For the last ten years I have been baffled as I watched the conservative movement devolve into a weird wing of progressivism—especially on economic issues. While once at least paying lip service to limited government, fiscal prudence, and personal responsibility, conservatives now ignore the size of government and fiscal responsibility. They increasingly call for a larger child tax credit, a universal basic income, and paid leave arranged and ensured by the federal government. Many conservatives now also proudly embrace tariffs, hyperactive antitrust, and industrial policy (often justified, of course, as necessary to ‘fight’ China).
Conservatives – or at least the more politically active ones – are reverting to their 1920s selves (See Matt Continetti’s book, The Right: The 100 year war for American Conservatism.) I failed to see this reversion occurring, in part because I moved to the United States in 1999 and was until recently fairly ignorant of the history of the conservative movement- and how the last forty years were more an exception than the rule.
I fear that this recent trend is just the beginning. It won’t be long before the conservatives’ platform is a full-on version of big government, big business, and big unions. It’s depressing.
It is hard not to wonder if the liberty movement is now failing to follow in the footsteps of Hayek, Friedman, and other great 20th-century champions of freedom. It’s important now to recognize that on most fronts the challenges faced by the first- and second-generation members of the Mont Pelerin Society were, if anything, greater than what we champions of freedom face today. After all, people in 1947 – or even in 1987 – could not, as we can today, point to the actual collapse of the socialist states as evidence of the dangers of collectivism. And yet Hayek and his peers left us a world that was more accepting of free trade and free-market economics, even if these liberal policies were not the default position.
Perhaps a more optimistic way to view the current situation is to be inspired by those who fought for a more classical liberal world at a time when things looked particularly grim. Rather than despair, get energized by the challenge. But this raises the question of what is the best way not merely to preserve the flame of freedom but to spread it. What the next steps are, I do not know. I am open to your suggestions. The private sector continues to deliver innovation, growth, and widespread prosperity. But as of today, few people are willing to acknowledge that it is the free-market system that allows these wonderful things to happen, and that while of course imperfect (often because impaired by government interventions), any alternatives would be much worse.
How do you fight the battle of ideas when so many people distrust the institutions that host those of us who produce and apply these ideas? I have spent most of my professional life producing work to show that arguments for government interventions are bunk. For instance, in this new paper with Chuck Blahous, he and I take on the new conservative recommendation that Social Security be used to provide paid-leave benefits. We show, again, all the ways that this is a terrible idea. Of course, I believe that work such as this is important, since these are serious propositions introduced in Congress and supported by a fairly large number of conservatives. But is there a better way?
In this new paper, Gary Leff and I argue that next time legislators are tempted to bail out airlines ostensibly to ensure that they will be ready when the economy reopens, the public should remember the actual, depressing results of the most recent such bailout. But Congress won’t change its response unless we change the incentives politicians face during the next emergency. How do we do that? After all these years, I still don’t know.
Maybe it is more effective to offer a vision of what a libertarian world looks like. This is what Aaron Powell does in this edited volume. I recommend it. I think this approach describes also a lot of the work of former EconLog blogger Bryan Caplan. He inspires by offering a vision of what a world would look like without government subsidies to higher ed, a world with largely open borders, and a world with radically fewer restrictions on home building.
The Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom Index offers such a vision, because it is a concrete way to illustrate what countries with less economic freedom look like compared to those with more freedom. The 2022 Economic Freedom of the World Report was released earlier today; all countries have declined in economic freedom, thanks to over the top pandemic responses, but the U.S. has actually declined even more relative to other countries. The U.S. rating fell by twice the amount of the average reduction worldwide. The U.S. is at its lowest level of economic freedom in four decades.
The bottom line is that while I am usually an optimist, I find myself increasingly worried and wondering what we did wrong and what to do next.
Veronique de Rugy is a Senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center and syndicated columnist at Creators.
READER COMMENTS
Mark Barbieri
Sep 9 2022 at 10:39am
I can’t answer your question, but I would like to thank you, your fellow co-bloggers here, and all the like minded people that keep advancing strong arguments for freedom. I regularly refer to your writings in discussions with friends when they are surprised by my views.
It certainly feels like “team freedom” is fighting a losing battle all around the world today, but don’t give up hope. Even if all you are accomplishing is slowing the trend towards authoritarianism or sustaining the intellectual framework for a future rise of liberty, it is still a very valuable contribution to the people of the world. Thank you for what you are doing.
