Recently, I ran across a blog by some fringe uber-liberal blogger mourning the death of Bin-Laden as a misguided hero willing to sacrifice his life for the sake of "oppressed". Her words turned my mind to the question that puzzled me for a long time. Why is contemporary liberalism simultaneously anti-American (more generally anti-Western in the sense of Western cultural values) and anti-Israel in nature? What is that psychological trait which turns people born in USA and Europe to hate values on which their native civilization was founded? What is it that makes liberal Jews, to whom Israel did nothing bad personally, to hate it that much?
Obviously, liberals are against capitalism, and this explains their hatred for such things as individualism, private property, economic freedom, limited government. Capitalism was invented in the West, and US is perceived as the country embodying it the most, thus the anti-West and anti-US sentiments of the liberals are quite natural. What is more puzzling is why they always go hand in hand with loathing for Israel, which is a country with long-lasting socialist traditions.
In an attempt to find the answer to this question, let me begin by noting that liberalism is based on the idea, originating from Marxists class struggle theory, according to which people belong to one of two categories: they are either oppressors or the oppressed. The latter deserve sympathy and should be defended, while the former must be anathematized and, when possible, destroyed. Practical application of this idea depends, of course, on how one determines who the oppressor is, and who is being oppressed. This is where liberals very successfully play their favorite linguistic game redefining words and giving them new meanings. For me oppression is associated with Stalin's GULAG or with Hitler's gas chambers, but this is not what liberals mean by “oppression” these days. Nothing helps to understand the actual meaning of the words than looking at their usage.
The main favorite oppressor these days is, of course, Israel. Never mind that nobody heard about concentration camps build by Israel for Palestinians or about mass extermination of the latter by the former. (And, yes, I do know about certain incidents perpetuated by Jewish groups in 1948, which, while definitely, regrettable, were committed in the midst of the war and never became official policies of the State of Israel). In modern Israel, Arab citizens have the same civil rights as Jews including their own representation in the Knesset. Living conditions of even those Palestinians, who do sit in Israeli prisons for such insignificant things as blowing up Israeli civilians, are often better than that of their “free” compatriots. There has been a press report recently about two Palestinians refusing to leave the prison so that they could complete their education. So much for being oppressed! But it all does not matter because liberals learned very well Lenin’s dictum: “A lie told often enough becomes the truth”. Their demonization of Israel has been so persistent that now everybody is convinced that Jews are the most evil people in the Middle East, and “the pain in the asses” as one famous movie director put it recently.
When liberals do not blast Israelis, they like to talk about global guilt of the West before underdeveloped countries in Africa or Latin America or the same Middle East. Before WW 2, the Western countries "oppressed" the rest of the world directly by colonizing them. What does it matter that those “oppressors” built infrastructure, provided education and medical services to those whom they oppressed? So what that after "liberation" most of this infrastructure, medical and educational institutions fell in disarray, and the newly free nations, especially in Africa succeeded mostly in killing each other? While after the war Europe engaged in restoring their cities and developing their economies, Africa self-destructed. Instead of accepting responsibility for their people, African leaders helped by Western liberals, succeeded mostly in the blame game and stealing whatever resources the West had sent to their countries. The West is being blamed for everything including AIDS epidemics. The idea that one has to use condoms during sex turned out to be much less appealing than suggestions that the Western countries created HIV virus in order to get rid of Africans and to appropriate their resources. And it does not matter how many financial and human resources western countries wasted in Africa, it is never enough. If Africans are miserable, it is because of West's colonial, neocolonial or postcolonial policies.
The faces of oppressors and oppressed back home in the "Land of opportunities" are also well known. The most obvious oppressors are of course the "fat cats” from the Wall street, greedy bankers, and the biggest and the scariest one – the Corporation. Vilification of corporations in liberal media became so beyond any reason that it appears that Corporations are some evil monsters from outer space rather than just one of many ways to organize ownership and governance of a business. Liberals seem to forget that corporations provide hundred thousands of people with jobs and manufacture those things, which liberals do not feel any shame to use in their daily lives.
