Left2Right

Comments

Posted by: No Labels Please

"The self-sufficiency critique imagines that capitalism embodies a society of rugged individualists, like some imagined self-sufficient isolated producers in the state of nature. In fact, capitalism embodies a society of deeply interdependent people who share one another's fates. Social insurance simply makes this fact explicit.

Party on Liz...this is truly...deeply... ahhhhh....not sure what to say.

Moving smartly along...to really see what's wrong with the country, let's stop thinning the herd:

"Lawmakers behind the power hour bills say that only criminalizing the midnight binge can stop it. "I'm not in the goody-goody business, but I thought if we can remove a kid from a situation that is potentially fatal with a small change, we should," said Rob Eissler, the Texas state representative proposing to make the official drinking age there begin seven hours after men and women turn 21."

Maybe if tenure began 7 hours after the hiring process ended we'd get more intelligent posts on this blog?

Posted by: No Labels Please | Mar 12, 2005 5:22:54 AM

Posted by: Literally Retarded

Wow! Where to start? I suppose that if I were a philosopher-economist, I'd have to make some assumptions about systems and how they work, but I would imagine that I would impose strict limits on those assumptions and confine my remarks within those limits.

Professor Anderson inadvertantly (I hope) has set up rather porous assumptions and uses them to range all over the real world.

To start, there are 4 factors of production, not three. If you ignore, and therefore assign zero-value to management, then some of your conclusions might be right in a Marxian dogma kind of way. But if you then try to explain real-world occurences thereby, then I am afraid you may have sped off a cliff like Wile E. Coyote (you'll be fine, just don't look down).

Labor, for example, is not fungible, not fixed, and not static. Any given worker manages his own choices based on the market opportunities available. Declining marginal returns on labor only exist in basic econ texts. If that executive underpays that secretary, the secretary will go elsewhere. If the secretary doesn't earn his/her keep, the exec will replace the secretary (perhaps, in this case, with an answering machine). Both the secretary and the exec are managing their personal earning powers.

Business cycles only occur (in real life) from changing tastes, competition, and scarce resources. Society may feel a need to compensate the buggy-whip laborers and managers, but that need comes from compassion, not economics.

So Professor Anderson's point eludes me (and that is usually the case). Does society have an economic debt to its citizens? Is capitalism "wrong?" Are the Lumpenmensch incapable of running their own lives? Has she ever studied the actual effect of no-fault auto insurance (try paying for insurance in New Jersey; no, try to find an insurer in New Jersey). What does she want? And why won't she come out and say it?

Posted by: Literally Retarded | Mar 12, 2005 9:13:37 AM

Posted by: john t

Oh God,not again. Elizabeth,you share my fate. Upon reading this EFS $1,000 to yours truly.cut out the gov'ts 20% to 30% vig,and count yourself blessed as a pure altruist. Why always the rugged individualist bit? Why not individuals,hopefully and really as self supporting as possible while still avoiding the horrors of anarchy? When do we get to the good parts or is EA just tantalizing us.

Posted by: john t | Mar 12, 2005 9:32:24 AM

Posted by: D.A. Ridgely

Society, not capitalism, embodies interdependent people who share, in the sense that they are affected to varying degrees by, each other’s fate. Capitalism, or more properly market economics, provides the most efficient method of creating and distributing the wealth required for civilized existence consistent with (1) the observed truth that individuals are largely (though not tautologically) self-interested, and (2) the moral claim that coercion of others is prima facie wrong. Taxation is a form of coercion in that it extracts wealth (earned or not) under threat of force. Because the requisite conditions for market economic cannot exist except through the aegis of minimal government, arguably including the provision of police protection, court enforcement of certain private transactions and interactions (contracts and torts) and national defense, taxation sufficient to meet those minimum needs is a necessary feature of any civil society any rational person would choose to live in and is in that sense and to that extent and in that sense and to that extent alone morally justified notwithstanding the fact that it nonetheless remains coercive.

