Against Prisons and Taxes
2. Morally Relevant Differences
changed the details of the case, we need to make sure that TX2—
which says that Jasmine is doing something wrong—is still plausible. But surely it is, even when we modify the procedure by which she extorts and kidnaps her neighbors.
Third, one might point out that government officials have been elected to serve as representatives of our interests, whereas Jasmine was not elected. This may indeed be a morally relevant difference, but we can again revise the case so as to circumvent it.
ELECTED VIGILANTE
Jasmine plans to start taking prisoners and demanding $50 at gunpoint from each of her neighbors to pay for the prisoners and a gym. Zhiwen thinks it would be better to demand $75, with the additional $25 going towards hiring a nurse to provide free medical care to anyone in the neighborhood.
Jasmine and Zhiwen let their neighbors vote on which of them should get to set the policies for kidnapping and extortion.
Many don’t vote but, of those who do, the majority prefer Jasmine. Zhiwen accepts the results of the election, and Jasmine begins kidnapping and extorting her neighbors.
It still seems as if Jasmine is doing something wrong. So TX2 remains true. And since Jasmine is elected in this revised case, the proposed objection to TX3 fails. Nor should it be any surprise that holding an election doesn’t make a difference. Suppose I order pizza for the whole class, and when it arrives we vote on who pays the bill. The majority of the students vote that you should pay, and so I point a gun at you and demand that you pay. That would be wrong, even though we voted on it.
Fourth, one might insist that it’s okay for the government to imprison criminals because it’s public knowledge what the laws are and what the penalties are for violating them, whereas Jasmine just starts kidnapping and extorting people out of nowhere. There’s an easy fix here as well. We simply build it into the story that, before she starts kidnapping people and demanding money at gunpoint, she puts up a large, laminated poster in the center of town, labeled ‘Jasmine’s Rules’, and once everyone has had a chance to read it, she begins locking up
violators in her basement and demanding money from her neighbors on threat of imprisonment.
Fifth, one might insist that taxation and imprisonment are morally justified because we would all be so much worse off without them. That’s almost certainly true, but it’s irrelevant.
Jasmine’s kidnapping and extortion are also making things better in her neighborhood. There are fewer con men, and the gym really is helping keep troubled kids off the street. So, this isn’t even a difference between the cases, let alone a morally relevant one.
Furthermore, just because something would make the world a better place, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s morally permissible for someone to bring it about. To see this, consider the following case:
SAINT AND SINNER
A saint and a sinner both need a kidney transplant, but there is only one kidney available. The saint refuses it and insists that it be given to the sinner. The doctor, knowing that the world will be better off if the saint survives than if the sinner survives, forcibly anesthetizes the saint and gives her the kidney against her wishes and without her consent. The saint (who would otherwise have died) goes on to live a long life and does many saintly things.
Surely you’ll agree that it was morally impermissible for the doctor to force the kidney upon the saint, even though the doctor’s actions made the world a better place on the whole.
Likewise, even if the world would be a worse place without someone locking up criminals and forcing the rest of us to help pay for it, that doesn’t mean it’s morally okay for anyone to actually do it.
Sixth, one might insist that the country belongs to the government, whereas the neighborhood does not belong to Jasmine, and that this is why the government but not Jasmine is allowed to do these things. But I see no more reason to think that the country literally belongs to the government than that some street corner literally belongs to the drug dealers that have claimed it. It’s true that the government acts like they own the place, and that they have enough power to cow people into letting
them do what they want. But there’s no good reason to think that some patch of the surface of the Earth is literally owned by the government. It’s just not plausible that the country and the neighborhood differ in this way.
Furthermore, even supposing that government owns the country, we can once again revise the case so as to circumvent the putative morally relevant difference:
LANDLORD
Jasmine owns an apartment complex and discovers that some of her tenants have been conning some of the other tenants.
She locks the con men in the basement of the complex, and plans to keep them there for a year as punishment. Jasmine then demands an additional $50 from each of her other tenants, to cover the expense of caring of her prisoners.
Tenants who do not comply are locked in the basement with the other prisoners.
It still seems as if Jasmine is doing something wrong. So TX2 remains true. And since Jasmine does own the apartment complex in this case, the envisaged morally relevant difference has disappeared, and the present objection to TX3 fails.