Some thoughts on recent issues…

I’ve not been pulling my weight in posts for a while and ideas have been running around in my head. So, instead of writing 3 separate posts, I will combine stuff into 1. So here goes…

1) Nozick’s/Locke’s argument for private property is bad.

The reason that it initially seems plausible is because it involves seemingly innocuous steps. Initial acquisition by mixing one’s labour with that which was previously un-owned seems so reasonable. What’s wrong with taking it? It wasn’t anyone’s before, and if it is here at all, it is due to my efforts! Same with the principle of transfer: If something is mine, what’s wrong with giving it to others if I wanted to? Unfortunately, the Lockean argument doesn’t really have anything going for it other than an appeal to intuitions like these. Moreover, once we train our scepticism* onto the argument, it falls apart.

Lockean initial acquisition rests on the claim that once something that is-a-part-of-me/I-own is mixed inextricably with stuff that is not owned by anybody, the previously un-owned stuff becomes mine as well. If this latter claim were not true, the Lockean argument would not get off the ground. All this of course assumes that I own myself in the requisite way etc etc.

However, this latter principle is implausible. Not only does there seem to be any particular reason it could be true when we try to look sceptically at it, there are many cases where it seems downright absurd. We don’t think urinating or defecating on the ground is an appropriate way for humans to mark their territory. Nor do we think that doing so actually creates any kind of legitimate claim on the land thus marked. (Although if I were hiking on un-owned land and my buddy marked his territory like that, I wouldn’t touch it with a 10ft stick.)

Similarly, the transfer rule seems reasonable when considered on its own, except when we try to think of nearby alternatives (x% of money spent will be transferred to the state, if such an entity existed and where x follows some reasonable scheme…) Of course my alternative principle of transfer straightforwardly provides for taxation if such were necessary. However, there doesn’t really seem to be any particular reason why we should pick Locke’s principle over mine, especially not if we are searching for good reasons to believe things.

Of course, all this doesn’t mean that private property is not justified. I think David Schmidtz’s defence of property*** is pretty much on the mark. Private property according to Schmidtz is justified because private property regimes do a good job utilising resources in a productive, efficient and fair way. The beauty of such a defence is that since fairness can be cashed out in terms of justice (and vice versa) all we need to say is that private property is just and that insofar as we care about justice, we should have private property.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/4100977/schmidtz-The-Institution-of-Property

2) Violent reprisals against rebels are often justified (because rebellions rarely are) and it is profoundly stupid and wrong to raise rebellion for the sake of democracy.

One thing I want to ask you guys is this: When is armed rebellion justified if ever? And please don’t give me the claptrap from the declaration of independence. If you guys genuinely thought that the offences so listed were worth violently overthrowing a government over, then you guys wouldn’t be sitting here blogging. Instead you would have joined a radical militia by now. Let me take a stab at answering my own question.

What are plausible candidates? Well, the obvious one is when the justification for having any form of government at all falls apart. In short, governments are justified because by maintaining an effective monopoly on the legitimate use of force, they put an end to the war of all against all. Presumably the cessation of said war is justified because it is to the benefit to everyone, especially the worst off. Therefore, whenever a civil war would benefit the worst off, only then would it be justified.

What this means is that if a government is to properly view its own existence (even if not all of its activities) as justified it cannot allow the start of civil wars except under very stringent circumstances. In all other circumstances, civil wars would be to the detriment of the worst off. Evaluating this can be difficult due to timescale issues. A revolution will often cause lots of damage in the short term. In some but not necessarily all or even most cases, it may replace the existing regime with something better and more just. It is not clear that the losses and gains can be properly aggregated that way over time.

So, what is the appropriate response to unjustified violent revolution? The appropriate response is discernable from the very definition of the state (i.e. an entity which is able to maintain an effective monopoly on the legitimate use of force over a particular geographic area). The chief and most basic role of the state is to maintain this monopoly. Where this monopoly is unreasonably threatened, it is appropriate to respond to said threat. What does this mean? This means that states cannot cave in to rebels because if states made a policy of doing such, they would cease to be any sort of monopoly on the use of force. In fact, the appropriate response is to respond decisively to restore the monopoly on the use of force by nipping the problem in the bud before the rebellion spreads. Moreover, as a fundamentally coercive entity, it is entirely appropriate that people be in awe and fear of the state! At the same time, the state should be careful to use only the amount of force that is required to quickly resolve the issue in its favour. If using too much force riles people up and causes them to join the rebellion, then clearly force is counterproductive. If using too little emboldens the rebels, this is also bad. i.e. a certain amount of violence against armed civilians involved in rebellion (and those who give the aid and comfort) is justified.

