Justice: What's The Right Thing To Do? Episode 04: "THIS LAND IS MY LAND"
The main inconveniences is that everyone can enforce the law of nature everyone is an enforcer or what Locke calls the executor of the state of nature and he means executor literally if someone violates the law of nature he’s an aggressor he’s beyond reason and you can punish him and you don’t have to be too careful or fine about gradations of punishment in the state of nature you can kill him you can certainly kill someone who comes after you tries to murder you that’s self –defense
But the enforcement power the right to punish everyone can do the punishing in the state of nature and not only can you punish with death people who come after you seeking to take your life you can also punish a thief who tries to steal your goods because that also counts as aggregation against the law of nature if someone has stolen from a third party you can go after him why is this? Well violations of the law of nature are an act of aggression there’s no police force there are no judges, no juries so everyone is the judge in his or her own case and Locke observes that when people are the judges of their own cases they tend to get carried away and this gives rise to the inconvenience in the state of nature people overshoot the mark there’s aggression there’s punishment and before you know it everybody is insecure in their enjoyment of his or her unalienable rights to life liberty and property
Now he describes in pretty harsh and even grim terms what you can do to people who violate the law of nature “one may destroy a man who makes war upon him for the same reason that he may kill a wolf or a lion such men have no other rule, but that of force and violence, listen to this and so may be treated as beasts of prey those dangerous and noxious creatures what would be sure to destroy you if you fall into their power” so kill them first
So what starts out as a seemingly benign state of nature where everyone’s free and yet where there is a law and the law respects people’s rights and those rights are so powerful that they’ve unalienable what starts out looking very benign once you look closer is pretty fierce and filled with violence and that’s why people want to leave how do they leave? Well here’s where consent comes in the only way to escape from the state of nature is to undertake an active of consent where you agree to give up the enforcement power and to create a government or a community where there will be a legislature to make law and where everyone agrees in advance everyone who enters agrees in advance to abide by whatever the majority decides but then the question and this is our question and here’s where I want to get your views then the question is what powers what can the majority decide now here it gets tricky for Locke because you remember alongside the whole story about consent and majority rule there are these natural rights, the law of nature these unalienable rights and you remember they don’t disappear when people join together to create a civil society
So even once the majority is in charge the majority can’t violate your inalienable rights can’t violate your fundamental right to life liberty and property so here’s the puzzle, how much power does the majority have how limited is the government created by consent? It’s limited by the obligation on the part of the majority to respect and to enforce the fundamental natural rights of the citizens they don’t give those up we don’t give those up when we enter government that’s this powerful idea taken over from Locke by Jefferson in the Declaration unalienable rights
Justice: What's The Right Thing To Do? Episode 04: "THIS LAND IS MY LAND"
Last time we began to discuss Locke’s state of nature his account of private property his theory of legitimate government which is government based on consent and also limited government Locke believes in certain fundamental rights that constrain what government can do and he believes that those rights are natural rights not rights that flow from law or from government and so Locke’s great philosophical experiment is to see if he can give an account of how there could be a right of private property without consent, before government and legislators arrive on the scene to define property that’s his question that’s his claim.
There is a way Locke argues, to create property, not just in the things we gather and hunt but in the land itself provided there is enough and it’s good enough for others today I want to turn to the question of consent which is Locke’s second big idea, private property is one consent is the other
What is the work of consent? People here have been invoking the idea of consent since we began since the first week you remember when we were talking about pushing the fat man off the bridge someone said but he didn’t agree to sacrifice himself it would be different if he consented or when we were talking about the cabin boy killing and eating the cabin boy some people said well if they had consented to a lottery it would be different then it would be alright so consent has come up a lot and here in John Locke we have one of the great philosophers of consent consent is an obvious, familiar idea in moral and political philosophy Locke says that legitimate government is government founded on consent and who nowadays would disagree with him?
Sometimes when ideas of political philosophies are as familiar as Locke’s ideas about consent it’s hard to make sense of them or at least to find them very interesting but there are some puzzles some strange features of Locke’s account of consent as the basis of legitimate government and that’s what I’d like to take up today
One way of testing the possibility of Locke’s idea of consent and also probing some of its perplexities, is to ask just what a legitimate government founded and consent can do what are its powers according to Locke, well in order to answer that question it helps to remember what the state of nature is like. Remember the state of nature is the condition that we decide to leave and that’s what gives rise to consent why not stay there why bother with government at all? Well, what’s Locke’s to answer to that question he says there’s some inconveniences in the state of nature but what are those inconveniences?
（2月27日の続きです^^）Justice: What's The Right Thing To Do? Episode 04: "THIS LAND IS MY LAND"
You’re ready are you going to defend Locke?
ではロックの主張を擁護してください。用意はいいですか？
But you’re accusing him of justifying the European basically massacre of the native Americans but who says he’s defending it maybe the European colonization isn’t right you know maybe it’s the state of war that he talked about in his second treatise, you know
So the war is between the native Americans and the colonists, the settlers that might have been a state of war that we can only emerged from by an agreement or an act of consent and that’s what would have been required
Yeah and both sides would have to agree to and carry out and everything
はい、双方の同意がなければ起こらなかったことだと思います。
But what about and what’s your name? Dan.
名前は、ダンです。
Dan, what about Rachelle’s says this argument in section twenty seven and then in thirty two about appropriating land that argument if it’s valid would justify the settlers appropriating that land and excluding others from it you think that argument’s a good argument?
Well does it kind of imply that the native Americans hadn’t already done that?
それはアメリカの原住民たちがまだ土地を所有していないということが前提の質問ですか？
Well the native Americans as hunter gatherers didn’t actually enclose enclose land so I think Rachelle is on to something there what I wanted go ahead Dan.
