The general approach that Locke and Nozick take are that the idea of what people “deserve” isn’t so much the main concern. Everyone (at least in the United States) is better off than they would be in the state of nature. The government exists to provide for a better life than would be found in the state of nature, and to protect individual liberties. As long as everyone is better off than they would be in the state of nature, the primary concern of government should be protected individual liberties, including property rights. Redistribution from those who were arbitrarily given greater talents at birth to those who were not is a violation of the property rights of the wealthy.

My major problem is that it relies on some notion of natural rights that I don’t find particularly convincing. At least Rawls only talks about rights that exist once the state is founded.

Locke and Nozick take is*

@Rob: Alright, let’s drop the “deserve” framing; I still find Nozick’s view problematic. You might “own” your own arbitrary natural gifts, but you certainly don’t own the value that the culture places on them.

My guess is that a libertarian could provide a better response to that than I could.

The “Justice” lecture is actually pretty great. I recommend watching it.

The argument you present seems to be based on confusion about the implications of determinism for free will and moral responsibility. Unravelling this confusion is not easy, it involves digging deep into what we mean by “free will”.

A good place to start would be: http://lesswrong.com/lw/rc/the_ultimate_source/

This is part of sequence of posts explaining free will, and I recommend following the links and understanding the background material.

Here is one idea from the post that is relevant to your argument:

“If it were counterfactually the case that your parents hadn’t raised you to be good, then it would counterfactually be the case that a different person would stand in front of the burning orphanage. It would be a different person who arrived at a different decision. And how can you be anyone other than yourself? Your parents may have helped pluck you out of Platonic person-space to stand in front of the orphanage, but is that the same as controlling the decision of your point in Platonic person-space?”

And, as for your point “Her claim doesn’t even really outweigh the residual good she gains from living in a city with a lower poverty rate.” Do you really believe that you are more qualified than the person who earned the wealth to determine how to use that wealth for her benifet? Did you consider the possibility that she would be better off if her fellow members of society, including the philosophy major, had the natural incentive to be productive that occurs in the absense of government mandated redistribution?

Not a particularly engaging matter for a good libertarian. See Crispin Sartwell’s refutation of the Rawlsian philosophy in “Against the State”. It’s cheap (about $11 new) and is a short read. He’s also got YouTube stuff out there.

[...] 24, 2010, 4:08 pm Filed under: 1 Ned Resnikoff, an NYU Local writer and an NYU Democrat, has a great post on NYU Local today about flaw in the arguments behind Libertarianism, including a fantastic video [...]

@Eric: Any way you could condense the argument from that book? I can understand concerns about losing nuance, but I also don’t want the conversation to just end here.

@Jonathan: I’m not sure what your counterfactual argument really does, given that we’re not really arguing about moral responsibility. Besides, I’m not claiming that people aren’t responsible for their own actions–I’m just fleshing out the implications of the two seemingly self-evident points that:

(a) Some people have advantages over other people that are morally arbitrary, and

(b) Given that people are generally predictable creatures and our behavior is determined to a large extent by circumstance, “free will” isn’t entirely something that happens automatically without access to and awareness of other choices.

As for this point:

Do you really believe that you are more qualified than the person who earned the wealth to determine how to use that wealth for her benifet? Did you consider the possibility that she would be better off if her fellow members of society, including the philosophy major, had the natural incentive to be productive that occurs in the absense of government mandated redistribution?

Yes, everyone would be better off if the entire Earth’s population had the skills and know-how to cooperate together and create their own Utopian society. However, failing that, yes, I also happen to believe that the government knows how to put a certain share of a wealthy individual’s disposable income to better use than that individual would. What’s the point of even having a government if it we can’t trust it to effectively allocate any sort of resources?

I’m too tired to write out a full response to this article, which it actually deserves for being quite thought provoking, albeit misguided.

@Ned: you argue that wealth isn’t owned because the individual doesn’t determine the value society places on the individuals skills. However, in a capitalistic society like ours, the values of each skill set is not a hidden fact: Everyone knows that a med student training to be a doctor has a more valuable skill set than philosophy major training to be a Brooklyn hipster. At each point in life, the med student and the philosophy major had a choice: the med student chose to become something society values, while the philosophy major did not. Does the med student deserve to earn more: yes.

and about taxes, the problem is that gov’t spending is inefficient. I would much rather have the money in the private sector where it can create more wealth. Point and case: the post office vs. UPS. UPS is much more efficient and actually makes a profit vs. the post office which is slower and is bleeding money due to inefficiencies.

If your interested in the libertarian viewpoint, read Atlas Shrugged. Rand is an extreme in her beliefs, but it captures the gist of the libertarian viewpoint. You’ll probably read it disagreeing the whole way through but you won’t regret reading it because its quite thought provoking and an entertaining story taboot.

