A Passion for Liberty
Tibor R. Machan @ Rational Review
Archive for December, 2009
On Distributive Justice
Dec 13th
On Distributive Justice
Tibor R. Machan
For a long time political philosophers and such were interested in identifying the nature of justice. It started with Socrates and lasted to when John Stuart Mill did his work, although by that time there had been talk of this thing called distributive justice. By now most political theorists dwell on little else.
Yet I have never quite understood why the idea has become so prominent since it is clearly question-begging. Distribution is something done by people who have things to distribute, who are legitimate, rightful owners of what may be wanted from them about town. Money, mainly. So in our day government takes money from people–the resources they have made, earned, found, won or whatever–and hands it to some other people (after taking a good cut for itself). How the distribution goes may be judged as arbitrary, fair, unfair, corrupt, or, just. But all this couldn’t even begin if it were determined that the initial taking of the resources is wrong. And as I have managed to figure these matters, taxing people is wrong. That means that distributing what is taken in taxes is also wrong. Accordingly distributive justice could not be justice at all. It is at most something touched by a bit of generosity, as when bank robbers divvy up their loot among some needy folks, in what is taken to be a Robin Hoodish way (but Robin just took money back that had been taken in taxes instead of taxed people).
Why is taxation wrong? It is depriving people of what belongs to them without their consent. Sure, some people in a society may consent, by voting for it, to the taking of other people’s resources but that couldn’t possibly make the taking anything better than confiscation, an unjust taking because it involves coercion and lacks the consent of the owners. And this is what had been realized, more or less, when individual rights were finally clearly enough understood and affirmed by some political philosophers. Few came right out and condemned taxation because they held the mistaken belief that the administration of a just legal system required it, but it does not. They had similar ideas about slavery in various places until finally they gave that up. They should have given up taxation along with its conceptual sibling, serfdom. Both of these had their home under feudalism and other types of monarchy since in such systems the government–king, czar, pharaoh, dictator, ruler, politburo or whatnot–owns everything and thus when people live and work withing the realm, they are made to pay taxes as their rent and fees. Government in such systems permits people to live and work and charges them for this by making them serve in the military, subjecting them to forced labor, etc., etc. The benefits government provides are privileges, grants from the sovereign to the subjects. Such systems do not recognize individual rights!
Distributive justice is a weird hybrid that combines feudal or monarchical features with those of a fully free society, one in which it is individuals citizens who are sovereign, not the government. But the two, wealth-distribution by government and justice plainly enough don’t mix, despite how sophisticated folks claim they do. Justice requires acknowledging the sovereignty or self-rule of individuals, with what little government is warranted existing with the full consent of the governed. This government has no rightful authority to do any confiscation or conscription at all. Its sole function is that of a protector of individual rights or, as the American Founders put the matter, to “secure [the]… rights” everyone has by virtue of his or her human nature. (In America much of this was discussed but sadly not fully applied since a bunch of perverse ideas, held by powerful recalcitrant people, needed to be accommodated for the sake of establishing a sustainable country.)
When one hears of distributive justice–or another version of this oxymoron, social justice–it is best to conjure up the idea of a square circle or worse, a free slave. Governments that have resources to distribute came by it unjustly, by seizing it from people who are the just holders of those resources.
As to how legal services might be paid for, well, that is important but the answer cannot be “by confiscating the resources of those for whom they are being administered.”
From Machines to Humans?
Dec 12th
Machines into Humans?
Tibor R. Machan
There’s been a pretty impressive movement afoot for over a century or
even more championing the idea that human beings are but complicated
machines, nothing special at all in the world. The Artificial Intelligence
(AI) folks tend to hold this view—machines, in time at least, will do
whatever people can, maybe even much better than we do it, like thinking,
feeling guilt, empathizing, regretting, apologizing, and the whole gamut
of stuff many think is unique to human life. No, say the AI folks, it’s
just a matter of handling some of the technicalities and then, voila, we
will have machines just like us. After all, aren’t machines already doing
many of the tasks most if us had once thought only people could do? Sure.
