Against the Welfare Stateby
Dmitry Chernikov
One of my professors at Kent State who taught a course in social philosophy in 2005 had an interest in libertarianism and, upon learning that I did, too, gave me one of his articles on libertarianism and the welfare state. The article was so appallingly bad that after reading it I was motivated to write an 8-page paper with a line-by-line refutation of everything that the professor had to say. Here are some of the things that the fellow wrote. (I’ll give the reference upon request – I have to work with these people.) 1. To start off, he proposes a distinction between the positive and negative senses of liberty. Yet there is actually no such thing as "positive sense of liberty." Liberty is defined aptly as "a : the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action b : liberation from slavery or restraint or from the power of another." "Positive sense of liberty" is not liberty at all; it is power: power to act, to accomplish goals. The foregoing is precisely the difference between the ability and the right to do what one wishes, a distinction that our author oddly enough neglects to make. One can have the right to do something but not the ability, or the ability but not the right. A person who is free from interference by other human beings may be severely limited as to what he can do. Conversely, a slave ever at his master’s beck and call can have considerable power and discretion to act as, for example, the overseer of other slaves. 2. Another distinction is made between basic and non-basic needs. To be strict about it, it is a delusion to divide "needs" (i.e., wants) this way. All wants are lined up in a row for man to choose. One desire is not a priori superior to another; it is man’s preferences and choices that arrange them into a scale of more urgent and less urgent wants. It is argued that rights of the poor to sustenance permit "restricting the right of the rich to use their wealth for luxury." First, "luxury" is an entirely arbitrary term which means "a good which only few members of a given society have." It is used pejoratively to condemn the rich in envy of them. Second, in a capitalist society there is continuous economic progress, and what is luxury today is necessity tomorrow. The rich are pioneers who try out new goods and services before everyone else as "experiments in living," ignite a desire for them among the masses, and encourage initial production of these goods. They thus serve an important social function. And think of the absurdity of saying that "the liberty to acquire property beyond one’s basic needs is not an unconditional right." Since when is the right to subsistent existence the only right enjoyed by individuals? In fact, in a libertarian society all people have the liberty to acquire wealth merely to sustain their lives or to have pleasures that go beyond mere subsistence. There is no conflict. One right does not "take precedence," as the professor peculiarly phrases it, over the other, because both can be exercised at the same time. 3. Unless the poor are taken care of by the state, they will "see the rich as the external physical constraint on their ability to survive." A declaration like that betrays scandalous ignorance of economics. In a capitalist society there prevails a harmony of rightly understood interests of all people. The rich do not maliciously hoard the resources that the poor also want for themselves. The rich, mostly, are producers who use the factors of production, viz., capital, labor, and land, to create consumer goods for the "poor" to buy. They serve the poor. They are benefactors of society, and their wealth is due to the revealed preference of the poor for their work. (Let us be careful here and quote Ludwig von Mises as saying that "Those fighting for free enterprise and free competition do not defend the interests of those rich today. They want a free hand left to unknown men who will be the entrepreneurs of tomorrow and whose ingenuity will make the life of coming generations more agreeable. They want the way left open to further economic improvements.") Or, again, we read that "excess wealth is a constraint on the liberty of the poor because there is scarcity of resources." Once more, one person’s getting richer does not imply another person’s getting poorer. The author’s contention would make sense in the case of Vikings raiding English settlements but certainly not in a capitalist society. The market is voluntary exchange for mutual benefit of all parties involved in an exchange. When I pay $x for a widget, both the buyer and the seller benefit; both get richer. Private property and freedom of contract are the only rational ways of dealing with scarcity that permit progressive improvement in the standard of living for all members of society, as well as an economy as such, as opposed to chaos. 4. Apparently, "to starve to death is to be denied the right to life." The proper meaning of the term "right to life" is the right not to be killed by another man. It is not the right to have one’s life maintained forcibly at someone else’s expense. In The Ethics of Liberty Murray Rothbard quotes Judith Thompson who writes:
