An objection to libertarianism and classical liberalism is that total individual autonomy does not exist: even on the market, I cannot do anything I want. So what’s all the fuss about individual liberty? This is an important question about liberal political economy.
The short answer is that in a regime of equal individual liberty, you are constrained by the equal liberty of all other sovereign individuals, while in a regime of non-liberty, you are constrained by the will of some individuals (or by stifling tribal customs). To obtain this result, one needs first to recognize scarcity: resources, if only time, are limited and not everybody can have or do everything he wants.
The simplest microeconomic model, which you will find in any good microeconomics textbook, embodies these ideas. In order to maximize your utility (that is, improve your situation), you choose among all bundles of goods and services on the basis of both your preferences (tastes) and your budget constraint. Your budget constraint is composed of two things: the relative prices of all goods (and services) and your income; you can’t have everything. Your income is determined by how useful your productive capacities, yourself or your capital, are to others. Whatever his ultimate purpose (except negating your equal liberty), anybody may bid for what you directly or indirectly produce. Prices themselves are determined by everybody bidding on the goods he is pursuing. A free market is a continuous and silent auction, an important idea to understand.
The analysis is basically the same for all, or nearly all, kinds of social interaction. In order to obtain what you consider to be your preferred situation, you constantly choose among available social interactions on the basis of your preferences and what is possible for you to do. What is possible for you to do—your “feasible set”—is determined by what you must sacrifice to pursue some means of happiness instead of some others, and by your abilities and capacities (which are likely partly innate, partly acquired, pace Adam Smith). You can’t do everything. Your feasible set is determined by your contribution to the happiness of others, the latter’s cooperation, and of course by the person you are. The relative terms at which you can pursue social opportunities are determined by the social consequences of what all others do with the same liberty as you have to pursue their individual happiness.
These choices or decisions about your life as an adult can be made either by somebody for you (imposed on you), which, at least at a certain level, is called despotism or tyranny, or by yourself, which is called individual liberty.
Among the objections to this economic way of looking at the social world, one claims that the simple model described above does not work: it is impossible or “inefficient” for all individuals to have their individual liberty limited only by the equal liberty of all others. The response to this objection is that the possibility and efficiency of an autoregulated economic and social order has been a major 18th-century discovery, notably by Adam Smith. James Buchanan, the 1986 laureate of the Nobel Prize in economics, similarly explained that “we can all be free” (his emphasis). Economics demonstrates that the economy and society generally work better without commands from a coercive authority. What the “generally” exactly covers is a controversial matter, but it is difficult to rationally discuss it without some knowledge of economics. “Market failures” exist, of course, but they are generally much less constraining than the failures of government coercion.
An illustration a contrario was given by the Russian official who, after the breakup of the Soviet Union, asked British economist Paul Seabright: “Who is in charge of the supply of bread to the population of London?” A bread czar is not necessary. Historically and theoretically, there is more bread without one.
Other objections are more ethical, which means that they more explicitly require a value judgment. Instead of plunging into that rabbit hole, let me quote Anthony de Jasay, which raises the right questions (from “Before Resorting to Politics,” in de Jasay’s Against Politics: On Government, Anarchy, and Order [Routledge, 1997], p. 152):
If consequentialism is circular, depending in all cases involving harm or interpersonal comparisons on a value judgement about its own validity, the standard argument for letting the state to do all the good we can find for it to do, and accordingly allowing politics to have unrestricted scope, falls to the ground. Its collapse releases and activates and activates the basic presumption against coercion, a presumption that can be derived either from an axiom about the practice of choice, or from a social convention of “live and let live,” of letting each do what it will if doing so involves, roughly speaking, no harm to others. Accepting, and acting on, this presumption also presupposes a value judgement, but it is one that demands far less of our moral credulity than any consequentialist alternative I can think of.
This would take us much farther. There are many other objections and further explanations, but I could only promise, at most, half a lesson.
