We observe a strange phenomenon that does not only affect America but currently looks especially virulent in this country. (Before the fall of the Soviet empire, it was more noticeable in Europe.) When an election is coming, each of the two main competing sides shouts that if the other 50% (plus 1% or whatever) wins, catastrophes will happen. The phenomenon has gradually intensified. Each of the two sides seems right: the government has become so powerful that it can seriously harm the interests and lifestyles of either side’s members. Nobody seems secure in his liberty.
It is not that the politicians of one side promise to do nothing (slogan: “We’ll let you pursue your peaceful activities and happiness”) while those on the other side intend to actively harm the opposing 50% (“We are coming after you”). If that were the case, we would understand that the side to be actively harmed and discriminated against would have good reasons to cry wolf; and we might realize that there is a moral and economic difference between not doing something to help somebody and to actively harm him. But this is not what is happening. Each side intends to actively harm one-half of the population by restricting what they want to do.
The incantation that the new president will be the president of all (of all Syldavians) is a sham. He or she cannot be the president of all by taking sides for one half against the other half. “What can I do for you? What can I forbid or mandate that would please you?”
The losing side of the election, whichever 50% it is, feels threatened and angry. And here is what’s most surprising: the losers do not conclude that the government should not have the power to harm them (whether they are 49% of the population or whatever); no, they conclude that their candidates must win next time to retaliate and satisfy their claims against the other tribe. From one election to the other, from one change of the guard to the other, government power continues to grow, and the population becomes more discontented. Granted that one-third of voting-age citizens do not vote, which does not prevent their liberty from being alternatively shrunk by one-third and then by the other third.
The strange phenomenon is actually explainable, especially after the advances of public choice analysis over the past seven decades. Once political authorities have gained enough power to significantly harm the losing side in its liberties and opportunities, once the domain of collective choice has sufficiently invaded the domain of individual choice, politics becomes the only game in town.
For a couple of centuries, classical liberals and libertarians, whose insights are currently ignored, have argued against this absurd and dangerous race to power, like two angry would-be queens running to seize the throne. This system promotes politicization, conflict, and injustices, and represents a mounting threat to prosperity and liberty. Although liberals and libertarians continue to debate the exact limits of political power, their goal may be summarized by the motto live and let live. This is very different from competitive authoritarianism whether democratic or not.
It is worth reflecting on Anthony de Jasay’s simultaneously radical and reasonable definition of (classical) liberalism as “a broad presumption of deciding individually any matter whose structure lends itself, with roughly comparable convenience, to both individual and collective choice.” Since the 18th century, economic analysis has demonstrated how individual choices with the right institutional background generate a free and autoregulated society.
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The Red Queen and the Blue Queen running to seize the throne and harm the other’s followers
READER COMMENTS
David Seltzer
Nov 6 2024 at 10:34am
Pierre: I see something of a prisoners dilemma here. It seems all would be better off in the lower right square of the payoff matrix if they just agreed to not interfere with each other. Each would be free to pursue their purposes without the other impeding them.
Pierre Lemieux
Nov 6 2024 at 10:39am
David: Yes, there is nothing like the state to create prisoners’ dilemmas–under the excuse of preventing PDs in the production of “public goods”! This is a favorite argument of Anthony de Jasay.
Jose Pablo
Nov 6 2024 at 12:43pm
with each other
The problem is: that there is no “each other”.
I mean, the 50% “winning” is indiscernible from the 50% “losing”, to the point that it is practically impossible to fine-tune policies that favor my voters while harming the other party’s voters.
Around 55% of my neighbors vote for Trump and 45% for Harris (I am making up the numbers but it could be close). You have to be an extremely clinical “political surgeon”, to come up with policies that harm half of my neighborhood while favoring the other half. We live in the same place, occupy ourselves in similar endeavors, and buy, for the most part, the same groceries.
The only difference between my Trump neighbors and my Harris neighbors is that they “feel good” about different policies. So, the only harm the other candidate will do “only” to them (and not to the “opposite group”, is depriving them of the “feeling good” rush that has their favorite policies enhanced and implemented produce. In fact, nobody even cares about the real effects, which are rarely monitored, take ages to surface and you can never isolate the real causes.