Scott Sumner
Sep 9 2022 at 12:44pm
Excellent post. A few comments:
Some argue that while conservatives are disappointing on some issues, the left is even worse. But on an increasing number of issues the right is either no better (trade) or becoming significantly worse than the left (immigration, zoning, war on drugs, etc.). These are not trivial issues.
The Libertarian Party has also moved in a very unfortunate direction on some issues.
Roger D McKinney
Sep 9 2022 at 3:47pm
Good points! Reading Bastiat, I realized that freedom has enjoyed outstanding witnesses for it for over 150 years, yet has receded every decade. Robert Higgs said something important in Crisis and Leviathan. He showed that crises in the late 19th century US did not lead to calls for larger government, yet just a decade or two later, they did. His only explanation is that the ideology of the American people had changed. Before 1900, they didn’t look to government for all answers. After, they did.
The 1890s was when “Progressive” socialism became popular, too. Before, laissez-faire dominated the country. The big change that happened in the US in the last quarter of the 19th century was the decline of traditional Christianity and the rise of modernist Christianity that denied the deity of Christ. Modernist Christians saw Marx as the savior of the world instead of Jesus.
Helmut Schoeck made a similar point in Envy: A Theory of Social Behavior. He wrote that only Protestant Christianity had succeeded in suppressing envy enough to allow for freedom and innovation. Envy powers socialism. There does seem to be a correlation between the decline of traditional Christianity and the rise of socialism.
But I remind myself that by the 1970s, classical liberalism was almost dead. We have made huge strides in resurrecting it since then. We have setbacks, but the long term trend has been good. Trump’s Supreme Court appointees are forcing the Court to pay attention to the written Constitution for the first time in a century.
Maniel
Sep 10 2022 at 12:27am
Bonjour Dr. de Rugy,
Engaging post, somewhat along the lines of where is our god of economics and politics when we really need him/her? My economic heroes, Bastiat, Friedman, and Sowell more or less align with your own, but in my opinion, “those aren’t the droids we’re looking for” to answer the question, “what we did wrong and what to do next?” You despair that, “It won’t be long before the conservatives’ platform is a full-on version of big government, big business, and big unions.” But if we use a more generic term such as politician in place of “conservative,” I think we can accept that we are simply in Margaret Thatcher’s world of “the wets.”
You say, “as of today, few people are willing to acknowledge that it is the free-market system that allows these wonderful things [innovation, growth, and widespread prosperity] to happen.” However, while the framework matters, we need to build on our strength, the engine of that prosperity. And while I may give thanks to you, Bastiat et al, it is the practitioners of our free-market system who must be on the front lines of its defense. What are their names? Some are familiar, past and present such as Michelin, Ford, Morita, Jobs, Toyoda, Cook, Kelleher, etc., Others are restaurant owners. Still others are entrepreneurs. And while Dr. Friedman might tell us that their job is to run their businesses to the best of their ability, they too have much to lose if we, the unwashed, kill the golden goose.
Comment convaincre les non-croyants? Just as politicians broadcast their myths and preachers sermonize about their religion, defenders of the free-market system must share their faith in such principles as customer satisfaction, employee morale, and continuing improvement. They must be ambassadors for the system, showing principled leadership that rejects such anti-market practices as tariffs and subsidies. They must prove to their employees, through constructive actions, that unions cripple their own companies to every one’s disadvantage. Cultivating free-market ethics and winning the hearts and minds of the broad sweep of the population is a long road. However, one day, “born-again free-marketeers” might turn to representatives who reflect their beliefs. All this may take a while, so probably best to begin soon.
MarkW
Sep 10 2022 at 8:09am
The eternal problem, I think, is that bad ideas we’re struggling against will always have an inherent appeal. Socialism is just sharing! Nationalism is just taking care of our own family first! People can be persuaded to reject these ideas after hard first-hand experience with the problems they cause. But then time passes, generations turn over, and we’re back to the naïve folk-economics of a majority lacking any exposure to the downsides of socialism and nationalism (roughly where we are now, I’m afraid). And so here we go again. You read Bastiat on trade and he was fighting exactly the same battles. Since Bastiat, it has been progress and back-sliding, progress and back-sliding — I’m afraid the same battles will be fought in the 22nd century as well as the 19th, 20th, and 21st.
