 Good afternoon everybody. Welcome to our Cato Book Forum. My name is David Bose. I'm the Executive Vice President of the Institute. I imagine we're going to have more people coming in as we go. So those of you who are on the aisles, be alert to people wanting to get a seat. And of course we always encourage people who are arriving late to sit up front. But nobody ever wants to do that. So watch the aisle seats. We are going to be discussing today this new book from Cambridge University Press, Are Liberty and Equality Compatible? And this is of course a very old question in political philosophy. Can the ideals of political liberty and equality be reconciled? Are they indeed compatible? Of course we have to clarify what we mean by equality. Equality in the eyes of God, equality under the law, equality of opportunity, equality of outcomes, equality of assets. What do we mean by equality? In this book, two distinguished political philosophers will take up this debate, or actually in the book they already have taken up the debate. Today they will take it up here. Jan Narvison argues that a political ideal of negative liberty is incompatible with any substantive ideal of equality, while James Sturba argues that Narvison's own ideal of negative liberty is compatible and in fact leads to the requirements of a substantive ideal of equality. Obviously they can't both be right. James P. Sturba is professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. His previous books include Justice for Here and Now, Affirmative Action for the Future, and Does Feminism Discriminate Against Men, a topic he also debated here at Cato when that book came out. Jan Narvison is distinguished professor emeritus at the University of Waterloo. He is perhaps best known for his book The Libertarian Idea. His other books include Moral Matters, Respecting Persons in Theory and Practice, and You and the State. I would note that in addition to this book several of Professor Narvison's books are available outside and this is probably the best price that you will get on this new book from Cambridge or any of the other books that are available out there. We'll have opening statements and then formal rebuttals from each author and then we'll open the floor to questions and after that of course books will be available for signing and sandwiches for eating. Please welcome Professor James Sterba. Many thanks to David Boaz and the Cato Institute for inviting Jan and myself to this book forum. Bringing a book that discusses libertarianism to the Cato Institute may seem like bringing the proverbial coals to Newcastle but these are hard economic times especially for the poor in this country. So bringing a debate book that on one side argues that libertarianism requires a strong right to welfare and more might surprisingly turn out to be a valuable contribution to the thinking and work that goes on in this premier institution. In our book Our Libriant Inequality Compatible, Jan Narvison argues that a political ideal of negative liberty is incompatible with any substantive ideal of equality while I argue that Jan's own ideal of negative liberty is compatible with and in fact leads to the requirements of a substantive ideal of equality. That is the way I like to see the debate between Jan and myself and it is the way that is written up in the general introduction and the blurbs for our book. That is not however the way that Jan likes to see our debate. Jan prefers to see us both approaching our topic as social contract theorists thereby committed to finding principles of political philosophy that everyone would reasonably agree to uphold. Approaching our topic this way, Jan thinks that everyone would reasonably agree to uphold a principle of equal negative liberty. A principle that says we should not interfere with other people. Jan further thinks that after endorsing this principle, it is unlikely that everyone would go beyond it to endorse some form of egalitarianism that requires the provision of more or less extensive bundles of other social goods to each and every person. As I see it however, even the initial choice Jan describes is more complicated than he makes it out to be. This is because we are not faced with just one equal liberty principle to accept or reject. Instead, we are faced with many such principles. The most offensive of which I claim also requires substantive equality. It is in this way that the libertarian ideal of liberty can itself be shown to require substantive equality. Let me briefly explain how this argument from liberty to equality goes. Consider a conflict situation between the rich and the poor. In this conflict situation, the rich, of course, have more than enough resources to satisfy their basic needs. In contrast, imagine the poor lack the resources to meet their most basic needs, even though they tried all the means available to them, the libertarians regard as legitimate for acquiring such resources. Under circumstances like these, libertarians maintain that the rich should have the liberty to use the resources to satisfy their luxury needs if they so wish. Libertarians recognize that this liberty might well be enjoyed with the consequence that the satisfaction of the basic needs of the poor will not be met. They just think that liberty always has priority over other political ideals, and since they tend to assume that the liberty of the poor is not at stake in such conflict situations, it is easy for them to conclude that the rich should not be required to sacrifice their liberty so that the basic needs of the poor may be met. Of course, libertarians allow that it be nice of the rich to share their surplus resources with the poor. Nevertheless, according to libertarians, such acts of charity are not required because the liberty of the poor is not usually thought to be at stake in such conflict situations. In fact, however, the liberty of the poor is at stake in such conflict situations. What is at stake is the liberty of the poor not to be interfered with in taking from the surplus possessions of the rich what is necessary to satisfy their basic needs. Needless to say, libertarians want to deny that the poor have this liberty. But how can they justify such a denial? As this liberty of the poor has been specified, it is not a positive liberty to receive something, but a negative liberty of non-interference. Clearly, what libertarians must do is recognize the existence of such a liberty and then claim that it unjustifiably conflicts with liberties of the rich and is thereby rendered illegitimate. So when the conflict between the rich and the poor is viewed as a conflict of liberties, we can either say that the rich should have the liberty not to be interfered with in using their surplus resources for luxury purposes, or we can say that the poor should have the liberty not to be interfered with and taking from the rich what they require to meet their basic needs. If we choose one liberty, we must reject the other. What needs to be determined, therefore, is which liberty is morally enforceable, the liberty of the rich or the liberty of the poor. This means that there are at least two candidates for the equal negative liberty principle that Jan thinks that everyone would reasonably agree to uphold. One such principle would provide equal. That is the same liberties to each and every person. But that principle would include the liberty when you're rich, not to be interfered with by the poor and using your surplus for luxury purposes. The other principle would provide equal. That is the same liberties to each and every person. But that principle would include the opposing liberty when you are poor, not to be interfered with by the rich when taking from their surplus what you require to meet your basic needs. In essence, the second equal liberty principle by favoring the liberty of the poor over the liberty of the rich provides the basis for a right to welfare, whereas the first equal liberty principle by favoring the liberty of the rich over the liberty of the poor rejects any such right to welfare. So while Jan sees everyone as initially facing a choice of whether or not to agree to uphold an equal liberty principle, I have shown that an equal liberty principle itself has different instantiations. And what is most important for our purposes is that one such instantiation of the principle rejects a right to welfare while another instantiation requires a right to welfare. Yet all that I've done so far is show that Jan at least needs to complicate his argument for the incompatibility of liberty and equality. I've not yet shown that his argument is mistaken. While Jan thought he could show that everyone would first face the choice of whether to agree to uphold an equal liberty principle and then face the choice of whether to go beyond such a principle in favor of some form of egalitarianism, I have shown that the choice is better that is more neutrally represented as a choice over which equal liberty principle to uphold. You can further see that this is the case by considering what it would mean given Jan's construal of the choice situation for people to agree to go beyond an equal liberty principle and favor some form of egalitarianism. Such a move would be equivalent to rejecting Jan's preferred equal liberty principle in favor of an equal liberty principle that requires a right to welfare. So even an analysis of Jan's own way of construing the choice situation can be seen to be equivalent to the choice over which equal liberty principle everyone would reasonably agree to uphold. Our debate thus comes down to the choice over which equal liberty principle, one that requires