5. Our author is worried that there may not be voluntary charities in a free society. 1. This is an empirical claim. What if there will be? 2. Charity is the force that binds all things together and is the mother of all virtues: "If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing." (1 Cor 13:1–3) So it is to be expected that voluntary charities will exist. 3. The argument from the alleged non-existence (or, perhaps, underproduction) of private charities under freedom implies that the rulers are benevolent and enlightened, while their subjects are hard of heart and evil, when the reality is most often the other way around. 4. When the government is democratic, it is explicitly contrary to reason, because if the majority of the population has voted to tax themselves (and not just the rich) to provide welfare to the poor, then that very fact means that at least the majority is charitable enough to provide the same services privately. 5. By accepting mercy with gratitude one allows other people to serve him and in so doing earn merit in the eyes of God. (Of course, one should help out of love and not to score points, but points are scored anyway.) This effect is prevented in forced charity both because giving is no longer freely chosen and because the recipients all too often take their benefits for granted and think of the taxpayers as suckers. 6. Finally, it should be obvious that only private individuals can provide spiritual works of mercy (admonish sinners, comfort the sorrowful, forgive offenses, etc.); why is it assumed that they are incapable of doing corporal works of mercy? It might be argued that if the government does not take it upon itself to provide relief to the poor, then such relief will not be organized, that it will be haphazard. But this is just knee-jerk statism. It is equivalent to saying that if the government is not in charge of food provision, then everyone will starve, which is absurd. Even now, when so much of the resources in private hands is taxed away, charities thrive, compete with each other for donors, and serve their clients. Many successful foundations are very well run and are "big business." Further, economics teaches us that when taxes are lowered, spending on consumer goods is likely to go up. That includes charitable giving. Also, and crucially, unlike private works of mercy, government welfare is indiscriminate: it cannot easily take into account the nature of the recipient or his circumstances due to lack of proper incentives of the bureaucrats; therefore it cannot distinguish between deserving and undeserving poor; therefore it subsidizes sloth. 6. The professor takes issue with the "greed, selfishness, and drive of the rich to acquired excess wealth as fundamental liberty." This is a complete misapprehension of reality. 1. It is an unsubstantiated accusation that the rich are greedy and selfish. In fact, most people become wealthy not because they love themselves, but because they love their jobs as businessmen or highly paid workers and do them well. 2. Greed and selfishness are certainly not limited to the rich, but are vices that affect everybody, rich or poor. 3. You know how some people say that they "can’t afford to be moral"? Well, the rich can "afford" it more than the poor can. Hence we should expect a higher level of virtue among the wealthy. 4. What about education? The richer one is, the more time and money one can spend on schooling for oneself or one’s children. Or is selflessness to be found among the ignorant? 5. It is only the wealthy who have the means to display the rare virtue of magnificence. 6. Technically, everyone is selfish, because everyone wills happiness to himself first, because everyone loves himself more than neighbor, being substantially united with and therefore closer to himself. 7. The fact that a person is greedy and selfish says nothing about whether he should be forcibly parted with the property he covets so much. Is it OK to steal from bad people? If anything, the harm in terms of lowered utility done by theft to a greedy person is greater than that done to an altruistic person, because the former is more attached to his goods and will suffer more from seeing them confiscated. 8. Suppose for the sake of argument that the rich are indeed wicked in their character. It is still the case that the poor benefit from the existence of the rich, because the rich possess their wealth only insofar as the consumers of the things they produce approve of their conduct. Capitalism is essentially mass production for the masses. The captains of industry, the owners of corporations are subject to the supremacy of the consumers. As Mises writes, the latter "patronize those shops in which they can buy what they want at the cheapest price. Their buying and their abstention from buying decide who should own and run the plants and the farms. They make poor people rich and rich people poor." Entrepreneurs become rich because the masses, the "poor," rush to outbid each other on the products offered to them for sale. Personal wealth in a free society is a consequence of previous success in serving consumers. The rich are thus "mandatories" of the consumers, destined to work to please them. If they fail to satisfy their (our) wants, they will forfeit their wealth and their vocation as entrepreneurs and be demoted into the rank of laborers. To condemn the rich is to condemn them for enriching society, and to loot them is to discourage production and promote poverty for all. Oh, and, of course, there is no such thing as "excess wealth." It is an arbitrary and meaningless term. 7. It is found problematic that "a minimal state must perform the function of preventing the use of violence that could emerge from the anger, envy, or desperation of the poor." The situation could "degenerate into chaos." There are many problems with this argument. 