Comments on: Libertarianism without inequality (6)

By: Michael Otsuka

Michael Otsuka — Mon, 05 Jan 2004 23:50:50 +0000

My answer to the above question can be found in ch. 1, sec. III, plus ch. 5, sec. III. In brief, I claim that it follows from the most defensible version of Locke’s ‘enough and as good’ proviso that people haven’t left enough and as good if they ignore such costs.

By: robin green

robin green — Mon, 05 Jan 2004 22:01:26 +0000

But this is farcical. No libertarian advocates that businesses should be forced to pay severance pay to even the lowliest of employees for the “costs of leaving” a job – which can indeed be non-trivial – why then, under libertarianism, should anyone be forced to pay “leaving costs” to emigrants? It’s not intellectually consistent at all.

By: Michael Otsuka

Michael Otsuka — Mon, 05 Jan 2004 12:38:27 +0000

The thought experiment I conduct is one in which any costs of leaving (including the cost of severing social ties) are fully compensated. I claim that, in those circumstances, failure to leave legitimizes highly illiberal governments. So the above post is wide of the mark if it’s meant to be a commentary on ch. 6 of my book.

By: Stirling Newberry

Stirling Newberry — Mon, 05 Jan 2004 08:07:57 +0000

“Otsuka is not engaged in apologetics for any actually existing hierarchical or repressive regime: he is using thought experiments to press what our deepest convictions are on these matters.” The problem with libertarianism seems to be that it is a worship of the marketplace, which is practiced by people who have no clue about the value of objects. “Leaving” does not legitimize a regime, simply because of the value of networks and contacts. These have value – indeed, when companies are sold, specific value is attached to them. Therefore “leaving” means, in effect, a large tax for non-consent, one which is, even in libertarian conception, coercive. But this gets us back to the basic failure of libertarian, errm, thinking, yeah, that’s the word you guys use for this nonsense – Namely – the social network has a value, that value does not belong to any particular individual – and therefore the net value generated by that social network should be allocated by the decisions of all participating individuals. Adam Smith understood this, too bad that most liberatarians thump Smith like a bible, but, like many regular bible thumpers, they can’t read it in the original language.

By: Michael Otsuka

Michael Otsuka — Sat, 03 Jan 2004 15:29:15 +0000

Perhaps, Mr. Green, with all the technological advances we’d also invent a machine to measure people against the standard.

By: Robin Green

Robin Green — Sat, 03 Jan 2004 14:33:30 +0000

So, Mr. Otsuka, the obvious follow-on question is: How on earth could we define such a standard, and then measure individuals against that standard, for informed consent for such "permanent contracts"? If we take into account the expectations of some scientists and futurists (such as Aubrey de Grey) who predict that effective immortality[*] will one day be possible, permanent contracts seems especially problematic under such a future scenario. [*] That is to say, protection against ageing and disease. Protection against, say, death by bombs would require even more radical technology, such as mind-uploading coupled with vast distributed backup systems. Anyway, I'm getting heavily off-topic here...

By: Michael Otsuka

Michael Otsuka — Sat, 03 Jan 2004 13:54:39 +0000

To clarify my remarks on divorce: By ‘divorce laws’, I mean laws which prohibit all from entering into a marriage from which they cannot exit. I think such a blanket prohibition is justified only to protect people from exploitation arising from inequalities in gender relations, socioeconomic class, and the like. In my libertarian egalitarian utopia, all would be allowed to enter into a marriage from which they cannot exit so long as this marriage is the produce of free, rational, and informed consent. They would also, of course, have the option of entering into a marriage from which they can exit, which will almost always make the most sense, since people typically cannot know that they will want to remain with the same person for the rest of their lives. But what, you might ask, about 18 year olds who naively try to enter into a permanent marriage thinking that their love is eternal? What happens when they want to split up at age 19? A libertarian can reply that some acts of consent require a higher standard than others of rationality, information, and voluntariness in order to be binding. The standard of informed consent to euthanasia, for example, should be much higher than the standard of informed consent to a minor surgical procedure. Likewise, the standard of consent to marriage with no exit should be much higher than the standard of consent to marriage with easy exit. Teenagers in the grips of an illusion about the permanence of their love for one another arguably wouldn’t meet this standard.

By: Chris Bertram

Chris Bertram — Sat, 03 Jan 2004 11:29:33 +0000

Mike, it is hard to know how to argue about this since I can imagine us pressing one another about the inconsistencies in our responses to various cases (such as you outline). But I can’t believe that you are right to think that our real-world acceptance of divorce is a response to the inequalities against which decisions are taken as opposed to the shortcomings of human reason and affect that even the richest and least vulnerable are subject to.

By: Aaron

Aaron — Sat, 03 Jan 2004 00:40:39 +0000

Chris, I haven’t read the book (so maybe I’m cheating with this post) but I am a former libertarian and I had a comment. When I do the aforementioned thought experiment, I believe that it would often be inappropriate to hold people to such lifetime commitments. It seems too difficult to judge whether or not this would never or always be appropriate. Although I, like many people, lean towards allowing people the freedom to make choices, but also require want people to take the consenquences of their actions, so it is hard to determine what would be appropriate without looking at an individual case. Sure, a person should be able to renounce their religion even in a theocracy because, in my view, people who think that their religion is challenged by allowing dissent are sorely mistaken. Thus, you take a person like that and I would say ‘sure, let them go when they have a change of heart.’ And in the real world, there are always these sorts of influences. As you note, what about those who grow up in societies as a result of their parents’ choices? We all know that a person has free will but how they can use that free will is influenced by their parents, their grandparents and all other ancestors, their friends, where they grow up, etc. Aaron

By: Michael Otsuka

Michael Otsuka — Sat, 03 Jan 2004 00:27:11 +0000

Liberals think young adults should be permitted to smoke cigarettes, ride motorcycles, climb rocks, and engage in unsafe sex even though these activities can cause serious and lasting harm and life without them would not be so onerous. So I don’t think liberals are entitled to object to permanent contractual arrangements on account of the harm one may inflict on oneself in the future. I agree that there should be divorce laws and protection against crushing indebtedness in the actual world, but these measures are justified as a means of protecting the poor and powerless in circumstances of inequality. In circumstances of equality, rational and informed adults should be permitted to enter into any genuinely voluntary arrangements they choose which do not infringe the rights of third parties. Third parties, including governments into which one has not entered a contractual relation, have no business interfering with—and no obligation to enforce—these arrangements.