So the libertarian Cato Institute may or may not be subject to an unwanted takeover by the Koch family. It’s widely expected that if the Koches take Cato over, they’ll turn Cato into a GOP cheerleader.
(If that happens, it would be a shame. Although of course I often disagree with Cato, they do valuable work in areas such as prescription painkillers, and immigration.)
In anticipation of losing his freedom to write what he wants to if Koch takes over, libertarian Julian Sanchez has “presigned” from his Cato job (and he made it extra badass illustrating it with a photo of The Prisoner):
As I said, I’m in no great hurry to leave a job I enjoy a lot — so I’m glad this will probably take a while to play out either way. But since I’m relatively young, and unencumbered by responsibility for a mortgage or kids, I figure I may as well say up front that if the Kochs win this one, I will.
Corey Robin finds this telling:
But clearly there is coercion in the workplace; Sanchez readily admits it. And clearly its reach—whether it touches the individual worker or not—is related to, indeed depends upon, that worker’s ability to act, in this case to quit. Again, Sanchez admits as much.
So if liberty is the absence of coercion, as many libertarians claim, and if the capacity to act—say, by enjoying material conditions that would free one of the costs that quitting might entail—limits the reach of that coercion, is it not the case that freedom is augmented when people’s ability to act is enhanced?
More to the point: is one’s individual freedom not increased by measures such as unemployment compensation, guaranteed health insurance, public pensions, higher wages, strong unions, state-funded or provided childcare—the whole panoply of social democracy that most libertarians see as not only irrelevant to but an infringement upon individual freedom?
Bleeding heart libertarian Jessica Flanigan responds:
While I don’t agree with Robin’s argument, I do think that something like this criticism does land against a certain kind of extreme libertarianism, the people who deny easy rescue ( e.g. Randians.) Certainly there are elements to libertarianism that do deny any positive duties and discourage any assistance.
But to say that libertarianism is intrinsically committed to this view is just as uncharitable as a libertarian’s caricature of the left as a bunch of state-worshiping freedom-hating neo-Stalinists.
This seems like a strawman argument. Robin didn’t argue that the commitment against “unemployment compensation, guaranteed health insurance,” etc, was or was not “intrinsic” to libertarianism. But these views seem commonplace among most libertarians right now, whether or not they’re intrinsic, and that makes them fair game for criticism.
Flanigan seems to have entirely missed Robin’s point, which was about coercion (a word her post doesn’t even mention, except when quoting Robin). I’m glad that Julian Sanchez, who I respect greatly, has enough options — and few enough responsibilities — so that he can’t be coerced by new management. He can just quit. But, as Robin points out, Sanchez is implicitly admitting that a worker without those advantages could be coerced by their employer.
Modern libertarianism has a lot to say about the threat to freedom caused by government coercion, and rightly so. But the question is, what does libertarianism have to offer workers who aren’t as lucky as Sanchez — workers who are coerced into accepting unreasonable, unacceptable or unsafe working conditions, for instance?
Robin writes:
That, it seems to me, is the great divide between right and left: not that the former stands for freedom, while the latter stands for equality (or statism or whatever), but that the former stands for freedom for the few, while the latter stands for freedom for the many.
This seems a little broad-brushed to me (for one thing, is the Democratic party part of the “left”? Cause they sure don’t consistently stand for freedom.) But I think it is fair to say that modern libertarianism stands mainly for freedom from state coercion. Progressives, in contrast, think people need freedom not only from state coercion, but also freedom from economic and corporate coercion.
That’s why Julian Sanchez’s presignation was ironic. Not because I believe that Sanchez worships rich people — but because he recognizes the ways employers can coerce workers, yet libertarianism seems to have virtually no concern about that sort of coercion, nor anything substantial to offer those workers. If anything, common libertarian policies — the elimination of social security, for instance — would leave workers even more vulnerable to employer coercion.
(By the way, I do want to acknowledge that Flanigan favors a basic income policy, which actually would reduce employers power over workers. But if this is a policy that most libertarians today favor, they’ve kept awfully quiet about it.)
More to the point: is one’s individual freedom not increased by measures such as unemployment compensation, guaranteed health insurance, public pensions, higher wages, strong unions, state-funded or provided childcare—the whole panoply of social democracy that most libertarians see as not only irrelevant to but an infringement upon individual freedom?
