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Thursday
June 19, 2008

Liberty and Hard Cases by Tibor R. Machan

One book I edited has the same title as this column and focuses mainly on how a free society would cope with disasters such as earthquakes, floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, etc. When the nature of a just society is discussed, those who defend big government solutions to problems tend to start with orphaned children and catastrophes, claiming that only by means of massive government intervention can a society cope. But then, of course, it becomes evident that big government advocates—actually, advocates of governments with extensive scope, way beyond the task of securing the rights of the citizenry—don’t stop with the dire cases. Instead they move on to advocate government intervention into every nook and cranny of people’s lives. The tendency is toward totalitarianism, with just a few exceptions such as freedom for the press and for people religious choices. Everything else, however, seems to require government meddling, just as was believed in the thousands of years when monarchies ruled virtually everywhere because the king was thought to be God’s representative on earth. (Read more...)
Discuss this Article (25 messages)

Thursday, June 19 - 12:15pm

The article is quite correct. Natural disasters like floods and tornados offer very useful rationales for government intervention. The presumptions are that government is the only entity big enough and fair enough to provide the needed relief. At times I have pressed proponents of such relief if it would be okay for the government to rely solely on voluntary contributions to provide such relief. Taxes one is forced to pay could not be used. The usual answer is that relying on voluntary contributions would be inadequate. They want funding to be forced.

Thursday, June 19 - 1:21pm

Who You Gonna Call?

I would draw a distinction between the logistics of handling emergencies in progress, such as evacuation, quarantine, firefighting, anti-looting measures (which are often valid government measures) and remediation afterwards.

September 11 is a good case. I was quite happy to finally hear airforce jets buzzing Manhattan, even if they were about two hours too late. But private donations to care for the victims (i.e., surviving relatives) were far more than enough to handle people's financial needs. The same would be the case if FEMA didn't step in to every possible natural disaster. People would be insured, the uninsured could seek private charity. American generosity is proverbial and immense.

Even when disasters happen overseas, like the 2006 Tsunami, it is the US and not the UN to which the world looks for aid. (And which German tourists sue...)

The bottom line is one best summarized by Isabel Paterson. The government can't distribute aid that a capitalist hasn't produced first.

This is a good article. But I would have put the words "Hard Cases" in scare quotes.

Friday, June 20 - 6:30pm

I can appreciate how timely this piece is, considering that our current commander-in-chief has just been let off the hook -- for good -- for his violating of our 4th Amendment rights (via warrantless wiretapping).

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 6/20, 6:31pm)

Saturday, June 21 - 1:40am

"The tendency is toward totalitarianism, with just a few exceptions such as freedom for the press and for people religious choices."

That's a bit like saying the tendency is towards capitalism except with no private property... Totalitarianism is defined by a lack of such freedoms - this is the whole point of the distinction between authoritarianism and totalitarianism, in fact.

But anyway, private insurance is not much good when you're already dead. How would a free society cope with a deadly epidemic disease which could only be contained by restricting population movement? It is better that a thousand people have their freedom restricted and die, than a million people die, however free they might be while they expire.

Saturday, June 21 - 2:57am

Epidemics pretty much involve communicable diseases, not calamities like earthquakes or floods. As such, there is nothing objectionable about containing them by force--no one has the right to export his or her diseases to unwilling others.

Saturday, June 21 - 6:36am

Well good, but then we have the odd situation that if a plague strikes and you want to escape by running away, it is legitimate to shoot you or at least confine you, whereas if (say) a famine strikes and you want to hoard all of your food, it is not legitimate for the state to take some of it by force . Even though almost everyone would say that trying to save your own life is a lot less morally objectionable than hoarding more food than you need.

What is wrong with the principle that in an emergency situation (I'm not going to try to define what exactly counts as an emergency and yes I'm aware of "The Ethics of Emergencies"!), the state ought to do whatever it takes to save as many human lives as possible, and then compensate people later if their property was requisitioned as part of the process?

