Elizabeth Anderson Will Set You Free

The full moon is out, and I'm about to change into my werewolf form and run off into the night, performing various ethical deeds. But while I'm still a mild-mannered philosopher, let me point anyone interested in political philosophy to Elizabeth Anderson's latest post. It contrasts two kinds of freedom -- freedom as non-interference and freedom as expanding one's opportunity set. The former is the one emphasized by libertarians, but the latter is the one that's worth caring about.

If the only kind of freedom that matters is that no one intentionally interfere with one's formal freedom of action, and not that one's opportunity set be large and full of worthwhile options, then freedom-lovers would have to oppose traffic laws, stop lights, and so forth, for interfering with freedom of movement... By contrast, if we give up certain formal freedoms--to run red lights and stop signs, to drive indiscriminately across lanes--we get in return a vastly expanded opportunity set, including the ability to actually get to places one wants to go, more safely and quickly than if we hadn't given up those freedoms. The point of formal freedom of movement--the right to move around, without coercive interference by the state or other people--is that it is instrumental to expanding actual opportunities to move around where one wants to go. Merely formal freedom of movement, with nowhere to move to, or nowhere worth moving to, is not an end in itself. Different configurations of formal freedom of movement--different traffic laws--are justified by the extent of the opportunities for safe freedom of movement they enable.

She's working up to the conclusion, to be unveiled in later posts, that concern for freedom will push us towards redistribution of income. (The libertarians will be so surprised!) The justification for all laws -- property laws included -- ends up being the same as the justification for setting up traffic laws. Since the justification for setting up laws in one way rather than another is to maximize people's opportunity sets, redistributive transactions that increase opportunity sets increase freedom, rather than infringing on it, as the libertarians often argue.

Now, this isn't exactly my reason for supporting property rights -- for a whole 'nother set of reasons, I'm one of those crazy Benthamite utilitarians who just cares about generating pleasure and eliminating pain. To me, an increased opportunity set is valuable only instrumentally -- because it tends to make people happier. But I'll agree that it's a more plausible candidate for being fundamentally valuable than freedom as non-interference, if only because its connection to the general happiness is much closer. Some of her other excellent work is linked in the top paragraph.

--Neil the Ethical Werewolf