There is No Expressive Duty to Vote

The odds that your vote will change the result of the upcoming election are small. But maybe you ought to vote to send a certain sort of message rather than to change the result. As the philosopher Stanley Benn puts the point, “Political activity may be a form of moral self-expression, necessary not for achieving any objective beyond itself (for the cause may be lost), nor yet for the satisfaction of knowing that one had let everyone else know that one was on the side of the right, but because one could not seriously claim, even to oneself, to be on that side without expressing the attitude by the actions most appropriate to it in the paradigm case.” Perhaps you should vote to express your commitment to particular moral values. However, in Why It’s OK to Ignore Politics, I explain why arguments for an expressive duty to vote are unsuccessful:  

 

1) We might have good reason to be skeptical about duties to perform purely expressive actions. For instance, few would argue that you have a moral obligation to publicly wish for world peace when you see a shooting star even though the wish expresses your desire to see the world at peace.  

 

2) You can express your commitment to the relevant values without voting--for instance, by putting politically-charged bumper stickers on your car. 

 

3) It doesn't seem as though we have a duty to express our attitudes about moral matters in general--for instance, you're not obligated to "like" a Facebook post about the Against Malaria Foundation--so why would we have an obligation to express our political attitudes in particular?

  

4) To send the right message, you have to cast the right sort of vote. If you cast a vote without making an attempt to ensure that it is informed and unbiased, then you aren’t showing that you genuinely care about justice and the common good. Of course, you could always put in the work of researching and debiasing your vote to send the right message but I'm not convinced this is a good idea. The reason is because you’d be siphoning time and energy away from projects that actually make the world a better place simply to send the message that you care about making the world a better place. As I write in the book: 

 

Forgoing the opportunity to help people to send the signal that you care about helping people actually sends the wrong signal. Helping people is the right way to send the signal that you care about helping people [...] Consider a case that makes the choice between consequential action and expressive action particularly vivid. You pass a starving child on the street who asks you for money to buy food. You have some money but you’re reluctant to hand it over. Why? Well, it happens that you were on your way to buy a shirt that reads “Feed the Hungry” and you don’t have enough money for the shirt and the child. Surely letting the child go hungry so that you can afford the t-shirt sends the wrong message (to say nothing of the wrong you would commit by allowing easily preventable harm to come to the child). In the words of philosopher David Schmidtz, “If your main goal is to show that your heart is in the right place, then your heart is not in the right place."

 

The best way to express your commitment to justice and the common good is not to cast a purely expressive vote but rather to take action that actually promotes justice and the common good.

Three Arguments for a Duty to Vote (With Replies)

The Generalization Argument: You're obligated to vote because it would be a disaster if no one voted.

Loren Lomasky and Geoffrey Brennan provide a convincing reply to this argument. In brief, it proves too much. It would be a disaster if no one fixed cars, but you're not obligated to become a mechanic. It would be a disaster if no one dispensed prescription drugs, but you're not obligated to become a pharmacist. And so on. They suggest a stronger version of the argument is as follows: "Strictly speaking, what makes an ungeneralizable action wrong is not that it fails the generalization test. Rather, it fails the generalization test because of underlying unfairness, and it is the unfairness that accounts for the action’s wrongness.” The mere fact that it would be bad if no one voted isn't what makes it wrong to not vote; rather, it's wrong not to vote because you wouldn't be doing your fair share. This brings us to the second argument: 

The Fairness Argument: You're obligated to vote to meet your duty to contribute to the common good and a just society.

Jason objects to this argument, rightly to my mind, via an appeal to what he calls the particularity problem. It's true we have a duty to not free ride on the contributions of others, but we can do our fair share in ways that do not involve voting in particular. Our contributions can take a variety of forms, including donations, volunteering, and more. Indeed, I might take this argument a step further and say that it's better to make non-political contributions. As I put it in my book:

Suppose we’re on a camping trip where everyone has plenty of water to drink. I’m debating what kind of contribution to offer. I can make a costly-but-needless trip to the well or I can do something else that satisfies an unmet need, like gather firewood. At a minimum, it’s permissible to not fetch water and gather firewood instead. Gathering firewood is a perfectly fine contribution to the trip; I am not guilty of “free riding” on the work of the campers who collected water simply because my contribution takes a different form. Indeed, it seems to me clearly preferable to gather firewood. Given that sufficient water has been collected, getting more water doesn’t do any good. So doing something else with my time, like gathering the firewood, makes a more valuable contribution. The same point applies to political abstention. Political activity is no different from other occupations such as delivering the mail: just as it would be inefficient for everyone to deliver the mail, it is inefficient for everyone to be politically active.

