I had the pleasure of finding a real, honest to goodness, Labour voter yesterday – let’s call him Joe – first such person I’ve come across in a long time. “Labour all the way” he said. I physically squirmed at this.
As odd as it sounds, it was like having a conversation with myself – except me from 5 years ago. It all started when someone mentioned this blog. I said, “if you’re a lefty you probably won’t like it very much.”
“Why?” Joe replied. “Are you a bit of a fascist? Do you hate immigrants? Do you hate the poor?”
I choke on my burger at this point.
It wouldn’t be fair to describe Joe as typical Labour voter. His parents are highly regarded in the socialist movement, and when Joe went out looking for work, he was banned from working for the Liberal Democrats – work for Labour, he was told, or don’t work for a political party at all.
This conversation, then, takes place a few years after he’s been working in the belly of the beast. Curiously I find myself on the wrong end of what should be a very simple argument:
The only legitimate justification for the state to force an individual to do something is to prevent that individual harming another individual. Forcing an individual to carry an ID card does not prevent an individual harming another individual, therefore there is no legitimate moral basis to compel anyone to carry an ID card.
Simples!
Or is it? Because my interpretation of what is ‘moral’ for the state to do is not axiomatic – it is simply what I believe.When I say, “this is right, this is good” that’s really just me denoting my approval.
Joe suggested that the moral basis for ID cards is the same as that for taxation – that it’s a social contract. If you want to live in the UK then you automatically sign up to this social contract which means you pay the taxes required of you and you allow to Government to put you in a database so that you can prove who you are.
“It’s the Greater Good, isn’t it?” I offered.
“Exactly,” he replied.
Once again I came back to the basic principle that civil liberties are an inherent good (without really being able to explain why) and that compulsory ID cards invert the relationship between Governed and Government.
I realise I’m talking esoterically about philosophical attitudes, and that I have no deductively sound arguments in favour of civil liberties as a defacto good in their own right, that Liberty itself, as a good thing, is not universally acknowledged.
At every point, “The Greater Good” and “The Social Contract” effect – the ‘if you want to live here, you play by our rules and you pay your dues’ remains a perfectly acceptable counter-argument.
So an article in the Guardian about an immigrant’s experience at the hands of this BNP voter pandering Government was music to my ears this morning (and written about in top quality fashion by Devil’s Kitchen)
Cory Doctorow asks his Grandmother why she left the Soviet Union:
“Papers,” she said, finally. “We had to carry papers. The police could stop you at any time and make you turn over your papers.” The floodgates opened. They spied on you. They made you spy on each other.
This sounds like a powerful argument in favour of being watchful about the surveillance powers of the State, doesn’t it? Except it doesn’t. Even now Joe can reply, “well, they didn’t agree to the Contract, so they left, what’s the problem? Everyone who didn’t care stayed. Most people didn’t care.”
Which means we’re back where we started, where ‘Democratic Mandate’ gives Government the power to do whatever it wants and it’s up to us to comply or leave – very Labour.
The question now is whether or not we can ever find a hard argument in favour of civil liberties as an inherent good, in much the same way that democracy is considered an inherent good – something that people accept by default. Until then, civil liberties are little more than a minor annoyance for legislators who wish such a concept did not exist.
Perhaps such an argument can never be found, but it strikes me that if we’re ever to limit the power of the state to interfere with civil liberties then this is an argument that needs to be won, that the concept of a ‘free nation’ is something that people should value and want to fight for as a rule, not as an exception.
UPDATE: IanB has had a go at this thorny problem here.
UPDATE: Counting Cats has a go as well…
UPDATE: Costigan Quist says ‘there’s no such thing as the social contract’
UPDATE: Jock Coats claims that Social Contract contradicts the concept of self ownership
Ian B said...
2 Aug 09 at 2:01 pm
It is a basic problem. It may just come down to personality. Most people who call themselves various kind of libertarian or liberal (classical) are, I think, people who have always felt that way. I have. I’ve never doubted that being free is better than not being free. I saw an interview a while ago with Milton Friedman where he said much the same thing- “Why do I believe in freedom? I don’t know, I just do”.
So even back when I thought I was on the Left- by a process of deduction, since I sure as shit wasn’t on the “Right”- I was at gut level a libertarian. I became officially a libertarian, and repudiated the left, when I came to realise that the Left (despite some fine words) didn’t believe in freedom either… I have to say a large part of that was interacting with lefties/progressives on the web, who I though were “my people” and finding the more I interacted the more odious they became. That is, I guess, I didn’t become a libertarian at all. I simply assigned the correct name to what I already was.
It did mean changing my understanding of some issues, in particular understanding what free markets really are and how they work, and getting the courage to say “I am a capitalist”, knowing that that would cause dismay and rejection from the lefties I knew who I had once thought I was one of. But the basic belief that freedom is the best thing in the world, I’ve always had that. Never doubted it. It’s a gut feeling. As such, some on the left, or the right, can be led to liberty if they already believe in it and you can show them that their current philosophy does not lead to liberty. But those who are gut anti-freedomists, I don’t know if they can be converted. The question comes down to whether freedom loving is nature or nurture. Maybe collectivism is strongly genetic. Or maybe it just worms its way into people through their exposure to collectivist society, and fiction and arts. I sometimes suspect that one popular novel with a well crafted theme of liberty can do more good than a thousand well argued articles or debates. Argument rarely changes anybody’s mind. But if a child reads a story about free people, and thinks, “hey, I’d like to be like that”… that may be what influences those gut feelings upon which we then build our superstructures of justification.
Costigan Quist said...
2 Aug 09 at 2:09 pm
There’s no fundamental argument of principle against ID cards. After all, we happily carry around all sorts of bits of ID day-to-day. I’ve carried my driving licence around for years and have no problem showing it when needed.
The main issues with ID cards are, to my mind, a little more down to earth than philosophical.
First, it’s an utter waste of money. They do sod all for me carrying one and don’t help the State much either. Certainly nothing to even vaguely justify the £5-20 billion price tag.
Second, the database behind them will be beyond the scope and scale of anything seen before, with more personal information about us, more people with legitimate access to it, more opportunities for criminals to access it and more chances of the information being wrong.
Social contract or not, spending billions of pounds on something almost entirely useless that’s going to reduce our personal security is plain daft.
Charlotte Gore said...
2 Aug 09 at 2:11 pm
Christ you’re always so spot-on Ian, seriously.
I think I came to libertarianism the same way. Growing up under the Tories, I hit 18 just in time to vote in the 1997 General Election. I associated the Tories with Mary Whitehouse, with ending ‘right to remain silent’ and stopping raves in fields. I thought being left wing meant being in favour of freedom, so I called myself left wing.
Easy mistake to make, I think. I think a lot of people make it – especially because of ‘positive liberty’ and all that.
Paul Lockett said...
2 Aug 09 at 3:25 pm
The real problem with the kind of social contract argument presented by people like Joe is that it doesn’t really say anything. It’s almost a definition of representative government that we have to do what the government says. Joe’s social contract theory might say that, if the government says we must have an ID card, then we must, but it also says that if the government doesn’t tell us we must have an ID card, then we aren’t obliged to.
Until somebody like Joe can give me a good reason why I shouldn’t vote for a government which will offer me a social contract which doesn’t involve a compulsory ID card, then his argument is meaningless.
Ian B said...
2 Aug 09 at 3:54 pm
You’re not so bad yourself Charlotte
I enjoy reading your blog because it makes me nod and say, um hmm, yep, a lot.
Mark Reckons said...
2 Aug 09 at 5:32 pm
I remember 15 years ago, way before I was involved with politics sitting in a pub with my friends trying to argue why the creeping CCTVisation of our towns was a bad thing.
I found it difficult to argue against their main riposte which was “If you’re not doing anything wrong, why are you worried?”. I think I ended up falling back on the prediction that eventually we could have a totalitarian government and we would have handed them the apparatus to effectively land us in Nineteen Eighty-Four territory. This was met with widespread scorn. The point is I was an instinctive liberal at that point even though I wasn’t even really aware of it. If you had have asked me, I would have said I was left-wing and yes, I did vote for Tony Blair and Labour in 1997 thinking that things would be different and better under them. If I had only known….
I still find it hard to make the argument for civil liberties even now (although I am much better at it than I was!). It’s because it is so much more nuanced than glib “if you’ve got nothing to hide….” soundbites. I am absolutely clear that ID cards, DNA database and other fundamentally illiberal measures are a bad thing but I have yet to come across a killer one-line argument of the type that my pub friends were likely to listen to.
I know you published a post here Charlotte a while ago about how the simplest argument often wins the day and I did something similar a few months ago too. All I can do is keep plugging away from my little corner and not allow the glib wrong-headed sound-bites drown me out.
DavidNcl said...
2 Aug 09 at 6:32 pm
Glib simple slogans of the “workers of the world unite you have nothing to loose but your chains” work.
The collectivist have the best slogans and really care about getting power (and creating mass popular appeal – or the illusion of that). Too many libertarians want to win the intellectual argument or maybe be seen as principled rather than actually change society in the here and now.
Stu said...
2 Aug 09 at 7:07 pm
You can pretty much deduce that most people would agree with your ‘social contract’ friend, really, just by the fact that they continue to elect governments who define themselves in terms of their social contracts. And the fact that ’60% of people didn’t vote’ just strengthens that point – by not voting they’re implicitly suggesting they have no problem with any of the likely parties. So really, you’ve probably found yourself in the minority position in this particular argument.
Just sayin’…
The Great Simpleton said...
2 Aug 09 at 7:17 pm
Next time you meet him ask him if he’ll have the same approach to the social contract if the gang in charge is the Tories or, god forbid, the BNP. If the answer is yes then he has a fair point, if no then he is just an unthinking hypocrite.
Paul Lockett said...
2 Aug 09 at 7:22 pm
Stu, you could equally argue the other way about the 60% of people who didn’t vote and say that by refusing to offer support for any of the social contracts on offer, they are implicitly saying that they don’t want any of them. It’s always risky trying to give a meaning to silence.
Stu said...
2 Aug 09 at 7:44 pm
Paul, I agree that it would be nice if there were a way to vote the government out. I’d certainly vote the government out if the option were presented. But there’s ALWAYS been a protest vote candidate available, even if it’s just the Lib Dems – which is particularly true on the liberties issue since the LDs are supposedly the traditional proponents of Charlotte’s ‘individualist’ approach.
The point is that the centre ground is only the centre ground because it’s what the majority of people do not find objectionable. If the majority of people found it objectionable, it wouldn’t be the centre ground – it would be extremist.
In a way, you can tell what’s popular with the electorate, because it’s always pretty much what the mainstream parties are doing. If it wasn’t popular, and hence wasn’t going to get the votes, they wouldn’t do it. It’s a bit like evolution, really.
Charlotte Gore said...
2 Aug 09 at 7:49 pm
How can you be certain that what the majority think is ‘centrist’ isn’t actually defined by what the main parties do, and what is ‘extremist’ by what fringe parties do?
I think it’s a mutually reinforcing process – whatever the main parties offer, that’s what people will think is normal, required, etc.
I still don’t believe policy has much, if anything, to do with the who gets to run the country. It’s who the electorate trusts the most on the day, and at the moment they’re more inclined to trust the Tories. Simple as.
Mark Reckons said...
