>a claim I think most people would agree with: people are morally required to use an adequate but minimum amount of defensive violence to protect innocent people from offensive violence.
I disagree - I think most people would say even if e.g. it's wrong for someone to hit a dog, you have no moral obligation to go physically stop your neighbor from hitting their dog. If there is crime in your neighborhood, you don't have an obligation to be Batman and go prevent crimes. I'd guess people are more likely to say that society as a whole should coordinate to have laws and enforcement that prevent/address this kind of thing, but not that it's the moral obligation of random people to personally intervene.
I think if there were no government and no one else were dealing with the crime, people would correctly feel like someone somewhere had an obligation to intervene on crime. Maybe your obligation would be to support that effort in some way.
If my neighbor were hitting a dog I would feel some obligation to stop it, probably tell him to stop or get the police involved.
Oh I agree *you* would feel an obligation, and most people would feel that *someone* ought to do something, but I'm not sure most people would feel that they personally have an obligation. Largely because they have an intuition for what you point out would follow: suddenly everybody would be fighting.
“For most of human history states were totalizing and illiberal.”
Strongly disagree with this - for most of human history, states were not totalizing and “Cage of Norms”-style communities had much more autonomy. There wasn’t even a “monopoly on the legitimate use of force” - you could have feudal lords at war with each other, both of whom recognized the suzerainty of the same king/emperor.
Really liked the essay overall. Would be interested in your thoughts on America’s version of liberalism, which does allow some “Cage of Norms” style governance by delegating a lot of power to the states.
Also, our “powerful external institutions” are often not democratically elected - liberals complain about the Supreme Court, conservatives about the deep state agencies.
"Liberals want the state to be strong but restrained. Strong in the sense that it cannot be threatened by rival violent groups or people within society, and restrained in the sense that it is limited to mediating violence and enforcing basic rights rather than imposing very specific lifestyles on its people."
"Another way of helping people each pursue their own ends is redistribution of resources. Most modern liberals (myself included) believe strongly in the need for redistribution to help each person access society and the economy so they can pursue their values as they see fit. Most see redistribution as compatible with markets."
It's amusing how well you describe the views of (classical) liberalism and then go on to simply bolt on the progressive welfare state of "liberalism," because property rights are seen as a second class right, and "freedom from want" and some misguided view of Rawlsian egalitarianism have come to rule almost everywhere. This has been disastrous in terms of violating equal rights of individuals, as well as allowing the government to become very unrestrained across a host of domains. See also: The regulatory state.
You talk about offensive/defensive violence, but not negative/positive rights. There's no limit to government when voters and politicians can simply create new taxes and higher levels against particular segments of society. Someone like Hayek was willing to entertain a limited welfare state to provide a floor, but in practice the spending of the welfare state is hard to limit.
It's also the case that though there are forms of redistribution that are generally compatible with markets, the US has chosen several massive programs that have extreme market inefficiency (Social Security almost couldn't be designed worse if they tried). And left neoliberals/Democrats have mostly just defended such programs instead of supporting reforms to make them far better. See also: Market-friendly regulatory regimes.
Actual liberalism in the West has been dying almost everywhere, with some bits of neoliberal resurgence here and there. Two of the brightest standouts of liberalism/capitalism, NY and CA, are also the prime examples of welfare/regulatory "liberalism" being overtaken by progressivism.
To some extent, Rawlsian/FDR "liberalism" is just "Marxism with extra steps." Sure, you can own the means of production, but you have to follow all these rules and pay whatever tax rate we impose, which are usually one-way ratchet in practice (including that debt is a tax on the future).
I mean I think I just have a fundamentally different read of the whole situation. I see Rawls as articulating more of an idea that the state can intervene to make society more pareto-optimal, which is very different from the idea that labor value’s extracted from workers so therefore every last aspect of society needs to be run collectively
I basically view Rawls as a lagging defense of FDR-style policies that were already baked in as the dominating political/economic force in the West. Sure, the Western regulatory/redistributive state is less heavy-handed than Marxist collectivization and central planning, but, uh some slopes actually are slippery and basically nowhere has had a strong enough definition of limited government and property rights to stop from getting on the slide. Marxism cuts the golden goose's head off; progressivism gently applies pressure to the neck.
It's not a coincidence that Marxist "value extraction" from exploitation rhymes with progressive "diminishing marginal utility" and "pay their fair share," where "fair" is a moving number based on progressive's whims. Which actual welfare state programs are anything like "pareto optimal"? We mostly just have cost-disease socialism and a highly age-based discrimination welfare program. The NYC DSA mayor's program where they seemingly want rent control to make legal maintenance standards impossible to justify social housing, or the recent Weiner post about new housing specifically for "low income LGTBQ+ seniors" are painful true examples of left-liberalism turning into self-parody.
(One of the things I really appreciate about EA is that it's generally a movement of economically literate people who understand that nationalist concerns for citizen welfare are not effective uses of resources [nor morally justifiable if one is a universalist] and that economic growth has been the largest factor in improving material wellbeing by far.)
I read Hammond's paper you cite after my first comment and it's just a great example of "in theory" that runs into a brick wall of public choice theory and empirical reality of basically everywhere that's instituted a welfare state. In the US, almost none of our welfare state acts as "insurance" that overall increases productivity/growth.
The brutal irony is that the rapid rate of AI progress seems poised to eliminate the debate over property rights in the face of scarcity, and instead challenges basically ever core tenet of liberalism as the fundamentals it was built to deal with are radically transformed. I'm very annoyed about it.
>a claim I think most people would agree with: people are morally required to use an adequate but minimum amount of defensive violence to protect innocent people from offensive violence.
