George Allen is a white supreamcist creep to be sure, but there’s no need to compare him to the neo-Nazis. White supremacist creeps have filled out the political classes of Virginia since 1619. The NSDAP — let alone the Reich revivalists — are a bunch of johnny-come-latelies by comparison.

Egads. I scheduled the post for later in the night, so as not to crowd out another post for the morning, and look what I get for it: you scoop me on my own news!

Here’s another good Who said this? quotation from pinko, anti-property social anarchist Proudhon:

From each according to his capacity;
To each according to his needs.

Equality demands this, according to Louis Blanc.

Let us pity those whose revolutionary capacity reduces itself to this casuistry. But let not that prevent us from refuting them, for the Kingdom of Innocents is theirs.

Let us recall the principle once more. Association is then, as Louis Blanc defines it, a contract which wholly or partially (General and Special Associations, Civil Code, Art. 1835) places the contracting parties on a level, subordinates their liberty to social duty, depersonalizes them, treats them almost as M. Humann would treat taxpayers when he laid down this axiom: Make them pay all the taxes they can! How much does a man produce? How much does it cost to feed him? That is the supreme question which springs from the, what shall I call it? declension formula—From each… To each… in which Louis Blanc sums up the rights and duties of an associate.

Who then shall determine the capacity? who shall be the judge of the needs?

You say that my capacity is 100: I maintain that it is only 90. You add that my needs are 90: I affirm that they are 100. There is a difference between us of twenty upon needs and capacity. It is, in other words, the well-known debate between demand and supply. Who shall judge between the society and me?

If the society persists, despite my protests, I resign from it, and that is all there is to it. The society comes to an end from lack of associates.

If, having recourse to force, the society undertakes to compel me; if it demands from me sacrifice and devotion, I say to it: Hypocrite! you promised to deliver me from being plundered by capital and power; and now, in the name of equality and fraternity, in your turn, you plunder me. Formerly, in order to rob me, they exaggerated my capacity and minimized my needs. They said that products cost me so little, that I needed so little to live! You are doing the same thing. What difference is there then between fraternity and the wage system?

It is one of two things: either association is compulsory, and in that case it is slavery; or it is voluntary, and then we ask what guaranty the society will have that the member will work according to his capacity and what guaranty the member will have that the association will reward him according to his needs? Is it not evident that such a discussion can have but one solution—that the product and the need be regarded as correlated expressions, which leads us to the rule of liberty, pure and simple?

— Third Study, ¶¶ 109-117

I was thinking of following up with Confessions of a Revolutionary, but I’m having a deuced time finding anything in English anywhere. (I could get a French edition from Amazon.fr for € 24 plus shipping, for all the good that it would do me. Which would at least be better than the $100-$300 price range on copies in French from Alibris). Anyway, know of any translations anywhere?

Daniel,

The use of the terms “utility” and “utilitarianism” in ethical philosophy are a bit different from the use of those terms in modern economics. Here’s how John Stuart Mill defined “utilitarianism” in his book, Utilitarianism:

The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure. To give a clear view of the moral standard set up by the theory, much more requires to be said; in particular, what things it includes in the ideas of pain and pleasure; and to what extent this is left an open question. But these supplementary explanations do not affect the theory of life on which this theory of morality is grounded — namely, that pleasure, and freedom from pain, are the only things desirable as ends; and that all desirable things (which are as numerous in the utilitarian as in any other scheme) are desirable either for the pleasure inherent in themselves, or as means to the promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain. (Ch. 2 ¶ 2)

“Utility” is typically used by utilitarians to mean “conduciveness to pleasure” or “conduciveness to happiness,” not economic preference-satisfaction, and “utilitarianism” (sometimes “classical utilitarianism”) is broadly used to refer to any theory of ethics that answers all questions of ethical value, either directly or indirectly, in terms of what maximizes total pleasure (or total felt happiness) for everyone. Thus Francis Hutcheson, Jeremy Bentham, James Mill, John Stuart Mill, Henry Sidgwick, etc. are all classical utilitarians; philosophers such as G. E. Moore, who answer all questions of ethical value by reference to effects, but deny either that pleasure is always good as an end, or the only thing good as an end, or both, are consequentialists but not utilitarians. Since classical utilitarianism, unlike consequentialism broadly, entails ethical hedonism, you can refute classical utilitarianism by demonstrating that hedonism is false.