READER COMMENTS
Thomas L Hutcheson
Sep 10 2023 at 1:29pm
You leave out the what I think is the biggest objection, externalities.
One may think that the emission of CO2 into the atmosphere has negligible costs (and I fully agree that many people overstate these costs), that this externality does not exist, but if it does, what is the Libertarian response?
*I* think that the most libertarian-ish response ought to be a technocratic estimation of the costs (as a jury might do in a tort case) and levying a tax on the net emission of CO2 that optimizes the costs of CO2 emissions with the deadweight loss of the tax. I can see many ways for this to go wrong, but I do not see a less bad response.
Pierre Lemieux
Sep 10 2023 at 2:20pm
Thomas: This a good point and it indeed comes in the remaining 90% of the lesson. Can you give me a definition of externality that would exclude the spoiling of somebody’s life by opinions (expressed or non-expressed) or lifestyles that he doesn’t like? And who can say that an externality exists or is “suboptimal”? According to James Buchanan or Carl Dahlman, the answer is Nobody. In Public Good, Free Ride, Anthony de Jasay also writes, in the same perspective (p. 157, footnote):
In other words, who say’s so, who is the Philosopher King? (Trump or Biden?) Who chooses him? And what about the externalities created by the state (Super-T or Super-B)?
PS: My Regulation article “The Threat of Externalities,” raises that issue, but not as well as Buchanan, Dahlman, or de Jasay, the first two with a citation.
nobody.really
Sep 11 2023 at 2:12am
Well, yeah–but Buchanan and Dahlman made me swear not to tell anyone.
Pierre Lemieux
Sep 11 2023 at 12:11pm
Nobody: There will be less confusion if next time you sign in as Mr. Really.
Mr. Really (?)
Sep 11 2023 at 2:58pm
🙂 But “Mr. Really” seems more self-aggrandizing than nobody.really. I’m barely tolerable as it is….
Thomas L Hutcheson
Sep 11 2023 at 12:05pm
I do not need a definition of “externality” to favor taxing the net emissions of CO2 in the belief it will lead to a better outcome over the next century or so. You do not need a definition to favor something else or nothing.
Jon Murphy
Sep 11 2023 at 12:50pm
You do need a definition of externalities if you are making the case for CO2 taxes on externality grounds, which you explicitly are.
Pierre Lemieux
Sep 11 2023 at 1:03pm
Jon: I agree. I had not seen your (more practical) message when I sent my own reply to Thomas.
Thomas L Hutcheson
Sep 12 2023 at 10:51am
I do not need the word “externality” and how it might apply is all sort of different cases to observe that in the aggregate many people causing many molecules of CO2 to be emitted into the atmosphere, raising the concentration of CO2 in the atmospheres and caucusing the earth to re-admit less of the solar energy falling on it that it receives causing the average temperature of the earth to increase and CO2 concentrations in the oceans to increase. On net these climate changes — more extreme weather hazards, reductions in crop yields, sea level rises, etc. — cause people to have to make costly investments to off set the changes. Investment opportunities exist that would reduce CO2 emissions at less cost than the costs of offsetting the climate changes.
in my opinion, global welfare would increase if the CO2 emission reducing investments were made, but no market exists in which those harmed by the CO2 emissions can pay CO2 emitters to emit less nor judicial system that can impose an obligation on emitters to compensate those harmed for the harm, which would induce them to emit less and others to be able to invest less to offset the effects of the emissions. I think, therefore, it would be good if, in light of the non-existence of a market or judicial system some other way could be found to incentivize emitters to emit less. YMMV but I see no better way than for each national government to tax emissions in its territory.
Jon Murphy
Sep 13 2023 at 10:34am
True, but you do need a working understanding of when it does apply and when things like carbon taxes are inappropriate or undesirable.
