Neighbors, Fences, That Kind of Stuff
Jason Kuznicki on May 19th 2006 07:20 am |
[Author's note: The following e-mail exchange with Richard Chappell is being reprinted with permission.]
Dear Jason,
I’m a little puzzled by your perception that I’ve been actively involved in “the nasty turn” in the debate [over the nature of property; see here, with extensive discussion in the comments by yours truly, and also here, Sandefur's reply]. My original post was perfectly civil, and the harshest point made was that it’s “foolish” to claim that taxation is “exactly like forcing [someone] to labor for you” — which was, I think, a fair assessment. I quite calmly explained why I think it is a foolish claim to make. Surely this is all well within the bounds of civil discourse.
My only other participation in the debate was to post an update explaining how Sanderfur’s reply misrepresents my position, and expressing disappointment at his uncivil behaviour. Again, nothing “nasty” here. I think my response was quite restrained, considering.
Sandefur, on the other hand, began by blatantly misrepresenting my position, and went on to hurl the most vicious invenctive I’ve ever suffered in all the time I’ve been blogging. His behaviour is utterly beyond the pale of civic discourse. This is to be expected from some
blogs, of course, which gain a reputation for beings “sewers” of public opinion. But I never would have expected to see ‘Positive Liberty’ among them.
Now, I’ve always considered you a good neighbour. But if you’re willing to tolerate such a debasement of your blog, and then express “disappointment” at the victim for the “nasty turn”, well… I guess it’s time to start rebuilding our fences.
Sincerely,
Richard.
Richard,
You did call Sandefur’s views “transparently foolish.” You also called them “extremist” and “absurd.” I don’t think that these were appropriate comments, at least not if you wanted to engage with Sandefur seriously. This is the language of someone who is seeking not to argue, but to grandstand.
Yes, his reply was over the top. Yet I have a hard time disagreeing with its substance; to be honest, I think he was entirely correct in his arguments. Although you may not self-identify as a positivist, and although you may repudiate that position in its more extreme manifestations, I have to say that I find the following quite positivist indeed:
[A]s if the state were breaking laws rather than creating them! …entitlement derives from institutional rules, and our institutions are so set up that individuals are entitled to (only) their post-tax holdings.
This merely serves to insinuate that post-tax holdings are the only legitimate ones we have, and if the “extremist” property rights position is illegitimate because it assumes too much, then I think that this stance is guilty in exactly the same manner. Why should the state be presumed innocent? If we are really talking about the foundations of social life, let us call the state into question as well, and hold it to account for its actions like any other institution. We can’t very well begin an argument by saying “money, property, and private exchange are all arbitrary” — and then end it by saying “but the state is presumed to be correct.”
As to the tone of Sandefur’s reply, if it were up to me, I would certainly have presented his points more dispassionately, but he and I are different people.
It is a grave error to assume that because we post at the same weblog, that he and I will always share some trait you might find admirable in me alone. That you find one of us admirable, and the other less so, is something I hope that he and I both will take seriously and reflect upon in the near future.
Sincerely, and with hope for continued good relations,
Jason
[Chappell promises a post clarifying his ideas on the institution of property. As for me, I have a hard time seeing his views as anything other than positivist, at least as regards property rights: Positivists hold that we only enjoy rights through the "positive" grants made by the state. And this is precisely what Chappell has claimed about the right to property.]
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[...] Update: Kuznicki hits it on the head here. Trackback URL: http://positiveliberty.com/2006/05/here-we-go-again.html/trackback/ [...]
[Just to add my responding email:]
I’ll grant that some of my descriptions were rhetorically loaded, for sure. But not unreasonably or misleadingly so, and all within the context of a substantive argument which engaged fairly and seriously with Sandefur’s position.
I will write a follow-up post clarifying my institutional conception of rights, since that seems to be causing some confusion. (Let me immediately clarify that I don’t “presume” the state to be right. I simply think it’s a category error to confuse unjust institutions with internal violations. You might reasonably criticize our institution of taxation, but this will be on grounds other than “theft”.) But really, one would have to completely overlook significant portions of what I wrote — not least the introduction and conclusion! — and take the sections you mention quite out of context, in order to justify the kind of positivistic interpretation that Sandefur reads into my post.
Regards,
Richard.
I’ve just reread your post, Richard, and I have to admit that while you clearly reject an extreme or systematic positivist account of rights, your theory of property rights as explained so far is otherwise so congruent with positivism that here, at least, the charge has to stick.
