In a critique of a recent column by New York Times columnist David Brooks, Andrew Bacevich, president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, writes:
In a progressive context, individual dignity is a euphemism. It is a leftwing equivalent of “free enterprise,” a term employed by some right-wingers to provide a moral gloss to policies that exalt market values over human values.
Bacevich, generally a very smart man, makes a common mistake, seeing market values as contradicting or undercutting human values. But what are human values? They’re the values that humans have. Where do market values come from? They come from humans. If many people are willing to pay a lot for a limited number of tickets to a concert for example, the market value reflects the value that those humans put on the tickets.
Bacevich might challenge the idea that humans should value those concert tickets as much as they do. But if so, then he’s simply dismissing human values that don’t correspond with his own.
Bacevich’s error is similar to an error that has been around for a long time: the idea that there’s a conflict between property rights and human rights. In early 1970, in the first talk I ever saw Harold Demsetz, at the time a professor at the University of Chicago, give, Harold addressed that issue with a concrete example. Holding up his lecture notes, he said, “My property rights in my notes are my rights in my notes; they’re not the notes’ rights in themselves.” (By the way, somewhere in my attic, I still have the reel-to-reel tape of that talk.)
READER COMMENTS
Jon Murphy
Jul 21 2021 at 5:56pm
Your post reminds me of one of the big debates that occurred following the passage of the 14th Amendment. I am going off my memory of events as recounted by the IJ’s excellent podcast Bound by Oath, so I may get some details wrong.
As I understand it, in the years following the passage of the 14th Amendment, the Supreme Court began carving out exceptions to the Amendment, ultimately leading to the present classification where there are some rights that are primary (eg the right to vote) and some that are secondary (economic rights). For the former, the government needs to show overwhelmingly that their abrogation of the right in question is necessary and proper. For the latter, the government need only show their actions may be reasonable (episodes 6-8 of the podcast cover this).
But, the framers of the 14th Amendment balked at such a separation. I forget the exact quote, but one of the framers, in response to the different type of rights, responded to the effect of “the problem with slavery is not that the blacks couldn’t vote!”
The separation of economic from political/human rights was a deliberate act to keep Jim Crow the Law of the Land.
David Seltzer
Jul 21 2021 at 5:59pm
It seems property rights are human rights is self evident. Humans have property in their persons. Any property that issues from a person’s abilities cannot be in conflict with human rights. Per Arman Alchian; “Thus, the three basic elements of private property are (1) exclusivity of rights to the choice of use of a resource, (2) exclusivity of rights to the services of a resource, and (3) rights to exchange the resource at mutually agreeable terms.”
Jens
Jul 22 2021 at 2:07am
Sounds kind of superfluous, if not tautological. Of course, property rights are human rights. Even in real socialism there was private ownership of the toothbrush, but there was no private ownership of the means of production (at least outside of the black markets). But all human rights can conflict with one another. This can be solved in different ways, e.g. with concepts about core contents and mutual barriers.
Thomas Lee Hutcheson
Jul 22 2021 at 6:36am
True enough to a certain extent, but “human values” and market values do not necessarily align perfectly all the time because:
1) Today’s market values depend on yesterday’s income distribution.
2) Markets are incomplete; there is no market in which the people suffering from wild fires today/sea level rise in 2050 can pay energy producers in the 1950’s to shift to nuclear power instead of coal.
robc
Jul 22 2021 at 4:34pm
#2 isnt exactly true. Things like the X-prize pay for work after it is done. But, you may say, the prize was created before they started the work. In which case, the early nobel prizes were awarded for science done before the prize was created.
Create the Hutch-prize and award it to 1950s era Nuke companies. Problem solved. Make it large enough and you will greatly award the companies with the foresight to assume the award would eventually exist!
Thomas Lee Hutcheson
Jul 23 2021 at 5:26pm
If I had THAT much money, I’d just buy 51 Senators and 218 members of the House. 🙂
Floccina
Jul 22 2021 at 11:34am
That is soooo common on so many issues. For example: The big difference in health insurance between the USA and UK is people in the USA can opt out of more and take the risk but so many are sure they’d be better off with the amount that the median voters would want to pay for, but expensive healthcare’s effects are small, even while cheap healthcare like vaccines is very effective. But in the UK everyone must buy, via the VAT, at least what the majority of voters think is a good minimum.
Matthias
Jul 25 2021 at 4:21am
There’s many more differences.
Both system are highly regulated.
Eg in the US you can’t just opt out and buy drugs that haven’t made it through the FDA or get treated by a cheaper doc who hasn’t made it through medical school.
And if you want to build a new hospital, all the existing hospitals in the area have a veto right..
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