I’m happy and flattered to see that Randy Barnett of The Volokh Conspiracy has linked to and quoted approvingly from my TCS piece.
Judging from the comments thread at TCS, it seems that I failed to adequately convey that political libertarianism is by no means an amoral theory. Political libertarianism assumes that a peaceful, stable, fair, extended social network of mutually advantageous cooperation — liberal order — is, if not morally good in itself, at least good as a means to other moral ends. The point, however, is that people with different commitments can support a liberal order, and can account for the moral value of the order in different ways. When you live in a large, incredibly pluralistic society like ours, the problem of how we all can live together, despite our differences, is a serious problem no matter what you happen to believe. A minimal set of social principles that accomodates the broadest array of commitments and worldviews can be seen by all sorts of people as the best solution to that problem.
This also does not imply that comprehensive justificatory strategies are false. Suppose, say, Ayn Rand is right. Then Ayn Rand is right. But the probability that everyone comes to agree with Ayn Rand is, well, zero, give or take. (The probability that the people who claim to agree with Ayn Rand will come to agree with each other is probably no better.) Whatever the correct comprehensive theory is, it’s probably never going to be the case that everyone believes it. An authoritarian order can probably coerce agreement, to an extent, by restricting freedom of thought, speech, and inquiry. But that’s not the kind of society we want. And a small, homogenous community, a group of Hutterhites, for example, might share a common conception of the good. But we’re talking about a huge, diverse society.
So, one might arrive at the one true theory of the good, and even do a bang up job of spreading the word, but still be swamped by Babelian pluralism. The problem simply isn’t how to get everyone to agree on fundamentals, because it’s a problem that won’t get solved in a big, free society. What we’re left with is a sort of engineering problem. What terms of association, what social principles, can accomodate all these people, and all these diverse commitments, in a manner (almost) everyone has reason to affirm. The hypothesis is that political libertarianism is the best solution to the engineering problem.
Now, I’m by no means sure that this hypothesis is correct, or even exactly what political libertarianism entails (and thus what the hypothesis really is). I think I’d just want to call my own view liberal minimalism. I’m receptive to the idea that some small-scale redistribution might be a condition for stable liberal order, putting me in the company of Hayek, Milton Friedman, and Loren Lomasky. While people tend to identify these thinkers as libertarian, people also tend to think libertarianism by nature rules out redistribution. So I’m not quite sure what to call myself, not that it matters much.
Great piece. The systematic refutation was very well presented.
This is precisely the problem. Nobody has the balls to say they know whats right anymore so they try to accomodate every half assed theory that comes down the pipe. What the classical liberals thought is quite the opposite and is a system that at least has some backbone to it. People these days are just afraid.
Let me try another tack. If the argument for the political conception of libertarianism is “addressed toward people who already live in a basically liberal society, already benefit from it, and see themselves as having reason to go along with it,” as you suggest, then the question of neutrality among competing conceptions of the good doesn’t really arise, because relevant public accepts the desirability of some degree of toleration of diverse ways of life, at least on prudential grounds.
The debate thus turns on fundamental questions of political morality, namely an articulation of the requirements of a liberal theory of justice. But it is as difficult to conceive that we’ll arrive at anything approaching a rational consensus on a libertarian theory of justice, which is freighted with any number of controversial normative assumptions, than we will on any particular comprehensive conception of the good.
As you know, Rawls’s answer to this dilemma is the social contract: the principles of justice are those that emerge from the original position, which is designed so that no person’s parochial interests are privileged in the design of social institutions. The resulting principles of justice define the scope of person’s rights and are in that sense “neutral” between person’s competing interests. While reasonable minds might differ about what the contractual methodology actually requires, it is at the very least a powerful tool of social analysis.
But as Rawls points out (Political Liberalism, p. 265), this option is not open to the libertarian, for whom rights are typically posited as part of the natural social fabric, e.g., the fundamental right of individual liberty yields the right of self-ownership, which in turn yields the right to the fruits of one’s labor, etc. How, then, does one justify a libertarian theory of justice without resort to inherently contestable moral claims? If one can’t, then how can political libertarianism prevail by means of democratic (non-coercive) processes?
