Left2Right Comments

This post by Elizabeth Anderson is the first post in this long series where I really take exception to a couple of the points.

Anderson wrote: "It's worse [from the perspective of freedom] to be unable to cross an unnavigable river because others arbitrarily forbid one from using the bridge, than because the technology for building a bridge at that point is lacking. In the first case, one lives in a state of subjection to others; in the second, one is merely technologically poor."

Perhaps this is true in theoretical philosophy, and perhaps it's true in reality for many people. For me, though, I would feel no less free if I couldn't cross a raging river because there was no bridge as opposed to being unable to cross the river because someone else, at substantial cost to themselves, built a bridge and then prohibited me from using it. This would be true even if the bridge builder prohibited me from using it because he didn't like me, for example, because of my race.

Becasue what does prohibit mean? Does it mean that there are armed guards who are allowed to shoot to kill when they see trespassers? If not, the prohibition of the bridge builder is less absolute than the prohibition of the lack of the bridge. In case of a flood where I need to get across the river to save my life, if there's a bridge, even if I'm "prohibited" from using it, I'll simply ignore the prohibition to save my life. Perhaps I'm then sued for big bucks or put in jail for a time, but at least I'm still alive.

So I have a very different perspective on freedom from Anderson. My vote and my policy objectives clearly begin to sharply diverge at this point.

Beyond the bridge and associated examples, I'm profoundly amused that when considering freedom relative to pharmacists, Anderson stops at the specific point of ensuring freedom of women to buy birth control pills. I can't buy birth control pills. I can't buy strong pain meds for my aching back or sleeping pills to help me with my insomnia. The pharmacist won't give them to me, in this case because I don't have a little piece of paper signed by someone else also licensed by the government.

Actually, now that I'm older I can generally get the doctors to give me prescriptions for what I want. But when I was 25, with long hair, a beard, and dressed in ratty jeans, there was no way I could get a prescription for sleeping pills - even when I had legitimate reasons to get them. Thus, it's discriminatory that I didn't used to be able to buy those things.

So the solution to Anderson's pharmacist dilemma is to simply get rid of pharmacists. Doctor's should "suggest" medication to patients, then patients should buy whatever they choose. We would all certainly be more free that way.

But you say, the government needs pharmacists to take care of you! Well, that's exactly what the Conscientious Objecting Pharmacist is doing; he's taking care of your soul, clearly something far more important than day to day details of life.
 

(didn't mean to rush you, brett, and again you are doing a fine job with this blog.)
Several things about this installment are worth praising.
She starts on familiar ground, Locke and Nozick, and a concrete real world example, here the landlocked landowner.
And where before we've complained she's being too slow, here things move pretty quickly - from Nozick to Stalin* in a few easy jumps.
She continues to use a pair of powerful tools - freedom on the sense of non-domination, and freedom in the sense of the sum of one's opportunities.
I think that's very useful. It's way of evaluating any proposed social system or set of outcomes - does it result in high levels of non-domination? Does it result in high levels of opportunity?
I'm also pleased she is concerned with people not being arbitrarily discriminated against.
* I use Stalin as shorthand for domination, but Roosevelt is a better example. We are in more danger of domination from popular elected leaders than from military dictators, although both are common patterns.
If this were a longer post, I would critique her choice of option F - a sudden jump to taxation (domination) when other options were more preferable, and be more detailed in my rejection of her regulated common carrier model.
To quickly summarize my objections, she sees numerous industries as involving natural monopolies, and argues those in such industries should be made second class citizens, dominated by all who wish their services, or dominated by a government standing in for the customers.
Pharmacy is not such a natural monopoly. Don't like your pharmacist? Grow or make your own drugs, or go to one you like.
The current scarcity of pharmacists is a government-created problem.
Regulation imposes barriers to entry. Having created a problem, statists then go on to "solve" the problem with - gee! - more regulation.
Her result is one in which a productive class - those engaged in providing goods or services she describes as common carriers - is dominated by a non-productive class of customers, who in turn are dominated by a government which taxes them to build roads. We know historically from Truman's Pendergast machine that a government given the power to monopolize roadbuilding can use it as leverage to take over a country.
So we end up with everybody being dominated, and thus failing one of her two prongs. We also end up with powerful disincentives for people to engage in productive activity such as pharmacy, with the result that everyone's set of opportunities is diminished.
Option F turned out to be a blind alley. Maybe we should take a closer look at some of the other options .
-arbitrary aardvark.
 

