I suppose it was inevitable that a Book Club on Milton Friedman would eventually come down to a shoot-out between hardcore libertarians and their opponents. Being a practical person, our Reviewer is understandably reluctant to take on this task. Being a thoroughly impractical person, I'm happy to give it a go.  While we're waiting for the artillery to move into position, we might take a moment to consider precisely what we mean by "libertarian" because there are two ways in which we may interpret the concept:  a) on the one hand, libertarianism may be regarded as a set of personal opinions to be submitted to the democratic process. If other members of the community find such opinions persuasive, then presumably the community would adopt those opinions as policies. But in what sense is this "libertarianism"? People who hold this view of the world might be more accurately described as "democrats with personal opinions at the libertarian end of the spectrum". If they wish to refer to themselves as "libertarians", let them. It does no harm; but  b) on the other hand, there are those fundamentalist libertarians who hold that their particular view of the world takes priority over the democratic process and that it ought to prevail even if other people hold a different view of the world.  It is the second type of libertarianism - what we might call paternalist-libertarianism - that will be addressed here.  We begin our analysis with those well-known political philosophers from Monty Python's Flying Circus. Those who have seen "Life of Brian" will recall the sad case of Stan, the man who wanted to be a woman (Loretta) and to have babies. When told that he couldn't have babies he responded that he was being oppressed. After some debate it was agreed that while Stan couldn't actually have babies (not having a womb, which is nobody's fault, not even the Romans') he could have the "right" to have babies.  What the Pythons were satirising was the idea that "rights" could be simply declared to exist. There is a famous saying in law: "There's no right without a remedy." Stan had no remedy that would enable him to have a baby. With no remedy, he had no right.  Extending this idea, we might ask this question of the "rights" proclaimed by libertarians: if these "rights" actually exist, why are we having this argument? Why do the libertarians not simply enforce their rights and put an end to the discussion.  It is clear that when libertarians use the term "rights" they are using the word in a different sense from that commonly understood. This causes no end of confusion. In order to remove any ambiguity, it would be useful if the libertarians used some other word for their concept.  I discussed this with my youngest daughter over the weekend and we decided that a good word to describe these "things" - whatever they might be - would be "Gigglipuffs". "Gigglipuff" is a pleasant word that is not currently being used for anything else, so why not give it some useful work to do, to denote the "things" being proposed by libertarians?  Now we may all agree that people have an inalienable Gigglipuff to life, liberty and property, and that their Gigglipuffs must be recognised and respected. Let me declare here and now that I recognise and respect those Gigglipuffs.  In the passage quoted by our Reviewer, commentator Fundamentalist asked: "If someone has a natural [Gigglipuff] to property, does the majority have the [Gigglipuff] to take some of it and give it to another without the owner's consent?"  The flaw in this reasoning is that the majority never take away Gigglipuffs. We've already agreed that the Gigglipuffs must always be recognised and respected.  Commentator Fundamentalist then suggests: "Essentially, no property rights exist." That is not so: "property rights" (as opposed to "property Gigglipuffs") exist if and when the state provides a remedy for their enforcement.  But enough of this entertainment. I suspect that hardcore libertarians will not be put off by mere satire.  A few days ago commentator Fundamentalist put the following argument:  "The foundation of natural law is the right to life and property. Natural law has no other purpose but to protect both. All other rights are derived from those rights through the application of sound reason. Judges study natural law and apply it."  If "natural law" could really define the allocation of rights unambiguously we wouldn't need judges (who are, ironically, agents of the state). At most we would need only a panel of logic professors who would work out - presumably from "natural law" first principles - which party was in the right and which was in the wrong. In this age of information technology, we might even save on the cost of the judges and program all the rules into a computer.  If "natural law" could define allocations of rights unambiguously, no one would bother incurring the time and expense of going to court. They would simply consult an expert who would tell them which side was going to win!  This is not how judges operate . . . for the simple reason that "natural law" (if it can be said to exist at all) does not do what its supporters claim.  