There is a current within SF writers' community of libertarianism. I
suppose there is a certain internal logic to this. An author can operate,
at least on one level, in his craft as an individual doing his own thing.
So philosophies of individualism may be more common among authors than in the
general population. Regardless of what grains of truth may exist here and
there in the libertarian ideology, as a whole it seems to me to be a dangerous
way to run a society in modern times.
Like any part of the ideological spectrum, what libertarians advocate varies
from individual to individual and organization to organization. Whether
or not they perceive it that way, their economic policies would at least in the
short run favor the more affluent, and I believe there is good reason to
believe this would be true in the long run as well. Although my income is
above average, it is not high enough that I could depend on such a system
benefiting me, even if it did not result in economic depressions and other
problems. Besides this orientation to the wealthy, I would suggest the
following issues with libertarianism:
Some Of The Issues
1) Business Needs To Be Regulated
There are dishonest businesses and businesspeople. Theoretically, these
could be dealt with by the Chamber Of Commerce, an industry-specific business
group, or some other alliance of honest businesses - but it's not.
Dishonest businesses take away customers from honest businesses, they make
customers suspicious of honest businesses, they use deception to confound the
process of informed competition, etc. It would be in the immediate
self-interest of honest businesses to help shut down dishonest
businesses. Other businesses in the same industry would have specialized
knowledge that could make them the most capable at identifying dishonest
business practices. Nevertheless, other businesses tend to do little to
stop dishonest businesses. Industry does not regulate itself, so
government must.
If businesses had not polluted before government established pollution
controls, if businesses had not marketed addictive products like tobacco before
government regulation, if drug companies had adequately tested their products
prior to FDA rules, if businesses had regulated themselves so there wasn’t a vast
financial crisis in 2008, if business had not carried out other practices with
harmful effects on society - then it would be reasonable to consider that
government regulations might be unnecessary. But that's not what history
tells us.
History suggests businesses don't control their polluting because of
environmental concern, without legal requirements. (Of course, if the
pollution harms the company's facilities costing more than the cost of
pollution control, they may act on that. They may build a tall smokestack
so the soot falls on someone else's property, but they don't control themselves
in order to avoid smog affecting the surrounding city.) In any case, it
is reasonable for citizens to want pollution regulation done by an independent
body rather than by businesses that have a vested interest in minimizing
business expenses. If my bank won't let me withdraw from my account and I
have to take my case to court, I don't want the court to be made up of
bankers. If we need pollution control, we don't want it regulated by
industrial companies.
The Libertarian Party's website position paper on the environment is mostly a
rant about pollution by government bodies. Whatever the shortcomings of
the government's own actions, we can all vote against the guilty politicians
and we can even run for office against them. The average person simply
can't have stock in every company that pollutes and take off time from work to
go to all of their stockholders' meetings. Changing government policy isn't
easy (partly because corporations spend vast sums to influence government
officials). As hard as that is, it is more difficult for the average
citizen to influence corporate polices using only consumer purchasing and
stockholder meetings. And that is why we now have government regulation,
not business self-regulation. (It might also be noted that the amount of
“government pollution” may be related to the fact the government is responsible
for trash disposal, sewage treatment, toxic waste abandoned by companies, hazardous
materials used by the military, etc.)
In any case, if the government sent
its employees to rob banks, libertarians would not conclude that since the
government was guilty of bank robbery that we should repeal laws against bank
robbery. They would say laws against bank robbery are good and we just
have to stop the government from doing it. The same is true for
pollution.
2) Businesses Often Avoid Informed Competition
Free market advocates tend to sing the praises of competition and how it leads
to improvements and forces companies to provide benefits for customers.
However, if you look at / listen to advertisements, you'll find they do not
tend to be very informative. Some tell you nothing meaningful about the
product. Most ads do say something about the product, but in a way
designed to provide limited information. They may mention some features
in a way intended to make it sound good, but don't compare this to features
offered by competitors. Some emphasize they are the only ones with some
trade-marked "feature" while not saying what benefit it has.