Your argument that having the right to sell oneself into slavery does not constitute more freedom does not convince. The support you give is easily refuted...it essentially boils down to the following rephrasing "in a society where you could sell yourself into slavery, the fact that the price of a product could be your freedom shrinks your opportunities" This argument is equivalent to the following argument.

"in a society where the purveyor of goods or services can decide the price, she may price a product out of your (subjective) budget, thereby reducing your opportunity set, therefore freedom to pay prices that are "too expensive" must be revoked"

The reason that the argument does not work is that in a free economy with little to no monopolies, it is not likely that the price of "slavery" will hold up for any markets other than extremely valuable goods (for which it might be warranted) and it is also more likely for someone to simply sell themselves into slavery for money (which is more fungible than any given good or service) and buy the goods and services that they want with that money.
 

I have a real hilosophical problem with your whole approach to these packages. A claim that any given package X is superior to any other given package Y is based on your subjective valuation of the value of right a and right b. What makes you think that I would value them the same way or that your valuation is "the correct" one?

Free markets have basically proven that different people will value the same things very differently.

Lifestyles do the same thing. Some people value longevity over immediate gratification but others do not. Some value relationships with a steady supply of sex with only one person over no relationships and an unsetady supply of sex with a potentially unlimited number of partners. Which set of "rights" is better? It depends on you.

I think that a better argument would be one that starts from a given point and takes the approach that no legal action should be permitted that shrink my opportunity set in a meaningful way.

Taking your example of ability to leave one's property. At the point at which you purchased the property, you had to have the ability to get there (and I assume therefore the ability to leave). This right should therefore not be able to be taken away from you. If the person (maybe the state) who granted you the right to leave you property sells the property to another owner, they do not have the right to at the same time sell or revoke that right. They therefore have to provide an alternative and equal right or they have to get the new owner to agree to uphold the existing right(s) as part of the purchase contract.
 

Hrrrmph.
Let's say I stand at the edge of a vast river. I sure would like to get to the other side, but there's no bridge, and I don't know how to build one. Bummer.
Tomorrow, I return to the edge. Mr. E. came by over night and built a bridge. But Mr. E has a grudge against me, so he refuses me passage.
According to your article, I'm now worse off than I was yesterday. This does not pass my smell test. I may resent the situation because now it's "only" a human's will standing between me and my goal. But blaming Mr. E smacks of socialism - the claim that since he had the means of production, he owes me their (indirect) use.
Now I'll grant that the situation would be different if there was only one viable place to build a bridge, and several people who wanted to build one. Then Mr. E might be rent-seeking (squatting). But the blanket statement that being prevented by a human is worse than being prevented by lack of means altogether makes no sense to me.
Cheers
-- perry
 

When Mr. E builds a bridge, he has probably increased my opportunity set even if I can't cross it. The fact that other people can cross the bridge makes me better off even if I can't.

For instance, if the reason I wanted to cross was in order to spend time with my uncle Ned, Ned can now cross the bridge to see me instead. Or suppose I wanted to cross to buy something at a store. I can ask a friend to cross on my behalf to purchase that very item, or buy it from a local retailer that uses the bridge as a supply chain.

If building a bridge creates a common carrier obligation such that E. would have to serve me if he built it, and E. really really doesn't want to serve me, he might decide not to build the bridge at all. In that case, a common-carrier rule makes me worse off, since I'd much rather get the indirect benefit of E's bridge than have no bridge at all.

Elizabeth might want to read The Case of the Segregated Streetcar and a Sowell book or two...

And, yeah, it's just plain silly to propose enslaving pharmacists when getting rid of the legally-mandated gatekeeper function is so much easier and so obviously more in keeping with "a free society". Without the government-enforced medical monopoly, women could order a birth control subscription online from amazon.com and get regular refills in the mail rather than having to visit a pharmacist at all. Or, in a pinch, they could go to the local 7-11 and find the pills in the same aisle as aspirin, cough medicine and immodium.
 

Becasue what does prohibit mean? Does it mean that there are armed guards who are allowed to shoot to kill when they see trespassers? If not, the prohibition of the bridge builder is less absolute than the prohibition of the lack of the bridge. In case of a flood where I need to get across the river to save my life, if there's a bridge, even if I'm "prohibited" from using it, I'll simply ignore the prohibition to save my life. Perhaps I'm then sued for big bucks or put in jail for a time, but at least I'm still alive.

Made me think of the EMS conference attendee who was told she would be shot if she tried to cross a bridge in New Orleans.

Interesting on how things like that come up in the real world.
 

Stephen,
The government can shoot to kill to "prohibit" a behavior. A private owner of a bridge cannot.