Positive Liberty

As usual, the sidebar items predict future PL posts. I’m getting a lot of new blog material through George W. Carey’s reader Freedom and Virtue, now available to your left. It’s a recap of the high points in the 1960s libertarian-conservative debate, with much subsequent material, and it’s well worth reading now that libertarians are again in a public discussion about their place in the American political landscape: Will it be right, left, or neither?

Again and again in the essays I have read, conservatives criticize libertarians in terms similar to the following:

[T]he question to be answered by the libertarians is this: What will be the effect of a system of law that says only that it is not in the interest of man to commit a crime? Rousseau’s answer was: There will be more crime. There will be more crime because once people are not governed by decent habits instilled in them with the assistance of law, “they will soon enough discover the secret of how to evade the laws.” [Walter Berns, "The Need for Public Authority," in ibid.]

Conservatives often argue that beyond enforcing the laws, the state must foster private moral virtue, otherwise society will fall into crime and thence into collapse. Below the fold, I’m going to look at this argument a bit more closely and then propose what I see as the real glue holding society together, which is neither private virtue nor simply enlightened self-interest, but scarcity and division of labor, which have many civilizing effects that self-interest alone does not. The conservative critique of libertarianism therefore fails here, because private virtues or vices are generally irrelevant in how societies are organized.

The conservative argument against libertarianism usually begins as above; it then proceeds to a laundry list of virtues, varying from one conservative to the next and from one era to another (Should the races mix? Or is this a private vice that will lead to social collapse? Some have indeed insisted on this). Whatever the recipe, always there are state actions to enforce private moral virtues.

The whole enterprise is of course repulsive to libertarians: laws against birth control, which we hope will keep the population up; laws against blasphemy, which we hope will turn away the anger of G-d; laws against pornography, which stop us from feeling icky; and forced education to inculcate private virtues from a young age. (There are also cushy government jobs for those who pride themselves on their virtue, but let’s not talk about that part for the moment.)

A version of this argument can also be found in the social conservative case against homosexuality: We must not allow this liberty, because it will bring the collapse of civilization itself. Tolerating gays and lesbians is “A Freedom Too Far,” as the title of one anti-homosexual book would have it. Or, as James Dobson puts it,

And that’s why it [same-sex marriage] will destroy marriage. It will undermine the traditional relationship between men and women. It has happened in the Netherlands. Young people are not getting married. When you go in that direction, you confuse the meaning of marriage, and then it is destroyed. The family is destroyed. That is the foundation for Western civilizations, and I tell you it will bring the destruction of this nation and many others if we go in that direction.

Yet nowhere are conservatives more murky than when they try to offer a coherent mechanism for this social collapse, rather than simply an emotional appeal. What, exactly, are the causal links that would lead from private vices to the actual collapse of a society? To this there is never a satisfying answer.

Meanwhile, in the course of history, I observe many, many societies full of evil individuals, people who indulge not only in private vices but also in outright crime, with real and innocent victims. These societies may endure and prosper for decades or even centuries. China has the most rapidly growing economy of our era, yet it practices massive infanticide — surely a moral evil if ever there was one. Why hasn’t the sky fallen on them? It would seem that evil and society can live quite well together, even if the evil is undoubtedly grave, and even if it has an external victim. How much less, then, does society have to fear from private vices?

Or consider our own society, where the Internet has made pornography vastly more available — and where, in the same time period, rape and other violent crimes have become much less common. We might agree or disagree that pornography is a private vice, that it’s harmful to one’s salvation, or that it makes for a bad individual character. We might even set aside the contrarian thesis that pornography provides an outlet for sexual frustration and therefore reduces the urge to commit rape. Yet I feel I am on fairly solid ground in asserting that, if the conservatives of the 1960s were told of a society that took in as much porn as we do, they would be surprised that we hadn’t already given up the collective ghost.

Back then, the fear of indecency in private life concerned more than just individual character — It was also a specific prediction about a society like ours, doing exactly the things that we do today. Midcentury conservatives worried about cartoon pigs kissing and cartoon cows who didn’t wear skirts — h/t: BoingBoing.(*) They saw Playboy as a sign of imminent disaster and fought valiantly to keep it out of their communities. The theater that started showing x-rated movies horrified them, while we can watch x-rated movies whenever we like in the comfort of our own homes.

So where is the social disaster, already?