At the same time he’s saying that just by picking an acorn or taking a apple or maybe killing of buffalo on a certain amount of land that makes if yours because it’s your labor and that’s your labor would enclose that land so by the definition maybe they didn’t have fences around little plots of land but didn’t
Well I mean just to defend Locke, he does say there are some times in which you can’t take another person’s land for example you can’t acquire land that is common property to people and in terms of American Indians I feel like they already have civilizations themselves and they were using land in common so it’s kind of like an analogy to what he was talking about with like the common English property you can’t take land that everyone has in common
And also you can’t take land unless you make sure that there’s as much land as possible enough for other people take as well so if you’re taking common, so you have to make sure whenever you take land or that there’s enough let for other people to use that’s just as good as the land that you took
that’s true, Locke says there has to be this right to private property in the earth is subject to the provision that there be as much as good left for others what’s your name.
So Fang in a way agrees with Dan that maybe there is a claim within Locke’s framework that could be developed on behalf of the native Americans here’s the further question, if the right to private property is natural not conventional, if it’s something that we acquire even before we agree to government how does that right constrain what the legitimate government can do in order for finally to see, whether Locke is an ally or potentially a critic of the libertarian idea of the state we have to ask what becomes of our natural rights once we enter into society we know that the way we enter into society is by consent by agreement to leave the state of nature and to be governed by the majority and by a system of laws, human laws but those human laws our only legitimate if they respect our natural rights if they respect our unalienable rights to life liberty and property
no parliament no legislature however democratic its credentials can legitimately violate our natural rights. This idea that no law can violate our right to life liberty and property would seem to support the idea of a government so limited that it would gladden the heart of the libertarian after all but those hearts should not be so quickly gladdened because even though for Locke the law of nature persists once government arrived even though Locke insists on limited government government limited by the end for which it was created namely the preservation of property even so there’s an important sense in which what counts as my property what counts as respecting my life and liberty are for the government to define that there be property that there be respect for life and liberty is what limits government but what counts as respecting my life and respecting my property that is for governments to decide and define how can that be is Locke contradicting himself or is there an important distinction here in order to answer that question which will decide Locke’s fit with the libertarian view we need to look closely at what legitimate government looks like for Locke, and we turn to that next time.
Justice: What's The Right Thing To Do? Episode 04: "THIS LAND IS MY LAND"
・・・Because the labor is the unquestionable property of the laborer and therefore no one but the laborer can have a right to what is joined to or mixed with his labor and then he adds this important provision at least where is enough and as good left in common for others.
But we not only acquire our property in the fruits of the earth in the deer that we hunt in the fish that we catch but also if we till and plow and enclose the land and grow potatoes we own not only the potatoes but the land the earth, “as much land as a man tills, plants, improves, cultivates, and can use the product of, so much is his property. He by his labor does, as it were, enclose it from the commons.”
So the idea is that rights are unalienable seems to distance Locke from a libertarian libertarian wants to say we have an absolute property right in ourselves and therefore we can do with ourselves whatever we want Locke is not a sturdy ally for that view in fact he says if you take natural rights seriously you’ll be led to the idea that there are certain constraints on what we can do with our natural rights, constraints given either by God or by reason reflecting on what it means really to be free and really to be free means recognizing that our rights are unalienable so here’s the difference between Locke and the libertarians but when it comes the Locke’s account of private property he begins to look again like a pretty good ally because his argument for private property begins with the idea that we are the proprietors of our own person and therefore of our labor and there of the fruits of our labor including not only the things we gather and hunt in the state of nature but also we acquire a property right in the land that we enclosed and cultivate and improve
There are some examples that can bring out the moral intuition that our labor can take something that is unowned and make it ours though sometimes there are disputes about this there’s a debate among rich countries and developing countries about trade related intellectual property rights it came to a head recently over drug patent laws western countries and especially the united states say we have a big pharmaceutical industry that develops new drugs we want all countries in the world to agree to respect the patents then there came along the aids crisis in south Africa and the American aids drugs were hugely expensive far more than could be afforded by most Africans so the south African government said we’re going to begin to buy a generic version of the AIDS antiretroviral drug at a tiny fraction of the cost because we can find an Indian manufacturing company that figures out how the thing is made and produces it and for a tiny fraction of the cost we can save lives if we don’t respect that patent
And then the American government said no here’s a company that invested research and created this drug you can just start mass-producing these drugs without paying the licensing fee so there was a dispute the US and the pharmaceutical companies sued the south African government to try to prevent their buying the cheap generic this they saw it, pirated version of an aids drug and eventually the pharmaceutical industry gave in and said all right you can do that but this dispute about what the rules of property should be of intellectual property of drug patenting in a way is the last frontier of the state of nature because among nations where there is no uniform law of patent rights and property rights it’s up for grabs until by some act of consent some international agreement people enter into some settled rules.
What about Locke’s account of private property and how it can arise before government and before law comes on the scene is it successful? How many think it’s pretty persuasive? Raise your hand. How many don’t find it persuasive? Now let’s hear from some critics what is wrong with Locke’s account of how private property can arise without consent
I think it’s justifies European cultural norms as far as you look at now native Americans may not cultivated American land by their arrival in the America that contributed to the development of America which would have otherwise necessarily happened then of by that specific group
I see, and what’s your name? Rachelle Rachelle says this account of how property arises would fit what was going on in north America during the time of the settlement, the European settlement do you think Rachelle, that it’s it’s a way of defending the appropriation of the land
Indeed, because he is also you know, justifying the glorious revolution, so I don’t think it’s inconceivable that he’s also justifying colonization as well
Well that’s an interesting historical suggestion and I think there’s a lot to be said for it what do you think of the validity of his argument though? Because if you’re right that this would justify the taking of land in north America from native Americans who didn’t enclose it, if it’s a good argument then Locke’s given us a justification for that if it’s a bad argument then Locke’s given us a mere rationalization that it is morally indefensible
alright let’s hear if there’s a defender of Locke’s account of private property and it would be interesting if they could address Rachelle’s worried that this is just a way of defending the appropriation of land by the American colonists from the native Americans who didn’t enclose it is there someone who will defend Locke on that point?
