It’s funny how certain ideas you encounter early in life can stick inside your head, regardless of where they came from. As a young child, I immensely enjoyed reading cheesy horror stories aimed at kids and teens. One book (I’ve long since forgotten the title or author) had a scene that lodged an idea in my head ever since.
The book told the story of a vampire who lived in an old, abandoned house. One evening, a group of high schoolers snuck into the house (because…reasons?) and were trapped inside by the vampire. He explains that he only needs to take one victim and will let the rest of the group go. However, he insists that the teens themselves must decide who he will take. At one point, one of the teens volunteers herself to spare her friends. The vampire announces she is free to leave – he operates according to certain rules, and by those rules, volunteering has spared her.
Immediately after this, another teen volunteers herself to the vampire, and he promptly accepts her offer. When she protests that the vampire is contradicting himself over the rules, he responds that it only seems that way to her because she doesn’t understand what the rules are. She was under the mistaken impression that the rule was “anyone who volunteers will be freed.” But the actual rule was that acts of genuine self-sacrifice would set someone free. Volunteering as a roundabout act of self-preservation didn’t confer the same result. To my young self, this was a fantastic twist in the story, and it lodged an idea into my young brain. If someone’s behavior seems inconsistent or contradictory to you, that probably just means you don’t really understand what’s animating their behavior in the first place. (If only a certain breed of behavioral economist on a mission to “correct” certain peoples “irrationally inconsistent” behavior had read cheesy vampire stories in their childhood – but that’s a rant for another day!)
I was reminded of all of this when reading a remark by frequent commenter PhilH, where he suggests there is a contradiction in different metaphors economic liberals use to describe the market. On the one hand, classical liberals describe freedom in the market as “just freedom to do what you want,” but also describe the market itself as “an ‘invisible hand’ and a powerful force.” Is that a contradiction? How does one reconcile believing that market freedom is the freedom to do what you want, while also believing the market acts as an invisible hand powerfully directing people’s behavior?
Whether this seems like a contradiction depends on what one means when they speak of force. To economic and classical liberals, “force” is narrowly defined to describe actual (or believably threatened) acts of violence. By contrast, adjusting your behavior in response to market signals does not qualify as “force” or a restriction on freedom. We don’t deny that the market can provide constraints on one’s behavior – which is why we frequently employ terms like “budget constraints” or “constrained maximization.” But when we speak of the freedom to act as you wish in the market, that does not mean “the positive ability to achieve anything you desire, free of constraint.” It simply means that you may do whatever is in your budget set, with a willing trading partner, and nobody may use force (as defined above) to stop you.
Suppose I wanted to import a custom Lamborghini. Unfortunately, I look at the cost of doing so, and look at my bank account, and notice the massive gulf between the two. I end up with no Lamborghini in this case.
Now imagine that my bank account was significantly bigger, so there was no budgetary constraint preventing me from importing that Lamborghini. However, suppose a law had been passed outlawing such imports. Here, too, I end up with no Lamborghini.
In the first case, the invisible hand of the market is saying “If you attempt to get a Lamborghini, your trading partner will decline due to lack of payment, so no Lamborghini for you!” In the second case, the state is saying “If you and a trading partner voluntarily agree to exchange for a Lamborghini, it will be seized and you will be fined/arrested/subject to legal sanction, so no Lamborghini for you!” The result in both cases is the same, but economic liberals insist there is an important difference between the two. And given how different these situations are, we should not use the same word to describe them – doing that would be bad lexicography and would only muddle our thinking. So only situations involving threats or acts of violence or state sanction are called “force.”