2 Aug 09 at 7:57 pm
I still don’t believe policy has much, if anything, to do with the who gets to run the country. It’s who the electorate trusts the most on the day, and at the moment they’re more inclined to trust the Tories. Simple as.
There is definitely something in this. There was evidence a few years back when the Tories were at the depths of their unpopularity that a policy decreased in polling once the public were told that it was Tory policy. This strongly suggests that some people are voting on an overall brand rather than looking at the individual policies espoused.
Ian B said...
2 Aug 09 at 8:04 pm
The outcome of any poll is drastically affected by whether one judges no-votes to be a yes or a no. Consider that the government plans a law against some thing- let us say angling- and comes over mysteriously direct-democratic and holds a referendum. Let us suppose the population breakdown is 10% In Favour (activists and campaigners, etc), 9% Against (anglers) and 81% Don’t Know/Don’t Care. We normally hold referenda as only counting those who voted. So, the In Favours win, carried 10:9 (53%/47&) and the anglers lose their hobby. The DKDCs are thus counted as being on the winning side.
But if we use a different approach, and say that a law must gain a majority of support in the country then a quite different interpretation emerges; the Angling Prohibition Law loses by a hefty 10:90.
Ergo, if we simply changed our democratic system to require a plebiscite for every law, which must gain the votes of at least 50%+1 of the electorate, requiring them to haul themselves to a polling station to actively vote for it, it is likely that very few laws would pass and the statist steamroller would sputter to a halt instantly. Certainly our angling bill would not pass. (Real world examples that certainly would not have passed would be for instance the smoking ban(s), extensions to detention, internet censorship, virtually anything actually).
So while this isn’t an argument with them as such, proggie lefties annoy me no end with the “social contract/will of the people” argument, because they go out of their way to avoid engaging the public will- setting up political systems which avoid democracy. They will generally argue that if a country is a representative democracy, then that means the people want a representative democracy, and that means the people want others to make decisions for them, so they have no right to complain about laws because that is what they have demanded via the social contract. Nothing scares a proggie more than the thought of direct democracy.
Stu said...
2 Aug 09 at 8:43 pm
Charlotte, I didn’t say it was popular so much as just not objectionable. There’s a difference – people vote for popular, but just don’t vote against not objectionable. The Conservative approach is coming back in fashion partly because Labour under Gordon Brown have become a party the electorate decidedly doesn’t want, and partly because Cameron has made the Tories not so objectionable.
When large amounts of people really dislike both of them, they start looking at the Lib Dems or other minor parties (which they are). The knock-on effect of this is to make the major parties start to take notice and change their approaches. The Lib Dems may get upset with the main parties ‘stealing their policies’, but it’s part of the same ebb and flow – if a Lib Dem policy is particularly popular with the public, one of the big two parties is bound to start looking into it. If it wasn’t for party allegiances, of course, it could be seen as a good thing.
That’s clearly not to say the system is an especially good one, but to me it stands to reason that ‘mainstream politics’ is always going to gradually change to better reflect what the majority of people think, most of the time. Much like in a free market economy, those ‘mainstream’ policies wouldn’t get very far if they were utterly abhorrent to the electorate. Witness the changing Conservative stance on issues like homosexuality, and the changes to Labour’s economic attitude in the 90′s.
Besides, there’s always, traditionally, been more people than there are politicians. If the ‘silent majority’ really did hate what was going on in parliament that much, I’m guessing they wouldn’t be so silent.
Devil's Kitchen said...
2 Aug 09 at 11:01 pm
What the fucking fuck? I had someone do this to me last night. The answer is very simple…
“Can someone please remind me when I voluntarily signed this contract? Oh, no, wait, I didn’t did I? Now fuck off back to play-school, you fucking moron.”
Your Labour friend is a disgusting little authoriarian who should be killed. Not by me, of course, since I wouldn’t initiate violence—what will me being a libertarian. Although, come to think of it, he and his filthy fascist friends have already initiated violence against me…
Hmmm.
DK
Devil's Kitchen said...
2 Aug 09 at 11:04 pm
It is wrong to force your personal morals onto others. Full stop. A swift example that works for me…
“How about if I decided that my morality meant that I should compel your children to take drugs: is that right? No.
“Then why the hell is it right for you to force your morals onto me? It isn’t.
“Fuck off.”
DK
Paul Lockett said...
2 Aug 09 at 11:41 pm
DK: “It is wrong to force your personal morals onto others. Full stop.”
In principle, I agree, but in practice, pretty much everybody’s approach would involve forcing one group’s morals on the rest. As an example, whichever system of property rights we have, unless everybody explicitly consents to it, it is nothing more than a “social contract” imposed by the controlling group.
I’d love to live in a society where every law was explicitly agreed to by everybody who was subjected to it, but with a population of millions, I can’t see that ever being practical.
Ian B said...
2 Aug 09 at 11:54 pm
DK, shouting at people is normally quite enjoyable, but it doesn’t actually have much success as a rule. The point you seem to be missing is that the people you’re telling to fuck off are the ones who are in power in our society, so in fact they’re the ones who can tell you to fuck off.
What are we trying to do here? Achieve some political change, or feel better by shouting a lot for a round of applause from the 36 people who currently agree with us?
Oranjepan said...
3 Aug 09 at 12:40 am
Excellent stuff.
Firstly the ‘social contract’ argument has become inverted by authoritarians to compel the people’s support of the government. It needs to be reclaimed by libertairans to compel the governments support of the people.
Secondly liberalism is the denial of deductive reasoning in politics. This is because you can show something to be logically true by deducing it from an original statement, but unless the premise is a statement of fact any conclusion drawn from it is not valid. Anything but a statement of fact as a premise is contingent upon the authority of the individual stating it for any subsequent deduction to be good, and to make assumptions about their authority is dangerously dogmatic.
Liberalism supports inductive reasoning where syllogisms drive progress towards conclusions. In other words liberal thinking says everything is conditional and the particular application which brings the best outcome depends on the specifics of the circumstances (eg nationalisation/privatisation may be helpful or unhelpful depending on how necessary it is and what other knock-on consequences it may have, but it is not something that should be ruled out on principle – how the process is handled will determine how successful the result is).
Liberalism says the future is unmade and it is for us to decide if we want to make it better or worse. Only one thing is for certain – things will not stay the same.
Thirdly, morals. We need to recognize the difference between subjective mores and objective morality. The line that ‘morality is not axiomatic’ cannot be praised highly enough, though I doubt it would win many votes as a slogan.
Lastly, I think ‘centrism’ (horrible term) depends entirely upon the practical policies being proposed in a negative sense. I personally prefer ‘decentrist’ methodology because it is irrelevant where ideas come from on any artificial political spectrum – more important is that they are realistic and can be introduced with effective checks and balances.
Max Andronichuk said...
3 Aug 09 at 2:25 am
It’s interesting that Joe asks “Do you hate immigrants? Do you hate the poor?”…
(the following is not a representation of my views, for I am a Libertarian, this is just possible argument)
Why Joe, surely we must say to you “If they don’t like it, they can just leave. Seeing as most of them don’t leave, they must not mind being poor and the occasional bit of xenophobia”
When Joe argues for the rights of immigrants, he argues from the point of “Liberties”… so be consistent Joe.
(My views)
It is surely a silly argument “so they can just leave”, the whole social contract is a blurry line to take (Tacit consent isn’t consent at all really).
I think the best way to approach Joe would be from a Utilitarian point of view (seeing as “the greater good” means that much to him) and argue that society benefits most from conditions of freedom and liberty.
What we must ask Joe is:
“Do you hate your freedom?” and “Do you hate freemen?”
If so, then he can explicitly consent to authoritarianism by moving to North Korea for “The Greater Good” of the freedom loving people of this country.
John Scott said...
3 Aug 09 at 7:46 am
This argument doesn’t work (sorry Charlotte, for disagreeing with you suggesting it does): “Joe suggested that the moral basis for ID cards is the same as that for taxation – that it’s a social contract. If you want to live in the UK then you automatically sign up to this social contract which means you pay the taxes required of you and you allow to Government to put you in a database so that you can prove who you are.”
A contract is something one enters into freely. If one has no choice (as on ID cards, or taxes), it is not a contract, it is the use of force against another person and requires a greater justification. If Joe cannot provide a justification for the use of force, simply wheeling out a “contract” line does not work.
If Joe really does believe in the social contract, he is therefore in favour of unrestricted immigration according to political beliefs. After all, given the nature of the State, immigration is the only way to choose to sign up. The greatest freedom is the freedom to leave, or to say no. Guess what we don’t have?
Obsidian said...
3 Aug 09 at 3:07 pm
The problem with any ideology is they have no prima facie argument – objectivists try to have one, but then so do the religious, but magical rights don’t fly – you just have this foundationless General Agreement flapping about.
There are no founding right/wrong arguments for civil liberties, only consequential ones.
Can Joe state why the Greater Good is better than Civil Liberties? Can he provide qualitative evidence? How does he countenance the greater role of the state in retarding social mobility? What if the states ranging powers come to be possessed by people he disagrees with?
The desire to have the state submit all to what you agree with is very human, albeit childish, what Joe needs to understand that a reduced role for the state is the ultimate protection for the wellbeing of the widest number of people. State power is cliquey, nepotistic and amoral – how it is used is reflected by the user. Which usually means bad times ahead for people the users of state power disagrees with or are considered problematic.
State power also desires homogeneity – satisfying a load of white, heterosexual, working-class Catholics takes less effort, time and investment than keeping a whole mish-mash of society happy.
In short, Joe’s politics are an anathema to freedom, individuality and diversity. He probably just doesn’t see that, as whilst he’s happy to question your views, I bet he’s never questioned his own.
Ian B said...
3 Aug 09 at 3:56 pm
I’ve had a think and written a blog post on this at Counting Cats. I tried to trackback or whatever it’s called but it doesn’t seem to have worked.
Joseph K. said...
3 Aug 09 at 5:55 pm
“Joe’s” argument falls down when it is examined in a logical way. The crux is that if you do not like the social contract as defined by the government then leave. The problem is that the most oppressive governments in history have made it increasingly hard to leave as they become more authoritarian. Just ask the families of those shot trying to cross the Berlin wall. If I refuse to have an ID card which will be linked a passport, then by definition I would not be allowed to leave and therefore Joe’s argument fails.
Joseph K.
Stu said...
3 Aug 09 at 7:22 pm
Well, Joseph… Sort of. You can’t leave through an airport without a passport. You could leave by boat or train without difficulty. You’ll also have trouble at your destination if you can’t show where you came from.
A subtle distinction, but I think an important one.
Joseph K. said...
3 Aug 09 at 7:37 pm
No Stu it is a vital distinction, the permits of the argument is that you are free to leave. If the state then puts an unreasonable restriction on leaving, or makes me acquiesce to the very restriction I am objecting to then I am not free. The state by Joes definition the state could do exactly what a number of states have done and point out that I am able to leave at any time, with only one little restriction I am not allowed to take anything with me. The option to be turned into a penniless refuge, dependent on the charity of whichever state I escape to is not part of any social contract that I would recognise, but is the logical conclusion to Joe’s flawed argument.
Joseph K.
Joseph K. said...
3 Aug 09 at 8:12 pm
Sorry about the typos, post in hast, repent and curse auto correct at leisure.
Joseph K.
Tom Papworth said...
4 Aug 09 at 11:45 am
Charlotte, I’m disappointed in you!
