Thomas wrote:I don't know about "a citizen's right to something", and I don't care about it as an end in itself.
Typically, rights are not considered ends in themselves.
Thomas wrote:What I care about is citizens' access to these things. Effective pharmaceuticals exist not because legislation has given citizens a right to them, but because researchers have developed them, companies have built factories to produce them, and medical studies have seperated the wheat from the chaff. The "rights" came after the fact; the probably helped some and hurt some, but I don't believe they, on net, increased people's access to effective medicine.
Here I think we may have hit on a fundamental difference. Libertarians, it seems, tend to think of "efficiency" as a social good. Their objection to government regulations, for instance, often centers on the inefficiencies of the present system. Indeed, despite the fact that libertarians rarely identify "efficiency" as a
goal of society, I would surmise that, next to "freedom," libertarians view "efficiency" (in particular,
market efficiency) as the
highest social good.
Although there are compelling reasons to get effective pharmaceuticals into the market quickly and efficiently, government cannot be oriented only to getting things to work "right," it must also prevent things from going "wrong." For libertarians, however, the government's primary function is to clear the way for the market to do its job: it's the market that makes things right and it's the market that fixes things when they go wrong. Yet the market, which is admittedly more efficient than government (at least in some respects) in making things right, is not very good at fixing things that go wrong.* In particular, it is not very good at protecting interests that are not economic interests.**
Thomas wrote:In the case of highways, I concede there might be a big enough problem with monopoly power to render competition ineffective. I haven't looked into this issue deeply enough to give you a good answer on that. About the regulation of pharmaceuticals, there is a body of scholarly work, most prominently by the University of Chicago's Sam Peltzman. Based on admittedly indirect evidence, it finds that it has decreased people's access to effective pharmaceuticals, by greatly increasing the cost of developing them. If Peltzman is right -- I am too much of an armchair economist to be sure he is -- the actual net effect of the legislation was the opposite of the intended one.
Assuming that the legislation was intended to promote efficiency.
Thomas wrote:I take your point; it weakens mine, but doesn't refute it entirely. For example, before the civil war, black slaves could purchase their liberty. That sounds like the transfer of an "inalienable" right to me. The moral philosophy about what rights are "inalienable" wasn't too different then from what it is now.
A slave buying his freedom isn't an example of a transfer of an inalienable right. After all, the slave is
property, and property is always transferable. A better example would be someone selling himself
into slavery -- thus transferring the previously inalienable right to liberty. Would that be permissible in a libertarian society?
Thomas wrote:Answer #1: We're talking about a very extreme form of libertarian society now. Most libertarians want to go back to 19th century institutions, minus slavery, the absence of universal suffrage, and the like. I know of no evidence that selling votes to the highest bidder was more of a problem then than it is now. But I don't want to chicken out: No, there's no fundamental principle against vote-selling. Given that, here goes ...
OK.
Thomas wrote:Answer #2: How would that be different than today? Our politicians do this kind of stuff all the time; that's what lobbying and pork-barrel spending are all about. Specifically, I've heard of a Chicago mayor who made a carrer out of buying and selling votes under the current system. He looks much like your avatar.
Well, he was only a buyer, never a seller.
Thomas wrote:Also note that during the last presidential election campaign, there have been several websites where Green voters in swing states and Democrats in non-swing states traded promises to vote for the other side's guy for mutual gain. For the purpose of our argument, that isn't too different from selling to the highest bidder.
No, it is as different as a lightning bug is to lightning. Right now, I could "swap" my vote with someone else, but there is no way of knowing if either of us kept his part of the bargain. In a libertarian society, however, if vote-selling were legal the vote-buyer would undoubtedly insist upon some form of guarantee that the vote-seller fulfilled the contract. Ultimately, widespread vote-selling might necessitate the elimination of the secret ballot, since vote-buyers would not be satisfied with the vote-sellers' mere promise to vote according to the vote-buyers' instructions.
Thomas wrote:Answer #3: In a libertarian society, government would have much, much less pork to hand out. So the votes wouldn't nearly be worth as much to potential buyers as they are today. Moreover, every sold vote would do much less social damage that it does today. I expect the combination of the two dominates any adverse effects from making votes easier to sell. But I admit I have no solid proof for this expectation.
What if I were a judge. Could I sell my decision in a court case to the highest bidder?
Thomas wrote:Money isn't what the social good is, only what it's measured in.
Often, the distinction is lost in practice.
Thomas wrote:No, you wouldn't have the same rights. You would have different rights.
I quite agree.
Thomas wrote:One possible scenario would be that your neighborhood is a propietary community. You and your neighbors would call the proprietor and point out to him that if this slaughterhouse is built, he loses your business to people who'd be willing to pay much less rent than you do. This isn't technically a right, but it gives the proprietor an incentive not to have the slaughterhouse built. In fact, the proprietor has an incentive to attract your business by preempting this situation in the first place. One way to preempt it is to put it in the contract with the inhabitants
And if the owner of the proprietary community is also the person who wants to build the slaughterhouse...?
Thomas wrote:(Aside: I'm not sure what you call the payments proprietary community owners are getting. Taxes? Rent? My English fails me here.)
I imagine it would be called "rent."
Thomas wrote:Another possible scenario revolves around property rights. For example, estates might come with the right not to have a slaughterhouse built within 500 yards of it, and the slaughterhouse owner would have to purchase this right. Alternatively, estates might come with the right to build a slaughterhouse on it, and the neighbors would have to purchase this right from the potential slaughterhouse builder to make him stop.
But all of this presupposes a marketplace of willing buyers and sellers of rights. Let's say, for instance, that each parcel of land in a particular area has both a right to be the site of a slaughterhouse and
also the right to be free of neighboring slaughterhouses. Mr. Butcher decides that, on his property, he will build a slaughterhouse, which he is certainly entitled to do. His neighbors, however, refuse to sell their rights to be free of a slaughterhouse, while Mr. Butcher refuses to sell his right to build a slaughterhouse. Who wins?
Thomas wrote:As you know, "I own this real estate" is really shorthand for "I own a bundle of rights with regard to this real estate". Serious libertarians argue that the bundle could be adapted to solve your slaughterhouse problem.
Are you sure? My slaughterhouse problem can get devilishly complicated.
*I would, however, argue that government is
more efficient at addressing the "free rider" problem.
**I recognize, however, that some libertarians would argue that
all rights are fundamentally
economic rights.