@Ryan: Again, though, not everyone has that choice. You need grades and money to go to college. You have little to no choice about the latter as a minor, and as for the former it’s incredibly difficult without a stable environment available in which to study. Everyone who’s commented here seems pretty intelligent, so at the very least can I extract an admission from you guys that there’s significantly more to whether or not you succeed beyond talent and elbow grease?

As for the UPS point: Yes, there are a lot of things the private sector does far more efficiently. But that doesn’t mean they do everything more efficiently, and I don’t see why we should have this deep ideological commitment to keeping as many industries as possible private even when that’s bad for the public interest. For example: I’ll take my fire department government-run, thank you very much.

Also: I think part of the disagreement here is over the fact that libertarians seem to generally take a far sunnier view of our capacity for making choices than I do. There’s a pretty substantial body of psychological research (going back to greatest hits like the Milgram experiment) suggesting that the “choices” we make are much more dependent on environmental pressures than most of us would care to admit.

Also also: I don’t want to start too many simultaneous arguments (well, too late, probably) but here’s something else to consider: A modified thought experiment by NYU’s own Prof. Peter Unger:

Say you’ve been hired to spend the summer cleaning a billionaire’s yacht every weekend. While you’re finishing up scrubbing the hull one day, you notice there’s a man drowning about a quarter of a mile away. Worse, there’s a heavy storm coming in, which is why you were so eager to finish cleaning and get inside in the first place.

The Coast Guard wouldn’t be able to reach the guy in time if you called now, so the only way he’ll live is if you commandeer the boat and drive out to rescue him. But if you do that, then the boat will get caught in the storm and sustain tens of thousands of dollars in damage. What do you do?

I think most of you would steal the boat. Even if it was the guy’s own fault for ignoring the storm warning in the first place, using that as a justification for letting him drown would be monstrous.

But consider this: If you decide to take the boat out, then you’re privileging this guy’s well-being over the rich man’s property rights. Now what justifies you making this decision on your own for one guy, when it’s somehow immoral for a democratically elected government to do the same thing for the general public good?

[...] is why I decided to needle them a little bit with this post; I knew we’d get some pretty good discussion out of it in the comments. And so far, I think [...]

@this article
The problem is not that there is anything wrong with the wealthy or fortunate helping the poor or unfortunate. It is about the government’s illegitimate use of power and the slippery slope of wealth redistribution.

The difference between liberals and libertarians is the belief that the government doesn’t have its own selfish desires. Once it is understood that the liberal use of power always translates into corruption, it is easy to see why there is a fundamental problem with government wealth redistribution.

Imagine the government as robin hood, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. The problem is our robin hood isn’t just keeping its operating costs and giving the money back, they are spending the money foor the poor.

I would love to debate this more, but I’m writing on a cell phone.

@Greg: When you get off the phone and to a computer, I have oh so many questions.

1.) By what mechanism does use of power invariably translate into corruption?

2.) What makes it illegitimate use of power?

3.) Re: your Robin Hood analogy: Whoa, wait a sec. Are all the other libertarians in the house cool with the implication that it would be preferable to just directly transfer wealth from the rich to the poor? How do you guys reconcile that with the earlier argument that poverty is, at least in part, the result of bad choices?

Ned,

When you claim “Claims to having ‘earned’ something are extremely weak, because you can’t really earn anything in a vacuum”, that is a claim about moral responsibility. You are denying an agent’s moral responsibility for creating wealth benifetting that agent if that wealth generation could have been predicted from starting properties of that agent. My (actually Eliezer Yudkowksy’s) counterfactual argument directly counters this claim, noting that if that agent had been given different starting properties so that it had not created that wealth, then we are no longer talking about that agent. That is, instead of saying that given different starting properties the agent would behave differently, it is more accurate to say that had an agent with different properties been instantiated, that different agent would have behaved differently than the one that actually exists. So, your argument boils down to saying that because a different agent would not have produced that wealth, the actually existing agent that actually did produce the wealth has no claim to it. Really, that agent had no right to be instantiated, but since it was instantiated anyways, it has a claim on the wealth that it generates given that it was instantiated.

“Yes, everyone would be better off if the entire Earth’s population had the skills and know-how to cooperate together and create their own Utopian society.”

You missed my point. You had claimed erroneously that the governments action was a net benifet even to the person whose wealth was being appropiated: “Her claim doesn’t even really outweigh the residual good she gains from living in a city with a lower poverty rate.” My refutation notes that she is in fact better off if her wealth is not used to destroy the incentives of others be productive. If the philosophy major is not guarenteed an income by the government, he is more likely to do something that society wants, to produce wealth himself. Taking away this incentive does not benifet the productive members of society whose wealth is taken, rather it hurts them a second time.

“I also happen to believe that the government knows how to put a certain share of a wealthy individual’s disposable income to better use than that individual would.”

