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Libertarianism and Market Critique, image, image - Coggle Diagram
Libertarianism and Market Critique
Moral Force of Contracts
Libertarian perspective: Contracts are formed on the basis of individuals expressing their freedom of choice, these contracts must be fulfilled to respect each other’s liberty.
Utilitarian perspective: Agreements are a mutual contract between individuals seeking to gain a benefit or happiness, therefore the contract must be fulfilled on the grounds of promoting the general welfare.
Objections
People may not be "truly free" to make choices because they're bound by preexisting conditions such as: Being ignorant, naive, birthplace, lack of information, language, economic class, bank account, etc.
“There are some things money shouldn’t buy” found on the basis that a monetary value placed on certain entities degrade their value, so they should not be available for sale. This argument only applies to human life, on the grounds that we’re worthy of respect so human life should not be used as a commodity.
What Liberians rejects
No Morals Legislation
. Libertarians oppose using the coercive force of law to promote notions of virtue or to express the moral convictions of the majority.
No Redistribution of Income or Wealth
. The libertarian theory of rights rules out any law that requires some people to help others, including taxation for redistribution of wealth.
No Paternalism
. Libertarians oppose laws to protect people from harming themselves.
According to the libertarian, redistributive taxes are a form of coercion, even theft. The state has no more right to force affluent taxpayers to support social programs for the poor than a benevolent thief has the right to steal money from a rich person and give it to the homeless.
Libertarian philosophy
Friedrich A. Hayek:
argued that any attempt to bring about greater economic equality was bound to be coercive and destructive of a free society.
“but are we entitled to use coercion to prevent him from doing what he chooses to do?”
Milton Friedman:
argued that many widely accepted state activities are illegitimate infringements on individual freedom.
“If a man knowingly prefers to live for today, to use his resources for current enjoyment, deliberately choosing a penurious old age, by what right do we prevent him from doing so?”
Robert Nozick
distributive justice depends on two requirements—
justice in initial holdings
and
justice in transfer.
liberty upsets patterns. Anyone who believes that economic inequality is unjust will have to intervene in the free market, repeatedly and continuously, to undo the effects of the choices people make.
intervening in this way—taxing Jordan to support programs that help the disadvantaged—not only overturns the results of voluntary transactions; it also violates Jordan’s rights by taking his earnings. It forces him, in effect, to make a charitable contribution against his will.
Self-Ownership: Objections to and Arguments for Libertarianism
Objection 3: Debts are Owed to Society
Rebuttal: True, people rarely make it to the top without assistance form society. However, some people are compensated more for their time based on the value they add. Just because someone is payed more for their time does not mean they owe society a cut (a society who values them so highly in the first place).
Objection 4: You Consent to Taxation in a Democracy
Rebuttal: Living in a democratic society does not imply that one consents to the laws one is under. Thinking generally, if a government has the power to take your possessions (money) away from you, then it has the power to also take your liberties.
Objection 2: The Poor Need the Money
Rebuttal: No one has the right to our belongings, even money. Furthermore, the rich should be persuaded to give of their own freewill, not forced into charity.
Objection 5: Your Talents are not Your Own
Rebuttal: Implying that talents are not possesses by an individual and skills are not curated by a person, but rathe embellished by society strips a person of self- ownership.
Objection 1: Taxation is Not Forced Labor
Rebuttal: True, taxation is not forced labor. However, taxation implies your preference in accordance to leisure. This assumption alone deprives a person of self-ownership.
Touchy Subjects
Assisted Suicide: This type of death could end the suffering of terminally ill patients, but could also allow for the death of many who could have been helped by mental health services
Voluntary Cannibalism: While the choice to be eaten exemplifies self- ownership, there can be issues legally. Much like the case with surrogacy contracts, people might not know how they truly feel about being killed and eaten until it is too late.
Selling Kidneys: While having the potential to save countless lives, this type of self-ownership has a potential for cruel exploitation.
Soldiers: drafting versus hiring
Union draft made a striking concession to that tradition: Anyone who was drafted and didn’t want to serve could hire someone else to take his place.
Draftees seeking substitutes ran ads in
newspapers, offering payments as high
as $1,500
The Confederacy’s draft law also allowed for paid substitutes, giving rise to the slogan “rich man’s war and poor man’s fight”
Congress passed a new draft law, provided that any draftee could pay the government a fee of $300 instead of serving
The commutation fee represented close to a year’s wages for an
unskilled laborer
conscription and the market
conscription fills the ranks of the military by requiring all eligible citizens to serve, if not all are needed, a lottery to determine who will be called.
market system (volunteer army)
Is it moral for a court to enforce an agreement to give up a baby if the woman who carried the baby wants to keep it?
A judge upheld this case in 1986.
The ruling was overturned because the court saw it as "babyselling."
(2) “treating babies and pregnancy as commodities degrades them, or fails to value them appropriately” (96).
Objections to upholding the contract
(1) meaningful consent cannot be provided when there is a dire need of money.
We tend to dislike hiring pirates to do our dirty work but is it morally much different from funding a modern military to kill for us?
Is hiring private mercenaries for us that different from a tax-payer funded volunteer army?
Proponents of the volunteer army argue that our troops are motivated by patriotism or civic duty, rather than just money (Blackwater and other private security firms that find alongside conventional soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan).