The revolution in thinking about externalities that occured with Coase, Buchanan & Stubblebine, Dahlman, Ostrom, etc., help clarify our thinking on when exteralities exist and what are relevant policies. Pigouvian taxes, (even for CO2) are not 1st best, or even necessarily 12th best, solutions. It depends on numerous factors and is perhaps best handled on a case-by-case basis rather than a blanket application. Indeed, with carbon taxes, as you note below, there rests an assumption of a unified enforcer of the taxes. Which means, for carbon emissions in general, you run into big jurisprudence issues and an ad hoc, country-by-country application could very well make the problem worse.*
*I suspect that a country-by-county application of carbon taxes would likely lead to a net welfare loss. Each country would impose their taxes, which will alter the optimal level of other countries. But no country has the incentive to reduce their tax or coordinate, so each will likely have a tax that is too high. But I have no evidence to support this other than my gut.
Pierre Lemieux
Sep 13 2023 at 11:04am
Thomas: Global warming might be a serious problem for a large part of mankind, although it is far from the paradigmatic case of an asteroid hit. In one case or the other (and especially the first one), the theoretical framework of Pigou, social-welfare-function, and cost-benefit-analysis is not really useful for analyzing the problem. What you said above is just your opinion and the problem is, What would justify imposing it on everybody by force? Your argument and implicit definition of “externalities” apply even more to free speech and consumer advertising (think Times Square) which threaten the immortal souls of millions and wastes their chances of eternal life. Think about an urgent problem of externality!
Taking a slightly different approach, why should a public good to which enough individuals don’t contribute voluntarily be coercively financed by everybody? Perhaps it should, but not on the basis of my opinion or yours in this or that special case. On the dangers of expediency, Hayek is another challenge I would propose to you. You might find Anthony de Jasay’s Public Good, Free Ride: A Study of the Public Good Problem an interesting read, perhaps more challenging than even Buchanan (or Hayek) for the 1960s consensus on social welfare and the Francis Bator sort of analysis (which I myself once found attractive).
Pierre Lemieux
Sep 11 2023 at 12:53pm
Thomas: In my view, it is not easy to do something good while not being able to define the bad it will prevent—especially for a statocrat who will impose the “good” on everybody. Perhaps following traditional rules à la Hayek might get us out of the conundrum, but this is not clear in the present case. Although it is not my intention to compare you to Dani Rodrick, the motto “just do something good” reminds me of a criticism of mine about his book Straight Talk on Trade (quoting my Regulation review):
Thomas L Hutcheson
Sep 12 2023 at 11:56am
Likewise I do not think that one should take policy positions without consideration of the possible costs, including costs or “imperfect” execution.
What I want to do is to disaggregate consideration to policy by policy. In the specific case of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, I think that it has had large costs already and will have more in the future and that a wise policy would be for each state to impose a tax on net emissions in its territory. Even if that were not the income maximizing policy which I think it is, I think it has fewer ways to go wrong that any other strategy for reducing the harm of further CO2 emissions.
Thomas L Hutcheson
Sep 14 2023 at 10:01am
Your observation points to the need to address each possible externality on its own merits. IS X an extremality? How costly is X? How might X be remedied or ameliorated? What are the costs of remedying X? Will THOSE (minimum) cost be executed or something more costly, potentially more costly than X?
It seems to me that too often some Libertarians fail to engage in this dialectic and either “doubt” that X is costly (or as costly as some claim) or suspect that the welfare economics theoretically correct policy will not be perused but rather used if only unintentionally, as cover for a policy that is more damaging than X.
I agree that if the half lesson were more widely applied, the world would be a much better place, but I also think the whole lesson is more than twice as good as the half lesson.
Pierre Lemieux
Sep 10 2023 at 2:24pm
Thomas: A question related to your specific concern is, What about those who benefit from global warming?
steve
Sep 10 2023 at 5:41pm
This sounds to me like the claim is being made that absent the definition of the perfect person to define externalities we should should just ignore them. (A mirror of sorts to the argument that imperfect markets cannot work.) Almost by definition when externalities are created someone is benefitting. We have pretty good evidence that particulate pollution is harmful. If a local factory is pumping out particulates they are making money but I am (probably) not benefitting but I am definitely being harmed. Who decides that their liberty is more important than mine. If they confine their particulates to their factory, or even the homes of those benefitting from the factory I dont care too much, assuming I dont pay the indirect costs either.