You can believe crazy things, but that doesn’t make them true. This particular claim doesn’t stand up to the fact that the government is spending tax dollars to fight stupid, unnecessary wars.

@Jonathan:

On your first point: But again, in many cases, the agent in question did not really “produce” much of that wealth. It is, for example, profoundly easy for me as a white male from a stable family in a first world country to maintain certain advantages without really trying. Did I produce those advantages? No. Would I be happy to trade away a share of them for the general public good? Absolutely.

On the second point: There are plenty of modest social reforms that could reduce the amount of staggering poverty we have without destroying any incentive to be productive. Do you seriously think that most people are just content with not being homeless and getting a couple hot meals a day, and that’s enough to erase any drive to be productive at all?

(Side note: In general, I’m noticing sort of a weird unsupported maximalist trend among some of the libertarian arguments here. i.e. All government programs do this, all poverty can be accounted for by that. It’s not like the sole alternative to Ayn Randia is the USSR.)

Point three: I was just clarifying my argument so you would understand what I was actually saying; not that I, personally, should decide how this woman’s wealth gets distributed, but that a legitimate democratic government is certainly qualified to use a small share of it effectively. Let me again ask: If you don’t have any faith at all in the state’s ability to do that, then what resources are they allowed? And how can we even have a functioning state at all, for that matter?

@Ned
1. I guess you don’t study any economics… So for the exact mechanism just think (big picture) about Machiavelli and Hobbes. Lets face it, some people are selfish and uncaring. I would prefer you read The Road To Serfdom by Hayek. He won the nobel prize and was the rival of John Maynard Keynes. Keynes is responsible for governments thinking they can intervene in the free market to make people better off. Hayek was proven right, just a little too late.

Here is the wikipedia of Hayek’s argument:

Main thesis and arguments

For Hayek “the road to serfdom” inadvertently set upon by central planning, with its dismantling of the free market system, ends in the destruction of all individual economic and personal freedom. Hayek’s central thesis is that all forms of collectivism tend towards tyranny, and he used the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany as examples of countries which had gone down “the road to serfdom” and reached tyranny. Hayek first argued that democratic legislatures move too slowly to manage a modern industrial economy. Management of socialism would therefore lead to bureaucrats gaining discretionary powers. Disagreement about the practical implementation of any economic plan would invariably necessitate coercion in order for anything to be achieved. Hayek further argued that the failure of central planning would be perceived by the public as an absence of sufficient power by the state to implement an otherwise good idea. Such a perception would lead the public to vote more power to the state, and would assist the rise to power of a “strong man” perceived to be capable of “getting the job done”. After these developments Hayek argued that the worst get on top of socialist bureaucracies. Those who are good at acquiring and exercising discretionary powers in government are usually the most ruthless and corrupt individuals.

Hayek argued that countries such as the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany had already gone down the “road to serfdom”, and that various democratic nations are being led down the same road. In The Road to Serfdom he wrote: “The principle that the end justifies the means is in individualist ethics regarded as the denial of all morals. In collectivist ethics it becomes necessarily the supreme rule.”

2. The government’s power is illegitimate because it is without the consent of the governed. Legitimacy is not all or nothing, and it just so happens that our plurality system yields outcomes which alienate half of the country at times.

3. Libertarians don’t make the argument that poverty is the result of poor choices. That’s ridiculous. Of course there are winners and losers in the world, if you don’t believe that… just turn on Animal Planet. Libertarians should advocate direct transfer of wealth from the rich to the poor, its called charity.

People do good things on their own. We are moral (don’t dig to deep into the “moral” issues, just assume I mean moral in the same way you do when arguing for national healthcare etc.). If the government wasnt providing for the poor, not for profits would be, and not for profits have to compete. Competition means they will improve and innovate.

ugh, I could go on forever, I wish we could just have this discussion in person while someone writes out the dialogue. lol

Rawls argues that if we believe socio-economic inequalities to be arbitrary and thus undeserving of societal advantages, then we should also believe that the “lottery” of natural endowments (strength, intelligence, beauty, ambition, motivation, loving family) are also undeserving of societal advantages because the natural endowments are equally, if not moreso, arbitrary.

How to correct for socio-economic inequalities is readily apparent to most of us. Programs like financial aid, affirmative action, or even merely combatting the “old boys club” of public institutions would seem to do much to this end.

However, when we consider how society might attempt to correct for inequalities deriving from the natural lottery, the only solution seems to suggest that the natural endowments aren’t quite as arbitrary as Rawls makes them out to be. Programs that enhance the intelligence, strength, family bonds, appearance, or passions of individuals would need to fundamentally change these characteristics (within the individual) for the program to succeed in overcoming the otherwise unequal distribution of natural endowments. i.e. there is no “financial aid” for intelligence. The only way to correct for the supposedly unequal and arbitrary distribution of intelligence in society is to actually make those who seem to be lacking in intelligence, more intelligent.

