A Passion for Liberty
Tibor R. Machan @ Rational Review
Posts tagged rights
Essay on The Democratic Ideal
Mar 17th
The Democratic Ideal
Tibor R. Machan
Democracy is a process by which some decisions are made and in the context of politics it means the kind of system that depends upon the participation of the citizenry for certain purposes. What grounds democracy as a just mode of political decision-making is that citizens have the ultimate authority concerning certain matters in the polis. And the reason they do have this ultimate authority is that they are, as adults, equal in their status vis-à-vis the stake they have in their political institutions, their laws, public policies, foreign relations, etc. That they have this equal status hinges on certain extra or pre-political matters, to be discerned by way of reflection upon human nature and proper human relations. For now I’ll simply note that as I understand political matters, they arise from the moral fact that each individual adult human being has as his or her task in life to live it rationally, to flourish as a rational animal. Since this task for adults can only be achieved if they are not subject to another’s will―in which case it is that other’s rational choice that would be the ruling principle of one’s life—in communities human beings must be sovereign. From this it follows that they must have a say in their own political fate, ergo, democracy.
In any case, democracy is derivative of what human beings are taken to be as they find themselves within a community that aims at justice, a polity. From the Hobbesian framework, democracy is recommended because all of us are nothing but bits of matter- in-motion and thus lack any significant, fundamental differentiating attributes. Even our human nature is but nominal, a status in the world established by means of the human intellect’s response to the motions that affect the brain, a response itself motivated by the drive for self-preservation or keeping in continued motion in part by naming groups of impulses affecting the brain. We make the categories, create them by naming our sensory input as we will.1 So the reason for democracy a la the Hobbesian view is that nothing justifies differentiating some people from others (indeed, if one were to be fully consistent, anything from anything else, at the metaphysical, fundamental level of being.) A somewhat different reason for democracy arises from the Lockean view, one closer to what I sketched above as my own. For Locke, at least when we turn to his political treatise, we are all equal and independent in the state of nature, i.e., prior to the formation or apart from civil society or the polis. Adult human beings begin, never mind the precise point of reaching adulthood, as equally embarking on a human life, one that is to be governed by the laws of nature, which is reason, if one but consult it. In other words, we are all moral agents having to live up to our moral responsibilities or duties, and in this we are all alike. So we are all endowed with natural rights, which spell out for each of us a sphere of sovereignty or personal authority or jurisdiction. There are no natural masters or natural slaves (although there may be borderline cases of defective or crucially incapacitated persons). If this is kept in clear focus, one will realize that a human community starts with no one superior or inferior regarding the issue of the authority to make law and to govern. Thus, democracy.
But democracy is a process, morally required by the right to take part in deciding or to give consent. It is in fact our natural right to person and estate that lies behind the right to be part of the decision-making process involved in politics. It is not a process that is applicable to everything one might want to influence, however. There is a proper sphere of democracy.
Clearly there are those who propose that democracy is unlimited-only the fact that people will things to be one way or another matters. Some interpreters of Locke have claimed this—e. g., Wilmore Kendall and his followers—as well as some conservatives, e. g., Robert Bork. Thus they argue that once human beings are no longer in a state of nature, they have in effect adopted democracy as a decision-making process regarding whatever comes up for public discussion, whatever a sizable number of them want to subject to this process.
Yet this seems to me to be wrong, whatever the proper interpretation of Locke might be and I would dispute that Locke can be coherently interpreted this way. For in Locke the justification for government lies in the need for the protection of natural rights, a protection not easily obtained (except by the strong) in the state of nature. (And the state of nature need not be a source of much intellectual consternation—it refers to a circumstance not governed by due process or the rule of law, one that we may even encounter in a back alley or away from civilization where we can be easy prey for thugs. In the classic movie, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, it was the situation prior to when John Wayne enabled Jimmy Stuart to establish law and order. In actual life it is the situation one may face in the middle of the Mojave Desert or in any inner city park where law enforcement is nearly nothing.)
So Locke sees the protection of everyone’s natural rights as the proper purpose of government. Since establishing, maintaining and protecting government is itself a form of human activity that can be done well or badly, it must be guided by the principles of natural rights-its creation, development and operations may not encroach upon those rights, lest its proper purpose is undermined. Perhaps the best way to understand this is by recalling the common sense notion that even the securing of highly valued goals does not justify the employment of immoral means.
Quite a part from Locke, in any case, unless democracy is itself guided by norms-unless the people express and implement their will as they should and not as they should not-it becomes self-defeating. Not only is there the problem that such a process is in violation of the rights of innocents who would be made victims of the use of arbitrary force. Unlimited democracy, furthermore, can undo democracy itself. If democracy, for example, is applied too broadly, it is bent upon defeating its very purpose, the goal that justifies its employment. To provide a hint via a possible result of the democratic process, suppose that we democratically vote to exclude some people from the voting process. This is a legacy of some state governments in the United States of America, as well as the efforts of the federal government. When the possibility of voting is linked to property ownership or some other condition, the democratic process is weakened. It also occurs when the federal government focuses on what has come to be called inclusiveness so that, for the sake of including into the governing process members of some minority groups, it is decided that other members should be given lower representation. Such group inclusiveness undermines the natural rights of individuals to take part in the political process, a right that derives from their right to liberty of association. Yet the underlying justification for democracy is that individuals have the right to consent to their government. In other words, if the democratic process can justifiably produce governmental measures that violate the natural rights of individuals, this undermines the capacity of these individuals to be full, equally free participants in the democratic process.