They hire actors with certain looks to leave people with some unfounded
assumption about the product. And so on. Ads are designed to get
you to buy without making an informed comparison with other products.
This is the natural course for business. Their purpose is to sell.
Any business with a conscience is at a disadvantage competing with companies
without a conscience. All in all, they have found it convenient to have
ads with the minimum information necessary to sell, and the maximum amount of
irrational appeal. Businesses and business groups are not going to change
this on their own. We have to either conclude informed competition is
going to be limited and free markets will only provide a bit of benefit from
this, or we need government intervention to force companies to advertise and
market in a way that increases informed competition so benefits can be obtained
from it.
Businesses also try to prevent open and informed competition in a variety of
other ways. One is designing products to have unnecessarily proprietary
aspects or other forms of incompatibility. For instance, it is common for
mass produced items such as cell phones to use battery rechargers that are
incompatible with those available from competitors and even incompatible with
those for other models made by the same manufacturer. Corporations also
sometimes preempt start-ups (or other smaller competitors) with products /
technologies that they considering threatening by buying out the other
company. If the product / technology threatens the corporation's central
game plan, that product / technology is often locked up and never allowed to
see the light of day. There are also other monopolistic practices or other
means corporations use to block or hinder real competition.
Some manufacturers produce the same product under different names / model
numbers to sell to different kinds of stores. This makes it difficult for
consumers to comparison shop between full-retail and discount-price stores, and
similar complications. Some kinds of products also are replaced
frequently with other models even if no significant change has been made.
As a result, by the time product comparisons appear in something like Consumer
Reports, the model numbers in the stores are different.
3) Sometimes The Best Solution For
Businesses Is A Compromise Enforced By The Government
I worked for a government agency that operates as
an insurance company for workers compensation. The agency and workers
compensation laws were set up back in the early 1900s, before the days of big
unions, public assistance programs or most of the government regulatory
agencies we have today. It came about as a compromise for
businesses. Workers injured on the job were going to court and suing
businesses to get some money for their medical and living expenses. When
the court made the businesses pay, that could be a significant
expenditure. It was a big, sudden expense similar to why people get fire
insurance, accident insurance and such. But businesses were reluctant to
be the first or only company to take on the expense of paying insurance
premiums for workers compensation. That would put them at a competitive
disadvantage.
However, court settlements were a big enough issue
businesses eventually decided the best solution was to have all businesses
required to have workers compensation insurance. Businesses with more
accidents would pay higher premiums. On the one hand, companies did not
want to be forced out of business because no private insurance company would
sell them a policy, on the other hand insurance companies didn't want to have
to sell policies to every company that requested one. So, in addition to
private insurers, a government agency was created to sell workers compensation
insurance to any business that asked for it.
The private insurance companies did not want this
government agency to be too capable of competing against them, so many rules
were set up restricting the agency. When the agency is selling lots of
insurance, there's a limit on how much money it can make. When it's
selling only a little, there are inflexible rules about what it must do.
It is forbidden to sell other kinds of insurance or do non-insurance business,
and it's restricted in where it can sell insurance. It is required to
sell insurance to companies other insurers won't. And so on.
Actually, considering all these restrictions, the
agency does rather well compared to private insurance companies selling workers
compensation - a fact that runs counter to libertarian claims private
businesses always do things better.
4) Consumer Choices Aren’t The Best Means For
Citizens To Make Binding Group Decisions
There are some objectives that are less effectively
addressed as consumers. Suppose the majority of citizens would like
manufacturers to use methods that put less pollution into the air.
Consumers can try to convince a manufacturer to take the risk of the extra
expense of pollution controls while their competitors don't. Consumers
can even try to buy stock and lobby for pollution control at the annual
meeting. If/when some company starts using pollution controls,
organizations can try to convince large numbers of consumers to buy that
company's more expensive products because the products were made with less
pollution. And so on.
