Are you just presupposing here that the correct understanding of "property rights" would yield the result that taxation necessarily qualifies as a violation? Social Security is weirdly structured, but compulsory social insurance doesn't strike me as obviously "a violation of property rights" (e.g. if it approximates what market participants would want to pre-commit to from behind a veil of ignorance). It seems much more natural (to me, at least) to understand the relevant "right" as just being to one's post-tax holdings, in such a case.
For the purposes of this post, I am presupposing that taxation qualifies as a violation of property rights. I do think that view is plausible, but I simply assume it here because that seems to be the position of many moderate libertarians. If you haven't seen it already, you might be interested in this piece by Huemer:
Thanks for the pointer! It seems like the key argument happens in one paragraph on p.11, where Huemer writes: "the standard revenue-collection methods used by the state infringe upon *core* property claims in *paradigmatic* ways... [O]n any normal (not radically revisionary) conception, there will be some legitimate ways of acquiring goods, such that one who acquires goods in one of those ways has a property right in them. Since I am coercively transferring goods from my neighbors regardless of how they acquired those goods, I am violating any normal conception of property rights."
This is a bad argument. Obviously the opposing moderate property rights view is one on which the "legitimate ways of acquiring goods" may give you a property right to less than 100% of the value of the good, with the remainder being subject to tax for the collective good of society. Huemer doesn't even seem to *consider* this possibility, let alone argue against it.
I agree that the opposing moderate view is a serious contender. Given his methodology, I suspect Huemer might reply with a case like this: Alice hires Bob to mow her lawn for $10. A third party demands $3 to be used for the collective good on the grounds that, for instance, this is what they'd agree to behind a veil of ignorance. Bob is only entitled to $7, not $10. Intuitively, the third party seems to be doing something wrong here even if, in fact, this is what Alice and Bob would agree to behind a veil of ignorance. Granted, you might disagree with Huemer's methodology. (He also raises some objections to Rawls-style arguments in *The Problem of Political Authority*.)
Yeah, I think it's just a bad methodology to assume that a political process is always morally analogous to a corresponding unilateral individual action. Jurors are different from vigilantes. Tax is different from theft. Process and institutions matter.
I think basically everyone should be a (rule) consequentialist about *political institutions*, incl. determining the scope of property rights. From there, deontologists and (act) consequentialists can disagree about the ethics of individual action. But if rights are inherently institutional, there's just no sense to the idea that the best institutions involve rights violations.
That I'm likely to pre-commit from a veil of ignorance to some kind of retirement planning doesn't get you to social security taxes. I would _not_ pre-commit to something so ridiculously low on return. If all the money they'd taken in social security taxes had been mine to invest differently, I'd be driving a Porsche by now.
Surely it depends how competent most people are at managing money? If you had a 90% chance of ending up as a dimwit, it would seem prudent to pre-commit to (even suboptimal) social security over pure privatization.
I don't need to be a financial whiz myself, anymore than I need to know how to fix the car or do an appendectomy. I just need to be able to get someone to do those things for me. In the veil of ignorance I wouldn't precommit to mediocre or incompetent mechanics or surgeons, so why would I precommit to mediocre or incompetent financial planning? the V of I means I need a world with automotive maintenance services, but I'd prefer to choose which mechanic I go to based on all sorts of factors I wouldn't know in the V of I (e.g., if it turns out I'm good with cars, maybe I wouldn't outsource my auto maintenance at all). Similarly, I need to live in a world with financial planners, but I don't need to live in a world where everyone is required to use the same (awful) ones.
Again, it's just an empirical question how many people are sufficiently competent to pursue (and follow the advice of) a financial planner. My sense is that a lot of people don't just lack expert knowledge; they lack very basic practical competence, and cannot be trusted to take the necessary steps to plan for their own retirement. Hopefully my pessimism here exaggerates the real extent of practical irrationality. But if I were behind a veil of ignorance, I would worry a lot about ending up as such a person.
If all that wealth redistribution did was redistribute wealth, it would probably be defensible from behind the veil or ignorance or in front of it. But its actual effects are also empirical questions. And they’re poorly understood. And examining particular cases doesn’t tell us much about them.
I agree that social insurance is very different than welfare. In fact it often solves “the underwriting problem”, where maintaining a stable risk pool can’t be done if people can opt out.
But if people can’t opt out, it is tempting to turn any social insurance program into a defacto welfare program. After all, what the the payers going to do about it.
