The reason why things don’t work properly is that the right people are not in politics. Of course, what you think are the right people is not necessarily what your neighbor thinks, so ultimately the problem is a lack of national unity. What is needed is that we share the same values under democratic political leadership. And even this is not enough. Every voter must spend at least as much time studying every major political issue as he spends buying a new car. Add inclusivity to all this, and the proliferation of externalities would become solvable. If we are one, there cannot be anything external to us (reminder: the main characteristic of externalities is that they are external to the market). With more Alexandria Occasio-Cortezs and more Sidney Powells in politics, with more knowledgeable and devoted bureaucrats, we could hope that greedy consumers would stop gouging businesses, that rational policies would prevail, and that people with good union jobs would work selflessly for our children.
My readers will understand that the model of the state adumbrated above is poles apart from any defensible political and social theory. We may say it’s balderdash. It’s an excuse to playfully mark the 2021 April Fools’ Day (check this link to the Encyclopedia Britannica and you will see what the fish has to do with all that).
READER COMMENTS
Jon Murphy
Apr 1 2021 at 7:46am
That fish brings back childhood memories
Thomas Lee Hutcheson
Apr 1 2021 at 8:58am
What I miss is understanding what the best solution from a Libertarian point of view is to the harms that are created by pollution including the increase in CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere? Yes, I understand that the harms are not uniform and that different people will estimate harm in different ways.
Pierre Lemieux
Apr 1 2021 at 10:49am
Thomas: Climate change may be a problem—more than, say, overpopulation was in the 1970s, as ecologists made all politicians believe including Nixon! (See “Running Out of Everything“) Perhaps Tyler Cowen’s fear and approach are justified, although my review of his book was perhaps not critical enough. But it is an error to think that the government can solve all problems especially given its inherent lack of information, the cost of its interventions, and its willingness not to let a good crisis go to waste. Imagine if Alexandria Occasio-Cortez was elected world president to solve the problem. A must-read article is Carl Dahlman, “Externality,” Journal of Law and Economics 22:1 (April 1979), 141-162.
Thomas Lee Hutcheson
Apr 1 2021 at 11:12pm
Why not your own idea at a level of detail similar to the post? Also I asked about a specific externality to permit costs and benefits of different approaches, which might of course be to have no change in existing public policy.
Pierre Lemieux
Apr 2 2021 at 12:34am
Thomas: With some luck, you’ll have my own ideas on externalities in the Summer issue of Regulation. But it is difficult to do better than Dahlman (who looks at externalities in the way Coase and Buchanan do).
James
Apr 1 2021 at 11:09am
One answer is that libertarians see the harms created by pollution as a comparatively smaller price to pay in order to avoid the greater harms created by entrusting politicians with the authority to address externalities.
Another answer is that the government should stop polluting and subsidizing activities that cause pollution. In the US, the federal government is the single biggest polluter and has been for years.
Another answer is that people could use markets to sell remediation services. For example, you could start a business selling products or services that reduce the impact of pollution. If pollution a problem for people, they will pay for ways to deal with it. Admittedly, they might like for the government to force other people to pay and libertarians are not going to favor that. I do not know where you live but I am curious: How is pollution affecting you right now and how much would you be willing to pay out of pocket to make that pollution stop?
Pierre Lemieux
Apr 1 2021 at 3:22pm
Well said, James.
Michael S.
Apr 2 2021 at 4:33am
honest question: how is the federal government such a big polluter?
T Boyle
Apr 1 2021 at 8:03pm
Thomas, libertarianism is a philosophy rather akin to the medical principle, “First, do no harm”. It guides government policy by reminding those who govern that if something they deem undesirable is common, it is common for a reason – and efforts to stop it will generate workarounds and behavioral adjustments that may be more harmful to the government’s interests than the original problem did.
However, sometimes the workarounds will not be as harmful as the original problem. This is why libertarians tend to support a role for government in enforcing property rights, rule of law, and national defense: if the government does not do these things, the bad behavior that results will have a greater cost.
After that, there are shades of libertarianism. Many libertarians (often grudgingly) accept that some kind of tax system is needed – if for no other reason than to enforce the law and provide a national defense, and thus reject the anarchist “taxes = theft” mantra.
And this brings us to your question about CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. A Progressive, approaching from an “intervene in everything, unless it is provable that the results will be harmful,” will want to intervene early and substantially, as soon as the issue arises. A Libertarian, approaching from a “first, do no harm” perspective, will want very compelling evidence that the problem is real, followed by careful study of the options to identify the least harmful government response. Broadly speaking, Progressives tend to respond to CO2 emissions with a “ban, then look for an alternative solution” approach, whereas Libertarians who accept that the problem is serious will tend to respond with a “put a cost on emissions – even a high cost – rather than banning them outright – to enable the market to find alternatives” approach.
Hope that helps.
TMC
Apr 1 2021 at 11:35am
Maybe the government should be a much smaller part of our lives, so we wouldn’t need to pay so much attention to it.
Pierre Lemieux
Apr 1 2021 at 3:30pm
TMC: One test of that would be that, except for those who have an academic, journalistic, or literary interest in politics, most people wouldn’t be sure of the name of the current president or prime minister. A caveat, however, is that the number and power of bureaucrats would have to be limited too and that the legislature could not vote whatever strikes its majority’s fancy. We are not there yet (the understatement of the century)!
David Seltzer
Apr 1 2021 at 6:49pm
“Every voter must spend at least as much time studying every major political issue as he spends buying a new car. Add inclusivity to all this, and the proliferation of externalities would become solvable.” Every political issue ?Does that mean every voter has the same opportunity cost as every other voter?
Pierre Lemieux
Apr 2 2021 at 12:29am
David: The problem you raise is only one of the problems in voting. The major one is that since the probability that an individual voter will change the issue of the vote, his incentives are generally to spend nothing on information because with or without it he will have as much influence, that is, zero influence. (But you do realize, don’t you, that my post is an April Fools’ Day rant where everything is the opposite of a defendable opinion? You can see this by applying the ideas of this post to, say, automobiles.)
David Seltzer
Apr 2 2021 at 9:57am
Pierre, I got the spoof. I’m still chuckling!
Comments are closed.