25 Great Quotations

1. “Of what use is it to sheep that no one abridges their freedom of speech? They stick to bleating.” Max Stirner, The Ego and His Own.

2. “Right – is a wheel in the head, put there by a spook; power – that am I myself, I am the powerful one and owner of power.” Max Stirner, The Ego and His Own.

3. “Because I cannot grasp the moon, is it therefore to be “sacred” to me, an Astarte? If I only could grasp you, I surely would, and, if I only find a means to get up to you, you shall not frighten me!” Max Stirner, The Ego and His Own.

4. “You start back in fright before others, because you think you see beside them the ghost of right, which, as in the Homeric combats, seems to fight as a goddess at their side, helping them. What do you do? Do you throw the spear? No, you creep around to gain the spook over to yourselves, that it may fight on your side: you woo for the ghost’s favor. Another would simply ask thus: Do I will what my opponents wills? “No!” Now then, there may fight for him a thousand devils or gods, I go at him all the same!” Max Stirner, The Ego and His Own.

5. “The German people and German peoples have behind them a history of a thousand years: what a long life! O, go to rest, never to rise again – that all may become free whom you so long have held in fetters. The people is dead – Up with me!” Max Stirner, The Ego and His Own.

6. “If you showed folks that their egoism demanded that they busy themselves with State affairs, you would not have to call on them long; if, on the other hand, you appeal to their love of fatherland and the like, you will long preach to deaf hearts in behalf of this “service of love.”.” Max Stirner, The Ego and His Own.

7. “A historian or an ethnographer who neglects in his work to take full advantage of the results of economics is doing a poor job. In fact he does not approach the subject matter of his research unaffected by what he disregards as theory. He is at every step of his gathering of allegedly unadulterated facts, in arranging these facts, and in his conclusions derived from them, guided by confused and garbled remnants of perfunctory economic doctrines constructed by botchers in the centuries preceding the elaboration of an economic science and long since entirely exploded.” Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

8. “If and as far as labor under the division of labor is more productive than isolated labor, and if and as far as man is able to realize this fact, human action itself tends toward cooperation and association; man becomes a social being not in sacrificing his own concerns for the sake of a mythical Moloch, society, but in aiming at an improvement in his own welfare.” Ludwig von Mises, Human Action.

9. “Man is not a being who cannot help yielding to the impulse that most urgently asks for satisfaction. Man is a being capable of subduing his instincts, emotions, and impulses; he can rationalize his behavior. He renounces the satisfaction of a burning impulse in order to satisfy other desires. He is not a puppet of his appetites. A man does not ravish every female that stirs his senses; he does not devour every piece of food that entices him; he does not knock down every fellow he would like to kill. He arranges his wishes and desires into a scale, he chooses; in short, he acts. What distinguishes man from beasts is precisely that he adjusts his behavior deliberatively. Man is the being that has inhibitions, that can master his impulses and desires, that has the power to suppress instinctive desires and impulses.” Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

10. “One must not tell the masses: Indulge in your urge for murder; it is genuinely human and best serves your well-being. One must tell them: If you satisfy your thirst for blood, you must forego many other desires. You want to eat, to drink, to live in fine homes, to clothe yourselves, and a thousand other things which only society can provide. You cannot have everything, you must choose. The dangerous life and the frenzy of sadism may please you, but they are incompatible with the security and plenty which you do not want to miss either.” Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

11. “The direction of all economic affairs is in the market society a task of the entrepreneurs. Theirs is the control of production. They are at the helm and steer the ship. A superficial observer would believe that they are supreme. But they are not. They are bound to obey unconditionally the captain’s orders. The captain is the consumer. Neither the entrepreneurs nor the farmers nor the capitalists determine what has to be produced. The consumers do that. If a businessman does not strictly obey the orders of the public as they are conveyed to him by the structure of market prices, he suffers losses, he goes bankrupt, and is thus removed from his eminent position at the helm. Other men who did better in satisfying the demand of the consumers replace him.” Ludwig von Mises, Human Action.

12. “(Demagogues) tell us that these associations of bankers and manufacturers are the true rulers of their countries and that the whole apparatus of what they call “plutodemocratic” government is dominated by them. A simple enumeration of the laws passed in the last decades (1920s and 1930s) by any country’s legislature is enough to explode such legends.” Ludwig von Mises, Human Action.

13. “In every sphere of his practical activity man has developed a technique or a technology that indicates how one is to proceed if one does not want to behave in an unreasonable way. It is generally acknowledged that it is desirable for a man to acquire the techniques which he can make use of in life, and a person who enters a field whose techniques he has not mastered is derided as a bungler. Only in the sphere of social policy, it is thought, should it be otherwise. Here, not reason, but feelings and impulses should decide. The question: How must things be arranged in order to provide good illumination during the hours of darkness? is generally discussed only with reasonable arguments. As soon, however, as the point in the discussion is reached when it is to be decided whether the lighting plant should be managed by private individuals or by the municipality, then reason is no longer considered valid. Here sentiment, world view – in short, unreason – should determine the result. We ask in vain: Why?” Ludwig von Mises, Liberalism In The Classical Tradition.

14. “the whole of economics can be reduced to a single lesson, and that lesson can be reduced to a single sentence. The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.” Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson.

15. “Today is already the tomorrow which the bad economist yesterday urged us to ignore.” Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson.

16. “This question of legal plunder must be settled once and for all, and there are only three ways to settle it: 1. The few plunder the many. 2. Everybody plunders everybody. 3. Nobody plunders anybody. We must make our choice among limited plunder, universal plunder, and no plunder. The law can follow only one of these three.” Frederic Bastiat, The Law.

17. “Whenever someone starts talking about “fair competition” or indeed, about “fairness” in general, it is time to keep a sharp eye on your wallet, for it is about to be picked.” Murray Rothbard, Protectionism and the Destruction of Prosperity.

18. “In short, public creditors are willing to hand over money to the government now in order to receive a share of tax loot in the future. This is the opposite of a free market, or a genuinely voluntary transaction. Both parties are immorally contracting to participate in the violation of the property rights of citizens in the future. Both parties, therefore, are making agreements about other people’s property, and both deserve the back of our hand. The public credit transaction is not a genuine contract that need be considered sacrosanct, any more than robbers parcelling out their shares of loot in advance should be treated as some sort of sanctified contract.” Murray Rothbard, “Repudiating the National Debt”.

19. “It is curious, once more, that the very writers who complain most of the wiles and lures of advertising never apply their critique to the one area where it is truly correct: the advertising of politicians…. the consumers have always at hand a simple and pragmatic test of success: does the product work and work well? In public economic affairs, there is no such test, for no one can know whether a particular policy has “worked” or not without knowing the a priori reasoning of economics.” Murray Rothbard, Man, Economy, and State.

20. “Furthermore, the “modern democrat” who scoffs at direct democracy on the ground that the people are not intelligent or informed enough to decide the complex issues of government, is caught in another fatal contradiction: he assumes that the people are sufficiently intelligent and informed to vote on the people who will make these decisions. But if a voter is not competent to decide issues A, B, C, etc., how in the world could he possibly be qualified to decide whether Mr. X or Mr. Y is better able to handle A, B, or C? In order to make this decision, the voter would have to know a great deal about the issues and know enough about the persons whom he is selecting. In short, he would probably have to know more in a representative than in a direct democracy.” Murray Rothbard, Power And Market.