Other kinds of cases abound. If by the democratic process the rights to life, liberty or property could justifiably be abrogated or violated, those taking part in the process no longer can act freely and independently. The majority can threaten their free judgments. It can enact measures that will authorize vindictive official actions against the minority, something that inevitably leads to the undermining of democracy. That is just why the “democracies” of Eastern Europe were a complete farce despite the great numbers of participants in the actual electoral process. Thus parties, however, had no liberty to vote as they wanted, for whom they wanted.
If when I vote I know that voting my conscience will result in having my sovereignty undermined, leading to my partial enslavement or involuntary servitude, I will not likely vote my conscience. I will act like the victim of the mugger who is told, “You r money or your life!” When I hand over my money I do it under compulsion not by choice. (It is a myth that we always have a choice, for a choice that is set out by others regarding one’s life, that robs one of one’s life and takes away the prospects of a self-governed future, is no choice.) If a democratic process allows the similar act on the part of the majority, the members of the minority will vote-voice their judgment, indicate their preferences-under severe constraint. No true majority will can emerge under the circumstances.
We can extend this analysis now to the realm of contemporary politics in Western democracies. Let’s focus on the general situation in the United States of America today.
Whenever public programs are being cut, those who have their benefits reduced offer cries of need and those who feel for them cries of compassion. Yet whenever public programs are proposed, which also cuts out the benefits of those who need to pay for i t from higher taxes, it is contended that this is just the result of social life. After all, “we” have decided to fund social security, unemployment compensation, the national parks, public broadcasting, or whatnot, haven’t we? So it is no objection to this that some of us suffer losses, that some of us now have to forego benefits, experience reduced income which can lead to reduced quality of education, recreation, home life, dental care, transportation safety, cultural enrichment, and so forth. None of this is supposed to matter because “we” have decided to tax ourselves higher to fund all those public programs.2 Why is it that it is OK to violate the individual rights to liberty and property of millions of people when the lot of us decide to do this but not OK to reduce the benefits of people when a somewhat differently configured lot of us decided to do that? Why may the choices of some individuals be ignored and thwarted by democratic decision making but not that of others trumped by the same process? The fact is that most people who talk of and like democracy in the context of the currently bloated understanding, they do so only when it supports their agenda. It is fine to use democracy to rob the rich-it makes it valid public policy instead of theft. But if the poor are the targets than suddenly democracy is invalid.
Indeed, the reason is, as suggested earlier, that democracy is never enough. There must always be some specification of the goals for which democracy is appropriate. It isn’t enough to have a democratic process-it can lead to results of widely different quality. Sometimes the majority does right, sometimes wrong. And the task of political theory is, in part, to identify those areas of public life that should be subject to democratic decision making.
What are those areas? And why are they the ones?
Whether alone, or with one’s fellows, a human being may not do some things to other human beings. Especially no one may take over another’s life. This is so whether that other’s life is fortunate, well to do, talented, accomplished, and beautiful, accepted by others and freely granted benefits. In short, neither those who are fortunate—let alone those who are accomplished—nor those lacking in good fortune, are available for others to be used when permission hasn’t been granted, when consent is not given. In either kind of ca se, no one or group may take over another’s life-it amounts to the kind of crime classified, variously, as theft, robbery, assault, kidnapping, murder, battery, rape, and other forms of aggression. And the fact that the numbers of those who do such thing s is increased and even constitute a majority of those concerned makes no difference. Nor does the fact that some procedure has been followed as these policies are instituted, for lacking the consent, tacit or at least implicit, of those who are to be deprived, makes any such process invalid, unjust, undue.
It is wrong to steal on one’s own as well as with the support of millions. It is wrong to enslave, to place others into servitude when they refuse, etc., no matter whether one is in the minority or the majority.
Nor can majorities authorize certain people, such as their political representatives, to carry out such deeds, even if they do it indirectly, by threatening those whom they would rob, steal from, kidnap, assault or whatever with aggressive enforcement at the hands of the police. It is wrong, then, even for the government of a representative democracy or republic to carry out such deeds. Having done it with democratic “authorization” makes it no more right than if no such authorization had taken place. There i s simply no moral authority for anyone to delegate to another such powers since one hasn’t got them in the first place. If my friends and I enact an elaborate process, surrounded with pomp and circumstances, ritual and ornamentation, to commence kidnapping your children or confiscating your wealth, all this is morally and politically trumped by the fact that your consent to the process has been lacking. Unless you are a criminal, who has by his or her crime in effect tacitly agreed to accept our forcible (self-protective) response, you may not be intruded upon.3 Most of this is admitted by all the parties to the debate. This is why even when the people elect certain political representatives (for example, conservative Republicans), others (for example, liberal Democrats), often claim that what results, in terms of legislation, is wrong and should not have been done. They maintain this in various political forums that are supposedly the spheres of democratic decision making. So they evidently think t hat what the democratic process produces is not decisive as to what ought to be done. Even if a law passes, critics will call it wrong-heartless, unkind, lacking in compassion. Even supporters of legal positivism, who discount any moral dimension of the legislative process, such as the obligation to be guided by natural or divine law, will protest democratic attacks upon values other than democracy.4 Because no one simply accepts the answer to a challenge of a democratically arrived at result which the y find morally abhorrent that, well, it was brought about by way of the democratic process-”we” did it, so it’s OK, a matter of society’s collective will. (Even in criminal trials, the mini-democracy of jury verdict is governed by firm provisions of due process and with opportunities of appeal.)
