Political Philosophy and Ethics discussion
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Public choice
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Which book is it to which you refer in the first sentence?
government failure by Tullock, Seldon and Brady. Apparently it isn't visible on the mobile app
Ah, no. I am traveling in Oz! Thanks for posting.Cheers,
Randal
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As I understand it, public choice theory reduces "political man" to "economic man" and assumes that all governmental officials operate to maximize their private interest (in terms of power or money) at the expense of the common good. The explicit or implicit conclusion is that we might as well let the free market do everything, because people are going to act only in their self-interest anyway.
If my characterization is accurate (and perhaps it is not), this would be a prime example of the logical fallacy of reductionism. I could spend hours going through history to give specific counterexamples, but neither time nor space permits such an exercise here.
It is true that politicians and other public officials often act to maximize their own personal political or economic interests. This does not mean, however, that they always do so or that government is totally ineffectual in achieving its legitimate ends. As I have indicated in other posts in this Goodreads group (and elsewhere), anarchocapitalism is a utopian fantasy that would result in a hellish situation for all but the very wealthy. In fact, we are seeing today in the United States (and perhaps in some countries in Europe) the results of putting libertarian theory into practice. This is why economic inequality is at the greatest levels since immediately before the Great Depression and is probably one of the causes (there were several) of the Great Recession of the last decade.
I have always been guided by James Madison's analysis in The Federalist number 51:
"But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.
"This policy of supplying, by opposite and rival interests, the defect of better motives, might be traced through the whole system of human affairs, private as well as public."
Of late, Madison has been appropriated by American conservatives to support their small-government theories. (American conservatives do not, however, like Madison's views supporting a strict separation of religion and government.) It must be kept in mind that Madison, like Jefferson, lived in a preindustrial age. It is difficult to predict what Madison and Jefferson would have thought regarding the relationship between government and the economy in the present age of greatly changed circumstances from those that obtained in 1776, the year of publication of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. I have recently read David Sehat's The Jefferson Rule: How Our Founding Fathers Became Infallible and Our Politics Inflexible (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015). This book, which was first published a few weeks ago, is an excellent discussion of American history and its use and misuse by political movements.
As I have stated elsewhere, we can learn something from libertarian theorists. I am not sure, however, that they have much of significance to add from what we already know by way of Madison and other hard-headed, realistic Enlightenment theorists. I do not, of course, speak of Rousseau and his epigones, who went off in an entirely different direction.
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Alan - let me underline your statement. I strongly agreed:
"It is true that politicians and other public officials often act to maximize their own personal political or economic interests. This does not mean, however, that they always do so or that government is totally ineffectual in achieving its legitimate ends".
I also have always been guided by James Madison's analysis inThe Federalist number 51:
"But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.
Solution is reduce resources managed by bureaucrats and politicians (human will) - tax system - and increase those flowing by free market - nobody control it!!!
Regards. Ron Carneiro
Ronaldo,
I also stated:
"As I have indicated in other posts in this Goodreads group (and elsewhere), anarchocapitalism is a utopian fantasy that would result in a hellish situation for all but the very wealthy. In fact, we are seeing today in the United States (and perhaps in some countries in Europe) the results of putting libertarian theory into practice. This is why economic inequality is at the greatest levels since immediately before the Great Depression and is probably one of the causes (there were several) of the Great Recession of the last decade."
You have much greater faith in laissez-faire economics than I. Although pure socialism does not work, pure capitalism does not work either. Some governmental regulation is necessary to control the hubristic excesses (and negative societal effects) of unmitigated greed. American history is replete with proofs of this proposition. Adam Smith wrote at a time when governmental policy was dominated by mercantilism. That was a legitimate target. But today's situation is much different.
Alan
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Our Koch brothers are now using their massive wealth to invade the pope's backyard and defeat views that have their source in the ethical teachings of Jesus. See the article here.
Yes, of course, modern capitalism has taught us important lessons that were unknown to the religious or secular ancients. But it has now replaced God as the object of worship. This used to be called idolatry. Although I have a secular, not religious, orientation, Pope Francis may be onto something.
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Big thruth: Although pure socialism does not work, pure capitalism does not work either.Government intervention is necessary only cause agriculture (nutrition) health and educations doesn´t work alone. Let´s include these 3 sectors as private companies responsibility and the "Church of the magical, mystical market" will work (Mimi I liked this, never heard before) accordingly.
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Government intervention is necessary only cause agriculture (nutrition) health and educations doesn´t work a..."
It's not clear to me how this would work. For example, here in the USA the Koch Brothers have basically been doing that in the field of education by taking over secondary schools and colleges with their money. They then proceed to fire those instructors with whom they disagree and impose ideological conformity on the rest. It is becoming an Orwellian nightmare. The wealthy would like nothing better than to control education so that people would be indoctrinated to support a far right ideological agenda. Soon we might as well change our name to the Tea Party States of America.
