Mr. Foley, a partner in Souther, Spaulding, Kinsey, Williamson & Schwabe, practices law in
Individual responsibility refers to man’s willingness and ability to unflinchingly and without exception abide the consequences of every human act and choice. Consequence follows choice inexorably.
Man acts; this fact ineluctably attends the study of mankind. One can no more imagine a world devoid of purposeful human action (given the existence of human beings) than one can conjure up a land unfettered by cause-and-effect relationships or unblessed by a sun which arises in the East each day.
But what constitutes human action? Purely and simply, it alludes to that characteristic of personal conduct which we refer to as a choice between alternatives. Each individual confronts myriad potential courses of conduct as he faces each appointed task. He — or someone on his behalf — must choose between those available routes to his goal. Man must choose; he cannot remain static and survive. Abdication of the power to choose represents as much a choice as any other course of conduct. Try as one might, man cannot avoid the awful responsibility of that power which affects both his life and that of others.
The stark reality of the unyielding necessity to choose and act sometimes obscures a salient point: the very power to choose and ability to affect consequences marks the difference between man and other creatures or inanimate objects. Man is man because he can knowingly choose and seek his own destiny within the constraints of his physical limitations. This special nature sets the human condition apart from the animal world where the birds and beasts react instinctively but without rational purpose. A seal or dolphin may react to a maze or series of lights for a gourmet reward, but these mammals can never devise the system nor comprehend the essential relationships which cause it to work with relative infallibility.
A concomitant fact of human nature, whether termed universal truth, natural law, or reality, leads to the discussion of the concept of individual responsibility: man makes mistakes. Any objective observer of human history and nature recognizes that man necessarily falls short of his aspirations. The finest hitter in baseball lore achieved success approximately 36% of the time; an accomplished musician manages a few “clinkers” in every performance; a proficient secretary snow-packs her typographical errors. If such a low ratio of success applies to those endeavors in which one exhibits consummate skill, how much greater the likelihood of mistake, confusion or misdirection in enterprises where the actor lacks mastery. In plain terms, man is a fallible, finite being prone to misjudge both means and ends and only dimly cognizant of the normative rules which govern the art of living.
Man acts; by his very nature he chooses between alternatives; he errs. Addition of the ingredients analyzed yields the equation of individual responsibility : Each choice represents a moral imperative: Individuals should endure the consequences of their actions, tolerating their mistakes as well as enjoying their successes. Responsibility encompasses the attribute of accepting the results of human action without attempting to shunt these consequences unto the shoulders of other human beings.
The Essence of Personal Responsibility
Two common rejoinders color the condition when human action produces untoward or unanticipated results. First, the actor seeks to diffuse his loss, or to avoid it entirely, by imposing the consequences of his choice upon other persons. Second, even when resisting that temptation many individuals display a selectivity in acceptance of involvement; in other words, one may profess a belief in individual responsibility yet by his actions brook only a part of the output. So, we note a proclivity on the part of human beings to desire and revel in the choice-making power while circumventing the outcome of wielding that authority.
Remember the fundamental rule that action produces effect. Apostles of liberty glory in the freedom of human action, the ability of a human being to choose between alternatives in as many instances as possible without external constraints. All too often, these same individuals ignore or avoid the necessary obverse to free action, the concept of individual responsibility for the results of that action.
Shifting the Responsibility
Examples sometimes clarify a point. A may consider the oil industry profits excessive. To alleviate this situation, A secures introduction and passage of a bill by Congress limiting oil producing enterprises to a return of 6% upon their gross sales. Such an action produces results, both obvious and cloaked. One outfall will exist in higher energy prices to consumers by virtue of the thwarting of investment capital and the disinclination of investors to incur substantial risks of loss for so slight a return. Existing companies in the field will concentrate upon relatively safe explorations ; production will decline while demand remains constant or increases; demand increases concomitantly with artificially-lowered prices to consumers; since a lower amount of the commodity appears for sale to an equal or larger number of consumers bidding for the goods, prices will increase as the market replies to consumer pressure. If A truly believes in individual responsibility for his actions, he will accept the market dictation of higher prices for energy products. However, if he performs true to form of the mill run of the citizenry, A will rail at the result of his conduct and seek to shift the burden of those results to others by the imposition of wage and price controls. Price controls applied to the oil industry will only serve to aggravate an already perilous situation: a limitation on the price charged (particularly in a period of rapid inflation) will further eliminate both investors and producers in the field, secure unnatural cartelization of the industry, destroy capital formation and, if carried to the extreme, annihilate the creation of the goods. A‘s refusal to abide by the consequences of his choice will ultimately thrust the burden first upon the producers regulated and eventually upon all who use energy products.