It is, then, no valid answer to those who protest the taking of their life-time, income, good fortune or whatever by way of majority vote that, well, this is OK since it is done democratically. The violation of the rights of individuals is no less justified by democracy than is collective callousness. This raises the problem of how to be kind, compassionate, generous, and helpful to those in genuine need without violating the rights of individuals to their life, liberty and property? The answer is actually quite simple: Do it, promote it, and exhibit it by your own conduct! When members of a society learn that moral principles cannot justly be violated by the democratic process, so they may not violate anyone’s rights with the excuse that “we” did it so it’s OK, they learn, also, that when the right thing must be done, it has to be done by choice, free of coercion. So the help that the poor and needy should be given must be given at the initiative of the free citizen—via charity, generosity, philanthropy, and, yes, the facilitation of productive opportunity.
Interview on Argentine TV in 2001
Feb 9th
This Interview was conducted on Argentine television, October 2001
Question: Do you have any explanation for the fact that the U.S. developed in the way it developed in the last two centuries, compared with its neighbors in Latin America – who didn’t develop that way?
Roughly speaking the answer is that the founders of the U.S. were people who had had it with monarchies “up to here” – they were opposed to top down government. They were not right in everything – they made mistakes – but their primary message was that it is not the king (government) who is the sovereign in a society – it is the individual members of the society who are sovereign. They rejected the status of the inhabitants of the society as subjects, and insisted that they were citizens who had basic rights The fact that they announced that in the Declaration of Independence – that everyone has the basic right to his or her life, liberty and pursuit of happiness and that the only function of government is to secure these rights – made the biggest difference, was the most revolutionary development of human political history. All the rest follows from there.
Even the mistakes they made, for example, about slavery or the treatment of the Native American “Indians,” could only be corrected in terms that they themselves laid down to guide the nature of social life, namely, in terms of individual human rights. It is not the family, the tribe, the clan, the ethnic group, or the nation but the individual human being who’s the most important “ingredient” in society.
All the other nations went along with that only willy-nilly, including Latin & Central American nations that were far less clear-cut in their opposition to monarchies, to top-down rule & society.
Question: What would you answer to philosophers like the guest we had program – a philosopher/professor at the University of Buenos Aires — who sustain that in general the problem with Latin America and the lack of development is excess of individualism, excess of selfishness and we should really in order to progress, to be part of the group, to consider ourselves part of a big type of animal where we are all involved with each other.
Poppycock is the American expression to that. I consider that completely wrong — way, way the “wrongest” answer you can give. It simply increases the power of some people [to reject individualism]. There is no such entity as the society. There’s no such as entity as the group. Those are all [conceptual and verbal] shortcuts to talking about people [in various associations with one another].
Whenever people bring up the community above individuals, they really mean that some individuals should have more power than other individuals. There is no escaping from that. Nobody who talks about the public interest vs the private interest really means some different interest. It’s some private interest that he prefers or that he considers more important vs other private interests.
I don’t know this gentleman who we are talking about but whenever people talk to me about how there’s too much individualism, and too much selfishness, that’s usually a code word for saying it’s some one else’s individualism, some one else’s selfishness that is to crowd out my individualism and my selfishness. In fact they have goals and I have goals and other people have goals. A proper society makes the realization of these goals peacefully possible. That’s what’s necessary.
There are corrupt versions of any kind of point of view including individualism. Individualism does not mean Robinson Crusoe on an island all by himself – self sufficient, unrelated to people. All individualists who have something to contribute to the discussion of political matters recognize that individuals flourish with other individuals, but not on just any terms. They have to be terms that respect the individual’s right to sovereignty in terms of which any individual should chose other individuals as members of the community. I ought to relate to friends, to relations, to colleagues, to neighbors, to fellow participants in the market place. It is better for me to do that, but not when they start violating my rights.
Question: But is it not the case, as some people sustain, that in general if you leave people alone in the market just in general, you have winners and losers, and there is no remedy to that. That in general some people will prevail over the other ones and will take advantage of them.
The market place is not a field of combat. It is field of peaceful, even friendly, competition. It’s not like a boxing ring; it’s more like a marathon race. Everybody moves forward and as long as people move forward, they sometimes drag other people forward. It’s not a zero sum game – it’s a mistaken view of the market. When there is freedom of competition, when there is freedom of enterprise, everybody gains.
Even egalitarians like John Rawls at Harvard, who’s the foremost political philosopher in the U.S. today, admit that in order to increase the common wealth of a country you need to allow for free competition. You need to allow that some people are going to get ahead faster in order for everyone to gain from this – gain that they make themselves for themselves. There is no reason to believe if you honestly look at it, that free people who respect one another’s rights become enemies of each other. They become friends/associates, of each other.
