I recently watched an interview with Milton Friedman. At the end of the interview Friedman said that his greatest wish is that he has somehow caused freedom to spread in the world. Then he added that he doesn’t know why freedom is a virtue but that it “just is”. I consider myself a Classical Liberal and have always sought to maximize liberty, but if I were to explain to people why freedom is a good thing I’m not sure I could come up with any kind of answer besides that I highly value freedom.
True liberty requires you give up a little security (assume risk) in an attempt to fulfill your goals dreams and desires. Far right (anarchism), and far left (socialism) require the most or the least amount of risk.
That’s easy, liberty is a virtue because it allows people to realize their potential and gives people the ability to achieve it, should they choose that path. Contrast that with tyrrany. Tyrants use force to keep others in line and are beholden to the will of another. That’s why a true libertarian is mindful of the rights of others. It’s a short step from disregarding the rights of others to disregarding all rights.
When I think of virtue I think of action-related descriptions like courage, selflessness, and leadership. Liberty is more of a general social condition.
Expression of its benefits are usually found in ethical or economic approaches. Regarding the former, though, make sure your ethics are consistent with your worldview. A lot of people screw that up.
Hans Hoppe has given a rather more rigorous treatment. If we assume that a system of ethics must be viable and universally applicable, we can derive logically that each person owns themselves (is free). The only other possiblities are universal communism, where everybody owns an equal part of everyone else, (which is not viable, you’d need permission from every other person just to breathe); and slavery, where some people own other people (this viable, but is not universally applicable).
For a book length treatment, you can do no better than “For a New Liberty” - Rothbard. I love the free mp3 files read by Jeff Riggenbach. Highly recommended.
Just a little addition, though. By definition, virtue can mean ‘moral excellence (goodness)’ or an ‘effective force or power’. Liberty fits perfectly well with either meaning. It is no less a means as it is as an end.
Neither Virtue nor Right. A Virtue is a trait of a person, something that he has cultivated and works consistently up to. I.e. Honesty is a virtue in the sense of someone usually giving you reliable truthful information. The opposite is a vice like dishonesty meaning someone is inclined to lie, if he sees this as an advantage.
Neither is Freedom a Right. Since a Right is an entitlement to something i.e. a payment, an action, a good etc.
Freedom or Liberty are conditions under which someone lives and operates. It is the condition to master ones own affairs. That requires ability and absence of constraints. Virtues can be helpful with mastering these affairs. And respect for a system of Rights is one way how liberty in society may be protected against constraints.
Being in favor of “limited government” is a very difficult position to defend because its self contradicting. If government is good at keeping people safe from murder, why can’t it keep them safe from hunger?
The obvious answer is that governments that try to keep people safe from hunger fail. Less often stated, but no less valid, is that governments that try to protect people from murder fail.
People say that governments protect their citizens from invading armies, but the way they do it is by sending wave after wave of their citizens to their deaths. Any fool can realize this is not the best way to protect yourself, so these same governments have to enslave(draft) their citizens in order to make sure they follow orders.
Liberty is good because its the absence of aggression. Most people are aware of many reason why crime is bad, but what most do not realize is that governments employ criminal methods. You want to “limit” government because you want to limit the violence it commits. I want to destroy government to eliminate all the violence it commits.
The world without governments is not a utopia, there would still be crime. But there would be a massively reduced amount, I can’t even begin to describe the magnitude of the difference.
I believe in liberty and oppose government because I oppose violence.
The standard neoclassical answer would be that defense is often non-rivalrous and non-excludable, thus making it a public good. Food is both rivalrous and excludable.
The funny thing being that government are supposed to be needed to protect us from … others government (since only governments make war). The snake eating its own tail. Now the fact that defense can be qualified as a public good doesn’t make a coercive entity necessary.
No, but by arresting the bad guy at my house, the police have removed a potential threat from yours as well. An arrest has positive externalities. Of course, defense really isn’t a very good example of a public good, in my opinion. Things like disease, information, and clean air are much more “public”. Or, if you accept that nukes can deter attacks, a nuclear arsenal is much more “public” than conventional defense.
States are hardly alone in their ability to make violence, and nature of the things they war with is not relavent to their own justifications for existing. We don’t say all business firms are useless because some firms exist to oppose others.
No offense but public goods theory is laughably fallacious. If there truly was such a thing as a free loader problem the US would be required to invade Mexico and Canada and demand tribute in exchange for us policing the world.
Public goods theory is nothing more than a thinly disguised and weakly supported attempt to justify why current government intervention should continue.
The American military invaded Iraq on behalf of the Iraqi people. Public good theory would suggest that the Iraqi’s owe the Americans money because they all reap the “benefits” of having their country destroyed. We can’t let them exploit the American tax payer.
And of course clean air is not a public good. Its a private good, thats why you’re not allowed to send your pollutants into my property.
The economic calculation problem applies to both private and public goods provided by government. As you mention, the government is woefully bad at supplying meeting the defense demands of its “customers”, just as it would be very poor at feeding them. However, this deficiency does nothing to promote or detract from public good theory. Neither does its use to support government expansion.
It does call into question the wisdom of assuming government should fund public goods, but it doesn’t solve the free rider problem itself.
Right, but absent legal enforcement which requires polluters to pay for rights to pollute each of their victims (a framework which would be nigh-impossible in today’s world), air is neither rivalrous or excludable.
All we would have to do is remove all statutes and let courts settle it case by case. And its feasible with either private or government courts.
I dont believe in a free rider problem, the only problems I care about is crime. If someone recieves some benefit through my actions, I am not automatically entitled to assign a dollar price to the benefit and demand payment.
If a meteor is flying towards the earth and I divert it with a laser I built am I allowed to demand in payment an arbitrary percentage of all current or future wealth that I have preserved? That would not be an economic transaction, only coercion. Clearly, if I wish to be compensated for my service, I must confince people to willingly pay for it. I have two methods to do this 1) ask for donations or 2) find a way to withhold the service from non-payers.
I don’t mean to be getting an “ought” from an “is” here. I am talking about a problem of funding, not a moral problem of what is or is not just.
Yes, thats exactly what I mean. The basic problem presented by public goods theory exists, and it is an entrepenurial one of: “how do I make money providing this public good?”. Fortunately, the entrepreneur has more tools than the above two you listed, but as I see it the problem is not totally solved by current economic thought.