government monopolies….

[S]ome also oppose the use of retaliatory or punitive force, asserting that any use of force beyond self-defense is itself an initiation of force.

Because of their uncompromising antipathy to government, many fundamentalist libertarians claim no special allegiance to the United States and believe, further, that it is as wrong for the United States to act preemptively in the defense of its citizens as it is for you to punch your neighbor without provocation.

That’s jolly well easy to say if you happen to live in the United States, whose citizens (even allowing for Pearl Harbor, 9/11, and violent crime) are, on the whole, well protected from foreign enemies and domestic predators because

there is a United States,

its government has excellent (if imperfect) armed forces and intelligence systems, and

its government and the governments of the individual States and their political subdivisions have large and generally effective law-enforcement agencies.

Fundamentalist libertarians — especially anarcho-capitalists — are simply deluding themselves if they think that they don’t owe their liberty and physical security to the state and to its ability to exercise coercive power on their behalf. They are further deluding themselves if they believe that private agencies could possess the same coercive power without descending into gang warfare, if not coercing their “customers” at least as much as governments coerce their citizens.

It’s true that the state doesn’t perfectly protect Americans from foreign enemies and domestic predators. But we’re protected well enough that anarcho-capitalists and other fundamentalist libertarians have the luxury of imagining that, without the benefit of protection from the state, they could enter into enforceable contracts with protective agencies. The American state, at least, remains somewhat accountable and responsive to those who pay its bills. What will keep your local protection racket (oops, protective agency) in check, an even more predatory competitor?

There is a difference between the United States and other nations and extra-national terrorist organizations. The United States exists for the purpose of securing the rights so prized by fundamentalist libertarians. Yes, it’s far from perfect, but it’s the best deal available. It therefore makes sense to adhere to the United States and oppose its enemies, unless you’re prepared to move to a place that offers you a better combination of rights and physical security. If you’re not, stick around, pay your taxes, and use your freedom of speech in an effort to make the union more perfect. But don’t try to pretend that the United States is just another place on the map that has no special attributes worth defending.

As for defending those attributes, I will simply ignore as irrelevant those relatively few anarcho-capitalist, fundamentalist libertarians who profess outright pacifism. I am mainly concerned with the rather more prominent set of fundamentalist libertarians who oppose preemptive defense. Because they oppose preemptive defense but not self-defense, they are only arguing about where to draw the line in the sand. It’s an important argument, however, because if the line is drawn too close to home, that increases my chances of being killed by someone who is bent on killing me (and who will try to do so regardless of my views about preemptive self-defense). Fundamentalist libertarians and others who hide safely behind the wall of American might are just as much a target of foreign enemies as are those of us who would aggressively pursue those enemies.

There can be no quid pro quo with fanatical aggressors. Their stated “reasons” for hating America are cover stories for their twisted set of values. And if they do hate us because — among other things — we maintain a presence in the Middle East to protect our access to oil, that’s tough. We have just as much right to buy that oil as anyone else, and if we have to fight to protect that right, so be it. Why should we try, vainly, to assuage the hatred of our fanatical enemies by withdrawing from the Middle East and going into an economic decline deeper than that which we experienced during the Great Depression?

That leads to my first three (rhetorical) questions for fundamentalist libertarians: Where are our rights? Why aren’t you worried about our rights? Why are you so bloody worried about the rights of others and not about our rights?

My fourth question for fundamentalist libertarians is this: Where should the state draw the line in protecting the interests of its citizens? When our fanatical enemies are about to slit your throat? No, that may be too late. When they’re inside our country, planning to slit your throat? That, also, may be too late. Overseas, then, where they’re planning and training to slit your throat? Yes, overseas, where there are regimes that support — or turn a blind eye — to the planning and training that would enable our fanatical enemies to slit your throat? You see, we’re merely quibbling about where to draw the line in self-defense, and where you — my fundamentalist libertarian friends — want to draw it is in the wrong place.

Non-fundamentalist non-libertarians out there will ask — cynically — “Why don’t we deal with other regimes in other parts of the world that threaten us?” To them I say: You do what you can, when you can, and then you move on to the next enemy, who may — upon sober reflection — choose to limit his aggression to verbiage in light of our willingness to smite our enemies.

That’s self-defense.

Getting Neolibertarianism Wrong

Justin Logan gets all hot and bothered about neolibertarianism. He can’t decide which he hates more: neolibertarian principles or prose. After thoroughly misreading and misrepresenting neolibertarianism, or at least some of what’s in the first issue of The New Libertarian (password tnlv1i1), Logan says:

Put me firmly down in the “libertarian” wing of the libertarian movement. Or maybe the better dichotomy is “anti-state” versus “anti-left.”

So, Pope Justin has decided that he is a true libertarian and those of us who call ourselves neolibertarians are a lesser species. Well, bully for him, but I guess I missed the conclave where he was elected supreme arbiter of libertarian principles. Two (or more) can play that game.

