The following paper was presented at the Advanced Seminar at the 8th IOS Summer Seminar, July 5-12, 1997.
Living in a civilized society presents many opportunities for "free riding", i.e. for gaining benefits from the efforts of others without contributing to these efforts.
In mainstream academic writing, both in ethics and in economics, free riding is regarded as a serious problem. Economists regard the possibility for free-riding as a problem for the free market, justifying government intervention. Writers on ethics regard cases of free-riding as examples of "prisoner's dilemma" situations, demonstrating the harmfulness of egoism.
The free-rider issue is often seen as central to social morality, because of the premise that an individual's self-interest is to interact with others by force and fraud, and that the only reason for avoiding them, or for cooperating with others, is the benefit of living in a society in which people generally act in this way. Thus, the question of whether one should use force or fraud towards others becomes the question of whether one should free-ride on the benefits of the society created by others who avoid force and fraud, or whether one should contribute to the existence of such a society by avoiding force and fraud oneself.[1]
In this paper, I present an outline of what I believe to be the correct Objectivist treatment of the free-rider issue. The position I defend is that there is nothing wrong with being a free-rider, and that the possibility of free-riding does not represent an ethical or social problem.
David Kelley on free-riding
David Kelley, in Unrugged Individualism, in the context of discussing the rational, egoistic motives for offering help to others in emergencies, provides a view of the essential Objectivist approach to the issue of free-riding. This, so far, has been the only Objectivist discussion of the issue in print. I developed my own position on this issue mainly by thinking through my disagreement with Kelley, and this paper focuses on presenting this disagreement.
Kelley writes:
It is to the benefit of each of us to live in a society where people extend help in [emergency situations]. If I am a victim, it is certainly to my benefit to receive help; my life may depend on it. But there cannot be a society in which such help is available unless people extend help when they can. Not to do so is therefore to be a free-rider. Someone who would accept help in an emergency but would not provide it to others is acting on the premise of seeking something for nothing. He is seeking a benefit without the effort of producing that benefit; he wants to obtain an end without pursuing the necessary means. His action is therefore incompatible with independence and responsibility, which require that we make our own actions the causes of the benefits we enjoy, rather than depending on others to provide those benefits for us. [2]
Kelley later[3] states that "the desire not to be a free-rider" is an important and rational motive for other, non-emergency instances of generosity, such as financial support of charitable organizations.
Kelley thus seems to share the mainstream attitude of regarding free-riding as an ethical problem, though not the view that this constitutes a problem for egoism. Note that, while Kelley grants the issue a far narrower scope of significance than that assumed by writers such as Gauthier, the structure of his argument is the same; one needs to act in a certain way - in Gauthier's version, avoid force and fraud; in Kelley's version, offer help to others in emergencies - because of the benefit one gains from living in a society in which people act in this way, and in order therefore not to be a free-rider on the efforts of others who make such a society possible. This similarity is carried even further by Roger Donway ("The Roundtable", IOS Journal, vol 6., no. 4, p. 7), when he posits a tacit social insurance-like contract, mediated by custom, of assisting each other in emergencies. I submit that such similarity in the arguments should be a warning signal; given how far apart the basic premises of Objectivism and of writers such as Gauthier are, it seems unlikely that a correct application of Objectivism would result in an argument that is so similar in its details. [4]
In his reply to my letter in the IOS Journal ("The Roundtable", vol. 6, no. 4, p. 8-9), Kelley concedes that "there is nothing wrong with being a free rider as such, in the broad sense of receiving values from others beyond what we have traded for"; but claims that there is a distinction between some cases of "innocuous free-riding" and other cases in which free-riding is wrong.
Is Kelley correct in his characterization of the implications of independence and responsibility? Do these virtues preclude seeking benefits from others when one has not contributed to the effort of producing these benefits? And if they don't preclude it in all cases, do they allow us to derive a principled way of distinguishing between cases in which free-riding is innocuous and cases in which it is wrong? Before treating these questions, let us look at some examples of the opportunities, present in a civilized society, for obtaining free-rider benefits.
Free-riding in a civilized society
Life in a civilized society not only presents many opportunities for being a free-rider, but necessarily involves taking advantage of such opportunities.