“If you want to live in the UK then you automatically sign up to this social contract which means you pay the taxes required of you and you allow to Government to put you in a database so that you can prove who you are.”
Surely you were able to tear this to shreds.
“Social Contract”? What a crock of %^&*! Where is this contract? Who drafted it? What does it say?
And who are Joe and his chums to say that they know what that contract says? That they can divine the will of God?
More practically, what right have they to say that I cannot live in the country in which I was born if I do not accept their rules.
This is not just philosophical argument. You might draw his attention to International Law, which stresses the illegality of denying a person nationhood: neither Joe nor his New Labour chums can legally revoke my right to live in Britain, no matter how much I rebel against their kingdom.
The “Social Contract” is a convenient canard invented by authoritarians to justify the use of force to impose conformity and obedience in a world without Divine Right.
And I would have thought that you were the person to point this out.
I can only assume that you were having an off day
)
Charlotte Gore said...
4 Aug 09 at 12:45 pm
The luxury of blogging is time to consider. Not having had this particular debate before I wasn’t remotely prepared.
I need more practice with the old verbal sparring I think.
CountingCats said...
4 Aug 09 at 3:09 pm
Charlotte,
Is this of any value?
http://www.countingcats.com/?p=3793
And as IanB asked in reference to his posting, do you have trackbacks enabled?
Charlotte Gore said...
4 Aug 09 at 3:20 pm
I do have trackbacks enabled but they don’t display, presumably because I hacked out the code to display them at some point.
I’ll add the link to the main article, and yes, I like your argument too!
Ron said...
4 Aug 09 at 3:25 pm
It is difficult to win this type of debate against people who simply don’t think in terms of freedom. I remember a horrible debate I had with my brother and his friends a couple of years ago which they still think exposed me as some kind of extremist free marketeer/fascist against their rational moderate social democracy. Of course I don’t see it in these terms at all because I don’t think free markets have anything to do with fascism.
The best way I’ve found to win or at least hold your own in debates like these is to attack the weaknesses of the social contract argument by looking at the possible consequences.
Tom Papworth said...
4 Aug 09 at 3:52 pm
Ron,
I’m preaching the choir, probably, but free markets are the antithesis of fascism. They didn’t call themselves “National Socialists” for nothing!
Interestingly, The Sun is taking a typically anti-market line again, today. If ever there was a mouthpiece for the real, genuine type of fascism in this country, that paper is it.
The Great Simpleton said...
4 Aug 09 at 6:09 pm
I’ve just start reading Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom and he addresses this very point in the introduction (my emphasis):
“The orgasmic, “what can you do for your country” implies the government is the master or the deity, the citizen, the servant or the votary. To the free man, the country is the collection of individuals who compose it*, not something over and above them. He is proud of a common heritage and loyal to common traditions. But he regards government as means, and instrumentality, neither a grantor of favors and gifts, nor a master or god to be blindly worshipped and served. he recognizes no national goal except as it is the consensus other goals that the citizens severally serve. He recognises no national purpose except as it is the consensus of the purposes for which the citizens severally strive.
The free man will as neither what his country can do for him nor what he can do for the country. He will ask rather “What can I and my compatriots do through the government” to help us discharge or individual responsibilities, to achieve our several goals and purposes and above all, to protect our freedom? And he will accompany this question with another: How can we keep the government we create from becoming a Frankenstein that will destroy the very freedom we establish it to protect? Freedom is a rare and delicate plant. Our minds tell us, and history confirms that the great to freedom is the concentration of power. Government is necessary to preserve our freedom, it is an instrument through which we can exercise our freedom. Even though they be not corrupted by the power they exercise, the power will both attract and form men of a different camp.
I emphasise those sections because it is here that the hard of thinking like Joe just cannot understand that they may trust their own party, but they won’t always be in power. Personally I think that Labour, especially Brown, are becoming corrupt and evil because of the trappings of power, but that isn’t an argument that will persuade the likes of him.
*Stand up Maggie
Nick K said...
4 Aug 09 at 6:40 pm
It amazes me that anyone can still think the social contract argument is even remotely credible, even in academic circles which are typically very left wing (or collectivist) this argument, at least in the crude form herein presented, is almost universally regarded as laughably inadequate.
The most obvious problem, as highlighted by Devil’s Kitchen, is that nobody ever signed any ‘social contract’ in the first place and how can one be bound by a ‘contract’ (or more accurately an arbitrary list of all government actions joe happens to favour) one never signed or indeed never had the opportunity not to sign!
It’s at this point that the morons who typically advance this (non)argument suggest that what one is actually bound by is a ‘hypothetical contract’ i.e. a contract one would have signed under such and such hypothetical conditions that never were or will be realized. Thomas Hobbes first made this argument in Leviathan by suggesting that the ‘state of nature’ (a hypothetical condition in which there was no government) would be so awful and life so “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short” that man would rationally agree to any authority, even one with absolute power, by abandoning their freedom (or some of it) just to escape this misery. However the fact is that this argument cannot ever counter those who insist (even if insincerely) that they would not have signed the contract under such specified conditions. Moreover, in a rare instance where one can quote Ronald Dworkin approvingly; “A hypothetical contract is not simply a pale form of an actual contract, it is no contract at all.” Why should one be bound by a choice one may have made but never actually did? More importantly, as the Hobbes example shows, even the most oppressive and objectionable of governments could be justified by this form of the social contract argument, and an argument that could legitimize the authority of Stalin is hardly one worth much consideration.
The final attempt to make this argument work rests on the notion of tacit consent. Typically this tacit consent is said to be given by the following principle which Joe seems to accept: If you don’t like the laws of a particular country you can sod off somewhere else, if you don’t go elsewhere you are giving tacit consent to those laws. This principle rests on the important notion that for one to be said to have consented then, at the very least, one must have had the opportunity not to have consented. However this version of the argument fails on numerous levels. The most important is that there are, in most cases, no places to sod off to. If we consider the example of taxation, the analogy which Joe himself makes, I cannot think of a single country which has no taxation, so where are those who disapprove of being taxed meant to go? More broadly, one could be living in a country for the sole reason that one considers it to have the best laws in the world, but this is not to say that one approves of those laws, merely that one finds them less objectionable than all the alternatives on offer, this would not meet the test of having an opportunity not to have consented and hence such a person could not be said to have given even tacit consent.
Also it is hard to see the principle behind the idea that those who disapprove of a certain law are free to leave the country in which it is in place. If the sole reason that person X is leaving country Y is that they don’t want to pay tax and if they go to country Z where everything else is the same except for a lower tax rate, then it seems that the only principle by which this action could be legitimate is that people may freely choose to pay lower tax rates. But if it is accepted in principle that people may choose to pay lower tax rates then why not allow this option without the condition that X must go to Z, i.e. why not just let people choose which tax to pay while remaining in Y? If it is insisted that X cannot simply choose which tax rate to pay then on what grounds can X be allowed to avoid the tax rate in Y by moving to Z? But then if X cannot freely leave Y for whatever reason he chooses we cannot assume he is giving tacit consent to being taxed in Y, for he had no alternative. Thus it seems that the tacit consent argument is also doomed to failure as we cannot assume tacit consent is given just because someone hasn’t left the country.
As far as I am aware there is no other way in which one could be said to have given consent to a social contract and so, I think, it must be concluded that the social contract argument is as much of a failure as the Labour government whose policies Joe is trying to justify with it.
Ian B said...
4 Aug 09 at 7:11 pm
The problem I tried to address in my post over at Cats is that most of these arguments that seem obvious to us lot don’t gain any purchase against the collectivists. For instance, the “if you try to force me with your social contract I will fight you” is met with the “do your best, we have a bigger stick” response, which is pretty convincing.
Likewise, the “I never signed a social contract” argument doesn’t hold water. While say the English can argue we were never offered one specifically, the Americans certainly signed one when they voluntarily formed the USA.
So that’s why I tried a different tack by addressing the nation state as a territorial monopoly, thus arguing that the social contract can only be deemed voluntary if territorial secession is allowed; since it isn’t, the contract is invalidated- that is, their definition of “free to leave” is flawed. I’ve been round the mulberry bush a lot with this argument, and believe me, the overwhelming majority of people believe that democratic authority trumps individual rights.
It’s no good just carrying on with blustery arguments that only we find convincing. You need to find logical arguments that will defeat your enemy’s argument. The vast majority of our fellows believe in the social contract. If the 36 libertarians in Norwich want to dismantle that and change their fellows’ minds, they need more intellectual ammunition than sweary “meet me in an alleyway with a 2 by 4″ type stuff.
Ian B said...
4 Aug 09 at 7:13 pm
Another example, by the by-
The “there is nowhere else to go” argument is usually met with something like “that proves that your ideas are not wanted by other people anywhere”, which is a surefire crowd pleasing winner for their side.
I am Me said...
4 Aug 09 at 8:21 pm
Haven’t thought this out fully, but how about this:
Did “Joe” (or his parents if he’s not old enough) support Maggie’s policy on Miners’ Strike or the Poll Tax?
If he/they did not then did he/they leave the country? If they stayed then is that not implicit approval of those policies?
Jock said...
4 Aug 09 at 11:07 pm
Ian @ 7:11 – the “territorial monopoly” thing sounds very Hoppe; have you read/listened to much of his argument on this? I think personally they are very close to a formulation for what Charlotte, you and CountingCats are trying to get to.
I was thinking already of blogging myself about this, so maybe I will and join in the Gore festschrift, as I think it’s really too much for a comment and I need to put my thoughts (and sources) together on it.
Ian B said...
4 Aug 09 at 11:26 pm
Jock, yes after I’d written that I realised it dovetails with Hoppe, and what may have inspired the idea was that I’d read some of Hoppe’s stuff in that vein (regarding the immigration problem being a consequence of state territorial monopoly) recently.
As to your blogging on the issue; I think it’s a rather good thing if a bunch of bloggers all wrap their brains around a particular issue from their various viewpoints. We could call it “Blogstorming” an issue
Nick K said...
5 Aug 09 at 1:40 am
Ian B
While I appreciate that you are only playing Devil’s advocate I think there is a very simple response to the argument you presented at 7:13pm on August 4th(“that proves that your ideas are not wanted by other people anywhere”). The appropriate response is to point out that this argument rests on circular and hence invalid reasoning. What those invoking the social contract are attempting to demonstrate is that it is legitimate for one group of people to impose their political views on another group who may disagree with some of those views. If your argument that “your ideas are not wanted by other people anywhere” is to provide the desired conclusion, namely, that it is therefore legitimate for others to impose views that are not your own on you, then one must already assume that people can legitimately force you to accept the laws they desire. If this assumption is not made then the statement “that proves that your ideas are not wanted by other people anywhere” has absolutely no bearing since nothing follows from it. If the assumption has already been made then the argument is of course circular (since one will have assumed what is meant to be proven) and similarly irrelevant.
Jock said...
5 Aug 09 at 4:38 am
I have postulated what I think is a slightly different line of argument: that “social contract” is inherently totalitarian and amounts to slavery.
Costigan Quist said...
5 Aug 09 at 8:58 am
My take on this question.
The North Briton said...
5 Aug 09 at 9:30 am
“Not having had this particular debate before I wasn’t remotely prepared. I need more practice with the old verbal sparring I think.”
