Welcome to Keith's night. Don't tread on anyone.
Andy, libertarian Institute today.
I am joined by. Dr. Chris Freeman.
He is a philosophy. Professor at William and Mary.
He's the author of why it's okay to ignore politics and
unequivocal Justice. Dr. Freeman.
Thank you so much for your time. Thanks for having me.
If you had to nail down the most important lesson you learn from
the work of Robert nozick. One two, or three, what would
you say? That is?
I like the question. That's a good question.
Well, I don't know. So this might not be the
response that you're looking for.
Although this is what came to mind.
First this I learned. I don't know.
I think that the right way to kind of conduct your research as
an academic. To pursue the arguments where
they lead and not worry so much about the kind of reaction that
you might get from your colleagues.
So knows their Grote Anarchy State and Utopia.
It's a great book. It's one of my favorites, but
from everything I've heard, his colleagues weren't in love with
it. And he actually suffered social
consequences as a result of it, but he, but he wrote the book.
And, you know, he taught the courses that, you know, he
taught the way he wanted to. And he was very Be courageous
and the way he went about his career.
And so that's something that I think is is worth emulating and
worth learning from now. I can maybe give you a more.
I don't know a response that is more directly connected to some
of his actual arguments. So I think maybe knows it's
great. Insight is a political
philosopher, Anarchy State, and Utopia, is that the sorts of
reasons that liberal egalitarian is like, John, Rawls.
Give Are prioritizing civil or or political Liberty?
So things like freedom of speech, freedom of Association,
freedom of the press those sorts of things and Democratic
freedoms, as well are also reasons to protect and
prioritize economic Liberties like the freedom to own
productive property, freedom of contact contract, freedom of
exchange and so on. And so I think really one way of
thinking about what Noah's Ark is up to and Anarchy State and
Utopia is doing that a consistent liberalism leads to
libertarianism. What is philosophy and why do
you think it's important? He's a good question.
Well philosophy. I don't know.
I mean means love of wisdom. So that's that's a pretty good
start. I think one of the unique
features of philosophy and this also speaks to why I think it's
important is I think it's one of the few disciplines that doesn't
really let you take anything for.
Granted. You take a course in chemistry,
you can take for granted the existence of chemicals.
You take a philosophy. Words can't really take anything
for granted. You take, you can't take for
granted that there's an external world or anything like that.
You have to argue for it. You have to question your
assumptions. And so even if you don't become
a professional philosopher and you know, those jobs are pretty
scarce these days so it's maybe not the most promising career
path. I think you can learn something
from Philosophy by internalizing this lesson that you know, don't
take things for granted question your assumptions things.
That might seem like common Common Sense, might turn out to
be false. I love these thought experiments
you give one of them is, you know, you can ask people, is it
okay to kill one person to, you know, take their organs and then
save the lives of seven people. But if you ask people, whether
or not, it's okay to vote, they will say unequivocally.
Yes. I'm not even having this
conversation now, but we don't usually run into this, where we
are talking to someone and say, should I kill them and harvest
their organs to save more lives? Is one of the many great thought
experiments in both of your books.
Links to both of which will be in the description below.
What is the importance of thought experiments?
If we never actually encounter these events in the real world?
Yeah, and I should say that, you know, I wish I could take credit
for that particular thought experiment about killing the one
and harvesting their organs to say, five.
That's an old Chestnut. So if you haven't been talking
to a lot of people about these sorts of crazy scenarios, that
just tells me you need more philosophers on the show.
We've got, we've got a million of Of them.
But yeah, so I think these thought experiments can
illuminate basic moral principles.
So I'll just, so, I'll just run with the one that you've already
brought up. So you have this scenario where
you say, look, maybe you have five patients, all of whom are
dying of organ failure. Each one needs a different organ
to live and there are no volunteers offering up their
organs. And so these patients are going
to die. However, you know, there's an
innocent person. Who's a match for all five.
You can kill the one, we distribute their organs and save
the five. Should you do this?
Now? You might say this is not really
a scenario that the doctors frequently encounter.
So what's the point of considering it?
Well, the point is to test a principle that might say
something like perform the action that does the most good
or promotes the most welfare or seems the most lives.
And if you think that it's wrong for the doctor to kill the one
to save the five, in that case, then you might not be tempted.
By this principle that says, you know, always perform the action
that saves the most lives or does the most good.
Do you see any important insights in Plato's allegory of
the cave? I do that's a bit outside my, a
bit outside my wheelhouse. I haven't got, you know My
Philosophy tends to go to 1970 and that's as far back as I go,
these days. But I do like the, the allegory
of the cave. I mean, I think there's this
kind of goes back to the idea that, you know, maybe it
shouldn't take common-sense for granted.
Don't think don't take the way that things appear as the final
word. And one thing that philosophy
can do is just sort of cast a new light.
These issues that have become very familiar to us and maybe we
become complacent in the way that we think, or react.
And like I said, you just, you know, take things for granted,
you take people's word for it, but philosophy can, you know,
maybe helps you get out of the cave and see the sunlight for at
least, for some cases? Perhaps at least.
That's the hope. That's the hope.
What is the thesis of your book? Why it's okay to ignore
politics. Well, the thesis is it's okay to
ignore politics. That's so that's the short
version. The slightly longer version is
that. It's morally better for most
people, maybe not everyone. But for most people, if you take
the time and energy that you might allocate to politics to
something like preparing and casting a vote.
And you reallocate that to other more effective forms of private
altruism. So my favorite example, is
something like earning extra money to donate to the against
malaria Foundation. This is perhaps the world's most
efficient charity gives you sort of the most bang for your buck
so to speak. So it's a dollar sent to this
charity is going to do more good than a dollar sent anywhere
else. And so my argument is rather
than spend your time on politics again for most people, which is
very Very unlikely to produce any good.
Spend that time doing something that that will produce good and
potentially a lot of good potentially saving lives.
How did you respond to the criticism that what the
individual does? When they're voting?
They realize that necessarily their vote doesn't change
anything but just as if I go into someone's house and steal
one item. I'm not changing the entire
direction of the rest of their life.