In addition to large oppressors, there are smaller oppressors, which judging by Obama’s tax proposal, are everyone making more than $250 K per year. They may be not as evil and powerful as Big Oil or Big Farma or Koch brothers are, but they still oppress “less fortunate”, just by the virtue of possessing their “fortune”. One should admire Left’s linguistic abilities in inventing names designed to conceal the actual nature of phenomena they discuss. Term “less fortunate” is supposed to convey the idea that being poor has nothing to do with people making their personal choices, but it just a matter of good or bad fortune. Here are a few examples of those who are encouraged to think about themselves as oppressed. Students at my university feel so oppressed that a week before the finals, instead of studying, went to demonstrate and demand that more money were taken from those who has them and given to them. Another example: welfare mothers, a whole bunch of the “Precious”, who do not have the will and skills or even a desire to hold a job, but dream big about how they magically appear on a brightly lit stage, in a glamorous dress, and are admired by everyone. Also oppressed are the drug dealers and the drug users. The former sell drugs because they are not provided with other economic opportunities and the latter use them for exactly the same reasons. In general, oppressed are those who have “needs” they cannot fulfill and demand that other people were forced to provide for them.
Now, let us see if there is anything in common between these disparate examples of “oppression”. There might be more than one unifying motif here, but the one, which seems almost obvious to me, is that in all these cases oppressors are those cultures, countries, individuals who succeed, and the oppressed are those who fail. Indeed, Israel built a functioning state with a powerful army, modern economics, developed infrastructure, medicine, world-class education, and the level of life unseen in this part of the woods. Palestinians, at the same time, completely failed in developing their territories in spite of streams of money sent their way. This observation also helps me to understand why liberal Jews hate Israel so much that actually covertly want its passing to oblivion. They are psychologically frustrated. They would like to be able to be both good Jews and good liberals, which is not possible while Israel exists as a successful state. If Israel were no more and all the Jews (those who would survive) were scattered again all over the world and persecuted, they could be immediately moved to the category of oppressed. At this point, the liberal American Jews would find themselves in a very comfortable position - once again, they could be good liberals and good Jews saving their fellow compatriots and bringing them back under socialistic banners.
The same idea explains the general animosity of liberals toward principal Western values and their embrace of multiculturalism, which is just a code word for diluting western ideals of individualism, rationality, objectivity with cultural values from other much less successful traditions. The only consequence of this dilution can be diminishing role of those values that brought people from all other the world to the West to enjoy its achievements. The result is not difficult to predict: no more achievements.
One can argue that in the world of limited economic resources, the successful people and countries enjoying the fruits of their success consume too many resources leaving too little for those who are less successful, and therefore they become oppressors immediately once they claim their rights on the fruits of their labor. This argument, however, suffers from two fallacies. First, is the presumption that amount of wealth available for distribution is a conserving quantity so that if one has more than the other necessarily has less. Or if put in terms of the game theory, that economic activity is always a zero sum game. This is, of course, not so. Successful people create something, which would not have existed without them, and this defines their success. In very general terms, they create wealth, and by creating wealth, they increase resources available for everyone, including those who are “less fortunate”. Hayek in his “Road to slavery” gives a perfect example of this phenomenon. The labor of a minimally skilled worker by itself is not worth much. When, however, he becomes a part of a bigger enterprise, a factory, created by a successful individual with vision and talent, the worth of his labor increases by orders of magnitude. The second fallacy consists in the assumption that expropriating wealth created by successful people to achieve its more equitable distribution would have no influence on its overall amount. Ayn Rand showed that this is not so very clearly in her Atlas Shrugged, where she demonstrated with almost mathematical precision what happens to a society, which begins such redistribution.
OK, it is time to wrap it up, as I myself am not able to finish reading this post. To conclude: the liberals hate capitalism because they are ashamed of being successful. They believe that success of some is unfair for the others. It might be so, but to punish people and countries just because they succeeded while others failed is not just more unfair – it makes things worse for everyone, including those whom liberals are purported to defend.
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Liberals and Ideology of failure. Take II
Previous thread with the same title got too cluttered, thus we decided to streamline the discussion and move to a new thread. So, here it is. Enjoy.
