So I got into discussing it a bit prematurely on the last album, but I want to focus on it a bit more here. Widerquist and McCall tend to reject the hobbesian hypothesis. Or at least they dont take it for granted like most people do.
Basically the hobbesian hypothesis is the idea that the state is justified because even the worst person in a state society is better than the best off person in a non state one. As I said, I tend to reject that idea because some outliers are always going to be worse off. But I think most people are arguably better off.
Widerquist pointed out the obvious problems with it in the sense that measuring what is considered to be better off is difficult to do. I admit, even in my own formulation, this is difficult, and I even admit that it's vague, because morality itself is relatively subjective. But I tend to personally justify it from looking at natural selection. In this environment, I would say the state of nature is generally one that means premature death for a lot of human beings. People come together and form societies because its a survival strategy, their chances of survival are better off together than alone. Even widerquist would be willing to admit this I bet, he just argues that stateless tribal societies aren't states. For me the difference between state and non state is not super important. States are ultimately just much larger governments needed for larger and more complex societies. Eventually at some point you need to go from your little band of 20 people to a larger society that exists for the mutual defense of all. States are also necessary for any form of complex economy or defense. You cant have a modern capitalist economy or a military without a state. So for me, states are just a natural evolution of government.
How do I square this with the idea that states were originally violent, authoritarian, and unjust? Well, I don't believe I need to. I dont see states as prescriptive in this sense, just descriptive. The first states were just tribes with authoritarian leaders who subjugated everyone who wasn't them. We see this behavior in the animal kingdom among other primates. Chimps going to war against other chimps or gorillas, with some sort of leader in charge? Often there is like an alpha male that these guys rally behind. Are we any different?
My justification of states is more modern. I see states as a necessary evil. It won the natural selection game and destroyed their competition. And I would argue any modern society needs a state in order to have a military to fend off other states. It's a matter of kill or be killed, conquer or be conquered. If the US and its military disbanded, another state would simply arise in its place, and odds are, it would be worse.
Modern states, like the US, have several distinguishing characteristics that make them more just than past states. They claim at least, to be democratic, although the democracies are flawed in our case. Other western countries arguably have more options and better institutions. We have high trust in our institutions. Constitutional rights. Separation of powers. Our state, our institutions, are supposed to, in theory, serve us. That is what makes our state different. This is far from perfect in practice. As I'd argue (and have argued on this blog), consent is manufactured, choice is limited, and sometimes dissenters dont get their way and are subject to the majority's will. There's a huge reason I have such a passionate rejection of "vote blue no matter who" sentiments. It's because these jokers are supposed to represent us, yet they try to strongarm us out of our one means of expressing our will: our votes. Screw them. I'll do what I want. But I digress. Im not here to crap on the democrats again, although you can clearly see how my rejection of blue no matter who sentiments comes out of my core political philosophy.
Now, despite all of this, do I say states meet the lockean proviso? No. They dont. Not everyone is arguably better off than they'd be in another hypothetical society like a tribal society (given said society isn't immediately taken over by another state). I dont believe that the lockean proviso justifies states in a hobbesian fashion. I mean, they do, but they don't. You could argue our society is better than the immediate alternatives, both real and imaginary, and that we could have it worse, but would every person have it worse? No. And sometimes states do tend to subject people to their will unfairly. I do believe states have a duty to preserve freedom as much as possible, and to only interfere when necessary to prevent harm, or to greeatly and demonstrably improve well being or freedom over what it would be otherwise.