Christoffer wrote: "I have this book at home. There is much I disagree with, but the premise is interesting, namely that government is not an objective truth-seeker but rather has its own agenda.For example, people ..."Madison is correct in his descriptions of the challenges of democratic government , the best line of defense against the intrusive state is the people, and vice versa the constraint on the people a vigorous government. Madison was writing post independence, arguing for protections against the very big central government that abused the colonists liberty. Thus the adoption of Madison by small government conservatives. Madison was conflicted of course as so many were by the need to square the circle of individual liberty with minority protections. In the end , Madison's philosophical partner in crime ended up being Hamilton, whose continental vision of America ended up closer to our reality. Government failure is a problem except when you consider the alternative...there is no guarantee that our corporate leader won't be Roger Smith (GM) rather than Steve Jobs.
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In the early republic, big government was associated with big banks and financial speculation (Hamilton and his cronies). These days, the banking interests are for an unregulated Wild West and thus oppose Dodd-Frank, etc. However, they are happy when they are in the driver's seat and can control government, as in the late 1990s and early 2000s before the crash.
Seems to me what the public choice theorists are saying is the following: even though the results from a free market are less than ideal (which we all can agree to), government intervention only makes things worse.They are not saying that the free market will work any wonders, just that it is the lesser of two evils.
If you put it like this, I agree with them. I don't for a second believe we will ever have heaven on earth
It seems to me that most people implicitly agree. If competition is good sometimes, why isn't it good always? Government intervention always makes a competitive situation more monopoly-like. Some marginal actors will be pushed out by new regulation.
(BTW I do believe, with Hobbes, that a strong governmnet is needed BUT one that manages the truly collective goods only)
Christoffer wrote: "(BTW I do believe, with Hobbes, that a strong governmnet is needed BUT one that manages the truly collective goods only) ..."I love the reference to Hobbes, but I wonder what exactly we mean by "collective goods."
Air and water quality would seem to be collective goods. So we should regulate release of substances into our common air and water which harm the commons. This would include oxygen demanding substances and nutrients that cause excessive algal growth in our waters. But what about carbon dioxide release into an atmospheric commons that is truly global? Shouldn't we be regulating that? And who should be doing that, since we have no global regulator?
And what about money? Isn't that a collective good? So regulation of banking is necessary, no? And what about the case where a government service or government-produced product would make a market MORE competitive? Since capitalistic markets tend towards what Joan Robinson called "imperfect competition" in any case, shouldn't all markets be regulated? Isn't it the case that they wouldn't exist at all without collective regulation and nurture?
And doesn't this include markets for stocks and property? Isn't there an element of collective good involved in these, which calls for government regulation? And what about transportation? Do you really want to exist in a world of toll roads and water and wastewater utilities owned by private companies? Aren't these "natural monopolies" that call for regulation?
And on and on. Isn't a more equal distribution of the fruits of our collective labors a positive benefit? So redistribution of wealth is fair and contributes to collective good, no? In fact, high tax rates on the top income earners during the trente glorieuse (from 1950 to 1980) led to higher growth rates than we have had in the United States since. (I have written about this here.)
So the real question is not whether government is necessary only for collective goods, but what about our world is NOT a collective good, no?
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Some additional thoughts:
Christoffer wrote: "If competition is good sometimes, why isn't it good always?"
Then why draw the line at "collective goods" at all? According to Murray Rothbard and his trusty band of anarchocapitalists, private enterprise is better at everything. Ergo, we can eliminate government entirely. Private insurance companies, per Rothbard et al., can provide competing militias to institute criminal justice and other "collective goods." They will be much more efficient at these tasks than government. Perhaps Rothbard (who died in 1995) would have liked the contemporary Middle East with its weak or nonexistent governments and its competing militias. Some of these militias favor Sharia law—a desideratum for some people in that region. Isn't that wonderful? Shouldn't people be allowed to opt for such systems by voting with their feet (there's a lot of that going on in the Middle East, though usually it is away from militias with Sharia law) and, most especially, with their guns (evidently the ultimate argument against gun control)? Why not fast-forward to a war of all against all as in Hobbes's state of nature? Then we will all end up preferring the Leviathan of an absolute state that guarantees the right to life but not the right to liberty, let alone property (never mind whether life is possible without liberty or property). As Plato and others recognized long ago, extreme liberty leads to extreme tyranny. Back to the future! Reductio ad absurdum!
