Customer Reviews

The Cost of Rights: Why Liberty Depends on Taxes

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

This book covers an important issue that is rarely bought up: liberty, rights etc. depend of an enforcement mechanism.

And this enforcement mechanism is government. Weak governments (such as those of the current Russia) cannot guarantee property rights or any other rights for their citizens. Anyone who feels they can establish their rights without government should visit Somalia and see how easy or difficult it is in the absence of government.

How would you establish right to a plot of land, for instance, without a title, some means of enforcing property laws ?

The Founding Fathers most certainly recognized the value of government -- thats why they wrote the Constitution, because the Articles of Confederation proved inadequate. They also provided the government with the means to fund itself -- through tarrifs, which are just another form of taxes. This is something the authors do indeed support, and at least two of the 1-star reviews lead me to conclude the authors never got beyond the title.

Finally, the Constition does indeed provide powers to the States. But is unclear why this should necessarily please someone who claims that governments take away all rights, since the states are also run by governments. In fact, historically, the states have had practically all the powers (public schools, eminent domain, property taxes) etc. etc. that libertarian types find distasteful.

This book is NOT a call for higher taxes, and it recognizes the tax-and-spend problems as well.

While it wasn't the most exciting book I've read, "The Cost of Rights" was a refreshing twist on the taxes issue. It challenged opponents of the current tax system or any tax system to think critically on the subject. I felt that Holmes' and Sunstein's approach was more effective than a listing of statistics. Rather than explaining economic reasons for taxes, they brought it to a level that related more to readers. Everyone has a reason to be interested in the preservation of his or her own rights. Without taxes for government support, we could not be guaranteed equal representation before the law. Taxes pay for law enforcement and other government services that are vital to our liberty. Without taxes, no one would every truly own property. Taxes serve as the standard for American's to exist and be governed by. They do not discern our morals, but instead preserve our rights. In "The Cost of Rights", the case for taxes was presented in such a way that I couldn't see liberty without some sort of tax system.

The authors make a valiant attempt to remove an artificial distinction between 'rights' and 'entitlements' , a distinction often used by right wing commentators to add moral stature to right wing parties chosen methodology of rewarding their constituency. The point is obvious, freedoms, like benefits, incur costs, borne by society as a whole. The political debate should therefore always be a question of cost and benefit, rather than some idealised debate about rights or entitlements. The authors take a long time to explain this point, but given previous reviews, perhaps not long enough.

At the very least, reading the Cost of Rights will broaden your prespective beyond the narrowly drawn libertarian/liberal/conservative catagories that have become so ingrained in modern American political thought. Many of the points made in the book are such that they seem obvious once you have read them, though you never in a million years would have thought of them yourself. It's true, for example, that the so-called "negative rights" (rights against governmental interferance) are just as much dependant on governmental enforcement and hence taxpayer dollars as are welfare, medicare, and medicaid. Police forces, court trials, governmental oversight all cost money, and without such well run institutions one's rights are all but nonexistent. It is also the case, though we often forget it, that resources are insufficiant to fund all the rights that people could ever justifiably want or demand.

All of this is well and good, but in Holmes and Sunstein's hands, it fails to translate ino a workable agenda for American politics. Having read the book, I feel that I've gained a broader perspective on legal and political issues, but the practical effects of that broader perspective seem to be nil. In the second half of the book, the authors also begin to confuse legal rights with moral rights, leading to some confused argumentation.

It is the fashion to disparage government and all its works these days. Sunstein and Holmes have given this timely reminder that Constitutional and property rights only have meaning if they can be enforced BY the government (that is, by courts, executive agencies, police departments, disaster relief, and the like). The book is flawed to the extent that seems to call for affirmative rights to public services (social workers, police) to be enforced by judges. Such a state of affairs would totally undercut the majority-rule principle of democratic society. However, the book is a welcome antidote to the trendy, bumper-sticker diatribes against the evils of government. We need a serious dialogue on the proper (and limited) functions of government in the new global economy, not more slogans. If you like this book, also look at Garry Wills's "Necessary Evil" (which does a better job with historical background) and Brinkley's "New Federalist Papers."

If you're not supposed to judge a book by its cover, perhaps you should also not judge a book by its title. While this title seems like a natural cure for somnambulism, next to sex and death, I found the content very interesting.

Since our founding, many Americans have believed that taxes have robbed us of our freedom, that it is big government imposing its will on a grudging public, and that taxes and liberties are antithetical. Authors, Stephen Holmes and Cass Sunstein make a simple counter proposition: liberty depends on taxes. Liberty costs money. Without money their could be no freedom and without a government there would be no one to ensure that our rights were preserved. Government is not some outside force that dominates our political and social fabric. The authors contend that government is the most effective means for "a politically organized society [to] pursue its common objectives, including the shared aim of securing the protection of legal rights for all."

