Murphy vs. Famous Keynesian
Ah, but it’s the poor man’s Krugman, Brad DeLong. (At this point I can’t be accountable for jokes at the expense of DeLong, since I can plead insanity in my defense. I couldn’t help it, guys. Voices are telling me to rip on him, honest.)
Anyway, I was foolish and decided to defend Sasha Volokh from DeLong’s psychoanalysis when it comes to libertarian rights theory. (Be careful to read my endnotes in the article; I’m not so sure I would be happy with Volokh’s views in general.) Specifically, Volokh said he thought it would be immoral to tax people, even to stop an asteroid that would destroy the earth.
DeLong said that this stance was proof that America’s libertarians were “completely insane,” so naturally I jumped in.
DeLong then repeats his claims in a follow-up post, making sure I understand what he and the rest of economists think on the matter. (I actually learned about lexicographic preferences when I got my PhD in economics from NYU, but it’s good that he doesn’t assume anything on the part of the reader.)
I actually tried twice to clarify my position in the comments, but I’m prepared to move on with my life.
Sasha, if you want to buy a little Seasteading plot, where we can live free from DeLong’s astronomical tyranny, make me an offer.
UPDATE: Oh I forgot to mention: On three separate occasions I was sure someone was rushing to my defense in the comments at DeLong’s site. First up was Daniel Kuehn. “OK Daniel probably doesn’t agree with me, but he’ll at least tell DeLong to stop with the mere assertions and name-calling, and grapple with my arguments, right?” Nope: “Brad, Keynes had it right eighty years ago when he wrote of Hayek that he provided an “example of how, starting with a mistake, a remorseless logician can end up in Bedlam”.”
Then I saw Jonathan Catalan, who posts at Mises.org all the time. Surely he would come to my aid! Nope: “Second, and this is in support of Professor DeLong’s overall point, the obvious argument against Dr. Murphy is, “Do you seriously believe that people will oppose spending on the construction of a device that could potentially protect the human race?”” (No Jonathan I don’t. That’s why you don’t need taxes to fund the project. Apparently DeLong et al. think there might be a serious possibility of such opposition, and that’s why they want to make darned sure we have the option of taxation at our disposal.)
Finally, I saw Alex Tabarrok. OK here we go, at last, someone who will say, “Stop the lynching! Let’s at least address some of the various points Murphy raised in the article!” Well, not quite: “You will be happy to know that in our textbook Tyler and I use blowing up asteroids as our primary example of a public good.”
Hmmph, I see how it is. Sasha, call me.
DK, do you still say that we don’t get called crazy excessively?
Dr. Murphy, they don’t deal with the actual ideas because they can’t defend their positions. How are they going to explain why people would need to be coerced thru taxation to stop an asteroid that would destroy the planet? An article that causes you to test libertarianism in an extreme situation is used by them to defend their “right” to tax in the event an asteroid is heading towards the planet. It seems like every time they chime in it is defend some tax or spending bill. I find their position funny, “Libertarians are insane, of course we need to be able to tax and spend to save the planet.” Come to think of it this is almost always the case they make. Global warming, we better tax and spend to save the planet. Banking crisis, we better tax and spend to save the planet. At this point, it is going to be hard for you to find people (especially Keynesians) to grapple with you on ideas.
I said in that thread that DeLong is definitely guilty of liberally slinging around adjectives that are disproportionate to the task at hand. I’ve criticized him for doing this to Hayek on my blog on several occassions.
I said in that thread that DeLong is definitely guilty of liberally slinging around adjectives that are disproportionate to the task at hand.
Where did you say that? (I’m asking in a neutral tone, not accusatory.)
Not in those words of course… this was the comment I’ve had in mind – http://consultingbyrpm.com/blog/2011/02/tom-woods-has-still-got-it.html
If you search on “Richard Moss” for my exchange with him. On my blog I’ve also said that Brad is too strenuous in his treatment of Hayek – conflating a view that unemployment is functional with a view that it is desirable.
Oh when you said “in that thread” I thought you meant on DeLong’s blog. So you admit that when you speak of Austrians amongst Keynesians, you are all knives. 🙂
You might be interested in this: http://factsandotherstubbornthings.blogspot.com/2010/11/prad-krulong-on-keynesian-political.html
I got him to comment on my blog because I said he should tone it down over Hayek.
This comment on DeLong’s post was funny.
Dan said in reply to Charles Peterson…
Charles Peterson said…
“Brad and most others here really nail it. Bravo! And this is especially important now, IMO, after the public good has been starved for so long in the name of economic growth but in the reality of a rising plutocracy.
Right now, the world needs public goods more than anything else. We need such public goods as climate stability, renewable energy and transportation, sustainable agriculture, sustainable demographics, sustainable healthcare, new vaccines and antibiotics, etc., etc.”
My response awaiting moderation was this,
Well good thing you don’t want socialism? I’m sure you got one or two things on your list the free market can handle.
Someone needs to make one of those xtranormal videos. My start of the video would be along these lines.
Obama: An asteroid will reach Earth in 6 months. If we don’t immediately put in place a global tax (pause for DeLong’s cheers) the world will end.
Libertarian: Why do you need to impose a tax to solve this problem?
Obama: What are you insane? The world will end if we don’t.
Libertarian: Why would the world just sit back and do nothing if you don’t tax us?
Obama: (silence)
Libertarian: What if we all can contribute voluntarily to a fund that would pay the first person to save the planet?
Obama: There won’t be enough contributions to save the planet.
Libertarian: If a person was not willing to contribute willingly to this cause, why would they pay the tax? They are already willing to die, right?
Obama: (silence)
“If a person was not willing to contribute willingly to this cause, why would they pay the tax? They are already willing to die, right?”
They wouldn’t contribute voluntarily because of the free loader and prisoner’s dillemma problems. They would contribute tax because that would internalize the cost, however inaccurately.
Note: I am a libertarian so I agree taxes are dumb, but its not like the argument you present is convincing or good or hard to refute or anything.
Yea, the whole world would just sit and do nothing because their neighbor might not pay. I think the prisoners dilemma is stupid to bring up in this situation.
Well, if Dan finds it stupid, that’s that.
besides, one could always publish the “total funds collected to date” online, so it does not even have to be a prisoner’s dilemma.
A good post Dr. Murphy. As usual, your best posts are the ones where I think to myself “well that’s obviously wrong… hmm, actually… ”
In other words, the right answer isn’t obvious if you spend a few moments thinking about it.
“You will be happy to know that in our textbook Tyler and I use blowing up asteroids as our primary example of a public good.”
Wouldn’t this be a perfect example of a ‘lumpy’ public good? It seems like a poor replacement for the lighthouse. Either you contribute to save the planet from destruction, or you die. Quite a high cost for free riders to risk.
Except they’re not paying that cost, which is the whole problem to begin with! They’re betting on enough other people coming through that they will live, even though they don’t pay. So they don’t have to make that choice.
But if it’s a sufficiently ‘lumpy’ public good, free-riding is not the obvious strategy. The benefits of free-riding must be weighed against the risk that the good will not be provided at all, and the attending cost to be borne if the good is not provided. We’re not talking about a few more molecules of clean air or slightly less pollution in a stream. Either the asteroid is destroyed and the world is left unharmed, or the asteroid is left unharmed and the world is destroyed. If it is generally agreed upon that the asteroid is going to hit the planet, would-be free-riders are literally risking their lives. With such a risk, being a ‘sucker’ is not so unattractive.
Would anyone here not pay to avert annihilation?
Again, because they think enough other people will.
Are you saying that people wouldn’t voluntarily contribute to help prevent an asteroid from destroying the planet or that there would be free riders so we must steal from everyone instead?
Does the free-rider problem apply to entire countries? For example, Canada might not contribute anything because they think USA will pay, and vice versa.
@Dan: Yes, in that it’s a non-trivial possibility there will be enough voluntary contributions. And that’s pretty easy to prove (just imagine that like with AGW, there will be “asteroid deniers” that spread misinformation, etc.). There’s a separate matter — which you are trying to blur — of whether, given such a situation, forcing people to contribute is preferable to the extermination of humanity. I think it is.
@Daniel_Hewitt: Relevance? Why do you need my opinion on that, anyway?
@ Silas: With AGW the governments around the world have been unable to solve the problem with taxes. They haven’t been able to put in place cap and trade, for example, on a global basis. Why would they be able to succeed in collecting taxes in the event of an asteroid heading towards earth. If the majority of the world believes it is a hoax then neither taxes or voluntary contributions will succeed. Well, not necessarily with voluntary contributions. If Bill Gates and other billionaires are willing to contribute half their money to charity, I’m pretty sure they would contribute to destroying an asteroid. Plus it would be less expensive to alter the trajectory of an asteroid than to control the weather.
As far as morality is concerned, I’m not trying to blur the issue. I find it immoral to steal or kill the innocent, no matter what. If there were Nazi’s in the concentration camps who were working on the inside to limit the atrocities, I would still say they are guilty of a crime. Maybe they were right and were able to limit the damage, which could be taken into account during sentencing or nobody would press charges, but they are still guilty of an act of aggression against the innocent. So if a group of people start stealing money to stop an asteroid my conclusion is the same. They are guilty of an act of aggression against the innocent, but hopefully a judge would take into account the circumstances or that nobody would press charges. The morality of killing or stealing doesn’t change in my mind when the going gets tough. The only thing that would change for me is the severity of the punishment for their crimes.
“Are you saying that people wouldn’t voluntarily contribute to help prevent an asteroid from destroying the planet or that there would be free riders so we must steal from everyone instead?”
Well, Dan, the whole issue on the table is “would such a tax amount to theft?” To assume it does merely begs the question.
@Dr. Callahan
I think there is a enough literature, by minds much greater than mine, that can better explain the view. But Silas didn’t take exception to the classification of taxes as theft. Since I directed the question to him, I don’t think we need to explain why we were both fine with saying taxes are theft. If you take exception to that definition feel free to spell out a different one.
Dan, I didn’t ask you to explain that view — I understand it quite well. I pointed out that you were guilty of question begging. Do you understand what that means?
Dr. Callahan, yes I do understand what question begging is. I don’t see the problem with it here. If neither of us object to calling taxes theft, why do I need to frame the question like I’m talking to you?
Sorry, Dan wins this dispute with Gene_Callahan. In the context of our discussion, I was not disputing that taxes=theft, so Dan can safely assume this for purposes or argumentation when he is only arguing with me, as he was.
Gene_Callahan, for his part, can stop requiring all words’ meaning to be predicated on what he thinks is justified.
Bob, at least you’ve always got your humour. Even when I think you are preaching (sorry) madness, you manage to get in a few chirps that make me chuckle. That must be worth something.
(No need to invoke the Batman vs The Joker theme from Brad’s comment thread.)
PS – In case you missed it (and seeing as I’m already commenting here on your blog), I left this comment on the DeLong thread:
Bob,
At the very, very least you are missing out on the problems of free-riding, as others have already pointed out.
At worst you are preaching MASS culpable homicide through deliberate inaction… Although, given the recurring theme of this thread, perhaps you could plead manslaughter on the basis of being of unsound mind.
This conversation really elevates the phrase “cutting off your nose to spite your face” to the astronomical level.
[Feel free to respond on either forum!]
