It follows in this case that to elect to give up this freedom, to an extent, to gain an even further freedom would be the rational thing to do. You would be giving up some freedom, but in exchange you receive a freedom of arguably greater value. The benefits of this sacrifice in Ripstein's outline is that all people are to give up these freedoms universally. You are not at a disadvantage to other people for sacrificing your liberty. For example, everyone has to obey the rules of the road. Yes, this may restrict your freedom to travel as you please, but it gives you greater freedom in the general dependability of the other drivers on the road to obey the rules as well.
The question that surfaced during this reading for me is how Ripstein would respond to sacrifices in liberty to the public state that are in theory universally mandatory, but in practice result in disproportionate implementation. For example, we have all given up our freedom to easily board a plane without first passing through a time-consuming security process. It seems in practice, though, through racial profiling and other failings, that some groups of people are forced to sacrifice more of their time than others. Is this simply poor implementation of public provisioning, or is it something that could be included in Ripstein's account of mandatory cooperation?
It seems to me that the TSA's predilection to "randomly" select people to be questioned would technically be a failure of public officials to carry out their mandates. Ripstein's idea with the roads/traffic laws example is that they exist so that everyone may freely associate with whomever they please, and the traffic laws ensure that we all experience the roads equally, that is, no one can lay down an impediment to prevent others from using the roads. In this sense, the TSA official who racially profiles someone is failing to accomplish his or her job effectively. S/he is limiting the selected person's experience of boarding a plane without just cause (assuming the person has done nothing wrong). All of that said, Ripstein doesn't want his argument to tell TSA officers exactly what to do when operating security, but rather how they should approach it: "The Kantian approach provides a framework that tells officials how to think about questions of public provision, rather than what to think about them." (256) In theory, TSA officers should approach security with an unbiased view, operating only to keep everyone getting onto the planes safe, but in practice, I think it is just an example of poor implementation of public provisioning, as you intimated. I don't think that excludes it from potentially being included in mandatory cooperation: "in sustaining a condition of private freedom, we are all in it together." (256) The TSA officers are mandated to ensure everyone's freedoms are maintained, including the freedom to be treated equally regardless of race.
ReplyDeleteKyla,
ReplyDeleteThe differentiation between general principles and explicit implementation is a very interesting one indeed. Kant provides this framework that validates the existence of interference between private activities in public spaces. Nonetheless, there is “no conceptual guarantee that officials will not be inappropriately selective in identifying interferences” (264). Furthermore, Kant’s ideas provide a conceptual framework for classifying public and private purposes, but his ideas do not suffice to actually classify the particulars. Ripstein explains that some may view Kant’s abstention from delving into the particulars as an “abdication of responsibility” (265), but goes on to defend this conceptual framework by asserting that this is all that is expected of normative theory. I am not entirely convinced that normative theory should steer clear from dealing with the justness of the particulars. It is especially alarming because Ripstein grants a very large amount of freedom to the state: “[T]he state is required to provide public rights of way; its obligation to do so authorizes it to decide how to do so” (262). Ripstein even explicitly says that, “it is plainly within [the state’s] power to place specific burdens in ways that turn out to confer burdens and benefits unequally in particular cases” (259). Using your example, Ripstein seems to believe that this ‘disproportionate implementation’ is permissible due to the authority and the freedom to implement granted to the state.
Perhaps both Kant and Ripstein are too overly optimistic the benevolent intentions of the state. This may be a major flaw; in some cases, decisions made by the state may be made by one or two people. How can we trust that their intentions reflect the public interest rather than their private interests? In general, how much leeway should be afforded to the state? These questions seem to demand an answer.