Passions and Constraint (book) #2

In short, the author of Passions and Constraint champions the need of government to recognize rights, and keep the peace (constrain violence). However, he is unclear on where he stands on controversial rights and how far government can go to reach its goals. Maybe his answer is in another book, The Cost of Rights: Why Liberty Depends on Taxes, co-authored with Cass Sunstein.

He cites Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman as too much on the anti-tyranny side. He says Hayek's negative constitutionalism is nothing but a device for limiting the power of government (p. 135). He says Friedman treated welfare measures as profoundly illiberal -- they seek through government to force people to act against their own immediate interests in order to promote a supposedly general interest.

However, neither Hayek nor Friedman were against assisting the poor or helpless as much as Holmes says. With regard to a safety net, Hayek advocated "some provision for those threatened by the extremes of indigence or starvation, be if only in the interest of those who require protection against acts of desperation on the part of the needy." He also wrote "there is no reason why ... the state should not help to organize a comprehensive system of social insurance" (link). Friedman at one time proposed a negative income tax (link).

Holmes portrays welfare to the indigent as payment for refraining from crimes against others. He asks a challenging question: "If criminals who are apprehended are given food and shelter, then how, for safety's sake, can the noncriminal poor be guaranteed any less?" (p. 253). In other word, it's a provision for safety.