This is a longer, less certain path than government
regulation. Also, just as some companies continue to find consumers to
buy cheaper, but poorly made, products; there would continue to be some
companies that would find consumers willing to buy cheaper, but polluting,
products. Advertisements from polluting companies would try to leave
consumers with the impression they did not pollute. (It also becomes
rather complicated if you have more than the one issue of air pollution.
If there are efforts to only buy from non-polluters and efforts to only buy
from those that don't use misleading ads and efforts to..., individual
purchasing becomes a less practical method.) It seems to me it is reasonable
for the majority to be allowed to decide what an acceptable amount of air
pollution is whether or not there is a minority willing to buy products that
would cause more pollution than that. The market does not allow majority
rule to operate in that kind of manner.
Minorities have some rights, but I think the
majority has the right to limit this in cases when harm to everyone may
result. In an election, in a legislative body or in a regulatory agency
an organized, public discussion can provide a more thought-out, informed
decision on an issue. And structures can follow through on the decision
in a thorough and consistent manner. (Not that anything human, government
or free market, operates at 100% efficiency; but leaving everything to
individual choices is not a mechanism for these collective decisions.)
5) History Does Not Show That Business Forces Make
Companies Efficient
Even if at any one given moment in time most of the
more prominent businesses were acting more efficiently than less prominent
companies, this does not seem to be a process that imposes efficiency on
companies in general or the more prominent ones in particular.
I'm told that General Electric is the only company
that has remained in the Dow Jones index since the beginning. The Dow
Jones includes those companies that do well, at least for the time being.
But all but one company has come and gone. Some have simply gone out of
business, some have done poorly enough some other corporation was able to buy
them out, some still exist but aren't doing well enough to stay in the index.
In the late 1980s a large part of the US savings and loan industry went under. Only 20 years later, in 2008, banks and
investment firms were in another crisis – as a result of making the same kinds
of foolish choices - with big name companies going out of business.
American auto manufacturers aren't doing so well. (European imports are
doing fairly well in the US and those are not cheap and they are made with
union labor, so price and unions don't seem to explain US auto problems.) Not only have we had cases like Enron, we've had major financial
institutions favoring Enron stock until the end. We've had issues with US
airlines...
Microsoft is known for having bloated
software. It is not responsible for much real innovation. Most
advances have been developed by other companies; then Microsoft buys their
company, bullies them out of business or otherwise use non-innovative means to
take over the market.
Companies haven't used automated phone systems to
efficiently talk to customers quickly - they use them to reduce staff size and
leave customers on hold for long periods of time. They've outsourced
their phone operations to other countries where the pay is low but the staff
can be difficult to understand. And even with this inferior level of
service there's an increasing tendency to charge customers for things like
technical support.
6) Economic Instability
Prior to organized government intervention to stabilize the economy, there were
periodic economic depressions. The most serious being the Great
Depression of the 1930s. Libertarians might like to believe the reason
the Great Depression lasted so long was because of the beginning of public
assistance, government intervention in the economy, etc. This can be
countered in a few basic ways. First, the stock market crash occurred in
October of 1929. FDR was elected in November of 1932. That was
three years later and FDR was elected because the economy didn't look to be
getting better. Second, not every country followed policies similar to
FDR's in the US. Those that followed different policies experienced the
Depression as well. Third, economic downturns have tended to be less
serious since these government operations began. It's been 60+ years
since the end of WWII, which is a reasonably long period of time to see if
government intervention in the economy causes worse downturns.
Apparently, it does not.
On the other hand, the financial meltdown of 2008 might have been avoided if the
financial industry had not been allowed to put trillions of dollars in
unregulated types of investments. Neither the individual corporations nor
industry groups were acting to prevent those irresponsible business
practices If the government had not been taking an approach somewhat in
the direction of libertarianism we could have avoided this crisis.
