Christopher Pang
The “Occupy Wall Street” (OWS) movement has been well over a month and protestors seemed to be garnering more support than ever. These “occupants”, some of which are protesting, in hope of a “fairer system” that provides health care, education and opportunity for all. Obama and other Republican presidential candidates, in a bid for presidency elections, started on class warfare as a populist move, to get the rich to pay their “fair share of taxes to pay for a jobs bill.
Therefore my questions to this misguided group of people and President Obama are “What is a fair share?” and “Why should everyone be ENTITLED to healthcare and education?”
In order to answer the questions above, we need to identify the natural rights of individuals and how entitlements are basically promises by government to violate rights of one particular group of individuals to benefit another group of individuals. Every individual only has the basic inalienable rights to life, liberty and property.
Life: Everyone is entitled to live once they are created.
Liberty: Everyone is entitled to do anything they want to so long as it doesn’t conflict with the first right.
Property: Everyone is entitled to own all they create or gain through gift or trade so long as it doesn’t conflict with the first two rights.
Many people misunderstood the right to live by insisting since they have a right to life, denying healthcare to them is denying them the right to life. The state therefore must provide the necessary healthcare for them. The right to life only applies to a human being’s right not to be killed by another human being. It is a form of “negative right”, which protects us from coercion from others (including government) to do something for another group of individuals, acknowledging others have the same rights as us.
Healthcare provided by government is an entitlement. How is it fair that an individual who did not pay a single cent of taxes to the healthcare program be entitled to free healthcare while many others who are paying much higher for their healthcare than it should be? How is it fair that the rich is paying higher amount of taxes but getting less in government handouts? Is it because the rich is rich, therefore they can afford it? And because they can afford it, therefore it is fair. Similarly it is definitely unfair that a group of comfort food consumers have to pay for the bills of healthcare consumers. Healthcare, like all other goods and services, is not unlimited and follows economic laws of scarcity. Health care is a need, like water or food. And like water or food, it isn’t free. Doctors/nurses have to go through proper training, medicines need to be researched and tested, before procurement and production, hospital beds do not appear by waving a magic wand just because it is government funded.
Similarly if Warren Buffett wants to contribute more tax voluntarily, no one is stopping him because it is his own property and he should be free to do whatever he wants with it. However enacting into a tax legislation and to force high income earners to contribute the same through income tax is pure coercion. The rich is not obliged to share their wealth with the rest of the society. The rich can only acquire their wealth by serving others in a capitalism model, providing what others values who are willing to pay a premium for this good/service, resulting in profits for the capitalist. The misconception that everyone has a right to be distributed a portion of the wealth of the rich is immoral. Similarly this applies to bailouts for the banks on Wall Street for socializing losses. These banks should have failed in 2007 if not for the Federal Reserve intervening and providing emergency funding. Two wrongs do not make things right by taxing the rich. Not every rich individual acquired their wealth from Wall Street and not every individual who acquired their wealth from providing financial services on Wall Street received bailout funds.
No one should be entitled to any freebie just because he has a Social Security number in USA or has a pink I/C in Singapore. For some reason or another, people today believe they should have entitlements to healthcare, education and housing. If something must be provided to us at the expense of someone else in order for us to have it, then it may be an entitlement, a privilage, or an act of charity – but it is not a “right”. Unless we correct our misconceptions on rights and entitlements, we will continue to give up our rights to liberty, property and eventually our lives to our political leaders in exchange for these entitlements.
Based on your ‘natural rights’ reasoning, what Obama is trying to do is liberty as it does not trample on the first right .
All 3 rights are inalienable rights. The first right is just a right to life. All 3 rights should not be compromised. Obama has infringed the 3rd right to property by taxing the high income/rich to pay for a bill to create jobs for the unemployed. How is that a fair share? Jobs don’t need to be created by building a bridge which no one uses so that a construction worker can carry on being employed in the construction industry. Construction workers either need to lower their wages such that it makes sense for projects to be profitable or they retrain in another skill such that they would be employed. Jobs should not be created by government for sake of getting people employed. This would only result in unproductive use of labour, resources and tax money from more productive sources which could have been reinvested.
You have chosen to use Locke’s theory but bear in mind that in the American Declaration of Independence, property was substituted with the pursuit of happiness.
The ideal of law and government is the regulation of life in a country so as to enable security and economic progress.
When some of act as parasites off the value generating class, the imbalance must be corrected. (e.g.: food centre “managers” who lease from the government and charge ridiculously high rentals) This is relevant from both ends of the economic spectrum. Ideally, this correction should be targeted.
