Will Wilkinson - Latest Comments in Liberty in Context

Re: Liberty in Context

Jessica Wright — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 08:23:54 -0000

I completely agree with Kerry's argument and your explication of it. I'm doing some work (at LSE) on this subject as well & was glad to see other libertarians are considering these ideas & expanding the debate.

Re: Liberty in Context

danisraeliuncensorednews — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 17:47:12 -0000

Living in a culturally comfortable society is an important part of personal liberty. That's why we're arguing for liberal Israel as an association of culturally independent towns: some might ban Arabs while other would embrace them , and so on.

Re: Liberty in Context

Dain — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:50:17 -0000

I doubt most societies, historically or contemporarily, actually believe women to be inferior. I'd surmise that their conception of what constitutes woman's "liberation" (i.e. equality, or even superiority) is just different from our own.

Re: Liberty in Context

Gorgias — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:19:20 -0000

There's considerably more than an "ick" factor going on in worrying about the diminution of freedom that occurs within "traditional" societies or households.

Re: Liberty in Context

famous people — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 13:25:33 -0000

If they wanted to do a Bloggingheads with Todd Seavey, they would have done it long time ago. But then the two of them wouldn't be able to parade as spokeswomen for libertarianism. Friggin impostors!

Re: Liberty in Context

GilM — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 02:31:53 -0000

No. Kerry and Todd Seavey should do a Bloggingheads.

Re: Liberty in Context

Mina — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 13:19:21 -0000

You should do a blogging heads with Kerry on the subject. I absorb information better through discursive rambling.

Re: Liberty in Context

Gorgias — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 23:59:59 -0000

I think the idea that libertarians should work to erode or challenge cultural conformism is exactly what's at stake here. See all the people above protesting that libertarianism is fundamentally a political ideology, and any ideas advanced by a libertarian are useless if they do not have policy implications, or the belief that libertarianism is about allowing individuals to create pockets of society with different mores, some of which will promote cultural conformism.

Re: Liberty in Context

Jay Daniel — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 20:27:56 -0000

Simonkinahan - thank you for responding with such courtesy. I agree that you have identified the hard question, as did Kerry. Libertarianism more generally has a problem with the raising of children. Kerry tries to answer it one way, but her way essentially says, "society should not permit any coercive social norms except for the coercive social norm that society should not permit any coercive social norms."

Even though I think Kerry's answer is internally contradictory, from a practical standpoint, I believe it is a better reason for coercion than finding a practice "repulsive." I do get concerned that immigration and changes to our population could lead to an increase in appetite for state coercion of norms. This is happening elsewhere; sometimes it is overblown, and sometimes it isn't. I think Kerry's argument, teased out, might even support a prohibition against people from more traditional cultures or practicing particularly illiberal forms of religion from voting (I wonder what Will or Kerry would think of that application of her reasoning?)

My answer to your example is actually pretty much the same as Kerry's on the theoretical, but I see it cutting in the other direction when it comes to application. BECAUSE everyone's values are contingent upon the circumstances, community, and culture in which they grew up, there ought to be a firm, ex ante rule that says the state has no role in shaping the child-rearing context. Even though I'm instinctively uncomfortable with this rule's application in certain contexts because I agree with you that the polygamous cult's child-rearing is fairly repulsive, I don't think the situation you describe is significantly different from most traditional cultural practices, and would closely mirrors more traditional Muslim practices. It just includes an "ick" factor, along with perhaps additional cultural distance so that I feel very little sympathy. When I imagine traditional muslims who have recently immigrated living next door and raising their children in a traditional manner, I find that forceful intervention sounds much less appealing. Do you agree?

Also, a child who grows up in a family that is secular and liberal will have attitudes that many, if not most people in the United States find "fairly repulsive." While this may be changing, I still suspect that a society in which everyone agrees that the most powerful political block gets to impose its social norms on everyone else, the secular liberal family loses out. Its for this reason that I oppose state coercion, and I'm not going to support it if and when people who are more like me attain power.

Re: Liberty in Context

Gorgias — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 20:06:03 -0000

Why isn't, "libertarians ought to promote libertarian social mores outside government intervention," an important distinction from the rest of the libertarian movement?

Re: Liberty in Context

simonkinahan — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:41:37 -0000

Jay, Sorry I misrepresented you. I still think there's a genuine disagreement here, although I'm still trying to clarify for myself just where it lies.

