[Jason Vines]

I originally wrote this in response to a conversation I had via IM with Sim. I'm reproducing it here.

Personal responsibility

Everything we do can affect other people. Even a seemingly innocuous activity like masturbation can have deadly consequences: The women with whom one might have slept had he not pleasured himself instead has a lesser pool of healthy sexual partners from which to choose, thereby increasing her odds of picking one with a sexually transmitted disease such as AIDS.¹

As Friedrich Hayek wrote, and as you said previously, we live in a complex world wherein many things happen—even things that affect us—beyond our control. We often have little influence over the circumstances in which we find ourselves. We can't control where, when, or whence we're born; our genetic code; or most of the trillions of activities other people undertake every day.

But insisting on personal responsibility, in Hayek's view, remains proper. It gives individuals incentive to try to improve their own lives and to avoid dissolute or criminal behavior. Otherwise, if people are not responsible for themselves, and if responsibility is instead assigned to amorphous "society," then why would anyone bother with self-improvement or self-control? There's a proverb about committee decision-making: "When everyone bears responsibility, nobody does." That applies equally well to this case.

The scope of what government can do

The complexity of modern civilization brings to mind another point: An individual's knowledge is limited. Comprehending one's own abilities and circumstances often taxes a person's faculties, which you've said yourself. How, then, could he possibly be expected to bear responsibility for society, which is vastly more complicated than his own life? Why, then, would we ever trust anyone to mold or "regulate" society (especially when the politicians who would do it seem among the least capable of regulating their own lives)?

You might rejoin that you don't expect individuals to be responsible for society, but for society to take responsibility for individuals. But that formulation would only make sense were society a collective consciousness, with people's minds linked together and sharing knowledge. That's not what civilization is, however; instead, the humans who comprise it are in many ways discrete parts, without the capability to meld their minds together. Holding "society" responsible for something is really asking each individual who comprises society to assume responsibility for things that happen outside his own sphere, even though he could not possibly understand, predict, or influence many of them.

So how is society even possible?

Just as life arose through biological evolution without conscious direction, so have our ideas and methods—such as language, law, and economy—arisen through memetic evolution absent conscious planning.² We, by and large, follow traditions that have survived the battle of memes and withstood the test of time, without comprehending all the wherefores behind those traditions.

This is not to defend slavish devotion to tradition. Progress only occurs when individuals believe they have better ways of doing things and have the will and the freedom to assume the risks of pursuing their ideas. Good ideas can spread beyond the early adopters, eventually supplementing or supplanting tradition; bad ideas, in contrast, usually perish in their infancy. And it takes place not with central planning, analogous to "intelligent design," but through an unguided process similar to what gave us opposable thumbs.

That's the point: Most of humanity's advancement and enlightenment stems from evolution, not from design. Of course, human reason plays a role, but in individuals applying reason to their own circumstances, sometimes quite fallibly, and not in "society" exercising overarching responsibility for human development. For cabals that have grabbed political power to claim such responsibility in the name of "society" jeopardizes human advancement by derailing the processes most responsible for it.³

Left-wingers regularly uphold government intervention as a manifestation of collective action and a corrective on individual fallibility. Such a conception of government activity, though, has many problems. When government launches quixotic endeavors to "regulate" society, it undermines collective action. The judgment of millions of people acting freely is substituted for that of relatively few politicians and bureaucrats. Concurrently, the potential for individual fallibility to wreak havoc increases because citizens must do what individuals in government instruct them to do. Therefore, bad ideas affect not just a handful of experimenters but can impact a whole society.⁴

What about criminal law?

Laws against murder, theft, assault, larceny, fraud, etc., evolved almost everywhere on Earth, not as the result of an overarching plan but as cumulative extensions of natural self-defense.

These negative restrictions that apply equally to everyone, consistent with "rule of law," don't require extensive knowledge of everyone's circumstances to enforce effectively. And they leave intact an individual's ability to use reason to formulate his own plans and pursue his own ends. He need only avoid a few obstacles, as would the hiker in the countryside who mustn't fall into ponds or trip over rocks.

The more the state relies on positive commands, though, the more it substitutes its own thinking for that of individuals. Instead of one considering his own circumstances, including laws against criminal behavior, and then deciding how to act, he must suspend his faculties and act as per the will of the government that has decided for him. Imagine the hiker in the countryside, but this time with a leash on his neck, being tugged where his handler wants him to go.⁵

In the former scenario, an individual is his own master, under the protection of laws the purpose of which is to ensure he remains such, for a Hobbesian state of nature would leave self-mastery very much in doubt. In the latter scenario, by contrast, an individual is a tool the state uses for its own ends; even if a tool is used only sparingly and judiciously, it remains a tool.

Aren't "we" the state?

Of course not.

As heretofore described, "society" comprises largely discrete individuals. People in government, serving in often distant national, state, and provincial capitals, are not in telepathic communion with people elsewhere. Whereas democratic republicanism enhances the rapport between state and citizenry above what it would be under any other system of government, such as monarchy, it's still flawed, so flawed that "we" cannot be said to "be" the state.

Consider:

• The principal-agent problem, exacerbated by the inability or unwillingness of many people to follow politics closely.
• The "pebbles in an avalanche" problem.
• The energy of the executive,⁶ vis-à-vis the diffuseness of the legislature, hinders legislative control and oversight of executive bureaucracies. Today, with sizable government power delegated to bureaucracies⁷—which are full of career personnel without political accountability, and which frequently make their own rules and enforce them on the public—much of the apparatus of the state falls beyond electoral or legislative accountability.

Aristotle postulates accountability as the shield against tyranny. That, and not mythic communal decision-making, represents the end of democratic voting in a republic. This is why bureaucratic lack of accountability, and the rampant government interventionism that has catalyzed the growth of bureaucracy, should concern anyone who cares about freedom.

Why "social responsibility" threatens social harmony

Every system has winners and losers. The questions are: Who will become winners or losers? How many will become so? Why?

Under a free system, one rises or falls based on the value⁸ his services provide to the community, the sum of his inherent abilities and defects, and the effects of millions of other citizens interacting with each other. So, in many cases, the outcome depends on one's own efforts and characteristics. And, when that's not true, the reason usually isn't the plotting of another individual or group with one's own misfortune in mind, but impersonal societal forces more akin to weather phenomena than to conscious decision-making.