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Well Lev, I don't even know where to begin--the history of American progressive movements, the European welfare state, Israeli politics... (all referenced in the previous round of discussion--nk)Needless to say I disagree adamantly with almost all of the positions you've taken on these matters, but there just aren't enough hours in the day to cover all the points. So rather than chasing you down these winding paths, I'd like to return to the central premise of your original post--the notion that there is a 'culture of failure' inherent in the liberal worldview. As you put it liberalism does its greatest harm by coddling the "failures" of society and draining resources from the "successes" (i.e. the wealthy and powerful)in order to support them. Aside from the thorny question of how one defines success and failure, what strikes me is just how reminiscent your views are of good old late 19th century Social Darwinism. You know the old song--life is a struggle for existence and only the fittest survive and thrive. As for the rest, they had best content themselves with what they have in life, for they're lucky to have even that.
ReplyDeleteThe nice thing about Social Darwinism was how it provided such a convenient justification for just about anything you might want to justify: savage economic exploitation--the workers are "unfit:" failures don't deserve any better; racial genocide--the inferior unfit races must yield to the master; eugenics--substandard specimens must be eliminated from the national stock so as not to weaken the vitality of the whole.
In fact, Social Darwinian constructs, with their pseudo-scientific veneer, were a particularly potent ingredient in the toxic ideological brew that nourished the vipers of early twentieth century politics--extreme nationalism, anti-semitism, 'scientific' racism, and, of course, fascism. What all of these movements hold in common with Lev's model of a 'culture of failure' is a willingness to dispense with the sanctity of the individual and simply write off people and groups as "failures"--human refuse whose existence on the planet no longer serves a useful purpose.
(to be continued)
I am sure that Lev would not go so far as to advocate a cleansing of the earth's human refuse, although it's not entirely clear what he thinks should await the failures of the world. But the logic of the argument is inexorable--it's truly a slippery slope. Entire classes of people--students, welfare moms, drug dealers (where are your libertarian principles? They're obviously successful entrepreneurs!), Palestinians, Africans--are written off as failures. Since efforts to ameliorate their conditions only draw resources from the successes, the misery of the failures will inevitably deepen and many will no doubt perish. Those who survive will live on the very margins (to pay them more than the fair market value of their labor would waste precious resources) and toil at the menial jobs created for them by the successes, and through which the wealth of the successes comes to fruition.
ReplyDeleteThese ideas are as old as the hills, and we've seen where they lead. As they say--been there done that! Lev claims that liberals are opposed to the individual and espouse ideas that are antithetical to the Western tradition. I would argue that it is precisely the other way around. It is his neo-Social-Darwinism which negates the inherent value of individual life, irregardless of success or failure, and stands at odds with the Western tradition. This notion that the poor, the sick, the aged, the unfit deserve our care and concern is not, as Otto Von Bismarck pointed out when he introduced his welfare program in the 1880s, some dastardly socialist plot. It is basic Judeo-Christian morality. You want to find the real brain-dead liberal--talk to the guy who said "blessed are the poor. the meek, the hungry." Maybe you think this is all bunch of rubbish? Fine! You're in good company--Friedrich Nietzsche and his disciple Ayn Rand felt the same way. But at least they did not try to suggest that the ideas they opposed had nothing to do with the Western tradition.
About Social Darwinism
ReplyDeleteI see where Nathan is coming from with this, but it just shows how little he has understood in my post, which is, possible, the reflection of my failing as a writer. But since it appears the he misunderstands Ayn Rand as well, the problem might have deeper roots. Actually, he is not alone in this. Many liberal thinkers of the past tried to accuse proponents of similar ideas in Social Darwinism, and these attempts have been refuted many times over. But, obviously, these ideas, as old as they are, still require a lot of explanations.
So, if Nathan wants to talk about them in terms of biological allegories, I am all for it. Every biologist knows that competition is not the only survival strategy used by living organisms. A widespread approach to survival is that of symbiosis, when a smaller and weaker species forms a mutually beneficial relationship with larger and stronger species. A classic example of this is the relationship between the plover bird and the African crocodile, when the bird acts as a toothpick for the crocodile feeding on whatever food is stuck between the crocodile's teeth. It is not a very flattering and particularly appetising example, but it works for both. Liberals, of course, would have incited this bird to declare that it refuses to perform such a demeaning job and insist on being classified as endangered species. This, of course, would imply free food and defence against crocodiles. Eventually crocodiles will extinct of declining teeth, free food will end, and the poor bird will become extinct soon after.
