by Chris Bertram on July 24, 2003
The new issue of Prospect includes a rather meandering piece by Samuel Brittan on baby bonds, basic income and asset redistribution. A central issue in this area is how to finance such proposals, and that’s something Brittan gets down to at the end of his article. He canvasses Henry George-style proposals for land taxation and also mentions inheritance taxes, but finally comes up with a somewhat odd suggestion:
… a very simple practical proposal, why not auction planning permission? Many local authorities have approached this piecemeal by making such permission conditional on the provision of local services such as leisure centres, approach roads and so on. But why not return this windfall to the taxpayer in the form of asset distribution and let citizens decide how to spend it?
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by Henry Farrell on July 23, 2003
Tyler Cowen has a couple of posts suggesting that there is a serious libertarian argument against initiatives like the US government ‘do-not-call’ list for telemarketers. His argument is that government shouldn’t be in the business of restraining peoples’ spontaneity.
(warning: lengthy argument follows)
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by Chris Bertram on July 21, 2003
Daniel’s post about the morality of snitching got me thinking about an issue that is, I think, related. Namely, the question of solidarity: what is it and how does it impact on our practical reasoning. Take the following dialogue from a recent episode of ER where the nurses have got up a petition against Luka Kovac:
Haleh: It’s nothing personal, Abby. I like Dr. Kovac.
Abby: Really? It’s hard to tell.
Haleh: He’ll be back to work tomorrow. We have to do this every couple years to send a message.
Abby: Do you even know what happened?
Haleh: I don’t care what happened.
Abby: You cared enough to sign the petition.
Haleh: Another nurse asks for my support, I’ll give it, every time.
Abby: Whether she’s right or not.
Haleh: I’ve been doing this job for 17 years, honey, doctors come and go, but nurses make this place run. We don’t get much credit, or much pay, we see a lot of misery, a lot of dying, but we come back every day. I’ve given up on being appreciated, but I sure as hell won’t let any of us be taken for granted.
The way in which the solidaristic consideration impacts on Haleh’s reasoning is just the same as the way in which an authoritative command would. That’s to say that she sets aside her own estimation of the rights and wrongs (and even of the facts) of the particular case and treats someone else as entitled to decide what she ought to do. That person’s decision pre-empts her own estimation of what reason requires. The interesting difference with more standard authority claims (officer commanding soldier, state commanding subject via law) is that authority here is diffuse and any member of the relevant group can exercise it over any and all of the others. Of course, there’s a risk that individuals will exercise their right of command irresponsibly, and so there will often be an interest in routing things through some appropriate body (like a union committee). But that doesn’t seem essential to the nature of the case.
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by Chris Bertram on July 9, 2003
Brian’s post on Nozick (immediately below) prompted a certain kind of reaction in me. I felt rather like the boy in the class who wants to interrupt with “But sir…, but, but …” The reason I have this reaction is, I think, not because I believe Nozick to be right (I don’t) but because I’ve always found Anarchy State and Utopia to be a challenging and stimulating book, and not one to be too lightly dismissed.
Nozick was certainly a great writer among philosophers, but also one with an eye to the good thought experiment which could discomfit his complacent leftie readers by taking their intuitions and working with them to produce unwelcome conclusions. The Wilt Chamberlain parable is one good example of this as are the immediately following paragraphs on the socialist entrepreneur. His use of the public entertaiment system example to undermine the Hart-Rawls principle of fair play (ASU 90-95) is another. To be sure, Nozick rarely has the kind of knock-down argument for his premises that we might like. But in the dialectical context, he doesn’t need to have, since he’s appealing to intuitions we already share (for whatever reason).
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It seems like it is Nozick-bashing day Down Under. First Ken Parish links to his favourite online criticisms of Nozick. Then John Quiggin follows up with a different criticism. Quiggin’s argument is that given some plausible assumptions about history, we can justfy (heavy) taxation even by Nozick’s lights. Premise one is that Nozick agrees that if one person, say the king, or one group, say the parliament, owned all the land, then they could justly charge rents on all who inhabited that land. Whether we call these taxes or not doesn’t change the fact that they are justified. Justification does not turn on whether something is called a rent or a tax. Premise two is that at some stage the land was owned by some such person or group. Premise three is that current states can be construed as owning the land they govern because they traded for it with the previous owners. Conclusion, all taxes are justifiable rents.
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