As I have noted previously, one need not assert an absolute right to one’s property in order to assert a morally sufficient relative right vis a vis others’ claims to it. Ms. Anderson’s debunking of notions of absolute or natural property rights are thus unavailing in establishing the moral force required for collective appropriation beyond minimal social needs. Neither does her contention now that our interdependence (the “we’re all in this together” theory of government) is a “fact” made “explicit” by social “insurance” lead to any such conclusion. Herewith, a few comments in that regard:

1a. I don’t think anyone seriously believes Locke’s labor theory of property any more than anyone takes his social contract seriously, at least at face value. The former may be a useful way of characterizing why material objects not subject to prior property claims should be considered the property of whoever by first ‘mixing his labor’ with them turns them into goods, but not much more than that. Of course, most people are required to exchange their labor in return for purchasing power in order to buy goods. However, it is insofar as they do so voluntarily that they are entitled to the benefit of their bargains and hold a superior claim to that benefit vis a vis others’ claims upon it.

b. I thought we were going to get Ricardo here. Instead we get, among other confusions, the failure to recognize the difference between wealth creation and nominal income earning. Homemakers of course create wealth for their households. The fact that its real value is not monetarized (until the divorced wage earner has to hire a housekeeper) and thus, say, captured in the GDP is irrelevant and, by the way, the source of much mischief when it comes to measuring such problematic concepts as poverty. For that matter, households are not firms. The purpose of a firm is the creation of wealth. The purpose of a household is the enjoyment that comes largely from or at least is made possible by the consumption of wealth (including, by the way, such intangible wealth as leisure time.) In other words, life is not a business. I’ll leave it to others to dissect the old “capitalism relies on high unemployment” canard.

Insofar as people are relatively free, subject to their talents, abilities and interests, to decide for themselves what sort of producers they will be and also free, beyond the necessities of life, to decide what to consume, it is hardly surprising that a physician’s “threat advantage” in the market is greater, on the one hand, than a dish washer (lower supply) or, on the other hand, a philosopher (lower demand). “Threat advantage” in a free market may sound less compelling morally than “productive contribution,” but it certainly sounds less morally dubious than the sort of compulsion any individual faces from the “will of the majority.”

c. Negative externalities do, indeed, exist. At the risk of sounding glib, we shouldn’t be surprised that the poor are less able to avoid them simply because the avoidance of negative externalities can often be characterized as a form of luxury consumption and the wealthy can afford more such consumption. Property values will be lower next to the city dump or airport because people would prefer not to experience the smell, let alone risk of toxic exposure, or the noise. But the garbage and airports have to go somewhere and the rich can better afford to distance themselves from them. The wealthier a nation becomes (and it only gets that way through productive free markets), the more environmentalism as a luxury good it can afford.

Many, though not all, negative externalities and “tragedy of the commons” problems are the result of a failure to privatize property (e.g., endangered species in Africa) and thus properly incentivize private mitigation or avoidance. Some positive externalities are not captured or compensated by market forces and free rider ‘problems’ thus exist. My neighbor’s meticulous front yard adds “curb appeal” to the neighborhood and increases my property values whether I follow suit or not. Life is unfair.

The problem with the tort system is the tort bar’s understandably aggressive lobbying to prevent reasonable tort reform. (If you want tort reform, don’t vote Democratic. Sorry, but it’s just about as simple as that.) Strict liability makes some sense as private law when it comes to inherently dangerous activities. As public law it becomes the bludgeon of the nanny state. Regulations are onerous, expensive and, once regulators are captive to the regulated industries, ineffective. Even if this were not so, none of these sorts of problems lend any apparent support to what Ms Anderson continues inappropriately to call social ‘insurance.’

d. Business cycles continue but they appear to be far less severe in recent history. Perhaps this is the result of better monetary policy, perhaps because the information age and more efficient technology has enabled industry to avoid gluts and shortages better, perhaps both, perhaps neither. It isn’t, strictly speaking, true however that we all gain in booms and lose in busts. If, as the old saying goes, Wall Street is motivated solely by fear and greed; prudent people get fearful when everyone else is greedy and greedy when everyone else is fearful.

2. Hayek is correct that virtue is irrelevant to free market compensation and that attempts to redistribute wealth in accordance with some arbitrary sense of what things are worth would undermine the efficiency of the market system. It behooves Ms Anderson to explain why that claim is not equally true if one substitutes “virtue” with “need” and “things are worth” with “people require.”

If it is true that litigation is too expensive (and I think it is), the solution is to find less expensive methods of litigation, not to turn private law into public law. In any case, litigation should be at least somewhat expensive because it should be the resolution method of last resort.

