Apropos of very little, I hope to solicit the opinions/counterarguments of some of our smart libertarian commenters on something: there’s a lot of overlap between liberals and libertarians, but when we diverge, it is invariably because liberals have proposed collecting or regulating the exchange of private wealth to a degree that libertarians see as unjustly compromising property rights.
(It’s important that we be very specific about what the term “property rights” means in this case: not the entitlement to certain goods and services like food, housing, or health care, which is a completely different argument. Instead, I’m talking about the belief that you are entitled to the property and material wealth you already own, as long as it was given to you in a fair transaction, or you somehow earned it.)
It’s not that most liberals don’t think property rights exist; it’s that they don’t see these rights as being anywhere near as strong as libertarians do.
In the above video, Michael Sandel presents a Harvard philosophy class with the Rawlsian case, which I think is pretty persuasive. 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; there’s not really any reason why, say, having DNA that makes you naturally predisposed to being extraordinarily good looking should be rewarded, but people make stunningly successful careers out of it.
But the same thing applies even in cases where it’s less obvious. The girl with a 4.0 may work hard, but she also likely possesses a certain kind of natural intelligence, along with a work ethic that could be influenced by anything from the culture she was raised in to the school she went to, to even her age relative to her siblings’ (no, really, watch the video). None of these advantages are things that she earned.
Take it a little further. This girl graduates, and becomes filthy stinking rich. The government, as a result, taxes a higher share of her income than that of a destitute classmate of hers (maybe this classmate decided to major in Philosophy). This money then goes towards providing services that the impoverished classmate didn’t earn, but I have a really difficult time understanding how the potential additional good for him is outweighed by his classmate’s very tenuous claim to her income. Her claim doesn’t even really outweigh the residual good she gains from living in a city with a lower poverty rate.
This is an old argument, but I’ve never heard a truly convincing response. Anyone want to take a crack at it?
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.