Sometimes it gets messy. Maybe the benefits and costs are not so clearcut. However, I dont think lack of a perfect mechanism should necessarily make us decide to do nothing. Otherwise as you noted “These choices or decisions about your life as an adult can be made either by somebody for you (imposed on you), which, at least at a certain level, is called despotism or tyranny”
Steve
Pierre Lemieux
Sep 10 2023 at 6:13pm
Steve: Perhaps my Regulation article on “The Threat of Externalities,” linked to above, will help you see how economists, even those who don’t reach the same radical conclusions as I do, think about these things. I also recommend to those who have formal training in economics to take the red pill and read Anthony de Jasay’s The State (link to my Econlib review, which can only take you so far).
Jon Murphy
Sep 11 2023 at 7:43am
Nah. Pierre’s definition is a pretty standard one. It recognize that values (and thus costs and benefits) are subjective. Consequently, people will have differing claims about what an externality is and what it isn’t.
For example, for many people cigarette smoke is a negative externality. It’s smelly and generally unpleasant. For me, it is a large positive externality. It reminds me of my father.
More often than not, it is merely asserted that X is a negative externality (or a market failure more generally) and no effort is taken to show that 1) it is actually a negative externality and 2) whether it is a policy-relevant externality.
Roger McKinney
Sep 11 2023 at 10:25am
The state should ignore them. But individuals may negotiate with those they think are damaging them.
steve
Sep 11 2023 at 3:10pm
How exactly does one person of limited means negotiate with a billions of dollars corporation? I think this gets back to the libertarian perception as courts being impartial decision makers when they are really just another branch of government at least as biased and corrupt as any other branch of the govt, probably worse.
Steve
Pierre Lemieux
Sep 13 2023 at 10:26am
Steve: How do you negotiate with a trillion-dollar state?
Thomas L Hutcheson
Sep 11 2023 at 12:13pm
I have no problem in adding their benefit in the function that optimizes the trajectory of CO2 concentrations for which a tax on net CO2 emissions is the instrument. This is not even controversial. CO2 fertilization of plant growth is a negative “cost” in climate change cost calculations. The almost everyone will benefit from a navigable Artic. Everything goes into the pot.
David Seltzer
Sep 10 2023 at 6:45pm
Pierre: “An objection to libertarianism and classical liberalism is that total individual autonomy does not exist: even on the market, I cannot do anything I want. (My emphasis) So what’s all the fuss about individual liberty? This is an important question about liberal political economy.” I took the red pill and read De Jasay’s The State. I didn’t come across a passage where he said or implied an individual was free to do anything they wanted. What I did glean; bilateral contracts between consenting parties work symmetrically. Contracts, both private and social, define terms that are acceptable and reject unacceptable terms that unfairly constrain the liberties of others. It seems that was the intent of the founders.
Mactoul
Sep 10 2023 at 9:26pm
Aren’t you imposing your will when you decree certain things stifling tribal customs which have no place in your utopia?
I find little politics in this political economy. Where is recognition of the most salient political fact— the deep and enduring political divisions among men?
Where is recognition and any attempt at understanding why men everywhere and at all times have governed themselves through non-utopian means?
Why men have found it natural to sacrifice themselves for the sake of the collective, call it tribe or nation?
Etc etc.
Mactoul
Sep 11 2023 at 2:27am
Did Adam Smith regard the existing government of Britain a tyranny?
Communism shares the same Enlightenment origin as the right-liberalism. Hence, quotes of communists tell nothing against other criticisms of the right-liberalism.