a right to welfare or one that rejects such a right, everyone would reasonably agree to uphold. That seems to be the fairest way of putting the debate between Jan and myself. As I see it, everything depends on an answer to that question. But what is the answer? What would everyone reasonably agree to uphold? Well, you look like a group of reasonable people here. Let's see what you think is reasonable to uphold. How many of you think, by show of hands, that we all should uphold an equal liberty principle that rejects a right to welfare? Okay. You ain't in the APA anymore, Jim. Okay. How many of you think that we all should uphold an equal liberty principle that requires a right to welfare? Clearly no unanimity here. And notice that this lack of unanimity is not just a problem for Jan's view. It is also one for my own view as well. Since we both wanted to ground our views on principles that everyone would reasonably agree to uphold. Given the disagreement that I've just elicited, either both of our projects are doomed to failure, or I haven't posed the question in exactly the right way so that we can see how it will receive the same answer from everyone. Now, I'm hoping that the second alternative obtains. So let me try to explain how the question needs to be posed in order to elicit the same answer from everyone. First, Jan and I agree that one's moral views should not be brought to bear when people are trying to determine what political principles they should reasonably agree to uphold. Our shared view here is that morality itself is the outcome of this choice. Morality does not determine the principles we should choose. So if you were thinking that you have a moral right to your surplus, and accordingly you should not have to give it to the poor, alternatively if you were thinking that the poor have a moral right to welfare, and therefore that you should support such a right. And if these were the reasons you were favoring one of these liberty principles over the other, then you weren't making the choice the way Jan and I wanted you to make it. We both recognize that different moral views would favor different choices, but we also recognize that it's difficult to show that one particular moral perspective is preferable to all others. So we both want to ground the choice of political principles here in something that is still more fundamental. Similarly, we are presupposing that your religious views are not determining your choice. We are assuming here, although we can argue for it, the morality that would emerge from this choice should constrain whatever obligations religion might impose. So if some of you were using religious views to make your choice, then too it is no surprise that we got the lack of unanimity we did. Nevertheless, while Jan and I are in agreement that the choice facing everyone should not be made on the basis of people's prior moral and religious views, we still do not yet agree on what grounds the choice should be made. As Jan sees it, the choice should be made on the basis of mutual benefit so that it would serve everyone's self-interest. That is why he argues that a principle of equal liberty that rejects a right to welfare would be chosen. As he sees it, having a liberty principle that contains a right to welfare would require the rich to sacrifice their interests for the sake of the poor. That would not be part of a mutual benefit scheme. So Jan claims everyone would not reasonably agree to uphold an equal liberty principle that requires a right to welfare. That in nutshell, I think, is Jan's argument for how the choice would be made. So what's mine? Again, I'm not going to appeal to morality or religion here to support my view. What I'm going to claim is that we are in need of a good argument as to which equal liberty principle we should choose, and a good argument by definition will not beg the question. This means that the argument will not ignore important interests that people have in reaching its conclusion about what equal liberty principle everyone would reasonably agree to uphold. Unfortunately, that is exactly what Jan's construal of the choice situation does. It ignores the interests that poor people have in having their basic needs met because those interests conflict with the interests that rich people have and using their surplus for luxury purposes. In my view, to make the choice non-question-beggingly, we must take into account the conflicting interests that people have as well as their non-conflicting interests of mutual benefit. But how do we do that? Here's one way. We need to idealize a bit to do this, but I think you will get the idea and see how it is a way of non-question-beggingly taking everyone's conflicting and non-conflicting interests into account. Consider a ranking of your own self-interest from your most important interest to your least important interest. Now consider a ranking of the self-interest of others from their most important interest to their least important interest. Now some of the interest in these rankings will not be in conflict. Furthering them will serve the interests of yourself and others. These involve mutual benefit where the liberty of yourself and the liberty of others are fully compatible. Clearly we should all be in favor of promoting such liberties. Nevertheless, there will be other situations where your interests and liberties come in the conflict with the interests or liberties of others. Let us set aside those cases where your high-ranking interests come in the conflict with the high-ranking interests of others. Those cases are like lifeboat cases and any of you is going to have some difficulty resolving such cases. Former numerous are cases where your high-ranking interests come in the conflict with the low-ranking interests of others or the high-ranking of interest of others come in the conflict with your low-ranking interests. In such cases, I claim that a non-question-begging way to resolve such conflicts is to have high-ranking interests trump low-ranking interests. In this way, the high-ranking interests of the poor, having their basic needs met, will trump the low-ranking interests of the rich and be able to use their surplus for luxury purpose. And this, I claim, will ground a right to welfare. Thus, a non-question-begging preference for the high-ranking interests of the poor over low-ranking interests of the rich will favor the choice of an equal liberty principle that requires just such a right. In our book, Jan takes me to be a minimal egalitarian who tries to support a right to welfare limited to one's own society. However, for many years in both my published work and in my public presentations, I have argued that when a right to welfare is extended to distant peoples and future generations, it leads to substantial equality. Here, I see myself as simply following out the libertarian idea that the basic rights that people have do not stop at the borders. Of course, when libertarians argue for this universalistic view of rights, they usually do not recognize that the right to liberty they champion leads to a right to welfare. In any case, all that I have done in this book is explore the unintended, but I think clear consequence of the libertarian view. So let me briefly show how the libertarian grounded right to welfare that I have just argued for leads to substantial equality. To meet the basic needs of the poor throughout the world, Thomas Pogge has proposed a 1% tax on aggregate global income, netting $312 billion annually. Peter Singer, as an alternative, has proposed a graduated tax on incomes of the top 10% of U.S. families, netting $404 billion annually, with an equal sum coming from the family incomes of people living in other industrialized countries. Both Pogge and Singer are confident that their proposals will go a long way toward meeting basic human needs worldwide. In fact, Singer remarks that before coming up with his recent proposal, he never, quote, fully understood how easy it would be for the world's rich to eliminate or virtually eliminate global poverty, end of quote. Yet while Pogge and Singer's proposals would doubtless do much to secure a right to welfare for existing people, unfortunately they do not speak very well to the needs of future generations. In the U.S., currently more than 1 million acres of arable land are lost from cultivation each year due to urbanization, multiplying transport networks, and industrial expansion. Of course, this is slowed a bit with the economic downturn. In addition, another 2 million acres of farm land are lost each year due to erosion, solanation, and water logging. The state of Iowa alone has lost one half of its fertile topsoil from farming in the last 100 years. That loss is about 30 times faster than what is sustainable. According to one estimate, only 6 tenths of an acre of arable land per person will be available in the U.S. in 2050, whereas more than 1.2 acres per person are needed to provide a diverse diet. Currently 1.6 acres of arable land are available. Similar or even more threatening estimates of the loss of arable land have been made for other regions of the world. How then are we going to preserve farmland and other food-related natural resources so that future generations are not deprived of what they require to meet their basic needs? And what about other resources as well? It's been estimated that presently a North American uses 75 times more resources than the resident of India. This means that in terms of resource consumption, the North American continent's population is the equivalent of 22.5 billion Indians. So unless we assume the basic resources such as arable land, iron, coal