I disagree - I think most people would say even if e.g. it's wrong for someone to hit a dog, you have no moral obligation to go physically stop your neighbor from hitting their dog. If there is crime in your neighborhood, you don't have an obligation to be Batman and go prevent crimes. I'd guess people are more likely to say that society as a whole should coordinate to have laws and enforcement that prevent/address this kind of thing, but not that it's the moral obligation of random people to personally intervene.
I think if there were no government and no one else were dealing with the crime, people would correctly feel like someone somewhere had an obligation to intervene on crime. Maybe your obligation would be to support that effort in some way.
If my neighbor were hitting a dog I would feel some obligation to stop it, probably tell him to stop or get the police involved.
Oh I agree *you* would feel an obligation, and most people would feel that *someone* ought to do something, but I'm not sure most people would feel that they personally have an obligation. Largely because they have an intuition for what you point out would follow: suddenly everybody would be fighting.
More generally, thanks for writing this up! I never studied political science or philosophy and always welcome a plain-language explainer!
Thanks! Really happy it was useful!
“For most of human history states were totalizing and illiberal.”
Strongly disagree with this - for most of human history, states were not totalizing and “Cage of Norms”-style communities had much more autonomy. There wasn’t even a “monopoly on the legitimate use of force” - you could have feudal lords at war with each other, both of whom recognized the suzerainty of the same king/emperor.
True, should go back and fix. Thanks!
Really liked the essay overall. Would be interested in your thoughts on America’s version of liberalism, which does allow some “Cage of Norms” style governance by delegating a lot of power to the states.
Also, our “powerful external institutions” are often not democratically elected - liberals complain about the Supreme Court, conservatives about the deep state agencies.
"Liberals want the state to be strong but restrained. Strong in the sense that it cannot be threatened by rival violent groups or people within society, and restrained in the sense that it is limited to mediating violence and enforcing basic rights rather than imposing very specific lifestyles on its people."
"Another way of helping people each pursue their own ends is redistribution of resources. Most modern liberals (myself included) believe strongly in the need for redistribution to help each person access society and the economy so they can pursue their values as they see fit. Most see redistribution as compatible with markets."
It's amusing how well you describe the views of (classical) liberalism and then go on to simply bolt on the progressive welfare state of "liberalism," because property rights are seen as a second class right, and "freedom from want" and some misguided view of Rawlsian egalitarianism have come to rule almost everywhere. This has been disastrous in terms of violating equal rights of individuals, as well as allowing the government to become very unrestrained across a host of domains. See also: The regulatory state.
You talk about offensive/defensive violence, but not negative/positive rights. There's no limit to government when voters and politicians can simply create new taxes and higher levels against particular segments of society. Someone like Hayek was willing to entertain a limited welfare state to provide a floor, but in practice the spending of the welfare state is hard to limit.
It's also the case that though there are forms of redistribution that are generally compatible with markets, the US has chosen several massive programs that have extreme market inefficiency (Social Security almost couldn't be designed worse if they tried). And left neoliberals/Democrats have mostly just defended such programs instead of supporting reforms to make them far better. See also: Market-friendly regulatory regimes.
Actual liberalism in the West has been dying almost everywhere, with some bits of neoliberal resurgence here and there. Two of the brightest standouts of liberalism/capitalism, NY and CA, are also the prime examples of welfare/regulatory "liberalism" being overtaken by progressivism.
To some extent, Rawlsian/FDR "liberalism" is just "Marxism with extra steps." Sure, you can own the means of production, but you have to follow all these rules and pay whatever tax rate we impose, which are usually one-way ratchet in practice (including that debt is a tax on the future).
I mean I think I just have a fundamentally different read of the whole situation. I see Rawls as articulating more of an idea that the state can intervene to make society more pareto-optimal, which is very different from the idea that labor value’s extracted from workers so therefore every last aspect of society needs to be run collectively
I basically view Rawls as a lagging defense of FDR-style policies that were already baked in as the dominating political/economic force in the West. Sure, the Western regulatory/redistributive state is less heavy-handed than Marxist collectivization and central planning, but, uh some slopes actually are slippery and basically nowhere has had a strong enough definition of limited government and property rights to stop from getting on the slide. Marxism cuts the golden goose's head off; progressivism gently applies pressure to the neck.
It's not a coincidence that Marxist "value extraction" from exploitation rhymes with progressive "diminishing marginal utility" and "pay their fair share," where "fair" is a moving number based on progressive's whims. Which actual welfare state programs are anything like "pareto optimal"? We mostly just have cost-disease socialism and a highly age-based discrimination welfare program. The NYC DSA mayor's program where they seemingly want rent control to make legal maintenance standards impossible to justify social housing, or the recent Weiner post about new housing specifically for "low income LGTBQ+ seniors" are painful true examples of left-liberalism turning into self-parody.
(One of the things I really appreciate about EA is that it's generally a movement of economically literate people who understand that nationalist concerns for citizen welfare are not effective uses of resources [nor morally justifiable if one is a universalist] and that economic growth has been the largest factor in improving material wellbeing by far.)
I read Hammond's paper you cite after my first comment and it's just a great example of "in theory" that runs into a brick wall of public choice theory and empirical reality of basically everywhere that's instituted a welfare state. In the US, almost none of our welfare state acts as "insurance" that overall increases productivity/growth.
The brutal irony is that the rapid rate of AI progress seems poised to eliminate the debate over property rights in the face of scarcity, and instead challenges basically ever core tenet of liberalism as the fundamentals it was built to deal with are radically transformed. I'm very annoyed about it.