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ESCAPE
FROM LEVIATHAN AND THE NATURE OF LIBERTY
Richard Garner (June 27,
2006). http://www.richardgarnerlib.blogspot.com/
See also the reply to this article: -
Reply
to Richard Garner
by J C Lester
I have argued in the past,
that neither egalitarianism nor Rawl's "difference principle" would
follow from contractarian premises.
Egalitarianism would not follow because egalitarianism says that inequalities
are always wrong. Rawl's own argument against this is essentially that it is
Pareto inferior: Imagine country A and country B. In country A there are vast
inequalities, whilst in country B everybody is equal. However, now imagine
that even the worst off group in country B is better off than anybody in
country A. All else being equal, it is surely irrational to choose to live in
country A rather than country B. Egalitarianism would be irrational compare to
an inequality where everybody is better off than they would be under
inequality.
So Rawls suggests that another principle would be opted for as part of the
social contract. He says that people will choose a principle that says
"inequalities are just only insofar as they benefit the worst off
group." This avoids the problems of country A and country B.
However, what happens if some change to a Rawlsian society would introduce an
inequality that would make some people better off, but would not benefit the
worst off group. Now, when I say this is what it would do, this is all I say
it would do - note that I do not say that it would make the worst off any
worse off than they already were. Rawls difference principle would seem to
forbid this change. But, in that case, why accept the difference principle. It
is obvious that nobody would accept a principle that would make them worse off
without compensation, but since this change does not do that, it only makes
some better off, why reject it? Who would agree to a principle that forbids
them from bettering their situation (or the situation of someone they care
about) without worsening the situation of anybody else? Nobody.
So, I posit that a more plausible principle that would be chosen is that
inequalities are justified so long as they do not come at the expense of
others, so long as they don't worsen the situation of others. Further, I posit
that as a rational principle, people should be allowed to do as they choose so
long as they do not worsen others. Basically, this amounts to prohibiting
Pareto worsenings, but allowing Pareto improvements.
Now, what counts as a worsening, and according to what baseline are two
further questions. But what we have is a rude case for saying that people
should be able to do as they choose so long as they do not impose costs on
others. This principle is one that is explored thoroughly in J. C. Lester's
excellent book Escape from Leviathan: Liberty, Welfare and Anarchy
Reconciled. Of course, Lester is broadly a Popperian critical rationalist,
and so puts forward no case as to why we should accept the principle that we
should be able to do as we choose except impose costs on others. Instead he
puts it forwards as a conjecture and then refutes criticisms of it. And in
doing so, he does excellently.
However, since he gave me his book because of a discussion I got into on the
Libertarian Alliance discussion list about the nature of liberty, it is on
this issue that I will focus and will criticise him. My own opinion is that he
shows that minimising costs leaves us with something pretty close to
libertarianism, and that libertarianism is the idea that people own themselves
and any previously unowned resources they appropriate, combinations they
produce therewith, and whatever they receive by non-rights violating
exchanges. His position, though, is that minimising costs is
libertarianism; that liberty is an absence of imposed costs, and so maximising
liberty is minimising costs.
So he writes,
The classical liberal, libertarian, and principal commonsense conception of interpersonal liberty is of people not having constraints imposed upon them by other people. Such liberty is here formulated as people not having a subjective cost initiated and imposed on them (that is, without their consent) by other people. Or for short, liberty is the absence of imposed cost. In the event of a mutual clash of imposed costs, observing liberty entails minimizing imposed costs.
But this is confused. I accept the first sentence whole-heartedly: "The
classical liberal, libertarian, and principal commonsense conception of
interpersonal liberty is of people not having constraints imposed upon them by
other people." Yep. I agree, that is what liberty is about. But what does
this have to do with costs? Why is "not having a subjective cost imposed
on you" the same as not being constrained? It simply isn't. I can have
costs place on me without there being constraints placed on me. For instance,
if I am deeply opposed to the colour blue, and you come along wearing a blue
shirt, then I have had a cost imposed on me. But In what way have I had a
constraint imposed on me? I haven't. Likewise, I can have constraints imposed
upon me without having costs imposed on me. For instance, suppose that I am
sitting in a room I have no intention of leaving, and, unbeknownst to me,
someone comes along and locks the door, and then opens it an hour later.