7) Prosperity
Libertarians claim free markets lead to greater prosperity than other economic
policies. At best, this is a bit hard to determine. You're unlikely
to find a libertarian who will indicate any country today as carrying out all
the policies they advocate. And if they did indicate some country, it
certainly would not be one of the world's top ten economic powers. We
don't have a real-life reference point of what libertarian policies would
do. (Since there are capitalist nations that are democracies, monarchies,
military dictatorships, etc. it is safe to assume that if businesses really
wanted an entirely free market economy there would be at least one somewhere or
other.)
Since they can't compare prosperity of an existing libertarian economy with a
government-regulated capitalist economy, they sometimes compare the economies
of the top capitalist powers with Communist economies. But there’s more
to the affluence of an area than its economic model. The state of Montana is not less affluent than the state of New York primarily because of different
economic systems.
Prior to WWI, Czarist Russia's economy lagged far behind the major capitalist economies.
Russia suffered greatly in WWI and more so in the civil war after the
Communists came to power. The US only entered WWI towards the end and
none of the fighting took place on American soil. Only about 20 years
later, the USSR suffered greatly in WWII - with devastating fighting on their
land and about 20 million of its people dying. Again, the US entered WWII later than other countries and fighting on American soil was limited to the attack
on Pearl Harbor and more distant US colonies such as the Philippines. Under these circumstances it would not be surprising Russia could not compete with the US economy regardless of what economic policies Russia enacted.
(Libertarians started using the USSR as an example of economic failure
when its Communism had had less than 70 years, including those devastating
wars, to build up. Today, Russia has been capitalist for 20+ years,
during which it hasn’t suffered from major wars or a Great Depression. So far, we have not seen capitalism bring it back to the
international influence the USSR had.)
A Communist could throw around some interesting statistics. Around 1989,
when Eastern Europe was rebelling, the New York Times published a chart
comparing the economies of NATO and European Communism. The three poorest
nations on the chart were all capitalist - Portugal, Greece and Turkey. Does this prove Communism provides more prosperity? No, that would be
as silly as the libertarians’ comparisons. You need to know more about
the countries you're comparing - history, natural resources, geography, etc.
The crucial point is, even if Communism was an economic failure, it does not
necessarily tell us which variant of capitalism is best.
Libertarians won't make similar comparisons between capitalist nations with
more social welfare and those with less social welfare. It is the more
affluent capitalist nations that can most afford social welfare programs.
So, any such comparison would show on average countries with more social
welfare are more affluent; countries that are poor have less social
welfare. But as you see, it’s not as simple as “economic policy = level
of affluence”. One has to be careful for any attempts to make meaningful
comparisons to economic policies and consequences. Still, if such case
studies did hint at anything, it would not be in favor of libertarianism.
It is precisely those more inclined to free market approaches that are always
telling company employees wages & benefits must be held down so the
business can compete and telling US citizens wages & benefits must be held
down so the US can compete in the world. It certainly is the logic of
free markets that lower wages & benefits are an advantage to
companies. Especially today with greater ability to use cheaper labor in other
countries, a libertarian economy would mean a downward spiral of wages until
they evened out at a level approaching (but not exactly) that of the
lowest-paying company in the lowest-paying country. Then no company or
country would be at a competitive disadvantage. Prices would decline
also, but the necessity of items such as food, clothing and shelter would allow
businesses to decrease those prices to a lesser degree than the decrease in
wages. This might give great prosperity for the business owners, but not
the vast majority of people.
100 years ago in the US, when economic policy was much closer to the
libertarian ideal, most Americans were working longer hours at lower wages and
were less prosperous even by the standards of that time. Developing
countries today have economic policies closer to libertarianism than ours, but
those countries have smaller middle classes because fewer of their people share
in what wealth their country does have. It would be reasonable to expect
most Americans would be in a similar situation if libertarian policies were
instituted now.