3. Ms Anderson rhetorically asks, “What's the virtue in living within the constraints of one's threat advantage? (What's the virtue in exercising one's threat advantage so as to drive the less fortunate to the wall?)” The virtue of efficiency lies in encouraging individuals to increase their “threat advantage” because in doing so they become not only more relatively self-sufficient but also more productive to society’s overall advantage. Encourage efficiency and you’ll get more. Discourage it and you’ll get less.

If one is to be fair to Ms Anderson, one must presume that her parenthetical question presupposes she actually believes that exercising one’s “threat advantage” in a free market economy necessarily or even probably or typically “drive[s] the less fortunate to the wall.” It should suffice merely to state that this is not the case at least for the vast majority of people the vast majority of the time. On the other hand, no one has ever seriously argued that there are not economic losers as well as winners in free markets. It remains an open question how we might be obligated either as individuals or as a society to meet the needs of blameless losers in such an economy. Nothing that Ms Anderson has argued leads me any closer to the belief that coercive state action is the preferred answer to that question.

Posted by: D.A. Ridgely | Mar 12, 2005 9:35:44 AM

Posted by: D.A. Ridgely

Note: I should have been more clear that the reason physicians earn more than dish washers is because there is a smaller supply of physicians than dish washers, if only because of the extensive human capital investment required to become a competent physician. It may well take the same investment to be a competent philosopher but the demand for such services nonetheless remains lower. (People prefer health to wisdom: go figure.) Also, while I used Ms Anderson’s (or Mr. Herzog’s) “threat advantage” phrase in my earlier comments, the notion that productivity is divorced from or irrelevant to compensation is both false and absurd. I may personally value the product (and, hence, the productive capabilities) of a philosopher over, say, a pop singer or, for that matter, of a good housekeeper over a philosopher. The fact that housekeepers earn considerably less than (employed) philosophers or that the highest earning philosophers earn vastly less than highly successful pop singers doesn’t invalidate my own preferences any more than my preferences illegitimate their relative market values. Ms Anderson confuses the marginal cost of production in an efficient market and the relative productivity of labor as a factor in that production with the value to society of the finished end product. The most efficient employee in a firm that produces something nobody wants has created zero or negative wealth. The only rational way to judge the value to society of a finished end product is its market price.

Posted by: D.A. Ridgely | Mar 12, 2005 11:15:27 AM

Posted by: Mona

Thank you Liz for another post that generates much interesting and provocative discussion. While I (unsurprisingly) agree with virtually all of Mr. Ridgely's dissent and analysis, your intelligent post gives us the opportunity to have the conversation.

Liz writes: Full-time homemakers relieve their partners of the time, stress, and bother of managing the household themselves, thereby enabling them to be more productive at work. Full-time parents contribute to production by raising the next generation of workers.

And she seems to believe that home-making is among the uncompensated benefits "extracted" from people by capitalism. Of course, there is something the free market could do to (at least partially) offset this "problem," but I expect Ms. Anderson's egalitarianism (not to mention current anti-discrimination law) would foreclose it.

At the conservative Roman Catholic law school I attended, many of the faculty had far more than the standard 2.1 children of the typical American family. It was reported by my feminist labor law prof that one of the con law profs, a Thomist, had proposed at a faculty meeting that private institutions should be able to compensate breadwinners whose spouse is at home raising a family at a higher level than those who are single and/or childless. She, my labor law prof, was aghast by this notion.

But rather than resort to any coercive means of the state taking money from all to remedy whatever market deficiencies are perceived in the lack of compensation for homemakers, why not permit private entities to have a compensation bias in favor of those with a stay-at-home spouse? (Yes, I can see the disincentives for hiring sole breadwinners this might entail, altho it does not seem to occur much in the realm of the higher cost for a family insurance plan paid substantially or entirely by the employer. But my inquiry is why, in principle, permitting such compensation bias should not be allowed?)

Posted by: Mona | Mar 12, 2005 11:44:13 AM

Posted by: Tad Brennan

Mona--

Interesting proposal; I'm not sure liberals ought to be reactively opposed. I am all in favor of figuring out *some* way of compensating homemakers. And I am suspicious of the tendency to make the benefits of the free market end at the boundary of the home--some versions of that bias tend to systematically disadvantage women.