At worst you are preaching MASS culpable homicide through deliberate inaction…
I think you may know this, since you say “at worst,” but let’s make sure we keep the analysis correct: I am NOT NOT NOT saying “it would be moral to refuse to contribute to a project to save the human race, hoping that enough other people chipped in.” No, I am saying that it would not be moral to FORCE such an (immoral) person to contribute.
So it’s not an issue of, say, whether a guy is immoral for watching someone drown. (Even here, we can invoke the Jackie Chiles defense of Seinfeld.) To make it analogous, there has to be a guy with a life jacket in his possession, someone is drowning, and the rest of us say, “Hey, throw that guy your life jacket!” The guy refuses, so we beat him up and take his life jacket.
Now if some of us say, “You know, it’s not obvious to me that that was moral,” I don’t think we should be classified as insane.
No, I am saying that it would not be moral to FORCE such an (immoral) person to contribute.
Afraid I disagree. That’s why I specifically described it as culpable homicide. To put it differently… If a member of my family drowned while someone deliberately withheld a spare life jacket, any decent justice system would find it unconscionable to excuse such behaviour on the defence of “non-coercion”. Similarly, we prosecute grossly negligent behaviour precisely because it can result in the same negative consequences as deliberately “evil” actions.
* And, yes, it may boil down to a matter of degrees. A taxation contribution towards saving the entire human race is not the same as viciously beating one human being to save another.
Just so, Stickman.
stickman, you are redefining the meaning of the concept “coercion”, e.g. “initiation of violence”.
Your emotional based logic leads to absurdity if it is completely fleshed out.
If a member of your family drowned while someone deliberately withheld a spare life jacket, then yes, that would be very disturbing, questionable, and revolting behavior. But it is NOT homocide, because the person withholding the lifejacket did not CAUSE your family member to be put into the water. If they did, then that would be homocide.
If we took your logic that refusing to help someone is homocide, then every single one of us commits homocide every day of the week, since we are all deliberately withholding at least some positive sum of money we don’t need to stay alive, from say, starving children in Africa. The fact that we don’t usually think about it every minute of every day doesn’t mean that we are not deliberately withholding that money from those people.
Since everyone is a murderer in your worldview, the concept loses all meaning.
I’m afraid that you are engaging in a vicious accusatory campaign of calling Bob a proponent of mass murder through inaction.
Your emotional based logic leads to absurdity if it is completely fleshed out.
*Sigh*
I invoked the use of my family (I could have used anyone’s) simply to make it relevant.
As for your assertion that it wouldn’t equate to homicide, may I suggest that you note the word “CULPABLE” that proceeds “homicide”.
Some further reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culpable_homicide
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_negligence
(Note the invocation of the “reasonable person’ standard… As I said earlier, it IS a matter of degrees. You may live in world that is composed of false dichoto… er, polar extremes, but the most of us see various shades of grey.)
*…precedes “homicide”…
Focus Stickman!
“I am NOT NOT NOT saying “it would be moral to refuse to contribute to a project to save the human race, hoping that enough other people chipped in.” No, I am saying that it would not be moral to FORCE such an (immoral) person to contribute.”
But why, Bob? Once you have acknowledged that they have a DUTY to contribute their share, then you should be able to take the next step: there is nothing immoral about compelling someone to do what is their duty to do.
Do you think all moral requirements are enforceable? If so, why?
Well, I don’t think they all should be enforced, that’s for sure. A society decides which ones it is useful / practical to enforce.
“A society decides…” Somehow I don’t think I will be a part of “society” when “it” makes that decision.
Very funny Bob. Because you can’t opt out, you know, at least not without going to live in Antartica or something.
Do you think in Anatopia it won’t be a collective decision as to what is a rights violation? It sure will, Bob. We are social creatures, and the truth of what I’m saying can’t be avoided by exotic schemes for re-arranging political life.
Oh, and this is why I think it is important to discredit “anarchism”: it takes good people, who might influence these social decisions for the better, and fills their heads with the delusion that they can opt out of them, and that if enough people do, there will be no need for social decisions at all!
But why, Bob? Once you have acknowledged that they have a DUTY to contribute their share, then you should be able to take the next step: there is nothing immoral about compelling someone to do what is their duty to do.
?!?!? Yeah I “should be able to” if I weren’t a pacifist. But I am.
This isn’t some weird approach to ethics that Rothbard invented. (Note, he wasn’t a pacifist.) There are plenty of people–whom I would say were “sane”–who put certain classes of actions, like using violence against others, off the table. Period.
Not a single person has answered my hypothetical case of Martians telling us to torture 1,000 infants to avoid the earth blowing up. The best I’ve seen is someone on DeLong’s blog saying, “If you don’t see the difference between torture and taxes, you’re an idiot” or something.
Well yeah, if your side gets to monopolize the ridiculous thought experiments, then my side will look foolish. But I want you to say out loud Gene what your position would entail in that case: “Bob, it wouldn’t be ‘murder’ if we had a duty to torture those infants. And if some wimp refused his moral duty, you should agree we could compel him to do it. Go read Aristotle.”
There are plenty of people–whom I would say were “sane”–who put certain classes of actions, like using violence against others, off the table. Period.
This is true. What makes the libertarian position here is not that it recognizes moral absolutes, i.e. that there are certain things that should never be done regardless of the consequences. It is the particular things libertarians claim fall into that category that are loopy.
Suppose someone thought that eating ice cream was absolutely immoral, so that if you had to choose between eating some ice cream and letting the earth get blown up you should let the earth get blown up. This, I think we can agree, would be a crazy view. It’s no defense of this view to point out that it would be wrong to torture a thousand infants to save the earth.
“Yeah I “should be able to” if I weren’t a pacifist.”
OK, that’s fine. But now you’re in a whole different camp than anarcho-capitalists, who think it is fine to employ violence against thieves, trespassers, molesters, etc. etc. etc.
Why is it fine? You should say I’m nuts for not recognizing the legitimacy of taking what is not someone’s property (i.e. the resources they are selfishly holding back from “society”) with force, if necessary.
You can’t say it’s sane for a pacifist to let the world blow up, but it’s insane for a Rothbardian to do so. Or at least, if you are saying that, you need to realize that your position has nothing at all to do with DeLong.
You can’t say it’s sane for a pacifist to let the world blow up, but it’s insane for a Rothbardian to do so.
Why not? Suppose someone thought that taxation was legitimate for any other purpose but that taxing for stopping asteroids was inherently immoral and should never be done no matter the consequences. Surely that view is crazy in a way pacifism is not.
“Why is it fine? You should say I’m nuts for not recognizing the legitimacy of taking what is not someone’s property…”
Well, what I meant was, as a pacifist, at least you are consistent in your abjuration of violence. I do think the position is nuts, and could not possibly be the basis for a workable society — in fact, every time a decent person becomes a pacifist, the society will get a little worse — but at least you are consistently nuts.
“Not a single person has answered my hypothetical case of Martians telling us to torture 1,000 infants to avoid the earth blowing up.”
Sorry, I missed that. This is very easy: Torturing infants is wrong. Getting people to do their fair share to stop the earth from being blown up is not wrong.
Sorry, I missed that. This is very easy: Torturing infants is wrong. Getting people to do their fair share to stop the earth from being blown up is not wrong.
Bob’s example is about torturing 1000 babies to stop the Earth from blowing up. Wouldn’t torturing 1000 babies be considered “getting people to do their fair share”?
Walter Sobchak: You know, Dude, I myself dabbled in pacifism once. Not in ‘Nam of course.
More seriously:
Not a single person has answered my hypothetical case of Martians telling us to torture 1,000 infants to avoid the earth blowing up.
Bob, I don’t think that this is true. Indeed, I think that it is at the very heart of the matter… It’s just that everyone rejects your conflation of what they regard as VASTLY different scenarios (taxation versus baby torturing). It’s this distinction that makes De Long et al. ring out the I-bomb (i.e. insane). As I wrote above: “[Y]es, it may boil down to a matter of degrees. A taxation contribution towards saving the entire human race is not the same as viciously beating one human being to save another.
Have you ever visited this planet? Maybe you’d like it.
You should literally see a neurologist, because there could be something very wrong with a brain willing to allow an asteroid to extinguish all of his genes, especially on the basis of some abstract moral principle with no defensible grounding in any sense. But then, I wouldn’t be surprised if you reject evolution, as you would any scientific theory, perhaps apart from chemistry, physics, and direct extensions. Scientific evidence is as foreign to you as the planet you may claim to inhabit.
Maybe it’s at least partially due to your born-again Christian status that you’d actually think of letting the world parish, rather than tax anyone a dime. Extremist fundamentalist Christians seem to revel in the expectation of the end of the world.
The only reason anyone of sound mind and logic pays any attention to you is to behold the freak show that is your public existence. I wonder how many clients this will cost you, as you can forget any aspirations you had regarding a debate with Krugman.
I welcome this sort of airing of neuropathology and hope it attracts a wide audience to finally begin to end the growing mass cultish insanity you call a political movement.
Translation: “I didn’t actually read your article, but I’m pretty sure the other guy’s caricature of it is all I need to know. Meanwhile, there is nothing cultish at all about our allegiance to the state, with its flags, its songs, its mass murders, its little children saluting and paying homage to pictures of their dear leaders on the wall, etc.”
Tom Woods > David S.
Hmmm. Aren’t you the pseudo-historian who fancies himself an economist and has the nerve to be arrogant and sometimes truculently sarcastic when belittling basic economic concepts that he doesn’t begin to understand, to say nothing of all of those of which he isn’t even aware?
Then, there is the literally crazy assumption you apparently make that I somehow favor radical nationalism and even cult of personalities. I’m anti-nationalist, so as usual, your total lack of intellectual rigor rears its ugly head.
I’m assuming you rendered that judgment based on Tom’s prodigiously researched work in history as praised by the American Journal of History. No?
That’s funny. A guy with grad degrees from Harvard and Columbia had a teaching position at Suffolk County Community College, and now is at the academically irrelevant Mises Institute.
I could find no publications in his name from any refereed history journals. I only see articles written for libertarian publications, none of which I suspect have the slightest bit of respect outside of small extremist libertarian circles.
He’s had some big selling books, but any moron can do that. Madonna did it with photos alone. Other examples of best-selling authors include Rosie O’Donnell, Adolph Hitler, and Pauly Shore.
And what is the American Journal of History? I found the Journal of American History, which is actually claims to be respectable.
@ David S, As Gary North would probably say, two of you wouldn’t make a half wit.
Wow, somebody must have peed in this guy’s cornflakes this morning.
“I am NOT NOT NOT saying “it would be moral to refuse to contribute to a project to save the human race, hoping that enough other people chipped in.” No, I am saying that it would not be moral to FORCE such an (immoral) person to contribute.” – Bob Murphy
What part of this did I fail to understand, pseudo-historian?