How will you parse this statement found in Aristotle’s Politics:
A man should rule his wife politically, his children monarchically and his servants despotically
There is good discussion of what tyranny means in the Preface to Paradise Lost by CS Lewis. Tyranny is when a natural inferior rules a natural superior.
Pierre Lemieux
Sep 11 2023 at 8:17am
Mactoul: The great Aristotle lived during the infancy of reason. We’ve learned a few things since (and Ancient Greece has something to do with that). What has been learned includes a crucial discovery: why, during 299,700 years of the 300,000 years of the history of mankind, ordinary people virtually everywhere lived in dire poverty and fear. The answer to this question is what I invite you to discover. It is not necessarily easy (especially, to paraphrase Keynes, if one is over 30), but not impossible.
Mactoul
Sep 12 2023 at 2:08am
300,000 years is far overreach for economics. Better to stay within 10000 years.
And even within 10000 years, you have to grapple with those like Steve Pinker who claim a great pacification precisely in lands where organized states existed.
Market economy doesn’t exist in a vacuum but requires many conditions to be satisfied.
Every private property exists within the nexus of laws, formal or customary, and is secured by armed might of the collective people. Name one case where it is not so.
Pierre Lemieux
Sep 12 2023 at 10:49am
Mactoul: Difficult to answer the question without knowing what “the collective people is.” Is it a far cousin of the Blue Unicorn? Or is it Marx and Engels’s “armed proletariat”? Or is it what somebody says so?
Mactoul
Sep 12 2023 at 10:26pm
Collective people is just the nation or tribe– whoever is securing your private property from invaders, foreign or domestic.
This point is invariably ignored. Property disputes being resolved in Courts have as long history as does civilization. And what are courts? Collective people.
The people define property laws, customs of buying and selling land, inheritance and the whole field of family law. None of which is provided by market of two- party transactions.
A host of conditions have to be met before market can get going and these things must be provided by politics and the collective people.
Jon Murphy
Sep 13 2023 at 8:50am
Macoul-
You keep using “tribe” and “nation” interchangeably, but they are two very different things, requiring very different levels and types of analysis.
Roger McKinney
Sep 11 2023 at 10:36am
We can’t give in to the silliness that all inequality is evil. Some inequality of wealth and income is good and necessary for the goodof society. The desire for absolute equality is merely envy being exposed. See Helmut Schoeck’s classic Envy: A Theory of Social Behavior.
And inequality today is near its lowest levels in history.
If inequality results in more political power to the wealthy, the solution is to shrink government until there is no advantage to the wealthy in buying politicians.
Pierre Lemieux
Sep 11 2023 at 12:08pm
Roger: I agree with you, but I don’t know what “the good of society” means.
Roger McKinney
Sep 11 2023 at 11:19pm
I just meant reducing poverty and increasing liberty.
steve
Sep 11 2023 at 4:19pm
I read your article and it is nicely written but I think it leaves large gaps. It’s seems to assume idealized behavior that one may occasionally see realized in the real world but often doesnt work. In your paper mill example what happens if neither has property rights to the river or in the more obvious case, air pollution? The party that is polluting has no incentive to negotiate and the party being harmed cant force them to negotiate.
It ignores how people actually behave as they really arent little economic models. What really happens is that are near peers in economic and political clout they probably negotiate. If there is a significant difference in economic power or political then they dont negotiate. The weaker party then has to decide if it can bear the costs of hiring competitive legal counsel. If they cant they lose. If the board of one of the entities has strong political connections in the area they can decide to use those to make sure they win any court case. I have lived through this so I know it is not just some theory.
What all of this means is if you are unwilling to consider any kind of govt intervention is that the wealthier, more powerful party will usually win.
Steve
Roger McKinney
Sep 11 2023 at 11:23pm
That’s not the only option. People downstream can sue the papermill in court. Even Anarcho-capitalists admit that.