I recall when I first ran across this topic, in a course what was called
“Philosophical Psychology,” back at Pamona College, in Claremont, where I
took some of my undergraduate philosophy courses—we studied, among others,
Alan Turing and Ludwig Wittgenstein both of whom addressed aspects of the
issue. I even recall one of our tests on which we were asked what
Wittgenstein would have said to the idea that machines could think and my
answer was, “Wait and see, it isn’t something to know about ahead of
time.” My professor was rather impressed with this little part of my test,
not much else. But I, too, would have said the same thing—who can tell
ahead of time? Although I have doubts that non-living beings could ever
come up with all of what people can do.
So I was discussing this with my best friend the other day, we both
serious students of philosophy, and he noted that if the AI folks are
correct, we should soon have a way to purge ourselves of false beliefs, as
well as useless information. We will just take some kind of drug—well, may
be a pill with who knows what in it—that will purge our system of
falsehoods and trivia, plain and simple, just like today computers have
programs that can purge them of unused desktop icons, cookies, and the
like. We laughed about this some, since the notion that there could be
some mechanical or even chemical way to get rid of false ideas or beliefs
seemed absurd. But why? Don’t we use drugs to get rid of viruses now?
Well, one reason is that to learn what is true versus false involves
elaborate research, reasoning, checking and double-checking, with the
ingredient of self-generated, initiated mental concentration, clear focus,
keeping one’s attention, and recalling all sorts of information the
coordination of which is needed to make sure of what’s what. No mechanical
process is sufficient here, not at least when it comes to some of the
deeper issues such as religion, politics, ethics, metaphysics, even
biology and the rest of the disciplines the findings of which require
extensive work of the sort that’s unique to human beings, using their
higher level thinking, reasoning for which they possess their very
complicated brains and minds. To think some machine or mechanism or even
chemical agent could accomplish the purging of falsehoods from our minds
is to assume there are minds much like ours that will program whatever it
is that’s supposed to do this purging business and use it to do the job.
But there aren’t. Nothing in the known world does this kind of work other
than people. At least not yet. It takes other people—or oneself, if one is
really self-ware—to come up with criticisms and discarding of the bad
ideas one holds. Sure, some tools can help—like a calculator, but who made
those tools? Whoever could would be, well, pretty much people.
Yes, we can fantasize about a falsehood-purging-pill or such—that’s been
done since time immemorial. Take all those Disney-like movies, right up
close to our own time, in which everything and anything is routinely
animated, with all those animated beings doing what we do and more,
sometimes. Animals in this imaginary world do philosophy and math and
literature, as do desks and chairs and cars and flowers and mountains—the
human imagination is very fertile with such remote, counterfactual
possibilities. But they are not to be confused with real prospects, not
unless there is evidence instead of mere speculation.
So if you are waiting for the pill that will fix all your mistakes, do
not hold your breath.
Equality’s Irrelevance
Dec 10th
Equality is Irrelevant
Tibor R. Machan
Equality is a deceptive political concept. In the hands of the American Founders it had great merit since it was based on those aspects of human nature that everyone not crucially impeded does in fact share, namely, everyone’s basic rights.You and I and all the billions of people in the world and throughout human history are and have, of course, been quite different from one another while we also possess our basic rights to life, liberty and property.
In certain respects the difference among people stems from the plain fact that human individuals are at a certain level utterly unique, irreplaceable. This is why no substitution can be made for a deceased friend, a spouse, a member of one’s family. Once you grow close to someone and know him or her intimately, there is just no one like that person. Which is one reason the deceased are mourned so much–they will be missed because no substitution for them is possible.
Human beings are in some limited respects the same but in most respects different. And this is further complicated by the fact that some of their differences as well as some of their similarities are innate, just a matter of what they were born to be, so to speak, or accidental, due to circumstances over which they have no control at all; other differences and similarities are the result of their choices, be these good or bad ones, by they trivial or morally significant.
So both equality and uniqueness are part of normal human life. The results of this can be extremely wide-ranging and the last thing that would be sensible to expect is that some pattern of equality, be it economic, social, religious, ethical, medical or anything of this sort can be implemented or should be attempted. The Procrustean temptation is an incredibly hazardous one. Its sources are many, some benign and some mendacious but all to be guarded against.
