Huemer: Problem of Political Authority

Libertarian political philosophers make this mistake, i.e., that the state can be likened to a security firm, all the time. Thus, Michael Huemer in his book The Problem of Political Authority examines the idea that it is a basic mission of the state to “protect the citizen from criminals and hostile foreign governments.” (31) He finds the state guilty of dereliction of duty from the US courts’ invocations of “the fundamental principle that a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any particular individual citizen.” “The government’s duty, the court explained, was only a duty to the public at large, to provide a general deterrent to crime.” (33)

This is entirely correct. It is not the task of the state to protect anyone by any means at all or to assist the victim in self-defense during the commission of a crime.

Protection, from locks to bulletproof windows to bodyguards to a concealed weapon to karate expertise, is a market service, provided by private firms. It always has been so provided and always was meant to be. It would be a very bad thing if the state concerned itself with “protection.” It would ruin the free market and the safety and security industry.

Instead, the state indeed supplies “general deterrence” by promulgating a penal code and threatening potential criminals with punishment after they commit a crime, perhaps long after their victims are dead, after an exhaustive investigation has concluded, after due process has been observed, after the judge has pronounced a sentence, and so on. The fear of punishment permeates society as a whole. Every potential evildoer willy-nilly takes the cost in the form of possible capture and punishment of his contemplated crime into account. As a result, some marginal criminals are deterred by this incentive of servile fear, though they care not for justice, and are redirected into legitimate occupations.

All people benefit from this deterrence. That includes the criminals, such as thieves, themselves. Without it, crime would skyrocket, and (1) undeterred thieves would face greater competition in their line of “work,” and (2) production would suffer as (2a) otherwise decent people decide that theft beats honest work, and (2b) decreased security of property rights scares off savers and entrepreneurs. Even thieves would be worse off without the state. “Smart” thieves have a vested interest in vigorous theft deterrence: it keeps society rich and ripe for the plucking and keeps their “dumber” brethren in prison.

Huemer then proceeds to argue that “if the [social] contract somehow holds only between the state and the public at large, then perhaps ‘the public at large’ owes something to the state, but no individual does. If, on the other hand, the social contract holds between the individual and the state, then the state must have an obligation to the individual.” But he imagines that the state has repudiated the contract (to protect the citizens), which means that “individuals cannot be taken to be obligated under that contract either.” (34)

Now the “social contract” is not so much between the individual and the state as between the citizens who, presumably unanimously in some town meeting, agree to commission the state and grant it certain powers and responsibilities. One such responsibility may be to punish condemned criminals. As long as the state executes this function with a measure of competence, it may be considered to have fulfilled its contractual obligations. As a result, since deterrence is a costly public good, the citizen body owes to the state, as a logical deduction or praxeological necessity, some financing. Perhaps taxes are the only feasible way to keep the government running. Who should pay how much is of course debatable. But in this case one can no longer dismiss the idea that a citizen can have obligations to the state on the grounds that the state has no obligation to the citizen.

As for the state’s alleged duty to protect folks against “hostile foreign governments,” Rothbard disposed of it long ago:

Especially has the State been successful in recent centuries in instilling fear of other State rulers.

Since the land area of the globe has been parceled out among particular States, one of the basic doctrines of the State was to identify itself with the territory it governed. Since most men tend to love their homeland, the identification of that land and its people with the State was a means of making natural patriotism work to the State’s advantage.

If “Ruritania” was being attacked by “Walldavia,” the first task of the State and its intellectuals was to convince the people of Ruritania that the attack was really upon them and not simply upon the ruling caste.

In this way, a war between rulers was converted into a war between peoples, with each people coming to the defense of its rulers in the erroneous belief that the rulers were defending them.

This device of “nationalism” has only been successful, in Western civilization, in recent centuries; it was not too long ago that the mass of subjects regarded wars as irrelevant battles between various sets of nobles. (“The Anatomy of the State”)

The very idea of “foreign policy” is a despicable fraud: the only proper attitude of one state toward another is unconditional pacifism.

In short, the state very properly has no duty to protect anyone from anything and therefore cannot be charged with viciously abdicating this duty. Hence, the argument against social contract theories based upon this charge cannot get off the ground.