In other words, natural endowments are not static. The 4.0 GPA first born girl at Harvard might very well have been blessed with the perfect collection of natural endowments. Yet, social liberalism’s fascination with defaming the success of individuals with certain advantages seems to be based on having relinquished the possibility of succeeding without those advantages. That’s just not so.

@Ryan – I get what your saying, but this idea that private conquers all and is so much better than public is simply false. It sometimes works, it sometimes doesn’t. Plus, the USPS example is tired and disproven. An entire business running on stamps without any government funding, competing against a similar model in which fees are exponentially higher, all while maintaining routes of pickup and coverage that UPS, Fedex, and DHL could not hope to cover in conjunction = a pretty stunning model.

@ Jonathan – What I will say is that your statement, “You can believe crazy things, but that doesn’t make them true. This particular claim doesn’t stand up to the fact that the government is spending tax dollars to fight stupid, unnecessary wars” does not hold up (and let’s step away from the nebulous arguments for a moment) when one considers how very similar the spending habits of the United States and your “average” American are. Both are smothered in debt, riding on credit, and have no plan for long-term preservation. However, when America “wastes” money, such as on wars (for liberals) or on food stamps (for conservatives), the effect is much greater and beneficial for the society as a whole than if our philosophy major decided to spend that $20 bill on a new book. Scale affects effects.

@Gregory – 1.) I would suggest this excellent piece by Jacob Weisberg from Slate in which he eviscerates the libertarian movement. http://www.slate.com/id/2202489/ He does a great job, without the “humoring” of libertarians that goes along with current economic journalism, in stating facts and showing how this philosophy you espouse above is, in reality, wishful at best.
2.) The concept of legitimacy is what this entire discussion is about. It’s not an issue of what we should be doing in the next five years to implement the changes that Rawls would desire. It is about how the inefficiencies in today’s world came about and what are the philosophical weak zones in the way we practice morality and politics.
3.) Knowing Ned, I don’t think he would argue against your position that there are winners and losers. I do believe, however, that he, like me, would hope that we as a society would limit the destruction of one large portion of society in favor of a much smaller portion. This is where government intervention comes in – guaranteeing protections of one part of the populace at the hands of another. An example that dismantles Hayek’s principles (principles that are pretty radical, since he seems to have based them on the two most radical, international examples of ALL TIME – like basing your study of steroids on just this guy: http://s2.mcstatic.com/thumb/1117529/6211795/4/flash_player/1/1/a_muscle_mans_huge_arms_greg_valentino_talkin_with_dave_5.jpg ) is child labor laws.

@Chris – I think you’re missing Rawls’ point on this particular argument, and the lecture above illuminates this issue pretty well. The process of equalization of social advantages is not about changing the person from their core (Chopping off their toes, for instance, if they run too fast). Instead, he argues for a response from the society as a whole to said advantages/disadvantages. There is no need to bring people up individually when we may instead reform the way the population perceives differences, i.e. beginning to ignore said differences, or utilizing them so expertly that their place in our economy and public is so fluid that no advantage disparity can be sensed. This kind of gets into what Benjamin Rush described in building public schools back in the late 1700s. He argued that the goal of the republic should be to create “machines” to sustain the nation in a way that legitimized differences while refusing to accept the status quo and the inability of practicing experimentation as a a given.

@Ned

“But again, in many cases, the agent in question did not really ‘produce’ much of that wealth. It is, for example, profoundly easy for me as a white male from a stable family in a first world country to maintain certain advantages without really trying. Did I produce those advantages? No. Would I be happy to trade away a share of them for the general public good? Absolutely.”

This is quite a shift of the goalposts. I thought we were talking about the agent’s claim to wealth produced by the decision making properties of the agent, that you were claiming that the agent was lucky to be the sort of agent that makes those good decisions that generated wealth, and therefore, does not have a strong claim to that wealth. Do you at least agree now that an agent has a strong claim to the wealth it generates by making good decisions?

I would argue that being a member of a privileged group only reduces an agent’s claim to the wealth it generated to the extent that the
privilege accounts for the variation in success between groups. It certainly does not reduces the agent’s claim on exceptional wealth generation for a member of its group. (I concede that you have identified a cause of wealth generation that can be considered as luck, but with the caveat that this only affects the moral claim to a (probably small) portion of generated wealth.)

What you are happy to do does not indicate what people in general are obligated to do.

“There are plenty of modest social reforms that could reduce the amount of staggering poverty we have without destroying any incentive to be productive. Do you seriously think that most people are just content with not being homeless and getting a couple hot meals a day, and that’s enough to erase any drive to be productive at all?”

