Libertarianism. Is it more than just selfishness?

DaveSchmidt said:

PVW said:

Are there any groups we can identify in "America up until WIlson" who can make a strong claim to being victims of massive theft, and what were their rights, and the rights of their descendants?

Quite the caveat, aren’t they. Well, he did say that era was far from perfect, even if pretty libertarian and remarkably successful.

 Yes, though my point is still about critiquing this idea that "property rights are an extension of self ownership." I know I'm being rather tedious on this point, but as it seems central to the entire premise of libertarianism, and my critique of it continues going unanswered, I feel compelled to keep bringing it up.

If you inherit property, it can hardly be an "extension of self ownership". You got that from someone else, not yourself. And if you take possession of property stolen from someone else, again that directly contradicts this idea of property as "self ownership." And if you compound that by saying that stolen property can then be passed down to your descendants, and further allow for the inheritability of property but not the inheritabiity of redress for theft of that property, then the whole scheme just strikes me as an elaborate justification for selfishness and greed.

Now as terp noted, there are "various schools of thought that fall within the libertarian umbrella." Perhaps one of those schools is opposed to inheritable wealth and believes reparations are owed to African Americans and Native Americans. If so, that school is much more philosophically consistent than the libertarianism I've come across so far.

terp said:

And America up until say Wilson was a pretty libertarian country.   It was far from perfect.  But if you compare it to what preceeded it and its peers from those times it was remarkably successful.   The productivity that this liberty resulted in created enormous wealth.  Living standards improved at tremendous rates. Our industrial might allowed us to win 2 world wars and become a superpower.  Alas, in the process we have lost our way.  

I think a more precise definition of "libertarian" is needed, to discuss whether it's correct to say "America up until say Wilson was a pretty libertarian country".  I can't see how the Teddy Roosevelt presidency could be labeled "libertarian", but maybe my definition is wrong.

And if slavery is "libertarian", then maybe there's a problem with that definition, as well. 

terp said:

And I still don't know why we need the law to help our fellow man. I wish someone would explain to me why that is the only way to help other people.  

Having "the law" be used, to provide help to people who need it, is not the only way.  But for too many people, relying on something other than some government action produces lives that may be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.

nohero said:

I think a more precise definition of "libertarian" is needed

Libertarian is the belief that the government should never help anyone other than yourself 

Why are the majority of libertarians white men? Why are they so focused on returning America to the days when black peoples had no freedom? 
They knew all too well how to keep people in bondage, while they fiercely refuse to be subjected to it. because they come to identify their freedom as exclusively for them. The freedom to own property and slaves. The freedom to not have government looking over their shoulders.... one would think that African Americans would be more inclined towards libertarianism eh? 
What is the liberty and freedom y’all talking about?

terp said:

And America up until say Wilson was a pretty libertarian country.   

 The country was not at all "libertarian" in any sensible meaning prior to the Wilson Administration. There was slavery, the Civil War, Tariffs, the National Bank, all manner of legal restrictions and women not only couldn't vote, married women were considered the property of their husbands. Regulation of business in response to the Industrial revolution began in the 19th Century. 

PVW said:

Now as terp noted, there are "various schools of thought that fall within the libertarian umbrella." Perhaps one of those schools is opposed to inheritable wealth and believes reparations are owed to African Americans and Native Americans. If so, that school is much more philosophically consistent than the libertarianism I've come across so far.

Just now, I’m acquainting myself with Robert Nozick’s principle of rectification, which poses the question, “If past injustice has shaped present holdings in various ways, some identifiable and some not, what now, if anything, ought to be done to rectify these injustices?” Nozick goes on, “The principle of rectification presumably will make its best estimate of subjunctive information about what would have occurred (or a probability distribution over what might have occurred, using the expected value) if the injustice had not taken place.”

Without investing time to acquire and read his “Anarchy, State and Utopia” (1974) myself, at least right now, I’m finding a variety of assessments of whether the principle supports reparations and, if so, in what form. It appears that “presumably” and “best estimate” were enough to satisfy Nozick. (As for inheritance, his principle of justice in acquistion sounds entirely concordant with it.)

