A Libertarian Overture to the Left: towards moral common ground and productive debate

Libertarians start most political and philosophical debates on the back foot. This is not meant as a complaint. Any “radical” ideology prescribing fundamental and sweeping changes to the status quo — whether socialist or anarchist or whatever — reasonably faces this default burden of proof. As such, I feel no special grievance in having to begin most political discussions in defensive mode. However, in the case of libertarianism, there is typically an additional obstacle not faced by radical ideologies associated with “the left” (I use scare quotes to head off the mistaken counter-characterisation of libertarianism as belonging to “the right”). So while the economic or practical feasibility of radical leftism is typically called into question, its moral component more often than not is, if not accepted, then at least given the benefit of the doubt. Socialist and leftist idealists “have their hearts in the right place”. The same cannot be said for libertarians. Typically, the libertarian’s moral commitments are immediately suspected. The libertarian stereotype is not the wide-eyed bleeding-heart idealist, but rather the heartless, greedy, anti-social contrarian. My aim herein is to go some way towards redressing this stereotype; and to make the case that, in fact, the moral commitments of most serious libertarians are, if one looks carefully and objectively, not only amenable to political moderates, but indeed evince considerable overlap with the radical left.

I’m not going to pretend that there haven’t been some self-described libertarians who have gone to great lengths to tarnish the libertarian idea by living up to the stereotype. However, what I wish to do here is not vilify the unfortunately conspicuous outliers, but rather to elaborate and defend what I take to be the most compelling and appropriate moral motivations for libertarianism. This won’t be a systematic derivation. Admittedly, I’m still working out the interrelations and “lexical priorities” of the relevant principles, to borrow a Rawlsianism. I’m starting from personal experience here. I’ve come to libertarianism largely for the same moral reasons I came to socialism several years ago. I don’t suppose most libertarians have followed the same trajectory. However, my impression is that more and more contemporary and young libertarians, as well as the most prominent contemporary libertarian academics, identify as such for reasons similar to my own.[1]

There are three foundational principles of political morality that have brought me to libertarianism. I can’t say any has priority with respect to the others, and so my starting with one should not be taken to indicate its priority over the ones that follow. The first is what might be called a principle of institutional justice. The idea is roughly this: “a just political-economic system ought to raise the living standards and dignity of the poorest and most vulnerable people in society as much as possible, relative to available alternatives”. Obviously the principle has a Rawlsian ring to it, although I’m not concerned as to exactly how Rawlsian it may or may not be. The basic intuitive idea is that as few people as possible, and ideally no one, should have to suffer material hardship; and improvements in the lives of those currently suffering most ought to have moral priority over improvements to relatively better off people. But notice one important ambiguity at the outset: the phrase “as much as possible” above conceals a complexity, namely, within what time frame the relevant improvement in living standards should be considered. To illustrate the complexity briefly, suppose we have two economic systems, A and B, which depart in different ways from the status quo in a given society. In the case of system A, the currently poorest and most vulnerable would see a 30% increase in their real wealth in the first year from the current level. Thereafter, their wealth would increase by 1 % every year for the next 100 years. In the case of system B, the currently poorest and most vulnerable would see only a 1 % increase in their real wealth in the first year. Thereafter, their wealth would increase by 5% every year for the next 100 years. Which system, according to my sketchy principle, would be more just? Of course it’s difficult to tell as it is stated. Are compound improvements in the future more or less valuable than large instantaneous ones in the present? Is greater immediate relief with modest long-term improvement better than lesser immediate relief combined with substantial long-term improvement? I don’t have the space to resolve such questions in great detail here. But an honest person, whether socialist or anarchist or libertarian, ought to recognise the importance of these complications. However, I will say that whatever improvements occur ought to be sustainable ones in some commonsensical understanding of the term “sustainable”. For instance, a big improvement in the poor’s real living standards over one or two years that causes a complete economic collapse of the society in the third year, resulting in the immiseration of those who had been poor to begin with, should be ruled out a priori as unsustainable, and not the kind of “improvement” I have in mind.