I agree that we should allow groups from the seasteaders to the Amish through the ACLU to form an associate as they see fit. Communities naturally have norms and generally will disassociate from members who don't live by them and that's unavoidable, but there are elements here that are tricky for me. I think there's a basic kernel of norms that's essential to a liberal society, and for me they go a bit further than non-coercion. When a sub-group abandons those norms, I think its appropriate for the wider society to intervene. I'm not sure such intervention can always be non-coercive, although I'd certainly prefer it to be.

Take the example of a polygamist cult that believes that women should not be educated, should be married to a man of their father's choosing at the earliest age, should be obedient to their husbands, and should be exposed to no outside influences. Lets suppose that they're not breaking any laws (its unlikely in practice, but this is for the sake of argument). Now most of us would find this fairly repulsive. Personally I'd also favour any possible private non-coercive action to change the situation. If that didn't work would I favor forceful intervention? I personally find this a very hard question.

Re: Liberty in Context

Name — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:27:37 -0000

Totally. All her ideas are simply wasted typing unless they're moored to some sort of policy.

Re: Liberty in Context

Ben A — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:20:15 -0000

I think you need to take Seavey more seriously.

Obviously, social norms can influence or limit choice. That's their purpose. Any ethical system will have an idea of what a good life is and what it isn't. You probably have an idea of what an ill-lived life looks like. If you have a child, you will try to ensure he doesn't grow up to have a life like that. You may even want to live in a community whose norms are conducive to a well-lived vs. an ill-lived life.

For example, I don't want people becoming misogynist pick-up artists, heroin-addicts, or hobos because I think certain relationships with other people, with pleasure, and with work are necessary for a well-lived life. Access to the life-plan "heroin addict" is not valuable in my estimation. Libertarians have typically said: fine, but that's not an argument to make heroin illegal. You and Kerry seem to think libertarians should also say: fine, but that's not an argument to shun heroin addicts or have a social stigma against heroin addiction. Correct?

Re: Liberty in Context

simonkinahan — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 18:28:09 -0000

I don't read Kerry as offering tacit support for anti-discrimination laws. The problem with reading tacit arguments into something is that you're reading something that's not there, by definition, or it wouldn't be tacit. She's just observing that liberty means more than freedom from state coercion, so the boundary that political libertarianism draws for itself is rather odd. A movement fully committed to promoting liberty could easily act privately to that end, as well as opposing state coercion, but the libertarian movement, unusually amongst political movements, generally doesn't (although some individuals do).

Personally, I think that's because most libertarians are in fact conservatives in unconvincing drag. When push comes to shove, they don't really favor liberty at all, rather they are specifically opposed to state intervention, in the belief that without it life would take its "natural" course, which happens to be exactly the way they already live, even though they actually depend on the state in all kinds of ways they happen to conveniently forget. In my view this isn't libertarianism but a confused and nasty kind of conservatism. But that's just me.

Re: Liberty in Context

Jay Daniel — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 18:18:47 -0000

simonkinahan -- I think your use of ellipses mischaracterizes my post pretty significantly. The obvious and fair reading of my post is that I DO care about individual liberty but take issue with how Will is defining it and making it an end in itself. To provide a concrete example for what I am talking about, I want to live in a political unit that allows for groups as disparate as the seasteaders, the ACLU, the Amish, and hippy communes to form without interference from the state (while still preserving the right to defend individuals from physical violations of their personal autonomy. see, e.g. reports of rampant child rape among the Amish).

You also interpret "shame and shun" to mean something I did not intend, although that is perhaps my fault. I simply intended it to be a stand in for the normal, social behaviors all of us engage in when we disagree with someone. Someone who wants his community to adopt norms from the bible will likely not fit in well amongst the seasteaders I have been reading about. Eventually, if he keeps being obnoxious, they will probably start ignoring him entirely or ask him to leave ("shun"). I don't see how this is inconsistent with valuing liberty. Indeed, I would argue that it is IMPOSSIBLE to live in a community -- even if it is simply a marriage/sexual partnership -- without developing a set of shared norms that are enforced by the ultimate threat of disassociation. If you are going to form a long-term partnership with someone, you can't always do whatever you want all the time. The relationship won't work. I would even go so far as to say you might end up "shunned" :)

I mostly agree or at least take no issue with your other comments.