本日からのハーバード白熱教室のテーマはジョン・ロックです。ロックといえば、ホッブズやルソー、モンテスキューなどと並び、国家権力の根拠について考察した哲学者ですね。ロックは国家権力の正統性に根拠を持たせるために、まず国家というものが存在しない状態というものを想定し、そこからいかにして国家権力というものが必要となっていったかを考えました。この国家というものがない状態のことをthe state of nature（自然状態）と表現しています。このことをふまえて、講義に入りましょう^^
Justice: What's The Right Thing To Do? Episode 04: "THIS LAND IS MY LAND"
Today we turn to John Locke on the face of it Locke is a powerful ally of the libertarian first he believes, as libertarians today maintain that there are certain fundamental individual rights that are so important that no government even a representative government even a democratically elected government can override them. Not only that he believes that those fundamental rights include a natural right to life liberty and property and furthermore he argues that the right to property is not just the creation of government or of law the right to property is a natural right in the sense that it is pre-political it is a right that attaches to individuals as human beings even before government comes on the scene even before parliaments and legislatures enact laws to define rights and to enforce them Locke says in order to think about what it means to have a natural right we have to imagine the way things are before government before law and that’s what Locke means by the state of nature.
He says the state of nature is the state of liberty human beings are free and equal beings there is no natural hierarchy it’s not the case that some people are born to be kings and others were born to be serfs we’re free and equal in the state of nature and yet he makes the point but there’s a difference between a state of liberty and the state of license and the reason is that even in the state of nature there is a kind of the law it’s not the kind of law the legislatures enact it’s a law of nature and this law of nature constrains what we can do even though we’re free even though we’re in the state of nature well what are the constraints? The only constraint given by the laws of nature is that the rights we have the natural rights we have we can’t give up nor can we take them from somebody else under the law of nature I’m not free to take somebody else’s life or liberty or property nor am I free to take my own life liberty or property even though I’m free, I’m not free to violate the laws of nature, I’m not free to take my own life or to sell myself into slavery or to give to somebody else arbitrary absolute power over me
So where does this constraint you may think it’s a fairly minimal constraint, but where does it come from? Well Locke tells us where it comes from and he gives to answers here’s the first answer for men being all the workmanship of one omnipotent and infinitely wise maker, namely God, they’re his property whose workmanship they are, made to last during his, not one another’s pleasure. So one answer the question is why can’t I give up my natural rights to life liberty and property is well they’re not strictly speaking yours after all you are the creature of God. God has a bigger property right in us a prior property right now you might say that an unsatisfying unconvincing answer at least for those who don’t believe in God
what did Locke have to say to them well here’s where Locke appeals to the idea of reason and this is the idea that if we properly reflect on what it means to be free we will be lead to the conclusion that freedom can’t just be a matter of doing whatever we want I think this is that Locke means when he says the state of nature has a law of nature to govern it which obliges everyone: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions this leads to a puzzling paradoxical feature to Locke’s account of rights familiar in one sense but strange in another it’s the idea that our natural rights are inalienable
what does unalienable mean? It’s not for us to alienate them or to get them up to give them a way to trade them the way to sell them consider an airline ticket airline tickets are nontransferable or tickets to the patriots or to the red sox nontransferable tickets are unalienable I own them in the limited sense that I can use them for myself but I can’t trade them away so in one sense an unalienable right, a nontransferable right makes something I own less fully mine but in another sense of unalienable rights especially where we’re thinking about life liberty and property for a right to be unalienable, makes it more deeply more profoundly mine and that’s Locke’s sense of unalienable
We see it in the American declaration of independence Thomas Jefferson drew on this idea of Locke unalienable rights to life liberty and Jefferson amended Locke, to the pursuit of happiness unalienable rights. Rights that are so essentially mine that even I can’t trade them away or give them up so these are the rights we have in the state of nature before there is any government in the case of life and liberty I can’t take my own life I can’t sell myself into slavery anymore than I can take somebody else’s life or take someone else as a slave by force but how does that work in the case of property?
Because it’s essential to Locke’s case that private property can arise even before there is any government how can there be a right to private property even before there is any government? Locke’s famous answer comes in section twenty seven every man has a property in his own person this nobody has any right to but himself the labor of his body the work of his hands we may say are properly his so he moves as the libertarians later of would move from the idea that we own ourselves that we have property in our persons to the closely connected idea that we own our own labor and from that to the further claim that whatever we mix our labor with that is unowned becomes our property whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature has provided, and left it in, he has mixed his labor with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property why? Because the labor is the questionable property of the laborer and therefore no one but the laborer can have a right
I think I’m okay with that honestly, even from the libertarian standpoint, I think that okay saying that you can just take money arbitrarily from people who have a lot to go to this pool of people who need it but you have an individual who’s acting on their own behalf to kind of save themselves I think you said from the idea of self-possession they are also in charge of protecting themselves and keep themselves alive so therefore even from a libertarian standpoint that might be okay
Alright that’s good, that’s good. Alright what about number three up here isn’t it the case that the successful, the wealthy owe a debt, they did do that all by themselves they had to cooperate with other people that they owe a debt to society and that that’s expressed in taxation. DO you want to take that on Julie?
Okay this one, I believe that there is not a debt to society in a sense that how did people become wealthy? They did something that society valued highly so I think that society has already been providing for them if anything I think it’s everything is cancelled out, they provided a service to society and society responded by somehow they got their wealth
Well be concrete, in the case of Michael Jordan, some, I mean to illustrate your point there were people who helped him make money, teammates the coach people taught him how to play, but those you’re saying, but they’ve all been paid for their services
Alright good, who would, anyone like to take up that point?
