Week 2 post 1 Utilitarianism v. Libertarianism

 Week 2

(longer note section)

Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do? 

By michael Sandel

OBJECTION: INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS

  1. The most glaring weakness of utilitarianism, many argue, is that it fails to respect individual rights

  2. By caring only about the sum of satisfactions, it can run roughshod over individual people

  3. Utilitarians believe individuals matter but only in the sense that each individuals preferences should be counted with the everyone else’s

  4. In ancient Rome, they threw Chris tians to the lions in the Coliseum for the amusement of the crowd. Imagine how the utilitarian calculus would go: Yes, the Chris tian su! ers excruciating pain as the lion mauls and devours him. But think of the collective ecstasy of the cheering spectators packing the Coliseum

  5.  If enough Romans derive enough plea sure from the violent spectacle, are there any grounds on which a utilitarian can condemn it?


    1. Is torture ever justified?

  1. HYPOTHETICAL: . You capture a terrorist suspect who you believe has information about a nuclear device set to go o! in Manhattan later the same day. In fact, you have reason to suspect that he planted the bomb himself. As the clock ticks down, he refuses to admit to being a terrorist or to divulge the bomb’s location. Would it be right to torture him until he tells you where the bomb is and how to disarm it?

  2. Torture in" icts pain on the suspect, greatly reducing his happiness or utility. But thousands of innocent lives will be lost if the bomb explodes. So you might argue, on utilitarian grounds, that it’s morally justi$ ed to in" ict intense pain on one person if doing so will prevent death and su! ering on a massive scale

  3.  Some utilitarians oppose torture on practical grounds. They argue that it seldom works, since information extracted under duress is often unreliable.

  4. Some people reject torture on principle. They believe that it violates human rights and fails to respect the intrinsic dignity of human beings. 

  5.  They argue that human rights and human dignity have a moral basis that lies beyond utility. If they are right, then Bentham’s philosophy is wrong

  6. even the most ardent advocate of human rights would have a hard time insisting it is morally preferable to let vast numbers of innocent people die than to torture a single terrorist suspect who may know where the bomb is hidden.

  7. The moral intuitions at work in the ticking time bomb case are not only about costs and bene$ ts, but also about the non-utilitarian idea that terrorists are bad people who deserve to be punished

 

    1. The city of happiness

  1. short story by Ursula K. Le Guin

  2. city called Omelas—a city of happiness and civic celebration, a place without kings or slaves, without advertisements or a stock exchange, a place without the atomic bomb. Lest we $ nd this place too unrealistic to imagine, the author tells us one more thing about it: “In a basement under one of the beautiful public buildings of Omelas, or perhaps in the cellar of one of its spacious private homes, there is a room. It has one locked door, and no window.” And in this room sits a child. The child is feeble-minded, malnourished, and ne glected. It lives out its days in wretched misery.

  3.  If the child were brought up into the sunlight out of the vile place, if it were cleaned and fed and comforted, that would be a good thing, indeed; but if it were done, in that day and hour all the prosperity and beauty and delight of Omelas would wither and be destroyed. Those are the terms.

  4. Are those terms morally acceptable? The $ rst objection to Bentham’s utilitarianism, the one that appeals to fundamental human rights, says they are not—even if they lead to a city of happiness. It would be wrong to violate the rights of the innocent child, even for the sake of the happiness of the multitude

 

OBJECTION: COMMON CURRENCY OF VALUE


  1. Utilitarianism claims to o! er a science of morality, based on measuring, aggregating, and calculating happiness

  2. It weighs preferences without judging them.

  3. Everyone’s preferences count equally. This nonjudgmental spirit is the source of much of its appeal

  4.  is it possible to translate all moral goods into a single currency of value without losing something in the translation? 