The second principle of political morality might be given different names. I prefer to call it a strong principle of moral equality or equal authority. Others have ventured the non-aggression principle. Still others the non-aggression axiom. The philosophical debate on this idea is vast, and the different names sometimes correspond to substantive philosophical differences. But the basic idea I have in mind is simple and intuitively compelling: “In normal circumstances, no person has the right or moral authority to force a peaceful person to do something against the latter’s will”. Immediately one might ask, “but what are *normal* circumstances anyway!?” I’ll get to that. But here’s one way of parsing it: If one is going to initiate violence and coercion against another human being, the countervailing moral reasons adduced in support of that violence ought to be overwhelming, as the moral presumption in favour of affording peaceful people complete control over their own bodies and minds, and so their own lives, is fundamental.

So why the qualifier “under normal circumstances”? Because without this qualifier, most morally sane people would find the principle implausibly strong. One could readily conceive of what are sometimes called “lifeboat scenarios” that illustrate that, indeed, there are imaginable circumstances in which it would appear to be justifiable to violently force someone to do something against their will. Suppose, for instance, that a doomsday bomb is about to go off. For whatever reason, only one person is within reaching distance of the device’s “off” button. Unfortunately, our potential saviour here is a well-known misanthrope with a death-wish and a powerful grudge against the whole of humanity. He declares that he has no intention of disarming the device, and we have every reason to believe him given his track record of reliable misanthropy. But suppose furthermore that we can reach his arm, in such a way as to be able to forcefully push his hand onto the “off” button, thus disarming the device, and thereby saving billions of innocent lives. Now, the obvious question is, would we be morally justified in pushing his arm without his consent? Anyone with any moral sense will of course say “yes!” In fact, most will say that we have a strong moral obligation, and not just permission, to physically force this man to do something without his consent. After all, this is a minor rights violation, and a failure to enact it will guarantee the death of the entire human race! Only a moral monster, or a woefully defective moral principle, would require that we not force the misanthrope’s hand. Fortunately, we do not face such life-boat scenarios with great frequency, and so for practical purposes, the principle I defend implies that in almost every single case every single day with respect to every single person we ever interact with, we have a moral obligation to refrain from forcing that person to act in ways contrary to his or her wishes, or to physically aggress against that person in any way. In other words, the right to physical autonomy is morally defeasible at the margins, so to speak; but even in the bomb example, we would have to admit that we had indeed violated the misanthrope’s rights. It would simply be a justifiable violation.

The third principle I will state roughly, but again, it’s intuitively compelling: “For any previously unused natural material, if a person peacefully labours on and transforms that material, he or she thereafter has a right to keep that product, to dispose of it as he or she wills, and trade it or gift it to another on any terms he or she finds agreeable”. The same applies to peaceful groups of people labouring on a set of natural raw materials or land. If I come across some peaceful person or group that has been transforming some portion of the earth, I (whether for myself or in the name of others) have no right to unilaterally take it from them or thwart their peaceful use of it, regardless of how much I want it or like it or claim to deserve it. Even if I feel they have a strong obligation to share it with me or give it to me outright, their permission is a necessary precondition of legitimate transfer.

These are the principles, and perhaps the latter two in particular will strike some as overly simplistic, or abstracted, or idealistic — too “neat” to be usefully applied to the historical complexities of the real world. Firstly, one must not confuse simplicity with something’s being simplistic. These principles are intuitive, plausible, common-sensical even. However, one should not assume therefore that they are incapable of accommodating emergent social complexity, resolving complex historical disputes and conflicts, and admitting of a great deal of moral subtlety[2]. In the same way that scientific principles need not be convoluted in order to account for complex phenomena, moral principles do not have to be complex to afford solutions to complex social problems. But secondly, the sceptical reader ought to reflect on the degree to which he or she lives these principles every day. And not just in some flippant way, as though they were principles one might casually abandon for the sake of convenience. Look at any person beside you right now. This person has constructed for himself or herself a life constituted by all manner of sacrifices, trade-offs, efforts, failures, worries, relationships, cherished possessions, savings, plans and hopes for the near and distant future. Suppose it suited you to go over to that person right now, reach into their pocket, and take their wallet and phone… Well, do you have the authority to do that? No. Of course not. Even if you could do so without anyone preventing you or resisting? Still, no. Moreover, would you feel as if you’d done a good or even permissible thing if you did it and could get away with it? Clearly, no. Do you have the right to do this to anyone in your daily life? I can’t imagine any sane person answering “yes”.