Also, I’m very puzzled by the following:
freedom of thought and religion is crucial for human flourishing. Freedom from taxation isn’t.
Yet there are degrees in everything, and there are various levels of freedom and unfreedom. Humans may flourish to a high degree with only modest infringements on their economic freedom, certainly. But they may also flourish to a high degree with only modest infringements on their intellectual freedom. The real gradient here is not between economic and intellectual freedom, but between slight and egregious restrictions on either.
Consider this: The complete lack of intellectual freedom would obviously be a disaster, as we no doubt agree. (And certain countries came all too close in the twentieth century.) But suppose we were forbidden only from believing that the moon was made of green cheese. This is an almost infinitesimal infringement on our liberties in practice.
Likewise with taxation: I think we both agree that a purely confiscatory state, one that owned all property, did not pay wages, and merely allocated to you what commodities it thought was necessary, would be an atrocity. A modest income or sales tax, not so much.
But what troubles me about both instances — the modest income tax and the prohibition on luna-cheesiosity — is the principle of the thing. Once a government has established that it may take away one belief, it has also established that it may take away any belief. All it needs to do (even among rational people like ourselves) is to establish that this belief is not so necessary as all that. (And by what standard? Humans are cussedly multifarious, as we all know.)
And the same holds true with dollars: Once it is established that the government may confiscate the first marginal dollar of my production, it is far from clear where to draw the line — until, that is, we reach the last marginal dollar. A state of full human flourishing would allow me to trade goods and services voluntarily for just this reason: While the government may think that it knows where to stop taxing and regulating (leaving me with “enough” freedom, whatever that means), it is almost certain to be wrong. As I’ve argued at your site, its interventions are also likely to hurt the very people it sets out to help. Cussed multifariousness, again.
This is why I think that an ideal government would be voluntarily financed. An excellent government — but not a perfect one — would be voluntarily financed to the extent that it would be ruined should people choose to withdraw the voluntary portion of their support.
I know that this is utopian; I plead guilty with a smile on my face. And while I do, I work incrementally toward the direction that I think is proper, always checking to see if the theory I have is still supported by the evidence. So far, I think it is.
*shrug*, it might be possible to define a weaker sense of “positivism” that encompasses my institutional account (in which gov’ts are still very much open to moral criticism), but there’s no longer anything objectionable about such a view, and that’s certainly not how Sandefur was using the term. I don’t much care about the terminological issue. The important point is that my argument bears no relation whatsoever to Sandefur’s representation of it.
Here’s my main argument, copied straight from the introduction to my post:
“Property is a “social construction” [rather than a "fixed and immutable" natural category], and recognition of this fact can open our eyes to the possibility of various different systems of property rights. We can then make an informed moral choice between the various options. We shouldn’t just assume the absolutist propertarian conception from the start.”
And after explaining why I think the ‘taxation is theft’ claim involves a category error, I conclude: “We may dispute the merits of alternative institutional systems. But that will take some argument, rather than closing down debate by presupposing a groundless pre-institutional conception of “natural” property rights.”
Note that I leave open the question of what systems would be just (though some of my opinions here will be clear from the rest of the discussion and links).
Now compare Sandefur’s straw man:
“Since property is created by social mores and by government’s laws, therefore there can be no real objection when the government changes the rules and says that what you own is not really yours… I call [this] the “Red Queen view”: just as the Red Queen tells Alice that “all the ways here are my ways,” so the positivist is arguing that all ways are the government’s ways.”
Now this is simply an absurd misrepresentation. No-one who made a minimal effort to read and comprehend my post could reasonably interpret it in such a way. And if you’re going to engage in the kind of scathing insults Sandefur does, you are surely obliged to first ensure that you’ve understood their argument. His failure here is breathtaking.
He attributes to me the idiotic view that gov’ts may do anything, when I explicitly wrote that “That’s not to say that “anything goes”, or that any system of legal rights instituted by a society would be equally legitimate.” This bears emphasizing: he insults me based on the attribution of a position which I explicitly rejected in the post he purports to respond to. That’s just totally inexcusable.
(I’ll respond to your substantive point back on my blog, to keep the debate in one place.)
