Libertarianism: How, not Why

“you need to convince me that I should expect the institution of government to outperform individuals in making decisions. That is a tough sell.”

Perhaps it is a tough sell because the institutions of government don’t make decisions. Only individuals make decisions. Isn’t that a standard libertarian, reductionist line? This dichotomy is not very useful.

Seems to me that the individuals in the military (a government institution) make better decisions about military matters than individuals in a private military could make. Critics of the libertarian view do not hold that the institutions of government outperform none government institutions in *all* cases. Many don’t even hold that view for most cases. The line is drawn based on the type of activity.

If you were to read Charles Sable you would find that “liberals” do not believe that the institution of government is “some magic correction fluid for wiping out these mistakes.”

I guess straw-man attacks can come from both sides.

I’m all for empirical comparisons…

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/06/20/249061/chart-taxes-economic-growth/

@ Michael

Perhaps it is a tough sell because the institutions of government don’t make decisions. Only individuals make decisions. Isn’t that a standard libertarian, reductionist line? This dichotomy is not very useful.

That dichotomy is very useful if you want to be realistic or even logical. It is correct that only individuals can make decisions, but the difference in performance is surely the superior incentives that voluntary interaction among individuals results in compared to the actions of individuals acting on the behalf of government. That is, individuals acting on the behalf of the institution are exposed to incentives that would not exist in a market arrangement. From what I’ve seen, nearly all sides merely like to take convenient shortcuts by saying, “markets decided…” or “government did…” instead of the correct, “the result of the interaction among the individuals participating in the market…” or “employees of the government.” So, I would expect a little more than an irrelevant accusation of reductionism to refute Kling’s original statement.

Of course, I’m sure Kling is not merely implying the different incentives; I’m sure he’s alluding to the great amount of problems a bureaucratic institution inherently has, such as the infamous knowledge problem that the market remarkably and efficiently solves.

Seems to me that the individuals in the military (a government institution) make better decisions about military matters than individuals in a private military could make. Critics of the libertarian view do not hold that the institutions of government outperform none government institutions in *all* cases. Many don’t even hold that view for most cases. The line is drawn based on the type of activity.

I would agree with the assertion of national defense being a “market failure,” yet there are multiple theories regarding how a market for private defense could work. One of the most common arguments made by defenders of the private defense is pointing out the fallacy of “national defense.” Again, I would not say this is a fallacy at all, but I am only briefly mentioning this argument.

If you were to read Charles Sable you would find that “liberals” do not believe that the institution of government is “some magic correction fluid for wiping out these mistakes.”

Do you mean Charles Sabel?

“you need to convince me that I should expect the institution of government to outperform individuals in making decisions. That is a tough sell.”

Luckily we *don’t* have to persuade you. We merely have to persuade a majority of our citizens. And to be honest, that seems (and has seemed for decades) like a slam-dunk. Even the most right-wing modern Republican is far to the left of is compatriot of 50 years ago.

Sorry, but I think the #1 thing we purchase with wealth is security, and for most of us, government and government regulation provides us with more security than their private counterparts.

Can and does it go off the rails? Of course. But in the minds of people, government has one big advantage – nominally government’s purpose is to serve the people, and business’ purpose is to serve itself. Granted governments don’t always serve their citizenry and businesses often serve themselves best by serving others, but never underestimate the importance of the nominal in the minds of people. Often it’s a *lot* more important than the actual results.

“…you need to convince me that I should expect the institution of government to outperform individuals in making decisions. That is a tough sell.”

I think the vast majority of non-libertarians individually prefer and voluntarily choose and decide to join together to create and use governmental institutions to achieve certain ends and in particular comply with certain strict moral duties.

When there’s a famine in Africa, everyone in the US should just stop what they’re doing, buy some canned goods, and get on a plane to Ethiopia, or wherever? The government should not provide tax-financed aid to those starving Africans, but leave it to personal acts of charity, even if doing it this way means, oh, maybe 745,000 people unnecessarily starve to death?

Rational agents, precisely because they are rational, consciously use government to accomplish certain ends which they know, or which they reasonably believe, are unlikely to be adequately accomplished otherwise.

People cooperate. They set up democratic political authority. They deliberate and vote on certain ends, and the best means to achieve them. Surely this is far from being unChristian!

Objection:
“People who are motivated to support the government’s efforts would likely have given their own money anyway (unless they are hypocrites),
while people who pay taxes begrudgingly or without knowing the government’s expenditures are doing exactly nothing to satisfy any Christian duty of care.”

Response:
Nor is a murderer satisfying his duty not to murder people. But the government is perfectly justified in spending taxpayer money on policing the streets, catching murderers, trying and incarcerating them. In other words, it’s justified in spending taxpayer money to enforce the duty not to murder.

Why is it not also justified in trying to enforce duties of care, duties that, at least from a Christian point of view, are so strict and so stringent that our very salvation depends upon our complying with them (see the parable of judgement in Matthew ch. 25)?

The unwilling taxpayer is not justified in witholding money for crime prevention and punishment. The unwilling taxpayer is not justified in witholding money to assist the destitute either, in principle.

It’s an empirical matter whether crime prevention and/or poverty relief are best done by government, or with at least some governmental apparatuses acting in addition to private initiatives.