Question: Good. What I would like to review with you are some premises in general for philosophical talk, study by metaphysics in general. I would like to know, what’s the nature of reality for you?
The nature of reality is not “for me,” not for my thought. The nature of reality is what it is. This glass of water is a glass of water, whether you are a Hottentot, a German, a Japanese, or an American. It’s going to remain a glass of water until someone drinks it, then in which case, it will an empty glass of water.
Question: What about that sentence that says that everything is according to the way, the color that you see, and the different things?
No, partly because that mistakes awareness for influence. Awareness is awareness. As an analogy, when I grab a glass, I do not distort the glass. I simply pick it up; I adjust myself to the glass. When my mind becomes aware of the glass, it doesn’t distort the glass, it doesn’t make the glass into something else. You see, if you believe that it does, you are in very, very deep trouble because then your belief that that’s what’s going on is also intruded upon by your mind. Which leads to an infinite regress of distortions. There is no escape from it.
So even the people who propose that as we understand the world, we’re distorting it don’t believe that that insight is distorted and so they think something is objective, namely their understanding of the lack of objectivity between human beings and the world.
Question: I understand that, but what about relativism; is reality moving, always, in a process of changing, so you never can know it as it is, because there is always another approach. Knowledge should be obtained all the time. You never just reach a certain point where everything is known.
My response is that, if you have an unrealistic conception of what it is to know something – if in order to know that this is a glass of water, I have to have the final word on it – then knowledge is impossible. We are never here to eternity to get that final word. Knowledge is misconceived as the final word; it’s the best word on something. That is clearly possible. Even though I don’t know what may be discovered about this thing 10,000 years from now, I can know what has been discovered about it up to now. That is enough for me to know what it is. That’s all that knowledge means. Knowledge is not a promise for a finished product.
Question: I would like to know your definition of truth, according to what you said before.
Truth is a property of a belief, a judgment, or a sentence or a statement indicating that it accurately reflects what is in the world. If I say that you are wearing a dark suit; then this sentence is true just in case you are wearing a dark suit. If the suit is not dark, if you are not wearing a suit, or if you’re not even here, then this is not a true statement.
Question: So a lie is . . .
A lie is something very complicated. Now it’s not just a falsehood; a lie is an intentional falsehood. When someone deliberately says what is not the case, or what he believes is not the case –because by accident someone could lie and tell the truth – if he mistakenly thinks that something is the case, and he wants to deny it and it turns out the denial is true, then he lied and also told the truth.
Question: I want to know your opinion about miracles – and people feel well about it, and they feel like they are not transgressing their nature.
Well, they are wrong. They are transgressing their nature.
Question: What is your view of politicians?
Politicians are often criminals in disguise and this is a very sad thing and they have been like that from the time of Caesar’s and pharaohs up to today. There is no big mystery, really: they routinely rationalize their stealing and today, for example, call it redistribution of wealth, helping the poor children, or the orphans or those who are sick. It all a ruse; it’s all a charade, it’s quackery. The fact is that politicians have one job to do. That is to protect our rights, so that we can proceed with our lives peacefully. Then if we need to help people, we need to exercise the virtue of generosity. We need to be charitable. It is not charitable to steal from you and give to me who may need some help. That is theft, not charity.
Question: The idea behind this is: that we need education, somebody needs help; somebody needs to build new houses for the poor.
The “we” tends to disguise what is going on here. Granted, parents need to give their children an education, if they cannot give their children the proper education, they should not have children. It is malpractice for them to multiply without the facility to bring up their children in a helpful, flourishing way.
Question: Not allow poor people to have kids?
I’m not prohibiting them from having kids. I’m simply insisting when they have kids, they need to take care of them or ask for help from willing others and not rob other people who have goals – an artist has the goal to paint or write or compose, a scientist to study the universe, etc. These people’s goals are just as important as those parents who didn’t think before they had children. They do not have the right or the authority to take these other people’s resources and convert them to their goals. Not without their permission.
Politicians pretend that they do have this authority, which they don’t have. Legally they do, but that simply means they have the army behind them. In fact, morally speaking no one has the right to steal from another – even for a very good purpose, even for an excellent purpose. Suppose I am the most wonderful artist in the world, I compose the most beautiful music, but I am too poor to buy a piano and buy sheet music. I don’t have a right to go over and steal from you your resources that you might even squander or gambling away. As long as it comes from you, as long as it is something you’ve created from your assets, from your resources, you are entitled to dispose of those things as you see fit – even when you do it wrongly. I may criticize you; I may beg you to do it right, but I may not send the police out to reform you in my image.
This is the nature of civilization. Civilization means treating other human beings with attention to their reasoning capacity and abstaining from the use of force – even for very good objectives.
Question: So the only proper role of government is justice. No other role, like the one mentioned before – education, or just building houses for the poor or security.
A proper government is a like a referee at a game. There could be all kinds of things going on in the audience, on the playing field. Some of the players might need help, may need to be consoled because they lost the last round, but the referee must keep his/her integrity and uphold the rules, and not get involved in other things. There are other parts of society that take care of that – of charity, of generosity, of philanthropy, of business, or competition. The role of the government is to be the guardian of the rules of the free society. Those rules consist of defending individual rights; making sure that nobody gains some advantage through force and that all advantages are gained voluntarily, peacefully. Even if the advantages are huge; peace, justice is what the government is obligated to secure; not some other goals, which are perfectly OK for other people to strive for.
