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| Ann
Speaking
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 One problem here is with the concept of freedom being used. On the libertarian view if a person is faced with several horrible options and chooses to work for a
pittance, that choice is considered free or voluntary. And because it is free, it must be defended. I would
like to suggest that this is not the way the words 'free' or 'voluntary'
are ordinarily used. Most people would describe these situations by saying "he had no choice." Consider two situations: (1) a middle class office worker chooses to engage in dangerous mountain climbing, and (2) a woman in Thailand takes a job in a dangerous sweatshop to avoid malnutrition, begging, or prostitution. In the first case, we can say that the person involved chooses freely; and that matters for our thoughts about whether we should interfere with her rather dangerous choice. But what about the second case? Is it really the same? If Professor Nozick of Harvard turns down an offer from Princeton, we regard his choice as free precisely because he makes it from a secure and comfortable position in which he has many appealing options. Nothing of the sort applies to the woman in Thailand. A century ago Leonard Hobhouse, the British philosopher and sociologist, criticized the views of 19th-century liberalism -- what we now call "classical liberalism." He talked about what he called "effective liberty." When a worker with little or no means of support bargained with an employer for a job, he was effectively helpless. Although he was formally or legally free to decline whatever he was offered, he had no effective liberty. It seems to me that this is the situation in much of the world today. I think it provides an excellent argument in favor of intervention on behalf of wage earners. Another way of putting it is to say that employers and job seekers do not have the same market power. In many cases one is weak and the other is strong. In this situation the choice made by the weaker party cannot be called free. If the government places restrictions on wage contracts, it is in order to increase the power of the weaker party or compensate for the power of the stronger party. In doing so, the government is actually creating the conditions for a freely chosen contract. |
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