The Collective Samaritanism Argument: This argument comes from Julia Maskivker's outstanding book The Duty to Vote, which provides the strongest and most comprehensive defense of a duty to vote in the literature. We have a duty to contribute to highly beneficial collective activities when we can do so at a low cost to ourselves—even when your individual contribution is inconsequential. To adapt a case from the book, if we see a car in the middle of the road, we have a duty to help others push it to safety even if our individual contribution won’t make a difference to whether the car is moved successfully. Similarly, voting well is a highly beneficial collective activity that promotes justice and social welfare and so we have a duty to contribute our good vote given that we can do so at a low cost to ourselves.

However, I believe that an individual may do their Samaritan duty without voting, by promoting justice and social welfare in other ways. To elaborate on the car example, suppose you see that sufficiently many people are pushing the car to safety such that your help won’t make any difference. You also notice that a car accident victim is at the side of the road in need of CPR, which you are able to perform. Here you can do your Samaritan duty by tending to the particular person and allowing others to push the car out of the road. Indeed, the very consideration that speaks in favor of joining the car pushing effort—concern for the welfare of people on the road—speaks at least as loudly in favor of performing CPR. (We could even describe both forms of help as part of the same collective effort to ensure the safety of those on the road.)

Similarly, suppose you know that sufficiently many people are voting such that your vote won’t make a difference. You also know that the effort you could allocate to preparing and casting a good vote could be spent earning income to donate to an effective charity. Here you can do your Samaritan duty by donating rather than voting. Indeed, as in the car case, the very consideration that speaks in favor of voting—promoting social welfare and justice—speaks at least as loudly in favor of charitable contributions that make more of an impact on people's lives.

Routledge's WHY IT'S OK series

 Here is a new video about Routledge's Why It's OK series. 

Chris Freiman explains why it's OK--indeed, laudable and obligatory for most people, to ignore politics.  I explain why it's OK--indeed, in many cases laudable--for most people to want to be rich, to make money to get rich, and to keep much of their money rather than giving it all away. Jess Flanigan will later argue that it's OK to have bad grammar and spelling.

Here's the series blurb:

Philosophers often build cogent arguments for unpopular positions. Recent examples include cases against marriage and pregnancy, for treating animals as our equals, and dismissing some widely popular art as aesthetically inferior. What philosophers have done less often is to offer compelling arguments for widespread and established human behavior, like getting married, having children, eating animals, and going to the movies. But if one role for philosophy is to help us reflect on our lives and build sound justifications for our beliefs and actions, it seems odd that philosophers would neglect the development of arguments for the lifestyles most people—including many philosophers—actually lead. Unfortunately, philosophers’ inattention to normalcy has meant that the ways of life that define our modern societies have gone largely without defense, even as whole literatures have emerged to condemn them.　　

Why It’s OK: The Ethics and Aesthetics of How We Live seeks to remedy that. It’s a series of books that provides accessible, sound, and often new and creative arguments for widespread ethical and aesthetic values.  Made up of short volumes that assume no previous knowledge of philosophy from the reader, the series recognizes that philosophy is just as important for understanding what we already believe as it is for criticizing the status quo. The series isn’t meant to make us complacent about what we value; rather, it helps and challenges us to think more deeply about the values that give our daily lives meaning.　

Forthcoming:

Why It’s OK to Get Married
Christie J. Hartley

Why It’s OK to Love Bad Movies
Matthew Strohl

Why It’s OK to Eat Meat
Dan C. Shahar

Why It’s OK to Mind Your Own Business
Justin Tosi and Brandon Warmke 

Why It’s OK to Be Fat
Rekha Nath

Why It’s OK to Be a Moral Failure
Robert Talisse

Why It’s OK to Have Bad Grammar and Spelling
Jessica Flanigan

Why It’s OK to Speak Your Mind
Hrishikesh Joshi

How to Argue for a Duty to Vote

 Chris's new book is fantastic. It's clearly written, compelling, and highly original. Highly recommended.