21. “The environmental movement maintains that science and technology cannot be relied upon to build a safe atomic power plant, to produce a pesticide that is safe, or even to bake a loaf of bread that is safe, if that loaf of bread contains chemical preservatives. When it comes to global warming, however, it turns out that there is one area in which the environmental movement displays the most breathtaking confidence in the reliability of science and technology, an area in which, until recently, no one – not even the staunchest supporters of science and technology – had ever thought to assert very much confidence at all. The one thing the environmental movement holds, that science and technology can do so well that we are entitled to have unlimited confidence in them is forecast the weather – for the next one hundred years!” George Reisman, Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics.

22. “They (the great American industrialists of the 19^th century) were neither robbers nor barons, but in the highest rank of capitalist producers, whose great self-enrichment was the measure of their enrichment of the general public. They did not steal their wealth but created it, in the process greatly enriching others, not impoverishing them. They were in fact among the greatest benefactors of mankind in all of history.” George Reisman, Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics.

23. “For the 90 percent to seek to steal the wealth of the 10 percent is to destroy the creation of the wealth that serves them. It is to begin with no concept of the production of wealth and how it is accumulated, but instead with the myth of the “distribution fairy,” and from there to go to envy and resentment, from there to theft, and with theft, to the destruction of the incentives to saving, efficiency, and the accumulation of capital. The result is that those whose heads are empty of the knowledge of how wealth is produced and accumulated come to live in a world that is physically empty of the production and accumulation of wealth.” George Reisman, Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics.

24. “The propaganda of the redistributors and socialists has always depicted the capitalists as rich fat men, whose larders are overflowing, while the plates of the poor are empty. It has demanded that the capitalists’ wealth be shared for purposes of mass consumption. Since, in reality, the wealth of the capitalists is overwhelmingly in the form of factories and other capital goods, this has all along been a blatant demand for capital decumulation. The poor are to be benefitted by consuming the capital that underlies the productivity of labor and the payment of wages, and without which production must plunge. Thus, practically on its face, redistributionism has been a policy of destruction.” George Reisman, Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics.

25. “For after all is said and done, it is something on the order of a mere 10 percent of the overall, total consumption of the economic system that turns out to be the grand prize for which the redistributors and socialists have been clamoring all these years! This is the great fund of wealth by means of which they have expected to abolish all poverty, cure disease, and achieve utopia; and for the sake of which they have been ready to overturn existing society, seize private property, and shed rivers of blood – all in magnificent obliviousness to the fact that capitalism itself gratuitously provides such wealth over and over again every few years, through economic progress and an accompanying 2 or 3 percent annual rate of improvement in the productivity of labor.” George Reisman, Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics.

Income Tax Taskmasters

            An argument frequently employed by free-market sympathizers against a high income tax is that the higher the tax on individuals’ income, the less incentive they will have to work for money, as their monetary rewards for every hour of labor put in are diluted by the tax. They will have less of an incentive to overcome their preference for leisure, to overcome their preference for more enjoyable but less monetarily reward jobs, and to move to a different geographical location in order to make a higher income. This means that the person taxed by the income tax will have less of an incentive to serve the consumers in the best way they are able to.

            

           A counter-argument of income tax proponents is that, while this above effect could well occur, it will be counterbalanced by the fact that with the income tax, more work must be performed in order to make a given amount of money. If people really want a given amount of money, they will be willing to put more work in under an income tax regime in order to receive this given amount of money. The economy thus gets more work out of such people for the because of the tax.        

            

           A textbook on Canadian Income tax law puts it like this: “On the one hand, it is reasonable to expect that the incentive to work would decline as the after-tax return from work declines, creating a preference for leisure. On the other hand, it is also reasonable to expect that the reduction in disposable income which is caused by the income tax creates an incentive to work longer and harder to make up some of the lost income. It is hard to know what the net effect of these competing pulls will be on any given individual.”[1]

           

           Theoretically, this account is right. But I would venture to guess that given the psychology of most individuals, the “net effect of these competing pulls” will reduce the incentive to work well for the consumers for most working individuals. This is because money isn’t valuable for its own sake; it is a means to the end of enjoying life as much as possible. In order to use our money to enjoy life, we need leisure time to spend and enjoy the money in. So what if you earn a million dollars a year if you must put in 14 hours of work, 7 days a week, in order to earn it? You would barely have any spare time to make use of all this money.

            

           The more hours of leisure you have to spread out your money consumption budget on, the better off you will be. Thus, a person who has a $500,000 yearly consumption budget with 30 hours of leisure a week in which to spend and enjoy it, will be much better off than a person who has a $500,000 yearly consumption budget with 10 hours of leisure a week in which to spend and enjoy it.  Now, let’s assume that the former and the latter scenario are describing the same person in two possible political situations, the former where no income tax is applied, the latter where a high progressive income tax is applied. When the high progressive income tax is applied, will the individual really want his $500,000 yearly consumption budget so badly that he will be willing to cut his leisure to a third to earn it? Highly unlikely. The individual will probably still want something like 30 hours of leisure, and may well choose to take more because the monetary benefits of giving up leisure in order to work marginally more hours are cut by the income tax. They will be willing, although not enthusiastic, to settle for a smaller yearly consumption budget. This will especially be true for relatively wealthy individuals, the individuals that we are primarily talking about when discussing the costs and benefits of a high progressive income tax. 

            

           But I think that the main objection to this argument in favor of the income tax is not a technical objection, but an emotional objection. Personally, whenever I see this argument employed, it strongly arouses my indignation. I have relatively strong feelings of sympathy for people who do nice things for me. It makes me happy when good things happen to such people, unhappy when bad things happen to such people. I think that this trait is fairly common among humans. It gives rise to the popular sentiments of Gratitude and Loyalty.

            

           I know that as a consumer, my standard of living is based on the actions of the producers. The more they produce, the more the money I earn will enable me to consume. It is true that not every producer contributes directly to producing the products that I seek to buy. However, I know that the market system cannot just cater to my demands alone. In order for it to function, it must cater to the demands of all consumers with purchasing power. Hence, in this instance, I tether my interests to those of consumers in general. Whenever a producer earns a high income by producing things that the consumers want, the system of production for the consumers is advanced. The more this system is advanced, the better off I will be as a consumer. Hence, when I see a producer earning a high income through free-market means, I consider them to be a benefactor, and thus I particularly sympathize with them.

            

           Now, along come the income tax advocates. They see the large free-market incomes earned by efficient producers for giving the consumers what they want, through a series of voluntary, mutually beneficial exchanges. They decide that it would be better if some of this income were taken away and used by the government. A free-market advocate cautions that if too much is taken, incentives to produce for the consumers will be weakened, hence restraint must be exercised. The income tax advocates respond: ‘Perhaps incentives to produce for the consumers will be weakened as you say, but it is equally possible that producers will be incentivized to produce more, as now they must work harder to maintain the same standard of living as they did before we instituted the tax.’

           

           Here, I become indignant. This argument treats my benefactors, the ones that make my comfortable standard of living possible, like chattel slaves. ‘The more we take, the more they must work to make good the difference!’ the income tax taskmasters cackle. I say that this is a horribly shabby way to treat my benefactors, and I will not stand for it. These grasping people are not satisfied with all of the contributions that high income producers have made to our standard of living, they want more! They want them to do the same amount of work for the consumers, and fund a significant portion of the government at the same time! To me, this attitude is infuriating and revolting. If the technical objection that I made to the argument above is not sufficient to throw it out of court, my strong indignation will definitely be enough to finish the job, at least from my point of view and hopefully from those of many others as well.         