What I am trying to say is that in society, as well as in nature, there is a place for people of different abilities as long as they are ready to make efforts to contribute something which would be of value to others instead of complaining about their oppressed situation. It might even involve some menial job, but what is wrong with menial jobs? Why is it worse than, say, teaching history or physics? Doing menial job does not mean that a person is a failure. One is a successful individual if he does his best to live within whatever circumstances are given to him, satisfying his needs up to a level he can afford without burdening anyone. And if in order to achieve this a person works as a janitor, he has more of my respect than some of my college colleagues.
About morals
ReplyDeleteNathan expresses a moral outrage about my position, but is it really that amoral?
Today I was listening to a BBC reporter telling an awful story about a woman in Liberia who lost five of her eight children to various diseases. The touchy report was designed to make me feel ashamed for myself for not providing her children with whatever medicine they needed.
I, however, refuse to feel guilty about this situation, and consider my position perfectly moral. From my point of view, it is the behavior of that woman, who conceived those children while knowing that she could not raise them, is immoral. How moral is it to hold all the decent and compassionate people of the world hostages to her habit of copulating without giving any thoughts to consequences of her actions? I will happily donate money to teach her to use condoms, but this will be the extent of my benevolence toward her and others like her. I am not going to allow anyone to use the fact that I am a decent human being with a capacity for compassion to blackmail me into feeling responsible for someone lack of responsibility.
Now tell me, how moral is it to condone and encourage this woman's behavior by telling tearful stories about her and sending her unlimited amount of aid? Is it? Aren't people who do that should be held responsible for those poor dead babies?
Whoa! I was almost ready to say that we were approaching common ground with the discussion of symbiotic relationships in the second to last comment. But this last bit about the Liberian women put me back on the warpath. Now it seems we're not only dealing with Social Darwinism, but Malthusianism as well. Malthus, if you recall, made a very similar argument about the British lower classes in the early 19th century. Until they could learn to curb their reproductive instincts, he argued, misery, suffering and death were inevitable. Efforts to try to ameliorate their lot were simply a waste of resources that would only make things worse in the long run. It has even been suggested that famine relief to Ireland in the 1840s was blocked for a time by supporters of Malthus's ideas.
ReplyDeleteBut in this Liberian case, the Malthusian argument seems particularly out of place. First of all, is it really so irrational in an area with very high infant mortality to have many children? As I understand it, the children are not dying from overpopulation as such, but rather from disease, famine, etc. With so many deaths, you need to have seven or eight children to be sure that two or three would survive to adulthood. This was standard practice in early modern Europe and in Russia well into the 20th century, and I assume this same pattern may still hold sway in Africa.
So how to change this picture? What alternatives does this woman have? Can she even conceive of alternatives? How can you expect someone who has little or no education (I'm assuming this was the case)or exposure to the outside world to even imagine that there could be another way to live?
But let's just say, for the sake of argument, that this Liberian woman actually does want to have fewer children. Is this something that she can control? Most likely, she is living in a patriarchal society and her husband has the final say over all aspects of her life. Any attempt to resist him would probably mean being severely beaten. But yet you would have me believe that this woman is personally responsible for the deaths of her children?
Why does Nathan always have to use labels? Nietzsche once said that a primitive man would give a name to something and would believe that he solved a problem. While in reality, by believing that the problem is solved, he makes its decision impossible. My post was not about this particular woman, it was about the perverted nature of so called "humanistic" moral, and I am no Malthusianist.
ReplyDeleteBut, in this particular case, I do agree with Nathan's suggestion that multiple births in Africa is a way to compensate for huge infant mortality as it was in Europe in earlier ages. This is a perfectly natural evolutionary mechanism. I do not have any problems with that as long as she is left alone with her way of life, and the rest of the world is not being guilted into having to deal with consequences of her and her husband traditional behavior.
Sorry about the annoying labels, but there is a compelling reason for drawing connections between present day libertarian ideas and established ideological strains. Not only do these libertarian ideas have a long pedigree, they also have had consequences that we can trace through history. So we don't have to take it all on faith. We've seen how these ideas have played out in the real world, and it's not a pretty picture.
ReplyDeleteNice Nietzsche quote, by the way, but I'm not sure it takes us very far. His point is that the very process of using language to represent reality distorts that reality and limits the range of possible actions. But if we take Nietzsche at his word, how can we talk about anything?