Both Chris and I are skeptics that there is any duty to vote; indeed, we both argue that most people have a duty not to vote, though we offer different reasons. 

Here, though, let me lay out what it would take to show there is a duty to vote. I want to help you all when you write your responses to Chris.

1. Overcome the particularity problem: It's not enough to point to some general duty, G, which you argue people possess, and then to point out that voting is a way of satisfying G. It's not even enough to show that voting is the best way to satisfy G. You need to show voting is the obligatory way of satisfying G.

For instance, suppose someone says, "You should exercise civic virtue, therefore vote!" The problem--which should be obvious but for some reason isn't--is that there are lots of ways of exhibiting civic virtue other than by voting. Indeed, voting isn't even especially good. 

Even if voting were the best, that wouldn't obviously make it obligatory. Suppose you have a duty to do productive work, as Stuart White and Lawrence Becker argue. Maybe the best job you could take, given your talents, is medical doctor. But that doesn't mean you are obligated to be a medical doctor; you could be free and permitted to do something less optimal, such as being a philosophy professor. 

1.1. Corollary: No bullshit when dealing with particularity: This may sound silly, but it's not. You can't just point to a special feature of voting and then declare the debate over. The special feature must plausibly explain why voting is special. I've refereed papers which say that voting is special because we do it together as a group. Sure, but why does that make it obligatory? No answer. You might as well say voting is special because it's the only major political act that rhymes with "boating" and "gloating". 

1.2. A heuristic: If you offer R as a reason to vote, ask yourself, does R imply that something other than voting is obligatory? Does R pick out some other action as even better than voting?

2. You need to deal with bad voters and bad voting: Most defenders of the duty to vote think there is merely a general duty to vote some way, not a specific duty to vote well, for the better side. But then your argument for a duty to vote nevertheless needs to explain, carefully, why the voters for the worse parties or worse candidates aren't doing something morally bad and wrong. 

For instance, it's an act of civic virtue if I cast a magic spell which prevent cops from exercising undue force. It's not an act of civic virtue if I instead train cops to get away with using undue force. I avoid free riding when I pay taxes for genuine public goods. I don't avoid free riding by burning the cash that would go toward them. 

Many of the supposed arguments for a general duty to vote seem to imply that you must vote well, not merely that you must vote. 

3. You need to follow the consequences of your argument. For instance, as Brennan and Lomasky have pointed out, one popular argument for a duty to vote leads to absurd conclusions. "If no one voted, it'd be a disaster, therefore you should vote." First, it wouldn't be a disaster, but secondly, notice the argument works even better for farming: "If no one farmed, we would all starve to death, therefore you should be a farmer." Dumb, right?

Some people argue that high levels of voting produce good consequences. (Probably false but OK.) Those same people almost never say apply this argument to other areas of life. They don't say, "There are very good consequences if everyone does [fill in the blank], so therefore it's obligatory to [fill in the blank]."

Does your argument for voting have implications you are not prepared to endorse? Think it through. After all, if you don't, Chris or I will, and you don't want to hand us free publications criticizing you, do you?

4. Don't magically assume that voters know the right way to vote and that voting well is easy. It isn't. Read up on voter psychology, which says most people just follow what others do and for most people, politics is not about policy. Look at what political hacks even supposedly smart, critical thinking philosophers are. (How many philosophers just parrot whatever the Democrats say today? Note that I wouldn't be surprised if all 3 Republican philosophers in the academy act the same with regard to the Republicans.) Consider how hard it is to be informed, not merely of the particulars, but of the social science needed to understand causation. Consider how difficult it is to predict what politicians will do if elected. (Did you expect Trump to be such a dove compared to Bush II? Did you expect Obama to use so many drone strikes? Why?) Consider how hard it is to find reliable thought leaders to follow. 

