DISQUS

William · 1 year ago

But you don't have to deny that "anti-corruption" and "civic responsibility" are important to argue that government can't work. As I wrote on the previous thread, most businesses build in a certain level of trust just to make things operate smoothly. But that doesn't mean that I can just make any ol' business model and rely on honesty to get me through.

Banks could save a lot of money if they didn't have to buy safes or keep records of how much money people gave, but rather just trusted everyone not to steal the unguarded money and to be honest about how much they had deposited. But I'd argue with someone who wanted to start a bank based on that idea that it isn't going to work. The fact that most people are honest and trustworthy doesn't change my opinion that it's a really bad idea. My skepticism would not be diminished if the potential bank-owner told me he also had a plan to instill a greater sense throughout society that it's very wrong to steal from banks.

It's silly to say anything about "government" because there are so many different kinds, but you do have to mock the idea that government is a unique institution that doesn't have to take the honesty of people as a given, like any other corporation would have to.

Honesty is super important, but in a sense that doesn't matter because it's not something we can affect.

bjk · 1 year ago

The founders were found of this quote from Pope:

For Forms of Government let fools contest; whatever is best administered is best.

Slocum · 1 year ago

Very nice. A question -- how do norms interact with institution design? Does a form of broken windows theory apply? That is, are good institutions (from a public choice perspective) the equivalent of a policy of fixing broken windows and painting over graffiti immediately? Do good institutions with good incentives tend to produce and support good norms?

Or, on the other hand, do clearly defined punishment for transgressions tend to undermine norms by sending the message that cheating is rampant? I'm thinking, in particular, of the Italian laws that require buyers to ask for and retain receipts as a way of forcibly enlisting buyers in the fight against tax evasion via under-the-table sales. These laws do not seem to be turning Italians into Scandinavians -- but do they tend to make norms stronger, weaker, or have no effect?

Cool Cal · 1 year ago

I think that this discussion is somewhat remiss without at least addressing the partial origin of our civic norms, and how they deteriorated. The idea of the independently civic minded and philanthropic citizen, typically a member of the landed gentry, was a watchword of the Puritans, who first established what we might recognize as communes, and later formed the pillars of the Revolution, and then the fledgling United States. Anyone who had the fortune of owning land in the new republic, had a responsibility to dedicate a certain portion of his life's efforts towards the maintenance of that very democracy which enabled the free transfer of wealth, lest the young country coagulate into a de facto plutocracy. These were, in spite of what we might like to believe, religious as well as secular political values, which had their roots in the early English Civil Wars. And while the original farm families, revolutionary merchants, and barristers eventually became what we now know as the “Protestant Establishment” (Most quite wealthy in the end), they nevertheless maintained this virtue of civic engagement as a hedge against personal corruption (Anyone who has ever sung the Protestant hymn “‘Tis a Gift to be Simple, ‘Tis a Gift to be Free”, knows them well).

I suspect that two things eliminated the balance of this institution (or norm, what have you). Civil Service Reform, for whatever its virtues, introduced the capitalist enterprise system into politics at perhaps the worst possible time; the Gilded Age. It is perhaps no great coincidence that directly following this governmental reform, most of the regulations were introduced that poisoned the market system as it existed and created the corporate-political web that we know today, in addition to establishing a new breed of government entity; the Career Politician. Political power was no longer a duty, it was an ambition.

Finally, that great libertarian bugbear, F … D … R. A member of the Protestant Establishment himself, he took the norms of civic duty and engagement, philanthropy, public welfare that the rich and privileged formerly took it upon themselves to dispense as largess … and enforced them upon the masses. People often seem to overlook the fact that the wealthy who resented FDR by and large were, at the time, considered “New Money” – Carnegie, Rockefeller, etc. were from rough backgrounds and in some cases had little to no education. Capitalism to the new Americans meant earning money and keeping it without apology. If the old Puritan guardians of virtue were going to die with the rise of “unfettered free marketers” they weren’t going without a fight. The intense power our politicians have, especially the president and our stifling federal apparatus in place since the New Deal are all largely the result of a system of virtues which, when impossible to ensure voluntarily, were imposed on us forcefully.

