Monthly Archives: July 2021

Current Events, Uncategorized

The Shaky Pullout from Afghanistan

Joe Biden is on track to do what his two predecessors failed to do: get out of Afghanistan. They failed to achieve this goal due to the worsening security situation and the incapacity of the Afghan forces to take over. After many more years and countless billions spent, it is still unclear that the Afghan National Army (ANA) has the capacity to keep the Taliban from taking over more territory, let alone maintaining control of the capitol. As recently as March, John Sopko, Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, said “the Afghan government’s fears for its survival are only exacerbated by the knowledge of how dependent their country is on foreign military and financial support. If the goal of the reconstruction effort was to build a strong, stable, self-reliant Afghan state that could protect our national security interests as well as its own—it is a mission yet to be accomplished.”

According to Biden, however, that is not the American goal. They did not intend, despite 20 years of evidence, to “nation-build” in Afghanistan. Their goals were 1) “get the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11” 2) “deliver justice to Osama Bin Laden” and 3) “degrade the terrorist threat” to reduce the possibility of Afghanistan becoming a base for terrorist organizations in the future. If these were the goals, they were arguably achieved by May of 2011 when President Barack Obama ordered the successful strike against Bin Laden. 

There is a possibility Obama, or perhaps President Donald Trump would have had to reopen the mission, as Obama did in Iraq in 2014, when the Islamic State (IS) spread across the globe . If that were the case, they would have to remain to this day as the threat from IS Khorasan in the country, let alone the region, remains significant.

Instead, Biden decided to honor the deal struck between Trump’s Administration and the Taliban to completely remove the US presence from the country, albeit on a slightly slower timeline. And what was the reasoning? He determined it is not in the “national interest of the United States of America to continue fighting this war indefinitely.”

He has a point. If the mission has yet to be completed after 20 years, it won’t be completed without a big change within the foreseeable future. Furthermore, he had a front row seat to Obama’s failure to end the war using a troop surge. Is this, therefore, the least worst option?

The truth is we don’t really know. Biden didn’t engage in a long, involved discussion outside of his administration—except to consult with former Presidents Bush and Obama. There wasn’t even much discussion with Congress before he announced he would completely withdraw troops. Even after months, there remained a lack of clarity about the merits of the withdrawal. If the pull-out from Bagram Air Base is any indication, there is nothing orderly, well-thought through, or well-executed about the withdrawal. After 20 years, countless public embarrassments due to poor policy planning, no way to achieve victory, and a great risk to security from instability in that country, shouldn’t the administration take more time to have a serious and perhaps a public discussion about how to bring this war to a close? Shouldn’t members of Congress push the administration to engage in this deliberation? Shouldn’t the public?

The fact is, the Taliban is salivating over this result and using it to demonstrate that they have achieved their mission: remove the imperial power from their state and reassert their control.

But Biden is resolute. He claims he “will not send another generation of Americans to war in Afghanistan with no reasonable expectation of achieving a different outcome.”

As I demonstrate in a recent article discussing 10 criteria for successful deliberations about military policy, an effective way to avoid implementing haphazard policy is to engage in thoughtful discussions in order to effectively achieve well-articulated goals. Instead, what we see from this administration is what we’ve seen throughout the War on Terror: policy that looks reactionary and poorly developed because it is.

Discourse, Political Philosophy/Theory, Social Criticism, Toleration

Community, Selfish Miscreants, and Civil Discourse

In my last post, I discussed the paradox of community. Recently, I was reminded of one standard way that paradox is ignored and debates within communities are badly framed.  Its worth considering this as a way not to proceed if one wants to improve civil discourse.

Typically, one of the parties in a dispute about the way the community should move—and this could be newcomers or long time members, though it’s more likely to be the latter simply because they likely have some cohesiveness as a group—is to claim they represent the overall community while the other side is simply selfishly representing themselves.  The dialogue might be explicitly put in terms of those who are selfish and those who are selfless or in terms of those interested only in themselves and those interested in the community as a whole. 

