I’ve been thinking more about Brian Leiter’s ethical trap. (Caveat: I’m quoting Leiter’s questions from memory, so his exact wording will slightly vary).
During our debate, he repeatedly asked the audience:
“Suppose I threaten to shoot you unless you do what I want. Are you free?”
At least one person in the audience dodged the question, but everyone knew “No” was the correct answer.
This then led straight to Leiter’s next question:
“Suppose I threaten to starve you unless you do what I want. Are you free?”
Leiter’s point: Threatening workers with starvation is precisely what employers do to make employees do what they want! How then is this any worse than threatening them with a gun?
In my original critique I replied:
[T]here is a vast moral difference between getting you to do what I want by threatening to take away something to which you are morally entitled (e.g., your life) and getting you to do what I want by threatening to take away something to which you are not morally entitled (e.g. my assistance).
On reflection, though, I could have explained this answer much more effectively. Consider this line of questioning:
“Is it wrong to steal someone’s wallet?”
Yes, duh.
“So is it wrong to steal someone’s boyfriend?”
Normally not, right? So what’s the difference? Simple: You are morally entitled to your wallet, but you are not morally entitled to your boyfriend! The rightful owner of your boyfriend, after all, is himself. This is true even though many people suffer far more over a lost boyfriend than a lost wallet.
Deeper point: The language of “stealing a boyfriend,” though metaphorically compelling, is ethically confusing. Why? Because it makes it sound like you are the boyfriend’s legitimate owner.
Similarly, the language of “threatening to starve a person” is metaphorically compelling but ethically confusing. Why? Because it makes it sound like the person is the legitimate owner of someone else’s food. Taking the food you grew and refusing to share the food I grew have radically different moral status even when they have the same physical effect.
To be fair, you could say, “The employer who fires a lazy worker has a right to do so, but he still deprives the worker of his freedom.” My reply: “freedom” is a highly moralized concept. Meaning: When moralists invoke the concept of freedom, they’re implicit making claims about rights. Logically speaking, “The First Amendment protects the religious freedom of Muslims” and “The First Amendment deprives Americans of the freedom to ban Islam” are equivalent. But when you say the former, you implicitly affirm the individual’s right to worship as they please; and when you say the former, you implicitly deny this right.
READER COMMENTS
Mark
Mar 31 2020 at 8:22am
I think the distinction is between action and inaction. A threat to starve someone is coercive if it is based on action (such as stealing their money, or forcing other people to boycott them) but not if it is based on inaction (simply not paying them going forward).
Phil H
Mar 31 2020 at 8:29am
This is good, but I feel like adding the boyfriend into the equation muddies the water, somehow!
I wonder if a line like this would be better: an open economy is one in which no-one is can ever be in a position where they can threaten you with starvation (not even the government), because you’re always allowed to go and work with/for someone else to get the food you need.
P Burgos
Mar 31 2020 at 9:51am
Doesn’t the existence of more than one employer change the moral calculus? If the employer could prevent someone from working for someone else, and then wouldn’t pay or feed someone unless they worked for that employer, that would fit the case Leiter is describing. But that is literally slavery.
Rebecca J
Mar 31 2020 at 9:54am
Denver
Mar 31 2020 at 10:52am
Suppose you are in a vast desert, and walk upon an oasis. Unfortunately, this oasis is owned by someone. And similar to Leiter’s example, he promises to share his water with you, potentially saving your life, you just have to agree to be his personal slave forever.
Does this seem ethical? Not to me. And responding, “ah but there is a distinction between coercing you to be his slave and refusing to give you his water” falls on deaf ears. Sure, there is a distinction, but either case seems immoral. And I think a socialist would point out, the reason it seems immoral is because the oasis owner’s claim to the oasis is fundamentally immoral. That he is, in effect, enforcing his claim to this oasis with violence, and there is little distinction between violently forcing you to be his slave, and violently forcing you to not drink water, potentially dying of thirst, unless you agree to be his slave.
So I typically just admit, “yeah sure, there can be situations in which it seems wrong to enforce such property claims. However, we do not live in a vast desert. We live in a modern society, where you have a diverse number of employers you can work for, and not working for one of them doesn’t entail the literal end of your life. If we modify the hypothetical such that there were many oases, each with their own owner, politeness aside, it doesn’t seem entirely immoral to demand that you be a personal slave in exchange for a drink, because you can just go to another oases and ask it’s owner for a better deal.” That is assuming, of course, that the owners of the oases came to their ownership of the oasis legitimately.
Hugland
Mar 31 2020 at 6:53pm
It seems to me your claim is one of two (or perhaps both) of the following:
1. The exchange is immoral because the man’s need of water requires him to accept any deal that is presented, and is thus on some spectrum of coercion.
2. The exchange is immoral because the man should not be allowed to own the Oasis.
Assume the following case: A man who really wants to buy a Ferrari from its own, sells himself into lifetime slavery to that owner. Is this transaction moral?
If it is not moral, then you need to revisit your premises. Because the man has no existential need for the Ferrari. Nor would a rational person object to that someone can rightfully own a Ferrari.
It seems instead that you are smuggling your premises in with a moral aversion to slavery itself. And maybe what you should be interrogating is the idea of indivisible rights — rights that cannot be morally separated from a person.