Unfortunately there’s little to be learned from getting into discussion with people like the one you describe. As DavidNcl pointed out, his (loosely) thinking is founded on single-sentence slogans, ‘you hate the poor’ etc. What you may need to learn is when to recognise that it isn’t worth the bother.
What may be worth doing is firing some shock one-liners back at them, one-liners after all being their belief makeup. Obviously avoid anything that would make up Tory party policy. I’d have said ‘You do know that the welfare state is the biggest enemy to free immigration don’t you?’, or similar. ‘Socialist economics is inherently nationalist’ is another good one. ‘Of course, the BNP is the only true socialist party now’. I’ve found these often rock their boat a bit because they cause a very direct clash of pairs of their one-liner beliefs.
You certainly ain’t going to get anywhere with this guy in the space of a few minutes. Leave him with some conflicts that he has never engaged with before and hope that he follows them up. He probably won’t, but you can catch some people earlier than others.
Oh, and DavidNcl: I saw your brake discs today and they are HUGE. I wish my discs were as impressive as yours.
Joe said...
5 Aug 09 at 5:57 pm
Hi All,
I think that I did not make my arguments particularly well at the weekend, a few drinks later and all.
My use of the social contract concept was supposed be a way of understanding the relationship between governments and governed. When I brought it up in this context all I was doing was suggesting that the introduction of ID cards did not represent a significant shift in the nature of this relationship, as forcing people to carry identity is comparable to forcing people to pay taxes.
I think that the key to this “contract”, and I accept that I use the term lightly, is the democratic process and that this is the point the governed population confers the monopoly of force onto a governing body. Even if you do not vote you have that right, and this is what legitimises the government (however I strongly believe that there should be a “none of the above” option which should be able to remove legitimacy from an election). Leaving the country is not the only option when an election goes the wrong way. I would stay and fight against policies which I disagree with, and then use my vote at the following election to try and shift opinion.
Devils Kitchen – please do not kill me, I do not believe that I have the monopoly of truth on this subject and welcomed the opportunity to discuss my thoughts with someone of a different opinion.
Joe (the plumber)
Joe said...
5 Aug 09 at 6:01 pm
The Great Simpleton,
I think that dichotomy describes the hypothetical social contract that I was referring to the debate becomes where we draw the line between these two poles.
Joe (the plumber)
Charlotte Gore said...
5 Aug 09 at 6:12 pm
Thanks Joe. Kinda glad you found this – you’re clearly no straw man
Tom Papworth said...
6 Aug 09 at 10:19 am
I love the expression “The governed population”. It says it all, doesn’t it.
“Even if you do not vote you have that right, and this is what legitimises the government.”
I don’t see any legitimisation in this. Compelling somebody to be part of a club is not justified by allowing him/her to chose the club president.
I am reminded of the argument that one former Lib Dem Blogger of the Year made to me once in the pub, to the effect that taxes were justified because we all received services; in fact, the way it came across, he was saying that special interests were okay as long as everybody was part of some special interet group!
There is no moral basis for either ID cards or taxation. There is just a series of convoluted excuses for powerful people to force others to do their will, be it part with their money (aka. taxation, or extortion) or carry a form of identity (aka. an ID card, or a yellow star on their coat).
Matthew Huntbach said...
7 Aug 09 at 12:02 am
I’m born into a society where some people seem to own a great deal and as a result lead very comfortable lives and have a great deal of freedom and influence, and some people don’t and so lead shitty lives in which they get pushed around by those who have the benefit of wealth. It seems to me that it is every bit as a much a “social contract” that I am expected to accept that as I am expected to accept laws set by government. It is every bit as much powerful people forcing me to do their will, Tom Papworth, when they say I have to respect their ownership of all they own as it is when they and I are expected to pay taxation.
Ian B said...
7 Aug 09 at 12:20 am
I just experienced a moment of syncrronicity. Just as Matthew’s comment dropped into my inbox I happened to read the following sentence in Gibbon’s Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire, in which he is discussing Theodosius’s ruthless imposition of the new christian order on the pagans of the Roman Empire-
“A nation of slaves is always prepared to applaud the clemency of their master, who, in the abuse of absolute power, does not proceed to the last extremes of injustice and oppression.”
Tom Papworth said...
7 Aug 09 at 10:43 am
Matthew,
You’ve missed the point, as usual.
Even if it is true that “It is every bit as much powerful people forcing me to do their will…” when rich people use their power to push around poor people, there is no Social Contract.
A contract is an agreement between consenting parties, in which each commits to a defined set of actions. That is not the case in society, where powerful people (be they powerful due to wealth or due to status) force others to obey them.
Try reading what I said instead of trying to torch a straw man.
Matthew Huntbach said...
7 Aug 09 at 11:59 pm
Tom, I will repeat my point.
When a rich person says “this is my house, this is my land, this is my money”, it is a social contract that we agree with him. We do not say “well, that may be your opinion that that is your house, but I never agreed to it, so I shall make my way in and live in it”.
As Ian B notes, a nation of slaves is always prepared to applaud the clemency of their masters. And so it is when poor people struggle and push themselves to gain even the necessity to have a small home of their own. The clemency of their masters who are born with wealth and so never had to face that struggle is applauded, we are led to believe we should welcome what little we can get at great cost when the smart set live lives of luxury at much less personal cost.
This is recognised when the Liberal Party constitution talks of “enslavement by poverty”. I am sorry that modern members of the party like Tom pooh-pooh this notion.
Jock said...
8 Aug 09 at 3:55 am
I don’t believe Tom does pooh-pooh the notion of saving people from “enslavement by poverty”. He, and many of us, simply recognize that the way to do this is to radically reduce the state and the privilege it necessarily confers on those most able to lobby for it.
The history of the state is the history of the rise of the wealthy hangers on who get it to do what they want to protect their interests.
A hundred years ago, before the socialists muddied the waters, our party, and its working class following, knew this only too well as they campaigned for free trade.
Gummint interference, often dressed up as “well meaning”, increases the costs of basic needs like health and education and food and housing by its over-regulation and decreases the returns to labour by actively stifling entrepreneurialism and job creation. Its manipulation of things like the money supply transfers vast wealth from the least well off to the most well off. And all the while, the working poor pay a greater proportion of their little income towards helping their fellow non-working poor than do the best off.
They have had decades, nay centuries, to get these things right and fair and have consistently failed, either deliberately or through ineptness. Despite huge interventions at vast cost they have managed to widen the gap rather than narrow it often as not, whilst at the same time putting the productive economy in great peril. And once agaqin it is the folk at the bottom who are going to end up paying for it disproportionately.
We are every bit as committed to ending “enslavement by poverty” but like Liberals of yore we know instinctively that the way to do it is to increase the returns to labour and the ability of workers to build their own contingency funds so they can stand up to capital, not, in the name of “redistribution”, trying to make up with bribes for having forced so many out of work in so many ways.
Matthew Huntbach said...
10 Aug 09 at 12:33 am
Jock
I don’t believe Tom does pooh-pooh the notion of saving people from “enslavement by poverty”. He, and many of us, simply recognize that the way to do this is to radically reduce the state and the privilege it necessarily confers on those most able to lobby for it.
Well, we have gone through this before, but I think this is essentially the Tory line “our policies will be so economically successful that we’ll all get rich”. Which is no more sensible than the socialist line “don’t worry about freedom, our polices will be so economically successful that we’ll all be free once they’re full implemented”.
We have, since 1979, seen your politics becoming the dominant one in this country. You adopt a particularly extreme version of it, to be sure. But this country has become less equal and those at the bottom less free due to it. I don’t see that we are a lovely free country so much more free than those other countries in Europe which have been more cautious about adopting free market policies. Indeed, I rather see you like those socialists who faced with the failure of socialism in practice said the only problem was that it wasn’t done in an extreme enough form and they had magic ways to make sure it wouldn’t go wrong if only we moved headfast in their direction.
Now, I know you object to being called a Tory, but isn’t this just the same as socialism worked in practice? Those who could seized from it what most benefited them while ignoring the finer aspects? So the dictatorially minded heard “dictatorship of the proleteriat”, acted firmly on the first word and paid only lip service to the rest.
You say our 19th century forebears supported what you support, but they lived in an economy where goods and services were largely provided by small local businesses. The distributists hated the idea of anyone owning more than one shop – what would they have thought of Tescos and Sainsbury’s? Well, those who like to quote them today to support extreme free market policies tend to ignore what they actually proposed – state action to ban owning more than a single shop.
I note your tendency to use Americanism like “recognize” and “gummint”, which gives a clue to where your thinking comes from. The USA was until fairly recently a country with effectively infinite resources. There was a wild west frontier beyond which anyone who was squeezed out of property could go and grab some. There what you stand for is a sort of cargo cult which assumes the wld west frontier can be magically recreated just by adopting the sort of poliuices which made sense when it existed. That is why the poster girl of the movement comes from Alaska and can sort of recreate the idea with a rather pathetic “drill, baby, drill” on the last bit of what might be thought of as free wild land.
In England, the whole land was parcelled up to the robber barons in 1066.
Charlotte Gore said...
10 Aug 09 at 12:43 am
Matthew you really don’t know what you’re talking about.
Ian B said...
10 Aug 09 at 12:50 am
Matthew-
When you accuse “Tom’s Policies” of being how this country currently has been since 1979, you are simply wrong, if as I understand it Tom’s policies are libertarian liberal/free market. We do not live in a free market, and it becomes less, not more, free every day.
It may be that a free market would not work. But it is wrong to say that the current mess is proof that free markets do not work. The current mess is not proof that free markets cause inequality, or poverty, or any of our other problems, because we do not live in a free market. It is simply wrong to claim that we do.
The stuff about the wild west is nonsensical. Wealth is not a matter of resource capture, it is a matter of value addition through production. A society living on a barren rock in the middle of the ocean can become wealthy by importing materials, making them into something of greater value, and selling them. America’s wealth is due to production, not natural resources.
You seem to be stuck with the idea that the only two choices are socialism and conservatism. There is another one. It’s called freedom. We really should give that a try.
Jock said...
10 Aug 09 at 7:35 am
Matthew, I’m not sure I need to add much to what IanB said in response to your comment. However, whenever anyone mentions Tesco in a debate about libertarianism I am always minded to point them in the direction of last years Chris R Tame Memorial Prize winning essay the subject of which was set as “Can a Libertarian Society be Described as ‘Tesco minus the State’?” Enjoy!
Tom Papworth said...
10 Aug 09 at 11:12 am
Matthew,
I would refer you to my comment earlier on about attempting to torch straw men.
Why don’t you go and find somebody who believes your parody of classical liberalism and blow smoke at them.
Matthew Huntbach said...
10 Aug 09 at 10:47 pm
Ian B
You seem to be stuck with the idea that the only two choices are socialism and conservatism. There is another one. It’s called freedom. We really should give that a try.
I am not the one who is saying anyone who believes there is some sole for the state is a total enemy of freedom and must be an authoritarian doctrinaire socialist. So why accuse me of supposing there are only two choices I seem to be the only one in this argument who isn’t holding to that position?
Matthew Huntbach said...
10 Aug 09 at 10:57 pm
A society living on a barren rock in the middle of the ocean can become wealthy by importing materials, making them into something of greater value, and selling them.