Disconfirmations of the private-vice-to-social-collapse thesis abound. And as I noted downblog, cases supporting the theory seem almost nonexistent. Perhaps there is Rome — but even here, a considerable debate exists. The historical sources are relatively poor, the ethic being preserved was downright vicious, and the social conditions were so far removed from modernity that the example might not mean much of anything even if it were confirmed beyond all doubt that the Romans lost their empire to their legendary orgies.

Now, I can think of many puritanical societies that learned to loosen up a bit, but — outside of myths and parables — I can’t come up with a single example of the outright collapse of a society owing to its sexual mores or its fondness for booze or drugs (The Opium Wars? China had problems aplenty, of which opium was certainly a symptom, but it was not the root cause). I tentatively conclude, then, that in arguing for private virtue as the key to social harmony, conservatives may make an intuitively appealing case, but without clear empirical support or evident causal mechanism.

Yet oddly, I agree with part of the conservative critique of libertarianism quoted above: Self-interest all by itself is a lousy foundation for society, and if rational self-interest were all that we could offer as an incentive to join the social contract, then conservatives would be manifestly justified in wondering what holds society up. (That conservatives would insert a frankly mysterious appeal to virtue here is typical, but this is a way of thinking that I cannot share.)

I agree with the conservatives that a focus on self-interest runs into the kind of prisoner’s dilemma that the Berns passage suggests: It’s a definite improvement on my lot if we all cooperate in civil society. But it’s conceivably an even bigger improvement if everyone else cooperates while I defect. “Why not break the laws?” Berns asks near the close of his essay — and he concludes that only virtue prevents the rationally self-interested from cheating on the social contract. Society needs virtue, and therefore it also needs laws to enforce virtue; the libertarian position is defeated.

The problem, though, is that self-interest describes only very badly the real thing that draws members of society together, which I argue is scarcity. Keeping in mind that it’s always easier to shoot down a grand model of how society works than it is to offer a working replacement, still I think that this one has a good deal going for it.

Social individuals do tend on the whole to be rationally self-interested, and this is indeed a good thing, but society will not fall even if many individuals are habitually altruistic, irrational, libertine, or criminal. None of these states change the fundamental fact of scarcity, which generally brings us together to seek material security, almost no matter what our minds may think about it.

Consider the life of an individual dedicated to private, individual vice: He may be an avid consumer of pornography, or a marijuana smoker, or (for the scolds of a different era) a fellow like me, who looks forward to a nice gin martini every Friday evening, and who sometimes has a couple of beers on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Or he may practice something I consider a genuine vice — using heroin, for instance.

Now this individual is in no sense freed from material wants. In most cases he still has to obtain a living, and even the very rich libertine still has to buy and sell in the market if he wishes to survive off his accumulated wealth. They are rare to the point of being legendary, those fabulously wealthy individuals who can purchase everything they need to devote themselves to a life of private vice. And even they will need medical care sooner or later.

The need to provide for one’s material wants is a natural limit on vice, and a first step on the path to civilization, whether the libertine justifies his individual vices rationally, or hedonistically, or as some form of unappreciated altruism. It impels us toward actions similar to those that a rationally self-interested person might take, even if we take them kicking and screaming and hating it all the while.

It doesn’t matter whether the devotee of private vice thinks that he is acting in his self-interest or not. It doesn’t matter whether he tells himself that he is a heroic flouter of social convention, or whether he thinks himself a small, shameful, perverted miscreant. It doesn’t matter what he thinks at all: What matters is that he will still generally act to avoid material want, and, to the extent that he doesn’t, he will be punished.

Insofar as he acts to eat, drink, clothe himself, shelter himself, and so forth, the libertine will have to interact with others: Society will therefore have to continue, as will the libertine’s interaction with it — else his private vice immediately becomes its own punishment. Faced with scarcity, vice either curbs itself — or it destroys the bearer.

Once our libertine accepts that he must still meet the material needs of human life, he is drawn into the world of employment, with all of the cultural pressures that it entails. Now it’s in his best interests to make alliances with others for the sake of security, to conform to codes of conduct, and to excel in whatever areas he can. Thereupon he is placed in a specialized job, one for which he has comparative advantage. Will he go his own way in his private time? Of course. And you would want the same privilege — which is really a right that we extend to everyone.

Now, you ask — won’t our libertine just turn to a life of crime to support his bad habits? His habits are bad already, so perhaps he will treat others badly as well. There is certainly some weight to this suggestion. Yet only some individuals will turn to crime to further their enjoyment of private vices; others will lead exterior lives that are otherwise normal. Which group does better, overall? And what does society have to fear from a bunch of self-defeating, self-limiting losers?