Not exactly. I think there are enough people who are not sufficiently motivated to do better than not being homeless and getting a couple hot meals a day to cause a decrease in the overall productivity of society. By sufficiently motivated, I mean enough to put serious effort into a job search, and to actually do the work to keep a job.

I do think that it is good for private charities to provide help. (I am not a follower of Ayn Rand.) This has a major advantage that it emphasizes that the aid comes from the generosity of donors, and the recipients are not morally entitled to it, but they got lucky, and should make the most of their good luck by becoming self-sufficient. (Really, I mean interdependent by producing enough of what society wants to pay for what they want. Almost no one is literally self-sufficient in the sense of not depending on anyone.)

“I was just clarifying my argument so you would understand what I was actually saying; not that I, personally, should decide how this woman’s wealth gets distributed, but that a legitimate democratic government is certainly qualified to use a small share of it effectively. Let me again ask: If you don’t have any faith at all in the state’s ability to do that, then what resources are they allowed? And how can we even have a functioning state at all, for that matter?”

Do you agree that the government is not qualified to take this woman’s wealth and spend it for her benifet (not for society in general) better than she can? You claimed that it is when you said “Her claim doesn’t even really outweigh the residual good she gains from living in a city with a lower poverty rate.” You denied that there even is a trade off between the good of the woman whose wealth the government takes and society in general, by claiming that the woman is actually personally better off as a result of the government intervention.

The reason we can even have a functioning state at all is because the actually productive members of society are that awesome, that despite the inefficiencies that coercive government force on them, they still generate a lot of wealth. Though it would be much more without the interference.

@Lucas

The behavior of the so-called “average” citizen does not justify the government’s behavior towards the more responsible citizens who actually do better than the government. It is only because of government redistribution that the irresponsibility of the government and “average” citizens are significant compared to the wealth generated by responsible citizens.

@Lucas – I didn’t mean to suggest Rawls talks about a “leveling equality” (as Sandel describes it). But the idea that such programs or mechanisms could be used to enhance the natural endowments is merely suggestive that individuals and their advantages aren’t quite as static and set in stone as Rawls’ argument assumes them to be.

I guess you could come at me with the “willingness to try” schtick, which is meagerly defensible, but ultimately just fatalistic and boring.

I don’t have time to respond to everything, but I wanted to make a few points:

@Greg:

I guess you don’t study any economics… So for the exact mechanism just think (big picture) about Machiavelli and Hobbes. Lets face it, some people are selfish and uncaring.

Stop right there. I’m not going to play this game with you. If you want to make a counterargument, you’re going to have to actually make it instead of referring to some store of knowledge you have and I don’t and making a couple oblique references to other texts.

As for the “selfish and uncaring” part; of course people are. And of course any large bureaucracy, public or private, will inevitably have to deal with corruption. But I’m willing to accept the costs of battling public corruption if the benefits of engagement with large social problems outweigh it. The difference between your style of arguing and mine is that I don’t point to corruption in the private sector and say that it’s proof that all private industry will inevitably slide into corruption.

The government’s power is illegitimate because it is without the consent of the governed.

But it’s, uh, not. We live in a society that’s still at least somewhat responsive to the demands of the public. If anything, disproportionate power is wielded by the wealthy who I’m proposing take on a larger share of the tax burden. If they don’t consent to being taxed like this, they, unlike the poor, have the resources at their disposal to move elsewhere.

Again, I’d refer you back to the yacht thought experiment. Why is the decision of a single individual in that case more legitimate than that of a government for and by the people?

Libertarians don’t make the argument that poverty is the result of poor choices. That’s ridiculous. Of course there are winners and losers in the world, if you don’t believe that… just turn on Animal Planet. Libertarians should advocate direct transfer of wealth from the rich to the poor, its called charity.

People do good things on their own. We are moral (don’t dig to deep into the “moral” issues, just assume I mean moral in the same way you do when arguing for national healthcare etc.). If the government wasnt providing for the poor, not for profits would be, and not for profits have to compete.

Just so you’re clear I wasn’t arguing with a straw man, I’ll refer you back to Ryan’s post earlier. As for the point about private charities, the problem is that charities are, by their very nature, blinkered: each one deals with a specific problem, and people aren’t very good at allocating money where it needs to go most. The charities popular, glamorous diseases, for example, are more likely to receive funding than ones that treat diarrhea in third-world countries.

Which is why it would be nice if we had a single well-funded institution whose job it was to weight the allocation of resources for every threat to the public good. Lucky for us, we do have that! It’s called government.

This is quite a shift of the goalposts. I thought we were talking about the agent’s claim to wealth produced by the decision making properties of the agent, that you were claiming that the agent was lucky to be the sort of agent that makes those good decisions that generated wealth, and therefore, does not have a strong claim to that wealth. Do you at least agree now that an agent has a strong claim to the wealth it generates by making good decisions?

