Are economic liberalism and social liberalism compatible?
By economic liberalism I understand the freedom of the individual to make his or her (or its in the case of corporate entities) own decisions concenring the acquisition of goods and services, including things like health care. By social liberalism, I understand the freedom of the individual to do whatever he or she likes providing it does not interfere with others. Please correct me if these definitions are inadequate.
Economic liberalism would appear to enable those who already have resources to use them to gain more, hence generating ever increasing inequality. Given human nature, I would have thought that it is also likely to result in short-term decisions that deplete essential resources in the long-term.
Answer:
I have heard (read) the argument that you can not have one without the other. For their to be true social liberation, then their must be economic liberation first... I have also read the opposite. Some of the more active libertarian authors, like most of those belonging to the Austrian school (Mises, Böhm-Bawerk, et al) and the Chicago school (Friedmen, et al... though to a lesser degree today). See my references. I would also look up Nozick, but if you read Nozick, you really should read Rawles for reference and if you read Rawles you should read Locke... and well, you get the idea.
I am not totally familiar with Sen (see references), but I believe he argues something along the lines of the later.
That said, to answer your question more directly, yes, they are compatible. Henry George attempted to answer this very question over 100 years ago and chronicled this in his book "Progress and Poverty". (See references) In contemporary economics, Georgists aside, the prevailing notion is that a trade exists between efficiency and equity. Or rather, we can not have a totally free market and a totally free society at the same time. Which, given the current paradigm is largely true. Indeed, the very notion of an income tax is contrary to social liberalism and economic liberalism at the same time. The argument for a tax on income (wages) is that it is better then any other alternative.
The argument against, from a social justice perspective, is as follows. Consider you are a man alone in the wilderness. Maybe God created you, maybe you evolved, it doesn't matter. Either way, in this state of nature, we can probably agree that you own yourself and by extension all people own themselves. This implies that anything you do with yourself, you also own fully. For example, let's say there is an apple tree and you pick some apples, you have mixed your labor with the land and the product then becomes wholly yours (since, in this state of nature, the land belongs to no one). Locke went on to say, let's say there are many apple trees and many people and I pick all the apples. If I pick all the apples and then they go to waste this would be a problem, but after money was created, this was no longer a problem. I can no sell my apples for other goods and store the value of my labor in some transient vehicle (like money). The other issue, for Locke, was the scarcity of land (as much as, and as good as for others), but he said that the bounty of the New World was so large as it would never be a problem (and we see how well that worked out).
The argument against, from a perspective of efficiency, is that to tax anything which is being produced, in this case labor, provides a disincentive to continue producing it at the rate when it was not taxed. This is actually a complicated problem when it comes to labor, so I will simply leave it at that; however, I will add very quickly that it has something to do with the Laffer Curve and you can see the references if you wish to explore this idea further.
In your second paragraph, you make the observation that it doesn't seem to be a question of the rich getting so much, as it is a question of resource scarcity and who has control of those resources. For that, I point you to the third of my references, when Henry George was attempting to answer the very question you are asking this observation ended up being crucial to his thesis.
Libertarians favor less regulation in both social and economic topics.
The Tories believe in that, or used to.
within reason..a subject that bodes ill for liberals
umm not in american social liberalism. (which is actually economic conservativism)
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Economic liberalism would appear to enable those who already have resources to use them to gain more, hence generating ever increasing inequality. Given human nature, I would have thought that it is also likely to result in short-term decisions that deplete essential resources in the long-term.
Answer:
I have heard (read) the argument that you can not have one without the other. For their to be true social liberation, then their must be economic liberation first... I have also read the opposite. Some of the more active libertarian authors, like most of those belonging to the Austrian school (Mises, Böhm-Bawerk, et al) and the Chicago school (Friedmen, et al... though to a lesser degree today). See my references. I would also look up Nozick, but if you read Nozick, you really should read Rawles for reference and if you read Rawles you should read Locke... and well, you get the idea.
I am not totally familiar with Sen (see references), but I believe he argues something along the lines of the later.
That said, to answer your question more directly, yes, they are compatible. Henry George attempted to answer this very question over 100 years ago and chronicled this in his book "Progress and Poverty". (See references) In contemporary economics, Georgists aside, the prevailing notion is that a trade exists between efficiency and equity. Or rather, we can not have a totally free market and a totally free society at the same time. Which, given the current paradigm is largely true. Indeed, the very notion of an income tax is contrary to social liberalism and economic liberalism at the same time. The argument for a tax on income (wages) is that it is better then any other alternative.
The argument against, from a social justice perspective, is as follows. Consider you are a man alone in the wilderness. Maybe God created you, maybe you evolved, it doesn't matter. Either way, in this state of nature, we can probably agree that you own yourself and by extension all people own themselves. This implies that anything you do with yourself, you also own fully. For example, let's say there is an apple tree and you pick some apples, you have mixed your labor with the land and the product then becomes wholly yours (since, in this state of nature, the land belongs to no one). Locke went on to say, let's say there are many apple trees and many people and I pick all the apples. If I pick all the apples and then they go to waste this would be a problem, but after money was created, this was no longer a problem. I can no sell my apples for other goods and store the value of my labor in some transient vehicle (like money). The other issue, for Locke, was the scarcity of land (as much as, and as good as for others), but he said that the bounty of the New World was so large as it would never be a problem (and we see how well that worked out).
The argument against, from a perspective of efficiency, is that to tax anything which is being produced, in this case labor, provides a disincentive to continue producing it at the rate when it was not taxed. This is actually a complicated problem when it comes to labor, so I will simply leave it at that; however, I will add very quickly that it has something to do with the Laffer Curve and you can see the references if you wish to explore this idea further.
In your second paragraph, you make the observation that it doesn't seem to be a question of the rich getting so much, as it is a question of resource scarcity and who has control of those resources. For that, I point you to the third of my references, when Henry George was attempting to answer the very question you are asking this observation ended up being crucial to his thesis.
Libertarians favor less regulation in both social and economic topics.
The Tories believe in that, or used to.
within reason..a subject that bodes ill for liberals
umm not in american social liberalism. (which is actually economic conservativism)
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