P.S. Apologies for the typo in my first email — that should of course have been “invective”.
it might be possible to define a weaker sense of “positivism” that encompasses my institutional account (in which gov’ts are still very much open to moral criticism), but there’s no longer anything objectionable about such a view, and that’s certainly not how Sandefur was using the term.
I suppose I still have one question for you here: If the institutional nature of property does not permit arbitrary redistribution of wealth — then what, exactly, stops it from doing so? Do you mean to say that we have a natural right to property — but only to so much property? If so, then say it, and justify your claims with reference if possible to the nature of man and government.
Further, if this is what you really believe, then don’t burden your argument with something that looks so much like legal positivism and that carries with it all of positivism’s unsavory implications. You may reject positivism in your heart of hearts, but how you arrived at that position is not, from what you gave us, altogether clear.
>Do you mean to say that we have a natural right to property — but only to so much property?
You’re trying to look for rights in a utilitarian – you should know that isn’t going to work/ isn’t going to be a fair representation.
I am also concerned about your slippery slope argument
> Once a government has established that it may take away one belief, it has also established that it may take away any belief.”
The problem with these arguments is that their conclusion is entirely defined by how you phrase it. I could say “as soon as the government takes action (like providing national defense) it establishes its right to take any act”
Yes there is a slope there but it isn’t very slippery.
In this particular case it is plausible that a mild tax level is a stable state (all things considered) – with the extremes (anarchy and communism) being unstable peaks.
genius–
It’s quite easy to distinguish between the slippery slope that I’ve suggested and the one that you have suggested, as both the size of the government and the tax burden required to support it have steadily grown over time. Taxation is an easy thing to manipulate, and the difference is far smaller moving from one tax dollar to the next, than moving from any action at all to any other action at all. The latter is pretty hypothetical; the former happens all the time, and it takes a truly heroic effort to shrink the size of the government and with it, the tax burden on the citizens.
Jason – “If the institutional nature of property does not permit arbitrary redistribution of wealth — then what, exactly, stops it from doing so? Do you mean to say that we have a natural right to property — but only to so much property?”
Nope. I’m an indirect utilitarian, remember? The promised explanation is here.
Getting back to the meta-discussion: I’d like for you to address the rest of my previous comment. In particular, I would ask you this: do you believe that bloggers are beholden to some basic ethical standards (encompassing civility and intellectual honesty)? And if so, do you not agree that Sandefur has clearly violated those basic standards?
It concerns me that you seem to be excusing — and certainly tolerating — his behaviour, and treating it as a mere personal difference in taste between the two of you (“but he and I are different people”). You shouldn’t. Sandefur’s intellectually dishonest behaviour is thoroughly blameworthy. And I should think that the integrity of the rest of the ‘Positive Liberty’ team demands that they disavow such unethical blogging conduct. (A retraction and apology from Sandefur himself wouldn’t hurt, of course, but I won’t hold my breath.)
I do believe that bloggers should strive to follow basic ethical standards, and that these standards include civility and intellectual honesty. I cannot, however, presume to hold Sandefur to account for what you would see as a clear — and what I would see as a likely — violation of those standards.
I say that I find the violation “likely,” because, while I greatly disliked his tone, I thought and continue to think that he drew a fair conclusion from much of the essay that you posted. Yes, that conclusion may well contradict some of the other things you said elsewhere in the essay, but “positivism” was so pedestrian an identification of the theory you were using, that the caveats merely make the post incoherent; they do not exonerate the work from the implication he raised.
I will not “disavow” what he has written, because, while he and I share the same blogging space, I have never “avowed” my overall support for his writings. I will say that I would never have written the way that he did on this issue, and I find it regrettable that he did. But it’s not like I can censure him or something — Even while I happen to own the domain name, the policy of this site is that we are all independent, and no one has any more authority than anyone else. I have never exercised any form of editorial control over any of the other writers, and I’m not about to start.
In support of what I am saying, I ask you to recall that he and I have disagreed bitterly in the past — We have disagreed more harshly, if I may be frank, than he has disagreed with you. Recall our recent disputes on intellectual property and of course the propriety of the Iraq war. If you want an apology, I’m afraid you will have to ask him directly.
Yes, I did so, in hopes of resolving this amicably, but have yet received no reply.
I have no problem with harsh disagreement. What I do have a problem with is the intellectual dishonesty of creating a straw man and then attacking the other person based on this misrepresentation.