And now for some remarks for those especially interested in United States history and politics (perhaps not applicable for many people from other countries who are members of this group):
In the early U.S. republic, big government was favored by the business and religious establishments (the New England Federalists) and opposed by many ordinary white people (the Jeffersonian Republicans). It was widely believed that big government would benefit the wealthy and that the Constitution was designed specifically to curb the anarchic tendencies of the debtor class and to protect property rights (see Shays' Rebellion, etc.). In that preindustrial society, the ordinary white male could easily be self-sufficient, because there was plenty of land for farming—at least if one didn't mind stealing it from Native Americans. Big government evolved during the Civil War to abolish slavery and preserve the Union. (Lincoln: " The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present.") Then the Progressive Era and the New Deal turned early American political theory upside down by suggesting that government could help the "little guy" (originally only the little white guy) cope with the effects of industrialization (now postindustrialization and globalization) and financial speculation. Economic and demographic changes meant that the ordinary person was no longer always self-sufficient. One can debate endlessly the details of what works and what does not work to achieve the common good. Politicians and bureaucrats will always have some element of self-interest that will complicate matters. Still, only government can deal with many contemporary problems that were originally caused, or are exacerbated, by the unmitigated profit motive. Had it not been for the Clean Air Act, for example, people living in cities (and perhaps elsewhere) would now be literally choking to death. (I remember well the difficulties of breathing the air in Chicago when I lived there during the 1960s.) But, by all means, let's go back to the future by abolishing the EPA as many politicians now advocate! And let's ignore climate change—a problem that is in no one's short-term economic interest to address. Our children will suffer the consequences, but we will have protected the sacred "job creators" of Big Business. We have come full circle, only with an ironic twist. Unmitigated laissez faire now benefits Big Business but not the ordinary person. The problem is to find solutions that properly and effectively balance free enterprise and governmental regulation. History proves that neither a command economy nor total freedom from economic regulation will work. Instead of focusing on a priori economic ideologies, we need to figure out practical solutions that will work in the real world and not just in the Ivory Tower of pure ideology, whether of the Left or Right.
This just in from Justice Scalia, our defender of constitutional preservation, in turning down the right of EPA to regulate coal burning power plants: “It is not rational, never mind ‘appropriate,’ to impose billions of dollars in economic costs in return for a few dollars in health or environmental benefits. Statutory context supports this reading.” The question that he doesn't consider, of course, is costs to whom? The leader of the right wing of the Supremes counts the costs to his Koch brother backers, the costs to peasant farmers in Bangladesh or Louisiana in dealing with rising seas and pickled oceans, not so much.
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Either Scalia is lying or he's senile.
But never mind, the EPA's authority to regulate was not impinged. They will dot the i's and cross the t's before too long and do it again.
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Try to think in a new pact where profit depends on human health. What willgonna happen with clean air, carbon, huge cities and so on.
Alan you´re absolute right when state:
"The problem is to find solutions that properly and effectively balance
free enterprise and governmental regulation. History proves that neither a
command economy nor total freedom from economic regulation will work"
I am in agreement with most of everyone's points on public choice, I offer the following; its clear that in a nation as large, dynamic and diverse as ours, that societal goods are best provided by government in general. However what those goods are and how they are supplied perhaps evolves over time. No doubt access to health care is a very different need today than in 1935 or 1955. Thus the delivery mechanism must change and relying on private insurance markets alone to serve us is illogical at best. Delivery of the mail on the other hand which was one of the founding responsibilities of our country, not so much. Very few can argue, and even fewer among the younger set, that daily delivery of paper mail goods is a critical societal need. The problem with government is not that its paid by taxes, but that it hides away from the real world that is changing so quickly and cannot keep up with the true needs of Americans. Also , it spends too much because of its built in reactionary DNA.
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It strikes me as oddly American that the primary motivator for conservatives to 'lean to the right' always seems to be the distribution of wealth. Is that all they every preoccupy themselves with? The US Govt already subsidizes the income gap between rich and poor so that it won't be revealed as so utterly blatant (enough so that someone might have to actually do something about it). But how much more of a chasm would the Right like to see?Anyway I was unfamiliar with the term 'public choice' before noticing this discussion, of course I was already familiar with the concepts. Political victories in the modern era seem to indicate that government mismanagement is welcomed as a deliberate policy. It is part of 'the American Way'. To remove this brain lesion at this late stage means removing the frontal lobe of the patient where identity is stored. As it were.
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There appear to have been three kinds of American conservatives during the last few decades: (1) the libertarian (economic) right, (2) the religious right, and (3) the neocon foreign policy right (the people who pushed George W. Bush into invading Iraq). MacLain establishes that the libertarian right has basically been taken over by the Kochs and transformed into an oligarchic or plutocratic movement. She also observes that the Kochs have decided to ally themselves with the religious right in order to maximize the possibility for success. Indeed, I was astonished a while ago to realize that the Mises Institute (one of the main organizations of the libertarian right) has countenanced Old Testament theocracy and even given a prize to a person who supports such a theocracy for the United States. See posts 55 and 57-72 in the Separation of Church and State topic.
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For example, people will balk at private enterprise and ciritizise it for being in it just for the money. If the operations are handed over to the government, things supposedly will be managed for the public good.
Student of public choice would disagree, and claim that the problem gets worse if government handles it since it then gets coupled with political power, and does not risk bankruptcy no matter how badly it is run.
This freedom is according to public choice theory just too tempting and in time the operations will be run for the benefit of the few at the expense of the general public.
Thoughts?