Any
normative political theorist must have some kind of political ideal in mind
when he criticizes the status quo or suggests reforms. This ideal must ultimately be based on
one of three overarching political principles, and then qualifications or
amendments are then added. These three basic principles are: freedom, elitism,
or egalitarianism.
The holder
of the political principle of freedom maintains that in most cases,
individuals, by pursuing their own ends, and exchanging and cooperating with
one another to pursue those ends, spontaneously generate a good social order.
Each individual owns themselves and the fruits of their labour or goods received through the voluntary
exchanges that they make, hence the institution of private property. The free-market
is seen as economically preferable to socialism, and hence most government interventions
with the free-market order are seen as counter-productive. Furthermore,
individuals are seen as their own ends, not just means to some ‘collective’
end, and hence the individual freedom to pursue individually chosen ends is
considered as a vital good to be pursued in its own right.
The holder
of the political principle of elitism maintains that some individuals, by some
kind of alleged superiority, whether it is strength, intelligence, race, birth, or
anything else, should have special privileges that other individuals do not.
Because of their superiority, these individuals are allowed to rule over the
‘inferior’ individuals, whether for their alleged own good or for the good of
the ruling class, whose interests are deemed more important.
The holder
of the political principle of egalitarianism maintains that the mere fact of
being born entitles the individual to material equality with the rest of
humanity. Individuals do not own themselves, each individual is owned by all
other individuals. If someone accumulates more material wealth than the rest of
his fellow humans, the surplus should be confiscated and distributed equally
amongst all others.
A static
political ideal is the ideal political arrangement of a thinker, which would be
realized if he became an omnipotent dictator with the power of changing
political arrangements instantaneously. Usually, these political ideals will be
an eclectic mixture of the three ‘extremist’ political principles enumerated
above. The mere fact that the thinker has a concrete political ideal (a set of things that governments should be doing) usually
makes him a bit of an elitist. The whole exercise assumes that the thinker, and
those who think like him, know what is better for their fellow men more than
they themselves do through their voluntary actions, or else political action,
ie. coercion, would not be necessary to achieve the outcome. The egalitarian or
elitist side comes out whenever the thinker suggests that resources be taken
from one group in order to benefit a group that ‘needs it more’. If for
instance, the thinker believes the government should fund the arts, this is an elitist policy because he implies
that the tastes of certain people, ie. those who appreciate the arts, are more
important than those who do not, and these ‘superior’ people should have the
privilege of subsidizing their activities through the forced contributions of
those ‘inferior’ people who do not see the value of the arts. If the thinker
believes that the government should take from richer citizens in order to help
out poorer citizens, this is the egalitarian side. But, unless the political
ideal is a completely totalitarian socialist dictatorship, the freedom
principle is still present in the political ideal.
Allow me to
lay out my static political ideal as an example. In most things, I am a
libertarian and adhere to the freedom principle. I think that due to the
subjectivism of tastes and the elegance and effectiveness of the free-market
mechanism in generating material prosperity, freedom is the most effective way of satisfying the most people’s
desires. However, I am not an anarchist but a minarchist, I believe in a
minimal role for government, the social mechanism of coercion and compulsion. I
suspect, though I do not know for sure, that a minimal, democratic government,
coercing people for funds in order to provide their monopolistic law and
security functions, would mean less coercion than anarchism, where everyone is
free to organize themselves into a defence (or offence!) agency and collect
funds from willing contributors. I suspect that some of these agencies might
become aggressive and try to enrich themselves through coercion like bandits.
Also, without a monopoly of law, there could be many different variants of law,
not all of which would accord with individual freedom (shari’a law for
example), and there would be no monopolistic agency powerful enough to ensure
that individual freedom was always respected. Thus, I estimate, though I have
no concrete proof, that the public coercion of a consistent minarchism would be
less than the private coercion of anarchism.
Moving on to
other deviations from the freedom principle, in order to appease bleeding
hearts, to prevent people from citing ‘necessity’ as an excuse for breaking the
law, and to give people a basic guarantee that his fellow men will not let him
die due to poverty, I would allow for a very minimal social safety net for
those who simply could not make it in the market economy and whom private
charity had not provided for. Another deviation: in order to keep spendthrift people
from abusing this social safety net, and in order to ensure that the capital
supply necessary for economic growth does not fall too low, I would institute a
modest forced savings plan, where individuals would have to set aside, say, 10%
of their income as savings, to be invested as they want but to be spent only
for medical emergencies, educational investments, or for retirement. Also, in
order to ensure that costly, but very valuable, technological innovation
continues, I would allow for an intellectual property system of patents and
copyrights, with a modest length so as not to stultify innovation and cripple the
economy with monopolies, to help actors reap more of the, otherwise external,
benefits of technological innovation. Also, if significant global warming and
the carbon emissions necessary for it to create serious consequences could be proven in a court of law, I would
allow some kind of governmental carbon cap-and-trade system in order to
internalize this negative externality. Finally, for my proposed air quality associations, water system
associations, and road owner associations who would own these resources, some
minimal governmental functions and different property rules may have to be
assigned to them.
