Rhetorical devices in The Myth of Ownership

This is the third article on the theories defended by Murphy and Nagel in their book The Myth of Ownership


It is a common complaint of philosophers that political debate is dominated by rhetoric. Murphy and Nagel agree with that view: they write that voters react to catchphrases and do not pay attention to more substantial arguments. Politics would improve by introducing into it higher standards for judging the reasons that are provided for different plans.

Certainly, philosophers might help in this respect, but then they should cease to write as if Bastiat, Bohm-Bawerk, Mises, Hayek, Friedman, and Hazlitt had never existed.[1] Moreover, we must not assume that philosophers would always be free from the same mistakes they want to correct in others.

There is a particular rhetorical device much in use through The Myth of Ownership. Again and again, when arguing for more distribution of goods by government's decision, the authors say that “the market generates economic inequalities”,[2] and discuss the allocation of the “entire social product”.[3] They tell us that “capitalism at its most successful will inevitably generate large upward inequalities”.[4] It seems only natural therefore, that they suggest ways to correct the problem. The market and capitalism are viewed like defective machines that must be fixed so that the result is the desired one.

The key word here is “generate”. Now, it is clear that the differences are caused by better products pushing bad ones out of the market, by good or bad decisions about the use of money, by the judicious or injudicious combination of raw materials, etc. People buying and selling goods take these differences into account. A new engine gives more power for less fuel, and it puts the makers of older models in deep trouble. Certainly, we may say that these are results generated by the market. But that is the same way in which we may say that exams generate differences among students. By using the expression we lose sight of the real causes. Certainly, Murphy and Nagel are not so unguarded as not to include, in passing, some words that indicate that differences “generated” by capitalism are in fact “generated” by other things.[5] But after erecting this protection for the rearguard, they go on ascribing the generation of differences to capitalism and the market, which puts the focus where it is rhetorically useful.

If we think that the changes refer to a mechanism, it is easier to accept plans to fix it. It does not seem to concern any person's liberty and rights. And we forget for a fatal moment that we are talking about people’s plans, efforts, mistakes, and achievements –not just about a mechanism or a system. That this is the truth is clear: otherwise it would be impossible to say why, out of nothing, the system generates differences.

Dismissing personal achievement and the money that result from personal effort, Murphy and Nagel write: “You may say, I am entitled to it because it was my effort and talent that produced it or because people whose money it was decide to give it to me. But what I or they earn from given expenditure of effort and talent or from any investment luck depends entirely (??) on the political settlement in force when we earned it, so it wholly begs the question to say that I am entitled to a particular political settlement to one that reduces my taxes, for instance because it better protects what I have earned or been given. If we changed the political settlement in some important way, I would earn or inherit less or more”.[6]

So, we have learned that the way to avoid begging the question is to say that governments can make taxes higher without taking money that belongs to us because governments could have made taxes higher and then that money would have not belonged to us.

Jeremy Waldron, a professor of law and philosophy at the universities of New York and Oxford, writes in a similar way that “There is no sense to the idea that talents can simply be exercised by those who own them apart from any social framework whatsoever. And there is no sense to the idea that there is a natural phenomenon called ‘reaping the benefits of one’s talents’ which is understood apart from the social arrangements and institutions that define one’s relationships to other people”.[7]

Ronald Dworkin’s attempt to sweep the real causes of wealth under the carpet is based on a different rhetorical device. He writes that “the usual arguments that supposedly demonstrate that pretax income is ‘my’ money are incoherent. The only coherent such argument supposes that the accident of first possession gives rise to a moral entitlement”.[8] So, I have my salary because –somehow– it first landed in my hands. I was the first to take it, that is all. The fact that someone freely decided to hire my services and pay for them is of no relevance. So is irrelevant the fact that I actually worked to earn it. In a similar way, Edison just put his hands on some light bulbs that were laying there. And without the philosophical insight we now enjoy, he might have thought that by grabbing them first he had some moral right to the fortune he made with them.

Dworkin attributes the delusion of ownership –which so many people suffer– to the fact that taxes appear in their pay slips as a deduction of their salaries.[9] Even more confusion is created in his opinion by the fact that the rich –by which he must mean those who do not receive salaries, e.g. grocers, barbers, and Bill Gates– are allowed a delay between the time they receive their income and pay their taxes. Dworkin tells us that  “these are mere accidents of efficient tax accounting”.

But there is a more fundamental delay that is not accidental: the delay between the creation of wealth and the payment of taxes with a portion of it. There is a delay between the harvest has been collected and the government receives a portion of it in the form of taxes. There is a necessary delay involved when the doctor treats his client, receives his pay, and pays his tax. If we dismiss that as accidental, if try to bury it under a mass of truly conventional details (Dworkin mentions the fact that payment of some taxes is done in quarterly installments, or that the final payment is on April 15), we would not have helped to reduce the number of rhetorical traps from which philosophers complain. We would have contributed with another one.

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[1] Of course, the enumeration is imperfect and does not suggest that these authors share a single view. Nevertheless there is one thing in common among them: their arguments are seldom or never answered by those who argue for bigger government.

[2] P. 67.

[3] P. 79.

[4] P. 186. Similar words on page 181.

[5] P. 17 and 67.

[6] Ps. 124-125.

[7] The Right to Private Property, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1988, p. 404.

[8] Is Democracy Possible Here? p. 125.

[9] Same page.