Here is an example: One group might say they are seeking to add a pool to the community (at the expense of all community members) because it would be good for the community as a whole, giving community members a location and activity in which to foster discussion which is good for encouraging community (by strengthening the relationships of community members) while also (of course) providing a form of exercise to keep community members healthy. Advocates of the pool might then say they’ve talked to many of the others in the community who also want the pool and so those who advocate for the pool are really the “we” while those arguing against the pool are selfishly concerned only with their own finances and not with the health of their community members or the community itself. 

The pool issue is thus framed as one between those concerned with “we, the community” and those concerned with “the me”—anyone arguing against the pool is portrayed as being selfishly concerned only with their own interests, unable to suppress their selfishness for the greater good of the “we” that is the whole community. They don’t even understand that as part of the “we,” getting the pool would be good for them! This, of course, is nonsense. (See Isaiah Berlin’s statement about “positive liberty” on pages 22-24 here.)

Consider a different way the issue might have been framed if those opposing the pool started the discussion.  They would insist they have the community’s interests at heart, worried that the added expense will be hard on community members, that some may genuinely fear a pool (perhaps a sibling drowned in in a pool), and that all community members will have additional liability, not merely financial, moving forward.  In short, on their view, the addition of a pool puts a strain on community members, and thereby strains the community.  They then insist that those advocating for a pool are selfish, interested in something only a few swimmers will benefit from, while all share the costs.  

Again, the pool issue is framed as one between those concerned with “we, the community” and those concerned with “the me”—this time, anyone arguing for the pool is portrayed as being selfishly concerned only with their own interests, unable to suppress their selfishness for the greater good of the “we” that is the whole community. They don’t even understand that as part of the “we,” not getting a pool would be good for them!  This, of course, is again nonsense.

In both scenarios—one where pool advocates control the terms of debate and one where anti-pool folks control the terms of the debate—the other side Is said to be selfish, each on that side only concerned with the “I.”  The possibility that they are genuinely concerned with the entire community is disregarded in the normal Orwellian move to use language to one’s advantage regardless of truth. (If it’s old-timers arguing for one side, they might even try to “explain”—Orwell style—that those arguing against it are newcomers who don’t understand the importance of the “we” in this community because they are still embedded in the “me” culture.  They may even believe this.)*

This way of engaging in discourse with others—whether in a small community or a large polity—is misguided at best.  Once again, what we need is open and honest discourse where all realize that disagreement is possible (even likely) and useful and that those we disagree with can be honest and well meaning.  Insistence on labeling those we disagree with “selfish” is a more likely indication that one is a miscreant than being so labeled.

*For my part, I wish people would get over thinking there was something wrong with being concerned with one’s own interests. If people would really concern themselves with their own interests (and that of their own family and friends), they would spend less time bothering others (see this). They might even be more receptive to open and honest dialogue.

Law & Legal Philosophy, Political Philosophy/Theory

A Trilemma for “Taxation is Theft”-Libertarians

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Claiming that taxation is theft is an effective way to signal that you think of yourself as a libertarian of the more radical, uncompromising, and possibly more Rothbard-inspired sort. But are there substantive reasons to endorse the slogan? It is easy to point at differences between taxation and theft, after all: Taxation is widely regarded as legitimate, taxation is expected, institutionalized and to some extent automated, (at least some) taxation is put to good public use, etc. More sophisticated defenders of the “taxation is theft”-slogan will not deny these differences, though; they will concede that theft and taxation aren’t the same in every respect. Instead, they will explain that the fact that taxation is legal is morally irrelevant, and that taxation and theft are thus on equal footing in one important respect: they are both coercive takings of property and as such pro tanto morally wrong (see for example Michael Huemer’s defense of the claim that taxation is theft here and here).

Obviously, legal conventions determine people’s legal property entitlements. But it is less obvious what role legal conventions play for people’s moral property entitlements. In the following, I will try to sketch a trilemma for libertarians who endorse the “taxation is theft”-slogan, arguing that none of the three basic positions one can take on the role of legal conventions supports their cause.

