It’s a free country. People can do what they want with their lives, unencumbered. But what if one’s circumstances constitute an encumbrance by rendering his right to choose so limited in scope that it becomes effectively non-existent? What should we do then? Possibly eliminate it altogether. Let me explain by way of illustration.
A man signs an employment contract to accept a job from an employer. He starts Monday. Was this an economically (praxeologically) valid hiring? I believe the Austrian/Misesian would say yes. Any voluntary transaction between individuals acting freely in their own interests passes economic muster with no further examination necessary.
Not so fast, says the more benevolent and socially-conscious among us, whose answer would be: It depends. It could be a perfectly legit deal, or maybe not. I need more details, so as to measure it on my equity/social justice scale. …
Prior to this “correct” starting point, we meager playthings just aren’t ready. Too much is left to chance, and not enough pathways to potentially undesirable outcomes have been closed off. We want guarantees; of “acceptable” poverty and mortality rates and sufficient socioeconomic equality. With the right top-down edicts and pronouncements, we can have these guarantees. Then, and only then, can we maybe talk about this silly idea of “freedom.”
This position was famously argued in different terms by Adlai Stevenson: “A hungry man is not a free man.” So, a transaction can’t be just if all parties aren’t perpetually at a basic level of wealth, and a society can’t be free if there’s poverty anywhere in any measure.
What are we to do until these factors are properly situated? This pre-freedom phase of the plan seems to consist of a centralized resource distribution scheme to put things right. So, if freedom is insufficient to get us there, and perhaps even harms the cause, why should we implement it afterwards, or at all? How much more disturbing are the liberties, power lust, and experimental flexibility likely entailed in the probable forthcoming answers? Particularly since they all boil down to the same fundamental principle: if one man is impoverished, another must be plundered.
Yeppers, just another way for all of us to plunder each other! Every time I see situations like this the first thing that comes to mind is: “Is this another boundary problem?” A lot of people start their solutions at the furthest boundary, the one that doesn’t exactly look like a power-play plundering scheme and propose it, without doing any analysis of further applications of the very same theory. There seem to be a lot of this going on, to obfuscate what the real goals and situation in the end state: plunder and immiseration of everybody else. Why are we continually being sucked in by this very same tactic, time after time?