I’ve known Tyler Cowen for 25 years. Straussian misreadings notwithstanding, I assure you that he has little patience for open borders and even less for my brand of pacifism. But given the general moral theory that he embraces in his new Stubborn Attachments, it’s hard to see why Tyler doesn’t already agree with me. At minimum, he ought to take my contrarian views far more seriously. What else can he logically conclude, given his endorsement of the “Principle of Growth Plus Rights”? After strongly endorsing the moral value of maximizing economic growth, Tyler adds:
The Principle of Growth Plus Rights. Inviolable human rights, where applicable, should constrain the quest for higher economic growth.
Bear in mind that I am working with a pluralistic rather than a narrowly utilitarian approach. I will return to the status and nature of such rights later, but for now just think of such rights as binding and absolute. That means: just don’t violate human rights. If we were willing to trade these rights against a bundle of other plural values, at some sufficiently long time horizon the benefits from higher economic growth would trump the rights in importance, and in essence the rights would cease to be relevant…
Philosopher Robert Nozick wrote of rights as “side constraints.” The particular specification of these side constraints need not coincide with Nozick’s libertarian vision, and need not coincide with his absolute attachment to all forms of private property or his prohibition of most forms of taxation. Still, these rights satisfy Nozick’s notion of rights as restrictions on the choice set of an individual or an institution. As I see it, virtually everyone believes in rights of some sort… namely that they have to be pretty strong and nearly absolute.
Note that the traditional notions of “positive rights” or “positive liberties” – both of which refer to people’s opportunities – do not fit into this conception of rights… The result is that these negative rights, restrictive though they may be, represent a stripped-down set of bare-bones constraints, a series of injunctions about the impermissibility of various forms of murder, torture, and abuse.
Tyler’s big qualification make little practical difference:
…we should violate rights to prevent extremely negative outcomes which involve the extinction of value altogether, such as the end of the world, as is sometimes postulated in philosophical thought experiments.
OK, so why on Earth isn’t Tyler a pacifist in my sense? In the real world, modern warfare always means deliberately killing innocent people. What do you expect will happen if you bomb a city? If anyone other than a government deployed such weapons on a population center, virtually any jury would convict them of murder. Even manslaughter would be a stretch.
But what about stopping the “end of the world”? World War II itself hardly qualifies. Indeed, until the Soviet Union collapsed, it would have been quite reasonable to believe that U.S. participation in World War II was a critical step toward the end of the world.
Much the same applies for open borders. Immigration restrictions need not involve murder or torture (though they often do). But even if ICE enforced its laws with kid gloves, barring an innocent person from accepting a job offer from a willing employer or renting an apartment from a willing landlord is extremely oppressive. Almost everyone would now recognize Jim Crow laws as “abuse.” How are immigration restrictions any less awful? You hardly have to be a libertarian to see the force of the question.
Stubborn Attachments is one of Tyler’s best books. But if you share his abstract moral theory, you should reject his applied moral moderation. On a personal level, Tyler relishes uncertainty and complexity. But once you accept a moral presumption in favor of negative human rights, uncertainty and complexity reinforce skepticism against coercion rather than undermining it. Clearly.
READER COMMENTS
Kevin
Oct 22 2018 at 3:36pm
I think what Tyler meant as “human rights” is just what is traditionally thought of as human rights. Like the government should not arrest its citizens for no reason. You can argue that human rights should be extended to include the right to not have wars and the right to immigrate anywhere, and maybe that is true, but my reading is that those just aren’t included by definition. I think the purpose of including human rights is mostly just to take the human rights that everyone agrees on and include them in the system, rather than to philosophically expand on human rights. Expansion of goals should happen via the “growth” pillar rather than the “human rights” pillar.
In terms of whether expanding human rights to include immigration is a good idea, from one of those Marginal Revolution links, Tyler says:
If it really is doomed to fail and backfire then that seems like a good reason to oppose it. The main point of debate seems to be whether open borders proposals are actually doomed to fail and/or backfire.
DJ
Oct 22 2018 at 8:51pm
If it makes you feel better, I once asked Prof. Cowen at an event whether you were right about The Myth of the Rational Voter. He said, “Yes, of course.”
David Manheim
Oct 29 2018 at 3:56pm
You realize they have offices down the hall from one another, right?
