Arguments for a UBI – The Libertarian

This post is part of the sequence Arguments for a Universal Basic Income.

Freedom from Gouging

Price gouging is a specific type of market failure that occurs when someone’s life is at stake.  As an example, in drought conditions, even though water may quite legitimately be expensive, it is possible for a water seller to make even higher profits than this, due to the desperation of the people in question.  If they had the time to shop around, they might be able to buy water at the (albeit expensive, due to the shortage) market rate, but they do not have time – they are dying of thirst, so would give the water seller the deeds to their house if it meant not dying.  There is a similar problem with money – ultimately in modern society we need money to survive.  It is essential for food, water and shelter, and without it your life is at risk.  People in desperate need of money are willing to do all sorts of things that they ordinarily wouldn’t even consider.

There are a great many jobs and activities that are considered by some to be distasteful, dangerous or both, and yet there are still people that do them.  The issue is whether they are happy to do the job, simply considering it less distasteful than most, or being more comfortable with the risk than most.  The alternative is that they are being coerced into doing it, which would mean that their freedom is being infringed upon.  Whilst no individual is threatening them by putting a gun to their head, a person is still being coerced into doing something when the alternative is death, or at the very least, putting their life or the life of their family at immediate risk.  This is the reason why even in the late 20^th century, a coal miner would risk their life every day in a coal mine, and die early of silicosis – the alternative was that their family might starve.  This is one of the reasons that paid organ donation is illegal in the UK and the US – whilst there are some people that despite being well off, might be comfortable selling one of their kidneys for several tens if not hundreds of thousands of pounds, there are many desperate people that would sell a kidney for a few hundred pounds, far below the market rate, because that money would allow them to live a few more weeks.  This is also one of the key reasons that many people view legal prostitution as morally wrong – even if the person has not been trafficked, and is not providing these services against their will, there is still the possibility that they are being forced into it by their poverty.  Only when we can be sure that no-one is being coerced into these situations, can we be sure that there is no ethical issue with the libertarian argument that people should be able to do anything that doesn’t negatively impact someone else.

It is often a stipulation of state benefit systems that people must be willing to take any jobs that they are qualified for.  This means that if something were considered a viable job, but you were unwilling to do it, you would not be eligible for benefits.  Whilst this might at first seem reasonable – “why should the government pay for someone that considers themselves above working in a fast food restaurant?”, this allows people to be coerced into jobs that are less benign.  Should someone today be in the situation of a coal miner 50 years ago, forced to work in conditions they perceive to be unsafe, to provide for their family? To go even further, if prostitution were fully legalised, should benefits be denied to someone that refuses to go into that line of work?  Clearly not, and yet all of these exceptions require further policing, checking and bureaucracy, else they become accidental by-products of ill-conceived legislation.

This therefore is the benefit of a Universal Basic Income: under such a system, this robust safety net would ensure that no-one was being “price gouged”, as no-one’s life would be in immediate danger.  This would then remove some (though perhaps not all) of the obstacles in the way of a truly libertarian society.  Of course, in a similar vein to the Capitalist argument, this would likely result in dangerous jobs paying more, increasing the drive for safety, as the only people willing to work such jobs would be people that hadn’t been coerced.  Without coercion, people are generally disinclined to risk their lives without significant reward.  As Bertrand Russell wrote:

 “Anarchism has the advantage as regards liberty, Socialism as regards the inducement to work.  Can we not find a method of combining these two advantages?  It seems to me that we can.” … “Stated in more familiar terms, the plan we are advocating amounts essentially to this: that a certain small income, sufficient for necessaries, should be secured to all, whether they work or not, and that a larger income – as much larger as might be warranted by the total amount of commodities produced – should be given to those who are willing to engage in some work which the community recognizes as useful.”

In ensuring that a base level of income is maintained, we can allow a far greater level of freedom in society than could be sustained without it.

Of course, how a Universal Basic Income is funded may change how libertarian it can be considered to be.  An income tax for example, as proposed in the Accountant section is perhaps not the method a libertarian would prefer.  It is however a fact that in most developed countries there is an income tax already, and that doesn’t look likely to change in the near future.  As such, it seems a worthwhile policy to employ, given the ethical quandaries it avoids.