Subject: Re: Distributive Justice in a Pure Service Economy 2/2

From: [email-masked] (ASP-Disc)
Date: Wed, 2 Nov 1994 09:44:45 -0500

From: Steven Blatt <[email-masked]>

[Continued from previous message.]

> 4. Extending the Model
> 
> Now suppose that instead of writing down labor debts in a book,
> people started circulating negotiable labor notes.  (As was
> apparently done in Josiah Warren's 19th-century utopian village).
> Would the redistributionist have a firmer case here?  It is
> hard to see why he would.  For these notes are merely a more
> convenient way of designating the same agreements as before;
> for naturally in the initial setup, the surgeon could agree to
> perform surgery on Fred on the condition that Fred gives 100
> hours of wood-working lessons to Ann (and Ann agrees to give
> 2 years of flute tutoring to the surgeon).  So why should the 
> more fluid designation of the underlying fundamentals 
> matter?  True, it may now be more _convenient_ for a government
> to demand 10% of all notes exchanged; but what we are interested
> in here is not convenience but justice.  The fact remains that
> the 10% tax is blatantly a demand for forced labor; for each
> time one person sells labor to another, he is also compelled to
> give up an additional 10% of that labor against his will.
> 
> But let us then go further.  Suppose that the abundance of nature
> dried up, and goods, from land to minerals to wildlife, became
> as scarce as they are in the real world.  Naturally, people
> would want to claim products as their own; they would want to
> homestead unowned products and claim exclusive ownership of them.
> What objection could be made to this new regime; and would it
> create a wedge for redistributionist theories of justice to
> come into their own?

        This is the key portion of the argument, since what we're 
interested in is the goods-and-services economy, not the pure services 
economy.

> 
> Again, it is hard to see how it would.  The right to claim
> unowned products by "mixing one's labor with them" is not
> deducible from the claim of self-ownership, but the ideas are
> nevertheless closely connected.  And so are the objections
> that might be levelled against one or the other.
> 
> One might claim, for example, that because the homesteader does
> not "really create" the cultivated land, he is not entitled to
> it.  But of course the homesteader did not create himself either;
> does it then follow that he is not entitled to own himself?
> Or one might claim that the labor merely _adds values_, and so
> the homesteader is merely entitled to own the value that he adds;
> and the remainder may be legitimately taxed away for social aims.
> But as our example with the surgeon makes clear, the same could
> be said about my own labor services.  Namely, while I do contribute
> to my own value by training and experience and education, a
> significant fraction of the market value of my services is
> determined by my innate intelligence, dexterity, and so on.
> Does my education entitle me merely to that part of my earnings
> added by the education?  May I be forced to labor a percentage
> of the time equal to the percentage of my labor value determined
> by my raw talent?  One of the many absurdities entailed thereby
> is that the totally unskilled laborer is entitled to _nothing_.
> Again, then, we see that generalizing the argument against
> individual homesteading leads us to the untenable affirmation
> of the propriety of forced labor.

1.  Slavery is wrong.
2.  If robbery (taxation) is justified, then slavery is justified.
3.  Therefore, goods taxation is unjust.

> 
> 5. Conclusion: Libertarianism and Its Alternatives
> 
> No moral argument, indeed no argument at all, can compel agreement.
> It always remains open to a person to deny the premise OR embrace
> the conclusion.
        Or deny the validity of the argument.

  The one thing he cannot do is accept the premise
> and deny the conclusion.  The most desirable feature of an argument,
> then, is that the initial premise have greater initial probability
> than the conclusion does.
> 
     I thought that if the conclusion has very low probability that is 
considered a reduction of the premise to absurdity and is an argument 
against the premise.  Indeed, that seems to be Bryan's approach to 
Redistributionism:  the Redistributionist premise (high probability) 
leads to the conclusion that slavery is just (low probabillity).

> Now I claim that the argument arising from this thought experiment
> does indeed meet this criterion.  The truth of libertarianism as
> a theory of distributive justice does indeed strike most people
> as wildly unlikely; for it is a theory bereft of concern for
> equality, poverty, luck, and so on.  (Or to be more precise:
> it is a theory that says that these concerns are not a matter of
> justice and right; it leaves open the possibility that they are
> of moral interest, but on a lower level).  And yet, if anything
> is known about morality, it is known that it is just plain
> wrong to force someone to labor against his will, to enslave
> him or her.  Wrong whatever else must happen in consequence.
> This intuition is perhaps the fundamental intuition behind
> libertarian moral theory; and it is the intuition that the
> proponents of redistributionist theories must reject if they
> are to avoid the libertarian position.
> 
        Nozick argues outright that taxation is slavery.  
If so, giving birth to children is evil,
since the children will be slaves.  True, the birthgiver is also a slave;
but victimhood doesn't confer sanction to do wrong unto others.  Giving
birth is equivalent to selling your child into slavery; you get the
benefit (you enjoy having a child to raise), the child gets enslaved. 
True, your offspring may lead a full and productive and happy life, and if
you hadn't given birth to him he would, in consequence, never even have
gotten a chance to exist--and yet, if anything is known about morality, it
is known that it is just plain wrong to force someone to labor against his
will, to enslave him or her.  Wrong whatever else must happen in
consequence.  The premise--slavery is wrong--is more plausible than the
conclusion--reproduction is enslavement. 
     Bryan's argument doesn't say that goods taxation is slavery.  It
says, more subtly, that if the current welfare state is justified, then
slavery is justified.  Slavery is unjustified.  Therefore the current
welfare state is unjustified.  Accepting Bryan's argument, I can argue
that if reproduction is justified, then slavery is justified.  Here's how: 
We've shown that taking goods from people is unjust (if not, then slavery
is just).  Parents know their offspring will be robbed (taxed).  So
parents are accomplices in the taxation/robbery.  (If not for the
parents' actions, the offspring could not have been robbed; the parents
know their actions will result in   their offspring being robbed; no one is
forcing them to have children.) (Say that robbers tell you that if you
invite so-and-so to your home, he will be robbed.  Even though you won't
get any loot, you enjoy so-and-so's company so much that you invite him to
your house, not informing him of the robbers so as not to scare him off. 
You are an acomplice, even though you would have invited him even if you
hadn't known that he was to be robbed.) But robbery is wrong
(otherwise slavery is right).  So reproduction is wrong. 