GilM · 1 year ago

The point is to make our institutions more likely to deliver what they promise.

Is it?

Isn't the point to leave us better off?

And, doesn't that entail severely limiting the scope of what government promises us, because venturing out beyond that scope will hurt us (for all of the institutional reasons we've been discussing)?

I'm afraid that this Lakoffian framing will be counter-productive. I'm not enthusiastic about collectivist projects (if only they didn't require angels), and I don't think pretending that I am will lead to more human flourishing.

I really don't agree that romantic fantasies about hope and change and honest politicians, who could help us all if they just decided to honestly do something, lead to anything that's "better". Just as I don't think religious faith will cure disease.

And, I don't think pretending that I do will do anything other than encourage dangerous mistakes.

Yes, some honesty is necessary, and good norms are necessary to keep government relatively honest and limited. But, let's not pretend that we're actually all believers in magical government, because that's a mistake that needs to be corrected.

TGGP · 1 year ago

The anarcho-capitalists seek to make public spiritedness irrelevant by eliminating any government power that could possibly be abused. Mencius Moldbug, heavily inspired by Rothbardian anarcho-capitalism, proposes to make public opinion irrelevant by investing absolute power in a for-profit corporation whose incentive rests on maximizing shareholder value, which in term rests on property values or rent.

Emphasizing, truly, that the system can’t possibly work without some level of virtue and trust is a good way to reassure skeptics that you haven’t declared jihad on fellow feeling and are out to wring the inefficiency from our institutions by wringing out the humanity.
Shouldn't the most important criterion be whether or not that statement is true?

GU · 1 year ago

If you study corporate governance, you come to realize that large corporations have many of the same problems as big government. High agency costs almost by definition entails not maximizing shareholder returns. There is already a large group of influential scholars who don't think that corporations have a duty to maximize shareholder value, even though most corporate charters, not to mention the law, mandate it. Imagine all the "stakeholder" theories of corporate duty that would surface if there was a corporation that was a super powerful quasi-government!

If we are going to model our government on a form of business organization, it ought to be a partnership.

Dain · 1 year ago

But it remains that we WANT good government, and public-spiritedness helps.

Of course the hardcore anti-statists believe that government is the antithesis of society! For them, public-spiritedness demands unceasing criticism of the state, perhaps especially on the warm and fuzzy sounding stuff like the welfare state.

Actually, given the propensity for adulation of authority figures and the evolved psychological satisfaction derived from the "People's Romance," I think that public-spiritedness probably does demand deference to the modern equivalent of tribal chiefs, "fairly" rationing out goods and services in the spirit of the hunter gatherer band.

Which renders libertarian individualists rather counter-cultural as well. Fellow Feeling? It's so conservative!

mk · 1 year ago

Will, I'm glad you're trying to break down some barriers here and find a middle way. Conversations like this is how real inter-ideological cooperation starts. Maybe you can be the Obama of blogging -- without an ideological home, you deploy language that both sides can understand, and then everyone realizes how much they really have in common!

"And yea, how foolish were we all to toil at our ideological fortifications, as a young lad who raises parapets fashioned from the cushions a sofa!" is what we will say, when that day comes. We will all say that exact sentence.

Steve Horwitz · 1 year ago

Will, I do think it's a matter of strategy and emphasis. My point was not to dismiss all government everywhere because of folks like Blago (I have plenty of other arguments beside him to do that ;) ). My point was simply the juxtaposition of a string of recent corruption cases (Jefferson in LA too) that seem to involve influence peddling and the like at the very same time we are handing over MASSIVE new powers to those very same folks. Blago et. al. wouldn't be so notable in this regard if we were enacting a new leash law on city council, but when we're talking trillions and nationalization, it behooves us to remember that the higher up the political food chain we go, the more likely it is that folks have a comparative advantage at behaving in ways that aren't so civically responsible. The worst do tend to get on top, a la Hayek.

x_trapnel · 1 year ago

Good points.
This reminds me, Will: I'd been tossing around the idea of trying to start a blog-based reading-group/discussion on Brennan & Pettit's "The Economic of Esteem," perhaps as a double-header with Gary Miller's "Managerial Dilemmas." Any interest, Will or Readers of Will?