Logan’s rant makes it plain that he’s of the non-coercion school of libertarian thought. That’s the one where rights descend from some mysterious source on high — it’s sort of an anti-religious religion. Those mysterious rights make self-defense wrong until you’ve seen the whites of your assassin’s eyes, by which time it’s too late for self-defense. It’s a form of idealism about as relevant to the liberation of human beings as the singing of “Kumbaya” by a bunch of hippie pinkos sitting around a campfire.

If anti-state is where Logan wants to be, fine. He and his like-minded “religious” libertarians can form their own country somewhere and defend themselves, if they are able to — which I doubt. There’s a lot more to libertarianism than not shooting before you’re being shot at.

I am neither suicidal nor tolerant of the regulatory-welfare state that has “progressively” robbed Americans of their freedom and prosperity. That’s why I like my libertarianism with a touch of statism (just enough for aggressive self-defense) and a large portion of anti-leftism, thank you.

Where Conservatism and (Sensible) Libertarianism Come Together

UPDATED BELOW

Edward Feser, writing at Right Reason, says this:

If “libertarianism” is merely another way of describing the classical liberal presumption in favor of free markets and limited government, then it is a healthy tendency which conservatives ought to welcome. But if libertarianism entails also that government can and must be neutral between views about the moral legitimacy of abortion, same-sex marriage, and euthanasia; that we can have no enforceable positive obligations to other human beings other than those we explicitly consent to take on; and that a society can be perfectly just as long as property titles are respected, no matter how morally depraved that society might otherwise become, then it is a view that is in my estimation false and dangerous, and ought to be opposed by every conservative.

The launching point for Feser’s post is an article by Jennifer Roback Morse in the latest Policy Review, from which I quoted from in a recent post.

My agreement with Feser on the social issues doesn’t make me a conservative. Morse has a compelling argument for the essential libertarianism of social conservatism:

It is simply not possible to have a minimum government in a society with no social or legal norms about family structure, sexual behavior, and childrearing. The state will have to provide support for people with loose or nonexistent ties to their families. The state will have to sanction truly destructive behavior, as always. But destructive behavior will be more common because the culture of impartiality destroys the informal system of enforcing social norms.

It is high time libertarians object when their rhetoric is hijacked by the advocates of big government. Fairness and freedom do not demand sexual and parental license. Minimum-government libertarianism needs a robust set of social institutions.

Perhaps there’s still some hope for a conservative-libertarian fusion, or at least a fusion of limited-government conservatives and neolibertarians.

UPDATE: I have reread a post of mine from August 10, 2004, in which I took issue with a pair of Tech Central Station columns by Feser. I ended my commentary on Feser’s TCS pieces by saying this:

I accept that not all libertarians think alike about all issues, but neither do all conservatives, liberals, Democrats, or Republicans think alike about all issues. The important thing, to me, about conservatives, liberals, Democrats, and Republicans is that they don’t share my commitment to what Feser describes so well

as the view in political philosophy that the only legitimate function of a government is to protect its citizens from force, fraud, theft, and breach of contract, and that it otherwise ought not to interfere with its citizens’ dealings with one another, either to make them more economically equal or to make them more morally virtuous.

I therefore ally myself with those who share that view. If that isn’t moral neutrality, what is?

It is now clear to me, in light of my recent agreement with Jennifer Roback Morse’s position on the issue of marriage, that I am sliding away from what might called a position of “moral neutrality.” But perhaps a better way of putting is that I have, since last August, clarified my own thinking about the justification for libertarianism.

Libertarianism cannot be justified on either of these bases, which are the tenets of what I call fundamentalist libertarianism:

Rights are immanent in humans; that is, humans are innately endowed with rights, which no one may take away from them.

Humans own themselves; it is therefore wrong to deprive them of rights. In fact, it is impossible to do so, given the innateness of rights.

Libertarianism cannot rest on such assertions because they have three fatal flaws:

First, they are pulled out of thin air: Who or what endows us with rights? By the same token, whence self-ownership?

Second, they simply beg the crucial questions: What is a “right”? How is it defined? Who defines it?

Third, they are not self-evidently true.

As I wrote here:

Fundamentalist libertarians argue that the only right is liberty — the right to be left alone as long as one leaves others alone — and that it is a natural right with which human beings are endowed a priori. In one rendition, liberty is immanent — something that simply is in human nature, perhaps as a gift from God. In another rendition, humans are endowed with liberty as a logical necessity, because humans own themselves.

But appeals to immanence and self-ownership are no more meaningful than appeals to faith. Such appeals fail because they take liberty as a first principle. Liberty, which is a condition of existence, cannot be a first principle, it can only serve the first principle of existence, which is self-interest. Only experience (of the right kind) and reason can show that liberty serves self-interest.

The appeal to liberty as a first principle is unconvincing, except to those who already want to believe in the immanence of liberty because they understand that liberty serves their self-interest. A belief in the immanence of liberty — whether it is God-given or simply axiomatic — is a skyhook: “a materially unsupported (and thus implausible) entity or process.”

