Please Discuss

by Will Wilkinson on May 30, 2008

1) Libertarians and many conservatives often talk about lower taxes as a matter of liberty. But a higher tax isn’t more coercive than a lower one. You’re either being coerced or you’re not. A guy who mugs five people with thin wallets is no less guilty of coercion than a guy who mugs five people with thick wallets. The harm from coercion might be greater if more is taken, but there is no more or less coercion. But if you don’t think that the size of the opportunity set is a matter of liberty, then you should not think of lower taxes as a gain in liberty, but just as a reduction in harm. Yet libertarians and conservatives don’t tend to talk this way. Why not?

2) The average citizen of Singapore has fewer politically recognized rights but is freer than the average citizen of India.

Discuss.

Viewing 30 Comments

    • ^
    • v
    Unless you favor the tax, you are being coerced with both a high and low tax. Seems to me we are all made to do things we don't totally want to do in life, but the question of how much of our life is effected by coercion is a very important one. Example: if I don't let you speak freely on 20% vs 80% of the topics you discuss, in both cases there is coercion/limitation, but you are restricted with respect to more resources in one case than the other. Depending on utility you get out of the 60% difference in the coercions, you may feel powerfully harmed or not by the difference.
    • ^
    • v
    Couldn't one reasonably say that taking more money is more coercive because it prevents you from doing more things with your money? I have $20 and I plan to buy a $10 book and see a $10 movie. Someone steals $10; they have coercively prevented me from seeing the movie (say I'd prefer the book if forced to choose). If they steal all $20 they've coercively prevented me from doing either one.
    • ^
    • v
    From a previous post - “Now that Chad is making a bigger salary, he is at liberty (or, more naturally: free) to travel more often." If this is true than wouldn't it follow that having more take-home pay as a result of lower taxes means that one is more free to travel or to do whatever one pleases? Whether a bigger salary or lower taxes, they both result in the same thing - more money in the pocket. The degree of coerciveness seems to be of some importance. Tapping you with my fist is different than punching you with it.
    • ^
    • v
    On #1, isn't the minarchist/conservative answer that all taxes are coercive, but not all taxes are unjustified coercion. If the coercion is necessary to perform the just functions of the state, then it's still coercion, but it's like violence in self-defence. If the coercion is in excess of what is necessary, then it's unjust. So the size of the tax matters to the extent of the coercion.

    Alternatively, a minarchist/conservative could just stipulate that "coercion" just means "unjustified force." Force in self-defence isn't coercive on this view (intuitions on whether this is consistent with natural language may differ). So the taxes necessary to fund a state that is confined to its just functions aren't coercive at all.

    The "freedom" issue (as opposed to the "welfar" issue) still isn't how much money you have left over. It's whether the state was justified in its taking, and the size of the taking matters to how plausible the justification is.
    • ^
    • v
    Pith,

    So, suppose the just functions of the state require a 10% tax rate. The rate goes down from 45% to 30%. That's no change in freedom, right?
    • ^
    • v
    1. Must be incorrect unless the tax adjusts for wealth effects. All else equal, a higher tax deprives the taxed person of a larger number of opportunities that would otherwise be available.
    • ^
    • v
    Short answer: Tell the guy who pays 100% of his income in taxes that he is no more coerced than the guy who pays 1%. See what he says. Then get back to me.

    Long answer: Although binary with regard to presence or absence, coercion isn't a discrete phenomenon.

    Once present, coercion is continuous, yet variant in degree. This is why we speak of how coercive an act is, and we measure it as mentioned above (though only intuitively, and relatively) by comparing what we might have done without the coercive act, and what we did do in its presence. "Not at all coercive" is a possibility, but so are varying degrees of coercive.

    Therefore I may be either "coerced" or "not" -- the latter being the case only if I paid 0% in taxes -- but this set of classifications (are or are not, and then how much) is not unusual. There are plenty of other phenomena that admit both of a binary distinction and also of differences in degree:

    You're either a smoker or not, but some smoke two packs a day, while others only smoke that much in a week.

    You're either religious or not, but some believers go to church every day, and tithe, and so forth, and others don't.

    A painting may be aesthetically pleasing or not, but some are more pleasing than others.

    You're either pregnant or not, but there is a difference between nine months and one.

