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A Sigh for the Diary
This is by way of a diary entry - a note to myself, a concession to a weak will incapable of erasing an overproduction of words, a malinvestment in homeless ideas, a cul-de-sac of phrases that do not fit into the chapter for which they were coined.
I cannot bring myself to entirely abandon the below first attempt at writing the 8th sequel of my 9 or
10 part chapter on "The State" to be included in "Attempts at Liberty."
I am not sure why the text jumped the rails. Somehow I got preoccupied with the idea that freedom is divisible - an important point, and especially attractive in a text that takes a contrarian view of liberty.
However, the below writing about "divisible freedom" is too much of an excursion to fit neatly into a chapter aspiring to be a lean account of the nature of the state and its consequences for freedom.
Spurious Distinction between Negative Liberty and Positive Liberty
I was even going to complicate the narrative by going off on a tangent about how we divide freedom when we cut her up into a part that we call "negative liberty" and a part called "positive liberty."
For some, liberty consists of
However, looking more closely at the matter, we discover that the distinction between positive and negative liberty is misconceived: all rights are positive. Why? Because rights do not exist solely by virtue of letting people be "uninterfered" with. Instead there is always an element of interference involved in lending sustenance to a right. There has to be someone who defines and enforces the right.
Here is, of course, the connection with my topic: the state. Every right, even those of a seemingly negative kind - say, the right not to be abused by the police - requires the provision of public resources and services. I will be left alone, only if the state enforces my right not to be intereded with by transgressors of my private sphere.
So, perhaps I could have added another flourish to the below lengthy contemplation about the divisibility of freedom. But I would not know how to fit it into a neat logic of argument. However much I like the idea that all rights are positive rights and that therefore the distinction between negative and positive liberty is spurious, I do not know how to build it into the argument about the divisibility of freedom.
After all, is it not a bit odd to defend the idea of divisible freedom by explaining that the division of freedom into a negative and a positive conception of her is not admissible, and therefore, at least in this sense, freedom is indivisible. True, I do not argue that there cannot be meanings in which freedom is indivisible (say, in the context of enforcing equality before the law) - however, be this as it may, I have to cut out the diversion, remember some of the good points contained in it, and return to chiselling a lean text.
This is the abandoned fragment:
Part Two - The State - (8) - [Draft] - Freedom Needs a Strong State - Organising and Defending Freedom Requires Massive Collective Action and Resources
10 part chapter on "The State" to be included in "Attempts at Liberty."
I am not sure why the text jumped the rails. Somehow I got preoccupied with the idea that freedom is divisible - an important point, and especially attractive in a text that takes a contrarian view of liberty.
However, the below writing about "divisible freedom" is too much of an excursion to fit neatly into a chapter aspiring to be a lean account of the nature of the state and its consequences for freedom.
Spurious Distinction between Negative Liberty and Positive Liberty
I was even going to complicate the narrative by going off on a tangent about how we divide freedom when we cut her up into a part that we call "negative liberty" and a part called "positive liberty."
For some, liberty consists of
- negative rights of not being interfered with,
- positive rights that entitle their bearers to a positive contribution by a third party (typically the state) enriching the right bearer by goods or services delivered by others on their behalf.
However, looking more closely at the matter, we discover that the distinction between positive and negative liberty is misconceived: all rights are positive. Why? Because rights do not exist solely by virtue of letting people be "uninterfered" with. Instead there is always an element of interference involved in lending sustenance to a right. There has to be someone who defines and enforces the right.
Here is, of course, the connection with my topic: the state. Every right, even those of a seemingly negative kind - say, the right not to be abused by the police - requires the provision of public resources and services. I will be left alone, only if the state enforces my right not to be intereded with by transgressors of my private sphere.
So, perhaps I could have added another flourish to the below lengthy contemplation about the divisibility of freedom. But I would not know how to fit it into a neat logic of argument. However much I like the idea that all rights are positive rights and that therefore the distinction between negative and positive liberty is spurious, I do not know how to build it into the argument about the divisibility of freedom.
After all, is it not a bit odd to defend the idea of divisible freedom by explaining that the division of freedom into a negative and a positive conception of her is not admissible, and therefore, at least in this sense, freedom is indivisible. True, I do not argue that there cannot be meanings in which freedom is indivisible (say, in the context of enforcing equality before the law) - however, be this as it may, I have to cut out the diversion, remember some of the good points contained in it, and return to chiselling a lean text.
This is the abandoned fragment:
Part Two - The State - (8) - [Draft] - Freedom Needs a Strong State - Organising and Defending Freedom Requires Massive Collective Action and Resources
§ 34 - Freedom Is Divisible - Concentric Expansion, Negotiability, and Incompleteness
Freedom is indivisible. This catchy phrase is often heard. In an important sense, it is doubly wrong.
Freedom's Divisibility - Growth and Dissemination
First, historically, important features of freedom develop while others are not present yet. Think of suffrage. Think of excluded groups: slaves, women, homosexuals.
My earlier sketch (see § 33) of the historic alliance between the House of Capet and the urban elites of France between 900 A.D. and 1300 A.D. testifies to the gradual dispersal of freedoms in the continued presence of massively unfree conditions. At the time, the kingdom of France is a far cry from resembling anything like a liberal democracy, and the urban population is still subject to highly illiberal restraints as well as being a promoting agent of fetters to freedom as in the form of guilts etc.
Freedom expands in concentric circles before she reaches parts of our life or segments of the population previously left out.
The rule of law, integral part of a free society, tends to spread first among an elite, the ruling coalition of power-holders in a limited access society. Only later the public becomes enlarged, and other strata of society are embraced in the scope of law, as contrasted with arbitrary acts of domination.