What I’m suggesting is that the two aren’t so easily separable. But yes, to the extent that wealth generated by good decisions and wealth generated inadvertently can be separated into neat little categories, property claims based on the former are stronger than the latter. That doesn’t mean that they’re all that strong at all when weighed against the public good; I’ll refer you back to the yacht thought experiment.

Not exactly. I think there are enough people who are not sufficiently motivated to do better than not being homeless and getting a couple hot meals a day to cause a decrease in the overall productivity of society. By sufficiently motivated, I mean enough to put serious effort into a job search, and to actually do the work to keep a job.

And I still think that’s nuts. Put yourself in the shoes of a guy who is living in horrific poverty: are you really going to feel no drive to look for a job and try and keep the job just because you’ve got food stamps and live in a shelter?

Do you agree that the government is not qualified to take this woman’s wealth and spend it for her benifet (not for society in general) better than she can? You claimed that it is when you said “Her claim doesn’t even really outweigh the residual good she gains from living in a city with a lower poverty rate.” You denied that there even is a trade off between the good of the woman whose wealth the government takes and society in general, by claiming that the woman is actually personally better off as a result of the government intervention.

Look, obviously redistribution does not invariably benefit everyone. My point was that it can sometimes be used to create an environment in which even the people who bear the brunt of the tax burden will benefit from. But you’re greviously misunderstanding my argument if you think I’m saying that the rich woman should be taxed heavily solely for her own good. Again, I refer you to the yacht thought experiment.

The reason we can even have a functioning state at all is because the actually productive members of society are that awesome, that despite the inefficiencies that coercive government force on them, they still generate a lot of wealth. Though it would be much more without the interference.

So what level of government is kosher? What services should be public? Law enforcement? Building roads? Nothing?

I’m jumping in on this argument really late, and while I think the discussion as a whole is very interesting, I just want to point out that a lot of you are beating up on Ned for being a philosophy major, which is phenomenally unfair.

I know that Libertarians as a whole generally see themselves as practical people, and as such, perhaps don’t see much value in overly abstract thinking. But that doesn’t mean philosophers can’t contribute to society. After all, he engaged you in this discussion, did he not? Talk about ideas. Don’t make this into a personal attack.

Beyond that, I have two other things to say:

1. Wealth is not the only factor indicative of a society’s health. Arguing endlessly about whether taxes are a good thing or not loses sight of a lot of other issues.

2. Ned is right that certain people have innate advantages that allow them to produce more wealth more easily than other people. The tired capitalist argument that “if you’re motivated enough, you can do anything,” just doesn’t hold water. I wouldn’t even be in college if it weren’t for government-funded loans. And believe me, I am not a lazy or unmotivated person. So, if the government, by redistributing wealth, is allowing me to be more productive later in life by helping me achieve an education, why is that such a bad thing?

The difference between libertarians and liberals is the view of the role of government. Libertarians think government is meant to protect the general welfare of civil society through law, so that he may provide and protect for himself. Liberals feel that government should provide and protect for the people through action and programs based on needs to make life’s experience more equal for all.

The problem with your question is that it is based on a false premise.

“Claims to having “earned” something are extremely weak, because you can’t really earn anything in a vacuum. The thing you earned has to exist in the first place, you have to have come from a background which supplemented you with the skills and status to earn it, and you have to live in a society which values that status and those skills. All of those things are arbitrary…”

1. There is no “vacuum” and not all that “exists” now did before. There are many inventions that have created wealth for the creator of it. The light bulb, the wheel, and the club did not exist until someone invented something to fill a need. The caveman needed a weapon so he picked up a stick and made a club for hunting and self defense. The wheel came from a need to move stuff, and from that we get the train and car and many other inventions which allow greater mobility. The light bulb did not exist until Edison harnessed electricity to light up the night. Wealth of the greatest form comes from providing for the needs of others.

2. Background is not the greatest determining factor of success. If that were true, every millionaire’s child would be a millionaire also. Great family wealth is often lost within one or two successive generations. Great family wealth is usually created by one generation (one person) who did something to benefit others.

3. “All of those things are arbitrary…” There is no such thing as “arbitrary wealth” in this world. There is no accidental millionaire. Those who take advantage of their skills and work hard are the ones who succeed.

Finally, “property rights” ARE viewed differently by libertarians and liberals. The libertarian knows that there is no “free lunch” so he works to earn enough to eat. That is his property. He earned, he gets to eat. The liberal knows that there is no “free lunch” but feels that it should be available for a discount to those who don’t work enough to earn it. The libertarian earns enough to have extra food for lunch and offers it to someone in exchange for work or property or gives it in charity. The liberal sees the libertarian with extra food and asks the government to tax it away from him for a welfare program for the hungry.

Libertarians are actually quite philosophical and very abstract. The entire theory and its application is based upon the inviolability of individuals rights. I think you would be hard-pressed to find anybody with stronger convictions about a set of abstract principles.