The concept of self-ownership as the basis of liberty is simply another skyhook. Yes, “I” am “me” and not “you,” but what gives me the right to be left alone by you, without sharing your burdens? Where does my self-ownership come from? Who or what imprinted it on me? And there we are, searching for a skyhook.

Rights — though they can exist without the sanction of government and the protection of a state — are political. That is, although rights may arise from human nature, they have no essence until they are recognized through interpersonal bargaining (politics), in the service of self-interest. It is bargaining that determines whether we recognize only the negative right of liberty, or the positive right of privilege as well. The preference of human beings — revealed over eons of coexistence — is to recognize both liberty (usually constrained to some degree) and privilege (which necessitates constraints on liberty).

The problem for libertarians, therefore, is to convince the body politic of two complementary truths: Self-interest dictates that liberty should be the paramount right. The recognition of privilege as a co-equal right undermines the benefits that flow from liberty.

In the same post I went on, at length, to show the logical absurdity of appeals to immanence and self-ownership as the basis of libertarianism. I came down on the side of consequentialism:

The virtue of libertarianism is not that it must be taken on faith but that, in practice, it yields superior consequences. Superior consequences for whom, you may ask. And I will answer: for all but those who don’t wish to play by the rules of libertarianism; that is, for all but predators and parasites.

In later posts I explicated those superior consequences. (See here, here, here, and here.)

Does my consequentialism — which has led me to support traditional marriage, oppose abortion and euthanasia, and support preemptive war — somehow make me a conservative? I think not. My support for those positions isn’t a priori, as it would be if I were a conservative. Rather, my support for those positions comes from my considered judgment that they will have superior consequences for the general welfare. Among those consequences, they will advance liberty and the blessings that flow from it.

Libertarians should value liberty not because it is “good” per se but because it has good consequences. As I wrote here:

Fundamentalist libertarianism reduces liberty to a matter of faith. If libertarianism cannot stand on more than faith, what makes it any better than, say, socialism or the divine right of kings?

I therefore reserve the right to agree with conservative positions. And I shall, when the consequences serve the general welfare. I also reserve the right to differ with conservative positions. And I shall, when the consequences disserve the general welfare.

In either case, I am confident that the general welfare is served best by liberty, and that liberty is not served when the state recklessly subverts socially evolved standards of behavior in the name of license masquerading as liberty.

The Broken Promise of Liberty

I have posted at Liberty Corner II “The Broken Promise of Liberty,” which is Part VI of my series “Practical Libertarianism for Americans.” Here are excerpts of Part VI:

If liberty is so wonderful, why don’t we enjoy it in full? Why are our lives so heavily regulated and legislated by so many federal, State, and local agencies at such a high cost? What happened to the promise of liberty given in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution? The answers to those questions are bound up in human nature and the nature of governance in a democracy….

In sum, it’s all about trust. You can trust in people to do the right thing because it’s to their benefit to do so, as it is in free markets and free societies. Or you can tie people down, economically and socially, in a morass of statutes and regulations….

Trust doesn’t mean an absence of rules, but the rules have only to be minimal, socially evolved rules of acceptable conduct, such as the Golden Rule or the last six of the Ten Commandments. The clearer and more intuitive the rules, the more likely they are to be enforced by self-interest, by fear of social opprobrium, and by pride in reputation — with swift, sure, and hard justice as a backup.

But none of that goes down well with the untrusting, who think that the road to happiness must be paved with hard-and-fast rules for everything and everyone (except those who break the rules, if they have certain racial, sexual, and socio-economic characteristics). Otherwise, how would people know what to do?…

What happens, then, is a ratcheting of government power, in response to demands for government to “do something,” and in furtherance of the ambitions of power-seeking politicians. There is no in-between solution. There is either a government of strictly limited powers — such as the one envisioned by the Framers — or there is, inevitably, socialism or something very close to it….

We have been following the piecemeal route to serfdom — adding link to link and chain to chain — in spite of the Framers’ best intentions and careful drafting. Why? Because the governed — or dominant coalitions of them — have donned willingly the chains that they have implored their governors to forge. Their bondage is voluntary, though certainly not informed. But their bondage is everyone’s bondage….

Unchecked democracy undermines liberty and its blessings. Unchecked democracy imposes on everyone the mistakes and mistaken beliefs of the controlling faction. It defeats learning. It undoes the social fabric that underlies civility. It defeats the sublime rationality of free markets, which enable independent individuals to benefit each other through the pursuit of self-interest. As “anonymous” says, with brutal accuracy, “Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on lunch.”…

The Framers understood human nature as a natural enemy of liberty. That is why they strove to check the passions of the mob and the power of government….

