[0:00]A production of WGBH Boston in association with Harvard University. Funding for this program is provided by POM Wonderful 100% Pure Pomegranate Juice. Additional funding provided by William D. Budinger, Gerry Cardinale, Ann B. and Thomas L. Friedman, Kenneth M. Hirsh, The Margot and Thomas Pritzker Family Foundation, and by Paul and Mary Anderson, Bruce G. Bodaken, Christman-Horvath Foundation, The Goldman Sachs Foundation, The Hermine and David Heller Foundation, Gerald D. Hosier, Joy Foundation, Laura and Gary Lauder, Markle Foundation, William E. Mayer, Dov Seidman. Harvard University's Justice with Michael Sandel. Free To Choose. A production of WGBH Boston.
[0:29]When we finished last time, we were looking at John Stuart Mill's attempt to reply to the critics of Bentham's utilitarianism. In his book Utilitarianism, Mill tries to show that critics to the contrary, it is possible within the utilitarian framework to distinguish between higher and lower pleasures. It is possible to make qualitative distinctions of worth, and we tested that idea with the Simpsons and the Shakespeare exerpts. And the results of our experiment seem to call into question Mill's distinction. Because a great many of you reported that you prefer the Simpsons, but that you still consider Shakespeare to be the higher or the worthier pleasure. That's the dilemma with which our experiment confronts Mill. What about Mill's attempt to account for the specially weighty character of individual rights and justice in Chapter 5 of Utilitarianism. He wants to say that individual rights are worthy of special respect. In fact, he goes so far as to say that justice is the most sacred part and the most incomparably binding part of morality. But the same challenge could be put to this part of Mill's defense. Why is justice the chief part and the most binding part of all morality? Well, he says because in the long run if we do justice, and if we respect rights, societies as a whole will be better off in the long run. Well, what about that? What if we have a case where making an exception and violating individual rights actually will make people better off in the long run? Is it alright then to use people? And there's a further objection that could be raised against Mill's case for justice and rights. Suppose the utilitarian calculus in the long run works out as he says it will, such that respecting people's rights is a way of making everybody better off in the long run. Is that the right reason? Is that the only reason to respect people? If the doctor goes in and yanks the organs from the healthy patient who came in for a checkup to save five lives. There would be adverse effects in the long run. Eventually people would learn about this and would stop going in for checkups. Is it the right reason? Is the only reason that you as the doctor won't yank the organs out of the healthy patient, that you think, well, if I use him in this way in the long run more lives will be lost? Or is there another reason having to do with intrinsic respect for the person as an individual? And if that reason matters, then it's not so clear that even Mill's utilitarianism can take account of it. Fully to examine these two worries or objections to Mill's defense, we need to push further. And we need to ask in the case of higher or worthier pleasures, are there theories of the good life that can provide independent moral standards for the worth of pleasures? If so, what do they look like? That's one question. In the case of justice and rights, if we suspect that Mill is implicitly leaning on notions of human dignity or respect for persons that are not strictly speaking utilitarian. We need to look to see whether there are some stronger theories of rights that can explain the intuition which even Mill shares, the intuition that the reason for respecting individuals and not using them goes beyond even utility in the long run. Today we turn to one of those strong theories of rights. Strong theories of rights say individuals matter, not just as instruments to be used for a larger social purpose or for the sake of maximizing utility. Individuals are separate beings with separate lives, worthy of respect. And so it's a mistake according to strong theories of rights, it's a mistake to think about justice or law by just adding up preferences and values. The strong rights theory we turn to today is libertarianism. Libertarianism takes individual rights seriously. It's called libertarianism because it says the fundamental individual right is the right to liberty. Precisely because we are separate individuals, we have a fundamental right to liberty.
[7:07]And that means a right to choose freely, to live our lives as we please, provided we respect other people's rights to do the same. That's the fundamental idea. Robert Nozick, one of the libertarian philosophers we read for this course, puts it this way. Individuals have rights so strong and far-reaching are these rights that they raise the question of what if anything the state may do. So what does libertarianism say about the role of government or of the state? Well, there are three things that most modern states do that on the libertarian theory of rights are illegitimate, are unjust. One of them is paternalist legislation. That's passing laws that protect people from themselves. Seatbelt laws, for example, or motorcycle helmet laws. The libertarian says, it may be a good thing if people wear seatbelts, but that should be up to them. And the state, the government, has no business coercing them, us, to wear seatbelts by law. It's coercion. So no paternalist legislation. Number one. Number two, no morals legislation. Many laws try to promote the virtue of citizens, or try to give expression to the moral values of the society as a whole.
