Abstract
Poverty is not due to lack of resources, nor generally either to incapacity or lack of motivation. It is essentially always due to bad politics, specifically, a manifold of devices and initiatives that impede the freedom necessary for people to get their jobs done. The freedom we need is both local – removing obstacles imposed by public institutions, as well as due to prevalent corruption and graft by powers that be; and international, so that people in country A can benefit from interaction with the productive in country B, whatever A and B may be. Misguided interventions on behalf of “equality” and other distortions need to be avoided. The emphasis here must be on commercial exchange, not “foreign aid” which is generally a disaster, and certain to fail to benefit the very people it is intended to benefit. Philanthropic assistance should be limited to disaster relief, such as tsunamis, where voluntary private help works brilliantly – and local governments impede it hugely.
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Notes
- 1.
Mancur Olson is one source: see his “Big Bills Left on the Sidewalk: Why Some Nations Are Rich, and Others Poor” in Benjamin Powell, ed., Making Poor Nations Rich (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008), 25–53.
- 2.
I say this in full realization of the fact that some want to classify libertarianism as a kind of egalitarianism in that it calls for “equal liberty for all.” But the term ‘equal’ here is meaningless, since liberty is simply the absence of impositions to voluntary conduct, and there is no uniform metric for measuring such impositions, therefore no way to say that some have thus-and-so more or less than others. If we are to say liberty is to be “equal”, what it calls for being equal is impositions – at zero. This is a reductio of the term ‘egalitarian’ and it serves only to muddy the waters to use it in this way.
- 3.
I obviously lean here on Nozick’s delightful analogies and examples. See Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974), Ch. 7. See esp. 160, and 168–172.
- 4.
Nozick, Op. Cit., 169.
- 5.
David Hume: Treatise of Human Nature III, Of Morals, Part II (“Of Justice and Injustice”), Sect. II: Hume, Sect. II – (L.A. Selbye-Bigge, ed., Hume’s Treatise (Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon Press, 1955), 491.
Previously, he had said “There are three different species of goods, which we are possess’d of; the internal satisfaction of our minds, the external advantages of our body, and the enjoyment of such possessions as we have acquir’d by our industry and good fortune. We are perfectly secure in the enjoyment of the first. The second may be ravish’d from us, but can be of no advantage to him who deprives us of them. The last only are both expos’d to the violence of others, and may be transferr’d without suffering any loss or alteration; while at the same time, there is not a sufficient quantity of them to supply every one’s desires and necessities. As the improvement, therefore, of these goods is the chief advantage of society, so the instability of their possession, along with their scarcity, is the chief impediment,” Ibid., 487–488.
- 6.
See the book authored by James Sterba and myself, Are Liberty and Equality Compatible? (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010). There is also G.A. Cohen’s recent Rescuing Justice and Equality (Harvard 2008). See also my lengthy discussion of that book, “Cohen’s Rescue” in the Journal of Ethics, 14:263–334.
- 7.
So I think; there are those who object.
- 8.
Still others, to be sure, are aimed at proselytizing for some or other religion, and of course some for various political ends. We omit the latter (apart from a short note) for present purposes – since our hope is to guide political activity, not to be driven by it, and we ignore the religious category as being not directly relevant here.
- 9.
Stephen Nathanson, “Equality, Sufficiency, Decency: Three Criteria of Economic Justice,” in F. Adams, ed., Ethical Issues for the Twenty-First Century (Philosophy Documentation Center, 2005), 367.
- 10.
Nathanson, Op. cit., 372.
- 11.
Nathanson, Op. cit., 371.
- 12.
The situation in 1987 is described by Robert Rector, “How “Poor” are America’s Poor?” in Julian Simon, ed., The State of Humanity (Oxford, U.K.: Blackwell, 1995), 251–256.
- 13.
Thomas Pogge has become the great spokesman for this point, though there are many others. See Pogge’s World Poverty and Human Rights: Cosmopolitan Responsibilities and Reforms, second, expanded edition (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2008) and also “Responses to the Critics” in Alison Jaggar, ed., Thomas Pogge and His Critics (Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press, 2010), 175–238.
- 14.
David Gauthier, Morals by Agreement (Oxford: UP, 1986), ch. IV, 83–112.
- 15.
Nathanson, Op Cit., 370.
- 16.
Narveson, “Deserving Profits”, in in Mario Rizzo and Robin Cowan, editors Profits and Morality, (U. of Chicago Press, 1995). Now in Narveson, Respecting Persons in Theory and Practice (Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), Ch. 9, 131–162.
- 17.
This is the classic social contract, of course, expounded variously by Hobbes, David Gauthier (op. cit.) and myself (The Libertarian Idea, Temple University Press, 1988/Broadview 2001 and other places).
- 18.
Narveson, “Welfare and Wealth, Poverty and Justice in Today’s World”; and “Is World Poverty a Problem for the Wealthy?” Journal of Ethics 8:4 (2004).
- 19.
See, for example, the statistics assembled from Census Bureau data etc. in W. Michal Cox and Richard Alm, Myths of Rich and Poor (NY: Basic Books, 1999),72–78.
- 20.
In the outgoing Commission of the European Union.
- 21.
Anthony de Jasay, “‘Globalization’” and Its Critics” in Political Economy, Concisely (Indianapolis, Ind: Liberty Fund, 2009), 310.
- 22.
David Schmidtz and Jason Brennan, A Brief History of Liberty (Chichester, U.K.: John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 2010), 120–122.
- 23.
See, for instance, Clark C. Gibosn, Krister Andersson, Elmor Ostrom and Sujai Shivakumar, The Samaritan’s Dilemma: The Political Economy of Development Aid (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), ch. 1, “What’s Wrong with Development Aid?” This useful source comes up with many ideas about how to improve development aid. Nor is it confined to government-sponsored aid.
The downsides of foreign aid are admirably discussed in P.T. Bauer, Equality, the Third World, and Economic Delusion (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1981). See especially chs. 3–5. See also Moyo, Dambisa, Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is Another Way for Africa (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009).
- 24.
Margaret Wente in The Globe and Mail (Toronto), July 13.
- 25.
The “robber baron” Cornelius Vanderbilt brought huge reductions in train fares to Americans; Andre Carnegie cut the price of steel rail by 75%; John d. Rockefeller cut the price of oil by 80%. Matt Ridley, The Rational Optimist, New York: Harper-Collins, 2010, 23. See also James D. Gwartney and Richard L. Stroup, What Everyone Should Know about Economics and Prosperity (Vancouver: Fraser Institute, 2002).
- 26.
A lengthy discussion has had to be omitted for reasons of space.
- 27.
Jack Powelson, Dialogue with Friends (Boulder, Col.: Horizon Society Publications, 1988), ch. 4 “Multinational Corporations”, 54–58.
- 28.
Many discussions and books entered into the background of this paper. A very readable brief one is James W. Gwartney and Richard L. Stroup, What Everyone Should Know about Economics and Prosperity (Vancouver: Fraser Institute, 1993).
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Narveson, J. (2013). Poverty, Markets, Justice: Why the Market Is the Only Cure for Poverty. In: Stacy, H., Lee, WC. (eds) Economic Justice. AMINTAPHIL: The Philosophical Foundations of Law and Justice, vol 4. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4905-4_8
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