Let me try another tack. If the argument for the political conception of libertarianism is “addressed toward people who already live in a basically liberal society, already benefit from it, and see themselves as having reason to go along with it,” as you suggest, then the question of neutrality among competing conceptions of the good doesn’t really arise, because relevant public accepts the desirability of some degree of toleration of diverse ways of life, at least on prudential grounds.
The debate thus turns on fundamental questions of political morality, namely an articulation of the requirements of a liberal theory of justice. But it is as difficult to conceive that we’ll arrive at anything approaching a rational consensus on a libertarian theory of justice, which is freighted with any number of controversial normative assumptions, than we will on any particular comprehensive conception of the good.
As you know, Rawls’s answer to this dilemma is the social contract: the principles of justice are those that emerge from the original position, which is designed so that no person’s parochial interests are privileged in the design of social institutions. The resulting principles of justice define the scope of person’s rights and are in that sense “neutral” between person’s competing interests. While reasonable minds might differ about what the contractual methodology actually requires, it is at the very least a powerful tool of social analysis.
But as Rawls points out (Political Liberalism, p. 265), this option is not open to the libertarian, for whom rights are typically posited as part of the natural social fabric, e.g., the fundamental right of individual liberty yields the right of self-ownership, which in turn yields the right to the fruits of one’s labor, etc. How, then, does one justify a libertarian theory of justice without resort to inherently contestable moral claims? If one can’t, then how can political libertarianism prevail by means of democratic (non-coercive) processes?
“A liberal society is, in Rawls’s words, “a cooperative venture for mutual advantage.” A stable liberal order is sustained by our willing compliance to fair principles of association that we each take to be instrumental to (and perhaps partly constitutive of) the satisfaction of our personal ends.”
Actually that would seem to be simply a free market, and the “willing compliance” clause plainly makes it incompatible with any governmant at all.
” If one can’t, then how can political libertarianism prevail by means of democratic (non-coercive) processes?”
Hold the phone. What does “democratic” have to do with “non-coercive”?
Libertarianism can’t prevail by political means, it can only prevail by private enterprise.
John, You pick up on something I’m really interested in. The market is, indeed, the system of cooperation for mutual advantage par excellence.
About “willing compliance” . . . What you say is what I used to think, but I think it’s trickier than that because of the funky logic of collective action. There are lot of circumstance in which people will voluntarily cooperate just in case they believe that others will cooperate (and not free-ride). That is, they need assurance of cooperation. Now, every free-rider is going to SAY that they will cooperatie. So avowed agreement to the terms of cooperation may not sufficient for assurance. However, a credible threat to coercively punish free-riders will often suffice to solve the assurance problem.
Now, the interesting thing here is that it may be that everyone is motivated to comply as long as others comply. The problem was simply informational–the inability to communicate a credible commitment to compliance. The credible threat of coercive punishment provides us with the confidence that there will not be much free-riding because most people won’t in the end get away with it. So we cooperate. Now, everyone may have been in exactly the same boat, and willing to comply if others do. In which case, no one is actually MOTIVATED by the prospect of coercive sanctions, people are simply ASSURED of the compliance of OTHERS by the presence of a credible coercive threat. So, we have fully voluntary and willing compliance, but only because of the credible threat of coercion.
It may seem paradoxical at first, but it’s not.
Whether the coercive threat really has to come from the state or not is another matter.
I’ll tell you right up front that I absolutely will not willingly comply with any such schemes to “solve” public goods problems by force. So you can forget about willing compliance.
But your solution is no solution anyway because it creates a more intractable public goods problem: Now you need government restrained. This can only be accomplished by voluntary donations of virtue because it’s flat impossible to force people to restrain government. But if voluntary efforts are sufficient to solve *this* public goods problem then there can’t be any justification for using government force to solve public goods problems in the first place.
John, I don’t think you understood the argument. There was no problem about the availability of virtue to begin with. There was a problem of information. Nobody is actually motivated by threat. I assumed that all are motivated to comply given that they believe others are as well. That is, nobody is disposed to unilaterally free-ride. So I was positing donations of virtue at the outset. But you still get the collective action problem. The second order problem gets solved by, yes, voluntary donations of virtue (my father is a retired chief of police, and a model of integrity and right conduct, and I’ll spit in your eye if you imply otherwise), savvy institutional design, and a kind of lateral iteration of the solution of the first order problem – basically, the police are policed by other police in a kind of convoluted circle.
