It took centuries, several great and not-so-great revolutions, the effort of philosophers, intellectuals, and ordinary people to establish what we now call the modern liberal order. An order that is built on a small number of simple, yet fundamental principles: namely, that every human being is equal in rights and freedoms, and should have the opportunity to fulfil herself to the extent that is possible within the reasonable bounds of her capacities and those of a society favorable to her well-being.
Most importantly, she is, as an individual human and bearer of liberal rights and freedoms, the center of this order. Without the individual as an end in herself, there can be no liberal order. And yet, it takes just one dinner among colleagues to learn that these principles must be abolished. How did we get here?
I was having dinner with two scientists, who shall be named Joseph and Jeremy. We all live in Zurich, one of the most comfortable (but also boring) cities in the world, and one that is plagued, much like the other livable and comfortable cities in the Global North, by a severe housing shortage. The conversation was a bit stale until I slipped and brought up what was a fairly viral topic of recent Swiss news: elderly people who dared to continue living in their big houses in the city even after their children have grown up and left their home.
Joseph and Jeremy are decent people, of course, but they are irredeemably enjoyers of “warm collectivism” and of being “do-gooders”.
“These elderly home owners are egoistic wasters of urban space, and their 'possession' of that space is merely a bourgeois construct anyway”, Joseph argued, adding that “we can build many more housing units on their plots of land, and if they refuse to sell, then the government should have the right to expropriate them, as they’re clearly and wilfully going against the Collective Good”. Jeremy, milder, but just as collectivist-minded, suggested that “maybe brute force goes too far, and we should instead try to ‘incentivize’ these people with heavy taxing to sell their property”.
“Elderly homeowners are egoistic wasters of urban space”.
Against my objections, on which more soon, Joseph and Jeremy started to unfold a set of arguments in the vein of “should a terminally ill child have the right to say the N-word?” They started by reiterating that, with new housing, a hundred people could be accommodated on the same plot. But then a more adventurous proposition came: what if it was on this and no other plot that the city’s citizens urgently needed a new hospital? In any of these two examples, which are categorically different, would an expropriation against the wishes of the proprietors be warranted? Because, after all, the individual must not stand in opposition to the greater collective good. A slightly different argument was finally brought to the table: since the state's safeguarding of individual property and ownership is a mere “construct“, the state can very well withdraw that right if necessary.
Hence, Joseph and Jeremy held positions that boil down to two core propositions:
"Individual interest must be subordinated to the collective interest".
"The State guarantees privileges, of which property is one, and therefore can withdraw them without much injustice being done".
First, in Switzerland, property is not a privilege, but a right. Article 26, paragraph 1 of the Swiss Federal Constitution translates into English as "the right to own property is guaranteed". While there are provisions that allow such drastic steps as expropriation, these are strictly defined exceptions and need to be implemented with full compensation. Second, property is better understood not as a construct, but as a social convention. And there are many conventions, such as universal human rights, that are arguably grounded in something going beyond simple "fantasy-constructs" such as, let's say, unicorns. Such conventions, even if “constructed” by humans, are useful and beneficial and hence not merely to be discarded on a whim. Just because something is a construct or convention, it is not necessarily invalid.
Just because something is a construct or convention, it is not necessarily invalid.
The case seems to get trickier when it comes to the argument of the collective good. Everyone caught in the immediate feeling surrounding the humiliation ritual of finding an apartment in Zurich would to some extent agree that there is a problem, and that maybe a more efficient use of urban space could help solve it. After all, what is the sorrow of the elderly couple compared to the joy of two hundred young families finally able to live in Zurich? Yet, intuitively, there is something not right in this juxtaposition. In fact it is here that we meet the fundamental problem, and one that both Jeremy and Joseph avoided, as it was “too abstract” for their taste: if the interest of the individual living in his big house is deemed irrelevant, why and on which principle should the interest of the young family then be regarded as something valuable? Purely on quantitative grounds?