    Many examples could be added. Where exactly is the trouble?
    • ^
    • v
    Will,

    The reason, I think, that people who speak in the language of liberty and coercion tend to avoid speaking in the language of harm is because harm is usually incommensurate, in their view. From a deontological perspective, we cannot say if stealing $2 from me is better or worse than stealing $1 from you, because deontologists don't believe there is a legitimate way of comparing the value of $2 to me to the value of $1 to you. All we can say is that both thefts are bad.

    But there is no problem of incommensurability when dealing with a single person and a single kind of harm. Deontologists can say that stealing $2 from you is worse than stealing $1 from you. Stealing $1 is a Pareto improvement over stealing $2 from the same person, but it is not a Pareto improvement if we are choosing between stealing $1 from one person and stealing $2 from a different person.
    • ^
    • v
    Jason, Suppose you are taxed once a year. Some people pay a higher rate, some people a lower rate. There is ONE instance of coercion per taxpayer. Just like there is one mugging per victim, regardless of the thickness of their wallet. You really want to say that people with the lower rate are coerced less?

    Anyway, you are threatened with jail even if your pay 0%, as many millions of Americans do. You still have to file. So you may be coerced even if you pay nothing. But I maintain that these people are a lot better off than the people who have to pay, freedom-wise. Don't you?

    Micha, Good point. The intrapersonal utility comparison is do-able. And so they SHOULD be talking about higher taxes as more harmful, not as liberty-reducing. But they don't. They talk like normal people do and say it is a matter of freedom.

    To reiterate... My point -- ill-made, I'm afraid -- is that even ideological rights libertarians, when they are speaking unreflectively, use "liberty" just like other English speakers, and think that paying less in taxes is a gain in freedom just because it is a reduction in the loss of opportunity. They don't talk about harm because they really do think of it as a question of liberty, even though their theory says they shouldn't.
    • ^
    • v
    Agreeing with Jason, if a robber comes and pushes a gun in your face and demands all your money, certainly you have been coerced. If the robber instead demands half your money, you've still been coerced, though to a lesser degree. Your total misery is less, even if the value of the freedom lost by the coercion itself is far greater than the value of the freedom lost according to the amount of money stolen.

    The converse (or inverse?) of this is perhaps the adage that goes: Slaves are still slaves, even if their masters allow them the "freedom" to sing their own campfire songs at night.

    #2 seems to ask a question regarding relative levels of wealth, but to me it doesn't add up. Adding the political freedoms of India to Singapore's citizens would increase their overall freedom. Likewise, imposing Singapore's system on India would reduce Indians' freedom. Wealth might increase the variety and quality of choices one has available, but that's a different sort of "freedom" than what is understood as "liberty". I'm reminded of the free-software movement's distinction between "free as in 'free beer'" and "free as in 'free speech'".

    And as for myself, coerced into choosing to live under one system or the other, I would choose India over Singapore any day.
    • ^
    • v
    Suppose you are taxed once a year. Some people pay a higher rate, some people a lower rate. There is ONE instance of coercion per taxpayer. Just like there is one mugging per victim, regardless of thickness of their wallet. You really want to say that people with the lower rate are coerced less?

    Absolutely. I smoke two packs a month. You smoke two packs a day. You're "a smoker," and so am I. But you smoke more. What's so confusing about that? I could give you examples of similar usages all afternoon if I wanted, and this suggests that you've found merely a language game, not a defect in our thinking about coercion.

    Now consider two governments: One has a 1% tax rate, while another has a 90% tax rate. Both are "coercive." One is certainly more coercive than the other. We count both the degree of severity and the number of instances, although in asking "How coercive is it?" we have a sliding scale from "not coercive" (zero acts of any magnitude) to "extremely coercive" (at least one act, and all acts considered together are extreme).
    • ^
    • v
    Jason, I find your intuition to be exactly parallel to "The guy with the thicker wallet got mugged more," which doesn't make sense. Why do you think you're not saying that?

    And your example flatly fails. Suppose at the 90% rate, there is perfect compliance. Or low compliance but the government does little about it. But at the 1% rate, a ton of people resist, and the government constantly comes with guns and throws people in jail until they pay up. Evidently the place with the lower rate has the more coercive government.
    • ^
    • v
    Will, you can make up scenarios where a system with a 90% tax rate is in some sense less coercive than a system with a 1% tax rate, but your scenario isn't particularly likely. People are more likely to resist a 90% rate. More importantly in your scenario it isn't the 1% rate that makes the situation more coercive, but the harsh enforcement of the rate. The harsh enforcement is not the same thing as the rate itself.
    • ^
    • v
    I am saying that the guy with the thicker wallet was robbed of more. This seems self-evidently true.

