Moral Duties in Contexts of Partial Compliance
Megan’s debate with Henry Farrell over voluntary taxation is fun to watch. Megan says if you think you are not paying your fair share in taxes, then you can always write a check to the government. She is correct. Henry says that when people say that they want to pay higher taxes, generally they mean that they want to pay conditional on other people also paying higher taxes. It may be well worth $x to me to increase government revenue by $10,000,000x, e.g., but not to increase it just by $x. He is correct.
I accept Henry’s reasoning. But a lot of folks with roughly his politics don’t. I’ve heard any number of ethical vegetarians reject the claim that the irrelevance of any individual’s choice to the aggregate demand for meat renders the individual’s obligation not to consume meat moot. Likewise, there is no change in my behavior that could possibly have a causally appreciable affect on the aggregate output of carbon. But there are evidently many many people who think I am under a strong moral obligation to bicycle, buy local produce, etc. whether or not a credible scheme of global carbon regulation is ever implemented. And aren’t a lot of the people who think they should not eat meat whether or not other people do, and a lot of the people who think that they should reduce their carbon footprint whether or not other people do, the same people who think tax rates ought to be higher as a matter of distributive justice? If so, then it seems like those people are logically committed to sending big checks to the government, or directly to poor people, whether or not other people are forced to. And so it does seem that many people who should think they ought to are avoiding sending checks to the government.
Maybe if there was a special “tax patriot” armband you got to wear around for paying extra taxes that allowed people to signal, and take public credit for, an otherwise invisible act — a Prius of taxation — we’d see more of it.
February 22nd, 2008 19:07
You’re probably right.
February 22nd, 2008 19:50
I don’t know.
Maybe it’s because I’m biased, but it seems like advertising that you thought the best way to individually address the problem of distributional unfairness was to send more of your money to the government is so facially stupid that it wouldn’t be very popular.
Many would view it as a dunce cap, not a badge of honor.
Somehow, arguing that we should all have to do this obscures things enough to allow people to think they’re being noble.
I don’t believe that Farrell is being honest (in more ways than one). It wouldn’t be hard to set up a fund that people could contribute to, that would transfer pledged money to the government only if N dollars were contributed. I suspect that Farrell, and most people, wouldn’t contribute to such a fund either. I think that the attractiveness they find in higher taxes is precisely that it forces many unwilling people, people who disagree with them on the merits, to pay. Otherwise, they think it’s just as stupid as we do.
February 22nd, 2008 20:27
Gil: right. The unfortunate thing about Megan’s failure to deal with the reality of the collective action problem is that, as you can see in Henry’s comments, it gives leftists an excuse to smirk and say “oh, those silly oversimplifying knee-jerk libertarians”. Actual libertarian economists who understand the problem perfectly well and propose innovative solutions (like Alex Tabarrok’s dominant assurance contracts) are much harder to sneer at.
February 23rd, 2008 02:25
“And aren’t a lot of the people who think they should not eat meat whether or not other people do, and a lot of the people who think that they should reduce their carbon footprint whether or not other people do, the same people who think tax rates ought to be higher as a matter of distributive justice?”
Sigh, this is true, but isn’t it a bit sad that views should clump like this?
February 23rd, 2008 02:53
This is all libertarians should ever write about.
February 23rd, 2008 03:46
Is there a difference here between concepts of obligation and fairness?
I presume Megan is saying: If you think that you have a moral obligation to help the poor, to refrain from eating meat and to reduce CO2 emissions, then do what you think you should do. I will makeup my own mind whether I follow your example.
I presume Henry is saying: It is unfair that I should be burdened with a disproportionate share of the cost of doing these things while you carry on as if you don’t have a care in the world.
It seems to me that Henry only has point if Megan secretly shares his values and is attempting to free-ride on his sense of moral obligation.
February 23rd, 2008 06:28
Gil writes:
It wouldn’t be hard to set up a fund that people could contribute to, that would transfer pledged money to the government only if N dollars were contributed. I suspect that Farrell, and most people, wouldn’t contribute to such a fund either.
In fact Pledgebank
http://www.pledgebank.com/
is a scheme a bit like this. I’ve certainly made and kept various pledges to contribute to schemes via Pledgebank, conditional on others doing likewise. Since I’m a person relevantly like Henry F - in being like him a Crooked Timber contributor - I suspect your “I suspect” is wide of the mark.
February 23rd, 2008 08:10
I’m not sure there is a collective action problem in vegetarianism. If I do not serve a chicken at tonight’s dinner, one less chicken would be killed. The relevant moral sphere encompasses me and the chicken, no?
February 23rd, 2008 11:27
“If I do not serve a chicken at tonight’s dinner, one less chicken would be killed.”
Sorry. This is just incorrect. At the time of your choice, all of the relevant chickens have already been killed. And your choice not to eat one tonight will have no detectable effect on demand (won’t depress the price of chicken meat) and so will not induce lower future chicken meat production.
