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Nor again, can even the enforcement of contracts be fairly said to be a realisation of freedom; for a man seems, strictly speaking, freer when no one of his volitions is allowed to cause an external control of any other.
Henry Sidgwick, in The Method of Ethics.
It is often assumed by defenders of largely unregulated private property that theirs is the system that takes liberty the most seriously - indeed the system with the most freedom of agency. On the other hand, some are pure consequentialists and are ostensibly disinterested in liberty except as a tool to maximise utility. However most are not, and even those who claim to be often use highly loaded language with respect to their positions, perhaps revealing non-consequentialist intuitions. Milton Friedman for example claims to be a consequentialist libertarian (here, 1:45 minutes in,) however, for example, his most famous book is called Capitalism and Freedom (as opposed to, say, 'Capitalism and Happiness'). This is to me hardly the mark of a pure consequentialist. That is a topic for another post, however.
However I think many people forget to consider the flip-side, that private property is in itself a highly coercive institution. This is highlighted in the Sidgwick quote given at the start. Consider two situations. In Country A, the Government passes a law prohibiting people from boarding trains on Sunday. This is obviously a restriction on people's liberty, presuming that they were choosing to board trains on that day previously. In Country B however the Government is more laissez-faire and makes no such law. Despite this, the owner of the trains decides that in accordance with his religious principles, his trains will not run on Sunday.
From the perspective of the passengers of the train, the situation is identical (assume that the citizens themselves have identical demand for the trains between the two countries). They would like to ride the trains and are unable to do so because someone has told them that they cannot.
It seems to me that it is inconsistent to claim that one of these situations is an abrogation of liberty and one is not. Perhaps in B less liberty is violated, because in A the Government places restrictions on both the customers and the owner, while in B only the customers are so restricted (as the owner is free to sell tickets whenever he likes). However my general claim (and also Sidgwick's) if were actually concerned with the maximisation of individual liberty, we would not support the institution of private property. Indeed the very principle of private property is that the owner of the property is permitted to restrict the liberty of others to do what they want with it! The case can be drawn even more clearly by considering ownership of land. Are we really expected to believe that it makes a difference to liberty whether an individual or the Government tells us not to travel on a particular area of land?
The key thing to draw from this is not that we should abolish private property, it that there are such things as legitimate restrictions of people's free choices. I believe private property to be clearly one of them. Thus the goal of liberty maximisation is a misguided one, at least as it is crudely understood by many. This is hardly a killer blow to libertarian philosophy - for example Robert Nozick was one of the most vociferous critics of the idea, critiquing it as a 'utilitarianism of rights'. But we should be sceptical of, dare I say it, the Ron Paul libertarians, who claim to opposed to the initiation of force in all circumstances, but in supporting private property support one of the greatest initiations of force there is.
Update: Edited the post slightly for clarity.
"It seems to me that it is inconsistent to claim that one of these situations is an abrogation of liberty and one is not. Perhaps in B less liberty is violated, because in A the Government places restrictions on both the customers and the owner, while in B only the customers are so restricted (as the owner is free to sell tickets whenever he likes)."
ReplyDeleteIn situation A the government has a monopoly on power, it can stop all people boarding all trains on Sunday, a private train owner can only stop people boarding his trains on Sunday. If there is competition in the transportation services then such an owner would loose business to other suppliers and consumers will not suffer much. On the other hand if there isn't competition then the problem is monopoly, not private property.
What Paul said.
ReplyDeleteYou're right that private property is a restriction of liberty, though. Maximizing liberty would involve not prohibiting anything, including rape and murder. I think you're also right that this is a problem for some first principle-type Libertarians, but it's important to distinguish between liberties and rights (a distinction I take from Anthony de Jasay). Liberties are those things you are morally (or legally, etc) free to do while (negative) rights are those things which another person cannot justly prevent you from doing. In an society of absolute liberty, you are free to do anything you want, but do not have the right not to be killed by me. A private property right over a piece of land grants the owner the right to exclude others (thus preventing others from permissibly preventing exclusion), which restrict others' liberty to use that land.
Clearly, both liberties and rights are important in any reasonable concept of freedom, and I think most libertarians recognize this, but place a greater weight than most people on liberties, relying on only a few strict rights.
"It is often assumed by defenders of largely unregulated private property that theirs is the system that takes liberty the most seriously - indeed the system with the most freedom of agency."
ReplyDeleteEven if we accept that private property is an restriction on liberty, if may be the second best answer to maximising liberty. Assume a society without private property, would such a society give more liberty to its citizens than a private property based society? One form of private property free society is to have only state owned property. Evidence would suggest that when this has been tried it has not lead to an increase in liberty. Another form of society would be one without property rights of any kind. But this has problems, as Brad rightly points out, and I don't see it as being likely to last too long.
So while private property is a restriction of liberty, it may restrict liberty less than the alternatives and thus "is the system that takes liberty the most seriously - indeed the system with the most freedom of agency."
Thank you both for the thoughtful comments.
ReplyDeletePaul - in response to your first post, the point is not that the liberty is restricted entirely, it is that it is restricted at the margins. Say there are n train services, the consumer then has a choice of n-1 trains in both country A and country B. I don't think you would accept the line of reasonning you provide if it was made by the Government - say if they banned a specific type of apple on the grounds that there are plenty of types of apples, and your consumption need not decrease. I suppose non market based examples are better though.
Brad - I agree for the most part with your post. I disagree however that most libertarians recognise this, but this is an empirical question and I could be wrong. The point I was trying to make, which I perhaps didn't make very clearly, was that I think there is a tension in the worldviews of some (but not all) libertarians. I agree that it's resolvable, but only if one is aware that it exists.
Paul again - I had intended to anticipate that objection but decided the post was too long as it is. There are a few complications to it which I don't think you've covered, but I'm at work so I'll write them up later this afternoon, perhaps in a post.
Again, thanks for the thought-provoking responses.
"I disagree however that most libertarians recognise this, but this is an empirical question and I could be wrong."
ReplyDeleteYou could well be right. I consider myself a libertarian, recognize the problem and know many others who also do. But I tend not to have much to do with any first principle Libertarians who take property as an unproblematic given (hardcore Objectivists being the most obnoxious sort, but also the Ron Paul/-types).
Before I came to self-identify as a libertarian, I considered these folks to be the prototype. There are many libertarians (just about everyone at the Reason Foundation, Will Wilkinson and Arnold Kling are examples that spring to mind) focused on a general liberal worldview combined with a scepticism of the ability of government to do anything worthwhile without causing even greater problems, rather than any sort of strict propertarianism.
"Say there are n train services, the consumer then has a choice of n-1 trains in both country A and country B. I don't think you would accept the line of reasonning you provide if it was made by the Government"
ReplyDeleteIf the government bans just the marginal train then it would be acting against not only the consumers' welfare but also the train owner's welfare. Also the incentives are different. If the train owner cuts services for a day he pays the cost of that decision. If the government does so it pays no cost.