Favored Treatment
Normally a follower of the freedom philosophy would not advocate enactment of such obvious market intrusions as profit, wage or price controls; that kind of tomfoolery seems to be the exclusive province of the misguided liberal who believes that state regulation supplies a ready and effective answer to all manner of human problems. Yet a freedom oriented individual may fall victim to similar if more subtle persuasions possessing the identical defect.
For example, X dislikes his neighbor’s use of the abutting property to grow begonias so he induces the county commission to adopt a comprehensive land use plan which will prescribe permitted uses and proscribe disfavored ones; yet when the neighbor complains about X’s use of his roof for a heliport, X secures a variance from the local planning board.
Or Y, feeling charitable and concerned about the poor and the downtrodden, favors a program of food stamps to insure an adequate diet; yet, when the tax authorities assess the cost of welfare upon the creators of value, Y declines to pay his share and encourages the state to impose a staggered or graduated tax which will lay the burden unequally upon the populace so that Y defrays a lesser portion of the cost.
Or Z, aware of the value of education, may apply compulsory attendance laws to unwilling learners yet refuse to accept the result of an expensive institution which instills neither intellectual nor moral values in a large number of those in attendance.
In each instance propounded (and each situation merely represents a slight variation of a repetitious theme) ends which may receive the label “good” in the subjective value structure of many persons falter on the shoals of the means employed to reach those goals. In each instance, proponents of a subject seize power and employ aggressive means to compel others to comply with their dream, unaware that dreams differ as much as human beings. In each instance, the seeker sees his course of conduct produce disagreeable results which he promptly reassigns to others by the use of duress and coercion.
A wholly distinct situation partaking of the same evil occurs when B and S enter into a contract wherein S sells B goods on credit. If B overextends himself and mortgages his future, that represents his choice for which he should remain responsible. Yet in the current state of affairs, many purchasers and borrowers exhibit an increasingly cavalier attitude toward debt — the result of voluntary contractual relationships — and try to shift the burden to the lender or seller by means of default or to the consuming public by means of moratoria and like restraints.
Misuses of Power
One must distinguish between two discrete misuses of power. The more readily apparent misapplication of force stems from the act of directing others to perform or to refrain from certain conduct: blue laws, usury rules, zoning ordinances all partake of this sin. The more hidden transgression lies in the use of law to disperse or avoid the risk of loss or the cost of a poor decision made with or without the aid of law. Governmental payments to Penn Central and Lockheed, bankruptcy norms, and compulsory automobile insurance reek of this offense.
Moreover, one should perceive that mankind does not restrict this particular propensity to the use of law or to the field of economic activity. Psychologists and psychiatrists recognize the habit of many patients to lay off their problems upon others or to attribute misfortune to God, chance or the position of the stars, instead of their own poor choice. Almost everyone has seen a fellow who moans at his fate in this manner, imputing his fortuity to a conspiracy rather than the natural outgrowth of human action. At the core, the attribute forms a moral and personal problem.
Freedom and responsibility truly represent two facets of the identical aspect of truth. Freedom postulates a belief that no person should initiate coercion against another, and that the use of force receives justification only to protect persons from loss of life, liberty and property caused by coercive or fraudulent means, and to adjudicate disputes which the parties cannot resolve on their own. Responsibility stands on the tenet that each citizen must accept the consequences of such unfettered human action without employing the law to ameliorate the results of his free choice. Arising from the same base, the two concepts exhibit compatibility and an inherent relationship : A free man chooses and a responsible man accepts the results of his choice without infringing upon the equivalent freedom of others.