Saturday, June 21 - 8:20am

Most people keep more food on hand than they need, so they "hoard" food. And, of course, grocery stores are filled with food the owners do not "need." The point of a regime of property rights is to keep tab on who owns what and that establishes who gets to decide what is done with it, famine or not, earthquake or not. Indeed, what's the point of rights if whenever others want to violate them they stop being applicable? If one is endangering others with oneself or one's property, as with a communicable disease, the violation has commenced and the legal authorities assigned with the task of securing our rights may take action. Complications, of course, can arise and need to be worked through, which is what courts are about (as well as human intelligence). But the default position is one of unalienable individual rights.

Saturday, June 21 - 2:59pm

"The point of a regime of property rights is to keep tab on who owns what and that establishes who gets to decide what is done with it, famine or not, earthquake or not. Indeed, what's the point of rights if whenever others want to violate them they stop being applicable?"

Ok - but that can't be the ultimate point. The reason that we want to keep tabs on who owns what is surely that by doing this we avoid the disasterous consequences of the alternative i.e. everyone staking a claim to everything. So the defence of property rights are justified by the fact that it leads to generally desirable consequences (peace and prosperity, at least most of the time). But then it is obvious that in those circumstances in which property rights are getting in the way of saving lives, they have to be suspended, because they are no longer serving their purpose.

Rights per se, have no right to exist... their right to existence is derived from their usefulness.

Sunday, June 22 - 1:23am

Rights do not have as their point some grand social desirability--societies do not benefit, individuals do, from principles such as individual rights. The framework within which rights are significant isn't collectivist but individualist. So even if some in society find respect for and protection of the right to private property inconvenient or bothersome, those rights apply and serve the purpose of rendering the lives of human beings in society just, fitting. Yes, this will have some beneficial consequences but not always; there will be rights holders who will act badly with what they have a right to, including their own lives, liberty, and resources. Yet this doesn't justify violating their rights.

Sunday, June 22 - 4:32am

I am no collectivist - I care about people (individuals), not societies. If "society benefits" while all the people in it suffer, that's no good. But on the other hand if a stubborn respect for property rights leads to people (individual people - lots and lots of them) dying in a preventable way, then as a respecter of people I am compelled to put rights to one side and get on with the job of saving lives.

Are you honestly saying that if you were starving during a disaster, and you had the chance to loot some food from (say) a well-stocked grocery store, you would not do it? But if you would, why should the state not do it for you?

Sunday, June 22 - 4:50pm

Being that I live literally in the middle of a flood plain it's quite amusing to see how statists try every card in the deck to 'prove' their case of being useful because often it's people locally that have to make hard decisions rather than listening to some high and mighty jerk in a suit tell us what we need to prepare for and why. Take Wichita for example. We're in a middle of a flood plain like I stated before. When my dad was a child there were floods that were quite common this time of year, but most weren't severe as what's going on right now in Missouri. The city government at the time had a problem of considering its situation because it had a limited budget for the whole year to consider possible disasters and preventative measures. In this case, the city government decided to forgo any major improvements to the snow plows it owned and put all its eggs in on the Big Ditch, which saved our butts many times compared to nearby outlying towns that had no flood mechanisms like the Big Ditch place.

Why am I relaying this story about this? Well, because it's a matter of realizing that central management as you go further up the chain of command tends to simply put screw up, and so it's better to have management in the hands of those with the real world experience and the everyday consequence of failure right outside their door. Some jerk in DC isn't going home to a house six feet underwater or to a city rocked by two jet planes smashing into the symbol of its economic and political might (which happened to also have thousands of people inside of it at the time). People who are further away from a problem don't care about the problem being solved and more about the problem being used to bolster their position, their usefulness (which is usually zero in matter of percentage). The more people believe that some not related to the everyday consequences of a problem will some how solve it the more such people deserve the disasters that literally rain in on top of them. It's lazy to depend on others, especially those who are incompetent. With my city government, at least I know where the jerks are and who they are compared to the faceless jerks thousands of miles away in a former swampland called DC.

-- Brede

Sunday, June 22 - 9:44pm

Jeremy B. wrote:

I am no collectivist - I care about people (individuals), not societies. If "society benefits" while all the people in it suffer, that's no good. But on the other hand if a stubborn respect for property rights leads to people (individual people - lots and lots of them) dying in a preventable way, then as a respecter of people I am compelled to put rights to one side and get on with the job of saving lives.

