G.A. Cohen and Nicholas Vrousalis have suggested that we should distinguish between objective and subjective freedom:
- We are objectively free if there is no interference with our actions and if we have a real opportunity to act – in other words, if we have the capabilities and other means necessary for action and if afterwards no one stops us from acting. For example, I am free to speak f I have the education and money necessary for me to engage in meaningful speech and if no one censors my speech.
- We are subjectively free if we do something from reasons that are our own or that we do not mind acting from after due consideration of those reasons. I am free to be a janitor if I have my own, well-considered reasons for choosing this occupation (I may have a deep sense of service to others and strong feelings of humility), but not if I somehow convinced myself that there are, regrettably, no reasonable alternative occupations available to me – even though in reality there are (if there are no real alternatives, then I’m (also) objectively unfree rather than merely subjectively). In the latter case, my being a janitor is not something that I do not mind to be and is not something I do for my own reasons. For the same reasons, I am free to be a doctor if I have arrived at my reasons motivating me to be a doctor through my own sound and independent thinking, and not if I have convinced myself that in reality I have arrived at my reasons through parental influence and indoctrination. Similarly, I’m not subjectively free if I’m a drug or sex addict, if I wish to quit, and if I’ve convinced myself that I can’t quit (if I really can’t, I’m (also) objectively unfree).
Both objective and subjective freedom are important. Someone who is not interfered with and who has all the necessary means and capabilities can still be unfree if he thinks – probably incorrectly – that he is lived by others, that his reasons for doing things are other people’s reasons, that there is no free will and only determinism, or that there are no alternatives. The case of paranoia comes to mind. Vice versa, people may feel subjectively free even though they are objectively unfree, for example if they think that their reasons are their own even if that is objectively not the case. Think of the effects of advertising, beauty ideals or political indoctrination.
How does this distinction between objective and subjective freedom relate to human rights? Objective freedom is clearly dependent on human rights: these rights can stop interference and can offer the means and capabilities necessary to act (the latter is the case for the right to education and the right to a minimum living standard).
However, subjective freedom is in some instances also dependent on human rights. You can best arrive at your own well-considered reasons for your actions, and convince yourself that you have and that your reasons are really your own, when you are a member of a thriving public space where the relative merits of actions, goals and reasons are freely discussed and where the presence and feasibility of alternatives can be clearly seen.
More posts in this series are here.
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Can you explain what do you actually mean when you say “right to education” and “right to a minimum living standard”?
Do you mean no one has the right to interfere with us pursuing those things for ourselves?
Or do you mean that an agency should be set up at the heart of society which has the monopolistic legal right to extract (by force) a percentage of everyone’s earnings and redistribute this wealth (again by force) in order to provide certain services such as ‘free’ schools and ‘free’ money to the poor?
If you mean the second thing, then I have some questions for you :)
1. An agency which ‘taxes’ people by force is one that (by definition) violates everyone’s property rights. (ie the right to NOT have half one’s earnings taken from them by force). It would seem that you therefore view ‘education rights’ and ‘minimum living standard rights’ as more important than ‘property rights’. Is that the case?
2. In order to have a system of taxation the threat or use of force or even violence must be used against the population in order to collect those taxes (ie the threat or actual use of fines, bailiffs, imprisonment etc for non payment of taxes). That use of threats or violence defines ‘taxation’ and distinguishes it from, say, ‘charity’ or ‘donation’ or ‘commerce’ (all of which are non coercive, non violent, voluntary transactions). Anyone who does not want to pay ‘taxes’ and tries to defend their property rights (their possessions, their home/ land and their body) might end up getting tasered, wrestled to the ground or even shot dead by men in blue costumes acting on behalf of the agency which is trying to collect the ‘taxes’. It would seem that you therefore view ‘education rights’ and ‘minimum living standard rights’ as more important than the right to be unmolested by violent thugs (police or bailiffs) and even potentially the right to life itself. Is that correct?
3. What guarantee can you provide that giving an agency the legal right to steal our wealth and then reallocate it would actually result in acceptable (let alone good or great) levels of ‘education’ and ‘living standards’? What EVIDENCE do you have to support this idea? How do you respond to the evidence which seems to suggest that state education is sliding into an abyss of dumbing down, while costs skyrocket? And what of the statistics which show that poverty was in a steady decline in the US right up until the very year when government ‘welfare’ programs were introduced – at which point poverty has been on the increase? Are you familiar with the concept that if you just throw money at the poor (enough to survive, but not enough to do anything useful) it gives them no incentive or means to escape poverty?
4. How else might this agency of force use its power – and how might that affect society?
5. What else might an agency of force spend this ‘tax’ money on (apart from crappy prison like schools and dubious welfare programs)? And what happens if the population does not like the way they spend our money after they have taken it from us by force? For example the Iraq war is proven to be illegal and Blair and Bush have already been convicted of war crimes under the Geneva convention. This war costs $3000 a second and has been going on for a decade already. This money is extracted from us by force via ‘taxes’. Would we choose to voluntarily spend our money in this way, if given a choice in the matter? And if you think we would choose to spend our money in this way, if given the choice, then why is force used to make us hand this money over?
