Tag Archives: Morality

The Pauper Principle

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Jeffrey Sachs wrote what bugs him about libertarianism.  Here’s one passage:

Suppose a rich man has a surfeit of food and a poor man living next door is starving to death. The libertarian says that the government has no moral right or political claim to tax the rich person in order to save the poor person. Perhaps the rich person should be generous and give charity to the neighbor, the libertarian might say (or might not), but there is nothing that the government should do. The moral value of saving the poor person’s life simply does not register when compared with the liberty of the rich person.

While I find this to be an unimaginative and simplistic false choice, I’ll play along.

I’m assuming Sachs believes it is moral for the government to tax the rich person to “save” the poor person.  In other words, it’s moral to force the rich person to do something.

The question I have for Sachs is whether he also thinks it’s moral to force the poor person to do something? For example, can the government force the poor person to give two hours of his labor to the rich person in exchange for receiving the tax?

Keep in mind, the poor person would not have a choice in the matter, just like the rich person.  The poor person wouldn’t be able choose not to work in order to not receive the tax.  The poor person would be forced to work and to receive the tax, just like the rich person would be forced to give up some of the proceeds from his work effort.

Is that moral?  Why or why not?

Can we all agree?

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This and this from Don Boudreaux at Cafe Hayek are must reads for anyone who has mistaken skepticism for government solutions with lack of compassion or ignorance of a greater good.

The second link is a response to a person who charged Boudreaux with not giving enough priority to “public morals”.   Here’s a key paragraph:

Where do the “public morals” that you so admire come from?  Isn’t it true that the very reason you support the welfare state is that your own private moral code tells you that helping needy people is the right thing to do?  I don’t see how you can casually cast aside one “private moral” (namely, that it’s wrong to take other people’s stuff just because you fancy that you’ve found better uses for it) in order to clear your way to justify the state acting to satisfy another of your private morals (namely, that it’s right for those of us who ‘have’ to give to people who ‘have not’).

Exactly.

If you happen to agree with the “public morals,” great.  Everything is just fine and you don’t usually question your own legitimacy in overriding the rights of others to fulfill your desired ends.

It’s usually not until such a person runs into a situation where they disagree with the “public morals” that they begin to understand that there may be errors in their thinking.