I submit that the best way to enjoy a life of private vice is to partake in the ordinary run of society as a means of supporting that vice. First, it’s a longer-term solution with less risk of getting caught. Second, it pays better. Vanishingly few people actually make a living off of outright crime, after all. And third, even if some people do turn to occasional crime through the encouragement of their vices, the overall bargain may yet work out best for all of us: We may be best off allowing some vice, and some crime, if in doing so we also permit free exchange, economic specialization, and the personal liberty that is necessary for both. The tables have been turned, and in this particular game, it’s not a prisoner’s dilemma anymore. It doesn’t pay to defect. It pays to let the suckers defect — then we take our greater rewards, and they take their much lesser ones, or their punishments.

Whereas a society that perished from lack of personal virtue is nigh on impossible to find, plenty of societies have struck precisely this bargain: They punish outright crime, of course, even while conceding that some of it is always going to happen. And they look the other way at private vices. In doing so, they accept what turns out to be a massively good deal for the moderate libertine and the saint alike — material economic progress, which it would be nonsensical to interrupt in the name of perfect crimelessness, much less perfect private virtue.

Good government requires something quite different from the suppression of private vice; it requires a series of attitudes toward other individuals and toward the state that may be had by a virtuous man or by a libertine, as their first teacher is scarcity, a condition that exists for both. These vales are in principle discoverable, through trial and error, by anyone, even a libertine.

What keeps the hedonist working? Why, the fear of suffering, of course. What keeps him in good relations with his neighbor? The constant need to trade with him. The society that devotes its leisure time to porn still needs to eat, every bit as much as the society that devotes its leisure time to (bowdlerized) Shakespeare. The highest efficiency outcome for both societies is just the same: specialization and trade. Thus neither society is in any danger of collapse simply from its hobbies.

This is why modern “society” never collapses, short of some gross imposition of force, and why it can so quickly put itself back together again, once the rule of law is functioning normally again. Society is robust because everyone wants to alleviate their own material scarcity, and because they want the institutions that will make it possible to use whatever specialized talents they have — which means that people in successful societies tend generally to want private property, the rule of law, and protection for basic individual liberties. Yes, there are limits to this principle, but it holds overall, and well enough.

Now wait a minute — Modern America hardly seems a place where scarcity has much drawing power. We’re the most materially abundant culture ever. Doesn’t this mean that scarcity has less of a hold on us, and therefore we must worry all the more about private vices? Are we caught in the cycle, dreaded by early modern authors, that moves from rustic simplicity, to virtue, to wealth, to decadence, to decline — and back to rustic simplicity?

In a word, no. I will devote the rest of this piece to explaining why individual Americans are not the most free of scarcity constraints, but are actually the most bound by them. Scarcity is worse for us than for anyone else, and it holds us to civil society far more tightly than those who live in less economically advanced cultures.

We live in a culture where, apparently, the large majority of people have enough to get by. I say “apparently,” however, because in reality, each one of us — considered singly — is almost entirely destitute. We have abundance through specialization of labor and through trade for comparative advantage, which vastly increases the amount of material wealth to go around. Yet we are quite poor without these economic techniques, poorer perhaps than even preliterate aborigines.

A typical modern man thrown into the wilderness will be utterly helpless, so much is he a creature of society and the specialization of labor. Even the rudest primitive would do better, for the primitive would know what plants were good to eat, how to catch animals, how to make a fire, and so forth: This general knowledge of survival is useful in situations where the primitive often finds himself, but it is superfluous to the modern man. The modern man — schooled in contract law, aerodynamics, or surgery — will have nothing to offer in this situation.

Modern man therefore lives in a condition not of abundance, but scarcity, in which he is utterly dependent on his fellows. If I want to satisfy my hunger with something other than acorns gathered in the park, then it behooves me not to be obnoxious to the grocers. Division of labor produces in the individual a condition of scarcity, and this scarcity teaches a multifaceted civility.

This process can be seen in the steady progress of manners from the early middle ages until nearly the present day, a phenomenon well documented by historians. In premodern societies, one stood to lose relatively little from boorish behavior, as trade, specialization, and the extensive network of interpersonal contacts characterizing the modern world were still in their infancy. Even while most people seldom traveled beyond the town or village of their birth, still, irritating others with your vices — public drunkenness, lewd behavior, wiping your nose on your sleeve, et cetera — wasn’t such a bad alternative. What did you stand to lose? Not so much, really, because neither of you traveled. You had to do what little trading you did with the same people all the time, all of whom were equally landlocked. But when you had to travel to London or Paris or New York to make your way in the world — well, suddenly good manners became a matter of economic importance, one by which you would be judged in the absence of other evidence. Scarcity, not virtue, created social polish.