I suppose a Nozickian response to the Texas power failures would be that the energy companies owe a lot of folks a whole bunch of money?

Here’s a link to a copy of the relevant “Anarchy, State and Utopia” chapter, which appears to be abridged but is much more complete than the excerpts I was finding earlier. Nozick frames inheritance as being about the rights of the giver — the extension of self-ownership, I suppose, being expressed that way. You got that from someone else, not yourself, because of someone else’s extension of ownership, which you now get to extend. (Extension of self-ownership, I also suppose, not to be confused with a reflection of self-ownership.)

Whether or not it is better to give than to receive, proponents of patterned principles ignore giving altogether. In considering the distribution of goods, income, etc., their theories are theories of recipient-justice; they completely ignore any right a person might have to give something to someone. Even in exchanges where each party is simultaneously giver and recipient, patterned principles of justice focus only upon the recipient role and its supposed rights. Thus discussions tend to focus on whether people (should) have a right to inherit, rather than on whether people (should) have a right to bequeath or on whether persons who have a right to hold also have a right to choose that others hold in their place. I lack a good explanation of why the usual theories of distributive justice are so recipient-oriented; ignoring givers and transferrers and their rights is of a piece with ignoring producers and their entitlements. But why is it all ignored?

Thanks. Have to admit I haven't been previously familiar with Nozick; it's nice when the internet works out that way to surface interesting ideas and works to follow up on.

I thought it might be helpful to the discussion to link an article about citizens complaining about lack of government regulation.

https://www.politico.com/news/agenda/2021/02/28/fda-toxic-metals-food-471757

drummerboy said:

terp said:

And I still don't know why we need the law to help our fellow man. I wish someone would explain to me why that is the only way to help other people. 

 jeebus. it's not the only way. But it's a far more reliable way than relying on the whims and vagaries of private charity.

Can't believe this even has to be said.

terp, when you hear one of those heartwarming stories on the news about a community rallying around some sick individual by helping with their astronomical hospital bills, do you see that as an an example of society's success, or is it a failure?

cuz it's a failure.

 coincidentally the NYT site has a link to a podcast interview with the CEO of GoFundMe.

The House has just passed a $1.9 trillion stimulus bill which is now pending Senate approval. GoFundMe C.E.O. Tim Cadogan hopes the package will alleviate some of the economic pain of the pandemic. Activity on his crowdfunding platform has surged in the wake of Covid-19, with users turning to GoFundMe to help pay for everything from rent to funeral services. Cadogan would rather that the government — not his company — play this role.

If Government Did Its Job We Might Not Need GoFundMe

DaveSchmidt said:

Here’s a link to a copy of the relevant “Anarchy, State and Utopia” chapter, which appears to be abridged but is much more complete than the excerpts I was finding earlier. Nozick frames inheritance as being about the rights of the giver — the extension of self-ownership, I suppose, being expressed that way. You got that from someone else, not yourself, because of someone else’s extension of ownership, which you now get to extend. (Extension of self-ownership, I also suppose, not to be confused with a reflection of self-ownership.)

Whether or not it is better to give than to receive, proponents of patterned principles ignore giving altogether. In considering the distribution of goods, income, etc., their theories are theories of recipient-justice; they completely ignore any right a person might have to give something to someone. Even in exchanges where each party is simultaneously giver and recipient, patterned principles of justice focus only upon the recipient role and its supposed rights. Thus discussions tend to focus on whether people (should) have a right to inherit, rather than on whether people (should) have a right to bequeath or on whether persons who have a right to hold also have a right to choose that others hold in their place. I lack a good explanation of why the usual theories of distributive justice are so recipient-oriented; ignoring givers and transferrers and their rights is of a piece with ignoring producers and their entitlements. But why is it all ignored?