Are you honestly saying that if you were starving during a disaster, and you had the chance to loot some food from (say) a well-stocked grocery store, you would not do it? But if you would, why should the state not do it for you?

My answer is that, yes, you would be justified in stealing food to save your own life, because your life is your highest value. You would, of course, have to pay it back. What you are not justified in doing is stealing food to help others who are starving, such as the famine ridden victims in foreign countries. And if you don't have the right to do this, then neither does the government.

- Bill

Monday, June 23 - 7:11am

I have my own thoughts about the ethics of emergencies: the purpose of morality is to teach you how to live as a human being- but when a disaster strikes, the context may very well make it impossible to remain human- you may have to act as an animal in order to hold on to bare survival (after a nuclear attack, or in some earthquake etc.). Personally, I believe that your goal in an emergency should be to end that emergency as quickly as possible so you can return to a normal moral context: and that you should adhere to your moral code as closely as possible to achieve this so that, when normal life resumes, you can live with yourself.

It's not only your body that you must try to preserve- but your integration as a whole human. If you know the evil of sacrificing others to self, you should not crawl over others to survive in an emergency. Not for their sake, but for your own- so that, when normal life resumes, you can look back at the emergency not with self-loathing and guilt but with pride in yourself.

However, I do believe that situations exist in which behaving morally is impossible or the 'grey area' is so contextual that no philosophy can prepare you for it (think of the movie Alive for example)- in those cases, the goal becomes not preserving your complete psychological integration but preserving as much of it as you can. There's no hard moral lines in nature- (e.g. even eating someone else's dead body that died naturally is morally preferable to killing them for their meat, and on and on). Life as a rational being is the standard by which you judge yourself- and you take the actions you can personally live with. If you go too far, you may survive the immediate danger only to be burdened with mental anguish and suffering the rest of your days, or you may demonstrate your weakness to others in a way that makes it impossible to face your fellow men with pride. Reality will be the final judge as to where your own personal moral line must be drawn. Every man has a limit to what he may forgive himself and none of us should have to learn what that limit is.

In short, philosophy teaches a morality for both body and mind. Emergencies threaten the integration of the two. The degree to which you allow an emergency to split your moral consciousness from your bodily survival is the degree to which afterward you will be psychologically and emotionally torn apart. The proper approach to emergencies is to set the goal of eliminating or minimizing such damage to the greatest possible degree.

Monday, June 23 - 12:47pm

Keep in mind most of those "hoarding" and "Profiteering" laws are counter-productive. In fact, you WANT high prices for hotels - why? Because then only those who really need it take it - if you can survive well enough, you won't pay, but if the price stays low you may want to do so. Same with food, if the price is artificially low it becomes first come first serve, but if prices can adjust then if you don't have to, you won't buy more food than you really need.

Also, high prices bring people in to sell - if you are in a state nearby its not worth selling water - except in an emergency - now you can both serve your fellow man by helping and make a profit - this is not evil, it is good, it lets resources flow inward to where they are needed because of the high prices!

Monday, June 23 - 12:48pm

Also note that in "Alive" they didn't murder people to eat them, they ate those who had died.

Monday, June 23 - 1:01pm

Bill wrote:

"My answer is that, yes, you would be justified in stealing food to save your own life, because your life is your highest value. You would, of course, have to pay it back."

Pay it back how? By the value you place on the food? Or by the value the person you stole it from values it at? What if they place a price you think is unreasonable on it -- for example, they propose essentially making you their unpaid servant for life in exchange for a pound of food? Or, if you balk at that, they demand all of your current possessions, plus a financial obligation that will eat up all your future income for life beyond the minimum to keep you alive? What if it is not possible to pay it back -- for example, there is a famine going on, and either you eat the food and they starve or they eat the food and you starve?

Basically, if you say it is justified to steal food in such an emergency, how do you prevent the exception from expanding bit by bit into the rule, where anybody has the right to make a claim on a bit (or all) of your life in order to preserve theirs? Have you ever sat through a legislative hearing where an "emergency" appropriation is being proposed, and some legislator says that if this confiscation of your property doesn't occur (not THEIR phrasing, of course), then people will literally die?