    Suppose someone breaks into my house and steals only a beer from the fridge. Suppose someone else breaks into my neighbor's house and steals everything. We were both robbed, but he was the victim of a greater robbery.

    Likewise, someone who pays more in taxes has been coerced out of more. In what way is this not greater coercion?

    Incidentally, your alteration to my example regarding tax rates would change things, but it's hardly charitable. When a discussant offers a comparison, it should be assumed that things not mentioned remain equal. The example doesn't "flatly fail" unless it's changed along the way.

    Here's another example: I skipped lunch. I'm hungry. But people are also starving to death right now in Burma. Consider one of them. Is he "not more" hungry than I am? If I were to accept that "hunger" is like your "coercion," then I would have to say that he and I were equally "hungry," but this would impair our understanding of the situation to an almost unbelievable degree.

    Is there only ever to be "hungry" and "not hungry," without regard to degree? This seems artificial and contrary to ordinary usage not just in politics, but virtually everywhere.

    Consider another example: One woman is beautiful. Another woman is not beautiful. A third woman is more beautiful than the first. In the group, there are two "beautiful" women. This doesn't sound weird, does it?

    In short, I think what you've found is a Wittgensteinean language game, not a serious problem in philosophy.
    • ^
    • v
    Jason, So, basically you are accepting my distinction between an instance of coercion and the harm from coercion. But you say I'm playing a language game. Yes. It's called "English". I think you're just table-pounding, insisting that instances of coercion that are more harmful are ipso facto more coercive, but this seems to me just obviously wrong. I agree that some coercive acts are more coercive than others, but the degree of coerciveness seems more or less independent of the degree of harm.

    (a) I threaten to kick your shin unless you give me your $10 million van Gogh painting. You capitulate.

    (b) I grab you by the throat and, angry eyes blazing, credibly threaten you with violent death unless you give me everything in you pockets. You give me everything you have: $.45.

    In what universe is (b) not more coercive? The harm is probably rather greater in (a) but that doesn't make it more coercive, does it?

    Coercion is the use of force or the threat of force to gain compliance. If I stipulate that the same amount of force is used steal $100 and $1000, you can't just reply that, no, really more force was deployed in the $1000 case, since that's more money. Or maybe you're playing language games?
    • ^
    • v
    So, basically you are accepting my distinction between an instance of coercion and the harm from coercion.

    Yes and no. Certainly, there is a distinction between instance and degree. But I believe that you have changed your argument.

    Initially, you claimed that "a higher tax isn't more coercive than a lower one. You're either being coerced or you're not."

    It's true -- unquestionably -- that you're either being coerced or you're not. But it's also true that there are degrees of coercion beyond mere "yes" and "no," and that within "yes," less coercion is, well, less coercive than more coercion. A person who uses a lesser degree of coercion is less guilty.

    At this point it behooves us to say what we mean by "more" or "less" coercion. The degree of force employed and the degree of harm wrought are two different factors to weigh in assessing the severity of any act of coercion, and this does raise some interesting quesitons when the two are mismatched as in your recent example.

    (Incidentally, one promising way to assess the degree of coercion in two or more scenarios, each with a number of imposed alternatives, is simply to ask which set of alternatives would allow me to choose the most favorable result. Between your "a" and "b" above, I might prefer to pay $.45 rather than be kicked in the shin, and thus "b" is the less coercive when these two are compared in isolation. Both, however, are coercive, as they both compel me to disregard my own hierarchy of values in favor of yours.)

    But in any case, I don't think that these conundrums have much to do with the original post. Let me try one more time to come up with an example that will express what I mean.

    Suppose there are two history books on a shelf. We are told that one book contains thousands of lies, while the other contains only a single, relatively trivial lie. Which book would you rather read? Which one is more truthful? Would you really say that "a book is either honest or it's not," and that the one is "not more dishonest" than the other?
    • ^
    • v
    Why isn't it the case that there can be different "senses" in which an act can be coercive? In one sense a robber than only asks for half of my money seems less coercive than one that asks for all of it. In another sense they are both equally coercive in that they involve the same implied threat. Which is the "better" sense of the term is a function of the conext in which the term is being used.

