The Free Rider Problem for Human Equality
The Free Rider Problem is generally brought up in political philosophy as a problem for making public goods (which often include governments). A public good is simply something that everyone can benefit from. Clean air, for example, is a public good-everyone benefits from having clean air to breathe. One particular feature of public goods, that causes the problem, is that everyone will benefit from them regardless of their contribution. Meaning, a public good can only exist if it is beneficial to everyone-you cannot make it not beneficial to everyone without getting rid of the public good.
Here’s some numbers to illustrate this:
Imagine a town of people considering whether or not to contribute to the public good of a public park. Each individual person is capable of contributing to the park, but it costs them 10 units of utility in order to contribute. For every contribution, the benefit of the public good increases by 5 units of utility. Each unit of utility the public park has is available to everyone. So, if the public park has 20 units of utility, everyone gains 20 units of utility.
It would be best, in an aggregate sense, if everyone contributed. If there are 100 people in the town and each contribute their 10 units of utility, then the public good would reach 500 units of utility. Each person sacrifices 10 units of utility, and gains 500 units of utility. Each individual gains +490 units of utility.
The free rider problem: for each individual, it is best for their own self interest to not contribute, but have everyone else contribute. If they don’t sacrifice their 10 units to contribute, they only lose 5 units from the public good. So 99 people sacrifice 10 units of utility, 1 person doesn’t. Each person gets 495 units of utility from the public good, where the 99 who contribute get a net of +485, the 1 who did not contribute gets a net of +505.
The individual who gains the benefit of the public good, but does not contribute, is a free rider. This is obviously a problem, because each individual could reason in this way, to the point that no one will contribute.
In simplistic terms, the free rider problem is: I want others to contribute to something that everyone benefits from, but I don’t want to contribute myself.
(Side note: there are a lot of attempts in political philosophy to solve the free rider problem, like the Principle of Fairness. However, I have yet to be convinced by any of them, and would argue that none of them can get around this problem)
So how does this relate to human equality? To be analogous, I am thinking of “everyone is treated with equal respect” and “no discrimination” as public goods-everyone benefits when there is no discrimination and everyone is truly equal. Our contribution to this public good is to treat everyone equally, and not discriminate ourselves.
A free rider, with these analogies, would be someone who does not treat everyone equally but expects everyone else to. The free rider expects everyone to contribute to the public good of true equality, but does not contribute themselves.
The problem, as in the public park case, is that when people don’t make their own individual contributions, the group as a whole doesn’t get the benefit. The extent of this problem is correlated with the extent to which people don’t make their own individual contributions.
On the surface, it would seem that most people do contribute to the public good of equality (at least in the U.S.). Not many people discriminate against other people with their actions (at least I would hope).
But the problem I want to focus on is the way we view other people, especially those different than us. On the most basic level, we’ve come to realize and try to fix this problem in ourselves. Most intelligent people aren’t racist, and don’t think less of people of different races. This was once a huge problem (and it still is a big problem), but I am optimistic that it isn’t as bad as it used to be.
However, the intense focus on not being racist hasn’t been carried over into other areas of similarly arbitrary ways of discrimination. A lot of conservatives, especially recently, look down on the poor. If you are poor, on welfare, etc., you are seen as less of a person than a rich, successful businessperson. This is true of a lot of people-whether actively or on a more subtle level, a lack of financial success is seen as something that makes the person, in one way or another, less than a person who is financially successful.
Liberals have this problem too, though often in different areas. What I see a lot from liberals (which I have to admit includes myself), is looking down on people who aren’t as intelligent. A person who is less intelligent than another person is seen, in one way or another, as less than a person who is more intelligent.
These are just two examples, but the list could go on: social standing, physical ability, physical fitness, interpersonal skills, etc. Each of these traits is an arbitrary reason to value another person less than other people. They are all comparable to race, in that none of them are justifiable grounds for thinking of another human being as somehow inferior.
In conclusion, the public good of human equality is threatened by individual people being free riders. Individual people can be free riders, in this case, if they expect others to treat people equally but find ways on their own to consider some people as inferior to others.
I would hope that the free rider problem doesn’t apply to many people. However, I am extremely doubtful that it doesn’t. From what I’ve noticed, it seems each person has traits that they look for in other people, and value them differently based on that trait. A racist who values white people more than other races, a Mormon presidential candidate who values rich people more than poor people, a liberal blogger who values liberals more than conservatives-all are cases of being a free rider when it comes to equality. If people don’t genuinely think of people on equal terms, then the free rider problem for human equality will continue to make it so (as I believe is actually the case) that the system will favor those who more people like, rather than achieve genuine equality.
Good try. It’s perhaps, a better model for discussing equality as voluntary and involuntary transfers than some abstract moral emotion.