But I don't think you are *disagreeing* with L.A.'s claim that homemaking is an uncompensated benefit extracted by the current system, only disagreeing about the forms of redress you might be willing to consider (or rather, you are anticipating a disagreement; let's see what L.A. says).

Suppose we go your route, and pay employees higher amounts if they have more children, as a means of compensating homemakers. Doesn't that involve deviations from the ordinary labor market just as extreme as anything proposed by L.A.? I.e., two employees who yielded equivalent value to their employer would be compensated differently, without regard to their economic contribution.

"But there's no departure from the free market, because employers and employees would still have liberty of contract--so if the childless employee didn't like being paid less, they could take their labor elsewhere."

True, but already true without your pro-natalist proposal. What other changes--legislative, cultural, etc.--would be needed to make your proposals stick?

(But this whole line of questions is a bit off topic, so don't respond if you don't want to).

Posted by: Tad Brennan | Mar 12, 2005 12:23:15 PM

Posted by: David Velleman

All this talk of taxation as "coercive" will need to be justified at some point.

Mr Ridgley says:

Because the requisite conditions for market economic cannot exist except through the aegis of minimal government, arguably including the provision of police protection, court enforcement of certain private transactions and interactions (contracts and torts) and national defense, taxation sufficient to meet those minimum needs is a necessary feature of any civil society any rational person would choose to live in and is in that sense and to that extent and in that sense and to that extent alone morally justified notwithstanding the fact that it nonetheless remains coercive.

This statement is multiply problematic. If you agree that "any rational person would choose" to live under an arrangement, how can you say that "it nonetheless remains coercive"? You must have a very expansive conception of coercion -- a conception so expansive as to raise doubts as to whether "coercion" as you understand it is necessarily wrong. And do you mean to say that the only justification for government is that it is necessary for "the requisite conditions for market economic [activity]"? Surely, any rational person would agree to live in civil society for reasons that go far beyond its conduciveness to a market economy.

What these comments suggest is that today's tax-complainers just don't believe in representative self-government.

Posted by: David Velleman | Mar 12, 2005 12:26:18 PM

Posted by: Tad Brennan

Sorry--I mangled my point about the thing that's already true even in the absence of Mona's pro-natalist proposal.

What's already true is that I or any other parent with mouths to feed can already go to our employer, ask to be paid more money than a childless colleague, and take our labor elsewhere if the request is not granted.

So I'm still wondering what would be different in the proposal she makes--would I *automatically* get a larger check? Regulation enforced by whom?

Posted by: Tad Brennan | Mar 12, 2005 12:42:27 PM

Posted by: Mona

David V. writes: All this talk of taxation as "coercive" will need to be justified at some point.

Allow me. To quote Hayek (The Constitution of Liberty, p. 137) "True coercion occurs when armed bands of conquerors make the subject people toil for them, when organized gangsters extort a levy for 'protection,' when the knower of an evil secret black-mails his victim, and, of course, when the state threatens to inflict punishment and to employ physical force to make us obey its commands. (emphasis mine)

I submit that collection of municipal, state or federal income taxes is effected by the threat to inflict punishment and to employ physical force (armed agents of the state and prison) to make us obey its command to ante up. Thus, taxation, certainly American income taxation, is coercive.

Posted by: Mona | Mar 12, 2005 12:52:35 PM

Posted by: Mona

Tad Brennan writes: So I'm still wondering what would be different in the proposal she makes--would I *automatically* get a larger check? Regulation enforced by whom?

(fighting the vapors) Egads, sir, surely you know that my libertarian heart would stop before I'd advocate a "regulation" enforcing larger compensation packages to sole breadwinners. No, what I am wondering, is why religious and other private entities should not be merely allowed to offer such benefits.

Perhaps it is the case that sole breadwinners (and c'mon, we know it is usually going to be men) in marriages, raising children, and who value the home and kinder enough to sacrifice the luxuries of a dual income, may also make a better employee. Why not let employers experiment with trying to lure such people, which has the additional benefit of improving the lot of the uncompensated homemaker. (And some institutions, especially religious ones, might adopt the policy purely out of principle, regardless of any aid to their bottom line in terms of worker productivity.)

As it stands, such a policy would almost certainly be challenged as unconstitutional and contrary to the CRA. So, the market is being interfered with in a way that might ameliorate one of the problems Ms. Anderson attributes to it.