  5. According to this objection, all values can’t be captured by a common currency of value

  6. consider the way utilitarian logic is applied in cost-benefit analysis, a form of decision-making that is widely used by governments and corporations


The benefits of lung cancer by philip morris

  1. Philip Morris, the tobacco company, does big business in the Czech Republic, where cigarette smoking remains popular and socially acceptable

  2.  Worried about the rising health care costs of smoking, the Czech government recently considered raising taxes on cigarettes. In hopes of fending o! the tax increase, Philip Morris commissioned a cost-bene$ t analysis of the e! ects of smoking on the Czech national budget

  3. The study found that the government actually gains more money than it loses from smoking

The reason: although smokers impose higher medical costs on the budget while they are alive, they die early, and so save the government considerable sums in health care, pensions, and housing for the el derly

once the “positive e! ects” of smoking are taken into account—including cigarette tax revenues and savings due to the premature deaths of smokers—the net gain to the treasury is $147 million per year

  1. The cost-bene$ t analysis proved to be a public relations disaster for Philip Morris. 

  2.  “Tobacco companies used to deny that cigarettes killed people,” one commentator wrote. “Now they brag about it.”1

  3.  Faced with public outrage and ridicule, the chief executive of Philip Morris apologized, saying the study showed “a complete and unacceptable disregard of basic human values.”

  4.  A bad principal or a bad study? For a Benthamite, the smoking study does not embarrass utilitarian principles but simply misapplies them. A fuller cost-bene$ t analysis would add to the moral calculus an amount representing the cost of dying early for the smoker and his family, and would weigh these against the savings the smoker’s early death would provide the government


A discount for seniors

  1.  In 2003, the EPA presented a cost-bene$ t analysis of new air pollution standards. The agency assigned a more generous value to human life than did Ford, but with an age-adjusted twist: $3.7 million per life saved due to cleaner air, except for those older than seventy, whose lives were valued at $2.3 million.

  2. : saving an older person’s life produces less utility than saving a younger person’s life. (The young person has longer to live, and therefore more happiness still to enjoy.)

  3. Stung by the protest, the EPA quickly renounced the discount and withdrew the report

  4. Critics of utilitarianism point to such episodes as evidence that cost-bene$ t analysis is misguided, and that placing a monetary value on human life is morally obtuse

  5. Defenders of cost-bene$ t analysis disagree. They argue that many social choices implicitly trade o! some number of lives for other goods and conveniences. Human life has its price, they insist, whether we admit it or not

  6.  the use of the automobile exacts a predictable toll in human lives—more than forty thousands deaths annually in the United States. But that does not lead us as a society to give up cars. In fact, it does not even lead us to lower the speed limit. During an oil crisis in 1974, the U.S. Congress mandated a national speed limit of $ fty-$ ve miles per hour. Although the goal was to save energy, an e! ect of the lower speed limit was fewer tra# c fatalities

  7. , two economists did the math. They de$ ned one bene$ t of a higher speed limit as a quicker commute to and from work, calculated the economic bene$ t of the time saved (valued at an average wage of $20 an hour) and divided the savings by the number of additional deaths. They discovered that, for the convenience of driving faster, Americans were effectively valuing human life at the rate of $1.54 million per life. That was the economic gain, per fatality, of driving ten miles an hour faster.

  8. Utilitarians see our tendency to recoil at placing a monetary value on human life as an impulse we should overcome, a taboo that obstructs clear thinking and rational social choice


^also basis of lecture 4

 

Lecture 4: 

Quotes from professor mike:

  1. When I was a graduate student I was at Oxford in England and they had men’s and women's colleges they weren't yet mixed and the women's colleges had rules Against overnight male guests by the nineteen seventies these rules were rarely enforced and easily violated, or so I was told, by the late nineteen seventies when I was there, pressure grew to relax these rules and it became the subject of debate among the faculty at St. Anne's College

  2. The older women on the faculty we're traditionalists they were opposed to change on conventional moral grounds but times had changed and they were embarrassed to give the true grounds of their objection and so the translated their arguments into utilitarian terms if men stay overnight, they argued, the costs to the college will increase. how you might wonder well they'll want to take baths, and that will use up hot water they said furthermore they argued we'll have to replace the mattresses more often the reformers met these arguments by adopting the following compromise each woman could have a maximum of three overnight male guest each week they didn't say whether it had to be the same one, or three different Provided and this is the compromise provided the guest paid fifty pence to defray the cost to the college the next day the national headline in the national newspaper read St. Anne's girls, fifty pence a night

  3. Intensity and duration of pleasure or pain

  4. Who is to say what pleasures are higher/nobler/better than others

  5. Can we all together dispense with the idea that certain things we take pleasure in are better or worthier than others


John stuart mill tries to respond to utilitarian objections 

  1. His father james mill was a disciple of benthams 

  2. Our empirical desires are the only basis for our moral judgment 

  3. How can a utilitarian disguise qualitatively higher pleasures

    1. If you have tried both lesser and higher qualities you'll naturally prefer the higher one always 

  4. Do people like a hamlet soliloquy, the simpsons, or fear factor better? What decides what is of highest pleasure

  5. When someone else decides that something like shakespeare is better because you have to learn how to read it and appreciate it. It is sort of an elitist idea. 