Re: Liberty in Context

SRdV — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 18:18:41 -0000

Will, having read your post a couple of times now I'm concerned by a complexity I see in it.

You write that libertarianism is a cultural product. It seems from your post that you see libertarianism as a political ideology devoted to liberty. Does that mean that liberty, as an idea, is culturally conditioned?

In fact, throughout this post there seems to be a vacillation between a culturally conditioned idea of liberty held by other people and an idea of liberty that is treated as a norm for those conditioned ideas. Unfortunately for the argument, I don't see any reason to believe that this norm is not actually a conditioned idea of liberty held up because it is your idea of liberty.

This can lead to further difficulties, particularly in relation to privileging particular cultures and the possibility of state and non-state coercion in the pursuit of a a particular culture's idea of liberty.

Re: Liberty in Context

TGGP — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 18:04:01 -0000

Why put economics in its own separate box? Economic freedom is just one aspect of any person's freedom.

It's impossible to really justify anything in an objective sense. It generally boils down to "Cause I said so", with unjustified dispositions behind that. My opposition to state coercion is grounded in egoist paranoia. I combine that with the pragmatic recognition that demanding others accept my priorities (including libertarianism, hence the meta-libertarianism) isn't going to fly without any special reason to say I equivalently shouldn't be forced to accept the priorities of others, so that a rational-choice contractarian framework along the lines of Narveson & de Jasay is the better bet. I'm not interested in imaginary "social contracts" though, but an actual, physical one of the sort that might be used in the creation of an intentional community or treaty between communities. I don't say "justice, though the heavens may fall" (or think any such thing exists), but "let's make a deal".

Re: Liberty in Context

TGGP — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 17:49:15 -0000

What constitutes "undue"? It seems to me that liberals have moral disagreements with conservatives and when there are outcomes one or the other doesn't like they are all apt to call it "undue" and say if you squint and look from the right angle it's really unfree.

Re: Liberty in Context

TGGP — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 17:37:42 -0000

As I said at IOZ, someone really consistent in their libertarianism winds up an anarchist. Since you admit to not quite being a libertarian, I can't be surprised that you don't go for anarchism.

Would you object to the existence of communities that value honesty and/or anti-racism and use social sanction against those who don't fit such norms?

Unlike Jay, I do value individual liberty (such as my own). However, I do not commit the Stirnerite fallacy in thinking that any constraint, including those voluntarily undertaken, constitutes a violation of such liberty. My acceptance of communities stems not from some value that a community has over and above the individuals that comprise it (you could also substitute "God" in the case of theistic communities, but I'm an atheist anyway), but mere recognition that communities are among the things valued by individuals. My acceptance of divergent particularisms derives from a basically liberal universalism. Aside from being anti-social and personally placing a low value in community, that actually doesn't make me too different from most philosophical "communitarians", at least according to Jeffrey Friedman. Jeffrey thinks liberalism itself is a mistake which both libertarians and communitarians need to get over.

Re: Liberty in Context

simonkinahan — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 17:25:24 -0000

Certainly there are courses of action that would become impossible (or at least harder) in a libertarian world. Obviously I need to tighten up my reasoning up-thread somewhat - I was thinking specifically in terms of lifestyle choices that are mostly independent of economic organization.

But while libertarianism as such is indifferent to these issues, I don't agree that its completely orthogonal to them. A preference for libertarian government is impossible to justify separate from some kind of liberal ethical framework. Seperate from that, concern with minimizing state coercion just degenerates into preferring some local set of norms, usually quite illiberal, under the illusion that its "natural" where its actually locally enforced through social pressure if not actual violence. That's a kind of conservatism, and there's nothing very libertarian about it.

Re: Liberty in Context

Gorgias — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 17:22:47 -0000

I don't think anyone is concerned about the formation of communities, but I do think the left-libertarian contingent is concerned with the creation of communities that have undue coercive powers over its members. It's not hard to see why there's an increase of liberty when prevailing social mores turn in a more tolerant direction, as, say, increasing acceptance for different religions and different sexual lifestyles have increased religious and sexual freedom in our society.

