"Crusoe Ethics"

This was an interesting post over at Ricochet.com.

In this scenario, the desert island dwellers currently survive only by eating fish. Alas, these fish, being hard to catch, are in short supply. Then one day, an entrepreneur, who adores fish, saves up his meager rations, and still goes hungry for days, in order to fashion a technical innovation: a net. This net enables him to catch more fish more efficiently in future. As a result, he can now dine heartily.

In addition, he loves fish so much that he is unwilling share any of them with his fellow island dwellers, who are currently starving. These other islanders offer him what they can in exchange. But as I said, he loves his fish. So he refuses all their offers, and keeps all he catches for himself.

The other islanders are understandably aggrieved. They claim that it is intolerably unfair that he should have many more fish than they do. They also argue that the fish will benefit them more than they will benefit him. After all, whereas they need to fish simply to survive, he only wants them to pleasure his palate. Accordingly, he should share at last some of his fish with them.

In response, while munching on a mullet, he argues that they have no right to the fish. By dint of his own industry and intelligence, he has designed and created the net. He now uses that same net to catch all the fish. No one else was involved, or is involved. So the fish he catches are indisputably his: only his labour is here getting mixed with the natural world, no one else's. Hence, no one else but him is entitled to the fish. This means that, no matter how much other people want the fish, or need the fish, they cannot have the fish, unless he voluntarily decides to share them, which, sadly for them, he will not currently do. Nonetheless, no one has the right to take any fish from him by force: that would be a violation of his inalienable right to the specific fruit of his prsonal labour. Even God has decreed as much, some say.

You--on behalf of your starving self, family, or clan--now have the possibility of stealing fish from his bountiful private stash. Is it right or wrong to steal his fish? And if it is right to steal them, what is wrong in principle with a welfare state supported via taxation? Where and now do you draw the line for when it is right to steal what is indisputably the property of others for the greater benefit of the many?

I can't get past the idea that if the man really wanted more fish, if he really "adores" fish that much, then what he would probably say to the others on the island is the following: "You can't have my fish and you can't have my net, but I'll tell you what. I need some time to sleep and rest and eat my fish. When I am not using my net, you can use my net, and whatever you catch, we will split 50/50."

He would end with many more fish, as would the other islanders. Everyone would be better off.

Under the scenario described above, he is not so so much a self-interested profit maximizer; he is a sociopath. His utility gains come from seeing other people suffer, not from acquiring more fish.

Some might point to this example and argue that this is why we need government - to protect us from sociopaths. But I would argue that this is why we need competition. Competition is the ultimate mechanism for providing consumer protection.

Under this scenario, ultimately someone would adopt his idea and "put him out of business", or at least make him entirely irrelevant.