But I am not sure that it operates in practice unless we also take into consideration that having children one cannot support on one’s own is also free riding. At that point the only cure to the free riding of the unproductive yet reproductive, is to deprive them of subsidy, and therefore of the desired equality. Your argument only stands if free riding is a ‘bad’. I’ll agree that it’s a bad. But then, we have to account for all the forms of free riding. And the cause of free-riding comes down to a limited number of categories: 1) physical or mental defect, 2) being very young or very old, 3) theft/cheating/laziness, and 4) bearing children one cannot support. THe first is an accident we are all subject to, the second is an equality because we are all both young and old at some point, the third and the fourth are a choice. As choices they are costs that are put onto others involuntarily.
The second problem with your argument is that there is a difference between an abstract good that is capitalized (a park, or a norm) and a material good that is consumed by an individual. Treating people equally, that is, equality of opportunity, is very different from conducting transfers: trying to produce equality of outcomes. I am not sure that it is possible to create a transfer that is not free riding on its premise. A loan is one thing, a transfer is another.
The third problem is that equality is not a desire of a majority. It is far from universal. While almost all humans both dislike cheating/free-riding, and almost all of us dislike suffering, a substantial portion of the population, conservatives and libertarians included, intuitively feel that society is best as either a hierarchy or a meritocracy, rather than an egalitarian order. For both conservatives and libertarians, equality of opportunity is an expression of freedom. But equality of outcome is something that is both impossible without creating terrible ‘bad’ consequences.
We are coming very close to attributing the political sentiments to a biological origin, and largely an expression of the difference between male and female mating strategies. If this is the case, then our arguments are preferences that can only be decided by the study of outcomes. And if we are to study outcomes, it will tend to suggest that the conservative model of society, which constrains the breeding of the lower classes, is the one that produces both the maximum short and long term outcomes for all members of a society. Perhaps for all mankind.
But that said, your approach is an economic way of thinking rather than pseudo moralistic way of thinking and for that reason it’s refreshing.
There’s a lot packed in your reply, but hopefully I respond to the points that are relevant.
First, I have to note that I believe you are somewhat misinterpreting the post. The public good that I am referring to isn’t so much of a practical “what should everyone be given” conception of equality (though I did bring this up as it is relevant to the topic), but rather a “everyone should be thought of as equal”. So it’s much more a focus on mental activity rather than political systems. The “public good” is simply: everyone thinks of everyone else as fundamentally equal as humans. I assumed in my post that this is a public good most people would want (and further that most people think that there is a moral force behind why it should be the case). From this, the free rider problem is when people don’t do it themselves, but expect others to.
The definition of “good”, in this sense, is purposefully vague. It is simply what people desire (so a Humean definition of good, in a way).
I would note that the four types of free-riding you listed are not as distinct as your argument assumes them to be. Laziness/theft/etc. might fall under “mental defect” (especially if the world is deterministic on a macro level).
About the distinction between conservatives and egalitarians: I believe you are vastly over-stating the number of people who would agree with you, even among the conservative base. There is a lot to be said about the distinction between equality of opportunity and equality of outcome, and further a lot to be said about what equality of opportunity really means (one conception in political philosophy is that equality of opportunity requires society to accommodate for every morally arbitrary factor, and distribute pay only after these factors have been mitigated).
In summation, I am highly doubtful that there are a significant number of people who would reject egalitarianism of some sort in favor of a hierarchy society. The number is highly dependent on the definition of egalitarian you use (if you stick with equality of outcome, then egalitarianism is in the minority).
As for the male/female distinction in politics-I would argue that you are making some unsupported inferences. Even if political leanings can be traced back to some male/female distinction (though I am highly doubtful, as assuming there is a definable difference between male and female mindsets is already making a fallacious assumption), you won’t be able to support conservatism in the way you expect. “Constraining breeding of the lower classes” will never result in the best results for society, for the same reason communism doesn’t end up with the best result for egalitarians. If you assume omnipotent power (so you can make society do whatever you want it to do), then communism would work best for egalitarians, and limiting breeding would work best for conservatives. However, that obviously isn’t the case. In order for it to be the best, you’d have to argue that a government policy that targets and limits the rights of certain people based on income and social class would eventually result in some net gain for society. To do this, you would have to find some positives (economic growth, avoiding population increases, etc.) that might be worth pursuing. Even if you were successful in proving this link, you would still be faced with the consequences of the means you pursue-limiting people’s rights. Those other effects, which might be better definable on paper, would not improve society in actuality because of the negative effect of eliminating people’s rights and targeting a particular minority.
John,
I think there’s one things you’ve overlooked in your analysis of the free rider issue. The first is that your definition of “public good” is misleadingly narrow. If a public good can only exist when everyone benefits, then just about every government program will have to be cut. This is because of the opposite of the free rider: the paying non-rider.