Posted by: Mona | Mar 12, 2005 1:09:30 PM

Posted by: Dale Miller

While all of Professor's Anderson's work is deeply instructive, I do have a small quibble about the claim that the market does not reward homemakers for their productive contribution. Some mention ought to be made of the fact that if a homemaker makes a wage-earning partner more productive then their household will have a higher income and the homemaker will presumably share in the benefits this entails. I'm not suggesting that this is just the same as getting a paycheck in one's own name. Still, if the household itself practices distributive justice then the differences may be more psychic than material.

Something may also be a bit odd about the claim that the unemployed contribute to the economy, although I can't quite articulate what this is. Anderson's explanation seems to be that if no one were unemployed then businesses would have to hire more workers long term. If no one was unemployed, though, where would these extra workers be found? Maybe a slightly better explanation is that without a "reserve army of the unemployed" businesses would have to demand more hours out of their existing labor force at busy periods, which is more expensive than hiring temps.

Posted by: Dale Miller | Mar 12, 2005 1:26:11 PM

Posted by: mikec

I'm becoming increasingly disenchanted with this series of essays. At first I was intrigued, but with each addition the whole exercise seems more silly. While it may be fun, and even good intellectual exercise, to set up straw men and then try (often ineffectually) to knock them down, it really doesn't accomplish much.

But I'll keep reading them, waiting for a lengthy rebuttal to some real argument. E.g., "practically everything would work better, and practically everyone would be happier, if we had a 10% flat income tax with the only deduction being a $10,000 deduction for each dependent." But that would probably require more than historical reviews and logic chopping to refute.

Posted by: mikec | Mar 12, 2005 2:37:17 PM

Posted by: David Velleman

If Mona's definition of coercion is right, then taxation is the least of our worries: all law and regulation is coercive, since it is all ultimately enforced by the power of the state. This conception of coercion can have one of two consequences: either it defines coercion so broadly as to undermine the assumption that coercion is wrong; or it establishes that all government is illegitimate. As I said, you're not opposed to taxation; you're opposed to representative self-government. Why not just admit that you're anarchists?

Posted by: David Velleman | Mar 12, 2005 2:47:19 PM

Posted by: D.A. Ridgely

Mr. Velleman’s logic is impeccable even if he chooses to personalize his objections with sneering phrases like “tax-complainers.” The fact is that I have never found a way around the notion that some minimal level of coercion is required for civil society, nor do I know of anyone else who has. Thus, my phrase “any rational person would choose” cannot be taken literally except in the sense that I, personally, believe that no one would not feel compelled by his own reasoning to agree, however grudgingly. As Mr. Velleman correctly points out, that isn’t coercion. On the other hand, unlike, say, Rawls, I am unwilling to claim that anyone who doesn’t agree with me (or me hiding behind the veil, as it were) is to that extent irrational. I simply can’t bring myself to believe a rational person would so choose, but my belief is no argument, let alone proof. The point doesn’t undermine my general position, however, except among those who care more deeply than I do about insisting upon the universal application of a principle that generally works very well.

Mr. Velleman’s other principle objection merely conflates society with the state. His suspicions regarding what I may happen to believe about the very open-ended and undefined phrase “representative self-government” are irrelevant. If he wishes to defend state action, especially including the threat of force, to compel individual compliance with his or Ms Anderson’s various social welfare schemes, he bears the burden of proof and persuasion. So far, he has not met that burden and neither has Ms Anderson.

Posted by: D.A. Ridgely | Mar 12, 2005 2:52:52 PM

Posted by: Mona

David V. writes: This conception of coercion can have one of two consequences: either it defines coercion so broadly as to undermine the assumption that coercion is wrong; or it establishes that all government is illegitimate. As I said, you're not opposed to taxation; you're opposed to representative self-government. Why not just admit that you're anarchists?

Now, now, it is a logical fallacy to impose only two alternatives, when there obviously are more. Like Hayek, my position is that coercion is bad, but not illegitimate when it is meant to defend against or punish the initiation of force. (See the unbolded examples of coercion offered by Hayek in my above post for examples of the initiation of coercion.) It is not improper to grant the state a monopoly on, to return to Hayek's language, "threaten[ing] to inflict punishment and to employ physical force to make us obey its commands," when those commands are prohibitions on rape, robbery, fraud or murder of one's neighbor, that is, when the command is: "thou shalt not initiate force."

