If you watch the interview of Bernie Sanders by Joe Rogan, which has been clicked close to eight million times, you will find that the Vermont senator and presidential candidate looks honest and persuasive. One reason is that he has been a politician for nearly all his life, but there is more than that.
One thing is that he stands on the shoulders of two centuries of socialists. He is promising lots of goodies: free college, free health care, free dental care, higher wages at no cost (nobody will lose his job), protectionism, a ban on assault weapons but no confiscation of the millions already owned, saving the earth, no oil, more income for everybody except the corporations and “the billionaires,” rebuilding communities, retrofitting buildings…
This looks like a winning program that would relieve much frustration and envy. Once the socialists are in power, Sanders is trying to say, the state will finally be us. “We” will take care of “us.”
For Sanders, as well as for all the Mr.-Jourdains who do socialism without knowing it, every problem has a solution available from some political authority and imposed equally to all. In principle, the political authority is “the people,” which means half of the people, or in fact half of the two-thirds who vote, which in practice means the leaders of the government and the bureaucrats who assist them.
Socialists have a poor understanding of incentives in general (everybody is a Rousseauvian “good savage” like them), and voters’ incentives in particular. Public choice theory has shown how the ordinary voter is “rationally ignorant”: he has no incentive to gather the information necessary to cast an informed vote, because his vote will have zero influence on the election results. Imagine if all Americans were obliged to own the same brand and model of car to be chosen by a referendum. How much time would you spend to get informed on what is the best car? Given that, the voter can only express a non-influential moral opinion; more often, he votes for the same reason that he applauds at a sports game, that is, not to change the level of noise but to entertain himself. (See my old Regulation article on this public choice approach.)
It is a strange thing that “democratic socialists” have only a pre-scientific intuition of how democracy works.
Another reason for the appeal of Mr. Sanders’s message is that it is well adapted to our time when socialism has come to mean not empowering individuals, but giving them the security of being to the state what children are to their parents. In a 2005 article in Public Choice (“Afraid to Be Free: Dependency as Desideratum”), James Buchanan predicted a revival of socialism under that form, which he called “parental socialism” or “parentalism.” Many of Mr. Sanders’ listeners were already looking for what he is promising: a powerful paternal figure that will take care of them. That is a bit different from the “we” sort of socialism and very different from a free society.
So when Mr. Sanders insists that his proposals “are not radical ideas,” he is right in a sense. They are a natural continuation of the drift from the ideal of individual liberty to the collective straightjacket.
We must remember that what the state gives, he has already taken from somebody, often from the same persons to whom it is giving (a process called “churning”). Politicians don’t pay for their promises out of their own pockets. Moreover, the taking is not only in the form of money but in the form of forcing people to do certain things or forbidding them to do something—or else, the nice socialists will send the cops. Also missing in Sanders’s approach, as in the general approach of socialism, is an understanding that the state can only provide all these free gifts by controlling a large part of society, levying heavy taxes on the people including ordinary people (like in Scandinavian countries), and grabbing a big decision power in individuals’ lifestyles (at least those that are not politically-correct for the moment).
Sanders invokes the example of Canada’s monopolistic, single-payer health-insurance system (in fact, there is one for each province). In that country, the median wait time between a referral to a specialist physician and actual treatment is 19.8 weeks (see the latest, 2018, survey by the Fraser Institute). And even these services are not really free: somebody has got to pay. People don’t go broke because of their medical bills, they go broke because of their tax burdens instead.
A related failure of socialism consists in its incapacity to understand how a society of free individuals is auto-regulating. This theory of the free society is not necessarily easy to understand, and much of economics has consisted in trying to explain it, starting with Adam Smith. Buchanan summarized this ideal in his book What Should Economists Do? (which I will review in the forthcoming issue of Regulation for the fortieth anniversary of its publication):
As a discipline or area of inquiry, economics has social value in offering an understanding of the principle of order emergent from decentralized processes, of spontaneous coordination. (The market is a classic example.) Such an understanding is necessarily prior to an informed decision on alternative forms of social order, or even on alternative directions of marginal distinction. The principle of order that economics teaches is in no way “natural” to the human mind which, in innocence, is biased towards simplistic collectivism.