When some manipulate, through the money at their disposal, the entire legal and economic framework of a nation, the resulting corruption, too should be corrected. (The Regan years in the USA are an example. The most powerful statement that this was the case is a clip of a Banker telling the US president to hurry his speech up, shown in a Michael Moore film Capitalism. Of course, the political scientist can look to the laws enacted by that administration for further evidence.)
It is interesting you mentioned Mr Buffett. There are few who would question that his integrity and acumen in the business had made Berkshire Hathaway shareholders very wealthy.
He famously said he is a very lucky and blessed man. To be born in America, to be good at asset allocation which pays extraordinarily well compared other noble professions like leading the Boy Scouts. That is why he believes in giving back to society, and that other wealthy people in the country should pony up and pay their taxes instead of bitching about reducing taxes for the rich through corrupt Congress representatives.
Buffett fans step right up!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiTkU9eIFPs
This line of reasoning has roots from Rawl’s work “A Theory of Justice”, which argues that under the ‘veil of ignorance’, if you didn’t know whether you would end up rich or poor in this life, it is natural that people would freely choose a ‘fair’ social system that maximizes the possibility that you are better off no matter what life throws at you. This is a basic insurance coverage that everyone would elect to have under the veil, thus in such a system where freedom and equality is valued, what is covered under this basic insurance coverage would be deemed inalienable rights.
Wouldn’t it be good (for everyone) to know that if you are unlucky to have caught lethal airborne communicable diseases like SARS, you would be treated even if you cannot pay for it, as opposed to being quarantined and left to die? What would happen if SARS carriers are unwilling to seek treatment when the latter is true?
Having illustrated that healthcare can be a right too, I disagree with your statement that “healthcare provided by government is an entitlement”.
On a side note, could you clarify why every individual has a basic inalienable right to property?
“There are few who would question that his integrity and acumen in the business had made Berkshire Hathaway shareholders very wealthy.”
I am not questioning either. I am saying he is doing it voluntarily. His wealth is a result of his good business acumen, his ability to read markets well, his financial analysis of firms and to spot bargains. All his wealth is a result of his hard work, ability and risk management. No one should be able to take his wealth away from him. Whether he wants to donate to charity or give more in taxes to the government is his right to do so, because no coercion was forced upon him to do so. BUT enacting a tax law to do so and forcing high net worth individuals or high income earners to contribute the same is involuntary. Forcing someone to do something involuntarily for the benefit of someone else is just pure coercion.
Supposed Robin Hood steals/robs your money from you but distribute to the poor, it is noble in the eyes of the poor but a thief in your eyes. No matter who he distributes to, the act of stealing or robbing is wrong. Whether it is done by the government or a robber is irrelevant.
Does the majority have more rights to take away property of the minority just because they are richer than the majority. Democracy is tyranny of the majority against the minority. Majority seeks equality and fairness. Equality is to provide equal rights, not to make everyone equal. Life is never fair, governments do not make things fairer by taxing the rich and subsidizing the poor.
“Wouldn’t it be good (for everyone) to know that if you are unlucky to have caught lethal airborne communicable diseases like SARS, you would be treated even if you cannot pay for it, as opposed to being quarantined and left to die? What would happen if SARS carriers are unwilling to seek treatment when the latter is true?”
If a person knows he has SARS but cannot pay for the treatment, he could seek treatment through getting donations, from certain medical organizations or borrow to do so. In any case, treating for SARS is not expensive. If you read the papers yesterday or the day before, which I cannot remember, there is an article which talks about financing for medical needs. http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_731623.html You may look for the hardcopy to find the additional content. People also seek donations on facebook and from charitable organizations. It is both voluntary methods instead of a tax on people. I believe in voluntarism and free will. Forcing people against what they refuse to do is coercion.
My take on these inalienable rights is as long as you do not infringe on other people’s rights to life, property and liberty, you should be free to do so.
Hello again Chris,
I do not think there is any coercion on richer folks to pay.
We are simply enforcing a social contract today on everyone within the national borders to pay for a health insurance policy that comes into effect upon birth. A contract that does not discriminate whether you will grow up rich, smart and healthy, or poor, dull and lame. That means if you are more successful, you are obligated by your stature and success to lend a hand to those less fortunate.
Because prior to birth, if you didn’t know how life would turn out, wouldn’t you want to ensure that the community would take care of you if things turn out worse than expected? That is the basis of Rawl’s argument.
The SARS example meant to illustrate the point about how certain subsets within the full range of healthcare treatment need to be classified as rights, and I used an extreme example because it is not only right (pun unintended), it also becomes rational to do so unconditionally.