And if it is unable to do this, maybe because its people are rather stupid (some people are) they lead barren and unfree lives. Where’s the freedom in that? Or if it invests a great deal of money into building the infrastructure to make those new goods, but suddenly a technological change renders that infrastructure useless because someone else can make them much more cheaply, its is stuck, owing a large amiunt of money, and its population is free to starve or to be forced from their homeland. Why do you suppose this to be the ultimate in freedom?
Matthew Huntbach said...
10 Aug 09 at 11:02 pm
America’s wealth is due to production, not natural resources.
So cultural values in the USA are not at all influenced by the fact that 300 years ago it was a vast and almost uninhabited land, and by the amazing history of people moving into it and building up a new country there?
I rather think it is, and I put forward the suggestion this causes a cultural blindspot towards the problem of people being squeezed out of freedom due to owning nothing. This is, I suggest, something we may be more aware of in countries where all the land was parcelled out to a few centuries ago.
Matthew Huntbach said...
10 Aug 09 at 11:07 pm
Tom
Why don’t you go and find somebody who believes your parody of classical liberalism and blow smoke at them
I am raising what I believe to be a serious objection to your claim that your politics is true freedom, that objection is that people who own nothing but their own bodies may be very restricted in freedom, particularly in complex societies where there isn’t land freely available they can just grow crops to live on, and not much demand for people who aren’t too intelligent.
Now, if you have a counter-argument to what I have raised, you might politely give it and convince me that I am wrong. That instead your only reply to me is to insult me and ignore my argument does not endear you and your politics to me.
Ian B said...
10 Aug 09 at 11:29 pm
Matthew, one way of looking at it is this-
Advanced economies are complex. If we try to compare simplified economies, we miss the avantage provided purely by complexity. Unfortunately this is hard to illustrate, precisely because one cannot simplify it to a toy model. If we imagine basic economies, e.g. agricultural ones, we come to the wrong conclusions. We might say, “everyone is a farmer, so they need land, but the land is owned by the few, so the majority will suffer”. This is true of a primitive economy. Monopolisation of land and resources was the primary driving force of sociopolitics for much of human history. But as economies become steadily more advanced, that principle collapses.
There are a zillion different ways to be productive in an advanced economy. A zillion different jobs. You aren’t tied to the land. You aren’t tied to a few big factory employers either. YOu can build businesses from large to small, producing all manner of goods and services. This is the key thing about an advanced free market; it is a matter not of monopolising base resources but of purchasing raw materials (or time) and adding value to them. That is what production is. THe free market just isn’t the same as a subsistence economy. It naturally produces growth. You don’t get more stuff by capturing it, you get more stuff by transforming stuff.
If you own a furniture business, it matters not who grew the wood. You buy it in, and make furniture from it, and sell that. You don’t care whether it’s English wood or French wood. It’s just wood. Nobody in the furniture business grows their own wood, and it wouldn’t make them any wealthier if they did.
But this is why freedom- of persons and markets- is essential. People need to be able to spot a need and supply that need. By doing so they add value to their own wealth and to that of the economy in general. The more of that which happens, the more wealth is created and the more circumstancial freedom is created. It’s the only way to do that.
Liberal freedom cannot supply everybody with an infinitude of circumstancial freedom. No system can do that. What it can do is steadily increase the freedom available to everyone, and it is the only system that can do that. It’s a game everybody can play, and the only obligation it places upon us is that we seek ways to fulfill the desires of our fellows; for in return they are seeking ways to fulfill our desires. That is what trade is.
Under liberalism, you may be at the bottom but you can work your way up. Under socialism/conservatism, if you’re at the bottom the state does everything in its power to keep you there. Sure, it may appear to help you by alleviating the very worst of your condition. But it will never give you the freedom to truly escape it.
Charlotte Gore said...
10 Aug 09 at 11:36 pm
Matthew, your argument is always the same. Your definition of freedom is someone else paying so that you can choose not to take a job you consider beneath you, or someone else paying so you can enjoy a lifestyle that you cannot attain on your merits and skill alone. you want the freedom to take.
That’s not freedom. That’s you having people serve you on the grounds that they’ve got more money. At the same time, coercion is used against the suckers forced to have you as their master.
Don’t you get it? Absolute poverty is extremely rare in the UK, and annoying it is liberty and freedom that generates the wealth you’re so eager to get your grubby mitts on. Kill the liberty, and it’s goodbye free lunch. You know, the exact same mistake every socialist state has made when it confiscates private property then wonders why the country is ruined a few decades later…
Charlotte Gore said...
10 Aug 09 at 11:38 pm
Ugh typing comments on phone very bad. Apologies.
Jock said...
10 Aug 09 at 11:59 pm
Matthew @ 10:57
I realize the barren rock was not your analogy originally, but your response to it needs a little looking at. In the given scenario, if nobody on the island is making any money for the variety of reasons you postulate, who is going to pay for welfare etc to give them *your* idea of freedom?
Additonally, it is highly unlikely that in a truly free market they would have such a dependency on such a single industry as you postulate. Division of labour would suggest that they would build an ecology of businesses utilizing peoples’ varied skills. It is very much a mark of a command economy, or even just one like many have where the state tries to pick a winner for all the population to work on, providing protectionist rules to help one particular capitalist that would produce such a monoculture.
And then, when that one collapses, they have nothing to fall back on, for income or for redistribution in the name of “freedom”.
Oranjepan said...
11 Aug 09 at 2:41 am
Can I ask for a definition of welfare?
I don’t accept the term. I think of it as some sort of social investment. If it’s uneconomic it’s also illiberal and anti-social.
If the government gets the balance wrong it starts to fail, so it’s more a question of how a shift in balance would improve it than what the ideal result should be.
I accept it’s a relativist view, but it is pragmatic. And everyone is always more impressed by tangible results than rhetoric.
Ian B said...
11 Aug 09 at 2:58 am
Can I ask for a definition of welfare? [...] I think of it as some sort of social investment.
You can think of it as a type of sentient mauve banana if you want, but that won’t make it into one. An investment is a deferral of consumption for future benefit. That is, if you invest in something, it is with the intention of reaping a greater reward in the future. That is neither the intention nor practical reality of welfare.
Welfare is charity by the state. There is nothing wrong with charity. Most of us would happily give to a starving man with no expectation of a return; we do so for moral reasons, not practical ones. But however moral that may be, a charitable act is not an investment.
If you wish to divert tax money to charity, then fine, go ahead. But be honest and say that it is charity, rather than using a term like “investment” that implies some future return that does not exist. Admit that you are making a net loss, instead of pretending there is some net gain to be had.
Tom Papworth said...
11 Aug 09 at 11:52 am
Your comments about America’s prosperity and culture being shaped by its vast uninhabited interior and huge natural resources fails to recognise that this is not a situation unique to the USA. There are plenty of other countries as vast and resource-laden as the US that achieved neither the wealth nor the liberty. Russia is an obvious example. Another is provided by Alan Beattie and is summarised in the first to paragraphs of this article. America’s success has resulted from philosophy and attitude far more than natural resources.
As regards your “what I believe to be a serious objection to your claim that your politics is true freedom”, that does not excuse your misrepresenting my position by suggesting that I “pooh-pooh th[e] notion” that one can be “enslaved by poverty”. I do think that it is a somewhat melodramatic expression, but then this is the opening statement of a constitution. However, I fully recognise that people have less latitude if they have less resources and so I want to shape society to one where each person is able to maximise their own resources and so enjoy the greatest opportunity. As has been proven time and again, the most effective route to wealth creation it liberalisation, while government intervention stifles wealth creation and condemns those at the bottom to poverty.
If you want me to respond politely, don’t twist my words to fit your prejudices.
Matthew Huntbach said...
12 Aug 09 at 12:17 pm
Matthew, your argument is always the same.
Yes, and so is your argument always the same. There may have been some freshness to it when it emerged against the assumption that intelligent smart people would be socialists back in the 1970s or so, but now it’s stale and played out. Essentially, you believe government legislation is the only possible thing that can ever restricts freedom. I disagree with that. End of story, if you like.
Your definition of freedom is someone else paying so that you can choose not to take a job you consider beneath you, or someone else paying so you can enjoy a lifestyle that you cannot attain on your merits and skill alone. you want the freedom to take
My observations of current society tend to suggest that those with large amounts of wealth are not necessarily more skillful or meritorious than those with small amounts.
That’s not freedom. That’s you having people serve you on the grounds that they’ve got more money. At the same time, coercion is used against the suckers forced to have you as their master.
Whereas you wish to have people serving you on the grounds you’ve got more money (or at least the people most eagerly pumping this ideology). Those at the bottom of society are coerced into conforming to the smart set who dominate business and finance, because it’s those people who dictate how the world is, and even (as I have recently argued) have invented a form of religion which is designed to keep them there.
Don’t you get it? Absolute poverty is extremely rare in the UK,
Charlotte Gore said...
12 Aug 09 at 12:22 pm
My observations of current society tend to suggest that those with large amounts of wealth are not necessarily more skillful or meritorious than those with small amounts.
Well apart from not remotely dealing with the question, this particular issue is something we agree on. The problem is state interference and protection of vested interests is one of the big causes of this.
Matthew Huntbach said...
12 Aug 09 at 12:25 pm
Don’t you get it? Absolute poverty is extremely rare in the UK,
It wouldn’t be if the sort of politics you like were fully imposed.
and annoying it is liberty and freedom that generates the wealth you’re so eager to get your grubby mitts on. Kill the liberty, and it’s goodbye free lunch. You know, the exact same mistake every socialist state has made when it confiscates private property then wonders why the country is ruined a few decades later…
Are, there we go, as ever. Anyone who adopts any position other than the extremes of what you call “libertarianism” is automatically a supporter of Soviet style communism. I actually agree that there are some aspects of the libertarian viewpoint which need to be considered, but it’s this dogmatic insistence of people like you and others posting here that the world must only be viewed 100% through that viewpoint and that all who has a more balanced pragmatic view are to be lumped together as some sort of evil extreme socialists that puts me off.
Your argument is, of course, easily shown to be nonsense by the fact that various European societies which do have a high degree of taxation and welfare state appear to be prosperous pleasant places to live in, and do indeed appear to have become more so relative to Britain since 1979 when Britain was pushed down the path which you seem to think will lead to happiness and prosperity for all.
Matthew Huntbach said...
12 Aug 09 at 12:32 pm
Me:
My observations of current society tend to suggest that those with large amounts of wealth are not necessarily more skillful or meritorious than those with small amounts.
Charlotte:
Well apart from not remotely dealing with the question, this particular issue is something we agree on. The problem is state interference and protection of vested interests is one of the big causes of this.
Well, yes, we were told this in 1979. Since then we have had governments committed to rolling back the state, and to some extent they have done so. The net result is greater inequality in both wealth and life chances, and this country no more prosperous compared to other European countries who have been less gung-ho on this line than it was then.
So, there we go, you sound just like the Trotskyists I used to argue with in the 1980s, and your fallback arguments are always the same. Anything that went wrong when your ideology was put into practice is always dismissed as “they didn’t do it in an extreme enough way”. Always, always, the delightful society you insist your ideology will lead to is held up as just around the corner and we must push harder and harder at it, even though pushing as hard as we have has made society nastier and less equal rather than the opposite you promised.
Charlotte Gore said...
12 Aug 09 at 12:47 pm
Yawn
Matthew Huntbach said...