 I'm working my way through “Anarchy, State and Utopia” and haven't gotten to the cited section yet. Still, another thought to flesh out my objections to property as a "right" -- if you take as your basic premise that a person's rights should not be violated, and you posit that property is a right, then you've effectively made it so that the more property you have, the more rights you have. This is very different from other attributes we think of as being part of "rights." Everyone has one life, for instance, and so saying that as a principle we need to respect each individual's right to live keeps us all on an equal plane. But property is something one can acquire and, the more property one has, the easier it is to acquire more. And if you pair this with the idea that one only has negative and not positive rights, then it's very easy to end up at a place where a handful of highly propertied individuals crowd out the ability of under-properited or non-propertied individuals to secure the means for health and happiness. (Indeed, is not the factory owner polluting a river at the expense of non-properited individuals living near that river precisely an example of this?)

Perhaps Nozick will get into this -- right now he's talking about anarchy vs the minimal state (I'm still pretty early in the book).

PVW said:

But property is something one can acquire and, the more property one has, the easier it is to acquire more. 

Not only that but certain people or organizations start out with property passed down to them from before the advent of Capitalism. For example land owned by the British Royal family or the Roman Catholic Church. 

STANV said:

PVW said:

But property is something one can acquire and, the more property one has, the easier it is to acquire more. 

Not only that but certain people or organizations start out with property passed down to them from before the advent of Capitalism. For example land owned by the British Royal family or the Roman Catholic Church. 

 Pull yourself up by your ancestors' bootstraps...

STANV said:

PVW said:

But property is something one can acquire and, the more property one has, the easier it is to acquire more. 

Not only that but certain people or organizations start out with property passed down to them from before the advent of Capitalism. For example land owned by the British Royal family or the Roman Catholic Church. 

Weren't slaves property of their owners too? And then, as a bonus, the owner could grow his property by raping his female slaves and producing offspring. Isn't that what Thomas Jefferson did?

This libertarian idea that property is somehow a sacred right that cannot be touched seems naive to me (and I am being very generous)

and then there's the obvious point that nobody's property is strictly the fruit of their own labor.  Everyone acquires their earnings with the support of the state and everyone else who pays taxes to support it.  Even in a big corporation, earnings are something of a pyramid scheme.  The junior people at the bottom of the organization do the grunt work, whatever that may be, and their managers and those above them use that output to do their business.  And at each level of the organization as one moves upward, managers get paid more than those who report to them.  I don't know of any person who is "self-made" in terms of the "fruits of their labor."

basil said:

STANV said:

PVW said:

But property is something one can acquire and, the more property one has, the easier it is to acquire more.

Not only that but certain people or organizations start out with property passed down to them from before the advent of Capitalism. For example land owned by the British Royal family or the Roman Catholic Church.

Weren't slaves property of their owners too? And then, as a bonus, the owner could grow his property by raping his female slaves and producing offspring. Isn't that what Thomas Jefferson did?

This libertarian idea that property is somehow a sacred right that cannot be touched seems naive to me (and I am being very generous)

I don't think that's entirely fair as I do not think libertarians defend slavery. But I do think American libertarians have a very large blind spot on the issue.

I'm assuming that terp's claim that "America up until say Wilson was a pretty libertarian country" is a reference to the passage of the 16th amendment and the establishment of a permanent income tax. He admits that the country prior to that was "far from perfect" which, I take it, is his acknowledgement of slavery (and the genocide of Native Americans and seizure of their land?), but his phrasing make it seem that he sees this as largely an unfortunate but not central component in country's "enormous wealth."

That doesn't square with historical reality, though. Here's a passage from Coate's Case for Reparations (yes, I do tend to quote Coates a lot, and this piece in particular)

In 1860, the majority of people living in South Carolina and Mississippi, almost half of those living in Georgia, and about one-third of all Southerners were on the wrong side of Calhoun’s line. The state with the largest number of enslaved Americans was Virginia, where in certain counties some 70 percent of all people labored in chains. Nearly one-fourth of all white Southerners owned slaves, and upon their backs the economic basis of America—and much of the Atlantic world—was erected. In the seven cotton states, one-third of all white income was derived from slavery. By 1840, cotton produced by slave labor constituted 59 percent of the country’s exports. The web of this slave society extended north to the looms of New England, and across the Atlantic to Great Britain, where it powered a great economic transformation and altered the trajectory of world history. “Whoever says Industrial Revolution,” wrote the historian Eric J. Hobsbawm, “says cotton.”