But that still leaves us with the question of when to raise rebellion. As mentioned earlier, it is when doing so will result in an improvement of the lives of the worst off. To be more specific, it involves said improvement in terms of physical security, the personal, procedural and economic liberties, wealth, opportunities and the rule of law. These are basically the primary goods. Moreover, political liberties like the right to vote are only good to the extent that they deliver the proper distribution of the primary goods. And whether democracy indeed delivers can vary from situation to situation and from culture to culture. i.e. it is a contingent and delicate matter whether the institution of democracy, especially in a culture which is not used to functioning under democratic institutions, will be best. (Note that this is a massive concession on my part from my usual position on the justice of democracy) Now, as we have mentioned, the extent that the government fails to provide for or even endangers physical security, personal, procedural, civil and economic liberties, wealth, opportunities and the rule of law relative to a state of civil war justifies rebellion. i.e. these are fisrt order kinds of considerations that justify governments and certain types of governments over others.  However, when it is so uncertain that democracies in that region will in fact work better, it is impossible that raising rebellion for the sake of democracy (as happened in Egypt and Libya and as is happening is Syria** currently) could ever be justified. In order to even justify raising rebellion for the sake of instituting democracy, not only would the situation have to be extremely dire, it would also have to be fairly certain that democracy would be an improvement.

3) What Liberalism is all about

When I talk about liberalism, I’m not just talking about whatever people who vote D believe. Rather, I am talking about all the intellectual descendants of classical liberalism. This includes High (welfare) liberalism, neo-liberalism, neo-classical liberalism, liberaltarianism and libertarianism. Granted that there is a fair bit of overlap between these various ideologies, I’m going to presume that there are distinctions to be made. Nevertheless, I’m trying to think about what unites all these belief systems.

As a first pass, I will say that the thing that unites all of these and differentiates liberalism from various forms of conservatism and socialism is that socialism and conservatism are communitarian whereas liberalism is individualist. Individualist theories posit no good that concerns the state apart from the good of individuals. Communitarians suppose that there are some goods that concern the state that are not reducible to various individuals’ individual good. For example various forms of conservatism hold that the culture or certain ways of life are worth preserving apart from how well people are served by these ways of life. i.e. it is certainly a conservative impulse that sees it as good that people sacrifice a bit to preserve a way of life.

One kind of communitarian which lies on the left of centre is one that sees solidarity/fraternity of fundamental importance. i.e. it is more important that people share in each-other’s fate than pareto improvements be made to their wellbeing.

Of course, certain kinds of conservatism and socialism have an individualist basis. A Burkean conservatism is based not on any special concern for particular ways of life, but on a more pragmatic worry about the effect of radical change on the wellbeing of individuals. Similarly, certain types of socialism may hang on a misunderstanding of the effects of state control of the economy. We might even reasonably call such ideologies liberal conservatism and liberal socialism. That is because the socialism and conservatism are not terminal ideologies so to speak, but in this case strategic stances aimed at furthering liberal ends.

The principle can break down even further. Some forms of theocracy are individualist. After all in particular kinds of theocracy, the concern is for the fate of particular individuals’ souls. It is difficult to explain how this could be considered liberal without absurdly stretching the meaning of the term. Liberalism as individualism thus seemingly fails to get rid of at least certain glaring false positives. If, however, individualism is sufficient to narrow the range of ideologies down to at least some form of liberalism, that would be great.

It is certainly the case that the principle of separation of morality and the state deals with the theocracy issue and separates out the various liberal philosophies from non-liberal ones. We have to be careful, however, to make sure that no liberal philosophies are excluded. The importance of the separation centres on the critique that theocracy involves imposing religious morality on everyone. A conservative reply would be a tu-qoque that in liberalism people are imposing liberal values like autonomy and tolerance on the religious. Properly dealing with the question requires us to formulate a liberalism that is able to prove what it needs to without imposing any substantive theory of the good. This is a tall order, however, but I have hope that it will be successful.

*You might want to ask why we should be so sceptical. It’s not clear if I can give a proper answer, but if you don’t want to be sceptical, then I have a bridge that I want to sell you… More seriously, isn’t one being drastically inconsistent/illogical/irrational if one trains one’s scepticism on one’s opponent’s arguments but not on one’s own?

**I’m not saying that the protesters in Syria were necessarily at fault. The Libyan rebels, however, got violent first. (Tell me how you can stage a coup against a military dictator without threatening force)

P.S. Otherwise, consider this an open thread