In the steal-a-life-preserver-to-save-the-kid-from-imminent-death case, which I 100% agree is the right thing to do, the fact that you ought to compensate the owner later seems to mean that the right _is_ absolute, if by absolute we mean that he still has a right even if you were justified in violating it. If it weren't, why would he be owed compensation? You can get to the conclusion you come to without making this concession.
Yep, that's plausible--the right is absolute in the sense that it always carries some moral weight, but violating it is justified all things considered.
Justified in the sense that that's what you ought to do (save the kid's life), but not in the sense that the owner isn't thereby due compensation for the violation. I can imagine the owner saying "jeez, don't worry about it, I'm just glad the kid is ok" but he's nevertheless _entitled_ to the compensation even if he feels like waiving it.
You don't mention a key caveat re the duty of aid - in current law and in most people's morals, the duty of aid is often enforceable in situations where there is only one person in a position to provide aid.
The Law of the Sea requires mariners to rescue one another on the high seas, regardless of cost or inconvenience. (Tho the rescuee may find himself with a demand for compensation after the fact). At least in cases where life is at stake. (Physical inability or excessive risk to the rescuer are valid excuses, but the bar for these is remarkably high.)
This is justified by the assumption that in most cases there will be only one single other ship with the ability to perform a rescue - the ocean is a big lonely place.
When a city pedestrian falls to the ground, other pedestrians don't have an enforceable duty to aid, because in a city there are others around able to aid, so the duty doesn't fall on any single person. (I believe there are some jurisdictions where even in a city, if you're the only person able to perform a rescue, you have an enforceable duty to attempt one.)
Chris, you say: “Now, it’s possible that some of the redistribution done in the United States is so beneficial that it justifies a violation of property rights. But investigating that possibility is beyond the scope of this post.”
Let me take the first step in investigating that possibility. When I last checked, several years ago, the cheapest way to save a life anywhere in the world cost about $2K per life saved. (This is stuff like deworming and mosquito nets.) Presumably that cost has only gone up in the last few years, because the lowest hanging fruit has been picked. So, question: is it morally okay to force someone to give up $2K to save a life? I think we’d all be horrified if people went around robbing each other of $2K to save lives. In particular, I suspect anyone reading this post would think it immoral for him/her*self* to do that, that is to force someone else to give up $2K and then donate it to save a life. Plausibly the reaction we’d have to that sort of case is on a par with the reaction we (are supposed to) have towards the society of music lovers in Thomson’s violinist case. (To continue the Thomson analogy: suppose there is a “Society of Effective Altruism Lovers” that goes around forcibly taking $2000 from people and saving 1 life each with it—this would be a morally outrageous society.)
If so, then—at least at the current margins—even in the best, most effective cases it’s wrong to enforce the duty to aid. The qualification of “at the current margins” is important, because if you take away too many social services then eventually we’re back in the state of nature, with no sanitation, no vaccines, etc. And in that state of nature, arguably some duty to aid would be enforceable, because the distance between cost and benefit at that margin would be much higher than it currently is.
Redistribution is a mix of social insurance (the payee hopes to receive something of equal value in return one day) and violence (voting blocks realize they can manipulate the states monopoly on violence to achieve some advantage.
Roving bands of effective altruists mugging people would violate the states monopoly on violence, with huge externalities on society if it were allowed to continue. Aid to third world countries is low because it provides neither social insurance nor vote banks to first worlders.
Sorry, new to Substack comments, and I can’t see a way to edit my own comment. (Is there one?) Anyway, at the end I should also have emphasized that all of the cheapest lives to save are in extremely impoverished areas outside rich countries like the US, so in order to justify an enforceable duty to aid fellow citizens of rich countries we’d have to go pretty far down our current ladder of social services, indeed so far down that we’re substantially worse off than the currently worst off regions of the world. Then, at *that* margin, where we’re also suffering from malaria, malnutrition, diarrhea, etc., then maybe, if it’s bad enough, there would be an enforceable duty to aid our fellow (US) citizens.
This come down in my book to different weights placed on efficiency (~ respect for property rights) and redistribution of consumption. And taxation of externalities like CO2 emissions are a bit different, closer to court ordered tort relief.
If you were going to generalize from the Bruce Willis case, wouldn’t you generalize to something like universal taxpayer-funded 911 rather than Social Security? How does that generalization strike you?
