by Daniel Klein dklein@gmu

1. Five Uses for the Distinction between Direct and Overall LibertyGMU Public Choice seminar 19 Nov 2014 by Daniel Klein dklein@gmu.edu

2. Liberty effects of R1(and concomitant enforcement) • Direct effects (or facets) • Indirect effects • Overall: Direct and Indirect

3. Five uses for the distinction Is liberty talk, classical liberalism coherent? Libertarians and conservatives. Anarchy talk. Interpreting political theories. The brighter side of nation-states.

4. The distinction is set out in an article by Michael J. Clark and me. The journal published a comment by Walter Block and one by Claudia Williamson. Clark and I replied. Block rejoined.

5. The Liberty Principle In a choice between two reforms, favor the one higher in liberty. Or: If R1 >L R2, then R1 >D R2

6. The Liberty Maxim By and large, if R1 >L R2, then R1 >D R2. The liberty maxim carries a presumption of liberty. Now, opponents find much to object to.

7. One objection has to do with the liberty operator >L Suppose there are two ways of ranking R1 and R2 in terms of liberty.

8. Possible examples: • Deregulation of Savings & Loans (1980s)? 2008 bailouts? • US govt entry into WWII? • Legalizing bazookas? • Banning lead from gasoline? • Open borders?

9. Liberty effects of R1(and concomitant enforcement) • Direct effects (or facets) • Indirect effects • Overall: Direct and Indirect

10. (Both are about “negative” liberty.)

11. Disagreement R1 >DL R2 and R2 >OL R1

12. Will the real Liberty please stand up? Direct-liberty operator: + Much more concrete and determinate. - Only part of the liberty story. Overall-liberty operator: + The whole liberty story. - Much less concrete and determinate.

13. Use #1 Is liberty talk, classical liberalism coherent? Libertarians and conservatives. Anarchy talk. Interpreting political theories. The brighter side of nation-states.

14. We have problems if disagreement … • is rife • is unmanageable. • That is the use to which Clark and I put the distinction.

15. We came up with categories of possible disagreement Thoreauvian coercion Coercive hazard Disarming or defusing private coercion Controlling pollution Restrictions to prevent rip-offs Subsidizing against coercive taboos Taxing to fund liberal enlightenment Coercively tending the moral foundations of liberty Log rolling for liberty Stabilizing the second best Military actions, etc.

16. Thoreauvian Coercion Private coercion might undo larger coercions.

17. Coercive Hazard A play on “moral hazard”. The point may play into any issue involving government subsidies or expenses.

18. Disarming or defusing private coercion

19. Controlling pollution

20. Military actions, etc. • Toppling Saddam Hussein? • The Korean War? • US involvement in WWII? • The Civil War? • The US Revolutionary War?

21. Taking stock In a modern stable polity: The most significant areas of possible or arguable disagreement: • Coercive hazard • Controlling pollution • Moral foundations and political dynamics with respect to massive immigration • Military actions, etc.

22. Simon Newcomb “It is not claimed that such propositions should be taught dogmatically, as if they were theorems of geometry.  Not only should their limitations be pointed out, when necessary, but the student should be encouraged to find or even to imagine conditions under which the maxims would fail. In doing this, the vice he should be taught to avoid is that of concluding that because he can imagine a state of things under which a maxim would fail, therefore it is worthless.”

23. Use #2 Is liberty talk, classical liberalism coherent? Libertarians and conservatives. Anarchy talk. Interpreting political theories. The brighter side of nation-states.

24. Conservatives see more disagreement than do libertarians. • Restrictions to prevent rip-offs • Taxing to fund liberal enlightenment • Military actions, etc. • Coercively tending the moral foundations of liberty, political dynamics • Log rolling for liberty Libertarianism has been described as a movement with head and no body; Republicanism has a head and a body.

25. Use #3 Is liberty talk, classical liberalism coherent? Libertarians and conservatives. Anarchy talk. Interpreting political theories. The brighter side of nation-states.

26. “Anarchy”

27. “Anarchy” would seem to be about eliminating all 10,000 govt interventions. R* = abolishing all government interventions. What would be the indirect-liberty effects? => Issues of human frailty, meaning, cultural assumptions, etc., and focal points amidst those issues. Abolitionism is much more meaningful.

28. From Black’s Law Dict.

29. Jural Monism versus Jural Dualism The equal-equal relationship The superior-inferior relationship Monism rejects the superior-inferior relationship. Is monism a vestige from the ancestral band?