And then they run through another dozen such "emergency" appropriations in the same hearing.

If you make the exception above, how do you distinguish that from the above, other than that YOUR theft is OK because your life is your highest value, but no one else's theft is because their life isn't your highest value?

The previous month's issue of Liberty magazine posed a number of such questions to their readers -- I recommend checking it out and thinking them through for yourself.

Monday, June 23 - 2:04pm

"Have you ever sat through a legislative hearing where an "emergency" appropriation is being proposed, and some legislator says that if this confiscation of your property doesn't occur (not THEIR phrasing, of course), then people will literally die?"

If this is nothing more than rhetoric, then of course it's deplorable. If, on the other hand, lives really are at stake, then the state (and anyone else) has a perfect right to appropriate as necessary. Of course it's not nice to think that ones property could be taken away to save people who you've never met. But ask yourself - wouldn't you like to live in a state in which all necessary means would be taken to save your life in an emergency? Strictly from a selfish perspective...

Monday, June 23 - 2:20pm

"But ask yourself - wouldn't you like to live in a state in which all necessary means would be taken to save your life in an emergency? Strictly from a selfish perspective..."

Define "necessary". Clarify if you mean private or public aid in an emergency. Define "emergency". Define if you would be required to reimburse those who offered aid.

If I was in a life-threatening emergency, sure I'd want my life saved. But, not currently having made choices that have put me in imminent dire straits, do I want to live in a state where the government has the right to, on net, decrease my overall statistical chances of survival, and most everyone else's, too, to save the lives of a few people who, for the most part, screwed up badly and now want to force us to save their lives, and not even have to reimburse us after the fact for all that?

From a selfish perspective, hell no. Such a state does not advance my interests, and harms most everyone else's interests, too.

Tuesday, June 24 - 3:12am

Ed wrote:

I can appreciate how timely this piece is, considering that our current commander-in-chief has just been let off the hook -- for good -- for his violating of our 4th Amendment rights (via warrantless wiretapping).

Ed

Well to be fair Ed every President before Bush since FDR also illegally wiretapped phones without a warrant. Not saying I like it but it's not unusual he got away with it.

Tuesday, June 24 - 8:57am

I wrote, "My answer is that, yes, you would be justified in stealing food to save your own life, because your life is your highest value. You would, of course, have to pay it back."

Jim Henshaw replied,

Pay it back how? By the value you place on the food? Or by the value the person you stole it from values it at?

By what it would cost him to replace it, plus a reasonable amount of interest. The principle here is the same one that would govern any other theft. The thief should compensate the victim for the market value of what he stole plus an additional amount to cover his period of loss. Certainly, the victim cannot demand whatever he wants, and no court would be justified in giving it to him.

What if they place a price you think is unreasonable on it -- for example, they propose essentially making you their unpaid servant for life in exchange for a pound of food? Or, if you balk at that, they demand all of your current possessions, plus a financial obligation that will eat up all your future income for life beyond the minimum to keep you alive?

Are you serious? A little common sense, please!

What if it is not possible to pay it back -- for example, there is a famine going on, and either you eat the food and they starve or they eat the food and you starve?

Then it's not possible to pay it back, and each of you tries to survive at the expense of the other.

Basically, if you say it is justified to steal food in such an emergency, how do you prevent the exception from expanding bit by bit into the rule, where anybody has the right to make a claim on a bit (or all) of your life in order to preserve theirs?

You're dropping context here. If it's not an emergency, then people preserve their lives best by production and trade, not by robbing their neighbors.

Have you ever sat through a legislative hearing where an "emergency" appropriation is being proposed, and some legislator says that if this confiscation of your property doesn't occur (not THEIR phrasing, of course), then people will literally die?

As I said, I don't support the government's robbing Peter to pay Paul any more than I support your robbing Peter to pay Paul.

If you make the exception above, how do you distinguish that from the above, other than that YOUR theft is OK because your life is your highest value, but no one else's theft is because their life isn't your highest value?

Look, everyone is justified in doing what is necessary to preserve his or her life in an emergency, but it has to be a real emergency.

- Bill