Once government intervention begins eroding freedom, however, the conscious decision-making of other people exerts more control over whether one wins or loses. If one is a member of a politically favored constituency, then government likely will decide he should be a "winner" and transfer resources from less favored constituencies to make it so, often contributing to them becoming "losers." The damage to the economy from the forcible transfer of resources from more efficient activities to less efficient ones creates more "losers," so the number of "losers" from government action can surpass that of artificially created "winners."

You might—in a discriminatory spirit that mocks rule of law⁹—not mourn the plight of rich people resulting of government action. But what about the employees who will lose their jobs when wealthier individuals must curtail spending, when some companies must go out of business? What about patients who will go untreated and clients who will go un-served by fed-up doctors and lawyers working fewer hours?¹⁰ Why do they deserve to suffer; how is it "fair"? And what gives anyone else the right to decide they must suffer for the sake of other people?

Furthermore, not only does such an interventionist state rest on the ethically questionable framework of robbing Peter, Mary, and Sue to pay Paul, but it encourages societal discontent as well.

Why?

In a free system, to the extent that one's circumstances aren't one's own fault, they normally stem from processes that are as impersonal as rain, since they comprise indirect effects nobody has planned or could reasonably be expected to have anticipated or prevented. Say you have a tofu burger instead of a pizza. That could have larger effects of some kind, but how could you be "responsible" for them? You'd have little idea what most of them could be, you'd have little ability to control them even if you knew more, and you'd hardly be able to do anything if you tried contemplating them all before taking any action (inaction which could itself have just as many unforeseeable consequences!).

Such a multiplicity of indirect effects, just like rain or snow, cannot be somebody's "fault." Ergo, individuals usually deal with them as best they can, according to their own strengths and weaknesses, without hating other people. In contrast, under an interventionist state—be it corporatist, mercantilist, social democratic, or something similar—then one's fate is often directly controllable by other people, in the form of the state. What was once bad luck transforms into, from the perspectives of many citizens, a decision by identifiable men and institutions—the state—not to act. Unemployment, business failure, job displacement, and other such maladies become the government's fault, in the eyes of the public. After government inevitably breaks its unfulfillable oaths to protect society from these afflictions, having arbitrarily shifted around resources to create visible "winners" while making the rest of the populace feel left out, civil discontent accumulates.

Let's revisit a political brouhaha from a year ago, sparked by then presidential candidate Barack Obama's comments about voter bitterness¹¹:

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"You got into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them," Obama said in an address to fundraisers in San Francisco last week. "And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

The United States government continually made promises it couldn't keep in light of the domestic economy's inexorable shift from manufacturing to services. Of course that sparked anger within clingers to an increasingly outmoded way of life, who might have moved on long ago but for an interventionist state that absolves them of personal responsibility to improve their own lives and soothes their fears of change by giving them false hope it won't happen. (Most individuals who traffic in such fraudulent claims are known as "con men," but in Washington, we call them "congressmen.")

One reason why class hostility hasn't historically riven the United States as much as Europe might be the American government's greater reluctance to interfere with the market on behalf of either proletariat (social democracy) or bourgeoisie (mercantilism, corporatism). Consequently, less of a perception exists among Americans that government has privileged undeserving "winners" at the expense of everyone else.

Holding the innocent "responsible"

In response to my point about impersonal societal forces for which no specific person or group could be held responsible, you might aver that is why society itself should be held responsible, because no individual could reasonably be deemed "guilty."

But, in addition to the difficulties with "societal responsibility" I raised above, such a notion can represent communal punishment for the actions of a few. I trust I need not explain the barbarism of punishing Peter, Paul, and Mary for what only Paul did.

"I agree," you might say. "But if everyone is guilty of some indirect hurt of another, certainly some redress might then be appropriate."

Because, however, under such a scenario, specific crimes could not be delineated or specific perpetrators identified, the state would have an ultimately unlimited mandate to seek "redress" from society as it sees fit. One could only hope the "right" party is in power to forestall abuses, an uncertain prospect and an arrogant expectation.

In addition, since society is really just a collection of individuals, the above scenario would enshrine the concept of holding individuals accountable for that for which they cannot be held responsible, as they could not understand, predict, or control most of the indirect effects for which they're being punished.¹² I also trust I need not explain the barbarism of that concept.

On "fairness" as commonly understood

If a particular distribution of resources is the cumulative result of actions undertaken in freedom and absent coercion, then hullabalooing about the "unfairness" of it just validates envy. A distribution, to borrow from Thomas Jefferson, neither picks one's pocket nor breaks one's leg. The mere fact that Person A has more than Person B doesn't harm Person B or prevent Person B from acquiring more than what he already has.

This is not to minimize any suffering of Person B. If Person B is suffering, of course any empathetic human would consider that a problem (not necessarily a problem for government, but nonetheless a problem some mechanism would hopefully address). It's a problem regardless of whether Person A is in a better situation than Person B. If Person A suddenly had just as much as or less than Person B, that would do nothing for Person B!

As a libertarian, I can't help but think "fairness" would lie in thinking of how to address Person B's problems without in the process spreading misery to others, and then considering his dilemmas "solved" because they now feel some of the pain he does.

If that is "fairness," I want nothing to do with it.

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1. More Sex is Safer Sex: The Unconventional Wisdom of Economics by Steven E. Landsburg presents the counterintuitive but compelling case that more promiscuity would decrease instances of STD's in the aggregate by increasing the number of less risky, more healthy (not drug abusing, not sickly, not completely slutty) partners available to sexually active people. An example would be Patricia having sex with several of her friends instead of committing to one person or pleasuring herself. (But, whereas society might benefit from that, greater promiscuity would entail more risk for oneself because one would raise his chances of sleeping with a carrier of an STD.)

2. Spontaneous order (http://www.thefreema...aneous-order/).

3. The memetic evolution described here should not be confused with Social Darwinism, the subject of which was people, not ideas.

4. Notice the resemblance to the case James Madison made for federalism in The Federalist, No. 10 (http://www.constitut.../federa10.htm): "The influence of factious leaders may kindle a flame within their particular States, but will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other States. A religious sect may degenerate into a political faction in a part of the Confederacy; but the variety of sects dispersed over the entire face of it must secure the national councils against any danger from that source. A rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project, will be less apt to pervade the whole body of the Union than a particular member of it; in the same proportion as such a malady is more likely to taint a particular county or district, than an entire State."

5. Friedrich Hayek discusses this concept in more detail, and perhaps with greater facility, in Chapter Ten of Constitution of Liberty, "Laws, Commands, and Order" (http://www.hypersyl....sandorder.pdf).

