A standard theme in (propertarian) libertarian thinking is that personal freedom in matters such as choice of sexual partners goes naturally with economic freedom, defined as the lack of state interference with property rights. To summarise this in a slogan, “If you want to keep the state out of your bedroom, you should support keeping it out of your (and others) business as well”. But this is not only a false equivalence, it’s self-contradictory, as can be seen by example.
Suppose A rents a house from B, who requires, as a condition that no-one in class C (wrong race, religion, or gender) should share the bedroom with A. Suppose that A signs the lease, but decides that this contractual condition is an unreasonable violation of personal freedom, and decides to ignore it. B discovers this, and seeks the assistance (or at least the acquiesence) of the state in evicting A. On a propertarian/contractual view, B is in the right, and is entitle to call in the state into the bedroom in question.
And, this is the fundamental problem. Is it A’s bedroom or C’s? If we understand the phrase in its normal sense, no-one including a landlord, has the right to tell you what to do in your own bedroom. But, from a propertarian viewpoint, C’s ownership rights over the bedroom, derived from and ultimately enforced by, the state, trump all other considerations.
Of course, this example stands in for many others like this one
If you really want personal freedom, you can achieve it only by constraining property rights.
John Quiggin 
@Freelander
“Interestingly as far as I know there are no laws, at least currently, that criminalise ‘thoughts’ (particular or general).”
There are quite a few. For example, it is illegal to refuse employment to someone because of a preference based on race, colour, descent or national or ethnic origin. It’s the preference that is illegal, which is only a thought. Crimes like assault have aggravating circumstances that relate only to the thoughts of the perpetrators, colloquially known as hate crime laws.
“If there were such laws they are hardly worthy of discussion because with existing technology such laws are unenforceable.”
It depends on the evidence available. If someone expresses their discriminatory thought, or behaves in such a manner that would give rise to a reasonable inference that they are being discriminatory, then the laws can be enforced. However, as I said earlier in the thread, all they have to do is give a plausible lie, and the law is circumvented.
Sorry to butt in Freelander but I can’t ignore Jarrah’s misunderstanding the difference between thought and behaviour.
Jarrah it is the ‘refuse employment’ bit – the behaviour – that is illegal, not the preference itself.
In the second example, expressing the thought is called speech and speech is a behaviour. So it is still the behaviour that is unlawful. But you are still free to speak whatever you want if only the dog is listening. Tell him what an idiot the libertarians are. I do that all the time.
But you can also say whatever you want when you are among friends, like people do over at that den of angry snarling curs, called Catallaxy. The law still won’t get involved. The problem arises only when you speak where there are other people around who could reasonably infer that the words were discriminatory.
But even then I’d say, that if you didn’t mean your words to be discriminatory there is a good chance that by speaking nicely to the people who have reasonably inferred that you are being discriminatory, you could still avoid the law being involved.
Even when the law does become involved, if you have a good argument and/or a good lawyer, it isn’t difficult to show that the other person’s inference was not reasonable. So the freedom you want is the freedom to force people to listen to your preference and/or tell other people that you are proud of being discriminatory?
From my point of view that freedom interferes significantly with my freedom to work toward a society in which I don’t have to have to suffer the negative consequences that occur when people are encouraged to discriminate against other people.
@Julie Thomas
“Jarrah it is the ‘refuse employment’ bit – the behaviour – that is illegal, not the preference itself.”
Wrong. I can refuse to employ someone, that’s legal. If I do it because of a particular racist thought I have about that person, that’s illegal. What’s the difference? The thought.
“In the second example, expressing the thought is called speech and speech is a behaviour. So it is still the behaviour that is unlawful.”
Actually, my second example was the hate crime laws (which, if you didn’t like the first example, are a more straightforward case of thought crime). My second point was about enforceability, where I was agreeing that overt behaviour was required.
“So the freedom you want is the freedom to force people to listen to your preference and/or tell other people that you are proud of being discriminatory?”
No. I don’t want anyone to be forced to listen to anything.
So I can tell the dog my opinion but if I tell Jarrah it might be a crime. What a screwed up outlook.