  6. The elitist idea is that you need cultivation and education 

  7. In his essay Utilitarianism, Mill argues that respect for individual rights as “the most sacred and binding part of morality” is compatible with the idea that justice rests ultimately on utilitarian considerations. 

  8.  JS mill utilitarianism summary: In his second chapter, Mill discusses the definition of utilitarianism, and presents some misconceptions about the theory. The third chapter is a discussion about the ultimate sanctions (or rewards) that utilitarianism can offer. The fourth chapter discusses methods of proving the validity of utilitarianism. In his fifth chapter, Mill writes about the connection between justice and utility, and argues that happiness is the foundation of justice.


Higher pleasures reading 

By michael sandel

  1. Bentham recognizes no qualitative distinction among plea sures. “The quantity of plea sure being equal,” he writes, “push-pin is as good as poetry.”24 (Push-pin was a children’s game.)

  2. Part of the appeal of Bentham’s utilitarianism is this nonjudgmental spirit. It takes people’s preferences as they are, without passing judgment on their moral worth

  3.  Bentham thinks it is presumptuous to judge some pleasures as inherently better than others. Some people like Mozart, others Madonna. Some like ballet, others like bowling. 

  4. Think again about the Romans throwing Chris tians to the lions in the Coliseum. One objection to the bloody spectacle is that it violates the rights of the victims. But a further objection is that it caters to perverse pleasures rather than noble ones. Wouldn’t it be better to change those preferences than to satisfy them?

  5. Mill acknowledges that “some kinds of pleasure are more desirable and more valuable than others.” How can we know which pleasures are qualitatively higher? Mill proposes a simple test: “Of two pleasures, if there be one to which all or almost all who have experience of both give a decided preference, irrespective of any feeling of moral obligation to prefer it, that is the more desirable pleasure.”


Lecture 5

Strong theories of rights

  1. Libertarianism

  2. Takes individual rights very seriously and the stakes are really high in this mindset

  3. The fundamental individual right is the right to liberty

  4. The right to live freely provided we respect other people's rights to do the same


The libertarian view of government 

  1.   No paternalist legislation ( No passing laws that protect people from themselves like seatbelt laws) No coercion

  2. No morals legislation (don't promote the virtue of citizen) ex. laws against gay marraige

  3. No redistribution of income from rich to poor, no taxes (yikes) they say it's coercion


Nozick: What makes income distribution just?


  1. Justice in acquisition (initial holdings)

  2. Justice in transfer (free market)

  3. We are the owners or the proprietor of our own person. We belong to ourselves not to others. But at what point does one's recklessness harm other people and if you are saying its only illegal once you harm another person HOW do you justify not preventing the harm in the first place. 


Libertarianism only works in hypotheticals because that is the only true grounds for equal opportunity. In real life that lack of redistribution gives one group such an amass of wealth and the rest hardly enough to buy food. What moral obligations do we owe each other?

Robert Nozick says if you think about it taxation amounts to the taking of earnings in other words in means taking the fruits of my labor but if the state has the right to take my earnings or the fruits of my labor, isn’t that morally the same as according to the state the right to claim a portion of my labor? So according to this dude taxation is forced labor which is a form of slavery. He says that the government would partially own us.?? I disagree. To me this comes down to perception and although it attempts not to be one sided it is a somewhat inhumane concept. It prides itself on self possession and freedom but who will be free to enjoy their freedom if most people have less money than that top 1-5 percent combined. I believe that paying taxes for the stability of society not only reaps personal benefits but is a part of our moral obligation to each other and our well being. These people live an insanely materialistic lifestyle and their basis of genuine happiness and rights to liberty are scientifically questionable when it comes down to what a meaningful life is and how we regard other human beings. 