That said, to go back to one of Widerquist's big criticisms of the hobbesian hypothesis, it's often just asserted without being justified, or metrics even being suggested to measure. What metrics could we suggest? Well, I think stuff we do use like life expectancy, murder rates, GDP, etc. could all be useful in justifying modern states at least over a non state situation. Would you rather live to 80 in an industrialized democracy or live to age 30-40 in a tribe? My family itself, including me, would be dead many times over if not for modern medical intervention. You break your leg in nature and that's it, you're done. You get a bacterial infection, and how are you going to treat it, amputation? We got antibiotics. We can feed people far more easily in a modern society than a world in which people are hunter gatherers. These are all good things. Now, again, the lockean proviso and the hobbesian hypothesis argue that the worst under a state is better off than the best in a non state situation. I don't think we can say that. Modern democracies still got poverty, homelessness, exploitation involving long work weeks (largely ignored in the context of being better off than the freedom of a non state situation), etc. The fact is, even if we give states credit for generally improving life, yeah, we can't realistically argue every person is better off.
And this is where I think widerquist's efforts truly shine. He does have ideas to make state social contracts more just. He combines freedom with economic security, effectively arguing that to be free in a modern state with property rights, people need enough property themselves to be free of their own person and not subject to anyone else's will. In modern capitalistic democracies, people are often subject to others' will, and while free on paper, are not free in practice. In some ways the property rights regime reduces their freedom from what it would be in the state of nature, and UBI is just compensation to make people free again. While people might argue taxation is theft, we could just as easily argue property is not a natural right, that property reduces freedom, and that a UBI is required to make property a just mechanic in our society.
I also think given my anti work views, that UBI makes sense for moving us away from work. Keep in mind, all human institutions exist for human well being, including work. it's not punishment from god, and we should be leery of the idea of it being an obligation. That makes sense with earlier states where everyone was needed to work to survive, but as automation and technology has increased our well being, we continue working in a manner of full employment for higher levels of GDP, with those levels of GDP being questionable to one's quality of life. Even if a correlation can be found, perhaps people would still be better off if people were allowed to work less for a lower, but still sufficient standard of living. As for the question why people work long hours and why they dont work fewer hours, as I've argued before in other articles, it's because the american (and other western countries) is designed around the 40 hour work week, with the mandates for things like health insurance and living wages being designed around a 40+ hour week, not say, a 30 or 20 hour week. We could design things around lower work weeks, but we keep working at the same standard despite our standard of living being 3x what it was 70 years ago, and 6x what it was when these laws were implemented in 1938. What's wrong with this picture? Even if higher living standards are part of it, one can't ignore the obvious inflation with things like housing, healthcare, and other core costs of living that make living in 1938 or 1950 standards on a 1938 or 1950 type salary possible. That world no longer exists. Rent costs $700+ on the low end, and the median is probably up to around $1500-2000 these days. An accident without insurance could net you a $30k medical bill. it's insane, living in modern america, and no wonder people need to work constantly to survive. It's not that we need to live that way, but our social structures force us to. We are a slave to our own structures.
Honestly, Widerquist's theories (as well as my own) are needed just to offset that nonsense.
Anyway, I know I'm rambling again. In some ways Im more using his book to write my own tangents that I might use in my own book if I write one. These are more reactions where I just use his topics as a springboard to fine tune aspects of my own ideology that I feel like need correction. If that makes any sense at all.
Going back to his chapter, despite my obvious disagreement I respect his criticisms. Because they look a lot like my own criticisms of Christianity and theism, and how the Christian worldview uses sloppy logic and weird crap like pascal's wager to justify itself, when we should really be skeptical of this crap. All of these institutions are man made, and while I would argue in support of them generally using the own arguments I presented above, I obviously am acknowledging the obvious flaws that widerquist points out. The hobbesian hypothesis should NOT be accepted uncritically, it needs evidence, and I feel like my own analysis is sufficient, at least in the case of me and my own ideology, to justify it enough to argue that a state still should exist. But, I would also argue that yes, the hypothesis itself as presented is arguably not fulfilled, but that his ideas would bolster it in such a way to fulfill it. Which is the point. Keep in mind, widerquist, at the end of the day, doesnt seem to argue against the idea of states. Rather, he finds ways to justify states, by adding the stipulation of UBI. Van Parijs did the same thing with justifying capitalism. He argued that the collectivism of socialism arguably stifles individual freedom in a lot of ways, and capitalism is a superior structure. I would agree with him, but much like widerquist, he argues UBI is the mechanism needed to make the system more fair.
