fagin@ucbvax.ARPA (Barry Steven Fagin) (04/20/85)
In article 7755 of net.politics Richard Carnes writes: > Libertarians hold that the > only kind of freedom worth defending is freedom from direct coercion > by individuals. No, Richard, and you are well enough acquainted with libertarian positions to know better. Libertarians maintain that the only kind{ of freedom that COERCION should be used to defend is freedom from said coercion by individuals. If you find the freedom to discriminate perverse, you are at liberty to oppose it through noncoercive means. > They further maintain that the highest good, or > perhaps the only ethical good, is the maximizing of this particular > kind of freedom. If this isn't perverse it is at least arbitrary; I > haven't yet come across a persuasive or plausible defense of this > view. As I've said before, all political discussions can eventually be reduced to arbitrary statements, although I prefer the words "primitve" or "axiomatic" to "arbitrary". I thought I made a plausible defense of this a while back; I guess it wasn't very persuasive. See below. > As Barry Fagin writes: >> It seems to me that if people have the right to think their own >> thoughts, to own property, and to form voluntary associations, then >> they may not be prevented from discriminating against anyone in any >> manner they please....In any case, since non-coercive techniques are >> available to combat the perceived evils of discrimination, why use >> coercive ones? > This is written in the standard libertarian question-begging mode. > The question being begged is whether the only standard for judgment > should be the minimizing of coercion by individuals. Almost. The question is, given a conflict between coercing individuals and a desired social goal, how should it be resolved? Advocates of legislation ensuring nondiscriminatory hiring practices are NOT claiming merely that equality in the workplace is just; they are claiming that equality in the workplace is a higher good than the coercion of individuals who hire. This argument seems to me shallow and unsatisfying; a sleight-of-hand trick that is just another way of saying "the end justifies the means". Consider: no matter where human beings go, what countries they live in, or what their fellow humans think of them, they will always posess the natural attributes that render them proof against coercion (having free will, independent minds, perhaps having a soul, and in general being creatures of inherent value). Now consider the issue of equality in the workplace. Suppose Janet Workingwoman finds herself transplanted to a community where noone cares about equality. Or better yet, where people believe that inequality is part of the natural order of things. Does JW have still have a right to coerce a given series of actions out of an employer, in the name of a higher good? Some might say yes, but at the very least it should make them uneasy. By contrast, she still has (I believe) a right to be free from coercion from anyof the individuals in this new community, just as they have similar rights against her. No matter where she goes, these rights stay with her. The point I wish to make is that social goals like "equality", "freedom from discrimination", and so forth are not natural, but transitory: they depend heavily upon groups of people and what these groups of people think. The noncoercion principle suffers from no such restriction: it applies everywhere because it is rooted in the nature of human beings. Given that a conflict between these two basic ideas of justice must be resolved, anyone who believes that justice arises from enduring principles inherent in the nature of mankind must resolve this conflict in favor of the NCP. POSSIBLE WAYS AROUND THIS: "The coercion involved is so small, and the ends are so obviously good, ..." I suspect a lot of people out there believe this, but this is just the usual end justifying the means argument. Doesn't suit me; that's how liberty dissapears, a little bit at a time. If you want something, work for it noncoercively: you might be surprised at what can be accomplished. "Conflicts between natural justice and societal justice shouldn't always be resolved in favor of the former". Unsatisfying to anyone who believes justice is an enduring, real concept. If you accept the quote, then you belive that, at least in some cases, right and wrong are decided by what a group of people happens to be thinking at a particular time. "People don't have natural attributes that render them proof against coercion from others". Can't argue with this one; if you refuse to accept my basic premise, most of the argument falls apart. "Equal opportunity legislation is right because lots of people feel very strongly about it and most people don't give a damn about coercion". Well, at least you're being honest. >> It is the Free Economy that will benefit victims of discrimination >> the most, and not more coercive legislation. > let us first have a definition of a "Free Economy," > since I am not sure I understand exactly what this is. A reasonable request. How about this: Free Economy: that economic system that results when coercion is never employed in the making of any decision regarding distribution of resources. Here I use "coercion" in the standard libertarian sense. Thus worker-owned enterprises that determine selling prices at weekly meetings are certainly compatible with this definition, (provided the workers obtained ownership of the enterprise in a just manner) since no coercion is being employed. I also note that I like to use "Free Economy" and "capitalist economy" interchangeably. Over the past couple of months I've noticed that Richard Carnes et. al. talk about something very different when they speak of capitalism. For instance, they probably consider government intervention on behalf of major corporations as quite compatible with capitalism, while I see it as an anathema to it. To avoid this and other problems, I'll try to use "Free Economy" in the future to make things a little clearer. > Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes --Barry Fagin, fagin@berkeley -- Barry Fagin @ University of California, Berkeley