During that time, I was constrained to stay in that room (assume it had no
other exit), prevented and unfree to leave it. This fact imposed no cost on
me, though.
So, both these examples show two things: You can constrain people without
imposing costs on them; and you can impose costs on them without constraining
them. So imposing costs is neither a necessary nor sufficient feature of
constraining somebody. Given this, and given the sentence that "The
classical liberal, libertarian, and principal commonsense conception of
interpersonal liberty is of people not having constraints imposed upon them by
other people," Lester's own conjecture, that people ought not to impose
costs on each other, and where impositions conflict, we should minimise the
imposed costs (and so go with the option that imposes the lower costs) quite
simply is not a formulation of the "common sense" view of liberty.
It is not liberty at all. Lester writes that "I am not concerned with
words or the 'essence' of the concept of liberty. I have no argument with
those who prefer to restrict the use of 'liberty' to some other sense, such as
'the absence of any constraint on movement'." Fine, but since an absence
of constraint is what Lester has declared is the "classical liberal,
libertarian, and principle commonsense" view of what liberty is, then
there is sure to be some question about whether he has succeeded in his
claimed task of reconciling liberty, welfare, and anarchy: What he calls
liberty is not what he says classical liberals, libertarians and people with
commonsense call liberty.
In fact, he admits this. Whilst claiming that his "chosen formula is
intended to capture what libertarians and classical liberals require for
practical purposes," he started by saying that these people view
interpersonal liberty as an absence of constraint, not as his own view of an
absence of imposed costs. And he also goes on to say,
One important contrast with this sense of 'liberty' is 'liberty' as a mere zero-sum game whereby any loss in my interpersonal power must be exactly balanced by an increase in the power of others: if I lose the interpersonal power to exercise free speech, then this must mean that others gain the power to keep me quiet. This position is even reached by the libertarian philosopher Hillel Steiner (1983). Such 'liberty' cannot be protected or promoted for all (specific powers can be, but not power as such); it can only be fought over by all. People sometimes seek 'liberty' in a way that entails this 'power' sense, to the detriment of people's liberty and welfare as more normally understood. Classical liberals, such as Herbert Spencer, sometimes write of equal liberty and thereby seem committed to this zero sum view...
Note, where as first Lester said that classical "The classical liberal,
libertarian, and principal commonsense conception of interpersonal liberty is
of people not having constraints imposed upon them by other people," he
then said that it was in fact the libertarian or classical liberal view that
his own distinct and completely different "chosen formula is intended to
capture what libertarians and classical liberals require for practical
purposes," and then he goes on to give examples of classical liberals and
libertarians (Spencer and Steiner - one can add others, such as Benjamin
Tucker, who also held an "equal liberty" view" following
Spencer) that do not hold his view. On the contrary, theirs is closer to the
"absence of constraint" view that he first says libertarians do
support and then says that they don't. This is Steiner's point, that if I am
free to act, then I have actual or subjunctive possession of the necessary
physical components of an action. If I lack such possession, I am not free to
perform that act. And if I lack such possession, other people do not.
Therefore other people's freedom to perform certain actions implies my
unfreedom to perform other actions: Their actions constrain mine, and mine
theirs, so if mine are unconstrained, theirs are constrained, and if mine are
constrained, theirs aren't.
So,
1: It is possible to impose constraints without imposing costs, and impose
costs without imposing constraints, so imposing costs is neither necessary nor
sufficient to imposing constraints; meaning that "liberty is the absence
of imposed cost... observing liberty entails minimizing imposed costs" is
not a formulation of "The classical liberal, libertarian, and principal
commonsense conception of interpersonal liberty [as] people not having
constraints imposed upon them by other people."
2: Given this, and given the evidence that Lester himself provides,
libertarians and classical liberals do not think of liberty in terms of an
absence of imposed costs, and think of maximising liberty as minimising
imposed costs.
3: The zero-sum view that Lester rejects is closer to the "absence of
constraints imposed by other people" view that libertarians, classical
liberals, and people bestowed with commonsense, he says, accept.
Neither does the zero-sum view necessarily entail fighting over freedom. It
may be, for instance, that there is a particular distribution, or original
distribution, of freedom that it would be rational for everybody to agree to.
That would be a contractarian method of distributing freedom.
See also the reply to this
article: -
Reply
to Richard Garner
by J C Lester
***
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