Of course, it's pretty common for philosophers to say that in the US, it is uniquely easy to vote well: Just vote Democrat all the time. Obviously the Republicans are worse so voting well is easy. 

5. Don't straw man liberals with half-baked arguments. I'm looking at you, communitarians! So many papers say, "Liberals emphasis rights but forget that there are duties too! Therefore, citizens should vote!" Not only is this dumb because by definition a claim right implies that others have duties, but it's not even an argument. Fine, citizens have duties too. Which ones do they have and why?

6. For political theorists specifically: Quoting an older theorist stating they believe there is a duty to vote is not an argument. 

7. Also for political theorists: Saying something like, "A duty to vote is implicit in our democratic culture" is not an argument for a duty to vote. Is this implicit assumption correct? 

Three Concepts of Democracy

I recently got a contract to write Democracy: A Guided Tour of an Idea (title subject to change) for OUP.  Rather than doing more democracy bashing in the name of liberalism, it will examine how thinking about democracy has changed over the years.

Though of course we could divide this up even further, I'll argue that the basic ways of philosophizing/theorizing/thinking about democracy fall into three major categories:

1.     The Ghost of Plato: Democracy stultifies and corrupts us. It exacerbates our biases and our worst behaviors. Here I include not only Plato and others historically concerned about mob rule, but also the recent empirical work on voter ignorance and irrationality, the new epistocratic critiques, and empirical work on democratic realism and the ideological innocence of voters

2.     The Spirit of Equality: Democracy is fundamentally a mechanism by which we realize an ideal of equality. It makes us all equals and allows us to see each other eye-to-eye. Here I include Rousseau and de Tocqueville, Dewey, contemporary neorepublicans, the deliberative democrats. 

3.     The Shadow of the Market: Democracy is a form of trade and exchange by other means. Democracy enables people to get what they want and lead their live as they choose. But just as markets can fail, so the democratic market can fail. Here I include many of the early American and British pro-democracy thinkers, the authors of the Federalists Papers, the public choice tradition, and your sixth grade civics teacher.  

While I'll cover roughly 2500 years in this one book, a good third of the book or more will be about works written in the past 75 years. Frankly, most of the best work on democracy was written recently, because it was only recently that we started having good social science to help inform and set parameters for our normative theorizing. 

Cato Unbound on *Injustice for All*: Malcolm Responds

John Malcolm responds to our lead essay here.

Excerpt:

The authors end their article by stating that our “system is broken from top to bottom.” Surely there is room for improvement, but I fundamentally disagree with this conclusion. At the outset, they state that “Only 11 U.S. states incarcerate citizens at a lower rate than the Russian Federation. 25 U.S. states, including overwhelmingly white states like Wyoming and Montana, put people in prison at a higher rate than repressive, authoritarian Cuba.” But given the choice, would anyone subject themselves to a trial in Russia or Cuba or any of the dozens of other countries that fail to provide what we consider basic procedural safeguards over a trial in any of the 50 states? I didn’t think so.

Perverse Incentives Created Our Dysfunctional Criminal Justice System

Chris Surprenant and I have the lead essay this month on a Cato Unbound symposium on why the US criminal justice is so terrible. It draws from our book Injustice for All. 

Abstract of the symposium:

We all know that the United States imprisons many more people per capita than otherfree countries. But why? Progressives, conservatives, and libertarians all have their favored theories, but this month’s lead authors, Chris W. Surprenant and Jason Brennan, argue that none of them captures the whole story. Here to discuss with them this month are Clark Neily, the Cato Institute’s Vice President for Criminal Justice; and John Malcolm, the Heritage Foundation’s Vice President for the Institute for Constitutional Government and Director of the Meese Center for Legal & Judicial Studies. The conversation will continue through the end of the month, and comments on posts are open to readers during the same time period.