Reading Huemer reminded me of my notes on Rawls and Cohen. Again, if I were behind the veil of ignorance, thinking about what sort of society I’d want to live in, it would occur to me that since I can’t influence who I personally will be incarnated as (as rich or poor, healthy or sick, smart or dumb), I would focus on making the overall society as efficient as possible. This means in particular not its “total happiness” at any given moment, but the speed (and acceleration, etc.) at which this total happiness increases with time.

But that society is precisely libertarian laissez-faire capitalism.

Rawls seems to think differently. He’d rather live in a society where the “morally arbitrary” distinctions between persons, such as the quality of their families or IQs are erased. In practice, that would mean that the accidentally better-off shall toil thanklessly for the benefit of the worse-off. Rawls concedes that there can be “incentives” for the more talented so as to elicit the appropriate effort from them which would regretfully cause society to deviate from perfect equality. Cohen asks why, if justice is our ideal, any incentives are necessary. People should work as hard as they can only to give up the fruits of their labors to the poor out of a sense of moral duty. Perhaps we can even have full-featured capitalism, as long as all consumer goods are distributed equally.

In response, I argue that people act for ends. They perceive future pleasures; choose between them; choose between various means to attain these ends, and act with a hope of bettering their lot. “Moral duty” is not in the equation at all. One is never content with merely following the moral law, for a stone or any other inanimate object, too, is perfectly righteous in this sense. One follows the law for the sake of physical or spiritual survival. But he seeks happiness by working to satisfy his various desires and succeed in his pursuits.

In that case, a man must be ruthlessly brainwashed from childhood in order to forget his own ends and work like an automaton only to have his product confiscated. But what if he wakes up from this nightmare and thinks for himself? That’s presumably where the “incentives” would come in. What if he, responding to the tax laws, refuses to work? Then he must be enslaved and forced to work under threat of the whip. And what if he tries to run away to free himself? Then he must be killed, lest other slaves mutiny, as well.

We can see that Cohen is a murderer of both mind and body. Hs soul is his own business. But murdering talented people does not benefit the worse off, as Rawls himself acknowledges. Nor does enslaving them, since slave labor is extremely unproductive. Nor, in the final analysis, does treating them as tax-serfs. Up we go in this manner until we reach libertarian unhampered free enterprise system as the pinnacle of human social evolution.

This, I think, is what really follows from Rawls’ “original position.”

Huemer makes an excellent point. The virtue of the original position for Rawls is that “since the differences among the parties are unknown to them, and everyone is equally rational and similarly situated, each is convinced by the same arguments.”

This understanding “rests on a particular diagnosis of the phenomenon of widespread intellectual disagreement: that such disagreement is due entirely to such factors as ignorance, irrationality, and biases created by knowledge of one’s individual characteristics.”

But, Huemer continues, that seems to be obviously false. “Outside political philosophy, philosophers carry on persistent debates in epistemology, ethics, and metaphysics, some of which are millennia old. The partisans in these debates commonly appear equally rational, well informed, and intelligent. None appear to be attempting to tailor their theories to their own circumstances nor to be illicitly relying on personal information about themselves… Anarchists do not disagree with statists because anarchists have some peculiar social position or combination of personal traits that somehow would enable them to prosper in the absence of government while the rest of society fell apart.” (48-50)

I myself am a case in point. In the previous post, I argued that Rawls has misunderstood his own invention or thought experiment of the original position. Nothing like the Rawlsian “interventionist phantasmagoria” follows from it. Instead, laissez-faire capitalism should seem far more attractive to the persons behind the veil of ignorance than any other economic system. And I believed that long before I read The Problem of Political Authority. It’s clear that honest disagreements can persist even without emotions or undue self-interest or sinful desires clouding the mind.

A little earlier in the book, Huemer offers another clever argument. The “hypothetical” social contract theory may propose that “one may coercively impose an arrangement on individuals, provided that the individuals would be unreasonable to reject the arrangement.” (44) He counters with examples that demonstrate otherwise. But the idea is even more hopeless. An “arrangement” is ultimately a preference and as such is a subjective and arbitrary ultimate given. Preferences and values are neither reasonable nor unreasonable. They belong to the will not the intellect. It is neither more nor less reasonable to prefer chocolate ice cream to vanilla or vice versa. In this case, there are no “true” values. Who then is to judge whether a rejection of any political system is reasonable or not? Clearly, Smith’s judgement does not determine or invalidate Jones’.