Bedarz Iliachi
Oct 23 2018 at 12:36am
Until the libertarian theory resolves the status of national territory, whether it is collectively owned by the population or the State, or it is not owned at all but it is a possession secured by the national might, it is pointless to theorize about open borders. The objections to open borders do not go away even if the essential feature of private ownership, the willing landlords etc, that the private ownerships exist embedded in the national territory in an way that it is impossible to hand-wave away the State.
nobody.really
Oct 23 2018 at 1:17am
Does the distinction between negative rights and positive rights make sense?
f I have a right to be left alone, does that entail a right to command society’s resources be used to defend my rights? Does that entail a right to command YOUR resources (via taxation) be used to defend my rights? And once we acknowledge society’s right to command the expropriation of your resources for my benefit, what is the rationale for distinguishing between negative and positive rights?
BC
Oct 23 2018 at 2:39am
“In the real world, modern warfare always means deliberately killing innocent people. What do you expect will happen if you bomb a city?”
That would seem to be true only if one defines “innocent” to include soldiers of an authoritarian government or if one defines “deliberately” to include inadvertently killing civilians when targeting a military installation. “Smart” bombs don’t target entire cities anymore even if admittedly civilians do still get caught in the cross fire.
The main problem with pacifism, of course, is that pacifists must explain how they propose to prevent foreign militaries from threatening or taking away our own rights. Thus, a good pacifist argument is actually about military strategy and tactics, not moral philosophy.
Nicholas
Oct 23 2018 at 1:46pm
@kevin I fail to see how any definition of “human rights” could apply only as a prohibition on government actions against their own citizens; that pretty much defeats the “human” part. Human rights must apply universally, for instance: if it is a ‘human right’ for the government to not arrest it’s own citizens for no reason, it follows they must not arrest anyone else for no reason either.
…Like, even if they’re coming from another country to accept a job from a willing employer.
The universality runs both directions, not just what one government defines as a right it must extended to all humans, but rather, a human right must prohibit all governments from violation, for instance: if it is a ‘human right’ to not be murdered by your government without due process (I think this qualifies as a right “everyone agrees on”, no?) it then follows it is a ‘human right’ not to be murdered by any government without due process.
…Like, from having them drop a bomb on you.
So open boarders and no war are definitionnaly ‘human rights’. The system you outlined is rather a system only of ‘national rights’.
Opposing human rights on practicality grounds is pretty despicable, like people who argued that we shouldn’t abolish slavery because the indentured workforce was necessary to maintain growth in their preindustrial economy.
Karl
Oct 23 2018 at 3:14pm
Tyler said various forms of **murder** not killing innocent people.
What’s the difference? Murder is a social construct. More specifically, murder refers to taboo killing. For most (all?) humans proclaiming an opposition to taboo killing is a precondition for having a conversation. Tyler wants to have a conversation so he makes this proclamation. It has nothing to do with his general moral theory, which is why its a side constraint.
Now, to be clear, this precondition makes sense, since those humans who did not demand it likely died when the conversation went bad. Thus we should think of it as a bit handed-down moral furniture that we have to incorporate into whatever morality we settle upon. Besides that, we shouldn’t stress over it.
Thaomas
Oct 23 2018 at 3:45pm
Taxation is NOT theft.
Get over it.
Nicholas
Oct 23 2018 at 7:40pm
Citation needed.
nobody.really
Oct 25 2018 at 9:30am
You might check statutes, rules, and ordinances. In the US, crimes tend to be defined at the state and local level, whereas tax laws also get defined at the federal level. You might start with your local jurisdiction’s definition of theft/larceny.
It would be amusing to learn if the definition of larceny encompassed taxation. But I suspect the definition will include some conclusory term such as “wrongful” or “without lawful authority,” which just kicks the can down the road….
Bedarz Iliachi
Oct 24 2018 at 1:23am
Nicholas,
There does not exist a consistent definition and application of human rights. Essentially, human rights are whatever the United Nations agreements and declarations define them to be. And open borders and no war are not among them.
Consistently, there exists universal principles that are called Natural Law in the Western traditions. The particular applications of the Natural Law informs the Civil Rights that are guaranteed in a particular country. For example, due process is a general principle but trial by jury is a civil right in English-speaking countries but not in the Europe.
Hazel Meade
Oct 25 2018 at 5:09pm
<i>But even if ICE enforced its laws with kid gloves, barring an innocent person from accepting a job offer from a willing employer or renting an apartment from a willing landlord is extremely oppressive.</i>
This point really needs to be emphasized with respect to “dreamers”. it’s one thing to bar people from entering the country to work, it’s another thing to prevent someone from having a job in the land where they grew up, and where they have all of their social ties. The latter is as oppressive as it gets – such people are essentially official pariahs. And yet, years pass and nobody does anything to rectify that monstrous injustice.
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