In fact, they might not even know the items gone.
What the voter is attempting to do, is harmonize their interest
with the interest of society, as a whole, by participating in
participatory democracy. I forget what, what what the
term is, but that's what the voters actually doing.
They know they alone are not saving the world.
However, they are engaged in an activity, which on net will will
do. So how do you respond to that?
I would draw a distinction between the claim that politics
one practice collectively has no impact, which is, which is
false. Surely.
It does have an impact and an individual's participation in
politics, having an impact, which frequently it fails to
have an impact. And And more directly to your
question. I would say there are ways of
sort of promoting the goals that you might promote via politics
more effectively via non-political mean.
So, just very simple example, could be something like food
insecurity. Maybe you participate in
politics because you're worried about food, insecurity, you're
worried that people aren't getting enough to eat one.
Option would be researching candidates their platforms, see
how well, they Answer this problem of food, insecurity and
then go out and cast a vote for the one that you think is best.
That's one way of doing it. But of course your vote is very
unlikely to make a difference to whether or not that person could
get selected for all practical purposes.
It's not going to make any difference.
The alternative is you spend the time that you would have spent
on Politics on non-political forms of altruism?
And in particular non-political ways of addressing the problem
of food, insecurity, and there are various ways.
You could do this. Maybe this means, Learning to
donate to a food bank. Maybe this means volunteering at
a food bank, you know, you can use your imagination.
But the idea here is that you could still contribute to that
goal that you think is important.
And that, you think other political participants are
contributing to say solving the problem of food insecurity.
But if you pursue it, via non-political means you'll
actually make a difference. You can actually help people get
fed who otherwise wouldn't get fat.
Let's say a lot of people read this book and only the very
humble people are persuaded by the arguments.
Look, I don't have the information.
So I'm not going to do this. So I'm going to engage in
effective altruism in place of voting will.
All this does is open up a void for the most evil non people
without humility to fill this void.
Making things worse than that, than they, otherwise would have
been. What do you say?
To that response. Well, I in part, I love the
worried because you're assuming that my, you know, the most
rational and humble readers will be persuaded by me.
I'm very flattered by this objection.
I like this objection, you know, my basic response is I try to be
realistic about my impact. So if it were the case that, you
know, I like this book and I draw a ton of really Lee humble,
rational people away from politics.
And like you said this, maybe there's this new void, that's,
that's being filled up by people who are not rational, and
humbleness makes our politics much worse.
That would be bad. However, I I just don't think
I'm not influential. I'm happy to be wrong.
I'm happy to be more influential than I think I am.
But I think you know, I don't know how many people I could
persuade with this book. I don't think it's enough to
make a difference to something like national scale.
Tex. But if you can, you know, if it
changes a few people's minds and they really do shift their
attention away from politics and toward effective altruism.
Then it won't actually have any meaningful impact on politics.
That's going to stay the same, but it could mean that some
lives get saved that otherwise wouldn't get saved.
And so I think that would be, that would be a win.
That would be, that would be a moral Improvement.
When it comes to, I believe the final chapter of the book you
talk about, not only is it bad in the aggregate.
When a bunch of ignorant, people waste a bunch of time engaging
in political activity, but it's bad for you individually to
spend all this time watching the news media and it's also bad for
your relationships. What evidence do you have that
engaging in political activities?
Is bad for us, mentally and our The closest relationships in our
life. Yeah.
So there's a lot of evidence that suggests, it's bad for us
for our mental well-being. Particularly.
So, you know, just casting your vote and getting on with your
life, is not a big deal, but it's really the constant
attention paid to politics. That's bad for us.
So constantly scanning social media is, you know, it causes
anxiety. It causes sleeplessness.
It actually can worsen our physical well-being.
And the thing is that, you know, for what But you know, like I
said, it's not as though you can use the information that you
will acquire, in this way to actually make a difference.
So we're making ourselves more stress, more anxious, Sleepless
for no further end. And I think that's an additional
reason to disengage from politics.
And in terms of relationships being bad for our relationships.
I mean, there's a lot of evidence now that suggested that
an increasing number of people, simply refused to associate with
members of the other party. They won't date members of the
other party. They don't want their children,
dating members of the other party.
And so, you know, basically you're cutting yourself off
from, from half of the country for political reasons.
And you know, this clearly is going to have a negative impact
on on your relationship to other people least other people in the
other party. Do you see this as a result of
the state? Well, not only existing but
being so big like everything, it touches it, then we then have to
have a one-size-fits-all policy. So it's not just some hobby that
you can have. It's like, look I want to be
friends. But what if I'm an atheist and
you're an Orthodox Christian and we get to vote on what religion
everyone is? Okay.
Well, I wanted to be friends, but now I have to violently
impose my will on you or I don't get my way and Vice versa is
this just me engaged in seeing something.
I already want to see where I pin this on big government.
I think that is part of it. I think that is part of it.
There's there's this great thought experiment from from a
Georgetown Professor named John has Miss where he asks us to
imagine a world in which the choice of which car, you get to
drive becomes politically determined like, you know, like
the whole country gets one type of car and we vote on it.
And he says, well you could imagine very quickly.
This becomes a hot political issue.
Like, you know, we've become politically divided over the
question of cars. Now, as things like we're
actually kind of a little too politically divided over the
crushed cars now, but imagine how Amplified that would be in a
world where car choices come under political control.
We have much more conflict over this issue, where there's not a
ton right now, but of course, this is what you see.
In other cases that are politicized, where you have
these choices that could be Two individuals or individual
families. And we can kind of, you know, go
our separate ways and we don't have to fight about it, but were
drawn into these conflicts because the state really does
have such a wide range of things that it influences these days.
People will frequently see watching the news and reading
the newspaper reading articles on these, you know, news sites
as the way that you can accurately.
Get informed. Do you have any Superior ways of
let's say, well we're trying to get people to ignore politics.
So maybe I should take a different direction here, if
someone really wants to be informed, because they simply
want to have an understanding of what's going on.
The world. What approach would you tell
them to take it? What's up?