8) The Right Of The People To Choose
When legislation inconvenient to businesses are
proposed one often hears arguments that if it becomes law businesses will move
to other places, businesses will reduce their staffing, or they will do this or
that. Businesses don't necessarily do such things as a conscious effort
to sabotage such laws, but it can have an impact on areas attempting to
implement plans preferred by the majority. Whatever the conscious intent
of businesses, the practical consequences are that if government policies are
warm and cozy for companies, companies operate more extensively. If
government policy isn't as lopsided in favor of business, companies don't contribute
as much towards the health of the economy. As a result, any statistics
suggesting business-friendly policies are good for the economy in general are
influenced by voluntary business choices as well as government policy. In
principle, those private businesses choosing to be less cooperative when they
don't get their way could be replaced by a public or private enterprise that
would be more cooperative. If that was done, we would get a better idea
what the impact of the government policy itself was. One way or the
other, the majority should have the right to choose society's policies.
Sometimes those policies may not turn out to be as useful as hoped for.
But failure of a policy should not result because some business owners choose
to reject the democratic process.
9) Bureaucracy
Libertarians often argue against government
agencies and operations they don't like by talking about government
bureaucracy. Certainly, it's not so hard to find examples of government
bureaucracy. But anyone who has ever worked for or had to have certain
kinds of dealings with a large corporation will know they, too, have
bureaucracies. Smaller businesses (and smaller political subdivisions)
tend to be less bureaucratic. If you want to have automobiles built by
little mom and pop companies, it can be done without bureaucracy. If you
want cars built by a large mass-production factory (whether privately owned or
government owned) the organization will have bureaucracy.
10) A Time Of Crisis
An unrestricted market economy may have been
beneficial in the 1800s, and maybe it would have no harmful consequences for an
interplanetary civilization able to access enough resources elsewhere so it
doesn't damage planetary ecosystems. However, we are at a point where we
are causing an ecological / climatic crisis, but lack space resources to
counter-balance this. We can choose to eat, drink and be merry today and
die tomorrow; or we can choose to put limits on what we do today in order to
live tomorrow. If there was some way to let those who preferred the first
choice to party today and die tomorrow without it preventing the rest of us
from accepting limits and living tomorrow, I'd let them go their own way.
But that's not a feasible option. Therefore, I advocate setting necessary
limits so we can live tomorrow. I don't consider letting businesses
produce whatever they want (in whatever way they want), to advertise whatever
they want in whatever way they want, and other economic activities contributing
to the crisis to be a more essential right than the survival of the human race.
As noted above, businesses don't regulate
themselves in terms of dishonest businesses. They also don't regulate
themselves in terms of climate change and the environment. At some point
in time, the crisis may become so severe and immediate that they do regulate
themselves, maybe not. We can't afford to wait to find out or to hope
that when they start to regulate themselves we haven't crossed the point of no
return. Something has to be done now and we have the right to legislate
it under these circumstances.
Consider a related matter. As time goes by, new technologies are
developed that could be incorporated into products to reduce human impact on
the environment and climate. For instance, cars with electric power or
other alternative energy sources. When these technologies are new, they
tend to be expensive. Left to a free market with no government
intervention, these new technologies will not be commercially advantageous to
auto companies for a number of years. Alternate energy cars began to be
produced in small numbers many years ago and have shown themselves to be
usable, but they have not been sufficiently profitable for large-scale
production. Over time, the unit prices of these vehicles will come down,
but society should not have to wait for the free market to reach that
point. Society acting through government should have the right to say we
can’t allow the harm to the Earth to continue until it is convenient for
businesses to act differently.
(11) What’s Good For Business Isn’t
Always Good For Society
The purpose of a business is to make money for its owners. For a product
to make money for a business there must be a certain number of consumers who
either want it or can be convinced to buy it. However, that does not mean
it is desirable to most consumers and does not cause harm. Let me give
one example in addition to those used above. Some businesses find it
advantageous to promote disposable products – selling one $1 disposable product
each day to a consumer may be more profitable than selling a $10 product once a
month. However, manufacturing huge numbers of disposable items can mean
using more natural resources, making more pollution and causing more garbage
when they’re thrown away. As I argued above, I don’t believe individual
consumer purchases or stock ownership is the best way to deal with such an
issue.