I believe this does, in fact, work fairly well here in the US, although, of course, very far from perfectly.
“That is, nobody is disposed to unilaterally free-ride.”
I am disposed to unilaterally free-ride, and so are you.
Say the people on my block decide to hire a security patrol. I will definitely benefit from the patrols, my home will be slightly safer. But the benefit does not justify the cost, I’d prefer to spend my money otherwise. So I’m disposed to free-ride if they implement the patrols.
Can you offer an example where you think force is justified to reach voluntary compliance?
“I believe this does, in fact, work fairly well here in the US…”
If restraining government by voluntary donations of virtue works well then why is the effective choice on the ballot between socialism and socialism-lite?
I’ll tell you right up front that I absolutely will not willingly comply with any such schemes to “solve” public goods problems by force. So you can forget about willing compliance.
This is false. You are willing to enter into contracts enforced by law, are you not?
David Friedman presents Will’s argument above in MoF. To solve a collective action problem, an investor goes around to various potential customers and tells them that he intends to offer some public good like a damn, but only if all potential customers agree to commit themselves to funding it. Under Will’s argument stated above, these people would be willing to participate just in case everyone else participates and does not free ride. They are willing to lock themselves in to this collective bargaining process.
Of course, there still might be a significant free rider problem with strategic bluffing and so forth, especially when the number of potential customers is significantly large. But it is incorrect to say that you not willingly comply with any such schemes to “solve” public goods problems by force. You sign contracts all the time.
I’ll tell you right up front that I absolutely will not willingly comply with any such schemes to “solve” public goods problems by force. So you can forget about willing compliance.
This is false. You are willing to enter into contracts enforced by law, are you not?
David Friedman presents Will’s argument above in MoF. To solve a collective action problem, an investor goes around to various potential customers and tells them that he intends to offer some public good like a damn, but only if all potential customers agree to commit themselves to funding it. Under Will’s argument stated above, these people would be willing to participate just in case everyone else participates and does not free ride. They are willing to lock themselves in to this collective bargaining process.
Of course, there still might be a significant free rider problem with strategic bluffing and so forth, especially when the number of potential customers is significantly large. But it is incorrect to say that you not willingly comply with any such schemes to “solve” public goods problems by force. You sign contracts all the time.
I’ll tell you right up front that I absolutely will not willingly comply with any such schemes to “solve” public goods problems by force. So you can forget about willing compliance.
This is false. You are willing to enter into contracts enforced by law, are you not?
David Friedman presents Will’s argument above in MoF. To solve a collective action problem, an investor goes around to various potential customers and tells them that he intends to offer some public good like a damn, but only if all potential customers agree to commit themselves to funding it. Under Will’s argument stated above, these people would be willing to participate just in case everyone else participates and does not free ride. They are willing to lock themselves in to this collective bargaining process.
Of course, there still might be a significant free rider problem with strategic bluffing and so forth, especially when the number of potential customers is significantly large. But it is incorrect to say that you not willingly comply with any such schemes to “solve” public goods problems by force. You sign contracts all the time.
I’ll tell you right up front that I absolutely will not willingly comply with any such schemes to “solve” public goods problems by force. So you can forget about willing compliance.
This is false. You are willing to enter into contracts enforced by law, are you not?
David Friedman presents Will’s argument above in MoF. To solve a collective action problem, an investor goes around to various potential customers and tells them that he intends to offer some public good like a damn, but only if all potential customers agree to commit themselves to funding it. Under Will’s argument stated above, these people would be willing to participate just in case everyone else participates and does not free ride. They are willing to lock themselves in to this collective bargaining process.
Of course, there still might be a significant free rider problem with strategic bluffing and so forth, especially when the number of potential customers is significantly large. But it is incorrect to say that you not willingly comply with any such schemes to “solve” public goods problems by force. You sign contracts all the time.
I’ll tell you right up front that I absolutely will not willingly comply with any such schemes to “solve” public goods problems by force. So you can forget about willing compliance.
