The View from the Bearded Mirror Universe

by Will Wilkinson on June 8, 2008

Regarding my latest “liberaltarian” post, John Markley writes:

Will Wilkinson has what I would consider a deeply misguided post about the alleged affinity between libertarianism and big government welfare statist left-liberalism. It’s sort of the bearded mirror universe double of left-libertarianism; left-libertarians like Long, Johnson, Carson, et al. want to radicalize libertarianism and unite it with the anti-statist elements of the Left, whereas Wilkinson proposes to repudiate libertarianism’s more radical strands and draw closer to the Left’s more statist mainstream elements.

I think perhaps John has misunderstood me. I am arguing that (a) libertarian welfare statism is not only a possibility, but is actually espoused by canonical libertarian thinkers, and (b) that left-liberal welfare statists, insofar as they are actually liberals and not just progressive-style paternalist technocrats or closeted socialists, would better achieve their distinctively liberal aims by accepting something like the Friedmanite or Hayekian version of welfare statism. I’m not interested in “repudiating” libertarianism’s more radical left-leaning strands — I have a lot of sympathy with elements of Long, Johnson, and Carson’s philosophies. I am interested in promoting a tendency of thought and a set of policy reforms that I think will, as a matter of fact, make people better off.

As a reminder, behold Hayek in Constitution of Liberty, a core reading in the libertarian syllabus:

All modern governments have made provision for the indigent, unfortunate and disabled and have concerned themselves with questions of health and the dissemination of knowledge. There is no reason why the volume of these pure service activities should not increase with general growth of wealth. There are common needs that can be satisfied only by collective action and can be thus provided for without restricting individual liberty. It can hardly be denied that, as we grow richer, that minimum of sustenance which the community has always provided for those not able to look after themselves, and which can be provided outside the market, will gradually rise, or that government may, usefully and without doing any harm, assist or even lead in such endeavors. (pp. 257-258)

Should you be a state-smashing radical or a milquetoast piecemealer? I don’t know. The debate over reformism versus radicalism is never-ending. For my part, I have a fairly radical ideal theory of a cosmopolitan liberal global order of trade, migration, and peace. I think the “nation state-as-primary-moral-community” assumption at bottom of most modern liberal arguments for the welfare state (and in many libertarianism-in-one-country arguments, for that matter) is morally backward. But I also have a fairly conservative theory of incremental social change. Whether or not all our institutions are legitimate — and certainly they are not — they are also very good in relative terms, both historically and contemporaneously. My immediate interest is in taking steps to make those institutions better in a way that opens up to the possibility of expanding liberty and thereby well-being the world over.

  • "Libertarianism in one country"? What the heck is that?
  • mk
    Tom, Here's my dream for health care.

    Blast from the past. I had forgotten it, but that was a truly awesome post. Deregulation, direct monetary subsidy and computer science, sounds like a good cocktail to me.
  • Oops, I meant to say "What would health care look like?" and "It seems to me" .... I wish comments could be edited after posting. Sorry.
  • I take Kevin's point that ideally all welfare should come from voluntary contributions, but it also seems to be that in the meantime we'd be better off with a negative income tax and Earned Income Tax Credit if in return all of the other programs of the welfare state were abolished, i.e. Social Security, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, food stamps, industrial plants required to say "Mother, may I?" before they shut down, etc. etc.

    Will, are you going to write a liberaltarian book to flesh out your vision? Where would health care look like under a liberaltarian regime?
  • Gil
    Hey M. Huben! Like your site. :P
  • Mike Huben
    If Will Wilkinson doesn't exclude people from the libertarian tent, the meaning of the word libertarian becomes uselessly diffuse.

    Hayek apparently made lots of disclaimers to provide plausible deniability to his harsh libertarian conservatism. But they're all unfunded mandates as far as libertarians are concerned, until the libertarians stop shrieking "taxation is theft!"
  • Gil
    "under private landowners, it is a simple process to move somewhere else"

    You can't prove that because people are forbidden from owning land via the government. How do we know that private landowners would stay nice and small? How would we know the 'leave it' argument would be easy because 'freedom to leave' doesn't equate to 'freedom to arrive'. You're free to emigrate but you're not free to immigrate. Since landowners are governments supposing private landowners would be nice and dandy is mere speculation especially if private landowners are going to be nice guys and not use 'force&fraud'. And even then what type of 'force&fraud' is invalid to a landowner? A tenant is but a guest on a landowner's land and what if one day for no obvious reason the landowner rants and raves "get the hell off my land or else!"? The tenant has now been declared a trespasser and the landowner is free to force the ex-tenant off the land if the ex-tenant doesn't show any sign of leaving. The only 'force&fraud' not technically allowable to a private landowners is when he leaves his land and is now on someone else's. Quite it's starting to sound the same as to what government already do.
  • kevin
    @Gil: The difference is that I don't respect the claims of the people in washington that they own all the land under our feet. Furthermore, under private landowners, it is a simple process to move somewhere else, whereas under the state system, there are huge barriers to moving somewhere else.
  • Gil
    "Why does my living within certain arbitrary boundaries . . . entitle someone else to that which is mine?"