Even negative liberties, a term which means that the government imposes restraining forces upon itself in dealing with its citizens, cost money e.g. the recent ruling in which religious extremists are allowed to desecrate the funeral services and burial of our servicemen and women, required a government intervention such as the Supreme Court, and may still require government intervention, such as polic, in protecting mourners or those who taunt them out of misguided religious zeal. Again, all these liberties are costs that we accept. The authors find even negative rights are positive.

If the cost of certain liberties are too much as some citizens claim, then they are unwilling for their taxes to be used to pay for them, or the citizen-government will simply decide that these costs are too high. A case in point is the rich kid who gets into trouble, whose parents can retain topnotch lawyers for the defense of their son. This cannot be said of the kid from the ghetto who is arrested. Can the government pay for the each and every citizen getting a reputable lawyer for every defendant? Maybe, but do they want to? No. That liberty or right is a price government finds too much.

The citizen might object to paying taxes for healthcare for the poor, while already paying taxes for veterans, who are wounded, injured, or just old. In fact taxes for welfare actually began after the Civil War in providing prostheses and medical attention to the veterans.

Liberties are choices, and the choices depend on the money available to enforce them. Each tax does not have to be listed as a taxable item in the Constitution for the taxes to be valid and legal, as some misguided interpretations of the document suggest. That argument is most common on "hot button" issues such as prayer in public. One side might claim that it is freedom of speech demanding government support while the other side believes it is imposing a religious belief and violates their freedom.

The book is divided into four sections: why a penniless state cannot protect rights; why rights cannot be absolutes; why rights entail responsibilities, understanding rights as a bargain, and the public character of private freedoms. These sections have chapters of their own.

Twice now in a short time, I have found a valuable source for a segment of the public that needs it the most, will probably not because of one of the authors' name--Cass Sunstein. He is vilified on right wing radio and Fox TV even though his scholarship in the law is evident in his multiple publications. The authors are not advocating a particular political stance. They are dispassionate in their description of the relationship between liberties and taxes. Their simple claim is that liberty does not survive without a government or taxes.

As Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence, "...to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men."

As the authors say at some passage in the text, biblically simple ideas can make a profound difference. They say this when it comes to stress the importance of values like truth, honesty and integrity. We could also say the same about "loving your neighbor as yourself", the core of equality and reciprocity. This book is an example of how you can do much by sticking to simple assumptions. I must say that I appreciate Sunstein and Holmes a lot, and try to read all that thy write.

Steven Holmes and Cass Sunstein have made a strong case, in this and their other writings, that while we can appreciate and defend free enterprise, private property, private media, free exercise of religion, and so on, we still need a strong State to impose liberal constraints on private power.

In fact, that's what classical social contract theory is all about. The State is created by a social contract to protect individuals from one another, since the state of nature is a state of war between men, in which man is a wolf to other man.
Historically, the liberal revolutions were fought against not only absolute monarchs, but also against authoritarian churches, catholic and protestant, that used State power as a secular arm ("braccio seculare") to impose their own dogmas to believers and non believers, thus excercising an undue "power over the hearts of man" (Baruch Spinoza).

While we should advocate a strong marketplace of ideas (including religious ones), and while we should appreciate religion contribution to civic virtues, we still have to protect our liberal institutions from ilegitimate attempts to get these institutions under the control of iliberal and anti-liberal religious dogmas that want to fight equal religious liberty for all citizens and groups alike, believers and non-believers, men and women, adults and children, black and white, gay and straight. That's what separation of religious communities and State is all about.

When we think of Enron, for instance, we realize that corporations can be a Leviathan to many defenseless citizens, by totally destroying their life savings and prospects, with profound psicological consequences. That's plain evil. More, we realize that some already rich man will evade their duties of citizenship and civility (v.g. the duty of paying taxes) to get even more rich.

I am in favor of a strong market economy. It allows for human creativity, it creates wealth, it creates habits of work, trust and tolerance, it decentralizes authority, and by doing this it can further human rights.

But I think that only a robust liberal State, with strong legislative, administrative and judicial branches, can counter the threat to liberty, security and well being that some corporations here and there may represent. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, as Lord Acton said. Only a strong liberal State can make, market economy both possible and credible.

Originally liberals are defenders of the State, an institution tipical of a civilized society. John Locke is the main example here. The liberal State is a mark of rationalization and civilization, as german philosopher G.F. Hegel would put it. That's why Oliver Wendell Holmes used to say that taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society. I totally agree with that. Liberal thought fears both authoritarian states, weak states or anarchy. In all these situations the strongest will prevail at the expense of the weak.