What the left seem to be naive about in my view is that once you grant the notion that government should have the power to ban the expression of offensive opinions and you set up the institutions to do so, you will soon enough find that power being wielded against you once the political tide turns. I’m not into banning the expression of opinions but I can tell you that there are plenty of comments on this blog and amongst the left that I find offensive.
I must admit I don’t know a lot about this issue (so my contribution could be wrong or redundant) but it seems as if there are plenty of laws that consider motivation. And I think this is a good thing.
If you refuse to hire somebody based upon some racist thought, it is still the discrimination in hiring that is the problem. The racist thought is a necessary but not sufficient condition for racial discrimination to occur.
Further this is the case for a large variety of crimes. It is legal to kill somebody (say accidentally). It is also legal to think about killing somebody. It is just not legal to do the two at the same time.
@Julie Thomas
When you find you’re arguing with an idiot (someone who doesn’t know the difference between thought, speech and other actions) probably time to give up, that is, unless they are an entertaining idiot. After all, good free entertainment is hard to come by.
Contrived ignorance, which they might be guilty of, rather than simply parading an innate stupidity, is probably even worse. Mind you, contrived ignorance seems to be required to be a CEO nowadays, if Qantas’ Joyce and some other CEOs’ public performances are anything to go by. Maybe TerjeP and Jarrah are grooming themselves for success?
@NickR
Nevertheless, thought(s) can not be read (at least yet). Motivation is inferred from speech and other actions.
@NickR
“it seems as if there are plenty of laws that consider motivation”
Generally speaking, most crimes require mens rea, or the guilty mind. Motivation, intent, knowledge, etc. But they also require actus reus, the bad act. With discrimination laws, a perfectly normal act becomes a bad act because of the mental state of the actor. This is akin to a thought crime.
@Freelander
“When you find you’re arguing with an idiot (someone who doesn’t know the difference between thought, speech and other actions)”
Much easier to cast aspersions that grapple with the issue, hey Freelander? If you don’t like the employment example for semantic reasons, what about hate crimes? They are an obvious and incontestable example of thought crime – hitting someone is assault, hitting them because you don’t like the colour of their skin is aggravated assault.
Freelander – that seems correct to me.
@Jarrah
Ok say person A accidentally kills a pedestrian in a traffic accident. Person B also kills a pedestrian in a similar situation, but this time the act was deliberate.
Do you think that person A should be treated the same as person B?
Am I advocate for punishing ‘thought crime’ if I think that person B should be punished severely but person A deserves only sympathy?
@Jarrah
Actually…”A person is guilty of aggravated assault if he or she attempts to cause serious bodily injury to another or causes such injury purposely, knowingly, or recklessly under circumstances manifesting extreme indifference to the value of human life; or attempts to cause or purposely or knowingly causes bodily injury to another with a deadly weapon. ”
Hence, ‘aggravated assault’ has no connection whatsoever with whether or not you dislike the colour of their skin. If you commit a crime against someone motivated by something like a dislike for the colour of their skin, that is typically called a hate crime. Again, intent is inferred by your behaviour, speech you may have used during the crime, or before or after, your distributing some associated literature or the like, or some other act from which the intent is inferred.
“Do you think that person A should be treated the same as person B?”
No, of course not. But in both cases there is actus reus. With discrimination laws, there doesn’t have to be. Didn’t you read my last comment?
By the way, just to clarify, not much to watch on the tube tonite.
@Freelander
“Hence, ‘aggravated assault’ has no connection whatsoever with whether or not you dislike the colour of their skin. ”
Mate, you shouldn’t try arguing the law with a law student 😉
Aggravating circumstances can be related to the degree of harm, the use of a weapon, the presence of others, the circumstances of the victim, etc etc. With hate crime laws, they add the thoughts of the perpetrator as an aggravating circumstance – having racist thoughts somehow makes assault worse!
“By the way, just to clarify, not much to watch on the tube tonite.”
I’m taking time out from studying for my Criminal Law exam, which will cover homicide, assault, sexual assault, and dishonest acquisition. 🙂
As Jarrah has already pointed out the act of not employing somebody isn’t a “bad act”. So the motivation for not offering employment ought to be irrelevant.