On donations and charitable help, if the said person was involved in a traffic accident without any kin, it may not be possible for him to do fundraising while lying in coma. A local MP said it well, that only when one needs to visit the ‘jamban’ then you go and look for paper, it will be too late! We have come to expect TP in every cubicle for those urgent moments, shouldn’t we expect a limited range of healthcare as a bulwark against life’s nasty surprises?
Hi Jonas,
Social contract is coercion. I can imagine Elizabeth Warren saying almost the same thing as you.
Hi Donaldson,
I acknowledge the site and its contributors as expert proponents of liberty and freedom. Perhaps social contract is coercion. You could be spot on the semantics, and nothing else.
Say a society only has you and me, instead of thousands/millions of people. I do not know you and you do not know me. What kind of social contract you think exists between you and me then?
I can think of many. Division of labour, pooling of interests, mutual defense against hostilities, are all part of a deal to collaborate. Are you still unable to get out of the ‘I, me and myself’ mindset?
At a basic level, the implicit contract is to not disrupt each others’ personal security. Otherwise you’ll have less well off secondary school kids trolling for primary school kids with nice phones for an easy pickup. The real world is more complex, and the things one generation would agree to differ from the last… Therein lies the rub.
Hi Jonas, you said:
I think your statement is extremely problematic. Libertarians don’t reject collaboration as long as it is derived from spontaneous order. We term such collaboration as social cooperation. Spontaneous order may be a difficult concept to comprehend. Let me illustrate through an example.
Common law is an example of spontaneous order. It is derived through case law whereby judges apply particular cases general rules which are themselves products of cultural evolution. In another words, common law is knowledge gained through a long history of trial and error. Hence, common law comes about through human action but not human design, thus it is an example of spontaneous order.
Now that we have clarified what spontaneous order is, you can see that spontaneous order is somewhat guided by examples (e.g. legal precedence) and established norms. In no way is any person coerced to participate under the threat of force. Division of labour and pooling of interests are examples of voluntary exchange under social cooperation. They take place because benefits are obvious to every party involved. Yet at the same time, nobody is compelled to pool interest or specialise in a particular form of labour.
Well, not all libertarians have the same interpretation of things…. The spontaneous cooperation notion is just the same as forming little pacts as and when it suits one. They are an ethic for the strong, or those who seek strength in numbers. Gang 1 forms to expropriate and rule a disorganized mass — not a desirable outcome but a often seen result of such an ethic. Or one breaks off from the pact without fulfilling his obligations, cheating his former collaborators by taking group property temporarily in his custody…. Such an ethic is as troublesome as signing the unborn up to a pact they never agreed to.
On a separate note, spontaneous order has a hint of self assembly which leads to physics again. Hence, with appeal to the principle of least action from classical mechanics (or thermo, which is directly applicable to self-assembly) there is a sense that such spontaneous cooperation seeks efficiency in the teleological sense. Perhaps efficiency with respect to the participants’ objectives. There is no sense of seeking just outcomes. Or perhaps it is right that ethics exist solely to blunt the will of the strong, who would otherwise go unchecked.
“I can think of many. Division of labour, pooling of interests, mutual defense against hostilities, are all part of a deal to collaborate. Are you still unable to get out of the ‘I, me and myself’ mindset?”
Firstly division of labour do not magically appear out of thin air. Division of labour exist because both parties find it more beneficial to trade with each other based on their own specialized trade rather than trying to do everything himself. The most important criteria for this to work is MUTUALLY BENEFICIAL. The same is applied for pooling of interests and mutual defence.
Similarly if you and me were on a deserted island in this imaginary society of 2 people, I suggest a division of labour of you fishing for food, while I am responsible for finding materials for a raft to get away. That is mutually beneficial.
Supposed I now tell you I would prefer to stay on the island and not look for materials to get away and consume what you fished, while you still eager to find a way home now need to support my living and still have to find materials to build a raft to get home. Now that it is no longer mutually beneficial to have division of labour, you would have to fish less and find materials to build a raft. If I cant fish, I need to help you find materials so that you will continue to fish for me. But the eventual result is 1) I have to leave with you to survive or 2) pick up fishing as a skill to survive or 3) grow some agriculture to be self sufficient.
Now supposed a government comes in on this island and say “I cannot allow Chris to go hungry so i am going to tax 1/3 of your fish catches and give to Chris as this is a social contract for being on this island with Chris.” This will enable me to live off you even longer while you will take even longer to build your raft to get home.
The introduction of the taxes will continue to be a drag to the actual economy. Instead of me finding a new skill which we both could benefit from, I can continue to live off you with government supporting my “right” to live off the productive people.