To counter “disillusionment with the government,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D. Conn) expressed a widespread but invalid or seriously misleading idea: it is the idea that governments should “deliver” or, in other words, be efficient (“Americans Diverge on Perils and Lessons of the Jan. 6 Capital Attack,” Wall Street Journal, December 30, 2021):
Listen, I do think people are actively considering giving up on democracy in this country. And that does explain part of the reason why people marched on us, why people tried to overthrow the government. We’ve got to show people that government can deliver for them.
The idea that government should “deliver” is seriously misleading because it depends on what exactly it delivers. The WSJ reports that Mr. Murphy was “arguing for passage of Mr. Biden’s stalled economic agenda.” For anybody who disagrees with this trillion-dollar agenda—and about half of American voters do—the government should not “deliver.” It is an invalid idea if one assumes that it is incorrect to tax all the people in a country or even just a selected group of scapegoats (like “the rich”) in order to finance the benefits that others want.
In other words, it is not because some group has some grievance that the government should deliver relief, for this usually means that some other group will be conscripted into providing it. To support my claim, I could invoke the radical theory of Anthony de Jasay, but I will instead refer to the much milder ideas of Friedrich Hayek, which are representative of what classical liberals have believed for at least two centuries and a half. In Rules and Order (1973), the first volume of his Law, Legislation, and Liberty, Hayek wrote:
Since [the representative assembly] possesses authority to arrange everything, it cannot refuse responsibility for anything. There will be no particular grievance which it will not be regarded as capable of removing; and since in every particular instance taken by itself it will generally be capable of remedying such a grievance, it will be assumed that it can remove all grievances at the same time. However, it is a fact that most of the grievances of particular individuals or groups can be removed only by measures which create new grievances elsewhere.
Incidentally, a new consolidated version of the three volumes is forthcoming at the University of Chicago Press, under the competent editorship of Jeremy Shearmur. I will soon review the “Rules and Order” part for Econlib.
Of course, there can be real grievances. In a classical-liberal or libertarian perspective, however, these would be grievances against discrimination by government, not requests for government discrimination, that is, for granting privileges to some at the detriment of somebody else.
Saying that to “deliver” anything somebody wants should not be the role of government amounts to saying that the government should not be “efficient” in implementing measures that undermine or threaten the general context of individual liberty that equally allow all individuals to each pursue his own goals. This is why our forebears put stringent limits on government “efficiency,” from countervailing powers inside the government to specific procedural rules that politicians and bureaucrats must follow, such as the Senate 60% majority, not to forget constitutions, bill of rights, or other such fundamental laws that are by design constraining and difficult to change.
(I put “efficient” and “efficiency” in quotes because the meaning of the concept refers to what satisfies individual preferences without making anybody worse off. This encapsulation of Pareto efficiency would require a discussion by itself, and Hayek would differ. Let’s keep this conversation for another time.)
The obstacles put up against government “efficiency” include privacy rules that are, or were, enacted against government agencies building, using, or sharing databases on citizens. It is dangerous that government actions be too well-coordinated, as Hayek again understood (quoting from Rules and Order):
It is important that the size of this ‘public sector’ be limited and the government do not so co-ordinate its various services that their effects on particular people become predictable. [Emphasis in original]
In this perspective, a government should not discriminate in favor or against identifiable individuals determined in advance—although a measure may differentially affect unknown individuals in future instances. For example, changing intellectual property law will affect people who decide to create such property in the future or who would then benefit from it, but should not benefit or harm any particular person on whom we can now put a name.
In brief, the government should not “deliver” just to deliver some goodies to some privileged group in society. There is nothing good in government delivering tyranny or measures that push people farther on what Hayek called the “road to serfdom.” The only thing that government should deliver are the (few) measures that (arguably) facilitate the common interest of individuals in the satisfaction of their several preferences.
READER COMMENTS
Craig
Jan 3 2022 at 1:49pm
“Listen, I do think people are actively considering giving up on democracy in this country.”
The rhetoric of leftist hate. Well, personally I have never considered giving up on democracy. I have however absolutely given up on THIS democracy. There’s a difference and a major part of the reason are people like Murphy who apparently opine that I’m nothing more than an authoritarian, fascist, racist deplorable.
“We’ve got to show people that government can deliver for them.”
The problem of course is that I don’t want the government to deliver on the things Murphy wants it to deliver on. I feel very strongly about this. I moved 1200 miles away from NJ to get away from it. And I loved NJ, still do, its where I grew up. But at the end of the day the taxes were just too burdensome to pursue my own happiness.