12 Aug 09 at 12:49 pm
There are a zillion different ways to be productive in an advanced economy. A zillion different jobs. You aren’t tied to the land. You aren’t tied to a few big factory employers either. YOu can build businesses from large to small, producing all manner of goods and services.
The sort of economy which existed in the 19th century and where my ancestors and yours, I guess, had small businesses, no longer exists. Back then, every village had its own independent butcher and baker and candlestick maker, and much else, now we all buy those things from big multi-national chains and those small business have closed down.
Finding a niche is much harder now, it can depend on being in just the right place for a technological advance – as a few people, Bill Gates and the like have been. We can’t all be like that.
When it comes to small-scale boutique-like developments, I note that nowadays such things often are set up by the “trustafarians”. I.e. people who have family wealth to fall back on, and life experience and contacts to sell to people like themselves and to get promotion from the media.
Yours and other arguments that all is fine and dandy and only the evil state stands in the way of true equality of opportunity is just nonsense. It’s the sort of nonsense which says things like George Bush II got there entirely by his own merits, and it was just coincidence that he was the son of George Bush I, it could equally well have been anyone else.
Charlotte Gore said...
12 Aug 09 at 12:53 pm
Sorry, allow me to clarify: If you have problems with Thatcher’s lot, take it up with Thatcher’s lot.
Matthew Huntbach said...
12 Aug 09 at 1:07 pm
If you own a furniture business, it matters not who grew the wood. You buy it in, and make furniture from it, and sell that. You don’t care whether it’s English wood or French wood. It’s just wood. Nobody in the furniture business grows their own wood, and it wouldn’t make them any wealthier if they did.
Yes, and the brand image and contacts and distribution networks and machinery and much else is all just as important as the mere raw material. And if you have it, or have the contacts and background to acquire it, you’re enormously more likely to be able to start up and make a success of it than if you start with nothing. The modern scale of society works like this – we aren’t living in the 19th century when it was primarily small-scale workshops.
Charlotte asks me to take this up with Thatcher’s lot, but the language she is using is much the same as that lot did. There are differences, which I recognise and agree with, but the message “work hard and you will be rewarded” is the same, and the refusal to acknowledge the problems of wealth and privilege placing some at an enormous advantage over others is also the same.
You go ahead piping away with your own propaganda and go “yawn” at anyone who dares question the orthodoxy of today. You and your like have big business and all those free-market think-tanks paid for by big business piping out your propaganda, but you hate it when someone disagrees with you.
Myself, I like to think and challenge orthodoxy, not just go along with it and think myself clever just because I adopt the most extreme version of it in order to please the masters of society today, the big business jet set who have so benefited from all politics being pushed in their direction.
Charlotte Gore said...
12 Aug 09 at 1:12 pm
I find it shocking that you think you’re challenging orthodoxy.
Stu said...
12 Aug 09 at 1:25 pm
“The sort of economy which existed in the 19th century and where my ancestors and yours, I guess, had small businesses, no longer exists.”
Tell that to freelance designers and independent software developers. Or even to eBay buy-and-sellers or web startups. Or anyone you’ve ever seen going on Dragon’s Den. All you have to do is use your brains.
Charlotte, you should get back on Twitter – it’d be more productive for you
Tom Papworth said...
12 Aug 09 at 1:28 pm
Morning, everybody. Here we go, again!
“Whereas you wish to have people serving you on the grounds you’ve got more money”.
Essentially, yes. My mechanic, dentist and solicitor will all serve me, in return for which I will give them money. The difference between the service that you demand through the political system and the service that I demand through the economic system is that you demand compulsory service (“conscription”) whereas I demand – request might be a better term – voluntary exchange (“commerce”).
“Those at the bottom of society are coerced into conforming to the smart set who dominate business and finance, because it’s those people who dictate how the world is…”
But they would have more freedom if they were only limited by a lack of resources, rather than by both a lack of resources and a political system that prevented their freedom of action.
“Don’t you get it? Absolute poverty is extremely rare in the UK
It wouldn’t be if the sort of politics you like were fully imposed.”
At last, a verifiably false statement. The clear parallel with economic freedom (aka. limited government intervention in the economy) and absolute levels of wealth in all five economic quintiles has been demonstrated conclusively by (among others) the Frasier Institutes Economic Freedom of the World index. Put simply, poor people in economically free countries are far richer than poor people in countries where governments intervene more in the economy. This is fact. What you said is not.
“various European societies which do have a high degree of taxation and welfare state appear to be prosperous pleasant places to live in”
They also rate high for economic freedom. Scandanavian countries, for example, may have high taxes, but they are relatively flat, tend to be declining and don’t fall too hard on business and wealth creation. Many of these countries are also indulging in Capital Consumption – living off the profits of the past rather but not renewing investments (Sweden was the second richest country in the world in 1945).
In the area of public services they put us to shame for their level of liberalism: none of them have a state monopoly healthcare provider like the NHS; many allow school choice through voucher schmes.
So thank you for the examples. Very useful.
“1979. Since then we have had governments committed to rolling back the state”
No we haven’t. We’ve had governments committed to centralising the state, drawing power ever closer to the centre. But not reducing it. The Thatcher government appropriated broadly the same proportion of the economy in 1989 as it did in 1979; Brown has increased this, so that now the government takes almost half of what we produce. “Rolling back the state”? Don’t make me laugh!
“The sort of economy which existed in the 19th century and where my ancestors and yours, I guess, had small businesses, no longer exists.”
Indeed. There is far more variety, diversity and choice in career than there ever was before. To suggest that “Finding a niche is much harder now” is simply absurd. I don’t think I know two people who do the same job. I do know lots with job satisfaction, though. Many run their own companies doing things that would have been unimaginable in the C19th, and would be unimaginable in a planned economy.
“… arguments that all is fine and dandy and only the evil state stands in the way of true equality of opportunity is just nonsense. It’s the sort of nonsense which says things like George Bush II got there entirely by his own merits, and it was just coincidence that he was the son of George Bush I, it could equally well have been anyone else.”
How ironic that your example of hereditary power and privilege should be one from the political, and not the economic, system. Says it all, really.
BTW: I don’t know if anybody has noticed, but Charlotte’s original posting was about civil liberties. Charlotte was defending civil liberties; her interlocutor was selling them out to unfettered government. I, Ian B and others were joining Charlotte in her defense of liberty. Matthew then attacked us and Charlotte. He Matthew thinks by attacking those who were defending civil liberties he is defending liberalism. I think George Orwell called that Double Think.
Oranjepan said...
12 Aug 09 at 4:21 pm
I just want to point out that the civil liberty I consider most valuable is the freedom to have an undisturbed night sleep.
Whether my dreams are interupted by men in jackboots crashing the door down or from hunger because someone else told me they need to take the food off my table, I’m still going to get up in the morning with a grouch on because I haven’t had enough rest.
But at the same time if I’m expected to put up with this state of affairs I can understand the temptation to go down the line and persecute the next weakest because it is the only game in town.
For real people to fight against some mythic beast we call the ‘state’ is a delusion caused by lack of rest: we either choose to fight against other people or we fight against the limitations of that choice.
Matthew Huntbach said...
12 Aug 09 at 5:45 pm
Tom, if your comments on Sweden are actually an admission that taxation is not the ultimate evil, and that in fact it is possible that a country with higher taxation is more free than one with lower taxation, that is a major breakthrough. I have no reason to defend monopoly state provision of health or education or whatever services. My arguments have purely been to note that liberty may be restricted by lack of wealth as well as by state legislation. It is surely ironic that you hold up Sweden as an example of a liberal nation when it is so often held up by small-state people as an example of the sort of high-tax controlling society which they claim is all we should be moving away from.
Now, on Thatcher you may be booing her and saying she wasn’t really minimising the state, but that’s not what her supporters were saying at the time. Neither is it now, when Thatcher is held up by many of the sort who seem to be saying just the same “small state is freedom” as you say as the revolutionary person who turned Britain away from socialism. So, you just continue the point I was making – like the old Trots, modern “libertarians” have a get-out clause whenever anyone says “but what you want didn’t work out as you said it would” which is “Oh, that wasn’t really what we wanted”. The Trots used to love that phrase “state capitalism”, which could be conveniently applied as the get-out clause whenever they were pushed into a corner in an argument.
Stu:
“The sort of economy which existed in the 19th century and where my ancestors and yours, I guess, had small businesses, no longer exists.”
Tell that to freelance designers and independent software developers. Or even to eBay buy-and-sellers or web startups. Or anyone you’ve ever seen going on Dragon’s Den. All you have to do is use your brains.
Yes, there are niches, but you miss my point that it is not as easy as it used to be. There aren’t easy niches for people who aren’t that bright, people who aren’t going to become freelance software developers and the like. Most of the suppliers of the basic things we rely on are huge corporations whose hugeness places them at a big advantage and means they dominate their market, small suppliers can’t break into it. in the 19th century it wasn’t like that, there just weren’t all thee big corporations supplying most things, that is why 19th century liberals did not develop more of a concern about these things and so could be relatively simplistic on free trade.
Tom says that poor people are held back by a political system which prevents their freedom of action. Well, what is that? Please state how someone who is now on the dole is being held back in freedom by the state. In what way would their freedom be improved if they were denied even the minimum state support to keep alive that currently exists?
My point here is not to say that everything you and your like say is all wrong and you are all evil. I don’t have a two dimensional politics like that. I am concerned only that you seem to have a limited idea of freedom, which doesn’t take into account the lack of freedom caused by wealth differences. When I try to talk about this I get pounced on as if I was an evil enemy of freedom, which I don’t believe I am.
When I consider the ways in which my own freedom is restricted, I don’t see the state as the major problem. Not having enough money to do what I like is a bigger one, obviously. But all the other ways of having to live alongside people who have different ideas on what they want to do restrict me as well.
It seems to me that a true liberal welcomes constructive argument, but that is not the feeling I’m getting from self-styled “libertarians”. You seem instead to be a closed circle, very smug you have everything right, ready to dismiss as the enemy anyone who questions what you say, unwilling and unable to see points which don’t fit into your narrow agenda.
Paul Lockett said...
13 Aug 09 at 12:06 pm
Matthew Huntbach: Most of the suppliers of the basic things we rely on are huge corporations whose hugeness places them at a big advantage and means they dominate their market, small suppliers can’t break into it. in the 19th century it wasn’t like that, there just weren’t all thee big corporations supplying most things, that is why 19th century liberals did not develop more of a concern about these things and so could be relatively simplistic on free trade.
The presence of huge dominant corporations is caused in no small part by state interference. States create major barriers to entry in many markets which make it difficult for a smaller player to break in. States grant extensive limited liability privileges which allow corporations to grow much larger than would generally be the case without those privileges. States create convoluted systems of taxation which make informal working too expensive or complicated to undertake in many cases.
Many of the problems you have pointed out are perfectly reasonable, but I don’t think it’s reasonable to assume that the best way to solve problems which have been created or made worse by state interference is to introduce even more state interference.
Ian B said...
13 Aug 09 at 12:40 pm
The other point regarding hugey corporations is that they aren’t necessarily a problem in every instance, or even in a majority. We have a dogma that large corporations are bad, but most of teh time they are successful becuase they’re supplying a good product/service. Some businesses simply need to be big. You can’t really have a small business drilling for oil, for instance, the capital costs are so huge. Likewise, we’re having this conversation because the cheap PCs on our desks are built by big corporations- there are only a couple of players in the CPU market for instance, but then you can’t have a local cottage industry manufacturing CPUs.