What if it’s some rich middle-aged executive called Fatcat Joe? He’s a real flesh and blood person, despite his unlikely name. You don’t know about his history, but he’s sitting there not bothering anyone. And you have no reason to suspect that his wealth was acquired by violence. He’s a regular human with a (well-paying, although probably stressful) job. What does this mean? It means the guy is engrossed in his own concerns, relationships, hopes, worries, stresses, commitments, obligations, etc etc. Ok. Suppose like me you’re in the bottom twenty percent of the income pile in a developed country. It would be just wonderful if you could have Fatcat Joe’s wallet, phone, watch and access to his savings. Can you walk up to Joe and grab these things by threatening him with violence should he refuse to comply? Do you have that right? No. Clearly you don’t. Of course, there are non-moral, prudential reasons you’re not going to do that — it would be awkward, Joe would probably kick up a bit of a fuss, and you’d draw a lot of unwanted attention to yourself. But suppose again there would be no resistance from Joe, and there’s no one else around to witness you accosting him. Well, would you have behaved morally, permissibly, justifiably in any sense if you took his possessions by force? I can’t see it. I suspect you can’t either. And for good reason. You live these principles every day because they are fundamental, you take them seriously, and they are the minimum conditions of treating people with moral respect and dignity.

Here’s where libertarianism begins to get its purchase. The libertarian will see all peaceful people as deserving this minimum (notice it’s a minimum; it’s certainly not necessarily the final word on morality. Refraining from expropriating people does not instantiate utopia, nor constitute a complete moral life!) of respect. And they see politics as shorn of any mystique or veneer of exemption. Suppose I see a suited man entering this café right now with an officious air and walking over to that woman there minding her own business. I hear him tell her that if she doesn’t fork over her wallet and bank details so Mr Officious here can extract 20% of her earnings, then he will send in some goons in uniforms and hurl her into a cage. People are ready to protest and intervene in defence of the woman, but Mr Officious announces that it’s ok, he’s an agent of the state! He’s acting on behalf of a majority of other people who happen to live within 5,000 square kilometres of this woman. Again, for the libertarian something just doesn’t seem right here, notwithstanding Mr Officious’s assurances and appeals to authority and democratic mandates. Mr Officious doesn’t seem all that different from the woman sitting there, or from me, or you. He’s not a moral superbeing. In fact, the only difference is he’s wearing a nice suit and being a complete asshole.

For the libertarian, the morality of one to one, face to face, is the morality of ten to one, is the morality of a thousand to one, is the morality of a million to one, at a distance, from an office desk, or by remote control. There is a moral continuum because any group is comprised of real flesh and blood people who are the centre of their own universe, worried, trying, sacrificing, failing, creating a life with others in a peaceful way. I can’t honestly see myself as having the moral authority or right to walk up to any one of these people like me and invade their life for the sake of my ends, no matter how much worthier I think my intentions or ends are. Suppose I think a particular charity does great work helping the poor lift themselves out of poverty, and that Fatcat Joe there has a strong moral obligation to donate. Does even this strong obligation entitle me to grab his wallet by force, when Joe refuses my pleas? Again, it’s very difficult for me to answer yes, and I suspect this is the case for nearly all morally sane people.

When you dodge the charity worker on the street, would you react warmly if she were to follow you saying that, if you persisted in refusing to donate, she’d send people in uniforms after you and have you thrown into a cage? Presumably not. What if she told you that you, as a median-income westerner, were part of the global 1% (which, by the way, would be true); and that you owe a significant percentage of your income to the absolutely poor of the world? Would this justify her threats? Would you accept going to prison for refusing to comply? Would she have that authority?…

For the libertarian, the burden of proof thus shifts seismically in light of such considerations. The presumption to peace, voluntary interactions, and productive autonomy is serious and exceptionless, for groups or individuals. Only overwhelming countervailing evidence that not violating this prohibition against violent expropriation will produce widespread suffering would unfasten this universal presumption in favour of peace.