For example, often people find a way to carry on in their lives, including how they drive, bring up kids, cook dinner, arrange the furniture, choose a career, invest in the market, etc., and so forth, and this often suggests to them that others need to follow suit. Wouldn’t the world be just swell if everyone followed one’s example, seeing how it has been so fruitful for oneself? But, of course, different folks, different strokes, more often than not. Different people will enjoy different sports, entertainment, tourist attractions, cuisine and all. And even more importantly, they will actually be better off pursuing different objectives, ones that really suit them well but not their fellows, certainly not most of the time. Indeed, this is well borne out by the fact that when people recommend things, they can usually do a creditable job only when they do so to someone they know very well, at least within the sphere of the recommendation. “You just have to see this movie or go to this store or eat at this restaurant or take your vacation here, etc., etc.,” said to a total stranger tends to be quite risky, even reckless.
On the continuum from what is universal, applicable to us all as human beings, to what is only right for a given individual human being, there is a vast array of options suited all the way from what suits millions to what only some here and there and, finally, to just a solitary single one individual. This is what the American Founders, guided by their study of political history and thought, especially the ideas of John Locke, suggested, which is why their claim that we are all created equal had to do with “equal with respect to having certain basic rights” and not with equal opportunities, equal conditions, equal consequences and the like. Equality under the law, of course, is what their idea clearly implies but not other kinds of equality promoted to much these days.
Yes, Virginia, there are those very influential, even powerful ones, who want us all to be engineered into one type, all to be serviced by the same public policies (“options” is a really insulting term since they are not optional for citizens to, say, pay for!). Yet, what a just society is characterized by is that its principles are suited to an incredible variety of citizens, all carrying on as they choose, provided they do this in peace, without invading others or their realms. Egalitarians would toss all this out to institute their one-size-fits-all policies, except of course for one element, namely, that they alone should run the show, no one else. Sharing power isn’t on their agenda, especially sharing it with everyone by letting everyone enjoy sovereignty.
Finally, in answer to the claim that equality is necessary to stop envy, I wish to quote Nobel Laureate Edmund S. Phelps:
“The idea that ordinary people are anguished by the thought that other people have extraordinary wealth is also cultivated in fashionable circles without the presentation of any evidence. Most people are practical enough to see that when, say, they have to go to the hospital for tests, what matters is whether the right kind of diagnostic machine is there for them, not whether there is a better machine for others somewhere else.”
Is Health Care “Reform” Constitutional?
Dec 7th
Is Health Care Reform Constitutional?
Tibor R. Machan
On this occasion I wish to address some of Dean Erwin Chemerinsky’s points made in an article he wrote for the December 2009 edition of Saturday Night magazine, in a guest column title “The Constitution and Health Care Reform,” one that defends the constitutionality of health care “reforms” currently under way.
Before I begin I wish to enter a protest about calling the health care policies being advocated by President Obama and the Democratic leadership in Congress reforms. In my view they are not any kind of reforms, bits of adjustment here and there, of the approach Americans take to to securing health care and health insurance for themselves. It is rather a major, even revolutionary, change because while in the past some of health care (Medicare and local county hospital policies) has had government involvement, this time the objective is to establish what is called “a public option,” meaning a form of health care that is provided by the federal government, just as, say, the Interstate Highway system is provided by the federal government.
But what about Dean Erwin Chemerinsky’s major points in this piece? First, though, it should be noted that while the dean comes with impeccable credentials, this should not mislead readers to think that equally well credentialed American constitutional law professors do not disagree with him. For example, the University of Chicago Law School’s Professor Richard Epstein takes a diametrically opposed view on the topic. He has published articles and books critical of government regulations of all parts of American society and makes a powerful case that such regulations are indeed unconstitutional. He has even defended the highly controversial idea that anti-discrimination laws violate individual rights (to, for example, freedom of association).
Second, Dean Chemerisnky’s argument assumes that the interstate commerce clause authorized the federal congress to regulate–that is to say, aggressively interfere with–commerce (among the several states). Yet, arguably what that clause did is to authorize Congress to regularize such commerce, meaning, to abolish tariffs and duties that had been imposed by the colonies prior to the creation of the union. What Congress was authorized to do, then, is to establish a free market in the United States of America not to obstruct it. Not that this is a popular view among constitutional scholars but we aren’t discussing what is popular or not but what makes the best sense, objectively, including in the light of American political and legal history. After all, for a long time the constitutional treatment of African Americans followed precedents that eventually were overturned because they were deemed to be grossly unjust. Well, the kind of welfare statism advocated by Dean Chemerinsky may well be similarly unjust, given how aggressively it promotes violating the private property rights of American citizens. I am not complaining of the dean’s embrace of such views, though I object to them, but I protest his assertion that welfare statism is sanctioned by the U. S. Constitution and the political philosophy of the American Founders.