    Geez! Last time I looked a private-owning landlord is just as entitled some to my property (rent) for me to occupy his apartment. I don't get why Libertarians get into a stink about governments and social contracts - if the government is the primary landowner then it get the right to say what goes on and what amounts to payment. Hardcore anarcho-Libertaiians want primary landowners to individuals and so how is that going to be any different? I pay rent to a private landowner, they extract rent, they get to make rules on what I can and can't do, if I don't like it I leave it, and, AND, if I don't like and use force against the owner or refuse payment the private landowner can use (retalitory) force to extract payment or punish me. So how is there any real difference?
  • if the government is the primary landowner then it get the right to say what goes on and what amounts to payment.

    Absolutely correct. If the government is the rightful, ultimate landowner. But it isn't. So the rest of your argument doesn't follow.

    Further, without the coercive monopoly that governments enjoy, it is much more difficult to centralize power and land ownership. This is where Kevin's response enters the picture. With thousands of competing land owners as opposed to a single central monopoly, the use of Exit as a check on power is much greater than the use of Voice (i.e. elections).
  • kevin
    I'm not impressed with the idea of the "social contract". Why does my living within certain arbitrary boundaries (the same country or the same planet, it doesn't matter) entitle someone else to that which is mine? Property rights are absolute, or they aren't rights, are they? They would simply be privileges, which can be removed by the powerful at will.
  • atlas1882
    I think I'm with Nicholas on this one, or at least I don't see how liberty and the uniqueness of an individual's perception of utility are completely independent. What would be the value of one without the other?
  • Renato Drumond
    Atlas 1882, if you think that liberty has a value for itself and over other considerations, even if was possible to increase total social utility violating individual liberty, you should be against it.

    I think a good test to discover if someone is pro or against something on its own sake or because of undesirable consequences is to question if they would change their position if the consequences were others.

    For example, if someone is against civil gun ownership because it raises the sum of murders on a given society, ask him/her if he/she would favor the incentive of gun ownership if the murders fall with this policy. Of course, other questions may be involved, but I think it's a good start.
  • kevin
    "Kevin, So then neither Mises nor Hayek nor Friedman were libertarians. "
    Well I always assumed they supported a safety net mainly as a way of preventing frustrated poorer people from extorting more tribute through non-government means (stealing, revolution, etc.).

    I just think that the safety net should be non-compulsory and provided by nice, bleeding heart types like you. (and me)
  • Nicholas Weininger
    Why say "libertarianism is not" rather than "libertarianism is not necessarily"? Why exclude from your libertarian tent those of us who believe that

    (a) liberty *is* valuable for its own sake, in part because of the morally suspect nature of interpersonal utility comparisons

    (b) at least some level of liberty is morally mandated as a side-constraint, rather than simply being an input to the great utility objective function?

    That seems at least as bad as the exclusion you (rightly) complain about. IMHO the dialogue between deontologists and consequentialists is one of the things that makes libertarianism such a vibrant and productive intellectual movement; it is, if you will, a process of reflective equilibrium carried out between rather than within people. We'd be worse off without Hayek but also without Rothbard.
  • Nicholas, Sure. Read what I said again. I obviously did not "exclude" anyone from the libertarian tent.

    I am no utilitarian. I'm some kind of contractarian.

    I do think liberty is valuable for its own sake. It's just not the most important value. And it's hard to see how the suspect nature of interpersonal utility comparisons bears on the intrinsic value of liberty. Aren't these entirely logically independent?
  • Kevin, So then neither Mises nor Hayek nor Friedman were libertarians. I believe, like all of them, the liberty is valuable primarily for its effects on human well-being. Libertarianism is not the view that liberty is valuable for its own sake and always trumps competing values. Some libertarians think that, and they're wrong.
  • kevin
    "I am interested in promoting a tendency of thought and a set of policy reforms that I think will, as a matter of fact, make people better off."

    Then you aren't really a libertarian at all. You are a leftish utilitarian who happens to be economically literate (unlike most leftish utilitarians).
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