Sam Stone recently started a thread on a propsed platform for a Progressive Market Party and suggested various thread be started on different issues. Taking up the challenge, here’s a thread on the issue of personal liberty.
In broad scope, I’ll define personal liberty as this, “the right for any adult person to do whatever they want as long as their actions do not harm another person without their consent.” It’s a little broad and may need some fine tuning, but that’s part of the purpose of this thread.
Another issue is what role does the government have in personal liberty. Is it a passive role of not acting itself to restrict the personal liberty of any citizen? Is it an active role in seeking to protect the personal liberty of its citizens? Is it just a federal role or are all levels of government to be prohibited from interefering with personal liberty?
In my opinion, an active role is required of the government. Consider an analogy of crime. Suppose the government decides murder should be a crime (a reasonable decision) and the people want the government to discourage murder. Would anyone feel it was a useful action for the government to pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting the government from murdering its citizens and then announcing that as long as the government didn’t murder anyone, any other murders that occurred where strictly affairs between private citizens and of no interest to the government? Of course not. Our government should not only refrain from attacking our rights it should also work to defend our rights from attack.
On a related issue, I think that the principle of states rights is immaterial in personal liberty issues. Why would I care whether federal law or state law is interfering with my life? If I want the government to maintain a hands off policy on an issue, I want all levels of government to keep their hands off. As in the example I gave above, if the United States agrees I have the right to light up a cigarette then it should not stand by if New York tries to deny me my rights.
The devil in the details is going to be the definition of “harm”. We can probably agree that physical injury counts as harm. But beyond that? Damage to property, perhaps - does “damage” include “reduction in value”? If so, can I legally compel my neighbour to mow his lawn and trim his hedges to my standards, because otherwise he’s reducing the value of my house? Can I prevent members of racial minorities from moving into my neighbourhood for similar reasons?
There’s also the issue of free speech. Does being offended count as “harm”? If so, where do we draw the line? Do we ban public display of pornography, racist material, religiously offensive material, jokes that might possibly offend 0.01% of the population? Do we ban gay couples from holding hands in public? That offends quite a few people, after all. Or, do we say that only physical injury counts as “harm”, rule that Fred Phelps and his ilk have an inviolable right to outrage and upset the targets of their bigotry, and prevent anyone taking steps to prevent them doing so?
Even physical injury - particularly, self-inflicted injury - isn’t without its complications. There are people - admittedly, not many people, but still a non-zero number - who want to have their legs, arms, etc cut off for sexual gratification. Should the state allow this freely, or does it have a duty to (at least) require them to undergo some sort of psychological counselling and assessment beforehand? Does the state have a duty to try and prevent suicide - or can the state actively assist the suicidal?
There’s also a tie-in to the environmental issue from the other thread. Is a citizen permitted to harm something that isn’t a person, or which isn’t the property of another person? Does legislation preventing cruelty to animals violate “personal liberty”, if the animals in question are wild, or owned by the perpetrator?
I’m no libertarian. I accept the idea that in a democratic society not every individual gets to do whatever he or she wants. So as a general rule of thumb, a reasonable definition of “harm” or any other ambiguous terms can be defined by majority rule.
Within the context of the kind of party I was talking about, its responsibility would begin and end with,
A. Attempting to make sure that the costs and benefits of a decisions are paid for (i.e. correcting for externalities such as area pollution),
B. Making sure the market is functioning correctly, that there are no technical or intrinsic reasons stopping people from freeling contracting with each other.
In terms of your OP, your right to swing your fist does not include your right to force me to breathe stuff you are emitting, or listen to the noise you are making, or otherwise be harmed without my consent.
I understand that this is a matter of interpretation - some people have used harm to include things like emotional harm (you must protect someone from smoking- think of what his poor family will go through if he dies!) or financial harm because the person stops providing (We must stop alcoholism because it destroys families). Those arguments are specious, and I would reject them. You could use the same argument to prevent someone from dumping a girlfriend.
I’m talking about concrete physical or monetary losses incured wtihout any consent whatsoever. That doesn’t mean monetary losses because you picked the wrong husband and he drank the inheritance. It means things like crop damage from acid rain, economic damage from effluvients downstream from a mill, etc. Areas where economic activity is being subsidized by people who are forced to absorb the cost of that activity through externalities.
As long as all parties in a transaction consent, and there are real alternatives to the transaction so no one was coerced, then this political party is agnostic, and Liberty trumps all.
Just to confirm, there would be no sanctions against “emotional harm”? Stalking and other forms of harassment (cross-burning, opressive picketting) would be legal? Unless I can prove “physical loss”, I have no case against anyone who goes out of their way to cause me mental distress?
I’m afraid you’re losing my vote on this issue, even before we get to the topic of animal rights.
Sam, what’s your stand on the ideas of my second post; the government’s role in personal liberty? As I recall, in your original thread, you said that the Progressive Market Party’s platform on abortion would be no federal law on abortion and let the states regulate how they wish. Is that just a stance on abortion or a general idea? And if so, why is it okay for a state government to pass a law on something if it isn’t right for the federal government to do so?
I’ll admit I’ve never understood the states rights rhetoric. I’ve always felt the main issue was whether or not any government had a right to take a given action; arguing about which level of government should take an given action seems like pointless trivia in comparison. And even at that level of trivia, I’ve never understood what the attraction the states seem to hold for so many people. I can think of arguments why some issues should be carried out at the highest government level - the nation - and some issues should be carried out at the lowest possible levels - towns and villages. But the mid-level of the states seems to me to have no particular virtues.
And I agree with Tevildo’s most recent post. Some actions, while not actual physical harm, rise to the level of unacceptable harassment and can be outlawed. As I said before, I’d accept a community standard on where that level is.
I realize I seem to be leaving myself open to the charge that my principle is no different than existing principles. On paper that might be true; I’ll concede how my ideas could be twisted to cover any existing law. What I wrote was more of a guideline; people should have to show that an action harms somebody, not just offends somebody nor harms society in the abstract, before a law is passed.
Guys these are mostly sidetracks. Can we take it as a given that laws against things like stalking, harassment, and the like would remain as they are? I don’t know of anyone against those, including Libertarians.
I’m really not interested in discussing every possible social policy here. I’m mostly interested in large macroeconomic policy at this point.
Worse thing a political party can do is be a one trick pony. You get elected, you pass one law, and then what? Turn the government back over to one of the other parties to handle all the other business of state?
As for sidetracks, we’re discussing the topic of the thread title and OP and you were the one who suggested starting threads like this one specific issues.
So, do you have to get unanimous consent from all those affected? How would that be feasible for things like atmospheric pollution. Even for the easier case of getting the downstream neighbors to agree to your usage of a river. What’s to keep one person from holding out and vetoing economic expansion?
That’s the problem, isn’t it? Your micro is my macro. Your right to drive without insurance shouldn’t mean I have to pay when you rear-end my car. Your right to sell crack while living next door to me shouldn’t mean I have to live with crackheads coming into my neighborhood 24/7 to buy from you.
I would want to give individuals a civil right to prevent private parties, such as employers, from infringing on their personal liberties and give government the power to help individuals, through civil and criminal action, prevent infringement on personal liberties by such private parties.