and oil are in limited supply, this unequal consumption will have to be radically altered if the basic needs of future generations are to be met. I submit therefore that until we have a technological fix on hand, recognizing a universal right to welfare applicable to both existing and future people requires us to use up no more resources than are necessary for meeting our own basic needs, thus securing for ourselves a decent life but no more. For us to use up more resources than this without a technological fix on hand, we would be guilty of depriving at least some future generations of the resources they would require to meet their own basic needs, thereby violating their libertarian-based right to welfare. Obviously this would impose a significant sacrifice on existing generations, particularly those in the developed world, including a far greater sacrifice than Pogie and Singer maintaining is required for meeting the basic needs of existing generations. Nevertheless, these demands do follow from a libertarian-based right to welfare. In effect, recognizing a right to welfare applicable to all existing and future people leads to an equal utilization of resources over place and time. In this way, I think everyone can be reasonably brought to agree to uphold an equal liberty principle that requires substantial equality, but only, of course, if people behave reasonably and do not reject the force of a good argument. Thank you. Jan Narbison. Hello, I am really impressed to see such a sizable audience here to listen to a discussion on a topic quite as, in a sense, rarefied as this. Well, which introduces an important pointer, the discussion between me and Sturba goes on at, really, two levels, roughly. What I'll call the abstract or sort of philosophical level and, on the other hand, the here and now real world. Now, one might argue, as many, including Sturba himself, have, that it's really only the latter that matters, only the real world. And one might infer from this, as Jim, to his credit, does not, that it isn't worth wasting your time at the first level. Now, I think we both happily disagree with the latter. You guide practice in the light of ideas, which can be worked out in an essentially abstract stage, even though you get onto that stage as a result of your immersion in and experiences of the real world. So, my abstract world, and, in a sense, Jim's, whether it is, is a very interesting and important question as we will see. But prima facia, we're both starting out in the abstract world of Hobbes' state of nature. Does everybody, has everybody, is there anybody who hasn't read Hobbes or hasn't heard of Hobbes even? Ah, great, I'm talking to the right people. This is very easily misunderstood, though. I take Hobbes, rightly or wrongly, it doesn't matter here as a point of interpretation, to be saying that morality is not just a basic part of human nature. It needs explaining, and indeed it needs justifying in terms of a prior and more fundamental notion of rationality. Now, that prior notion is a pretty well common property nowadays to us and economists and lots of other people. It is that a rational agent is guided by two things. Firstly, his interests, as he sees them. If you like, you could call those his values. That's okay, too, as long as you don't presuppose anything that we're trying to get out of this in the way of morality. And secondly, his information base regarding on what's going on around him. And in particular, how that affects his choice of actions. He chooses then, on the basis of this information, the actions that he hopes or expects will do the best by the schedule of interests or values that he actually has. Now, if morality, which is a set of requirements notionally imposed on everybody, and it's a set of requirements meaning it tells us to do things that we might not like to do at the time. It overrides our initial interests. So if something like that is going to be relevant, if it's going to have any cloud, then it has to be some, it has to be such because having such a thing will somehow serve our interests. Not our moral interests, just our interests. Thus, we can select and improve those peculiar sets of instructions called moralities, for all, on the basis of how they impact on our interests. Now, for most people, most interests include both what Sturba would call egoistic and what he would call altruistic ones. I mean, I would do, and just think we, this is common terminology here, in varying proportions. Very varying proportions. Some people have virtually none of the altruistic ones and some have apparently astonishing little of the self-interested ones. It would be, to use an expression very important to both of us, question begging to assume that people didn't vary in these respects. And it would be misguided to argue that those who lack one or another sort of them are somehow bad guys who don't count. And the reason for this is we're dealing with everybody. Here's the world. It's all kinds of people out there. We bump into them. They bump into us. The question is, what are we going to do? You cannot just rule some people out because there they are. What I have claimed is that taking into account this whole range of variation in what people are like, we can hope to find some uniform moral rule or rules among possible rules that require us sometimes to do things other than we like to do at the time. All right? We cannot do this by just consulting our independent interests. Such as, for example, a desire that the world be of the following kind. Well, la-ti-da. Everybody has desires like that. Hey, we'd like that the world be like this. Who cares? The answer is, if other people don't share your view then it's completely useless for this purpose because you're trying to deal with those people. And that's why we have to talk what amounts to social contract talk. So we seek rules which everybody can reasonably accept provided that everyone else does too. Now it's the proviso that matters. Remember we're not just talking about ideals in the sense of views of what we think would be really nice if everybody was like. We're talking about sets of rules, which there's at least decent reason to think that everybody can see reason to accept rules calling for restrictions on behavior. Since they restrict your actions as well as mine, it is possible that if you restrict yours in those ways that benefits me enough to make it worthwhile for me to restrict mine in relation to you. That's the general logic of the social contract by position. Now my thesis is that this one general rule of this kind that can meet the requirement of universal rational acceptance would be the libertarian rule. Understood as forbidding what we would call aggressions in some circles. Understood as forbidding interventions by one person that worsened the situation or threatened to worsen the situation of the other one. So my saying here, you do the following and if you don't I'll kick you is a violation of the liberty principle. To put it the other way around then the fundamental rule that I think passes acceptance and by the way so did Hobbes and Kant and a bunch of other interesting people gives everybody a general right of liberty which holds good for him unless and until he violates the same right on the part of somebody else. I take it that this rule implies all the Lockean things. Moral security against invasion of one's persons, one's health and one's level of well-being, one's freedom of external action so long as it is consistent with the like freedom of all and therefore in my view, therefore is important one's property. They don't include on the other hand requirements that we help others to any particular degree and that's where my discussion with Sturba kicks in for he claims it does. So why do I claim it doesn't? Basically it's because relative to the baseline of having no rules at all anyone can be sure to do better by not being attacked since attacking by definition worsens me in respect that matter to me. Of course you're helping me too would be nice but am I already to help anybody else out there? Maybe but maybe not. It might not be worth it to me to offer help to you. I don't necessarily gain from helping others because it might not be reciprocated. Might not either because I might not need your help of that kind or because you may not even be capable of rendering it anyway and on the other hand I might be quite capable of rendering help to you and so it's asymmetric. It doesn't look like it would be a paying proposition for me to commit myself to helping everybody who needs help just because he needs it. It does have to be borne in mind I mean if we can't overemphasize that there's loose talk about needs here especially basic needs in the case of GM and the point to be made here is whatever your needs are they don't necessarily matter to me but we're looking for rules for both of us not just you in relation to me. So the world isn't your oyster it's all of our oysters and therefore you simply can't count on everybody being already to help you out just because you need help. On the other hand we all need not to be attacked we can all depend on having an interest in the freedom to do the things that we want to do and so there we have common ground there we have a common good we can get to we don't have it in the case of any sort of mutual in the case of welfare. Now the reason for considering interest to be really more fundamental than altruism is easy to see consider someone for whom it's only the interests of certain or even all other people that really matter very much okay now about those other people the objects of their altruistic