The Amoral Nature of Libertarian Politics

There is something very seductive about the Libertarian political ideal. It presents a system in which no one has to do anything that they don't want to do. Taxes are minimal, if they exist at all, and you don't have government always getting involved in your personal life. Drugs and prostitution would be legal, foreign wars and "police actions" would disappear, and everyone could just live their lives without undue interference.

Sounds lovely. But it is a total farce. There is nothing real about this utopian image, either in terms of the practical realities involved nor in terms of the moral rectitude that it tries to convey.

Let me state that again, more bluntly: There is nothing moral about Libertarian policies. In fact, Libertarianism is decidedly amoral.

Most people recognize that government just works better than private enterprise when it comes to certain things such as firefighting, police, education, national defense, and a whole host of other government-funded services that Libertarians would prefer to turn over to the private sector. Pragmatically speaking, Libertarianism just doesn't work, and has never worked, so there is no reason to believe that it ever will work. But that is a practical argument. My argument is that even if it could be done, implementing Libertarianism would give us as many moral problems as we face now, if not more.

The central Libertarian moral argument is that nothing should be illegal if it doesn't hurt anyone else, and no one should be compelled to do anything that they do not want to do. While I tend to agree with the former, the latter smacks of a disaffected teenager who feels too adult to be told what to do, but isn't adult enough to do those things anyway because that is what adults do -- without being told.

Here is the crux of my argument: Imagine you are walking along, minding your own business, and you notice that someone is in a locked cage and they cannot get out without help. Libertarianism would tell you that you are under no obligation to let the person out of the cage. You didn't put them there, so it isn't your responsibility to let them out. Of course, you could let them out, and a nice person would let them out, but you are under no obligation to be nice. You have a right to be an asshole, and compelling you to let that person out of the cage is no less an affront to your human dignity than it is for that person to be in a cage to begin with, and two wrongs do not make a right.

There is a certain appeal to this sort of argument, and it is a good one on many levels. However, as a society do we really think that one person's right to be an asshole is on the same level as another person's right to be free? If the only way to get that person out of the cage is to compel you to open the door, then I feel bad for your hurt dignity, but I will barely notice those feelings -- what with being overjoyed by the fact that an enslaved human has been set free.

Okay, so maybe that's just me. I can see how someone might not agree, that it is always wrong to compel someone to do something that he doesn't want to do. So let's make our analogy resemble life a bit more fully: Now, in addition to seeing a cage with a stranger inside of it, you also notice an electronic sign on the cage that shows you exactly how much money is being deposited into your bank account every day that this person is locked up. This may be news to you -- The "magical" appearance of that money was such an integral part of your reality that you never really noticed it, in the same way that we tend not to notice the oxygen that we breath every moment of the day. Okay, so you didn't know the true origin of all that money before, but now that you know the truth, would it still be morally acceptable to allow the person to remain imprisoned while you profit from their incarceration?

At this point, most people will acknowledge that a good moral compass would compel you to let the person out of the cage. Even the appearance of a conflict of interest should be enough to get any but the biggest assholes out there to let the poor man out of the cage. It's the only right thing to do. If someone tries to tell you that the only reason they didn't open the door is because they are not obligated to do so, they are only fooling themselves. The fact that they benefit from the man's continued incarceration is not just a happy (for them) coincidence; it is what makes the right to be an asshole so appealing in the first place.

In the real world, the analogy of the cage represents the institutional advantages that some people have that others do not. As a white, English-speaking, middle class, American, straight male, I pretty much have all of those advantages locked up, and I was quite precocious in this regard --  I had most of them under my belt before I even left the uterus! It would have been easy for me to miss just how good I have it, because I've never known anything else. People just let me do what I want to do most of the time, and if they don't, there is usually some reason for it that has nothing to do with the fact that I am white, English-speaking, middle class, American, straight, or male. This is the only reality I have personally known.

However, many of my friends of color have had a very different experience of life. Many of the doors that were wide open for me were at least partially closed to them, if not completely nailed shut. My life has not been easy, but how much harder would it have been if I had to expend extra effort just to overcome the obstacles presented by having a darker complexion, or "inside parts" instead of "outside parts"?

Although it took some work, at this point in my life I feel no guilt for having advantages that others do not. I did not give myself these advantages, that's just the nature of the playing field I was born into. I can only have real guilt or regret for the choices I have personally made, not those made by others long before I was born.

At the same time, however, the fact that I did not give myself these advantages does not give me free rein to abuse those advantages, or even to accept them without some consideration of the responsibilities that come with them. If I have advantages that I never had to work for, and others have disadvantages that they never did anything to deserve, then there is an imbalance. An amoral person wouldn't care, as long as he was on the winning side of that equation. But a moral person does care. A moral person wants everyone to have all the same great opportunities that he has had in life. A moral person does not turn a blind eye to the injustices served to his fellow human beings, no matter how far removed he is from the decisions that caused such injustices.

This is why Libertarianism is amoral -- it rails against any legislation that would address these institutional iniquities through programs such as welfare, affirmative action, social services, Pell grants, or any other publicly funded program designed to help the disadvantaged. For them, this is an involuntary confiscation of the money that they earned, and no positive use of that money can offset the fact that they were "robbed" of it in the first place.

What this worldview fails to consider is this: How much of that money were they able to earn thanks to the institutional power structures that favored them over others? This is an impossible question to answer in detail, but it still needs to be asked, because that's how we stay honest with ourselves. And if we are honest with ourselves, we must acknowledge that some effort must be put into neutralizing institutional advantages that lift some up by putting other people down. Until these iniquities no longer exist, and no longer present a danger of returning, Libertarian philosophies are -- in effect, if not intent -- little more than a smoke screen to protect the advantages of those already at the top. And there is nothing moral about that.