This is false. You are willing to enter into contracts enforced by law, are you not?
David Friedman presents Will’s argument above in MoF. To solve a collective action problem, an investor goes around to various potential customers and tells them that he intends to offer some public good like a damn, but only if all potential customers agree to commit themselves to funding it. Under Will’s argument stated above, these people would be willing to participate just in case everyone else participates and does not free ride. They are willing to lock themselves in to this collective bargaining process.
Of course, there still might be a significant free rider problem with strategic bluffing and so forth, especially when the number of potential customers is significantly large. But it is incorrect to say that you not willingly comply with any such schemes to “solve” public goods problems by force. You sign contracts all the time.
Ack, sorry about all the comments. Stupid computers!
Micha,
Will was taking issue with my assertion that willing compliance was incompatible with any government at all. If he means to say what you and DF are saying, fine. But how is that government?
“Then Ayn Rand is right. But the probability that everyone comes to agree with Ayn Rand is, well, zero, give or take.”
Coincidentally, that’s about where libertarianism shows up in the polls…
“Ack, sorry about all the comments. Stupid computers!”
There are no stupid computers, only stupid users, programmers, and writers.
Great piece. The systematic refutation was very well presented.
This is precisely the problem. Nobody has the balls to say they know whats right anymore so they try to accomodate every half assed theory that comes down the pipe. What the classical liberals thought is quite the opposite and is a system that at least has some backbone to it. People these days are just afraid.
Let me try another tack. If the argument for the political conception of libertarianism is “addressed toward people who already live in a basically liberal society, already benefit from it, and see themselves as having reason to go along with it,” as you suggest, then the question of neutrality among competing conceptions of the good doesn’t really arise, because relevant public accepts the desirability of some degree of toleration of diverse ways of life, at least on prudential grounds.
The debate thus turns on fundamental questions of political morality, namely an articulation of the requirements of a liberal theory of justice. But it is as difficult to conceive that we’ll arrive at anything approaching a rational consensus on a libertarian theory of justice, which is freighted with any number of controversial normative assumptions, than we will on any particular comprehensive conception of the good.
As you know, Rawls’s answer to this dilemma is the social contract: the principles of justice are those that emerge from the original position, which is designed so that no person’s parochial interests are privileged in the design of social institutions. The resulting principles of justice define the scope of person’s rights and are in that sense “neutral” between person’s competing interests. While reasonable minds might differ about what the contractual methodology actually requires, it is at the very least a powerful tool of social analysis.
But as Rawls points out (Political Liberalism, p. 265), this option is not open to the libertarian, for whom rights are typically posited as part of the natural social fabric, e.g., the fundamental right of individual liberty yields the right of self-ownership, which in turn yields the right to the fruits of one’s labor, etc. How, then, does one justify a libertarian theory of justice without resort to inherently contestable moral claims? If one can’t, then how can political libertarianism prevail by means of democratic (non-coercive) processes?
Let me try another tack. If the argument for the political conception of libertarianism is “addressed toward people who already live in a basically liberal society, already benefit from it, and see themselves as having reason to go along with it,” as you suggest, then the question of neutrality among competing conceptions of the good doesn’t really arise, because relevant public accepts the desirability of some degree of toleration of diverse ways of life, at least on prudential grounds.
The debate thus turns on fundamental questions of political morality, namely an articulation of the requirements of a liberal theory of justice. But it is as difficult to conceive that we’ll arrive at anything approaching a rational consensus on a libertarian theory of justice, which is freighted with any number of controversial normative assumptions, than we will on any particular comprehensive conception of the good.
As you know, Rawls’s answer to this dilemma is the social contract: the principles of justice are those that emerge from the original position, which is designed so that no person’s parochial interests are privileged in the design of social institutions. The resulting principles of justice define the scope of person’s rights and are in that sense “neutral” between person’s competing interests. While reasonable minds might differ about what the contractual methodology actually requires, it is at the very least a powerful tool of social analysis.