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[1] Peter Hogg, Joanne Magee, and Jinyan Li, Principles of Canadian Income Tax Law, 7^th Edition (Toronto: Carswell, 2010), p. 56.

Critique of Lee Boldeman's 'The Cult Of The Market: Economic Fundamentalism and its Discontents'

The Cult Of The Market[1]

Chapter 2: The Creation of Social Order is Irreducibly a Moral Project

Boldeman: “One important consequence of this adherence to methodological individualism has been a stubborn refusal on the part of economists to examine the formation of preferences – the basis of our choices. They do so on the grounds of what is called the doctrine of consumer sovereignty – the idea that we are all free to form our preferences without having to justify them. As such, it is simply a restatement of the economic profession’s commitment to individualism. It privileges so-called individual preferences – as opposed to social institutions and collective rules of behaviour – on the assumption that preferences have been chosen individually. This view ignores the extent to which our choices are conditioned by our positions in the social system – positions that involve normative obligations and power relationships enforced by society. It ignores the fact that we justify our choices to ourselves in the language of contemporary culture and the social construction of that language and culture. It also assumes that we know what alternatives are open to us and that we know what we want. So it simply refuses to examine the great extent to which preferences are learned and not chosen. It also ignores the particular influence that others have on those preferences, the extent to which they depend on previous choices and the extent to which they are either incomplete or inconsistent. What is more, it ignores the highly manipulative nature of much advertising. Furthermore, the economists’ assumption that preferences are consistent has been proven to be false – a finding that undercuts rational choice theory, which, in turn, underpins the theory of demand.” 47

Brian: I will address this laundry list of points one by one.

Economists don’t “examine the formation of preferences” because that is the domain of psychology. Economics studies the endeavours of people to get what they think they want. It doesn’t claim to know what people should ‘truly want’, nor does it claim to know what people’s preferences would be in the absence of certain environmental and social influences on the individual. I think that any science that hoped to attain this kind of knowledge would fail hopelessly. Thus, economics has a more modest scope, but is a more modest and realistic scope for a science really grounds to criticize that science?

The doctrine of consumer’s sovereignty merely says that the producers must ultimately cater to the demands of the consumers, whatever these demands are and however they are formed, if they wish to make monetary profits on the free market. It doesn’t say anything about whether we have to justify our preferences or not. At best, this factual doctrine, if interpreted as a mark in favour of a freer market, might imply that consumers shouldn’t have to justify their preferences to the government in order to freely pursue them. But if our preferences are disapproved of by our friends and family, economics would simply interpret this disapproval as a cost like any other that individuals must take into account when forming their preferences and deciding on courses of action.

Yes, most free-market economists ‘privilege’ individual preferences over ‘collective rules of behavior’. This is mainly because they recognize that these ‘collective rules of behavior’ simply represent the individual preferences of those in power or, in rare circumstances, of a majority of the population in a geographical region. If, for example, 70% of the population of a political region preferred that no one in the region smoke tobacco, and decided to turn this preference into a ‘collective rule of behavior’ by banning smoking, the remaining 30% who liked having the freedom to smoke would be harmed by this ‘rule of behavior’. I would venture to say that members of the 30% are harmed more by the policy, because their preferred, freely chosen behavior is roughly trampled upon, than members of the 70% are benefitted by the dubious satisfaction of seeing that their ‘fellow citizens’ are no longer smoking.

“Our choices are conditioned by our positions in the social system”: Sure, our choices are conditioned by an almost endless array of factors. Does that mean that we are indifferent as to whether we can make decisions for ourselves and freely pursue our chosen objectives or not? Not in the slightest. I would venture to say that most people don’t particularly like having their chosen courses of action forcibly aborted by others. If this were not so, and the ability to pursue personally chosen objectives does not make people any happier in the slightest, than people shouldn’t mind if they are just enslaved by the next arbitrary thug that comes along. What does it matter whether people’s courses of action are determined by the orders of an arbitrary thug or by their own personal choices, if personal choices are meaningless in the first place? And yet, I have a strong feeling that we are now venturing into the territory of the absurd, so there must be something good about the freedom to pursue personally chosen courses of action.      

“It also assumes that we know what alternatives are open to us and that we know what we want”: Sound free-market economics assumes no such thing. It does not assume that individuals are omniscient beings, nor does it assume that governments are omniscient beings, as some people who make this criticism seem to. What it does say is that if individuals want to attain better knowledge of their alternatives or of how best to achieve their ends, they would be better off consulting experts in a freely competitive, free-market information industry, than they would be being ordered around by a monopolistic, inefficient government beholden to all kinds of special interests. Furthermore, the political extension of free-market economic thinking tends to hold that adult individuals are ultimately the best qualified to know what they themselves want, more so than governments or other authority figures. Due to the highly subjective and personal nature of most economic preferences, I think that this is a very defensible postulate.

“It ignores the highly manipulative nature of much advertising”: Strictly speaking, sound free-market economics shouldn’t take a position on this question. If advertising succeeds in manipulating people, then it becomes just another of the many psychological factors that enter into individual preference formation, preferences which economics must take as a given. However, the political extension of free-market economics tends to hold that it is very difficult for advertising alone to ‘create needs’ in its target audience. Also, if every firm is free to advertise, than the firms offering products that meet ‘real needs’ could put just as much into advertising as those firms offering products based on needs ‘artificially created’ by the advertising campaign. In such a contest, it would seem likely that the former firms would be able to handily outcompete the latter firms, who face a far more difficult advertising task than the former, in which case consumer preferences would not be noticeably changed by the advertising campaigns. In addition, ultimately, an individual is responsible for his own conduct in a free society. If an individual is stupid enough to indiscriminately buy any random thing that an advertiser puts in front of him, than he almost deserves to lose his money uselessly. Hopefully, this individual will learn from his mistakes and reform himself in the future.      

“The economists’ assumption that preferences are consistent has been proven to be false”: Sound free-market economics does not assume that individuals have preferences that are consistent over time. An individual could well prefer an apple over an orange at 1:00 PM, but would prefer an orange over an apple if he had been shopping at 2:00 PM. But this poses no real difficulty for the economist. It just means that consumer demand can vary unexpectedly, and that producers must try to prepare themselves for this variance if they wish to make monetary profits. It by no means invalidates the Law of Demand; this claim is extravagant and backed up by nothing.

Boldeman: “We are all capable of unspeakable acts and an extraordinary indifference to the suffering of others. Before we get carried away, therefore, about the perfectibility of modern humans, or even about labour-market deregulation, it would be wise to remember that within every person there exists the capacity to be a slave driver, a slave owner, a death-camp guard, a camp commandant, a torturer and a tyrant – writ large or in the minutia of everyday life.