Right? So the first thing I would say
is well, maybe let's take a step back and ask if you really want
to do this. If this is how you want to spend
your time, but for argument's sake, let's say that you do.
So I do think that there are sources that are, that are less
partisan than others. I think that's, that's a good
start, but it's hard. It's hard.
So, I think people have this idea that you can become well,
informed and unbiased or make. You know, have good political
judgment simply by reading nonpartisan sources and I think
to some extent that can help, but but there's this further
obstacle, which is interpreting the information in an unbiased
way. So you could get, you could just
get you, no factual information. That seems relevant to politics,
but you might be biased in the way that you interpret it.
And so it's not enough to just know the facts about Politics.
You actually have to be able to process it and interpret it in
an unbiased way and that's really hard to do.
And as far as I can tell, there's actually not a whole lot
of evidence based strategies for D biasing ourselves.
So I think that there are there are ways to do it.
That, that shows some promise but it's not clear how effective
they are going to turn out to be.
So for example, it turns out that if people were Reflect on
their own ignorance of the mechanics of policy.
They become a little bit more humble.
So, in other words, you say, you know, I've got this problem with
Social Security, what, you know, whatever it might be.
I don't like Social Security and then you, you have them reflect
upon whether or not, they actually know how, you know,
Social Security Works. Maybe, I don't quite get it and
then they become a little bit more humble and can actually
sort of open them up to counter arguments, and, and things like
that. That might be one way to do it.
There are other, there are other ways that are you might try
again. It's not, it's not quite clear
how successful they are. But having sort of friendly
conversations without party members about topics that you
disagree with. But you kind of start out not
with the disagreement but by discussing things that you do
agree about. So yeah, okay.
We're on the same page about this now.
Let's let's talk about that. This also seems to soften up our
bias a little bit. The thing is that's a lot of
work. There's a lot of work.
It's Not clear how effective they are.
Look at it. There's there's some promise but
it's, you know, it remains to be seen.
I think exactly how how successful they'll be.
You got to acquire all this information and the payoff is
very, very low. So maybe it means you have an
informed and unbiased vote that won't make a difference.
And so my argument is don't spend your hours doing that.
Spend your hours maybe learning to donate to the against malaria
Foundation. You spend enough hours and you
learn enough to save a human life and that's a much better
use of your time, morally speaking.
Then all of the Informing and D biasing work that you might do.
You had mentioned that philosophy is about questioning
a lot of assumptions that we have.
Could you give us the biggest misconception, people on the
right have and the biggest misconception, people on the
left have about the world in general?
That's good. Okay.
I don't know, maybe the biggest misconception.
So this is obviously, you know, broad Strokes here.
People on the right, you know, I think maybe their biggest
mistake is thinking that the cosmopolitanism or globalism is
bad. I think it's very, very good
open borders, free trade, all of these sorts of things.
I think are extremely good, their dynamic.
They lead to sort of more robust and diverse societies at.
Yeah, so I think if I could persuade the right of one thing,
It's the cosmopolitanism is a good thing and should be
embraced offer. The left.
I would say, can Embrace capitalism?
Capitalism is good in particular.
It's good for the poor. Maybe that's that.
Maybe if I'm narrowing it down that that might be what I would
try to persuade folks on. The left of is it capitalism is
not just good for the Elon musk's of the world.
It's good for the rest of us. It's good for people who have
cheaper products to buy who have better products to buy.
Why we have more Leisure Time and that probably capitalism is
a much more effective way to reduce poverty than a lot of the
Regulatory and we distributive suggestions that people on the
left make and how do you know that the reduction in poverty or
the increase in standard of living exist?
As a causal result of capitalism?
Yeah, so I think, in particular, when we're talking about
something like poverty reduction, my favorite sort of
measure of this is the, the, the time cost or time price of
goods. So you say, for example, you
know, what would it how many hours would the average American
have to work 100 years ago to buy a loaf of bread.
I don't know what it is. I'm making numbers out like 10
hours or something like that and now it's like to you know, 20
minutes or something like that. You say well, okay.
Well Is that what is actually led to that reduction in the
time price of that good and many other Goods?
It's like well, it's you know, it's the the sort of standard
story that we know about capitalism is that you have
people competing for your business.
They're trying to innovate if they can sell a better loaf of
bread or the lower price. They'll get more business.
And so this incentivizes higher quality Goods at lower at lower
prices, and we just see this we don't really have an example of
List societies that have this impressive track record of
poverty reduction in this. Maybe this is an additional
comment that might relate to what I would try to persuade the
left of countries like Sweden their capitalist countries in
the sense that they do not have Collective ownership of the
means of production. They're not socialist countries
their capitalist countries with a lot of redistribution.
And, you know, we can, we can debate the merits of
redistribution. But any country with a high
material, standard of living is going to be a capitalist
country. So where the the ownership of
productive property is is held in private hands, so there's not
really a counterexample for this.
It seems like you're not even necessarily taking away the
Socialist identity. If you say that you want private
ownership in the means of production.
Because if they say, well, I want the workers to own the
means of production. Well, first of all, it's
assuming entrepreneurs don't do any work.
So that's ridiculous. But second of all if you have
what I think Mesa said one of the one of the things to look
for to see if places capitalist or socialist is Not there was a
stock market exchange because this means there is a free
market in capital ownership. That's a place where the
workers. So to speak, can enter the
capitalist Arena and own the factors of production.
Not just the place. They work, they could be
Diversified and own a few different places.
Is this a way that we could actually harmonize our interests
with that of the Jimmy doors Glenn greenwald's and Aaron maté
as of The world. So yeah, so I think that's an
interesting and interesting point.
I would also say in more directly.
And so we're talking about nowzik early on, he had this
point, which I think is really insightful and underappreciated,
which he says look under capitalism.
You can still Finance worker-owned Democratic coops,
if you ones and we have examples of this, so he and particular
was talking about, he said, you know, why don't you means I use
some money from their treasury to finance.