6. For example, Alexander Hamilton in The Federalist, No. 70 (http://www.constitut...d/federa70.htm), discusses the potency of the American Presidency.

7. As it must be to enact coercive social democratic policies on which substantial and cohesive—as opposed to fragmentary—agreement couldn't be reached within republican institutions.

8. As opposed to "merit." See "Equality, Value, and Merit" (http://www.woldww.ne...k-equality.htm), a chapter from Constitution of Liberty by Friedrich Hayek.

9. Which upholds the equal treatment of all citizens by government, regardless of their personal differences. Otherwise, we have rule of men, deciding which rules will apply to which people.

10. "Upper-Income Taxpayers Look for Ways to Sidestep Obama Tax-Hike Plan" (http://abcnews.go.co...6975547&page=1), ABC News. As one lawyer said:

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"We have to find a way out where we can make just what we need to just under the line so we can benefit from Obama's tax plan," she added. "Why kill yourself working if you're going to give it all away to people who aren't working as hard?"

11. "'Bitter' Pill Hard to Swallow in Pennsylvania Town" (http://abcnews.go.co...ory?id=4652934), ABC News.

12. Talk about "tasking" individuals too much!

[Jason Vines]

Regarding the above point on Why "social responsibility" threatens social harmony, I wish to share this passage from an 1850 essay by Frederic Bastiat, "The Law":

Frederic Bastiat said:

Is there any need to prove that this odious perversion of the law [the use of legislation for plunder on behalf of certain groups at the expense of others] is a perpetual cause of hatred, discord, and even social disorder? Look at the United States. There is no country in the world where the law confines itself more rigorously to its proper role, which is to guarantee everyone's liberty and property. Accordingly, there is no country in which the social order seems to rest on a more stable foundation. Nevertheless, even in the United States there are two questions, and only two, which, since it was founded, have several times put the political order in danger. And what are these two questions? The question of slavery and that of tariffs, that is, precisely the only two questions concerning which, contrary to the general spirit of this republic, the law has assumed a spoliative character. Slavery is a violation, sanctioned by law, of the rights of the person. Protective tariffs are a violation, perpetrated by the law, of the right to property; and certainly it is remarkable that in the midst of so many other disputes this twofold legal scourge, a sad heritage from the Old World, should be the only one that can and perhaps will lead to the dissolution of the Union. It is, in fact, impossible to imagine any graver situation in a society than one in which the law becomes an instrument of injustice. And if this fact gives rise to such dreadful consequences in the United States, where it is only exceptional, what must be its consequences in Europe, where it is a principle and a system?

[Jason Vines]

Another topically relevant excerpt from Bastiat's "The Law":

Frederic Bastiat said:

France is also, and necessarily, the one nation in which revolutions are most likely to occur.

Once we start from this idea, accepted by all our political theorists, and so energetically expressed by M. Louis Blanc in these words: "The motive force of society is the government"; once men consider themselves as sentient, but passive, incapable of improving themselves morally or materially by their own intelligence and energy, and reduced to expecting everything from the law; in a word, when they admit that their relation to the state is that of a flock of sheep to the shepherd, it is clear that the responsibility of the government is immense. Good and evil, virtue and vice, equality and inequality, wealth and poverty, all proceed from it. It is entrusted with everything, it undertakes everything, it does everything; hence, it is responsible for everything. If we are happy, it has every right to claim our gratitude; but if we are wretched, it alone is to blame. Does it not dispose in principle of our persons and our property? Is not the law omnipotent? In creating a monopoly of education, it has undertaken to fulfill the hopes of fathers of families who have been deprived of their liberty; and if these hopes are deceived, whose fault is it? In regulating industry, it has undertaken to make it prosper; otherwise it would have been absurd to deprive it of its liberty, and if industry suffers, whose fault is it? In upsetting the balance of trade by the operation of tariffs, the state has undertaken to make trade flourish; and if, far from flourishing, it falls off, whose fault is it? In granting the shipping industry protection in exchange for its liberty, it has undertaken to render this industry profitable; and if it becomes unprofitable, whose fault is it?

Thus, there is not a single ill afflicting the nation for which the government has not voluntarily made itself responsible. Is it astonishing, then, that each little twinge should be a cause of revolution?

And what remedy is proposed? To enlarge the domain of the law indefinitely, that is, the responsibility of the government.

But if the government undertakes to raise and to regulate wages, and cannot do so; if it undertakes to assist all the unfortunate, and cannot do so; if it undertakes to assure pensions to all workers, and cannot do so; if it undertakes to provide workers with the tools of production, and cannot do so; if it undertakes to make interest-free credit available to all those clamoring for loans, and cannot do so; if, in words that we regret to note were written by M. de Lamartine, "the state assumes the task of enlightening, developing, increasing, strengthening, spiritualizing, and sanctifying the soul of the people," and if it fails; is it not evident that after each disappointment (alas, only too probable!), there will be a no less inevitable revolution?

[Sim]

That's a great treatize, and while I don't have the time to go into that much detail as you have, I'd like to address a few points.

First, you state that society consists of individuals exclusively. I'm not convinced that is true. Man is a social animal, we form groups, organizations and identify with our groups. Of course that alone doesn't refute your point, because even groups consist of individuals, and members of that group don't give up their individuality by joining. That's true, but there is one thing that's crucial, I believe: Sometimes, we no longer act according to individual preferences and advantages within a group, but we communicate within that group to find out what's in the best interest of the group, and we then subordinate our individual preferences for what we agree is the common good.

That's an important distinction: The moment we talk, have a discourse and mutually agree on a common "good", we no longer are mere individuals as proposed in the treatize, who exclusively act according to a instrumental-rational logic (using structures of bureaucracy or the market, using either the medium "power" or "money" according to our capacities, with our individual goals in mind). Obviously, there is the resource of solidarity, which makes us, combined with our capacity for reasonable communication, find agreement as a group.

Idealistic classic republicans (small "r") emphasize the role of a democratic state, by claiming the entire nation is such a group, where discourse creates agreement on the common good and then directly legitimizes the government. Of course there are many problems with this kind of model, many of which you explained above: There is no such thing as a consensus in modern nation-state republics, there is the principle-agent problem and many more. All this is true.