This is the reason why people have long sought to put in place structures to inhibit the accumulation of excessive power and its abuse. It has been one of the primary justifications advanced for liberalism and the market system in the past two centuries. There has also, however, been a recent strong tendency to overlook the exploitation and the abuse of power that occurs within the market system itself. It is not simply governments that are capable of tyranny.”  66-67

Brian: From my perspective, it appears that actors within ‘the market system’ are constantly getting accused of ‘exploiting’ people, often erroneously, while the evils perpetuated by western democratic governments are the ones more often overlooked. In any case, no tenet of free-market economics is based on the assumption that humans are generally ‘good’, however that is defined, or on the assumption that humans are ‘perfectible’. If it is assumed that people are generally nasty creatures, then they will be nasty whether they are in government or acting in the free-market. Arguably, because government can use physical force to achieve its goals while actors in a free-market cannot, people in government are capable of perpetrating far nastier acts than people in free-market organizations. I don’t see how pointing out that humans can be nasty to one another is any kind of argument against the free-market and in favour of government intervention.

Chapter 7: What, Then, Can We Say of the Status of Economics?

Boldeman: “There is no neutral platform of pure science utterly free from value commitments. Rather, social science is a product of the development of a particular kind of society and its lexicon. The development of Enlightenment economics clearly took place in parallel with the development of the market system and served to justify that system morally and scientifically. Nowhere is that connection more closely observable than in the period of the ideological conflict between capitalism and communism, when economics was deployed as a ‘scientific’ justification for the capitalist system.” 187

Brian: Boldeman seems to be confusing the reasons for developing a theory with the accuracy of the contents of the theory once developed. If a physicist hated trains, and this lead him to disseminate the physical theory that stepping in front of a moving train would mean death for a human being, we don’t say that the theory is a ‘valuational’ one. An arbitrary value judgement of the physicist (his hatred of trains) led him to develop the theory, but there is nothing valuational about the contents of the developed theory. The theory is not valid only for people who hate trains; it is valid for train lovers and train haters alike. If a train lover were to attempt to disprove the theory by stepping in front of a moving train, he would promptly die and the objectivity of the theory would be nicely illustrated.

Similar considerations hold for free-market economic theory. It may have been developed in order to justify the market society that was becoming more prevalent. Or, the development of the economic justification of the market society may have led to an intensification of that kind of market society, as more and more people in society and government were convinced of its benignity by the teachings of the economists. Probably both happened, mutually reinforcing one another. But, while an interesting question for the intellectual historian, the circumstances surrounding the development of free-market economics have nothing directly to do with the correctness or objectivity of free-market economic theorems. Just because certain value judgements may have led many economists to their interest in the subject doesn’t mean that the theorems developed by these economists are invariably ‘valuational’ ones.   

For instance, no matter whether you are a capitalist or a socialist, everyone must agree that when an exchange takes place, both parties must expect to benefit more from making the exchange than from not making the exchange. This proposition of economics is irrefutable. It is also a tautology, but a tautology that social commentators too often forget or gloss over. Everyone must also agree that when an individual gives up a unit of a homogeneous good in his stock of that good, he will remove that unit from the use he considers to be the least important, and hence will value the loss of the unit given up according to that least important use which is no longer possible.  Similarly, everyone must agree that, if it is assumed that human capacities for labor differ and that the suitability of different parcels of land for different kinds of production differs from one another, division of labor and exchange will be more physically productive in the aggregate than autarchic isolation. These, and other deductive and semi-deductive (deductive reasoning based on given assumptions that might not always hold) truths, form the basis of free-market economics, truths that are not valuational but objective. One can opine that market participants are fools who don’t know what’s good for them, but one cannot opine that when an exchange takes place, the market participants involved didn’t expect to benefit more from making the exchange than from not making the exchange at the time.

Chapter 8: The Critique of Neoclassical Economics and its Influence on Policy Decisions

Boldeman: “The marginalist movement pioneered by Walras, Jevons and Menger in the nineteenth century strengthened these (Newtonian) tendencies in economics, which were strengthened still further by the post-World War II fascination with formalism….”

“Within this mechanical framework, Homo economicus – economic man – created originally by classical economics, is a reductionist attempt to obtain an idealised creature defined by economic motives only – a machine for making decisions, an atomistic economic billiard ball on which economic ‘forces’ act, which at the same time remains perfectly ‘rational’.” 213-214

Brian: Actually, Menger’s method and the school of thought that he spearheaded were entirely different from those of Walras and Jevons. Walras and Jevons did indeed rely on mathematics and strove to make economics like Newtonian physics. Menger most certainly did not. There are no mathematical equations in Menger’s Principles of Economics, something that Boldeman would know if he had actually read the book. The school of economic thought descended from Menger, the Austrian School of economics, explicitly rejects the use of mathematics in economics and is highly critical of the neoclassical obsession with general equilibrium (Newtonian) analysis.

Similarly, the Austrian School never makes any assumptions about people being Homo Economicus. The Austrian School recognizes that market participants can care about all kinds of things, and that this will affect their consumption and production decisions. An Austrian economist might say: ‘Assuming other psychic factors are equal, a worker will choose to work at a job with a higher wage over a job with a lower wage’. But they would never say: ‘Let’s just assume that workers don’t care about anything except money.” There is no need to make such an assumption; it is easy enough to incorporate psychic factors into economic analysis alongside ‘material’ or ‘monetary’ factors.   

You would think that someone writing a book criticizing free-market economics would at least be aware of and mention the fact that there was another school of free-market economics that had a very different methodology from the neoclassical school. Unfortunately, Boldeman doesn’t seem to have done his research properly. As a result, many of the methodological critiques he makes of what he thinks represents all of free-market economics, the Neoclassical School, are also critiques made of neoclassical economics by another school of free-market economics, the Austrian School. Austrian School economists tend to be even more free-market oriented than Neoclassical economists, so Boldeman’s critiques are unlikely to have their intended, devastating effects on free-market economics when presented to people familiar with the Austrian School such as myself.  

Boldeman: “Furthermore, there is much evidence, including in economics, to show that in practice people’s choices are often not selfish. For most of us, this would seem to undermine the whole idea (of the economy being governed by individual preferences). (Amartya) Sen goes on to argue that, while choices based on sympathy for others could perhaps be accommodated in mainstream models, choices that are made on the basis of moral commitments are counter-preferential and cannot be so accommodated.” 220

Brian: The fact that people don’t always act ‘selfishly’, however that is defined, does nothing to undermine economics. Individual preferences still determine action and the structure of market prices, whether they are based on ‘selfish’ motives or ‘altruistic’ motives.

Contrary to Sen, there can be no such thing as a ‘counter-preferential’ choice. Such a concept is an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms. If we observe someone making a choice, we must infer that he preferred making the choice in that way over making the choice in another way. So what if a choice is made based on a ‘moral commitment’? Obviously, the actor prefers to uphold his supposed ‘moral commitment’ over not upholding it. There is nothing ‘counter-preferential’ about it. If the actor preferred otherwise, he would forget about his ‘moral commitment’ and choose to do something ‘immoral’.

Boldeman: Criticizes Rational Choice Theory, Pareto-Optimality Welfare Economics, and General Equilibrium theorizing. 221-226

Brian: These things are all worthy of criticism, but Austrian School economists have harshly criticized them as well. Hence, Boldeman is not here criticizing ‘free-market economics’ as he thinks he is, but only the less free-market oriented neoclassical branch of it.