Whenever the government does something, there are some people who do not benefit from it but nonetheless are made to pay for it. In the case of the park, for instance, there’s probably some guy in the town who doesn’t even like parks and therefore isn’t interested in paying.
If we fund the park publicly, we create eliminate free riders who would enjoy the public park without voluntary doing so, but we create paid non-riders who will pay for the public park and not enjoy it. And then, by your definition, the park ceases to be a public good.
I have a feeling that you’ve got something less than “everyone” in mind when you declare a public good to be something that benefits everyone. I think that if you defined it more rigorously your arguments about government would be strengthened.
You’re right, and I used the word “everyone” only for simplicity. It could be argued that public goods benefit everyone necessarily, like air or clean water. If this is the case, then almost nothing else would be a real public good, as you argued.
But, I wouldn’t make the claim that a public good has to universal in order to be a public good/justifiable. It’s a grey area to distinguish between “universal”, “almost everybody”, and “a majority”. But, there is still a distinction, even if it suffers the problem of vagueness (as the definition of “bald” does). If this distinction is sensible, and I think it clearly is, then I would define a public good as one that benefits the group “almost everybody”. Statistical outliers shouldn’t negate the justification for a public good, as a person who enjoys murder doesn’t negate our consensus on the immorality of murder, or a person who wants to hurt himself doesn’t negate our rational consensus.
(I’m not sure where you’re going with the guy who wants to hurt himself. A non-paternalist will allow him to do so, right?)
Part of the reason I’m being a stickler here lies in the way that words can make something appear more cut-and-dry than it is. So, for example, let’s say a particular public park benefits everybody. Literally everybody.
Even so, we’d have to ask whether it benefits everybody more than they could have benefited from being able to keep the money. So in addition to the problem of statistical outliers who do not benefit at all from a proposed project, there is also the problem of those people, however many or few, who benefit from the project but do not reap a net benefit from it once cost is figured in.
This last consideration is important, or else we’d grossly overproduce public parks and any other good thing that costs money and improves lives.
This is part of why I’m skeptical of broad notions like “public good” (although I’ll admit I no longer have any plausible line of reasoning that would eliminate the possibility that the government should build parks): the production of a “public good” is almost never accompanied by any attempt to weigh the improvements and personal costs involved according to any sort of rule-based criteria. Instead, whoever feels warm feelings for the park and whoever feels bad feelings go at it until they find out who has more pull with city hall.
Hans Hermann Hoppe likes to declare that he is doing a public service every time uses deoderant — he doesn’t mind his own stink and all who do are free riders — and that his use of it should therefore be subsidized. It’s silly, of course, but it illustrates the problem — public goods sound good in theory but the relationship between the theory and how things work out in reality is tenuous.
The guy who hurts himself is only there to point out that it’s okay to admit that masochists exist, while still maintaining that policies that affect everybody are justified by their benefit, rather than their harm (as almost everybody wants policies to be justified by their benefit, and only people who are irrational want policies to be justified by the amount of harm they can do). Wasn’t my best example, but couldn’t think of much more.
” weigh the improvements and personal costs involved according to any sort of rule-based criteria.”
I agree with you that this has to be done. It might be better to think of my stance on public goods, as with the paternalism point, as a focus on what the justification for the argument is. When I say government is justified in taxing for public goods, it means that they should frame their argument for the public good in the form “this is a public good, which is why we want to tax for it”. The argument should only be convincing if the public good is actually worth doing (and all the considerations you mentioned are relevant).
So for both public goods and paternalism, I’m trying to show how an argument could possibly be justified. Public goods give a possibly justified argument, but there are no cases where a paternalistic argument is justified. There are cases where a public goods argument is not justified, and cases where a non-paternalistic argument is not justified, but no cases where a paternalistic argument is justified.
So would you say that the value of the negative right not to be interfered with paternalistically is more valuable than all the possible positive rights that could be conferred by a paternalistic policy?
I’d take issue with the idea that there could be possible positive rights done through paternalism. To include every possible idea, I’ll structure positive rights as such:
If (I want X) -> X will be ensured for me
the “->” link is there for any “X” that is actually a positive right (so for any “X” where if I want it, it is my legal right to get it).
Paternalism is structured as such:
If (I want X) -> not X is ensured for me
the “->” link is paternalistic for any “X” when 1. I want “X”, and 2. government ensures that I do not get “X”, on the justification that I am better off without X than with X.
-Based on my understanding of paternalism and positive rights, I don’t see any possible “X” where both definitions could be satisfied. If we assume it is true that “I want X”, in order for both definitions to be met “X will be ensured for me” and “not X is ensured for me” have to be true at the same time, which isn’t logically possible. So I’d say there are no possible positive rights that could be granted through paternalistic policies, making it difficult to answer your question.