But as Rawls points out (Political Liberalism, p. 265), this option is not open to the libertarian, for whom rights are typically posited as part of the natural social fabric, e.g., the fundamental right of individual liberty yields the right of self-ownership, which in turn yields the right to the fruits of one’s labor, etc. How, then, does one justify a libertarian theory of justice without resort to inherently contestable moral claims? If one can’t, then how can political libertarianism prevail by means of democratic (non-coercive) processes?
“A liberal society is, in Rawls’s words, “a cooperative venture for mutual advantage.” A stable liberal order is sustained by our willing compliance to fair principles of association that we each take to be instrumental to (and perhaps partly constitutive of) the satisfaction of our personal ends.”
Actually that would seem to be simply a free market, and the “willing compliance” clause plainly makes it incompatible with any governmant at all.
” If one can’t, then how can political libertarianism prevail by means of democratic (non-coercive) processes?”
Hold the phone. What does “democratic” have to do with “non-coercive”?
Libertarianism can’t prevail by political means, it can only prevail by private enterprise.
John, You pick up on something I’m really interested in. The market is, indeed, the system of cooperation for mutual advantage par excellence.
About “willing compliance” . . . What you say is what I used to think, but I think it’s trickier than that because of the funky logic of collective action. There are lot of circumstance in which people will voluntarily cooperate just in case they believe that others will cooperate (and not free-ride). That is, they need assurance of cooperation. Now, every free-rider is going to SAY that they will cooperatie. So avowed agreement to the terms of cooperation may not sufficient for assurance. However, a credible threat to coercively punish free-riders will often suffice to solve the assurance problem.
Now, the interesting thing here is that it may be that everyone is motivated to comply as long as others comply. The problem was simply informational–the inability to communicate a credible commitment to compliance. The credible threat of coercive punishment provides us with the confidence that there will not be much free-riding because most people won’t in the end get away with it. So we cooperate. Now, everyone may have been in exactly the same boat, and willing to comply if others do. In which case, no one is actually MOTIVATED by the prospect of coercive sanctions, people are simply ASSURED of the compliance of OTHERS by the presence of a credible coercive threat. So, we have fully voluntary and willing compliance, but only because of the credible threat of coercion.
It may seem paradoxical at first, but it’s not.
Whether the coercive threat really has to come from the state or not is another matter.
I’ll tell you right up front that I absolutely will not willingly comply with any such schemes to “solve” public goods problems by force. So you can forget about willing compliance.
But your solution is no solution anyway because it creates a more intractable public goods problem: Now you need government restrained. This can only be accomplished by voluntary donations of virtue because it’s flat impossible to force people to restrain government. But if voluntary efforts are sufficient to solve *this* public goods problem then there can’t be any justification for using government force to solve public goods problems in the first place.
John, I don’t think you understood the argument. There was no problem about the availability of virtue to begin with. There was a problem of information. Nobody is actually motivated by threat. I assumed that all are motivated to comply given that they believe others are as well. That is, nobody is disposed to unilaterally free-ride. So I was positing donations of virtue at the outset. But you still get the collective action problem. The second order problem gets solved by, yes, voluntary donations of virtue (my father is a retired chief of police, and a model of integrity and right conduct, and I’ll spit in your eye if you imply otherwise), savvy institutional design, and a kind of lateral iteration of the solution of the first order problem – basically, the police are policed by other police in a kind of convoluted circle.
I believe this does, in fact, work fairly well here in the US, although, of course, very far from perfectly.
“That is, nobody is disposed to unilaterally free-ride.”
I am disposed to unilaterally free-ride, and so are you.
Say the people on my block decide to hire a security patrol. I will definitely benefit from the patrols, my home will be slightly safer. But the benefit does not justify the cost, I’d prefer to spend my money otherwise. So I’m disposed to free-ride if they implement the patrols.
Can you offer an example where you think force is justified to reach voluntary compliance?
“I believe this does, in fact, work fairly well here in the US…”
If restraining government by voluntary donations of virtue works well then why is the effective choice on the ballot between socialism and socialism-lite?
I’ll tell you right up front that I absolutely will not willingly comply with any such schemes to “solve” public goods problems by force. So you can forget about willing compliance.
This is false. You are willing to enter into contracts enforced by law, are you not?
