On July 8, I expressed my shock at co-blogger Bryan Caplan’s statement that it would be morally permissible for John, whose daughter is dying from cancer, to hack into Bill Gates’s bank account and steal the money to finance the medical treatment. I won’t repeat my argument here. If you want to know it, click on the link in this paragraph.
On July 14, Bryan responded to my July 8 post. He led by saying:
My general position, to repeat, is that we are morally obliged to respect libertarian rights unless the consequences of doing so are very bad.
So far, so good. Bryan and I agree.
Then Bryan speculates about where I think he’s gone wrong. I’m not sure why he speculates because I had already said where I think he’s gone wrong, but maybe I wasn’t clear enough, so let’s examine his speculations.
Bryan writes:
1. He might think that we are morally obliged to respect libertarian rights regardless of the consequences. This seems like a crazy view. You shouldn’t steal a dime to save the world? Come on.
No, I don’t think that. Again we agree. The case we were discussing had literally nothing to do with saving the world.
Next, Bryan writes:
2. He might think that the consequences of stealing from Bill Gates to save your child’s life are actually very bad.
He’s getting warmer.
He then walks through his reasoning:
The original hypothetical only posited a single person who had to either steal from Gates or watch their child die. Per Huemer’s general approach, I just accepted the hypothetical and ran with it. And the consequences of this one hypothetical individual stealing do indeed seem very good on net.
Here’s where we part a little. Notice that Bryan writes “the consequences of this one hypothetical stealing.” But he’s not discussing “the consequences.” He’s discussing one consequence. What other consequence is he leaving out? That if stealing is said to be alright in this case, people will come to think that it’s alright in many such cases.
Bryan, though, seems aware of that issue, as evidenced by what he writes next:
David is right that lots of people are in similar or worse positions than the parent of the child with cancer. Wouldn’t the principle that all of them are are morally entitled to steal from Gates lead to bad consequences (i.e., destroying incentives to produce wealth, plus general chaos)? No, because almost none of these desperate people are in a position to steal anything notable from Gates. If these desperate people said, “I’m hungry” and you told them, “Fortunately, it’s morally fine to steal money from Bill Gates,” they would understandably be puzzled. “And how am I supposed to do that?!” would be the obvious reaction. (Some could pirate Microsoft software, I guess, but very few could make much money off of this).
People, especially my wife, often tell me that I often take things too literally. And they’re right. Here’s a rare case, though, where I didn’t take things literally enough. I thought that if Bryan thinks it’s alright to steal thousands of dollars from Bill Gates to finance one’s daughter’s medical treatment that “has a reasonably high chance of saving her life,” then surely Bryan would think that it’s alright to steal a thousand dollars from Bill Gates when doing so gives a parent’s starving child in India or Haiti an even higher probability of saving her life.
That’s where I wasn’t literal enough. For Bryan it matters that the person who is stealing has the technical expertise to do so. I think this way of thinking is bizarre. The person for whom it’s alright to steal is the person who has a fairly high amount of human capital. But wouldn’t it then make sense for that person to use his technical expertise to make money the old-fashioned way: by earning it?
Bryan ends the discussion of theft by saying:
You could change the hypothetical so that all of the poor people are in a position to steal from Gates, leaving societal devastation in their wake. Then, of course, I’d revert to my anti-stealing default.
So he and I are agreed that this massive theft by all the poor is wrong.
Then I would ask him the following question:
How little wealth would Bill Gates have to lose from theft by many (not all) poor people so that Bryan would say it’s right? I know that in his view a few thousand dollars is alright. How about a million? A hundred million? A billion?
One of the benefits of a comments section is that commenters often have good ideas. A commenter on my July 8 post, Mark Young, wrote:
I agree with Caplan, but with a caveat that he might also accept — and which, I hope, most others here would accept as well.
Caplan says that the rights violation is OK if the benefit greatly exceeds the cost. I take that to mean that it’s not morally wrong to (for example) break into a cabin if you are lost in the woods in a blizzard. Saving your own life is a greater benefit than the cost to the cabin owner. (I hope you all agree with that.)