Thomas L Hutcheson
Sep 12 2023 at 12:08pm
And a world court could impose a tax on net emissions of CO2 as a remedy to a class action suit brought by those harmed by CO2 emissions. Personally, I’d prefer to try to get nations states to impose the tax.
Thomas L Hutcheson
Sep 14 2023 at 10:12am
To Jon Murphy:
“Pigouvian taxes, (even for CO2) are not 1st best, or even necessarily 12th best, solutions. It depends on numerous factors and is perhaps best handled on a case-by-case basis rather than a blanket application.”
Essentially, that is exactly what I advocate. True, I start from thinking that taxation of net CO2 emissions is best, but I certainly agree to take into account “numerous factors” to arrive at a this case solution/amelioration.
I do wonder how you can be sure that taxation of net CO2 emissions is NOT the 1st best solution and what you think IS?
Jon Murphy
Sep 14 2023 at 12:04pm
To the first question, simply looking at Coase, Buchanan & Stubblbine, Dahlman, Ostrom, etc., basically any of the research on externality since the 1950s, gets me there.
To the second question, I do not know what is. I do not need to know what the perfect (or 1st best) is to know when the imperfect is unlikely to work. I do not need to know what the perfectly good life is to know murder is wrong.
Because I do not know, I want a cornucopia of solutions, rather than a one-size-fits-all.
Jon Murphy
Sep 14 2023 at 2:19pm
Let me be a bit clearer here:
I do not deny that a carbon tax will reduce carbon as a first-order effect.
Rather, I am invoking what I call Murph’s Law of Unintended Consequences: For every action, there will be an intended consequence and at least 3 unintended consequences.
Seeing how governments have abused market-correcting powers (see, as a very recent example, Missouri et al v Biden et al), our default position as empricial economists should be to assume that the powers will be abused. After all, that is what the evidence shows. Consequently, any analysis of policy proposals must take into account that fact and discuss how to structure incentives so the policy will not be abused.
Our duty as economists is to consider all costs and all benefits for all parties. As Coase showed back in 1960, the standard Pigouvian model doesn’t do that at all; Pigou is too focused on marginal effects and not at all interested on total effects. Consequently, his model is either irrelevant (in the case of zero transaction costs) or potentially damaging if the total effects are not considered (in the case of high transaction costs).
rick shapiro
Sep 14 2023 at 10:31am
Individual liberty will not alone protect us from the forces of collusive despotism. Remember that the era of least wealth concentration occurred in the 50s and 60s, when vigorous anti-trust enforcement was in vogue. Today, the assimilation of Chicago-school Borkianism into the judicial system has resulted in the majority of essential industries being dominated by a small handful of giant corporations. The resulting economic (and consequent political) power has, via monopsomies in labor and wholesale purchasing, impoverished large sections of the populace; and consumers (initially benefitting from efficiency, according to Bork) are now seeing the ultimate “enshittification”.
Adam Smith himself clearly stated the dangers of collusion among suppliers. But “wink and nod” collusion is not exclusively a function of human nature. Profit maximizing AIs would do exactly the same thing. And if you think that simple logical tautologies don’t also contribute to gini, then you need to review the chapter on random walk with absorbing walls in your undergrad probability text.
In a free capitalist society, it is vital for government to put a thumb on the negotiating scales, in favor of the powerless.
Pierre Lemieux
Sep 14 2023 at 3:49pm
Rick: Two points, very rapidly. First, on the supposed increase in inequality, one book is essential: Phil Gramm, Robert Ekelund, and John Early, The Myth of American Inequality: How Government Biases Policy Debates (Roman & Littlefield, 2022). I will review it in the Winter issue of Regulation, but it is not necessary to wait for my review. Second, on your last paragraph, how do the powerless negotiate with the state after they have called for more power to it? (Just an example: how do they avoid being used as canon fodder?)
Two antidotes to consider: Anthony de Jasay, The State; and, the softer, fuzzier, and less technical Bertrand de Jouvenel’s On Power.