Human nature has overcome constitutional obstacles. The governed and their governors — locked in a symbiotic relationship that is built on a mistrustful worldview, economic illiteracy, and baser instincts — have conspired to undermine the Constitution’s checks and balances. People, given their mistrustful and ignorant nature, have turned to government for “solutions” to their “problems.” Government, in its turn, has seized whatever power is necessary to go through the motions of providing “solutions.” For rare is the legislator who doesn’t want to legislate, the executive who doesn’t want to act, and the judge who doesn’t want to exercise his judgment by interpreting the law rather than simply apply it….

The authors of the Declaration of Independence, were they writing it today, would be able to list “a long train of abuses and usurpations” by the federal government against the States and the people. Their list would rightly include these charges, once levelled against the British monarch:

…erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harrass our people and eat out their substance….

…combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution and unacknowledged by our laws….

…[took] away our [State] charters…and alter[ed] fundamentally the forms of our governments….

[L]iberty has been vanquished in the mistaken belief (or hope) that government can effectively and efficiently make us better off, salve our woes, and put an end to social and racial divisions. To those ends, the governed and their governors, walking hand in hand, have taken liberty for a stroll down a slippery slope. Every step they have taken down that slope has made more problematic our journey back up the slope.

For earlier entries in the series, follow these links:

I. Introduction

II. Terminology

Addendum to Part II: Notes on the State of Liberty in American Law

III. The Origin and Essence of Rights

IV. Liberty and Its Prerequisites

Addendum to Part IV: More Hayek

V. The Economic Consequences of Liberty

Addendum to Part V: The Destruction of Income and Wealth by the State

A Footnote to My Theory of Rights

In Part III of my series “Practical Libertarianism for Americans,” I wrote:

Fundamentalist [natural rights] libertarians argue that the only right is liberty — the right to be left alone as long as one leaves others alone — and that it is a natural right with which human beings are endowed a priori. In one rendition, liberty is immanent — something that simply is in human nature, perhaps as a gift from God. In another rendition, humans are endowed with liberty as a logical necessity, because humans own themselves.

But appeals to immanence and self-ownership are no more meaningful than appeals to faith. Such appeals fail because they take liberty as a first principle. Liberty, which is a condition of existence, cannot be a first principle, it can only serve the first principle of existence, which is self-interest. Only experience (of the right kind) and reason can show that liberty serves self-interest….

I say, therefore, that rights arise from human desires (yearnings) and are agreed through political bargaining among humans (either before or after the creation of a state). Then, to be realized (given effect), those rights must be enforced by someone or something: individuals acting in self-defense, by stateless groups (e.g., bands of hunter-gatherers), and even by the state, if it happens to be the right kind of state (e.g., the one envisioned by the Founders of the United States).

I say that rights do not necessarily depend on the existence of a state, but do arise from politics because politics “is the process and method of decision-making for groups of human beings…[which] also observed in all human group interactions….” And those “group interactions” began long before the creation of a state. As Wikipedia puts it, “rights must be understood by somebody in order to have legal existence, so the understanding of rights is a social prerequisite for the existence of rights.”…

Now, I have explained how I think rights come into being, but until a fundamentalist libertarian explains how he thinks the liberty right comes into being I can only conclude that he must think that (a) everyone has the same conception of rights — a proposition that seems to defy experience — or (b) everyone is somehow (mystically) endowed with the same right to liberty.

Perhaps the answer to my challenge lies in the self-ownership argument. That argument, as forumalated by Robert Nozick, goes like this (according to R.N. Johnson’s summary of the political philosophy of Robert Nozick):

The self-ownership argument is based on the idea that human beings are of unique value. It is one way of construing the fundamental idea that people must be treated as equals. People are “ends in themselves”. To say that a person is an end in herself is to say that she cannot be treated merely as a means to some other end. What makes a person an end is the fact that she has the capacity to choose rationally what she does. This makes people quite different from anything else, such as commodities or animals. The latter can be used by us as mere means to our ends without doing anything morally untoward, since they lack the ability to choose for themselves how they will act or be used. Human beings, having the ability to direct their own behavior by rational decision and choice, can only be used in a way that respects this capacity. And this means that people can’t be used by us unless they consent.

The paradigm of violating this requirement to treat people as ends in themselves is thus slavery. A slave is a person who is used as a mere means, that is, without her consent. That is, a slave is someone who is owned by another person. And quite obviously the reverse of slavery is self-ownership. If no one is a slave, then no one owns another person, and if no one owns another person, then each person is only owned by herself. Hence, we get the idea that treating people as ends in themselves is treating them as owning themselves.

…Nozick’s proposition amounts to nothing more than the assertion that everyone must act from the same principle. Immanuel Kant made essentially the same assertion in his categorical imperative:

Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end.

Well, what if the person making that statement believes that his end is to be a slave-owner — and he has the power to make me a slave?

The fact is that people, all too often, do not act according to Nozick’s or Kant’s imperatives. As Dr. Johnson said, I refute it thus: Look around you….