A (pure) conventionalist position is that people’s moral property entitlements are simply determined by whatever legal property entitlements are conveyed by the law. That position is quite implausible in its own right (surely there are at least moral criteria that legal property conventions should meet to be morally justifiable), and of course it doesn’t help to make sense of the “taxation is theft”-slogan. If moral property entitlements were simply determined by legal conventions, then the fact that taxation is legal would imply that what we morally own is what we own post-tax. Obviously, conventionalism is also not a position many libertarians will be drawn into.

An anti-conventionalist position is that people’s moral property entitlements are determined by natural, non-conventional criteria (i.e., principles of just acquisition and just transfer, as in Nozick’s entitlement theory of justice). Legal conventions may at best have a minor role to play in specifying what is left vague and indeterminate in people’s natural property rights. This position lends some support to the “taxation is theft”-slogan: If the only morally relevant role of legal conventions is to carve out the more precise specification of antecedent natural property rights, and if that may be done without taxation, then the fact that taxation is legal is morally irrelevant and all infringements of natural property rights are morally on a par, no matter if it is state agents or non-state agents that engage in them.

The problem, though, is that the anti-conventionalist view arguably implies that almost all of today’s legal property entitlements are morally void (compare Twin Nozick in Loren Lomasky’s article and Matt Zwolinski’s related discussion at Bleeding Heart Libertarians). After all, hardly anyone can claim to own property with a clean record of title transfers going back to a just acquisition from the state of nature. I don’t even know how to look for such a record for all the materials that are built into my laptop, for example. If that means that I don’t really own it, from a moral (natural property rights-) perspective, then taxing my purchase of it can also not count as an infringement of my moral property entitlements. In other words, while the anti-conventionalist position in principle makes sense of equating taxation and theft, it can depict neither taxation nor theft in today’s societies as a violation of moral property entitlements, simply because all (or most) claims to property would be morally suspicious. This is an implication most “taxation is theft”-libertarians will not be willing to endorse.

The most plausible view is a mixed view about the role of legal conventions. On this view, there are moral standards for legal property conventions (they must be something useful for us, after all), but at least when a basic moral threshold is met, then legal conventions do determine pro tanto moral property entitlements. This quite plausibly explains why it is morally wrong to steal even in the non-perfect societies we are living in, where most property titles can’t be proven to have a clean track record going back to an initial acquisition from the state of nature, but where property conventions may well be taken to meet the basic moral threshold, while having considerable room to improve in many respects.

Of course, there is a wide range of views one could take about what exactly the moral standards for legal property conventions are and where the basic moral threshold is to be set. But, just to have some criteria on the table, arguably property rights should be conveyed by well-defined and transparent rules, they should give owners sufficient control over what they own, they should be properly enforced, violations should be properly rectified, and they should be in line with broader moral principles, like, for example, equality before the law. It is also plausible that principles of just acquisition and just transfer should be incorporated into legal conventions, such that, for example, somebody who creates something valuable from something she legally owns should also own the creation (because creating or adding value to something should be taken to ground property entitlements).

But whatever the moral standards for property conventions may be in detail, on the mixed view taxation cannot be equated to theft. The fact that the former is legal, while the latter is not, is of moral relevance. What moral property entitlements people have will depend on legal conventions, at least as long as these meet the basic threshold, and in our societies taxation is part of these legal conventions. What people morally own will thus be what they own post-tax – but not post-theft. Obviously, this should not be confused with an “anything goes” position about taxation; one can evaluate and criticize different tax policies in light of the moral standards property conventions should meet, of course, even after the basic moral threshold is met (see also Andrew J. Cohen’s related discussion at Bleeding Heart Libertarians).

Some libertarians may say that no system of property that includes taxation meets the basic moral threshold (according to their interpretation of it). But if this were so, we would get back to the problems of the anti-conventionalist position. If current legal conventions don’t meet the basic threshold, then neither taxation nor theft will violate moral property entitlements in today’s societies, since current legal conventions would fail to give rise to moral property entitlements. One cannot cherry-pick and accept the moral relevance of current legal conventions when it comes to the property titles they assign, but reject their moral relevance when it comes to taxation.