The Rationale for Responsibility
Two separate lines of reasoning undergird the doctrine of individual responsibility outlined above, similar to the rationale supporting the concept of liberty.1
First, recur to a pragmatic reason: A man makes better choices if he bears the ultimate responsibility for his actions. He will tend to think through the problem, apply his best judgmental, experiential and analytical tools, and reach the most reasoned result in harmony with his personal dynamic scale of preferences. Individual responsibility does not mean that man will not make mistakes ; nothing can entirely eliminate that problem, for to do so would amount to a reconstruction of human nature. Individual responsibility does mean that men, singly and as a whole, will make fewer and less tragic mistakes and will more nearly reach their personal aspirations.
Again, an example may prove instructive. History demonstrates that men adduce better choices for their largess if they maintain personal accountability for choosing the objects of their charities. Almost all men betray the very human (natural) trait of sympathy with those less blessed with
Second, a distinct moral reason separately and wholly justifies the practice of individual responsibility. Insofar as individual responsibility requires the actor to accept and live with the ramifications of his choice and not employ legal process to coercively shift the results to another person or group, justice and morality support the proposition. The same fundamental moral principle applies here as it does in any instance where mankind rejects the suggestion that “might makes right.”” Reduced to an a priori declaration, fundamental morality condemns the initiation of force against another who persists only in minding his own business and going about his pursuits in a non-aggressive way.
Furthermore, a collateral proposition of moral suasion justifies individual responsibility even on those occasions when the actor seeks to divert the effects of his decision by nonjural means. If choice making ability distinguishes mankind from other inhabitants, then it rationally follows that choice means nothing without a concomitant responsibility for that choice. If choosing descends into meaninglessness, then the ability to choose does not mark the actor in a different fashion from other creatures. There fore, man must accept the effects of his causal action and cannot escape responsibility by importuning, deception, disregard or any other means. Whether one posits the primacy of choice or deduces it from human nature or basic reality, the result remains identical.
In addition to the unassailable pragmatic and moral reasons discussed, a third support appears for many analysts. A believer in universal justice, whether based on religious or natural theory, must necessarily propound a belief in the essential orderliness of the universe. Things work in a repetitive pattern; cause-and-effect flow through the unseen mechanism. Postulate an orderly nature of things and it requires but a small step to subsume a retributive form of justice where events finally come to rest at the feet of the doer : “As ye sow, so shall ye reap.” Ultimately, those who contribute to the fires of a raging inflation by their vote, by their deed, or by their theories are bound to suffer the effect of the necessary cataclysm. Such a theory of natural justice necessarily imposes the normative rule that man cannot avoid the consequences of his acts; he may defer the effect of bad choice A by a series of other poor decisions, but he will ultimately pay the piper in regard to A.
The Misdeeds of Enterprise Responsibility
One cannot adequately investigate the doctrine of individual responsibility without a cursory examination of two related subjects: corporate and government responsibility.
Corporate responsibility relates to, the extent to which corporate enterprises bear an obligation for entrepreneurial action. By their very legal structure, corporations and limited partnerships render the investing entrepreneur only liable to a limited amount, generally the total of his investment or subscription. The justification for this special privilege rests in part upon the policy determination that venture capital cannot be pooled in sufficient amounts without the protection of limited liability, and in part upon the consensual or implied contractual basis that all who deal with such a business recognize, and consent to, the limitation of liability.
The former policy reason probably represents a historical fact although not a necessary one. One could achieve a similar limitation of liability by the judicious use of insurance (written in an association rather than in the corporate form) without the inconsistency bred into the law by corporate enterprise. The latter consensual reason supplies a simplistic justification which proceeds upon the assumption that all men know the law and assent thereto, an assumption probably unjustified in this or any other state. Each year literally thousands of good faith creditors receive naught for their goods, services, ideas or money when a limited liability venture comes a cropper, while the principal owners of that enterprise remain insulated behind the corporate form, enjoying property protected from attachment for judgment debts. In such a manner, the owners shift the effects of their actions to other persons and shirk individual responsibility.
Social Responsibility of Business Enterprise
In other ways, corporations occupy a similar position to that of individual actors. Causal connection governs group acts as well as personal conduct. Shifting responsibility and spreading of risk occupy considerable managerial time and effort. Postponement of consequences, rather than total avoidance, affects both the group and the person.