    That question is unstated in these past two posts and the responses, almost as if this were a cross-examination in which eliciting an admission would make other arguments easier. The admission doesn't seem to be forthcoming (from anyone) so why not move on to the later substantive argument(s)?
    • ^
    • v
    On 1, I _do_ talk that way. Coercion is coercion.

    On 2, politically recognized rights are irrelevant to actual freedom, because the government will just "interpret" them in whatever way happens to suit the government. All that really matters is how free people are in reality.

    For example, here in the US it's a politically recognized right (under the highest law of the land) for me to walk down the street with a machinegun. In reality, if I tried to do that here in LA I would certainly be murdered by the government almost immediately, because in the US the politically recognized right to keep and bear arms is irrelevant to the way things actually are.
    • ^
    • v
    I put this on my blog, but I thought I'd copy it here to see if I can provoke a response from Will:

    First, we tend to view taxes as confiscation of our time. The more we’re taxed, the more we feel that we’re working for the Government. Thus, we don’t just feel like we’re being mugged—we feel like we’re being mugged every day until Tax Freedom Day, which meant every day until last April 23 for the typical American.

    Second, most people don’t feel that a mugger is entitled to ANY of their money, but most libertarians believe that the Government is entitled to SOME of our money, usually for the few legitimate functions of the state: defense, courts, police. Some libertarians would add roads and environmental protection. Some would add more. I think most libertarians would admit that there’s no divine dividing line that delineates what is an appropriate government function and what is not. At some point on the spectrum of Government powers, it becomes a matter of argument and policy. It’s hard to know what’s absolutely right.

    When the Government takes our money for welfare—pure redistribution—it feels completely illegitimate. When the Government takes it for roads or school—something we might actually benefit from, it seems less illegitimate. When the Government takes our money for national defense, it seems completely legitimate. But then again, when the Government uses our national defense for an unjust war, again it seems illegitimate.

    If a mugger takes my money, it’s coercive force. But suppose the mugger is someone who I hired to paint my house for $100. Maybe I feel that he did a lousy job and won’t pay him, but in my heart, I know he’s owed something for his work. If he pulls me aside in a dark alley, shows a gun, and takes $50, I might feel he deserved it. If he takes $80, I might think that’s more than he’s really owed. But if he takes $200, it clearly feels wrong—there’s no good argument on his side to suggest that he’s entitled to the $200, and it feels a lot more like theft than if he took $50 or $80. The difference between the mugger taking $80 and $200 isn’t just a matter of damages; the difference is in the nature of the transaction.

    Libertarians want lower taxes because we know that we owe the Government something, but we feel like it’s taking a lot more than we owe it.

    In the comments above, Will notes: “So, suppose the just functions of the state require a 10% tax rate. The rate goes down from 45% to 30%. That’s no change in freedom, right?” But again, it’s hard to know what the legitimate functions of the state are. I also know, despite my strong beliefs, that I could be wrong about some of them. I know that 30% is closer to what I think is right that 45%. And I know that I’m less certain about the impropriety of 30% than I am 45%. It’s like the house painter example—if the guy takes $50, I probably think he’s entitled. If he takes $80, it’s a closer question. If he takes $200, it’s clearly wrong.

    Now, I suppose Will could reply, what if a tax rate of 99% were dropped to 98%. Okay, I suppose we would probably agree that neither rate is anywhere near an appropriate rate for supporting the essential, minimal functions of the state that we want. But I’m still more certain that 99% is wrong than I am that 98% is wrong.

    We could, as Will suggests, just look at the nature of the threat against us, whether it's kicking us in the shins or throwing us in jail. But again, we judge the coercion based upon the circumstances surrounding the use of force. If I throw you in jail for killing a man, that coercive force seems fine; if I throw you in jail for insulting me, not so much. If I'm holding your baby and won't give it back, then kicking me in the shins is fine. If I kick your shins to take your money, it's not. But if you owe me some money and won't give it to me, maybe I shouldn't kick your shins, but if I do, it's different than if I have no right to that money.
    • ^
    • v
    Yet libertarians and conservatives don’t tend to talk this way. Why not?

    Umm, cuz they're full of crap. Was the question supposed to be hard? Libertarians and Conservatives don't like to whine about taxes because they believe taxes are coercive, they believe taxes are coercive because they like to whine about them.
    • ^
    • v