Freedom's Divisibility - Development and Management
Second, freedom is divisible because in developing and managing her we keep redefining her, thus adding to, subtracting from, and constantly reshaping the form she used to take hitherto. We divide her into new and old parts, into discarded and newly appearing elements. We inspect, repair, innovate, and refurbish her. All the time.
Also, even when we seem to be clear about the going meaning of freedom and the enforceable rights that bring her to life, we tend to copiously disagree about the implications, the extent, and the manner of her enforcement. An important dimension of living in a free society comes with the ability to compromise about what freedom is supposed to mean, how she is to be practised, and how we expedite or frustrate different interpretations of her. We keep dividing freedom into valid and invalid parts. We subject her to political, operational, and ultimately budgetary patronisation, permanently cutting her up into preferred, less preferred, neglected and discarded parts. Engaging in an ongoing process whereby we negotiate and decide how to divide freedom among ourselves, keeping our differing preferences and tolerances in mind, is a defining quality of freedom. For freedom to advance, concentrically or otherwise, she must change. For freedom to adapt and remain relevant in a changing world, she must be reshaped. Changes to the meaning of freedom here, bring about changes to the meaning of freedom there. Freedom is a complex system of interrelated rights and duties such that an alteration in one element easily reverberates throughout the entire system, thereby changing the relationships of the elements as they used to be up to now.
See more at my The Point Cloud of Freedom.
Growth and management of freedom require a strong, modern state. In the chapter on "Politics" I will look at the kind of political behaviour and political institutions that are likely to guide the resources of the state in the direction of freedom. For the time being, I wish to convince my readers of the extent to which we practice freedom, and cannot otherwise practice her, by using the power and the multifarious functionalities that are unique to the mighty modern state. It is the task of the state to help us get to grips with the business of dividing freedom among our competing interests and thereby maintaining her at a vibrant level.
§ 35 - Freedom Requires (the State to Manage) Comprehensive Collective Action and Massive Public Resources
My fundamental contention is that advanced forms of freedom such as we enjoy them, say in contemporary Germany, require extensive collective institutions. Freedom is not a private product; she is being collectively produced, maintained and defended. Freedom's lynch pin and load-bearing framework is the state.
The state of a certain historical period may be incapable of supporting liberty, and even today, the state may be abused so as to violate or even destroy freedom, but whenever liberty becomes feasible she is the result of capabilities residing in the state.
§ 36 - Resources Supporting Liberty Are Scarce, Subject To Opportunity Costs and Inescapable Trade-Offs
In modern liberal-democratic states, the vast majority of costly human effort needed to support the rights characteristic of a free society are funded by taxes rather than fees.
Fees tend to be charged so as to match the beneficiary as a source of funding with the costs of a benefit inuring to her. The economist might speak of full internalisation of costs when he who benefits fully pays fully for the benefits received, without third parties being burdened by costs associated with benefits from which they are excluded or which are of no use to them.
Taxes are different from fees in that they can be used to impart benefits on recipients who do not fully (or not at all) pay for the benefits they receive. To this extent, taxes are transfer payments - they are redistributive.
The costs involved in maintaining a modern system of liberty are too high to be shouldered by each beneficiary in proportion to her benefit. I may simply not have the funds to pay my share in building and maintaining all the bridges I am using. Also, it may not be possible to ascertain the exact degree of a beneficiary's benefit and its share in the properly associated costs. Who is benefiting more from effective border control? The harm caused by intruding criminal gangs may be far larger in border towns than in far away places. Or it may be the other way around, because the perpetrators go for the richer towns far away from the border. Needless to say, there are innumerable other factors that may effectively determine cost-benefit ratios for each single member of the population. Moreover, there may not be an objective way of establishing the ratio. For instance, it could be more effective to assign a liberty protecting function to a public non-profit institution depending on a non-fully internalising tax system.
§ 35 - Freedom Requires (the State to Manage) Comprehensive Collective Action and Massive Public Resources
My fundamental contention is that advanced forms of freedom such as we enjoy them, say in contemporary Germany, require extensive collective institutions. Freedom is not a private product; she is being collectively produced, maintained and defended. Freedom's lynch pin and load-bearing framework is the state.
The state of a certain historical period may be incapable of supporting liberty, and even today, the state may be abused so as to violate or even destroy freedom, but whenever liberty becomes feasible she is the result of capabilities residing in the state.
§ 36 - Resources Supporting Liberty Are Scarce, Subject To Opportunity Costs and Inescapable Trade-Offs
In modern liberal-democratic states, the vast majority of costly human effort needed to support the rights characteristic of a free society are funded by taxes rather than fees.
Fees tend to be charged so as to match the beneficiary as a source of funding with the costs of a benefit inuring to her. The economist might speak of full internalisation of costs when he who benefits fully pays fully for the benefits received, without third parties being burdened by costs associated with benefits from which they are excluded or which are of no use to them.
Taxes are different from fees in that they can be used to impart benefits on recipients who do not fully (or not at all) pay for the benefits they receive. To this extent, taxes are transfer payments - they are redistributive.
The costs involved in maintaining a modern system of liberty are too high to be shouldered by each beneficiary in proportion to her benefit. I may simply not have the funds to pay my share in building and maintaining all the bridges I am using. Also, it may not be possible to ascertain the exact degree of a beneficiary's benefit and its share in the properly associated costs. Who is benefiting more from effective border control? The harm caused by intruding criminal gangs may be far larger in border towns than in far away places. Or it may be the other way around, because the perpetrators go for the richer towns far away from the border. Needless to say, there are innumerable other factors that may effectively determine cost-benefit ratios for each single member of the population. Moreover, there may not be an objective way of establishing the ratio. For instance, it could be more effective to assign a liberty protecting function to a public non-profit institution depending on a non-fully internalising tax system.
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