These sorts of Enterprises, another example of this would
be. I just looked it up recently,
but I forget what the number is. But some the the amount of
funding that the Democratic socialists of America have is
quite a lot of money. They have quite a lot of money
and those it would say, look, you could take some of that
money and fund worker-owned Democratic cooperatives.
If you want to do, there's nothing sort of formally
stopping socialist from doing that.
In a capitalist economy, but we don't we don't really see a
whole lot of that. I think one reason why we don't
see a whole lot of that is just because you know, it's not the
case that everybody or perhaps even most people want to work in
a democratically run worker Cooperative.
Maybe they just prefer to work for a steady wage and they don't
want to have the risk and responsibility of a worker
owner. They'd rather have the risk and
responsibility of a wage earner. Maybe that's just a preference
that people have be a knows if we'll just say there is nothing.
Within capitalism that prevents workers from establishing these
sorts of Enterprises on their own.
But of course, the reverse is not true.
So under social, so, under capitalism, you could collect
devised the means of production if you want, but under
socialism, you cannot privatize, the means of production.
And so this is a reason to think that capitalism is going to end
up being more respectful of people's values and preferences
than socialism will be. One of the shortcomings of
Charity. Well, I don't that's unfair
because it also applies to the state.
But when you think of well, what people should do is donate to
charitable causes assume that you have, you know, a lot of
people who don't have a lot of Leverage in the labor market,
but they're in their suffering, unfortunately, and you want to
help them. Well, you could engage in
charitable, practice one of the issues that arises as that.
Well, I individually could give maybe five thousand dollars and
that would make a big difference in my life.
If I gave five thousand dollars away.
And for all I know it's going to be used at a cocktail reception
for even bigger donors. So I'm actually not just going
to donate everyone else has the similar feeling.
It's a big cost for me small cost in the aggregate.
So do you have any ideas on how we could almost harmonize this
individual interest and Collective interest?
When it comes to Donating to charity to make it a much more
attractive option compared to the welfare state.
So is the worry that, you know, you'll donate to an organization
and it just won't be used very effectively.
It will end up helping any of the people that you're intending
to help. Is that the concern that you
have? There's that surface level and
then there's well, what do I get out of this?
I give them 5 grand? Okay, and then my bank account
has five thousand dollars less. All right.
Now I'm done. So unless I can tweet this out.
And put it on Facebook and Chris Freeman says, hey Keith Knight
did a great thing the other day. Let's give this guy a round of
applause. Please follow him unless I can
do that. It's just not worth much.
That sounds pretty good though. I'll let you said.
Yeah, I'll retweet you if you if you do that, which you know,
that is really a huge benefit I think but no seriously.
Yeah. So good.
So a couple of things. So just on the first point about
Effectiveness. I think this is a reason why you
need to do a little bit of homework before you donate to
make sure that you're actually. Really donating to a charity.
That's effective and there are effective Charities.
I would recommend give well, as an organization that just does a
terrific job of evaluating the effectiveness of Charities and
telling you the most efficient ones.
So that's my remark on the first point as in one.
Yeah. I don't know.
I mean, so you think about voting is it?
What if people vote? There's all sorts of reasons why
people vote but they love to get the sticker.
The I voted sticker. Yes.
Yeah. Okay, you know, the people want
out want to show off that they voted and they, you know, they
get some sort of, I don't know, some sort of psychological
reward as a result of showing off the sticker that, that tells
everyone that they voted. And I don't know, maybe maybe we
could harness that that sort of mindset for the case of Charity.
So I don't know, an example of this, might be something like
these fundraisers that people run on Facebook.
For example, People for their birthday.
They say it's my birthday. I'm running a fundraiser.
Let's say for for the against malaria foundation and say,
okay, you know, somebody decides to donate some amount to that
fundraiser and then it actually or at least you can allow other
people on Facebook to see that you've donated and, you know,
I'm sort of a results person. I don't mind if your motivation
and donating is to get the publicity as long as you donate.
And So if that's what it takes, if it takes your Facebook
friends, being able to see that you donated to the against
malaria Foundation. That's fine with me.
I'm not going to object as long as you donate.
I want to take is there anything else I have on this?
No, okay, so when it comes to intentions, sometimes I just
want to say, you know, when we're talking about things like
well, yes, you know, what does turn out that the US has more or
less formed an alliance with al-Qaeda in Syria to fight
Assad, but you know what? People support this but they
don't know what at least, their intentions are good.
I've been hearing that for so long that I'm at the Point with
this and a number of other issues where I say screw the
intentions, I'm done having that conversation.
But if I really say that, then that means someone who
accidentally kills someone with the car and someone who
intentionally kill someone with a car have engaged in the same
action. The only difference is the
intention in their head. How do you as a philosopher,
determine how much weight we can give someone's intention when
they commit and when they engage in an activity?
Yeah, so we might care. So, you know to, you know, say
just a little bit about my own views as a moral philosopher.
I'm pretty sympathetic to consequentialism which is just
the idea that it what makes an action, right?
Is a matter of its consequences and so, right?
So you do have this worry, you say, well, you could imagine two
acts that have the same outcome that have the same results.
But the intention of the actor is very different in the two
cases. And so what can you say about
that? I've been one thing you could A
to sort of take the edge off, those cases is to separate the
way that we evaluate the action from the way that we evaluate
the act or so, you might say in the case where so, you know,
just let's take like an Adam smithian case where you have one
person who benefits another as a result of a free exchange.
They benefit the other person. Not really because they care
about their well-being but because they want their money
but they say, look I'm going to give you this product that you
want to, you're going to give me the money that I want, and
you're going to Be better off and we say, yeah, you made them
better off but it was a kind of selfish intentions.
Yeah. Okay, like maybe the action was
good, but we don't give a talk. Maybe we don't get a ton of
moral credit to that to the seller in that case.
Maybe as opposed to somebody who says, look I really care about
your well-being. I'm not in it for myself.
I just want to make you better off and they benefit you same
action as the first case but different intention.