And we don't need to take my word for that. Let's listen to someone with direct experience. Billings Learned Hand - one of the most highly regarded United States judges of the twentieth century - summed it up in a speech given in his retirement. Talking about the Bill of Rights no less, he said:  "[Judges] wrap up their veto in a protective veil of adjectives such as 'arbitrary', 'artificial', 'normal', 'reasonable', 'inherent', 'fundamental', or 'essential', whose office usually, though quite innocently, is to disguise what they are doing and impute to it a derivation far more impressive than their personal preferences, which are all that in fact lie behind the decision. If we do need a third chamber it should appear for what it is, and not as the interpreter of inscrutable principles."  Having spent decades on the bench applying legal gobbledegook, Hand lifted the veil and let us in on the secret. There are no inscrutable principles. There are only human judges applying personal preferences. And that - paradoxically - is why we need judges: in our current state of technology, a computer cannot express preferences.  Before proceeding, it might be noted that very often the "personal preference" of a judge is to follow closely the decisions made by earlier or more senior judges. The state often selects judges precisely because they have that personal preference. But it does not always happen. Sometimes judges prefer to follow precedent; sometimes they prefer to overturn it; sometimes they prefer to distinguish a precedent so as not to be seen to be overtly overturning it. In each case they apply their preference.  Yesterday, commentator Sam B put the following argument:  "Libertarianism is the belief that no-one has the right to use force in anything other than self-defence against someone else's use of force."  This put me in mind of a story told by the late physicist, Julius Sumner Miller. He described how he was once standing in a crowd when the man beside him turned and yelled: "Stop pushing!!" To which Professor Sumner Miller replied: "I cannot push you any harder than you are pushing me."  A similar Newtonian symmetry undermines the libertarian concept of force. Specifically, until we have some means of determining who has the right and who doesn't, it is impossible to tell whether force is being used to deprive one person of Gigglipuffs or merely to enforce the Gigglipuffs of some other person.  Consider a practical example. Imagine that this debate concerned members of a "private" corporation in dispute with one another. Imagine, for example, that one shareholder had failed to make a payment on some partly-paid shares. Imagine also (a common scenario) that the obligation to pay up partly paid shares is slightly ambiguous.  Would the libertarians shareholders in the company say: "Oh, what a pity!! We cannot use force except as self-defence against someone else's use of force. We cannot recover the money we believe is rightfully ours."  Or would they apply to the Court to adjudicate the matter - according to the personal preferences of the judge - and then apply to have the bailiff (an agent of the state) recover the money - or some property of equal assessed value - by force?  Until the state has determined which party is in the right, it is impossible to say whether the force would be depriving a person of a Gigglipuff (i.e. the Gigglipuff of the shareholder to continue holding the money) or enforcing the Gigglipuff of another person (i.e. the Gigglipuffs of the other shareholders to have the shares paid up). Once the state has made that determination - through its agent the judge - the Gigglipuff of the winning party becomes a right, and the state's organ of coercion (the bailiff) made be applied to enforce the remedy. (The Gigglipuff of the losing party does not change its nature; it remains a Gigglipuff.)  Let us now consider the problem of privileging as it applies to paternalistic-libertarianism.  If I am to be completely individualistic, then presumably I must take complete responsibility for my own personal safety and defence. I must protect myself against the perils of the outside world, and I must be my own personal army, willing (and somehow able) to defend myself against all those other individuals who would kill me and steal my property.  In practice this is observed to be not feasible. (Anyone who wants to try is free to do so now. We will resume the argument when you return . . . . .  . . . . .Having now established this fact, we may continue.)  Libertarians typically respond to this by declaring that certain limited forms of collective action are "legitimate": typically defence, and policing (and - for some libertarians but not others - some other public goods such as the maintenance of sound currency).  But herein lies a problem. Having accepted collective action in principle, how can one then arbitrarily limit it to some so-called "legitimate" forms. More importantly, who decides which forms of collective action are "legitimate" and which are not.  