What we owe to each other
In my two previous articles on the nature of basic rights, I discussed what I see as the general concept of rights and a grounding for them in human existence, without a need to refer to any deities. To finish this series, I will conclude by answering the question of what we owe to each other as members of a social organization.
I am told repeatedly by libertarians that they owe nothing to anyone simply by virtue of being members of a society. In their view, they entered into no voluntary contract when they were born, nor did they sign the constitution, and thus taxes are theft, and regulations come at the barrel of a gun.
Dismissing this as mere adolescent whining is tempting, but it is better to explain what, exactly, is wrong with such thinking.
Consider first the need for regulations. I have mentioned before the case of spilling some noxious substance into a river—or, to bring corporations squarely into this discussion, deliberately pouring such a chemical. Even if we accept the notion of the natural environment being nothing more than unclaimed resources available for the taking by whoever grabs first, that grabbing should not damage the property of others or put their lives in immediate danger. In the same way that my neighbors may not exercise their gun rights by firing rounds through my windows, corporations violate the concept of basic human rights if neglect maintenance of their systems and refuse to keep enough employees to ensure that their trains do not crash and burn. Or if they sell a chemical while hiding the fact that their product either causes multiple diseases while being addictive or heats up the entire atmosphere.
This does not mean that every business should have a squad of federal inspectors constantly watching its every action. Nor is danger by itself something to be regulated away. If customers wish to hire a guide to conduct them through the Alaskan wilderness in winter, say, that should be available to them if anyone is willing to sell that service. But such guides should be honest about their qualifications and about the risks involved. A regulator would be acting appropriately to bring some enforcement action against a guide who claimed to be skilled, but who had never journeyed beyond the property line of the Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport or who told clients that the weather in December would be sunny and warm. By the same token, gun makers are selling a dangerous product, a product that must be dangerous to operate as promised, but these guns should not explode when fired or throw bullets in random directions. In summary, a business should be honest about its products and a good neighbor with its wastes.
But what about relationships such as wages paid to employees or taxes to the government? Call me a socialist—please do—but I do support the idea of fair compensation for the contributions made by everyone who works for a given company. The boss may have come up with the marketable notion, but the laborers who assemble or perform it are essential to translating notions into the real world, and the libertarian doctrine that workers and employers should be free to make contracts without interference leaves out the disparities of power that the latter have. What we owe to each other here, and what regulation mandated by our collective will expressed through government must do, is to secure the honest balance between contributions to productivity and compensation for that work.
But a business is a collective entity. Its actions of necessity involve multiple persons. What if I live on my own little farm, entirely self-sufficient and self-contained?
This is a mythical existence on Earth at the present. Someday, if we stop squabbling amongst ourselves, humans can emerge into the galaxy and seek out an asteroid or planet for each of us. Until that day comes, however, all land has been owned before and touches on someone else’s land. Water and air is a common resource—they are inherently fluid, by nature highly resistant to being walled off. And these libertarians who fantasize about isolation generally do so on social media, fora for the exchange of ideas that require electricity and the mining of metals to operate. Those uses of natural resources will affect more than the miners and electrical engineers.
We could have a war of all against all over these resources, but that is a destructive exploitation, and one that leaves no time to enjoy the use of these bounties. As much of an annoyance as filing taxes can be each year and as much of a bother it can be to comply with the rules when we want to put up a garden shed or dig a trench, those payments that we make to keep regulators doing their jobs and the codes of conduct that we have to follow are the price for a relatively peaceful society. We could only make a state of nature work if there were a lot fewer of us and we were willing to accept constant violence from those around us. What we owe to each other can be rephrased as what we give to each other to allow a far more complex life to exist.
What is more, by acknowledging some obligation to each other, we create a system of reciprocity that establishes trust among us all, a web that gives the reliable promise that we will lift each other to our fuller potentials.
It is in that kind of world that rights have the greatest extent for exercise.