Maybe we give the second person more moral credit, but what I'm
inclined to say, is that those Actions is doing the actions
themselves. It's like an identical benefit
to the same person. So those actions are morally
equivalent, but we might give more praise to the second person
to the altruistic person and to the first person who's merely
acting out of self-interest. One of the thought experiments
that is frequently used against utilitarians.
Can go as follows people with high IQs, should more or less
enslave people with low IQs. Let's try it and see if it
works. Ten years, then goes by, there's
a lot of bad in the world. So we need a program to
restructure the enslavement methods.
Let's try these new ones and see if they work, and that was then.
And this Is now and things are totally different.
So basically you've created an unlimited justification for why
the high IQ people can enslave the low IQ and you just keep
moving the goal post, because you can always say, well, their
shortcomings in the world and the smart people need to have
more leverage over the less wise.
What would you as a utilitarian say in opposition or support of
something like this? So, the short version is that
you You know, I would call that an abuse of utilitarianism
rather than an appropriate use. So, so there is this worry.
And I think it's, I think it's a legitimate where to have is that
if you tell people look, just worried about producing the best
outcome. They're going to use that to
rationalize a lot of bad stuff. I think, I think that's a fair
worried, but we have to distinguish between what
utilitarianism actually implies and how people might abuse it.
And so the case that you If you feel like, that's not good.
That's not going to lead to happiness.
That's not going to lead to social well-being and so
utilitarian would oppose it. But, you know, utilitarianism
can be, you know, so he said, like, there's lots of really
terrible things that have been done in the name of the greater
good. But utilitarians going to say.
Yeah, but they didn't actually lead to social happiness.
That was an abuse of the principle in any moral theory.
In principle can be abused and so I don't think that and you
know that It's utilitarianism from other views that it could
be abused for bad purposes. And I also think, you know, one
thing that utilitarian some utilitarian say that I'm
sympathetic to is, you know, for these sorts of reasons.
You don't really want people thinking like utilitarians in
their day-to-day life. So you say something like look,
let's just follow some. Some really sort of basic simple
rules of morality, you know, you no respect other people's
freedom and their property. You know be charitable when you
can and so on and so forth, just follow those basic rules.
That's probably going to lead to more societal happiness than
everybody. Trying to calculate what will
maximize societal a penis. I'm somewhat sympathetic to that
myself. So a simple analogy and support
of that view would be, you know the case of something like
traffic lights. So this is a very since we have
very simple rules for traffic, stop at the red light.
Go with the green light. Very, very simple.
You could imagine an alternate system that says, well, when I
like look around and whenever you think it's going to maximize
this Idol happiness, run the red light and say that probably
paradoxically will not lead to the maximization of societal
happiness. If people take upon themselves
to calculate the wisdom of stopping at a red light, every
time, it's gonna lead to accidents is going to be to
uncertainty. It's going to be people going to
be use it all these sorts of things.
Just follow the simple rule stop at the red light.
Go with the green light and I think utilitarianism is going to
tell us something similar about moral rules.
That don't hurt. People, respect our property.
You know, how about when you can these sorts of things?
Don't, don't try to, don't get out the spreadsheet and the
calculator and try to figure out what's going to maximize this
idle happiest because that has all sorts of problems.
Just follow the basic rules and we'll be fine.
I really enjoyed the book, but why it's okay to ignore
politics. It's part of a great series that
Routledge Duds does the why it's okay Sierra.
So I totally recommend it, but one of my favorite books
probably ever because I reread it going over.
My notes is unequivocal Justice. How would you explain your
thesis, or what? Your general aim is in
unequivocal, Justice Link in the description.
Well, first of all, thank you for the kind words about the
book. Look, I would say the the short
version is so I kind of start with an Insight that public
Choice. Economists have, you know, have
been promoting for a long time which is just you are the same
person in politics that you are elsewhere.
So, you know, when you're, you know, you know shopping for soup
that the at the supermarket that's the same person that you
are. When you're, you know, shopping
quote on quote for a senator. You're like, you're the same
person and so absent some Really compelling evidence.
We should assume that people are not better.
They're not sort of wiser or more altruistic within the
political Arena than outside the political Arena.
And I think if we consistently apply this principle, it has
significant impacts for the sorts of politics.
We might want to see, so oftentimes sort of Government
Solutions to problems start. From the assumption that people
are bad or flawed or Limited in some way.
So a simple case that I talk about in the book is something
like carbon emissions and here this isn't even so much that
people are bad. It's just they face this
Collective action problem. So you say look we have this
problem. We have, you know, too much air
pollution but no individual actually has an incentive to
reduce how much they pollute because it's not it's not really
going to make a difference. You say I could And a few extra
thousand dollars in the hybrid, which will emit less carbon, but
you know, that doesn't really make much of a difference to the
overall state of the atmosphere. So I'm just going to go with the
cheaper car even though it pollutes more.
And so everybody's thinking this way and as a result, we have too
much air pollution. And so we say, okay well now
this is a justification for some sort of State regulation to
ensure that this the public good of clean air is provided that
could take a variety of forms, but the problem with this move
Is that it ignores the way that the, the motivational problem
that gave rise to excessive air. Pollution is also a problem that
applies to the government solution as well.
So you say look voting well, say for really well-designed
Environmental Policy is also a public goods problem.
So they say look like this kind of goes back to what we were
discussing earlier. I could spend a lot of time
researching different proposals from different candidates and
trying to be unbiased and all that sort of stuff and vote for
the candidate. Who's the most Mentally friendly
and do it informed unbiased way. But of course, you said, well,
why would I do that? Because that's not actually
going to make a difference in the same way that buying a
hybrid car is not going to make a difference.
So if we consistently apply the motivational assumption that
sort of generated the need for the state solution.
We're going to, you know, be a little less enthusiastic about
the the quality of the governmental solution itself.
In the chapter is the state special.
What, what, what are some of the ways you communicate?
The importance of this specialty of the state, because people
often see it yet special. It's the one institution we all
share and we can influence. How would you say the state is
special, you know, will. So I would say in probably the
two most important senses. It's not special.
So it's not special in the sense that, you know, I don't think
People acting in the, in their role, as state actors or
political actors are in any sort of significant sense, all that
different from how they are in their other roles.