The most fundamental sense, in which almost everybody in society is a free-rider, is a consequence of the pyramid of ability, as noted by Rand in Galt's Speech [5]. Life in a civilized society allows each of us the opportunity to enjoy the benefits of the work of people with productive ability far greater than our own. The vast majority of people, even of fully rational and productive people, will never be able to create anything even close to the great productive achievements that they benefit from. This makes everyone in society - other than the top-tier, first-rate productive geniuses - a free-rider, whose actions are not the cause of benefits he enjoys and who depends on others' efforts to provide these benefits without contributing to them.
This is an example in which one is unable to contribute to providing the benefits he enjoys; there are myriad other, less fundamental ways in which living in society creates situations in which one can contribute to producing the benefits he enjoys, but chooses to depend on others for them instead. For example: many people, when driving or walking through a good neighborhood, with beautiful houses, get pleasure from looking at these houses; and yet many of them - including some people who can afford to own their own house, and so contribute by their own efforts to this benefit that they enjoy - do not own a house of their own. In this way they become free-riders, depending on others for this benefit that they enjoy.
Free-riding and the virtue of independence
I assume Kelley, as well as most Objectivist readers, will agree with me that there is nothing wrong with the free-riding described in the two above examples. The man who chooses not to own his own house, even though he derives a benefit from seeing other people's houses, is not acting against the requirements of independence or responsibility, and these virtues do not impose any obligation on him to build, or buy and re-decorate, his own house, in order to make his own actions contribute to this benefit he enjoys. The benefit you gain from the achievements of people of greater productive ability, to which you can't contribute by your own actions, is neither a cause for regret nor a compromise of independence or responsibility; on the contrary, it is one of the most important benefits of living in a civilized society.
More generally, I don't think Kelley has made a case that independence and responsibility preclude seeking benefits that one does not contribute to oneself.
Rand's longest discussion in print of the virtue of independence, specifically in its existential aspects, is in Roarks's speech in The Fountainhead (the discussion in Galt's speech focuses exclusively on the intellectual aspect). Rand writes:
Nothing is given to man on earth. Everything he needs has to be produced. And here man faces his basic alternative: he can survive in only one of two ways - by the independent work of his own mind or as a parasite fed by the minds of others. The creator originates. The parasite borrows. The creator faces nature alone. The parasite faces nature through an intermediary. ...
The basic need of the creator is independence. The reasoning mind ... demands total independence in function and in motive. To a creator, all relations with men are secondary.
The basic need of the second-hander is to secure his ties with men in order to be fed. He places relations first.[6]
It seems clear from this that Rand saw independence, in its existential aspect, as applying to how a man obtains the primary requirements for sustaining his life. I see no indication that she would have regarded the obtaining of any benefits from others without contributing to them by one's own efforts as against independence. Nor do I see any valid argument for such a claim.
The Objectivist virtues preclude trying to obtain values from others by force or fraud; and they preclude asking others to act self-sacrificially. If one can, without using force or fraud, gain benefits from the self-interested efforts of others without contributing to them oneself, that is not in anyway against the Objectivist ethics, but rather is a concrete instance of the harmony of men's interests, and should be celebrated and welcomed as such.
Differentiating between innocuous and bad free-riding
Clearly there is an essential difference between cases in which one can't contribute to the benefits one enjoys (such as enjoying the benefits of work by productive geniuses), and cases in which one chooses not to make a contribution that is within one's power. But apart from this distinction, can we differentiate between innocuous free-riding, such as the case of a person who enjoys the sight of other people's houses without owning one of his own, and "bad free-riding", such as the case of a person who will not offer help to others in emergencies?
We can differentiate between these two specific cases, in that there are independent reasons why acting generously, including the offering of emergency assistance, is in an individual's self-interest (the reasons which Kelley points out as motive no. 3 [7], of generosity as a form of investment); whereas any reasons why owning a house is in an individual's self-interest are much more specific, and there are many individuals to which they do not apply. But if we abstract from the specific actions and benefits involved in these two cases, and observe the essentials of the free-riding in each case, can we find a difference?
I submit that the answer is: no. In both cases, the person is enjoying benefits that he depends on others to provide, and which his actions are not the cause of. In both cases, he chooses not to do what he can to contribute to the creation of these benefits in society. The nature of the free-riding is identical in both cases. There is no principle deriving from the nature of free-riding that can differentiate them, and the principles of independence and responsibility provide no basis for any such differentiation.