[I]You should literally see a neurologist, because there could be something very wrong with a brain willing to allow an asteroid to extinguish all of his genes, especially on the basis of some abstract moral principle with no defensible grounding in any sense. But then, I wouldn’t be surprised if you reject evolution, as you would any scientific theory, perhaps apart from chemistry, physics, and direct extensions. Scientific evidence is as foreign to you as the planet you may claim to inhabit.[/I]
It’s surprising you mention evolution. Humans seem to be the only species with elaborate legalistic arguments as to why failing to help a drowning person creates the same enforceable obligation to help as if you’d pushed them into the water. Maybe it’s the unusual level of cooperation in our species that creates this exaggerated sense of an “obligation to help others no matter what”, I don’t know. And far as I know chimps, gorillas, lemurs, and other types of primate do not force each other to cooperate, or applaud those who use force on innocents or rob them in order to “help others”.
“And far as I know chimps, gorillas, lemurs, and other types of primate do not force each other to cooperate, or applaud those who use force on innocents or rob them in order to “help others”.”
The libertarian role model: the chimp!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPznMbNcfO8
“rob them in order to “help others””
Nope, they savagely kill one another for their own inscrutable reasons, but at least they are not cursed with law.
“@ David S, As Gary North would probably say, two of you wouldn’t make a half wit.”
Seeing that Gary North is a Christian reconstructionist (a.k.a bait and switch libertarian) who wants to transform the USA into an authoritarian theocracy which castigates heretics, apealing to him as an authroity isn’t going to do you any good.
Aren’t you that guy that failed to notice that even Delong has updated his post. Are you the same guy who doesn’t read the other side, acts like a troll and spews forth massive ignorance and stupidity. Then you go insult and misunderstand the the blog writers view, even though it’s been stated on this site quite often. Or is it someones religious views are too nuanced for you to understand.
Aren’t you the loser who fancies himself a genius and has the nerve to be arrogant and sometimes truculently sarcastic when belittling basic economic, historical, factual, academic, scientific and religious concepts that he doesn’t begin to understand, to say nothing of all of those of which he isn’t even aware
Also you were called cultist for spewing forth a terrible rehashing of someone else’s viewpoint..?
I guess getting a PhD from Columbia is as easy as getting a degree from University of Phoenix in communications these days. You probably have no understanding of what actually qualifies as someone being a Historian either.
And I guess you think all historians sit around publishing, teaching, traveling, editing, and selling hundreds of thousands of history books(nobody reads history books) and having a family. I guess if your not doing all of those at the very top of field of all of them at the same time, your just a psuedo-historian.
Perhaps you should check someone’s web pages if they’ve ever published in journals, like the The American Historical Review. Or is that too difficult for your feeble mind?
Even the lowest scum would be ashamed of having you read their website, let alone Brad Delong. You know nothing of academia, historians, economics, science or philosophy. Stop being a troll and get out from under that bridge.
Who pisses in your cereal bowl every morning? I want that job.
*like*
You like that comment?
Well I think it’s funny, sure.
If someone literaly pissed in his cereal every morning, I would certainly object.
But yes – I chuckled.
Bob – so since that was directed at Brad, I of course emphasized the fact that I agree with him and that it’s “unreasonable” to disagree on that point (I don’t think that word is too strenuous for the occassion).
But I hope you could gather from my comment that I do understand your critique of Brad – I told him your logic and Volokh’s logic is completely sound. The logic isn’t what’s in error – it’s the adoption of the assumptions that lead to your conclusions and it’s the application of the logic to the circumstance that’s the real problem.
I see this in much the same way that I see your past squabble with Krugman – you guys are two ships passing in the night in a lot of ways. I see what you’re saying – and perhaps Brad sees what you’re saying, perhaps you were right in your Mises piece that he doesn’t (he certainly missed at least a few of Volokh’s points), but I don’t think that’s where the fundamental difference lies.
PS – I like Brad DeLong as “the poor man’s Krugman” 🙂
I am disappointed that neither Delong or his commentators seem willing to offer poor libertarians a way out of the darkness. If we are to ditch our crazy ideas then we at least need to be told what the good ones are. I see that the right approach appears to be some kind of conditional morality, but I need to know under which conditions morality changes and how it should change in those conditions.
It’s all well and good someone like Daniel Kuehn pointing out that deductive logic is only a tool to be used in certain circumstances and that it should be abandoned when we don’t care about it. He is a progressive. Crazy libertarians need to be told in which circumstances deductions from first principles(aka moral reasoning) is not valid in determining what is moral. We need to be told how to discern when we should care about morals or not. Why won’t they help?
You’re disappointed that I don’t supply new axioms to make my critique of the workability of dependence on axiomatic thinking more “workable”.
This is certainly a critique I haven’t heard before.
I don’t think you really understand what “axiomatic thinking” is. Murphy’s conclusions aren’t based on any type of axiom. They are based on a moral belief, i.e. that theft is bad.
You’re right I’m using “axiom” too broadly here.
I don’t think the point of contention is the moral belief that theft is bad, though. It think the point of contention is very likely to be “what constitutes theft”. Although perhaps there’s a difference of opinion on both.
Yes, though, you’re right – I have been using “axiom” too liberally. I tried to clear that up in my response to your comment in the post on my blog. But my essential point still remains – whether the starting point is axioms, definitions, or assumptions (and I understand each is different), the libertarian/Austrian nexus of thinkers is far too dependent on logical derivations from their own set of axioms/definitions/assumptions (whichever the case may be), which are sometimes incomplete, and sometimes flat out wrong. That central point stands even if I’ve been sloppy with the use of the word “axiom”.
But the point doesn’t hold unless you show it to be true by showing us where the premises are incomplete or wrong.
I illustrated the thought process regarding taxation and morality, by the way:
1a. Theft is bad.
1b. Theft is when you take something against someone else’s will or without their consent.
2. Taxation is theft.
3. Taxation is bad.
So, either you disagree that theft is bad (which you prob. don’t) or your disagreement is on the definition of theft. Or, you believe that a little bit of bad is justified to allow more good (i.e. the necessary evil argument).
Which, btw, I don’t necessarily disagree with. I approach anarchy from a completely different, non-moralistic angle.
Right.
So, isn’t then a question of moral preference, which is subjective? Why criticize based on the use of deductive logic, and not on the premises… which is what actually matters.
“Crazy libertarians need to be told in which circumstances deductions from first principles(aka moral reasoning) is not valid in determining what is moral. ”
Tezqilla, that is easy: all circumstances.
Jonathan, the place your axiomatic system goes bad is pretty obvious:
“1b. Theft is when you take something against someone else’s will or without their consent.”
You forgot to add “Unless they have an obligation or duty to surrender that good.”
Illustration: When someone fathers a child, he has created an obligation to support the child. If he refuses to do so, the proper authorities may compel him. That *is not* theft.
And I should note – “axiom” is used in a lot of different ways. Mathematicians use the word “axiom” in the way that Austrians would use the word “definition”. There’s nothing self-justifying about mathematical axioms in the way that Mises claims self-justification for the action axiom. I have no idea how philosophical logicians use the word in a strict sense. But in a more general sense – thinking of axioms/assumptions/definitions more broadly – I think my central premise and concern still stands.
An axiom is a premise which is self-evident; i.e. non-debatable truth. (It’s not to say that the axiom can’t be challenged, it’s just to say that it usually isn’t, because its truth is taken for granted.)
It’s true that the use of “axiom” is looser in mathematics (although, they distinguish between the type of axiom), but we’re talking about strict verbal logic here.
Why do you assume moral reasoning is the same as deductions from first principles.
Yes, I should have pointed that out in my response above. Teqzilla’s “aka” is wrong. Moral reasoning is not the same thing as deductive logic. Teqzilla might consult Aristotle for an extended argument as to why they are different.
I think even though nothing economics dictates says that people will spend money on the asteroid shield initiative (ASI as it will from now on be known), a lot of people still will. After all, nothing says people should vote, or recycle, or buy one brand of computer over another. Its impossible to tell what people will gain satisfaction from. Despite all that, however, you can say with 100% certainty that almost everyonee would give an ASI, just as I can say with 100% certainty that I will wake up tomorrow in the bed I am writing this from.
There are numerous forces that would push people to contribute to an ASI, such as social pressure and media agenda setting.
The main problem with taxing for the ASI is that people wouldn’t be free to choose between alternate ASIs. Even if you assume a completely benevolent and competent government commitee in control over the whole thing, there might be two or more ways of doing things. You could democratize the process of how much money should go to which way of defending the earth, but essentially this is the kind of production allocation problem markets successfully solve all the time.
A middle ground might be open up a market for the ASI for a while, and then tax everyone and distribute proportionally to all the ASI providers.
But thats only an approximation of the market result, and ultimately unecessary. If it really comes down to it private violence via mobs and such will be able to extract a few extra pennies far more efficiently than state violence could. Best of all, and unlike state violence, such events would be subject to proper court procedure against each individual offending party after the whole debacle finishes. Assuming the earth makes it out alive, the common law could be revised for circumstances of “the end of earth as we know it” which would be a boon to any an-cap society!
“The main problem with taxing for the ASI is that people wouldn’t be free to choose between alternate ASIs. Even if you assume a completely benevolent and competent government commitee in control over the whole thing, there might be two or more ways of doing things.”
Well, that could be a problem, or a boon. Consider a situation where everyone contributes to the ASI of their choice… and 100 ASIs get 10% built by the time the asteroid arrives!
My extended thoughts here: http://factsandotherstubbornthings.blogspot.com/2011/02/if-you-think-its-been-too-long-since.html
The solution that Brad DeLong supports rests upon the assumption that a voluntary solution would never work. That assumption is what your article challenged. That is what the debate should be focused upon. It looked to me like Jonathan Catalan was trying to steer the discussion back that way, as Brad and his commenters were unwilling to scrutinize that assumption.
I assume you are equating “voluntary” with “non-state”? This is one assumption that his post could rest comfortably on. There are others, though:
– He could be assuming that non-state solutions could potentially work but that we should not take the chance that it would work (given the non-trivial prospect that it won’t work) and that it is morally valid to not take the chance that non-state solutions would work.
– He could also assume that non-state solutions have a very high likelihood of working (perhaps higher than state solutions), but that it is entirely legitimate to pursue both public and prive solutions.
These two seem more likely to be his assumptions than a fundamental assumption taht non-state solutions “would never” work, do they not?
Daniel, state vs. non-state is a good way to put it…..thanks. Brad never spent any time on his underlying assumption, but chose to frame the issue as state solution vs. no solution at all. Your first possibiliy is simply a variant of “non-state solutions would never work”, is it not? And I honestly don’t see the point of pursuing both public and private solutions if private solutions can get the job done. I don’t want to assume too much, but I think that DeLong himself might even agree. You know, the whole “public goods are necessary because of free-riders and externalities” thing?
Well I would have thought that we cannot say that private solutions would never get things done and we cannot say that private solutions would always get things done, but only that they would get it done with some probability.
Given that, I don’t see the problem with being pro-public-asteroid-prevention and pro-private-asteroid-prevention, right?
You’re right – if know that “private solutions can get the job done”, then the only reason to pursue a public solution is if it’s more efficient (which isn’t likely). But who would be willing to claim that they know that “private solutions can get the job done”?
Yeah, I know you don’t see a problem with being in favor of both. I get that. Some of us do have an objection to the public portion of it because it is coercive, i.e. you support the coercive force that backs the public solution, yet the public solution may or may not work. The private solution does not have this inherent dilemma……if you don’t think it would work then don’t contribute.