And this goes back to this idea that you're the same person in
the supermarket that you are in the voting booth.
So that so economists, sometimes called is behavioral symmetry
you behave the same way, inside of politics that you do outside
of politics. So in that sense, I don't think
the state is special. I do, you know, I don't think
voters are public officials are particularly morally.
Aunt than, you know, people are in other domains of life.
And then another way I so I don't really talk about this in
the, in the book, but I think this is something that
Libertarians tend to agree upon that maybe distinguishes them
from a lot of other thinkers, is that the state is not special,
in the sense that the state is more or less Bound by the same
moral principles as non-state actors.
And so, the idea here is something like this.
If it is not okay, in principle. For me to do something to you as
a private citizen. It would not be okay for me to
do that thing to you. If I were acting in my capacity
as a government actor. So simply putting a badge on me,
doesn't really change my moral status.
So so private actors and government actors are bound by
the same moral standards. I think that's a second way in
which I would say the state is not specialized in most
Libertarians would say, the state is not special other
people disagree. And they think there is a
difference, but I think this is a case where Libertarians tend
to have very different views about the moral specialness of
this state than other people do. How would you explain John Rawls
has original position? This, by the way, Michael humor
makes the case that John Rawls is probably the most influential
philosopher today and that's why it's so important not just
picking a person at random here. This issue with the book is but
more or less dedicated to refuting.
That's why I like it so much. What is John Rawls has original
position? Yeah.
No, he's definitely the most influential political
philosopher in recent memory. But right, so the original
position, so we start thinking about this, this idea of the
original position by asking ourselves.
You know, how would we come up with, you know, a fair system of
Rights and Liberties and distribution of resources and
things like that. And so what option would just be
to sort of, you know, reflect on what we actually believe.
So, you know, I'm just, I'm sitting here.
I think. Okay.
Well, what would be a just distribution of income for
example, and whatever I come up with now, is it?
Good answer. But Rawls notices.
There's a problem with this namely, I might be biased in
certain ways, and it might not even be conscious.
It might be a form of non-conscious bias.
But just to take a really simple example, if you're really
wealthy, you might be biased towards principles that benefit
the wealthy. And what we really want is a way
to think about Justice, which is unbiased, which is fair and
impartial, and the original position enables us to think
about Justice in this way, the basic idea here is imagine what
sorts of principles of Justice? You would choose if you didn't
really have any information about yourself as an individual.
So you don't know what race or gender or religion.
You are. You don't know what your income
is. You don't know what your
profession is. You don't know what your
education level is. You don't know any of this
stuff. And so the question is not
knowing this. What would I choose?
And the idea is that in the original position behind what
Rawls calls, the veil of ignorance, you're forced to
choose principles that are good for everyone.
It wouldn't make sense for you to choose biased principles.
So, for example, maybe your deliberating in the original
position, think, okay. Well, what about a law that
discriminates against a particular religion?
Should I endorse that the answer is clearly?
No, you shouldn't endorse it because when the valve,
Ignorance is lifted. When you sort of are in the real
world, it could turn out that you're a member of that religion
and so would be a rationale for you to endorse a principle that
discriminates against. And so, the idea is that the
original position forces us to choose principles of justice
that are fair or unbiased. And, you know, the basic
principles that Rawls then people would choose.
He thinks we would choose the, you know, protection of basic
Liberty, Liberty civil liberties, the sorts of stuff
you see in the Bill of Rights. Equality of opportunity and what
he calls the difference principle, which is basically
that the just distribution of wealth.
And income is the one that maximizes the material
well-being of the poorest people in their society.
In the idea. There is basically look.
If you didn't know, if you were going to be really rich a really
poor, it makes sense to sort of cushion the blow as much as
possible. If you turn out to be among the
poorest in your Society. Did they not have casinos in the
1970s when he was riding? Does he not know?
People love taking big risks? Sometimes.
I mean, does he know what cave diving is?
People go to the bottom of caves and almost suffocate themselves
just for The Rush. What?
What how did he get away with something so ridiculous.
Well, so I mean this is a criticism that people make is is
they say look Rose. You're being really risk-averse
here. So particularly when we're
talking about the difference principle.
Say what you want to do. So, he talks about maximin
reasoning. The it is, you maximize the
minimum. So you make the minimum income
as high as possible. And this is a very low-risk
Choice as you say basically. So it doesn't really matter how
much you can get if you're if you're sort of at the top of the
income distribution or even, really, what the average is.
It just matters that. If you turn out to be in sort of
the at the bottom of the distribution, You have as much
as possible and it does look, this looks very risk-averse.
So, I mean, what argument? Yeah, I mean, I'm sympathetic to
this objection that it's to risk.
A, I mean, one thing that, you know, if you want to meet rolls
halfway, and I think this is essential sensible option, is
you say, look, it makes sense to want some kind of basic minimum.
So the idea is, you know, we want to make sure that nobody
Falls below. You know this, Amount of money
per year, but then above that, you know, maybe we do something
else. Maybe we maximize average income
or something like that. That's a different Principle as
I make the make the lowest income as high as possible.
It's just a look. There's a threshold.
We don't want people to fall below.
That makes a lot of sense but above that let's make societies
which as we can. Like that strikes me that
strikes. Me is a better principal than
rawls's but he you know, his basic view is look, If you don't
know where you're going to end up?
It makes sense to be really risk-averse.
Because this, he's having you imagine that you're choosing
this principle, and you got to stick to it for the rest of your
life. And so, maybe you are the, the,
you know, the High Roller who says, all right, I could either
be a billionaire or, you know, have nothing but I want to take
this risk. Well, says, well look, suppose
you take the risk and you lose. And you end up with nothing.
Once the veil of ignorance is lifted.
He thinks that's going to be extremely difficult for you to
stick with and live by. And so, this is why he thinks it
makes sense to, you know, be pretty cautious here, because we
want to make sure that people are actually able to live with
the outcomes that they would choose in the original position.
I still don't see how even if you want something like that.
You would not choose a system where some people have the right
to initiate violence against others.
