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Show Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume I: The Humean Conception 499 retained in it, without seeing the danger of their error; which errors a man cannot reasonably reckon upon as the means of his security: ...[italics added].4 In this passage Hobbes argues that by breaking the rules designed to protect all citizens, the free rider thereby announces his unreliability to his fellow citizens, and so absolves them of any obligation to protect him. Since the potential free rider knows in advance that he is thereby undermining his own claim to social protection by breaking the rules, he would be a "fool" to go ahead and do so. But the force of Hobbes' argument depends on the mistaken assumption that breaking the rules is tantamount to announcing publicly that one is breaking the rules. His argument holds only for the highly unlikely and truly foolish case in which one publicizes one's intent to break the rules for personal advantage, or does so before an audience, or does so but takes no precautions to conceal one's dereliction. To publicize one's intent to free ride in a society in which one's audience does not would, as Hobbes observes, be self-defeating since it would immediately elicit punitive social sanctions. This much seems obvious. But Hobbes' argument does not address the far more widespread case, in which one takes advantage of others' adherence to the rules by secretly breaking them. Only by being a clandestine free rider can one be a successful free rider. For only in this case can one derive the benefits, gratis, of others' adherence to rules and laws that prescribe, for example, paying one's taxes, voting, financially supporting public radio, etc. Publicizing one's intention to free ride would be to forego these benefits. Thus Hobbes' instrumental reasoning cannot convince a committed, clandestine free rider that her behavior is irrational. If all were to reason as this type of free rider does, there soon would be no stable social rules for anyone to free ride on. On Hobbes' version of Social Contract Theory, clandestine free riders' violations of the law therefore threaten social stability, and are strictly incompatible with the publicity of the principle that justifies them. All of Hobbes' successors in the Anglo-American analytic tradition attempt to come to grips with Hobbes' free rider dilemma by modifying his assumptions about individual motivation. Sidgwick's solution does so most radically, and therefore fails most dramatically. However, if my conclusions about Instrumentalism in Chapter IX.4.4 are well-taken, a sound solution to the problem requires modification not only in the model of motivation, but also in the corresponding model of rationality; for it is the Instrumentalist form of justification that legitimates free riding as rational and consistent behavior. 4 Ibid., 115. © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