One’s individual freedom may well be increased by measures such as these. (It’s “may” because, for example, does the strong union require me to join it in order to work in a place? Do I have to get a shop steward’s permission to retrain for a different job? Etc.)
But that individual increase is not the only factor to consider. What are the costs to my own liberty, or to the liberty of others, imposed by these measures? If other people are paying for my guaranteed health insurance (i.e., my benefit is larger than my contribution) then those people’s liberties are being infringed. “State-funded” childcare does not come from the state, it comes from my fellow taxpayers covering my bills; if my childless-by-choice coworker ends up paying for my decision to have kids, then his liberty is being infringed. If other people are paying for my “public pension” because I paid in $10 a week and am pulling out $800 a month, then their liberty is being infringed.
The panoply of social-democratic benefits may well be, at a particular time and place and for a particular individual, a boost to that individual’s freedom to make particular choices. (For example, free to choose to make inadequate provision for his own healthcare, to make inadequate investments for his own retirement, and to have children whose care he isn’t prepared to pay for.) But that freedom comes at the cost of a social apparatus that makes everyone less free, by requiring them to pay large sums in taxes for the benefit of the system.
The market provides mechanisms by which people can buy pensions, pay for their health care, and hire babysitters. Socializing these things and requiring people consume them, and pay for others’ consumption of them, is on balance a significant reduction of liberty.
But I think it is fair to say that modern libertarianism stands mainly for freedom from state coercion. Progressives, in contrast, think people need freedom not only from state coercion, but also freedom from economic and corporate coercion.
First sentence, true. Libertarianism is a limited solution to a limited list of problems.
Second sentence first phrase, false. Progressives have demonstrated that they believe people should be free from certain types of state coercion, but that other types of state coercion are totally OK. Second sentence second phrase, eh, sort of kind of in a dim light if you’re being generous. Progressives have shown that they think power should be shifted away from voluntary associations to involuntary associations. They have precious little to show for an argument that they think there should be less power exercised.
It’s entirely fair to critique libertarianism for failing to address corporate power (and it’s also fair for libertarians like me to note that we’re not unconcerned with it, but that we don’t see clear fixes, so we focus on the issues where we do see clear fixes). But that failure doesn’t create some counterbalancing anti-power virtue on the part of progressives; nine progressive proposals out of ten involve concentrating power, forcing one set of people to behave in a certain way, using the state to take from X to give to Y, and so on.
That’s ridiculous. Generally speaking, achieving “freedom from economic and corporate coercion” requires either some sort of utopian mind-meld, or a vast increase in the power and coercion of the state.
Good progressives acknowledge that. Bad ones try to get around reality by defining “coercion” differently for each side.
Generally speaking, achieving “freedom from economic and corporate coercion” requires either some sort of utopian mind-meld, or a vast increase in the power and coercion of the state.
Or a vast increase in the wealth of the society, or a vast expansion of the tools available for an individual to monetize their own human capital. “I have to work at Cato or my family starves” clearly offers greater scope for employer coercion than “I have to work at Cato or I might have to sell my third vacation home”.
I think the Internet and the massive increase in an individual’s ability to freelance/start their own enterprise has done more to reduce corporate coercion of this sort, at least for knowledge workers, than any amount of fiddling with state policy.
Corey’s post has a couple of assumptions built into it. If you don’t buy into them, then his post falls apart.
By saying that Julian Sanchez admits there is coercion in the workplace, he implies that Julian would define the specific behaviors as coercion. That’s not actually clear. Coercion is the threat or use of force to compel behavior. Threatening to cease exerting efforts on someone’s behalf (specifically, by firing them) is not force, although failure to uphold existing contracts falls into fraud, which is generally considered a form of force. Offering someone pay in exchange for particular work done in a particular fashion is persuasion, not coercion, no matter what circumstances the employee would be in without that pay.
He assumes a definition of freedom is not compatible with the libertarian definition of liberty. His second paragraph in the excerpt glosses over this. Freedom from coercion is not the same as freedom to act. This may be caused by his unintentional conflation of coercion and persuasion.
I would further note that every government program he lists which increases someones ability to act also decreases someone else’s freedom through the means of coercion. Any beneficial thing those programs do does not erase the harm done at the revenue end.
EDIT: His full post at least mentions the different defintions of freedom but at first glance doesn’t actually deal with it beyond mentioning it and moving on. He also admits the costs of social programs, but relies on his definition of freedom to argue that the freedom of many > freedom of few as a way to dismiss them.
“Progressives, in contrast, think people need freedom not only from state coercion, but also freedom from economic and corporate coercion.”
You’d have to squint pretty hard to get the idea that freedom from state coercion is a general organizing principle of progressivism the way you contrast it to libertarianism. It is something progressives focus on in certain limited areas (most specifically on the topic of abortion perhaps) but it strikes me as similar to the way Republicans use “states rights”–a convenient argument when you want it with very few implications in any area you don’t want it.
See for example recent progressive discussions about the state forcing employers to provide birth control access (the original Obama proposal especially). Religious exemptions? Not interested. The need to have employers provide birth control? Obvious, because employer-employee relationships ummm clearly implicate birth control?
Progressives and Libertarians are pretty much orthogonal to each other on state power. Progressives want to use it, a lot, for good things. Yay, good things! They don’t want it to be used for bad things. Boo, bad things. Libertarians tend to believe that government power often gets used for bad things, sometimes REALLY bad things. They tend to believe that corporations gain more power than they ever could possibly get without government by co-opting government.
I tend to believe that government can do some good things, but I see a lot of force to the libertarian critique that empowering governments is like gambling, and the historical odds of it not being used in really atrocious ways seem low.
Progressives seem extremely willing to take that gamble. Casting “freedom from government coercion” as an organizing principle doesn’t seem accurate to me.
RE: Sebastian H “See for example recent progressive discussions about the state forcing employers to provide birth control access (the original Obama proposal especially). Religious exemptions? Not interested. The need to have employers provide birth control? Obvious, because employer-employee relationships ummm clearly implicate birth control?”
I disagree there. This may be true of “Democrats”, but its not true of real progressives, or of progressives that have given the issues much thought.
The biggest reason is that the “most progressive” position is to ELIMINATE employer provided health care altogether and move to a single payer system. Think about this. The problem of “religious freedom” goes away entirely when “religious organizations” are no longer the ones supplying the insurance. The fact that religious employers are still the ones even responsible for insurance at all is “unprogrerssive”.
For example see my article here (The section on real health care reform):
http://www.rationalrevolution.net/articles/restore_america.htm
The real progressive solution, eliminating all private health insurance and having a single payer system managed by the government, ALSO inherently resolves the “religious freedom” issue, and truly does it fully, unlike the conservative position.
Under the current scheme “religious freedom” means the freedom of religious employers to deny freedoms to their employees. Real “religious freedom” is attained under a single payer system where religious organizations have no obligation or ability to provide or deny contraception to anyone. They aren’t forced to do anything they don’t want to do, nor do they have the ability to deny anything to anyone else either.
This is juts another reason why a single payer system would be superior to the private insurance system.
Back to the main topic though, I generally agree with the OP. Overall people who call themselves libertarians tend to take the position that the only form of coercion is “state coercion”, and its gets even more complicated when the state is merely acting as an agent of private interests, cause then they get all wound up in knots.
Progressives recognize that not all state actions are inherently progressive, obviously. The American government is largely a tool of private corporate interests, so to any real progressive would have to be very wary of state action in America. The overall impact of government in America benefits corporations, the wealthy, and property owners. American government is pro-capitalist, so clearly we can’t say that “state action is progressive”.
Even using the example of Social Security in the OP is actually problematic. The general concept of Social Security is progressive, but the actual implementation fo it in America is not. The Social Security tax, 12.4% of wage income up to ~106K, is massively regressive, and has served to finance massive tax for the wealthy over the past 30 years. $2.5 trillion of the deficit (generated by under taxation generally) has been financed by over taxation via the payroll tax, which falls almost entirely on poor and middle-class workers.
The Social Security system as it currently operates is a massive boon to the American wealthy. It takes huge sums of money from the poor and middle class , fiances national debt, which is used to benefit the wealthy, and removes social responsibility for the elderly and disabled from the wealthy, YET huge portions of what Social Security income is SPENT ON, are services and goods provided by the wealthy. In other words, Social Security takes money from the working class when they are young, and is used by the elderly to buy goods and services from the wealthy.
There are many super-rich American’s whose incomes are derived primarily from provided services to the elderly. They would be worse off if Social Security didn’t exist.
So my point is that progressives recognize that whether a policy or condition is progressive or not, beneficial or not, good or not, is fair or not, has nothing to do with the institution that implements it, whereas libertarians seems to take the position that its all about who and not about what. For progressives is about what, or libertarians is about who.
And as for “force”, I posed this question to some libertarians, who just dismissed it:
You are in a life boat in icy water with 10 people. A massive wave is coming at the boat and the only way to survive is is everyone leans to one side. You say to the group, “Everyone lean to the left side of the boat!”, but 2 guys say “No, we don’t want to.” Should you force them over to the side of the boat?
Now obviously this is a contrived scenario, but still. The libertarian position seems to be that forcing those 2 guys to lean to the left side against their will is wrong, so as a result there is nothing the group can do, they will just have to accept inevitable death. They fail to recognize the implicit force being exercised by the 2 guys and don’t recognize that there has to be a process for conflict resolution and that everyone can’t get their way all the time.
Normal people, i.e. all normal people not just progressives, recognize that in a situation like this the majority has every right to say “SHUT THE F* UP and get over here,” and grab them by their hair if need be and drag their butts over to the side of the boat so it doesn’t capsize and kill everyone…
The real progressive solution, eliminating all private health insurance and having a single payer system managed by the government, ALSO inherently resolves the “religious freedom” issue, and truly does it fully, unlike the conservative position.
Yes, by eliminating religious freedom (in the sense of not forcing people to pay for medical care that they are religiously opposed to) altogether.
I don’t object (legally) to you having an abortion. I do object to paying for it.
Other people have different sets of objections, and indeed, there is a general problem of being forced to pay for things we find morally or religiously objectionable. Amp didn’t want to pay for the Iraq War and I don’t blame him a bit. Unfortunately paying for things we don’t like is a necessary concomitant of having a government at all, so Amp sucks it up because war is the provenance of the state.
Arguably, health care ought to be as well, in which case I have to suck it up. But kindly do not pretend that this “resolves” the problem of my religious freedom in a way that I am going to say “whee, this is way better than the old system of private insurance”. It resolves the problem by bulldozing the people who pose the problem into the ground.
Edited to add: and please note that such a system can end up bulldozing the opposite interests, as well. Pass universal health care in Vatican City, and it’s going to include a ban on all abortion and contraception. Totalizing a system resolves conflict, but it does so by ruling one or more sides of the conflict “wrong” and picking a winner who gets their way. Vatican City’s single-payer plan isn’t going to be any more respectful of religious freedom than Vice City’s plan.
You are in a life boat in icy water with 10 people. A massive wave is coming at the boat and the only way to survive is is everyone leans to one side. You say to the group, “Everyone lean to the left side of the boat!”, but 2 guys say “No, we don’t want to.” Should you force them over to the side of the boat?
Not sure why libertarians wouldn’t answer this one. No, you should not force them over to the side of the boat. You should force them over the side, killing them, in order to save the boat and those willing to engage in survival behavior in this survival situation. The state is empowered to kill to defend it’s existence, or the existence of the population it was constituted to protect. You’re not entitled to enslave them (force them to behave as you want) in order to protect your interest, but you’re entitled to kill them in order to keep them from killing you.
Or, more generally, on any topic related to sex. Leftism is basically what you get when you play the fortune cookie game with libertarianism. Everyone should be free from state coercion…in bed.
Back to sporadic lurking. I was just too proud of that one not to post it.
But “I want to pick and choose what my taxes pay for,” is not part of religious freedom and never has been. You don’t want to pay for abortion, I don’t want to pay for Iraq, or Afghanistan, or DOMA. But we both get to suck it up and deal with it. Tax money ceases to be your money once you pay your taxes. The only way you could get that level of religious freedom is if you went off to an island and founded your own little theocracy.
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KellyK – Yes, if we’re talking about government policy and government-funded sectors. I think it’s too damn bad that Amp doesn’t want to pay for wars. I think it’s too damn bad that I don’t think Medicaid should pay for [x]. We each have recourse to the political system to try to get our own preferences made into the ruling policy, but the underlying injustice of “I don’t want to pay for that” is part of the machinery of statehood, and we just have to live with it.
Right now, with private insurance and individual payment for health care, that injustice doesn’t operate. I don’t have to pay for Jane’s abortion, and if it bothers me massively to be part of an insurance pool that would, I can find a different job or a different insurer. I have freedom to pursue my conscience, because there is not a one-size-fits-all state solution forcing everyone to do/be the same.
Thus, moving to the state solution – assuming that it normalizes a different moral value set than the one I have – moves me from a position of religious freedom, to a position where I no longer have the freedom, which I find a detriment. Or we could move to a state solution that prohibits abortion altogether, in which case my religious preference is valorized and made the norm, while yours (whether it’s religious or moral or whatever) is zeroed out and YOU don’t get to choose.
It’s one reason that libertarians tend to hate state solutions – not necessarily because they are bad solutions (single payer would probably work) but because state solutions cannot realistically permit people to live out their individual values. A state solution in an anti-abortion culture ends up making abortion a crime; a state solution in a pro-abortion-rights culture ends up making abortion an entitlement. Both solutions end up completely eliminating the ability of individuals to live their values; different sets of people in each scenario, but someone always gets screwed.
Phlinn: You write, “Coercion is the threat or use of force to compel behavior. Threatening to cease exerting efforts on someone’s behalf (specifically, by firing them) is not force….” A question for you: If the government passes a law restricting some exercise of free speech with a specified penalty of a $500 fine — and no more and no less than that — is that coercion? (I won’t touch the notion that it is the employer who is exerting efforts on behalf of the employee….)
Yes, by eliminating religious freedom (in the sense of not forcing people to pay for medical care that they are religiously opposed to) altogether.
You know better, Robert. Requiring religious organizations to follow secular law in some cases does not “eliminate religious freedom.”
Requiring religious organizations to follow secular law in some cases does not “eliminate religious freedom.”
Arguable (and I’m sure we’ll argue it), but immaterial to the instant case. We aren’t discussing a requirement for religious organizations to follow secular law. We’re discussing eliminating private insurance and putting everything under the aegis of the state by going to single-payer. If I have religious freedom in the status quo ante, then there is a state takeover and I no longer have the choices that I once did, I have lost religious freedom.
Well, Robert, I don’t think it’s “arguable” that you tried to conflate limiting religious freedom with eliminating religious freedom. Really, it doesn’t piss me off that you play these rhetorical games, only that you think nobody will notice. I feel somewhat insulted.
If you cannot follow your newfound Neo-Gorean religions which allows you to seize attractive pool boys and make them your sex slaves whether they will or no, because of those silly secular laws against kidnapping and so on, then you’ve lost religious freedom there, too. Religion is not a get-out-of-all-laws-free card and never has been. To what degree religious beliefs get you an exemption, and to what degree the state should be allowed to pass laws that impact people’s religious freedom, is not an easy question, which is why it ends up in the courts so often.
@Corey:
What is the penalty for not paying the fine? If it’s nothing more than the government saying “you suck” then no. If it’s backed up by the government declining to provide any services to you forever more, it also wouldn’t be force. If it’s backed up by jail time for failure to pay, then it’s not really just a $500 fine, it’s either pay a fine or go to jail, and of course that is force. You can’t separate a punishment from the means of enforcement.
I’m not Corey — by the way, hi Corey! You don’t know me, but one of my housemates when to high school with you — but for the sake of argument, what if the penalty for not paying the $500 is that the government will withhold $500 from your paycheck or have it withdrawn from your bank account with a judge’s order.
(Also for the sake of argument, let’s assume that the person in question has a job that pays via paychecks, and a bank account.)
Phlinn: Okay, just checking. I’d say many definitions of coercion don’t hang everything on the use or threat of physical force — Hayek’s for instance does not; he makes room, and rightly so, for perceptions of threat, emotional intimidation, and such — but I was just curious to see how committed you were to your definition.
Ampersand: who is your housemate? And hello to you!
We’re using a different definition of “lose” apparently. Since I’ve never in my lifetime been permitted to take slaves, me joining a religion that calls for that behavior (to no avail, damn you, Johnny Law) ends up with me, behaviorally, at status quo ante. Since I’ve never before been required to pay for your abortions, a legal regime shift where that ceases to be true represents a loss in my available range of choice.