Question: You mentioned rights – to defend individual rights – don’t people have the right to have a job, for example in the country with such unemployment is 14%?
Consider for example if I had a right to have employment. That means I have a right for other people to buy my goods or services. Other people would then have to be conscripted – forced – in order to give me this job. They would have an obligation to buy things from me, to use my goods and services. They would not just have perhaps a moral responsibility but also a legally enforceable obligation. That would place them into involuntary servitude to me.
Question: So you don’t think people have a right to a job?
Of course not. Jobs are created through trade and exchange – through voluntary trade; to people’s free consent to use the services of those offer those services for sale. That what brings about jobs.
Question: Why in this society don’t we have jobs? And people are unemployed?
That’s a historical question. Very often the reason for that is that business, commerce, labor, is stymied – it’s blocked, there are protectionist measures that are introduced to protect some industry and give them an advantage over other industries. That keeps production enterprise down. Consider for example the fact that in the U.S., which is a welfare state, but a milder version of a welfare state, compared to France, Germany, or Argentina to some extent. There is a fairly open employment market. When you get hired by an employer he/she isn’t required to immediately give you life-long benefits. That means that more people enter the market with new ideas, with new projects, because they are not afraid that the moment they enter the market, they would be over-burdened with all these obligations to their employees. So there is more work, there are more jobs, there is more employment and they have an unemployment rate of around 4% compared to Germany where you start a business, you immediately have to promise your employees life-long security. That creates a depression of enterprise. People cannot afford to enter new enterprises and to risk assuming all these burdens they didn’t choose.
Question: What about income tax?
If you consider the origin of taxation, you will have an understanding why I will answer you the way I will. Taxation was at home in a feudal system where the king owned everything. Taxes were the rents the kings collected on other people working their property, on their land. It all belonged to the king; the king owned everything. So taxes were a form of payment to gain the king’s permission to work there. But once you change the idea of politics away from the sovereignty of the king to the sovereignty of the individuals in a society, taxation lost its rationale. Now taxation is anomaly – a strange thing in most western societies. Here we are basically paying someone because they won’t let us work without paying them. That’s called extortion. That’s what the Mafia does. It goes to a shop owner and says if you do not pay me something, I’ll burn down your shop. That’s like the government coming to say, if you don’t give me part of your income, I’ll not let you work.
Question: But how do you fight this?
That’s an interesting question. Ask yourself that question in another context. Suppose you were used to a government establishing a religion in a country. Now you suggest that that should no longer be the case. People will scratch their head and say, then how would you have worship in a country if a government does not establish it? Look at the U.S. – the government is explicitly prohibited from establishing a church. Do you know how much religion that there is in the U.S.? A lot. Everybody goes to church. Almost 90% of the people profess to be in God, and go to church. Religion did not die because the government does not protect it. Now, there’s the same question – how would legal services be funded in a society in which robbery or extortion by the government is prohibited. It has to be done by charging a fee for the services for the government should provide.
Question: What is the role of democracy in such a context?
You’re jumping ahead a little bit too fast. But my basic answer to the previous question is contract fees. You charge a fee for all written contracts in order to provide the legal background within which contracts can be adjudicated and protected – that requires police, courts, military, etc. If you confine a government to its proper role, then this will be sufficient to pay for it.
Question: In Argentina, the gross national product is 300 billion – and in general the government is taking a hundred billion of it. Would you consider that an excess?
Highway robbery. This is some people living off the backs of other people. There is no question in my mind about this. No matter how nice a rationalization for this, no matter how saintly you think politicians are, the fact is that they are robbing people of their lively-hood for purposes to which those people have not agreed.
Question: So if our president had the chance to look at the program right now and if you could give him some advice, what would you say?
Scale down the scope of the government. Not so much it’s size, but it’s scope. It needs to focus on protecting the rights of the citizenry – not on building roads, not on building sports arenas, not about protecting some industries against others, and regulating people – confine yourself to the honorable task that a politician truly should be loyal to – that is, defending individual rights.
Question: Shouldn’t the government impose science?
No! That is not its business – any more than it is its business to promote religion or to promote sports. That’s not the government’s business – the government is agent of force. Just like you can only use force when you defend yourself – not in accomplishing something with me. If I don’t give you the right answer, you can’t come over and hit me in the head, right? You have to plead with me for the right answer. Similarly the government should never use force except in defense against criminals or outside aggressors. Any other use is illegitimate use of its tools.
Question: Aren’t you defending the concept of government that was the concept in the 18th century?
No.
Question: There is no room for government – what is going to happen to the poor people?