        So now I can make this argument:  either (1) there is a flaw in 
Bryan's argument (a faulty premise or invalid reasoning) or (2)  for 
anyone (living in a welfare state) to beget children is evil.

        Redistributionists may say, yes, coercively taking goods from people
is not nice, but neither is letting people starve; in some cases the evil
of lettting people starve outweighs the evil of forcible taking.  Bryan
tries to get around this approach by presenting a case where the
redistributionist is forced to weigh accepting inequality against forced
labor; Bryan's expectation is that the Redistributionist will be unwilling
to weigh anything against slavery--slavery is wrong no matter what.  But
in fact most people have litle problem with some forms of forced labor
(see the examples listed above).  But say the Redistributionist agrees the
Redistribution is unacceptable in the pure-services economy.  Now Bryan
moves to keep the statist from trading property rights off against
distributive justice in the goods-and-services economy by tieing taxation
to slavery--if taxation is ever justified, then slavery is too; slavery is
never justified;  taxation is never justified.  My point is that this goes
too far, as my argument against reproduction shows.  Here's another
demonstrative argument:  suicide is a slave's duty.  Otherwise, the slave
is allowing himself to be enslaved;  but slavery is completely
unacceptable, whatever the consequences of avoiding it.  Here's another
demonstrative argument:  suicide or rebellion is a U.S. citizen's duty. 
Otherwise, the citizen is allowing himself to be robbed.  The citizen may
figure, better robbed than dead.  But Bryan has shown that we may not weigh
the positive effects of allowing the robbery to continue against the
negative, since that would open the door to condoning slavery. 

     My arguments don't show that the redistribution is just.  
Redistribution may be wrong,  but not so bad as to preclude 
reproduction in and accomodation with a redistributive society.  Bryan's 
arguments cut off this route by saying that we cannot weigh 
the pros and cons of redistribution, just as we cannot weigh the pros and 
cons of slavery.

Cordially,
Steven B.

---

From: [email-masked] (ASP-Disc)
Date: Thu, 3 Nov 1994 08:37:15 -0500

From: Mike <[email-masked]>

To Steven B:

I'm not sure how serious that argument to the immorality of reproduction
of yours is supposed to be taken.  I realize it's supposed to be some kind
of reductio or parody of Bryan's reasoning, but what are we supposed to
conclude from it?  Not, evidently, that reproduction is wrong.  Are you
arguing that, contrary to Bryan's assumption, slavery is permissible?  Or
are you arguing that the form of argument Bryan used is not valid --
namely, "If A then B; not B; therefore, not A".  Either of these would seem
an outrageous claim for you to be making.

Your argument is not of the same form as Bryan's.  Bryan's argument goes like
this:  The arguments which justify redistribution would, if valid, justify
slavery.  But slavery is wrong.  Therefore, the arguments are not valid.
Therefore, they do  not justify redistribution.
YOUR argument is of a much more dubious  form:
1. If you do X, then a wrong action will be performed by someone else.
2. Therefore, it is wrong to do X.
That is, you say that because if you have children, they will be subjected
to slavery and/or robbery by someone else, therefore, it is wrong to have
children.  I do not see how this is supposed to follow.  I can guess that
there's an intermediate stage, which goes:  "If you have children, then they
will be subjected to slavery.  Therefore, if you have children, then YOU
will be subjecting them to  slavery.  Slavery is wrong.  Therefore, you
should not have children."  Now that argument is valid all except for the
second step.  It may be true that if I have children, then someone ELSE 
will subject them to slavery.  It does not follow that *I* will be
responsible for that, because I will not be the one doing the enslaving.

To take your argument to its absurd conclusion:  Suppose you see a man
drowning in a river.  You consider saving him.  But then you consider the
fact that all men are mortal -- hence the man is doomed to die someday
even if you save him.  If you save him, he will die.  Therefore (by your
reasoning), if you save him, you will be killing him.  Therefore, it is
wrong to save him.

Or again:  it is not the case that parents are morally culpable for all
the actions of all their descendents (so that Adam is responsible for the
Manson murders), even though the parents in some sense cause them.

The thing to note is that Bryan never made use of your premise, that a
person is morally responsible for anything and everything that will happen
if he performs a given action.