Of course much needs to be done to better the State, to make it more just, transparent and efficient. A lot can be done, if there is the political will to do this. One of the reasons why state reform is so difficult has to do with the way private interests, lobbies, and naked preferences take the dominance and try to use the monopoly of legitimate coercion to further their own ends. That's why a civic republican liberalism is so important when it comes to reform the State.

I think there is plenty of room for a strong and commited "intelligent design movement" in politics and institution building that is able to come up with liberating public institutions that support a liberating private sphere.

But one thing is certain: evading the cost of rights will, in the end, be evading their benefits too. Sunstein and Holmes... we got it.

The authors present a well written view of how the exercise of individual rights cost money if those rights are to be accomplished reasonably and in the abscence of armed force on the part of the individual. A number of previous reviewers have sanctimoniously and self righteously assumed for the book objectives far beyound its meager size and intent. I suspect they are the usual (1) "no gummint is good gummint" and (2) "no taxes is good taxes" types who feel that God, or something, made them exempt from cooperating with other people - a general description of so-called libertarians and far-right conservatives. In other words, their rights are paramount and they have no responsibilities or accountability. That road appears by magical thinking, as did garbage delivery and the sheriff's department in their view. They don't owe anyone anything for any reason, and they will shoot you to prove it. Sounds like they did not get socialized in K-12. Read the book for its intent, which is to object to "no gummint and taxes" movement in the US over the past decades which has brought us a really sorry pass and nearly into a form of fascism light. Holmes and Sunstein have done a great service here by raising substantive counter arguments to the "screw you, I got mine" groups in this era.

This book is correct that even limited government types view some government as necessary and that this requires some taxes for government to fulfill its role. Conservatives support property rights and this frequently requires government protection (though not always). But even after reading this book I fail to see where the problem is. Government has costs and conservatives or libertarians would argue that you try to limit government to those things that it has the biggest advantages to providing. Is this a new point? Is there some deep contradiction here? How Holmes and Sunstein can argue that these limited government types do not deal with why they prefer some government to no government is a mystery to me. Possibly the authors would benefit from reading books by Milton Friedman or F.A. Hayek. Friedman supports government defending property rights and I personally think that his books do a pretty good job explaining why governments are more preferred to perform certain activities than others. Using economic jargon such as "opportunity costs" adds nothing new to the debate (especially since economists have already used the term in this context).

I was shocked at how badly reasoned this book is, considering Sunstein's high profile. Its argument rests entirely on overgeneralizations, broad, vague language and cheap rhetorical devices that wouldn't challenge a high school debater to refute.

The authors' strategy seems to be to take low-frequency events, like an occasional fire or theft, the response to which comes typically (but not exclusively) from government, and extrapolate from that observation to argue that all individual rights are substantially dependent on government to effectuate; ergo, all rights are determined by government. This is literally the path and level of generality of the argument.

Obviously, their argument is illogical when applied to the individual rights expressed in the Bill of Rights, all of which require that the government refrain from acting. Their argument, indeed, seems to be written about some bizarro-universe version of the United States, in which the fundamental principles stated in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, that the people of the United States are fundamentally endowed with an inalienable right to liberty outside of and regardless of the government they form, are turned inside out so that liberty is derived from government. Consider these statements from the first chapter: "Under American law, rights are powers granted by the political community" and "Personal liberty, as Americans value and experience it, presupposes social cooperation managed by government officials." There you go, your liberty only exists because "social cooperation" is "managed by government officials." They seem blind to the fact that the vast majority of citizens have historically respected each other's rights voluntarily and require no management by government officials as the phrase "law-abiding citizens" implies. They also ignore the fact that the actions of government officials tend to impair citizens' rights as much as they protect any.

Consider also this statement: "The individual rights of Americans, including the right to private property, are generally funded by taxes, not fees." Who knew that the right to your own religious beliefs, or the right to have the police not search your home arbitrarily, was "funded by taxes"? They make government sound like a protection racket - you pay us da taxes, we leave you alone til next year. But they're serious! I mean, these are some of the most idiotic statements I can recall reading on a topic of this importance.

Also, by using the broadest language they can to talk about rights and government action, the authors plainly seek to elevate the progressive left's agenda of having government provide a middle class lifestyle to all residents to the same plane as the rights embodied in the Bill of Rights, which are expressed in an entirely different manner, as the right to have government not interfere with certain private activities.

One of the worst books I have ever read and as low a rating as I could give one.