After all, people in 1947 – or even in 1987 – could not, as we can today, point to the actual collapse of the socialist states as evidence of the dangers of collectivism. And yet Hayek and his peers left us a world that was more accepting of free trade and free-market economics, even if these liberal policies were not the default position.
Unfortunately, I think this cuts the other way. To most of the people alive and voting today, 1987 (let alone 1947) is ancient history. If you were an adult when the Berlin Wall fell, you’re now over 50. Hayek and his peers could point at actually existing socialist states (who were mostly our sworn enemies) as examples of what not to do. They could point directly at the bad examples, whereas it seems that we’re in a position where we have to create and live through our own bad examples before our younger citizens get it.
Gene
Sep 12 2022 at 3:43pm
I don’t know enough to be sure the author’s premises are wrong for the most part, but her argument could use a few more examples of exactly which “conservatives” she is talking about. The inclusion of a UBI, for instance, sounds odd to me–how many Republicans are actually in favor of such a thing? The one linked example she offered, re the SS benefits as paid-leave bill, refers to a bill co-introduced by Mitt Romney, who is considered the RINOist of RINOs by most Republican voters.
nobody.really
Sep 13 2022 at 1:40am
Maybe these?
Thomas More, Utopia (1516), advocating social insurance and the abolition of private property.
“And if there be any waste or barren land within our dominions, that also is to be given to strangers, at their request, or may be lawfully possessed by them, because whatever remains uncultivated, is not to be esteemed property, only so far as concerns jurisdiction, which always continues the right of the ancient people.”
Hugo Grotius, De jure belli ac pacis libri tres [On the Law of War and Peace: three books] (1625)
“42. [W]e know that God hath not left one man so to the mercy of another, that he may starve him if he please: God, the Lord and father of all, has given no one of his children such a property in his particular portion of the things of this world, but that he has given his needy brother a right to the surplusage of his goods; so that it cannot justly be denied him, when his pressing wants call for it: and therefor no man could have a just power over the life of another by right of property in land or possessions; since it would always be a sin, in any man of estate, to let his brother perish for want to affording him relief out of his plenty. [C]harity gives every man a title to so much out of another man’s plenty as will keep him from extreme want, where he has no means to subsist otherwise: and a man can no more justly make use of another’s necessity to force him to become his vassal, by with-holding that relief God requires him to afford to the wants of his brother, than he that has more strength can seize upon a weaker, master him to his obedience, and with a dagger at this throat offer him death or slavery.”
John Locke, Two Treaties of Government (1689), Book I, Chapter IV., Of Adam’s title to sovereignty, by donation, Gen. i.28; see also Book II (1690), Of the State of Nature.
“The rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.”
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (1776), Book V, Chapter II, Part I: Taxes upon the Rent of House.
“No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, cloath and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged.”
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (1776), Chapter VIII.
“[A]n equal division of property is impracticable. But the consequences of this enormous inequality producing so much misery to the bulk of mankind [in France], legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property, only taking care to let their subdivisions go hand in hand with the natural affections of the human mind. The descent of property of every kind therefore to all the children, or to all the brothers and sisters, or other relations in equal degree is a politic measure, and a practicable one. Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise. Whenever there is in any country, uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labour and live on. If, for the encouragement of industry we allow it to be appropriated, we must take care that other employment be furnished to those excluded from the appropriation. If we do not the fundamental right to labour the earth returns to the unemployed. It is too soon yet in our country to say that every man who cannot find employment but who can find uncultivated land, shall be at liberty to cultivate it, paying a moderate rent. But it is not too soon to provide by every possible means that as few as possible shall be without a little portion of land.”
Thomas Jefferson, Letter to James Madison (October 28, 1785)
“If socialists mean that under extraordinary circumstances, for urgent cases, the State should set aside some resources to assist certain unfortunate people, to help them adjust to changing conditions, we will, of course, agree. This is done now; we desire that it be done better.”
Frédéric Bastiat, “Justice and fraternity,” in Journal des Économistes (15 June 1848)
“There is no reason why, in a society which has reached the general level of wealth ours has attained, the first kind of security should not be guaranteed to all without endangering general freedom. There are difficult questions about the precise standard which should thus be assured …. but there can be no doubt that some minimum of food, shelter, and clothing, sufficient to preserve health and the capacity to work, can be assured to everybody….