But the moral calculus does not end with you breaking into the cabin. Once the emergency has passed you are morally obliged to make good the damage you’ve done. You must reimburse the cabin owner for the breakage and for any other consequential damages (say if the cabin becomes water damaged when a sudden thaw lets meltwater in thru the window you broke). It’d be nice if you went beyond that (maybe treat them to a meal at their fave restaurant), but reimburse the damages for sure.
So long as Caplan agrees with that, then I’m with him. The person who stole the money from Bill Gates is required to repay the amount along with any consequential damages (the $15.00 bank charge for a bounced cheque, say). Each of the 100 million starving Indians would have to pay Bill back as soon as they can, along with extra money to cover any damages the temporary loss of funds caused him.
(Again, assuming that each stole from Bill for a very good reason (“benefits vastly exceed the costs”) and there was no alternative that wasn’t equally as bad.)
I agree. Does Bryan?
Postscript:
In the first comment on Bryan’s response to me, our co-blogger Scott Sumner references one of my favorite movies of all time:
Recall the famous Coke machine joke in Dr. Strangelove.
Here’s the scene. Notice what Colonel Bat Guano says: “You’re going to have to answer to the Coca-Cola company.” My sense is that the Coca-Cola company would have no problem with having some change stolen from it to save the world. Call it a hunch.
READER COMMENTS
Rob Rawlings
Jul 19 2021 at 11:46pm
‘My sense is that the Coca-Cola company would have no problem with having some change stolen from it to save the world’
if the Coca-Cola company did have a problem with the theft would that mean it was not OK to take the money to save the world ?
If it would be OK to take the money even if the Coca-Cola company objected then would it also be OK if the world wasn’t at stake but a single persons life ?
What is no lives were at stake but the person taking the money just felt that on balance the act would leave the world a better place ?
Bryan’s position (seemingly: It’s OK to steal as long as the benefits greatly outweigh the costs and as long as only a few people can do it) seems absurd but all the other arguments seems just as subjective and arbitrary as well.
David R Henderson
Jul 20 2021 at 9:59am
You wrote:
No. It would still be OK. What I said at the top of the post about a dime applies to a whole bunch of dimes.
Scott Sumner
Jul 20 2021 at 5:21pm
Good point.
john hare
Jul 20 2021 at 4:54am
These posts trigger me more than is strictly rational. I have had people (usually employees) steal from me and rationalize it in various ways. The normal consequence is that they don’t work for me anymore, but more important, I try not to hire other people with the same characteristics. That short circuits Bryans’ ability to steal caveat by removing them from the company. So it’s okay to steal if they work for me??? Many people cannot be trusted to make an accurate assessment of when it would be moral to steal. A dime to save the world, or breaking into a cabin to save your life is on a different plane from the normal and frequent rationalizations of many.
A different point made above is the obligation to make it right after the emergency is passed. Too many people have the stated intent, but not the ability to make it right later on*. Personal experience again. People that can’t or wont hold a job have no capability to pay it back or make it right. The words are often borrow money when the meaning is give money.
“Rationalization is a cliff and not a slippery slope” is the phrase I used before. I may change that attitude if a rational argument is made.
Mark Young
Jul 22 2021 at 4:04pm
john hare writes:
I agree. It sounds like you might have had to deal with more than your fair share of such people, too. From what you’ve said, it sounds like you dealt with them appropriately — fire them if they steal from you for no good reason.
But I’d like you to consider this: Is there anything that someone who stole from you might be able to (truthfully!) say that would make you say to them “Well, I guess you made the right decision under the circumstances. Pay me back, and that’ll be the end of it.”
Is there anything that’d make you say “Well, Hell! If I’d been there and you’d asked me, I’d have just given it to you anyway. No need to pay it back!”
Now possibly you are a jerk, and there is literally nothing anyone could say that’d get either reaction from you. (Apparently some other people here are not afraid to wear that tag.) But what I am saying, and what I think Bryan and David are saying, is that there are situations where those are the most morally appropriate responses. Situations where if you don’t react that way, then it’s you who is the immoral one.