The Theology of Liberalism

In Eric Nelson's newish book The Theology of Liberalism, he argues that Rawlsian liberalism represents a break with the liberal theories that went before it. Rawls is skeptical of merit, very concerned with the seeming arbitrariness of the distribution of talent, and wary of the inegalitarian distribution of opportunities that results from inherited inequalities of ability and resources. Liberals before Rawls viewed people differently. They "rejected the notion of moral arbitrariness. Their animating conviction ...inferred the possibility of human freedom and merit from the justice of God" (xi)  

Nelson's book is, in a way, a defense of the older approach. Nelson writes, 

"There is something deeply inegalitarian about Rawlsian egalitarianism. In place of the ... insistence on the equal moral power of all human beings to shape their lives in accordance with virtue, Rawls gives us an essentially hierarchical account of human nature in which the “better endowed” take the place of the Augustinian elect. (71)

Rawls's desert-skepticism then motivates his support for broadly egalitarian redistributive policies. But As Nelson points out, this move is too quick, and even if one is skeptical about deservingness, the existing distribution of resources may still be morally significant. 

Nelson argues that even if people have no natural rights to the distribution of natural resources or talents they inherit, it doesn't follow that the present-day owners of resources aren't entitled to them. After all, the distribution was to some extent a result of good-faith actors who, if they were acting wrongly, were not blameworthy for their wrongdoing. Also, those who are disadvantaged by the present-day distribution would not have otherwise existed. And since we cannot identify the victims of an unjust historical distributive pattern, we also cannot identify a sound principle of rectification. 

So even if the present-day distribution is in some ways arbitrary and free from considerations of merit, people may still have some kind of a claim to their inherited share of resources. Nelson writes, 

The moral rights of those who have purchased natural resources ought to be defended even by those who ... regard rules allowing the ownership and exchange of natural resources as unjust. I suggested that those holding such a view should concede that we often have reason to attribute good faith even to those who act in accordance with unjust rules, and that such good-faith rule-following itself gives rise to claims...My arguments should have important consequences for all dignitarian liberals—that is, for all of those who defend liberalism on the grounds that it respects the inviolability and “separateness” of persons— even if they dissent from libertarians in arguing for a “patterned,” rather than an “historical” approach to the theory of justice. For any theory of justice will necessarily confront the question of rectification. Whether we suppose that, in the abstract, the principle of justice requires equality of resources, equality of opportunity for advantage, the delivery of basic capabilities to all persons, or the maximization of the welfare of the least well-off, we have to consider the moral significance of the fact that we inhabit a world that has been structured by an infinite number of good-faith human transactions that conflict with our chosen principle. (155)

This is a really interesting argument. Here is how Nelson's argument could inform ongoing debates about distributive justice that go like this: 

A: It's wrong to enforce redistributive policies that create a particular distribution or end-state pattern of resources because such a system would violate people's rights! 

B: People don't really have natural rights that align with the current property system though. And people certianly don't deserve what they earn within the current system. If anything, the current property system violates rights! So redistribution is good because it remedies the rights violations that are inherent in the current system and it doesn't violate anyone's well-deserved entitlements. 

Nelson: Even if the existing distribution is in some sense arbitrary and undeserved, it could still be disrespectful to treat people as if their claims within the current system are irrelevant. 

So Nelson offers a kind of middle-ground, where existing distributions can carry some weight without assuming that any redistribution necessarily violates people's rights. So redistribution is not necessarily unjust, nor is it morally required. Again, here's Nelson on this point. 

It is not mere reliance on existing rules that commands our respect, but rather the good-faith reliance of those whose “minds,” “feelings,” and “consciences” assure them (mistakenly but not unreasonably) of the justice of those rules. What the requisite sort of respect amounts to—whether it should be conceived as a trumping consideration or simply as a pro tanto reason for deference (and if the latter, how it should be weighed against other concerns)— must of course remain an open question. But it is a question that political theorists should be interested in answering. (157)

 

Moral Talk Is Not Magic: From Grandstanding

Grandstanding is the fantastic book by Justin Tosi and Brandon Warmke that you should be reading. 

Here's a wonderful passage from the first chapter, p. 5:

...many people don't see the downside of abusing moral talk. They act as if moral talk is always admirable (at least when their side does it). For these people, moral talk is magic. Invoking sacred words--justice, dignity, rights, equality, or honor, tradition, faith, and family--magically transforms your nasty, abusive, selfish behavior into something heroic and praiseworthy. Want to be cruel to people you don't like and have your like-minded peers congratulate you? Wrap your behavior in high-flying moral language. Voila! Brave, Admirable, Speaking Truth to Power.