I’m frankly stunned that you think his interpretation was a “fair” one. A student would flunk a first-year philosophy course if they offered such an unsupported and uncharitable interpretation of an argument. It doesn’t just go against certain “caveats”, but the whole thrust of the essay, including the introduction and conclusion! It simply beggars belief.
And even if it were merely against the “caveats”, such caveats are there for a reason, viz. to clarify my position. You can’t simply ignore them. If one’s initial interpretation would seem to be “incoherent” according to the explicit caveats, then that suggests there is a problem with one’s interpretation. One then has an intellectual duty to read it more carefully and see if one has misunderstood my point. In the case of my post, the alternative interpretation of the argument is quite accessible, being plainly stated in the introduction and the conclusion (where one would expect to find summaries of the argument, after all).
I argued that because property is a social construction, we thus ought to consider the various different ways we might institute it, in order to “make an informed moral choice” between them. Simple.
Sandefur interpreted this as “Since property is created by social mores and by government’s laws, therefore there can be no real objection when the government changes the rules and says that what you own is not really yours.”
But I never said any such thing, and I did say things which explicitly contradict this. (Another example: “Any system which allowed the rulers to arbitrarily seize all a worker’s holdings and leave them to starve would be plainly immoral. The system must be set up in a fair and equitable manner.” That initial post might not have said much about what I think the appropriate external standards are – though I did actually reference ‘indirect utilitarianism’ – but that I think there are some is surely undeniable.) That makes his interpretation stupid. Really, incredibly, stupid. Flunking PHIL-101 stupid.
(Granting that Sandefur is not himself a stupid person, such incredibly stupid behaviour can only be explained through incredible carelessness, or a total lack of concern for understanding and engaging fairly with my argument. Hence the charge of intellectual dishonesty. To compound this recklessness with unwarranted personal attacks and insults of course makes one all the more morally culpable.)
Perhaps you think that “positivism” is a “pedestrian” label to apply whenever anyone uses the term “social contruction”, without regard for context, and no matter the rest of the argument. But that is sheer intellectual laziness and prejudice. My post makes it perfectly clear that I think there are limits on what governments may rightfully do. So it is scandalously irresponsible for Sandefur to present my conclusion as the very opposite, i.e. that gov’ts may do whatever they please. There is no reasonable reading of my post on which that is my conclusion.
There’s no “likely” about it. A plainer case of intellectual dishonesty would be hard to come by.
(Just out of curiosity: are there any breaches of blogging ethics that you wouldn’t quietly tolerate? Say if a co-blogger started plagiarising, or using PL as a platform for hate speech, etc.? Of course you have no reason to condemn Sandefur merely for what I “see” as ethical violations. Perhaps I’m misguided or deluded, and he’s really behaved in an exemplary fashion. But if I convince you that they really are clear violations, then some sort of acknowledgment of his misconduct might be appropriate. Having “basic standards” would seem rather meaningless otherwise.)
Richard –
I await his reply. Yet I stand by what I have said before: To the extent you hold that property is created only by government fiat, you are a positivist. This is the very definition of legal positivism. (Do you, perhaps, believe that something besides government fiat goes into the creation of property? The sheer fact that you offer limitations on the government’s ability to destroy property suggests as much. Perhaps you aren’t really a positivist?)
Troublingly, your assertion that the government was not permitted to seize all property came with no justifications whatsoever. It was merely asserted in the context of an intellectual system whereby property arose solely through government action. Given the arbitrary nature of property rights themselves in that scheme, this is all deeply problematic.
As to punishments of co-bloggers, I don’t do them. If I felt that I absolutely could not abide Sandefur’s conduct (or Rowe’s or Brayton’s), I would leave, and I would turn the domain name over to them. I promised them that I would exert no editorial control, and I meant it. The worst I have ever done was to close a thread when it got taken over by spammers.
Perversely, this could mean that if one of them wanted to own the domain, they could just plagiarize or declare their support for the Nazi Party or something, but, well… These were three people whom I already trusted when I began the project, and I do not expect such behavior from them. I was willing to bet the money and the domain name that they wouldn’t do it. And I hope they will all live up to that expectation.
And like I said before, the word “positivism” is a red herring, I couldn’t care less how you define it. The point is simply this: I said there are limits on what governments may rightly do, and Sandefur misrepresented me as saying the very opposite (and went on to call me “idiotic” and “deserving of the bitterest ridicule” on that basis). It’s that simple.