Currently, some would advocate a concept of “social responsibility of business,” implying that the business enterprise possesses some greater obligation to the community beyond the sale of goods, services and ideas. While such a notion merits separate treatment, suffice it to say that the sole business of business is business, to produce the best possible goods, services and ideas at the lowest possible cost and the greatest possible profit. Business enterprises owe no social responsibility outside of the common duty to refrain from the initiation of force and fraud and abiding by standard dispute-settling rules.
Perhaps corporations do possess the tools to make better decisions and fewer mistakes within the perimeters of their actions. Corporate managers and directors often own substantial expertise in their chosen field and devote a large portion of their time to analysis and solution of business problems. Often several individuals pool their efforts and talents to the answer of a particularly difficult problem and the making of a particularly trying choice. Yet, in final analysis, corporation decisions are personal decisions rendered by the individual officers and directors, and the resultant choices achieve no higher plane than the best that these finite men have to offer.
The Miasma of Government Responsibility
One manifestation of group responsibility affects both corporate and state enterprises in common, although more apparent at the latter level: the readiness of the individuals involved to evade or attempt to shun individual responsibility for enterprise acts. Devoid of its outer garb, this feature merely forms another facet of the individual tendency to decline acceptance for mistaken or misguided choices.
Individuals acting in a corporate or state capacity owe precisely the same moral obligation for the consequences of their enterprise actions as they do for personal conduct. One cannot repudiate responsibility by the artifice or device of membership in the United States Army or United States Steel Corporation. The law perverted permits individuals to postpone effects of enterprise acts but human law cannot overcome and obviate the natural course of events. Ultimate responsibility remains and finally rests upon the back of the individual decision maker.
Governmental servants and officials owe an even more stringent duty to make proper choices since they deal with the coercive powers of the state. It requires little insight to recognize that one who seizes or utilizes power should do so fairly and under restraint lest that power be abused. The decision of otherwise insoluble disputes and the protection of life and liberty from fraud and force represent an awesome task in any view ; those chosen to perform these state functions must not only accept ultimate personal responsibility for their activities but also exercise the highest degree of prudence and foresight in handling the entrusted affairs of state.
To the extent that the state exceeds the limits of its appropriate functions, the individual officials cannot escape their personal responsibility for their role in such action. Acceptance of the premise that restrictive state action amounts to immorality leads to the inevitable conclusion that the state servant bears the final obligation for that immoral conduct. After all, neither a corporation nor a government can act; artificial entities perform only by means of individuals functioning in their stead.
Both corporate and governmental enterprises tend to prove the natural law that one takes less care with the lives, liberties and properties of others than he does with his own. If Congressmen had to man machine guns, wars would end quickly. If Presidents had to pay the bills for housing and feeding those unwilling to work, the budget would balance. If judges had to live next door to suspects on bail, less criminal relapse would mar the community. One can hardly apply the term “responsible” to governmental action where deficit spending in a year reaches $44, or $60, or $100 billions (depending on who provides the estimate), where the resulting inflation chips gaping holes in the buying power of the measure of exchange, and where taxes absorb 40% or more of the national product. Corporate officers at least often own a substantial interest in their enterprise and thus suffer the effects of their conduct in some regard; state officials normally achieve strict insulation, if not immunity, from the consequences of their conduct since their state actions necessarily harmonize with their own subjective values.
True freedom cannot exist in the absence of individual responsibility. Individual responsibility, whether exercised on one’s own behalf or in the employ of a voluntary or state organization, requires the actor to accept the consequences of his conduct without using juridical rules to shunt the natural effects unto another, unwilling party.
1 See Foley, Ridgway K., Jr., “A Rationale for
2 See Foley, Ridgway K., Jr., “Welfare as a Right”, 23 Freeman 663-671 ( Nov., 1973) .
3 See Foley, Ridgway K., Jr., “You Can’t Sell Freedom To a Starving Man” (Unpublished Manuscript)
Ridgway K. Foley Jr.
Ridgway K. Foley Jr. is a litigation lawyer who is passionate about individual and economic freedom, and has authored numerous scholarly articles on related subjects.