But moral talk is not magic. We do not have free rein to treat others badly simply because we are invoking sacred words, or because we are showing in our own way that we care. Being morally outspoken is not in itself an achievement.  [Emphasis added]

Protesting Police and Policing Protests

The  Marc Sanders Foundation recently hosted a  hosted a Zoom Panel Discussion on Protesting Police and Policing Protests featuring Ekow Yankah, Michele Moody-Adams, Brandon del Pozo, and Jason Brennan, moderated by Barry Lam and Simone Gubler. The event was co-sponsored by the The Philosophy, Politics and Economics Society, and Hi-Phi Nation.

You can watch the video here:  https://marcsandersfoundation.org/protesting-police-and-policing-protest/

 

My part draws upon Injustice for All. 

*Grandstanding* by Justin Tosi and Brandon Warmke

Grandstanding is now out! You should definitely buy this book. Indeed, if you don't you're a bad person who must not care about justice or ethics, unlike me.

This may be the book of the decade, hopefully in the sense that it sells a lot, but at least in the sense that it explains so much behavior distinctive or amplified by our social media-fueled decade.

That said, the phenomenon it describes is old. Indeed, Jesus complains about it in Matthew 6:5:

And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others.

The point is that such people are less concerned with connecting with God and more concerned with inducing other people to believe the they are good and pious.

"Moral grandstanding" refers to when people use moral language for self-promotion. As Warmke explains in an interview, "Grandstanders are moral show boaters who use public discourse as a vanity project. They aren't really concerned about helping people or contributing to a conversation." 

When people engage in moral grandstanding, they are trying to raise their own status and prestige through the use of moral language. They are trying to get others to think more highly of them or to secure various benefits for themselves.

Some example forms of grandstanding include:

1. Ramping Up: Making increasingly strong claims about the matter under discussion. Engaging in a kind of moral arms race. (E.g., "Washington was a racist slave owner." "Oh, yeah, well, he was also sexist and heteronormative too. I guess you didn't see that."). Here, people are trying to show off their moral purity and moral sensitivity by making increasingly strong claims.

2. Trumping Up: Insisting on the existence of a moral problem where there isn't one, or exaggerating a problem dramatically. Think of the story of the princess and the pea. A real princess is so sensitive that she can feel the presence of a pea under 40 mattresses. Well, some people like to show off heir moral sensitivity by finding moral problems everywhere, and then announcing their distaste and shaming others for not also finding those problems. Again, the point is to raise their own status.

3. Dismissiveness: Insisting that one's own point of view is obvious and that any disagreement is obviously stupid and vile. Here, the person is trying to signal their virtue and moral purity by being unwilling to interact with contrary points of view. You can see a great deal of this in contemporary philosophy about race and gender issues, where many of the theorists act like the controversial stuff they are saying--stuff they didn't themselves believe 3 years ago--is obviously true, and that it's beyond the pale to acknowledge or debate anyone who disagrees. "I'm such a good person I can't even tolerate reading what others say."

4. Excessive emotional displays: People go out of their way to emote in reaction to things, often in disproportionate ways. Go on Facebook today and you'll surely see some of this: You'll see friends crying and whining about bad news, acting like it destroys them. I have academic friends who brag--yes, "brag" is the right word--about how Trump's election bothered them so much that they couldn't get any writing done for six months. Here, the goal is to signal, "I'm such a morally sensitive and good person that I can't even handle the news. Oh, you kept going about your life like normal? I guess you aren't as good as I am."

The book identifies how grandstanding works, explains what makes it morally wrong, diagnoses a great deal of social and political behavior, and finally ends with recommendations about what to do about it. In particular, they recommend against trying to police others' moral grandstanding (you'll probably just engage in grandstanding yourself when you do) and instead policing yourself. 

Tosi and Warmke are now working with psychologists to run experiments testing various empirical hypotheses about grandstanding. While these papers came after the book was written, to be clear, it is a demonstrably real phenomenon. Their psychological work is able to show that people are often using moral language for self-promotion rather than for other reasons. 