A good description of this issue (and a quippy response) can be found in Thomas Sowell’s book The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy:
The cosmic perspective of course extends beyond the law. But, in whatever field it appears, its adherents are quick to say that people did not really have a “free choice” in what they did. Thus to Noam Chomsky, “freedom is illusion and mockery when conditions for the exercise of free choice do not exist” – and these conditions do not exist for “the person compelled to sell his labor power to survive,” i.e., for anyone who works for a living. Any circumstantial constraints or potential consequences hanging over people’s decisions makes their choices not “really” free. But this conception of a free choice requires an unconstrained universe. Only God could have a free choice – and only on the first day of creation, since He would be confronted on the second day by what He had already done on the first.
Someone might agree with Chomsky and disagree with Sowell about freedoms and constraints. But even if Chomsky and his fellow thinkers are correct, the perspective of Sowell and economic liberals would merely be wrong – but it would not be contradictory. The seeming contradiction rests on a misunderstanding of what is meant by the terms.
Kevin Corcoran is a Marine Corps veteran and a consultant in healthcare economics and analytics and holds a Bachelor of Science in Economics from George Mason University.
READER COMMENTS
nobody.really
Oct 31 2022 at 10:59am
“Former Massachusetts congressman Barney Frank once said, “I only voted once for someone who believes in 100 percent of what I believe. And that’s when I voted for myself—the first time.”
Al Franken, Al Franken, Giant of the Senate
nobody.really
Oct 31 2022 at 11:26am
Corcoran strives to make a worthy distinction between constraints imposed by circumstances beyond human capacity to transcend, and constraints imposed by human choice. Two thoughts:
1: In what category do we put taxation? Some will argue that this looks like human-imposed constraint. Others will argue that circumstances require humans to expend resources to obtain certain services necessary for survival (such as self-defense), and often taxation looks like the least costly method for obtaining those services.
A variety of group choice problems follow this pattern.
2: I understand classical liberals to embrace the use of force. More specifically, I understand classical liberals to value autonomy rights, and to support the use of physical coercion in the defense of those rights.
Jon Murphy
Oct 31 2022 at 11:40am
Taxation is force. Taxation is not the cost of the action (defense). The force comes from the method used (ie “pay your taxes or go to jail”).
Jens
Oct 31 2022 at 3:28pm
Given that “only situations involving threats or acts of violence or state sanction are called “force”” defense can also be force !?
Jon Murphy
Nov 1 2022 at 8:47am
Yes, defense involves force.
nobody.really
Nov 1 2022 at 4:31pm
Great; I think you, Kevin, and I share a common understanding of this definition of “force.”
I merely want to suggest that in the absence of taxation, you may have no socially-provided defenses–and will experience force wielded by others, and may need to wield force in response. Thus, I regard living with “force” as an unavoidable part of the human condition, not the result of a state per se.
In the real state of nature, man lives in the shadow of many threats. So man creates a bulldozer called The State to level those threats. And when finally, with great effort, The State completes that Herculean task, man gazes around with satisfaction and declares this new, artificial situation “the state of nature”–except for the existence of that damn bulldozer which some thoughtless person left here without the slightest concern for how it obstructs his view….
Kevin Corcoran
Oct 31 2022 at 1:04pm
You can just call me Kevin, by the way – I generally prefer going on a first name basis, particularly after nine years in the Marines.
Regarding your first item, I have a few thoughts. There is, as you note, an important distinction between constraints imposed on humans by reality (economic scarcity is an important example) and restraints deliberately imposed on humans by other humans through threats or acts of violence. You suggest the need for taxation in order to fund governments may be an example of the former. Granting that, what follows? I think it is still accurate to say that taxation is collected by force – we would just say that due to circumstances we can’t change, the use of force is justified in order to prevent the collapse of civilization.
Sometimes people use the term “force” when referring to a Hobson’s choice – that is, a choice where the alternatives are so drastically different that realistically only one will be taken. Whether or not to eat might be called a Hobson’s choice. I might say “I have no choice but to eat food,” but it’s understood what I mean by that is “The only alternative to eating food is a slow and painful death by starvation, so I choose to eat.” This, too, seems to fit the kind of external constraint model you described. But there’s an important difference between my (perhaps Hobson’s) choice to eat and, say, someone who has a feeding tube shoved into them and pumped with food involuntarily. Given the important differences between those situations, it would be misleading to describe them with the same vocabulary – which is why I would not say that I am forced to eat, whereas the person involuntarily hooked up to a feeding tube was being forced to eat. Only the second situation involves actual force.
