Think Free Posted November 3, 2013 Posted November 3, 2013 http://youtu.be/g8S3geFZSpM (Sorry, don't know how to embed.) Original Article: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/... I didn't think Stef did the best job on this one. Mostly because he seemed to get pretty distracted criticizing the author. So, here's my shot at it: 1. Is any exchange between two people in the absence of direct physical compulsion by one party against the other (or the threat thereof) necessarily free? Yes, at least in the sense that is relevant to libertarianism. A person falling from an airplane obviously isn't free to not fall, but they are free to do whatever they can in that situation. Government doesn't have any magical power to controvert the facts of reality, it only has the power to use violence against people, just like all humans do. Libertarians claim people should be free from violence, not free from the laws of nature. If you say yes, then you think that people can never be coerced into action by circumstances that do not involve the direct physical compulsion of another person. Suppose a woman and her children are starving, and the only way she can feed her family, apart from theft, is to prostitute herself or to sell her organs. Since she undertakes these acts of exchange not because of direct physical coercion by another, but only because she is compelled by hunger and a lack of alternatives, they are free. Yes. As Stef has pointed out, to make the above scenario even remotely plausible you have to add so many additional caveats and limiting factors to explain why she can't possibly provide anything of value other than her sexual services and/or organs, and can't possibly receive any charity that what you're left with a scenario suitable only for a farce. The fact of the matter is that humans almost always have a near unlimited number of options at any point in time, and here's the thing: the worse and more desperate your situation, the more likely any given option will improve your situation. So, if you're Bill Gates, going door to door and asking for food or a job is a huge waste of time. But for a woman who magically in such a strange situation without friends or family or any job opportunities whatsoever (yet still somehow in a free-market) that it almost seems like "God" made it up to prove a point, going door to door would be a great option. The fact of the matter is that women who prostitute themselves usually either are violently forced to do so, or pick it over a list of other options that other women have chosen over prostitution. The bottom line is that problems that are not caused by violence cannot reasonably or reliably be solved by violence. So even in this woman's situation, if your only tool is a gun, your only possible way of helping her without hurting someone else is to find the violence that is putting her in that situation and stop it. Hint: It's probably something the government is doing, like minimum wage laws. 2. Is any free (not physically compelled) exchange morally permissible? Of course not. If you believe that "ought to be legal" equals "is morally permissible" you've completely lost sight of what morality is. It's not moral to mock the disabled, but it shouldn't be illegal. Libertarians (mostly) don't claim that it's moral to ignore the plight of the starving, but we do claim that it should be legal. The libertarian claim is that the only immorality that justifies violence being used to stop it is violent immorality. Libertarians claim that it is okay for you to believe that homosexual acts are immoral and not use violence to stop people from committing those acts. Libertarians vary on this, but I believe that some immoral acts are worthy of ridicule and censure, but not violence. For example, I believe that the pickup artist lifestyle is worthy of censure, but not violence. If you say yes, then you think that any free exchange can't be exploitative and thus immoral. Suppose that I inherited from my rich parents a large plot of vacant land, and that you are my poor, landless neighbor. I offer you the following deal. You can work the land, doing all the hard labor of tilling, sowing, irrigating and harvesting. I'll pay you $1 a day for a year. After that, I'll sell the crop for $50,000. You decide this is your best available option, and so take the deal. Since you consent to this exchange, there's nothing morally problematic about it. Again, another ridiculous example. Obviously it's not moral for the land owner to try and make his neighbor do all the work for a tiny fraction of the profit, but it should be legal. However, let's examine the situation a little more: If one man is able to earn $50,000 a year simply by tending a piece of land, then there should be a plethora of well-to-do landowners and tenders for which the poor man in this example could provide other services. Let's tighten the scenario by supposing that ALL the land was concentrated in the hands of a few lazy land owners that all got together and agreed that they would only pay $1 a day. And let's assume that for some magical reason, the laborers couldn't unionize, and can't find any other jobs. The first evil baron that abandoned this scheme and competed for labor could easily corner the market on wheat and make a killing. For example, at the normal "market" value of $50,000 suggested by the scenario, the smart evil baron could afford to pay 2 workers $2 a day to work his field and another 130 workers $1 a day to just not work for the other evil barons and he would still make a profit. If the pool of potential laborers wasn't significantly larger than 130, he would, by doing this, drive up the price of wheat (or whatever they're growing) significantly and be able to pocket the extra. If he owned more fields, his ability to screw over the other barons and make an obscene profit would increase proportionally. Of course, this scenario would never happen because enough barons are too smart to deliberately screw themselves over by being "evil". Anti-free-market people never seem to understand that employers compete for employees just as employees compete for jobs, so that in a true free market, there is a pressure to normalize wages. 