desires do they count or not and if they do why do they ultimately a theorist promoting altruistic action is going to have to say that yes they do count and they do so by taking into account the effects on them themselves that this putatively altruistic persons approved actions would have on them if put into effect in other words an altruistic action is altruistic because it has effects on the other person which from that person's self-interested point of view are good things. So there's a complete asymmetry here self-interest is fundamental altruism is derivative it isn't that altruism doesn't happen it isn't that most of us aren't at least somewhat altruistic we are it's that altruistic cannot be absolutely fundamental and therefore for theoretical purposes we might as well talk about everything from the point of view of self-interest. Now Sturba claims that I am biasing things by looking for rules that would win the unanimous consent of all when some of them are highly non-altruistic. Of course I never claim that nobody is altruistic I would be absurd it is widely miss it's a widely held misreading of the social contract idea that it assumes that people are not self-interested I make no such assumption I mean that they're not altruistic I do assume that people vary and they vary a whole lot I do claim that the world contains lots of kinds of people including thoroughly selfish ones you probably know something so if we are aiming at universality then it would indeed be biasing things to confine yourself to worlds full of people more altruistic than that Sturba says that I am begging the question against other possible interpretations of that choice situation I deny this there is only one interpretation of the choice situation it's the choice situation among everybody where everybody is all kinds of people and so the question is what do you get all these kinds of people to agree on if a lot of them aren't altruistic your hope of getting them all to agree on altruism is zilch and if on the other hand we can identify an interest which I think we have that everybody has we can hope of agreeing on that and that's the libertarian principle okay now moving to Sturba's position how am I going on time David you have 10 minutes okay good I used as Jim pointed out I used to misread his view and attribute to him a much narrower level of required concern for others than he actually has namely I he used to talk quite a lot about starvation and saving people from that now he's talking about basic needs but he's going a lot farther than that he used to have I thought a sort of minimal welfare welfareism where only those who really have exhausted their options and then only those who were on point of starvation are to get the coerced assistance which is the subject of the debate between us I do claim that he can't even get that from our common starting point but I also noted there's not much of an issue here since in current America and most of the g20 countries accepting of course good ol russia there just isn't enough in the way of need at that level to worry about with no welfare estate there wouldn't be either just as there wasn't to speak of even in late 19th century America let alone current America but I find that I underestimated his commitments and I must thank him for pointing out that he now claims to take on a great deal more of a load than that we turn out to be quote guaranteed the resources for a decent life but no more all of us and that means that in his view the state can take as much of our income as it needs to satisfy what he would regard as the basic needs of everybody and that sounds pretty far out egalitarian doesn't it now a couple of comments on this number one it isn't clear how egalitarian it is for of course the impact of this depends on how you answer this question which he raises in the book how do you distinguish basic from non-basic needs an important question how indeed but Jim though he does raise it doesn't actually answer it he assumes that we have some sort of a handle on that distinction well sorry the distinction as he defines it goes like this basic needs if not satisfied lead to significant lacks or deficiencies with respect to a standard of mental and physical well-being quote and that's page 13 foot not 14 for those who want to look it up so of course everything depends on just which such standard is being employed a standard but which standard and how do you decide what that standard is going to be one may be forgiven for thinking that the original question has been somewhat swept into the carpet here thus he says that the rich of course have more than enough resource to satisfy their basic needs well how does he even know that in some places Jim is ready to account the American poor in the sense of people below the American poverty line the official one in terms of income as being among those whose basic needs aren't being met while allowing that the roughly two-thirds i think it's more like 90 percent of the population of india who are below that line are nevertheless maybe it's 98 percent who are below that line are nevertheless not all to be recognized among that set of people who the rest of us are supposed to turn aside while they plunder our luxury goods if of course you think that people's basic needs aren't being met when they only have two tv's 1.5 cars indoor plumbing in central heating and air conditioning and a computer or that's what the American poor have in case you didn't you i take it you all know that if you don't look it up that's what they've got that's the poor the American poor now and so much to eat that obesity is their main problem rather than starvation then there's no wonder that you'll go in for Castro style confiscatory taxation of everybody above the assistant professor level in ranks of in hopes of meeting those basic needs for all if you want to get into the needs game a bit more seriously you might ask why jim keeps classifying the luxury needs is somehow not serious not you know try asking the rich whether they really do need a Porsche some of them do after all in their view and why does our view count and there's not or of course a psychiatrist not to mention a half million dollar course of cancer treatment or whatever don't tell me that it's impossible to have so much money that there isn't something that you need that you can't get with it i'm afraid if i mean i don't know very many rich people what i've read about them suggest that they've all got things to spend their money on which they claim that they need and if you think well those aren't basic needs and the question is what kind of game are you playing but notice since i think the whole idea is wrong anyway i think we don't have an enforceable duty to satisfy anybody's need for anything we just have an enforceable duty to leave the poor blokes in peace need or no need i don't have to settle the question which needs are basic and which aren't but he sure does and i think it obvious that he hasn't done it here read the book see what you think or if he has in the way noted above then his theory would be i think regarded by most of us as putting him in pretty clearly in cloud cuckoo land but i am quite willing to go back to my earlier generous reading of him however and settle for being on the brink of starvation as a suitably representative case of not having the needs he's talking about met and yes i think that even those people do not have the right to take what they need from us by force either so back to the question why don't i think we have that right why don't i think we have any of those duties because i claim the only basic right that we can all agree on is the right not to be harmed or molested or aggressed against and defrauded and in general worsened now jim again queues me a question begging when he claims that my right is only a right to approved liberties is if i had arbitrarily restricted the liberties the libertarian principle is concerned with well he's wrong about that in the passages from me that he refers to where i point out that stealing from people who have acquired the goods in question without in their turn using force or fraud against anyone else is a violation of the libertarian principle and that was our agreed terms of reference i am of course using only that principle not some imported bias from somewhere else in applying the restriction in question so when i say of course the poor don't have the right to steal from the property of the rich because it's their property and because it's their property my violating that violates their general liberty right now as jim has pointed out against ronald dorkin quite correctly the liberal the liberty principle doesn't say anything goes it says rather anything goes in the way of actions that do not in their turn aggress against anyone else well when the poor attack the rich they are aggressing against someone else and when the rich make a whole lot of money by perfectly voluntary means as they usually do they are not aggressing against anybody so there's no question about it what jim is calling for is a violation of the liberty of the rich he is not just extending the idea of liberty in such a way that what do you know it turns out that the poor guys have a right to attack us rich blokes i think of me being one of the rich whole all right um two minutes two minutes good we could get into lots of real world type issues here some of which he and i do get into in the book especially he less me and if if we had time i would go into them but we don't i want to just make a couple of quick comments about two first jim wants to lean very heavily on supposed rights of future