Then “the mere unreasonableness of someone’s rejecting am arrangement does not typically render it morally permissible to coerce that person into accepting the arrangement, nor does it impose on individuals an obligation to accept the arrangement.” (57) Again we can strengthen this conclusion by asking, “Reasonable from whose point of view?” We do not normally have access to God to teach such things with authority.

This argument of course applies specifically to contractual theories, where the agreement itself causes an “arrangement” to acquire force. If we start wondering whose political theory is objectively truest or best, we may no longer be able to call a preference for it “subjective and arbitrary,” but we’ll then also stop using contractarianism, as well.

In Chapter 6 Huemer discusses the “psychology of authority.” He relates an experiment in which people obeyed obviously unjust and illegitimate orders. He proposes that even if it were in fact true that all governments were illegitimate, “it is quite likely that we would still by and large feel bound to obey our governments. That is likely, because even people who are subjected to the clearest examples of illegitimate power still typically feel bound to obey.” (110)

However, I disagree that it follows from this that “the widespread belief in political authority does not provide strong evidence for the reality of political authority, since that belief can be explained as the product of systematic bias.” (111) Rather, what the experiments and history seem to establish is that people tend to overestimate the proper scope of authority. No authority has unlimited discretion, and the mistake people make is imagining that the authority has the right to command them to do evil things. But that does not suggest that they are mistaken as to the reality of authority as such. It leaves open the possibility that some appropriately “limited” government can be justified.

Perhaps the argument could be rephrased in Bayesian terms. Let h = “there is political authority,” and e = “widespread belief in authority.”

Then, considering P(h) to be 0.5 for the sake of simplicity,

P(h|e) = 1 / (1 + P(e|~h) / P(e|h)).

Huemer argues that P(e|~h) is larger than it seems. Perhaps it is as big as P(e|h). Then P(h|e) is still no greater than P(h) (or 0.5). Then e is worthless as evidence for h.

Yet this form of the argument is not convincing, either. What the Stanford Prison Experiment described in the book had in common with a state was the fact that the “authorities” had easily exercised power to hurt people. By virtue of explicit design, both the Stanford “guards” and the state had such power. It may be true that when Smith accepts Jones as a political authority, Smith soon develops a compulsion to obey Jones’ orders, no matter how unjust. At the same time, Jones will probably abuse his powers greatly. There will occur both intellectual blindness and moral corruption on the part of both rulers and subjects. What’s the explanation of this phenomenon?

Speculatively, few people would endorse a Hobbesian absolute sovereign. They do not in their cool-headed philosophical moments believe that one ought to follow unjust orders. At the same time, people’s “real” underlying beliefs are often demonstrated in action. Huemer with some reason rejects the idea that the examples of experiments, war crimes, kidnappings, and so on indicate that people act viciously because they cannot tell right from wrong. The folks involved in these situations are not necessarily more likely than anyone to be perverted psychopaths. That people willingly and readily follow unjust orders suggests that they believe not in authority as such but in absoluteness of authority.

In that case, if h’= “political authority is absolute,” and e’ = “widespread belief in the absoluteness of authority” (demonstrated in action), then P(e’|~h’) is indeed high despite the obvious falsity of h’. But that does not prove that P(e|~h) is also high.

But Huemer is right that there is something about political authority that is uniquely disturbing. In a private firm, the manager is an authority for the technician, but no employee will agree to assassinate the business owner’s competitor at the manager’s command. Similarly, the consumer is an authority for the entrepreneur, but the latter is unlikely normally to break the law to satisfy a malicious customer.

In contrast, regarding the “greatest man-made evils,” Huemer points out, “no one has ever managed, working alone, to kill over a million people. Nor has anyone ever arranged such an evil by appealing to the profit motive, pure self-interest, or moral suasion to secure the cooperation of others — except by relying on institutions of political authority. With the help of such institutions, many such crimes have been carried out, accounting for tens of millions of deaths, along with many more ruined lives.” (109)

In other words, it’s as if the state specialized in committing awful injustices on a massive scale, while at the same time busily “devising theories to explain why we have this obligation” to obey. In addition to its primary mission of destructionism, the state is always at work improving its ability to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable.