The “real” (as opposed to “felt”) harm of Trump’s (or Harris’) policies will affect all my neighbors pretty much the same no matter who they voted for.
David Seltzer
Nov 6 2024 at 1:24pm
Pablo, with respect, there is each other Meaning, If I harm you so that I benefit or vice versa, the prisoners dilemma holds. The optimal outcome is cooperating to assure individual freedom.
Jose Pablo
Nov 6 2024 at 1:54pm
But it is not you harming me, David. It is the government enhancing policies that harm (for instance) Harris’ voters while helping Trump’s voters. And that is an impossible trick.
There are Trump’s voters and Harris’ voters in the same neighborhoods, in the same workplaces, in the same supermarkets, in the same petrol stations. You can not be clinical enough to define policies that help and harm people who do the same things just depending on how they voted yesterday.
You can not design a policy that helps Trump’s voters while hurting Harris’ ones. You certainly can implement policies that hurt both Trump’s and Harris’ voters. Or (much more unlikely) that help both.
Voters support immigration policies not because of how immigrants rationally affect you (most voters have never seen one and how they affect them is, for the most part, unknown) but because of how you “feel” about immigration. Voters support abortion policies not because they (or anybody in their close family) are going to have an abortion but because of how they “feel” about abortion.
The only thing that will hurt for Harris’ voters but not for Trump’s voters will be their feelings (their “political feelings”). “True harm” (as opposed to “felt harm”) will be indiscriminately done to both groups or voters. Or (much more unlikely) true good will be indiscriminately made to most of us.
David Seltzer
Nov 6 2024 at 2:31pm
Jose: Well argued, as always. I see your point. Thank you.
Pierre Lemieux
Nov 6 2024 at 3:07pm
Jose: As much as it is difficult to see who benefits in the net from complex redistribution programs, there are well-delimited client groups whom a powerful and crony state will reward for their support. Trump will reward billionaires such as Musk and their companies, “working-class” rural white Americans, manufacturers (at least those who don’t import inputs), farmers, and probably young men; Kamala Harris’s clientèle was made of college graduates, the education industry, the reproductive-rights crowd, the “intellectual class,” the poverty industry, and trade-unions apparatchiks.
Pierre Lemieux
Nov 6 2024 at 3:14pm
Jose: What creates some (much?) noise in the picture I just drew is that Trump is not supposed to run again, which he must suspect. That leaves more room for his whims. We can however expect Vance, who does want to run again, to try and smother Trump’s most destructive intentions like, perhaps, hairy protectionism.
Pierre Lemieux
Nov 6 2024 at 3:19pm
Jose: Many, among Trump’s sycophants, also have political ambitions, and will try to advance them, often by restraining the Lider Maximo. Expect Trump to fire many of them during the course of his term.
Jose Pablo
Nov 6 2024 at 9:27pm
there are well-delimited client groups whom a powerful and crony state will reward for their support
Pierre, 40% of rural white Americans voted for Harris as did 42% of no-college degree Americans.
How is Trump (of all human beings!) going to design policies that favor the 60% of rural white Americans who voted for him but not the 40% who voted for Harris?
And, fortunately, Trump is not going to be the only one in charge of making policy in the USA. I hope the House will be controlled by the other party, making the reward of not very well-defined groups even more difficult.
But, even worse, it is impossible for an individual voter to rationally know beforehand, how is he or she going to be affected by a particular candidate’s announced (and very ill-defined) policies.
That would require:
a) the candidate making explicit all the policies that he (or she) is going to implement
b) the candidate making an explicit promise of not implementing any measure he has not mentioned during the campaign
c) the voter knowing which policies each candidate has promised to advance if elected.
d) the voter being able to anticipate how a particular policy is going to affect him or her. Nobel prize winners in Economic Science don’t agree on the macro consequences of a particular policy, and the layman is going to be able to predict the individual consequences of these very same policies?!
e) the individual voter being conscious of his own utility function and being able to work out how the different consequences of different policies would add up for him (he has to go: Harris policy on abortion is going to cause me +5 utility units, but her immigration policy -3 and his foreign policy +2 … so …)
I find it very difficult to believe any of these five could happen. Much less all the five at the same time.