IronSig
Apr 1 2020 at 10:31pm
1. “Water for bondage” addressed in Bryan’s online Principles of Microeconomics notes
2. Can you really expect one person to a willing suppressed subordinate for a lifetime in exchange for one gulp of water? Probably not. One gulp per day for life? It’s somewhat more plausible, but I don’t think I’ll be that enthusiastic. What if there’s another parched-throat who crawled in at the same time as me and we have to fight to the death for bondage and the privilege of one gallon per day? Will the oasis-sitter really forgo one extra laborer to secure low wages for the remnant?
In his tours of the antebellum American South, Frederick Law Olmstead noticed a stark contrast between the treatment of slaves on cotton plantations and between slaves building roads through the Carolina Swamps- roadbuilders were paid wages and allowed save to purchase their freedom. Olmsted’s interviews and observations, compiled into his book The Cotton Kingdom. figured that diving and dredging deadwood was so dangerous and demanded so much attention to detail, the contractors had to shell out to get the work done on time and done well.
John Halstead
Mar 31 2020 at 12:48pm
Why are you entitled for someone not to shoot you but not entitled not to starve?
This also highlights that the name ‘libertarian’ is itself weird. Libertarians favour freedom circumscribed by a set of rights. So do all other nonconsequentialists. Why then are ‘libertarians’ more pro-liberty than other nonconsequentialists? Bryan responds – because we have the correct theory of entitlements. But then shouldn’t all nonconsequentialists call themselves libertarians?
Mark Z
Mar 31 2020 at 7:13pm
I think it’s clearer when one thinks about it in terms of obligations: having an obligation not to shoot someone is different from having an obligation to feed someone, the argument goes. One person’s freedom from starvation is necessarily another person’s obligation to feed them.
John Halstead
Apr 3 2020 at 7:45am
I don’t think this takes us very far. All rights imply obligations. The right not to starve implies a duty to provide food. The right not to be shot implies a duty not to shoot someone. What is the argument for the former right but not the latter/
It can’t be grounded in what would make people’s lives go better. The duty to provide food seems not onerous relative to the experience of starving to death.
Swami
Mar 31 2020 at 2:18pm
I have for some time been concerned that there are quite a few different types of “harm” and there is no single source which summarizes them all. I was able to come up with at least twenty different types of harm, from direct physical damage, to restrictions on freedom, to theft, to harming someone’s reputation, pecuniary harms, switching who we cooperate with and so on.
Once I listed out all the possible ways we can harm each other, it is obvious that any human society has to mediate these harms by determining which ones are permissible and which ones are not, and when some are permissible. There is no possible way to eliminate all harms. Indeed, some harms, such as some types of healthy competition, and punishing those who have violated proscribed rules are almost certainly constructive. Other types of harms are logically necessary in any reasonable world (such as the harm of restricting freedom of action, vs the harm of negligently hurting someone because of that action).
The answer to Leiter’s ethical trap is first to recognize the panoply of types of harms, and understand where some are necessary. In the case of employment, we are dealing with voluntary cooperation. Both sides are free to determine whether to cooperate or not, and who to cooperate with. The employee is free to go elsewhere or not work at all, and the employer is free to end the relationship or replace the worker. The reason we have these “rights” is that we have found over time that societies with these freedoms or types of harm worked out better than those that didn’t.
A world where employers are not free to end cooperation with employees is one where prospective employees, customers and society in general would be worse off. It is clearly less positive sum than one where both parties are free to negotiate and refuse terms.
Mark Z
Mar 31 2020 at 7:19pm
“…and when you say the former, you implicitly deny this right.”
Someone above suggested this is supposed to be “latter.” If so, then I’m a bit confused. How does this implicitly deny Americans the right to worship as they please? Forbidding Americans from preventing other Americans from worshiping as they please implies the right to worship as one pleases the same as positively affirming affirming the right does.
Fazal Majid
Mar 31 2020 at 8:17pm
Some people’s beliefs involve stopping others from doing things the former dislike. See the Puritans’ persecution of the Quakers, the Inquisition’s persecution of the Jews, or how some modern-day Evangelicals seem to think blocking gay marriage is somehow “defending religious freedom”.
Ron Browning
Apr 1 2020 at 7:36am
You could also view this as the employee attempting to starve the employer.
Sole proprietor, single employee. Employee demands weekly paycheck even though he decides to stay home, not work, until he arbitrarily feels safe enough to return. Payment for work not done starves employer.
Explain justification from each parties point of view.
Justin Case
Apr 1 2020 at 12:04pm
Let’s remove the employer from the picture for a moment. Is it true that in this case to potential employee will have to starve to death? The answer is no. What people were doing before we’ve got the employers? Hunting, fishing, gathering, farming, starting your own business – there are lots of things you can do if you cannot or don’t want to be an employee.
“Threatening workers with starvation”? – that can only happen if it is a monopoly on the source of food (a tyrannical government which dictates what you can and cannot do by the means of a monopoly on use of force).
Robert EV
Apr 1 2020 at 11:21pm
Each of these is profoundly limited in the modern world (as is shelter). Even in most of pre-modern times many of these required resources that were not easily created alone.
Comments are closed.