Ridiculous read on what is fundamentally an anti-authoritarian philosophy. Read John Stuart Mill, one of Nussbaum's biggest influences (unfortunately not mentioned in the article).
"Though Mill is an advocate of limited government in ways that one might expect given his defense of basic liberties in On Liberty, he is no libertarian. He emphatically rejects the idea that legitimate government is limited to the functions of affording protection against force and fraud (PPE V.i.2). Instead, he thinks that there are a variety of ways in which government can and should intervene in the lives of citizens—sometimes as coercer and other times as enabler or facilitator—in order to promote the common good."
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mill-moral-political/#Lib...
1: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/review-essay/1995-07-...
"Mill thinks that the state can and should require parents to provide schooling for their children, ensuring that this kind of education is available to all, regardless of financial circumstances, by subsidizing the costs of education for the poor so that it is available free or at a nominal cost."
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mill-moral-political/#Lib...
I'd be wary of quoting that article like it's some authority. At a glance, it reads as skeptical of Mill. The harm principle is the basis of his thinking and he was very concerned about paternalism. I think it's quite likely he would view CA as an overreach.
What do you mean? What is the thing that utilitarian founders like Mill wanted to promote in the world? How is that not connected to human flourishing?
“The grand, leading principle, towards which every argument unfolded in these pages directly converges, is the absolute and essential importance of human development in its richest diversity.”
— Wilhelm Von Humboldt, Sphere and Duties of Government
voluntarily? or involuntarily?
My attempts to describe what I think is the logical consequence of that view of rights should not be taken as an endorsement of it.
definitely
> if you have a moral claim over someone else
This is exactly what I think the danger of bad philosophy leads to, people confusedly believing they have a claim to control people just for existing. The right to pursue life do not require an automatic claim to control the life of others merely for existing. The "right" to a certain quality of life does, however imply a belief that it must be provided by some means.
Something can't be "taken" if it's not owned.
Property rights systems exist because people use property to achieve their life's values, and having billions of people argue over how to use land is not enactable (I hope that's obvious).
People's lives are not served by telling billions of people who want to use a plot of land to "fight it out", and thus governments have reasonably enacted systems that gives gives people both physical and intellectual property based off their. efforts.
This isn't to be said that property systems can't be improved, our intellectual rights property system obvious has many ways it could be improved (and it changes as we discover new knowledge). The end goal of these political policies though is to create social systems that allow individuals to maximally pursue their life.
Property systems goals are NOT to give everyone a certain quality of life.
Take a look at even the most communist/anarchist society you can imagine (the kind with people who hate those who own property), and you will see systems of an authority being grasped for that help coordinate use of material means in order to avoid violence. Reality cannot be escaped.
Sure it can, someone can take land in the plain everyday sense that they occupy it and tell others to stay out. But that act, and any attempts to enforce it, is coercive and aggressive. Which proves that any system with property rights, including every libertarian proposal ever made, is coercive. That's ok but it also means that your "is it voluntary?" complaints are futile and self-defeating.
> Property rights systems exist because people use property to achieve their life's values
What's your empirical evidence for that claim? The actually existing legal construct of property in countries around the world, and in international treaties, in fact serves a whole range of goals. In every prosperous country on earth there is room for both private property and taxation for public provision. In empirical studies of life satisfaction and happiness the top is consistently dominated by democratic countries with extensive welfare states funded by taxes https://happiness-report.s3.amazonaws.com/2024/WHR+24.pdf#pa...
Government-imposed.
> government
Also known as a mere bunch of people who enforce their decisions using monopoly on violence.
> by yourself without infrastructure like plumbing, roads, schools and hospitals to educate and heal your employees, a strong legal system to enforce property rights…
Surely a government cannot do it by itself either? Who’ve decided that the decision should be deferred to them and not me or someone else? Oh, right, it was decided using the infrastructure and processes imposed by the government.
The only realistic alternative to “it’s not truly yours” is not global horizontal fair decision-making, it is a bunch of bureaucrats making decisions on behalf of (ie instead of) other people. That’s a road to serfdom paved by well intentioned naïve people.
The people through the process of democracy, where you also have a say as a voter and potential candidate. Property rights is a legal construct, created by the state. A technology if you will. Part of the rules of that construct is that property can be taxed for public provision purposes.
“The process of democracy” is hand waving. There is a complex web of institutions and traditions that reinforce themselves. What country would be more “democratic”: the one where people can vote for one of several handpicked candidates or the one where they can impose their will through community organizing and strikes? The one where billionaires own media and put forward their agenda or the one where the media landscape is dominated by self-sustained media co-ops?
> Property rights is a legal construct
That’s the main issue I have with your view. Property rights are a construct as much as the legal system is a construct, democracy is a construct, the state is a construct and “the rules” you appeal to are a construct. There is no any primacy of the state and the government.
If you want to know what Nussbaum has to say about it, you should probably read them yourself.
“Property” is most definitely a social aspect of reality. It does not water down its usefulness, or moral rationale, to recognize that any view of property beyond “things you can physically defend without help from others” involves social agreements and efforts.
I don’t think dismissing others good points out of hand is the best way to communicate your own ideas.
Human beings benefit so much from social agreements it is profound. This is not news to game theorists, but some people seem to find it to be a bitter instead of sweet pill.
The question for the animal which creates exponentially more value for itself via many and varied social constructs, than any other animal, is to optimize positive sum social structures (in form and depth), and avoid and mitigate negative sums. Not deny their obvious existence or that our own existence (and freedom) as individuals and a species would be significantly curbed without them.
If you have "collective efforts" you want funded or built, you're free to ask people voluntarily to put their lives, children, families etc. on hold for whatever cause you think is important that I don't see that you have insight into.
There's nothing stopping you.
Such collective efforts are already underway. One is called the United States, a system where the legal construct property is bounded and compatible with taxation for public provision. The US is a club of people who have banded together for common goals and with democracy as a tool for updating the system. If you don't want to be part of that club then leave.
“Democracy” is often used as a general term for governments that in some sense are a delegation of citizen power. Even though a pure democracy would remove the delegation.
As a practical matter, the US model has devolved into a party-duocracy. Power at all levels has nearly completely centralized at the national level of each majority party. Of which there are only two. The extreme minimum of choice even for a Republic.
So true.
But at some level, people who live together have to be able to make some decisions together.
The top level of that is what we call “government”.
It complicates things that governments are as prone to dysfunction as any other structure. And that governments are often weakest at the job of improving themselves.
This is getting a bit abstract.
The specifics of what a government taxes and for what matter. The line would be only to tax for things that generate a net positive expected sum for all citizens, and only in cases where the positive sum is significant and only achievable as an agreement at the top level of society. And these systems are monitored and adapted or cancelled based on their actual, not envisioned, impact.
There isn’t going to be a general answer to the question of whether taxation is good or bad. Only cases where the net benefits are positive and negative. Real or imagined.
I share the view that blind redistribution does not deliver positive returns in reality or in any sober theory.
But the societal level returns we get, from real (not unmeasured, not just imagined or ideologically assumed) surpluses of common efforts, are a legitimate source for funding those efforts.
https://mattbruenig.com/2015/10/01/capitalism-is-coercive-an...