(12) Individualism
Individualism might be good if you live in a log cabin you built yourself, you
farm and hunt for your own food, you weave your own clothes, chop your own wood
for heat and make your own candles for light. But if you buy your food,
clothing, shelter, heat and electricity you live in a community of people with
complex interdependence. Your goods and services are mass produced in
ways requiring team work. The individual choices of the particular homes,
foods, clothes, books, etc. that this allows us would not be possible without
coordination in some areas. Our lifestyle depends on a balance between
individual and society. To one degree or another libertarians accept this
– they usually believe that some things should be crimes and society has a
right to control individuals in such matters. I believe most people and
society would benefit from a balance further from individualism than
libertarianism general favors.
(13) Baking More Pies Vs. Competing Over
The Same Pie
Another issue with unregulated capitalism is the fraction of the economy
devoted to activities that don’t produce new wealth. Consider financial
trading. A modern economy would not function if there were no places to
exchange currencies, buy and sell stocks and other securities, etc. On
the other hand, much of actual financial trading does not produce goods or
services to increase overall wealth. As a very simple example, we need
currency exchange for travelers, but we don't "need" speculative
currency trading. In cases like speculative trading it only redistributes
which affluent people have the wealth. To take an analogy, it changes who
gets bigger or smaller slices of the same pie, rather than making more pies so
everyone has more to eat. This is an issue even today in our
non-libertarian society. At least in our current society government
efforts to try to maximize parts of the economy that produce goods and
services, and minimize areas that are strictly "gambling" with no new
wealth created are not forbidden by libertarian principles. We can see
from experience that markets left to their own devices care more about the
anticipated return on investment more than whether society as a whole ends up
with additional wealth. I don't think we should close our options for
society to guide this trend away from less beneficial areas of the economy.
(14) Financial Crisis Of 2008
The financial crisis in September 2008 is a good example of the issues of
libertarianism. Governments of the world pumped untold billions of
dollars into the financial sector to prevent a full meltdown into a
depression. Libertarians would tend to argue that the crisis is just a
necessary shake-out and "correction" for the economy - and they would
claim that in the long run, for the majority of people, the net result would be
somewhat more prosperous than in a regulated economy that did not have
occasional depressions.
I'm not convinced that their claims are true, but whether or not they are that
should not be the whole story. In the business world, some investors
prefer stable, low-risk investments - although these have a lower average
return on investment. Other investors will put at least part of their
money into investments that have a higher risk of losing money, but have the
potential to have a higher rate of return if things go well. If the
majority of the people would rather have the economy regulated so it works like
a low-risk, lower-return investment, perhaps that is the right way to organize
the economy. There is more to life than merely increasing one's money as
fast as possible. A sense of security and dependability has some human
value also. The financial crisis has caused millions of people who had no
say in corporate choices to lose their jobs, lose retirement money, lose
college savings and/or lose their homes. Not having to worry about such
things is worth some trade-offs.
In personal money investment, you can put the majority of your money in
minimal-risk investments, and put just a small fraction in high-risk
investments. In an unregulated economy, the entire system can fall into
depression because of the poor choices of a certain number of companies in one
pivotal sector of the economy. If a society chooses an unregulated
economic system it's like putting the majority of society's money in high-risk
investments. That's not a good idea.
(15) Science
Libertarianism conflicts with my scientific approach. Essentially,
libertarianism claims that there is absolutely no possible way in which humans
could use intelligence, past experience, scientific study or any other
conscious effort to improve on the uncoordinated activities of a free market.
That's kind of like saying if a farmer wants a new variety of plant or animal
it would be better for him to wait for random mutations to produce it rather
than a conscious breeding program. Perhaps, that's not a truly good
example as individual businesses do have managers with human minds. But
if libertarians believe society would be better off without economic
coordination, do they believe a corporation should have managers for each of
its departments, but no central management for the whole company? Do they
believe that companies should not belong to industry groups that coordinate
activities? Do they think having a Chamber Of Commerce is a bad idea?