Huemer keeps confusing “protection” services with “general deterrence.” (145-8)

“Protection” consists of a wide variety of goods and services, most of which are fully private; they are excludable, and their consumption is rivalrous. I see no case at all for government provision of them. The market works as expected and improves our welfare speedily.

In addition, the vast majority of protection is now already being privately supplied.

General deterrence, on the contrary, understood as the effect of the threat / fear of punishment on the citizens’ decisions to commit violent crimes, is indeed a public good; both non-excludable and non-rivalrous. This generates a case for having it supplied by the state.

Plus, since the state is the only organization that is authorized to punish (with vengeance being proscribed altogether), general deterrence is for the most part already produced by the state.

In this respect, self-defense and punishment have only one thing in common, namely, that both are justifiable uses of violence. But that is where the similarities end.

The state both properly and actually has zero involvement in self-defense. Guns (and skill at using them), alarms, car anti-theft devices, and so on are private goods in the economic sense. Employing them is one’s natural right and responsibility. Do not expect the cops to save your life or stop a mugger! It’s not what they are for. Cops are not “first responders”; they are precisely last responders, getting into action at the very end of the judicial process.

“It is the fear of punishment that law makes use of in order to ensure obedience: in which respect punishment is an effect of law,” says St. Thomas. (ST, II-I, 92, 2)

Protection and deterrence could not be more different, and we’ll make no headway in our philosophy if we conflate them.

Huemer argues that “given the presumption against coercion, the [antipoverty] programs are justified only if it is clear that they have a net positive expected benefit.” (152)

At first glance, it is strange that after much excellent rights-based dissection of government actions, our author up and throws deontology out the window, saying apparently that any “net benefit” of an unjust government policy beats the prohibition of committing injustices and is permissible (or even required).

The subtlety is that his view is based on his analysis of a particular moral dilemma:

Imagine that you are passing by a pond where you see a drowning child. If you can save the child at slight cost to yourself, then it would be wrong not to do so. …

But now imagine that for whatever reason, you are unable to save the child in the pond yourself. There is, however, another bystander who could save the child at slight cost to herself.

This individual, however, does not care enough about the child to do so voluntarily. The only way to cause the child to be saved is to threaten the bystander with violence unless she saves the child. You do so, and she saves the child.

Call this the Drowning Child case. In this case, regrettable as the resort to coercion may be, it seems justified. (149)

First, as I argued before, this conclusion depends on accepting Christian as versus natural morality, a fact which in itself may threaten the conclusion’s validity, since Huemer’s book is fully secular and does not deal with religious commandments at all. Our intuitions have been shaped by two thousand years of Christianity, but unless nature and grace are thoroughly distinguished, proper grasp of these issues will elude us.

Second, even within Christian morality, the threshold to be used in the exchange of justice for welfare is personal and subjective. I need not feel that coercion is justified in the Drowning Child case, even if the author feels it is. Admittedly, this isn’t an important critique, since the desired conclusion can be reached for most people simply by increasing the number drowning children in the pond that can all be rescued simultaneously to, say, a million.

Third, the scenario assumes that “I” am a good and holy Christian (or at least Samaritan), while the bystander is a callous and wicked man. He may even know his duty full well but rejects it with contemptuous pride. Fine. But does the analogy really transfer to the welfare state? Is it the case that the congressmen who coercively impose taxes are God-fearing saints while the people are ruthless hard-hearted egotists? The benevolent authorities must crush the people’s selfishness and have sweet mercy on the poor. The people deserve to be beaten with many blows until they accept the state’s graces.

This understanding is hard to square with Huemer’s previous note, already quoted below, that “institutions of political authority” were the essential means through which monstrous crimes against humanity “have been carried out, accounting for tens of millions of deaths, along with many more ruined lives.” (109) Suddenly he deems the bombing class compassionate and eager to help the workers and the peasants?

Fourth, even if it were so, and the people were generally marked with consuming selfishness, I have argued that tax-forcing charitable donations from them defeats the purpose of charitable giving, which is to increase the charitable feelings in men’s hearts and ultimately to unite mankind with love. The government rules through fear of punishment alone, which almost entirely disqualifies it as any sort of grace-giver.

Fifth, as we will see later, Huemer himself, as I do as well, makes cogent distinctions between a one-time rescue of a person from a life-threatening situation by a friendly individual and lavish permanent welfare by a tax-eating state.