Brad Delong got me interested in the details of a few of these cases
You can sleep easy if you play by the rules even if you think the rules are non-optimal, as long as you point that out. That’s Milton Friedman.
You cannot sleep easy if you play by the rules if you think the rules give you a license to steal. That’s Robert Nozick, Robert Bork, and Ayn Rand.
That’s the difference between utilitarian and deontological theories. Deontology is a bitch.
To catch up, Robert Nozick freely entered into a lease with his landlord, Eric Segal. After living in apartment for a year or so, Nozick then sued Segal for violating rent control laws and further refused to move out unless paid additional compensation. According to his moral theories this constituted extortion.
Ayn Rand, received Social Security and possible Medicare payments to cover lung cancer treatment. This is despite her characterization of the welfare state as theft and a particularly egregious form of theft because it is legal.
Robert Bork sued the Yale Club after suffer a slip and fall, despite arguing against frivolous lawsuits. I couldn’t find enough information on Bork – in the short time I looked – to get a real sense of his moral philosophy concerning slip and falls.
For Nozick and Rand, however, these are clear breaches of the most common interpretations of their moral philosophy. Does this undermine their philosophy at all?
On one level we are of course tempted to say, no what is true is true regardless of whether the popularizer of those truths honors them. On the other hand “ought” implies “can.” If not even Nozick and Rand can hold to these principles are they a meaningful guide to how we ought to structure our society? While these are by no means view-killing breaches, they do raise the question: is anyone capable of living according to these maxims?
I looked a little in Nozick and Rand’s response. By my reading Nozick’s offers a fair degree of absolution for his philosophy while Rand’s leaves me scratching my head.
Nozick via Julian Sanchez
I knew at the time that when I let my intense irritation with representatives of Erich Segal lead me to invoke against him rent control laws that I opposed and disapproved of, that I would later come to regret it, but sometimes you have to do what you have to do.
This reads to me as this: Yes, what I did was wrong. I knew it at the time, but I was pissed.
This statement moves the onus from the philosophy to the individual. Had Nozick dithered and said “Well, but Segal deserved it” that would be different. Instead, he seems to admit that he acted immorally.
Said another way, its one thing to abandon your principles you when find that they are inconvenient to you. It’s another to fall victim to weakness of will and do something you know you will later regret. We don’t have any philosophy, save perhaps hedonism, that protects people from weakness of will.
Rand on the other hand claimed
It is obvious, in such cases, that a man receives his own money which was taken from him by force, directly and specifically, without his consent, against his own choice. Those who advocated such laws are morally guilty, since they assumed the “right” to force employers and unwilling co-workers. But the victims, who opposed such laws, have a clear right to any refund of their own money—and they would not advance the cause of freedom if they left their money, unclaimed, for the benefit of the welfare-state administration.
This is much iffier. Here she does seem to be saying that different rules apply to her followers simply because they are her followers. This has the feel of ad hocery. There might be significantly more, but it seems to be a more eloquent way of saying “We were just sticking it to the man, that was sticking it to us.”
Doesn’t the taking of benefits imply that more resources will have to be confiscated to support the program? And, while appealing for a refund makes perfect sense, simply using the system without a guarantee that you are matching funds put-in with funds taken-out and certainly without the express permission of the people who are currently being taxed seems morally ambiguous in Rand’s own terms.
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Monday ~ February 14th, 2011 at 1:10 pm
Ryan P
So all libertarians who ever went to public school are hypocrites (except maybe those who only used vouchers, perhaps)? On its face that doesn’t sound like a terribly reasonable position.
If I think the home mortgage deduction is a bad idea, but I also qualify, would I be a hypocrite unless I made a point of calculating what my net deduction is (compared to the standard deduction) and made a donation to the IRS? Come to think of it, what about the standard deduction if I don’t think zero marginal rates at the bottom make sense?
Monday ~ February 14th, 2011 at 1:48 pm
Craig
Libertarians who went to public schools should sit down and have a long, hard think about things, certainly. Many libertarians of my acquaintance are deeply wrapped up in denial of the benefits they have derived from non-libertarian arrangements. I tend to think they would benefit from some reflection.
Are they of necessity hypocrites? No. Children have very little authority over their schooling arrangements, and therefore have very little responsibility for them.
Or at least, we can say that about their years of primary schooling. The charge of hypocrisy becomes more substantive in the case of a legal adult who choses to attend a taxpayer-subsidized institution of higher learning, or choses to take out taxpayer-subsidized loans to pay for education anywhere. Randian individualists will choose instead to enter the workforce directly and return to a (private) college when they have accumulated enough money from the fruits of their own efforts to do so. And this should not have to be explained to them. To do otherwise is looting.
Ryan, you are going to have to work out to what extent you are willing to say morality is co-extensive with legality. It is not all that long ago that you could legally buy, own and sell human beings in this country. Therefore morally acceptable? If you genuinely think the home mortgage deduction is _immoral_, as opposed to merely sub-optimal policy, then YES, you are obliged not to take advantage of it. And you don’t have to do any fancy calculations: you just don’t claim the damn deduction. That’s actually _less_ work than claiming it.
Monday ~ February 14th, 2011 at 1:56 pm
Joe
Could you cite a source regarding Rand’s receipt of social security and (perhaps) medicare payments?
Monday ~ February 14th, 2011 at 2:15 pm
Ryan P
If I were a pure utilitarian, I’d say sub-optimal policy is necessarily immoral. Since it’s extremely obvious that the home mortgage deduction is sub-optimal, it then follows that utilitarians find the deduction to be immoral. For that matter, it’s pretty straightforward to show that zero (or negative) marginal rates at the bottom aren’t the optimal redistribution plan from a utilitarian POV, but I don’t see anyone returning the standard deduction. I don’t think that’s hypocritical for a utilitarian, either. Hypocritical would be if they SAID “I’m a utilitarian, but we should keep those deductions, at least for me.” It’s not hypocritical to have benefited from a public policy you’re opposed to and advocate against. [Similarly, someone who supports more immigration (whether on utilitarian grounds or liberal principle) isn't being hypocritical if they work in an industry that happens to receive a wage rent from immigration restrictions, assuming such a person doesn't advocate for an exception just for them]
Obviously owning a slave would have been immoral despite the laws. But there’s a clear moral difference between enslaving another human because there is no legal sanction, and benefiting from a bad or immoral public policy although having done nothing to enact said policy.
Tuesday ~ February 15th, 2011 at 9:55 pm
Ryan Vann
“Children have very little authority over their schooling arrangements, and therefore have very little responsibility for them.”
Why equivocate? They have zero authority, and thus no responsibility in the matter.
Anyway, I find these sorts of moral hypocrisy cudgel bashings sub-optimal, to borrow a phrase from my consequentialist brethren. Of course, that is a relativistic and normative valuation, but there you have it.
In the scenario of taking medicare/SS, the counter argument is always along the lines of “The entire program was sold a direct funding scheme. Like any retirement instrument; I’m just collecting on the money I had diverted from me.” To some, that might not be convincing, but considering the only way to escape reality is through death or constant acid trips, I find it reasonable enough. Of course, the immediate response is that the person is just rationalizing violations of morals. Soon enough it devolves into simian crap tossing contests, and I’m surprised it is being dredged up from the swamps of irrelevancy to we thrown at a dead Russian lady.
Wednesday ~ February 16th, 2011 at 1:40 pm
Johnnie Linn
If hypocrisy is a universally recognized sin, perhaps the start of a universally applicable moral system is a universally recognized definition of hypocrisy.