@Jarrah
I did read your post and my questions were totally sincere – I was genuinely interested in and unsure of what you were saying and was asking for clarification. As I indicated previously this is not an area that I have any expertise and therefore am a little unsure of what is disputed and what is not.
Having said that, I don’t terribly appreciate the way you trot out this incredulous ‘haven’t you read’ line all the time. The reason why it irks me is that recently (in the post on percentiles) you repeatedly tried to abstract inequality from welfare, even though I explained on several occasions that (statically) this is impossible. I demonstrated the theory of this and cited some of the discipline’s most famous papers which make the case. It appears, of course, that in this case you did not read/understand/take on board.
Apologies for derailing the thread.
@TerjeP
Omission can be an act. If you fail to act in a way you are obliged to, that is an act. But if you don’t like the word “act” covering “omission(s)” as well, then please substitute in “act or omission” anywhere the word “act” previously was used. But I was wrong, there were things worth watching.
Not employing somebody is not a “bad act” nor is it a “bad ommission”.
mm = m
@NickR
“I don’t terribly appreciate the way you trot out this incredulous ‘haven’t you read’ line all the time.”
I didn’t realise I did. But it was a genuine question, one picked with care from others that I could have asked (which would have been far more insulting). Your comment only made sense if you hadn’t read mine, because the questions you asked were answered already.
“you repeatedly tried to abstract inequality from welfare”
They are different concepts. You can tell this from the fact that we use different words for them. AFAIK, I acknowledged and dealt with every point raised by my interlocutors on that thread. If you felt I didn’t, there was plenty of opportunity to draw my attention to that, but I don’t recall you doing so.
Anyway, back to the topic. Do you, or do you not, acknowledge my point about the ‘bad act’? Do you, or do you not, acknowledge that hate-crime laws effectively criminalise thoughts? Freelander finds himself unable to do so, perhaps because he is afflicted with intellectual cowardice, but I do hope you are the better man here.
@Freelander
” But I was wrong, there were things worth watching.”
You mean you aren’t prepared to acknowledge you were wrong, despite there being no harm in doing so. Ignorance of the law is perfectly excusable, go ahead and admit you are. Then we can let the matter rest and go back to the original topic.
TergeP discovers Boolean Algebra.
Works in regular algebra if m is zero or one. However I was in fact merely acknowledging my own spelling mistake.
“What the left seem to be naive about in my view is that once you grant the notion that government should have the power to ban the expression of offensive opinions and you set up the institutions to do so, you will soon enough find that power being wielded against you once the political tide turns.”
For once I actually agree with you, however generalising the leftists into having the same thoughts on issues would be a little bit extreme? Some people including me feels more comfortable with the leftists value but do not always have the same thoughts and feelings toward an issue. This is why people dislike stereotyping expecially public broadcastors/journalist; I’m pretty sure sometimes you would find yourself having disagreements with libertarians over some issues.
“As Jarrah has already pointed out the act of not employing somebody isn’t a “bad act”. So the motivation for not offering employment ought to be irrelevant.”
I do see your point in this comment, people can refuse unemployment for any reasons even if the only reason why they refuse you is due to discrimination thoughts. This motive is certainly illegal, however practically impossible to prove unless the employer sends an email refusing you stating the reason being because your are a certain race/disability/age etc. I believe a lot of people include me and Jarrah said himself, whom would like to eliminate discrimination thoughts on the world. Idealistic but it’s moral values, this can not be achieve if there are people that stereotype a certain group even if classifying them as “elites”; if this is achieved there will be no refusal of employment due to discrimination. However attempting to achieve this via strict laws can be quite ineffective, which leads back to your comment.
Tom – yes I disagree with libertarians on a very regular basis. And I know it is a simplification to lump the left together as one. Such is the limitation of labels and categories. Crude as they may be such shorthand is often useful for getting the message across. However I’m receptive if you want to deal with these things using a greater degree of subtlety.
@Jarrah
I was asking (hopefully in a friendly way) for clarification on something I was not sure about. I hope I wasn’t asking you to repeat yourself.
“But it was a genuine question, one picked with care from others that I could have asked (which would have been far more insulting).”
Ok fair enough – I have no doubt that you are very good at insulting people.
“They are different concepts. You can tell this from the fact that we use different words for them.”
