Another Part of the Possible
(posted by Jim Henley)
Thanks to George Will, I think I have a better idea of the thrust of Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler’s much-discussed new book on “libertarian paternalism,” Nudge. It’s not about distorting the tax code with a million new Pigovian prods. It is also, it should be noted, not remotely libertarianism pure. It’s a regulatory regime. It would impose some burdens on businesses and probably individuals. It does sound like an incremental improvement over existing nanny-state impulses, though. And the plain truth is, generalized libertarianism is unproven as a plan for human betterment. (There’s a rights-based case that side-steps the practicalities of whether every single possible reduction of governmental sway over our lives will make people happier and materially better off. A dedicated anarcho-capitalist is pretty sure life would be “better” without government, but thinks that what matters is that life without government would be more moral.) Meanwhile, past - managerial - approaches of liberalism to societal problems have often misfired spectacularly.
June 23rd, 2008 at 8:02 pm
[...] brief discussion of George Will’s review of [...]
June 24th, 2008 at 8:32 am
I don’t disagree with you Jim. But as a dedicated AC let me just quibble a few terms. It’s not true that ACs envision a life without government, much less thinking it better. Some people manifestly do now need to be governed, criminals, most pointedly. And IMO it’s part of the human condition is that some people will always need to be governed. Perhaps a few leftie-type anarchists do imagine life without government, by which they reveal that they think that criminality itself is a part of the cultural superstructure created by the state. But not us rightie-types. Rather, we (along with our left brethren), envision life without the state; that’s what anarchy means. The state is a corporation with a monopoly on legitimized coercion. Breaking that monopoly is what we advocate. But the legitimized coercion, not. In our view government can arise outside of the state.
June 24th, 2008 at 11:36 am
Among some market anarchists, at least, the argument is that by definition things would be better without government because only voluntary agreement between utility-maximizing individuals creates Pareto optimal results. Coercion, by definition, involves one person being forced to accept a lesser utiity for the sake of another’s interest, so that one benefits at another. So net utility for society as a whole is always lessened.
June 24th, 2008 at 6:04 pm
It does sound like an incremental improvement over existing nanny-state impulses, though.
Unfortunately, as far as I know, it does nothing to improve the nanny-state measures already in place. Maybe someone knows more, but it seems it would just add these “libertarian paternalist” schemes to that which is currently free of government intervention. Would Thaler and Sunstein allow for opt out Social Security or FDA restrictions?
The basis for their libertarian paternalism is that people suffer various cognitive biases that prevent them making rational, informed choices. But their fatal flaw (apart from their normative and somewhat controversial assertions that, for instance, smoking is irrational, period; well, so is having anonymous sex without a condom, I suppose - yuppie biases!) is that they don’t extend this insight to the government agents themselves. This is probably the best critique I’ve seen, what Will Wilkinson calls the ‘fallacy of asymmetry’.
Having said that, Obama could have a worse crop of advisors I suppose, and hopefully this “opt out”/libertarian angle will catch on with the next generation of liberal regulatory hopefuls.
June 28th, 2008 at 7:57 am
“generalized libertarianism is unproven as a plan for human betterment.”
This statement strikes me as a bit sloppy. By what metric is such a plan proven or disproven? If we use government continuity as a metric, then monarchy is clearly proven. If we take territory conquered as our metric then empire is the clear winner. I doubt Jim means these but what then? Perhaps the metric is general material prosperity in which case we could chose from several alternatives–dictatorship, democracy, or various flavors of totalitarianism. If, however, the metric is the amount freedom and self-determination the population has then the statement becomes self-contradictory.
But there is a darker aspect to this statement, one which I think gets to the heart of the matter. The great insight of the anarchists is that the state is an instrument of organized political violence. So, when people say that the government needs to solve a problem, they are saying that the problem must be solved by violence. This means liberals too, there is an iron fist behind the bleeding heart. Anarchy is the form of organization that rejects violence as a means of solving problems (except in a limited, always defensive way for criminal acts). From this perspective, therefore, Jim’s statement reads that “ceasing to use violence is unproven as a plan for human betterment”.
On a side note, it saddens me that most people think of libertarianism as an economic system rather than first and foremost a rejection of violence. The free market is an effect not a cause.