Back to the Liberian example. Lev suggest that while there may be an underlying rationality to the reproductive behavior of the woman in question, we should not be made to feel that we are obliged to act to change it. I'm not great fan of guilt trips, so I could accept his basic premise but for two points. First concerns the interconnectedness of the world. If we simply wash our hands of all of the impoverished, disease ridden parts of the world and leave them to fester, who's to say that the resulting contagion won't eventually reach our shores? Even from the perspective of naked self-interest there's an argument to be made for humanitarian action.
ReplyDeleteMy second point stands more firmly on humanitarian grounds. Surely empathy, the ability to feel another person's pain, is a basic human quality built into our very neurological make-up. There's been interesting research over the past decade into so-called mirror neurons that allow us to reproduce internally what we see others experiencing. So the impulse to feel the suffering of others and strive to alleviate it is a basic component of what makes us human--it's hardwired. What's wrong, then, with wanting to improve the lot of the Liberian woman? If we have the capacity and the will to improve health care, reduce infant mortality, educate women, stifle violence and corruption, why shouldn't we do these things? I realize, of course, that these problems are intractable and that there are no easy solutions. It's tempting to dismiss Africa as a basket case, but people were saying the same thing about China 100 years ago. Not only is development possible, it is the only way of breaking the vicious cycles that keep people locked into poverty, violence and despair.
Actually, libertarian's ideas had a very short history of practical application, and that history was spectacular. Never before civilization developed faster and economic condition of so many people improved by so much than during the short period of time when markets were really free of government intervention. Of course, there were those, whose life did not improve as much as they would had liked, and there was poverty and diseases, but comparing to the pre-capitalist era, it was a giant leap forward.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, as Hayek points out in his Road to Slavery, people are very impatient, and their leaders are too opportunistic and hungry for power to let that path to prosperity to continue unobstructed. Deviations form libertarianism (or better to say classical liberalism) also has its own distinguished history, which involves such figures as Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, etc. Thus, I am not sure if appealing to history actually proves your point.
As far as us being hard-wired for compassion, we are hard-wired for many contradictory things. I have nothing against compassion if it is rational and based on cold cost/benefit analysis. Pure compassion exercised by humanitarian organizations for last 50 years proved to achieve nothing. Actually it seems that with rare exceptions things are getting worse whenever NGOs go. I am surprised that you are using China as an example, because it just proves my point. Nobody was coming to China or India with any humanitarian help and giving them money to waste. Whatever they achieved they achieved first of all because they freed individual energy of their citizens, even though only partially. So, we are back to square one: when you reward success you have success, when you reard failure you can only have even more spectacular failure.
So, the heyday of libertarian ideals was a time of spectacular success, a great leap forward (to quote the inimitable Mao Tse-tung)? I assume that Lev is referring to the early period of European Industrialization before the state began to impose significant regulation on the behavior of industry. Let’s take a closer look and see what we find: starvation wages, 14 hour work days, brutal child labor, draconian labor discipline, dangerous and unhealthy work conditions, inadequate housing, poisoned food and water, massive environmental degradations, etc. etc. Certainly, there was tremendous economic growth, but at a terrible cost. If this is what success looks like, I’d hate to see failure! If these conditions had continued unabated, it’s likely that industrial capitalism would have collapsed, as Marx predicted. It was only when states intervened to impose limitation on the rapacious behavior of the industrialists that capitalism settled into a more sustainable pattern.
ReplyDeleteIncidentally, this libertarian dreamland was not just a phenomenon of 19th century Europe. Similar conditions can be found throughout the developing world wherever the state lacks the strength to impose and enforce regulations on industry. Whether it’s the maquiladoras in Mexico, gold mines in New Guinea, or sweat shops in Thailand it’s a similar picture: meager wages, exploitative labor practices and environmental devastation.
Lev’s approach however seems to be to deny the very possibility that exploitation and oppression in these forms can even exist. He is all too willing, of course, to recognize the state as an oppressive force. But when the source of oppression shifts from the public to the private sphere, the whole phenomenon suddenly vanishes into the mist. A priori, there can be no oppression among private individuals and entities because those who might consider themselves oppressed are by definition failures and therefore deserve whatever treatment is meted out to them by the “successes.” And should this tautology ever crack there is always the argument that all is for the best in the best of all worlds—that however horrendous conditions may have been, any possible alternative would have been infinitely worse, since it wouldn’t have led to the wonderful life we live today. I don’t think I need to elaborate the absurdities that emerge when you take this argument to its logical extremes.