(Thanks to Andrew J. Cohen for feedback on a draft version).

Current Events, Discourse, Ethical Issues, Political Philosophy/Theory, Social Criticism, Toleration

The Paradox of Community

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Conceptually, community is distinct from neighborhood.  A community can be in a neighborhood, but it might instead consist of widespread people who share some commonality (the community of PPE scholars, for example).  A neighborhood, for its part, may merely be a place people live, not knowing those that also live there. 

Take communities to be groups of people bound together by traditions. Traditions are essential to community. They also vary by community. They might be matters of language, religion, commitment to country, behaviors, holidays, heritage, or any number of other things, some requiring more strict abidance by group norms, some requiring less. Traditions necessarily (but, importantly, not always problematically) hold us back, keep us limited—for the simple reason that people are committed to them. When people are committed to one way of doing things, they are resistant to changes to it. A commitment to car culture, for example, makes it less likely that a group would find (or even look for) an alternative means of transportation. (Or accept such if offered. Think of Segways—why aren’t these available for long distance use? or sealed from rain and cold?)

While traditions hold people back, they also provide a foundation for change.  From the security of being able to interact with others in accepted ways, one can develop new ways to do so—and new ways not to do so.  Because they have traditions, communities make it possible to innovate. Innovation, though, can cause the community to change or even disintegrate. Tradition and innovation are symbiotic even while they simultaneously threaten each other.  Call this the paradox of community (it’s at least a significant tension).

The paradox of community—the fact that a community’s traditions make innovation possible while simultaneously trying to prevent innovation (because innovation could bring the end of the tradition)—makes life in community … interesting.

Another fact about communities is that they either grow or die; stasis is illusory. Communities grow as their members change (some join, some exit, some change themselves), innovate, bring about changes to the traditions (adding some, altering others, ending still others). This is why the paradox is so important.

Some within a community can become so committed to a particular tradition(s) of the community that they work to slow the pace of the community’s growth in order to prevent the altering or ending of their favored tradition(s) or the inclusion of others.  They may do this by trying to encourage newcomers to learn and accept the existing traditions of the community or by actively working to create an environment whereby those seeking change are limited. If they succeed too much—preventing any change in the community’s traditions—they attain stagnation rather than stasis.  This is because absence of change in a community (as for an individual person or any animal) brings the end of the community.  It means no new members–and with no new members, it dies as it’s members die.  Change—innovation—is essential to community.

Of course, new people may attempt to join the community. When they do, they would bring their own histories, cultures, beliefs, and ideals. They could (and perhaps should) learn about the community’s ways of doing things. That is consistent with their bringing their own ways of doings (and their histories, cultures, beliefs, and ideals). It is consistent, that is, with change. But if those within the community seek to limit change, they may try instead to indoctrinate the newcomers into the community’s traditions so that they live as those in the community now live, rather than bringing anything different. Indoctrination thus treats newcomers as having nothing of their own to contribute, as if their histories, cultures, beliefs, and ideals have no place in the community. Newcomers would thus not be allowed to bring their ideas and preferences into the community’s traditions–those traditions would not be allowed to change. Such newcomers are, then, likely to exit the community. (Notice that this does not mean they physically move away or drop their official membership–remember, communities are not the same as neighborhoods (or associations)).

To build community, change must be permitted. This means that all in the community must listen to each other, open to hearing new things that might be incorporated into the web of community activity and the traditions that shape them. This does not mean jettisoning everything previously held dear, but it does mean being open to the possibility of doing so (likely not all at once). Long time members of the community can teach newer members how things were or are done, but that counts no more than what newer members bring to the table. Importantly, those whose ideas are rejected out of hand have no reason to participate in the community. Ignoring this–thinking that all learning here is in one direction–will simply give rise to factions, splintering what was a community, killing it while perhaps giving birth to new, smaller, communities as those factions continue to grow.

