The Idea of Liberty in Sam Slime Case - Coursework Example

Sam Slime This could certainly be the case of the rich get richer and the poor go to jail, especially in a country that is trying to serve many masters. The government of the United States is certainly a political and governmental entity, but at it heart it has almost always been a voice of corporate business and expansion of wealth for the few. It operates seemingly under the principle guise of what is good for business is good for the people. One could say that the state of the economy today is the fallout of this mindset. In the “Sam Slime” case study we see the idea of liberty as applied by several masters. The first, when Sam Slime mugs you outright is a matter for governmental law and order. Cleary there is a criminal (Sam) and a victim (you). In the second scenario the government, in the guise of a benevolent company decides to rehabilitate Sam and gives him your hard earned money through further taxation, another kind of economic stimulus perhaps. In this case when you resist, as you would have in the first case, you are the criminal because this master says that you have to pay and suddenly you are on the wrong side of justice. But, how can this be if the laws of the land are written to explicitly prohibit this kind of injustice? In these two cases stealing is occurring and there is no difference whether it is through the government or between individuals I the street, it is as if the appropriation of money through taxes is simply another form of slavery. What do we mean by serving two masters? In Statism, as we can see by these two scenarios, there may be many views of what liberty and as many views of what justice for all means. However, it is important that only one view of liberty be maintained if true justice is to be preserved. This multiplicity of views comes from the diverse nature of authority that the state can wield. Each governing body or person in authority may then have their own propensity to set varying standard of principles and conduct, this as opposed to the one view of liberty that is necessary for coherent justice. “Indeed, there could be authorities which would compromise liberty in favour of other values. In a libertarian society, however, liberty must be pre-eminent.” (Kukathas 9) It can certainly be espoused that both cases are morally the same. From the perspective of the victim in each they are being denied something they feel is their right to posses. In the first case it is your hard earned money, in the second it is Sam’s State given right to his unearned income as guaranteed him by the system. Yet another perspective is that if the current governmentally created schisms of class structure were not in place, Sam Slime would exist as Sam Citizen and not necessarily be coveting your money in the first place. But that is at the moment, not a reality. There are also many shades of gray in the policies that govern not only the distribution of wealth, but our perception of that wealth. In both instances of our scenario there is a payoff for the parties in charge. As Block states in his article, Libertarian Punishment Theory: Working for, and Donating to, the State, “Both parties to every trade must necessarily benefit from it, otherwise they would not engage in it.” (Block 21) Sam Slime’s punishment in the first scenario satisfies both the state, who certainly keeps up payments to their jails and law enforcement agencies by incarcerating Sam, and to you who feel vindicated somehow by the judgment. In the second scenario it is Sam and the State who are vindicated, Sam gets his money and the state gets to be right and just by putting you in jail (further promoting the economics of the justice system) or forcing you to pay the tax. Block also presents an interesting scenarios regarding money and its source and use and presents the following suppositions from a Libertarian viewpoint: 1. Say XYZ gets $50m from the State. You say giving money to XYZ is donating money to the state. 2. Suppose XYZ were a private college but received $50m in state subsidy. Is donating money to it also donating money to the state? 3. If so, what is the dollar threshold of state funding? If a private college receives even $1 in government funding, is giving money to the college illegitimate? (Block 22) So in the case of “giving” money in both scenarios, is the first wrong because Sam Slime is a criminal and the second right because the government has the taxing authority? Or, is the first wrong because Sam Slime should not be punished for cutting out the middleman that introduces himself in the second scenario? How is one to decide which side they are on in such divisive situations? Libertarians believe that all individuals are entitled to live as they choose, free from interference by other persons or by the state. They also believe that in the absence of such interference, whether by government or other agents of the state intent on designing or planning for society as a whole, order will nonetheless prevail. Given the freedom to contract and exchange, markets will coordinate the production and distribution of goods—and indeed do so better than any other institution can. (Kukathas 1) So, in a sense the deck has been stacked against both Sam and you in either scenario. In the first scenario Sam is deprived of his right to make a living the only way he knows how given the parameters of his life, but he is denied it in this instance by the same state who has set these wheels in motion in the first place. In the second scenario you are denied your right of choice, your liberty to choose to whom and to what intention your money may go to. The following quote from Richard Overton puts this into perspective: “To every individual in nature is given an individual property by nature, not to be invaded or usurped by any: for everyone as he is himself, so he hath a self-propriety, else could he not be himself, and on this no second may presume to deprive any of, without manifest violation and affront to the very principles of nature .