Friendship and the Free Society; A. Cohen

There are of course many sorts of friend ships. Some persons are friends out of conve nience. Perhaps our typical "acquaintances" fall into such a category. There are also friendships based merely on what two people find mutually pleasing. Both of these types of relationships help amplify our lives in various ways, but the best sorts of friendships are those where each friend cares deeply and sin cerely about the other. In such complete Andrew Cohen teaches philosophy at the University ofOklahoma, Norman. 20 friendships, each friend respects the other person, not as a means to his own ends, but as an end in himself. A free society is uniquely qualified to pro mote the most complete friendships because it provides the institutional framework most favorable to them. Freedom by Degrees Bya "free society,"we can speak ofa social and political framework with three key fea tures: (1) private property is protected as invi olable, (2) government's role, at most, is to prevent and punish the violation of individual rights, and (3) all human relationships are vol untary. Free societies can exist in degrees.

While the United States now is more free than, say, the Soviet Union under Stalin, the United States is not a completely free society. To the extent that a society counts as free, it will provide the best opportunities to nurture and sustain deep friendships. Consider what is necessary for friendships. Two persons must share some form of good will. There needs to be a certain authenticity to any such mutual affection. This sincere good will helps to nurture a sense of trust and healthy interdependence. Trust is certainly key to building and maintaining any meaning ful relationship, particularly in complete friendships where friends have a special respect for each other. But suppose you find yourself in an institutional environment where you have no choice but to interact with someone else. Such a stilted setting will tend to restrict the development of any friendship. While you may still come to be friends with the other person, it is much more difficult for you to do so under such circumstances. First you must overcome some understandable mutual suspicion, but then you must fight the worry that the other merely likes you as a means to some private end.

In all political economies, individuals will sometimes find themselves having to deal with persons somewhat involuntarily. Even in a nearly free society, we may find ourselves working for, going to school with, or just sit ting beside persons with whom we would rather have no contact. Consider just one example. Most municipal ities have tightly regulated local telephone monopolies. To a great extent we have no choice but to deal with our telephone repair man. His incentive to engage in gestures of good will, and our reason to show him some sincere regard, are both constrained.The repair man's "have a nice day" rings hollow when we know that we have no choice but to get our tele phone service from that one company. What a free society does is minimize the extent to which human relationships are involuntary. When we have no choice but to deal with someone, sincere good will is often hard to muster. But when individuals are free • to come and go as they please and they never theless continue to interact with one another, they can be more certain of one another. They might then foster the trust and mutuality nec essary for genuine friendships.

Take a lower-level friendship, such as one of mere convenience. We have such friend ships with many persons, such as with the family doctor, the comer florist, or (if we are lucky) with car mechanics, plumbers, and car penters. Our good will toward such persons is mostly based on what they can offer us. Gen:' uine good will·is an ingredient in any whole some friendship. To the extent our displays of good will are sincere, it is because we recog nize both the value such persons represent to us and their freedom to do as they wish. These low-level friendships are often step pingstones toward the more complete friend ships where each friend regards the other as an 21 end in himself. People usually do not just fall into friendships. They develop their relation ships, often starting out on the fragile and fleet ing bases of mutual pleasure or mutual conve nience. The trust that comes from freedom of choice can only help foster the good will that gets started in such rudimentary relationships.

The enhanced freedom of choice characteristic of free societies also removes several impedi ments to the deepening of these relationships. To say that the institutions of a free society best facilitate friendship does not mean that people didn't have good friends in, say, Maoist China. (Perhaps genuine friends were especially valuable there.) But it is far more difficult to discover, nurture, and sustain good friendships when human relationships are not entirely voluntary. What a free society does is enhance our range of freedom of choice. We have more options to select or reject. When you find yourself interacting with persons in this wider range of choice, you have better reason to believe that another's interest in you is genuine. You also have better reason to know that your own interest is genuine. The comer baker is more apt to take an interest in your life when he knows quite well that you could just as well go across the street to a competitor or bake your own muffins. You may also be more likely to feel a·mutual good will toward the baker when you know that you are free not to patronize him.

Private Property Another characteristic of a free society even more important and powerful for advancing friendships is private property. What good is wealth, Aristotle asks rhetor ically, unless we have people we care about with whom to share it? Ambiguously defined property rights and property that is not private notoriously promote waste and neglect. What matters here, however, is that when property is not private, or when it is otherwise not fully protected as private, individuals have dimin ished opportunities to cultivate the benevo lence characteristic of genuine friendships. There is a certain sort of kindness that helps to nurture and sustain friendships. This is the kindness manifested by freely sharing 22 THE FREEMAN/IDEAS ON LIBERTY • AUGUST 1999 one's belongings with others. Unless one owns property, however, it is difficult if not impossible to show benevolence toward another. With what would one be benevolent?

It is not benevolence if you grant another access to some good to which you do not have an exclusive, protected claim. Benevolence is still a vital ingredient in bringing a relationship to a higher level, one where you spontaneously and willingly con tribute to a friend's well-being. What property does is give individuals a protected sphere of control over some range of action and materi al goods. It sets up a divide between what is "mine" (and not yours) and what is not "mine" (but someone else's). "Property" here is not just a material thing but also includes one's freedom, one's time, and one's body. Even the materially poor man can be benevo lent toward another; the poor man still owns himself and his time. The authentically benev olent man then freely waives his rights to exclude others from his goods. In doing so, he builds trust and helps to enhance his friend's welfare. Such gestures lay the groundwork for later reciprocal gestures that, in a complete friendship, come freely and without any thought to some payoff.

A free society enhances the quantity of property individuals own and protects as inviolable whatever property rights individuals enjoy. A free society thereby promotes authentic friendships by giving people added opportunities to engage in meaningful shar ing. If resources move from one person to another when they do not have to, the recipi ent is better able to gauge the motives of the gesture. Indeed, the one who gave the proper ty away is better able to be sure of his own motives. A free society does well in clearing the air in this fashion. Relationships are vol untary, and property is exchanged and redis tributed only through free consent. Such ges tures lay the groundwork for the most mean ingful sorts of friendships. Friendships are possible in a variety of cir cumstances, including in the most repressive of dictatorships. What a free society does is make the discovery, development, and suste nance of friendships of all types-particular ly the most meaningful sort-easier. When free, individuals have a diminished need to second-guess the motives of others (and themselves) and they are better in a position to be generous. The freedom not to do what others may want us to do is a valuable liberty.

Besides providing a sense of autonomy, that freedom is an important ingredient in expand ing the opportunities for the friendships that characterize a successful human life. D We are helping FEE sell books over the Internet May We Help You? 3D RESEARCH http://fee.3dresearch.comweb@3dresearch.com (724)-776-7384 The Immoralityof AntitrustLaw by D. T. Armentano T he economic inefficiencies associated with antitrust law enforcement are now generally acknowledged. The regulation of mergers and acquisitions hampers the effi cient reallocation of corporate assets. The antitrust regulation of product prices and innovation (as in the recent Microsoft case) protects less-efficient business competitors and harms consumers. A century of antitrust litigation-both public and private-eonfirms that the laws restrain the competitive process and make economic activity less efficient. Economic issues aside, the antitrust laws also interfere with commonsense notions of liberty and justice, as Adam Smith remarked in The Wealth ofNations. Pro-antitrust econo mists never tire of citing Smith's famous con demnation of price fixers: "people of the same trade seldom meet together . . . but the con versation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices."