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Egalitarian Liberalism and Economic Freedom

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Egalitarian Liberalism and Economic Freedom University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2019 Egalitarian Liberalism And Economic Freedom Pierce Randall University of Pennsylvania Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the Philosophy Commons Recommended Citation Randall, Pierce, "Egalitarian Liberalism And Economic Freedom" (2019). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 3680. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/3680 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/3680 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Egalitarian Liberalism And Economic Freedom Abstract This dissertation considers three major challenges to egalitarian liberal institutions made by classical liber- als: that egalitarian liberal institutions involve too much coercive interference with individual economic decisions, that free markets tend to do better at rewarding people on the basis of their economic choices, and that only by recognizing full liberal rights of ownership can a society best promote a stable property regime consistent with our pre-political conventions of ownership. Each of these objections fails, but they point to an underlying concern that egalitarian liberal institutions fail to adequately protect economic freedom. The dissertation then develops and defends a conception of economic freedom that is reflected in egalitar- ian liberal institutions. Economic freedom depends on the quality and availability of options individuals have in markets, especially the quality of exit options available to avoid coercive or exploitative conditions of employment or exchange. It then extends this view to the idea of property-owning democracy and worker-ownership of firms. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Philosophy First Advisor Samuel . Freeman Keywords economic liberty, Gerald Gaus, John Rawls, John Tomasi, liberalism, property-owning democracy Subject Categories Philosophy This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/3680 EGALITARIAN LIBERALISM AND ECONOMIC FREEDOM Pierce Randall A DISSERTATION in Philosophy Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2019 Supervisor of Dissertation Samuel Freeman, Avalon Professor of the Humanities Graduate Group Chairperson Errol Lord, Associate Professor Dissertation Committee Samuel Freeman, Avalon Professor of the Humanities Kok-Chor Tan, Professor, University of Pennsylvania Alex Guerrero, Professor, Rutgers University EGALITARIAN LIBERALISM AND ECONOMIC FREEDOM © COPYRIGHT 2019 Pierce Adam Randall This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ ACKNOWLEDGEMENT When it comes to my intellectual debts, I am insolvent, for it is inconceivable that I would be able to fully repay the support, collegiality, and opportunities for thought and discussion that I have experienced in the philosophy department at Penn. Nevertheless, I will note some of the faculty and colleagues whose support has been essential to completing this dissertation. I should begin, of course, by acknowledging the assistance of Samuel Freeman, whose suggestions and guidance have played an profound role in shaping my thinking on these topics, as well as that of the other members of my dissertation committee: Kok-Chor Tan and Alex Guerrero. While I have received sup- port from nearly every member of the faculty, I would like to especially thank Rolf Horstmann, Michael Weisberg, Karen Detlefsen, Carlos Pereira Di Salvo, and Dan Singer for their inspiration and help in my graduate career. I have been inspired by nearly all of my past and present colleagues. I am particularly grateful for the discussions and work I’ve done with Justin Bernstein, Chetan Cetty, Raj Patel, Dylan Manson, Nabeel Hamid, Daniel Fryer, and Hal Parker. Your help has been indispensable to further developing some of the ideas in this dissertation. I have also enjoyed the friendship and support of Brian Reese, Ben Baker, Carlos Santana, Karen Kovaka, Devin Curry, Max Lewis, Marie Barnett, Raffi Knut-Landau, Michael Vazquez, and Yosef Washington. iii ABSTRACT EGALITARIAN LIBERALISM AND ECONOMIC FREEDOM Pierce Randall Samuel Freeman This dissertation considers three major challenges to egalitarian liberal institutions made by classical liber- als: that egalitarian liberal institutions involve too much coercive interference with individual economic decisions, that free markets tend to do better at rewarding people on the basis of their economic choices, and that only by recognizing full liberal rights of ownership can a society best promote a stable property regime consistent with our pre-political conventions of ownership. Each of these objections fails, but they point to an underlying concern that egalitarian liberal institutions fail to adequately protect economic freedom. The dissertation then develops and defends a conception of economic freedom that is reflected in egalitar- ian liberal institutions. Economic freedom depends on the quality and availability of options individuals have in markets, especially the quality of exit options available to avoid coercive or exploitative conditions of employment or exchange. It then extends this view to the idea of property-owning democracy and worker-ownership of firms. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ..................................... ii ABSTRACT ............................................ iii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS .................................... vi CHAPTER 1 : INTRODUCTION ............................... 1 1.1 Framing the problem: socialism redux .......................... 1 1.2 Does the concept of economic freedom do any normative work? ............. 5 1.3 Three liberalisms: classical liberalism, high liberalism, and libertarianism . 8 1.4 Institutions as the appropriate level of analysis ...................... 21 CHAPTER 2 : COERCION AND MARKETS ......................... 25 2.1 Classical liberalism and thick economic liberties ...................... 25 2.2 Hayek and legislative coercion ............................... 28 2.3 Public reason and the public justifiability of coercion ................... 35 2.4 Egalitarian economic freedom ............................... 41 2.5 Conclusion ........................................ 42 CHAPTER 3 : DO MARKETS GIVE US WHAT WE DESERVE? . 44 3.1 The concept of desert ................................... 47 3.2 Desert and markets .................................... 61 3.3 Conclusion ........................................ 79 CHAPTER 4 : CLASSICAL LIBERALISM AND PROPERTY RIGHTS . 80 4.1 Three theoretical approaches to property rights ...................... 80 4.2 Conceptual contours of “property” ............................ 86 4.3 The natural rights theory of property rights ........................ 89 v 4.4 Positive theories of property rights ............................ 96 4.5 The classical liberal approach: robust bottom-up conventionalism . 98 4.6 Conclusion ........................................108 CHAPTER 5 : ECONOMIC FREEDOM AND EGALITARIAN LIBERALISM . 110 5.1 The concept of liberty ...................................112 5.2 Three conceptions of freedom ...............................116 5.3 Motivating a negative conception of economic freedom . 120 5.4 The quality and availability of options account of economic freedom . 128 5.5 Economic freedom and egalitarian liberal institutions . 130 5.6 Conclusion ........................................132 CHAPTER 6 : PROPERTY-OWNING DEMOCRACY AND PREDISTRIBUTION . 133 6.1 Property-owning democracy in the works of Rawls and Meade . 135 6.2 The case for pre-distribution as part of property-owning democracy . 142 6.3 Predistribution three ways .................................145 6.4 Objections to property-owning democracy . 153 6.5 Quality work options ...................................164 6.6 Worker ownership and property-owning democracy . 166 6.7 Conclusion ........................................186 CONCLUSION ..........................................187 vi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FIGURE 1 : A summary of the moral commitments and institutional prescriptions of lib- eral and quasi-liberal theories .......................... 9 vii CHAPTER 1 : INTRODUCTION Economic activity is an important dimension of human life: it includes how we work, what sorts of au- thority relationships persist in our places of employment, how we save and plan projects, how we make decisions with our property, and how we live when not formally employed. The significance of economic activity raises a cluster of related normative questions: Who should get to make these decisions? How much latitude should they have to make them? How important are economic rights vis-à-vis other im- portant and possibly competing values, such as economic equality or efficiency? A normative theory of economic freedom is a set of answers to these questions. In this dissertation, I develop an egalitarian liberal conception of economic freedom, focusing on the quality and availability of options available to members of society. Left-liberals and social democrats seem to have surrendered the language of economic freedom to the right. Libertarian and classical liberal organizations go by names like “The Freedom Center” or the “Liberty Fund.”
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