Libertarians are not anarchists, and neither was Hayek, as we agree that the state should be vested with a monopoly on coercion and force in order to protect us from individuals who would initiate it against us. We all have the right to self-defense, but to keep that within the rule of law and to maintain a stable society, it is best to turn that right (except in the few cases in which it is infeasible) over to the state. In other words, in a world in which there is going to be some coercion, it is best and civilized to grant the state the limited power to coerce non-coercion.

But, I have no right to my neighbor's money, just because I think I need it more (and I truly may). And, I cannot (in justice) transfer a right-of-coercion which I lack to the state.

Posted by: Mona | Mar 12, 2005 3:23:12 PM

Posted by: David Velleman

Mr. Ridgley: I apologize for the phrase "tax-complainer" if you find it personally offensive. I was using it as shorthand the intended target's of Liz's posts, all of which have been entitled "How Not to Complain About Taxes".

Now, it's fine to use the word 'coercion' in such a way that all law and regulation enforceable by the state are coercive. But if one uses 'coercion' in that way, then one must believe that a lot of coercion is justified, lest government itself turn out to be illegitimate across the board. And then the question will be why some instances of coercion are legitimate while others are not. Merely calling taxation coercive won't yield any conclusions about it one way or another, since the crucial distinction will be between justified and unjustified coercion.

You suggest that "welfare schemes" involve unjustified coercion because they are mine or Liz's -- as if two lousy philosophy professors had taken it upon themselves to play Robin Hood, robbing the rich and giving to the poor, or robbing from the young to give to the aged. But that's where you are mistaken. The schemes in question have been adopted and maintained over decades by successive democratically elected governments, Republican and Democrat, liberal and conservative. You may think that they are ill-advised; you may vote for candidates who oppose them. But they are America's, not mine or Liz's.

The question is how you distinguish between these acts of democratic self-government and others. The distinction cannot be that they are "coercive". So what it is the distinction that makes them, not just ill-advised in your opinion, but illegitimate?

Posted by: David Velleman | Mar 12, 2005 3:34:16 PM

Posted by: AdamH

D.A. Ridgley:
If someone attempts to tonight to get into your house and sleep on the couch, they are likely to be ultimately evicted with the forceful aid of the police. In other words, they'll be coerced.
Presumably, you think this is all well and good, since this particular form of coercion is well justified. But then what's all this business about the "burden of proof" - you can't be saying that Velleman wants there to be coercive institutions and you don't, you just want there to be a different pattern of coercion.
Presumably you'll reply that the institutions you endorse only require coercion at "the minimal level" (as you put it) whilst those involving any redistribution will involve a higher "level" of coercion and that this is why the burden of proof is on Velleman. But this is far from obvious. There's not space here to argue the details but consider the following: The poor are constantly at risk of coercion. Since they don't own much, there's very little they can do, very few places they can go, without being coerced for violating someone elses (legal) property rights. At the extreme, the completely destitute and homeless can do almost nothing without getting coerced. One would need to give a pretty good argument to show that a state which enforces property rights with no redistribution would coerce less than a state which did redistribute.

Posted by: AdamH | Mar 12, 2005 3:50:24 PM

Posted by: AdamH

Sorry there's some repetition in my last post - I wrote that before David V had replied.

Posted by: AdamH | Mar 12, 2005 3:52:13 PM

Posted by: David Velleman

Mona:

Sorry, but the state cannot have a monopoly on the use of coercion to protect individuals from coercion without also having the right to yours and your neighbor's money, since its monopoly cannot be exercised without resources. And if, as you say (and I agree), the state obtains its monopoly on coercion because we collectively surrender to it our individual rights of self-defense, then we can collectively surrender to it other rights as well, and for precisely the same reasons. The arguments showing that it's rational for us to assign our rights of self-defense to the state are no stronger than arguments showing that it's rational for us to assign to the state the power to define the extent and limits of property rights, which are hopelessly indeterminate otherwise, as well as the power to require individual contributions toward the provision of public goods that otherwise would go unprovided.