At the end of the day there’s mutually incompatible visions, a national divorce genuinely NEEDS to happen. Yes, this will leave enclaves of blue in red and red in blue, but competitive governance must exist.
The Constitution is an experiment in limited government that has failed.
Pierre Lemieux
Jan 3 2022 at 2:29pm
Craig: Regarding your last sentence, Hayek said as much in 1973:
Just a dozen years earlier, in The Constitution of Liberty, he was still less pessimistic.
robc
Jan 3 2022 at 7:15pm
At first I wondered what Jon had done to you. Wrong Murphy.
Jon Murphy
Jan 4 2022 at 8:47am
Yay! I’m famous!
Pierre Lemieux
Jan 4 2022 at 10:05am
robc: The world would be a better place if Jon Murphy and Chris Murphy switched places–at least in the short run.
Jon Murphy
Jan 4 2022 at 10:37am
The one time I was (accidentally) elected to office, I was removed from office within a month
Thomas Lee Hutcheson
Jan 4 2022 at 12:01am
This makes a kind of sense if ones model of government is of random groups seeking government interventions on the economy to transfer income to them through policies that have significant deadweight loss, Farmers seeking price supports and production quotas or manufacturers seeking tariffs is a good example. It does not fit very will with groups who see “child poverty” or “too many foreigners” or “climate change” as problem (not necessarily a problem for them personally) and wanting “government” to do something about it maybe with policies with significant deadweight losses and even less if the “something? produces net benefits.
Pierre Lemieux
Jan 4 2022 at 10:12am
Thomas: I don’t want to minimize the importance of your objection (it was important enough to be analyzed by Hayek, Buchanan, and de Jasay) but, in one line, it depends in whose eyes it “fits” well or not, and also who gets the net benefit (and who the net cost).
Thomas Lee Hutcheson
Jan 5 2022 at 2:29am
I think the central insight of Smith is that net benefits tend to be widely dispersed. That is why tariffs are bad and a tax on net CO2 emissions would be good.
Jose Pablo
Jan 5 2022 at 3:01pm
How do you know a tax on CO2 would be “good”?
When you think you know that, you are randomly assuming prices and taking for granted models which are very likely orders of magnitude wrong (to say the least). Remember that we don’t even know how to measure “CO2 emission” … a tax with a non-measurable tax base?
And remember that, externalities always came in pairs. You decide which one of the pair you price higher just because it is the one dearer to you.
In any case, good or not (for sure it would be far worse than a “Coaseian solution”) it will never be implemented by a government. Do you really see governments pricing the poor out of gas for their cars and heating for their homes?
Thinking that actual governments can implement a Pigouvian tax on emissions is extremely naive and ignores everything we know about Public Choice.
Any government sponsored solution to climate change is going to be focused on having a “clearly seen delivery” and “high unseen costs” which is precisely the opposite of a CO2 tax.
Jose Pablo
Jan 6 2022 at 12:49pm
https://www.wsj.com/articles/dozens-killed-in-kazakhstan-as-authorities-crack-down-on-unrest-11641462504
speaking of which …
As Caplan was saying, science is all about the ability of making predictions …
Jose Pablo
Jan 5 2022 at 3:22pm
“This is why our forebears put stringent limits on government “efficiency,” from countervailing powers inside the government to specific procedural rules that politicians and bureaucrats must follow, such as the Senate 60% majority, not to forget constitutions, bill of rights, or other such fundamental laws that are by design constraining and difficult to change.”
Our forebears did their best … and they failed … big time!
A Senate, a House of Representatives and a President, elected in different ways with different ways of representing people and territories, should agree on new legislation for it to be enacted and another group of people (“elected” in a complete different fashion) should agree than the new legislation comply with the Constitution.
The whole system is design to produce “gridlock” and avoid “excess of legislation”, which was, very clearly in our forebears’ mind, the enemy of individual liberty. So yes, having Biden’s economic agenda stalled is precisely what they wanted for this “Democracy” and yes Murphy is totally ignorant of all this.
But “excess of legislation” is what we have had, what we have and what we will have. Excess of legislation and then some.
Nobody explains this better than Scalia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ggz_gd–UO0
Pierre Lemieux
Jan 7 2022 at 3:12pm
This little speech of Scalia (which I knew) is very impressive.
Jose Pablo
Jan 7 2022 at 3:42pm
Roosevelt (and Murphy) would disagree
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