Jon Murphy
Sep 14 2023 at 4:23pm
Yes, but he also clearly states that the state should not break up that collusion, nor create incentive to collude:
These sorts of regulations, Smith argues, increase the inequality of Europe.
Thomas Hutcheson
Sep 15 2023 at 11:12am
“Global warming might be a serious problem for a large part of mankind, although it is far from the paradigmatic case of an asteroid hit. In one case or the other (and especially the first one), the theoretical framework of Pigou, social-welfare-function, and cost-benefit-analysis is not really useful for analyzing the problem.”
OK. What IS the useful theoretical framework?
BTW an asteroid strike is a different kind of problem from climate change. We do not need to incentivize slight changes in behavior to achieve the optimal level of asteroid strikes. Also the cost of an asteroid strike is not increasing over time.
Jon Murphy
Sep 15 2023 at 3:48pm
I don’t want to speak for Pierre, but it seems to me the useful theoritical framework is the theoritical framework of externalities developed since the 50s that Pierre discusses.
Pierre Lemieux
Sep 15 2023 at 4:36pm
Thomas: I agree with Jon. In that framework, the economist is not, indeed cannot be, an activist politico or a busybody advisor to Leviathan. The first question is, Is there a problem—more than, say with free speech or photon pollution? Assuming that the answer is clearly positive, the second question is, Can we think of a rule that rational individuals would unanimously agree to that would allow a political intervention, say, the one you have in mind? Note that we are speaking of a general, constitutional rule, not an ad hoc and expedient intervention by politicians and bureaucrats. (This would require some concept of what a Pareto-relevant externality is.) The rule must be putatively in the interest of all individuals, that is, it must have benefits higher than costs for any of them (a foundational idea in Buchanan and Tullock’s The Calculus of Consent). A caveat: The rule must also be acceptable to any rational individual given its likely systemic effect, including the fact that it will provide cover for the state as it is now, not for the ideal Hegelian or Platonic state. I suspect that this last hurdle would block your suggestion if it had survived up to that stage; the post that I will run tomorrow will give an example. In the meantime, a couple of my previous posts, including “Climate Agnosticism,” discuss the issue (note Friedman’s quote).
Thomas L Hutcheson
Sep 16 2023 at 5:05pm
Give it a try with CO2 accumulation.
How do you propose to determine if the costs of CO2 accumulation do or do or exceed those of free speech? [I’ll stipulate that the cost a free speech are zero if that will help.]
Do I understand your position that if even one person benefits from CO2 accumulation that forecloses any intervention? Or must actual compensation be paid to secure unanimous consent?
Do you think there is any purported extremality that would be acted upon using this standard? Or any state action of any kind?
Having read Climate Agnosticism, it seems more like agnosticism about the size of the costs of CO2 accumulation than actual doubt that costs exceed zero and some rather un-agnostic estimates about the size of the costs of interventions that would reduce and eventually revers CO2 accumulation.
I’ll be looking forward to your upcoming post.
Pierre Lemieux
Sep 16 2023 at 10:01pm
Thomas: You write:
It is important to understand that we are speaking about unanimity on rules, not unanimity on ad hoc expedient interventions, which of course is impossible. Therein lies the difference (and, I think, the essential difference between you and me). One important book about that is Brennan and Buchanan’s The Reason of Rules, although the idea is omnipresent in Hayek and, in fact, in the whole liberal tradition. Take the Red pill!
Pierre Lemieux
Sep 18 2023 at 11:01am
Thomas: You write:
These are good questions, of course. According to de Jasay, the answer is No. To avoid choosing command over contract, one may invoke Buchanan (which I did here, in order to minimize the therapeutic shock). In my review of Brennan and Buchanan’s The Reason of Rules, I ask whether Hayek is not a more practical shortcut, a position that may be more congenial to you. One way or another, ad hoc oppression such as cost-benefit analysis would not be in the cards.
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