…” (Kukathas 2) Furthermore, are the scenarios presented merely a different form of slavery with different state principles of justice and subtle rewards? In the first scenario are you the victim being extolled by the government only as a matter of lip service to make you feel that the government is protecting you and taking care of you because you cannot do it for yourself? Sounds rather like the phrases uttered by slave owners who made themselves sound like the slaves’ benefactors by taking care of them because they do not have even the remotest capacity for self preservation if left on their own. In the second you are really also the victim since you have little or no hope of rallying against what you perceive is undue treatment by the government. In a sense you are only allowed two choices, pay the tax or go to jail. In either case you are still a victim of oppression and you liberty is severely limited to untenable choices either way. It is sad to think that a government that espouses life liberty and the pursuit of happiness has always had this inherent contradiction when it comes to slavery: In the end, the establishment of power, even the power to do good, does not guarantee that good will be done. It is worth remarking that the most libertarian constitution the world has known tried to pretend that slavery for some was not inconsistent with the ideal of freedom for all. (Kukathas 12) Freedom in the guise of law is often no freedom at all if the law is predicated on misleading or easily reinterpreted principles. But what happens if the laws are simply revoked is anarchy the only recourse? It would seem that we are programmed to believe in that likelihood so fear prenets us from thinking along these lines. If we were to liberate ourselves from this oppression, or guidance as the state would call it, certainly there would be a transitional period of adjustment, but eventually left on one’s own in a free market economy in which simple contracts are the method whereby each buy and trades good or service to the other may simply prevail. Here the lawyers may see themselves in a different perspective as well. But what about the charity that seems the primary force in the second scenario? Certainly we must be forced to give to the poor because they will always exist. Or could it be that generosity of spirit might come to the fore and the doctor simply takes care of patients who do not have the means, much in the same way the often disparaged lawyers take cases pro rata. There is already precedence in place. In this naturalistic idea something that is new? Certainly not, it has been an idea that has been around for centuries and is most elegantly encapsulated by the philosophy of John Locke quoted here: Though the earth, and all inferior creatures, be common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person: this nobody has any right to but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. (Kukathas 13) But how do we escape the mindset that has essentially been programmed into us from cradle to grave that we are inherently evil and that the only good comes from ultimate control by the government? Some believe that religion may be the source of this inspiration that may enable us to refocusing the government in a new light of spiritual liberty: Revolutionary propaganda is in its deepest sense the negation of the existing conditions of the State, for, with respect to its innermost nature, it has no other program than the destruction of whatever order prevails at the time.... We must not only act politically, but in our politics act religiously, religiously in the sense of freedom, of which the one true expression is justice and love. Indeed, for us alone, who are called the enemies of the Christian religion, for us alone it is reserved, and even made the highest duty ...really to exercise love, this highest commandment of Christ and this only way to true Christianity. (Bakunin) This beguilingly convincing argument is only the replacement of one form of tyranny over the other. The dogma of many religions is simply another way of keeping people in line for their own good. The Ten Commandments, quite often violated on the side of good in the bible, are a testament to this. Is their a compromise? Surprising this writer is in some agreement with Bakunin on the point he makes in this regard: To the compromisers we can apply what was said in a French journal: “The Left says, two times two are four; the Right, two times two are six; and the middle-of-the-road compromisers say two times two are five.” They never answer yes or no; they say: “To a certain extent you are right, but on the other hand....” And if they have nothing left to say, they say: “Yes, it is a curious thing.” (Bakunin) So if there is no compromise then we must revert back to the single view of liberty. Therefore if liberty is the belief that “…that all individuals are entitled to live as they choose, free from interference by other persons or by the state” (Kukathas 1), then both scenarios are not only morally wrong, but the justice in them is also ethically invalid and reprehensible to any idea of liberty or freedom under the guise of government. But what is our choice, where are we to stand in the world of the lesser of two evils? The choice is not, in the end, a happy one. But philosophical choices often are of this nature, since theory frequently leads us to reductios which are, if not absurd, unhappy or repugnant. One can only hope that in the real world such dilemmas will be dissolved in good measure by civility and good will, even if they cannot be resolved purely by the power of reason. (Kukathas 13) Works Cited Bakunin, Mikhail. “The Reaction in Germany from the Notebooks of a Frenchman.” Sam Dolgoff [ed] Bakunin on Anarchy (1971) [1842]. Marxist Internet Archive 15 March 2009. Block, Walter. “Libertarian Punishment Theory: Working for, and Donating to, the State,” Libertarian Papers 1, 17 (2009). 15 March 2009 Kukathas, Chandran. “Two Constructions of Libertarianism,” Libertarian Papers 1, 11 (2009). 15 March 2009. Read More