At some point in the interview, Sanders deplores that somebody’s job has moved to China—or language conveying that impression. Does he understand that the job did not walk to the airport and take a flight for China. The job did not move, it is American consumers who decided to patronize somebody in China who could make what they want cheaper. Aren’t these American consumers people too?
Not all the questions Sanders rise are wrong, his intentions are not necessarily bad, some of his ideas are even good—such as decriminalizing marijuana and having a hard look at the criminal justice system. But simplistic collectivism characterizes his understanding of society. Hell would be paved with his good intentions.
READER COMMENTS
nobody.really
Aug 12 2019 at 11:49am
Uh … ok, I get the whole Public Choice problem. But why is this a problem peculiar to socialists? Surely the people who voted for Adams, Jefferson, Lincoln, Coolidge, and Trump were rationally ignorant, too?
Pierre Lemieux
Aug 14 2019 at 5:55pm
Good point. Of course, the problem is not peculiar to socialists. But since socialists want to vote on more issues, they should be more alert to the problems of voting.
Other problems than rational ignorance affect voting–cycles, for example. More generally, socialists have to justify the divine right of the majority.
Andre
Aug 12 2019 at 1:29pm
I made it perhaps twenty minutes in, to the point where he started complaining about corporations. Good for him for talking with Joe, but I’m kinda tired of all the railing against corporations and inequality. Just about everyone who complains could give up half their income, or much more, and be just fine. They’d take a hit to their standard of living, but isn’t that worth making the downtrodden better off?Of course it is.
Bernie is definitely someone who could give up 95% of what he owns and be just fine.
But no, the complainers aren’t interested in lessening inequality, because they could act with their wallet at any time to do so, but they don’t. What they really want is to have other people pay to lessen inequality, while they score points.
Floccina
Aug 12 2019 at 4:18pm
Bernie calls the drug manufacturers greedy, but I don’t see him giving all his income above the median US income(his people’s earnings) to the American Diabetes association so they buy patents out or develop their own insulin.
I understand his idea that he won’t ante up until everyone does but calling the drug manufacturers greedy means he is being greedy too.
Pierre Lemieux
Aug 12 2019 at 4:30pm
Andre: I agree it is very frustrating to listen to.
Dylan
Aug 13 2019 at 9:26am
I think this kind of comment misses the point in that it is looking at individuals over the collective. Sure, Bernie Sanders could give up a big chunk of his wealth and make a few individuals better off, but that doesn’t do really anything for overall wealth inequality for the entire society, and so in some sense it might even be thought to make things worse.
I don’t subscribe to these views, but I raise them because I think that Pierre and others of the libertarian persuasion often miss. If you’re speaking on a topic and your argument rests on tenets of individual liberty, and your ideological opponents don’t share a belief in the supremacy of that particular value, then you’re just preaching to the choir. Yet, no one wants Venezuela. So personally, I find arguments about why such and such policy will lower overall welfare much more convincing than ones that depend a priori on the value of liberty.
Floccina
Aug 13 2019 at 10:58am
But then it is hypocritical to talk about the greed of the people in the pharmaceutical industry as her frequently does. Can’t they also say we will ante up when everyone else does? He frequently talks about the greed of Walmart owners and management, but can’t they say if the difference in pay between what we now pay and $15/hours is welfare, why should we pay for it all in the short run and our customers in the long run, why not make all wealthy people carry the burden together?
I think in those cases he is being hypocritical.
Dylan
Aug 13 2019 at 1:40pm
Well first, I don’t think there is much value in calling hypocrisy, we’re all hypocritical to some level, or at least the vast majority of us, so I just don’t see that as much of a sin except in the most egregious examples.
