Otsuka’s Desert Island, Able and Unable.
A critique of Michael Otsuka's distributive justice of equally advantageous shares of worldly resources for each and his 'robust' conception of self-ownership.
Michael Otsuka advocates for a left libertarianism with an egalitarian proviso which only permits you to ‘acquire previously unowned worldly resources if and only if you leave enough so that everyone else can acquire an equally advantageous share of unowned worldly resources’ (24). Fortunately for readers he discusses this egalitarian proviso via the use of the desert island thought experiment genre, which, to my mind, almost always increases the vividness of political and moral theory.
Otsuka’s central example for the plausibility of this egalitarian proviso concerns a large man and a small man alone on a desert island with a single blanket (assumed to be a natural resource). Since this desert island is very cold, the large man will feel a very discomforting chill were he to get only half of the blanket, while, contrastingly, the small man would enjoy the luxury of wrapping it around himself twice. According to Otsuka: ‘Intuitively, it would be unfair for the smaller person to acquire half of the blanket rather than the lesser portion which would leave him as comfortable as the other’ (26).
From this thought experiment Otsuka discusses the instance of Able and Unable. On a different island Able is able bodied and only wishes to laze on the beach and do a bare minimum of work to support himself. Unable who is not capable of supporting himself due to his disabilities needs help. Without any food produced by Able going to Unable, Unable will die.
According to Otsuka the disabilities of Unable warrant a division of the island such that Able has no land, meaning, Able will have to negotiate with Unable for access to the land via which Unable will be able to extract enough food from Able to support himself. When simply considering the egalitarian proviso, Able ‘has no legitimate claim on the island’s resources’ (29).
Otsuka really believes this conclusion is unacceptable. According to him reconciling equality with a conception of self-ownership which permits people to be forced by necessity to give up life, limb or labour to others is nothing but ‘a Pyrrhic reconciliation’ (32). A Pyrrhic reconciliation because it appears to grant to right libertarians their contention self-ownership and equality are incompatible. Otsuka wants to show any conflict between self-ownership and equality ‘is largely an illusion’ though (11), allowing for redistribution but keeping the plausibility of self-ownership.
I want to show him he’s wrong on his own grounds.
In order to avoid this problem of ‘a Pyrrhic reconciliation’ Otsuka states self-ownership must be ‘robust’ (32) which means it must come with ‘enough worldly resources to ensure that one will not be forced by necessity to come to the assistance of others in a manner which involves the sacrifice of life, limb or labour’ (32). Otsuka just leaves it there; he avoids the problem he has created by a redefinition of self-ownership. Is this okay?
No. There are two elements to the robust conception of self-ownership both of which a libertarian of the rightist or leftist variety cannot accept. If being ‘forced by necessity’ to give up labour undermines self-ownership then the very nature of (some) people having to work to survive means reality violates our rights. Not living in the land of Cockaigne doesn’t violate our rights though, so, being forced by necessity to labour alone cannot be said to undermine self-ownership either. Indeed: This idea of nature violating rights is something Otsuka explicitly rejects.
Now does being ‘forced by necessity’ to help others via the sacrifice of life, limb, or labour plausibly undermine self-ownership? No. Imagine Able in order to survive had to knock down a very large pineapple from up a tree which he couldn’t eat all of by himself due to its sheer size (before it rots anyway). When we consider him alone his circumstances do not undermine his self-ownership as per the last paragraph.
If we imagine Unable suddenly washes up on the shore though and needs a small bit of the pineapple we are left with a counter intuitive verdict. Although Able was going to bring down the pineapple anyway and not have his self-ownership violated in the slightest, according to Otsuka, the mere presence of Unable means his self-ownership is undermined. This is because Otsuka per the robust conception believes Able being ‘forced by necessity’ to assist Unable violates his self-ownership. This is implausible.
Indeed, Able having to share the plentiful pineapple with Unable (to ensure welfare equality) is the same situation as the able bodied having to share their resources with the disabled today (because they not working results in their starvation), yet, Otsuka denies this latter sharing undermines self-ownership. So, Otsuka must admit the mere addition of the morally irrelevant scarcity of resources which only Able alone can consume does not undermine self-ownership either. Morally irrelevant scarcity because of the natural cause.
To emphasise this point: Where the pineapple is big enough to share ‘force by necessity’ to labour for himself and Unable undermines his self-ownership on the robust conception. This implies though were Able and Unable to have washed up earlier when the pineapple would only support Able, Able’s self-ownership would not be undermined because ‘force by necessity’ would not require him to labour for Unable (only himself). Together this ensures whether or not Able has full self-ownership or not on the island depends on the size of the pineapple. This is very suspect.
Perhaps it is thought the self-ownership of Able is not undermined when he’s alone and had to get the pineapple because the ‘force by necessity’ stems from the prospect of starvation alone. While when Unable arrives the ‘force by necessity’ stems from the prospect of drowning after Unable’s eviction of him. (Because Unable is granted all the land to give him the bargaining hand to equalise welfare). Along with Eric Mack’s self-ownership proviso, I would agree Able’s self-ownership is undermined, because, we are all roughly entitled to use resources which we could in the state of nature.
Otsuka though cannot rely on this self-ownership proviso because its moral foundations clash with his idea that the disabled are entitled to natural resources (which they could not acquire via original acquisition per Locke). Crucially, Otsuka takes no issue with evicting people from land per se which they have homestead where it is necessary to increase the bargaining hand of the disabled to ensure equality of welfare. He’d willingly grant ‘all the sea-front property’ to the disabled to ensure ‘the able-bodied each voluntarily purchase access to the beach in exchange for…food’ (33) (where the abled own the farms inland).
Right, let us tie this up together now. Given Otsuka takes no issue with evicting Able from the patch he occupies on the island per se to help Unable, his actual reason for opposing must be the threat made by Unable is too large, i.e., a some point the threat becomes large enough to undermine self-ownership.
The threat Unable makes is actually tiny though, because, Unable is threatening to drown Able if he doesn’t get the pineapple down, while, Able not getting the pineapple down because he doesn’t want to would result in his starvation. The net threat is minuscule to absent when it comes to setting back Able’s interests; he dies either way. Again, Otsuka should be fine with this tiny level of threat given he accepts the disabled can threaten the abled with comparatively worse eviction from good land they would otherwise own (getting good returns from it too) to ensure their equality of welfare with them.
For Otsuka then to claim self-ownership is violated in the pineapple case he must really rest his case on the ‘necessity of force’ stemming from the alternative prospect of starvation which would make Able have to get down the pineapple for himself, and, incidentally, Unable too. Note how we’re back to nature itself violating self-ownership because it does not always provide ‘enough worldly resources’ (32), essentially, a land of milk and honey for people. This idea of nature violating rights is something Otsuka explicitly rejects; ‘talk of rights violations has, I think, gone too far if it is based on a theory which implies that a falling stone can violate a human right’ (72).
The robust conception of self-ownership must be rejected then for nature itself cannot plausibly be said to violate any form of self-ownership. The buffer then to the egalitarian proviso fails, meaning, Unable is morally permitted to make Able work for him on the threat of withdrawing resources from him starving him out in the original example of the two given. Since Otsuka himself takes this conclusion to be unacceptable, I believe, buffer removed, he must reject, or, question at least, his egalitarian proviso given it leads him to it. Right libertarianism which has always rejected the egalitarian proviso stands partially vindicated.
All references are to Michael Otsuka’s Libertarianism without Inequality