If you don't buy and read this book today, you must not care about ethics.

While you're waiting for your copy to arrive, read this delightful post from Justin Weinberg on the original paper that lead to this book. 

Liberalism at Work

In general, bosses shouldn’t fire workers for stuff they do on the weekends. Bosses should be legally permitted to fire workers for this reason. But people shouldn’t cheer bosses on when they do.

Lately, several people lost their jobs based on social media postings or their conduct outside of work. (Examples here, here, here, here, and here) Each case is different, but in many of them, it seems that bosses were firing workers in an attempt to demonstrate the company’s commitment to workplace inclusivity.

 

I agree that inclusivity is an important value at work. Nevertheless, I think liberals and progressives should generally oppose these dismissals because they should oppose workplace domination. Libertarians should oppose these dismissals too because even though employers should have a legal right to fire people at will on the basis of their social media posts or behavior outside of work, they still shouldn’t do it. Workplace domination is bad even if it shouldn’t be illegal.

Elizabeth Anderson makes a compelling case against workplace domination. When she joined Russ Roberts on EconTalk to discuss her book, Private Government, one of her examples of workplace domination was political pressure at work. She described “white-collar workers who are quite commonly pressured by their bosses to contribute money to favored political campaigns or political action committees.” Employers can monitor employees’ donations and employees with disagreeable politics could be disadvantaged in promotion decisions. 

 

Roberts then noted that employers can often dictate what workers do when they are not at work. Anderson replied,

Quite right. And this, I think, is even more objectionable. Normally we think that once you are off duty, you should be free from any kind of control or regulation by your boss. But, in the United States, the default rule of employment is employment at will. And that entails that your boss can fire you for any or no reason at all, including things that the boss finds out about your off-duty activity. For instance.…stuff that you might post on Facebook expressing perhaps controversial opinions can get one fired even if the Facebook posting isn't addressed to fellow workers or harassing them in any way but just expressing an opinion that the boss disagrees with. …In reality, people are fired for what they do over the weekend, and in their leisure time.

In contrast, Tyler Cowen wrote in response to Anderson,

A business usually should have the right to fire a worker for Facebook postings or other forms of “outside the workplace” activity. For a start, a lot of workers put racist, sexist, or otherwise discomforting comments and photos into their Facebook pages. When employers fire them, very often it is to protect some notion of the freedom of the other workers….The question of workplace freedom often boils down to one set of the workers against another. In that setting, allowing for a lot of apparently arbitrary firing decisions on net may support rather than oppose worker autonomy. (Private Government p.112)

In this exchange, I think Anderson and Cowen are both half-right. Anderson is right in saying that employers shouldn’t monitor employees’ social media accounts or speech outside the workplace, nor should they pressure employees to contribute to their favored political causes. Cowen is right that employers should not be legally prohibited from doing these things.

On the other hand, I also think Anderson and Cowen are also both half-mistaken. Anderson shouldn’t support regulations that limit employers’ ability to dismiss employees at will because this solution just trades workplace domination for political domination, which is even more pervasive and less escapable.

And Cowen should have been more worried that employers would fire people for bad reasons, or that it could be bad for employers to defer to an employees’ fellow workers to decide whether a person should be fired. The same reasons Anderson gives against subjecting employees to surveillance and arbitrary threats of dismissal from their bosses are also reasons against subjecting them to the same kinds of threats from their coworkers.

Another worry about firing people for their social media posting or behavior outside of work is that it is likely to be counterproductive if the goal is creating a welcoming workplace, even when bosses target speech and behavior that would undermine the values of corporate inclusivity. 

Consider a workplace that fails to make everyone feel welcome, a workplace that does not live up to its company’s commitment to inclusivity. In a workplace like this, expanding employers’ ability to dismiss people on the basis of their speech and conduct outside of work is may seem appealing in the short run. But without deeper reforms, corporate policies that permit bosses to fire people whose private conduct is viewed as objectionable or disagreeable could backfire in the long run.

Ultimately, expanding the power of the government, the bosses, or even the majority of workers is likely to end up harming the workers who have the least social power.