WP 2023-04.
Executive Summary
Among libertarians, it has been conventional to define the minimal state as a state that enforces contracts and employs coercion to prevent force and fraud only. Its foundations are the basic rights of individuals to liberty, life, and estate. The usual competitor to the minimal state has been the redistributive state which allows individual rights to be restricted for the purposes of social and economic welfare. In this paper, I return to Locke’s classical liberal theses and make a case for a Lockean minimal state that fleshes out the importance of trust. The core claim is threefold: 1) that a Lockean minimal state should be understood both as a rights-protecting and as a trust-based political authority; that 2) trust is fundamental to a free society; and that 3) the principal “foe” of the Lockean minimal state is not the redistributive state, but a novel type of social organisation called a social credit system. Social credit systems, as the one introduced in China since 2020, undermine both individual rights and trust or the moral glue that connects individuals inside a free society. The paper concludes with a warning about the possible spread of elements of social credit systems to Western liberal states.
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A Matter of Trust: The Lockean Minimal State and its New Foe