@ampersand:
How is the withholding or withdrawal enforced? Is it fines all the way down, or does physical compulsion get introduced somewhere? Granted, it may require coercion against my bank, rather than me directly by the government, but someone still ends up using force somewhere along the way.
@corey
To be fair, I was trying not to write a treatise on what is or is not force, just pointing out that Julian might not actually agree that what he described was coercion. He definitively did not use the word coerce or it’s variants in his post you were responding to. Without that, your post isn’t nearly as strong. I did include the threat of force, and many of the additional concepts you listed can be brought into that.
My basic argument would be that failure to act on someone’s behalf is not the same thing as causing someone harm. An awful lot of people confuse the two, so that they can justify the use of actual direct force in retaliation for someone just not doing as much to help as they would like. That doesn’t mean I don’t think someone should help in some situations, but I would limit my punishment of inaction to other inaction, not harmful punitive actions.
If you, I had a similar argument on Crooked Timber a while back.
Oh, and lest anyone use the arguments to attack libertarians in general, please note that I’m probably ethically closer to an anarchist. I think government is inevitable given the nature of people, and frankly don’t actually care enough to fight certain specific things it does, and default politically to libertarian on those grounds.
Actually, the threat against banks is not physical force, but further, larger fines and, if those are refused, withholding of the legal status of bank.
But from the perspective of Johnny Examplelad, it comes down to this: The government passes some restriction on free speech with a penalty of $500. The $500 is going to be withheld from him somehow unless he quits society and goes to live off the grid, perhaps as a hermit in a cave. Is Johnny — not Johnny’s bank or employer, but Johnny himself — being coerced?
Corey, my housemate is Sarah Kahn, but the person who told me about that small worldism is Brad Rosman, who also went to high school with you.
No, Johnny is not being coerced. Coercion requires the explicit or implicit use of force. The state is taking his money; this could be viewed as extortion (which it would or wouldn’t be depending on the legitimacy of the state’s process, etc.) but it’s not coercion. Like Phlinn says, we’re shaving with a very thin razor here because libertarians use the word in its tightest definition.
Thanks for clarifying that, Robert. So it’s not coercion, in your view. But is it an infringement on Johnny’s liberty?
Let me ask you another one. Suppose the federal government comes to you to do a little writing for them. In return, they offer to let you off the hook for several thousand dollars in taxes. (For the sake of this example, assume that you pay enough taxes so that this offer is meaningful.) Are they asking you work for free, in your view, or are they offering you compensation?
All state action ends up infringing on someone’s liberty. That might be justifiable (darn the state for infringing on my liberty to murder everyone who gets in my way in traffic!) because the infringement is in the service of protecting a larger or more compelling set of rights, or because of compelling state interest (I wouldn’t want to be drafted, but if the Canadians invade and we have no choice but to raise a mass army to hurl back the Maple Tide, I can live with it), or what have you. Or it might be totally unjustifiable, because it infringes upon an uninfringable right or is done in the service of simply using the state’s power to rob me and enrich some private interest.
So it’s going to be an infringement on my liberty no matter what; the real question is whether it’s a perfectly reasonable infringement that is just part of the balancing act, or an unreasonable infringement. And the most important factor there is, what’s the government action. If the state is fining me $500 because I didn’t put an Obama shrine in my front yard and sacrifice goats to his Satanic Muslim Glory, then the state sucks. If the state is fining me $500 for setting off dirty nuclear bombs in the atmosphere “because I like to see the pretty sunsets”, well, I think that’s probably within bounds and I imagine you’d agree.
As for your second question – that’s an interesting one. My immediate answer is “duh, obviously it is compensation.” But there might be nuances. Do I have to pay taxes on the taxes that they waive on my behalf? IE, do I have to come up with $600 in cash or whatever to cover the tax on the $3000 worth of tax they credit me as having paid?
I think – and we’re outside my sphere of confident expertise in What Libertarians Believe, so kindly apply salt – that in an economic sense this is clearly compensation, since I’m increasing my net worth by whatever they are remitting. In a legal or moral sense, it’s fuzzier – and I think that how the government treats the credit (i.e., taxable, not taxable, does it count as income on my child support calculation, does it count as income when I apply for foodstamps, etc.) will have a major bearing on its exact status.