February 23rd, 2008 11:51
Will, might you be discounting the possibility that many ethical vegetarians (or people who try to reduce their carbon footprint–is there a word for that yet?) would attempt to coerce the rest of us to adopt the same habits if the legal framework to do so were already in place?
It’s easier to advocate that everyone pay *higher* taxes, if everyone is already paying *some* taxes. But an unprecedented regulation of everyone’s personal habits is a much more remote (and therefore less worthy, for now) goal.
In other words, it isn’t so much a matter of inconsistency–they support coercion in principle–as it is a prioritizing of their (political) goals.
February 23rd, 2008 12:34
Freaky-deaky — I’ve _never_ commented on this blog (though I read it) but my details are filled in. How does that work?
Anyway — what I was going to say — with respect to, if only there were some kind of tax patriot armband you could wear to show that you donate to the government: damn, but there’s all kinds of nice stuff you can have to show that you don’t!
I sort of don’t get where Will’s coming from on vegetarians. As a vegetarian (married to someone who isn’t), well, I don’t not eat meat out of some moral calculus over demand and pricing and who lives. I don’t eat meat over a moral calculus of, it personally bothers _me_, and I guess it doesn’t bother other people in the same way, and, well, lots of stuff is like that (sometimes in the other direction). I suspect for most vegetarians that’s the issue. I mean, you could argue that my not breaking into my neighbor’s house and stealing his wallet has no real effect on crime statistics too. But it just would bug me so I don’t do it. The tax case is necessarily different: you’re already talking about large-scale concerns of what you want _society_ to look like.
February 23rd, 2008 16:16
Chris,
Were your pledges really to give money to the government to address some issue?
Or, were they for some private actions?
If it’s the latter, then I think my suspicion is still uncontradicted.
Either way, it’s uncontradicted by anything like the scale we’re talking about unless a large percentage of higher-tax advocates are contributing to such pledges.
February 23rd, 2008 16:22
Will,
You wrote, “At the time of your choice, all of the relevant chickens have already been killed. And your choice not to eat one tonight will have no detectable effect on demand (sic) (won’t depress the price of chicken meat) and so will not induce lower future chicken meat production.” And of course, that’s right, practically.
I don’t remember the exact wording, but Mises wrote hat in a free market every penny gives a right to vote, meaning that consumers decide what gets produced by their buying and abstention from buying. Assuming they buy that, would hardcore Austrians (or at least Misesians) have to disagree with your analysis about the consumption of that one chicken?
I haven’t thought this through, but it occurred to me that, if we’re going to bring in the assumptions of some of these other groups, maybe we ought to ID some of the assumptions of people closer to us on the political spectrum, and see where that leads us.
February 23rd, 2008 18:26
“It may be well worth $x to me to increase government revenue by $10,000,000x” is an extremely tendentious description of what’s going on. Henry Farrell’s $x is *not* increasing government revenue by $10,000,000x. It is only increasing government revenue by…well…$x.
It is the other 9,999,999 people involved, many of them against their will, who bring the total up to $10,000,000x.
It is also misleading to suggest that everybody is paying the same $x.
A more plausible description of what’s *really* going on might be this: a larger number of people, who pay, on average, less than x (and who might even end up with a net profit on the deal) coerce a smaller number of people, who pay, on average, more than x, into “doing the right thing.”
The former group than congratulates itself on its moral superiority to the latter group.
Rinse, spin, repeat.
February 24th, 2008 12:10
“At the time of your choice, all of the relevant chickens have already been killed.”
Suppose there were a delicious food product called Soylent Bleen, which is made out of dead people from a defined class — say, those born between August 23 and September 22.
You enjoy the product, but lament with appropriate intensity that Virgos are being killed to make it. The same collective action problem obtains. Should you only abjure eating SB only, say, if your threshold at Pledgebank is met? Or isn’t there some further argument that no matter what others may do, eating SB is just morally wrong (in a way that, say, withholding nontaxed disposable income from the government isn’t)?
February 24th, 2008 13:54
[...] Wilkinson summarises a blogosphere debate about voluntary taxation(?) between Megan McArdle and Henry [...]
February 24th, 2008 14:19
On “the irrelevance of any individual’s choice to the aggregate demand”…
(a) I’m not sure I buy actually buy the empirical claim here. Neither a small effect nor a small probability of a small effect is actually a zero effect. It’s just a small effect.
(b) More importantly, it’s kind of hard to even think about getting other people to make some sort of sacrifice like this if you’re not willing to make it yourself. The greatest benefit of being vegetarian/carbon neutral or whatever (assuming you buy the initial reasoning) is that you might prompt other people to follow your lead. Your own contribution will necessarily be minimal, but that’s not necessarily the point.
February 24th, 2008 14:59
conchis,
About (a), if the market is big enough, I’m completely sure of it. A single individual’s choice in isolation will be completely lost in the noise of normal fluctuations in demand (caused by a sale in a close substitute, e.g.).