Yes, but one is a direct determinant of the other. This seemed to be something that you (unless I am confusing you with libertarians more generally) were disputing. I abandoned this line of argument after three attempts as I was getting no traction and am happy to leave it as is. But like it or not, they are directly related.
“Anyway, back to the topic. Do you, or do you not, acknowledge my point about the ‘bad act’?”
Your point sounds sensible and I appreciate the logic to it. However I do not know enough about the issue to be able to hold a strong opinion. My agreement (or disagreement) would not count for much either way.
“Mate, you shouldn’t try arguing the law with a law student”
Are you seriously pulling rank? There are some phenomenally smart and well-credentialed people who comment on this blog (i.e. big international reputations, not undergraduate law students) and all of them refrain from doing this.
Freelander, arguing is the best sport around and surely it has to lead to some change in attitude and hence behaviour, if not in the welded on selfish people, then in the other people who are more able to change their thoughts in response to the evidence. Also arguing with those who think differently is a very good way to refine and organise my own opinions.
Neither law students or economists, have the ‘answer’ to the problems of the world. Psychologists don’t have the answers either, but this is the way to go. We can create a better world if people behave better, and the way to behave better is to understand ourselves, to understand what motivates some of us to discriminate and work toward changing those thoughts and attitudes.
The problem with conservatives and libertarians is that neither seems to think that people can change for the better and yet the evidence is all around us that people are very adaptable. Other cultures produce people who behave in very different ways to the way western cultures behave. All cultures discriminate, but this is not in the genes, it is a learned behaviour and as such can be eliminated now that it is no longer a useful way to behave.
The way the left has used laws to attempt to change behaviour is not the best way but seems to be the only way given the intractable support of the right for all the attitudes that create suffering in others less able than they are. The intention of the law should have been made clear, that we will achieve a better world if we do not discriminate on the basis of our irrational prejudices.
Again, Jarrah, prejudice might be easy and statistically rational but it is not rational if one wants to make a better world for everyone, and not just for the owners of capital.
So I think the act of refusing a job to someone because of an irrational prejudice is wrong. It is wrong because it denies that person their right to respect and acceptance as another person and that has to be the fundamental assumption for any progress toward a decent society.
That isn’t even slightly accurate. Of course people can change in all sorts of ways. It doesn’t give you the right to use coercive powers to do it. Certainly not in an institutionalised way. Nor does your definition of “better” have standing as the holy grail of how we should be.
For what it is worth I think you would be better if you were a libertarian.
Terje I wish I knew what libertarians stood for rather than what they are against. It has been said that the libertarian philosophy is adolescent and being against stuff is just what idealistic adolescents like to do. Hopefully this is a phase that our culture is going through and we will grow up in the next few decades.
I’m not sure what I wrote that would give you cause to imagine that I provided a ‘definition’ of a better world. I said a ‘fundamental assumption’; not the same thing. But that sort of denigration and red herring trick, can work when arguing against people like yourself who are motivated to ‘win’ an argument rather than understand the point the other person is making.
In the context of this discussion, it seemed clear that Jarrah had agreed that discimination was a bad thing even if it was ‘rational’ in his judgement/assessment/opinion/whatever, so I don’t think it is a point worthy of dispute, to say that a better world would be one in which there was no discrimination. Right? or do you think that owners of capital ‘should’ be allowed to discriminate?
I see that over at Harry Clarke’s you have said “I think Catallaxy should be more assertive in it’s comments moderation policy’. So you do think that in some cases freedom should be moderated for the greater good? The world certainly would be a better place if Catalaxy was not just somewhere to go to slag off ‘the left’.
I’d love to be libertarian; like must be so easy when you are certain that you have all the answers; it must be like being a Christian. But unfortunately I can’t do it. I simply don’t have the brain chemistry to be like that. Some of us are just born luvies and just can’t do the getting ahead thing. It’s not interesting or satisfying to me to feel superior to other people even if they are stupid and lazy.
But I appreciate your determination to defend your beliefs. I do wish you would answer questions I ask though. I still want to understand what Bolt is doing with the white aborigine thing. You say he offers you insights so please explain what insights he is providing in this matter. And I’d like to understand how you think people can change and if you don’t ‘use coercion especially not in an institutionalised way’ how does this change happen? Self-organisation?
