Libertarian ethics

Economics Political Theory
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Hello everybody!

I am what you guys call a statist. I am also a social democrat. I believe that we need government and I believe welfare state is neccessary and essentially a good thing. A Couple of days ago I had a discussion with someone who identified himself as an anarchocapitalist and a libertarian. He also told me about Mises institute.

I’m very interested about worldviews that are different from my own. I was wondering if you guys could explain me why NAP and natural rights are valid? Oh and could you give me some sort of reading list about libertarian ethics?

Sorry for my bad english grammar. I am not a natural born english speaker.

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The NAP and natural rights aren’t both required to be a libertarian. Let’s just tackle the non-aggression principle. To oppose the non-aggression principle, would mean that one tolerates some aggression. Aggression is the initiation of force.

Our natural state, is not one of being aggressed against, nor aggressing those around us. Our natural state is cooperative.

So the question which should be asked is, why is aggression valid?

Everything flows from non-aggression. If you believe it is wrong to aggress, then it is wrong to tax. It is wrong to regulate.

There are things you can read, but ultimately, the question will be whether one endorses violence as a means of ordering society, or they endorse peace as a means of ordering society.

A good start would probably be “The Ethics of Liberty”.

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I would also suggest “For a New Liberty: A Libertarian Manifesto” By Murray Rothbard.

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Are you only interested in ethical libertarianism? What about libertarianism from a utilitarian perspective? Ludwig von Mises, the namesake of this organization, was a utilitarian. He argued that government intervention caused more harm than good.

In the case of welfare, there are several negative unintended consequences. For example, the taxes used to fund welfare act as a disincentive for investment (investment being the cause of long-run economic growth). The less money people have, the less they can invest. So the taxes associated with welfare decrease long-run economic growth, and thus make everyone poorer in the long run. When it comes to the welfare itself, there are also negative unintended consequences. Oftentimes, welfare institutionalizes families. By giving money to people for free, welfare encourages people to stay on welfare, and not to go out seeking a job. This reduces economic productivity, increases government spending, and thus increases government taxation/deficits. Thus, this also reduces long-run economic growth. Welfare also changes incentives for many people. For example, in the United States, single mothers get more welfare money. This acts as an incentive for young poor mothers to dump the fathers when they have a child. After all, the mother and the child will get more money if the mother is single. The end result is that many children are raised in a fatherless home, which contributes to the high crime rate in inner cities.

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you said “i believe we need government” and “welfare state is necessary”. for those you need not an ethical approach. you need reasons why government is beneficial or not beneficial.

start by answering: who exactly is “we”?

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Thanks to everyone who has taken time to answer to my questions!

Liberty student said: Our natural state, is not one of being aggressed against, nor aggressing those around us. Our natural state is cooperative.

I’m starting to understand NAP but why do you think our natural state is cooperation rather than aggression? To me it seems that aggression is just as natural as cooperation.

Krazy Kaju said: Are you only interested in ethical libertarianism? What about libertarianism from a utilitarian perspective?

I would like to begin to understand libertarianism from utilitarian perspective but not yet because if libertarianism is unethical I don’t think utilitarian perspective matters. So I will first try to understand libertarianism from ethical perspective.

Zangelbert said: start by answering: who exactly is “we”?

Sorry but I’m not going to answer to your question because I’m not looking for a debate. I’m looking for a deeper understanding about libertarian ethics. This topic is not about my world view.

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I would suggest reading Lysander Spooner’s “No Treason”, it is a very good start (if not the best).

Read it online and free:

http://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/www/NoTreason/NoTreason.html

http://jim.com/treason.htm

On a side note: You will better understand “the “we” problem” if you start thinking about your own needs as an individual and respecting other peoples’ rights to do the same (minding their own business). Because, what suits for you doesn’t necessarily suit for other person (and I’m even not speaking about the “everyone”).

Libertarianism offends people, because it speaks (metaphorically) the truth, it defines terms as it is, not with mumbo-jumbo double speak (war is peace, slavery is freedom etc).

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Aggression is as natural as Cooperation. The questions are whether one is more productive than the other and which will endure in the long-term. I suggest Henry Hazlitt’s “The Foundations of Morality”

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Think about how you are brought into this world. Think about how you are raised and cared for when you are incapable of doing it for yourself. Think about how many times a day you cooperate (engage voluntarily) with others, and how many times you use aggression or receive aggression.