And others have the obligation to obey.
I mean, it did I I read justice as fairness.
I have not read a theory of Justice.
How does Rawls Square this circle?
Where he says the quality is really important.
Also the state has the right to make demands.
Everyone else has the obligation to obey wall.
So someone rolls is view, you know, the state has the sort of
has the the permission or the right to impose moral
obligations on people like for the sake of a quality.
As long as they don't infringe on people's basic Liberties and
that so this kind of goes to some of the nozik, Rawls
dispute. So Rawls is going to say, look,
you know, the state can't bring about a quality by
redistributing organs, for example, to return to that case.
So, like that would be one way of rectifying, a particular
inequality is by redistributing organs, but he says, we can't do
that because that's going to violate people's basic, right?
To bodily autonomy. So that's ruled out.
But he did think that's a taxing wealth and income.
Was a permissible way of realizing a quality because he
wanted to say look, people don't have this this basic right to
their property or at least like productive property in the way
that maybe somebody like knows it thinks that they do.
So even though a lot of ways of realizing a quality or going to
be ruled out in the original position.
There will still be permissible ways of doing it.
Most notably through things like regulation and redistribution.
He doesn't think that that's an impermissible infringement on
people's Liberty. Okay.
So let's give the Catholic Church, the unilateral right to
regulate. And redistribute since this
doesn't violate anyone's rights. I'm sure everyone's going to be
happy. And they'll say, you know what,
so long as I get to vote for the pope once every four years, then
everything they do is totally okay.
Well, I would say you can't do that in the original position
because it might not be Catholic.
Well, I might not be a part of the government and in the rasa.
It in the rawlsian world. Do you think?
Obviously, I'm just being ridiculous about this, but I
think it's really important because he doesn't seem to have
too high standards for for, for his own government supremacist
position. What I would call is, there.
Are there any real intellectual contributions?
You think that I am not appreciating of people?
Like we're I mean, I like the original position.
I think it's I think it's a really interesting and
Illuminating thought experiment. I think that he, you know, with
a theory of justice and some of his work, you know, beyond that.
He really revitalized liberalism in analytic political
philosophy. So, so yeah, I mean, I have
many, many disagreements with Rawls.
Like you said that, the, the first book contains many of
them, but I do think he, you know, he made, A lot of
interesting contributions and let me you know, just say a
little bit to you know, a part of my disagreement with Rawls in
this is a you know, what I detail to some extent in that in
the first book? Unequivocal Justice is he
doesn't take seriously the possibility that state power is
going to be abused because he's doing what he so he's very
explicit about this. He's not you no denying that
he's doing this but he says look, you know, I'm doing ideal
Theory which means I'm assuming that People are perfectly just
this is my project. My project is figuring out what
a realistic Utopia would look like.
So this means, you know, we can't just assume that people
can flap their arms and fly. That's not realistic.
But let's assume that people like are as good as humanly
possible. There is just as humanly
possible. Then what would it look like in
that world? What would Justice or what would
what would a state look like in that world?
And now I think one issue with that is if you're assuming that
people are as good as humanly possible, then you And just kind
of dismiss the possibility that state power will be abused, or
used improperly for other sorts of reasons.
And then, that, that sort of I think Stacks the deck against
something like libertarianism from the start.
Because a lot of libertarian concerns about state power, just
look if it were run by Angels or even human beings is as good as
we could, realistically be then we'd be maybe friendlier to a
lot of a lot of the stuff that walls is to.
I'm about but you know, the state is not run by Angels or
people as good as they possibly could be.
And so that's a reason to keep its power pretty limited.
And so he doesn't really take that sort of objection
seriously, and I think that's not giving a fair shake to a lot
of his critics. When it comes to his approach to
Desert, he will say things like if you have a lot of money,
well, you just happen to be born in a society that allocates
money toward a thing. You happen to be good at and
whether you know, let's say you don't work hard and you inherit
it. Well, you didn't earn it.
Let's say you work hard and earn it so to speak.
Well, you didn't choose in this original position to have these
skills which give you The willingness to work hard.
So therefore, basically you no one deserves anything up to and
including I guess life itself. How do you as a philosopher
approach moral desert and what people can just Lyon?
And claimed as there's versus things.
They do not have claims on. I confess.
I'm actually sort of sympathetic to that that argument from
Rawls. However, I don't think that this
this has the in Applications that he that he thinks it does.
So let's go back to knows it. For example, Noah's Ark is very
explicit that he's not defending libertarianism or free market
capitalism on the grounds of desert.
So, he's perfectly willing to say that, there could be
somebody who inherits a lot of money from their parents and
they don't deserve it. So, maybe maybe they're just a
bad person. Maybe they were, you know, a
bad, a bad kid, like all this stuff like they do the whatever
standard you want. They do.
Zuri knows it's going to say, you could still be entitled to
it in virtue of the fact that it was somebody's money and they
voluntarily transferred it to you.
Now, you might say, there are cases of people acquiring money
in a market system that aren't like that.
So they work hard and they produce something that people
value. When those people give them
their money. He said, look that person
deserves their income like that. That also makes sense to me.
You know, I don't know if we if we starting with it, you know,
the character that they had that enable them to do this.
They didn't really earn that. You know, I don't know.
I, you know, I'm not entirely sure what to think about that.
If it really is the case that you know, ultimately speaking.
Nobody deserves every nobody deserves anything.
I think I could be persuaded of that perhaps but I think, you
know, knows it goes on stronger ground where he says look it's
not about dessert. It's about entitlement,
something can be yours. Even if he didn't learn it.
So he says look you could you could it could be your kidney
due to be entitled to your kidney.
I can't take your kidney even if you didn't earn.
Our kidney leaving really work for your Healthy kidney, but
it's still yours. You're entitled to it.
And so this is kind of knows it's way of defending the
Marquis like maybe a lot of it's not deserved but you can still
be entitled to it. Yeah, I think one, one of the
things I one of the methods of thinking that I learned in
unequivocal justice as taking this principle and honestly
saying, well does this apply? And then saying well does it
also apply to the state? Why does Congress have the right
to make laws? They just happen to be elected
in an election. They happen to win with voters.