The static
political ideal outlined above is much closer to the pure principle of freedom
than those of non-libertarian thinkers. Nevertheless, I did borrow from the
principles of both egalitarianism and elitism, however modestly. The minimal
social safety net is clearly an egalitarian program: individuals, by the mere
fact of being born, are being given a privileged claim to the earned resources of
others, in this case, the enforceable claim to be given the resources necessary to live
without having to work for them. The other deviations from freedom have elitist
elements: I, the thinker, think that people want a certain thing that they have
not demonstrated on the market that they want (more capital goods, more
technology, a certain size and composition of water and road holding entities)
and I endorse using coercion in order to divert resources from what they
otherwise would have been spent on to these things. That my paternalism is substantially
more modest than that of most political thinkers is a question of degree, not
principle.
This brings
me to why I call it a static political ideal: because it assumes that this
political arrangement, regardless of the fundamental political principles
underlying it, will remain the same over time. In the real world of politics,
this is not the case. For example, rather than abolishing the Poor Law in
England in 1832 (an early form of welfarism), the largely free-market
economists and policy makers decided to reform it instead, making it more like
the minimal social safety net envisioned in my static political ideal above,
where instead of being given payments (outdoor relief), welfare recipients
would have to live and work in a workhouse under barracks like conditions, so
as to make being on welfare uncomfortable and to try to ‘reform’ the people in
the workhouse to make them productive citizens. This, because of the dynamic
political process, did not last long though. The egalitarian principle underlying
the poor law was stretched further and further in this area until Britain was
saddled with a bloated welfare state so characteristic of the modern western
world. The same can be said of the United States Income tax, adopted in 1913 at
a bottom bracket rate of 1%, top bracket rate of 7%, which reached 20% bottom
bracket and 91% top bracket in 1954. Certainly those who were debating the
income tax in 1913 did not envision it going up to this extent, nor did the
framers of the 1832 Poor Law reforms envisage the modern welfare state, nor did
the politicians who advocated modest financial help to schools for poor
children envisage mandatory, universal public education. The point is that if a
principle can justify an intervention of one magnitude, it can usually be
stretched to justify an intervention of a higher magnitude as well.
Thus, as
contrasted with the static political ideal, there is also the dynamic political
ideal. Here, the political thinker must consider the general principles
underlying his political ideal, and whether those principles could be used to
justify other political arrangements of which he would not approve. In my case,
my modest proposals for a deviation from the freedom principle imply that I do
not entirely dismiss the egalitarian principle or the elitist principle, so
what is to stop other thinkers or political actors from just pushing the latter
two principles a bit further? Why not a higher forced savings rate? Why not
direct subsidies of technology? Why not take-over investment choices, because
short-sighted people might not invest their capital properly? Why don’t we just
spend a little bit more on our social safety net to make it a bit more humane?
In order to
signify that I, as a political thinker, am against these extensions, it is
possible that as my dynamic political ideal, I may have to just forget about
deviations from the freedom principle and just embrace and defend that
principle wholeheartedly. For I think that of the pure principles, the freedom
principle is far and away the best and leads to prosperity and a dynamic
society, whereas the other two lead to slavery, stagnation, and penury. Ludwig
von Mises grappled with this issue. He posited that it might not be such a bad
thing if the advertising of products whose advertised benefits could not be
substantiated by the natural sciences or the consumption of harmful drugs could
beneficially be banned. But, in both cases he quickly went on to say that
“freedom is indivisible”, and that once the government starts getting in the
business of being a truth commission and regulating what people ingest, the
extent of the subsequent tyranny that could result would be virtually endless.
Largely for this reason, Murray Rothbard and his modern libertarian followers
have proclaimed the principle of freedom absolutely, even to the point of
advocating for the total elimination of coercive governments, or anarchism. I think, along with Mises though, that a very limited government, bound by strict rules to stick to defending person and property and that alone, and constitutionally bound by revenue caps, could sustain the freedom principle just as well, if not better, than anarchism so I would advocate consistent minarchism of this kind as my dynamic political ideal.
For my part,
I think that it is valuable to have both a static and a dynamic political
ideal. This allows the political theorist to more effectively isolate the
reasons why he advocates certain measures. Thus, when the leftist accuses the
libertarian thinker of not caring for the poor, the libertarian thinker, if his
static political ideal involves a minimal social safety net, can defend himself
with this position, but he can also explain why it is a dangerous principle
that, given the history of such things, would probably balloon into some kind
of ultra-coercive and redistributionist welfare state.
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