Liberals are always sensitive to the need for a healthily competitive market, but we must also remember that those corporations everyone is so negative about make many of the products that make life worth living.
Oranjepan said...
13 Aug 09 at 1:08 pm
Jeez, this is getting a bit circular.
Instead of wasting time over trying to define everything as intervention or interference and as a good thing or a bad thing, wouldn’t it be better to specify the precise limits where one thing turns into the other.
There is a need for the state, but it faces the dual risks of doing too much and too little.
Similarly, if there is no time limit on debate then it becomes easy to avoid voting on a decision. So where the risk of no decision is greater than the consequence of making the wrong one you end up in a worse place that you were in before you began.
This is not about libertarian vs totalitarian ideology, but pragmatic vs dogmatic ideology – it is a matter of pure pragmatic calculation which side of the fence to fall on any particular occasion.
At the current time Brown’s Labour govt is trying to do too much so can’t do half of it well enough for it to be worthwhile, but equally, refusing to do the half that is of value would be no better.
If we want an honest government we need an honest debate. Tax rises vs spending cuts is a false dichotomy because while capital and labour remain at loggerheads the result is increased suffering on both sides.
We need to redesign the system by replacing tax credits with tax cuts for those that need it and by removing tax loopholes and benefit fraud so that appropriate support can be given to those who are desperate.
So if we want to protect our remaining civil liberties we need to understand the causes of civil disorder better. And that means being able to find common ground with those who’d otherwise be opposed to you.
If we want to talk about home-grown ‘islamist’ terrorism, then we need to look at the vomiting teenagers who choose oblivion over liberation. If it’s racist bigotry we’re worried about then we need to address problems of housing, employment and crime which give rise to scapegoating.
so blah-de-blah-de-blah
You know all this and you both could probably say it better than me too, so why do I bother blistering my fingers?
‘Free trade’ is a handy slogan, but it is easily misinterpreted – I know for one that the drug dealers on the corner of my street who are all too happy to sell to primary school kids are against all state interference in their business practices, as too are the crack-addicted prostitutes who are more concerned about their next pipe than whether they may be spreading HIV or anything else.
So please, can you be a bit more disciplined, and we might actually get somewhere productive.
Tom Papworth said...
13 Aug 09 at 1:32 pm
I don’t think I ever said that taxation was the ultimate evil, Matthew, but then it is no surprise to find you trying to put words in my mouth agian. I refer you for the second time to my comment about torching straw men. A state can have a high level of taxation and be free in other respects. Sweden overall is a free country (it has respect for property rights, the rule of law and free speech, and there aren’t CCTV cameras on every corner) but it could be freer (for example, it could have lower taxes and not operate a state monopoly off licence).
As for what the Thatcherites said they were doing, I would have thought that even you were capable of looking beyond propaganda. The social democrats said they would provide jobs for all through fiscal stimuli but all they caused was hyper-inflation. The communists shipped millions to the gulags and called it equality.
How is a person on the dole held back from prosperity by the state? By it being illegal for them to accept wages that reflect their productivity. By the vaguries of a business cycle that causes periodic recessions due to government manipulation of the money supply.
“you seem to have a limited idea of freedom, which doesn’t take into account the lack of freedom caused by wealth differences”
This may depend on one’s definition of “freedom”. Of course lack of resources limits one’s action, but to say that a poor man is not free to own a yaght because he cannot afford one is like saying a man is not free to fly because he does not have wings. It is not a useful definition of freedom. I think we need conceptually to separate freedom from capability. The poor man is free to own a yaght, but he is not capable of buying one. As for “wealth differences” – which is a distinct issue from poverty – I think that the attack is misdirected. The problem is not differences in wealth, but differences is power. Yes, wealth c an generate power, but so can strength. As a society we have done a lot to prevent the strong from predating upon the weak; perhaps we need to do more to prevent the rich from coercing the poor. But the solution is not to prevent wealth differences, any more than the solution to violence was to make everybody equally strong (or, to better parallel with the wealth argument, to make everybody equally weak). Breaking the link between wealth and power, while allowing individuals to become as wealthy as they wish, and preventing others from taking away that wealth for any reason, seems to me to be what liberalism has always been about.
Your final point, suggesting that we should all be nice and have a polite debate, would ring a little less hollow if you didn’t keep accusing everybody who sees liberalism differently from you of being a closet Tory in denial about the real libertarian world that we have lived in since the 1979 general election. It’s bullshit, and it’s offensive bullshit.
Jock said...
13 Aug 09 at 1:56 pm
The Mutualists would of course claim, lik the Individualist Anarchists before them, that in a truly free world with no government to make decisions based on pressure ffrom favoured constituencies, it would in fact be very difficult for anyone to accumulate much more than the value of their labour. In other words that the returns to labour would rise to absorb most of the returns that currently go to capital.
Tom Papworth said...
13 Aug 09 at 2:18 pm
Jock,
That is a good point.
Some non-mutualist [...said?? Ed.] that the only returns to capital in a free society are interest (which would be based on the natural rate of interest resulting from aggregations of individual time preferences) and entrepreneurial profits resulting from discovery (both in the strict sense and through better use of knowledge such as through indentifying new opportunities).
Tom Papworth said...
13 Aug 09 at 2:19 pm
Some internet users would argue that Tom got his html wrong and didn’t close the link properly.
Oranjepan said...
13 Aug 09 at 2:37 pm
Tom,
if you want to break a vicious cycle of offense you won’t succeed by causing offense yourself.
The appearance of disunity in LibDem ranks is a direct consequence of members driving a wedge between themselves through bad choices of words.
I mean I’m happy to disagree on specific points with you or Charlotte, or Matthew or Jock or anyone else for that matter, precisely because I know deep down we all agree on generalities even if we find it difficult to express.
Where we disagree on the specifics we can work back to the point of divergence and understand why it occurred. Usually we find it’s a simple wrinkle, not a massive tear in the fabric of the shared space.
For example, I diverge with Jock in his above comment. I think the prospect of constituencies not exerting pressure is a denial of their existence and therefore government is normally required be able to construct means to balance all the pressures from different sides so that none are unfairly favoured.
The problem arises in that the electorate is biased towards retrospective judgements on past actions which creates a tendency towards reactivity and results in favours being traded off successively. This undermines the stability of the status quo, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing in itself.
All political solutions will eventually be superceded because the situations they were concieved to address are bound to change. The only philosophy which can keep up is one which survives by adapting to the conditions of the moment.
Charlotte Gore said...
13 Aug 09 at 2:52 pm
Government is normally required be able to construct means to balance all the pressures from different sides so that none are unfairly favoured.
This is, in fact, a feature of the collectivist Governments, or ‘Moral’ Governments, as Hayek put it, in that it seeks to impose its will on who gets what. It must, by definition, live in the moment, responding to what is happening month to month applying rules in an arbitrary fashion – treating everyone differently (rather than equally) in order to attempt to manipulate the outcomes according to it’s own value system. One of the things you’d expect to see with this type of Government is an over-abundance of legislation, attempts to circumvent parliament by moving it away from the ‘slow’ legislature to the ‘fast’ executive to cope with the demand for new rules and new balances.
And wouldn’t you know it? That’s exactly what we have. Trying to rig reality is a game for suckers and one that compromises democracy and the rule of law.
The alternative is a non-moral Government, one with a rule of law which applies equally to all and provides predictability on the behaviour of others. It does not take sides, it does not try to rig events – you can enter into agreements with people safe in the knowledge that the Government isn’t going to come along and rewrite the rules a few months later.
The basic argument for those who believe it’s possible to make a form of ‘Moral’ government work comes from people who believe that they can balance these conflicting interests in a ‘fairer’, better way than their political opponents because they’re more intelligent, more thoughtful and more considerate and aware of the different conflicts.
Well, good luck persuading others that you can do what every other person who’s ever tried has failed at.
Oranjepan said...
13 Aug 09 at 3:23 pm
Hang on Charlotte, it’s slightly more complex than that. Didn’t Hayek distinguish between ‘natural morality’ and ‘evolved morality’?
Stu said...
13 Aug 09 at 3:29 pm
Charlotte, I’m afraid your argument is now invalid.
We simply cannot condone a possessive apostrophe in ‘its’.
*shame*.
Charlotte Gore said...
13 Aug 09 at 3:31 pm
Oh well, least I tried.
Joe said...
13 Aug 09 at 11:52 pm
A couple of questions -
1) You all recognise Mathews point but you attack his examples. Deal with the main question – what do you see happening to those that end up at the bottom of the pile – Tom – it is a nice trick to change freedom to capability and ignore that money limits capability. Who will limit the riches ability to coerce the poor?
2) Related – what about those who are unable to work – who looks after them?
3) what about disasters which the market has proven unable to cope with IE global Warming
You might have dealt with these issues in the past but I am new to this blog so please humor me.
Joe
Charlotte Gore said...
14 Aug 09 at 12:20 am
what do you see happening to those that end up at the bottom of the pile
Well they’d have homes, jobs, families…
Who will limit the riches ability to coerce the poor?
That’s exactly what we’re all about. Seriously. The problem is that modern Governments take sides. The point is that what we’re actually after is voluntary exchange between parties only – NO coercion, ever, full stop.
money limits capability
It limits your capability to buy stuff, but we’re talking about finite goods – allowing the price mechanism to set prices to decide who gets what – and let people acquire goods through units of value they’ve earned (or will have to pay back) is an inherently just and equal way of dealing with the solution. The alternative is handing stuff out based on favours, on friendship, on identity, or breaking the link between effort and reward and just handing stuff out equally, but rationed – these solutions don’t work as well in the real world.
The point is that markets use competition to bring down prices by improve efficiency, and it allows resources to be used where they’re needed very quickly.
The problem we have is that most of the markets are rigged in the favour of big monopoly players, which removes the competition and thus removes the benefits – very bad for consumers.
Matthew refuses to accept that we want to deal with this problem (because he doesn’t understand that a properly liberal government is one that treats all citizens equally, rather than a conservative or labour government that treats people differently in order to try to produce equal outcomes).
I think in the real world people who really can’t work will always get help.
Finally I think markets will cope with changing environmental circumstances very well as soon as there’s an actual economic impact as well. Cost of fossil fuels will be a major factor in the drive away from those – and generally speaking they’re dirty and inefficient so the trend was always going to be moving away from them. Well, that’s assuming Governments stop doing special favours for energy giants.
So yes, there you have it. It’s about trying to stop Governments rigging games, in our favour or against it. It should treat people equally.
Oranjepan said...
14 Aug 09 at 2:32 am
“The problem is that modern Governments take sides.”
No, the problem is when the government is forced to take sides it does so on the basis of political calculation, not economic calculation – ie on the basis of evidence as presented and the expected public reaction.
The problem of being forced to take sides arises from policy failure resulting from previous misinformed calculation.
It seems to me that the libertarian is calling for a neutral government rather than an accurate or honest one, which is an acceptance of dishonesty, if not dishonest itself, and no way to ensure oversight and scrutiny.
Nice in theory, but not in practice.
Charlotte Gore said...
14 Aug 09 at 2:44 am
Nice in theory, but not in practice.
Right need sources for this one. Evidence please.