For libertarians collective security is a fatal pact with the devil. Having deigned to accept the assistance of their community for security, on what basis do they then turn around and presume to dictate to their fellow citizens (the very people upon whom they have chosen to rely so absolutely) on how that community is to be run?  And it is an observable fact that some members of the community hold opinions which differ from those of the libertarians. Were it not so we would not be having this debate.  It might be noted that this is not an "argumentum ad baculum". It is not being argued that the opinions of other members of the community are "correct" because the libertarians would be beaten up by them if they didn't accede. The libertarians have willingly accepted the assistance of the community against the terrors of the outside world, and - as noted above - libertarians in general freely acknowledge that certain forms of collective action are "legitimate".  But which ones? Where do you draw the line? And who decides?  By what self-evident principle may the opinions of libertarians on these matters be accorded greater weight than those of other members of their community?  Do libertarians have a monopoly on wisdom? Do they commune regularly with The Almighty, and receive from On High the list of "right" and "wrong" answers for each day? Could it be that God has granted to them a "Cosmic Teachers' Guide" with the answers in the back of the book? If so (to quote John Locke) "[they] ought to show us this charter from heaven, and let us see . . ."  In the absence of such conclusive evidence, the personal opinions of libertarians - even libertarians with Nobel prizes - remain just that: personal opinions.  In both Friedman's book and in some of the comments made at Book Club there have been disparaging remarks about "Tyranny of the Majority". What is often overlooked by those who use this term is that the mathematically inevitiable alternative to "Tyranny of the Majority" is "Tryanny of Some Minority". If the will of the majority does not prevail then - by the iron laws of mathematics - the will of some minority prevails against it. And there is no self-evident principle by which the will of any minority may be privileged a priori.  Now, it is all very well to point out that there is no basis by which libertarians' opinions (or the opinions of any minority) may be privileged a priori. But we must still consider how society may make decisions. Specifically, is it possible to devise a system of government that does not require a priori privileging?  As discussed yesterday, provided that we can define who "the People" are, then we might argue as follows:  Proposition A: "There exists no a priori principle by which the opinion of one person in relation to an appropriate system of government may be given more weighting that the opinions of other people."  Proposition B: "If a set of real number weightings are applied in aggregating the opinions of a number of people, and if no weighting is greater than any other weighting, then all the weightings must be equal." This may be readily derived from the mathematics of real numbers.  From this we might conclude that the initial system must be one agreed using an aggregation device which accords equal weightings to all of the People.  However, the initial system might not be the final system. It is possible that - in a referendum in which all opinions (yes or no) were weighted equally - the People might approve the according of greater weights to the opinions of certain select people (elected representatives, for example), possibly subject to limitations of some kind.  It is even possible that the final system might incorporate elements of libertarian thinking. For example, libertarians might successfully convince their fellow-citizens that it is a pleasant and useful thing to assign and enforce private property rights (subject, perhaps, to some overriding public rights).  Indeed, empirical evidence from even the most democratic places - like Switzerland or California - suggests that such arguments have been very convincing. The majority have not sought to initiate constitutional amendments to abolish all private property - although they do limit private property rights when it is judged appropriate to do so.  It is worth noting that as a matter of historical record, in places where people have been able to express their wishes through Democracy, they have not used their democratic rights:  (a) to abolish Democracy; or  (b) to impose a paternalistic-libertarian regime in its place.  Paternalistic-libertarians may not like that, but there is no self-evident principle by which their preferences may be forced upon other people.  Finally, I might add that I'm not naive enough to think that any of these arguments will change the beliefs of hardcore paternalist-libertarians. I hope only that they demonstrate such beliefs to be unfounded in reason.
I SUPPOSE I should be prepared to engage hardcore libertarian arguments about fundamental rights and so forth. Being a practical person, I'm not. Commenter fundamentalist writes: We could argue forever about rights.