Mill's Harm Principle

[Marat]

John Stuart Mill, one of the 19th century founders of modern liberalism, stated that no country respectful of human liberty should make anything illegal unless it was clearly objectively harmful to someone. While this seems to be a sensible criterion for determing what should justly be made illegal in contrast from what the state should leave people free to do, it would have some startling consequences. For example, would incest between consenting adults qualify as harmful or would it have to be made legal? What about necrophilia of corpses with no living relatives? What about sex between humans and animals? Should a society assume the right to make things illegal simply because they are distasteful or they are profoundly disturbing to ordinary moral intuitions, even if no one is actually physically harmed by allowing them? If we do accept that premise, then where do we draw the line? That would seem to allow a profoundly Christian state to force everyone to go to church on Sundays or pay a fine or go to prison.

[Pangloss]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to be making an argument for the libertarian concept of victimless crimes. Let's see if we can spur a discussion here. The Wikipedia has a good summary of the subject here, including both "pro" and "con" arguments:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victimless_crime

 

The standard opposition arguments are broadly categorized thus:

 

- "Group Rights" -- The will of the majority should be allowed to overrule a personal freedom (even if victimless) in a constitutional society through the appropriate application of law. Examples include gay marriage bans. (I disagree with this argument, btw, but I'll go ahead and throw it out there to encourage discussion in your thread.)

 

- "Inability to Consent" -- Some actions are taken through ignorance or misunderstanding of consequences. Drug use, for example, could be undertaken via misunderstanding of results, and then continued through addiction. Addiction can be viewed as an undermining of personal consent. (The problem with these arguments in my view is that they present others/governments as more qualified to judge and act, which opens a whole other can of worms.)

 

- "Good of Society" -- Sometimes actions have unintended consequences, such as creating "drug quarters" in a city, lowering property values for neighbors, etc. This is an interesting argument because it essentially denies the concept of victimless (in specific cases). A proponent might respond by saying that in such cases the freedom could be withdrawn under the concept of victimless crimes because the activity is no longer victimless, but of course changing a law is a huge battle, and opponents are basically saying here that these things can be considered in advance. In other words, it suggests that slippery-slope reasoning is an appropriate argument in a victimless crimes debate.

 

- "Good of the Individual" -- Unintended consequences applied to individuals (with most examples being connected to some degree to the arguments above). A typical example here being prostitution leading to a life of denigration and abuse, with the typical counter being that those results are based on other influences (economic, etc).

[Marat]

I think the answer to all the interesting problems you propose is that the only way to preserve the liberalism implicit in Mill's harm principle is to insist on very clear proofs of immediately harmful effects as the only criteria which can count for limiting human freedom. Since everything ultimately leads to everything else in a densely interconnected world, everything can be imagined to be harmful or beneficial, depending on which consequences and interactions we empathize.

 

Every choice everyone else adopts has some effect on my quality of life. If large numbers of people choose to be strict Roman Catholics, women may lose their abortion rights as a result of laws being changed or courts coming to be populated by judges with very different views from those of the Roe v. Wade court. If large numbers of people exercise their right to leave school in the 8th grade, there may be a doctor shortage which negatively impacts the physically disabled. We could try to say that we will allow people to inflict minor harms on others if the freedoms people gain by inflicting those harms mean more to them than the harms mean to those hurt, but then we would have some difficulty in calibrating whose harm outweighed whose freedom in a value-neutral way. Heinrich von Kleist, the German dramatist, used to say that the noise of church bells irritated him profoundly, but because the general value system of society favors religion, we don't regard bell ringing on a Sunday morning as a nuisance. But an explicit billboard ad for a pornographic film which we could more easily ignore than the noise of ringing churchbells would be regared as so harmful that it had to be forbidden.

 

In a democracy, where we trust people so much that we grant them the right to rule the country by their free choices, we should lean toward trusting them with the freedom to make their own errors and bear the consequences. But should that mean that people can drive motorcycles without a helmet in a country with a free public healthcare system?

 

Perhaps the most we can do with Mill's principle is take it as a general orientation towards our decisions about what to allow and what to forbid, with considerable limitations on the margins.

[Pangloss]

An interesting and thoughtful post. Unfortunately we live in a highly opinionated, reactionary, media-driven society. The very first single mom with three children who dies because she didn't like wearing her seat belt and it's all over, my friend.

 

 

Perhaps the most we can do with Mill's principle is take it as a general orientation towards our decisions about what to allow and what to forbid, with considerable limitations on the margins.

 

You may be right, and I can think of worse outcomes. The overall impact of libertarian sentiments in modern society is, I believe, a highly positive one.

[ParanoiA]

I think the answer to all the interesting problems you propose is that the only way to preserve the liberalism implicit in Mill's harm principle is to insist on very clear proofs of immediately harmful effects as the only criteria which can count for limiting human freedom.

 

Do you consider state confiscation of one's property as a limit of their freedom? I do. And while you could make an argument that *not* allowing the state to have a portion of everyone's property can cause harmful effects, such as lack of a military to protect against invasion, or whatnot, you'd still be left with no immediate harmful effects. It would appear taxation would violate Mill's harm principle.

 

Therefore, that answers this question:

 

But should that mean that people can drive motorcycles without a helmet in a country with a free public healthcare system?

 

I guess not, unless the government is generating revenue by some free market means in order to pay for that healthcare system.

 

Perhaps the most we can do with Mill's principle is take it as a general orientation towards our decisions about what to allow and what to forbid, with considerable limitations on the margins.

 

But see, there you initialize exception, from there human imagination will expand on that exception either positively or negatively - usually both.

 

The same exception that allows us to work around a principle in order to help one, provides the same precedence to hurt another.

[Marat]

A lot depends on how we measure harm. For example, on Hobbes' view it is certainly less harmful for an individual to live in a society where he is taxed to pay for public services and security than to live in a state of nature where he would not be taxed but where he and his fortune would be exposed to the insecurities of the natural world with no laws, no police, and no courts to protect order. But if we measure harm less globally then we would have to say that the taxes are immediately harmful to the person who loses money, just as the speed limits are harmful to someone who wants to drive somewhere quickly and without interference, at least until we raise our sights and look at the entire traffic system and see how harmfully risky driving on a road with no speed limits would be.

 

We are left without many rules to guide the use of Mill's principle beyond an earnest desire not to make more rules than are really beneficial to people's 'real needs' as opposed to legally enforcing the interests of people to manage other people's lives by imposing their own value systems them. Is there a rule or concept that rigorously shows why it is impermissible to insist that everyone go to church every Sunday because that will make them more moral on someone's theory and thus generate a less harmful society for everyone, but why it is permissible to insist that everyone obey the speed limits while driving, even if they are painfully inconvenient and thus harmful on some occasions? If it is all just a matter of degree or covert cultural values then Mill's harm principle can't provide much guidance.

[ParanoiA]

But see your second statement is a false dichotomy. It is also less harmful to live in a society where he is not taxed to pay for public services and security because those services are covered by harmless revenue solutions based on persuasive means. Forcible taxation is not the only way for a government to acquire funds. If even by donations only.

 

Speed limits are bad analogy because driving on public roads is not a right but a privilege. So speed limits are a reduction in benefit, not abridged freedom. Particularly if you define a privilege as an exception to do something that is otherwise illegal.

 

I actually like Mill's harm principle. But, I also agree that ultimately desperate imagination can undermine rigidity, particularly when social policy creates the imperative. I think for the most part, it could be implemented without exception. But not without a strong desire by society to solve problems by free association and respect, and to refuse the lust of the efficiency of coercion. No society like that exists.

Edited August 7, 2010 by ParanoiA