Do we own ourselves

Justice by michael sandel

Free-Market Philosophy

  1. Robert Nozick offers a philosophical defense of libertarian principles and a challenge to familiar ideas of distributive justice. He begins with the claim that individuals have rights “so strong and far-reaching” that “they raise the question of what, if anything, the state may do.” He concludes that “only a minimal state, limited to enforcing contracts and protecting people against force, theft, and fraud, is justi$ ed. Any more extensive state violates persons’ rights not to be forced to do certain things, and is unjustified.”

  2. Prominent among the things in libertarianism is that no one should be forced to do is help other people. Taxing the rich to help the poor coerces the rich. It violates their right to do what they want with the things they own. 

  3. According to Nozick, there is nothing wrong with economic inequality as such

  4. Simply knowing that the Forbes 400 have billions while others are penniless doesn’t enable you to conclude anything about the justice or injustice of the arrangement

  5. Nozick concedes that it is not easy to determine whether the initial holdings that gave rise to today’s economic positions were themselves just or ill-gotten so then how can he in his right mind apply this to modern society knowing that this philosophy is flawed

  6.  If it can be shown that those who have landed on top are the bene$ ciaries of past injustices—such as the enslavement of African Americans or the expropriation of Native Americans—then, according to Nozick, a case can be made for remedying the injustice through taxation, reparations, or other means.

  7. This line of reasoning takes us to the moral crux of the libertarian claim—the idea of self-ownership. If I own myself, I must own my labor. (If someone else could order me to work, that person would be my master, and I would be a slave.)

  8. So its Admirable for rich people to help the poor but unjust for the state to enforce this. In my opinion this is an entirely volatile way to live. You cannot depend on the good will of them to make sure money keeps circulating. 


Lecture 6 

  1. The minimal state; Milton Friendman

    1. Many of the functions that we take for granted as properly belonging to the government, don’t. They are paternalists.

    2. Example social security, good way to save for retirement. He says it's wrong for the government to force us to save. He thinks it should be free for individuals to make that choice. But what volatility to you add to society when you take away certain securities?

    3. Milton freidnman argued that collective goods like police protection and fire protection inevitably create the problem of free riders unless their publicly provided. 

    4. There are ways to prevent freeriders. There are ways to restrict even seemingly collective goods like fire protection.

  2. In principle many parts of government can be made private 

Redistribution Debate


Clear objections 

Responses  Red is libertarian Blue is questioning

  • The poor need the money more


  • At some point the benefits of redistribution of wealth do not justify the initial violation of the property right. If you look at the argument that the poor need the money at no point in that argument you contradict the fact that we are extrapolated from agreed upon principles that people own themselves. We've extrapolated that people have property rights. Whether that is a good thing or a nice thing or even a necessary thing to the survival of some people does NOT justify the violation of the right that we logically extrapolated. Individual philanthropy still exists (that's not dependable) That still counts as coercion. There is a difference between Needing and deserving something and in an ideal society everyone needs would be net but what libertarians are arguing is what we do deserve as a society and what the poor do not. 

  • Push back on their response to “deserve” is do the victims of Hurricane Katrina not deserve the help that would come through the federal government through the process of Taxation 

  • She says this is a case where they need help rather than deserve.  

  • My response is WHO decides what people need vs. deserve

  • Response to property rights are established and enforced by a democratic government where we have representatives who enforce those rights and if you live in a society that operates under those agreed upon rules than it should be up to the government to decide how to tax because it is through the consent of the governed MAJORITY RULE

  • talking about mob rule ???

  • In an open society you have recourse to address that through your representative and if the majority of the consent of those who are governed doesn't agree with you then you know, you are choosing to live in the society and you have to operate under what the majority of the society concludes. 

  • On democracy: If I have 1 five hundred thousandth of a vote for one representative in congress it is not the same thing as having the ability to decide for myself how to use my property rights

  • Why can you take to the hustlings and persuade the fellow citizens that taxation is unjust and try to get a majority

  • People should not have to convince 280 million others in order to exercise their own rights in order to not have their self ownership violated. I think people should be able to do that without having to convince the majority to agree.  He believes that democracy is fine on a very minimal scale except where fundamental rights are involved

  • This is an argument I'm making you decide to live in a Democratic Society so you decide to live under those laws. It's not my fault you don't want to pay taxes.