Daniel –
1. Right, but the critique that it is coercive is different from the critique that private solutions obviate the need. The second doesn’t really work from a libertarian or a non-libertarian perspective. The first does work from a libertarian perspective.
2. And the whole coercion argument is dependent, of course, on libertarian assumptions about coercion and rights.
Fair enough. The columns are getting skinnier and skinnier here. A hint to wrap it up, I guess. I realize that you don’t see taxes as necessarily coercive, that I do, and that these different assumptions are a key contributor to our divergent opinions.
No, actually I do think the state is coercive, but I think the property rights regime (and thus the market) is too, and that liberty should not be conceived of as the opposite of coercion, so much as the arrangement of these coercions in a way most consistent with human creativity, potentiality, etc.
I don’t mean to drag this out – I know it’s getting narrow – but I just want to note that strictly speaking I’m not sure I’m in the “taxes aren’t coercive” camp… my thoughts on this are still evolving, though.
I for one, would be 100% willing to claim with 100% certainty that the private solution would always have more statistcal likelyhood of success than the public one.
e.g. if we had two cases where there are a trillion planets (with sentient beings capable of diverting an asteroids) with a trillion asteroids heading towards them, and in the one case they all let the market take care of the problem, and in the other case they all choose a public option, then I am saying with 100% certainty more planets would survive in case one.
If a private solution was successful and I was one of the contributors I would think the non-contributors owe us. That they free-rode.
Your position (or the one you suggest is worth considering) is like arguing that it’s not appropriate to have public infrastructure investments because people make private infrastructure investments.
Most advocates of public infrastructure I’m aware of don’t (1.) believe private infrastructure isn’t ever built, or (2.) have any animosity towards private infrastructure.
Pointing out the existence of private toll roads doesn’t get you very far when you acknowledge and applaud the existence of private toll roads and see no contradictions between their existence and a public infrastructure program.
Advocates of public infrastructure also make the same assumption – that private infrastructure cannot work (externalities again). I don’t have anything from DeLong on this, but since he is a poor man’s Krugman (that was funny!), here is Krugman himself:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/07/transit-economics/
Externalities say that private infrastructure is not optimal.
That is very, very different from saying that it will not emerge or that when it does emerge it’s not a good thing.
I suppose we have to nail down what we mean by “it works”. I don’t think private infrastructure “works” insofar as I don’t think the market alone provides an optimal level of infrastructure investment. I do think private infrastructure “works” insofar as I recognize there is some privatee investment in infrastructure and it is a beneficial investment.
How about this Daniel – neither are perfect, but private infrastructure is less optimal and public infrastructure is more optimal. Does that state your view fairly?
Of course, I think you should elaborate on what the optimal level of infrastructure investment is, since you see it as a macro problem to be solved. You probably know that I see it as a series of many micro problems. i.e. this road takes in more revenue than it spends in costs and therefore provides a net benefit, that roads takes in less than it spends and therefore is not beneficial. Maybe I shouldn’t even use the word problem, I just can’t think of a better term at the moment.
I see externalities as a fundamentally micro problem, not a macro problem. What is macro about it?
Your understanding of the criteria for optimality seems to be the same as mine too – total marginal costs equals total marginal benefits.
Not sure where we’re disagreeing then… perhaps on social costs and benefits and the extent to which costs and benefits are internalized? That’s the fundamental issue, after all, but if you’re coming at this from a marginalist, subjectivist, micro perspective that seems like it’s the only thing that could lead us to substantially different conclusions.
Daniel, I do not think that there are externalities when it comes to roads and I do think that public infrastructure’s immunity from profit/loss does not allow cost/benefit to be determined. That’s our fundamental disagreement. The columns are skinny again, so if you want to post again I will read it but not reply. Thanks for giving me some stuff to think about.
The first is a fundamental disagreement – I agree that profit/loss mechanisms aren’t available in public provisions and that this is an impediment. I don’t think that’s a reason not to do things publicily, but I completely agree with you the problem exists.
Ya – good discussion – just wanted to clarify my agreement with you on this point. I gotta say, the ability to disagree wihtout a ton of hostility on this blog is nice.
OK, but in my mind, here is what Brad DeLong is doing:
“These wacko libertarians think it is immoral for the government to tax people in order to give food and education to people. But if we don’t eat, we starve. What morons! They are literally insane. The Sabbath was made for man.”
Can you agree that would be a rather unfair way of arguing?
Or, taking the tradeoff as inevitable (as Silas wants us to do), how about this?
“Some people think it would be immoral to torture 5 billion people to death, in order to avert an asteroid from killing 6 billion people. How insane! The Sabbath was made for man.”
See, it’s not enough to assert, over and over and over again, that we are nuts. I understand that DeLong, Silas, DK, and others think it is moral to steal a little bit of money from 6 billion people, in order to blow up an asteroid. Fine. But let’s generalize. What are the principles involved with that snap judgment? Or, is the very idea of using principles to solve such problems, a fruitless path? (I don’t ask that sarcastically.) Like the muscle man said above, it’s not enough just to tell us we’re insane. Explain to us the rival approach, and it can’t just be, “What Would DeLong Do?”
It’s not a snap judgment. It’s just that I didn’t spell out my moral reasoning on this since it doesn’t fall into some kind of gray area. You’re just assuming there’s no principle behind my judgment because you can’t fathom that there would be one. But I’d gladly sketch it out.
The governing principle follows the general pattern of the golden rule and categorical imperative: I should do that which I self-interestedly wish all similarly situated beings would do, on the basis that if I would regard it as optimal, so would they. That gives an outline of how one can engage in principled behavior — even of the sort “don’t break the confessor’s vow, or lie, even if the world is at stake” — yet not commit yourself to condemning humanity in the asteroid situation.
In contrast, your entire argument for why it’s wrong to do one wrong to prevent a worse one amounts to, “cause, like, it’s against my principles and stuff.” (And it’s not an assumption on my part — that’s about the only justification you’ve ever given in the many years I’ve seen you address topics like this [going back to 2002]. I haven’t even seen the most rudimentary of game-theoretics in the face of threat situations, which would actually help your case.)
What does food and education have to do with this, Bob? You’re completely missing the point of “the sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath”. Replace “sabbath” with “property rights” and you’ll realize why you’re not getting his claim.
You write: “I understand that DeLong, Silas, DK, and others think it is moral to steal a little bit of money from 6 billion people, in order to blow up an asteroid.”
But you’re missing the whole point that it’s not stealing because stealing is predicated on a right to property which is a functional legal fiction which (like the Sabbath) is for our benefit and not the object of obeisance.
The rival approach is recognizing that there is nothing innate about this idea called rights. Rights are the product of an emergent social order that we all recognize because they are (1.) highly functional, and (2.) highly consistent with visions of human dignity. The principle is to pursue the most functional path and the path that is most consistent with human dignity. Maintaining a fiction like property rights for its own sake with an asteroid hurtling towards Earth is not functional, nor is it consistent with human dignity. A position that priveleges a social fiction over the lives of billions of people is also not one that brings words like “principle” or “morality” to mind. It seems more like a depraved idolatry towards a social construction. It is, as DeLong points out, analagous to considering man to be made for the Sabbath rather than the Sabbath made for man.
I like Silas’s point above too. You’ve gotta realize that your appeal to principles sounds odd to us, because you don’t appear to be appealing to principles so much as assertions. Your whole moral schema has nothing at all to do with “the good”, and everything to do with “following these rules is the same as the good”.
That just begs the question though – what’s so “good” about those rules? What is “good” about your understanding of property rights. I can see how it is functional and enriching under normal circumstances, but what is it about property rights that makes unswerving adherence to them “good”.
The only thing that would elevate a claim about the general functionality and dignity of property rights into the universal moral value you attach to it is if it were some sort of thing with its own morally significant reality apart from ourselves and apart from society. Otherwise you have no real basis to elevate it as a univesal moral metric.
Thanks, Daniel. It certainly says a lot when Bob has gotten you and me to agree on something!
I add that it’s fine to appeal to a principle (such as against infringing property rights) in a case like this — but you have to then justify *that principle* as part of a sensible moral framework. Bob seems to think invoking a principle is enough, and that principle is little more than an assertion he shouldn’t do this.
There certainly are justifications you can give that have “crazy” implications that are nonetheless sensible — but Bob never gives them.[1] I can confirm that this goes back to our days on anti-state.com in 2002, when we would debate such scenarios, in which a principled stand against e.g. giving in to threats was defensible. But _even then_, Bob would never actually defend the principle, just assert it. So yeah, this inscrutability has a long pedigree.
[1] For example, to expand on the bit about confessors: I would say that it’s wrong for a confessor to squeal about a penitent’s plan to destroy the world, but unlike Bob, I can _justify_ the underlying principle rather than assert it. Here, I would say that I only know of this plan because of my confessor’s vow, and that “If I would disregard it in the case of the world being at stake, I would never learn about such things in the first place” — so yes, viewed locally, I’m sacrificing that world, but willing to make the sacrifice doesn’t make the world better off because such a vow was necessary for me to even learn of the plan.
Also to echo Silas –
What you provide is a stock answer based on a rule which you make no effort at all to justify the moral content of. That seems to me to be the definition of “snap judgement”.
“I understand that DeLong, Silas, DK, and others think it is moral to steal a little bit of money from 6 billion people, in order to blow up an asteroid.”
No, Bob, you don’t understand at all. We (at least me, and I suspect others) DO NOT REGARD THIS AS THEFT. That is because this is something people would have an obligation to contribute to, and to compel someone to fulfill their obligations is just.
Who decides whats an obligation and what isn’t?
I am sincerely curios. My initial reaction is “well this could be an excuse for just about anything”
Avram –
I think that’s a tough question. But just because it’s a tough question doesn’t mean that you reach for “there’s no obligation” as the answer. In other words – our uncertainty or inability to precisely nail down what constitutes a genuine obligation should not be suspect simply because Bob claims to know exactly how to nail it down. It’s better to be roughly right than precisely wrong. Bob is mistaking moral decisiveness for moral discernment.
Everybody is going to have a different view on this, which is precisely why open societies are so important for arbitrating these questions.
Not quite, Gene. I’ve found I’m able to criticize Bob’s moral stance _without_ changing the plain meanings of words. If I were a catburglar removing loot from the palace of an ultra-corrupt, immoral government, I would still say, “Oh, I stole their ill-gotten loot back”, even as I would deem such an act (potentially) justified on a moral level.
Silas –
You think the linguistic summer-sault is in saying that taxation is not theft? This seems absurd. It’s you and Bob that are changing the plain meaning of words, and the plain understanding of words.
The vast majority of people don’t consider “taxation” and “theft” to be interchangeable terms. Now, the fact that the vast majority of people don’t think something doesn’t make it true – but if the argument is over the “plain meaning” of the term, it’s not Gene and I that are in the hot seat. Your view and Bob’s view may be right (I don’t think it is, but it may be) – but it is certainly not the “plain meaning of the word” if it is right.
DK said:
In other words – our uncertainty or inability to precisely nail down what constitutes a genuine obligation should not be suspect simply because Bob claims to know exactly how to nail it down. It’s better to be roughly right than precisely wrong. Bob is mistaking moral decisiveness for moral discernment.
Everybody is going to have a different view on this, which is precisely why open societies are so important for arbitrating these questions.