Am I suggesting that might makes “right”? No! It’s just that the right to liberty can’t be pulled out of the air in the form of propositions about immanence and self-ownership. Those are philosophical “oughts” that cannot, in themselves, dictate the “is” of human behavior. It is the actuality of human behavior that matters. To influence that, we must turn to reason — for the acceptance of the proposition that liberty serves self-interest — and (as necessary) to the use of force to compel adherence to the dictates of reason.

For, the logic of liberty, as I have said, lies in its superior consequences. Liberty can prevail through mutual assent. But it will not always prevail through mutual assent, because the yearning for liberty competes with other aspects of human nature. The upshot is that humans, for the most part, fail to comprehend that unalloyed liberty is the best servant of self-interest.

I like the way Anthony de Jasay puts it:

The “rights-based” defence of the free market has a startling element in its very foundation which most academic opinion… seems never to question, let alone reproach. In its starkest form, it appears in the famous first sentence of the Preface of Robert Nozick’s [Anarchy, State, Utopia]: “Individuals have rights, and (etc)”. Alternatives might have read “Individuals ought to have rights, and…” or perhaps “If individuals had rights, and…”and would have been unobjectionable, though they might not have conveyed the same message. As it is, this starting point devalues much that follows it and makes Nozick’s defence of the free market wide open to a flank attack. The fault is important because Nozick is probably the most influential libertarian defender of feasible freedom….

We do not in fact know that “individuals have rights” and nothing entitles us to pretend that we do. Characteristically, authors now frequently refer to rights “we have assigned”, from which one could infer that rights are created by somebody somewhere and are then conferred upon individuals (while the correlative obligations are imposed in some unspecified distribution). Nozick tells us that the rights he asserts individuals to have are boundaries that segregate their person, property and contracts. Once again, we wonder how he knows. However, if these particular rights have somehow been “assigned” to them, what is to stop an anti-Nozick, moved by moral concern for the wellbeing of individuals and for what is due to them in respect of their dignity and autonomy, from assigning additional rights to them—rights that are rights-of-way, easements cutting through the Nozickian boundaries? Is this not the rights-based model of “social market economy” or some other hybrid?

Compromise in the Pursuit of Liberty Is No Virtue

In the preceding post (full version here) I quoted Jennifer Roback Morse’s Policy Review article, “Marriage and the Limits of Contract.” In that article, Morse makes a telling point about the limits of compromise in politics:

No one disputes the free speech rights of socialists to distribute the Daily Worker. It does not follow that impartiality requires the economy to reflect socialism and capitalism equally. It simply cant be done. An economy built on the ideas in The Communist Manifesto will necessarily look quite different from an economy built on the ideas in The Wealth of Nations. The debate between socialism and capitalism is not a debate over how to accommodate different opinions, but over how the economy actually works. Everything from the law of contracts to antitrust law to commercial law will be a reflection of some basic understanding of how the economy works in fact. Somebody in this debate is correct, and somebody is mistaken. We can figure out which view is more nearly correct by comparing the prosperity of societies that have implemented capitalist principles with the prosperity of those that have implemented socialist principles….

There is enormous room for debate, but there ultimately is no room for compromise….We will be happier if we try to discover the truth and accommodate ourselves to it, rather than try to recreate the world according to our wishes.

Every serious comparison of welfare-statism with free-market capitalism gives the advantage to free-market capitalism. (See here and here, for example.)

It is time to stop debating the matter and follow the truth where it leads us. It is long past time to reduce the state to its proper role: defending us from foreign enemies and protecting us from force and fraud. And when the state won’t do its job, the people will have to do it for themselves.

I commend to you the Declaration of Independence.

Libertarianism, Marriage, and the True Meaning of Family Values

Regarding the debate about homosexual marriage, a common libertarian position — which I have shared — is that marriage should be taken out of the hands of the state and made a private, contractual relationship. Christopher Tozzo (a.k.a. KipEsquire) of A Stitch in Haste argues against that stance and for legal recognition of the homosexual union as a form of marriage:

As for the hyper-anarcho-libertarians [and many minarchists as well: ED] who try to short-circuit the entire gay marriage debate by moaning that “government should get of the marriage business altogether,” well, even if such a lament somehow helped the real-world quest for equal treatment of gays (I don’t see how it does), it’s also, quite frankly, an unacceptably naive and simplistic worldview.

The great thing about marriage, qua legal status, is that it eliminates the need for the (extremely complicated) “bundle of strictly private contracts” that radical libertarians and defenders of theoretical polygamy…seem to think is such a “neat-o!” idea. Ask any gay couple who has actually tried to do it — I guarantee you they’ll say it’s not so “neat-o.”

Stated differently, marriage, qua legal status, is extremely efficient economically. It saves time. It saves resources (e.g., lawyers drafting documents). It saves money. It saves grief over lost, destroyed or badly-drafted contracts. In an (admittedly Rawlsian) sense, the shortcut of marriage, qua legal status, does the greatest good for the greatest number. It’s simply a smart idea in a modern society.