Regarding your second item, most classical liberals do believe that the use of force can be justified, aside from the strictest of pacifists. But what’s denied is that the constraints of the marketplace, or of economic scarcity, are themselves examples of force, or that they constitute a violation of people’s freedom.
nobody.really
Nov 1 2022 at 10:07am
Thanks, Kevin; this clarifies your remarks.
I understand that you wish to distinguish logical/physical necessity from “restraints deliberately imposed on humans by other humans through threats or acts of violence,” but not to stigmatize the use of those restraints. Sometimes discussions that purport to merely define terms contain covert efforts to stigmatize the terms; I wanted to guard against that.
While we’re at it, let me also guard against a covert message that the impersonality of the marketplace suggests that market results derive solely from impersonal factors such as nature/logic. I don’t think this follows. To take one example, the fact that child production/rearing typically commands no price in the marketplace reflects a social, not a natural/logical, choice. The fact that we say a person’s productivity is a result of his/her efforts, without attributing any of the productivity to the parents, reflects a social, not a natural/logical, choice. The fact that the market’s hand is invisible does not make it natural or inevitable. As Karl Polanyi remarked in The Great Transformation (1944), “Laissez faire was planned.”
Monte
Oct 31 2022 at 3:42pm
Cool! Halloween-omics!
The book, Fatal Bargain, is the third in the trilogy, The Vampire’s Promise, by Caroline Cooney. A classic volunteer’s dilemma game. Except in this case, the 1st volunteer earns the benefit and the 2nd is doomed by free-riding.
I believe Chomsky may have a point here. Absolute freedom, it seems to me, is illusory and exists only within our conscience. And all expressions of freedom in the material world are an exercise in constrained optimization, aren’t they?
Kevin Corcoran
Oct 31 2022 at 4:53pm
Wow! I wasn’t expecting someone to recognize and identify the book so quickly! Bravo for that – the internet hivemind remains undefeated.
As for whether Chomsky has a point – I think here the issue is what constitutes a sensible definition of “freedom” or “exercising a free choice.” I’m not a linguistic prescriptivist, so I definitely allow that how we define words is ultimately a matter of stipulation or convention, but I also think that some definitions are more sensible and useful than others. As you note, “all expressions of freedom in the material world are an exercise in constrained optimization.” If Chomsky wishes to define “free choice” as choices which face no constraints, and fundamentally cannot exist in the real world, then yes, it would be true that someone isn’t making a “free choice” – but it’s only true trivially. But I don’t think that’s a sensible or useful definition of making choice freely, nor does it match how people use the term in everyday use.
When someone says “Bob wasn’t able to make a free choice,” we usually interpret that as making a substantive claim that calls out particular circumstances distinguishing Bob’s situation from ordinary circumstances, in a way that explains why this particular choice wasn’t free. But using Chomsky’s conception, “Bob wasn’t able to make a free choice” is just an uninformative tautology, and the statement doesn’t signal that there was anything distinctive about the circumstances related to this specific choice of Bob’s. This doesn’t make the conception of a “free choice” as used by Chomsky objectively false – but it does make it useless.
Monte
Nov 1 2022 at 12:11pm
Yes. It seems nothing is hidden from the internet, the “I” of Providence.
Agreed. I was only pointing out the absolute truth of Chomsky’s statement. Frictionless planes do not exist in the real world, yet objects in motion behave mostly as Galileo’s model predicts, just as transactions in our commonly accepted model of a free market do.
Mark Brophy
Nov 2 2022 at 10:56am
So, why did the kids go into the house? Were they going to make out before the vampire ruined the fun?
