“Duties” vs. Obligations

In my latest Forbes.com column (co-authored by Yaron Brook), “What’s Missing from the Budget Debate,” I argue that to cut the entitlement state, you have to reject the morality of need and defend the individual’s right to live and work solely for his own sake. Ira Stoll at Future of Capitalism raises an interesting objection:

I don’t think it’s necessary to reject responsibility for your brother or your neighbor in order to support some entitlement reform or reductions. It’s possible to accept responsibility (or choose to accept responsibility) for your brother or neighbor, without accepting it for all Americans, or for the whole world. One can have different levels of obligation to people in different circles. At issue in the entitlement debate Messrs. Brook and Watkins are writing about is what obligation, if any, Americans have to each other as Americans, since not even the far left, so far as I can tell, is talking about including the entire world’s population into Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.

Here’s my response, posted in his comments:

Thanks for taking note of our column, Ira, and for your thoughtful comments. I think, however, that framing the issue in terms of “circles of obligation” clouds the issue because it blurs a crucial distinction: obligations an individual voluntarily accepts in pursuit of his own interests, and unchosen obligations an individual supposedly has that demand him to sacrifice his interests.

I would argue that a person pursuing his self-interest has all sorts of voluntarily-accepted obligations. For instance, I have obligations to treat my wife a certain way, not as some painful duty, but in order to foster a relationship that means a tremendous amount to me. Similarly, I’m contractually obligated to write the best columns I can for my employer.

That is radically different from the idea that there are people I have a self-sacrificial duty to help regardless of their value to me. Once you accept that idea, it doesn’t matter whether you happen to think it applies only to certain others. You’ve conceded the essential issue: the individual is not sovereign, and the needs of his neighbor trump his pursuit of happiness. It’s hard to see how you can then defend against the person who says that your “neighbor” ought to include your entire town, or city, or county, or planet. Indeed, isn’t that what moralists like Peter Singer (to say nothing of Christian theorists) have argued?

In my view, you can’t fight the welfare state by defending the welfare town. You have to fight for the individual’s moral and political right to pursue his own self-interest.

Ayn Rand addresses some of these issues at http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/charity.html andhttp://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/sacrifice.html. I encourage anyone interested to take a look.

Read more at The Ayn Rand Center