Independence and responsibility imply that if a benefit is important to you, you should, to the extent that you can, act to increase the likelihood of receiving it, or to receive more of it, rather than passively depend on others for it. But when the benefit requires the actions of a large number of people, it is often impossible for an individual to make any significant difference to the benefit he receives. Building or redecorating one's own house, while it does provide other benefits, will not make a significant difference to the esthetic enjoyment one gets from looking at houses when walking or driving even through one's own neighborhood, let alone through other neighborhoods. If many other people do a good job of building esthetically pleasing houses for themselves, then one will get that esthetic enjoyment, and one's own house will not make a significant difference; if most other people don't take care of the exterior of their houses, then one will not get that esthetic enjoyment, and again one's own house will not make a significant difference.
Similarly, offering assistance to others in emergencies, while it does provide other benefits (the satisfaction of creating a value by possibly saving another person's life), will not make a significant difference to the likelihood of receiving such help in the future. If many other people are willing to offer such help, then one is likely to receive it if one needs it, and one's own willingness to offer it will make no difference; if few other people are willing to offer such help, then one is unlikely to receive it if one needs it, and again one's own willingness to offer it will make no difference.
In both these cases, one's choice is not whether to make one's own actions the causes of the benefits one enjoys; that is not possible. Rather, one's choice is whether to make a contribution to the general availability of these benefits to people in society at large, a contribution which will make no significant difference to the benefits one receives oneself. There's nothing in the principles of independence and responsibility - or in any principles consistent with an egoistic ethics - to imply an obligation to make such a contribution.
Free-riding, Kant's categorical imperative, and the no-conflicts principle
I think I made my case above that the correct Objectivist approach to the issue is that free-riding does not present any ethical problem, and that avoiding free-riding is not a rational ethical consideration. Why, then, do many Objectivists still regard free-riding as a problem? And what is it that makes Kelley's argument on the subject seem plausible? Below, I offer a suggestion as to what the basic, unstated issue is behind the argument.[8]
One distinction we can make between the two cases I discuss above - free-riding on the esthetic value of other people's houses and free-riding on other people's willingness to offer emergency assistance - is that in the former case, there are likely to be relevant differences in circumstances between the person who chooses to free-ride and the people who do choose to own houses, and these differences are usually the cause of the different choices; in the latter case, in contrast, there are not likely to be any such relevant differences. Thus, the free-rider in the former case is complying with Kant's categorical imperative; he is acting on a principle which he is willing to see become a universal law, since he is willing to see houses owned only by people whose circumstances are relevantly different from his own. The free-rider in the latter case, in contrast, goes against the categorical imperative; he is acting on a principle which he does not want to see become a universal law; if it did, given that other people are similar to him in all relevant respects, no one would be willing to offer assistance in emergency situations, and he would not receive such assistance if he ever needs it.
While Objectivists explicitly reject Kant's ethics, our culture is so dominated by Kantianism that it is often difficult to identify and eliminate all traces of Kantianism in one's philosophical thinking; that is a matter on which Objectivists need to be extremely vigilant. On the issue of free-riding, I submit that many Objectivists, including Kelley, are approaching the matter from a Kantian perspective, and that this is what makes the idea that free-riding is wrong - at least, in cases such as emergency assistance, in which there are no relevant differences between oneself and those who are making the contribution - seem plausible. I believe that this explains why arguments by Objectivists on this issue seem so similar to arguments by mainstream writers such as David Gauthier; and why this is the one point in Kelley's entire book which a Kantian philosopher such as Loren Lomasky is able to get.
The one grain of truth in this approach - the one reason which is legitimate, from an Objectivist perspective, why the lack of relevant differences between oneself and those making the contributions could imply that one ought to also contribute - is Rand's principle that there are no conflicts of interests among men. If there are no relevant differences between oneself and the people making the contributions, then if it really were in one's self-interest to free-ride - e.g., if it were in one's self-interest to decline to offer emergency assistance to others - this would imply that the people making the contribution are acting self-sacrificially. And, if one really is benefitting from these contributions, that would mean that one can get real benefits from self-sacrifice by others - which would imply a conflict of interests.
