Trading Freedoms

It seems that most of our readings regarding legitimate governments acknowledge that we naturally give up certain freedoms in order to gain others. In our Rawls reading from last week, it was argued that some liberties can be worth less than others based mostly on the ability of an individual to actually take advantage of these liberties. Ripstein draws on this with his system of equal private freedom. For example, everyone in this system would have the liberty to be the ultimate dictator of their own private property. However, the cost of this liberty is that your neighbors are the dictators of your choices whenever you desire to leave your own property. This severely limits the value of the liberty that you do have, because you do not really have the ability to use it meaningfully. 

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? 

Cars and Equal Access

Ripstein's account of public rights and their origins is fascinating.

I want to examine the implications of Ripstein's account of Kant's political philosophy.

Cars and Equal Access
Ripstein presents the solution to the landlocked problem in public roads:

    "[R]oads, understood as a system of public rights of way, guaranteeing that there is a path from every piece of privately held land to every other. With a system of roads in place, everyone can enter into voluntary transactions with whomever they wish, without being subject to the choice of any other person. The rights of way need to be public, rather than endlessly many private easements, precisely because access must be guaranteed to everyone in order to reconcile property in land -- ownership of a location -- with freedom" (248-249).

Using the United States as my reference frame, the current public road system is not exactly created for the benefit of everyone such that their right to associate is not abridged by private easements.
     
     a. To use the vast majority of roads it is required that you own some sort of legal vehicle - that is, you must transact with a private third party to give you the means which allow you to use the "public" roads. This puts you under the arbitrary control of another, thereby violating your freedom.

     b. Otherwise, to utilize the public roads, you must use some form of public transportation (like a bus). If these buses are not free, then your ability to utilize the roads are subordinated to your ability to engage in the private market (with a third party) to acquire the means to pay for the bus.

     c. Imagine we were in the landlocked world Ripstein presented. If the government built roads that allowed you to access every other property but they charged you a usage fee, then, before you were capable of using the roads, you would have to engage in a private market transaction to acquire the means to pay for it. Assuming you couldn't use the roads in the first place, you would have to engage with your immediately adjacent neighbors. If you couldn't trade with any of them, you would be unable to use the roads, thus, just as before, subjecting you to the whims of third parties - thus leaving you without Kantian freedom.

   d. By extension of c, Ripstein mentions a "Gasoline tax" or a usage fee on page 253. He acknowledges their popularity but doesn't specify how it avoids the above contradiction.

   e. For further food for thought, Ivan Illich, in Tools for Conviviality, argues that speed limits in countries should not exceed bicycle speeds ( essentially 20 mph). While Illich has a whole slew of reasons for this, he primarily looks at how the acceleration of transportation is inherently inegalitarian. Because usage of highways and freeways are reserved to car owners, a certain group of people (car companies and car owners) have made private what is supposed to be public space. Because Ripstein demonstrated that arguments of convenience and utilitarianism can't be used to override questions of personal freedom, how are we to judge this?

Ripstein’s government – a Critique of Nozick

            Even though Ripstein never mentions Nozick in his paper, nonetheless it is a good response to Nozick’s almost no-need-to-exist government because Nozick believes that, as long as the people do not violate his principles, there is not much role for government to play. Ripstein, on the contrary to Nozick, believes that state power (police power) is very crucial to create a system of equal freedom, which will enhance people’s public rights. The public rights are the precondition to extend one’s innate individual right to one’s property right. The government will provide people equal public rights through mandatory cooperation, which is more enforcing than private contract because others cannot compel one to do anything, while the government can. Under Ripstein’s government, the problem of entitlement is solved by public provision. Public terms of access to roads guarantees that there will be no privatization. The entitlement to get from place to place is given by the government. The central difference here between mandatory cooperation and private compelling is that, the state, acting on behalf of the citizens as a collective body, has legitimate powers that neither individual citizens nor any group of them have apart from it, even groups containing millions of people. To further illustrate the strength and usefulness of government regulation as opposed to private compelling, Prof Hurley raises the example of contract vs promise. In private, one can make any promise and breaks it without any punishment. In front of a government, a promise becomes a contract and is legally enforced. Punishment is unavoidable if the contract is broken.  

Ripstein’s government is a powerful government. But it is not omnipotent. It actually sets an upper bound to what government can do. Anything the government does must be pertinent to secure the individual private freedom. A national freeway system is rightful of government behavior according to Ripstein, but airline services are not. A universal basic education act is necessary, but an act to promote college education is not. A public speech can be exempt from the police power, but a street performance cannot. Within the boundary, the police power overrides individual rights. Beyond the boundary, it is not the government’s responsibility to act. As Ripstein said, the Kantian account of the public use of power is only legitimate in the service of individual freedom.

Externalities

In Ripstein’s discussion of externalities, he mentions how externalities “generate no issues of right” (260). Even though this claim might be partially true, Ripstein only addresses positive externalities and does not really mention negative externalities. In both the case of increase foot traffic due to the nearby hotel and the increase of bees will increase the welfare of the third party. In cases of negative externalities, a person’s right might be restricted. For example, if I were to blast music in my room every morning at 6 AM, I would be disturbing all of my neighbors. I am exercising my freedom but all of my neighbors are asleep, so playing music will negatively affect a third party. If they wake up, I am disturbing their sleep and if they can’t go to sleep because of me, I am taking away their right to sleep. In this case, instead of an undersupply of good there is a deadweight loss caused by my actions. I wonder how Ripstein would account for such actions, or if anyone would be called to be accountable for actions like that at all. In page 244, Ripstein does give a couple examples of negative externalities but says that one does not have the right to do anything until it directly affects one property. This makes me wonder what sort of externality can be caused and give someone the entitlement to complain about something without it physically affecting one’s property.

The Difference Principle vs. A Mixed Conception

In Section 29, Rawls has a lot to say about why his two principles of justice - but mainly the difference principle - would be far superior to the principle of average utility as the governing principles of the basic structure of society. He mentions the "burden of commitment", pointing out that the principle of average utility could demand that "some, particularly the less favored, should forgo advantages for the sake of the greater good of the whole" (155), which would not be easy for those unlucky individuals. In contrast, Rawls points out, in a society governed by the difference principle, "Not only do the parties protect their basic rights but they insure themselves against the worst eventualities" (154), substantially decreasing the potential burden of commitment in those worst cases where it matters. Rawls goes on to insist that the difference principle will promote a more "stable" conception of societal justice than the principle of average utility because the difference principle caters to self-interest whereas the principle of average utility demands "a greater identification with the interests of others" (154).

I'm not blogging about whether or not Rawls has or has not defeated pure utilitarianism with these and similar arguments.  What I want to point out is: I do not think that these arguments for the difference principle are at all effective when the difference principle is compared to one of the "Mixed Conceptions" that Rawls includes on his list of alternative principles. In a society with fair equality of opportunity that maintains a respectable social minimum, and then allows the principle of average utility to govern the rest of the wealth/income distribution (something like B3 from the list on page 107), the burden of commitment would be negligent even to those at the bottom of the heap. Such a society would certainly be stable in the sense that self-interested people would not have to worry about being left behind. In fact, a self-interested person (behind the veil of ignorance or not) might think something like:

"Hmmm... this mixed conception society promises me the minimum that I need, and in the event that I rise above this minimum, I am likely to be wealthier in this mixed conception society than in a society where we give as much as possible to those who have the least."

My question is: how would/does/could Rawls argue that the difference principle is superior to the mixed conception as the basic distributive principle of  society?     

Rawls and Self-Respect

While discussing the Original Position, Rawls argues that "it is clearly rational for men to secure their self-respect" (154). I want evaluate the significance of and implications of securing self-respect given inequality.

Rawls argues that "[u]nless we feel that our endeavors are respected by [others], it is difficult if not impossible for us to maintain the conviction that our ends are worth advancing" (154). Essentially, if our position on the social ladder is perceived as worthless we perceive ourselves as worthless. Crucially, our self-respect is largely a function of our perception of how others perceive us - that is, it's purely a result of social interaction. Further, living in a meritocracy or free market system actually exacerbates the inequalities with respect to self-worth. Those at the bottom of the ladder feel that their place at the bottom of the ladder is deserved / merited and is therefore a reflection of their inner worth; on the flip side, those at the top feel their inner worth reflected in their merit. This creates an intense system of status anxiety that ingrains class positions.

A system of feudalism, on the other hand, is actually free from much of the effect of status anxiety. Barring the atrocious destitution and brutality that serfs faced, those at the bottom of the pyramid were free from the toxic and psychologically tormenting effects of inequalities tied to merit. Everyone was born into their class division and - because there was no social mobility - never sweat over getting ahead of their peers. Peasants were peasants, knights were knights, lords were lords, and the king was king. Their position on the social ladder was not a reflection of self-worth, it was a reflection of divine and arbitrary placement, and, for the most part, it was generally accepted. This freed most from the psychological rat race.

Obviously, feudalism isn't a preferable system to our current system - but, we must acknowledge the impact a free market system has on the self worth of its citizens. During the Great Depression, many Americans suffered severe depression themselves as they blamed themselves for their inability to work and thus degraded their self-worth.

Even under Rawls' System of Justice, how do we ensure self-respect is maximized? So long as merited inequality exists, self-respect is imperiled. If, according to Rawls, "[s]elf-respect is not so much a part of any rational plan of life as the sense that one's plan is worth carrying out," how must we weight self-respect compared to other basic necessities? (154). If the vast majority of society finds their work purposeless, even if it is efficient - or, even if equality is maximized, what are we left with?

Rawls on Egoism

Rawls presents a very interesting argument for why egoistic conceptions are ruled out by the formal constraints of the concept of right. He arranges these constraints under five general headings—two of which are critical in rejecting the presence of egoism. 

The three egoistic conceptions are:

1.) First-person dictatorship: Everyone is to serve my interests

2.) Free-rider: Everyone is to act justly except for myself, if I choose not to

3.) General: Everyone is permitted to advance his interests as he pleases

The first two conceptions are easy to reject due to the generality condition, which states, "it must be possible to formulate [principles] without the use of what would be intuitively recognized as proper names, or rigged definite descriptions" (113). Because a description or rough understanding of a proper name is needed to fully comprehend the implications behind each case, both the first-person dictatorship and free-rider conceptions can be eliminated. Generality, however, does not rule out the third egoistic conception because, "The principle here can clearly be expressed in a perfectly general way" (117).

Instead, general egoism is rejected by the ordering condition. Rawls believes that a conception of right must be able to resolve conflicting claims by ordering their priority. Furthermore, this ordering must be independent from an individual's social position or capacity to intimidate or coerce. If everyone is truly permitted to advance their interests as they please, then men would be free to use arbitrary factors to successfully secure their self-interests, such as the power to effectively intimidate others into submission. Essentially, it is impossible to fairly rank competing claims if the factors of force and cunning play a role in determining the outcome.