Boldeman: “And, since capitalism is not a monolithic system, which capitalist system are we talking about? Why not, for example, imitate Denmark, a capitalist country that is very prosperous and has a comprehensive welfare state? Why pick the mean-spirited social policies of the contemporary United States? If one is to copy the United States, why not copy its active industry and innovation policies? Better still, why not pick the best of everyone’s experience? Complacently satisfied with economic fundamentalism, we do not devote anything like sufficient resources to studying what other people do – or how the world is changing.” 233-234

Brian: Really? Boldeman spends hundreds of pages harping on about how complicated the social system is, and how therefore economic theory cannot say anything meaningful about it, and now he dares to present us with crude empiricism as a supposedly viable alternative? Arbitrarily select a political ideology, cherry-pick the correlations that are convenient to that ideology and ignore those that are inconvenient to it, and then proclaim that your ideology is backed up by ‘the evidence’. This is how we are to go about gaining a clearer understanding of social affairs in their infinite complexity? I would take economic theory, flawed as it may be, over this crude procedure any day.

With regards to Denmark, the Heritage Institute gives it a higher rank (#10) on its 2014 Economic Freedom Index than the United States (#12). While taxes and government spending in Denmark are indeed high, Heritage gives them a high score in crucial areas such as protection of property rights, business freedom, labor freedom, trade freedom, investment freedom, and financial freedom, higher than the United States in all of these areas except for labor freedom[2]. In addition, the corporate income tax rate, a particularly destructive form of taxation, is lower in Denmark than it is in the United States.

Thus, it is simplistic and naïve to just say that we should “pick the best of everyone’s experience”. Without theory, we have no idea what factors caused these ‘good experiences’. Is Denmark’s prosperity a result of its large welfare state? Or is its prosperity due to its high degree of economic freedom in non-fiscal areas? Would Denmark become more prosperous if its large welfare state were shrunk? Or would it become more prosperous if economic freedom were curtailed more in non-fiscal areas? The ‘data’ does not give us any answers to these questions. There are simply too many factors at work in any social or economic outcome, and too much non-measurable diversity among different countries, for the ‘data’ to answer such questions at all convincingly.  

What does Boldeman mean when he says that we are “complacently satisfied with economic fundamentalism”? Even in relatively economically free Australia, Boldeman’s home country, ranked #3 on Heritage’s 2014 Economic Freedom Index, government expenditures constitute 35.3% of GDP[3]. In the United States, the supposed bastion of free-market capitalism, government expenditures constitute just over 40% of GDP[4]. If people were really satisfied with ‘economic’ or ‘free-market’ fundamentalism, then governments would only be providing basic law and order functions, funded through a minimal, probably flat, tax rate. They certainly would not be consuming over a third of a country’s yearly output, as they do in even a relatively economically free country such as Australia. Nor would they ‘regulate the economy’ or ‘plan cities’. It seems obvious that no country in the world is actually based on ‘economic fundamentalism’, or else their governments would be much smaller and less intrusive than they currently are.       

       

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[1] Dr. Lee Boldeman, The Cult Of The Market: Economic Fundamentalism and its Discontents (Canberra: ANU E Press, 2007)

[2] http://www.heritage.org/index/country/denmark

[3] http://www.heritage.org/index/country/australia

[4] http://www.heritage.org/index/country/unitedstates

Mean-spirited Equality

Egalitarian: “The rich have so much more wealth than the poor, it is deplorable! The rich and the poor ought to be made more equal. There ought to be more economic equality.”

Brian: “Easy enough to do. Simply find a way to reduce the standard of living of everyone else to that of the poorest member of society. It shouldn’t be too hard to think up a way to do that.”

Egalitarian: “No no, that’s not what I meant. I simply meant that the poor should be given more wealth than they have currently.”

Brian: “I hope that’s what you meant. But if that’s what you truly meant, then why use the term ‘equality’? 1 is equal to 10-9. 10 is equal to 9+1. But if we are talking in terms of economic standards of living, it matters a great deal whether this ‘equality’ occurs at 1 (a low standard of living) or at 10 (a high standard of living).”

Egalitarian: “Alright, I take your point. I should rather have said that we should have economic equality at a decent standard of living.”

Brian: “But why equality at all? If your wish is to help the poor, why not say that we ought to help the poor achieve a higher standard of living, even if it must come at the expense of certain rich people’s standard of living? A desire for equality as an ideal implies that not only is lifting the poor up a good thing, but pulling the rich down is also a good thing.” 

Egalitarian: “Hold on, but even you must agree that we must have equality in some things? How about equality before the law, surely you don’t oppose that?”

Brian: “I have no desire to see equality before the law. If the law says that 20 year old men are to be conscripted into the army and must serve for 2 years, I do not wish to see equality before this law. I do not wish to see this law extended to include women as well as other age groups so as to apply it more equally. I would rather see this bad law repealed and forgotten about altogether.”

Egalitarian: “Alright fine, so you don’t want equality before bad laws, fair enough. But surely if we agree that a law is good, you would want people to be equal before it?”

Brian: “I would not put it in those terms. I would say only that I would like people to be better served by the law. If a law best serves the most people when it is applied to everyone in society uniformly, then so be it, I want that. But I put value always on the positive side, never on the negative side. If someone is privileged by an absurd law, I would like to see the privilege eliminated, not in order to take something away from the person privileged, but in order to give something to those who were previously not privileged. The ideal of equality puts value on both the positive and the negative side, which is why it leads to so many absurdities.”

Egalitarian: “But how about fairness? Fairness is a very important thing, and inequality is unfair.”

Brian: “Fairness is just a manifestation of the ideal of equality, and is equally dangerous as a concept. Is it fair that some people are born with ample natural endowments while others are born with less ample natural endowments? No, it’s not particularly fair. But who cares? If you feel sympathy for those born less fortunate, then go help them out, I support you fully. But if you seek to hobble those born more fortunate in the name of the ideal of ‘fairness’, than I must oppose you with all my might.”

Egalitarian: “But how about jealousy and envy? Many people are envious of those born more fortunate, of those with more wealth, or of those who have special legal privileges. For them, tearing these lucky people down is almost as important as raising themselves up.”

Brian: “Ah, at last we reach the root of the matter. I gladly leave the ideal of equality to jealous and envious people. That means that I, and every other non-envious person, can forget all about equality. A welcome relief indeed!”

The Tax Lawyer As Heroic Bodyguard

            A robber waylays a merchant on his way back from a trading expedition, seeking to relieve him of some of his profits. The merchant, if he is smart, hires a bodyguard to defend him against the attempted predation of the robber. The robber says: “Cease defending yourself! I rob you so that I might give to the poor!” The merchant responds: “I care not what you do with your loot. You shall not take from me against my will. If you must, take your spoils from a less well-prepared merchant, but from me you’ll have none.”

            

           A government sees a corporation that has just made a profit, and seeks to relieve it of some of its profits by way of a corporate income tax levy. The corporation, if its directors are smart, hires a tax lawyer to defend it against the attempted coerced levy of the government, the lawyer advising the corporation on how to employ every legal means available to pay a smaller amount. The government says: “Cease trying to avail yourself of tricky tax loopholes! We tax you so that we might give to the poor!” The corporation’s directors respond: “We care not what you do with your taxation money. We will not allow you to take a penny more than is strictly necessary for us to stay within the bounds of the law. If you must, take your taxation money from a less well-prepared corporation, but from us you’ll have as little as possible.”

            

           Thus, the tax lawyer is a kind of modern bodyguard to corporations. Like the bodyguard, the tax lawyer performs the valuable service of protecting some of their clients’ assets against being taken away from them against their clients’ will.

