Property rights, coercion, and the welfare state: the libertarian case for a basic income for all.

• Author: Zwolinski, Matt
• Position: Report

MOST readers of this journal will probably agree that the U.S. welfare system is a disaster. The federal government alone spends well more than $600 billion each year on more than 120 different antipoverty programs. Add in another $284 billion of welfare spending at the state and local levels, and you have almost $1 trillion of government spending on welfare--more than $20,000 for every poor person in America (Tanner 2012).

That's a lot of money and a lot of bureaucracy. All of which might be excusable if the welfare state were effective at doing what it was supposed to do--helping the poor escape poverty. But it isn't. Programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Section 8 housing vouchers transform taxpayer cash into less-useful vouchers, thereby preventing recipients from buying those goods and services that best meet their needs. (1) And well-intentioned means testing leads to enormously high effective marginal tax rates and so-called welfare cliffs, thus producing a tremendous disincentive on the part of the poor to do the one thing most likely to help them leave poverty behind once and for all--work. As a result, despite massive expenditures by the welfare state, the problem of poverty in America remains a serious one.

But suppose we could give the system an overhaul--make it less top-heavy, more effective at relieving poverty, and maybe even less expensive. Would that be enough to make the system an acceptable one?

Some thinkers attracted to the ideals of individual responsibility and limited government believe that any welfare state would be unacceptable, no matter how effective and efficient it might be. After all, even a well-run government welfare program would still be coercive. It is coercive because all such programs involve the use of force to tax money away from some people in order to give it to others. And many libertarians and classical liberals regard an opposition to the initiation of force as the defining axiom of their creed (see, e.g., Rothbard 1973, chap. 2).

I have argued elsewhere (Zwolinski 2014) that a basic-income guarantee (BIG) would be less expensive, less bureaucratic, less prone to political opportunism, and less paternalistic and invasive than our present welfare state. These considerations make up what I called the "pragmatic libertarian argument for a basic-income guarantee." Even if the complete abolition of the welfare state is the libertarian ideal, I argued, libertarians have good reason to regard a BIG as significantly better than what we have right now and to view the replacement of our welfare state with a BIG as a potential win-win compromise with political progressives and moderates.

In this essay, however, I want to defend a more ambitious claim. Though I still believe that libertarians should regard the BIG as a sound political compromise, I do not think that they should regard it merely as a compromise. Instead, they should see the BIG as an essential part of an ideally just libertarian system. This conclusion will no doubt strike many libertarians as surprising (and perhaps implausible!). But what is even more surprising is that the best argument for this conclusion draws its main support from precisely the same consideration that most libertarians use to oppose welfare measures such as a BIG--an opposition to the initiation of force.

I begin by discussing the relationship between the libertarian commitment to liberty and the libertarian commitment to property in external resources and by arguing that there exists a significant tension between the two. I then proceed to explain the role of the Lockean proviso in addressing this tension and its limits. Satisfaction of the Lockean proviso is necessary to render a system of property rights morally justifiable, but we cannot ensure that the proviso is satisfied for all simply by pointing to the general prosperity that private-property rights engender. This suggests the possibility that a state-financed social safety net might be necessary to ensure the satisfaction of the Lockean proviso and hence render the system of capitalist property rights morally justifiable for all. Once we conclude that there is a strong moral case for a social safety net, pragmatic considerations indicate that there are strong reasons for making that transfer system take the form of a BIG rather than a more restricted form.

My argument in this paper is limited not only by focusing on philosophical considerations to the relative neglect of economic, sociological, and political ones but also by discussing only a portion of the relevant philosophical issues and those in something less than comprehensive detail. The final section reflects on some of the limitations of my argument.

Property and Liberty

To be a libertarian is to take property rights seriously. At the same time, and as we have seen, many libertarians also view an opposition to the initiation of force as one of the most important defining elements of their creed.

Libertarians generally see these commitments as complementary--indeed, inseparable. At the very least, property rights constitute an indispensible means for protecting individuals from the use of force by others. On a more fundamental philosophical level, it is difficult to see how we might even know what the initiation of force means without some prior theory of who is entitled to what--that is, without a theory of property rights. (2)

This connection is clear enough in the case of what is arguably the most fundamental kind of property right within the libertarian system--the property right each individual has in his or her own person. To the extent that each individual's natural right of self-ownership is recognized, that individual has the right to exercise exclusive control over his or her own body. Part of what is entailed by this right is the right to prevent other people from using one's body without consent--as a punching bag, as a tool for sexual gratification, or as a slave. In the case of an individual's ownership of his or her own self, respect for property and a commitment to individual liberty seem to go hand in hand.

But what is clear with respect to property rights in one's person is much less clear with respect to property rights in external resources such as land. If I put a fence around a piece of land that had previously been open to all to use, claim it as my own, and announce to all that I will use violence against any who walk upon it without my consent, it would certainly appear as though I am the one initiating force (or at least the threat of force) against others. I am restricting their liberty to move about as they were once free to do. I am doing so by threatening them with physical violence unless they comply with my demands. And I am doing so not in response to any provocation on their part but simply so that I might be better able to utilize the resource without their interference.

Why is this a permissible thing for me to do? Or wit permissible? This question turns out to be surprisingly difficult to answer. Historically, the most influential answer in the libertarian tradition was given by John Locke, who wrote that our right to acquire property rights in land and other external resources is grounded in our ownership of our selves and our labor. "Though the earth, and all inferior creatures, be common to all men," he stated, "yet every man has a property in his own person: this nobody has any right to but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property" (1952, sec. 28). Thus, according to Locke, we acquire property rights in external resources by mixing something that we own (our labor) with something that we do not own (the resource).

But this is a puzzling argument. What makes property problematic from a libertarian perspective is not the relationship between the owner of the property and the thing owned. What makes property problematic is the relationship between the owner of property and other people. To claim a property right is to claim the right to use physical force to prevent other people from using a resource without your consent. And it is not quite clear why the fact that you went and mixed your labor with some piece of land should suffice to give you that right. (3)

The idea that Locke's theory failed to justify the way in which property restricts liberty was eloquently expressed in the mid-nineteenth century by the great libertarian Herbert Spencer. For Spencer, the fundamental moral principle of libertarianism was that each person should have the maximum liberty possible compatible with an equal liberty for others. The problem with...