Henry,

As a response to Hayek, your statement suffers from having misunderstood Hayek’s central point, which has nothing to do with maximizing or sustaining the current quantitative output of literary works or inventions. What he said was this:

Yet it is not obvious that such forced scarcity is the most effective way to stimulate the human creative process. … Similarly, recurrent re-examinations of the problem have not demonstrated that the obtainability of patents of invention actually enhances the flow of new technical knowledge rather than leading to wasteful concentration of research on problems whose solution in the near future can be foreseen and where, in consequence of the law, anyone who hits upon a solution a moment before the next gains the right to its exclusive use for a prolonged period.

Both his discussion of copyright and his discussion of patents have to do with not only the quantity but the quality of the output. Just pointing to some folks who happen to be writing right now, or who happen to be inventing things right now, and saying “Without patents or copyrights these folks wouldn’t be inventing or writing!” does not even begin to answer his objection. In fact he’s quite explicit in the case of patents that he thinks a lot of the actually existing work encouraged by patent restrictions is misdirected or less than optimal. Thus your complaint about his focus on “great works of literature,” etc. is misguided. If you think that maximizing quantity of output, or maximizing quantity of output from a particular group of people (e.g. “working folks with a need to remunerate themselves”) then you would have some grounds to object to Hayek’s maneuver. But you would need to give some argument for that position, which so far you have not.

It is, however, disingenuous of you to claim that you are discussing only Hayek, and not patents or copyrights in general. In the case of copyrights at least you made quite specific claims about the global economic effects that (for example) abolishing copyrights would have, which are independent of anything in particular that Hayek addressed.

Without going any further in this direction, all I’m trying to say is that putting or taking money from peoples’ pockets isn’t as easy an issue as you’re trying to make it.

This is tendentious, to say the very least. I deny that allowing for a free market, and thus refusing to recognize arbitrary demands for monopoly rights, is appropriately described as “putting or taking money from people’s pockets.” And protectionist appeals to the poor working folks who will have to actually do the work of competing on price and quality are hardly going to move anyone who is serious about free market economics.

Lifting patent protections means giving more benefit to those organizations which can sell commodities most effectively.

To be precise, it does not mean “giving more benefit” to anyone. Free markets are opportunities, not gifts; what it means is stepping back and allowing those who can best sell the product to benefit from their own honest labor. (I think it’s interesting, for one thing, that you treat “pure out-and-out execution,” i.e. manufacturing and distributing and selling commodities, as something which doesn’t require “brains.” Ha ha ha.)

Now, I think that as a matter of economics, you are begging the question when you presume that “media conglomerates” or other “multi-billion-dollar” corporations are likely to be better than other companies at producing and distributing creative or inventive works. Since they have so much money and existing distribution channels, they may very well profit in the short term. (On the other hand, you need to keep in mind that there are several conglomerates in competition with each other, and their biggest sales opportunities would be in distributing copies of each other’s products — thus undermining the margins for all.) But in the long term, there is no reason to suppose that other players might not develop more efficient distribution channels, or that large-scale distributors will get products to local markets more cheaply than small-scale distributors. I think the long-run effects of abolishing IP restrictions would be to undermine the titans in the field, since today they (Disney, WB, BMG, Sony, Pfizer, GSK, etc.) depend on zealously guarded copyright and patent portfolios in order to generate those fat margins. There is no evidence at all that their product line or their internal culture is fit for competing in a market unencumbered by patent and copyright.

I also think it is gravely mistaken to suppose that abolishing patents or copyrights would reduce creative and technological fields into “a manufacturing economy,” in which the dominant activity is simply manufacturing and distributing commodities based on other people’s creation or invention. There are many ways for creative types to make a living other than exploiting grants of intellectual monopoly. I should hope if you ever hope to go into writing, for one, that you’ll figure some of them out, because most writers have a very difficult time eating on the royalties (if any) from their writing. Some people pursue creative/inventive/whatever endeavors as a hobby while making their living at a day job. Others go into a line of work that supports their writing/research/whatever by other means (for example, by entering the academy). One can easily imagine that under a free market these strategies would continue to exist, and would indeed expand.

But all of this to one side, the more important point to me has little to do with economics, and a lot to do with ethics. Even if it turned out that a free market resulted in overwhelming market dominance by a few large manufacturers and distributors, that would be no reason to sustain copyrights or patents even one hour longer. Neither I nor you nor anybody else has the right to stop other people from making a living through honest labor — i.e. rendering goods or services without employing force or fraud — just so that we can guarantee a particular set of market arrangements or a particular standard of living for ourselves. Since both patents and copyrights depend on suppressing other people’s right to make and sell copies of information they have freely obtained for an arbitrarily dictated length of time, they depend on just such an injustice. And I should hope that you, too, would rather work in a factory than do injustice to innocent people.