And of those situations you receive aggression, remove the times when it is the government directly performing or incentivizing it.

We take for granted all of the peaceful, fair, and noble things we do, and focus only on the 1% (if that) of our daily experience which involves unpleasant behavior. That obsession becomes a mental prison, which keeps us isolated from the truth.

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Liberty Student: You obviously did not grow up in the ghetto. Aggression is as natural as Cooperation. That the majority of people choose the latter does not make the former any less natural. There are people who choose to steal, defraud, and injure others for their own gain. And is aggression necessarily evil if it is used to prevent aggression? I think this is where the OP is going by asking What circumstances would have to exist to justify aggression? And Isn’t poverty a circumstance that justifies aggression in the form of welfare? and Why not?

To get at the crux of the welfare issue we must understand the poverty concern. It is believed that poverty is the result of a zero-sum game and we must question whether this is really the case. I believe it is not. People don’t produce at the expense of others though what they produce may not necessarily be in demand, if they are able to produce at all (assuming others are not using aggression to prevent them from producing).

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Lyle, you obviously do not know me, and would do well not to make arguments based on my personal experience.

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Lyle, a statement is true irrespective of the person and its background that utters it. Liberty Students point is much more subtle than the empiric claim that suburban regions are no slaughterhouse. The point is that the human brain as is favors the NAP as shown by brain scans. Or on a more heuristic approach: Imagine yourself meeting an other person. Do you have any motivation to attack this person? Certainly, ike the vast majority, no. To answer you formulation of the OP’s question: No circumstance justifies aggression, that is the content of the NAP. By deduction, poverty does not justify aggression either.

You do not need to believe that poverty is not the result of a zero-sum game, it simply is not. Poverty is simply the lack of means of production, or more generally a lack of productivity. This is an economic fact that is accepted by all major economic schools.

To answer the OP’s question: Seperate natural rights and NAP. In my approach you can derive one from the other or view them as the same, so I will focus on the “legitimacy” of the NAP. A better question in this context would be “Why should the NAP be not valid?”. You can accept die NAP based on a concept of natural rights such as the concept of God given right to live and bodily integrity or on utilitarian grounds as to some extent Mises did. I will give a hint to the latter and claim that history shows us that the more free a country is the more prosperous it is and the better the people fare. The reverse is true also such that the more opressed a people is the more it suffers, economically. Two excellent examples are before 1990 West Germany and the DDR and South Korea and North Korea. The contrasts couldn’t be starker.

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Poverty is simply the lack of means of production, or more generally a lack of productivity. This is an economic fact that is accepted by all major economic schools.

^ Even if I disagree with his politics, this guy gets it. Too many economists (amateur and professional) forget the first part, and only politic using the second (attacks on the poor as poor because they’re lazy).

OP you’re going to have trouble finding a comprehensive review of libertarian ethics. First because most of the world’s libertarians are leftist/socialist/anti-capitalist. But mostly, from an american perspective, you will have trouble because american libertarianism is very cosmopolitan. Rothbard had different justifications than Mises, and Ron Paul different justifications than both.

As has been pointed out, many are not ethical libertarians at all (meaning don’t focus on the ethics of it, because they are utilitarian. tho I tend to see some of them as generally unethical as well [Glenn Beck types]). YOu will find some who find monarchy to be more libertarian than democracy…

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No circumstance justifies aggression, that is the content of the NAP.

Metus: As I understand NAP, the aggression of self-defense is not defined as aggression. However, for the sake of the OP, I have defined it as such that we may have a clearer understanding of where the OP is coming from that we might also shed light on the path on which the OP should begin to travel. I particularly liked Robert P. Murphy’s treatment of the subject in his essay “Chaos Theory.”

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Aggression is the initiation of force. Self-defense by definition, cannot be aggression.

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Thank you Liberty Student. While I understand that self-defense is not aggression as defined by NAP, it seemed to me that the OP was unaware of the difference. As the discussion was progressing, it appeared everyone was talking past eachother for lack of a willingness to recognize this difference in understanding. I bow out.