But, yeah. A lot of people can’t be trusted with such decisions. I’d sort of hoped that most of us here could be.
David S
Jul 22 2021 at 8:09pm
I look at this differently, I guess. I believe that if you are a parent of a dying child that could be saved by performing illegal action X (which has less significant consequences), you are morally obligated to take action X (because you are directly responsible for the welfare of your child). But then you are also morally obligated to accept the consequences.
So you steal from Bill Gates, and then turn yourself in to be arrested. If Bill Gates (or a judge/jury) agree that it was the right thing to do, life goes on. Otherwise you pay a penalty to keep society from falling down a slippery slope. (Obviously if restitution is possible then this factors in.)
This way you do not get to decide yourself what actions should be taken, but you make the best decision you can at the time.
Similar rules apply to world ending catastrophes, terrorism, etc. A version of this happened in real life after 9/11 – do you torture the suspected terrorist to prevent mass casualties? I believe the best answer is: yes, but then you submit yourself for arrest. Willingness to die for your country sometimes means willingness to live with bad outcomes for your country. (Also, if I (who am innocent) and a terrorist were captured and the only way to save a thousand lives is to torture us both, I’d want them to torture us both – life sucks sometimes.)
Jens
Jul 20 2021 at 4:58am
Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to get away from the father – who does well-meaning, bad, wrong, criminal or other things, who steals or lends or helps or whatever you want to call it – and talk about the child . Whether the child has to rely on their father to do criminal activities or on Bill Gate’s charity. And whether it really helps the poor Indians so much when billionaires can watch the earth burn (almost) from space. Perhaps the whole discussion here is just a remarkably elaborate account of the fact that property rights are simply not enough. If you want to suck the *whole* world into this example, then you should do just that.
Thomas Lee Hutcheson
Jul 20 2021 at 6:44am
I think the interesting point her is that both agree that modifications of “libertarian rights” are subject to cost benefit calculations.
In my book that makes both just neoliberals which attach very high costs to most ways of transferring income in their cost benefit analyses.
Vivian Darkbloom
Jul 21 2021 at 6:21am
The original hypothetical only posited a single person who had to either steal from Gates or watch their child die. Per Huemer’s general approach, I just accepted the hypothetical and ran with it. And the consequences of this one hypothetical individual stealing do indeed seem very good on net.
Here’s where we part a little. Notice that Bryan writes “the consequences of this one hypothetical stealing.” But he’s not discussing “the consequences.” He’s discussing one consequence. What other consequence is he leaving out? That if stealing is said to be alright in this case, people will come to think that it’s alright in many such cases.
That’s exactly the problem with Caplan’s argument and it’s not just a little problem. To put it somewhat differently, I’m quite surprised that an economist would wilfully ignore second order effects. The real world second order effects here are enormous.
Dan Zatkovich
Jul 22 2021 at 6:54am
The only defensible and intellectually consistent positions here are categorical: Stealing is okay in all circumstances, or stealing is wrong in all circumstances.
Peter
Jul 23 2021 at 2:47pm
The challenge I’ve been having with this entire conversation back to the start of it is the failure of people to acknowledge sometimes you are just going to intentionally act in an unethical way and we don’t need to legitimatize it, they/you can simply feel guilty for it and you should. We have an entire set of laws and social norms built around deal with the behavior ex post facto but that doesn’t make the original action ethical. There is no situation period hard stop where it’s ethically OK to steal, murder, rape, etc regardless of your situation. There are plenty of cases where we agreed it’s not OK to punish that person or demand they make amends but they were still wrong in the first place regardless.
What I’m not sure of is do the folk having the conversation not grasp that or are they, like Scott Sumner’s recent post on redefining utilitarianism along the lines of the gospel of wealth to mean “Well as long as I think my personal utility is worth more than the worlds combined utility sans me utilitarianism demands I don’t help others as I’m part of world to hence my slice matters in the equation”, really trying to argue “Everything is ethical in my subjective foxhole”. No it’s really not. It’s understandable sure, it’s excusable sure, does it have to get done sometimes, yep; is it’s right, no.
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