But I think that doesn't mean we should give up the idea of positive freedom (not just individual freedom from the state, but freedom to collective decisions for what's perceived a common good in society) entirely: For example, the philosopher Jürgen Habermas has created a model of a "deliberative society" that takes a middle ground between the two models of society (the "individual vs. state model" on one side, the "republican nation as res publica" on the other). His model is rather complex, so I won't explain it in detail here, but he claims that there are many small "arenas", small spheres where groups gather and indeed subordinate individual preferences under a common good they find through communication (a communication where people consider each other equal), which are connected to both political system and the media system, which all are interconnected. In the end, such a free society is not perfect, but at least it's made sure that there are spheres of communication where nobody is subjected to someone else, as is the case in the systems of economy or state (those with more money or power are above those with less).

This communication between equals is crucial, in his eyes, and a major problem he sees with the model that assumes all people are mere individuals who then participate in the market to coordinate their resources. That is because he believes important resources any society needs -- solidarity, values, morals, narratives that create identity -- cannot be reproduced within spheres of instrumental-rational action, namely the market (with the medium money) or the state (with the medium power). Only in spheres of free communication, these resources can be reproduced. That's why leaving everything to a marketplace of mere individuals will not be a suited way to maintain a society. We need collectives and collective deliberation.

So much for Habermas, now another point:

It seems your main problem with social legislation is not wealth redistribution in general, but the problem that the state is not well suited to do that and likely create more injustice than it cures. That's well possible, yet I believe there is no alternative.

It's obvious the market is not a system that can make sure everybody's needs are met. There are just some poeple who are not of much value for the market, who don't have much to offer they could sell, and if there was no support, they'd struggle with survival. Think of handicapped people, or people with severe illnesses that keep them from selling their workforce. Leaving them entirely to the logic of markets would not be compatible with a humane notion that every human life is valuable (because we don't say just productive life is valuable). What's the alternative? I don't think charity or leaving it to the families is a humane option, because it makes people struck with handicaps to beggars and liabilities for their relatives, which takes away their dignity, lowers their self-esteem, makes them believe their fate is their own fault, or pushes them in depression by making them witnesses of their relatives' hardship. A society that allows that is not humane at all, in my opinion.

Also, I think the idea of the responsible individual that's entirely the forge of his own fortune or misfortune, is not realistic and doesn't do justice to human nature. First, not everybody has the same opportunities in a free market society, but some have to work much harder than others to improve their situation just a little. Some are caught in vicious circles -- born in a poor family causes them to go to a bad school. That causes bad education leading to a low-paid job, and so on. It's extremely hard to escape such vicious circle, especially because psychological factors are at work: Low self-esteem, bad social environment that doesn't encourage ambition, and so on. It's simply asked too much from many people to expect them to act rationally, or to even believe in their capacities, which is a requirement for improving. Many suffer psychological problems that keep them from functioning properly in a society that only gives them a decent place when they are productive and ambitious.

Of course some make it, and that's the reason why there must be incentives: Hard work should pay off more than laziness or indifference. But still I believe even those who don't make it should fall off the train. A humane society must not expect Übermensch-like attributes like high ambition, unlimited energy to overcome bad dispositions with mere willpower and a healthy psyche. Even lazy, disencouraged or psychologically unstable people need a place in our society, also because many of them have other qualities that don't pay off. People are more valuable than mere goods on a market.

Then, there is the problem that I don't believe success and profit in a capitalist system is always the result of hard work or good skills: Take the financial sector. Much of what's done there is more similar to gambling, than to other kinds of work. And while strictly speaking, gambling may be "work" too, I don't think it's proportional when some people make a 100 times (or even more) more money than someone else. My imagination and my sense of right and wrong is simply over-extended by the idea that there supposedly is a kind of work that's worth 100 times more than another.

Of course, people who work harder or longer than others should get more. So should people who bear more responsibility than others -- doctors should earn more than cleaning personnell. Some may earn 5 times more than others, some 10 times more. But 100 times as much? Or even more?

Apparently, I am not alone with that feeling, but it's inherent part of human nature, genetically engrained in our human genome:

(I wanted to post an interview with a psychologist who is doing research on the field of human sense of fairness here, but I wasn't able to retrieve it in Eglish. So I just post a link to the German version through google translate:)

google translate link

Apparently, it's within human nature to accept a difference of up to 10 to 15 times, but any bigger income difference is considered unjust.

Those are just a few thoughts.

[Jason Vines]

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First, you state that society consists of individuals exclusively. I'm not convinced that is true. Man is a social animal, we form groups, organizations and identify with our groups. Of course that alone doesn't refute your point, because even groups consist of individuals, and members of that group don't give up their individuality by joining. That's true, but there is one thing that's crucial, I believe: Sometimes, we no longer act according to individual preferences and advantages within a group, but we communicate within that group to find out what's in the best interest of the group, and we then subordinate our individual preferences for what we agree is the common good.

Linguistic communication is very limited. Not only is it incapable of transmitting more than a fraction of what we consciously think and feel, but it's incapable of conveying what we might know and act upon unconsciously.

And then the individual human mind can resolve only the barest percentage of all the linguistic communication in the world as distinct information. The mind perceives this scant information through the distorting lenses of its own biases and self-interest. Regardless of whatever data might enter the mind, the mind's ultimate synthesis of that data usually just so happens to serve the individual's needs and desires. Further such distortion of the data occurs when promulgating it to other people.

So mere linguistic communication doesn't obviate individuality to a significant degree or serve as an adequate basis for determining the "common good." Even a small community wherein everyone knows each other could hardly determine the true common good through flawed human communication that would inevitably twist or ignore many ideas. And for a vast, multiethnic nation-state with millions of citizens to discover the common good through deliberation would be even less likely.

Institutions that have evolved over time -- such as the price system via spontaneous order -- bypass many of the weaknesses of linguistic communication in helping us serve a common good, because they operate without conscious human intent. Supplanting these institutions with deliberation or, more likely, bureaucracy, damages our ability to serve the common good by crippling the mechanisms that have evolved to work around communication's deficiencies.

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we no longer are mere individuals as proposed in the treatize, who exclusively act according to a instrumental-rational logic

I didn't propose we act strictly rationally, as the "economic man" model would suggest. I agree with Michael Shermer in Mind of the Market and Bryan Caplan in Myth of the Rational Voter that humans act in ways they wouldn't as "rational self-maximizers." (See, for instance, my article, "Neuropsychology illuminates roots of human ethics.")

If that's not to what you're referring, I apologize. I'm unclear as to what exactly you mean.

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Obviously, there is the resource of solidarity, which makes us, combined with our capacity for reasonable communication, find agreement as a group.

I'd say obviously, human beings are social creatures who form groups naturally. But only when such associations form voluntarily, with departure also an option, can they find agreement and best meet the needs of their members.