First of all, there is a role for legal authorities to defend people’s rights. Within the context of having your rights effectively, properly defended by this legal authority, all kinds of charitable, philanthropic – kind, compassionate arrangements can reign. In fact, free societies are far more generous than coerced societies. You don’t see Iraq sending a lot of foreign aid to people – you see America doing so much more. There’s a great deal more scholarship and voluntary help when people are free. Because generosity and charity – in order for them to be true virtues have to be chosen – they cannot be coerced. Any form of coerced good behavior no longer is good behavior. It is simply regimented behavior. Now as far as sacrifice is concerned, it is true that I do not believe that the primary role of human beings in life is to sacrifice themselves. Notice the consequences of thinking so. Suppose you do believe that I should sacrifice myself for you – and then you believe that you should sacrifice yourself for somebody else and on and on and on. Who are the beneficiaries? So the only thing that could mean in any rational sense is that when people are in a special needy situation, in some emergency, when they have through no fault of their own, become in dire straits, when they are very much in need of some help, then we should take up pause with our attempts to flourish in life, and get ahead in life, and pay some attention to them. That’s what the virtue of generosity urges us to do. That was occasional charity – that’s what contributions to philanthropic groups – that’s why we should do that because people are in special circumstances – sometimes. But that shouldn’t be generalized into an overall ethics. That is, in Aristotle’s tradition, the greatest virtue is to think rationally – and thinking rationally will guide you to when to be courageous, when to be prudent, when to be honest, when to be moderate, when to be generous. Generosity shouldn’t be wasted on frivolous things; it should be exercised when genuine need from deserving people warrant it.
Question: So there is nothing wrong with accumulating wealth according to your views.
Nothing at all.
Question: Why do you think that a person that is accumulating wealth in our society is not seen well?
There are many reasons for that. Different people have different reasons and some people have a combination of reasons that leads them to think that way. Part of it is envy, part of it is resentment, part of it is the belief – an ancient belief – that this earth is not worth living for – that the only worthwhile lives are lives that are devoted to supernatural realm, to a spiritual existence. To some extent this is enhanced by some religions – not all religions. One of the reasons that in Christian Europe Jews were resented so much is that first they were excluded from ordinary professions, and the professions that they thought they could do – finance, banking – the Christians didn’t think they could do, so the Jews became rich and successful. Then suddenly everyone resented them, and eventually that is one of the major causes of the holocaust – this resentment toward the success of Jews whose religion did not prohibit them from striving for wealth. The only time Jesus became violent is against moneylenders. That’s a clue to the attitude toward riches – toward wealth gaining – that we’ve had in much of western society – especially other societies. When Saddam Hussein wanted to denounce the U.S. during the Gulf War, his major accusation was “you are materialistic”. But in fact what wealth seeking amounts to is seeking prosperity. Seeking success in a certain realm of one’s life. That’s not the most important thing, but that is one important thing – just like health. What are people who seek good health? After all they are healthy in this world; once their dead, health is not going to do them any good. Why don’t we resent people who go to doctors? Who seek help from medicine. . . we don’t resent them. Why don’t we resent people who seek health from nutrition? We don’t, because we generally recognize that a proper concern for one’s well being here on earth is a commendable, respectable objective. People who make wealth; they just don’t make wealth for them, they make wealth for their families, for their friends, for their organizations they believe in. For example, Bill Gates gives around hundred million dollars even billions of dollars sometimes to causes in which he believes. Just because there is a proper role for charity and generosity, it does not authorize the government to come in and play highway robber with the phony promise that they will allocate the wealth that they have stolen to the right cause.
Question: So your are not happy with the Robin Hood concept . . .
Well if you remember Robin Hood stole not from the rich but from the tax takers. He took the taxes back and returned to those from whom the taxes were taken. So Robin Hood was a good guy; he took only from those who first stole. He didn’t redistribute wealth that was honestly earned. That’s an interesting thing that is misunderstood about Robin Hood. There are many misunderstandings that people invoke to justify their criminality,
Question: Protectionism – do you think it’s a proper tool for development?
Protectionism is just a nice word for intruding on business. If I have a barbershop, and you have a barbershop, and you cut hair for a lower price than I. Am I entitled to hire some big fellow to stop at your door all the customers who go to your barbershop?
Question: Of course not.
Well then, that’s protectionism. That’s the bottom line of protectionism. Getting government with its armies, with its police – to protect some people against the competition in the marketplace.
Question: But what about the people we are protecting – our industrialists against foreigners?
There is no “our” vs “foreigners” in a marketplace. We don’t have “our vs. theirs.” It’s a form of discrimination that should be resented just as much as any sort of ethnic or sexist discrimination is. Any sort of protection should be given to individual rights – and let the rest of it play itself out, as freely combining and interacting human beings will.
Question: It is said that the U.S. develops itself thanks to protectionism.
It may very well be true to some extent. The U.S. has done that – and it was wrong for it to do so. It shouldn’t have advanced its own economic well being by barring others from competition. To the extent that it is done so, it was wrong. That’s true of all countries that practice protectionism. There is no excuse for it – it’s all a pretense; they are all farmers – they are human beings. If they honestly produce, they should be able to honestly trade.
Tibor, thank you very much for this lesson.
Column on Are Corporations Persons?
Feb 3rd
Are Corporations Persons?
Tibor R. Machan
Actually, no one thinks corporations are persons but some do believe they are groups of persons. No one thinks orchestras, or football teams or universities are persons but many do think they are variously configured people. If this is so, then they, as groups of persons, have rights, including the right to private property and freedom of speech.
When people come together for some common purpose, they do not lose their basic human rights. So all the hollering about how the recent Supreme Court ruling about whether corporations have the right to engage in political advocacy, based on the allegation that corporations aren’t persons, is off base.