About (b), yes. But be careful not to beg the question. If the reason to do it is to signal to others in a way that may help shift a consumption norm over time, then exactly the same reason applies to a voluntary tax. It may make no sense to do it in isolation, but if doing might inspire others to do it, then you should. And so Henry is wrong.
February 24th, 2008 23:50
“And aren’t a lot of the people who think they should not eat meat whether or not other people do, and a lot of the people who think that they should reduce their carbon footprint whether or not other people do, the same people who think tax rates ought to be higher as a matter of distributive justice?”
I can’t speak for “a lot of people” but I’m a progressive tax advocate/vegetarian/minimizer of my carbon footprint and the reasoning behind my advocacy of higher taxes for the rich hinges mainly upon the fact that they both utilize more and benefit more from the services that government provides. On the other hand, my vegetarianism/environmentalism stems from fear of impending ecological disaster. I don’t know if any of this constitutes a motivation towards what you call “distributive justice”, but my reasons for the positions I take just don’t engender the kind of cognitive dissonance or moral imperative that you claim I should feel.
Besides, Bush’s tax cuts for the rich are set to expire in a few years and every plastic bag I use will take 1000 years to decompose. Feel free to do the math on that if you like.
February 25th, 2008 09:34
“At the time of your choice, all of the relevant chickens have already been killed. And your choice not to eat one tonight will have no detectable effect on demand (won’t depress the price of chicken meat) and so will not induce lower future chicken meat production.”
Thanks, excellent answer. Clearly, I am wrong to think that I have a moral relationship to an individual chicken. So this _is_ a collective action problem — thanks for showing me how this is so.
I drafted an answer that was more or less what conchis wrote. I’ll respond to your answer to him. “A single individual’s choice in isolation will be completely lost in the noise of normal fluctuations in demand (caused by a sale in a close substitute, e.g.).” Yes, my effect on demand will not be noticed. Does that mean it does not exist? In the long run, do we not expect the price to respond to the actual demand for chickens, not the perceived demand for chickens? (So I am now talking about the practice of vegetarianism, not the decision to eat chicken tonight.) And, so, smoothing over my lifetime, won’t I exert a small, unmeasurable, but non-zero force of (say) 1 chicken / week on the suppliers?
It seems like this is a different collective action problem than, say voting. The chance that my vote will affect a binary outcome is more or less nil. But the slaughter of chickens is not an all or nothing event.
February 25th, 2008 10:04
I’ll try to say that more clearly. Your concern is that the noise in the market will obscure the small impact of my one time decision to buy a chicken. But if the problem is noise, the expected effect of consistently abstaining would be small but non-zero. (One chicken / week, though, is not small, if you think that life matters.)
February 26th, 2008 16:46
Will, You’re obviously right on (b) but I still don’t buy (a), at least not at your supposed level of certainty.
Of course there’s noise, and of course its likely to be bigger than any change you induce. But that doesn’t change the fact that you’ve still shifted the center around which the noise is distributed.
Assuming (plausibly) that supply changes at all in response to demand, it seems to me that such responses could either be continuous or have discontinuities. In the continuous case the effect of your action is obvious: small but not nonexistent. On the other hand, if there are discontinuities in response, this does indeed mean that most of the time your action will have no effect, but it also means that in a small proportion of cases it can have an effect if it helps make it over the discontinuity threshold: that is, you’ve got a small probability of a somewhat larger effect.
As I said before, neither a small effect nor a small probability of an effect is identical to no effect. Rather, no effect seems to me to be an asymptotic approximation that never applies in actual (finite) markets. By and large it may be a useful approximation, but I’m not convinced it is here, and I’m not sure you should be either.
February 28th, 2008 14:00
[...] so I’m going to declare intellectual bankruptcy, and just tell you to read Laura McKenna, Will Wilkinson and Russell Arben Fox. But I also wanted to point to some interesting stuff that’s been [...]
February 28th, 2008 14:47
What if voluntary donors to government could designate a use for the funds? This would create an incentive for officials to lobby citizens for money to fund pet projects–local officials could create a “teacher’s salary” fund, or the Feds could create a “body armor” fund. This would allow citizens to pocketbook-vote on what they want government to do–the arm bands would advertise the project a donor helped pay for–and might make voluntarily higher tax payments more likely.
This brings another thought to mind. A relationship exists between “tax rage” and government policy–that is, some citizens become more reluctant to pay taxes because government redistributes it to poor people. Does this mean that campaign contributions in a way look like voluntary higher tax payments?
March 3rd, 2008 22:55
“Maybe if there was a special “tax patriot” armband you got to wear around for paying extra taxes that allowed people to signal, and take public credit for, an otherwise invisible act — a Prius of taxation — we’d see more of it.”
This already exists in several forms and people do contribute to government in this way. The best examples are the contributions people make to state universities — for which people receive recognition of various kinds, including buildings and even entire schools named after them if the contributions are large enough:
http://www.bus.umich.edu/RossB-SchoolGift/