[9:03]Libertarians say, that's also a violation of the right to liberty. Take the example of, well, a classic example of legislation offered in the name of promoting morality traditionally have been laws that prevent sexual intimacy between gays and lesbians.
[9:29]The libertarian says, nobody else is harmed, nobody else's rights are violated. So the state should get out of the business entirely of trying to promote virtue or to enact morals legislation. And the third kind of law or policy that is ruled out on the libertarian philosophy is any taxation or other policy that serves the purpose of redistributing income or wealth from the rich to the poor. Redistribution is a kind, if you think about it, says the libertarian, is a kind of coercion. What it amounts to is theft by the state or by the majority, if we're talking about a democracy, from people who happen to do very well and earn a lot of money.
[10:33]Now, Nozick and other libertarians allow that there can be a minimal state that taxes people for the sake of what everybody needs, the national defense, police force, judicial system to enforce contracts and property rights. But that's it. Now, I want to get your reactions to this third feature of the libertarian view. I want to see who among you agree with that idea and who disagree and why. But just to make it concrete and to see what's at stake, consider the distribution of wealth in the United States. The United States is among the most inegalitarian societies as far as the distribution of wealth of all the advanced democracies. Now, is this just or unjust? Well, what does the libertarian say? The libertarian says, you can't know just from the facts I've just given you, you can't know whether that distribution is just or unjust.
[12:07]You have to look at two principles. The first he calls justice in acquisition, or initial holdings. And what that means simply is did people get the things they used to make their money fairly? So we need to know was there justice in the initial holdings? Did they steal the land or the factory or the goods that enable them to make all that money?
[12:43]The first principle is met. The second principle is did the distribution arise from the operation of free consent, people buying and trading on the market? As you can see, the libertarian idea of justice corresponds to a free market conception of justice. Provided people got what they used fairly, didn't steal it, and provided the distribution results from the free choice of individuals buying and selling things, the distribution is just. And if not, it's unjust.
[13:25]So, let's in order to fix ideas for this discussion, take an actual example. Who's the wealthiest person in the United States? Wealthiest person in the world? Bill Gates. It is. That's right. Here he is.
[13:59]Net worth $40 billion, source Forbes 2009. You'd be happy too. Now, what's his net worth? Anybody have any idea? That's a big number. During the Clinton years, remember there was a controversy, donors, big campaign contributors were invited to stay overnight in the Lincoln bedroom at the White House. I think if you contributed $25,000 or above, someone figured out at the median contribution that got you invited to stay a night in the Lincoln bedroom, Bill Gates could afford to stay in the Lincoln bedroom every night for the next 66,000 years. Somebody else figured out, how much does he get paid on an hourly basis? And so they figured out since he began Microsoft, suppose he worked what, 14 hours per day. A reasonable guess. And you calculate this net worth, it turns out that his rate of pay is over $150, not per hour, not per minute, $150, more than $150 per second.
[15:20]Which means, which means that if on his way to the office, Gates noticed a $100 bill on the street, it wouldn't be worth his time to stop and pick it up.
[15:38]Now, most of you will say, some net wealthy, surely we can tax them to meet the pressing needs of people who lack an education or lack enough to eat or lack decent housing. They need it more than he does. And if you were a utilitarian, what would you do? What tax policy would you have? You'd redistribute in a flash, wouldn't you? Because you would know being a good utilitarian that taking some a small amount, he's scarcely going to notice it, but it will make a huge improvement in the lives and in the welfare of those at the bottom.
[16:30]But remember, the libertarian theory says we can't just add up and aggregate preferences and satisfactions. That way, we have to respect persons and if he earned that money fairly without violating anybody else's rights, in accordance with the two principles of justice in acquisition and justice in transfer, then it would be wrong. It would be a form of coercion to take it away. Michael Jordan is not as wealthy as Bill Gates, but he did pretty well for himself. You want to see Michael Jordan? There he is. His income alone in one year was $31 million, and then he made another $47 million in endorsements for Nike and other companies. So his income was in one year $78 million. To require him to pay, let's say, a third of his earnings to the government to support good causes, like food and healthcare and housing and education for the poor, that's coercion. That's unjust. That violates his rights.