If participation in the group is largely not voluntary, then spontaneous order breaks down and dissenters can't just find other groups that suit their needs better but must be forced to cooperate. The whims of the majority take precedence over any "common good." This is what happens when states assume responsibility for molding society.

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Idealistic classic republicans (small "r") emphasize the role of a democratic state, by claiming the entire nation is such a group, where discourse creates agreement on the common good and then directly legitimizes the government.

Absolutely not; classical republicans loathed democracy, considering it mob rule subject to demagoguery and oppression. Classical republicans endeavored to avoid tyranny, through the Aristotelian principle of accountability, while also crippling democracy, by structuring the republic to stymie the majority's ability to force its will on minorities. (See, for examples, James Madison and Edmund Burke.)

Yes, classical republicans thought popular approval of the government itself was important. No, they didn't think much of the populace's ability to find "agreement on the common good." And, in both cases, they had good reasons that apply just as well today.

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But I think that doesn't mean we should give up the idea of positive freedom (not just individual freedom from the state, but freedom to collective decisions for what's perceived a common good in society) entirely

I have brought into serious question how genuine or effective "collective decisions" can be when they are the product of conscious interpersonal communication to attempt determination of "common good." Usually, the result consists of the implementers -- often unconsciously -- pursuing their own goals under the guise of the common good, on the basis of woefully incomplete and distorted information. "[C]ollective decisions for what's perceived a common good in society," under the paradigm of a "deliberative society," are as likely as survivors of space shuttle explosions.

Now, I shall attack the dangerous concept of "positive freedom" or "positive rights."

Any philosophical framework that tries to incorporate negative and positive rights is divided against itself and cannot stand. People have unalienable natural rights by virtue of their self-awareness and self-ownership as a human being. Everyone must be able to exercise rights all the time, without intruding on the rights of others. Just as humanity is not something that "balances" between individuals, rights do not "balance" each other, since they flow from our humanity. To suppress an individual's rights in favor of another individual is to treat the former person as less than human.

But that's what positive rights would demand. If someone has a positive right to health care, enforcing it would entail violating the negative property rights of another citizen. Translating the philosophical mumbo-jumbo, that means enslaving him by forcing him to do labor for someone else. How can a right of one person necessitate the involuntary servitude of another person? No such "right" can exist without imploding the notion of rights altogether. "Positive rights" are really special privileges.

Furthermore, whereas the limits of negative rights are obvious, the frontier of the aforementioned special privileges is nebulous. If someone has an enforceable claim to health care, to how much health care does he have this claim? If someone has a claim to education, to how much? If someone has a claim to food, or housing, or leisure, to how much? In addition, if someone has claims such as the ones I just mentioned, then why not also to love, sex, or family? Because these are very important to human well-being, why shouldn't the state enshrine them as "positive rights" it may force citizens to give their peers? No objective basis exists on which to answer these questions.

You have said before that politics could determine the scope of special privileges. But, since these can only come at the expense of actual rights, which must by definition be permanent and unalienable, your suggestion amounts to the death of rights on the altar of political caprice. Scavenging the corpse would be an interlocking series of grants from the state, which the state could change at any time to suit political whims.

So-called "positive liberty" cannot "balance" with negative rights. Positive liberty can only destroy negative rights; no other outcome is possible. Even when citizens appear to have certain rights in a society that enshrines special privileges, this is an illusion. These grants of latitude can evaporate with the political winds. And they often erode over time as the state does more and more to enforce positive rights, without much of the populace realizing what's happening as "normal" shifts more in favor of government intervention with the generations.

Lest you consider me alarmist, imagine how an American from the 19th century might react to today's world. Of course, he'd probably marvel at its wondrous technology, advanced science, peaceful relations, and multicultural tolerance relative to his own time. But I'd expect he'd recoil in horror at other "innovations" of contemporary life:

The United States government confiscates much of its subjects' wealth to pad bureaucrats' salaries and redistribute it to strategic voting and campaigning blocs (most of whom are not poor -- conventional welfare programs make up a small fraction of the American budget) for electoral advantage.

Local governments regularly seize private property for transfer to other more influential private interests.

Thanks to a Kaskaesque lattice of extensive and contradictory federal, state, and municipal laws that ostensibly advance the common good and routinely purport to extend "positive liberty," almost every American is a criminal. Only prosecutorial discretion stands between the average citizen and a jail cell, discretion that can vanish for the sake of quashing dissent or advancing career.

On the pretext of enforcing comparatively new laws against chemical ingestion -- a legacy of the prohibitionist zeal of "progressives" -- heavily armed stormtroopers frequently bust unannounced into American homes, with often traumatizing or deadly consequences for innocent people.

The federal government maintains records of its citizens' DNA and claims authority to track their every move.

The White House maintains it can imprison, torture, or kill anyone without congressional or judicial oversight.

Would the 19th century American reckon his country, circa 21st century, still to be free? That's questionable. But many contemporary Americans haven't noticed because their situation has befallen them gradually, as the scale of government activity has steadily increased and the memory of inalienable rights has slowly dimmed.

For this, I do mostly blame the "progressive" tradition, descending from French Rationalism, that champions the false "positive liberty," believes whatever freedom we might exercise comes from government, and posits human beings as subordinate to a chimerical collective -- which in reality manifests as the will of politicians and bureaucrats (whom communication cannot harmonize with any "common good").

The French Declaration of the Rights of Man from as far back as 1789 demonstrates to what I'm referring. Whereas this Declaration contains many laudable ideas that had previously sparked my admiration of the document, further contemplation led me to see it as reflecting dangerous strands of Rationalist thought. These sections are especially problematic:

"Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be founded only upon the general good." (That's self-contradictory, and it establishes a bulwark for the authoritarianism to come in the next few years of the French Revolution.)

"The principle of all sovereignty resides essentially in the nation. No body nor individual may exercise any authority which does not proceed directly from the nation." (Individuals are subordinate to the nation.)

"Law can only prohibit such actions as are hurtful to society [could that be more vague?]. Nothing may be prevented which is not forbidden by law, and no one may be forced to do anything not provided for by law." (I guess people can be forced to do for what the law does provide.)

"No one shall be disquieted on account of his opinions, including his religious views, provided their manifestation does not disturb the public order established by law." (Disagreeing with the government is so disturbing of the public order...)

"The free communication of ideas and opinions is one of the most precious of the rights of man. Every citizen may, accordingly, speak, write, and print with freedom, but shall be responsible for such abuses of this freedom as shall be defined by law."

