May 31, 2003
Libertarianinsm and the Harm Principle: Part 2
Earlier I talked about these concepts here. In the comments Kevin Drum felt that we were saying the same thing. Kevin has also posted on this topic here. As have Eugene Volokh and Steven at PoliBlog.
Kevin's claim that we are actually agreeing is false. Kevin has put forward the view that "virtually every human action is plausibly a danger to others." I reject this notion. In fact, I think it is precisely the opposite that is true. That virutally every human action is not plausibly a danger to others.
Kevin has also asked what kind of guidance does libertarianism provide in making decisions. He seems to be asking for some sort of objective criteria. Earlier I suggested that it depends on the probability that a given action (conditioned on other events) can be used as to help solve the problem. That is if
P(A|E1) >> P(A|E2)
Then perhaps A should be regulated when it is also the case the E1 holds as well.
One could then say, okay, but this is subjective. At what level of risk should something become regulated. Indeed it is subjective. But so is every other political ideology (unfortunately not very many of Kevin's commenters seem to grasp this).
So to expect some sort of simplistic decision rule from libertarianism is asking too much. No such political ideology provides such a decision rule. Life is too complicated and there are so many variations it would be impossible to account for everything.
What libertarianism does doe is give you a perspective, a point of view on how to approach these issues. To the libertarian the default is "keep the government out." At least until you have had some indication that perhaps the government should be involved.
This applies to the economic sphere as well. When markets work, not much beats them at allocating resources. The only thing a market cannot ensure is an equitable distribution of resources (however, I find it mildly amusing that something as subjective as what is an equitible distribution of resources does not even phase Kevin for a second). However, there are lots of assumptions that go into perfectly working markets. One of them is that there are no externalities. My personal view is that externalities are a necessary condition, but not a sufficient condition for government intervention. What the Hell does that mean. A necessary condition must be met, a sufficient condition ensures that whatever the government does will result in an improvement.
Now note, I didn't say what the sufficient condition is yet. Finding the necessary condition is often easy, it is the sufficient condition that is harder, at least for me. The reason it is harder is I don't like government interferrence in my life. I want the interferrence to do something to make the situation better, not worse.
This is exactly the opposite of the "Nanny State" mentality we have today. Everything has a warning label on it (okay not everything, but look around you'll find warning labels that will make you wonder...gee was somebody dumb enough to do that?).
The Nanny State mentality is that things are dangerous and people are too dumb or uneducated enough to realize it, so we need the government to step in and take care of them. This is precisely the opposite of the libertarian view. It does however fit with Kevin's
Virtually every human action there is can plausibly be supposed to cause harm of some kind, which in turn means that we are left to judge policies by balancing their effects on personal liberty with the protections they provide us against harmful behavior by others.
There is not going to be an objective rule. You'll still have the messy problem of deciding where the dividing line is. The libertarian (note the small 'l') will just come at it from the opposite end that Kevin, et. al. do.
James Joyner has an interesting post on this, and I think he has gotten it right.
Posted by Steve at May 31, 2003 10:46 AM