Even those who oppose the ruling implicitly acknowledge the above. Thus Justice Stevens, the major dissenter on the Court, wrote, that “[T]he distinctive potential of corporations to corrupt the electoral process [has] long been recognized.” But only persons can corrupt something! Theodore Roosevelt advocated prohibiting “all contributions by corporations to any political committee or for any political purpose.” And this, too, implies that corporations are made up of people, people who have rights! There is no other way corporations can make contributions–buildings, trees, land, the sea, none of these can make contributions, only people can. Ergo, corporations are people!
In any case, I have no idea what else corporations would be. Yes, they have some kind of legal identity but that is completely derivative of their being made up of people. Usually, it is a bunch of people who get together and incorporate–now that monarchs no longer create such associations–which is to say they form a specific type of organization, usually involving pooling some resources and hiring specialists to administer these resources either for profitable or non-profitable purposes. But whichever it is, it is persons who are doing this and nothing else. You may not like those types of persons but in a democracy they have the right to obtain and wield political power.
Now it is true that when people unite with one another, they tend to gain in influence, even power, if power is at issue. Sadly, given how much politics is not a matter of upholding principles, as the American Founders envisioned it, but of confiscating funds and then distributing them–that whole redistribution thing that candidate Obama had out with Joe “the Plumber”–having united powers can go a long way to gaining political clout. But this has nothing to do with corporations as such, which are perfectly benign outfits unless they commit crimes, just as this is so with individual citizens.
So then what is up with all the corporate bashing? Mostly that if you aren’t a part of the corporation but a lot of others are, it is they and not you who will wield more political power. And if one believes in democratic politics, why complain about this? If a huge company, owned by thousands of stockholders and other investors, exerts power, such is democracy. You cannot cherry pick which group of citizens should get democratic power and which should be ignored.
The remedy for out of control corporate political influence and power is to limit democracy to very few tasks in the country, such as the selection of public officials. They will then represent those who elected them but not by doing them special favors but by helping in extending the principles of the country to new and uncharted areas of the law.
I am no corporate attorney, nor a constitutional scholar but our legal system must make sense to all citizens, not just to experts. And as a plain, ordinary citizen it seems to me that all the derision extended toward corporations amounts to rank prejudice, bias, as a generalized dislike of movie actors or farmers would be. This is nothing to be proud of, that’s for sure, even if it is widely accepted and practiced. So was racial prejudice once. Not that those who have shares or manage corporations are all fine people, not by a long shot, but neither are all doctors, teachers, engineers or bureaucrats upstanding citizens. At any given time the bulk of the members of a professional could be engaged in malpractice or be decent in how they conduct themselves.
But there is no reason to suspect those who own or run corporations of any greater predilection toward malpractice than anyone else. Sometimes, of course, they operate in a system that encourages corruption, which the welfare state clearly does, what with all the selling and buying of political favors it involves. And big firms will probably be able to get more from politicians than little ones. That, however, is the problem of the system, not of any given profession.
Column on Rights are to Freely Act
Dec 31st
Rights are to Act Freely
Tibor R. Machan
I do not have a right to my car but I do have a right to buy, keep, trade and otherwise act in relation to my car. Rights are what define our range of free actions. In some cases the right to act garners us huge wealth, in others, fame, and in yet others it will gain us knowledge, health and happiness.
If I had a right to my car as such, I would get to have my car even if I paid nothing for it. Rights need not be paid for. For example, my right to my liberty–to sing to smile to think to worship and so forth–isn’t something I need to pay for. Nor can I lose such a right. Even if I end in jail for assaulting someone, it is because I acted, freely, so as to land me there. Sounds a bit odd but still true! It can be appreciated by considering that prisoners retain their rights to due process, representation, and so forth while they are in prison. They do not lose their rights but when they exercise them in certain ways, there are unwelcome consequences. As when one exercises one’s right to liberty by getting married and henceforth is no longer free to fool around.
So those who would insist that our rights be limited are advocating that other people, usually those in government, have the authority to violate our rights, that some people be in control over other people in disregard of their rights. There is no escaping this conclusion. Those who are naively thinking that “limiting” rights will just happen, by way of some cosmic power instead of human beings who would want to control others, need to realize that they are supporting involuntary servitude, plain and simple.
Such general points need sometimes be noted because of all the sophistic and dangerous loose talk about how rights are limited, not absolute. This is merely an excuse for not respecting and protecting people’s rights, for violating them at the discretion of certain citizens who find the rights of other citizens inconvenient because they stand in the way of making use of these other people for their own purposes.
For example, to claim that one’s right to the use and disposal of one’s property is limited to only a percentage of what one owns, in fact, is merely to offer a spurious reason to take what belongs to others and use it for purposes to which they have not agreed. Saying that no one has absolute rights to what he or she owns is bunk–”absolute” has nothing to do with this. Either one has the right to keep and hold and trade and otherwise use and dispose of one’s belongings or one does not and others then are given free reign over these (and allow one some usage). If I do have a right to my resources, then when others take these from me without my permission, they are violating my rights. And that’s exactly what happens when taxes are confiscated from us all. No fancy talk about no one having absolute rights excuses it–taxation is a kind of extortion: you must hand over part of what you own and ought to be able to keep, hold, trade, etc., otherwise you are going to be imprisoned or otherwise harmed. Sure, you may get some benefits from those who confiscate your belongings but that is irrelevant. What is relevant is that you didn’t give your consent.