As you can see, the Declaration of Rights only minimally, if that, recognizes inherent and inviolable human rights. Mostly, the Declaration features liberty as a grant from the state that is subject to modification by the state -- in other words, given the insatiable appetite of governments for more power, liberty that is already on death row.

Compare the Declaration of the Rights of Man to the American Declaration of Independence from 1776:

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We hold these truths to be self-evident:

That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness."

The American Declaration doesn't qualify rights or glorify order at the expense of liberty.

Unfortunately, the "progressivism" descending from the intellectual school behind the French Revolution has achieved domination of political discourse throughout Western civilization. Unalienable rights have concomitantly given way to shifting exceptions and privileges (social distinctions for the common good!).

(Libertarian philosopher Tom Palmer discusses positive versus negative liberty in a couple good podcasts: "In Defense of Negative Liberty" and "Rights and Wrongs on Rights".)

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This communication between equals is crucial, in his eyes, and a major problem he sees with the model that assumes all people are mere individuals who then participate in the market to coordinate their resources. That is because he believes important resources any society needs -- solidarity, values, morals, narratives that create identity -- cannot be reproduced within spheres of instrumental-rational action, namely the market (with the medium money) or the state (with the medium power). Only in spheres of free communication, these resources can be reproduced. That's why leaving everything to a marketplace of mere individuals will not be a suited way to maintain a society. We need collectives and collective deliberation.

Frankly, Habermas's paradigm, as you've presented it, is an incoherent mess of delusion and contradiction. I've already explained why the weaknesses of human communication prevent "collective deliberation" from ascertaining or approximating the true public good -- or, indeed, genuinely taking place at all. What "progressives" refer to as "collective deliberation" really consists of individual political elites making decisions for society as a whole based on incomplete and unreliable information, as seen through the prism of their own self-interest (including within "self-interest" their own emotionally satisfying ideological perspective on how society should operate).

Real humans don't join hands and sing kumbaya after a political decision is made this way. Because of inevitable disagreements and misunderstandings, the state must ultimately enforce the decision to ensure anything resembling compliance with and fidelity to the plan. Attempting to delink the state from so-called collective decision-making, as presented here, showcases the triumph of naive idealism over objective reality.

In addition, I agree with Hayek that "society, values, morals, narratives that create identity" not only can be the product of individuals acting freely but must be so if they are to gain to stable and widespread acceptance. (Hayek explains this eloquently, so I'll let him do the talking on this point rather than add to the length of this already-long post!)

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It seems your main problem with social legislation is not wealth redistribution in general, but the problem that the state is not well suited to do that and likely create more injustice than it cures.

That constitutes part of my objection, but I am not a utilitarian; I believe in inviolable natural rights. A nation of rights, wherein individuals are to be their own masters, cannot use citizens as tools for the advancement of another group's objectives. This ideal comports with Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative, which proscribes the treatment of humans as means to ends because it denies their capacity as free, reasoning beings.

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It's obvious the market is not a system that can make sure everybody's needs are met.

That's a facile criticism; no system can ensure everybody's needs are met. We don't live in the Star Trek universe with its seemingly infinite resources. In the real world, resources are limited, so meeting everybody's needs is impossible.

I could also impugn social democracy because it can't meet everyone's needs. Indeed, such a criticism applies much more to social democracy than to free enterprise capitalism, because the raison d'être of social democracy is taking care of everybody's needs, i.e., a fantasy.

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Also, I think the idea of the responsible individual that's entirely the forge of his own fortune or misfortune, is not realistic and doesn't do justice to human nature.

I agree, something on which I expounded quite a bit in the treatise. I invite you to revisit the first post and consider the points I made in that regard.

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A humane society must not expect Ãœbermensch-like attributes like high ambition, unlimited energy to overcome bad dispositions with mere willpower and a healthy psyche. Even lazy, disencouraged or psychologically unstable people need a place in our society, also because many of them have other qualities that don't pay off. People are more valuable than mere goods on a market.

That's quite a misanthropic perspective. Apparently, you disagree with the likes of Shermer, Adam Smith, David Hume, Milton Friedman, and me that human beings regard the welfare of their brethren as a desirable "good" in and of itself they would pursue as they would food or shelter.

Therein lies one of the great contradictions I see in social democratic philosophy. If human beings are so bad that, if left to their own devices, they would let starve anyone who cannot materially contribute, then why on Earth would you trust armed humans to ameliorate the problem with coercion? I would think you'd instead fear such beasts having power over each other.

But you obviously do value the welfare of your fellow humans. I believe you, on your own accord, would do what you could to promote the welfare of individuals who couldn't advance it themselves. So I must ask, why do you think you're special? What justifies distrusting most other people to take care of the less fortunate even though you would (keeping in mind that much of the money citizens might ordinarily donate to charity is instead taxed away for the benefit of the rich and powerful)?

At this juncture, you might have a question of your own: If I trust people to be good, then why would I object to robust government interventionism as much as I do? That'd be reasonable to ask.

To answer this question, first, as I've expounded upon above, I believe humans possess inalienable natural rights. They do so not because humanity benefits -- although I think this happens -- but because self-awareness and self-ownership entail these rights, in my view. Government may not legitimately infringe on these rights.

Second, Hayek, writing in The Road to Serfdom, shows why the "worst get on top" of aggressive governments. I'll add, whereas much of society might be "good," they wouldn't necessarily predominate in government. Instead, government by its nature would attract a disproportionate percentage of narcissists who enjoy commanding and bullying.

Third: "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." To quote Isabel Paterson, writing in "The Humanitarian with the Guillotine," "Most of the harm in the world is done by good people, and not by accident, lapse, or omission. It is the result of their deliberate actions, long persevered in, which they hold to be motivated by high ideals toward virtuous ends." This harm stems from unintended consequences, an inevitability of poor communication and knowledge that inhibits the apprehension of most of society's facets; from well-meaning paternalism, flowing from delusion amongst some people they know what's best for other people and should interfere in their lives without invitation; from utilitarian calculus, whereby decent individuals justify atrocities for the sake of the "common good." (The American government poisoning 10,000 of its citizens during Prohibition demonstrates all three!) Therefore, whereas I trust good people to do good things when they are free, that confidence erodes when these virtuous individuals get power to force their will on others.

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Then, there is the problem that I don't believe success and profit in a capitalist system is always the result of hard work or good skills

So what? That's not the point of a free economy, as Hayek notes in his Constitution of Liberty chapter "Equality, Value, and Merit" (sections six through eight of which are most pertinent). Hayek notes we're often not knowledgeable enough to determine whose effort is "meritorious" or not. The "value" of said effort -- i.e., the result -- is easier to judge, and this is what capitalism justly rewards.

Let's consider rewarding mere hard work through the lens of Kant's categorical imperative: "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law." If, universally, rewards accrued for hard work or "merit," irrespective of success or failure, then that would distort the signals to other actors indicating what endeavors are more useful than others, as well as erode motivation to seek these useful endeavors.

I'm sure we'd both agree if a brilliant scientist cures an epidemic without much effort, relative to his idiot cousin who worked his ass off but hit dead ends (pun unintended) and infected himself through comparative stupidity, then the brilliant scientist should get the money and the glory, not the idiot. If, however, we consistently apply the principal of rewarding hard work, then the idiot should indeed be rewarded, too. I presume we don't want that.

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Take the financial sector. Much of what's done there is more similar to gambling, than to other kinds of work.

I struggle to envision the grounds on which you make this claim.

To achieve success in the financial sector, one can't just walk off the street and start making bets. He would require far more perseverance and skill than he would for a game: He must undergo extensive training to analyze markets and then generate informed assessments of them, which itself is difficult. And he might need to understand details of particular industries as well, which would take more effort.

Comparing the financial sector to gambling is especially noxious because the finance industry performs a valuable task in helping direct resources to where the economy needs them. Without loans or stocks, bankers or brokers, the modern age of abundance wouldn't be possible. Poker, on the other hand, hasn't helped uplift much of humanity from mud huts!

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My imagination and my sense of right and wrong is simply over-extended by the idea that there supposedly is a kind of work that's worth 100 times more than another.

And voluntary transactions between other willing individuals have what to do with you and your imagination, exactly?

By wagging your finger at the voluntary activity of other consenting adults, why would you not resemble Christian zealots who want to legislate what happens in the bedroom?

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Apparently, I am not alone with that feeling, but it's inherent part of human nature, genetically engrained in our human genome:

Shermer also writes about the sense of fairness ingrained in humans.

But I don't think that makes fairness something objectively quantifiable and measurable. It is more like attractiveness: Whereas we can study what happens when one person finds another person attractive, whether one person will find another attractive is still variable -- with the individual, with the culture, and with the era. Ergo, we can't scientifically determine whether someone is attractive. The same applies to fairness. What some people consider unfair, others reckon fair; who's to say which side is right?

In addition, Shermer posits fairness as an atavism more suitable to the past than the present. From our evolutionary origins until relatively recently in human history, we didn't have many resources to go around. Someone who hoarded noticeably more goods than his peers genuinely threatened their lives. Even though in the modern capitalist and industrialized world, we live in an economy that's not a zero-sum game, some people instinctually react as if it is, thanks to millennia of evolution conditioning us to think so.

But treating the economy as zero-sum, in accordance with a subjective and archaic sense of fairness, is irrational and counterproductive. We're harming our livelihoods and constricting our potential because of how some people interpret vague feelings.

If we are to respect the sentience and self-ownership of human beings and the natural rights that flow from them, then government must legislate always with a "presumption of liberty." Hurt feelings hardly override that presumption.

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I don't think it's proportional when some people make a 100 times (or even more) more money than someone else. My imagination and my sense of right and wrong is simply over-extended by the idea that there supposedly is a kind of work that's worth 100 times more than another.

Of course, people who work harder or longer than others should get more. So should people who bear more responsibility than others -- doctors should earn more than cleaning personnell. Some may earn 5 times more than others, some 10 times more. But 100 times as much? Or even more?

First, as I said above, "If a particular distribution of resources is the cumulative result of actions undertaken in freedom and absent coercion, then hullabalooing about the "unfairness" of it just validates envy. A distribution, to borrow from Thomas Jefferson, neither picks one's pocket nor breaks one's leg. The mere fact that Person A has more than Person B doesn't harm Person B or prevent Person B from acquiring more than what he already has." I'd like for you to address that point, which I don't think you've done.

Second, the price system serves an invaluable function, as I discussed above: It overcomes the faults of human communication to let us know what is needed where and by whom. To address your example, much of the high salary of doctors stems from the urgent demand for them. This high salary provides incentive to meet the demand by undertaking the grueling training and massive workload necessary to be a doctor. If you want to curtail doctor salaries in the name of "fairness," then we will have fewer doctors than we need. (As economists say, there's no such thing as a free lunch.)

Third, Milton Friedman upends the "fairness" argument in his chapter on income distribution in Capitalism and Freedom. By artificially limiting the doctor's salary vis-a-vis the janitor, the janitor could make more money per unit of output than would the doctor. Why would forcing the doctor to toil for less money relative to his output than the janitor does be fair?

Ultimately, good reasons exist for income disparities, whereas all that condemns them is irrational personal offense some individuals choose to take. That's no proper basis for government intervention.

[Jason Vines]

"Democracy is not freedom" -- what classical republicans thought of democracy:

[Jason Vines]

Relating to this discussion, Mike Gibson points out how government undermines community in his post, "Exit Builds Genuine Community."

Mike Gibson said:

Taken to the frontier, life is on the threshold of being nasty, brutish and short. But it is precisely because of this difficulty that solidarity builds further. Whatever vital functions a government had performed in society before, now these must be assumed by individual pioneers.

I think this is what De Toqueville had in mind when he wrote about how weakness leads to stronger association. The Frenchman says:

Alexis De Toqueville said:

Amongst democratic nations, on the contrary, all the citizens are independent and feeble; they can hardly do anything by themselves, and none of them can oblige his fellow-men to lend him their assistance. They all, therefore, fall into a state of incapacity, if they do not learn voluntarily to help each other.

The flip side of this theme was picked up by Charles Murray in his book called In Pursuit. When men can oblige others to lend assistance, association atrophies:

Charles Murray said:

Communities exist because they have a reason to exist, some core of functions around which the affiliations that constitute a vital community can form and grow. When the government takes away a core function, it depletes not only the source of vitality pertaining to that particular function, but also the vitality of a much larger family of responses...

"If you don't do it, nobody will" is a powerful motivator for solidarity. Whereas "if you don't do it, the government will" is a charitable and fraternal buzz kill. Murray says, and I agree, that people tend not to do a chore if somebody else will do it for them. Philanthropic free riding is the irrational voter by another name.

David Boaz makes a similar point in his Libertarianism: A Primer chapter on civil society: Government programs do not facilitate communal action but destroy it.