I really think I must be taking crazy pills. Volokh said “I realize this sounds absurd, but I’m going to bite the bullet and say I don’t think it’s moral to tax people to blow up the asteroid.”
Brad DeLong declares that this view is insane.
I rush to Volokh’s defense and say “It’s not insane, it’s perfectly reasonable, and I actually agree with him. Let’s all talk about the general principles involved here. Let’s tweak the example to something more severe, like torturing infants, to test Brad’s sure-fire conviction that Volokh is insane.”
To which DeLong simply repeats, “No Bob you guys are insane.”
And now, somehow, Daniel Kuehn has described this situation as one where I am engaging in moral certitude, as opposed to the open discussion in a free society that he favors.
Bob – you think it is clear it is immoral and you base that clarity on a rigid, presumably simple definition from which moral import can be derived, correct? Isn’t that certitude? How is that not certitude? I’m not criticizing you for talking to people about it – I’m saying I think you’re wrong. I’m glad you’re being wrong and choosing to talk it through with people – that’s definitely preferable to being wrong and closing yourself off to discussion!
Here’s the thing, though – all I’m saying is that I think we desperately need an open society because I don’t think these are easy questions (it should be awfully easy in the particular case of the asteroid, but intermediate cases aren’t especially easy). My position NEEDS an open society. Your position seems certain enough to me that I don’t see how you would require an open society to come to a decision in the same way that I do. Presumably you just need one really smart ethical philosopher making what limited public decisions there are to make.
On the Brad/Sasha thing – I’m of the opinion that Brad’s position on the asteroid is right, but I’m between the two of them on their characterization of this conflict. I cringe at saying that Sasha and your position is a “reasonable” one, but I also wouldn’t go as far as to say you are “insane”.
Your arguing over whether taxation is or is not theft, then complain when ethics and morals are involved. This is odd because it’s inherently an ethical question. I don’t get it. On that point, it sounds like people want to change the definition of theft based on situation. For Example, it’s not theft if I steal your gun from you to keep you from killing yourself. Thats the line of reasoning I am seeing from people here.
Ethics aside what can economics tell about such a situation. Lets say we tax the world to fund a project that will prevent the collision coarse of a massive astroid. It may be that we have to impoverish a vast majority of the global population to fund such project.
Lets say that throughout the process we impoverish 5 billion of the 6 billion people. Finally, on the day of reckoning the astroid comes, and goes, missing our planet entirely. Woops!
Now 5 billion are dead or starving because we funded a project that was never needed in the first place.
If it can be shown, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that we may die from an astroid about to hit earth then I think it’s acceptable to assume that people would be willing to fund such a project voluntarily.
If economic calculation addresses all things relating to the allocation of resources then we have to ask. Why is it that we conveniently or situationally pretend that the problems economic calculation presents would not apply in doomsday scenarios.
Lets assume that the astroid WILL smash into earth and terminate human life as we know it. We can pretend that various independent scientific organizations come to the same dire conclusion that this will be inevitable. So that the general public is convinced of this impending doomsday. By what manner has this collective organization, that is taxing the world, proven that it is competent enough to address the problem adequately. Are we just suppose to assume that they will? How do we know this socialist program will be built correctly to perform the functions desired? Is this organization subject to the scrutiny of it’s constituents? What if the agency’s performance in constructing our rescue device begins to falter? What other alternatives does man have to choose from?
Wouldn’t we prefer to choose for ourselves which agency to support. Giving us the opportunity to review which agency that can be shown most competent to complete the task? Allowing people to coalesce behind the most promising avenue’s?
Ethics aside(Which is what you are inherently talking about when your arguing what theft is or is not), how does universal taxation solve our problem of imminent doom. Why does economic calculation conveniently not apply to this particular situation?
Silas: “Not quite, Gene. I’ve found I’m able to criticize Bob’s moral stance _without_ changing the plain meanings of words.”
Sorry, Silas, I will refrain from giving you credit for this again.
And, as DK said, it is obviously you (and other anarcho-whatevers) who is changing the ordinary meaning of these words. It is one thing to say that your meaning SHOULD be adopted, but to claim it is already the “plain” meaning of these words is absurd.
“Who decides whats an obligation and what isn’t?”
Avram, as DK says this is a hard question, but I don’t see that it is one bit harder than “Who decides what is a rights violation?”
Yes, Gene, the central issue *is*, in fact, the one of whether taxation is justified in this case. All arguments should directly address that.
Which it’s why it’s kind of thick-headed of you and Daniel_Kuehn to feel that, in addition to justifying taxation in this case, you must also somehow prove that it’s “not theft” because, apparently, “it’s not theft if Gene feels it’s your obligation”, and if it takes changing the plain meaning of words, then so be it!
If you want to justify taxation here, great! Justify taxation! Don’t dilute your position with a tangential justification of why words should be bent in the direction of your own parochial meaning.
I know this post misses the point completely, but I already agree with Dr. Murphy, and don’t really have anything to add.
I do like the parallels between global warming and the asteroid scenario though. There would be asteroid deniers…”The asteroid will miss by a wide margin!”. Asteroid alarmists “It may already be too late to stop the asteroid and life will end as we know it!”. Survivalists “We have had asteroids hit this planet before. We need to spend our resources preparing for the change in climate and surviving after the hit, instead of trying to prevent the collision, which may not work.”
So I think, whatever is the right answer for climate change is probably also the right answer for deadly asteroid impacts
It also parallels X foreign invader will come and wipe out our way of life and kill our children if the government doesn’t do A, B and C. But freeriders aren’t willing to make the sacrafice, so we have to force them too…
or people won’t give to charity on their own, so we have to force them to, or poor people will resort to crime. Can’t have freerider’s benefitting from low crime from my charitable donations…
I’m sensing a pattern, but like I said, I’m missing the point…
*Sigh*. This is the kind of cop-out I see from libertarians all the time. “Governments have an incentive to lie about threats to get more power. Ergo, no such threats are ever real and can be safely ignored.”
That’s not my argument at all. I didn’t say any of those things should be ignored. In fact I didn’t make any statement at all except that the mental exercises are similar.
You were using the similarity as your basis for rejecting those means. My summary was fair: You see the whining about crime and are unconvinced taxes are needed to solve it. You see the whining about terrorists and are unconvinced of a need for a war on terror. Then you lump this in with warnings of climate change, collecting them all within the set of “warnings we should ignore because of the related bad solutions”.
At that point, it was fair to say that you dismiss all such warnings on the grounds that it could be a power grab.
If you think there’s a big difference that makes the reasoning not work for AGW, great! So do I! Then, um, why did you reason as if they opposite were true?
No, you’re inferring a particular grouping that I did not imply, and attributing a conclusion based on that inference to me. I assure you I am not making that conclusion, no matter how much you insist I am.
What makes the link interesting to me is pulling the argument out of some hypothetical asteroid situation into subjects that we deal with everyday. I’m showing that the questions and the debates aren’t fundamentally any different for the asteroid than thay are for terrorism, AGW, etc.
So it’s not any more insane to be libertarian on the asteroid issue than it is to be libertarian on the AGW or terrorism issue…
O…kay, so now you’re back to “they’re the same”. And back to the same nebulous argument that “in similar areas, these warnings are just a power grab, so this one must not deserve a response involving any coercion whatsoever”.
If you want to just ah-gee-shucks about the parallels, then own up to them.
What if Grescodid means that he doesn’t believe that the State will be able to solve the problem or the free market would handle the problem better? What if he isn’t bringing a power grab into the equation like you are?
@Dan. Exactly. But even further, by extension, anyone who thinks that taxes shouldn’t be used on AGW is insane (right wing) and anyone that thinks that taxes shouldn’t be used on the war on terror is insane (left wing). So who ISN’T insane now?
@Dan: then maybe he should make *that* argument instead, and maybe you should learn to differentiate between two arguments that reach the same conclusion?
Just a thought.
@ Silas: That is the argument I thought he was making and he confirmed it to be the case. You are the one who was inferring a position on him he didn’t make. That’s not his fault since you didn’t ask for clarification of his argument before you inferred he was making a case he wasn’t making.
I do differentiate between two arguments that reach the same conclusion but I didn’t even make a case one way or another in that last post from me. I just pointed out that you weren’t correctly identifying his argument. He agreed with how I framed his argument.
Has anyone, in any of these discussions, mentioned the recent onion article about this?
It reminded me of Bob and his callous position on global warming, in particular the bit about the GOP cliaming that “The asteroid destroying bill would deprive Americans of the ability to choose the level of asteroid protection that best suits them.”
I also wonder if Bob’s head would explode if an asteroid were heading to the earth *before* the advent of Groupon. Or how he reconciles “you can’t use force against someone to stop the destruction of the earth” with his opposite position in his “private law and global warming paper”, where he concluded judges would rule you can do exactly this (in a hypothetical example where aliens will blow up the earth if too many words are spoken, and some group responds by cutting out the voice boxes of misanthropes who talk as much as possible).
Moreover, it’s kind of disappointing that Bob doesn’t have an actual decision-theoretic explanation for why it would be wrong to respont to natural or intelligent threats to our existence with coercion against bystanders; just that, “come on, that’s wrong, dude”. (There *are* good explanations out there — see Drescher’s “Good and Real” or Yukowsky’s Timeless Decision Theory — it’s just that Bob can’t articulate any of them.)
And finally, I don’t understand the kind of morality that says, “um, let the rich people bear the full cost of ensuring humanity’s continued existence; it’s perfectly fine for others to free-ride off them”, and which uses crossed fingers as a substitute for prudence. (“If I wish *really really* hard, entrepreneurs will magic up a solution … even if there are no property rights in the relevant areas!”)
“I don’t understand the kind of morality that says, “um, let the rich people bear the full cost of ensuring humanity’s continued existence; it’s perfectly fine for others to free-ride off them”
Isn’t that the morality behind progressive (or even proportional) taxation?
Yes, which is all the more reason to be perplexed when Bob falls into endorsing it.
He isn’t. There is a difference between forcing the rich to pay (as they would under any taxation scheme conceivable in modern society) vs. allowing people (including the rich) to pay as they wish given their interests and means.
Yep, allow the rich each choose the individual, personalized level of human extinction from an asteroid event that best suits their unique needs.
Bob’s position is equivalent in the relevant ways to believing that leeching off the rich is okay, even if he gives lip service to “oh, well gaw shucks I just don’t wanna force no one to contribute…”
So Silas, are you saying that your desire for a compulsory tax in this situation is motivated by a concern that otherwise the rich might somehow be exploited in a situation of non-coerced voluntary giving? If so, your support must be predicated on the tax being a head tax, i.e., a fixed dollar amount per person regardless of means?
BTW, your snarkiness aside, I am not sure why we wouldn’t expect rich people to willingly contribute more than poor people to save themselves and others from extinction. One thousand dolars is a lot to to someone with $1100 but not so much to someone with $1 million.
[quote]Yep, allow the rich each choose the individual, personalized level of human extinction from an asteroid event that best suits their unique needs.[/quote]
I don’t get this line of reasoning. FIrst it’s assumed that whatever level of protection people coalesce to is just by default assumed to fail? Doesn’t seem like your offering up a very reasonable chance to debate here here, if by default the market position is just asserted as destined to fail.
Second off it sounds like your complaining about positive externalities. That only certain parties will fund a salvation project, while others are the benefactors for free.
I never understood the positive externality position any ways. If people benefit from market activity without having to pay for it, all the better. If too many try to get a free ride, there will likely be a chance in the business structure.
As a side point, for a capitalist I can’t think of a better way of promoting you and your business than by sponsoring the salvation of man.
And finally, I don’t understand the kind of morality that says, “um, let the rich people bear the full cost of ensuring humanity’s continued existence; it’s perfectly fine for others to free-ride off them”
Did Bob or anyone ever say the second part of this sentence? The positive statement, “The rich will likely bear most of the burden,” can be separated from the normative, “The rich ought to bear most of the burden.” (or, perhaps more relevantly, “The less-rich ought to free-ride.”) Perhaps a person fails in his moral duties by free-riding, but I don’t see how that justifies compelling the less-rich to pay up. And of course, if you do coerce payment from suspected free-riders, you’re still left with the intractable problem of determining just what each person’s ‘fair share’ really is.
and which uses crossed fingers as a substitute for prudence
As opposed to what, exactly? We have no guarantees free enterprise would solve the problem, but we also have no guarantees that the state will either.
Perhaps a person fails in his moral duties by free-riding, but I don’t see how that justifies compelling the less-rich to pay up.
You don’t see how humanity being otherwise wiped out isn’t a godo enough justification?
And of course, if you do coerce payment from suspected free-riders, you’re still left with the intractable problem of determining just what each person’s ‘fair share’ really is.
Get some perspective, man. That problemt is a heck of a lot more tractable than rebooting human existence. And it’s Bob who betting on a “from each according to his ability” solution in the first place, not me. (Hey, the rich people can afford it! They have the ability so let *them* pay!)
As opposed to what, exactly? We have no guarantees free enterprise would solve the problem, but we also have no guarantees that the state will either.
There are better standards for comparison than the matter of whether one side has a “guaranteed” solution and the other doesn’t.
People give to charity voluntarily even though there is no assurance that others will give an equal amount (or even any). They do that even though they are not trying to avert a world-ending catastrophe – i.e., generally the donor doesn’t die if he and others give nothing to charity. Why on earth would anyone thus be convinced that the free-rider problem (present of course in charity) would prevent people from donating to save their own lives?
Also, awareness of the game may change people’s behaviour. If individuals expect that others will be influenced by the presence of the free-rider problem (and hence won’t donate), then donating increases your chance of survival. If no one else donates, yes, you are out a few bucks but who cares at that point? Everyone is dead. Doo you really want to bet that you will be the only one to be influenced by the free-rider problem and not donate? I thought people were supposed to be risk-averse?
Further, given different levels of wealth and different marginal utilities of wealth/public acclaim etc., the free-rider problem is diminished. For example, do people really think that Bill Gates and other members of the donate-half-our-billions-to-charity club wouldn’t jump at the chance to (really) save humanity? I mean, what’s the point of trying to solve the problems of polio, world hunger and AIDS if everyone dies first?
Finally, now we have the means, in the form of web sites such as the Point, to better coordinate collective behaviour in the face of free-rider-problems.
I think the game-theoretic aspect of public goods is much more complicated than is usually assumed.
People give to charity voluntarily even though there is no assurance that others will give an equal amount (or even any). They do that even though they are not trying to avert a world-ending catastrophe
Yes, and for the same reason, the world isn’t at risk if the fail to raise enough (which they often do — where’s my cancer cure?).
Wishing away the problem on a *particular* case doesn’t mean you’ve answered the dilemma in the general one.
So the argument then is that “we need to have the power to tax because an asteroid might hit the earth and, despite all evidence to the contrary, we are pretty certain that people would rather die than find themselves, after the fact, having been suckered into contributing when: a) some other people didn’t contribute or contribute as much, and b) despite a), enough money was contributed to save the world.
Doesn’t seem obvious to me.
Much much more money is currently pumped into finding a cancer cure by the feds. The “War on Cancer” has been fought since the 70’s without a cure. So the government has been wishing it away, too… I’m not sure that throwing 10 times as much money at the problem would give us a cure tomorrow.
I’m not going to double-check now, but I’m pretty sure Bob wrote in his article that you’d have to assume that the asteroid could be stopped. If the asteroid is going to hit in a month, but, by pooling as many resources as possible (voluntary or involuntary – your choice) still won’t get the asteroid destroyer ready in time, then there’s no dilemma.
Anyway, I just don’t see how your comment here proves or disproves anything in particular.
Is this supposed to be insightful, Kathryn? You need to remember to mention your PhD when you post stuff like this so we don’t see it for what it is.
Yes, government funding has failed to provide a cure for cancer. Now, if you had genuine insight to add here, you would come up with some kind of hypothesis for why some government-funded things, somehow, succeed at some of their goals, while others don’t.
In doing so, you might notice that, say, we don’t know what it would take to find a cure for cancer, while we _do_ know what it would take to avert an asteroid strike, and it really is just a matter of hiring the resources. And it really is the case that passing around the hat *might* not suffice to hire the expertise (all it takes is the theoretical possibility to make it a dilemma for the philosophy of libertarians like you).
See? That isn’t hard. I can oppose the role the government currently plays in our lives without also claiming that no satellites have ever been launched. It just takes a li’l thought is all.
Anyway, I just don’t see how your comment here proves or disproves anything in particular.
Pot, kettle.
I honestly wasn’t sure that I understood the point of your comment. You seemed to be blaming cancer charities for not finding a cure to cancer. I found this an odd assertion because the government puts in even more money for this cause, so would seem equally culpable. I wasn’t the one trying to prove or disprove anything – just wondering what your point was.
Why is the onus on me to argue or prove anything or to add any particular insight? I was just questioning your choice of an illustration. As you just pointed out, the cancer illustration is different from a hypothetical asteroid situation where we assume the solution is known and possible, but only comes down to funding.
So, where does the relevance of your argument come in again? Yes, both private and government agencies don’t know what it would take to cure cancer — and in both cases the world wouldn’t end. And neither applies here. So the point about cancer curing is moot.
And I’m still waiting for you to explain how your argument is relevant. (Not with bated breath or anything, but waiting nonetheless.)
I’m confused about the relevance of *your* argument. I’m not trying to make a second argument.
You said:
“Yes, and for the same reason, the world isn’t at risk if the fail to raise enough (which they often do — where’s my cancer cure?).” in response to David’s comment about voluntary charity being a viable alternative.
I guess I got hung up on the “Yes, and for the same reason” – I (apparently, mistakenly) read that as: Because cancer cures come from voluntary charity, it fails in its goal.
I was merely pointing out that cancer research is a particularly bad example because vastly more funds come to it from the feds.
You also said:
“Wishing away the problem on a *particular* case doesn’t mean you’ve answered the dilemma in the general one.”
I wanted to just clarify that I believed the asteroid argument had been framed around an end that we knew could be achieved. I know I could make a PB&J sandwich by the end of the day today. We don’t know that we can cure cancer in the next 10 years. So, just reiterating that I found your cancer cure example to be off the mark and wondered what your point was in bringing it up.
I realize I may have misunderstood your post. Fortunately, you have the opportunity to clarify, but so far you’ve decided to attack me for some wrong I apparently committed against you during one of the dozen times I’ve ever posted on this blog.
Bob,
Two things:
1. DeLong used to have a tendency of deleting posts that he didn’t like, and so I tend to word my comments in such a way that it comes off middle-of-the-road or slightly biased towards him so that they get through the filters.
2. You cut off part of my comment, where I say that your response would be that if people would allow taxation to solve the problem then the situation could prob. be solved through the market. Then I suggested that this was the age old debate.
I hope that clarifies my comment, and shows how subtly and implicitly I’m actually on your side, although I’m not really on the same page when it comes to morality (call me a moral subjectivist).
A retail store heir paid over $2 mil to put his daughter’s name on the new $75 mil 15000 seat basketball arena at my alma matre.
If that’s what the price is to put your stamp on a sports’ stadium, I can’t imagine where the bidding would escalate for the naming rights for the project that saved the earth. My guess is, though, the costs would be easily covered and talented volunteers would be easy to come by.
There are really two questions here. One is whether you would really need to use taxation to blow up the asteroid. On this I have to agree with Bob. Yes, there is a free rider problem, but when the issue is the earth getting blown up in six months, I don’t think that would be insurmountable (and if the free rider problem was severe then we’d be screwed anyway, as there is a comparable free rider problem for nation states).
Suppose, though, that it really was the case that the only way to save the earth was to tax people. Should we save the earth by taxing, or just say it was fun while it lasted? This is the real question that the hypothetical is trying to get at. And here I kind of have to agree with Brad. It’s kind of like the story about the guy who slips on his 32nd floor balcony but manages to grab ahold of the ledge on the 31st floor. If the guy who owns that apartment comes out and tells you to get off his property, the Rothbardian thing to do is to drop to your death. That’s kind of nuts.
Blackadder,
You wrote “And here I kind of have to agree with Brad. It’s kind of like the story about the guy who slips on his 32nd floor balcony but manages to grab ahold of the ledge on the 31st floor. If the guy who owns that apartment comes out and tells you to get off his property, the Rothbardian thing to do is to drop to your death. That’s kind of nuts.”
I think it’s a mistake to characterize falling to certain death to avoid violating another’s property rights as the ‘Rothbardian’ thing to do.
Rothbard would say that, yes, if you fall and grab onto someone else’s balcony rail you are trespassing on that person’s property. I don’t believe he would argue that means you should then let go and fall to certain death because you are doing so. He argued that rights violations are not negated in extreme cases. Just because you are hanging from someone else’s balcony does not mean you should be absolved of the crime of trespassing. The owner could prosecute you for that crime. (see Ch. 20 of his “Ethics of Liberty”).
Still, that does not mean the owner could force you off his balcony if doing so meant you would face certain death. Rothbard believed that self defense had to be proportional to the aggression;
“If a man deprives another man of some of his self-ownership or its extension in physical property, to that extent does he lose his own rights. From this principle immediately derives the proportionality theory of punishment-best summed up in the old adage: “let the punishment fit the crime.”
We conclude that the shopkeeper’s shooting of the erring lad went beyond this proportionate loss of rights, to wounding or killing the criminal; this going beyond is in itself an invasion of the property right in his own person of the bubble gum thief. In fact, the storekeeper has become a far greater criminal than the thief, for he has killed or wound- ed his victim- a far graver invasion of another’s rights than the original shoplifting.” “The Ethics of Liberty” pgs 80-81
Richard,
The balcony hypothetical is an actual example mentioned in Brian Doherty’s book Radicals for Capitalism. As he describes the case “if you fell off a building and grabbed onto a flagpole and didn’t have the explicit permission of the person who owned the balcony, you ought to let yourself fall rather than violate their property rights by crawling to safety.”
Blackadder,
Was Doherty interpreting Rothbard’s position, or directly quoting him? If you can provide a passage or page no. I would appreciate it.
Sorry, forgot to include the link;
http://mises.org/rothbard/ethics.pdf
Bob,
Also, though it’s kind of a side issue, I think you are missing Brad’s point about not telling people about the asteroid. Sasha thinks that it is okay to violate people’s rights if doing so will prevent a greater number of rights violations. But if there is a way to prevent these greater rights violations without violating anyone’s rights, then you must do that instead. In the asteroid example you can prevent the rights violations by not telling anyone about the asteroid, so you are morally obligated not to tell them.
Blackadder: I can do you and DeLong one better. If your interpretation of Volokh’s position is correct, then he must also think it’s immoral to grow food. After all, if everybody stopped growing food, then we would all starve to death–from natural causes. And then there would be no more rights violations, ever.
In contrast, if farmers grow food, then they know darned well some rights violations will occur “as a result.”
So the question now is, do you really think Volokh’s insistence on not violating rights, leads to this absurdity, or do you think maybe you’re not correctly shooting out implications from Volokh’s views?
Volokh’s views on the matter don’t seem to be well thought out, so it wouldn’t surprise me if they led to this sort of absurdity.
Bob,
Btw, I really loved your Batman comment. Pure genius.
Yea, that had me cracking up.
This asteroid story is really just an elaborate encapsulation of the following ancient question:
Suppose an individual faces the choice:
1. He lives but everyone else in the world dies; or
2. He dies but everyone else in the world lives.
Which is the moral choice and which is the immoral choice?
This is the fundamental question involved in the asteroid story, even if in the story this person is not going to die, but will only be “harmed” by others, by being taxed, threatened, etc. To “live” is something only the individual truly decides for themselves, if only mentally. Depending on the individual, they might choose death over experiencing bankruptcy, or death over experiencing the death of a lived one, or death over being tortured, etc.
If you want to harm someone, but not kill them, in order to get something out of them, to save the human race or whatever, then it is quite arbitrary to claim that because you aren’t killing them, your actions towards them are just and moral.
For the unstated assumption of DeLong et al is that they are in fact willing to kill people in order to save the human race.
Suppose “saving the world” did in fact require the deaths of those unrelenting people, because they happen to choose to defend their wealth from any forced theft, and they will match any escalation of violence against them with violence of their own in their defense. The logical outcome here is that if the tax collector truly believes that people should be sacrificed, then the taxer would have to admit that he is willing to kill anyone who does not pay. If not, then they are admitting that the relenting individuals themselves have a right to their own life, even if it means the death of the taxer. That is the libertarian position.
Will DeLong be willing to murder people who refuse to pay and are willing to die protecting themselves and their means to their well-being to the death? That is the logical outcome. This logical outcome is why the above fundamental question is THE ultimate question involved in the asteroid story.
Good post CF. Even though DeLong does ultimately feel this way, he would never accept it the way you stated it. Not to say that you stated it poorly; I am in complete agreement with you. But DeLong, or those who agree with him, would simply brush off the accusation that they support the idea that somebody be shot who does not comply. Not sure what to do about that.
Take the concrete example of vaccines that one of his commenters mentioned. It’s true that a small percentage of people will die from a vaccine. The commenter is fine with that because they see the vaccines as a “greater good”, yet I am certain that, if challenged, they would deny that mandated immunization equals mandated murder of a very small percentage of the population.
Take the concrete example of vaccines that one of his commenters mentioned. It’s true that a small percentage of people will die from a vaccine. The commenter is fine with that because they see the vaccines as a “greater good”, yet I am certain that, if challenged, they would deny that mandated immunization equals mandated murder of a very small percentage of the population.
Excellent point. The way you frame questions and, how do you call them…thought problems?…has a tremendous effect on which values and principles people “access” in their response, and which confusions in thought lead to which emotional knee jerk reactions.
Do you know the philosophy Stefan Molyneux? He has a VERY effective technique in argumentation called “Against Me”. In short, the against me argument is when someone consider’s someone else’s unlibertarian position in a debate, say for example taxation, and asks them if they are willing to themselves be the ones to use a gun to take the other debater’s money by force.
For almost everyone, when asked this question, they realize how evil it is, and say no they would not violently take the other person’s money like that. But every so often, you meet someone who says that they are willing to do it. Out of this group, a very small percentage are in fact serious, whereas the rest are just blowing smoke to cover their arses.
I have found that, for those I have met, over 99% of the people are anarchists/libertarians/etc, they just don’t know it because they have been taught since birth to ridicule and reject it, even though they all practice it everyday in their personal daily lives. They only say other people have to pay taxes, because they are just relaying what they were told by others to be moral. This is why formation of states requires moral and intellectual capitulation, and become larger the more capitulation, and smaller the less capitulation. Libertarianism is more a program of self-discovery and awakening. Anyhoo, slight tangent, but there you go.
This asteroid story is really just an elaborate encapsulation of the following ancient question:
Suppose an individual faces the choice:
1. He lives but everyone else in the world dies; or
2. He dies but everyone else in the world lives.
Which is the moral choice and which is the immoral choice?
Actually, I think the question is about taxation.
Actually, I think the question is about taxation
I wasn’t trying to guess what you think, BA, such that you need to communicate to me what you “actually” think.
At any rate, since you have decided to “contribute” to the discussion with glib one liner, you should understand that taxation is ultimately backed by the threat of death. If you don’t pay taxes, and if you merely defend yourself from ANY initiation of violence against you from the government, and only escalate your usage of violence in defense as the government escalates its initiating of violence, then eventually the government will shoot to kill you. The fact that almost everyone values their life such that they would rather pay taxes and live, does not remove the reality that taxation is backed ultimately by threat of death. This may unsettle you, but it’s the truth. Libertarians are not libertarians for no good reason.
My guess on the reason why people imagine these asteroid examples of “pay taxes or die”, is because they subconsciously know that death is what backs taxation in our society. They try to cope with this truth by believing that the death threat from not paying taxes is from asteroids, and not government.
More to the point though, the reason why my scenario is more fundamental to the asteroid example is because it isolates the asteroid example’s logical implications.
Suppose someone refuses to pay the taxes demanded by others on principle, and suppose that they will defend themselves to whatever extent is necessary to stop the aggressors violence.
Will the advocates of taxation kill this dissenter and take their money?
My original question above on which choice is moral and which choice is immoral exposes the relevant philosophy of the individual who answers it, which can then be used to answer the question on whether they will risk killing others if it means they can live, which can then answer the question on whether they find it moral to tax people to get their money in order to finance the construction of something that will save the planet from an asteroid.
More to the point though, the reason why my scenario is more fundamental to the asteroid example is because it isolates the asteroid example’s logical implications.
Suppose someone refuses to pay the taxes demanded by others on principle, and suppose that they will defend themselves to whatever extent is necessary to stop the aggressors violence.
Will the advocates of taxation kill this dissenter and take their money?
Suppose the answer is no. The state decides that it isn’t worth the trouble (more than enough money has already been collected from other people, and there are more important things to do, like stopping the asteroid). So they let him be. What then?
Suppose the answer is no.
If the answer is no, then by their actions they have shown that they aren’t actually taxing people, but rather soliciting for donations.
If the state started to collect money this way, by respecting people’s choice in not paying the state any money if they don’t want to, then taxation does not exist. Taxation would be impossible. The system that would arise would be a scheme of voluntary revenues to various private property owners, each of whom are competing for money to accomplish various tasks, for example human race from an asteroid.
Suppose now that instead of one person not paying the tax, there are two people who don’t want to pay and are willing to fight to the death to protect themselves and their means to their well-being. Is murder OK then? No? How many people have to resist before murdering people is justified? Why? What if it requires the murder of 50% the human race? 51%? 75%? 80%? 90%? 99%? Everyone but 100 people? Everyone but 50 people? Everyone but 10 people? Everyone but one person?
Do you see now why the logic invariably leads us to contemplating a scenario where an individual chooses his own life over the entire rest of the human race, or sacrifices himself for the benefit of others?
Would you sacrifice the entire rest of the human race if it means you can live? Or would you give up your life instead?
“At any rate, since you have decided to “contribute” to the discussion with glib one liner, you should understand that taxation is ultimately backed by the threat of death. If you don’t pay taxes, and if you merely defend yourself from ANY initiation of violence against you from the government, and only escalate your usage of violence in defense as the government escalates its initiating of violence, then eventually the government will shoot to kill you. The fact that almost everyone values their life such that they would rather pay taxes and live, does not remove the reality that taxation is backed ultimately by threat of death. This may unsettle you, but it’s the truth. Libertarians are not libertarians for no good reason.”
Would you kill me if I stole your cigarette?
Would you kill me if I stole your cigarette?
Depends. Is this a cigarette that will allow me to save my life or one of my family members or friends? Suppose I need that cigarette to bribe a gunman into preventing him from shooting me, or suppose that a dying wealthy individual is willing to give me $1 million for it just for one last puff, the money of which I need to save my life or the life of a family member.
If your theft will result in my death, or the death of a family member, then I would first tell you of my situation, and ask for the cigarette back. If you don’t, then I will threaten you with force if you don’t. If you still don’t, and if it really did come down to my death or shooting you, then I’d shoot you.
But, if you mean a regular scenario of me walking down the street, and you stole my cigarette, then of course I won’t try to kill you.
What does this have to do with the argument that taxation is ultimately backed by death? Were you trying to make a point that is quite honestly totally over my head?
“What does this have to do with the argument that taxation is ultimately backed by death?”
As are all laws, whether they be government laws or in laws in ancapistan. What is that supposed to indicate?
As are all laws, whether they be government laws or in laws in ancapistan. What is that supposed to indicate?
No Gene.
In an anarcho-capitalist society, you are not obligated to pay any private security force if you don’t want to. The money that you pay them would be voluntary, and hence the payment is not backed by death, as it is in our society of taxation where we have to pay whether we want to or not.
In an anarcho-capitalist society, you are not obligated to pay any private security force if you don’t want to.
You don’t have to pay them to protect you, but you do have to follow their rules, otherwise they will do to you exactly the sorts of things that governments do if you don’t follow their rules.
@Blackadder
That’s not true. Almost all refusal to follow the rules would be dealt with ostracizing the person or something along those lines. It wouldn’t be legal to kidnap or murder someone for stealing. Now if you did want to continue to be a part of society you’ll follow the rules and pay restitution but even then you wouldn’t be thrown in a hole for some arbitrary amount of years.
Almost all refusal to follow the rules would be dealt with ostracizing the person or something along those lines. It wouldn’t be legal to kidnap or murder someone for stealing.
Let me see if I understand this. Suppose we’re in Ancaptopia. One day while you are at work I burn down your house. You take me to libertarian court, which renders a judgment against me for the value of the house. You’re telling me that if I don’t pay, the only thing that will happen is that people are supposed to ostracize me?
It could be handled many different ways but we wouldn’t have a prison system that puts you in a box at the expense of everyone else for some arbitrary amount of years.
Dan,
If I may quote Rothbard:
If A has stolen $15,000 from B, then the first, or initial, part of A’s punishment must be to restore that $15,000 to the hands of B (plus damages, judicial and police costs, and interest foregone).
Suppose that, as in most cases, the thief has already spent the money. In that case, the first step of proper libertarian punishment is to force the thief to work, and to allocate the ensuing income to the victim until the victim has been repaid. The ideal situation, then, puts the criminal frankly into a state of enslavement to his victim, the criminal continuing in that condition of just slavery until he has redressed the grievance of the man he has wronged . . . This does not necessarily mean that prisons would disappear in the libertarian society, but they would undoubtedly change drastically, since their major goal would be to force the criminals to provide restitution to their victims.