(I say that the progress of manners has continued until “nearly” the present day because it’s clear that the last hundred years or so has seen a coarsening of manners as regards place settings, hat etiquette, holding the door for ladies, and so forth. At least some of this is motivated by egalitarian social philosophy and may therefore not represent a meaningful “decline,” but only a conscious choice to adopt a different set of manners reflecting the values of individual actors. I regard the rest of the modern confusion of manners as a temporary phenomenon, created by the rapid rise of the middle and lower classes through industrial capitalism, with sufficient time neither to assimilate the manners of yesteryear nor to invent a new set of rules. It is not a sign of decay, but of abundance. And out of it may come the removal of many unnecessary rules, even while we still enhance, say, the degree of cleanliness and personal decorum we show to one another — which are not at all unnecessary advances. I may admire the place settings of the nineteenth century, but I wouldn’t care to smell the dinner guests in July.)

As we have grown more mannered, we’ve also learned to tolerate a number of entirely private vices, once it was discovered that these vices do not interfere with the progress of society. Thus we don’t care so much anymore about the vices of masturbation, gambling, alcohol, or adultery. We’ve privatized these things, making them questions outside the public sphere, and all the while we’ve polished our public selves. Both of these civilizing tendencies were responses not to personal virtue, but to the question of scarcity. We gain more by trading with adulterers than by shunning them.

The same applies to questions of mere racial or religious bigotry. Whereas private vices tend to become self-limiting through scarcity, this is seldom the case with religion, save in some particularly extreme cases. When social disapproval of market-irrelevant traits like race or religion gets added to the mix, this disapproval may well become more of a punishment than necessary — and it ends up hurting the punisher rather than the punished. This, I suspect, is why we’ve seen a general decline in racial and religious prejudice along with the general increase in manners. Scarcity, specialization, and trade have done all of this for modern industrial society. Characteristically, it has only been in times or areas of extreme economic breakdown when bigoted ideologies like National Socialism have gained large numbers of adherents. Under other conditions, these ideologies tend to self-limit.

Society is its own bribe to those of us who cannot afford to do without it. As the division of labor progresses ever further, the bribe grows in value: Over time, each of us becomes poorer when stripped of the ability to trade with our fellows, as our specialized skill sets have grown more and more worthless when confronting the generalized problems of survival.

Yet over time, each of us also becomes richer to the extent that we are able to trade with one another and make use of our comparative advantage. Does it make sense to defect in the game of civility? Not when the risks increase in the way that they do, and when the prospect of scarcity therefore looms ever larger — being cut off from the grocer because we harassed the other customers; being denied a job because our manners were bad; being cut off from the online merchant because we engaged in identity theft.

The remote chance of being cast into the outer social darkness is not worth the scant payoff of defecting. Why not commit crimes? Because it’s unpleasant even to think about committing crimes, that’s why. Because civil society guarantees that, with a proper cost-benefit analysis, crime almost never pays anymore — and because our gut instincts verify this claim.

I want you to imagine, right now, the act of robbing a bank. Put yourself in the ski mask; carry the gun. Write out the note that you will pass to the cashier; ask for the large bills, thanks very much. Enter. Feel the security cameras recording your every move. Threaten the other customers; threaten the employees. Carry out your threats, if need be. Make your getaway. Wallow in your stolen cash. Wonder about whether the notes can be traced. Consider where you may be, ten years from now, if not in a penitentiary.

How much did you take? Now ask yourself: Were the feelings you experienced pleasant, or unpleasant? Only a small number of very serious deviants would answer the former. For most people, committing a robbery would feel horrible. This is why most of us don’t commit robberies. And no amount of masturbation is going to change all that.

We want these benefits, not the doubtful rewards that come from crime. We want to be known as honest people, as people who can deal with anyone, because this alleviates our scarcity. Even private punishment, outside the government, is horrible to us: If I were ever to “catch” a criminal myself, and if that criminal were somehow immune from prosecution, I still would do all I could to cut him out from my corner of society. No amount of private vice changes any of this.

[*Yes, yes, the Hayes censors brushed right past the evident racism of several of the cartoons in that piece -- and of many others besides. It's still an illustration of the pointlessness of censorship, which I forsake as well because it will never quite match my political agenda.]