いいでしょう。この点について意見がある人は？
I think that there’s a problem here what we’re assuming that a person has self-possession when they live in a society I feel like when you live in a society you give up that right. I mean technically if I wanted personally to kill someone because they offend me that is self-possession. Because I live in a society, I cannot do that I think it’s kind of an equivalent to say, because I have more money I have resources that that could save people’s lives is it not okay for the government to take that from me? It’s self-possession only to a certain extent because I’m living in a society where I have to take account of people around me.
Alright I want to quickly get a response of the libertarian team to the last point. The last point builds on, well maybe it builds on Victoria’s suggestion that we don’t own ourselves because it says that Bill Gates is wealthy that Michael Jordan makes a huge income isn’t wholly their own doing it’s the product of a lot of luck and so we can’t claim that they morally deserve all the money they make. Who wants to reply to that, Alex?
You certainly could make the case that it is not, that their wealth is not appropriate to the goodness of their hearts but that’s not really the more the morally relevant issue. The point is that they have received what they have through the free exchange of people who have given them their holdings usually in exchange for providing some other service.
toward the end of the discussion just now Victoria challenged the premise of this line of reasoning this libertarian logic maybe, she suggested, we don’t own ourselves after all if you reject the libertarian case against redistribution there would seem to be an incentive to break into the libertarian line of reasoning at the earliest, at the most modest level which is why a lot of people disputed that taxation is morally equivalent to forced labor but what about the big claim the premise, the big idea underlying the libertarian argument, is it true that we own ourselves or can we do without that idea and still of avoid what libertarians want to avoid creating a society and an account of Justice where some people can be just used for the sake of other people’s welfare or even for the sake of the general good libertarians combat the utilitarian idea of using people as means for the collective happiness by saying the way to put a stop to that utilitarian logic of using persons is to resort to the intuitively powerful idea that we are the proprietors of our own person that’s Alex and Julia and John, and Robert Nozick
what are the consequences for a theory of justice and an account of rights of calling into question the idea of self-possession does it mean that we’re back to utilitarianism and using people and aggregating preferences and pushing the fat man off the bridge? Nozick doesn’t himself fully develop the idea of self-possession he borrows it from an earlier philosopher John Locke
John Locke accounted for the rise of private property from the state of nature by a chain of reasoning very similar to the on that Nozick and the libertarians use John Locke said private property arises because when we mix our labor with things unowned things we come to acquire a property right in those things the reason? The reason is that we own our own labor and the reason for that we’re the proprietors the owners of our own person and so in order to examine the moral force of the libertarian claim that we own ourselves we need to turn to the English political philosopher John Locke and examine his account of private property and self ownership and that’s what we’ll do next time
Justice: What's The Right Thing To Do? Episode 03: "FREE TO CHOSE"
But in an open society, you have recourse to address that through your representatives and if the majority of the consent of those who are govern doesn’t agree with you then you know, you’re choosing to live in the society and you have to operate under what the majority of the society concludes
The fact that I have, you know, one five hundred thousandth of a vote for one representative in congress is not the same things as my having the ability to decide for myself how to use my property rights. I’m a drop in the bucket and you know while..
exactly and they might take? And I will, I mean I don’t have the decision right now of whether not to pay taxes if I don’t get locked in jail or they tell me to get out of the country.
Now Alex let me make a small case for democracy and see what you would say. Why can’t you we live in a democratic society with freedom of speech why can’t you take to the hustings, persuade your fellow citizens that taxation is unjust and try to get a majority?
I don’t think that people should be, should have to convince two hundred and eighty million others simply in order to exercise their own rights, in order to not have their self ownership violated. I think people should be able to do that without having to convince two hundred eighty million people.
Does that mean you’re against democracy as a whole?
全体として民主主義には反対だ、ということですか？
No I just believe in a very limited from democracy whereby we have a constitution that severely limits the scope of what decisions can be made democratically
Alright so you’re saying that democracy is fine except where fundamental rights are involved, and I think you could win if you’re going on the hustings let me add one element to the argument you might make maybe you could say, put aside the economic debates taxation suppose the individual right to religious liberty were at stake then Alex you could say on the hustings, surely you would all agree that we shouldn’t put the right to individual liberty up to a vote
So you would say that the right to private property the right of Michael Jordan to keep all the money he makes at least to protect it from redistribution is that same kind of right with the same kind of weight as the right to freedom of speech the right to religious liberty, rights that should trump what the majority wants
I think comparing religion and economics, it’s not the same thing the reason why Bill Gates was able to make so much money is because we live in an economically and socially stable society and if the government didn’t provide for the poorest ten percent as you say, through taxation then we would need more money for police to prevent crime and so either way there would be more taxes taken away to provide that you guys calling and then necessary things that the government provides.
What’s your name? Anna. Anna let me ask you this why is the fundamental right to religious liberty different from the right Alex asserts as a fundamental right to private property and to keep what I earn what’s the difference between the two?
Because you wouldn’t have you wouldn’t be able to make money, you wouldn’t be able to own property if there wasn’t socially like if society wasn’t stable. And that’s very different from religion that’s like something personal, something you can practice on your own in your own your own home whereas like me practicing my religion isn’t going to affect another person, whereas if I’m poor and I’m desperate, I might commit a crime to feed my family and that can affect others.
Okay good thank you would it be wrong for someone to steal a loaf of bread to feed his starving family is that wrong?
結構。ありがとう。飢えた家族を養うためにひと塊のパンを盗むことはまちがっていると思いますか？
I believe that it is.
はい、まちがっていると思います。
Let’s take let’s take a quick poll of the three of you, you say yes it is wrong.
君たち三人の間で即興で採決をとってみましょう。アレックスは間違っていると言いましたね。ジョンは。
It violates property rights it’s wrong.
財産権の侵害に当たるので、まちがっています。
Even to save the starving family?
飢えに苦しむ家族を救うためであってさえも？
I mean there there definitely other ways around that and by justifying now hang on hang on before you laugh at me before justifying the act of stealing you have to look at violating the right that we’ve already agreed exists, the right of self-possession and the possession of I mean, your own things we agree on property right.