generations this is in order to shore up his idea of uh very substantial egalitarianism not only do the currently existing poor get to steal our stuff on his view but so do zillions of people in the indefinite future and that apparently is why all of us above middle class status can appropriately be compelled to confine ourselves to hair shirts and gruel against this i want to say two things in the first place as i have already remarked it's a reductive of his idea on the immediate face of it anyhow but second anybody who depends upon malthusian premises about projections into the future for purposes like that really doesn't know what he's getting into malthus is dead he's out relying on ideas of resource scarcity for conclusions like that is completely out of touch with reality our present world has the same amount of stuff in it as it always did but we are all hugely better off now than we ever were before and it's not because more mana has fallen from heaven in the meantime but it's because a whole lot of very smart and very productive people have been able to use their smarts and productiveness enough to get us where we are and of course if only governments especially would get out of their habit of hampering so many of those people even more of us would be ever so much better off yet what's unforeseeable about the future is how much the bad guys will win in their campaign to hamstricken the productive but if as we perhaps still dare to hope it's not too much then the only rational belief about the future of mankind is that a we have very little idea what it will like be like but secondly it'll be one heck of a lot better than it is now I'm not going to comment on the other point because I've run out of time I'm sure there will be ample to talk about in the question period seems to me we already heard quite a bit of rebutting but we did agree that there would be formal rebuttals so Jim there is one point in John's argument that he makes this point and if he were right about that then then things would move in a certain direction given I claim that he's wrong about that then all the whole host of problems he raises from my view become problems for his view as well so let me show that show you where the juncture is where everything depends on this point again I said Jen initially that likes to look at this thing as a social contract theory so it's a question of what principle are we going to choose and we don't want to use morality to come up with morality we want to try to do it on on a non-moral foundation and what Jen says here is that there is this point of agreement and it's the point of agreement of all agree to a liberty principle understood as a don't harm don't aggress principle so that will be the point of agreement we might not agree to go on and do good for others but we can agree don't harm don't aggress the problem with that is that that is we have to say well how how do you know when you're harming and when you're aggressing and if you say especially how do you know when you're harming and aggressing with respect to external possessions well you harm and aggress when you are interfering with people's property okay so now we have to know have to be okay now what is it said so people have property and property rights what is it to have a property right here the property right is to have a right of non-interference it's to have a liberty a certain liberty now how do we know people have property like liberties rather than maybe welfare right liberties well how do we know that the liberties of property are more important than the liberties of welfare we need an argument we need an argument about why the liberties we associate with property trump the liberties we associate with welfare and until we have that argument we can't say that when we interfere with property we are harming with people because we may be harming people when we interfere with their welfare so the whole issue of don't harm is predicated on a further analysis of of what rights people have or put it another way what liberties should trump what liberties that's why I said the whole thing is about competing liberties competing liberty principles you've got to settle that and now how so so now the problem is which liberties are going to be the most important well liberties are connected up with interests all right and now we're back to the only thing jen can fall back on here because he's getting you I've now taken away don't harm principle that's not going to be the point of agreement because the that's that's driven us back to look at liberties and liberties is driven us back to look at liberty-serving interests and now so we could have this mutual benefit principle you know sometimes he waivers to yeah let's have a mutual benefit principle well the problem there is that yes we have interests that don't conflict and and that would be very nice to serve those interests but we also have conflicting interests rich and poor have conflicting interests and now the question is you just can't ignore those so I'll take care of the the non-conflicting interests and and we'll have we'll have principles of law that that support those but nothing about the conflicting interests and the conflicting is a big time interest so that brings so now now there now once you've now once the view is moved in this direction we've got to talk about conflicting interests in which conflicting interests should trump which conflict is or which liberty liberty the poor should trump the liberty the rich liberty the rich should trump liberty the poor we now have to well well we get back to well needs importance of needs ranking of interests and we're all back to the things that Jen says well how are you going to fix this how are you going to determine what basic needs are well we need to do that otherwise we have we have no political principles to live by we have to be able to make some determinations here otherwise it's just war against all of against all it's it's no good so and it seems to me we can make some determinations some important interests something sort of fundamental foods interests that are fundamental of housing interests that are fundamental um jan makes the comment about oh look at india look at united states uh well a way i would read this there's a problem here i mean again you these are problems that now he has to solve as well as i because everything is going to be on which conflicting interests which conflicting liberties are you going to go with well a way i would read that is that the basic needs in india and the basic needs united states are the same but the means generally available for meeting basic needs in india are different or cheaper than the means for meeting basic needs united states what's happening in united states is that the basic needs are met in a way that also meets non-basic needs you go on the you won't go on the in the supermarket and you go to the serial aisle there's all these different serials boxes toys offers i mean the cereal in the box you know cost 50 cents the the serial uh that they're selling you cost four hours so if we wanted to find ways to economically efficiently meet people's basic needs we'd find other ways of distributing the things that really meet basic needs if we're going to mess things up when meet bond basic and basic together well it's going to get more costly so so the idea would be since we're thinking about a worldwide scheme here libertarians liberty rights which turn out loud to be welfare rights turn out to be worldwide we look for a way to efficiently making meeting basic needs worldwide and we're going to have to find ways to more efficiently meet them in united states and and and that will bring also find ways to more to uh if meet more basic needs in indian in places like that so eventually there's going to be kind of a stabilization again if we have to deal with conflict and interests as i think we do we're going to have to do something like this um so um you know you can also talk about united states everything's fine but there are places in united states things are not fine if you go to pine ridge uh indian reservation uh you you know the life expectancy is 50 years all sorts of diseases 500 200 300 times uh greater than the average expectancy in in the population and there's just lots of places like that united states so things are not great across the united states we're not all doing meeting our basic needs in the united states some people are and doing far better and some people are not again since we're going to have to be talking about conflicting liberties conflicting interests we're going to have to deal with this problem and hopefully we can do with deal with it in a non-question-making way you know see one of the reasons why and this is common ground here why jan and i do not want to appeal to morality to solve this problem is again the different moralities give different solutions and it's unclear how you non-question-making leave favor one morality over another so again that that argues to back up off of morality religion too different religions different you know solutions back up off of religion and now let's find a non-question-making way to deal with non-conflicting interests and conflicting interests and it's the conflicting interests that are the problem uh if you think there's no way to deal with that and it's now a problem for not just myself as well for a liberal socialist but but but but but it's a problem for the libertarian now because i've made it a problem by denying the harm principle the harm principle is doesn't work you have to ask harm uh against what what liberties are are being when who has