Now here’s where things open up. And this is where I have to admit my libertarianism has modulated over the years. I’m no longer dogmatic on this point. I openly concede that, if indeed it could be shown that without a state expropriating peaceful people’s wealth, the worst off in society would be much worse off than they are under state interventions, then I would willingly qualify my strong presumption in favour of exceptionless bodily and productive autonomy. This is where empirical social scientific research becomes relevant. And to date, I have not only not seen any evidence to suggest that the state is necessary to sustainably improve the condition of the worst off in society; rather, I have gleaned from the social scientific research that in fact the state in almost all cases thwarts or sets back the economic development of the worst off in society. One commonplace (and totally baseless) criticism levelled against libertarians is that they assume too great a degree of rationality on the part of market agents, too great a degree of beneficence, or both. Of course the libertarian readily accepts (and never seriously denied) that people are far from optimally rational, suffering as we all do from myriad cognitive biases and prejudices. Nor does the libertarian assume that people are more benevolent than they are, or would transform into angels without government. Rather, the serious libertarian grants limited rationality and limited beneficence and asks, “under which set of feasible institutions are the negative effects of both basic defects limited to the greatest degree possible, and conversely, the positive effects of our more virtuous tendencies enhanced?” So while the libertarian accepts that real markets can produce sub-optimal results, and market agents can “do bad things”, he or she insists on consistency and does not simply assume that government agents can therefore do better. After all, governments are comprised of just more human beings, suffering on average from the same cognitive biases and limited beneficence. The question is — do governments tend to amplify or ameliorate these negative tendencies in people, and if so, do they do so more or less than the institutions of markets and civil society? For the libertarian, looking at the evidentiary record, the answer is that governments more often than not exacerbate and amplify (or even originate) defects in the market, and that the incentives inherent in democratic governance undermine (relative to markets and civil society) the nominal aims and values of democracies.

I gesture towards the evidence supporting these conclusions in the footnotes below[3], but there is an important general institutional insight that I wish to finish on. It is another reason for my shift from socialist to libertarian. The basic point is this. There is a world of difference between the name or intended effect of a law or policy, and the actual effect of the implementation of that law or policy. That is to say, just because a law is enacted mandating that a certain outcome be achieved by the state, it does not follow that that law will in fact aid in any way in achieving that outcome. This is a point that those on the left have a tendency to overlook or miss consistently, even if they occasionally pay lip service to it by demanding that politicians “follow through” or be “held accountable”. So when I hear of laws or policies guaranteeing “universal healthcare”, or “free university for everyone”, or whatever it may be, my reaction, while approving of the sentiment and intention, is to ask: “well, ok. How is that going to be realised?” Governments, after all, aren’t magic institutions that can click their fingers and just make things so. They’re comprised of more or less typically flawed or able people who will have to expropriate that wealth and those resources from real people, redirect them, manage inputs over time, consider opportunity costs, trade-offs, resource alternatives, constant demographic changes, economic and incentive effects of their interventions, and so on. So when the Socialist Utopian Party demands universal everything for everyone all the time, we should ask, regardless of ideology, how is that best achieved? And an honest person has to admit that, after all, the means towards that end may involve institutions and procedural rules that depart from those they had envisioned. So while I readily admit that, if someone could show me that robust private (that is, both individual and collective) property rights and freedom of association will consign the worst off to an even worse fate then I will temper or qualify my commitments to those institutions. I would also demand as a matter of consistency the same concession from the left — that if it could be shown that centralised democratic control of industry and firms and banks and all major institutions, or largescale redistribution and government management, will tend in fact to impoverish rather than improve the conditions of ordinary people over time, then they ought to be willing to modify those means and policies.