Walter Block also favors a similar form of punishment. Robert murphy favors a different approach. There are many different approaches to libertarian law. I personally favor a nonviolent approach. The only time I favor violence at all is in self defense.
You don’t have to pay them to protect you, but you do have to follow their rules, otherwise they will do to you exactly the sorts of things that governments do if you don’t follow their rules.
No, because they would have no monopoly privilege of law enforcement. They won’t do “exactly the sorts of things that governments do”, for the same reason most civilians don’t do “exactly what governments do”: Competition.
“If you want to harm someone, but not kill them, in order to get something out of them, to save the human race or whatever, then it is quite arbitrary to claim that because you aren’t killing them, your actions towards them are just and moral.”
But who wants to harm anyone? Getting someone to pay their fair share is, in fact, helping them.
Who decides what is their fair share? What if the decider and the payer don’t agree on what is fair?
Since things have been getting snarky in the comments lately, I want to say that these are sincere questions. I’m honestly curious what your thoughts are on this.
Who decides what is their fair share?
Isn’t it obvious? Gene and his friends.
Of course Bob is right. The market can create contingent contracts that will solve the problem. I’m a brilliant engineer who can build a rocket to blow up the asteroid. Now, I believe that my rocket will work, but most people don’t. I buy contingent contracts, that in the event of the earth surviving I get to assume their property (such as a house, office building, etc…). Those who think the world is going to be destroyed are more than willing to receive money now since the world will be blown to pieces when I’m wrong. Those who believe in my idea lend me capital to buy these contracts. I use the capital to build my super rocket.
Now pillary me.
“The market can create contingent contracts that will solve the problem.”
Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try…
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man…
Yeah communism!
Don’t forget that in the privatized Rothbardian paradise of the future that the only action forbidden is the initiation of force. Free riders could be ostracized, boycotted, banished or charged higher prices. This statist vision of atomized anomie in a private world is phony and false. Private neighborhoods or larger associations together with their protection agencies could and would have mandatory clauses for contributions to these types of rare dangers.
Under the current statist regime, if Mexico and Canada refused to contribute, what would be the outcome in the event that the danger turned out to be a) real or b) overblown? Would the US invade to collect a fee?
These statists are like Yosemite Sam loading his gun with gumdrops.
“Don’t forget that in the privatized Rothbardian paradise of the future that the only action forbidden is the initiation of force.”
You forgot to add “as defined by Rothbard.”
As defined by natural law and logic.
I have a scenario for all of the DeLong’s of the world. Would you give up all government spending around the world for 6 months to save the planet from an asteroid? You can take $1 trillion to give as reward to whoever takes out the asteroid but the entire rest of the governments spending is either returned or not collected. No government services, spending, or taxes, including central banking, for 6 months. Could you handle that?
You can take $1 trillion to give as reward to whoever takes out the asteroid but the entire rest of the governments spending is either returned or not collected.
And you would be acting as the taxman at that point, which by your very own argument is off-limits, genius.
Yes, government should be cut back. Yes, people would be wealthier if it were. No, that doesn’t somehow show that all collective action problems necessarily get solved without government (or wouldn’t _with_).
@Silas, I wasn’t trying to prove that all collective action problems necessarily get solved without government (or wouldn’t _with_). You ask a lot for a short post. I hope the libertarians in the crowd wouldn’t be opposed to the idea of cutting State spending across the planet to $1 trillion for the next 6 months. My scenario is libertarian because it would reduce the size of government, genius.
If a libertarian wanted to challenge my scenario he might argue that by pushing the button like this we might end up with a worse government in 6 months. While that’s true, an asteroid is heading towards the planet ready to destroy all life and I’d risk the button considering that some parts of the world might realize they don’t need the State after 6 months without them.
So, that said, I am asking liberals if they would be willing to give up government for 6 months to save the planet?
My scenario is libertarian because it would reduce the size of government, genius
LOL!!! This is just comical now. The whole point of this discussion was that certain libertarians (you and Bob) are claiming that rights violations are _not_ okay even if you cut back in other areas. But now your’e telling me that, e.g., it would be okay to use taxes to stop the asteroid as long as you also cut spending by $X bazillion???
I don’t even know why I waste time with you guys.
I’m not sure why you do either. You keep looking like a fool when you say things like your post above. Libertarians like Bob and I would rather have no government but we would be in favor of any cuts to the size of government we can get. If they say tomorrow that they are going to cut the income tax down to 10% you aren’t going to see libertarians screaming “No, either get rid of the entire government or keep things the same.”
Your argument is just silly.
I have a scenario for all of the DeLong’s of the world. Would you give up all government spending around the world for 6 months to save the planet from an asteroid?
Of course. Why is this even a question?
How about to prevent genocide?
(that’s rhetorical, of course)
@Blackadder, I didn’t think you were a liberal. I was curious if liberals would be ok with cutting spending to save the planet. They keep telling us that if the State doesn’t keep spending enormous amounts of our wealth there will be chaos. I wanted to know if there is any situation where cutting spending on a mass scale would be the right thing to do in their mind. I know they don’t have a problem with stealing through taxes but why not cut spending instead? I’m betting most liberals would say that it would be better to raise taxes than to cut spending even if an asteroid is heading towards earth.
I, of course, agree with you, it should be an easy decision to say cut spending in this manner.
Dan,
I’m not a liberal, but I do agree with DeLong on this point.
I’m sure DeLong thinks that if you stopped all government spending for six months there would be chaos. Still the choice between chaos and the total eradication of the human race shouldn’t be a difficult one.
If you believe that both taxing in that situation is moral and cutting spending is fine, would you rather increase taxes to defeat an asteroid or cut spending if it were to happen today? You could add redirect current government spending to taking out the asteroid as another choice. My fear would be that most people would say soak the rich if it were to really happen today.
As I understand it, Volokh’s view is that taxation is legitimate only if the money is spent for certain purposes (i.e. protecting against rights violations) and that blowing up asteroids is not one of those purposes. So you couldn’t get around the problem simply by cutting spending on other stuff.
Given the choice, I suppose I’d rather cut spending, but if we were really in that situation it’s not something I would get hung up on.
Of course, the Keynesian answer would be that you should neither cut spending nor raise taxes, but run a larger deficit. Think of the stimulus!
Yeah sure that could happen. I don’t think its likely at all, but it could. So could a lot of other things. For example the government commitee might suffer from internal bickering even though they just appropriated all the funds they needed. In fact, assuming complete benevolence on all parties, the exact same forces that would lead to fragmented competition in private hands, would lead to internal disputes in public hands.
I am quite certain that, in this situation, competing ASI providers would be able to allocate resources more effectively, and certainly more in line with where the public would like the resources to go, than just one government commitee. I don’t believe markets are infaliable or anything, but when it comes to the coordination of production and allocation of resources they tend to do a much better job than the alternatives. In fact, it is what they are best at.
To be frank this whole business is quite silly. From a pragmatic perspective the question of “should the govermnet be responsible for saving the earth when an asteroid is going to hit it” is a no-brainer. Of course it shouldn’t.
As Milton Friedman once said “put the federal government in charge of the sahara deset and within one year you’ll have a shortage of sand” or something like that..
The above was meant to be a reply to Gene Callahan’s reply to my longer post in this thread. If a moderator could please move it to its proper location it woudl be appreciated.
I think others have mentioned this, but if so many people feel it’s okay to tax in order to fund this asteroid-destroying mission (ADM), then why does the money even need to be taxed?
Why is it presupposed that the government, with mass taxation, will fund the PROPER ADM?
Who is the head of this mission? The US? A group of nations? Are they gonna go to war with, say, China and Romania and San Marino and Palau if they refuse to be taxed? By the logic of DeLong, it’s okay to go to war with those countries to extract money.
What if another country doesn’t want to be taxed by the US and its allies in the ADM because it believes their mission will fail and instead wants to embark on its own ADM afford/doesn’t want to give up extra resources to those other countries?
When does it become okay for a country or group of countries to start taxing every other country/person in the world?
“I think others have mentioned this, but if so many people feel it’s okay to tax in order to fund this asteroid-destroying mission (ADM), then why does the money even need to be taxed?”
I think others have repeatedly answered this, but: free riders.
“By the logic of DeLong, it’s okay to go to war with those countries to extract money. ”
Rubbish. They are sovereign nations.
“What if another country doesn’t want to be taxed by the US and its allies in the ADM because it believes their mission will fail and instead wants to embark on its own ADM afford/doesn’t want to give up extra resources to those other countries?”
They are a sovereign nation. They ought to be able to do so.
OK this is what cracks me up Gene. You really aren’t using the same line of thought as DeLong, Silas, etc. You have your own conception of The Good, which is not based on mere consequentialism. You acknowledge that we can’t use force against sovereign nations to save the human race. Fine.
I just think the individual should be sovereign, in this sense, with respect to his property.
Yes, it looks like Gene’s position is a lot more like yours than mine, despite the superficial resemblance. But I think you and I can both agree that it’s stupid to mock someone’s principled refusal to use violence “when the planet’s at stake, dude!!!”, and then go on to be aghast at the idea of going to war with “omg teh sovereign!!!” nations “when the planet’s at stake, dude”.
Right. As The Dude would say, there’s lots of ins and outs, lots of interested parties. For example:
(1) DeLong, Silas, Daniel Kuehn, and Gene all think it would morally permissible for the government to tax people to stop the asteroid, if it seemed private-sector solutions wouldn’t work.
(2) Silas and Bob agree that such taxation would be theft. Gene doesn’t, and I bet DeLong doesn’t. Not sure about DK.
(3) Bob says there is nothing crazy about having side constraints on behavior, which do not owe their sole justification to considerations of expediency. Kuehn disagrees; he is so sure that morality is nothing but rules for happier life, that he doesn’t seem to realize that is an assumption on his part. DeLong disagrees insofar as we take his views at face value, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he were more respectful of pacifists (the way Gene was), even though his official position should classify pacifists as insane too. Silas says it’s possible to make a coherent argument for side constraints that occasionally lead to the end of the world, it’s just that Bob hasn’t made such a case.
I am going to stop now.
Silas says it’s possible to make a coherent argument for side constraints that occasionally lead to the end of the world, it’s just that Bob hasn’t made such a case.
Eh, not quite right. For example, in the case of “not breaking the confessor’s vow when someone confesses his plan to blow up the world”, you wouldn’t even know of the plan if not for your vow. There is no corresponding “acausal consequence” going on in the asteroid case which is why I think you’re being sloppy with arguments from principled behavior. Yes, certain principled behavior can be justified, but you need a little more than, “Hey, some people reach the same conclusions I do.”
But you’ve probably had enough of this already…
And for the record, that cracked me up too 😉
In your code of ethics is someone allowed to say “I am my own sovereign nation and I don’t wanna pay the ASI tax”?
Or does he have an “obligation” not to do that?
You’ll have to give Gene a few moments…he needs to consult society and see what the answer is.
It is reality, not “my code of ethics,” that prevents someone from saying they are their own sovereign nation.
Similarly reality, not “your code of ethics” prevents sovereign nations from making their own decisions with no threat of war.
Here is the Onion‘s take on this very topic.