As you've said, human beings are social creatures who need each other to survive. That means, in a free society, people must learn to help each other, developing bonds of trust and fellowship in the process. This is the basis of community.

Government "assistance," on the other hand, obviates the need for community by allowing an individual to get resources taken from someone else about whom he need neither know nor care, as well as by suppressing both the desire and means for philanthropy. After all, government is taking our money and giving to the needy, so we don't have to do it, people assume. (People tend to donate more to charity if they think government is cutting back on welfare benefits.)

The result is what Boaz calls the "atomization" -- reduction to small distinct units -- of society. Individuals don't need to associate for mutual aid or learn how to serve communities productively if they can just get welfare or rents appropriated from other faceless people by the government.

Of course, free communities cannot replace government assistance; they shouldn't try! People who know and trust each other would always be better equipped to help their needy than strangers in government could. They'd have more knowledge of particular situations than bureaucrats could hope to achieve, while retaining greater latitude to craft strategies to help the needy become less dependent. That's why private charities have much higher success rates than government programs. No, private groups could never have the resources to provide for the livelihoods of all the country's poor indefinitely, but they wouldn't need to because they could help many of the poor become self-sufficient, if they had a chance without government demolishing community and usurping resources.

Sim said:

Think of handicapped people, or people with severe illnesses that keep them from selling their workforce. Leaving them entirely to the logic of markets would not be compatible with a humane notion that every human life is valuable (because we don't say just productive life is valuable). What's the alternative? I don't think charity or leaving it to the families is a humane option, because it makes people struck with handicaps to beggars and liabilities for their relatives, which takes away their dignity, lowers their self-esteem, makes them believe their fate is their own fault, or pushes them in depression by making them witnesses of their relatives' hardship. A society that allows that is not humane at all, in my opinion.

You're using the handicapped as mascots for welfare -- they are not typical welfare recipients (who themselves are not typical beneficiaries of government largesse) -- in a specious argument.

First, who says their fate isn't their own fault? Many jobs today don't require fully operational human bodies. And advancing technology is always expanding the range of what crippled people can do. I think the least humane thing we could do is pity the disabled and not expect them to push the limits of their capabilities -- that is what makes people feel pathetic and depressed! (John Locke: "Don't tell me what I can't do!") Many of the handicapped could and should be responsible for their own well-being.

Second, you're right, needing any help at all erodes a person's self-esteem. That applies regardless of whether one receives private charity, familial support, or government welfare. But charity and especially family can do things government can't, such as provide emotional comfort to counteract the sadness and encouragement to fulfill one's potential regardless of a disability.

Third, even if you were right, which I don't for a moment believe, I would still have to question why that would justify government plundering from someone else so a disabled person doesn't feel as bad about himself. How can one person's depression trump another person's rights? And, even supposing for the sake of argument that could happen, you'd just be reallocating misery rather than ameliorating it. The resources to protect the disabled person's well-being would come at the expense of another person who would lose his job, not be able to send his kid to college, become disabled himself because he couldn't afford as safe a car as he might have otherwise bought, etc. (And then the cycle begins again with the new victim!)

[Jason Vines]

French economist Destutt de Tracy, whose Treatise on the Will and Its Effects Thomas Jefferson translated and edited into A Treatise on Political Economy, echoes many of the points I made above. (See "Jefferson's Economist.")

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Society is purely and solely a continual series of exchanges. It is never anything else, in any epoch of its duration, from its commencement the most unformed, to its greatest perfection. And this is the greatest eulogy we can give to it, for exchange is an admirable transaction, in which the two contracting parties always both gain; consequently society is an uninterrupted succession of advantages, unceasingly renewed for all its members...

It is this innumerable crowd of small particular advantages, unceasingly arising, which composes the general good, and which produces at length the wonders of perfected society...

Enunciations of what's in the "public interest" typically reflect instead the particular interest of the speaker.

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After the free disposition of his labour, the greatest interest of the poor man is that this labour should be dearly paid. Against this I hear violent outcries. All the superior classes of society -- and in this view I even comprehend the smallest chief of a workshop -- desire that the wages should be very low, in order that they may procure more labour for the same sum of money; and they desire it with so much fury, that when they can, and the laws permit them, they employ even violence to attain this end, -- and they prefer the labour of slaves, or serfs, because it is still at a lower rate. These men do not fail to say, and persuade, that what they think is their interest, is the general interest; and that the low price of wages is absolutely necessary to the development of industry, to the extension of manufactures and commerce, -- in a word, to the property of the state.

(Emphasis mine.)

[Jason Vines]

Arnold Kling has a good post comparing and contrasting how libertarians and social democrats view the world, echoing many of the themes in my earlier posts in this topic.

[Jason Vines]

This post by Aaron Ross Powell ties into my post earlier in the thread about how the redistributive state destroys community and exacerbates greed:

Aaron Ross Powell said:

The case of Greece and the riots there speak to a seeming paradox within the leftist dream. That dream is one of people seeing themselves as members of a larger community first and as individuals second, of the state supporting workers before entrepreneurs, and ensuring that everyone has high pay, plenty of vacation time, medical care, and generous pensions, by taxing and redistributing heavily. A society structured that way is supposed, we are told, to lead to an end of selfishness and greed and an end to poverty and inopportunity–a society where we care about each other and not just about ourselves.

What the Greeks have learned–and what the rest of Europe is quickly learning–is that such a system is terribly expensive, and that the money has to come from somewhere. Every person living entirely off of the state is a person not putting money into the pot from which the state makes its payments. It’s quite obvious that if your paycheck had to support my family in addition to your family, both our families would be broke. That simple math doesn’t go away when we scale up the number of people both producing and consuming tax revenue. The Greeks forgot this. Their politicians over promised and the system can no longer provide.

But the riots speak to a more tragic element than the basic economic problems of a massive redistributionist state, as well. They show that even the idea that, with the state providing for all, everyone will think of community first is fatally flawed. The rioting Greeks are not rioting and burning and killing because they have a sense of community. They are each, individually rioting and burning and killing because they don’t want to make the tiny sacrifice, to take the relatively small cut in pay, Greece needs to continue to function. The Greeks are behaving exactly the opposite of how the leftist dream says they should. They are thinking of themselves first and their community not at all.

Believing in social justice is only meaningful when you have to sacrifice for it. The Greeks, contrary to the dream, are behaving like the worst progressive caricature of a greedy capitalist: what’s theirs is theirs, fuck the consequences. The leftist dream has lead not to moral enlightenment, but to moral repugnance.