I can only speak for myself here, and I'm not sure if Mr. Wilkinson would agree- but if you want to create a community for people to live in highly traditional, male head of household marriages, go for it. The problem becomes when social stigma (and particularly social coercion exercised through the workplace, where finding alternatives is much more difficult than in any other social endeavor) is such that the only meaningful choice for many is male head of household marriage.

Re: Liberty in Context

simonkinahan — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 16:59:28 -0000

To me this: "I don't value individual liberty ... People should be able to live in communities that share values and which shame or shun people who don't fit" is a normative statement that's at odds with liberal values and therefore also at odds with any kind of consistent ethics that features libertarianism as a preferably system of government. Its probably not at odds with anarchism, but I have hard time believing in a community close-knit enough to "shame and shun" those who don't fit in is going to put up for long with their protection agents preventing them from taking it a step further. But then I'm not an anarchist, for closely related reasons.

I don't for one minute believe that humans would ever prefer to be "transitory inhabitants of cosmopoli filled with atomized strangers" but I think we need to distinguish between Community and "community". Very often when we talk about communities we mean transitory, optional coalitions of individuals that form for specific purposes and that are only part-time. I can participate in the "community" of internet liberaltarain political philosophy, but I can also turn off the computer and go and have dinner with my wife, at low (probably negative!) cost. This is a very different thing from a Community that you're born in and expected to die in and live by its standards while you're there, amongst "like minded people (like us)". The former is a modern invention, dependent for its existence on the liberal, egalitarian, rationalist metaculture that surrounds it. If anyone starts with the shaming and shunning I can reduce my participation or leave without needing to completely transform my life. The latter is the way people lived throughout most of history. The record speaks for itself. Its not good.

Re: Liberty in Context

TGGP — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 15:14:27 -0000

A libertarian can accept the divergent desires of various individuals as valid for said individuals. Among those desires may be the desire to form like-minded communities (they're all over the internet!). If people would rather be transitory inhabitants of cosmopoli filled with atomized strangers, libertarians can accept that as well.

I don't think anything Jay said was incompatible with anarchy either, so it's not a demand for the state to privilege anything.

Re: Liberty in Context

simonkinahan — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 14:43:21 -0000

This seems to be more of a minarchist conservative way of thinking than a libertarian one, although you might well be right that its within the mainstream of Libertarian politics. I'm substantially too liberal to call myself a mainstream libertarian, so I'm clearly in no position to judge.

I'm an individualist, and I'm not very interested in communities. In fact I think communities of like minded individuals are often restrictive, and occasionally downright repressive, and I've no real interest in allowing communities to exist outside of the scope of state coercion. Individuals have certain rights - to use their property as they please, to protection against coercion, to do what they like with their bodies, and above all else to leave their communities without hindrance. Communities do not have rights, and even a libertarian state sometimes has to wreck communities in order to protect individual rights. If you don't like that, to my mind you're a conservative and not a libertarian.

Individual liberty, to me, is one of a collection of norms that are loosely speaking "enlightenment values", that are essential (but not sufficient) for human flourishing. Alongside liberty I'd put rationality, equality before the law, and many others. But these things aren't "natural" - people aren't free or rational by default, in the absence of something forcing them to act otherwise. They can only really exist in the context of societies that value and support them, because humans are in fact social animals. Its actually exceptionally hard to sustain rationality or to act freely in a society that doesn't value it (never mind China, consider high school ...). For me a libertarian state has to be endogenous to a society with overall enlightenment values or it doesn't make a lot of sense.

This does not justify enforcing the appearance of a liberal society, or even subsidising liberal programs through general taxation. But if you micro-society tries to create an illiberal bubble within a libertarian society you should expect me (and probably many others) to try to undermine it, and you should expect the state to protect our individual rights equally, not to privelege yours because its "your community".

Re: Liberty in Context

Phil — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 13:39:47 -0000

Yes, I agree that seems to be the logical policy upshot, but I wanted to hear Will say it. Will and Kerry have repeatedly implied that many libertarians are disagreeing with their (obviously correct) view that cultural norms can restrict freedom. But the real reason many libertarian commentators have taken issue with Kerry's article is that it offers tacit support to legislation (e.g. discrimination laws) that most libertarians oppose, and with good reason. And if Kerry's article isn't offering support to this kind of legislation, than it's not clear what it's doing at all. I think Todd Seavey made a point similar to this in the blog response that Will found so uninteresting.