           

           Besides being valuable to the client, the corporate tax lawyer is also valuable to society at large. The corporate income tax is a particularly destructive form of taxation. Without it, corporations would have more of a welcome incentive to retain more of their profits in the form of Retained Earnings, using these Retained Earnings either to invest in their own business or in other businesses within the economy. The corporate income tax is a levy standing in between Profits and Investment. Without it, profits could be channelled tax-free into investment, and more investment would occur as a result, something that would make the economic system more productive generally and which would enable it to implement technological advances more readily.

           

           In addition, the corporate income tax is a form of double-taxation when shareholders are paid dividends. Not only must their corporation’s profits be cut by the tax before any distribution can take place, thus leaving less to distribute and to invest in the future, but then they must pay an additional amount in personal income tax when they receive their dividends. These dividends represent the reward, akin to an interest payment, for the shareholders’ saving and contribution to productive investment in the economy. With this reward twice diluted, the incentive to save and contribute to productive investment is weakened, and the productivity of the economy suffers as a result.

            

           Given these harmful effects, whenever a tax lawyer succeeds in enabling a corporation to pay less of this ill-advised tax, they are thereby alleviating some of the negative effects of the tax, to the benefit of all of the society.

            

           Thus, not only are tax lawyers valuable personal bodyguards to corporations, but they are also heroic defenders of society against ill-advised governmental fiscal policies. This is not to say that all taxation is ill-advised and should be abandoned forthwith. But certain types of taxation, such as the corporate income tax and the capital gains tax should probably be completely abolished, while other types such as the personal income tax and sales tax should probably be radically simplified, greatly reduced in magnitude, and be made more uniform for all citizens. If this were to happen, tax lawyers might need to find a new line of work, but until that time, I would consider them to be social heroes, even if they do not consider themselves as such.      

Determining The Rules Governing Landed Property

‘Property is Theft!’ shouts the socialist. ‘Taxation is Theft!’ shouts the libertarian. Who is correct? Does ‘the community’, through the intermediation of the government, own all the land within its borders? Or does the individual, either through using their labor to make untouched land productive, or by purchasing land from a previous owner, own the land?

A common socialist response to the libertarian defense of the sanctity of private property is: ‘Don’t be so sure that you own this property that you speak of. The political community is in fact the legitimate owner of all of the land within its borders. Individuals just lease this land, and the taxes that they are assessed for are the price of the rent. If you don’t like it, go move to another country.’

The libertarian rebuttal runs along these lines: ‘What legitimate claim does the political community, or the government, have on all the land within its self-proclaimed borders? It is the individual pioneers, those that have transformed the land from useless wilderness into valuable economic asset, who have the only legitimate claim to appropriate formerly un-owned land. When the government demands tribute, it thus acts as a highwayman, not as a landowner.’

I think that both of these arguments are on the wrong track. They are arguing about who ‘the legitimate’ owner of a piece of land is. But the concept of ‘legitimacy’ only makes sense within a framework of rules adopted to achieve a certain purpose. If a boxer follows all of the rules of boxing during a match and ends up knocking out his opponent, then he has achieved a ‘legitimate knockout’. If, on the other hand, the boxer knocks out his opponent by kicking him in the head, then his knockout is ‘illegitimate’, as it was not done according to the rules of the sport. However, if the match was not a boxing match but a Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) match, where kicking to the head is allowed by the rules, then the same physical result would be considered a ‘legitimate knock-out’.

The point is that the concept of legitimacy presupposes a framework of rules that a result or arrangement are to be judged by. If the result or arrangement is in accordance with the rules, it is legitimate, if not in accordance with the rules, it is illegitimate. Thus, according to the socialist ‘rules’, the pretensions of individual property owners are indeed illegitimate, while the governments’ commands and taxation levies are perfectly legitimate. However, according to the libertarian ‘rules’, it is the pretensions of the government that are illegitimate, while individuals may legitimately exercise full control over their private property, so long as they don’t infringe on the legitimate property rights of others.  

Thus, the fundamental question is: which rules should we recommend? Should we recommend the libertarian rules, the socialist rules, or a set of rules that borrow elements from each? The answer: whichever set of rules are in the best interests of you and those that you care about. In what follows, I will recommend the adoption of a set of property rules whose general adoption I believe would be in the best interests of myself and of those that I care about.

As a general principle, private ownership of land by individuals is a very positive thing. Generally, the more relevant a piece of land is to the welfare of an individual, the more pains they will take to maintain the land, improve the land, and direct the land (through sale, use, or lease) to its most value-productive uses. Masses of overwhelmed, under informed, and apathetic democratic electors, or government officials who receive the bulk of their income from general taxation rather than from the specific parcels of land that they are administering, will have less of an incentive to care about a particular parcel of land than most private owners would.

Still, we need not push this principle to the point of delegitimizing every political arrangement besides anarchism, as many libertarians do. If a minimal role for government, particularly in the spheres of law and protection against aggressors, is considered a positive thing (as I consider it), then we can always devise the property rules in such a way as to make some limited government actions ‘legitimate’. We could say that the government has a limited lien on all landed property within its political borders, a lien that allows it to protect people against physical and fraudulent aggression on those lands and to levy enough in taxation from those who live on these lands to fund this protection.

Then comes the question of what to do with previously untouched land. The libertarian principle involves allocating ownership of the land to those people who first work the land and make it productive, who ‘mix their labor with the land’, as John Locke would say. This allows untouched land to be transformed into the private property of those who have a significant economic stake in the land, which, as explained above, is generally a positive thing.

While a relatively simple general principle, it becomes more complicated when we start thinking about details and specific cases. How much ‘labor’ would people have to ‘mix’ in order to claim a certain amount of land as their private property? Could a single rancher claim ownership of a vast field of grass if they just built a wooden fence around a large territory? Also, sometimes, especially in the modern world, undeveloped land is valuable. Logging companies love virgin forests, but would cutting a few trees give them a property claim to parts of the forest? And how about wilderness sanctuaries or wild animal reserves? These can be valuable land assets, but the ‘mixing labor’ property allocation rule would seem to be arbitrarily biased against them.   

The other option is to give full land ownership rights to untouched land to the government with military power/responsibility over the territory in question. They would not be allowed to develop the land themselves or to sell the untouched land with strings attached, only to sell it to others as full private property. But again, we are faced with the problem of giving land ownership responsibility to a giant organization whose decision-makers don’t have much of a personal economic stake in the land at all. One way to deal with this problem would be to specify that the government’s untouched land must be sold, in a gradual fashion, to the highest bidders in a fully public auction, open to all comers. Then, the land would be allocated to those who were willing to put up the biggest economic stake in it (the highest bidder), which would ensure that the land would become private property in the hands of individuals economically interested in the land. The winners of the auctions could either be prospective personal users of the land, prospective landlords of the land, or they could be land speculators that would try to flip the land for a profit. Either way, the owner would be personally interested in allocating the land to or using the land for its most value-productive purposes, and this could include activities such as ranching, logging, wildlife and wilderness preservation, activities which the ‘labor mixing’ principle might be biased against. In addition, with this method, the government could use the land auction proceeds, however limited they might end up being, to partially fund their activities for a while, thus giving a break to taxpayers.

The main problem with this auction solution is that the land would go to those who already possessed economic means, rather than to those poor pioneers who sought to use their labor and perseverance to carve out property for themselves. From the perspective of social mobility and economic egalitarianism, this is a mark against it and in favor of the ‘mixing labor’ principle.

