In Reply to Robin Hood Redux

A few weeks ago, in this post, Russell asked:

What level of wealth disparity is morally acceptable?

I've pondered the question for a couple of weeks, and while I don't have a specific answer, I believe there may be one. However, I think it exists only as a consequence of the answer to a more fundamental question: what means of allocating wealth are morally acceptable?

Personally, the idea of self ownership lies in the center of my moral concept, which is heavily influenced by the principles of libertariansm. Lux Lucre and Ken Schoolland have done as fine a job as I've seen of summarizing the basis of libertarianism in this Flash presentation, which I have linked to before, and so I reference it here again. In a nutshell:

You own your life; to deny this is to imply some other person has a higher claim to your life than you do. No other person or group owns your life, nor do you own this lives of others. You exist in time future, present, and past. This is manifest in your life, liberty, and property

Your property--that is, your wealth--is that part of nature that you have turned to your use as well as that portion that you have exchanged through volluntary mutual consent with other people. To lose your wealth is to lose that part of your life that you produced it. Any exchange must have mutually consent, because you don't own the life of other people, and therefore have no rightful claim on their wealth without their permission. That's why taking the wealth of others through force or fraud is theft, regardless of whether it is done by one person, some random group of people, or the particular group of people that is the government.

The consequence of all of this is that the collection of all wealth distributions that are morally acceptable lies somewhere within the realm of wealth distributions that are the result of only voluntary transactions. Now, clearly, there are many possible distributions of wealth for which this is true. Given a choice, people could collectively choose to give most or all of their money away in charity. Or they could choose to give away nothing. I believe that the former is likely to lead to a more moral distribution than the latter--but here's a critical point: It doesn't matter what I think. My moral authority to speak for how money should be distributed is limited to only that money that I, personally, own. Likewise for you. Likewise for everyone else. And no amount of conviction by me or by anyone else that someone else is more deserving or more in need of your money than you are gives anyone but you the right to speak for your wealth

Notice that this notion lies, in a sense, outside the spectrum Russell defined in his original message. In that message, he defined a spectrum where on one hand the government distributed money to everyone one, and on the other hand the government did nothing. There seems to be the implicit in that arrangement the assumption that if there is a morally optimal wealth distribution, the government is responsible, at least in part, for getting us to it. What I am saying instead is that the distribution of wealth and within society may or may not be morally optimal, but intervention by the government is itself immoral. Only individuals speaking for their own money may rightfully change how wealth is allocated. And if you believe the distribution is not moral enough, it falls to you to give more of your money to those you believe are in need, and to seek to persuade others to volluntarily give their money to the same end

There is, unfortunately, one wrinkle to all of this, which is the problem of market failure. There are certain circumstances, such as in the presence of a monopoly, or in a case of a public good, where market allocation doesn't seem to work very well. Until someone finds a better solution, government intervention in the circumstances appears to be a necessary evil. But it's an an evil nonetheless.

Comments

[Russell Lutz]

Interesting. True, there's no answer to my question, but interesting.

A couple of points:

"To lose your wealth is to lose that part of your life that... produced it."

This seems to imply that all wealth is the result of work. Inheritance is not. So, are the funds that a person owns through inheritance less "sacred" (for want of a better term) than funds for which a portion of a person's life was expended? I certainly think so, hence my support of estate taxes.

"...but intervention by the government is itself immoral."

This is only true if you don't agree to the transaction, no? Mutual consent is one of the ways wealth can be morally transferred. If I accept that the garnishing of my wages in the form of income tax is acceptable, in view of the goods and services that I receive from the government, then there's nothing immoral about it.

But what's most interesting to me is that you mention the concept of a monopoly, then call governmental interference immoral. This seems to imply that letting the monopoly flourish is the moral choice. If so, you really have answered my question. No ammount of wealth disparity is, in itself, immoral.