So, both tradition and innovation are essential to community. What this means, in part, is that while change is necessary, the pace of change may be too much for some people within a community, at least those committed to one or more of its traditions. Still change can’t be stopped; a successful attempt to stop it, kills the community. The question for those in a community is thus whether their favored tradition(s) and it’s (or their) history are more important than the community itself. To side with a tradition is to side with those no longer present; to side with community is to side with those currently constituting the community—including those who wish to see change.

Of course, those siding with a tradition may take that tradition to have independent value and thus to be worth protecting. They may take this to be a principled defense of preventing change in the community. It is not. The community from which a defended tradition stems, like all communities, must be able to change. (Again, stagnation means death.) Indeed, all surviving communities have what can reasonably be called traditions of change–ways that change takes place. So when defenders of one tradition seek to prevent change, they are pitting one part of the community and its traditions against another and claiming that one of the traditions should be defended at the cost of another—their favored tradition at the cost of the community’s tradition of change. That, though, is just a preference. One cannot just assume that one favored tradition is more valuable than another. After all, those seeking change may rightly claim to be defending a tradition of change within the community.

Putting the last point differently, those seeking change are defending the community as the community currently is and is growing with its current members and their preferences. Those seeking to prevent change, by contrast, are defending only part of the community—some specific tradition(s) they happen to prefer—and, by seeking stagnation, killing the community.

Lest I be thought too critical of defenders of particular traditions, I should note that I do not think there is a good principled reason for either protecting particular traditions or for changing or jettisoning them. In either case, on my view, further considerations are necessary. What we need to determine, on my view, is when interference is justifiably permitted–what principles of interference we ought to accept rather than simply what traditions we happen to prefer. (I discuss some such considerations here and in my 2014.)

Current Events, Law & Legal Philosophy

Springsteen Fandom and Vaccine Passports

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Bruce Springsteen is the first live act returning to Broadway. He is now featured at a few dozen shows running at the St. James Theater. What sort of freedom should Springsteen fans have to associate with other Springsteen fans?

Let us suppose Lee loves Springsteen’s music. Lee owns a restaurant in Jersey City called the “Bruce Tramps Bar & Grill.” Lee’s restaurant is filled with Springsteen and E-Street band memorabilia. It plays a revolving soundtrack of Springsteen’s discography. After the recent shutdowns nearly bankrupted Lee and coincided with a very painful divorce, Lee realized how important Springsteen’s life and music are personally and for everyone. As Lee will say, Springsteen matters. The stories Bruce tells are deeply meaningful.

Lee wants to set up a Bruce-safe space. Lee has decided to require as a condition of admission to his restaurant that you show a ticket stub from his performance at the St. James Theater, or any ticket stub from any other live Springsteen performance, ever.

We might think Lee is making a risky business move, but it turns out that Lee’s devotion is common. Bruce has inspired some very dedicated fans. There is even a documentary about their fandom, “Springsteen and I.” Fans of The Boss will talk at length about how his music resonated deeply with them and helped them through difficult times. Writing for The New York Times in 2012, David Brooks admired Springsteen’s talent for helping people to understand themselves and their world. After attending several of his concerts in Europe, Brooks wrote, “The passion among the American devotees is frenzied, bordering on cultish. The intensity of the European audiences is two standard deviations higher.” So, a business revolving around things Springsteen might do very well.

Imagine Lee explained his decision this way: “Things are crazy now. I want a place where ‘Bruce Tramps’ can feel safe and know they are among friends. So the only way you’re getting in here is if you know and care about The Boss. Any Springsteen concert ticket stub will do. I don’t care about your race, sex, sexual orientation, color, or creed. I just want to be sure you get the Boss.” People warn Lee that ticket stubs can be forged and just handed off to others, but Lee says the ticket-stub is a passport to getting into the restaurant. Lee says it’s an important step toward ensuring a safer space for fans.

You know what? That bar & grill might just succeed. People might want that type of environment.

Should Lee be able to have a place like that?