Yes, self organisation is how change should come about. And yes I do think people should be allowed to discriminate in their private decisions including private commercial decisions. That doesn’t mean I encourage bigotry.
I’m sorry if I don’t keep up with all your questions. I would be happy to answer them given sufficient time. However I find it difficult to maintain the flow of the discussion if I chase two many lines of discussions at once.
In brief I think Bolt makes a worthy but clumsy point regarding white aborigines. I appreciate that people identify culturally with their heritage irrespective of how they look. His point is that people have some freedom to choose which bits of their heritage they identify with and we should not have government sponsored positions and rewards that favour one choice over another. He thinks this policy divides people needlessly. I strongly agree. However this is true for people that look black as much as for people that look white. So whilst his point is correct his means of illustrate it is also dividing people. However with no high profile public commentators making the point in a neat way I’m happy to have at least one making it in a clumsy way.
@NickR
“Yes, but one is a direct determinant of the other. This seemed to be something that you (unless I am confusing you with libertarians more generally) were disputing.”
You must be confusing me with someone else, though I don’t know who wouldn’t believe that welfare levels determine inequality, by definition. The whole point of that thread is that many people believe inequality can determine welfare, which is a nonsense. W&P claimed there was a correlation (in many cases a dubious or false one) but absolutely no-one has come up with a plausible causal mechanism. But enough of previous threads.
“Are you seriously pulling rank?”
On Freelander, who presumed to quote statute to me. Prior to that, I withheld my status because I could simply make the argument without it. But he nettled me.
“There are some phenomenally smart and well-credentialed people who comment on this blog (i.e. big international reputations, not undergraduate law students) and all of them refrain from doing this.”
Not true, but when it came to a very simple legal fact, it made sense to tell him where my information was coming from to forestall further derailing. Notice he has gone quiet afterwards? 🙂
@Julie Thomas
“it seemed clear that Jarrah had agreed that discimination was a bad thing even if it was ‘rational’ in his judgement/assessment/opinion/whatever”
I said some discrimination was ‘rational’ (I even included the air quotes to indicate the fuzzibility of the concept). And it’s not an original opinion of mine, it’s a recognised sociological phenomenon.
“The problem with conservatives and libertarians is that neither seems to think that people can change for the better”
While not really identifying as either of those categories, I can tell you right off that is a false characterisation. If anything, it’s ironic – you are so convinced that people can’t change that they have to be forced to do so through the legal system!
“So I think the act of refusing a job to someone because of an irrational prejudice is wrong.”
Me too. Except that isn’t the end of the matter, because any policy response has to be evaluated equally. And I think forbidding discrimination by individuals and private groups is wrong too! (Government bodies, in theory representing all citizens equally, should never discriminate in the way we are discussing). So it becomes a judgement of balancing which wrongs supersede others, which rights are more fundamental. We’re still not finished, because we have to include social pressures in the analysis, which can ameliorate some of the problems of discrimination.
When I was in business I was hesitant of employing women of child bearing age because of potential leave requirements. It was prudent risk management. It had nothing to do with thinking women are somehow intrinsically inferior to men. It was more about putting bread on the table.
p.s. There are other ways I have discriminated but I’m not willing to incriminate myself with details. However I feel no guilt for my decisions.
TerjeP you are quite right, it was about putting bread on your table.
As your competitors who obeyed the law and didn’t discriminate and hence had to suffer any additional costs you believe you might have incurred, and hence either lost business or profits, it was about you taking bread off the discriminated people’s table and putting that confiscated bread on your own table.
Hope, although evidently you didn’t, you choked on it!
Jarrah inequality is a direct determinant of welfare. As I have said about five times now, take a separable, monotonic, concave ‘utility’ function, apply it to a distribution and you will see that the welfare of that distribution is necessarily a decreasing function of the inequality of the distribution, where inequality is defined using the so called ‘Pigou-Dalton’ condition.
This is unambiguously correct, was laid out by Atkinson (JET, 1970) and may well win him the Nobel Prize. There have been a huge number of other papers expanding upon this general theme. See the works I listed on the other thread (e.g. from Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen).