Nor is there any reason why the state should not assist the individuals in providing for these common hazards of life against which, because of their uncertainty, few individuals can make adequate provision. Where, as in the case of sickness and accident, neither the desire to avoid such calamities nor the efforts to overcome their consequences are as a rule weakened by the provision of assistance – where, in short, we deal with genuinely insurable risks – the case for the state’s helping to organize a comprehensive system of social insurance is very strong…. [T]here is no incompatibility in principle between the state’s providing greater security in this way and the preservation of individual freedom. To the same category belongs also the increase of security through the state’s rendering assistance to the victims of such “acts of God” as earthquakes and floods. Wherever communal action can mitigate disasters against which the individual can neither attempt to guard himself nor make provision for the consequences, such communal action should undoubtedly be taken.”
Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (1944), Chap. 9, “Security and Freedom”
“The problem is to organize society for the best possible realization of those ends which men want to attain by social cooperation. Social utility is the only standard of justice. It is the sole guide of legislation.”
Ludwig von Mises, Theory and History, at 54 (1957)
“[I]n my opinion, the negative income tax is more compatible with the philosophy and aims of the proponents of limited government and maximum individual freedom than with the philosophy and aims of the proponents of the welfare state and greater government control of the economy.”
Milton Friedman, “The Case for Negative Income Tax: A View from the Right” (1966).
“Perhaps it is best to view some patterned principles of distributive justice as rough rules of thumb meant to approximate the general results of applying the principle of rectification of injustice. For example, lacking much historical information, and assuming (1) that victims of injustice generally do worse than they otherwise would and (2) that those from the least well-off group in the society have the highest probabilities of being the (descendants of) victims of the most serious injustice who are owed compensation by those who benefited from the injustices (assumed to be those better off, though sometimes the perpetrators will be others in the worst-off group), then a rough rule of thumb for rectifying injustices might seem to be the following: organize society so as to maximize the position of whatever group ends up least well-off in the society…. In the absence of … a treatment [of the principle of rectification] applied to a particular society, one cannot use the analysis and theory presented here to condemn any particular scheme of transfer payments, unless it is clear that no consideration of rectification of injustice would apply to justify it. Although to introduce socialism as the punishment for our sins would be to go too far, past injustices might be so great as to make necessary in the short run a more extensive state in order to rectify them.”
Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974) at 231.
“The assurance of a certain minimum income for everyone, or a sort of floor below which nobody need fall even when he is unable to provide for himself, appears not only to be wholly legitimate protection against a risk common to all, but a necessary part of the Great Society in which the individual no longer has specific claims on the members of the particular small group into which he was born.”
Friedrich Hayek, Law, Legislation, and Liberty, Vol. 3 (1979); see also Hayek on Hayek: An Autobiographical Dialogue by F. A. Hayek, edited by Stephen Kresge and Leif Wenar (1994) (“I have always said that I am in favor of a minimum income for every person in the country.”)
“Just remuneration for the work of an adult who is responsible for a family means remuneration which will suffice for establishing and properly maintaining a family and for providing security for its future. Such remuneration can be given either through what is called a family wage—that is, a single salary given to the head of the family for his work, sufficient for the needs of the family without the other spouse having to take up gainful employment outside the home—or through other social measures such as family allowances or grants to mothers devoting themselves exclusively to their families. These grants should correspond to the actual needs, that is, to the number of dependents for as long as they are not in a position to assume proper responsibility for their own lives.”
Pope John Paul II, Laborem Exercens (1981)
“I think the issue of low-income people versus everyone else is a very important issue. [Wilbur J. Cohen said] ‘a program for poor people will be a poor program.’ …Isn’t that true? Look at what has happened to public housing: It’s a program designed for poor people—it’s a poor program. Look at what happened to Aid to Families with Dependent Children: It was a program designed for poor people—it was a poor program.
Programs that are designed for the poor will be poor programs. You need to have a universal program to have the backing of society as a whole, in order that it can really be a part of the structure of society. So I support an entering wedge in the form of a program for low-income people, but I believe it would be a very serious mistake to stop at that point…. [Programs such as vouchers] need to be expanded to include everyone, in order to get the public at large in back of them….”
Milton Friedman, “The Only Solution Is Competition: An Exclusive Interview with Milton Friedman” (December 1, 1998)
Ernest Martinson
Sep 17 2022 at 7:13pm
I would support a universal basic income if it replaced all other welfare and it was funded by a tax on land and other natural resources. Labor and capital should not be taxed.
The Pentagon can be remodeled into a shelter for homeless veterans and refugees from unnecessary wars which they all were.
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