From the Theory to Practice

The main point of all of the foregoing is this. I think that, in fact, most socialists and leftists would find my basic principles of political morality at least plausible and worthy of respect. They might add one or two more. Some commitment to material equality was probably notable by its absence. I abandoned this commitment long ago when I realised that I had conflated material equality with ensuring the improvement of the worst off in society, and ensuring as far as possible that as few people as possible fall into poverty. It was probably a function of the so-called “fixed-pie” fallacy and the mistaken idea that an economy is a zero-sum game — that one person’s gain must be another’s loss. Of course, basic economics shows this to be fallacious. Voluntary interactions, trades and exchanges are necessarily positive sum at the moment they take place, and latecomers in fact tend to benefit from affording first-comers stable property rights in the things they begin to productively labour on, ensuring that they are incentivised to conserve and trade the surplus in a way that increases overall social productivity. The “levelling down objection” to wealth equality as a principle of political morality seems to me to be decisive. Wealth equality per se has no inherent or non-derivative moral value (conversely, wealth inequality can be derivatively bad when it is the consequence of violence or cronyism). What we ought to be concerned about is improving as much as possible the absolute condition of the worst off, not reducing the relative wealth gap between rich and poor. Focusing on the latter would only make moral and economic sense if the worst off were suffering because the rich were better off. But this only follows if the rich take from the poor. But as I indicated, that is only unambiguously the case in instances of theft (including tax-funded subsidies and privileges given to the wealthy by the state) or violent colonisation/expulsion — all of which are of course completely inconsistent with libertarianism and call for systematic redress and restitution.

These are the main theoretical points, the abstract moral and institutional principles that brought me to libertarianism. But what about real-life day-to-day politics, the here and now? Shouldn’t we ensure as far as possible that the worst off (and everyone else) can access quality healthcare and education and food and housing and other fundamentals? Yes, of course! And doesn’t this mean we need the state to provide health and education and food and housing? Absolutely not! Here again is a common invalid inference drawn by leftists. It does not follow from being committed to achieving universal access to education and healthcare, for example, that the government should be directly involved in that provision in any way. But I’m a libertarian! Aren’t I all about laissez-faire, pulling the rug out from beneath state welfare? Maybe you’ll find a handful of simple-minded libertarians who advocate this crude abolitionist approach to the state. But the vast majority are gradualist on this point. They understand that the state’s ubiquitous involvement in the economy has fostered dependencies and vulnerabilities that warrant careful, morally-informed strategies of devolution. We ought to remove government barriers to the economic self-advancement of the poor as much as possible first, not the state crutches that (granted, not always effectively) support some of the most vulnerable. The first port of call would probably be eliminating licensing and labour-related barriers to market entry, reducing the relatively heavy tax burdens on smaller businesses in terms of compliance costs, abolishing trade tariffs and protectionism, moving towards more liberal immigration policies, and ending centralised inflationary monetary policies, among others. Affording greater opportunities to the poor to lift themselves out of poverty comes first.

The remaining poverty ought to be addressed next. The question is, how? I actually grant that, to the extent that we still have a state, one of its only plausible prerogatives is to ensure that no one (or as few as possible) suffer from onerous poverty or hardship. As I mentioned at the outset, a reasonable principle of institutional justice prioritises alleviating the suffering of the most vulnerable first. The question then is, what manner of state activity would be most effective in this regard during a transitional phase?

The approach I consider most feasible is as follows, and it’s gaining traction amongst many contemporary libertarians[4]. Many current welfare states are bloated, impersonal, bureaucratic relics of waste, misdirected funds, and absurd rules and regulations unresponsive to the vicissitudes of local circumstances[5]. Government hospitals are relatively poorly run, inefficient, prone to shortages and waiting lists and administrative bloat[6]; and public schools are more often than not unexperimental, torpid, understaffed, and overstretched[7]. What we ought to do instead is take the mass of funds we (often wastefully) spend on government control and management of these institutions, and simply give that money directly to those in need. Get the government with its perverse incentives completely out of the management business, out of the regulation and insurance business, and allow private alternatives to emerge in their place; private or community-run hospitals, schools competing and cooperating voluntarily. Give people a significantly higher “social benefit” from the money saved from forgone state administration and management, with a certain percentage (pegged to average rates) of the yearly income set aside for spending on children’s education, on healthcare services/insurance etc (sometimes referred to as “tokens”). That way, one affords the poor greater autonomy and choice, self-control and self-direction. They reap the benefits of schools and hospitals having to compete for their patronage, incentivising those institutions to innovate, reduce waste, tailor their service to people’s local demands, improve quality of provision relative to alternative providers etc. Over time, as increased free association and productive autonomy occasion economic development and afford the poor more and more opportunities to lift themselves into a more dignified life, one would hope that the state’s interventions become less and less needed and, to borrow a communist trope, “wither away”.