Constant:

If “you should not do this” means only, “this is wrong”, then I don’t deny that certain things are wrong, but I’ve given an explanation of what a wrong is which is the very conditional statement which you are uncomfortable with.

This is a very odd maneuver. Scheule’s point was to contest your explanation of what a wrong is, so of course if he means to say “this is wrong,” there is no reason for him to accept the conditionalized explanation of wrongs that you offered.

Scheule:

I don’t think I need a God to back up that command, anymore than I need a God to back up the law of gravity.

Constant:

A command logically entails a commander: a command is something commanded, and “to command” is a transitive verb with a subject (the commander) and an object (the recipient of the command).

Yes, but there’s no requirement that the commander and the recipient of the command be different people (let alone beings on different planes of existence). Some people, in fact, have thought it quite important to the nature of morality that the imperatives which issue from it are, first and foremost, self-regarding. I’m not a fan of centering the notion of “command” within ethics, for various reasons, but the theory hardly entails theism, let alone Divine Command theory, in the way you suggest.

Constant:

One rule of thumb I use is that law (and morality) is (normally) about prohibition. … If you find yourself talking about what we should do, there’s a chance you’re not talking about law or morality any more and are talking about recommendation.

I think that the point about law depends on little more than linguistic gerrymandering. (Should you say “You shouldn’t steal,” or “You should make an honest living?” Well, who cares?) And I think the point about morality is plainly absurd. While there is a sense in which all legitimate legal obligations are negative (since all libertarian rights are in some sense negative, and the only legitimate legal obligations consist in respect for libertarian rights), morality includes plenty of positive obligations. Charity is a duty, and so is gratitude; as are courage, kindness, faithfulness, honesty, etc. All of these virtues involve positive obligations, and some could not even be expressed non-trivially in negative terms. (You could give someone the rule, “Don’t be ungrateful.” But that’s at most a rebuke; the only way to actually spell out what not-being-ungrateful entails is to give some positive notion of what sorts of acts you should do in order to express gratitude.) Libertarians of all people should be careful not to conflate law and morality: justice is the only virtue which is legitimately enforceable, but it is very far from being the only virtue.

Dave,

I’m afraid that you may have confused things more than you have illuminated them.

This argument is not primarily an argument about empirical psychology. It’s about ethics. It may well be that Joe has views about the psychology of motivation that are different from those that natural rights folks such as Kennedy or I have. But the meat of the dispute is over value, not people’s psychological motivations. It’s not over what people are or are not motivated to seek, but rather what it is good or bad for people to seek. Unfortunately, in this vale of tears, the two aren’t always coextensive.

Joe:

He [John Stuart Mill] spends most of Utilitarianism rejecting appeals to intuitions, and while he is less dogmatic in his rejection of natural rights theory than is his godfather, he nevertheless does reject it.

Mill rejects something that he calls “the intuitive school of ethics”, which he associates with deontological theories, but I don’t know why you are leaning on this. Intuitionistic method is neither necessary for endorsing natural rights theory (cf. John Locke, Ayn Rand, Jan Narveson, etc.) nor sufficient for rejecting utilitarianism (cf. Francis Hutcheson, Henry Sidgwick). I’m personally quite comfortable with intuitionistic method, but many if not most natural rights theorists aren’t, and my influences on that score actually come more from consequentialists (Francis Hutcheson, G. E. Moore) than from deontologists.

Maybe you think that natural rights go along with intuitionistic method because you need to grasp at some sort of mystical revelation at some point to support the metaphysical mumbo-jumbo that you think natural rights theory requires. But if so, you can hardly expect either natural rights theorists or intuitionists to agree with the picture you present.

In any case, given the dispute between you and Kennedy over what file to drop J.S. Mill into, maybe it would help to clarify terms a bit. What do you think are the necessary components of a “natural rights” theory? Which of those do you think Mill fails to endorse?

(Kennedy, the same question, mutatis mutandis, goes for you.)

My reason for believing that the universe did not come into existence just now is that I remember it being in existence yesterday.

You might claim that this is a bad reason, because it is possible for the universe to have come into existence just now with a lot of false memories in place. I’ll grant that it is possible for that to have happened. But so what? Pointing out a mere metaphysical possibility proves very little about my actual epistemic state. Unless you have some reason to offer for treating my memories as globally deceptive, or even profoundly unreliable, you have not yet given me any reason for doubting the evidence of my memory. But without some such reason, you’ve given me no reason to entertain your “might have been” as a “maybe” worth considering.