The taxpayer doesn’t go out looking for murderers (usually). He hires folks called police officers to do that. Does this mean that the taxpayer has less respect or concern for human life than if he was simply a vigilante? Does it mean that vigilantism is preferable from a Christian point of view than having a tax-financed police force? That vigilantism is a purer way to fulfil the commandment, ‘Thou shalt not kill’, than having professional ‘cops’?

I say that’s crazy! We enforce the commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill’ very justifiably using taxpayer-funded police forces against murderers or would-be murderers, and more so than we would with volunteer vigilante groups alone.

So now what we have to decide is whether the strict duty of care for the indigent and sick which is enjoined by Christ upon pain of eternal damnation is analogous to the strict duty not to murder in respect of the moral legitimacy of having a taxpayer-financed government apparatus do it.

It strikes me that if it was empirically the case, and was widely known to be the case, that government poverty relief and health-care subsidies funded by taxation were more effective means than voluntary charity alone at helping the indigent and sick, then, just as a Christian would want to coerce his fellow-citizens into paying for a professional police force (in preference to vigilantism), he’d want to coerce them
into paying for some poverty relief and health-care for those unable to afford it. In other words, I don’t see any sharp difference in principle between the two cases.

Now, just as it’s an empirical matter whether having the FBI is an effective and desirable way of caring for our fellow citizens’ security and policing, so it is an empirical matter whether Food Stamps and Medicare are effective and desirable ways of fulfilling our duty to feed the hungry and care for the sick. But to say that it constitutes a lessening of a Christian’s personal moral responsibility consciously to use government apparatuses to discharge and enforce morality in the case of murder (or foreign aggression) would strike me as really quite bizarre, and not something that is said in the teaching tradition of the Christianity. So why should using government agencies to address poverty and lack of health-care be different from using such agencies to address crime and foreign aggression?

Did Jesus tell his disciples that it would be best if tax-funded Roman public officials didn’t arrest criminals, and that they (his disciples) should do it themselves instead? Or that doing it themselves rather than paying taxes to finance Roman police officers was somehow morally superior? Certainly there’s no record of him doing so.

I see no reason to deny that it is at least sometimes, in some contexts, legitimate, good, and wise for rational Christians to order society by choosing and using coercive government authority to ensure that certain vital moral values are better respected than they would be if it were all left to personal voluntary actions alone; and that this use of government to achieve certain moral ends can be and sometimes is, far from being a less virtuous way of certain fulfilling moral duties, actually a much more obviously virtuous and wise way of certain fulfilling moral duties.

If vigilantism rather than professional policing resulted in a big jump in the murder rate, it would be a lot less virtuous, indeed it would be just plain wrong for Christians or indeed anyone to opt for vigilantism rather than professional policing funded by taxes!

This example, to my mind, establishes the principle, and in principle answers libertarian objections concerning coercively redistributing income for a moral end. In principle, it can be and sometimes is justified.

What the libertarian would now need to do is come up with reasons either of principle, or of empirical efficacy, for saying that while granting that having a public police force specifically is better from a Christian viewpoint than vigilantism, having, say, Food Stamps is specifically worse from a Christian viewpoint than relying solely on church and other voluntary food banks (i.e., worse than the latter just by themselves).

Well, I just don’t see any reason of principle here. In both cases, taxes are coercively levied to achieve some moral end—in one case, feeding the hungry, in the other case preventing and punishing crime. It strikes me they’re both important moral ends, from a Christian point of view. If it was the case that, in the absence of Food Stamps, an additional 430,000 persons would be malnourished in America, then that would make me, as a rational Christian, vote for Food Stamps.

To me, that’s just like the example of famine in places like Ethiopia. If famine relief all being done without any government, tax-funded action meant that many more people would starve to death in Ethiopia, then it would just strike me as morally obvious that a rational Christian ought to favor taxpayer-funded famine relief, and moreover, that he would be fulfilling Chrstian morality much less well if he knew this fact and still objected to governmental, tax-funded famine relief.

I repeat, rational agents use government. Jesus knew it, and didn’t forbid it (“Render unto Caesar…”).

For most of the history of Christianity, the Church didn’t even say that the government had to be representative of the individual wills of its subjects, or that it couldn’t coerce its subjects, or tax its subjects, to do things which the government deemed to be moral ends—-such as giving the king the lifestyle befitting his office, or employing hangmen to execute sheep-stealers, or establishing beneficent works for the poor and sick under royal patronage, or beautifying the polis by employing artists and architects, or waging war against the infidel. None of this was ever protested by the Church as a matter of principle, or on the grounds that it would be better for the king to tend the sick personally rather than tax his subjects and get others to do it for him. It was understood by the Church that though the king might personally feed the poor and tend the sick in his spare time out of Christian devotion and gain merit thereby, he actually fulfilled this duty of care more fully by establishing hospitals and bread distribution centers which helped far more hungry and sick folk than his personal care alone could hope to achieve. Indeed the establishment of such publicly funded works of social welfare was regularly praised to the heavens by priests and preachers, steeped in the Word of God and prayer as they were.

How could they have been so blind to the true message of Jesus—is that what the Christian libertarian is claiming?

I ask, because that strikes me as an interpretation of Jesus’s message which Christians should vigorously reject, since it requires that we diminish our use of practical reason and wisdom, for the sake of gaining an individualistic sense of our own personal moral righteousness, but with the effect of letting many more people suffer and die than is necessary.

Once again I say, libertarianism, taken to its logical conclusion, is not at all an obviously Christian doctrine, but rather in opposition to it!

Or, government fails. Use government.