Things Libertarians Should Believe Or You Would Think

Mark Thompson in reply to Stillwater says:

I think the point is that it’s just not a dilemma at all for libertarians. Look, libertarianism is not a system of morality, and it is not a religion (Objectivism is, more or less, but only a small percentage of libertarians are objectivists, and fewer objectivists that you might expect consider themselves libertarians). Nor, I must jump to add, does it purport to be. It is a system of political theories about the proper role of government, no more, no less.

So if the question is “why is workplace harassment morally wrong to the libertarian” then the answer is: for whatever reason the libertarian in question believes it to be morally wrong – their libertarianism has, or should have, little or nothing to do with it.

If the question is “what, if any, libertarian justifications are there for legal prohibitions on workplace harassment,” though, then you’re going to get an answer such as that explained above – an answer that is ultimately pretty much the same as how a liberal would justify those prohibitions, just using different terminology.Report

Mark Thompson in reply to Stillwater says:

Stillwater:

And that’s the dilemma: the libertarian must choose between accepting that workplace harassment is wrong full stop, which justifies state intervention, or they bite the bullet and say that it’s permissible because concluding otherwise means that rights, contracts and freedom from state coercion aren’t sufficient for a just society. Notice that nowhere in this argument the law, or legal mechanisms mentioned.

The reason that this isn’t a dilemma is that everyone involved in this discussion accepts that (1) workplace harassment is wrong full stop, AND (2) it is wrong in a particular way that warrants state intervention. You are incorrect, however, in asserting that nowhere in this argument is the law, or legal mechanisms mentioned: state intervention is definitionally a legal mechanism. Moreover, it is an outright synonym for “legal mechanism.”

And here’s why I think that answer fails: the conditions a voluntary contract must meet to exclude in principle the possibility of harassment are impossible to meet in practice, unless there’s an independent conception of harassment – a free standing one! – that is already viewed as morally wrong.

Now this is a point that finally leaves room for interesting debate, I think. It seems you’re saying, in effect, that “libertarianism either has an undisclosed morality or it’s basically of minimal use because it provides no definition or conception of harassment.” I suspect you might even push this a little further and say that “libertarianism is of limited utility, and even appears to be tautological, because it fails to define its terms.”

Now this is actually quite an interesting challenge, I think. If I might toot my own horn a bit, it actually gets to what I view as the central reason why libertarianism is so factionalized despite its comparatively small size: it is premised on limiting government to the enforcement and protection of property rights, but provides little basis for defining those property rights. Nor, it must be added, does it even really give us an indication as to what external sources should be consulted to define those property rights. At best, the Rule of Law concept tells us that the system of property rights has to be stable and reliable and predictable, but it doesn’t tell us how to establish that system from scratch, and there are an infinite number of ways of determining property rights from scratch; meanwhile, the Non-Aggression Principle tells us that the system must reject the notion of “might makes right,” but doesn’t tell us how one acquires ownership of property outside of one’s own body and mind.

Thankfully, we’re not looking to build a system of property rights from scratch. Applying the Rule of Law principle, this fact would seem to militate in favor of a definition of property rights that is either centered on existing cultural traditions, mores, and practices or on existing laws. But what happens when the status quo definition itself at least partially seeks to legitimize a violation of the Non-Aggression Principle? Which principle controls?

In the alternative, to the extent the application of the Rule of Law principle is rooted in cultural traditions and mores, and those traditions and mores change to the point that the system of property rights must itself change in order to avoid the arbitrariness that the Rule of Law principle seeks to avoid, how do you implement that without violating the NAP?

To resolve these conflicts, the individual libertarian must inevitably wind up looking to his own personal morality and interests, both financial and cultural. Depending on the makeup of those interests, the libertarian may wind up functionally resembling a liberal or a conservative on many/most issues.

This may be why, on specific issues, I so often find myself in agreement with both Tod, who is neither a liberal nor a libertarian nor a conservative, North (and, dare I say, you), a liberal. It also may be why, on specific issues, it so often appears that some of the other self-described libertarians on the site so often appear to be in agreement with the site’s conservatives.

So what use libertarianism, and particularly libertarian theory, if ultimately it must rely on either conservative, liberal, or purely self-interested values? Here is a post that perhaps provides an answer to that question: https://ordinary-times.com/blog/2009/07/standing-athwart-history-yelling-ha-ha/

Mainstream libertarianism is, or ought to be, valuable to both liberals and conservatives because of its constant reminder that the duty of government is to protect its constituents’ fundamental rights to be individuals, and to be treated as ends rather than means, and that, in the process of performing that duty, it must take great care to avoid, or at least minimize, doing the the very thing that it is duty-bound to prevent.

Anarchic libertarianism, though outside the mainstream of political debate, likewise serves a powerful purpose, reminding us that government is an imperfect cure that has the capacity to be worse than the disease.

I suspect that if the Democrats and Republicans each came to be dominated by libertarian thought, the United States of America would still be quite recognizable compared to its current form since so much is dependent on culture. There’d be some important differences, though: both parties would care boatloads more than they do about basic civil liberties and respecting process – there’d be no War on Drugs (though many drugs would surely still be illegal); states would probably have comparatively more autonomy than they currently do, but less autonomy than they had before the Civil War; health care reform would have probably still passed by the skin of its teeth, but instead of being a bill written by to make Joe Lieberman happy, it would have been a bill written to make Ron Wyden happy. And so on.

Basically, it’d be a world in which the opinion pages of the NYT and Washington Post were dominated by the likes of Glenn Greenwald, Bill Maher, Radley Balko, and Andrew Napolitano, while the likes of David Brooks, Tom Friedman, et al were relegated to the role of being the lunatics on the sidelines.Report