The wealth accorded America by slavery was not just in what the slaves pulled from the land but in the slaves themselves. “In 1860, slaves as an asset were worth more than all of America’s manufacturing, all of the railroads, all of the productive capacity of the United States put together,” the Yale historian David W. Blight has noted. “Slaves were the single largest, by far, financial asset of property in the entire American economy.” The sale of these slaves—“in whose bodies that money congealed,” writes Walter Johnson, a Harvard historian—generated even more ancillary wealth. Loans were taken out for purchase, to be repaid with interest. Insurance policies were drafted against the untimely death of a slave and the loss of potential profits. Slave sales were taxed and notarized. The vending of the black body and the sundering of the black family became an economy unto themselves, estimated to have brought in tens of millions of dollars to antebellum America. In 1860 there were more millionaires per capita in the Mississippi Valley than anywhere else in the country.

Slavery was not ancillary to America's wealth; it was a central feature. To say nothing about the question of where, exactly, all the land this wealth was built on came from.

A claim like "America up until say Wilson was a pretty libertarian country" is either entirely wrong, or "libertarian" doesn't actually mean anything useful.

PVW said:

A claim like "America up until say Wilson was a pretty libertarian country" is either entirely wrong, or "libertarian" doesn't actually mean anything useful.

Bingo. 

PVW said:

I'm assuming that terp's claim that "America up until say Wilson was a pretty libertarian country" is a reference to the passage of the 16th amendment and the establishment of a permanent income tax. 

If "libertarian" just means that only there are only certain acceptable means to fund however much government is allowed (and income tax isn't one), then the "pretty libertarian country" claim is correct.  But that definition is not terribly useful for most people.

Regarding property:

For those of us who own our house in New Jersey, we bought the property from someone who bought it from someone who …etc. etc. … who bought it from the holder of a grant from the British crown. And we know how the British crown got it.

nohero said:

Regarding property:

For those of us who own our house in New Jersey, we bought the property from someone who bought it from someone who …etc. etc. … who bought it from the holder of a grant from the British crown. And we know how the British crown got it.

Interestingly, a lot of European colonization was technically under the aegis of private companies and individuals -- Dutch West India company, personal grants to English lords, etc. Which I guess on one hand would be cheering to the anti-statists, but on the other hand rather undermines the notion that it is the "state" that's the main problem.

That actually continues in American history beyond independence. c.f filibuster (almost certainly not the link you'd expect, I'll wager)

PVW said:

 Pull yourself up by your ancestors' bootstraps...

 Most people's ancestors didn't even have boots.

No one "owns" land.

https://www.context.org/iclib/ic08/gilman1/#:~:text=In%20spite%20of%20the%20way,the%20right%20of%20eminent%20domain.

No One Owns Land Each of these rights can be modified independent of the others, either by law or by the granting of an easement to some other party, producing a bewildering variety of legal conditions. How much can you modify the above conditions and still call it “ownership”? To understand the answer to this, we are going to have to make a very important distinction. In spite of the way we normally talk, no one ever “owns land”..In our legal system you can only own rights to land, you can’t directly own (that is, have complete claim to) the land itself. You can’t even own all the rights since the state always retains the right of eminent domain. For example, what happens when you sell an easement to the power company so that they can run power lines across you land? They then own the rights granted in that easement, you own most of the other rights, the state owns the right of eminent domain – but no single party owns “the land.” You can carry this as far as you like, dividing the rights up among many “owners,” all of whom will have a claim on some aspect of the land.

PVW said:

I don't think that's entirely fair as I do not think libertarians defend slavery. But I do think American libertarians have a very large blind spot on the issue.

I wasn't blaming libertarians for slavery. I was making the point that "property" is a tricky thing. For example, who owns land in the US that was bought from someone, who bought it from someone, .... , who stole it from native Americans. Who owns art that was stolen during a war decades ago?