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I’m a virtue ethicist so my reasoning will be a bit different to everyone else’s here but I’m sure the arguments can be adapted to fit other frameworks.

The proper standard for morality should be human well-being. It’s a reasonably simple idea. It doesn’t involve any abstract categorical imperatives but at the same time it can incorporate certain things being “goods-in-themselves” if they are a constitutive part of this overarching goal. Ancient greeks called this ultimate end “eudaimonia”, I’m calling it “well-being”, and it basically consists of all the lesser ends a person could reasonably strive for. In virtue ethical theory these lesser ends are the goods and virtues.

The NAP is simply a recognition of how diverse and individualised “the good life” is. Learning how to live a succesful life in co-operation with other humans is something that just can’t be legislated. Knowledge about what a particular person’s well-being consists of is dispersed and tacit and the future is uncertain so it’s impossible to plan what the best outcome is to every problem that may arise. What is required is for people to develop genuine virtue, especially the virtue of good judgement, then they can work out life’s difficulties as they arise.

Both of these are impossible without a commitment to freedom.

Broadly speaking there are two things necessary for a person to develop good judgement - that they are given the chance to make decisions themselves and that they are responsible for both the positive and negative consequences of their actions. No one should be making your decisions for you or guaranteeing you a bail out when you screw them up or you will never learn how to function intelligently. Therefore learning good judgement requires you having a right to make choices but no right to other’s co-operation.

Secondly, just like it’s impossible to develop good judgement without freedom it’s also impossible to develop any virtuous character traits if your behaviour isn’t self-directed. To genuinely demonstrate kindness, generosity, courage etc you have to have actually chosen to be kind, generous or courageous. There is nothing admirable about, say, giving to the less fortunate if you had no choice in the matter. There is also nothing contemptible about it (at least not in general). It’s just absurd to apply value-laden terms to behaviour directed by someone else. So genuine virtue too depends on having free choice in the matter.

I would argue that this makes the NAP the essential framework within which well-being can be pursued. As a political principle it protects the possibility of well-being and biases no person’s well-being at the expense of another’s. To violate the NAP is to make pursuing well-being to the same extent impossible and to privilege some members of society over others.

At the level of personal ethics the NAP is supported by many of what aristotelians call the “generic” virtues (traits that are admirable in everyone). Fundamentally it’s the choice to deal with others through persuasion (reason) rather than force (lack of reason), to respect other’s autonomy, to care about other’s well-being and to live productively rather than parasitically (and as this refers to a character trait I’m using productive to mean “productive relative to what a person could produce with their natural talents” so disabled people aren’t ruled out - you can be disabled and still have a productive mindset which is what really matters). The fact that life, liberty and property are good ethical principles can be seen my the fact that we only accept government violations of them. No one would tolerate private citizens ignoring them and if the government is the delegate of the people (which in theory it’s supposed to be) then it should be held to the same standards.

None of these reasons however should lead to an absolutist interpretation of the NAP, as though the initiation of force was the only relevant concern, which is why I would argue consequentialist considerations, are important even if they aren’t decisive, and in extreme cases can affect what counts as a proportional use of force to defend your rights. You couldn’t throw someone off your flagpole or kick them out of your lifeboat for example (though you could still claim damages from them). I couldn’t provide a fully worked out economic theory here but some of the same reasons that support a libertarian ethical theory support a libertarian economic one. The localised, tacit knowledge argument and the good judgement argument would both apply to resource allocation too. Probably the most common argument against libertarianism is that the poor would be systematically disempowered and left struggling to just get by. However I think the poor would benefit, disproportionately so, from a more libertarian system. There are three options the less fortunate have, starting their own business, working for someone else and charity. I think all of these would be made more attractive if the state ceased to externalise costs, set up barriers to entry and make factors of production artificially scarce (as a short, very generalised list). Whatever a libertarian system would do it certainly wouldn’t be involved in any of the above. Alas a full argument for this premise would take a while and this post is dragging on a bit.

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P.S - I summed up some of my arguments against social democracy (http://0welcometo1984.wordpress.com/2010/08/04/why-im-not-a-social-democrat/)]here. I wrote it a while ago so I could probably expand on it now but it’s, imo, a good starting point.