Ripstein and Libertarianism

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    In Ripstein’s chapter titled “Public Right II: Roads to Freedom,” he builds on his argument utilizing a Kantian framework to go against Libertarianism. Libertarians believe that government intervention ultimately leads to the loss of individual freedom. In avoiding the debate of which takes more priority – benefits or freedoms – Ripstein avoids this tension and instead argues that the lack of government intervention in public markets, such as private property and roads, leads to a more significant loss of this personal freedom.

As Ripstein argues with roads, if we existed in a purely private-property-based world, our interactions in the public market sphere would depend on our neighbors. In other words, with no government interaction, the only system allowing one to interact beyond one’s property ultimately relies on others. Following from Ripstein, it seems one cannot be a libertarian and, at the same time, utilize the benefits of public roads and traffic laws. As Ripstein shows, these liberties sprout from our freedoms to enjoy these publicly created goods by the government. Therefore, to have structures that support the most just and equal distribution of individual freedom, the structure cannot rely on individuals’ private views on whether or not they wish to “land-lock” their neighbor. Instead, as Ripstein shows, the structure must depend on government intervention that “compensates” the trade-off between limiting the private property to create public roads and allowing for more individual freedom.

Regarding Libertarianism and individual freedom, Ripstein speaks a lot about those with property but what about those without? If property seems to be the basis for the validity of claiming attacks on one’s freedom, how can people without property properly fight for their individual rights? Ripstein speaks about being “landlocked” by one’s neighbors, but this is only possible if one has land to be “locked on.” Regarding homelessness, if one does not have a claim to property, then they are “landlocked” by the entire world, greatly restricting their personal freedom. 

Would the argument follow here that the government, instead of policing homelessness as they do now, turn to instead “policing” the problem of unjust property distribution that leads to a part of our population being restricted in acquiring property? It can be argued that by the government not “intervening” in the problem of homelessness, they allow some of their citizens’ freedom to be restricted to serve others. As Ripsten attacked previously, the idea of utilitarianism does not fit without individual freedom because it is unjust to make one give up their autonomy for others. Seemingly, the government not adequately addressing homelessness allows both the false hope in the private market’s ability to fix public goods issues to persist and, more dangerously, creates homelessness into a utilitarianism scenario where some people’s personal freedom to property are being violated to serve others. 

Comments

  1. Paul HurleyMarch 21, 2023 at 8:44 AM

    Cool post. As you note, he begins with the same commitment as the libertarian (apparently), a commitment to equal individual freedom, but argues that "libertarianism" fails to secure equal "liberty" entirely, that it allows each person to be a dictator on their own property, but renders them utterly subject to the arbitrary whims of others on their property.

    I think he also addresses your second worry, with his argument that extreme poverty, e.g. homelessness in the US, violates the conditions of equal individual freedom.

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