“Let me ask you another one. Suppose the federal government comes to you to do a little writing for them. In return, they offer to let you off the hook for several thousand dollars in taxes. (For the sake of this example, assume that you pay enough taxes so that this offer is meaningful.) Are they asking you work for free, in your view, or are they offering you compensation?”
Or for progressives, Suppose the federal government comes to you to do a little writing for them. You’re a book publisher. They want you to write and publish a book on from a pro-repairing-gays-through-therapy position. They say that if you don’t do this, you won’t be able to hire employees anymore (remember hiring employees is not a ‘right’). Coercion?
Suppose you’re Planned Parenthood. As part of a comprehensive licensing scheme, you can’t hire doctors unless you pay for reparative therapy. You are strongly opposed to reparative therapy. Problem?
In fairness, Sebastian, I think Amp is trying for greater understanding of libertarian definitions, not just playing gotcha. Your examples are clever but also pretty easy to predict his answers to.
If you want to make him work for it, and/or pressure him to reveal his double standards, pair the examples with items that go in favor of his prejudices but that are oppressive for conceptually identical reasons. IE, a book publisher that has to write about reparative therapy and another that must write about the evils of gun ownership, and with owners who favor and oppose each position.
Robert @19: I’m not seeing an important distinction between “the government has always oppressed members of your faith” and “the government just started oppressing members of your faith.”
A distinction which, in any case, is meaningless in the context of the health-care laws. This isn’t the very first time the Catholic Church has been subject to secular laws.
Religious freedome can be a positive or negative right.
In the context of religious speech, it’s a negative right: the government doesn’t have to enable religious speech, but it should not selectively suppress religious speech. (At least that’s my own view. the current view is more that the government should selectively avoid suppressing speech of a religious nature, so long as it’s the “right” speech.)
In the context of abortion, it’s a positive right: if Paul detest abortion and if the government compels Paul to pay $10 towards Mary’s abortion, arguably the government is violating Paul’s religious freedoms. It’s a decent argument.
Of course, a valid question would be “who gives a shit?” Because of course, the religious freedom argument disappears if Paul is taxed that same extra $10 by the government, who then pays for Mary’s abortion. So in either situation, Paul is out the same $10, Mary still gets her abortion: why should be he permitted to care?
Although I am firmly anti-religinut, it’s fair to say that process matters. Just because the result of Process A and B are the same, doesn’t mean that they’re both morlly equivalent.
Mythago, I agree, that distinction wouldn’t be significant. But that between “we haven’t oppressed your faith before” and “we’re gonna start” IS significant.
In this post we aren’t talking about the Catholic Church and private insurers, but rather single-payer and individual conscience. A commenter thinks that single-payer “solves” the religious freedom problem, and I’m pointing out that it solves it the same way that a guillotine solves dandruff.
But that between “we haven’t oppressed your faith before” and “we’re gonna start” IS significant.
Legally, how so?
I doubt we’d be having this national conversation if, say, Bob Jones University didn’t want to fund fertility treatments for employees in interracial marriages.
I don’t care about “legally”, I care about actually. There are good arguments in favor of single-payer; “it solves all these balancing-of-rights problems!” isn’t one of them.
The Bob Jones example seems off-base; nobody is wanting to deny treatments to only some people in their organization. I agree, on the Catholic issue that you seem grimly determined to drag in, that if the bishops wanted birth control for their girlfriends but not for the parish staff, that would have little resonance.
That’s simply not true. You’re trying to give a “positive right” spin to a negative right.
There’s obviously no religious freedom to refuse to participate generally in government: or if there were, it wouldn’t be found in existing government issues. And there’s no religious freedom which is inherently implicated when the government makes majority-rule decisions that aren’t specifically aimed at religion.
I might think God wants to let the hungry starve and thus reach heaven more quickly. Under your view, it seems that you would view a new anti-hunger program as violating my religious freedom. That can’t seriously be accurate, can it?
Ignoring for a minute the reality that your opinion isn’t more relevant or important just because you claim it’s arisen from your personal deity: can you not understand that there are some people on various sides such that essentially EVERYTHING is a violation of SOMEONE’S religious freedom? Go to war: offend the “life is sacred” folks. Stay at home: offend the “act in the Lord’s name” folks. And so on.
