I've often seen people -- usually not libertarians -- argue that some supposedly "authoritarian" or "collectivist" action within some institution is inconsistent with true libertarian principles. Doug Berman's comments about my experiment with banning laptops are one example, but I've seen many, in many contexts.
I generally find those arguments quite unpersuasive. Libertarianism -- even a relatively mild presumptive libertarianism such as the one to which I adhere -- is a philosophy related to the proper limits on government power, especially the government's power when acting as sovereign. It tells us little about the right course of action for nongovernmental actors, or for actors within institutions (such as workplaces, universities, and the like) that happen to be run by the government.
Consider, for instance, dress codes or other appearance regulations. Libertarians, even squishy ones, would surely condemn laws banning baggy pants or nose piercings (with the possible exception of some minimal nudity bans). But they would insist on the right of private institutions -- restaurants, workplaces, schools, and the like -- to impose such regulations on their patrons, workers, or students. And my sense is that most libertarians wouldn't even have much of an ethical view about whether such institutions should impose such regulations. Some might think the regulations reflect a pointless obsession with appearances, or unduly restrict people's self-expression. Others might think the regulations are quite reasonable; but in any case, there's no inherent libertarian view on such regulations.
What about such dress or appearance regulations in government-run institutions, such as government workplaces, government-run schools, and the like? Some libertarians might be more troubled by such rules, because the government is involved in enacting them. But my sense is that many might find them to be just fine, if there's good reason to think that the rules improve the efficiency of the institution. The government as employer is not the same to libertarians as the government as sovereign. (K-12 schools are more complex, since there is some government coercion there, but even there my sense is that many libertarians would find dress codes permissible.)
More broadly, many libertarians are happy to participate -- and run -- institutions that are "collectivist" (from families to religious communities) and "authoritarian" (such as traditional workplaces that are not run on democratic lines, or hierarchical churches). It's true that some libertarians might not like most such institutions, but most are just fine with them. Again, there's no inherent libertarian view on the subject.
Now there might be situations where for reasons either of constitutional law, professional ethics, or perceived efficiency (especially efficiency in the use of government money, something that to libertarians might have an ethical dimension), libertarians may oppose certain kinds of restrictions even when the government as sovereign is not involved. Campus speech codes are an example: Many (though not all) libertarians may oppose them even at many private schools, on the theory that such speech codes undermine the atmosphere of freedom needed for effective teaching and research. But that stems from a certain view about what works well in a university, and a view about what university life ought to be like, and not from general libertarian principles. And still more libertarians likely think that speech codes at public universities are unconstitutional, but that probably has to do with their sense of the First Amendment at universities, and not from broader libertarian reasoning that would be applicable to speech at all institutions -- for instance, I imagine that many libertarians are just fine with at least certain kinds of civility rules in most workplaces, including government-run ones.
So if someone wants to argue that some policy in some institution -- especially a government-operation institution -- is unsound, or should be seen as unsound under libertarian principles, that's just fine. But saying that it's "authoritarian" or "collectivist" and libertarians should therefore presumptively oppose it strikes me as not much of an argument.
Related Posts (on one page):
- Class Discussion:
- Libertarianism and Actions Within Institutions:
- Experiment with a No-Laptop Policy for Class:
The Marxists, however, redefined "force" to involve unpleasant economic choices, e.g. early Industrial Age employers "forced" their employees to work 12-hour days at terrible wages -- even though those employees were generally perfectly free to abandon their jobs and return to their farms, to labor for even worse wages.
This expansion of definition has seeped into our national discourse everywhere, I think, in cases to the point of absurdity, where we speak of people "forced" to work a second job to pay for their medical care. Nowadays the question of whether you're "forced" or not seems to revolve around existential questions of happy you are with your options, and whether you can imagine better options in a different world, and not on the rather more mundane and practical question of whether some other person has physically coerced you. You might say we now take quite literally what used to be metaphorical usage (I say I am 'forced' to do this and such, because my feelings are as they would be if I were actually physically coerced to do so).
In your case, we have the notion that, because students would presumably pay a high cost for abandoning your class in order to preserve their freedom to use laptops, you have "forced" them to abandon their laptops. They're not happy with their choices, and they can imagine a different world where you offered them different (more preferable) choices, so you have "forced" them. A true classical liberal would observe that you held no guns to anyone's head, and therefore whatever verb one wants to use to describe your action, "force" isn't it, and questions of your students' liberty are not at issue.
"government's power when acting as sovereign"
Government is never sovereign. In our republic the sovereign, or supreme lawmaking authority, is the people, in their function of ratifying constitutions or constitutional amendments.
