American libertarians generally
believe that the only proper functions of government are an army to protect the
nation from invasion, police forces to protect citizens from aggression, and
courts of law to settle disputes.
That comes directly from Ayn Rand’s essay, “The Nature of Government”
published originally in The Objectivist Newsletter (Vol. 2, No. 12, December
1963) and reprinted in The Virtue of
Selfishness and Capitalism: the
Unknown Ideal. Beyond that,
little work has been done. When
asked in public forums about gun control and capital punishment, Ayn Rand
specifically demurred. She had no answers and left it to the future of legal
scholarship and jurisprudence.
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| Post Modernist Antithesis of Objectivism |
Your
rights can only be violated by volitional actors, by other people. If you
are injured by a horse, the animal did not violate your rights. The police can
only act in retaliation to a violation of rights. So, if the police see a pack of coyotes surrounding a child,
are they morally obligated to act? (I believe that they are. Others disagree.) If the police know from emergency systems that a tornado is approaching,
and if they see picnickers on the public square, are they morally obligated to
warn people of the danger? (I must insist that they do. Others claim laissez faire/laissez passer.) If you
have an absolute right to self-determination, and you threaten suicide by jumping
from a tall building, are the police obligated to intervene?
According Ayn Rand, a
truly capitalist society depends on government. Government holds a geographic
monopoly on the use of retaliatory force.
A government also enforces a single body of law within that geography. Rand specifically denounced Murray
Rothbard’s theory of “anarcho-capitalism” touted later by Linda and Morris
Tannehill in The Market for Liberty
(1971), and Jarret Wollstein in Society
without Coercion (1969) among others.
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Today,
we have private companies providing police services, armies, adjudication,
negotiation, and arbitration, and doing so in competition and cooperation with
each other and in competition and cooperation with traditional nation-state
governments. These market entities create their own laws, such as the Uniform
Commercial Code. Businesses and
individuals also choose among governments, shopping for laws. Read your
mortgage, the bank loan for your car, the terms of your credit cards. It is how
a Japanese company, buys parts made in Ireland, by a company headquartered in
Germany for installation in cars made in Ohio, to be sold by a dealer in Indiana
to a customer from Kentucky. And if pirates in the South China Sea hijack the
cargo, the owners will call on a private company to retrieve their property.
In 1972, Edwin Newman interviewed
Ayn Rand for his show “Speaking Freely” on NBC-TV. Among other statements, Ayn
Rand said: “But on the matter of
protecting people from physical danger, if certain conditions of employment,
let us say, are unsafe and it can be proved that there is a physical risk – I
don’t say that we have to wait until somebody dies – then the employer who is
creating this risk can be sued, and can be severely punished financially. In
other words, there can be a law protecting a man from physical injury by another
man. In this case, the employer who puts men into conditions of danger – not
accidentally, but intentionally or carelessly – can be penalized because he is
infringing the right of his workers not to be injured physically.”
(That and other transcripts are collected in the anthology Objectively
Speaking: Ayn Rand Interviewed, edited by Marlene Podritske and Peter
Schwartz; Lexington Books, 2009.)
That can bring back the question of the person who threatens suicide.
There are many ways to take your own life and rational reasons for doing
so; and it is better to face the end under
your own control. But when someone goes to a roof
to commit suicide, they are being publicly dramatic. By definition, a
person in an irrational state is not capable of making a rational choice.
Anyone in that circumstance has the same legal status as a child. They
get protection they have not asked for.
Discussing these and
related problems with other Objectivists I have been accused of being an
anarchist, a nanny state progressive, and a totalitarian. I take that to mean (1) these questions
cut to the core of the philosophy; and (2) the problems are not easily
resolved; and (3) no one else has a consistent development.
ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS
Wait, Ayn Rand said that a business owner can legally be sued if he creates a hazardous work environment? Isn't that a government regulation? Is Ayn Rand admitting that not all regulation is inherently bad?
ReplyDeleteI'd say regulation is different from what she said. She described a situation where the employer is sued for creating a hazardous environment, not a situation where government determines the due environment. It is, indeed, very hard to stop the government from regulating once you admit it can impose penalties over damages that did not happen (yet).
ReplyDeleteAyn Rand is not an anarchist by the way. It seems to me she is simply saying that stop people from coercing (including stop employers from creating avoidable serious risks, as it is in quoted speach) is part of government role.
It is notable that in her description the employer must be sued by someone. Be it some sort of organization or the worker itself, as long as the association is not a compulsory one, you could have rules emerging from the courts that are judging such cases.
This is different from regulation. In regulation we assume government can hire specialists to discuss and create rules others must follow. In the described scenario free people take their disputes to a court that judge each case. Rules emerge from there, of course, but they are not the product of the superior minds of government officials and they may disregarded if you can prove your case.
I'd say Ayn Rand is admitting not all government roles are inherently bad. Notably justice is an important government role (we can see that in Atlas Shrugged). Regulation is a great leap toward government intervention and control.