You’re calling a government that plans an ‘accurate and honest’ one, but the opposite of a neutral government is a planning government, one that takes sides.
Where’s yoru evidence that a planning government is *always* better than a neutral government, even if the planning government is picking sides and winners based on political considerations rather than economic considerations (if you can actually make a distinction?)
Oranjepan said...
14 Aug 09 at 3:13 am
Charlotte, you’re asking me to provide the impossible.
I specifically denied that a ‘planning government’ is always better, but the whole point of a government is to take the current situation and institute a plan *of improvement* which it hopes will maintain it support to see it through to the next election.
Look at the stats game for example. There are lies, damn lies and politicians who use stats. Would you rather there were no statistics to be manipulated, even if that meant we would then be unable to disinter how the political manipulation was transpiring and make accurate judgements thereupon?
If so your definition of ‘neutral’ would appear to boil down to pot luck – which on standard probability will of course sometimes be better than the arse-end of a government regime (such as now), but doesn’t ever provide any means of controlling your own destiny.
The answer isn’t to abolish the role of government, but to change the policy of the government of the day. And if they won’t change it then we must change them.
Joe said...
17 Aug 09 at 2:57 pm
Charlotte “I think in the real world people who really can’t work will always get help.” – How? Who will be responsible? Who will pay for their support? I don’t think that offer enough protection in the current system – especially in relation to education. Why would a system premised on the individual produce better results?
Markets have proven themselves in capable of dealing with crisis such as global warming, the full economic impact is not going to be felt for many many years at which point and changes will be too late to have an effect and the suffering caused may be huge. Too sit back now under the premise that, once the economic impact is felt, truly free markets will best determine who suffers and who doesn’t seems callus to say the least.
What about inheritance?
Joe
Ian B said...
17 Aug 09 at 3:12 pm
Markets have proven themselves in capable of dealing with crisis such as global warming,
That’s because markets don’t deal with imaginary neuroses, however popular.
the full economic impact is not going to be felt for many many years
Armageddon is always just a little way in the future isn’t it? Close enough to terrify, but far enough away to be as yet undetectable.
at which point and changes will be too late to have an effect and the suffering caused may be huge.
May be. Yes, nothing like certainty is there?
Too sit back now under the premise that, once the economic impact is felt, truly free markets will best determine who suffers and who doesn’t seems callus to say the least.
Just as well we didn’t start remedial action against the Ice Age predicted in the 70s isn’t it? I remember that as a kid, it was quite the rage. I remember drawing plans for giant glacier-melting electric pylons (I was under 10, it’s allowed). Sensible people grow out of such things.
Mind you, the big scare then was Nuclear War, and remembering that, I’ve long been convinced that people who believe in global warming don’t actually believe in global warming. What do I mean? Well, when I was a teenager I remember having long, earnest conversations with my fellows about the coming holocaust, and 10 megaton airbursts and fallout shelters and so on. But none of us were, in truth, in the least scared; we found the prospect rather exciting, all the mutants and so on. In our hearts, we knew the whole thing was imaginary. And I think eco-doomists are the same. They believe that they believe, but they don’t really believe, not in their hearts. It’s just an exciting idea to them, or an intellectual exercise. Fat Al’s purchasing of beachfront property has become a cliche, but is indicative; the most hysterical of the mongers are living their lives precisely as if the thing they predict will not happen- they make long term financial investments and zap around the world in jumbo jets, and it’s because they are just like a bunch of excitable teenagers who find the whole idea terribly exciting.
We didn’t live as if the world were about to end, and neither do the Warmists. Some of their followers do; some of them are genuinely terrified of the future, but the majority are strangely emotionally detached from it.
Anyway, it’s not going to happen, so it doesn’t count as a market failure.
What about inheritance?
Who would care about inheritance if the world were going to end?
Tom Papworth said...
17 Aug 09 at 3:28 pm
Joe,
You question how a free society would protect those who genuinely can’t find work. I would suggest that those who were capable would find work: systemic mass unemployment is a feature of the welfare state; there was only seasonal unemployment during the C19th.
As for those who were not capable, I believe that there would be sufficient support for them from friends, family, communities and charity. The fact that many people support tax-funded welfare suggests that they would support voluntarily-funded welfare as well (unless you believe that such people only support funding welfare out of other people’s contributions. What is more, there would be more resources to go around because the wealth-destroying effects of the Welfare State would be eliminated.
Markets have proved themselves remarkably effective in the field of education: the extent to which children were moved out of factories and into schools in the C19th before legislation pushed the process proves that they can work. You might also want to consider the growth of private educational provision in the Third World, where people have abandoned underfunded state schools and set up on their own.
As for Global Warming, I think it is rather premature to say that markets have failed. They’ve not been given a try. Never has an issue be socialised so quickly! In fact, markets might provide much better solutions because they do not require government foreknowledge and they factor in the possibility that adaption, rather than prevention, may be the better response.
I’m not sure what you mean by “What about inheritance?”.
BTW: Irrespective of all of the above, I still don’t think that some notion of a Social Contract justifies the use of draconian infringement of civil liberties. Which, we all keep forgetting, is where this discussion began.
Oranjepan said...
17 Aug 09 at 4:25 pm
Tom,
have you got any evidence to show the relative contributions made by voluntary supporters of the welfare state?
My suspicion is that support or opposition of welfare is largely an economic calculation made from a personal perspective and is something therefore that should be left to democratic decision-making.
If you want to convince a majority that the opportunity loss is not more than compensated by gains made by reduced risk it’d help to show some figures for exactly how much wealth is destroyed under what conditions.
Which returns to the general theme of being able to find an adequate balance between positive and negative liberty.
I think civil liberties are an issue where totalitarian polemic balances libertarian polemic – for example we accept some cctv where there is a specific need; we accept the police even if we fear a police state because crime is an equal threat.
So while I think we may be going too far in the totalitarian direction under Labour it doesn’t mean I want to be a seasteader.
Tom Papworth said...
18 Aug 09 at 10:59 am
OJ,
I’m not sure I understand the question “have you got any evidence to show the relative contributions made by voluntary supporters of the welfare state?” My point was that those who support a re-distributive system are either kind – in which case they would give voluntarily if it were not for coercive taxation – or they are selfish (i.e. making “an economic calculation made from a personal perspective”). As, evidently, not everybody can benefit from a redistributive system, some must either support it through kindness that would be replicated in the absence of coercion or they are victims of force. The fact that charity does exist suggests that there are plenty for whom kindness is the motive so I think that suggests that the “deserving poor” would not be left to rot.
Having said that, there is empirical evidence that suggests that countries with lower tax rates (e.g. in North America) are more philanthropic than those with higher tax rates (e.g. in Europe). I can’t be bothered to hunt out chapter-and-verse but I think this is widely acknowledged.
The wealth destroying effects of taxation are well documented too. My favourite study (because it was so interesting and readable) is by David B. Smith, who estimates that had the UK Government continued to tax at 1960s levels (taking 30% of national income instead of 40%, which is hardly anarcho-capitalism!), UK GDP would now be nearly twice current levels. As Smith notes, “Total public expenditure would then be higher, albeit as a lower proportion of a much bigger national output.” What government and populous would not prefer to spend 30% of £2.5tr on public services rather than 45% of £1.2tr?
This is a separate (though not unrelated) argument, of course. My point was that higher incomes combined with a greater proportion taken home would make us spectacularly rich and so foster greater philanthropy, a relationship for which evidence does exist.
“I think civil liberties are an issue where….”
I think this is right, though I also think it makes a certain sense. Debate naturally tends to polarise because we push for (our perspective of) perfection in theory even if we accept compromise in practice.
I think the solution it to create structures that address the threats but do not invade legitimate privacy. For example (an unusual real-Tom example!) I support the use of mobile CCTV to monitor known fly-tipping hot-spots, but do not generally support permanent, blanket CCTV coverage. I want an effective police force bound by the rule of law: I don’t want them crippled; neither do I want them beating up protesters.
Seasteading? It’s a fantasy that harks back to (dare I say it?) Matthew’s wild frontier. We have to accept the parcelled-into-states world in which we live (for now) and try to make them better places to live.
Anyway, nobody has yet built a platform that can host millions of people, complete with sustainable economy and a decent nightlife. As Matthew might put it, my freedom to party would be limited!
(Perhaps I do him a disservice. I have no reason to believe he would use “party” as a verb!)
Oranjepan said...
18 Aug 09 at 7:37 pm
Tom,
I think we can agree on a lot of principles – in particular, a good party is the best!
However there’s a lot of clarification needed in the detailed calculations.
*extended metaphor alert*
I fully accept that a larger cake is desirable because each slice can support more candles, but I also know a good party needs jelly and ice-cream and balloons and lots of rum.
My point refers to the problem that the question of national taxation is actually a destroyer of wealth is dependent on a number of variable factors. It can’t be taken in isolation from predictions about the global economy, particularly where trade is a large factor, nor the efficiency of state spending and the effectiveness of state regulation.
So, while I certainly agree that taxation does have wealth destroying properties, I accept it can also protect wealth and the means of wealth creation (for example good health in a nation is essential to provide an ample labour pool).
Therefore it is a more complex sum to calculate than you suggest. On the other hand each nation is an active agent in the global economy so the compound effect of accurate calculations at the time may have had even greater positive consequences!
But fun as it is to reminisce over might have beens and the cumulative failings of successive Labour and Conservative governments and the compatible leadership ideologies of each period (post-war under Atlee, Churchill and Macmillan; Wilson, Heath and Callaghan; Thatcher, Blair and Brown) we need to be more insistent on pointing out the specific weaknesses in their calculations which distort the conclusion.
So on welfare, charitable giving and philanthropy I remain unconvinced that there aren’t accurate economic calculations being taken into consideration from the perspective of individuals concerned (eg tax write-offs are a massive stimulus to philanthropy).
Tom Papworth said...
19 Aug 09 at 12:34 am
OJ,
Thanks for all that talk of cake and jelly. I’m starving now! I’ll try to distract myself by answering some of your questions.
“the question of national taxation is actually a destroyer of wealth is dependent on a number of variable factors. It can’t be taken in isolation…”
Actually, it can. By using a large enough data set one can control for individual variables and see how each one affects wealth. This is what Smith has done using WINMOD, his econometric model. It is of course true that other things affect wealth creation too (which is why Sweden is not a basket case) but it is equally true that lower (but not extraordinarily low) taxation would encourage wealth creation.
As for “the efficiency of state spending…”, he also finds that efficiency drives are illusory. The only way to increase efficiency is to reduce expenditure first, forcing politicians and bureaucrats to economise. Trying to find the economies to achieve saving doesn’t work.
“it is a more complex sum to calculate than you suggest”
I’m not sure suggested any sum, let alone a simple one. Econometric models are massive. Smith, btw, would not dispute your statement that taxation “can also protect wealth and the means of wealth creation.” His findings are that growth is maximised at a tax-take of c.20%, while welfare is maximised at a tax-take of c.35%.
So his findings provide no solace to the arch-libertarians!
“On welfare, charitable giving and philanthropy I remain unconvinced that there aren’t accurate economic calculations being taken into consideration from the perspective of individuals concerned…”
Such cynicism in one so young! (Or not. I’ve no idea how old you are!!)
Chiriqui said...
12 May 10 at 7:29 am
Your blog is outstanding I will have to read it all, thank you for the diversion from my studies!