But if there are limits on what government may rightly do to property, then government does not create property rights; it merely recognizes them. The limits to government action indicate that something other than the government is doing the real work of creating the rights.
The “permission slip” thought experiment is suddenly beside the point, because, if we grant the above, then many of these permission slips cannot be alienated without doing an injustice — and these so-called permission slips have now turned into things rather like natural rights.
(Contrawise, if the government alone creates property rights, then I can see no way of limiting what the government may do with these rights, including to abolish them if it wishes. Your protests to the contrary only admit that, in your own estimation, something besides the government is at work. Now I’d just like you to admit it explicitly.)
Of course, I certainly believe that government enforces property rights. But the mere fact that it may decline to do so in no way means that property rights exist solely because of government action. The rights exist, even when they are violated or completely unrecognized. To give a parallel example, we would both agree, I think, that slaves have rights that are currently being violated — But it is not the case that they have no rights. And if an emancipator came along to free them, we would not say that the emancipator had given or created these rights: We would say merely that he caused those rights to be recognized. And I would do likewise with property.
This is nothing to do with Sandefur’s mischaracterization, but if you must change the subject…
If by “doing the real work” you mean “providing the normative force or ethical foundation”, then of course I agree that the government doesn’t do this. (That’s a straightforward implication of the dozen quotes I gave above.) Neither do natural rights. Utilitarianism does. I say this in every second blog post, so I’m not sure how much more explicit I can be! Again, I’ve explained my view more fully in the followup post — you’re most welcome to respond there if anything remains unclear.
[Much of the miscommunication is probably due to your assumption that ethics is all about rights. I think "rights" talk is mostly a load of obfuscatory nonsense, and that we can get much clearer on ethics -- at least in the political sphere -- if we instead talk about the utility of various institutions. It's not clear to me what rights are, exactly, and I'm not convinced it's clear to anyone else either. I'd certainly agree that slavery is an unjust institution and ought not to be allowed, and this is so because of the harm it causes to the slaves. I don't see what talk of "rights" adds to this, unless you merely mean to say that we ought to establish a legal right against slavery. I suspect that's the only way to translate my view into rights-talk, and even this probably just muddies the waters. Anyway, I explain all this in my linked post.]
Also, you misunderstand the point of the “permission slip” thought experiment. It’s nothing to do with ethics or justice. It’s simply about freedom and interference, understood in non-moral terms. The point is that poverty is a socially-imposed unfreedom (rather than a natural incapacity as is typically assumed), and legal property likewise a social creation. Its moral status is an entirely separate question, and — as I explained to you in the comments of my original post — one that I meant to open, rather than close.
(If an illustration would help, see my post on when it would be appropriate to limit the right to life. If the right to life is not absolute, then property rights certainly aren’t. We can — and should — have a more open-minded discussion about what institutions and legal rights would do the most good. Which is precisely what I was arguing all along.)
Shame on Sandefur
I am disgusted by Timothy Sandefur’s intellectual dishonesty. He propped up a ridiculous “straw man”, bizarrely attributing to me views which I explicitly rejected, and then viciously mocked and insulted me on that basis…
> if the state were breaking laws rather than creating them!
Richard just happens to be applying a definition (of a law – as opposed to a metaphysical right, which is asserted to not exist), basic assumption (utilitarianism as a creator of such things) and level of analysis (the application level) that makes his view true. I think Sandefur has a potentially legitimate objection (even if I philosophically oppose it) by questioning if this is a relevant perspective but he doesn’t really bring it into the debate instead in a burst of adrenaline he gives us the standard jibes.
I think here critical assumptions are buried so deep in their arguments and definitions so as to preclude a true engagement of minds.
> it takes a truly heroic effort to shrink the size of the government.
Interesting many people on the left see it the other way around (i.e. that it takes heroic effort to prevent capitalism taking over. The question I guess is what are they looking at? And what perspective is more important?
One could ask – “if capitalism is more effective (as most capitalists seem to claim) wont power accumulate in the hands of those countries that do fight strongly enough to be capitalist (thus improving their ability to spread capitalism)?”
Or maybe the best situation is to have us sitting somewhere applying a “heroic effort” to maintain our position.
Finally there is the question of whether there is anywhere that is NOT on the slippery slope – personally I think a situation where there is no government would require the highest possible level of effort to maintain and would be the most likely to come crashing down to the bottom.