Posted by: David Velleman | Mar 12, 2005 4:00:02 PM

Posted by: Mona

David V. writes: Sorry, but the state cannot have a monopoly on the use of coercion to protect individuals from coercion without also having the right to yours and your neighbor's money, since its monopoly cannot be exercised without resources.

But of course. I have the right to defend myself from enemies foreign and domestic, and if I am going to transfer that right to another entity, private or governmental, I must pay for it. Those who do not wish to pay for it must be coerced to do so if we are going to avoid the free-rider problem. I see no way around coercion if we are to live under the rule of courts and law, as opposed to vigilante justice, and if we are to have a coordinated military to repel enemies. But frankly, before I would extend coercion beyond this role, I would rather exempt bona fide pacifists from paying for police protection. If that is the "consistency" price to paid in order to wall the damn of demands that once you allow minimal coercion, all is allowed if a majority votes for it, exempt the pacifists. (Altho, some public health programs certainly also fall into the category of common defense, and so I suppose we would have to offer exemptions to Christian Scientists, as well.)

And if, as you say (and I agree), the state obtains its monopoly on coercion because we collectively surrender to it our individual rights of self-defense, then we can collectively surrender to it other rights as well, and for precisely the same reasons. The arguments showing that it's rational for us to assign our rights of self-defense to the state are no stronger than arguments showing that it's rational for us to assign to the state the power to define the extent and limits of property rights, which are hopelessly indeterminate otherwise, as well as the power to require individual contributions toward the provision of public goods that otherwise would go unprovided.

Now, there you go again. Denominating some undefined somethings "public goods" does not demonstrate that these are either (1)anything I have a right to compel you to pay for in order that I might have them, or (2) that they would not be provided if the state did not provide them. You have no duty to pay for my food and shelter, and I have no right to put a gun to your head (or the IRS's guns) to coerce you to do so. You do have an obligation to refrain from stealing my worldly goods, and I have a right to employ force against you if you try, and that is a right I may farm out to others, including the state.

Posted by: Mona | Mar 12, 2005 4:57:26 PM

Posted by: David Velleman

There you go again. You just accepted that the state acquires the right to exercise coercion because individuals find it rational to endow it with their rights of self-defense. But then you go pretending that public goods are things that one individual is trying to force another individual to pay for -- as if it didn't matter than individuals would find it rational to agree to endow the state with the right to levy contributions toward their provision.

The same description that you (mis)apply to public goods can be (mis)applied to the functions of the night-watchman state. You have no duty to pay for my defense, any more than you have a duty to pay for my food and shelter. So where do I get the right to compel you to pay for collective defense, so that I can enjoy its benefits?

Posted by: David Velleman | Mar 12, 2005 5:18:07 PM

Posted by: David Velleman

Mona says:

You do have an obligation to refrain from stealing my worldly goods, and I have a right to employ force against you if you try, and that is a right I may farm out to others, including the state.

In "farming out" your right of self-defense, you are giving it up: so long as the state exercises coercive defense on your behalf, you may not do so. (That is, you may not engage in vigilantism.) You transfer your right of coercive self-defense to the state on the condition that others do likewise.

But just as you can transfer your right of coercive self-defense to the state on the condition of others' doing likewise, so you can transfer some of your property rights to the state on the condition of others' doing likewise -- that is, by agreeing to be charged for public goods if everyone is similarly charged. And just as you would be irrational not to join others in transferring your rights of coercive self-defense to the state, so you would be irrational not to join them in transferring some property rights to the state -- especially if you retain a voice, via representative government, in which goods are to be collectively provided.

The argument is the same in both cases. It's only by misdescribing the cases that you manage to make them look disanalogous.

Posted by: David Velleman | Mar 12, 2005 5:37:35 PM

Posted by: David Velleman

(In the foregoing arguments, I am waiving consideration of the respects in which property rights would be limited in the state of nature -- for example, by the requirement not to appropriate natural resources to an extent that leaves others no means of sustaining themselves. Some social provisions by the state may be justified by the need to satisfy such requirements, in order to preserve the legitimacy of property rights overall.)

Posted by: David Velleman | Mar 12, 2005 5:55:04 PM

Posted by: Rob

Professor Anderson,

incidentally, "To each according to his threat advantage" is first described, to my knowledge, as a principle of justice, in Rawls's Theory of Justice.

Posted by: Rob | Mar 12, 2005 6:25:09 PM

Post a comment