At the heart of our disagreement, it seems to me, are two fundamentally differing views of human nature—one realistic, the other utopian. We’re all used to hearing that liberals are the misty-eyed dreamers while conservatives are the hard headed realists. By it seems to me that in some respects it’s the other way around. Lev would have us believe that as long as economic interests are left to themselves they will somehow automatically moderate their behavior and act not only in their own best interests, but also in the best interest of society as a whole. Just leave it to the markets, conservatives insist—the self-regulating magic of market forces will kick into action and right all wrongs, cure all ills, ease all suffering. Rules, apparently, will emerge spontaneously and enforce themselves with no conscious effort or external intervention. This is about as likely, it seems to me, as throwing a bunch of monkeys in a swimming pool and excepting to find them playing water polo in half an hour
ReplyDeleteIn the real world, people just aren’t that good at policing their own behavior. Despite my earlier plea for empathy, I would have to admit that in most cases when set head to head against the power of greed, empathy will lose out. If there’s a large enough advantage to be gained, most people will eventually allow themselves to inflict harm on others, particularly if it can be justified through various ideological manipulations and inflicted through intermediaries. It is only when an external force representing the interests of society as a whole imposes constraints, that individuals will curb their natural egoism and work within the confines established by society. Call it the ‘nanny state’ if you like, but I prefer to see it as the rule of law, a fundamental precondition for any kind of economic, social or political progress.
This is a nifty rhetoric trick: state a position which your opponent did not take and then very passionately fight it. Since when did classical liberalism/libertarianism become an equivalent of anarchism? I also cannot see where Nathan found that libertarians expect people to act of any other reasons but their self-interest? The basic tenet of classical liberalism is that people do and must pursue their self-interest.This is a typical libertarian view of men: ""egoistic, coldly calculating, essentially inert and atomistic". Ain Rand goes even further than that, claiming that for people behave this way is not just the reflection of their true nature but the only moral way to behave. In reality, it is the modern liberals of collectivist variety insist on people behaving for the sake of "common good" forfeiting their self-interest. In my view, those who claim common good as their motif are conscious or subconscious liars. Assuming that acting in self-interest of one person is always harmful to another person means to suggest that people cannot have overlapping interests, which is plainly wrong.
ReplyDeletePeople are able to cooperate finding mutual benefit in actions fulfilling and/or balancing their self-interests. Still, it is obvious that people need an arbiter, something which would prevent them from pursuing their own self-interest at the cost of the harm to other people. This is one of the main elements of libertarianism. Libertarians never claimed that government does not have a role to play in regulating people activity. If Nathan read Hayek, he would know that it was always recognised that government is a giver of the rules, and that the Rule of Law is one of the main elements of a successful libertarian society. Hayek has an entire chapter titled The Rule of Law in his book.
The problem is of, course, not with the words. The problem is that we speak different languages even if it appears that we all speak English. The key words such as Liberty, Rule of Law, Equal Opportunities, Oppression, have been given lately a completely perverse meaning, so that any meaningful discussion is only possible through deconstructing each of these notions, and showing what they actually mean each time people use them. This is an impossible task, so I do not have much hope for the society, in which its key vocabulary has been essentially inverted in its meaning without people even noticing it. This is the key victory for modern liberals, but this is the Pyrrhic victory, the one which will eventually bring us all down.
I must admit, I'm rather confused by Lev's response to my last comments. Where did I ever suggest that libertarians were motivated by anything other than self-interest? And if I've engaged in perverse distortion of the meaning of words, such as to bring about the collapse of civilization, I'd like to know more specifically what it is I said.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me, in fact, that contemporary conservatives are the true virtuosos when it comes to twisting the meaning of words. Look at the way the term "socialist" was tossed around during the first two years of the current presidential term. Obama, we heard, was a fanatical socialist; 'Obamacare' was the purest embodiment of socialized medicine; etc. etc. Never mind that Obama, if was clear from the start, was about as middle of the road as they come, and the healthcare plan he was saddled with by conservative democrats was a far cry from anything resembling a single-payer state run plan. Yet Republicans felt the need to frighten the teeming masses, and socialist was about the scariest label they could devise. The real meaning was irrelevant.