1. It assumes the existence of a large mass of wretched poor in society. But under capitalism this is not the case. The desperately poor who truly cannot work are very few in number, most of them physically or mentally ill. Violence on their part will certainly not jeopardize society. 2. Everyone ought to realize that society will become poorer if the rich are under constant threat of being robbed. The incentives to gain wealth by serving consumers will be gone. Economic education is the cure, not welfare. 3. As a rule, the less wealthy majority does not revolt explicitly, but uses the government to enact legislation that will plunder the rich "legally." I see no moral difference between legal and illegal plunder. 4. There are ways to check one’s anger, envy, or desperation other than by handing out cash. The Church has been doing it for millennia by teaching virtue. 5. Suppose for the sake of argument that the poor masses are, in fact, about to revolt. In that case it is in the interest of the rich to band together and donate to private charities in order to forestall the looting. Coercion by government need not be involved. 8. Then there is this argument: "Since the practical need for a state exists, no matter how minimal the state, the libertarian stance in objecting to all forms of welfare on the ground that welfare limits freedom is inadequate." Here our fellow seems to be saying that from the fact that the state can limit the "freedom" to murder and steal it follows that it can also limit the freedom to dispose of one’s property as one sees fit. First, such a thing surely does not follow. Second, such a state will no longer be minimal. Third, it proves too much: where does the abridgement of freedom end? 9. The good professor asks: "Isn’t the consent or deference given to the doctor qualitatively similar to the consent or deference given to the politician in a democracy regarding how to spend public funds?" The answer is: No, it is not. 1. Public funds ought to be spent on public purposes, for the common good. Welfare is a case of public money being spent on the private good of welfare recipients. 2. In a democracy only the majority of eligible voters consents to the policy of the elected leader; the minority does not. Further, even the majority may simply vote for the lesser of two evils; it may despise the winner almost as much as the loser. 3. Unlike doctors, politicians do not have the proper incentives to spend the money in the right way. They are more likely to subsidize special interests and buy votes by handing out favors. 4. Unlike market producers, politicians have no reliable way of knowing whether their expenditures are favored by the public. In other words, for those there is no market test. 10. It is claimed that "to vote for a government in a liberal democracy is to consent." Suppose that the two candidates running for President of the United States have the following platforms. Candidate A says that once elected, he will kill you (for no reason at all). Candidate B says that once elected, he will put you in prison for life. Does voting for Candidate B imply consenting to his policy? Or consider a more direct example. Three gangsters hold you up at gunpoint. You object that what they are doing is wrong. They talk among themselves and tell you that you and they constitute a "society" with a need for democratic government. One of them runs for "President" on the spot. Two of the gangsters vote for him, and he wins. Now whatever the "President" does is legal, because, why, he is duly elected. He has the "mandate." He immediately proceeds to demand your money or your life. If you give him your wallet, are you thereby consenting to being robbed? 11. Consider the following proposition put forth by our professor: "It is possible for one to pursue one’s goals without thwarting a similar pursuit of others only if no complex social and economic relations and interactions exist in society." Despicable. On the contrary, "complex social and economic relations" are precisely what enable each person to pursue his own dreams. The sophisticated network of economic relations, the minute division of labor, the complex structure of production, possible only under economic freedom are what allow us to have an advanced standard of living and achieve ends that could not even be imagined in a more primitive state of civilization. In Education: Free and Compulsory Rothbard quotes George Harris (in somewhat other context):
Complexity does not entail lesser freedom. On the contrary, it is made possible only under freedom. A socialist society must inevitably degenerate into primordial homogeneity. Nor does complexity mean chaos or a clash of interests. The market allows an arbitrarily complex economy to be a well-coordinated organic unity and makes the consequences of human actions clear to all. Society, as Mises defines it, is "concerted action, cooperation." We cooperate with each other for mutual gain. Humans can pursue their goals only with the assistance of others, and libertarians argue that this assistance not only should be voluntary from the moral point of view but can only be voluntary in any sort of successful and progressing society.
July 19, 2006 Dmitry Chernikov [send him mail] is a graduate student in philosophy at Kent State University. Copyright © 2006 LewRockwell.com |
So
there you have it, an array of fallacies, hopefully refuted. None
of them, unfortunately, are strawmen. Philosophers say the darndest
things.