Sort of the original argument that I made in the very in the very first question you asked, the benefits of an action don’t justify, don’t make the action just
Justice: What's The Right Thing To Do? Episode 03: "FREE TO CHOSE"
Now we’ve already heard a number of objections to the libertarian argument what I would like to do today is to give the libertarians among us a chance to answer the objections that have been raised and some have been some have already identified themselves have agreed to come and make the case for libertarianism to reply to the objections that have been raised so raise your hand if you are among the libertarians who’s prepared to stand up for the theory and response to the objections you are? Alex Harris who he’s been a star on the web blog, alright Alex come here stand up we’ll create a libertarian corner over here and who else other libertarians who will join what’s your name? John. John Sheffield, and who else wants to join other brave libertarians who are prepared to take on yes what’s your name? Julia Roto, Julia come join us over there
Now while the, team libertarian Julia, John, Alex while team libertarian is gathering over there let me just summarize the main objections that I’ve heard in class and on the web site objection number one and here I’ll come down too, I want to talk to team libertarian over here so objection number one is that the poor need the money more that’s an obvious objection a lot more than do Bill Gates and Michael Jordan objection number two it’s not really slavery to tax because at least in a democratic society there’s not a slave holder it’s congress it’s a democratic, you’re smiling Alex, you’re already a confident you can reply to all of these so taxation by consent of the governed is not coerced third some people have said don’t be successful like Gates owe a debt to society for their success that they repay by paying taxes who wants to respond to the first one the poor need the money more all right John what’s the answer, here I’ll hold it.
The poor need the money more, that’s quite obvious I could use money you know I certainly wouldn’t mind if Bill Gates gave me a million dollars I mean I’d take a thousand but at some point you have to understand that the benefits of redistribution of wealth don’t justify the initial violation of the property right if you look at the argument the poor need the money more at no point in that argument you contradict the fact that we extrapolated from agreed upon principles that people own themselves we’ve extrapolated that people have property rights and so whether or not it would be a good thing or a nice thing or even a necessary thing for the survival of some people we don’t see that that justifies the violation of the right that we logically extrapolated and so that also I mean they’re still exist this institution of individual philanthropy, Milton Freidman makes this argument
Alright so Bill Gates can give to charity if he wants to but it would still be wrong to coerce him to meet the needs of the poor. Are the two of you happy with that reply? Anything add? Alright go ahead, Julia?
I think I could also ass I guess I could add that there’s a difference between needing something and deserving something. I mean in an ideal society everyone’s needs would be met but here we’re arguing what do we deserve as a society
Based on what we’ve come up with here, I don’t think you deserve something like that.
これまでの議論に基づくなら、値しないと思います。
Alright let me, push you a little bit on that Julia the victims of hurricane Katrina are in desperate need of help would you say that they don’t deserve the help that would come from the federal government through taxation.
Okay that’s a, difficult question I think this is a case where they need help not deserve it, but I think again if you hit a certain level of requirements to reach sustenance, you’re going to need help, like if you don’t have food or place to live that’s a case of need.
So need is one thing and desert is another. Alright who would like to reply? Yes.
つまり、何かを必要とすることと、何かに値することは別ということですか。結構、誰か反論したい人？
Come back to that first point that he made about the property rights of the individual the property rights are established and enforced by the government which is a democratic government and we have representatives who enforce those rights, if you live in a society that operates under those rules then it should be up to the government to decide how those resources that come about through taxation are distributed because it’s through the consent of the governed and if you disagree with it you don’t have to live in that society where that operate.
Alright, good so, and tell me your name. Raul. Raul is pointing out actually Raul is invoking point number two if the taxation is by the consent of the governed it’s not coerced it’s legitimate Bill Gates and Michael Jordan are citizens of the United States, they get to vote for congress and they get to vote their policy convictions just like everybody else who would like to take that one on? John?
Basically what the libertarians are objecting to in this case is the middle eighty percent deciding what the top ten percent are doing for the bottom ten percent with
wait wait wait, John, majority, don’t you believe in democracy? don’t you believe in the, I mean, you say eighty percent ten percent, majority, majority rule is what? Majority! aren’t you for democracy?
Justice: What's The Right Thing To Do? Episode 03: "FREE TO CHOSE"
We were talking last time about libertarianism I want to go back to the arguments for and against the redistribution of income but before we do that just one word about the minimal state Milton Friedman the libertarian economist he points out that many of the functions that we take for granted as properly belonging to government, don’t they are paternalist. One example he gives is social security he says it’s a good idea for people to save for their retirement during their earning years but it’s wrong it’s a violation of people’s liberty for the government to force everyone whether they want to or not to put aside some earnings today for the sake of their retirement. If people want to take the chance or if people want to live big today and live a poor retirement That should be their choice they should be free to make those judgments and take those risks
so even social security would still be at odds with the minimal state that Milton Freidman argued for it’s sometimes thought that collective goods like police protection and fire protection inevitably create the problem of free riders unless their publicly provided but there are ways to prevent free riders, there are ways to restrict even seemingly collective goods like fire protection
I read an article a while back about a private fire company the Salem Fire corporation in Arkansas you can sign up with this Salem Fire Corporation pay a yearly subscription fee, and if your house catches on fire they will come and put out the fire but they won’t put out everybody’s fire, they will only put it out if it’s a fire in a home of subscriber or if it starts to spread and to threaten the home of a subscriber the newspaper article told the story of a homeowner who had subscribed to this company in the past but failed to renew his subscription his house caught on fire the Salem Fire Corporation showed up with its trucks and watched the house burn. Just making sure that it didn’t spread
the fire chief was asked well he wasn’t exactly the fire chief I guess he was the CEO he was asked how can you stand by with fire equipment and allow a person’s home to burn? He replied once we verified there was no danger to a member’s property we had no choice but to back off according to our rules. If we responded to all fires, he said, there would be no incentive to subscribe the homeowner in this case tried to renew his subscription at the scene of the fire but the head of the company refused you can’t wreck your car, he said, and then buy insurance for it later
So even public goods that we take for granted as being within the proper province of government can, many of them, in principle be isolated, made exclusive to those who pay. That’s all to do with the question of collective goods and the libertarian’s injunction against paternalism
Let’s go back now to the arguments about redistribution now, underlying the libertarian’s case for the minimal states is a worry about coercion, but what’s wrong with coercion? Libertarian offers this answer to coerce someone to use some person for the sake of the general welfare is wrong because it calls into question the fundamental fact that we own ourselves the fundamental moral fact of self-possession or self ownership the libertarian’s argument against redistribution begins with this fundamental idea that we own ourselves Nozick says that if this is society as a whole can go to Bill Gates or go to Michael Jordan and tax away a portion of their wealth, what the society is really asserting is a collective property right in Bill Gates or in Michael Jordan but that violates the fundamental principle that we belong to ourselves
Justice: What's The Right Thing To Do? Episode 03: "FREE TO CHOSE"
Alright let’s see if there is who wants to reply to Joe? Yes go ahead.