At this point democracy tends to come up because the sophistic, spurious arguments for these ill gotten gains never ends. So if a whole bunch of other people–the majority of those who vote–agree that your belongings may be taken from you, it is supposed to be OK? Of course not. But because democracy concerning the selection of political representatives is highly prized, this same method is used for expropriating people’s lives, liberties, and property. It should not be. Multiplying the number of the criminals doesn’t eliminate the crime.
These matters are not very simple to integrate with our lives in complex societies where our actions are a mixture of free and coerced, often quite imperceptibly. Who can keep track of what we must do because otherwise we will be assaulted by the powers that be and what we do of our own free will because we have decided it is a good idea? As one goes through one’s life, with all the task one faces, it is nearly impossible to tell which of the task were freely assumed and which were imposed on one by governments (of which one is surrounded everywhere). And since some of what governments do can be of considerable value, those running government have an edge–they know that hardly anyone wants to give up the security offered by the police and the military, so they tend not to protest when these agencies abuse their powers. But those who notice have the responsibility to do so!
A few More Words on Animal “Rights”
Dec 14th
Tibor R. Machan
That people have rights is an idea that has been around a while–some argue that even Aristotle, who accepted a form of slavery for some, began to reflect on them back in ancient Greece. In time the notion got cleared up a good deal and with John Locke’s help, in the 17th century, a full theory of individual human rights emerged.
As someone who was smuggled out of communist Hungary where rights were deemed to be no more than bourgeois prejudices, I have always had a deep concern about whether a country’s legal order rests on such rights or on something far less solid and easily manipulated for the benefit of more or less Draconian tyrants. (In time I wrote two entire books, as well as a lot of papers and essays, on the topic.)
There have always been eager critics of individual human rights, for a variety of reasons, mainly because taking them seriously implies a severe reduction of the scope of governmental authority and power. That does not sit well with many people who want to achieve various goals without having to concern themselves about gaining the consent of those whose lives and labors they wish to use to help them do this. They wish to conscript people, not gain their consent, when they want their support and acknowledging individual rights renders this very difficult.
There are however those, too, who want to expand the coverage of individual human rights to include at least the “higher” animals, so that recently, for example, the government of Spain decided to “grant” rights to great apes. There is now a sizable movement, both popular and academic, insisting that animals other than human beings have the very same rights the American Founders mentioned in the Declaration of Independence. They deploy a variety of arguments in support of this idea and I have addressed several of them (in my book Putting Humans First [2004]).
One point I did not make in that work but one that should add a major obstacle efforts to ascribe rights to non-humans is worth laying out, especially now that one of our new president’s favorite legal theorist, Professor Cass Sunstein of the Harvard Law School, is proposing the push for laws that would empower animal rights supporters to sue in court in behalf of the rights of animals just as this is possible to do now vis-a-vis human beings.
Not that there is nothing wrong with abusing animals, with wanton cruelty toward them, and not that this couldn’t use a good deal of consideration from thoughtful persons, maybe even legal theorists. But the idea that animals have the rights we human beings do is completely misguided. That’s because animals are not moral agents. (There are some indications that here and there some minimal moral awareness is evident in some very few species but these are marginal cases not warranting the ascription of rights! We aren’t dealing with geometry here, so borders are sometimes hazy.)
In any event, a big problem with claiming that animals have a moral nature and rights, as human beings do, is that this would wreak havoc with the way animals are treated by us in the wilds. Putting it plainly, animals are not deemed guilty of anything when they kill, maim, devour and brutalize one another, as they do routinely on the high seas, in the desert, and up in the skies. One need but be minimally familiar with how millions of animals behave to appreciate that talk of their guilt or responsibility to be humane to one another, their need to be kind and considerate is utter nonsense. And if animals did have the rights human beings do, that is what would have to be true of them all–they would have to respect one another’s rights.
Consider that human rights watchdog agencies around the globe aim to bring governments and legal systems in line with the fact that everyone has basic rights to, for example, life, liberty, property, due process of law, free expression, political participation, and so forth. It matters not where the violations occur because the fact of someone’s humanity makes one a rights holder and indicts anyone who violates his or her rights.
If animals had these rights, too, then all of their tormentors in the wilds would have to be indicted, too. But this is nonsense because they aren’t subject to moral or legal principles and demanding that they conform to them is entirely off base. Yet if they all had rights and were moral agents that animal rights advocates insist they are–the main advocate, Tom Regan, who wrote The Case for Animal Rights back in 1984, argued that no morally significant difference can be found between people and animals–they would be (a) required to respect the rights of their fellow animals and (b) it would be mandatory to enact legislation for the protection of the rights of animals, ones being violated as a matter of course by other animals. These rights violating animals would have to be treated just like we treat violent criminals–charging them, prosecuting them, and incarcerating them once found guilty.
This is what follows form the claim that animals are just like us only a little less so–sort of like juveniles–in having a moral nature and thus possessing basic rights.
There is much else that could be pointed out that renders animal rights talk highly dubious if not out and out nonsense. But this is a major implication worth being given serious thought.