However, the principle that there are no conflicts of interests among men is highly derivative in Rand's ethics. It is an inductive principle based on identifying the principles that a rational man should live by, identifying what is in his self-interest in many different contexts based on these principles, and observing that these interests don't conflict. The principle of no conflicts of interests thus can't be used as an ethical argument, in arguing how one should act or that certain actions are in one's self-interest; such use of this principle would be inverting the hierarchy of the Objectivist ethics, and result in a circular argument.
This principle can, however, be useful as a warning signal in thinking about ethics. If, in considering an ethical question, we reach a conclusion which seems to imply the existence of a genuine conflict of interests, that should serve as an indication that we missed something essential, and need to consider the question further. Applied to the issue of free-riding, this means that if we consider an example in which we don't see any relevant differences between oneself and the people making the contributions, and yet it seems that it is in one's self-interest to free-ride, that can and should serve as an indication that we are missing something; usually, that that there are other reasons that we have overlooked why acting to contribute to the benefits, rather than free-riding, is in one's self-interest. However, to avoid appealing to Kant's categorical imperative, or using the no-conflicts principle circularly, these reasons must be independent of the fact that this is a free-riding situation.
Conclusion
The enormous significance that mainstream philosophers, such as David Gauthier, attach to the free-rider issue, clearly is based on premises that are foreign to Objectivism. While Objectivists do recognize this, many still see free-riding as a problem.
As I argued above, there is no basis, on Objectivist premises, for seeing free-riding as a problem at all. Nor is there any basis for distinguishing between good and bad forms of free-riding.
I suggest, therefore, that the proper Objectivist attitude towards free-riding in general should be highly positive, as a concrete instance of the benevolent universe and of the harmony of interests among men.
Like any other type of action that is generally appropriate and valuable, free-riding can be inappropriate in some contexts. However, those claiming that it is inappropriate to free-ride in a certain context, need to demonstrate that, by giving reasons, independent of the fact of free-riding, why in this case it is rational to act in a way that contributes to the benefits rather than to enjoy them as a free-rider[9]. Arguments that are based on seeing free-riding itself as a problem, or that appeal to a desire not to be a free-rider, are not consistent with the Objectivist ethics.
[1] This premise provides the framework for work in decision theory or computer simulations that purports to apply to the reasons why human beings cooperate, e.g. Axelrod in The Evolution of Cooperation, and is the reason why such work is regarded as relevant. A book widely regarded as classic on this subject is David Gauthier's Morals by Agreement, which explicitly regards free-riding as one of the central problems which social cooperation is aimed at overcoming, and posits a tacit social contract aimed at eliminating free-riding.
[2] Unrugged Individualism, p. 46.
[3] Unrugged Individualism, p. 49.
[4] While Kelley's discussion of free-riding is a very minor part of the content of Unrugged Individualism - a discussion of one sub-point of one of the component virtues - it is interesting to note in discussions of Unrugged Individualism that it seems this is the only point some readers have taken from the entire book. For example, in Loren Lomasky's review of Unrugged Individualism (Reason, April 1997), the points in the paragraph quoted above are the only ones he discusses; he dismisses everything else in the book as "not really about benevolence". Similar perceptions have also appeared in comments on email discussion groups; for example, Ron Merrill (message to Kirez Korgan's Objectivism list, August 7, 1996), states that "David Kelley's work on the virtue of benevolence was foreshadowed by computer simulations of social interactions".
I believe such misreadings are not an accident. Kelley's discussion of free-riding is the one point in his book which is the most consistent with mainstream thinking on ethics; it is the one point that does not depend on the revolutionary foundations of the Objectivist ethics - and, as I will attempt to argue below, is in fact not consistent with the Objectivist ethics. It is to be expected, therefore, that this is the one point that many readers feel most at home with.
[5] Atlas Shrugged, p. 988-989.
[6] The Fountainhead, p. 681.
[7] Unrugged Individualism, pp. 47-50
[8] I thank Roger Donway for private correspondence in which his attempts to defend Kelley's position helped me make the identifications I present below.
[9] For the case of emergency assistance, I believe Kelley has fulfilled this requirement with his motive no. 3, of help as a form of investment.