結構。では、ジョーに反論したい人はいますか？ どうぞ。
I don’t think this necessary a case in which you have ninety nine skateboards and the government, or you have a hundreds skateboards and the government is taking ninety nine of them it’s like you have more skateboards than there are days in the year, you have more skateboards than you’re going to be able to use your entire lifetime and the government is taking part of those. I think that if you’re operating in society in which the government doesn’t redistribute wealth that that allows for people to amass so much wealth that people who haven’t started from the equal footing in our hypothetical situation, that doesn’t exist in our real society get undercut for the rest of their lives.
So you’re worried that if there isn’t some degree of redistribution if some are left at the bottom there will be no genuine equality of opportunity alright. The idea that taxation is theft, Nozick takes that point one step further he agrees that it’s theft he’s more demanding than Joe, Joe says it is theft, maybe in an extreme case it’s justified maybe a parent is justified in stealing a loaf of bread to feed his or her hungry family so Joe is a what? What would you call yourself a compassionate quasi libertarian?
Nozick says, if you think about it taxation amounts to the taking of earnings in other words it means taking the fruits of my labor but if the state has the right to take my earnings or the fruits of my labor, isn’t that morally the same as according to the state the right to claim a portion of my labor? So taxation actually is morally equivalent to forced labor because forced labor involves the taking of my leisure, my time, my efforts just as taxation takes the earnings that I make with my labor.
And so for Nozick and for the libertarians taxation for redistribution is theft as Joe says, but not only thing left it is morally equivalent to laying claim to certain hours of a person’s life and labor so it’s morally equivalent to forced labor if the state has a right to claim the fruits of my labor that implies that it really has an entitlement to my labor itself and what is forced labor? Forced labor Nozick points out it’s slavery because if I don’t have the right, the sole right to my own labor then that’s really to say that the government or the political community is a part owner in me
and what does it mean for the state to be a part owner in me? If you think about it that it means that I am a slave that I don’t own myself so what this line of reasoning brings us to is the fundamental principle that underlies the libertarian case for rights what is that principle? It’s the idea that I own myself it’s the idea of self-possession if you want to take rights seriously if you don’t want to just regard people as collections of preferences the fundamental moral idea to which you will be lead is the idea that we are the owners or the proprietors of our own person and that’s why utilitarianism goes wrong and that’s why it’s wrong to yank the organs from that healthy patient
you’re acting as if that patient belongs to you or to the community but we belong to ourselves and that’s the same reason that it’s wrong to make laws to protect us from ourselves or to tell us how to live to tell us what virtues we should be governed by and that’s also why it’s wrong to tax the rich to help the poor even for good causes even to help those who are displaced by the hurricane Katrina ask them to give charity but if you tax them it’s like forcing them to labor could you tell Michael Jordan he has to skip next week’s games and go down to help the people displaced by hurricane Katrina? Morally it’s the same
so the stakes are very high so far we’ve heard some objections to the libertarian argument but if you want to reject it you have to break into this chain of reasoning which goes taking my earnings is like taking my labor but taking my labor is making me a slave and if you disagree with that you must believe in the principle of self-possession those who disagree gather your objections and we’ll begin with them next time.
・・・今回の「FREE TO CHOOSE」シリーズは、はじめて講義の最初から最後までブログで引用できた講義でした^^ もともとは、講義の重要なところだけ紹介できればいいかな、と思ってはじめたハーバード白熱教室シリーズですが、ブログで書いていくうちに、だんだん、サンデル教授の話のすべてが大事な話に思えてきて、全部を載せてみたくなっちゃんたんです。。。
Justice: What's The Right Thing To Do? Episode 03: "FREE TO CHOSE"
So let’s, in order to fix ideas for this discussion, take an actual example, who’s wealthiest person in the united states, wealthiest person in the world Bill Gates, it is, you’re right. Here he is. You’d be happy too now, what’s his net worth? Anybody have any idea? 40 billion that’s a big number during the Clinton years remember there was a controversy, donors, big campaign contributors were invited to stay overnight in the Lincoln bedroom at the white house I think if you contributed twenty five thousand dollars of above someone figured out at the median contribution that got you invited to stay a night in the Lincoln bedroom Bill Gates could afford to stay in the Lincoln bedroom every night for the next sixty six thousand years somebody else figured out how much does he get paid on an hourly basis and so they figured out since he began Microsoft suppose he worked about fourteen hours per day a reasonable guess and you calculate this is net wealth it turns out that his rate of pay is over a hundred and fifty dollars not per hour, not a minute a hundred and fifty dollars, more than a hundred and fifty dollars per second which means that if on his way to the office Gates noticed a hundred-dollar bill on the street it wouldn’t be worth his time to stop and pick it up.