Secondly though, I’m not sure this is really an example of hypocrisy. Disclaimer, I don’t really follow Bernie’s policy prescriptions that closely, so I’m not sure exactly what he is arguing/proposing here. But I do know that he is a fan of things like a $15/hr minimum wage more than just trying to voluntarily get employers to pay their employees more. In other words, he seems to favor using the power of the state to enforce a universal behavior rather than rely on “greedy” business owners and managers to “do the right thing.” Or have I misunderstood his policy prescription?
Pierre Lemieux
Aug 14 2019 at 6:04pm
Dylan: Your first point is good, although I am not sure it survives Floccina’s reply.
You also write:
This is a good point, too. But you must not forget that “welfare” requires some value judgment, a fact demonstrated by welfare economists from the 1930s on. A value judgment is required as long as one person sees his welfare decreased or simply if somebody claims that he does not believe in the Pareto criterion.
Mark Z
Aug 15 2019 at 12:09pm
I would make a slightly different argument regarding rich socialists: it’s not the moral hypocrisy that’s poignant: it’s rather contrast between what they do when they’re most rational (when they’re self interest is on the line) and what they want to do politically, when they more inclined toward sentimental Utopianism.
See, I don’t think there is a collective action problem. Bernie the investor is actually correct that his wealth is more productive being invested privately (both to him in the form of profit, but also society in the form of surplus accrued to consumers and employees) than in the hands of the state. I this applies to nonprofits as well: they tend to be far less efficient that for profit companies precisely because people are almost without exception more rational and prone to optimizing resource allocation when they are being self interested than when they are trying (or pretending) to be altruistic.
nobody.really
Aug 12 2019 at 1:35pm
I’d guess he could give up 95% of his hair care products and be just fine….
Thaomas
Aug 12 2019 at 3:35pm
Lots to disagree with here. What do these proposals have to do with socialism beyond Sanders use of the word?
Pierre Lemieux
Aug 12 2019 at 5:11pm
Thaomas: You are right to raise this question. If one defines socialism à la Marx, as the formal “public” (that is, government) ownership of the means of production, there is little socialism in Sanders’ proposals. Note, note that with modern Tocquevillian-style regulation, the state does not need to own capital to control it; so even here, contemporary non-Marxian socialism keeps a Marxian flavor. In general, though, the Marxist way is not how socialism has been conceived or implemented before Marx and in much post-Marxian socialism. In this sense, Sanders’ political program corresponds to the program of most Western socialist parties since the beginning of the 20th century or certainly the middle of that century. (This is how Rousseau already conceived socialism without the name.) The common denominator of all forms of socialism is the primacy of collective choices over individual choices: somewhere on the continuum, one picks his preferred point and says that socialism starts there.
Floccina
Aug 12 2019 at 4:02pm
I listen to that interview and I could not believe how bad Rogan was at questioning him. It was frustrating to listen too.
Mark Z
Aug 15 2019 at 12:13pm
From the few episodes I’ve heard I think Rogan has severe ‘pro interviewee’ bias. He likes to agree with his guests. He also seems somewhat sympathetic to anti-capitalism. His ‘conservative’ streak seems mainly confined to ‘political correctness’ type issues.
stephen leonhard
Aug 13 2019 at 12:22pm
Wage inequality exists simply because people have different abilities and work ethics.
It is simply insane for the government to become somehow involved in “rectifying wage inequality” The government does nothing well or inexpensively. I have never visited a government office at any level where the employees were working hard.
Oh yes, many are unionized which makes it virtually impossible to fire them for gross incompetence.
Stephen Leonhard
stephen leonhard
Aug 13 2019 at 12:37pm
Time after time the government demonstrates its costly incompetence!
Program budget overruns are routine, and no one is held accountable!
I have never visited a government office anywhere where employees appeard to be busy.One exception to this observation: the drivers license office where a single clerk worked tirelessly with mountain of applications and remained considerate and polite!
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