Tinker around the edges all you want. Should there be a “marriage penalty” within the federal income tax? I doubt it. Should there be a spousal benefit under Social Security? I seriously doubt it. But these are overlays that don’t go to the core of marriage qua legal status. The real meaning of marriage in modern society — automatic property rights, automatic inheritance rights, automatic child custody rights, automatic healthcare rights, automatic decision-making rights of all kinds, these all derive not from some abstract “bundle of contracts” concept of marriage, but from the legal status concept.

But…polygamists need not apply:

And they [“automatic rights”] require that marriage be limited to two people.

If consensual polygamists want to try to build a bird’s nest from the individual twigs and strings of contractual arrangements, then by all means they have a right to do so (assuming no externalities, especially to the children of such arrangements). But the assertion that to draw the line at two-person marriage is “arbitrary” is nonsense.

Well, it’s no more “nonsense” than the assertion that marriage — as recognized by the state — should be limited to the union of a man and a woman. If KipEsquire were truly interested in the equal treatment of citizens, it seems to me that he would could suggest a way to extend the same “automatic rights” to polygamists that he would extend to homosexual partners. (Or is he prejudiced against polygamists? Heaven forbid!) For example, the law would merely have to specify that, in the absence of valid documentation to the contrary, all survivors of a polygamous relationship share-and-share-alike in the property of a deceased member of that relationship.

As for the “efficiency” argument — which is really about cost-avoidance for homosexual partners — the “automatic rights” that legally married heterosexuals “enjoy” aren’t all that “neat-o.” Many, many heterosexual couples must spend lots of money on lawyers to carve out exceptions to those “automatic rights” bestowed so sweepingly by the state. Where’s the “efficiency” for those heterosexuals? And where’s the “efficiency” for not-legally-married heterosexuals, whom KipEsquire seems to have overlooked? Or are they, like polygamists, to be left entirely to their own devices?

KipEsquire seems to be more interested in the legalization of homosexual marriage than he is in the real effects of legalization on society’s well-being. To put it in the form of a question: What’s really at risk if society — acting through the state — undermines the privileged status of heterosexual marriage by bestowing equal benefits on other forms of marriage, and even on temporary relationships?

Well, Megan McArdle (a.k.a. Jane Galt) of Asymmetrical Information tried to address that question, at length, and for all her trouble KipEsquire misunderstood her point:

Jane cites four mini-case-studies — income taxation, public housing, welfare benefits and liberalized divorce — to argue what we all know already: that changing government policies changes people’s behaviors at the margin.

Um, so what?

The mile-wide blindspot in Jane’s tome is that all her examples are non-discriminatory.

The mile-wide blindspot in KipEsquire’s response is that Jane’s examples aren’t meant to be about discrimination. Nor is their effect on “marginal” behavior to be dismissed simply because KipEsquire wants to dismiss it. The examples illustrate the danger of the slippery slope: that many bad things that can happen when standards are relaxed — just a “bit” — for the sake of attaining a particular objective that seems “good” or “decent” or “fair” or simply attainable through raw political power.

So let’s return to the real issue, which isn’t — or shouldn’t be — cost-avoidance for homosexual partners, or fairness or decency or other such easily deployed phrases. The real issue is whether or not the state, by recognizing homosexual marriage, will undermine heterosexual marriage, with generally bad consequences for society. For I am a consequentialist libertarian:

Fundamentalist (or “natural right“) libertarians say that humans inherently possess the right of liberty. Consequentialists say that humans ought to enjoy liberty because, through liberty, humans are happier and more prosperous than they would be in its absence….(For more about this debate, read the online symposium, The Transformation of Libertarianism?.)

I stand with the consequentialists. Fundamentalist libertarianism reduces liberty to a matter of faith. If libertarianism cannot stand on more than faith, what makes it any better than, say, socialism or the divine right of kings?

The virtue of libertarianism, [which I explicate here, here, here, and here], is not that it must be taken on faith but that, in practice, it yields superior consequences. Superior consequences for whom, you may ask. And I will answer: for all but those who don’t wish to play by the rules of libertarianism; that is, for all but predators and parasites.

For the sake of argument, I will accept a point on which Jane Galt and KipEsquire agree, which is that, in KipEsquire’s words,

the hyper-anarcho-libertarians who try to short-circuit the entire gay marriage debate by moaning that “government should get of the marriage business altogether”…[offer], quite frankly, an unacceptably naive and simplistic worldview.

Or as Jane puts it:

There are a lot of libertarians who dismiss arguments about gay marriage with the declaration that the state shouldn’t be in the business of sanctifying marriage anyway. I don’t find that a particularly satisfying argument. It’s quite possibly true that in some ideal libertarian state, the government would not be in the business of defining marriages, or would merely enforce whatever creative contracts people chose to draw up. That’s a lovely discussion for a libertarian forum. However, we are confronting a major legal change that is actually happening in the country we live in, where marriage is, and will continue to be for the foreseeable future, an institution in which the government is intimately involved.