the right liberty and therefore that's how you fix harm so so it's a problem we all have if you think it can't be done there's no way to fix it fine there was a problem big problem if you think there's a rational way a non-question-making way to weigh high-ranking interests trumping low-ranking interests and work this thing out then i think we we we can do that and we can do it especially for fixing a minimum if we come up with technological fixes that can we can say everything's going to be fine for the future fine if we can't come up with technological fixes then i think being concerned about liberty which also ends up being concerned about welfare leads us to be cautious about the future and and and not to use up resources now that will put future generations in a bad way the irkway indians had a view that when they made major decisions that asked what impact it would have on the seventh generation seven i mean look how we make decisions i think the irkway were on the something i think maybe they didn't go far enough but they had a good idea and i think we have to if again we want to be have a defensible view i mean look we can we can wreck everything and future generations can look back on us and say yeah it was them in the 21st century they really messed the world up we put us in this horrible situation and they were just as the worst kind of people you could imagine and we'll be dead in god i would like to try to avoid that outcome jan your rebuttal um again i'll confine myself to i think a couple of points number one conflicting interests now what morality is all about what it's all about is it's a response to the potential for conflicting interests among people for conflict among people that's what it's for if there weren't any conflicts there wouldn't be any problem so how do we resolve conflicts of interest there are various ways the libertarian way is to say let's find out who the guilty guy is and say he's in the wrong now is the interest of the rich in conflict with the interest of the poor no there is absolutely no basic reason why the poor and the rich are in conflict they have different amounts of money now jim imputes to the discussion this alleged interest of the poor in having welfare rights of course they've gotten the interest of it in it after all if you have a welfare right it means you get to collect from me for free yeah but do i have an interest in that sorry no so if you and i have to agree on a principle for regulating our principle it isn't going to be that you've got a welfare right not for that reason anyway if you could show me that unless i fed you it would be dangerous somehow for me that would be a good argument and jim sometimes edges up to thinking he's done this and nowhere has he actually uh filled the bill on that one so until that time it seems to me that the right way to deal with conflict is find out who's in the wrong and then tell him to back down that's hobs is a fundamental principle of morality which is seek peace and only use violence only use the methods of war when the other guy makes war on you jim proposes that when the poor make war on us i'm not supposed to react by defending myself well sorry maybe he won't but some of us will and the question is should they if if they have a general right of liberty to do what they want to which means a right not to be attacked the answer is yes they do and it's too bad for the poor if there are some who can't make a living without handouts from somebody else but the point is the rest of us don't just naturally have an obligation to fulfill those interests of theirs we do often most of us have a certain altruistic interest in this most of us are nice guys we will help out that's true but that's very different from accepting a principle that the poor actually have a right to our assistance meaning a positive right meaning a right to coercively exact our assistance that's what i'm denying and it's the only thing that i'm denying here um a quick further response on the last item that he brings up we all are interested in world poverty not necessarily because it's a matter of justice which i don't think it is but still we're interested in it as i say we're nice guys we like to see people better off rather than worse off what is the solution to poverty now i want to make a general answer to this and the answer begins by distinguishing between poverty which is a sort of ongoing condition versus emergencies and disasters which are short term charity is great for disaster relief when disasters happen some place and wealthy people like americans canadians know about it they respond like that when the tsunami happened some years ago how many of you here went right to your computer and donated a bunch of money right i did immediately i read it in the newspaper i got on the computer and pretty soon somebody had 150 of my dollars to help matters out or something like that so many canadians responded that the big problem at the other end was what to do with all the money and how to get around all the goddamn government officials who are preventing them from spending it usefully it wasn't do we have enough charitable people out there to help out we do but poverty isn't like that to relieve poverty what you need and the only thing that you can possibly do is get enterprise going there and the only way you do that is to get impeters off of the backs of the people whose poverty is in question we need to get them working and the only way you do that is with investment not with charity charity is an ongoing cure for poverty is complete nonsense the only cure for poverty is investment let's get out there and help those people by using them using their services and hiring them and getting them out of the poverty that they're mired in by putting them to work that's the way you do it and there is no other way that's the way half a billion chinese have been cured of poverty in the last few years and it's the way the rest of them will if the chinese are able to continue they are etc etc etc so i mean i have no simply whatever with wealth heirism as a cure for poverty it's not a cure and on the contrary it's a way of perpetuating the situation thank you okay we have some time for questions please wait for a microphone to be brought to you and then let's try to make the questions quick we'll take one right there and then bring another microphone over here hello this is for dr stirba you're a part of your argument hinges on the on the dichotomy between needs and luxuries and one thing that dr nervissen said is he sort of challenged that i want to give you an opportunity to maybe respond it it doesn't seem clear to me or to dr nervissen what that dichotomy is or even that one exists how do you know that one exists and how do you figure out how to draw the line you say that okay all right now remember making a distinction between needs and luxuries becomes is a problem for me but i claim it will also be a problem for jen as well once we show that he can't rest with a no harm principle and once we see that that we have to look to competing liberties to fix a no harm principle we then have to go to competing interests to determine which liberties to fix and then we're going to have to rank the interest into basic and non-basic and so we're going to have to get to this basic needs versus luxury needs thing so it's a common problem okay all right now let me just one way to come at my solution to it he quoted he quoted me uh the definition of basic needs uh there was a little more to it and there's a references but let me come at it another way let me come in it from the final solution the final solution of course is that if we do if we're going to do this thing right we're going to allow ourselves only the resources necessary for meeting our basic needs for a decent life and that's what each of us is going to have so what's going and now the way to fix this basic needs minimum is imagine the kind of minimum we each want for ourselves on condition everybody gets the same nobody gets more or less than that so that's be the way to fix the minimum see the all the problem we have with fixing the minimum in our world is that the people who are fixing the minimum don't receive it the people who are you know it's the rich people who are deciding what the minimum should be for the poor and get you know back and forth thing it's really difficult well imagine you're fixing the minimum and that's what you're going to get i think we'll get a lot more unanimity there i will i think it'll be a decent minimum you know the education would part of it uh you know housing food and it's going to be a very decent minimum recreational needs will be part of it and but that's what everybody gets so that'll be that's my best way of coming at it jan did you have a response well the quick response is um he's simply wrong about this claim that i have to make the same distinction i don't since i claim we don't owe anybody anything in that respect all we owe is to keep off their backs all we owe them is peace and that's completely independent of how much money they do or don't have yes right here you started off your presentation i think correct me if i'm wrong by by saying we're talking about negative liberties and i don't understand it seemed to me that you then define uh entitlements as being a liberty when when you started off saying we're talking about negative liberties i don't see how that follows i can understand your confusion there uh what happens here is i'm i'm trying to work from a libertarian base here so we're dealing with negative liberties now what is the standard right to welfare it's a positive right it's not a