People don’t vote because of the harm or benefits that they rationally anticipate. They vote because of how they “feel” about the candidates’ vibe. Or to put it in more technical terms, they vote following their own biases.
Caplan did a great job pulling down the myth of the rational voter that is at the core of how we understand democracy.
Nothing of this contradicts De Jasay. The government is sure just a machine of taking from Paul to pay Peter. My point is that it is impossible for the individual voter to know if he is going to be Paul or Peter from the information they have (and understand) before the election.
Pierre Lemieux
Nov 7 2024 at 11:43am
Jose: You are right. We (and I) need to better model the articulation of some incentives in, and features of, democratic elections, including the following:
Typical voters are rationally ignorant and their votes are mostly “expressive,” that is, cast in order to satisfy the pleasure and entertainment value of expressing oneself and being part of a crowd or mob.
Voters vote their opinions or feelings (what Mactoul calls their “conceptions of the good”).
People’s feelings are often, perhaps usually, not contrary to what they perceive as their interests. They expect “their candidate” to work at improving their conditions (increase their utility), and he will do so in order to be reelected in the future. (Improving one’s condition is what utility functions are all about.)
A candidate’s main goal is to be elected with all the attendant perks, including a motorcade and his recognition as a powerful leader. He tries to achieve this by assembling a coalition of voters whom he can persuade that there is something for each of them in his being elected. As Trump says, what is it for him?
Populism (which is a drift or degeneration of democracy) reinforces the whole process by creating a group identity (“the people,” “patriots”…) against foreign enemies, cat-eating Haitians, and “enemies within” (see my “The Impossibility of Populism”). So even if the leader later imposes measures that will turn out to harm his flock (protectionism, for example), they will still think that he is working for them.
Organized and concentrated interests (e.g., trade unions, the super-rich, corporations and organizations needing government support such as inefficient manufacturers, and such) exchange their electoral support (including financial) for the implicit or explicit promise of future help.
Jose Pablo
Nov 7 2024 at 5:47pm
Yes!, that’s very precise and useful wording!
People’s feelings are often, perhaps usually, not contrary to what they perceive as their interests.
I still have problems with that part, though. The use of “perceive” (as opposed to “real”) is key in the statement. So much so that it renders, I think, the whole idea useless for any practical purposes.
The truth is that within the same “collective”, with very similar interests, some perceive their interest as defended by one candidate’s policies and some by the other. For instance, 60% of rural “perceive” Trump better represents their interest, but 40% think otherwise. Same thing happens among no-college educated. And with the billionaires, Musk perceives Trump better defend his interests but many others are core democrats (gauche divine approach).
In blue-collar manufacturing states the vote has been divided almost 50/50. which means that at least 50% (a significant figure) either have feelings contrary to what they perceive as their interest or they are wrong at perceiving as their interest which is, in reality, contrary to it.
Craig
Nov 6 2024 at 3:51pm
“Around 55% of my neighbors vote for Trump and 45% for Harris (I am making up the numbers but it could be close). You have to be an extremely clinical “political surgeon”, to come up with policies that harm half of my neighborhood while favoring the other half. We live in the same place, occupy ourselves in similar endeavors, and buy, for the most part, the same groceries.”
Your paragraph here is food for thought for sure, JP
Craig
Nov 6 2024 at 10:58am
“When an election is coming, each of the two main competing sides shouts that if the other 50% (plus 1% or whatever) wins, catastrophes will happen”
Very true though here’s the thing…..if Team Blue wins I’ll be stuck paying $.56 off each dollar I earn. I am confident of this because they did it already. #dontnymyfl
From a leftist pov they might have said in 2016, “Look, elections have consequences and if Trump wins, he appoints Supreme Court justices who will ultimately overturn Roe.” History proved that fear correct, no? Flip side, if Hillary wins I’m relatively confident I wouldn’t have an AR in my possession.