This has not been ‘debunked’ and almost surely never will be. It is met with almost total acceptance by economists with any sort of understanding in the area. I think you must be confusing this with the hypothesis forwarded by Wilkinson, that pure relative depravation of income has a negative effect upon certain social ills such as health. You are correct to make this point about Wilkinson (I agree he seems like a slimy sort of character) but even if his arguments were correct they would from a relatively minor reason to care about inequality.
“Notice he has gone quiet afterwards?”
I notice he hasn’t responded yet. Did you notice that Terje never responded after I showed (several times) that his claim that inequality and freedom were negatively correlated was wrong? I have and I hope everyone else has too. This is not the first time I have shown him to be wrong and he shuts up or changes the subject.
Anyway I am bored of this and this will be my last post in a while. I had been entertaining the belief that you and Terje were polite intelligent moderates with a sense of curiosity and integrity. Some of your posts appear to demonstrate this, but when push comes to shove you guys are far from impressive.
@NickR
I haven’t read the paper but wouldn’t the result simply be due to the restriction making the utility function (strictly?) concave rather than simply quasi-concave? The (strict) concavity, I imagine would be sufficient to ensure ‘diminishing marginal utility’ of ‘income’. The result would also rely on the long discarded notion of being able to make meaningful interpersonal comparisons of utility.
JQ, or Ernestine Gross, I imagine, would be able to answer this. Anyway, I don’t think the result prize-worthy.
@Freelander
Yeah we are derailing the thread, but that is more or less how it works.
The paper though does more than that though. It connects the Pigou-Dalton condition (defines what we think of as inequality) to a concept known as Lorenz dominance which is essentially a form of stochastic dominance, as well as highlighting the direct link between social welfare and inequality and producing a statistic to measure it.
It is well worth a read. According to Google it has been cited 4161 times, and RePec has it the 195th most cited paper in all economics. And it is not just me that regards Atkinson as a candidate for the Prize.
Anyway as I said I am a bit over arguing at the moment so I’ll leave it at that, but check the paper and have a good one 🙂
“his claim that inequality and freedom were negatively correlated”
If that is indeed what I claimed then I concede it is probably wrong. What I should have claimed (and probably did) is that the two are uncorrelated not negatively correlated.
Actually scrub that last comment. I was thinking the quote said something different.
@NickR
“I notice he hasn’t responded yet.”
Then you should brush up on your reading skills, or get a new prescription. He has commented on other topics three times since being schooled.
“I had been entertaining the belief that you and Terje were polite intelligent moderates with a sense of curiosity and integrity.”
Correct. Well, Terje’s not so moderate, but it’s all relative.
I’m certainly not moderate. I’m a radical, incrementalist, libertarian. I want radical changes in public policy that liberalise our economy but I think we should get there through a series of modest reforms over time. However I do try to be polite and intelligent (sometimes I fail).
Jarrah – I don’t think you are that moderate either to be honest. I’d call you a libertarian even if others wouldn’t. Moderate is somewhat in the eye of the beholder. And whilst most of the commenters on this blog have views diametrically opposed to the libertarian agenda I don’t think they qualify as moderate either. They are radical in a different direction.
Wikipedia has an article on incrementalism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incrementalism
@TerjeP
I might become a libertarian. But first I’ll have to find a mask, and something solid and heavy, to bludgeon my victims with.
@Freelander
Making no sense as usual.
Wading into this swamp filled with serpents has seemed like a losing move. However I can’t help but notice how Terje cheerfully relegates morality and the public good to the backburner in the context of things that are economically convenient for him, *in spite of laws made to countervail against exactly this sort of eventuality*. The laws don’t exist to do anything except protect people whose labour market position is vulnerable. A case study in why what is rational for an individual economic actor (albeit one unencumbered by conscience) is irrational for society, and ergo why arranging our economy and society around radical individualism is self-defeating.
Adam Theory of Moral Sentiments Smith is spinning in his grave.
@Dan
And here was I conjecturing that my becoming a libertarian might allow me to “cheerfully relegate morality to the back-burner” but TergeP responds that I’m making no sense!
I think it’s the Dunning-Kruger effect.