6. In relation to questions 4 and 5 …. do any benefits associated with having monopolised, centrally controlled education and welfare programs run by force, outweigh any pitfalls associated with giving a single agency virtually unlimited power and (our) wealth?
7. How can these services be classified as ‘free’ when they are payed for by the population?
8. A government’s legal right to use force allows it to (1) get into massive debt and then (2) force future generations to pay back these loans through taxation. Is stealing from the unborn an acceptable price to pay for ‘free’ education and ‘free’ welfare? Should the unborn perhaps have the right NOT to be enslaved with debt the moment they pop out of their mothers’ vaginas?
9. What is a ‘right’ anyway? Are we talking ‘unassailable rights’ or rights that are granted to us by an agency such as government?
10. If our ‘rights’ are granted to us by government, then surely that would place government above us? What ‘right’ then does this agency have to assume that position? What right does the government have to grant or deny us our rights? In fact what is a ‘government’ anyway? Does it even exist in the real world or is it in fact just a belief, a cultural superstition we collectively support in our thinking and in our behaviour.
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OK, regarding your other remarks:
1: All rights are equally important. I believe the right to property is very important, but not absolute (as are all other rights). Conflicting rights have to be balanced against each other. If an innercity child’s right to education can only be secured by taxing a billionaire and taking away his right to a fifth yacht, then so be it.
2: no. The state’s right to use force in order to secure rights is necessary in the case of all rights, including the right not to be subjected to arbitrary force by the state.
3: I’m in favor of education, and equal education opportunities for all. It is probably the case that in our present-day societies this means some education provision or subsidization by the state. But that doesn’t have to be the case in all circumstances.
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1. With respect, I don’t think you’ve addressed the hard reality of your vision for a world with only limited property rights and an agency using force to get what it wants. You use the argument of an inner city kid vs a billionaire, but this is an extreme. A billionaire being forced with threats of violence to hand over a percentage of his wealth is not half as upsetting an image as an ordinary working family who struggle to make ends meet being forced to pay crippling taxes.
Either we have property rights or we do not. You seem to want a middle ground but you have not defined how that would work *in reality*. If an agency has the right to violate our property rights (as the government currently can) how can you stop them from ‘taking the ball and running with it’? The answer is that you can’t. No one can. That is the reality of not having property rights – they can take from you by force! Once taxes have been extracted from us the money no longer belongs to us. Therefore any notion of having control over how it is spent goes out of the window, as does any notion of having a say about how society is run.
We are told democracy (statism) is choice but that’s BS. Only when there is no state (ie no use of force, no taxation) do we get to retain control over our money. And only when we keep control can we truly start to organise society. To pay taxes is to give up that control and to give up that responsibility completely. (I know, I know, this is the complete opposite of what we have been told all our lives!)
Every government throughout history has aways ‘taken the ball and run with it’, usually that means the government grows and grows in size and power, increasing its taxation along the way until eventually it collapses due to debt and war. By this point most of society has become dependent on government services and programs and so when the government collapses and those services (healthcare, education, infrastructure, welfare etc) suddenly disappear there is inevitable chaos and suffering – and a breakdown in society (violence, protests, crime etc). This often leads to an even more authoritarian government being brought in to ‘restore order’. A classic example being Germany. The economic collapse helped Hitler to get into power. The rest of the west is now entering the same phase – most notably the US and most of Europe.
When society gives up its property rights and lets a single agency take control of half the earnings of the nation this is not only extremely dangerous (suicidal, as history shows us), it is incredibly irresponsible of us. The governments of the west have all run out of money – they are in massive debt. Put in simple terms, this is because we allowed them run society through the use of FORCE, and naturally, they took the ball and ran with it. We must now look our kids in the eyes and explain to them that they will now inherit those massive government debts and a collapsing society with little chance of prosperity in their lifetime and massive cutbacks in services, and all because we let a bunch of criminals in government violate our property rights while bribing us with ‘free stuff’. Apparently, despite this brutal reality you *still* think they should carry on violating our property rights – correct? I’ll be honest, I don’t understand how you can still think that.
2. “…The state’s right to use force in order to secure rights is necessary in the case of all rights, including the right not to be subjected to arbitrary force by the state….”
This is a contradiction. You cannot violate someone’s rights AND protect their rights at the same time. Here’s how to defend your property rights: someone tries to steal half your earnings, you whack them in the face with a baseball bat. Here’s how NOT to defend your property rights: you let an agency take half your earnings by force and you let them spend it on whatever they please. See? ;)
But seriously, the confusion comes from the fact that the government does indeed defend our property rights, BUT only from other people in society – not from government itself! We are brought up to believe the government is protecting our property rights ‘end of story’ but in fact what is REALLY happening is that government is ensuring NO ONE ELSE GETS TO STEAL FROM US, ONLY GOVERNMENT.
This difference is HUGE.
It is like the difference between a group of men saying: “No one is allowed to rape the women of this village and we will stop those to try, and punish those who succeed” …….. and them saying….. “No one else is allowed to rape the women of this village but us, and we will stop those to try, and punish those who succeed”
In other words no one else is allowed to violate our property rights, except the government, and they make damn sure of it!