Property is subjective and in many cases open for legal, or at least moral debate. So it should not be some sacred, gold-plated, absolute right on which the whole libertarian philosophy is built. 

basil said:

PVW said:

I don't think that's entirely fair as I do not think libertarians defend slavery. But I do think American libertarians have a very large blind spot on the issue.

I wasn't blaming libertarians for slavery. I was making the point that "property" is a tricky thing. For example, who owns land in the US that was bought from someone, who bought it from someone, .... , who stole it from native Americans. Who owns art that was stolen during a war decades ago?

Property is subjective and in many cases open for legal, or at least moral debate. So it should not be some sacred, gold-plated, absolute right on which the whole libertarian philosophy is built. 

 Agreed, I find making property a "right" to be very problematic. I also thought your post provided an opportunity to note the centrality of slavery in American wealth (and, given that present wealth largely derives from previous wealth, its continuing significance). Honestly, the more I think about it, the more it feels that taking libertarian claims seriously absolutely requires favoring pretty massive reparations.

Libertarians frequently cite the Gilded Age as some sort of great triumph of libertarianism.

Are they actually that tone deaf?

This is somewhat oblique to the topic, but one thing I've always found a stumbling block is the language of "rights" you see in American libertarianism (though not only there). It doesn't ever seem to quite fit with my own philosophical intuitions. Part of that gets expressed in the talk of property, and I attempt to resolve that by saying, well let's not call property a "right" as it doesn't seem to fit that term well.

But another way to go is to play with the idea of what "right" actually means. This is from an article about the challenges of our vaccinated-but-still-in-a-pandemic future. The excerpts I'm quoting aren't necessarily the main thrust of the article, but I found them relevant to this thread in the context of asking "what are rights, anyway?"

The idea that rights and their limits can be socialized in this way has deep roots in the United States. The Bill of Rights, which we often associate with absolute individual entitlements enforced by judges, was originally meant to empower local political and civic institutions such as juries and state legislatures and parish churches. These places, not courts, were where rights—and their limits—got sorted out through deliberation and an appeal to the common sense of the community.

...

But the lesson that rights carry a social responsibility is worth recovering. Indeed, it is even more vital today than it was for the Founders. Pluralizing the community of people who get to claim rights means that some Americans’ rights will come constantly into conflict with others’. Not because some of us are correct about the rights we have and others are wrong, but because we are human, and therefore different from one another in the commitments we pursue and the values we hold precious. Our differences are worthy of celebration, but if we don’t account for them in our structures of conflict resolution, they will destroy us.

...

Politics is the art of people who are different from one another
figuring out how to live together. It’s been neglected for far too long.

(America’s Legalistic Culture Is About to Become a Problem, The Atlantic)

DaveSchmidt said:

Here’s a link to a copy of the relevant “Anarchy, State and Utopia” chapter, which appears to be abridged but is much more complete than the excerpts I was finding earlier. Nozick frames inheritance as being about the rights of the giver — the extension of self-ownership, I suppose, being expressed that way. You got that from someone else, not yourself, because of someone else’s extension of ownership, which you now get to extend. (Extension of self-ownership, I also suppose, not to be confused with a reflection of self-ownership.)

Whether or not it is better to give than to receive, proponents of patterned principles ignore giving altogether. In considering the distribution of goods, income, etc., their theories are theories of recipient-justice; they completely ignore any right a person might have to give something to someone. Even in exchanges where each party is simultaneously giver and recipient, patterned principles of justice focus only upon the recipient role and its supposed rights. Thus discussions tend to focus on whether people (should) have a right to inherit, rather than on whether people (should) have a right to bequeath or on whether persons who have a right to hold also have a right to choose that others hold in their place. I lack a good explanation of why the usual theories of distributive justice are so recipient-oriented; ignoring givers and transferrers and their rights is of a piece with ignoring producers and their entitlements. But why is it all ignored?

