particles of pollution will undoubtedly invade his lungs. I’ve
therefore trespassed against him and violated his right of bodily
integrity. So if we’re being strict about enforcing rights, we may
not drive cars or ride buses. Indeed, we’re barred from operat-
ing hospitals, water purification plants, farms, and pretty much
everything else under the sun.
Some deontological libertarians embrace this reductio ad
absurdum and support prohibiting pollution outright. But this
view is, in a word, absurd. Pollution prohibition would grind the
world to a halt, killing billions of people in the process. A conse-
quentialist libertarian, by contrast, will permit you to emit some
pollution because the cost of prohibiting all such emissions is
intolerably high. The optimal amount of pollution is not zero.
So consequentialism will endorse reasonable policies like emis-
sions trading or carbon taxes to arrive at the level of pollution
that maximizes social welfare.
Consequentialism can also resolve intramural libertarian
policy debates that stump deontologists. For instance, deonto-
logical libertarians have burned thousands of calories arguing
about intellectual property. One side says that copyrights are
state-conferred, anti-competitive privileges that restrict your
freedom to peacefully produce an image of Mickey Mouse. The
other side claims that intellectual property rights protect a per-
son’s ownership of the fruits of her labor, just like other sorts of
property rights. Frankly, I think both sides make good points,
and I don’t see any way to resolve the dispute from within the
framework of rights.
Consequentialists don’t have this problem. They
can simply endorse whatever system the social
science tells us strikes the most efficient bal-
ance between the need for market compe-
tition, the need to give people incentives
to innovate, and so on.
I sometimes hear the worry
that consequentialism is a shaky
foundation for liberty because it
could, in principle, license ter-
ribly oppressive policies. After
all, if communism worked,
then a consequentialist would
need to brandish the hammer
and sickle. But so what? If
the world were radically dif-
ferent from the way it actu-
ally is, then good institutions
would be radically different
from the way they actually
are. If humans could per-
form photosynthesis,
then the case for eat-
ing french fries would crumble—but that’s no reason to stop
eating french fries. Just because there’s an alternate universe
in which authoritarianism creates a heaven on Earth doesn’t
mean we should disown free minds and free markets in the here
and now.Photo: Adam Smith, F.A. Hayek; Public domain REASON 21
“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.”