It’s almost as if you’re discussing religious freedom while under the beliefe that you’re the only religion.
The case I make has nothing to do with my personal religion (it’s fair to say that my abortion opposition is somewhat derived from religion, but I differ sharply from my official faith on contraception, cloning, and just about everything else medical that the church takes a stand on). I would make the same case if I were a Jew or an atheist or a New Ager.
I will try to be clearer because it seems like there is some misperception of what I am saying.
It is not that religious opinions are more relevant than other opinions. It is that under a private, diverse system, you have the freedom to find an employer or an insurer (or an employee) that agrees with your values and lets you put them into practice. This is true whether you have religiously-motivated opinions or get your ideas from “iCarly”. Freedom is no guarantee, you might not FIND an employer (I don’t think I’d have much luck finding an employer who agreed with me about everything, because my views are too schizoid) but you’re free to look and choose.
Single payer replaces diversity with uniformity. There’s no way for single-payer to, in the reproductive health arena for example, permit Catholics to pay only for NFP consulting services to everyone in the country but make atheists pay for any and all services. Someone’s preference set – most likely the majoritarian one, but not necessarily – will be enforced on everyone. This is not problematic from a theory-of-government perspective; we only have one foreign policy, and only one set of rules for the legal system, and so forth, even though there are varying preferences for those things too.
It is only problematic from a freedom-of-conscience (whether religious or secular) point of view, and there it is problematic because there is both wide diversity of views, an often very strong commitment to those views, and a lot of topics that the religious/spiritual/moral views are relevant to.
Jesus doesn’t have much to say about farm policy. But the ethical constructs used by many of his followers, and the ethical constructs of Richard Dawkins fans, and so on, impinge on a LOT of medical topics. Not every single topic – but a hell of a lot of them.
The post to which I was responding said that single-payer would solve all these balancing issues. It just wouldn’t. That’s the only argument I’m making here.
The Bob Jones example seems off-base; nobody is wanting to deny treatments to only some people in their organization.
You sure about that, given that the treatment at issue here is only used by “some people” (females)? But you’re dodging; the question is whether or not an employer can refuse to allow its employees to access benefits otherwise available to them, because the employer finds it immoral.
The Catholic church is the actual, real-life example at issue here, so I’m not sure why it bugs you that I am bringing it up.
That’s not the question; it wasn’t the question until you brought it up and changed the subject. Which is why it bugged me.
But I have no objection to answering the question. Yes, any employer can decline to provide any type of health care coverage on moral grounds, up to and including declining to provide any health care coverage at all other than referrals to the practitioners of their particular church, or even just nothing at all, period. (Here I am thinking Christian Science, but it could be other groups or styles of objections. Jehovah’s Witnesses accept medicine but won’t do blood transfusions, I could easily see some schism from that group deciding that nothing that adds outside cells to the human body is acceptable, or something like that.)
I have a bunch of freelance contractors; I don’t provide them any benefits at all on the moral principle of “I’m cheap and you need the work and if you want an employer who does offer benefits you are free to go find that job.” If I did have a health plan I wouldn’t have the slightest qualm about not covering non-medical abortions; I wouldn’t have the slightest qualm about MythagoInc. offering abortion on demand through the eighth month, whether because as godless atheists you hate babies, because you worship the Blood God and he demands constant sacrifice, or because you like abortion rights and want to support them. It’s your fictional company, do whatever you want with it. What damn business is it of mine?
If the only argument you’re making is that single-payer won’t make the eternal religious freedom vs. secular law problem go away, no, it won’t.
But it does really highlight the problem of insurance supposedly being between the insured and the insurer, when the employer is the real customer. (And yes, you can buy an individual policy. I don’t recommend it.)
But it does really highlight the problem of insurance supposedly being between the insured and the insurer, when the employer is the real customer.
Only one of the many fundamental problems with insurance as a primary mechanism for funding health care.
Robert, since having an employer be involved is in no way fundamental to insurance (I’m not sure if any countries do it that way outside the US), that can hardly be called “one of the… fundamental problems with insurance.”
Freedom’s just another word for nuthin’ left to lose….
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