negative right this is what you're exactly what you're thinking ah but see what i've done now is to find an analog in the on the negative side that will do the work of something like the work of a positive welfare right it's the right not to be interfered with in taking from the surplus possessions of the rich what you need for to meet your basic needs that if you can if you have that right and you exercise it you will get for yourself the something like what the positive welfare right would would give you now there's there's problems i mean suppose you're so weak you can't even go to the rich to to take from their surplus well and then we can put a little uh epicycle in it then we could have robin hoods who kind of will move the resources from the rich to the poor so that that will that will be taken care of so i mean look what i'm trying to do is not to say that that libertarianism leads full full throttle to welfare liberalism and socialism i'm saying that what libertarianism leads to is something that's so close to welfare liberalism socialism libertarians should just throw up their hands and join the welfare liberals and socialists that's the arts of argument no i haven't okay no i haven't oh you want quick comment well i mean of course you're right the so-called liberty to take from the surplus so-called surplus possessions of the rich something is ipso facto not a liberty which a libertarian can accept that people have because it consists in violating their liberty namely their liberty to make money in the usual ways by purely voluntary means which might result in your amassing of fortune you do it that way anybody who takes that is attacking you the liberty to attack you is obviously something that the libertarian right says you don't have obviously jen's absolutely correct jen it's absolutely correct here i am not defending the liberty to take to take from the rich uh to meet your your basic needs i'm defending liberty not to be interfered with in taking that's the negative that's crucial remember i said i gave you an analog to a welfare right it's a right of non-interference jen keep slipping every time i do this i pointed out from he changes it in one text and then it comes back to it's a liberty to take uh no it's a liberty not to be interfered with in taking that's crucial i'm not sure i understand that if you don't believe in the liberty of men to rape women but you said you believed in the liberty of men not to be interfered with in the process of raping women that seems like a distinction without a difference now i'm and i don't mean to imply that taking goods is equivalent to rape but but but how's the difference but look uh on on on a real phenomenology here there's all sorts of of of liberties that are possible liberties and one possible liberty is not to be interfered with when you're raping a woman uh that liberty will hopefully will say nobody should have okay but but that just shows you that if you're going to decide what what that some liberties are privileged you have to at least have the whole expanse of liberties there and then give an argument for why you're privileging some over others that so you know liberty not to be interfered with when you want it when you're when you're shooting somebody to get their money that's that that's that's a liberty hopefully we can make an argument that people shouldn't have that liberty but that's you have to let everything in before you decide which are the privileged ones no we're gonna we're gonna keep the discussion up here as i pointed out in my discussion uh the liberty to do what interferes with somebody else is not an available libertarian liberty we defend all and only those liberties which are compatible with the like liberty for all rape is not on that list neither is robbery okay let me see here all right i'm looking for someone i do not know to be a libertarian intellectual all right let's go let's take a question right there and then in the back row there j hand him the microphone sure question for uh professor stirba but unless you believe that some people the poor are poor because the rich are rich doesn't the redistributive case collapse of simply on pure moral grounds um i'm not i'm not claiming that uh and jan and i earlier debate two weeks ago somebody went after jan by saying look uh the the property the property the not a rich people of mass they got by illegitimate means i jumped in and defended jan i said look let's not talk about it that way let's imagine that the rich got their proper or their possessions by by not interfering with anyone there still becomes my problem my problem is look you've got these possessions you didn't interfere with anybody to get them but now for the poor to meet their basic needs there is issue about whether they can take some of what you possessed or not now see here's the problem i'm granting that the rich produce something they now the question is what is the productive power give a person does it give it them entitlement to everything they produced or is it give them a entitlement to some of what they produce so that if there's somebody else that comes upon the scene that needs some of what they produced and now the question is should they be given the right of non interference with respect to getting at that and i'm saying well let's weigh the it let's weigh the liberties there's a liberty of the of the poor here not to be interfered with not a right liberty to take in taking from the surplus possessions of the rich which imagine they got somehow would not doing anything wrong now we know it's hard to get we're getting morality in here at or is it is the liberty of the rich to not be interfered with in using that surplus for whatever reasons they for whatever purposes they want and i'm saying we have to settle that question and the question then is what we can't do it on a no harm principle we have to do it on the weighing of the interests these are conflicting interests we have to say which conflicting interest is most important all right um well just another quick response as content Hobbes pointed out to have a right is to have a right to be defended in whatever it is you have a right to those that go together if you say oh well this is yours but you're not allowed to defend yourself if somebody comes and tries to take it then it's not yours this is double talk i agree i thought i'd mix things up and ask for that then his whole argument goes out the window no no it doesn't sounds like it you you what what well what do you want so he says if you have a right then you then you have a right to defend the right fine now the question is when we have these conflicting liberties between the rich and the poor we have to decide which is which liberty should have priority that liberty will then become the right so if so pose we say go with me that the right not to be interfered with and taking from the surplus possessions of the rich what you need for survival is the preferred liberty so you have a right to do that now that means that you if somebody if the rich come up and start stopping you you can defend you can fight them back legitimately because you have the right and they don't or if somebody else comes in to try to stop you from taking from the surplus position that you can defend yourself you could say look i have the right not to be interfered with you and and you would be right janice jan's principle hobbes in locking or counting we i agree okay right this is a question for dr nervison uh if i understand correctly you're saying that uh the abstract is only important as it relates to the practical or not only important but is important and your uh argument centers around the principle that you know uh non-interference is a principle that everyone can agree to so my question is if people knew the economics that you have maybe an 80 percent chance of being born into poverty compared to what we in america would consider as poor and you have a point zero zero one percent chance of having a jet it seems like not very many people would agree you know if you came to me and said i have this great principle it's the most fair way to do things and you have an 80 percent chance of being born poor i would say i don't know that doesn't sound like a very good principle so how do you defend you know an abstract thing which so clearly doesn't and well for everyone why would people agree to that the reason why all moral philosophers have talked about universal is point 001 percent is some 99.999 percent isn't all so let's get an agreement between those a real agreement now not a coerced agreement between those point 001 percent of the rich or whatever and the 99.999 percent of the poor why does the fact that there are so many of the poor out there who would like to steal your stuff um overwhelm the contrary of interest of of the people who stuff they would steal while in the contractarian view the answer is it doesn't we got to have unanimity and we aren't going to get it on behalf of of that we are going to get it on behalf of everybody recognizing everybody's right to deal with people on a voluntary basis in whatever way they can and that's a way which by the way the historical track record as well as common sense shows you works fabulously well way better than war you want to get rich what you need is peace and enterprise not war including not the war of the poor against the rich which is what he's fomenting so so jan says look you got to get actual agreement here you even if there were all these poor you got some rich who won't agree because they don't want to give up their resources now it seems to me that that that can't be the principle of