  • If it were not an economic matter you could say that people should have individual liberty such as religious freedom

  • Right of private property is the same kind of right As the freedom of speech,  the right to religious liberty,  rights that should Trump with the majority wants.

  • I am personally going to go ahead and say I disagree with this because they are of different moral significance and matter to Identity and Society in a different manner.  they are not comparable rights. 

  • Comparing religion and economics is not the same thing.  the reason Bill Gates was able to make so much money is because we live in an economically and socially stable society and if the government did not provide the poorest 10% as you say through taxation then we would need more money for police to prevent crime and so either way there would be more taxes  taken away to provide what you guys are calling then necessary things that the government provide.  another reason that Society is stable is because people have those individual liberties to religion and freedom of speech which is an entirely different matter then I can nomics which is more interdependent on each other. 

  • Economics versus religion is fundamentally different because if you couldn't make money and depend on the flow of money and society and owning property the world cannot function properly however religious individuality is a much more personal practice that does not directly impact the people around you. 

  • Someone practicing their religion does not have an impact on other people as long as it's not Evangelical or trying to impact other people that can be done within the religious community however when Society fails poor people they might have to commit a crime such as stealing bread to keep their family alive which in turn impacts others and disrupt the consumerist society we live in. 

  • It is not truly slavery to tax because at least in democartic society theres not a slave holder, its congress, people who have been voted for


  • Was not debated

  • Don't the successful like gates owe a debt to society 


  • There is not a debt to society Because those people obviously did something that Society valued highly and because of that Society has already been providing for them and if anything I think the idea of owing something to  one another is canceled out. They provided a service to society and society is what in turn created that wealth. 

  • The problem with his previous argument is that we are assuming that a person has self-possession when they live in a society.  when you live in a society you give up the right to self possession.  for example if I wanted to personally kill someone because they offended me that is South possession.  however because I live in a society I cannot do that and I think it is equivalent to say cuz I have more money I have resources that could save people's lives is it not okay for the government to take that away from me? it's self possession only to a certain extent because I'm living in a Society where I have to take account of the people around me. You cannot just discount the people around you. WEALTH DEPENDS PARTLY ON LUCK SO IT ISN'T DESERVED.


Do we own ourselves?

Michael sandel



In 1993, Michael Jordan announced his retirement from basketball, Chicago Bulls fans were bereft. He would later come out of retirement and lead the Bulls to three more championships. But suppose that, in 1993, the Chicago City Council, or, for that matter, Congress, sought to ease the distress of Chicago Bulls fans by voting to require Jordan to play basketball for one-third of the next season

  1.  Most people would consider such a law unjust, a violation of Jordan’s liberty. But if Congress may not force Jordan to return to the basketball court (for even a third of the season), by what right does it force him to give up one-third of the money he makes playing basketball?


Objection 1: Taxation is not as bad as forced labor

If you are taxed, you can always choose to work less and pay lower taxes; but if you are forced to labor, you have no such choice.

    1. Libertarian reply: Well, yes. But why should the state force you to make that choice? Some people like watching sunsets, while others prefer activities that cost money—going to the movies, eating out, sailing on yachts, and so on. Why should people who prefer leisure be taxed less than those who prefer activities that cost money?

    2. Consider an analogy: A thief breaks into your home, and has time to take either your $1,000 " at-screen television or the $1,000 in cash you have hidden in your mattress. You might hope he steals the television, because you could then choose whether or not to spend $1,000 to replace it. If the thief stole the cash, he would leave you no such choice (assuming it’s too late to return the television for a full refund). But this preference for losing the television (or working less) is beside the point; the thief (and the state) do wrong in both cases, whatever adjustments the victims might make to mitigate their losses.

Objection 2: The poor need the money more.

Libertarian reply: Maybe so. But this is a reason to persuade the a% uent to support the needy through their own free choice. It does not justify forcing Jordan and Gates to give to charity. Stealing from the rich and giving to the poor is still stealing, whether it’s done by Robin Hood or the state

  1. Consider this analogy: Just because a patient on dialysis needs one of my kidneys more than I do (assuming I have two healthy ones) doesn’t mean he has a right to it. Nor may the state lay claim to one of my kidneys to help the dialysis patient, however urgent and pressing his needs may be. Why not? Because it’s mine. Needs don’t trump my fundamental right to do what I want with the things I own

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