That happen to live in a district that happened to vote
for them. Instead of the other crook.
They were running against. Oh, well, why should I have any
obligation to them? So it's like Rawls and Company
have the ultimate skepticism when it comes to anything, the
average person wants to do and no skepticism.
When it comes to governments, which after all their histories
of mass murder. He doesn't think it's worthy of
a questioning whether or not they can be Jack to corruption.
I just think it's one of the most dangerous things not
because everyone, I know, reads Rawls, but because they put
these assumptions out there and then the average person gets
them and that's how they sort of gain this, that this popularity.
And one thing I mentioned, just briefly in the book, but I hope
it's Illuminating. Is it a lot of people would
recognize how strange Rawls is move is if we applied it to the
market rather than the state. So we say, we'll just imagine
like, here's how I'm Going to defend libertarianism and
capitalism. Assume that consumers are always
perfectly rational that they're perfectly, informed, that they
always make choices that are best for the community as a
whole. And you know, the same is true
of capitalist themselves and say look what boom I've indicated
libertarianism. Somebody would roll their eyes
and they'll be like, come on like know you hat like maybe in
this Lake really strange philosophical thought experiment
you have. But what does that have to do
with the real world? And I would say yeah like Point
well-taken. That's that's a Our point, I
haven't really done a whole lot to vindicate it, but when we
apply those assumptions to politics, for some reason,
people are just much more except.
Oh, yeah, I guess voter. Like, let's assume that voters
are rational. Let's assume that they're voting
for what's best for society. Let's assume that politicians
are not out for their own self-interest.
Well, yeah, okay, like in that, in that case, I can understand
why you'd want a lot of, you know, government power.
But what does that really tell us about the real world?
And my answer is not much if anything.
Few more questions for you. Dr. Freeman.
Thank you so much for being generous with your time.
People will often say what matters is a sense of belonging
identity and Community, or what we should try for is equality of
outcome or opportunity. Why is it that you put economic
freedom or freedom in general? So high on the list of what our
issues, why we should care about something.
Why does freedom really matter? Yeah.
I mean the short answer is because it works in the And some
of, you know, making us better off, making us happier
healthier, like more prosperous, more peaceful.
And in terms of the. So, for example, again, you just
look at countries, where people have the rights protected,
where, you know, their high levels of material well-being,
high levels of subjective, well-being, their societies that
that, you know, are free that like by liberal standard liberal
in the sense of like, Like this sorts of Liberties that we would
see on the Bill of Rights and things like that.
So that's, that's the basic answer as to why I think freedom
is so important. Because I think it's the most
important part of creating a society that advances, our
well-being. And I would also say to with,
with a quality. A lot of people, I think tend to
confuse a concern for inequality with a concern for poverty.
So I think it would be strange to care about inequality as such
so you have Somebody who has ten billion dollars and somebody
with 1 billion dollars and say, oh what a huge inequality but
who cares, they're billionaires their super-rich.
And I think when you present that kind of case to most people
say, yeah, I don't really care about that and say, okay.
Well, what does that tell you, it tells you, you don't really
care about the gap between people.
What you care about is ensuring that the people have enough.
What you really care about is poverty, not in a quality.
And so My Views, I don't care if there are people out there who
are making, you know, tens of millions of dollars.
Is like that, you know, that's great.
That's totally fine. What I care about is having a
system that, you know, enables people to avoid poverty.
And it turns out that Society, like, for example, there's not a
society that's done, an effective job of addressing
poverty. That doesn't have billionaires.
For example, so, prosperous societies Prosper.
Societies that do a good job of taking care of poverty, are
societies, that allow billionaires.
And so this tells us something about the capitalist system.
Like, it's good to allow people. Accumulate wealth, if it's part
of a system that ultimately redounds to the benefit of
people who are in poverty and then just two more questions
about former guests on the show. What is the most important thing
you learned from or intellectual contribution of Michael humor?
Well, I mean, he's great. It would be tough to list all of
them. I mean, I think is work and the
problem of political Authority is just Excellent.
So, you know, I would wholeheartedly recommend that
people listening to this, read that book.
If they haven't already, you know, I'm always teaching a
bunch of his work, his work on gun rights immigration, the drug
war. So look up all those as well.
And he also actually, I mean, yes, I'm just giving you a bunch
of recommendations home. But yes, it's great piece and
it's also on video why people are irrational about politics
and That's worth a watch for sure.
It does a really great job of explaining, you know, why people
are biased and uninformed about politics.
And also what lessons to draw from this.
And finally most important contribution of Jason Brennan
here again, so much great stuff. I mean, part of it.
I think I mean one of his great contributions is kind of I don't
know what you might call a deer romanticizing democratic theory.
So he says like one more time when we as Political
philosophers are talking about democracy.
Let's, let's talk about how democracy works in the real
world, with real people with their interests and their
biases, and all of these sorts of things and I think that's
been a huge contribution. But here again, you know, too
numerous to count, you know, he's done.
Terrific. Work on immigration on
libertarianism. Why not capitalism is a terrific
book to where he talks about this.
I mean, he really produces this great Insight which Is and this,
this is something that, you know, I talked about his case
and unequivocal justice as well. There's this tendency when
people are comparing socialism to capitalism to compare
idealized, Flawless versions of socialism to real-world
capitalism with all its flaws. And he says, this is not a fair
comparison. If you're comparing ideal,
socialism, to Ideal, capitalism, then ideal capitalism.
Looks Any good. It looks better than ideal
socialism. If you're comparing real world,
socialism to real-world capitalism capitalism.
Still comes out on top. And so you just have to be on
guard against this tendency of comparing idealized fictional
socialism to realistic capitalism.
What you want is the Apples to Apples comparison.
So, again, you know, he's got a he's got a ton of contributions
that I would recommend checking out as well.
The books are unequivocal Justice.
And why? It's okay to ignore politics.
Dr. Freeman. Thank you so much for your time,
sir. Thanks for having me.