[17:53]And that's why redistribution is wrong. Now, how many agree with that argument? Agree with the libertarian argument that redistribution for the sake of trying to help the poor is wrong. And how many disagree with that argument? All right, let's begin with those who disagree. What's wrong with the libertarian case against redistribution? I think these people like Michael Jordan have received, um, we're talking about working within a society and they've received a larger, um, gift from the society and they have a larger obligation in return, uh, to give that through redistribution. You know, you can say that Michael Jordan may work just as hard as someone who works, um, you know, doing laundry 12 hours, 14 hours a day, but he's receiving more. Um, I don't think it's fair to say that, you know, it's all on his, on his, you know, inherent, you know, hard work. All right, let's hear from defenders of libertarianism. Why would it be wrong in principle to tax the rich to help the poor? Go ahead. My name's Joe and I collect skateboards. I've since bought a hundred skateboards. I live in a society of 100 people. I'm the only one with skateboards. Suddenly everyone decides they want a skateboard. They come into my house, they take my, they take 99 of my skateboards. I think that is unjust. Now, I think in certain circumstances, it becomes necessary to overlook that injustice, perhaps condemn that injustice, as in the case of the cabin boy being killed for food. If people on the verge of dying, perhaps it is necessary to overlook that injustice, but I think it's important to keep in mind that we're still committing injustice by taking people's belongings or assets. Are you saying that taxing Michael Jordan, say a 33% tax rate, for good causes to feed the hungry is theft? I think it's unjust. Yes, I do believe it's theft, but perhaps it is necessary to condone that theft. But it's theft. Yes.
[20:17]Why is it theft, Joe? Why is it like your collection of skateboards? It's theft because, uh, at least in my opinion, and by the libertarian opinion, he earned that money fairly. Um, and it belongs to him, so to take it from him is by definition theft.
[20:39]All right, let's hear if there's, uh, who wants to reply to Joe?
[20:49]I don't think this is necessarily a case in which you have 99 skateboards and the government, or you have 100 skateboards and the government's taking 99 of them. It's like you have more skateboards than there are days in a year, you have more skateboards than you're going to be able to use in your entire lifetime and the government is taking part of those. And I think that if you're operating in a society in which the government's not, in which the government doesn't redistribute wealth, that that allows for people to amass so much wealth that people who haven't started from this very, the equal footing in our hypothetical situation that doesn't exist in our real society, get undercut for the rest of their lives. So you're worried that if there isn't some degree of redistribution, if some are left at the bottom, there will be no genuine equality of opportunity. All right. The idea that taxation is theft, Nozick takes that point one step further. He agrees that it's theft. He's more demanding than Joe. Joe says it is theft, maybe in an extreme case it's justified, maybe a parent is justified in stealing a loaf of bread to feed his or her hungry family. So Joe is a, what would you call yourself? A compassionate quasi-libertarian? Nozick says if you think about it, taxation amounts to the taking of earnings. In other words, it means taking the fruits of my labor. But if the state has the right to take my earnings or the fruits of my labor, that means it owns my labor itself.
[23:09]And what is forced labor? Forced labor, Nozick points out, is what? It's slavery.
[24:20]Because if I don't have the right, the sole right to my own labor, then that's really to say that the government or the political community is a part owner in me. And what does it mean for the state to be a part owner in me, if you think about it, it means that I'm a slave, that I don't own myself.
[24:50]So what this line of reasoning brings us to is the fundamental principle that underlies the libertarian case for rights. What is that principle? It's the idea that I own myself. It's the idea of self-possession. If you want to take rights seriously, if you don't want to just regard people as collections of preferences, the fundamental moral idea to which you will be led is the idea that we are the owners or the proprietors of our own person.
[25:35]And that's why utilitarianism goes wrong. And that's why it's wrong to yank the organs from that healthy patient. You're acting as if that patient belongs to you or to the community, but we belong to ourselves.
[25:53]And that's the same reason that it's wrong to make laws to protect us from ourselves, or to tell us how to live, tell us what virtues we should be governed by. And that's also why it's wrong to tax the rich to help the poor, even for good causes, even to help those who are displaced by the Hurricane Katrina. Ask them to give charity. But if you tax them, it's like forcing them to labor. Could you tell Michael Jordan he has to skip the next week's games and go down to help the people displaced by Hurricane Katrina? Morally it's the same.
[26:36]So the stakes are very high. So far we've heard some objections to the libertarian argument. But if you want to reject it, you have to break into this chain of reasoning, which goes, taking my earnings is like taking my labor, but taking my labor is making me a slave. And if you disagree with that, you must believe in the principle of self-possession. Those who disagree, gather your objections and we'll begin with them next time.
