Anthony de Jasay has recently written an essay for Cato Unbound entitled ‘Government, bound or unbound?’ (see here). This essay is a sequel to a widely-quoted article he wrote twenty years ago entitled ‘Is limited government possible?’.
The essay discusses the important question of whether democracy (or, more precisely, representative government with majority rule) is compatible with the classical liberal ideal of a government that acts as a guarantor of liberty, using coercion only to enforce rules of just conduct.
In the first part the essay the author argues that constitutions cannot be sufficiently strong to restrain governments from doing what they are anxious to do or must do to preserve their tenure of power. The basic problem is that, notwithstanding the so-called separation of powers, the enforcement of constitutional rules that provide that government shall not do certain things lies ultimately in the hands of government. Judges are appointed by governments. I agree with this reasoning.
I also agree with most of the second part of the essay, in which the author discusses circumstances and events that may place limits on collective choice. He suggests that several factors may place contingent limits on government.- The need for political candidates to obtain donations from higher income donors in order to get elected. This constraint is obviously weakened where campaign funding is subsidized by government. Even without such subsidies, I doubt whether this is an important constraint in countries with strong union movements.
- The desire of the winning coalition to remain in power limits the extent to which marginal supporters can be taxed and its desire to maximize long run tax yield prevents it from imposing high rates that would chase away “the goose that lays the golden eggs” (i.e. avoiding a brain drain and flight of capital).
- When government expands beyond some point an increasing proportion of voters may perceive that continuation in this direction will result in a bleak future. This may result in the election of a reform government with a mandate to pursue market-friendly policies.
- Finally, human motivation is influenced by factors other than identifiable interest. The author suggests: “Perhaps the purest and strongest limit on government is the standard, non-interest motive arising from superstition or taboo”. He gives the example of the balance budget as a standard that was followed reflexively for about a century and a half prior to Keynes’s General Theory.
I have two objections to the idea that we can rely on superstition or taboo to limit government. First, it is difficult to see how a taboo can be maintained in any area of public policy unless political leaders can explain why it exists and their explanations have fairly widespread support among relevant professionals. Second, as James Buchanan has suggested, the ethical constraints required to protect liberty are closely related to rules of reciprocity in interpersonal dealings (“Why I, too, am not a conservative”, 2005, pp 81-2). The rules of reciprocal respect extend beyond markets to include the political sector when people consider themselves to be engaged in politics to obtain publicly provided goods and services in exchange for tax payments (rather than to obtain distributional gains at the expense of others). The benefits of adherence to rules of reciprocal respect are obviously not beyond human understanding and adherence to such rules is likely to be enhanced by more widespread understanding of the purposes they serve.
The final comment I want to make about this excellent essay is that I think the author’s list of constraints on expansion of government omits one that has potential to be important. I think that transparency rules can be an important constraint on the expansion of government if voters understand their importance and expect governments to comply with them. I will write more about this in my next post
Human flourishing is inherently a self-directed process. It follows that in order for individuals to be able to flourish to the maximum extent possible, without infringing on the flourishing of others, we need a political/ legal order that will not favour some varieties of human flourishing above others. If this point seem obvious to you, please read on. Otherwise, see here.
The first category of arguments to restrict freedom involve fundamental opposition to the ethics of “live and let live”. According to this view everyone should be required by the government to live according to a particular set of values and standards. It seems to me that in countries with democratic forms of government few people are prepared to take this position openly. A Google search using the phrase “live and let live” did not reveal any internet sites which were presenting arguments openly opposed to individual liberty. The most popular arguments against liberty are more subtle.
The second category of arguments to restrict freedom are attempts to re-define rights in ways that reduce freedom. Nearly everyone agrees that the law should protect people against force and fraud, and that some additional protections are required for children and people who are not mentally competent. However, arguments are frequently put forward to give additional protection to the unborn as well as to animals, potential drug addicts, potential gambling addicts, potential credit addicts etc. Some of these arguments may have sufficient merit to attract near unanimous support, while others involve attempts by particular groups to impose their values on others.
The third category of arguments to restrict freedom are based on the view that people will flourish to a greater extent if the government provides them with paternal guidance. Thus we have arguments for compulsory superannuation, compulsory accident and health insurance etc. Such measures may prevent some misery and reduce the extent to which people with self-control problems become a burden on others. It seems to me, however, that human flourishing is to a large extent about the exercise of competence in the face of challenge (for further explanation click here). When governments take more of the trouble (i.e. challenges) out of living, we shouldn’t be too surprised if some people find other ways to get themselves into trouble (e.g. via gambling).