3. With most government programs only around 20% of the money ever reaches the intended target, the other 80% is typically lost in self serving bureaucracy. Plus governments always justify their use of force by emphasising the things we already want – hospitals, roads etc as if we would be spending our money on those things anyway (which is of course true). But in reality the money they take from us also goes towards paying for a bunch of stuff we DON’T want such as wars, bailouts, ‘jobs for the boys’, police state infrastructure, and loads of expensive, self serving government departments and committees.
And so even putting aside the moral argument against government’s use of force, government force is also a ridiculously crap way for society to provide itself with services. Education has been around a lot longer than governments. Since governments took over education the standards have only fallen and the costs have risen to astronomical proportions. This is what you would expect because the government have a monopoly on providing this service, and they aren’t subject to market forces – they can just use force to fund themselves instead. We all know that market forces drive up quality and drive down costs.
Plus if you do any research on government education you will realise it is based on the Prussian Skule system. This was invented by the ruling classes to train the public to be more obedient, robotic, compliant and, of course, supportive of the state. In a free market system where government schools had to compete with other ways to educate children government schools would all go out of business, and kids today would be a LOT smarter – and free of government propaganda too :)
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4. “..???..” – My point here was that government justifies its force as a way to provide ‘nice things’ that we all want, but the reality is that it also uses this force to do things we all object to which benefits only a few (such as wars etc). See also the end of my last comment….
5. “…. However, instances of abuse of the power of taxation are hardly proof against taxation….” – Surely those abuses are the MOST important arguments against taxation?! Are you seriously suggesting the illegal war of GENOCIDE which could ONLY be paid for by taxation is a minor point? Over a million dead. This could not have happened except through taxation. Hitler could not have built up his war machine and waged war on europe without taxation (government force). And without a system of taxation already in place in other countries there’s really no point in invading them. Countries are only worth invading if you can take over their governments – their TAX REVENUE. Otherwise you’re invasion just makes you a tourist arriving on a tank and waving a flag! LOL
6. “….Again, the need for taxes as means to provide equal education opportunities do not imply centralized and monopolized education provision. That is a non sequitur…..” – the need for taxes to provide education at all is a false assumption. As I already explained, education would be 100x better (higher standard, cheaper, less indoctrination) if it was provided in a free market.
8. “…. Taxation does not imply debt. Again a non sequitur….” – What I meant was that a government’s legal monopoly on the right to initiate FORCE agains the public to achieve its aims is what gives it the power to (1) tax the population (2) take out loans in our names (3) print its own currency and force us to use it exclusively. The issue in this whole discussion is the government’s use of FORCE. It is the right to use force against us which defines government, and which is at the root of all of society’s problems. The tragic irony is that as society continues to go down the toilet, the government (having already propagandised us via schools) is easily able to convince us that MORE government force is the answer to the problems already created by government force in the first place!
I can tax you, and take out a loan and expect you (or your children) to pay it back for me ….. but it only becomes meaningful if I can FORCE you to hand over the money. Otherwise I am just acting like a twit. If we remove FORCE out of the equation then we can still have organisation in society (far more so in fact), but every transaction becomes voluntary and (typically) based on a two way contract. This is how the rest of society functions. If Tony Blair wants to invade Iraq based on some conspiracy theory about WMD’s he’d have to ASK for funding, and make his case, just like anyone else. Without force, we’d get to keep all of our income and we’d have have a true free market of services (healthcare, infrastructure, schools etc). Naturally the best services would thrive and crappy services would fall by the wayside. Innovation would be the driving force – rather than self serving corruption and violence!
To see how insane it is to have things run by the government just take any random thing which is based on the free market, voluntary, contract based transactions (ie anarchy) and imagine the government taking over the running of it. How about….. mobile phones!
Now the government is in charge of providing our ‘free public phonecare’ service. Yay! This would inevitably mean we’d all get allocated the same crappy phone and package. The government would now be taking money from us by force to pay for this wonderful ‘free public phonecare’ and like all other government services there would be no contract, no binding T&C and no accountability whatsoever – at least not on their part. But we would, of course, be forced to pay for this crappy service via tax. Soon the government would create bloated, self serving departments to do with ‘free public phonecare’ and the chances are they would soon start a war with a foreign phone company and they would add these costs onto our bills. Eventually they would also get into debt and start making drastic cutbacks to our phone services. After all there’s no contract for them to abide by and we would not have the option of NOT paying for the service – even if we could switch to one of the obscenely expensive private phone providers.
Basically, letting an agency run things using force is immoral, irresponsible and a recipe for disaster. This is provable using logic, common sense and backed up by centuries of historical evidence. If statism was ever going to work for humanity it would have done so already… but here we are centuries on and the system is STILL slaughtering children, oppressing millions, collapsing around our ears and generally making life a miserable experience for everyone except a few at the top of the hierarchical pyramid of violent power.
If anything I’ve said makes even the slightest sense to you, and challenges previous ideas you held, then check out this philosopher.. He’s definitely onto something big…. really big :)
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