Now most of you would say someone that wealthy surely we can tax them to meet the pressing needs of people who lack of education or lack enough to eat or lack decent housing they need it more than he does and if you were a utilitarian what would you do? What tax policy would you have you’d redistribute in a flash wouldn’t you because you would know being a good utilitarian that taking some, a small amount, he’s scarcely going to notice it, but it will make a huge improvement in the lives and in the welfare of those at the bottom but remember the libertarian theory says we can’t just add up and aggregate preferences and satisfactions that way we have to respect persons and if he earned that money fairly without violating anybody else’s rights in accordance with the two principles of justice in acquisition and justice in transfer, then it would be wrong it would be a form of coercion to take it away.
Michael Jordan is not as wealthy as Bill Gates but he did pretty well for himself you want to see Michael Jordan? There he is his income alone in one year was thirty one million dollars and then he made another forty seven million dollars in endorsements for Nike and other companies so his income was in one year seventy eight million to require him to pay say a third of his earnings to the government to support good causes like food and health care and housing and education for the poor that’s coercion that’s unjust that violates his rights and that’s why redistribution is wrong.
Now, how many agree with that argument agree with the libertarian argument that redistribution for the sake of trying to help the poor is wrong? And how many disagree with that argument? All right let’s begin with those who disagree. What’s wrong with the libertarian case against redistribution?
I think these people like Michael Jordan have received, we’re talking about working within the society they received a larger gift from the society and they have a larger obligation in return to give that through distribution you know you can say that Michael Jordan may work just as hard as someone who works you know doing laundry twelve hours, fourteen hours a day but he’s receiving more I don’t think it’s fair to say that you know it’s all on his inherent hard work.
My name is Joe and I collect skateboards. I’ve since bought a hundred skateboards and live in a society the hundred people I’m the only one with skateboards suddenly everyone decides they want skateboard they come into my house to take my, they take ninety nine of my skateboards. I think that is unjust now I think in certain circumstances, it becomes necessary to overlook injustice and perhaps condone that injustice as in the case of the cabin boy being killed for food if people are on the verge of dying perhaps it is necessary to overlook that injustice but I think it’s important to keep in mind they were still committing injustice by taking people’s belonging or assets.
It’s theft because or at least in my opinion and by the libertarian opinion he earned that money fairly and it belongs to him and so take it from him is by definition theft.
So what does libertarianism say about the role of government or of the state well there are three things that most modern states do that on the libertarian theory of rights are illegitimate are unjust one of them is paternalist legislation that’s passing laws that protect people from themselves seat belt laws for example of motorcycle helmet laws the libertarian says it may be a good thing if people wear seat belts, but that should be up to them and the state the government has no business coercing them, us to wear seat belts by law its coercion so no paternalist legislation number one, number two no morals legislation many laws try to promote the virtue of citizens or try to give expression to the moral values of the society as a whole.
Libertarians say that’s also a violation of the right to liberty take the example of, well a classic example of legislation offered in the name of promoting morality traditionally, have been laws that prevent sexual intimacy between gays and lesbians the libertarian says nobody else is harmed nobody else’s rights are violated so the state should get all of the business entirely of trying to promote virtue or to enact morals legislation. And the third kind of law or policy it is ruled out on libertarian philosophy is any taxation or other policy that serves the purpose of redistributing income or wealth from the rich to the poor redistribution is a kind of, you think about it says libertarianists, a kind of coercion what it amounts to is theft by the state or by the majority if we’re talking about a democracy from people who happen to do very well and earn a lot of money.
Now Nozick and other libertarians allow that there can be a minimal state that taxes people for the sake of that everybody needs the national defense police force judicial system to enforce contracts and property rights but that’s it. Now I want to get your reactions to this third feature of the libertarian view I want to see who among you agree with that idea and who disagree and why and just to make a concrete and to see what’s at stake consider the distribution of wealth in the united states.
The united states is among the most In-egalitarian societies as far as distribution of wealth, of all the advanced democracies now is this just or unjust well what is the libertarian say the libertarian says you can’t know just from the facts I just given you you can’t know whether that distribution is just or unjust. You can’t know just by looking at a pattern or a distribution or a result whether it’s just or unjust you have to know how it came to be you can’t just look at the end state or the result you have to look at two principles the first he calls justice in acquisition or in initial holdings and what that means simply is did people get the things they use to make their money fairly so we need to know was there justice in the initial holdings, did they steal the land or the factory or the goods that enabled them to make all that money?
If not, if they were entitled to whatever it was that enabled them to gather the wealth the first principle is met. The second principle is did the distribution arise from the operation of free consent people buying and trading on the market as you can see the libertarian idea of justice corresponds to a free market conception of justice provided people got what they used fairly didn’t steal it and provided the distribution results from the free choice of individual’s buying and selling things the distribution is just and if not it’s unjust.
Justice: What's The Right Thing To Do? Episode 03: "FREE TO CHOSE"
When we finished last time, we were looking at John Stuart Mill’s and his attempt to reply to the critics of Bentham’s utilitarianism in his book Utilitarianism, Mill tries to show that critics to the contrary, it is possible within utilitarian framework to distinguish between higher and lower pleasures, it is possible to make qualitative distinctions of worth, and we tested of that idea with the Simpsons in the Shakespeare excerpts and the results of our experiment seemed to call into question Mill’s distinctions because a great many of you reported that you prefer the Simpsons but that you still consider Shakespeare to be the higher for the worthier pleasure that’s the dilemma with which our experiment confronts Mill.
What about Mill’s attempt to account for especially weighty character of individual rights and justice in chapter five of utilitarianism? He wants to say that individual rights are worthy of special respect in fact he goes so far as to say that justice is the most sacred part and the most incomparably binding part of morality but the same challenge could be put to this part of Mill’s defense why is justice the chief part and the most binding part of our morality? Well he says because in the long run if we do justice and if we respect rights, society as a whole will be better off in the long run.