Are you just presupposing here that the correct understanding of "property rights" would yield the result that taxation necessarily qualifies as a violation? Social Security is weirdly structured, but compulsory social insurance doesn't strike me as obviously "a violation of property rights" (e.g. if it approximates what market participants would want to pre-commit to from behind a veil of ignorance). It seems much more natural (to me, at least) to understand the relevant "right" as just being to one's post-tax holdings, in such a case.
For the purposes of this post, I am presupposing that taxation qualifies as a violation of property rights. I do think that view is plausible, but I simply assume it here because that seems to be the position of many moderate libertarians. If you haven't seen it already, you might be interested in this piece by Huemer:
https://philarchive.org/rec/HUEIWR
Thanks for the pointer! It seems like the key argument happens in one paragraph on p.11, where Huemer writes: "the standard revenue-collection methods used by the state infringe upon *core* property claims in *paradigmatic* ways... [O]n any normal (not radically revisionary) conception, there will be some legitimate ways of acquiring goods, such that one who acquires goods in one of those ways has a property right in them. Since I am coercively transferring goods from my neighbors regardless of how they acquired those goods, I am violating any normal conception of property rights."
This is a bad argument. Obviously the opposing moderate property rights view is one on which the "legitimate ways of acquiring goods" may give you a property right to less than 100% of the value of the good, with the remainder being subject to tax for the collective good of society. Huemer doesn't even seem to *consider* this possibility, let alone argue against it.
I agree that the opposing moderate view is a serious contender. Given his methodology, I suspect Huemer might reply with a case like this: Alice hires Bob to mow her lawn for $10. A third party demands $3 to be used for the collective good on the grounds that, for instance, this is what they'd agree to behind a veil of ignorance. Bob is only entitled to $7, not $10. Intuitively, the third party seems to be doing something wrong here even if, in fact, this is what Alice and Bob would agree to behind a veil of ignorance. Granted, you might disagree with Huemer's methodology. (He also raises some objections to Rawls-style arguments in *The Problem of Political Authority*.)
Yeah, I think it's just a bad methodology to assume that a political process is always morally analogous to a corresponding unilateral individual action. Jurors are different from vigilantes. Tax is different from theft. Process and institutions matter.
I think basically everyone should be a (rule) consequentialist about *political institutions*, incl. determining the scope of property rights. From there, deontologists and (act) consequentialists can disagree about the ethics of individual action. But if rights are inherently institutional, there's just no sense to the idea that the best institutions involve rights violations.
That I'm likely to pre-commit from a veil of ignorance to some kind of retirement planning doesn't get you to social security taxes. I would _not_ pre-commit to something so ridiculously low on return. If all the money they'd taken in social security taxes had been mine to invest differently, I'd be driving a Porsche by now.
Surely it depends how competent most people are at managing money? If you had a 90% chance of ending up as a dimwit, it would seem prudent to pre-commit to (even suboptimal) social security over pure privatization.
I don't need to be a financial whiz myself, anymore than I need to know how to fix the car or do an appendectomy. I just need to be able to get someone to do those things for me. In the veil of ignorance I wouldn't precommit to mediocre or incompetent mechanics or surgeons, so why would I precommit to mediocre or incompetent financial planning? the V of I means I need a world with automotive maintenance services, but I'd prefer to choose which mechanic I go to based on all sorts of factors I wouldn't know in the V of I (e.g., if it turns out I'm good with cars, maybe I wouldn't outsource my auto maintenance at all). Similarly, I need to live in a world with financial planners, but I don't need to live in a world where everyone is required to use the same (awful) ones.
Again, it's just an empirical question how many people are sufficiently competent to pursue (and follow the advice of) a financial planner. My sense is that a lot of people don't just lack expert knowledge; they lack very basic practical competence, and cannot be trusted to take the necessary steps to plan for their own retirement. Hopefully my pessimism here exaggerates the real extent of practical irrationality. But if I were behind a veil of ignorance, I would worry a lot about ending up as such a person.
If all that wealth redistribution did was redistribute wealth, it would probably be defensible from behind the veil or ignorance or in front of it. But its actual effects are also empirical questions. And they’re poorly understood. And examining particular cases doesn’t tell us much about them.
This is one reason why some people aren't entirely convinced the V of I does what Rawls thinks it does.
I agree that social insurance is very different than welfare. In fact it often solves “the underwriting problem”, where maintaining a stable risk pool can’t be done if people can opt out.
But if people can’t opt out, it is tempting to turn any social insurance program into a defacto welfare program. After all, what the the payers going to do about it.