Also, unlike all other economic goods, ground land can actually serve as the basis of a real monopoly. Other economic goods cannot be monopolized because either one party cannot own them en masse (human labor where slavery is prohibited), or they can be produced by newcomers with enough money at their disposal, so long as the necessary land factors aren’t monopolized. Thus, there cannot be a real steel monopoly, even if one firm had 100% market share in the steel industry, unless the firm had a full monopoly of all iron sites in the world. A newcomer with brains and money (his own or borrowed) could start his own steel operation by buying iron, tools and machines, and the necessary labor, and then getting to work. This would not be possible if the 100% market share steel company owned all of the iron sites in the world, because then the company could just refuse to sell its iron to anyone who sought to make steel with it, and prevent anyone from challenging its 100% market share.

Now, a real land monopoly like this is pretty unlikely, except perhaps in a few industries such as the diamond industry. Nevertheless, spreading initially un-owned land amongst a variety of individual owners would make a land monopoly even more unlikely. This the ‘labor mixing’ principle would achieve more effectively than the public auction method, which would probably end up concentrating un-owned land in fewer hands, at least initially.

In any case, I think that one of these methods, or some kind of combination of the two, should be adopted when it comes to allocating ownership rights to untouched land. As long as the government doesn’t hold the land for excessive periods of time or try to develop the land itself, I would be satisfied.

Once we have settled on a set of general property rules based on considerations of long-run expediency, we can then call specific instances of property ownership ‘legitimate’ or ‘illegitimate’ by judging it according to our rules. We don’t have to bother about what adherents of different sets of rules think is ‘legitimate’ or ‘illegitimate’ property, unless they can convince us that their rules are a more expedient set of rules than our own.

   

Critique of Communitarianism: 'The Responsive Communitarian Platform'

The Responsive Communitarian Platform[1].

Platform: “We must insist once again that bringing children into the world entails a moral responsibility to provide, not only material necessities, but also moral education and character formation.

Moral education is not a task that can be delegated to baby sitters, or even professional child-care centers. It requires close bonding of the kind that typically is formed only with parents, if it is formed at all.

Fathers and mothers, consumed by “making it” and consumerism, or preoccupied with personal advancement, who come home too late and too tired to attend to the needs of their children, cannot discharge their most elementary duty to their children and their fellow citizens.” (Start With the Family)

Brian: Firstly, parents are usually the ones with the closest sympathetic bonds to their children and the ones with the greatest selfish interest in seeing their children thrive both materially and psychologically (if their children thrive, the parents will not have to support them as long, and maybe the children can even support the parents in their old age). On the basis of these strong inducements to care about their children, either they will care deeply about their children (most parents) or, for whatever reason, they will not. Either way, pronouncements about parents’ ‘moral responsibility’ to raise their children are futile. It will either be preaching to the choir (most parents) or it will fall on deaf ears (a minority of parents).  

Secondly, what is this moral education that you speak of, and what makes every parent qualified for it? What if the parents are ignorant or despicable people, how could they contribute to moral education or character formation? In fact, it is highly possible that child care professionals, in accordance with the principles of specialization and the division of labor, would be more qualified to give the children a ‘moral education’, whatever that entails. These professionals could well be more knowledgeable about the relevant subjects (child psychology for instance) and could be more empathetic to children than the parents are.     

Thirdly, this idea that parents have some kind of ‘civic duty’ to raise their children in a specified way is a dangerous one. Who is to determine what an ‘acceptable’ way of raising children is? In order to be ‘acceptable’ to the ‘community’, should the children be raised as religious or as atheists? Libertarians or socialists? Believers in individual responsibility or in community responsibility? Should they be raised to be good at math or to be good at history? Should they be allowed to play violent video games and watch violent movies? Should sex be discussed with them or not? Should they be encouraged to be thinkers or encouraged to be doers? I could go on and on, and the combinations and permutations would be virtually endless. To vest the power to determine these things in the ‘community’ would be totalitarianism, something that I am extremely uncomfortable with, especially given the dubious quality of most ‘community-based’ decision-making processes.          

Platform: “We strongly urge that all educational institutions, from kindergartens to universities, recognize and take seriously the grave responsibility to provide moral education. Suggestions that schools participate actively in moral education are often opposed. The specter of religious indoctrination is quickly evoked, and the question is posed: “Whose morals are you going to teach?”

Our response is straightforward: we ought to teach those values Americans share, for example, that the dignity of all persons ought to be respected, that tolerance is a virtue and discrimination abhorrent, that peaceful resolution of conflicts is superior to violence, that generally truth-telling is morally superior to lying, that democratic government is morally superior to totalitarianism and authoritarianism, that one ought to give a day’s work for a day’s pay, that saving for one’s own and one’s country’s future is better than squandering one’s income and relying on others to attend to one’s future needs.” (Schools – The Second Line of Defense)

Brian: Let’s go over this catalogue one by one.

1. “the dignity of all persons ought to be respected”: Sounds good, but what exactly does it mean? Is a rich person’s dignity still being respected when they are forced to give away half of their income to the government, whether they personally support this policy or not? Is the dignity of an air traveller being respected when they are forced to go through a metal detector, take off their shoes, and have their bags searched by security personnel? Is the dignity of a car driver being respected when they are forced by law to wear a seatbelt, because it is assumed that they are too stupid to take reasonable safety precautions themselves? If the answer to these questions, and many other similar ones, is yes, then dignity would appear to be a pretty empty concept. If no, then teaching this moral postulate would involve the ‘moral teacher’ taking some pretty controversial policy stances and teaching them to their students as moral truths.

2. “tolerance is a virtue and discrimination abhorrent”: Tolerance, of what exactly? Of other people’s lifestyle choices? It can’t be that because there are laws banning the use of many recreational drugs and heavy discriminatory taxes on alcohol and cigarettes. Of other people’s financial decisions? It can’t be that because a large portion of people’s income is taken away from them through coerced taxation levies, and hence they are not free to spend that income as they choose. Of people’s political views? Only partially, because while people are generally left free to express their views, at the end of the day the favored policies of the majority are forcibly imposed on the minority. And how about discrimination? Can’t I legitimately discriminate when it comes to choosing who I want to associate with? I don’t want to be friendly with just anyone, only with carefully selected people who I get along with. While this postulate is probably intended to be taken in a narrower sense, the point is that these concepts are very fluid, and can be extended or narrowed relatively easily, presumably at the discretion of this ‘moral teacher’ we are talking about.

3. “peaceful resolution of conflicts is superior to violence”: Add ‘other things equal’, and then it is a good principle. Not all conflicts can be satisfactorily resolved by peaceful means alone though. If a mugger points a gun at you and says: ‘Give me all your money or I’ll shoot you in the head’, the peaceful resolution of this conflict would be to hand over all your money. And yet, I think a lot of people would justifiably prefer, if they had the chance, to defend themselves against this mugging, or if they couldn’t, would prefer it if the police used violence to apprehend the mugger and return the money.

4. “generally truth-telling is morally superior to lying”: This is a sound principle because of the word ‘generally’. And yet, this also makes it a complicated and ambiguous principle. When is lying morally justified? Is lying on your tax return morally justified if you believe that the government has no moral right to your money? When are ‘white lies’, lies told to save someone you care about from unnecessary suffering or anxiety, morally justified? If a ‘moral teacher’ were to take positions on such questions, then they would definitely be stepping outside of the boundaries of ‘values that all Americans share’.    