Monte
Nov 2 2022 at 11:48am
Synopsis:
There is a creepy, shuttered attic tower in the town’s run-down, old, abandoned mansion, and it’s the perfect place to have a spooky party. At least, that’s what Randy thinks when he invites his five friends for a night of scary fun. But the night gets more terrifying than anyone anticipated when Roxanne feels a long sharp fingernail brushing her bare neck, with no one near enough to touch her. Then Randy sees a shadow gathering—a cape without a person inside. Lacey immediately senses the presence of a vampire in the tower. She doesn’t understand how, but she knows it in her bones, in her soul, as if from another life in an ancient time: Vampire. In the chilling finale to Caroline B. Cooney’s Vampire’s Promise trilogy, six friends are trapped in a nightmare, and are forced to make a terrible choice. Only five may leave—and one must stay behind to face the vampire alone.
Jens
Oct 31 2022 at 4:16pm
Or was HE forced ?
Jens
Nov 1 2022 at 6:13am
One problem with the force/constraint distinction is that “constraint” itself is a very broad term, and the “force” term, on the other hand, has heavy normative connotations. In particular, normative and physical conditions are subsumed under the term “constraint”.
“I want to turn back time”, “You want to travel faster than light”, “C wants to live forever”, “A wants to take away from B the object C”, “A and B quarrel about C”, “A withholds from B the claim C” are, however, very different propositions. The latter are based on normative considerations or settlements and depend very much on who has or does not have which entitlements. The codes “true”/”false”, “illegal”/”legal”, “good”/”bad” are equated.
The result of this broad subsumption is that normative considerations and settings take on the appearance of facts. Of course, one can have strong opinions about certain normative and moral propositions. But it remains an opinion and does not become a fact. As a result, the text does not adhere to its own standard that one should use different words for different situations. This is an inconsistency.
The problem spreads even further, however, because reductionist and mechanistic viewpoints that may make sense in physicalist reasoning are transferred to normative contexts. Normatively, however, the whole and its parts don’t have a causal relationship. The normative design of the level of interpersonal exchange and trade, which is partly still directly handed down from Roman law (property rights, house rights, family law), may well be counteracted and balanced by other levels (duties, taxes, collective decision-making processes) without mechanistically inspired considerations.
This unification and exaggeration becomes emblematically actually in the quotation which subjects God to the “invisible hand” of his own setup. But God “saw that it was good” ! He could have started all over again. He could have corrected things. But he’s God, after all.
David Seltzer
Nov 1 2022 at 2:51pm
If being free requires an unconstrained universe, meaning uncontrolled in this context, then some of us are free to coerce or harm others of us. I suspect that’s the reasoning used in voluntarily accepting laws that apply to every individual. Trivial example of law following from human action. David and Kevin reach a mutually beneficial arrangement when both agree that one will stop at a red light so the other can proceed through the green light without fear of being struck.
BTW Kevin. I served six in the Navy and was TAD to Da Nang Marine Base during Vietnam era.
Phil H
Nov 1 2022 at 10:10pm
Hi, Kevin, thanks for the response and elaboration.
Yep, I agree with all that. The invisible hand is a metaphor, and does not in fact constitute a force of the same type as government strictures.
A couple of points: I wouldn’t accept a definition of force as only coming from governments. Private companies sometimes use force. It’s usually illegal, but it happens quite a lot.
Also, I would say there are quite a lot of things that happen to ordinary consumers where they cannot tell whether the thing is a natural constraint or a use of force. Say someone loses their job: was that natural, or policy driven? They’ll get different answers depending on which party they ask. So knowing that there is a real distinction between the two isn’t necessarily of help to Joanna Q. Public.
And there seem to be some things where even the experts disagree on whether they’re policy or natural. Are interest rates natural, or manmade? Market outcomes, or set by the (central) bank?
So I kinda accept the distinction you’re drawing on a conceptual level, but feel like the application to real life is messy.
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