our thing we got to have actual agreement that that that pray i mean that that if the way he's going to run it that's got to mean there's going to be no welfare rights because he's already in the background by by his principle of no harm it's got the the the strong property rights in place but but you know he's he's got there assumed it was not morally neutral but it didn't get morally neutral in there it was already he's made a decision but look what why you the actual agreement thing you can see there's a real problem the poor don't agree the rich the rich won't agree now what so then what you have to do it seems to me is to back up and say can we give a good argument that here if we were trying to look at the interests of the rich and the poor can we give a good argument for them going one way or another on this and that's my approach okay right here and then jay take a microphone to the lady in the back well um my question is to professor stirba wasn't this kind of system tried already and elsewhere ended up in millions of dead and machine guns and things like that um german ideology by marx when he kid i didn't come even up to proletarian class warfare he was talking about underclass that means welfare recipients probably so i think that was this was really tried then another kind of question i'm labor economist myself what kind of incentives for the people would be to do anything under that system uh two things so was it tried no uh i mean this i mean you had a commoner system it wasn't really a commoner system i mean probably the closest thing to it's tried sweden i'd be closest thing to where it's tried now you can what runs back arguments back and forth but the soviet union you know you you you um scrape below the surface and you really had a czar system uh and it's so easy the transition from from communism to capitalism there the the communists became capitalism i mean they're the ones that own the the means of production now so it was it was it was there there wasn't any big difference there's rich and poor now in russia as there were rich and poor uh in under the under the soviet union um was the second was the second point what is the incentive all the incentive well um i mean one way you you might run it is is there more incentive but the way i i'm being someone i want to do the moral thing is this is the only good argument we can give for how the rich and the poor should live live together now if that doesn't i i want what to do do you want to support your position with a good argument or you don't want to support your position with a good argument if you give up argument fine we're out of the game we philosophers i think are gone uh but if you want to find what is a good argument to deal with this then you got to run in in the direction i have and that's all we can do well i i was at the question on incentives you were asking and and so if fruits of labor are being taken to share them with them then why people would not just sit on welfare that's what happened everybody else they're not allowed to do that in my system the poor have to work as hard as they can that's that's what requirement here on and the rich have to work as hard well the poor the rich have to use work work as hard to help the existing poor that can't otherwise meet their basic needs i just came from the library of congress working on archives on soviet archives when it's i'm from soviet union originally and uh very interesting notes by lenient lenient is saying i'm telling these rich people what they should do they don't and i'm thinking what i will shoot a couple of them publicly and then that's like i think exactly where it would lead i mean if you if there's besides certain people who would be greedy who wouldn't like to share and definitely that would end up again with machine guns and everything my hope here is i mean you know this the view i'm arguing for is a very demanding view and if you just started all it's imposed on people well it's gonna be hell but what what i'm trying to win at my idea is let's talk about this argument let's work this you know and and once you see look we've got to we've got to come up with a good argument for how rich and poor should relate in society and the world and you know and into the future and and and now it's let's talk about it's the look this argument was so complicated seems to me pretty simple maybe it's wrong but but it was also pretty simple i think we could we if people came to my conclusion about what a good argument leads here then you're not going to have to do much coercion uh you know people will say look this is the only way i can behave in a way that can give a good argument for vis-a-vis other people so i'll do that okay back there yes wow um in terms of this good argument doctor sir but aren't you um conceptually counting on sustaining the very thing that you're trying to destroy if you go back to 16th 17th century and we have your system in place where is the wealth coming from that will sustain where what would the society look like today in your view what would the world look like well i mean i think we wouldn't have destroyed lots of lots of natural resources that we have uh in in this in this development i'm sure you know what we may well have you go back a little bit further we would have now the general join with me here we would have preserved american indian nations uh south central you know Aztecs the uh the Incas these wonderful civilizations and and and learn what contributions they would be making to to the new world because we wouldn't have used coercion and certainly not christianity to come in and say you're no christian so you don't have any you know you don't you don't count uh you know just think now where would the wealth come from that you're distributing what where would the wealth come from that you're redistributing well the point is if you if you have my perspective this is a this is a good argument talented people will want to do their best and poor people will want to do their best too because everybody real realizes in this system it's it's a fair system because it's ordered by a good argument and uh and there's no other system that's that that has a good argument to support it and so they're going to do their best in it everything else would be bad anything else they'd be taking advantage of people or other people be taking advantage of them and that's why they'll go with this system do i hear echoes of from each according to his ability and to each according to his fine fine with with a libertarian twist okay give the microphone j j take the microphone to sheka dalmia who i was trying to call on earlier and then give the other microphone to the gentleman behind her thank you david um i just have i'm just curious and this is a question for professor sterba uh you know this is sort of a meta question which is that you have perfectly good frameworks to defend the position that you're defending the outcome that you want you could use a ralzian framework as a gentleman previously was doing you could use a marxian framework why use a libertarian framework and give such a contorted definition of liberty to get where you want to get i mean i'm just genuinely puzzled by that well what i think has happened with the libertarians is they've ignored a whole set of liberties in coming with their conclusions about what people have a right to and and so there's this big gap in the view and i'm just exploring that gap because what i want of course is unanimity here if i can show the libertarian view leads to equality whoosh the welfare liberals will slide along the socialists will be cheery i mean we're all i mean we now have have art because the libertarians were were were the one whole big holdouts here so this was very important to bring the libertarian view along with through these through these conclusions uh well then just one follow-up given that you're not getting you know that consensus that you're seeking in this room will that persuade you to give up your project then oh come come now not overnight i mean jen and i've been working on this and actually if you if you would look back our arguments have been involving and jen i've been listening more to jen in a certain way try to put the argument differently i mean i used to put this argument in a way that used a moral standard for deciding what liberties should trump what liberties and i go with jen no not moral standards gotta be more fundamental than that we gotta get down to hams and something okay let's work there and i and and notice when he when he was presented this he talked about altruism and self-interest when i presented it i didn't talk about altruism at all now it was there but i had a way of getting i talk about other other people's interests and your people and and my interests i was had a way of getting the altruism in in a way that was an easier slide than the way i had presented on earlier stages so you know give us time or give me time maybe jan will convince me too um but but but you've just maybe heard this for the first time and this is probably shocking to you uh if you have libertarian sentiments i would say at least get the book i'm sorry it costs so much and but but but you know and read the argument on on on my side and the jens too and maybe you can email me and convince me i'm wrong i'm willing to go with this i i came here to see how good this argument was and i'm i think i'm willing to give it up if i heard a good argument for giving it up i'm listening i'm trying to listen maybe i'm you know biased but but but this was the whole venture and this is the way we philosophers should be operating with in this way