 Got to this part in the book. Shortly after this he starts talking about taxes, and how this is equivalent to forced labor:

"Taxation of earnings from labor is on a par with forced labor. Some persons find this claim obviously true: taking the earnings of n hours labor is like taking n hours from the person; it is like forcing the person to work n hours for another’s purpose. Others find the claim absurd. But even these, ifthey object to forced labor, would oppose forcing unemployed hippies to work for the benefit of the needy. And they would also object to forcing each person to work five extra hours each week for the benefit of the needy"

I think this is very much in tension with what he just said about inheritance. If your friend decides to gift you $100, and then at some future point you have to pay a tax of $100, in what sense is that taxing your labor? You received those $100 as a gift, not as a result of your labor.

My bringing up inheritance has always been about highlighting this glaring weakness in the libertarian equating of wealth with labor. If you're going to hold to that view, then you can't very well allow for any other means of acquiring wealth other than via  your own labor. The minute you do, the whole "my wealth is my labor" argument starts to fall apart, IMO.

And the issue of inheritance is just one angle on this. There are plenty of others. For instance, let's say you and I both work for eight hours, but I get $15/hour and you only get $7.25. If we both have to pay a $50 tax, is the claim that I've now been subjected to 3 1/3 hours of forced labor while you've been subjected to nearly 7 hours? Maybe the libertarian says yes, but isn't it odd that although an hour is the same amount of time for all human beings, regardless of who their parents were or what language the speak or any other attribute, $50 is something very variable that might mean three hours or maybe even just a few minutes? There's something that feels off about asserting that time, which is equal for all people, is equivalent to income, which is not...

Anyway, I'm about a third of the way through. I'll may occasionally put in some thoughts as I go through, though I'll try to keep them somewhat succinct in recognition of it just being me reading this on my own. Also just got a copy from the library of Stephanie Kelton's The Deficit Myth, so might end up posting some stuff on the other thread too as I go through that.

Thanks, PVW, and looking forward to more. Little did I imagine when I mentioned Nozick that I'd be contracting him out. I'm feeling quite Tom Sawyerish.

About 2/3 through the book, I came across this (to me, rather incredible -- not in a good way) passage. Here Nozick is discussing an argument by Bernard Williams that medical care should be allocated based on need. Nozick:

Presumably, then, the only proper criterion for the distribution of barbering services is barbering need. But why must the internal goal of the activity take precedence over, for example, the person’s particular purpose in performing the activity? (We ignore the question of whether one activity can fall under two different descriptions involving different internal goals.) If someone becomes a barber because he likes talking to a variety of different people, and so on, is it unjust of him to allocate his services to those he most likes to talk to? Or if he works as a barber in order to earn money to pay tuition at school, may he cut the hair of only those who pay or tip well? Why may not a barber use exactly the same criteria in allocating his services as someone else whose activities have no internal goal involving others? Need a gardener allocate his services to those lawns which need him most?

In what way does the situation of a doctor differ? Why must his activities be allocated via the internal goal of medical care? (If there was no “shortage,” could some then be allocated using other criteria as well?) It seems clear that he needn’t do that; just because he has this skill, why should he bear the costs of the desired allocation, why is he less entitled to pursue his own goals, within the special circumstances of practicing medicine, than everyone else? So it is society that, somehow, is to arrange things so that the doctor, in pursuing his own goals, allocates according to need; for example, the society pays him to do this. But why must the society do this? (Should they do it for barbering as well?) Presumably, because medical care is important, people need it very much. This is true of food as well, though farming does not have an internal goal that refers to other people in the way doctoring does. When the layers of Williams’ argument are peeled away, what we arrive at is the claim that society (that is, each of us acting together in some organized fashion) should make provision for the important needs of all of its members. This claim, of course, has been stated many times before. Despite appearances, Williams presents no argument for it. Like others, Williams looks only to questions of allocation. He ignores the question of where the things or actions to be allocated and distributed come from. Consequently, he does not consider whether they come already tied to people who have entitlements over them (surely the case for service activities, which are people’s actions), people who therefore may decide for them- selves to whom they will give the thing and on what grounds.

The perspective that sees medical care as equivalent to getting a haircut, and denies that someone trained to save lives has any particular obligation to someone dying or severely injured, leaves me rather gobsmacked.