David Seltzer
Nov 6 2024 at 11:36am
Craig,” if Hillary wins I’m relatively confident I wouldn’t have an AR in my possession.” I suspect that’s why there was a run on them and ammo leading up to the election.
steve
Nov 6 2024 at 11:44am
LOL. There has never been mass confiscation of weapons in the US in the modern era that I am aware of. The trend has been strongly towards expanding gun rights. However, in order to keep gun sales up the manufacturers, through their proxies, keep spreading the fear about guns going away. (Have to confess I dont understand the obsession with the AR. It’s a nice gun. At the quarry where I shoot long guns I have tried it out and used the military version when I was in the service, but I dont think its much better than a lot of other guns.)
Steve
Craig
Nov 6 2024 at 11:56am
There was a ban on them at one point.
David Seltzer
Nov 6 2024 at 1:15pm
Steve, regarding confiscating guns, Hillary Clinton said “I think it would be worth considering doing it on a national level, if that can be arranged.” I suspect just the veiled threat was enough for gun, magazine and ammo sales to rise substantially in anticipation of a Clinton victory. Economics is about incentives. Her statement gave people like me the incentive to purchase those weapons. I too shoot. I prefer my Glock 40 or P 365 Sig for home protection. At the range I shoot the ArmaLite 5.56 semi-auto.
Pierre Lemieux
Nov 6 2024 at 1:26pm
Steve: This is not exactly correct because there have been several partial prohibitions or severe regulations since the 1934 National Firearms Act: see https://oig.justice.gov/reports/ATF/e0706/back.htm. Note the case of fully automatic guns and sawed-off shotguns. Trump tried to ban bump stocks through BATF’s regulation but was stopped by the courts. The main way to prohibit guns has been to prohibit persons from having them: convicted felons (anybody who has once been sentenced to more than one year in prison) are prohibited from buying, owning, or being in control of firearms and ammunition: 8% of American adults are in this category. Since 1993, everybody buying a gun from a federally licensed firearms dealer must submit to a background check. Many people who are not convicted felons discover that some incidents of “domestic violence” (somebody for example who has admitted “domestic violence” in a divorce settlement) find themselves incapable of acquiring guns that way. The regulations of many states are more stringent.
David Seltzer
Nov 6 2024 at 1:40pm
Pierre: Some of the restrictions in Georgia.
Admitted to a mental health facility
Drugs or Alcohol are affecting your ability to move freely and think clearly
You are a convicted felon
You have left the military with a dishonorable discharge
You’ve been found guilty of a crime in a court of law
You have a substance abuse record
A device is made or has been adapted to silence a firearm
Your weapon is fully automatic
A rifle has a shorter barrel length than 16 inches
Your shotgun has a shorter barrel length than 18 inches
Your gun or rifle has an overall length shorter than 26 inches.
steve
Nov 6 2024 at 7:42pm
Pierre, that’s different than confiscation. Again, I cant think of an instance in the last 80 years. The trend has been in the opposite direction. Judging by actions, not words, it just hasn’t happened and again, I cant recall any serious attempts at confiscating weapons.
David- I am a wheel gunner at heart since that is what I learned on though do have a semi-auto also. .357 Ruger though I mostly shoot 38 specials at the range so my groupings look more like groupings as I get older. I would note that it sounds like the scare tactics worked.
Steve
Craig
Nov 6 2024 at 8:34pm
But there are laws banning possession and perhaps there are important reasons why many might shelter a distinction between ‘confiscating’ and ‘banning possession’ because with respect to the latter you remain free to remove the offending object from the jurisdiction, the fact remains that after a ban, if they catch you with the item, they will seize it.
Actually currently a case in NJ dealing with ARs, but I digress, prior to that July 2024 case* if I had the AR in NJ and you called the police, they would come, arrest me and seize the weapon. There’s no issue of ‘confiscation’ here because I don’t have the right to own, possess, buy or sell the weapon in NJ in the first place.
*(its that new so I am not sure what is happening since whether there is an injunction in place from enforcing the ban)
Craig
Nov 6 2024 at 8:46pm
And one last point here, Steve, because the specific issue you are bringing up isn’t really the point. Leftism creeps and often times leftists will simply have to allow whatever inch they grab to suffice until they can take the next inch. So yes, I fear confiscatory taxation, not just in theory but because of taxes that have already been imposed on me. With respect to firearms there have been ‘assault weapon’ bans, there have been ‘handgun bans’ the constitutionality of which are being challenged. If HRC had won and placed leftists judges on the court. Justice Stevens has called for the 2A to be repealed altogther: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/advocating-repeal-2nd-amendment-gift-nra-doesnt-deserve
You might say that he is crazy for suggesting such a thing would be politically possible and on that account you might be correct, but ultimately when DC v Heller was before the court he wrote the dissent and if HRC wins, that opinion becomes the majority opinion.