Well what about that? What if we have a case where making an exception and violating individual rights actually will make people better off in the long run is it all right then? To use people? And there’s a further objection that could be raised against Mill’s case for justice and rights suppose the utilitarian calculus in the long run works out as he says it will such that respecting people’s rights is a way of making everybody better off in the long run is that the right reason is that the only reason to respect people? If the doctor goes in and yanks the organs from the healthy patient who came in for a checkup to save five lives there would be adverse effects in the long run eventually people would learn about this and would stop going in for checkups is it the fight reason is the only reason that you as a doctor won’t yanked the organs out of a healthy patient that you think well if I use him in this way in the long run more lives will be lost?
Or is there another reason having to do with intrinsic respect for the person as an individual and if that reason matters and it’s not so clear that even Mill’s utilitarianism can take account of it fully to examine these two worries or objections to Mill’s defense we need to we need to push further we need to ask in the case of higher or worthier pleasures are there theories of the good life that can provide independent moral standards for the worth of pleasures? If so what do they look like? That’s one question in the case of justice and rights if we suspected that Mill is implicitly leaning on notions of human dignity or respect for persons that are not, strictly speaking, utilitarian we need to look to see whether there are some stronger theories of rights that can explain the intuition which even Mill shares the intuition that the reason for respecting individuals and not using them goes beyond even utility in the long run.
Today we turn to one of those strong theories of rights strong theories of rights say individuals matter not just as instruments to be used for a larger social purpose or the sake of maximizing utility individuals are separate beings with separate lives worthy of respect and so it’s a mistake according to strong theories rights, it’s a mistake to think about justice or law by just adding up preferences and values the strong rights theory we turn to today is libertarianism.
Libertarianism take individual rights seriously it’s called libertarianism because it says the fundamental individual right is the right to liberty precisely because we are we separate individual beings we’re not available to any use that the society might desire or devise. Precisely because we’re individual separate human beings we have a fundamental right to liberty and that means a right to choose freely to live our lives as we please provided we respect other people’s rights to do the same that’s the fundamental idea Robert Nozick one of the libertarian philosophers we read for this course puts it this way individuals have rights so strong and far-reaching are these rights that they raise the question of what, if anything the state may do.
Justice: What's The Right Thing To Do? Episode 02: "PUTTING A PRICE TAG ON LIFE"
What was pushpin? It was some kind of a child’s game like to tidily winks pushpin is as good as poetry Bentham says and lying behind this idea I think is the claim the intuition that it’s a presumption to judge whose pleasures are intrinsically higher or worthier or better and there is something attractive in this refusal to judge, after all some people like Mozart, others Madonna some people like ballet others bowling, who’s to say a Benthamite might argue, who’s to say which of these pleasures whose pleasures are higher worthier nobler than others?
But, is that right? This refusal to make qualitative distinctions can we altogether dispense with the idea that certain things we take pleasure in are better or worthier than others think back to the case of the Romans in the coliseum, one thing that troubled people about that practice is that it seemed to violate the rights of the Christian another way of objecting to what’s going on there is that the pleasure that the Romans take in this bloody spectacle should that pleasure which is a base kind of corrupt degrading pleasure, should that even be valorized or weighed in deciding what the general welfare is? So here are the objections to Bentham’s utilitarianism
and now we turn to someone who tried to respond to those objections, a later day utilitarian John Stuart Mill so what we need to examine now is whether John Stuart Mill had a convincing reply to these objections to utilitarianism. John Stuart Mill was born in 1806 his father James Mill was a disciple of Bentham’s and James Mills set about giving his son John Stuart Mill a model education he was a child prodigy John Stuart Mill the knew Latin, sorry, Greek at the age of three, Latin at eight and at age ten he wrote a history of Roman law. At age of twenty he had a nervous breakdown this left him in a depression for five years but at age twenty five what helped lift him out of this depression is that he met Harriet Taylor she in no doubt married him, they lived happily ever after and it was under her influence the John Stuart Mill try to humanize utilitarianism
what Mill tried to do was to see whether the utilitarian calculus could be enlarged and modified to accommodate humanitarian concerns like the concern to respect individual rights and also to address the distinction between higher and lower pleasures. In 1859 Mill wrote a famous book on liberty the main point of which was the importance of defending individual rights and minority rights and in 1861 toward the end of his life he wrote the book we read is part of this course Utilitarianism. It makes it clear that utility is the only standard of morality in his view so he’s not challenging Bentham’s premise, he’s affirming it. He says very explicitly the sole evidence, it is possible to produce that anything is desirable is that people actually do desire it. So he stays with the idea that our de facto actual empirical desires are the only basis for moral judgment.
But then page eight also in chapter two, he argues that it is possible for a utilitarian to distinguish higher from lower pleasures. Now, those of you who’ve read Mill already how according to him is it possible to draw that distinction? How can a utilitarian distinguish qualitatively higher pleasures from lesser ones, base ones, unworthy ones?
If you tried both of them and you’ll prefer the higher one naturally always.
両方を試してみれば、人は常に自然と質の高い方を好むようになります。
that’s great, that’s right. What’s your name? John.So as John points out Mill says here’s the test, since we can’t step outside actual desires, actual preferences that would violate utilitarian premises, the only test of whether a pleasure is higher or lower is whether someone who has experienced both would prefer it. And here in chapter two we see the passage where Mill makes the point that John just described of two pleasures, if there be one to which all are almost all who have experience of both give a decided preference, irrespective of any feeling of moral obligation to prefer it, in other words no outside, no independent standard, then that is the more desirable pleasure.
What do people think about that argument. Does that does it succeeded? How many think that it does succeed? Of arguing within utilitarian terms for a distinction between higher and lower pleasures. How many think it doesn’t succeed? I want to hear your reasons. But before we give the reasons let’s do an experiment of Mill’s claim. In order to do this experiment we’re going to look that three shorts excerpts of popular entertainment the first one is a Hamlet soliloquy it’ll be followed by two other experiences see what you think.
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