Coercion vs. Consent.In "Coercion vs. Consent" (March), Randy Barnett Randy E. Barnett (born February 5, 1952) is a lawyer, a law professor at Georgetown University Law Center, and a legal theorist in the United States. He writes about the libertarian theory of law and contract theory, constitutional law, and jurisprudence. writes that "there are very few libertarians today for whom consequences are not ultimately the reason why they believe in liberty," while Richard Epstein cheerfully agrees that libertarians are "all consequentialists now." Fortunately, this is not true. I say "fortunately" because consequentialism consequentialism In ethics, the doctrine that actions should be judged right or wrong on the basis of their consequences. The simplest form of consequentialism is classical (or hedonistic) utilitarianism, which asserts that an action is right or wrong according to whether it is philosophically indefensible as a normative theory. The basic problem with consequentialism is that it recognizes no limit in principle on what can be done to people in order to promote good consequences. Now consequentialists insist that in the vast majority of cases, killing, torturing, or enslavig innocent people is not the best way to get good results. And of course they are right about that. But by the logic of their position the consistent consequentialist (happily a rara avis) must always be open to the possibility that killing, torturing, or enslaving the innocent might be called for under special circumstances special circumstances n. in criminal cases, particularly homicides, actions of the accused or the situation under which the crime was committed for which state statutes allow or require imposition of a more severe punishment. , and this recognition necessarily taints the character of even one's ordinary relations to other people. As Immanuel Kant pointed out more than two centuries ago, to subordinate--or even to be prepared to subordinate--one's fellow human beings to some end they do not share is to treat them as slaves, thereby denying both their inherent dignity and one's own. Many consequentialists will say that they too can accommodate ironclad ironclad, mid-19th-century wooden warship protected from gunfire by iron armor. The success of the ironclad when first employed by the French in the Crimean War sparked a naval armor and armaments race between France and Great Britain. prohibitions on certain actions, on the grounds that utility will be maximized in the long run if people internalize internalize To send a customer order from a brokerage firm to the firm's own specialist or market maker. Internalizing an order allows a broker to share in the profit (spread between the bid and ask) of executing the order. such prohibitions. This is true, but it misses the point. Once one has internalized an ironclad prohibition, one is by definition no longer a consequentialist. One cannot treat certain values as absolute in practice and still meaningfully deny their absoluteness in theory; a belief that is not allowed to influence one's actions is no real belief. Most consequentialists are morally superior to their theory and, thankfully, pay it only lip service. David Friedman is quite right to point out, in the same issue, that "concepts such as rights, property, and coercion" are complicated and not always susceptible to clear and easy rules. But this is not an argument for making consequences the sole test of right action. What it does mean is that non-consequentialist moral considerations establish only certain broad parameters, leaving it to consequences, custom, and context to make them more specific. The parameters are not infinitely broad, however, and I do not see how they could be broad enough to license one group of people, called the government, to reassign title to the fruits of another group's labor at the first group's sole discretion. Hence, even if taxation and eminent domain eminent domain, the right of a government to force the owner of private property sell it if it is needed for a public use. The right is based on the doctrine that a sovereign state has dominion over all lands and buildings within its borders, which has its origins in had good results--which in the long term they rarely do--they would stand condemned on non-consequentialist grounds as slavery and plunder TO PLUNDER. The capture of personal property on land by a public enemy, with a view of making it his own. The property so captured is called plunder. See Booty; Prize. . Roderick T. Long Roderick T. Long (b. February 4, 1964) is a professor of philosophy at Auburn University and a libertarian political commentator. He received a B.A. in philosophy from Harvard University and his Ph.D. from Cornell University. Department of Philosophy Auburn University Auburn, AL In the roundtable discussion on the limits of liberty, James Pinkerton laments that libertarianism may be in danger of being regarded as a purely economic philosophy, while public attention shifts to other hot topics. I only wish that were true. Economics is what libertarianism explains best, and we should stick to pushing tax cuts, deregulation Deregulation The reduction or elimination of government power in a particular industry, usually enacted to create more competition within the industry. Notes: Traditional areas that have been deregulated are the telephone and airline industries. , the lowering of trade barriers, and the like. Focus on the fiscal, my fellow libertarians. The core free-market arguments have never applied to topics like foreign policy, police and courtroom procedures, the definition of marriage, abortion, the cultural effects of immigration immigration, entrance of a person (an alien) into a new country for the purpose of establishing permanent residence. Motives for immigration, like those for migration generally, are often economic, although religious or political factors may be very important. , or the nature of addiction as neatly as they do to the everyday buying and selling of widgets (and the everyday interference with widgets by big government). There's no shame in that. Let the other political factions fight about Iraq, gays, and all those other things. If we don't weigh in loudly on more clear-cut (albeit sometimes boring) issues such as the need to simplify regulations, abolish the Commerce Department, privatize the Post Office, and take an immense are to the budget, we can rest assured no one else will. Todd Seavey New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of , NY |
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