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The 'substantive freedom' fallacy

Richard at Philosophy Et Cetera has an excellent series of posts on the problems with libertarianism. Peter Cresswell of Not PC has responded here and here. The latter post has links to all of Richard's ones so I won't repeat them.

Let me say right from the start that the pure version of libertarianism as espoused by the Libertarian party is unsound, for the reasons given by Richard and more, so I certainly won't try to defend it. But I do want to address the specific issue of what freedom really is, and why it matters. The 'substantive freedom' theory that some socialists use to justify calling themselves liberals is not only a misuse of the word 'freedom' but also, more importantly, doesn't support the kind of policy options that socialist politicians typically prefer.


Why not 'substantive freedom'?

Suppose you are a slave and are forced to pick cotton on a plantation. The slave owner provides you with food and accommodation and other basic needs. According to substantive freedom, your freedom depends only on the benefits provided by the slave owner. If he provides you with healthcare, education for your kids, and you get to live in a luxurious villa with a jacuzzi and 32 inch flat screen TV, then you are free, despite the fact you have to go out every day and pick cotton or face serious punishment.

Note that the above scenario is not entirely made-up. If you adjust the example so that the slave owner takes 40% of your labour instead of 100%, it is pretty close to the current situation in New Zealand.

My view is that the benefits provided by the slave owner increase your standard of living but not your freedom. Nobody outside the Libertarian party is suggesting that taxes should be abolished. The rest of us are willing to give up some of our liberty in order to make a better society. When I call my political views 'liberal', I simply mean that my policy preferences tend to represent an increase in liberty relative to the status quo. A high standard of living for as many people as possible is a fine political goal, and I happen to believe that a lessening of coercion in many areas is the best way to achieve that.

To some extent this is just an argument about terminology. However, the problem with defining freedom so that it means the same as standard of living is that it makes the word 'liberal' useless as a political label. Everyone thinks their preferred policies would improve our standard of living. Whether they actually would do so is an empirical question. For the word 'liberal' to be sensibly attached to a set of political views based on their content, it cannot have the meaning that the substantive freedom advocates want to attach to it. Adoption of the 'substantive liberal' terminology is nothing more than a manipulation of language so that policies inconsistent with socialism are presumed not to work by definition, owing to the difficulty of establishing such policies do not work based on evidence.


What does substantive freedom entail?

Richard gives the example of a person (let's call him A) trapped at the bottom of a well, and points out that this person is not free even though he is not subject to coercion. Let's say another person, B, is building a house nearby.

The unspoken assumption his claim is that, under liberal principles, B ought to release A from the well. I have no argument with this view. The problem is that this debate is not about morality, or what we ought to do. This debate is about politics, or what the government can justify forcing us to do. Let's list some alternatives;

1. The government cannot force B to do anything, but in a large enough community there will always be someone willing to help A because it is the right thing to do (the Libertarian party position).
2. The government can force B to release A, but A must pay B a reasonable fee for this.
3. The government can force B to release A without compensation, and B must also let A live in one of the rooms of his house, give him some food, and pay for A's health care and the education of his children if A cannot pay himself (the Act position).
4. All of the above in more generous quantities even if A chooses to spend all day sitting on the beach or exploring more wells while B works his ass off (the National position).
5. All of the above in even more generous quantities and if A rapes B's wife, A gets to spend a couple of years watching TV, working out at the gym and eating KFC (all paid for by B), then the government will buy B's house using B's own money and rent that house to A for next to nothing (the Labour/Green position).

At most, Richard's example shows that option 1 does not maximize freedom. Option 2 is almost entirely consistent with 'negative freedom' and gets A out of the well at least. Option 3 is about as far as you can go even if you buy into the whole notion of 'substantive freedom'. Options 4 and 5 represent a lessening of freedom compared to 3, on any definition. I choose position 3 because I am willing to give up some liberty in exchange for other values that I hold. Supporters of 4 or 5 could obviously do the same, but would they just please stop calling themselves liberals when they do so.

As far as tax is concerned, even ACT is talking about a less than 10% reduction in the amount collected. But in areas such as health, education, and accident compensation, they would allow us to choose which provider receives our share of government funding. Allowing people to opt out of state monopolies is much more important than a small tax cut. It is 'user chooses' not 'user pays'. Again, this is a substantial increase in freedom on any definition.


Incentives Matter

Almost every argument put forward by a socialist, and Richard's one with the well is no exception, is based on a 'snapshot in time' and fails to take into account how laws affect behaviour on an ongoing basis. The proper test of a law is not whether you can think of an example where the absence of that law might lead to a bad outcome, but whether the effect of that law, over time, would be to produce better outcomes overall.

There is a reason that A is down the well and B is not. If this was a freak occurrence, B would have no hesitation in helping A regardless of the law. A law that forces B to release people like A has three serious negative consequences:

1. People like A have fewer incentives to solve their own problems. They need to take some responsibility by putting a cover over their well, tying themselves to a tree, or staying away from wells altogether. This responsibility can be avoided as long as B is forced to always rescue them.

2. The second is that the time B spends rescuing people like A reduces the time he can spend building houses. Some people will have no place to live because of A's carelessness. Of course A cannot be left in the well, but left to make his own choices, B would probably allocate a block of time each day to rescuing people and spend the rest building houses. If you got stuck in a well outside this time, you would just have to wait.

3. If the problem of people getting stuck down wells becomes serious enough, B will simply refuse to build houses whenever there is a well nearby. This will mean that not only do fewer houses get built, but people stuck in wells will be much worse off than if the government had never intervened in the first place.

The effect of all this is that it's highly doubtful that a law forcing B to rescue A would be a good idea. And this example is at the extreme end of the scale of situations where we allegedly need to coerce others in order to be free.


Conclusion

In short, the 'substantive freedom' theory is a long way from our ordinary understanding of the word 'freedom'. It makes 'liberal' as a political label not necessarily wrong, but certainly useless. In any case, even if correct, it doesn't support the kind of socialist policies advocated by those who use the term.

UPDATE: Richard's response is here.