Okay, now that the state is a central player in this drama, let’s see where that takes us.

Enter libertarian Jennifer Roback Morse (no pseudonym), writing in “Marriage and the Limits of Contract” (Policy Review Online, April-May 2005):

Marriage is a naturally occurring, pre-political institution that emerges spontaneously from society. Western society is drifting toward a redefinition of marriage as a bundle of legally defined benefits bestowed by the state. As a libertarian, I find this trend regrettable. The organic view of marriage is more consistent with the libertarian vision of a society of free and responsible individuals, governed by a constitutionally limited state…..

My central argument is that a society will be able to govern itself with a smaller, less intrusive government if that society supports organic marriage rather than the legalistic understanding of marriage….

The new idea about marriage claims that no structure should be privileged over any other. The supposedly libertarian subtext of this idea is that people should be as free as possible to make their personal choices. But the very nonlibertarian consequence of this new idea is that it creates a culture that obliterates the informal methods of enforcement. Parents can’’t raise their eyebrows and expect children to conform to the socially accepted norms of behavior, because there are no socially accepted norms of behavior. Raised eyebrows and dirty looks no longer operate as sanctions on behavior slightly or even grossly outside the norm. The modern culture of sexual and parental tolerance ruthlessly enforces a code of silence, banishing anything remotely critical of personal choice. A parent, or even a peer, who tries to tell a young person that he or she is about to do something incredibly stupid runs into the brick wall of the non-judgmental social norm….

No libertarian would claim that the presumption of economic laissez-faire means that the government can ignore people who violate the norms of property rights, contracts, and fair exchange. Apart from the occasional anarcho-capitalist, all libertarians agree that enforcing these rules is one of the most basic functions of government. With these standards for economic behavior in place, individuals can create wealth and pursue their own interests with little or no additional assistance from the state. Likewise, formal and informal standards and sanctions create the context in which couples can create marriage with minimal assistance from the state….

Some libertarians seem to believe that marriage is a special case of free association of individuals. I say the details of this particular form of free association are so distinctive as to make marriage a unique social institution that deserves to be defended on its own terms and not as a special case of something else.

One side in this dispute is mistaken. There is enormous room for debate, but there ultimately is no room for compromise….We will be happier if we try to discover the truth and accommodate ourselves to it, rather than try to recreate the world according to our wishes….

Being free does not demand that everyone act impulsively rather than deliberately. Libertarian freedom is the modest demand to be left alone by the coercive apparatus of the government. Economic liberty, and libertarian freedom more broadly, is certainly consistent with living with a great many informal social and cultural constraints….

We now live in an intellectual, social, and legal environment in which the laissez-faire idea has been mechanically applied to sexual conduct and married life. But Rousseau-style state-of-nature couplings are inconsistent with a libertarian society of minimal government. In real, actually occurring societies, noncommittal sexual activity results in mothers and children who require massive expenditures and interventions by a powerful government….

When…Friedrich Hayek championed the concept of spontaneous order, he helped people see that explicitly planned orders do not exhaust the types of social orders that emerge from purposeful human behavior. The opposite of a centrally planned economy is not completely unplanned chaos, but rather a spontaneous order that emerges from thousands of private plans interacting with each according to a set of reasonably transparent legal rules and social norms.

Likewise, the opposite of government controlling every detail of every single family’’s life is not a world in which everyone acts according to emotional impulses. The opposite is an order made up of thousands of people controlling themselves for the greater good of the little society of their family and the wider society at large….

Libertarians recognize that a free market needs a culture of law-abidingness, promise-keeping, and respect for contracts. Similarly, a free society needs a culture that supports and sustains marriage as the normative institution for the begetting, bearing, and rearing of children. A culture full of people who violate their contracts at every possible opportunity cannot be held together by legal institutions, as the experience of post-communist Russia plainly shows. Likewise, a society full of people who treat sex as a purely recreational activity, a child as a consumer good and marriage as a glorified roommate relationship will not be able to resist the pressures for a vast social assistance state. The state will irresistibly be drawn into parental quarrels and into providing a variety of services for the well-being of the children….

The libertarian preference for nongovernmental provision of care for dependents is based upon the realization that people take better care of those they know and love than of complete strangers. It is no secret that people take better care of their own stuff than of other people’s. Economists conclude that private property will produce better results than collectivization schemes. But a libertarian preference for stable married-couple families is built upon more than a simple analogy with private property. The ordinary rhythm of the family creates a cycle of dependence and independence that any sensible social order ought to harness rather than resist.

We are all born as helpless infants, in need of constant care. But we are not born alone. If we are lucky enough to be born into a family that includes an adult married couple, they sustain us through our years of dependence. They do not get paid for the work they do: They do it because they love us. Their love for us keeps them motivated to carry on even when we are undeserving, ungrateful, snot-nosed brats. Their love for each other keeps them working together as a team with whatever division of labor works for them.

