petition out of business; instead, you’ll need to make better and
cheaper products that help stretch everyone’s paycheck.
Deontological libertarians think that justice means respect-
ing individual rights, not because doing so produces good out-
comes but because rights are important in themselves. The trou-
ble is, deontologists have a hard time explaining why enriching
the poor and healing the sick matter at all. At most, these are
fringe benefits of liberty. To deontologists, a political system
that feeds the hungry is like a polio vaccine that freshens your
breath—the bonus is nice, but it’s not the point. This view gets
things wrong, however. That freedom makes us happier, health-
ier, and wealthier is the point.
Along the same lines, deontologists have difficulty explain-
ing what makes some violations of rights worse than others. For
instance, these libertarians typically believe that we possess a
right of exclusive control over our bodies that’s comparable to
the property rights we possess over material objects. Just as a
thief who extracts my radio from my car without my consent
violates my rights over my stuff, a dentist who extracts my
tooth from my mouth without my consent violates my rights
over my body.
But now consider two unethical dentists who pull teeth with-
out their patients’ permission. The first is gentle, so she at least
has the decency to administer anesthetic to ensure her patient
won’t feel pain. The second dentist is sadistic and wants to maxi-
mize her patient’s pain. Although both extractions are wrong,
the gentle extraction is less wrong. Why? It isn’t because the
gentle extraction is a lesser violation of the patient’s right of
bodily integrity—if anything, it’s a greater violation, because
the injection of Novocaine involves an additional invasion of
the patient’s gums. The gentle extraction is less wrong because
it causes less suffering. Notice that this explanation is available
to the consequentialist but not the deontologist.
Deontological libertarianism is also implausibly rigid. For
instance, if the duty to respect private property rights is insensi-
tive to costs and benefits, then you may not violate these rights
even when the cost is microscopic and the benefit is monumen-
tal. But surely you’re right to steal the apple pie cooling on a
windowsill if that’s the only way to keep your child from starving
to death. The victim of the theft will lament the loss of the pie,
but that’s nothing compared to the loss of your child’s life. And
ratcheting up the examples only makes things worse for deon-
tology. Suppose a scientist develops a cure for cancer but keeps
it locked up because he’s an evil misanthrope. You should feel
free to steal it. Sure, you’ll violate his property rights, but that’s
a trivial price to pay to save millions of people.
What’s more, deontological libertarianism’s insensitivity to
costs and benefits implies that your freedom may be restricted
in wildly unreasonable ways. Take air pollution. When I drive
my car past my neighbor while he retrieves his newspaper, someAFFIRMATIVE:
Freedom Is a Means
to a Happier World
CHRISTOPHER FREIMAN
ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL freedom helps us feed the hungry, heal
the sick, and enrich the poor. In short, liberty has good conse-
quences. And that’s why you should be a libertarian.
Don’t get me wrong—rights are important. But they’re impor-
tant because they’re beneficial. Private property, free trade, and
civil liberties are valuable as means to a prosperous, peaceful,
and happy world. Adam Smith tells us that market exchange
is good because it’s mutually beneficial. What’s more, as F.A.
Hayek showed, market prices convey information that enables
economies to allocate resources efficiently. And robust protec-
tion for market liberties functions as a safeguard against gov-
ernment overreach—a state with limited regulatory and redis-
tributive powers is a much less valuable prize for “rent seekers.”
To get rich in a place with a minimal state, you can’t lobby the
government for subsidies or for regulations that drive your com-
20 OCTOBER 2018
PROPOSITION:
The Best Case
for Liberty Is
Consequentialist