David Friedman presents Will’s argument above in MoF. To solve a collective action problem, an investor goes around to various potential customers and tells them that he intends to offer some public good like a damn, but only if all potential customers agree to commit themselves to funding it. Under Will’s argument stated above, these people would be willing to participate just in case everyone else participates and does not free ride. They are willing to lock themselves in to this collective bargaining process.
Of course, there still might be a significant free rider problem with strategic bluffing and so forth, especially when the number of potential customers is significantly large. But it is incorrect to say that you not willingly comply with any such schemes to “solve” public goods problems by force. You sign contracts all the time.
I’ll tell you right up front that I absolutely will not willingly comply with any such schemes to “solve” public goods problems by force. So you can forget about willing compliance.
This is false. You are willing to enter into contracts enforced by law, are you not?
David Friedman presents Will’s argument above in MoF. To solve a collective action problem, an investor goes around to various potential customers and tells them that he intends to offer some public good like a damn, but only if all potential customers agree to commit themselves to funding it. Under Will’s argument stated above, these people would be willing to participate just in case everyone else participates and does not free ride. They are willing to lock themselves in to this collective bargaining process.
Of course, there still might be a significant free rider problem with strategic bluffing and so forth, especially when the number of potential customers is significantly large. But it is incorrect to say that you not willingly comply with any such schemes to “solve” public goods problems by force. You sign contracts all the time.
I’ll tell you right up front that I absolutely will not willingly comply with any such schemes to “solve” public goods problems by force. So you can forget about willing compliance.
This is false. You are willing to enter into contracts enforced by law, are you not?
David Friedman presents Will’s argument above in MoF. To solve a collective action problem, an investor goes around to various potential customers and tells them that he intends to offer some public good like a damn, but only if all potential customers agree to commit themselves to funding it. Under Will’s argument stated above, these people would be willing to participate just in case everyone else participates and does not free ride. They are willing to lock themselves in to this collective bargaining process.
Of course, there still might be a significant free rider problem with strategic bluffing and so forth, especially when the number of potential customers is significantly large. But it is incorrect to say that you not willingly comply with any such schemes to “solve” public goods problems by force. You sign contracts all the time.
I’ll tell you right up front that I absolutely will not willingly comply with any such schemes to “solve” public goods problems by force. So you can forget about willing compliance.
This is false. You are willing to enter into contracts enforced by law, are you not?
David Friedman presents Will’s argument above in MoF. To solve a collective action problem, an investor goes around to various potential customers and tells them that he intends to offer some public good like a damn, but only if all potential customers agree to commit themselves to funding it. Under Will’s argument stated above, these people would be willing to participate just in case everyone else participates and does not free ride. They are willing to lock themselves in to this collective bargaining process.
Of course, there still might be a significant free rider problem with strategic bluffing and so forth, especially when the number of potential customers is significantly large. But it is incorrect to say that you not willingly comply with any such schemes to “solve” public goods problems by force. You sign contracts all the time.
I’ll tell you right up front that I absolutely will not willingly comply with any such schemes to “solve” public goods problems by force. So you can forget about willing compliance.
This is false. You are willing to enter into contracts enforced by law, are you not?
David Friedman presents Will’s argument above in MoF. To solve a collective action problem, an investor goes around to various potential customers and tells them that he intends to offer some public good like a damn, but only if all potential customers agree to commit themselves to funding it. Under Will’s argument stated above, these people would be willing to participate just in case everyone else participates and does not free ride. They are willing to lock themselves in to this collective bargaining process.
Of course, there still might be a significant free rider problem with strategic bluffing and so forth, especially when the number of potential customers is significantly large. But it is incorrect to say that you not willingly comply with any such schemes to “solve” public goods problems by force. You sign contracts all the time.
Ack, sorry about all the comments. Stupid computers!
Micha,
Will was taking issue with my assertion that willing compliance was incompatible with any government at all. If he means to say what you and DF are saying, fine. But how is that government?
“Then Ayn Rand is right. But the probability that everyone comes to agree with Ayn Rand is, well, zero, give or take.”
Coincidentally, that’s about where libertarianism shows up in the polls…
“Ack, sorry about all the comments. Stupid computers!”
There are no stupid computers, only stupid users, programmers, and writers.