30. Many libertarians accept only the equal-equal relationship. But who executes R*? When government executes R*, does it annihilate its superiorhood? Government has at least one necessary and important function: Dismantling other government functions.

31. Libertarian scholars show that commutative justice and other norms among equals emerge spontaneously. Voluntary provision. Such points have little bearing on the superior-inferior relationships as an appropriate expectation and presupposition. Such points don’t really speak to jural monism vs. dualism.

32. “Anarchy” In general, I think that libertarian talk of anarchy appeals to an instinctual jural monism but without mounting much of a case for monism over dualism.

33. Use #4 Is liberty talk, classical liberalism coherent? Libertarians and conservatives. Anarchy talk. Interpreting political theories. The brighter side of nation-states.

34. David Hume, “Of the Original Contract”

35. About the Tories: “The one party, by tracing up government to the DEITY, endeavour to render it [government] so sacred and inviolate, that it must be little less than sacrilege, however tyrannical it may become, to touch or invade it, in the smallest article.”

36. About the Whigs: “The other party, by founding government altogether on the consent of the PEOPLE, suppose that there is a kind of original contract, by which the subjects have tacitly reserved the power of resisting their sovereign, whenever they find themselves aggrieved by that authority, with which they have, for certain purposes, voluntarily entrusted him.”

37. - About the Whig theory - (cont.) “[T]his promise is always understood to be conditional, and imposes on him [the ordinary man] no obligation, unless he meet with justice and protection from his sovereign. These advantages the sovereign promises him in return; and if he fail in the execution, he has broken, on his part, the articles of engagement, and has thereby freed his subject from all obligations to allegiance.”

38. One of Hume’s objections to the Whig doctrine: “nor has the most noted of its partizans, in prosecution of it, scrupled to affirm … that the supreme power in a state cannot take from any man, by taxes and impositions, any part of his property, without his own consent or that of his representatives.”

39. Hume is pointing out that, although Whigs speak as though the original contract specifies the safeguarding of liberty, in fact they approve of institutions that violate liberty. • But the Whig could respond: Yes, we see the original contract as specifying a term about liberty, but, rather, it is that the government must never act in a way that reduces overall liberty. • One might respond in turn: OK, but whether acts reduce overall liberty is unclear. Maybe we serve overall liberty by eschewing political-consent theory entirely.

40. Hume: “When we assert, that all lawful government arises from the consent of the people, we certainly do them a great deal more honour than they deserve …” • Referring to Socrates in Crito: “Socrates refuses to escape from prison, because he had tacitly promised to obey the laws. Thus he builds a tory consequence of passive obedience, on a whig foundation of the original contract.” • Hume identifies a danger in the Whig theory: A social-contract doctrine that omits any terms and conditions about liberty.

41. Social democrats as jural monists Whereas the libertarian anarchists want to deny or annihilate the superior-inferior relationship, the social democrats deny it by saying that government is but a variety of equal-equal relationship. Such thinking is based on the idea of the polity as a hotel or club. It presupposes a collectivist configuration of ownership.

42. Four views of government

43. Hume and Smith are jural dualists. They are post-1688 writers. Their political liberalism presupposes a stable polity.

44. Use #5 Is liberty talk, classical liberalism coherent? Libertarians and conservatives. Anarchy talk. Interpreting political theories. The brighter side of nation-states.

45. “Ideals are peaceful. History is violent.”

46. History demonstrates that evil, illiberalism, is not only top-down; it is also bottom-up(family, clan, tribe, gang, fief, local govt, religious sect, ethnicity) and side-to-side(raiding, invasion, conquest). A good case can be made that many nation-states have augmented overall liberty.

47. Daniel Hannan: “It is extremely rare to find justice, freedom, or representative government flourishing in any context other than a nation-state.” We learn by appreciating the best ones.

48. The British/Anglo experience James Campbell (Historian, Oxford): “Let me state a certainty. Late Anglo-Saxon England was a nation-state. It was an entity with effective central authority, uniformly organized institutions, a national language, a national church, defined frontiers (admittedly with considerable fluidity in the north), and, above all, a strong sense of national identity.”

49. From status to contract Hannan: “What catalyzed the shift from status to contract [in Britain]?” “First, the development of a nation-state: that is, a regime able to apply laws more or less uniformly to a population bound together by a sense of shared identity.”

50. Conclusion:Five uses for the distinction Is liberty talk, classical liberalism coherent? Libertarians and conservatives. Anarchy talk. Interpreting political theories. The brighter side of nation-states.