I honestly like the idea of UBI a lot for these reasons. Virtually every other ideology, from the conservative "propertarians" to the hyper collectivist left, to even the more preferable regimes of liberalism and social democracy, ultimately coerce people into participation. The right might claim you're free, but the property rights system (assumed as a natural right) robs people of their freedom to, well...live as they want. The left might claim you're taken care of, but much like I demonstrated with rammstein and their work requirements before, yeah, they kinda believe people are forced to participate and give back, and that can greatly stifle freedom. Social democracy is a little better, combining the communitarian aspects of socialism with the freedom of capitalism, but still ultimately coerces people into labor via passive means like most other capitalists (denying people basic resources if they dont participate). We need a system that guarantees those resources, and then asks for cooperation, if possible. And then it lets people live as they want. Even if these ideas can't be pragmatically implemented entirely, I'd prefer a partial implementation over no implementation. It makes zero sense to force people to work for the sake of increasing GDP, outside of what that increased GDP means for our defensive capabilities against other states with less enlightened philosophies guiding them (like Russia and China). That's literally the only reason to care about GDP at the levels we have it at to the point it overrides freedom. Because none of this matters if we can be conquered by "the reds" and forced into servitude for THEM. But yeah, other than that, I really think we should wean ourselves away from valuing GDP over everything else. GDP is correlated with well being, but it isn't well being, and that's where we go back into Yang with his human centered capitalism, which DID try to come up with metrics other than GDP to measure well being.
But yeah, I know I'm all over the place, but again, kinda just using it as a spring board. It's a good book, and obviously I have a lot to say about these things. I feel like this book is helping me engage with the weaknesses of my own philosophy and strengthen them somewhat, especially since I notice that going from libertarianism to "we should provide this UBI for everyone and force people to pay taxes for it" is a bit of a jump in logic. Even if I have a vague idea that it increases freedom and is preferable to a life time of wage slavery, that doesn't stand up to conservative criticism of property rights and "screw you i got mine, stop taking my stuff".
I will say this though, without any improvements of my philosophy. I mean, lockean capitalism is a way to live. It's a model for the world, but I would ask, is this the best we can do? Is this really the model we want to stick to? After all, a society that forces people to labor to survive and has an iron clad idea of property is going to...create all of the problems with our existing system. ALl of the social problems that exist in modern society are a natural consequence of this philosophy. If you wanna live like that, fine, but most people who do are themselves not the people the lockean proviso is intended to protect. They're not the worst off, they're generally in the average to above average range. The worst off are poor, homeless, cant afford the basic necessities of life, and will live in a state not all that different than the state of nature, in which people die at age 40 due to easily preventable causes. At best, people in such a state are equal to what they would be in in nature, and at worse, worse, since they have no social support system (which many tribalistic societies probably do), and the property rights system and law enforcement surrounding it arguably make their life WORSE. So I guess it is worse. But either way, it's unpleasant, and to truly meet the hobbesian hypothesis, I'd argue states should increase quality of life not just better than nature, but as high as they reasonably can. I do believe a society is judged by how it treats its worst off, and that if we really wanna make a strong, lockean proviso argument, we should point to not only is our worst off better than nature, but also better than all states. All states should strive for the best lives for their citizens, and should compete policy wise to improve lives better. In the 1950s, the US could argue that it had the highest standard of living on the planet. And it was right. These days, I feel like the US has fallen to around 20th (still 90th percentile, but not the best) and that the nrodic countries have supplanted us in terms of being the envies of the world. We're not the best any more. maybe in raw GDP and military might we are, but again those things are more correlated with quality of life, they do not define them in and of themselves, especially if our social institutions are more backwards than those countries.
But I digress. Rambling again.
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