As we become old enough to be independent, we become attracted to other people. Our bodies practically scream at us to reproduce and do for our children what our parents did for us. In the meantime, our parents are growing older. When we are at the peak of our strength, stamina, and earning power, we make provision to help those who helped us in our youth.

But for this minimal government approach to work, there has to be a family in the first place. The family must sustain itself over the course of the life cycle of its members. If too many members spin off into complete isolation, if too many members are unwilling to cooperate with others, the family will not be able to support itself. A woman trying to raise children without their father is unlikely to contribute much to the care of her parents. In fact, unmarried parents are more likely to need help from their parents than to provide it….

Marriage is the socially preferred institution for sexual activity and childrearing in every known human society. The modern claim that there need not be and should not be any social or legal preference among sexual or childrearing contexts is, by definition, the abolition of marriage as an institution. This will be a disaster for the cause of limited government. Disputes that could be settled by custom will have to be settled in court. Support that could be provided by a stable family must be provided by taxpayers. Standards of good conduct that could be enforced informally must be enforced by law….

The advocates of the deconstruction of marriage into a series of temporary couplings with unspecified numbers and genders of people have used the language of choice and individual rights to advance their cause. This rhetoric has a powerful hold over the American mind. It is doubtful that the deconstruction of the family could have proceeded as far as it has without the use of this language of personal freedom.

But this rhetoric is deceptive. It is simply not possible to have a minimum government in a society with no social or legal norms about family structure, sexual behavior, and childrearing. The state will have to provide support for people with loose or nonexistent ties to their families. The state will have to sanction truly destructive behavior, as always. But destructive behavior will be more common because the culture of impartiality destroys the informal system of enforcing social norms.

It is high time libertarians object when their rhetoric is hijacked by the advocates of big government. Fairness and freedom do not demand sexual and parental license. Minimum-government libertarianism needs a robust set of social institutions. If marriage isn’t a necessary social institution, then nothing is. And if there are no necessary social institutions, then the individual truly will be left to face the state alone. A free society needs marriage.

Moreover, it is clear that the kind of marriage a free society needs is heterosexual marriage, which — a Morse explains — is a primary civilizing force. I now therefore reject the unrealistic (perhaps even ill-considered) position that the state ought to keep its mitts off marriage. I embrace, instead, the realistic, consequentialist position that society — acting through the state — ought to uphold the special status of heterosexual marriage by refusing legal recognition to other forms of marriage. That is, the state should refuse to treat marriage as if it were mainly (or nothing but) an arrangement to acquire certain economic advantages or to legitimate relationships that society, in the main, finds illegitimate.

The alternative is to advance further down the slippery slope toward societal disintegration and into the morass of ills which accompany that disintegration. (We’ve seen enough societal disintegration and costly consequences since the advent of the welfare state to know that the two go hand in hand.) The recognition of homosexual marriage by the state — though innocuous to many, and an article of faith among most libertarians and liberals — is another step down that slope. When the state, through its power to recognize marriage, bestows equal benefits on homosexual marriage, it will next bestow equal benefits on other domestic arrangements that fall short of traditional, heterosexual marriage. And that surely will weaken heterosexual marriage, which is the axis around which the family revolves. The state will be saying, in effect, “Anything goes. Do your thing. The courts, the welfare system, and the taxpayer — above all — will pick up the pieces.” And so it will go.

But many — KipEsquire among them — will say that the state’s refusal to legitimate homosexual marriage simply isn’t “fair.” And I will ask, “unfair to whom, to the relatively small number of persons who seek to assuage their pride or avoid paying a lawyer to document the terms of their relationship, or generally unfair to members of society (of all sexual proclivities), whose well-being is bound to suffer for the sake of homosexual pride or cost-avoidance?”

I’d rather maintain my stance that the government ought to keep its mitts off marriage. But Megan McArdle, Christopher Tozzo, and Jennifer Roback Morse have convinced me that I oughtn’t to do so. So I won’t.

Faced with a choice between libertarian shibboleth and libertarian substance, I have chosen substance. I now say: Ban homosexual marriage and avoid another step down the slippery slope toward incivility and bigger government.

(Thanks to my son for pointing me to Morse’s article.)

Libertarianism, Marriage, and the True Meaning of Family Values

The recognition of homosexual marriage by the state — though innocuous to many, and an article of faith among most libertarians and liberals — is another step down [a slippery] slope. When the state, through its power to recognize marriage, bestows equal benefits on homosexual marriage, it will next bestow equal benefits on other domestic arrangements that fall short of traditional, heterosexual marriage. And that surely will weaken heterosexual marriage, which is the axis around which the family revolves. The state will be saying, in effect, “Anything goes. Do your thing. The courts, the welfare system, and the taxpayer — above all — will pick up the pieces.” And so it will go….

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL POST, WHICH IS VERY LONG.

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