In the steal-a-life-preserver-to-save-the-kid-from-imminent-death case, which I 100% agree is the right thing to do, the fact that you ought to compensate the owner later seems to mean that the right _is_ absolute, if by absolute we mean that he still has a right even if you were justified in violating it. If it weren't, why would he be owed compensation? You can get to the conclusion you come to without making this concession.
Yep, that's plausible--the right is absolute in the sense that it always carries some moral weight, but violating it is justified all things considered.
Justified in the sense that that's what you ought to do (save the kid's life), but not in the sense that the owner isn't thereby due compensation for the violation. I can imagine the owner saying "jeez, don't worry about it, I'm just glad the kid is ok" but he's nevertheless _entitled_ to the compensation even if he feels like waiving it.
You don't mention a key caveat re the duty of aid - in current law and in most people's morals, the duty of aid is often enforceable in situations where there is only one person in a position to provide aid.
The Law of the Sea requires mariners to rescue one another on the high seas, regardless of cost or inconvenience. (Tho the rescuee may find himself with a demand for compensation after the fact). At least in cases where life is at stake. (Physical inability or excessive risk to the rescuer are valid excuses, but the bar for these is remarkably high.)
This is justified by the assumption that in most cases there will be only one single other ship with the ability to perform a rescue - the ocean is a big lonely place.
When a city pedestrian falls to the ground, other pedestrians don't have an enforceable duty to aid, because in a city there are others around able to aid, so the duty doesn't fall on any single person. (I believe there are some jurisdictions where even in a city, if you're the only person able to perform a rescue, you have an enforceable duty to attempt one.)
This strikes me as reasonable.
Chris, you say: “Now, it’s possible that some of the redistribution done in the United States is so beneficial that it justifies a violation of property rights. But investigating that possibility is beyond the scope of this post.”
Let me take the first step in investigating that possibility. When I last checked, several years ago, the cheapest way to save a life anywhere in the world cost about $2K per life saved. (This is stuff like deworming and mosquito nets.) Presumably that cost has only gone up in the last few years, because the lowest hanging fruit has been picked. So, question: is it morally okay to force someone to give up $2K to save a life? I think we’d all be horrified if people went around robbing each other of $2K to save lives. In particular, I suspect anyone reading this post would think it immoral for him/her*self* to do that, that is to force someone else to give up $2K and then donate it to save a life. Plausibly the reaction we’d have to that sort of case is on a par with the reaction we (are supposed to) have towards the society of music lovers in Thomson’s violinist case. (To continue the Thomson analogy: suppose there is a “Society of Effective Altruism Lovers” that goes around forcibly taking $2000 from people and saving 1 life each with it—this would be a morally outrageous society.)
If so, then—at least at the current margins—even in the best, most effective cases it’s wrong to enforce the duty to aid. The qualification of “at the current margins” is important, because if you take away too many social services then eventually we’re back in the state of nature, with no sanitation, no vaccines, etc. And in that state of nature, arguably some duty to aid would be enforceable, because the distance between cost and benefit at that margin would be much higher than it currently is.
Redistribution is a mix of social insurance (the payee hopes to receive something of equal value in return one day) and violence (voting blocks realize they can manipulate the states monopoly on violence to achieve some advantage.
Roving bands of effective altruists mugging people would violate the states monopoly on violence, with huge externalities on society if it were allowed to continue. Aid to third world countries is low because it provides neither social insurance nor vote banks to first worlders.
Sorry, new to Substack comments, and I can’t see a way to edit my own comment. (Is there one?) Anyway, at the end I should also have emphasized that all of the cheapest lives to save are in extremely impoverished areas outside rich countries like the US, so in order to justify an enforceable duty to aid fellow citizens of rich countries we’d have to go pretty far down our current ladder of social services, indeed so far down that we’re substantially worse off than the currently worst off regions of the world. Then, at *that* margin, where we’re also suffering from malaria, malnutrition, diarrhea, etc., then maybe, if it’s bad enough, there would be an enforceable duty to aid our fellow (US) citizens.
This come down in my book to different weights placed on efficiency (~ respect for property rights) and redistribution of consumption. And taxation of externalities like CO2 emissions are a bit different, closer to court ordered tort relief.
If you were going to generalize from the Bruce Willis case, wouldn’t you generalize to something like universal taxpayer-funded 911 rather than Social Security? How does that generalization strike you?