These are complex empirical questions, but they are empirical questions, and so ones about which honest and decent people can have detached and respectful discussions. As long as the moral objectives are kept in view, and we remember that they are by and large shared, libertarians and leftists can and should profitably engage one another. There are many other such policies that libertarians believe could significantly enhance the prospects of the poor (ending what has become an international War on Drugs through legalisation being one prominent example), and on which libertarians and leftists often agree. But the remaining disagreements are overwhelmingly factual ones, about how things will work, the best institutional means to achieve our broadly shared moral ends. When this point is acknowledged at the outset, debate becomes instantly more productive. One’s moral integrity is no longer assumed to be on the line, and so temptations to resort to ad hominem attacks are pre-empted. If libertarians and leftists can give their respective moral characters this benefit of the doubt and together focus temperately on the means, then the alleviation of suffering and the realisation of justice might be much more readily achieved.

[1] Some prominent academics and scholars who advocate libertarianism for moral reasons close to those I outline above include: Jason Brennan, Matt Zwolinski, John Tomasi, Steve Horwitz, Michael Huemer, Roderick Long, David Schmidtz, Will Wilkinson, Jacob T. Levy, Jeffrey Tucker, and Sheldon Richman, to name a few.

[2] A mainstay of ideas on emergent complexity in the social world arising on the basis of what might be called “minimalistic” laws is the work of Friedrich Hayek, particularly Volume 1 of his Law, Legislation and Liberty (www.libertarianismo.org/livros/lllfh.pdf). Of course Robert Nozick in Anarchy, State and Utopia famously extols the more aesthetic virtues of so-called invisible hand explanations, which are characterised by parsimonious explanations of emergent, complex phenomena (see Chapter 2, page 18 of the Basic Books edition, http://www.amazon.com/Anarchy-State-Utopia-Robert-Nozick/dp/0465051006). For a more technical treatment of when and why parsimony is a virtue of explanatory theories, see the work of Elliott Sober (particularly his latest book, Ockham’s Razors — A User’s Manual (2015) http://www.amazon.com/Ockhams-Razors-Manual-Elliott-Sober/dp/1107692539/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1461787812&sr=1-1&keywords=elliott+sober+ockham%27s), and his co-authored article ‘How to Tell When Simpler, More Unified, Less Ad Hoc Theories Will Provide More Accurate Predictions’ (1994) http://philpapers.org/rec/FORHTT), and Michael Huemer’s ‘When is Parsimony a Virtue?’ (http://philpapers.org/rec/HUEWIP).