There is also a matter of situations in which a state agent infringes on rights in ways not contractually consented to. I went to a private college, but when I was a student in public school, with disabilities of minority having been removed at age 13, the school administrators would have been in legal trouble with me if they had tried to interfere with my rights when outside school premises.
I would push this back to Doug by saying that far from being against paternalism or collectivism in any institution, libertarians (of the flavor I favor) are actually for such institutional design when implemented without access to the power of the state (especially the power to physically, or violently, demand compliance). Maybe the role of public institutions is to maintain a healthy, level playing field for private ones.
As Sasha pointed out in an earlier comment, the family is not an institution that would benefit from a more democratic institutional design.
It depends what you mean by power, I think. A law student who enrolls at a law school is essentially purchasing a service: he or she is contracting with the university, and the university agrees to provide a service that the student presumably wants to have. Granted, the service is one that leaves the student feeling at the bottom of the totem pole at times, but on the other hand, the student has freely chosen this and can just leave if he or she doesn't want it anymore.
One of the fundamental elements of Libertarianism as a political idea, is the belief that majority based or centralized decision making is superior to decentralized individual decision making only in very limited circumstances. Libertarianism is particularly skeptical of the notion that someone else can know what is in your own best intrests - at least in the case of compentent, reasonably educated adults, like law students. Libertarians also, generally speaking, are skeptical of majoritarian oriented claims that trivial nuisances to them outweigh strong opinions of someone whose actions are to be limited -- the flip side of liberty is a duty to tolerate others to the extent practicable.
If one looks to the values that undergird Libertarianism as a political idea, rather than a formalistic statement of what it means, the proposed "laptop rule" looks pretty dubious, and the special pleading that permits collectivist or authoritarian ideas to be favored in a rather broad class of circumstances seems doubtful.
If I hire an engineer to build me a structure and warrant its soundness, I must choose to follow his advice or free him from his contracted warranty.
Neither of the above interferes with my libertarian rights.
If I contract wiht a school to teach me how to think like a lawyer, and I indicate through matriculation which type of lawyer I want to think like, they have a responsibility under contract to lead me, despite my misgings in that direction. If I choose not to go, how is this different thn if I refuse to follow the advice of the engineer...
Thus, it would be authoritarian for the STATE to:
1) Ban students from using laptops, OR
2) Ban professors from banning students from using laptops, OR
3) Ban schools from banning professors from banning laptops
And so on...
The dress code analogy is quite apt, as a young woman in Kentucky is currently suing a mall for its attire policies.
I would say, as an outsider looking in (I'm a left-liberal, not a libertarian), that some of this might actually be the clash between different intellectual traditions within libertarianism.
Specifically, there's a tradition I might call "economic libertarianism" that is very concerned with protecting markets and with maintaining a strong public-private distinction and a state that doesn't interfere with private economic activity. (In saying this, I am not saying that such people aren't also civil libertarians; I am simply describing the lines of thought that generates their conclusions.) My guess is that Professor Volokh understands "libertarianism" to mean this sort of ideology.
But there's also a form of libertarianism whose central idea is mistrust of authority. This sort of libertarianism may come to similar policy conclusions to the economic libertarian, but his or her animating principle is not to protect free markets from state inferference but to protect the individual's autonomy against collectivism.
Thus, a certain strand of libertarian would certainly criticize many of the things that Professor Volokh sets out. Workplace harassment rules (even if employer-imposed and not state-imposed), school uniforms, etc. might be seen as political correctness, an attempt to stifle the individual.
As I said, I am approaching this from the outside looking in. But it certainly seems to me that these sorts of criticisms might flow from the first principles of some libertarians, even if they don't flow from Professor Volokh's philosophy.
Dilan - To the extent that libertarianism involves a mistrust of authority, its a mistrust of authority that you don't really get to choose (yes you do vote, and you can emigrate, but I don't consider that getting to chose whether an authority is over you or not, esp. since the US government exercises extra-territorial powers).
I'm a libertarian, but I didn't have more trouble that anyone else with accepting orders when I was in the military. (Which obviously involves a lot of authority over you, and government authority to boot). The reason why was because I chose to have this authority over me. A draft would be a different story, and I oppose a draft (not just as unlibertarian, but as not needed, probably not beneficial in many situations in modern warfare, and also unconstitutional forced servitude)
I don't particular like being told what to do, even when I did agree to the situation, but that's just a personal attitude or trait, not an issue of my military stint, having a job with a boss, or being part of a home owners association, being offensive to libertarian principles.
