Finance
Libertarian Reciprocity – Econlib
There are a wide range of arguments for what makes a state legitimate, or what gives a state such authority that it creates a duty of obedience. There is one type of argument that I have always found unsatisfactory, and as I thought about it recently I realized why it always fell short in my mind.
The argument I have in mind can be found in the work of thinkers like Thomas Christiano, author of The rule of many: Fundamental issues of democratic theory. Christiano argues that democracy confers authority on government because of the obligation to treat members of our society as equals and show them proper respect. As Christiano sees it, if a law is passed democratically with the support of the majority, disobeying that law would be tantamount to placing your own judgment above the judgment of your fellow citizens. This would mean treating these fellow citizens as inferior, which would be wrong. Therefore, there is an obligation to follow democratically adopted laws.
There are a number of reasons to distrust this argument. Why should we believe that there is a moral obligation to submit to the judgment of others when that judgment turns out to be more popular than yours? And more importantly, what would make this obligation an obligation? enforceable obligation – an obligation that can be enforced through coercion? If you go back a few decades, the majority of Americans disapproved of interracial marriage. Nevertheless, some people still married another race. Those who did clearly believed (rightly!) that their judgment on this issue was better than that of the majority of their fellow citizens. It seems patently wrong to say that in doing this they did something wrong in believing that they had better judgment than the majority, let alone impermissibly wrong in a way that makes coercion acceptable.
But there is a more fundamental reason why I find this line of thinking unconvincing. Missing from these types of arguments is an idea that is much more emphasized in the classical liberal and libertarian tradition: the idea of reciprocity.
I think the increased libertarian focus on reciprocity is why libertarians cite the work of Ronald Coase so disproportionately. It’s not that Coase’s work is in any way uniquely conducive to libertarian politics – you can’t start with the Coase thesis and draw a straight line from there to anarcho-capitalism. But Coase pointed out that economists had conceptualized externalities incorrectly. Previous economic analyzes treated external factors as unilateral cost imposition. But Coase pointed out that externalities are reciprocal: the imposition applies in both directions, between both parties. (This conclusion was also reached independently by the fictional physicist Sheldon CooperAs a result, an attempt to correct for externalities by saying “we should tax the party that creates the externalities” does not get off the ground.
Christiano’s argument suffers from the same lack of reciprocity. Even if you assume that placing your own judgment above that of others is an impermissible error, the situation is still reciprocal. If my fellow citizens say that I must do as they have decided, because if I do not do so I am treating my judgment as superior to theirs and treating them wrongly, I might as well say that by trying to force myself to do what they have decided. decided, they place their judgment above mine, place me as an inferior and treat me wrong. The situation is reciprocal. And by addressing the alleged “error” of valuing one’s own judgment over the judgment of others in this non-reciprocal manner, Christiano’s theory only treats humans equally in an ambiguous “some animals are more equal than others” manner.
I rather argued Yoram Hazony’s concern that an unyielding commitment to free trade can undermine the bonds of mutual loyalty on which a nation depends suffers from the same flaw. I gave a hypothetical example of the choice between buying cheap wood from a Canadian named Carl, or paying more for the same wood from a fellow countryman named Walter:
Presumably Hazony thinks there is an obligation rooted in loyalty to buy from Walter rather than Carl, but it is not clear why. After all, what Hazony invokes so often is the idea of mutual loyalty – and the point of mutual loyalty is that it is mutual. The obligation goes both ways. So why would we say I’m not showing Walter the right loyalty by buying from Carl? Why not say that Walter would fail to show proper loyalty to me, by insisting that I buy from him, despite the enormous additional financial burden this would place on me? Simply saying “mutual loyalty” does not solve this problem.
One of the best recent works of libertarian political philosophy (in my never-humble opinion), Least govern by Dan Moller, makes a similar point about treating the impermissibility of certain actions in a reciprocal manner:
I want to emphasize that, perhaps unlike other presentations of classical liberal ideas, the core impetus is not outrage over whether to giveit is initially bewilderment at the suggestion of what we are entitled to ask. The momentum moves through the conjunction table: I could not make such a demand; on second thought it would be scandalous you to make such a demand of them; and so it becomes clear she should not make such demands of us.
Moller argues that “if we recognize even modest restrictions on making others worse off to improve our lot” – and if we apply those restrictions in a reciprocal and equal manner among citizens – “we quickly run into a form of libertarianism.”
Of course, these are not the only theories of political authority out there. But I do find it striking that so many theories of political authority, such as those based on mutual loyalty and proper respect for the judgment of others, have to eliminate – or ignore – the issues of reciprocity that these principles seem to imply.