[3] For evidence on the relative failings and inherent problems of largescale democratic governance, see for instance the work of Ilya Somin (http://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/when-ignorance-isnt-bliss-how-political-ignorance-threatens-democracy), Bryan Caplan (The Myth of the Rational Voter, http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8756.html), and Mancur Olson (The Logic of Collective Action, http://www.amazon.com/The-Logic-Collective-Action-printing/dp/0674537513). One of the crucial insights of this “public choice” tradition in political economy is that a problem inherent in largescale democratic institutions is that they incentivise both political ignorance and political irrationality, and disincentivise diligence and political engagement amongst the electorate. The more extensive the state, and the more concerns over which democratic institutions assert control, the more pronounced these inherent defects become. For a comparison of the relative efficiencies of private charity and civil aid institutions versus government alternatives, see James Rolph Edwards’ ‘The Costs of Public Income Redistribution and Private Charity’ (https://mises.org/sites/default/files/21_2_1.pdf). For evidence on the positive, global correlation between greater economic freedom and higher standards of living amongst the relative poor, see the Heritage Foundation’s comprehensive analysis (available here: http://www.heritage.org/index/book/chapter-1). The fact that this correlation prevails across otherwise socially, politically and culturally heterogeneous nations supports the conclusion that economic freedom is the causative variable in sustainable poverty reduction. Two notable (although patently non-ideal) examples that further reinforce this inference are China and India. In the 1980s in China, there was a piecemeal and partial move in the direction of international free trade and market-based reform, that has accelerated in recent years. What have the results been? In China in 1981, 65% of the population lived in absolute poverty. Coinciding with the move toward greater economic freedom, by 2007 this had fallen to a mere 4%. India is yet another case in point. In 1991, after 3 decades of extensive state involvement in the economy, and with a meagre annual growth rate of barely 1%, India introduced fundamental (though still limited and distorted) market-based reforms. By 2010, India had achieved a GDP annual growth rate of 10.1%. In 1990, 51% of the population lived in absolute poverty. By the end of this year, the proportion is expected to have fallen to 22%. For a succinct overview some of these data sets and more, see the following video from Anthony Davies: http://www.learnliberty.org/videos/whats-so-great-about-economic-freedom/, with the pertinent evidence linked below the video. Finally, it should be noted that, while government transfers from the wealthy to the poor may afford some immediate material relief to the poor, it is far from obvious that such measures have net medium or long-term benefits, and that the poor wouldn’t have been better off in the long run had such measures not been implemented institutionally. I can do no better than quote Deirdre McCloskey on this point, which she raises in her critical review of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century, (available here http://www.deirdremccloskey.org/docs/pdf/PikettyReviewEssay.pdf):

‘Redistribution… has not been the chief sustenance of the poor. The social arithmetic shows why. If all profits in the American economy were forthwith handed over to the workers, the workers…. would be 20 percent or so better off, right now. But one time only. The expropriation is not a 20 percent gain every year forever, but merely this one time, since you can’t expropriate the same people year after year and expect them to come forward with the same sums ready to be expropriated again and again. A one-time expropriation raises the income of the workers by 20 percent, and then their income reverts to the previous level — or at best (if the profits can simply be taken over by the state without damage to their level, miraculously, and then are distributed to the rest of us by saintly bureaucrats without sticky fingers or favored friends) continues with whatever rate of growth the economy was experiencing….

The point is that 20 and 22 and 25 percent are not of the same order of magnitude as the Great Enrichment, which in turn had nothing in historical fact to do with such redistributions or charitable contributions. The point is that the one-time redistributions are two orders of magnitude smaller in helping the poor than the 2,900 percent Enrichment from greater productivity since 1800. Historically speaking 25 percent is to be compared with a rise in real wages from 1800 to the present by a factor of 10 or 30, which is to say 900 or 2,900 percent. The very poor, in other words, are made a little better off by expropriating the expropriators, or persuading them to give all their money to the poor and follow Me, but much better off by coming to live in a radically more productive economy.’

[4] Many of those listed in footnote 1 above express some sympathy with the idea. See, for instance, the several entries at http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/?s=basic+income+guarantee&submit.x=0&submit.y=0. For a more concentrated discussion of the relative merits and potential problems associated with a basic income, see the online symposium hosted by Cato Unbound: http://www.cato-unbound.org/issues/august-2014/basic-income-welfare-state. For a more extensive defence, see Charles Murray’s book In Our Hands (http://www.amazon.com/Our-Hands-Replace-Welfare-State/dp/0844742236)

[5] See Rolph Edwards’ paper in footnote 3 above, and Charles Murray’s Losing Ground (http://www.amazon.com/Losing-Ground-American-Social-1950-1980/dp/0465065880/ref=pd_sim_14_8?ie=UTF8&dpID=51reX7y847L&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR106%2C160_&refRID=1MWPAV6RKYGQGZDN3HBF) for an overview of some of the systemic problems with the welfare state model.

[6] see, for instance: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40276648?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents, https://mises.org/library/real-right-medical-care-versus-socialized-medicine

[7] https://fee.org/articles/the-failure-of-american-public-education/