I think that this personal attitude is one that many libertarians may have, but it isn't really part of libertarianism IMO.
The problem is that the student has to leave the things he wants as well as the things he doesn't. When the school can arbitrarily say "my way or the highway" and make it stick, that's power by any definition and it ought to be limited by natural rights.
As for "[he] can just leave," would you suggest that Jim Crow laws didn't need to be overturned because people could 'just leave' the jurisdiction if they didn't like them?
Whether it's employer/employee, business/patron, or husband/wife -- life is full of "package deals," and the right to offer, accept or reject such "packages" at will.
"I can do whatever I want whenever I want" isn't Libertarianism. It's anarchy.
Also the juror in considering the nullification of a law, an aspect of due process that cannot be constitutionally suppressed by the government.
Yours, TDP, ml, msl, &pfpp
For me this appeal is not just about the relationship of government to individuals: I personally prefer for any and every powerful institution --- not just government institutions --- to promote personal and professional liberty unless and until there is a (very strong?) basis to believe that an individual will make a choice that harms others (or perhaps his/her future self).
Though individual law professors may not feel like powerful institutions, we certainly are within the fiefdom of our classroom. We have extraordinary power over our students, and your experiment obviously restricts a modern freedom greatly within this setting.
To play out a variation of the analogy, I wonder how law faculty would feel if a dean, after returning from a teaching conference, decided to prohibit all professors from ever using power-point in class, OR the use of TWEN, OR communications with students through e-mail? The dean might say he'd heard reports that a law school ran better when all profs did things the old way --- using the chalkboard, posting announcements on paper, talking in office hours. Libertarian or not, I think modern faculty would revolt. That modern students do not revolt from similar tech bans is a reflection, in my view, of what little power they have in the feifdom of the classroom.
And Doug B., I think you're wrong, from my own experience. I banned laptops and explicitly told the students that if they objected after giving it a try, I'd change the policy. Turned out they all were happy with it.
I'm not as certain as you are that this is correct, I think it is more likely that the students are much less invested in the management of any particular classroom. Even if a student who requires laptop usage in class cannot juggle the required courses to avoid a professor who bans them, for the student it only constitutes a one semester ordeal for one class while for a professor a similar policy from the dean would affect all of their classes for a significant portion of their professional career. Law school is for most people just a temporary state with a set end while (hopefully) a law professorship is a more permanent state with an end in far future, and discommodation can been borne much easier on a temporary basis.
PersonFromPorlock—that's just not libertarianism, that's liberalism, or even Marxism.
Nope. As long as you're 'free to leave' (the business or the country), all associations are voluntary and logically indistinguishable. Natural rights apply to all associations or none. What you're doing is mixing apples and winesaps.
frankcross:
The applicant can say that but the student is pretty much stuck with whatever the school hands him. Or he can leave, reapply to another school (probably losing credit for courses already taken and paid for), move and start over. Not an awfully symmetrical power relationship.
Damn. And here I thought I was secretly advancing the Rosicrucian cause.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are access to three years of schooling in American law, and the use of a laptop computer at any place and time they should desire."
In EV's classroom, this is not the case. All men are not equal there. EV is invested with more power by the nature of the educational process. Attempts to lessen that power differential from principle (as opposed to practical considerations) are not libertarian, but leftist.
With that said, if a student enrolls in a law school with the reasonable expectation (express or implied) that he will be able to use a laptop in class, and then the rules are changed after the fact, then a case could be made that he's been done wrong... but that's a contractual issue, not a libertarian one. A law school certainly does have the right to run its classes however it thinks best, but perhaps it might not have the right to unilaterally change policies on which student enrollments were conditioned.
(This strikes me as an excellent lesson to law students to carefully review the conditions of enrollment and the commitments a school is offering, prior to signing an acceptance.)
BTW, Mr. Esper, given your self-labeling, what do you consider to be the ambit of liberalism that is neither libertarian nor leftist?
Moreover, even if the law school were opt out, opting out would not compel one to opt into a competing law school; one can choose to opt out of law schools altogether, whereas one cannot choose to opt out of states altogether.
The idea that participation in the state is voluntary because you are free to go to a different state requires a somewhat different formulation of "voluntary" from the common usage. If you were allowed to choose which of three burglars will rob you, but not allowed to choose not to be robbed, would you call your selection of the least violent burglar "voluntary"?
David - I think "libertarians sign with property owners in that context" goes to far. Its more like "some libertarians sign with property owners in that context", or alternatively "some libertarians sign with property owners of the parking lot in that context and others side with the property owner of the gun and the car".