The fourth category of arguments to restrict freedom are based on the view that it is OK to hinder the efforts of some people to flourish in the way they wish to if this will bring the greatest happiness to the greatest number of people (or perhaps just to improve the well-being of a small minority whom the majority consider to be worthy of government assistance). It seems to me that this is the dubious ethical reasoning that underlies the use of progressive income taxes to fund transfer payments and provision of public services. Nevertheless, not many people would be prepared to advocate immediate abolition of government welfare expenditure on the ground that it is not strictly consistent with the principles of “live and let live”. (See here.) This also seems to me to be the dubious ethical reasoning that underlies the economic argument that governments can increase GDP by subsidizing activities such as research, innovation and training, as well as arguments for governments to promote greater competition.
I think the main point which emerges from this attempt to list categories of arguments is that even though a large proportion of the population may support the principle of “live and let live” as an abstract concept, large numbers of people support policies that are inconsistent with this principle. This could be because they are unaware of the inconsistency, but in my view it is more often likely to be because they have no problem in making exceptions to general principles when they believe that there are powerful pragmatic reasons to do so.
When asked this question many people describe what they think an ideal world would look like and then point out how this ideal differs from the world we live in.
However, the visions we have of ideal worlds are not always possible worlds. A possible world has to be a world that is subject to the constraints of the laws of physics and biology, and one that is achievable by fallible humans. Charles Murray has suggested that if we were living in the best of all possible worlds we would be unaware of it (“In pursuit of happiness and good government”, 1988, p 242). He argues that only an omniscient bystander would know when we had reached the point when further attempts to reduce the bad things in the world would be futile because it would only increase the net amount of bad things. For example, just about everyone would agree that child abuse is a bad thing that should be reduced as far as possible, but in order to eliminate child abuse completely governments could end up doing more harm than good - for example, by separating children from non-abusive parents. We have to accept, reluctantly, that in the best possible world some parents would still abuse their children.
It seems to me that we would have a better chance of knowing whether we were living in the best of all possible worlds if we were living in a framework for utopias - to use an expression used by Robert Nozick (“ Anarchy, state and utopia”, 1974, chapter 10).
Nozick argues that, because people are different, no one vision of utopia could command universal assent. Utopia should be thought of as a framework for utopias – consisting of different and divergent communities under which people would lead different kinds of lives under different institutions. Even if it is clear to an omniscient bystander that one particular type of community is superior to all others, the limits of human knowledge mean that we can only be sure that one form of community is superior to others by observing which forms of community flourish in a competitive environment. The test is whether people decide to join particular communities or leave them, or whether members modify the rules of their community to make them more like other communities.
To cut a long story short, it seems to me that we will know that we live in the best of all possible worlds when people are free to choose the kind of community they live in. We are a long way away from the best of all possible worlds when we have a central government which seeks to impose uniform national standards for all kinds of regulation.
In my view, if Australia is to move toward the best of all possible worlds it will need to correct the fiscal imbalance between federal and state governments and re-embrace the kind of federalism embodied in the Australian constitution which defines and limits the powers of the federal government.
Isn’t this a great thought:
“If we value such collective goods as scientific research, space travel, public art, and fine architecture, then we should tax to fund them, whatever the economic cost. The consequent reduction of our material consumption will have little psychic cost”.
I am just joking, but I don’t think Gregory Clark was joking when he left readers with this thought at the end of his book, “A Farewell to Alms” (p 377).
In some respects I think Clark’s book is an excellent piece of work. It is highly readable and the main ideas in it – about the possible influence of differential rates of population growth of rich and poor on the spread of bourgeois cultural values in England prior to the industrial revolution – seem to be based on extensive research.
How does the author manage to end his book by claiming that taxation is costless when used to fund collective projects? He sees this as an implication of the observation that average happiness levels in high income countries do not rise much with increases in per capita incomes. He seems to think that this means that governments can tax away future increases in average income levels without making people any less happy.
I am not sure about anyone else, but the mere thought of a government attempting to do this makes me feel grumpy. At present I feel reasonably satisfied with life as a whole, not least because I live in a country where there are reasonable prospects that average living standards will continue to improve. I will become a very grumpy old man, however, if the government takes Gregory Clark seriously and decides that my children and their children should forego improvements in their living standards in order to fund more scientific research, space travel, public art and fine architecture. I suspect that a lot of other people will also become grumpy if this happens.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t have anything against any of the projects that Gregory Clark wants to fund. If he uses the proceeds of his book sales to fund such things, I think we should all be grateful to him. I might be prepared to buy a lottery ticket to help fund some of these things myself, but when I want to give any money to charity I prefer to give it to an organisation like Opportunity International. This organisation lends funds to needy people who are prepared to help themselves build better lives.