5. “democratic government is morally superior to totalitarianism and authoritarianism”: Really? How about the belief that the moral status of a government depends more on the content of its policies than on its method of ruler selection, implying that a good authoritarian government (Singapore’s for instance) could well be morally superior to a bad democratic government (Greece’s for instance)? Is this belief absurd and damnable and not held by any American? I think not.

6. “one ought to give a day’s work for a day’s pay”: Ok, so receiving welfare payments is morally wrong? Obviously this view is not shared by all Americans.

7. “saving for one’s own and one’s country’s future is better than squandering one’s income and relying on others to attend to one’s future needs.”: Saving is morally superior to consumption and ought to be encouraged? Great, tell it to all the Keynesian economists and policy makers who denigrate thrift and seek to encourage consumption. One shouldn’t rely on others to attend to one’s future needs? Great, then Social Security and Medicare have no moral legitimacy. And yet, it seems exceedingly obvious that these positions are not held universally by all Americans.

In general, I think that this communitarian desire to try to come up with ‘Shared Values’ for the whole society is quixotic and hopeless. Either these supposed ‘Shared Values’ are interpreted in such a way as to render them so vague as to be meaningless and without use for practical life, or they are interpreted in such a way as to render them controversial and no longer universally ‘shared’. As such, like it or not, there will always be an element of ‘moral indoctrination’ in any instance of ‘moral education’.     

Platform: “National and local service, as well as volunteer work, is desirable to build and express a civil commitment. Such activities, bringing together people from different backgrounds and enabling and encouraging them to work together, build community and foster mutual respect and tolerance.” (A Matter of Orientation)

Brian: Well and good, but why does it have to be unpaid work in order to achieve these positive things? Paid work expresses a ‘civil commitment’, it indicates that the worker is willing to contribute something valuable to society before taking something valuable out of it in return. Paid work brings together people from different backgrounds, sometimes more so than local community work. It is not true that local community work environments are necessarily more diverse than professional work environments, far from it. Paid work ‘builds community’, the bonds between co-workers are often stronger than the bonds between people from the same local geographical community. Paid work ‘fosters mutual respect and tolerance’, people must respect and tolerate other employees and act professionally, or they will be at risk of being fired for disrupting workplace relations. I think that the communitarian lionization of voluntary work as against paid work is mostly unjustified.  

Platform: “Paying one’s taxes, encouraging others to pay their fair share, and serving on juries are fully obligatory. One of the most telling ills of our time is the expectation of many Americans that they are entitled to ever more public services without paying for them (as reflected in public opinion polls that show demands to slash government and taxes but also to expand practically every conceivable government function). We all take for granted the right to be tried before a jury of our peers, but, all too often we are unwilling to serve on juries ourselves.” (Duties to the Polity)

Brian: Ok. What if someone does not believe that they are entitled, nor do they want, any public services besides law and police services? Can they then legitimately assess themselves at a far lower tax rate than the official rate? What about if we are perfectly content being tried by a judge alone rather than by a jury? Can we then legitimately pass on compulsory jury duty?

I think that we only have a duty to do something if we explicitly, voluntarily agreed to do it, whether in exchange for something or not. For government-imposed ‘duties’, this is not the case. In this case, ‘privileges’ (services due) and ‘duties’ are set unilaterally by one party, the government. If the government determined that they would give me an orange, and that because of giving me this orange, I must serve as a soldier in Afghanistan for two years in order to discharge my ‘duty’, I would consider it to be involuntary slavery, not the discharging of some kind of sacred ‘duty’.  

Platform: “Campaign contributions to members of Congress and state legislatures, speaking fees, and bribes have become so pervasive that in many areas of public policy and on numerous occasions the public interest is ignored as legislators pay off their debts to special interests…

To establish conditions under which elected officials will be able to respond to the public interest, to the genuine needs of all citizens, and to their own consciences requires that the role of private money in public life be reduced as much as possible.” (Cleaning Up the Polity)

Brian: Unfortunately, even if “the role of private money in public life” was significantly reduced, politicians would still be beholden to powerful special interest groups, not “to their own consciences” or “to the genuine needs of all citizens”. Firstly, there would remain the notorious ‘revolving door’ of employment between large companies and the government agencies that supposedly ‘regulate’ them. Large companies like hiring former officials of the relevant regulatory agency so that they can know the ins and outs of and be on the good side of that agency. The regulatory agencies like hiring people from large companies in the industry because of their knowledge of the industry and connections within the industry. Officials in the agency might look forward to holding a lucrative position in that large company in the future, while others who used to work for that company might look favorably on their former workplace. Either way, it is likely that such officials will be biased in favor of the large company in question, and this will affect policy-making. Notable revolving door arrangements exist between Goldman Sachs and the Securities Exchange Commission, and between Monsanto and the Food and Drug Administration, among others.   

Secondly, special interest groups don’t just receive their clout through money, but also through their power to persuade large numbers of voters to vote for the candidate of the group’s choice. Labor unions, professional associations, chambers of commerce, various single issue advocacy groups, and even local or regional interests themselves, constitute powerful special interest groups who would remain disproportionately powerful even without the direct infusion of money into public life. Most of these groups do not and do not try to represent the ‘general interests’ of citizens or of ‘the commonweal’. They represent particular interests, the kind interests which most voters base their votes on due to the complexity of societal and political life. A politician who tried to respond to an abstract, general ‘public interest’ or to their own consciences would invariably end up alienating the special interest groups whose support they need in order to survive politically.

Thus, while eliminating private money from public life would change the relative power of different special interest groups in politics, it would not reduce the dependence of politicians on such groups in general.

Platform: “As we see it, responsibilities are anchored in community. Reflecting the diverse moral voices of their citizens, responsive communities define what is expected of people; they educate their members to accept these values; and they praise them when they do and frown upon them when they do not.” (A Question of Responsibility)

Brian: This seems like an appropriate moment to pose the million dollar question: what constitutes a community and how does one become a member of one? Can your family be your community? How about your city block? Neighborhood? Is it based on the arbitrarily defined territorial political units of municipalities, provinces/states, and nation-states? How about a religious community? Ethnic community? Professional or corporate community? Community of shared interests (activity clubs, online forums)? Can the whole world be your community? Geographically non-contiguous parts of the world?

It is important that we answer this question clearly and unambiguously if we are to assign moral and political statuses to community groupings. If more than one of these kinds of communities are recognized as ‘true communities’, worthy of a moral and/or political status, than what happens if these communities demand different things of the individual? For instance, what happens if the nation-state community demands that the individual puts the interests of that nation-state above all, while the world community demands that the individual puts the interests of the world above all, including the interests of the nation-state? What if the family wants the individual to go abroad so that he can make more money and send some home to them, while the local community wants the individual to stay and contribute professionally to the local community? What if your religious community wants you to not associate with homosexual people, while your nation-state says that such discriminatory behavior is repugnant and punishable? Such possible examples are virtually endless. The point is that in order to propound a coherent ideology, communitarians must designate which communities’ rulings are to be supreme to the individual in any particular field, and they must justify their choice logically. I have yet to come across something like this in any communitarian writing, probably because it is an impossible task.

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[1]The Communitarian Network, “The Responsive Communitarian Platform”, http://communitariannetwork.org/about-communitarianism/responsive-communitarian-platform/