Third, contrary to what the dean implies, the Ninth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution makes clear that there are unenumerated rights–ones not listed in that document–which citizens also have. Recent rulings concerning the use of contraception and engaging in sodomy have relied on this reading. And that is, of course, as it must be in light of the political tradition that underlies the Constitution, one in which one’s rights, basic and derivative, are pre-legal, with the law resting on them not the other way around. Since we have many rights by virtue of our human nature, the Ninth Amendment makes eminently good sense.
Fourth, and more generally, in a free country citizens may never be placed into involuntary servitude to their fellows as this health care reform movement intends to do. It makes no difference about the precedence–again, many precedents do not deserve to be followed and those that support a confiscatory, intrusive welfare state could well be among them.
Column on Cell Phone Hazards
Dec 7th
The Cell Phone Hazard
Tibor R. Machan
For a while now I have been observing all the alarm about the use of cell phones while driving a car, truck, bus, etc. And there is hardly any doubt that doing so is hazardous. In his essay for The New York Times, Monday, December 7, 2009, Matt Richtel chronicles some of this and reports, among other matters, that “Bob Lucky, an executive director at Bell Labs from 1982-92, said he knew that drivers talking on cellphones were not focused fully on the road. But he did not think much about it or discuss it and supposed others did not, either, given the industry’s booming fortunes. “’If you’re an engineer, you don’t want to outlaw the great technology you’ve been working on,’ said Mr. Lucky, now 73. ‘If you’re a marketing person, you don’t want to outlaw the thing you’ve been trying to sell. If you’re a C.E.O., you don’t want to outlaw the thing that’s been making a lot of money’.” Mr. Richtel goes back even further and reports how worries about the safety of using cell phones while driving goes back to the 1960s!
Mr. Lucky’s line of reasoning is, of course, the favorite one to produce about those who defend some private industry–what they do is mainly to recklessly promote their own economic interests, never mind safety, never mind the interest of customers, never mind good sense–just pursue profit and be done with it.
But this is a caricature, born of cynical theory not of real life. While of course most people first think of how something will help them with their own projects and the pursuit of their own goals, there is nothing in this that shows their indifference to and neglect of other concerns, some of them indeed having to do with how other people are affected.
In the ongoing concern with the use of hand-held and hands free cell phone use while driving a car, the focus seems to be all on what such use does to one’s driving and the comparison is nearly always between such use and no distractions at all. But what about the possibility that cell phone use in cars may not be any more hazardous than, say, changing CDs or cassette tapes, tucking in the baby in the back, checking the map, looking for something in the glove compartment, or having a heated discussion with one’s passenger, while driving one’s vehicle. Indeed, this is probably true but not easily tested and confirmed (or dis-confirmed).
Imposing restrictions on drivers concerning these other possible distractions would, no doubt, be somewhat problematic since all those are mainly personal distractions and no big industry can be held complicit. Deep pockets are missing there, too. Instead these other distractions seem quite normal, just part of life on the road and have been with us since automobile and similar vehicle use itself has been.
Not that I have had the chance to make a thorough comparison except in my own case where I have found that using a cell is, yes, hazardous but then so is checking out one’s driving directions, looking for a house number (especially at night), examining a map, going through a personal address or phone book, etc., etc., and so forth. All such activities, while driving, require attention and concentrating on driving at the same time can be challenging; since doing so is not on everyone’s agenda as a general rule, why expect something different from people when they have the option to use their cell phones while they are driving?
Forgive me my suspicious nature, but am I seeing here, once again, the eagerness of some political and bureaucratic types to rush in an micromanage us all? Given how silent they appear to be about how cell phone use in cars compares with all those other, more customary distractions, I think my suspicion isn’t ill founded. A word to the wise should suffice–it may not be about safety as much as it is about control, about the age old government habit.