Cf. Outwitting Old Nick for fuller remarks on the older version of the same puzzle.

Joe,

I think the issue with Kennedy’s question is to bring the commitments expressed in your post into greater relief than was provided for by the cases you set out. Not to change the subject to whether or not those commitments would lead you to commit rape under the a given set of circumstances. I also think you misunderstood my reference to “stealth,” which was purely to refer back to Kennedy’s point (that there are plausible cases where a rape might never be noticed by the victim), not to introduce any new considerations.

The main point of my remarks is to suggest that it is not even remotely spooky to suggest that there are depraved pleasures, which are worth abstaining from independent of any further considerations about the effects of the acts or rules or life-stories or whatever necessary to produce them. Pleasures derived from hurting, degrading, or violating innocent people are one such example. (I think pleasures derived from, say, necrophilia or bestiality are another.) These distinctions are not spooky or unfamiliar; they are part of common-sense morality. While common-sense morality may be mistaken, and may need to be revised on particulars in light of rational criticism, the burden is on you to produce some argument that it does need to be revised on this point. I don’t see where you’ve done that; all you’ve done thus far is point out that everybody seems to prefer pleasure in the abstract to pain in the abstract. (That’s true enough, but so what? That doesn’t rule out people valuing something else as an end in itself in addition to pleasure, and it doesn’t rule out the possibility of particular instances of pleasure turning out to be evils.)

And no, I don’t think that describing rape as a wicked act begs the question. I’m referring to a pre-reflective judgment that rape is wicked. I happen to think this judgment is part of the data that any possibly correct theory of ethics would need to explain, not a conclusion that needs to be derived from the theory — if your theory could justify raping uncnoscious women, then that’s as good a reason as any for thinking that your theory needs to be chucked out. But whether or not you share my views on philosophical method in ethics, the point of referring to the pre-reflective judgment was merely to explain the general distinction that I was making amongst pleasures, not to invoke any particular view about which acts are in fact wicked or how you ought to discover that. (Specifically, to make a three-way distinction amongst 1. refined or wholesome pleasures, 2. coarse or hollow pleasures, and 3. depraved pleasures. Part of the point of the distinction was to suggest that common-sense morality generally judges the pleasantness of 1. to be a good but the pleasantness of 3. to be, if anything, an evil. Another part of the point was to suggest that your reflections on “elitism” didn’t actually address the issue of depraved pleasures. Whether or not it’s justified, scorn for the pleasures of “sports entertainment” is quite a different beast from scorn for the pleasures of rape and pillage.) In any case, if you don’t like the word “wicked” you could get a less precise but more wertfrei statement of the distinction by substituting “depraved pleasures taken from hurting, demeaning, or violating other people” for “depraved pleasures taken from wicked acts.”

Henry: Most inventions and copyrights are bestowed to working folks with a need to remunerate themselves.

So what? When did the world start owing them a living?

If you cannot find a way to feed yourself with your writing or your inventing, without the aid of a government-enforced monopoly, of arbitrary length, on the use of ideas copied or derived from yours, then you need to find another line of work. Your need to remunerate yourself is not a claim on anyone else’s pocketbook.

Henry: Tell me whether you find it hard to believe that in a world without copyright, the Disneys and Stephen Kings of the world would not troll the world of uncopyrighted material in order to recast it and sell it through their pre-existing “sales channels.” Tell me who in this world would benefit more, the artist or the media conglomerate.

Who cares? The question is one of justice in property rights, not one of class solidarity. It’s not the government’s job to police academic honesty or creativity. Rooting out “plagiarists” is a job for critics, teachers, peer reviewers, and the reading/listening/viewing public, not lawyers, judges, and bureaucrats.

But, just out of curiosity, where do you think the media conglomerates will get the money to sustain their giant, centralized operations once they no longer can rely on monopoly profits from their own productions or the productions they acquire from others?

Are you advocating privately funded and privately conferred prizes here, or are you advocating Stiglitz’s actual suggestion, which amounts to reviving the Stalin Prize in science and engineering?

If the former, then, sure, why not. If the latter, though, then the whole idea raises the question of where the governments of the “industrialized nations” (either severally or jointly) got the knowledge, the virtue, or the right to put themselves forward as qualified arbiters of the usefulness or importance of new drugs. The sort of “status” that a panel of professional blowhards and usurpers could convey on scientific geniuses deserves their contempt and nothing more. Any scientists who would be motivated by such “prizes” are perfect examples of the psychological deformities imposed by a sick culture, and we’d be better off convincing them of the hollowness of political honors than setting up State Prize committees to pander to their vanity.