Pierre Lemieux
Nov 6 2024 at 1:37pm
Craig: You may soon discover that this $0.56 income tax per marginal dollar was a great bargain never to be available again. A general tariff of 20% on everything would produce a shock probably comparable to the Great Depression or, at least, would lead to a 1970s-like stagflation. Imagine the price of every good increasing by 20%. Then, you or your children will have a second shock, as the $7 trillion increase in the public debt due to Trump’s current promises over the coming decade would either bring federal taxation to European levels or produce inflation never experienced in America.
Craig
Nov 6 2024 at 4:00pm
You could be correct of course. The grass is always greener? For many who comment frequently on Oct 28th I did write: “this time the calls for tariffs as he is proposing them smells like Smoot-Hawley to me” — but Trump has also discussed completely eliminating income tax which is a trade I’d salivate over. Of course also of note is that all of this is the purview of Congress…..(sometimes many, including myself, overlook that)
Mark Barbieri
Nov 6 2024 at 11:07am
Excellent article. Given current circumstances, I wonder how long it will take for the parties to flip their view on the filibuster now that it is useful to the other side. I’ve been trying to fell friends for weeks that they are so worked up and worried about the election because they’ve given too much power to the President, but they only seem to see it as a reason why winning is so important rather than a reason to reduce Presidential power. Oh well, as a country I’m afraid that we are getting what we asked for.
Craig
Nov 6 2024 at 11:12am
“they’ve given too much power to the President”
I agree in FDR inaugural he notes that the emergency, referring to the Great Depression, should be handled with ‘broad executive authority’ and gow many states of emergency are there today? I can’t count that high. Historically I see a parallel with the transition from the consuls of the Roman Republic to the emperors of the Empire.
Roger McKinney
Nov 6 2024 at 11:36am
I think envy plays a part in this. As Schoeck notes, people don’t envy the elite because they have no chance of becoming one. They envy others like them who succeed more than others.
Everyone would be better off with limited government, but voters fear others like them doing better than them. So they want a powerful elite that can squash other commoners who do well.
I think it was a Hungarian who said people are happiest when their neighbor’s house is on fire
Knut P. Heen
Nov 7 2024 at 6:06am
You are referring to the Law of Jante. It is supposed to be a Scandinavian concept.
Roger McKinney
Nov 11 2024 at 11:20am
Actually, it’s worldwide. Read Helmut Schoeck’s classic Envy: A Theory of Social Behavior.
John Smith
Nov 6 2024 at 12:45pm
“Just a reminder to all that I accurately called this election, and had publicly posted in writing beforehand. With my forecast for the electoral margin of victory being very likely to be >95% accurate as well, pending final votes.”
https://www.econlib.org/remunerations-determined-by-markets-or-politics/
Ahmed Fares
Nov 6 2024 at 3:47pm
I follow a website called “economistwritingeveryday”. This article I think explains well how we got to where we are today.
Apropos of everything
Pierre Lemieux
Nov 6 2024 at 8:14pm
Ahmed: This post, by Michael Makowsky, is interesting. Thank you for bringing our attention to it. I broadly agree with his conclusion (not included in your excerpt). Although big historical sweeps like his are necessarily incomplete, I wonder if he doesn’t attach too much importance to the “democracy” in “liberal democracy,” that is, if he does not distinguish enough between democracy as liberty and democracy as power (although he seems to know the difference). Spartan democracy and the Roman Republic were still much anchored in family ties and aristocracy. In The Rise and Decline of Democracy, David Stasavage shows that there have been many forms of democracy; see my Regulation review.
I think that what is missing in Makowsky’s seven points is an eighth point that would really explain, à la de Jasay, how modern democracy can degenerate into tyranny and the Plantation State. But I don’t know his work and perhaps this is done elsewhere.