And Ned, “disproportionate power is wielded by the wealthy” is a big understatement. There is vast amounts of evidence, both theoretical and empirical, that election systems (especially in the United States) are not even barely representative and that the lower class has no significant influence on politics at all. “Disproportionate” is not doing justice to the injustice of government coercion.

And I don’t believe you actually think the ability to move to another country is a defensible justification for taxing the wealthy. Family, culture, friends, and work all tie down the happiness of many American citizens to this country, regardless of their wealth or ability to change locations.

And I don’t believe you actually think the ability to move to another country is a defensible justification for taxing the wealthy. Family, culture, friends, and work all tie down the happiness of many American citizens to this country, regardless of their wealth or ability to change locations.

You’re breaking my heart. No, what justifies taxing the wealthy is the fact that a faction of the country’s disapproval of a particular does not automatically render it “illegitimate.”

Also… Many libertarians truly believe that their utopian system would actually lead to much greater wealth for everyone than any other type of system. Seemingly in accordance with something like the difference principle. Don’t ask me about the specifics, or to defend that statement, because I can’t, but I know that some powerful thinkers certainly try to do so.

The point, though, is that libertarians aren’t heartless elitists. A libertarian system would allow for the greatest welfare for everyone in society. We share common goals. It’s just that our priorities are quite different.

Not every decision is—or should be—up for a vote or popular decision. That is the foundation of the Constitution. Your point that a small portion of the citizenry would care about taxes on the wealthy is totally beside the point. My property shouldn’t be up for public debate.

@Chris:

Well yeah, not everything should be up for popular debate. My point is that if you’re going to argue something is “illegitimate,” then you’re going to have to show a little bit more work than “it’s unpopular among me and my friends.” And so far nobody’s been able to present a compelling argument for why (referring back to the earlier thought experiment that nobody’s responded to yet) your right to your yacht outweighs the moral imperative to save a drowning guy.

@Ned
This is a terrible forum for such a deep conversation. I believe there is a need for this discussion on campus. But this is a comments section, not an arguments section.

I am the first to admit that there are problems with libertarianism, but youre missing them. I think the insights gained from libertarianism should inform our process of governance.

The thing is, youre looking at this as a philosopher, not an economist, and that can dramatically skew your perspective away from reality. In order to understand any theory you need to know its assumptions and rationale.

I would really like to discuss this further with anyone who wants to take this deeper. Come to the Libertarian Meetings on Tuesdays at 5pm. You can find the rooms at our NYU College Libertarians Facebook Group.

We welcome skeptical minds!

Ned, just wondering… would you ever send an envelope with just cash in it through the mail?

@Ned
The yacht analogy is ridiculous and irrelevant.

Here’s why: Yes, the man should take the Yacht and save the drowning man. Not doing so would be negligent.

Then the yacht should be returned to the owner.

Then, the man should be held responsible for the damages done to the yacht, even if it only the gas burnt to move it over to the drowning man.

The court, should determine that the drowning man was negligent and make him pay the cost of his own rescue even though he didnt steal the yacht.

If it is found that the drowning man wasnt negligent, but still required saving, the court should still make him pay the cost of his rescue, since he received the service and benefits.

If the drowning man was committing suicide, he should be charged for the cost of his rescue because his action put the yacht cleaner at risk of being negligent.

Good?

Also, I don’t know of a single libertarian that would promote a legal protection of property over a legal protection of life. The primary right is the right to life.

The thing is, youre looking at this as a philosopher, not an economist, and that can dramatically skew your perspective away from reality. In order to understand any theory you need to know its assumptions and rationale.

Well gosh, now I’m convinced!

Greg, I’m really trying to understand, but honestly your condescension on the topic of philosophy versus economics is starting to become a bit wearying. For one thing, you and the other libertarians in this thread have endorsed libertarianism on philosophical grounds. For another thing, every time I’ve tried to push you into expanding on your arguments, you’ve demurred.

As for your response to the yacht thought experiment:

Just so we’re clear, you think that you personally should be “held responsible” for taking the yacht if you go to rescue the drowning man? In other words, you agree with the proposition that you should be punished for doing the morally right thing?

As for the possibility of making the drowning man pay for being rescued–you’re assuming that he actually has the ability to pay. Maybe that’s the sort of thing you should ask him before tossing him a life preserver.

Point is, by adding in these additional factors, you’re missing the point of the thought experiment, which is to extract an answer to a simple question: Is it okay to violate one man’s right to property to preserve the well-being of another’s? Based on your most recent comment, I’m guessing the answer is “yes.”

@Yacht Thought-experiment:

Saving someone’s life by rescuing him from drowning is not the same as the government redistributing wealth to poor people. The government is not saving lives by redistributing, they are just supposedly increasing welfare.