If libertarianism is the correct path, and if the uncoordinated actions of
independent humans will lead to the best results, then why hasn't the
"free market" of voting brought libertarians to power anywhere?
Why haven't at least the majority of well-educated businessmen accepted it as
the answer? (Yes, many businessmen hold certain ideas that are convenient
for business which are also held by libertarians, but most businessmen don't
accept the whole philosophy.)
Libertarians sometimes try to give themselves a scientific appearance by
comparing free market forces to "the law of the jungle" that guides
evolution. Science isn't just about observing nature in the wild and
describing it. There is also applied science in which we try to improve
on nature. Most of us who don't want to live a Stone Age life in the wild
also don't want to live in a modern-day "jungle". Nor do
libertarians. If a thief is smart enough to get through a bank's security
system, or strong enough to take money by force, or dexterous enough to pick
pockets, or fast enough to snatch purses and outrun victims - libertarians
don't conclude the thief has won by the law of the jungle and therefore
deserves what he stole. Then, libertarians advocate a big enough
government and taxes to act on behalf of those who lost according to the law of
the jungle.
(16) Property Rights
Libertarians often argue that property is a
fundamental right, and they suggest that either we must accept an absolute
right of property or reject all property rights (anyone passing me in the
street has the right to take the hat off of my head). That is an absurdly
extreme view of rights. The right to free speech doesn't necessarily mean I
can slander you or disclose government secrets to other countries or shout
"Fire!" in a crowded theater. A right which we consider to be of
great importance and central to our form of society can still have limits
placed on it based on harm to others.
Property rights must be subject to restrictions based on harm to others. For instance,
we can't allow a factory to pollute air and water on its property as it will
cause harm to others beyond the factory's property lines. Tobacco companies
don't necessarily have the right to promote and sell products that will harm
others. (Even if we were to accept the idea that tobacco companies had the
right to promote and sell products that are harmful to consumers who are fully
aware of the product's harmfulness, we could at least argue that the tobacco
companies must not conceal the harmfulness from the consumers.)
There can be disagreements on just what kinds of
harm from use of property rights must be restricted. For instance, when banks
can act in ways that result in the financial meltdown of 2008, are the
trillions of dollars and millions of unemployed people harm enough to restrict
the banks’ property rights? Libertarians may wish that what they conceive of
as property rights on general principles were absolute legal rights. However,
our government policies are based on law as established by the political
system. Questions of when and where property rights result in too much harm to
be permitted will be decided by our political system. We should not let a
religious-like belief in property to place it above the welfare of people.
(17) Morality
Libertarians argue against government services for the needy (often suggesting
private charities as an alternative). In a sense, an individual has the
right to think, "I'm well off and that's all I care about. If
somebody else is sick or hungry or homeless through no fault of their own, it's
their problem not mine." However, I object when people claim to care
about others, but say the needy should be entirely dependent on charity –
especially if they try to sound moral or religious about it.
When the major religions began thousands of years ago, societies were much less
affluent than today. Governments weren't especially concerned about the
poor (many of the poor were slaves), but even if they had been there would have
been limited resources. And much of the population lived in isolated
villages. Individual charity was something a religion could recommend
people practice immediately at any place. However, I think the moral
priority is not to just encourage good deeds, it’s to help as many of the needy
as possible.
Mandatory taxation to provide services to the needy provides more money to
help more needy people. It provides a central place where the citizens
can democratically decide how much of what kind of help for the needy we want
to treat as the right thing for society to do. It lets us democratically
decide what is the best way to distribute that aid. It gives us the
option of having the aid distributed by a single, centralized agency, which we
may or may not consider to be more efficient than having a large number of
uncoordinated private charities. And there's nothing that prevents
individuals who wish to from making voluntary donations above the mandatory
taxation.
From the point of view of a moral society, I find the idea of the needy getting
nothing other than what can be supported by voluntary donations as the wrong
message to give to citizens who we want to act morally. It tells us that
society believes that citizens have the right to be completely selfish with no
concern for other members of society and need not give a single penny in
charity or taxes for the needy. We can't prevent individuals from feeling
that way, but we can tell our children and citizens that members of society
have responsibilities for each other's welfare - and we take this seriously
enough that we collect taxes for the needy.