Jim Glass
Nov 15 2024 at 11:42pm
“Hunter-gatherer societies are scrupulously egalitarian, but not harmoniously so. They are violently egalitarian.” -— Dr. Herbert Gintis, University of Massachusetts, NY Times. That’s way more than 100,000 years ago.
See the “gut wrenchingly brutal” violent lives of chimpanzees, our nearest relatives. Via a common ancestor way way way more than 100,000 years ago.
It’s time to leave the myth of a “garden of Eden” past of peaceful cooperation behind us.
Mactoul
Nov 7 2024 at 12:03am
This is precisely what they don’t do. Politicians are notorious for promising all things to all people.
Pablo wrote
I fully agree but I put it in different words–each person has a vision of Good or how things should be. And he votes according to the degree of agreement he perceives between his individual vision and the vision offered by the contestants,
Pierre Lemieux
Nov 7 2024 at 11:52am
Mactoul: You write:
Listen carefully. Just two examples: When Harris promises to protect “productive rights,” she is telling many Christians that she will defend some murders. When Trump promises deportation, he is telling parents and farmers that he will deport their nannies and farm hands. “Harming” does not only mean cutting an arm or jailing. Most of what a government does (all that a government does, de Jasay would say) to help somebody is at the detriment of (is a cost for) somebody else.
Mactoul
Nov 7 2024 at 12:30am
Only a communist would disagree with this generality which is actually a particular case of the Principle of Subsidiarity of the Catholic Social Thought.
But how is Jasay’s anarchism compatible with existence of matters whose structure lends itself only to collective choice. Notice Jasay leaves this possibility open thereby opening the way to any state short of actual communistic.
Pierre Lemieux
Nov 7 2024 at 12:14pm
Mactoul: Or (better example since abortion is an especially difficult topic) when Kamala Harris promises to her electoral clientèle to control (private) guns, she is telling the poor in dangerous neighborhoods and those in the countryside that she will forbid them to exercise their right to self-defense. And so forth.
(Note also that her promise does not apply to her own praetorians.)
Mactoul
Nov 8 2024 at 1:27am
The curtailed right to self-defense applies to everyone, not merely to a particular demographic. And it isn’t being sold as being detrimental of anybody’s well-being but as leading to greater safety and well-being.
I think the thesis that politicians actively seek to limit liberties of those not supposed to be voting for them–this thesis is not tenable.
A better way to put it is that the very content of rights and liberties is contested. Armed self-defense may be fundamental right to some but outdated to others. Abortion may be fundamental to some but murder to others.
So, there is a real clash of visions of the what should be and the politicians cater to different segments.
Pierre Lemieux
Nov 8 2024 at 11:06am
Mactoul: It is precisely because there is a constant “clash of vision,” that is, because individuals have different preferences and values, that the domain of collective choices must be (at least) strictly limited.
Ron Browning
Nov 7 2024 at 6:04am
The following sentence:
“If that were the case, we would understand that the side to be actively harmed and discriminated against would have good reasons to cry wolf…”
is a bit of a language error. To “cry wolf” is term used to indicate false danger, while the sentence is intended to convey an understanding of a true danger.
Pierre Lemieux
Nov 7 2024 at 11:12am
Ron: Perhaps I could have expressed my idea better. There are two meanings of “to cry wolf.” One meaning (especially among our ancestors) applies to when there is really a wolf.
MarkW
Nov 12 2024 at 1:33pm
But this is not what is happening. Each side intends to actively harm one-half of the population by restricting what they want to do.
Hmm. It seems to me that neither side would agree to a smaller government because they want a strong government to take an active role in funding and promoting/mandating things that they care about (say, the transition to green energy or clamping down in unauthorized immigration). They don’t want these things because they’d hurt the other side, they want them because they genuinely believe they’re the right things to do (at least that’s true when it comes to voters, even if it’s not true for politicians). So both sides unfortunately do agree on not wanting a federal government too weak to carry out their programs when they are in power.
Robert EV
Nov 13 2024 at 5:35pm
“Weak” and “smaller” aren’t synonyms. Government in feudal times was really small, but it had far more power to constrain and tax the individual than government does today.
Likewise a large government, when the largeness generally consists of entitlements, can be weak.
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