Now imagine all The Boss haters out there. They complain. Why should Lee, and any Bruce Tramps, be able to restrict others from Lee’s bar & grill? They take it to the state. The governor and state legislature of New Jersey are outraged, too. They pass a law. From this point forward, any business operating in New Jersey “may not require patrons or customers to provide any documentation certifying Springsteen concert attendance to gain access to, entry upon, or service from the business operations in this state.” When asked why, the governor claims that requiring evidence of Springsteen concert attendance reduces individual freedom and harms privacy. As the governor says, people should be free to decide what sounds go in their ears.

Lee complains emphatically, and so do many patrons of the “Bruce Tramps Bar & Grill.” Lee says, “It’s my restaurant! You don’t have to come here!” Well, too bad, Lee, and too bad for all the Bruce Tramps who want to eat and drink there among like-minded others. The state of New Jersey has spoken.

In case this seems outlandish, substitute “COVID-19 vaccination or post-infection recovery” for “Springsteen concert attendance” in the text of imagined NJ law, and you’ve got a quote from a law recently passed in Florida. This is the law that now binds cruise ships, restaurants, health clubs, and… any other business in Florida. Businesses are legally forbidden to demand, as a condition of entry, that patrons provide some written or digital evidence that they are at low risk to transmit COVID-19. If you do require that, agents of the state will come to your business, sooner or later with guns, and compel you to stop or else they’ll impose a $5000 fine per incident. If you don’t pay that fine, ultimately they will use the force of the state to shut you down.

Why?

In May, many media outlets quoted Florida governor Ron DeSantis as saying, “In Florida, your personal choice regarding vaccinations will be protected and no business or government entity will be able to deny you services based on your decision.” Many arguments against such vaccine passports talk about protecting people’s freedoms to decide what goes into their bodies. DeSantis had previously issued an executive order where he claimed that vaccine passports “reduce individual freedom and will harm patient privacy.” When applied to private entities such as restaurants, health clubs, or cruise lines, the least we can say of DeSantis is that he is conceptually confused. You do not enhance freedom by crushing it. That is what the state of Florida is doing, and so too the other states forbidding businesses from demanding “vaccine passports.”

With the “Bruce Tramps Bar & Grill,” it might seem Lee and other fans of the Boss have an idle affectation about the people with whom they’ll keep company. We might even think they’re weird but admit it’s their choice to be that way. If they want to hang around only with other Bruce Tramps at a restaurant, well… more power to them. No one gets hurt from this exercise of their freedom.

The stakes are much higher with communicable disease. Cruise ships are confined spaces where disease can run rampant. This is what happened on the Diamond Princess and other cruise ships at the start of the pandemic. In health clubs, people exercise vigorously and breathe hard, aerosolizing whatever germs are in their lungs. In concerts and stadiums, when people cheer and scream, their mouths are vuvuzelas spewing infection.

The law now forbids Florida businesses from requiring patrons to show they have taken a key step to reduce the risk they pose to others. Even worse, patrons who want to associate only with other risk-averse patrons are now not free to do so in businesses that want to cater to them. That is the cost to freedom from these bans on vaccine passports. (Here we can pass over the loss to freedom that comes when people get infected and are hospitalized or drop dead, as well as the loss of freedom to those whom they infect.)

Even though a cruise line would want to sell me a lower-risk cruise, I am unable to purchase one from a company whose ship departs a Florida port and which requires as a condition of boarding that one provide some proof of vaccine status. That’s at least as groundless as not being able to go to Lee’s bar & grill to hang around only with other Bruce Tramps.

People might disagree about the seriousness of the pandemic or the best ways to manage risk. Here I pass no judgment about what is reasonable to believe about this disease in particular. I admit it seems to me a poor risk management strategy to forbid people to do what they believe best reduces it. (See a related recent great post by John Hasnas.) It also seems like a poor strategy from politicians who claim to protect freedom that they forbid voluntary acts among consenting adults who are concerned about risk. This is analogous to Nevada passing a law that forbids brothels from requiring patrons to wear condoms.

Even if we disagree about how serious COVID-19 is, the least we can do is leave people and businesses alone to sort out how they manage such risks.

Thanks to Andrew Jason Cohen for thoughts about an earlier draft.