3. Do people deserve all they are able, and only what they are able, to get through free exchange? If "deserve" means "should not by violence be dispossessed of," then people deserve all that they are able to get through free exchange as well as all that they are able to get by any other non-coercive means. If you say yes, you think that what people deserve is largely a matter of luck. Why? First, because only a tiny minority of the population is lucky enough to inherit wealth from their parents. (A fact lost on Mitt Romney, who famously advised America's youth to "take a shot, go for it, take a risk ... borrow money if you have to from your parents, start a business.") Since giving money to your kids is just another example of free exchange, there's nothing wrong with the accumulation of wealth and privilege in the hands of the few. Second, people's capacities to produce goods and services in demand on the market is largely a function of the lottery of their birth: their genetic predispositions, their parents' education, the amount of race- and sex-based discrimination to which they're subjected, their access to health care and good education. The problem here is that while the ability to earn (and especially to earn big) is somewhat based on luck, no human or group of humans is able to tell someone else how much of their wealth is the result of luck versus hard work, wisdom, patience, or any other virtue. One gambler may believe that he won the jackpot because of careful cultivation of his sixth sense. How can you be so sure that he's wrong that you are morally justified in holding him up with a gun and taking his money? Second, the idea that the free market tends to concentrate money in the hands of the few is just ridiculous. Free trade is not a zero-sum game. When two people trade freely, they are each acquiring wealth. The people who get the richest usually get the richest by making many other people slightly wealthier. And, as Stefan mentioned, the children of the highly rich and successful often just spend the money their parents earned, and when they do that, the money tends to flow from them who have an excess of money and riches to the people who have a deficiency and are willing to work for it. People with an excess of wealth have less incentive to save money and more incentive to look for the best. This is why high-end goods tend to have the highest profit margins. It's also a function of what the market happens to value at a particular time. Van Gogh, William Blake, Edgar Allan Poe, Vermeer, Melville and Schubert all died broke. If you're a good Nozickian, you think that's what they deserved. None of them were forced by the free market to die broke. None of them were mothers forced into prostitution, like your example. They all were capable of making other economic decisions and taking other paths in life. It's libertarians that tell them that they can take whatever path in life they choose. It's you who think you have the right to make others decisions for them. 4. Are people under no obligation to do anything they don't freely want to do or freely commit themselves to doing? Of course not, but everyone is responsible to determine for themselves what obligations they're under. This is known as "freedom of conscience" and it the basis for "freedom of religion" and most of our other freedoms. Everyone has moral obligations beyond what they want, one of those moral obligations is the moral obligation not to use violence to force somebody else to do what you think they ought to do. It's not that complicated. If you say yes, then you think the only moral requirements are the ones we freely bring on ourselves — say, by making promises or contracts. Suppose I'm walking to the library and see a man drowning in the river. I decide that the pleasure I would get from saving his life wouldn't exceed the cost of getting wet and the delay. So I walk on by. Since I made no contract with the man, I am under no obligation to save him. By now you should know that libertarians would mostly agree that you do have an obligation to save the man, but that's a red herring. You statists are constantly committing the straw-man and equivocation fallacies in this way. The debate between libertarians and statists is not whether you have an obligation to save the man, but whether you are morally justified in forcing another person at gunpoint to save the man, or shooting him after the fact if he chooses not to save the drowning man. The clear answers is, no, you don't have that right and nor does anyone else.
Guest Ethan Glover Posted November 3, 2013 Posted November 3, 2013 It's very difficult to take the original article seriously. Even David Gordon's response was fairly harsh. I've got 7 pages written up, and I certainly found myself incapable of playing nice because of the way it was put together. You've done a fairly good job of staying calm. And your responses are good. You may be showing more respect than Amia deserves, but that's a good thing for you.
Think Free Posted November 3, 2013 Author Posted November 3, 2013 It's very difficult to take the original article seriously. Even David Gordon's response was fairly harsh. I've got 7 pages written up, and I certainly found myself incapable of playing nice because of the way it was put together. You've done a fairly good job of staying calm. And your responses are good. You may be showing more respect than Amia deserves, but that's a good thing for you. Thanks. I believe that staying calm is very important. It seems to me that, unfortunately, most people can't tell the difference between someone who loses their cool in an argument and the loser of an argument. That's one of the strengths of the statist agenda, as they send armies of infuriatingly smug and naive people out into the world--it's hard to maintain your cool when you hear reasoning based on the unstated assumption of, "If it's worth doing, the government should do it," for the 10,000th time.
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