Your jump from the yacht to the government is faulty. If it were correct, you would relate the yacht to government activities that actually save lives (and not just improve them). If we’re then talking about law enforcement, libertarians would support government activity to save lives (and to support law enforcement through some sort of taxes). Income tax is not the best avenue of support, though.

Lets be clear:
Yacht:
Youre not doing something morally right without doing something morally wrong too.
Youre saving a life AND stealing a yacht.

Doesnt matter if he can pay or not, you have to assume he can. Youre assuming the yacht cleaner can’t just call the owner and ask him to save the life. Surely the yacht owner has the right to make the decision. An clever boat cleaner would conference call the coast guard and the yacht owner to negotiate a transfer of liability (while warming up the boats engines) thereby acting in accordance with the individuals who have the power.

But we werent talking about this before because libertarianism DOESNT rest on this point.

Yes, we need a government to pay for these services when there is no incentive for individuals to bear the cost of the necessary good or service.

Finally,
I’m sorry, we are framing this in philosophical terms because NYU local doesnt have an insert graph option on their comment section. I can’t use game theory and microanalysis to explain myself.

I’m not being condescending, philosophy is the foundation for all understanding and informs our intellectual pursuits. I love philosophy and I love philosophers, (I’m dating one!), but I can’t argue philosophy unless you’ve read what I’ve read.

@Chris:

It’s true, not all social welfare programs save lives. But many that libertarians oppose do; for example, comprehensive health care reform certainly would. And even with the ones that don’t directly save lives, I think you’d be hard-pressed to make the argument that, say, reducing poverty doesn’t save some lives.

@Greg:

You’re still missing the point of the thought experiment. You don’t have a phone. You can’t call the yacht owner.

As for this point:

Yes, we need a government to pay for these services when there is no incentive for individuals to bear the cost of the necessary good or service.

Well, that could be said of a lot of things. Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t there something in Econ 101 about corporations not having much of an incentive to subsidize public goods that all of their competitors will profit from as much as they will?

I’m not being condescending, philosophy is the foundation for all understanding and informs our intellectual pursuits. I love philosophy and I love philosophers, (I’m dating one!), but I can’t argue philosophy unless you’ve read what I’ve read.

See, this is the problem: I am eager to hear whatever arguments you can marshal. And I’ve done my absolute best to condense and reframe arguments when I don’t think you’re hearing what I’m saying. I’m just asking for the same courtesy.

And I know you’re not trying to be condescending; you’re certainly better than that. But when you say philosophy skews me away from reality, that’s not so much a real response to any of my points as a casual dismissal. Surely we can do better at having a real discourse than that. We’ve already gotten pretty far in these comments.

Chris is absolutely right!

If you look at the effects of government programs, not their intentions, you will see exactly how government intervention leads to unintended outcomes.

In the “long run” (Macro economic definition) there is nothing the government can do to change output. It is a zero sum game.

In the “short run” intervention is still a zero sum game.

Econ 101 example: The gov’t tries to increase the amount of jobs in the economy. So they raise taxes to subsidize new small businesses. New businesses show up, but higher taxes require them to make more money to operate and pay employees. They make more money by cutting costs and raising prices. An increase in the price level makes workers at the lowest level demand a higher living wage. The businesses can’t afford to pay them more, so they complain to their politicians. The politicians raise taxes to subsidize new businesses.

This is a very basic example meant to represent the futility of government spending, yes… you will be able to find exceptions to this example.

Also consider, that every time the government raises taxes to implement a new program they take a little off the top for themselves and the creation of new offices.

@ Ned

Econ 101 Corporate public goods. There is debate amongst economists on this point. I can think of many examples where corporations can turn a profit indirectly by offering public goods. Especially if consumers show their appreciate for corporate responsibility and generosity with their patronage. Its like “buying organic or fair trade.” It pays off in the long run.

Also Ned,

Lets just do this in person!

You can record the whole conversation and share it with your readers later…

To think that the gov’t is as efficient as the private sector is ludicrous. When private businesses determine how to appropriate funds they face very real consequences of losing money if they fail yet they are driven by the incentives of gaining money if they succeed. In the gov’t these motivating factors don’t apply. In the gov’t sector, the only motivating factor is benefiting the public, which is nowhere near as motivating as making money. Money is a much stronger motivator than “moral good.”

In terms of liberals vs. libertarians, the difference is that libertarians believe in the strength of man. Those who can succeed will succeed, regardless of the socioeconomic status they are born to. I for one know many adults who came from an impoverished family to make something of themselves. The cream really does always rise to the top. That saying is the motivating factor behind America: that anyone with the talent and drive can become something if they really try.

@Ryan:

We’ve been over the “cream of the crop” stuff already. I find it pretty telling that not even the other libertarians in this thread will endorse your John Galt speechifying.