Without taxation, citizens who are too selfish to donate to charity end up
having more money than other citizens who earn the same amount of money but
donate some of their money to the needy. The selfish have more money and
can use that money to support political candidates who support selfishness,
they can use the extra money for publicity advocating the right to
selfishness. The selfish can simply spend the extra money on themselves
thereby setting an example for others that if you want a more affluent
lifestyle you should be selfish. If we truly want a moral society, this
is the wrong message for our children to see.
In religious and moral writings we find beliefs that it is not evil to earn a
lot of money - but it is immoral to keep all that money to one self while
others suffer. Libertarians have the right to say they don't care whether
or not others suffer, but they should not claim libertarianism as a philosophy
does care, but propose a society that would (1) not act as a society to help
the needy, and (2) puts those who do act to help the needy at a disadvantage
compared to those who do not care about the rest of society.
One of the shortcomings of libertarianism is the extent to which it emphasizes
each individual's right to his wealth. First of all, most of society's
more affluent members did not start out with average assets - usually they
start out in above-average income families. They are not necessarily more
affluent because they did more to earn it than others, they simply had the luck
to be born into the right family. Even if one assumes a person who truly earns
his wealth has an absolute right to keep it to himself, that may not be true of
those who don't earn it. Secondly, the relative affluence of our entire
society depends on the interactions of the large majority of society's
members. Take away the people who do the undesirable jobs and we would
not have our modern society with the comforts the affluent take for
granted. Helping the needy is not only helping "those people over
there", it's helping society as a whole which in turn helps society
provide the affluent with their comforts.
Now, consider the alternative point of view. Suppose libertarians tell us
our society should be amoral and there is no reason why one individual should
care about the hardships experienced by others. Then, why should the
average person care about wealthy people’s property rights? Why should
the average person support the government levying taxes to arrest and punish
those who steal from the rich? Advocating selfishness may lead the
majority of people to oppose the property rights libertarians support.
______________________
There is nothing inherent in libertarianism that precludes businesses from
forming joint ventures or other kinds of limited or temporary cooperation,
however a greater orientation towards cooperation than that may be beneficial.
Below is a list of Scientific American articles that may be of interest to
those thinking about such questions.
Why We Help; July 2012; by Martin A. Nowak; 6 Page(s)
Far from being a nagging exception to the rule of evolution, cooperation has been one of its primary architects
The Traveler's Dilemma; June 2007; by Kaushik Basu; 6 Page(s)
People playing this simple game consistently reject the rational choice. In
fact, by acting illogically, they end up reaping a larger reward--an outcome
that demands a new kind of formal reasoning
How Animals Do Business; April 2005; by Frans B. M. de Waal; 8 page(s)
Humans and other animals share a heritage of economic tendencies--including
cooperation, repayment of favors and resentment at being shortchanged
The Economics of Fair Play; January 2002; by Karl Sigmund, Ernst Fehr
and Martin A. Nowak; 6 page(s)
Why do we value fairness and cooperation over seemingly more rational
selfishness? How can Darwinian generosity arise? Biologists and economists
explain
The Arithmetics of Mutual Help; June 1995; by Nowak, May, Sigmund; 6
page(s)
Computer experiments show how cooperation rather than exploitation can dominate
in the Darwinian struggle for survival
The Dynamics of Social Dilemmas; March 1994; by Glance, Huberman; 6
page(s)
Individuals in groups must often choose between acting selfishly or cooperating
for the common good. Social models explain how group cooperation arises - and
why that behavior can suddenly change
Never Give a Sucker an Even Break; October 1993; by Tim Beardsley; 1
page(s)
Shall the meek inherit the earth, or is might right? Students of behavior have
expended much effort analyzing whether evolution should favor individuals who
cooperate or exploiters who go for short-term gains.