I'm glad to hear that Hayek approves of state regulation. But I wonder whether he can really be considered a libertarian in the present day meaning of the term. My impression of Road to Serfdom was that it was a passionate and well-argued polemic against a system that has long proven to be utter dysfunctional--the Stalin era planned economy. In essence, Hayek's book, from the perspective of the present day, is a dramatic charge through an open door. It was relevant in 1944 when the notion of a planned economic still garnered some support on the left, but now its significance is mainly historical. Admittedly, I don't know a lot about Hayek's later work, but I would venture to suppose that there is a considerable distance between the more or less sensible, albeit somewhat tendentious ideas of Hayek and the far more extreme and dangerous ravings of Ayn Rand.
ReplyDeleteI would also draw a line between Hayek's qualified embrace of state regulation and present day conservative/libertarians who seem to reject out of hand any and all attempts at regulation no matter how moderate and necessary. Whether it’s safety devices on table saws which, it turns out, amputate extremities with alarming frequency, or controls on the financial derivative market which almost destroyed our economy, conservatives place the interests of business above the need to protect ordinary people through regulation.
Nathan, you misunderstand Hayek. He was not talking about Stalin style planned economics, which is too obvious an example. He was talking about overreaching state regulations, when it regulates things, which market can regulate much better. His point was that any degree of regulation beyond bare minimum necessitate some degree of planning with all its inefficiencies and lost of individual freedom. The more complex the regulation the more power the elected legislators must delegate to unelected bureaucrats, who the exercise their uncontrolled power over individuals. Dodd-Frank bill is the case to this point.
ReplyDeleteAs far as your table saw example goes, why should a state demand safety devices on the table saws? Are consumers so stupid that they will keep buying staff known to be unsafe, and are manufacturers are such idiots that they would continue producing devices, which nobody wants? Why you, liberals, think that some bureaucrats in Washington or Albany know better about products than people who actually use them or produce them? This is a clear example of overreaching regulations, based upon paternalistic attitude of smart "elite" toward stupid masses. People are quite capable to figure it out between themselves.
You, in general, misrepresent libertarian's position on the role of state. Even for extreme libertarians, such as Ayn Rand, state was needed to protect people against each other.
But all this is the theme for a separate discussion. The current topic is a reaction to a completely skewed situation when the state instead of being an impartial arbiter in relation between free people making free choices about their lives, engages in policies pitting one group of people against the other and taking sides of those whose contribution to the society is the least, giving them empowerment and incentives to continue contributing nothing. This is not a sustainable situation, and it will blow up in every-body's faces.
Also, examples of republicans behaving stupidly do nothing to rebut my charge that liberals are guilty in corrupting meanings of words rendering them useless. If you want to refute my proposition, discuss what I said, and not what someone who I do not care about said. And Obamacare is bad not because it is socialist or whatever, it is bad because it takes away my freedom about making choices about my life, and because it does not solve the problem for which it was designed. It is a sham.
Lev, I wonder if you fully considered the implications of the argument you put forth regarding regulation. Your position as I understand it is basically that people are smart enough to know and choose what's good for them, and therefore it is inappropriate and even harmful for the state to concern itself with peoples' well-being by mandating measures to protect health sand safety. If applied more freely, this principle could take us in some very interesting directions. Certainly seatbelts along with any kind of safety devices in cars would have to become optional at best. And what about food? Surely people are smart enough to know not to buy the food with poisonous additives and contaminants! Why should we let the government tell us what we can and can't eat! Look, if pregnant women want to take thalidomide and have babies with birth defects, that's their business. The government has no business telling drug companies what they can and can't sell to the public. And as for financial products, the government shouldn't even come near them. As P.T. Barnum said, there's a sucker born every minute, and if they choose to buy into bogus bonds and pyramid schemes, they're just doing what comes naturally--no need to get the bureaucrats involved!
ReplyDeleteMy point is that you're treading on a very slippery slope. By rejecting as a matter of principle the idea that the state has an obligation to protect the public from the actions of private profit making ventures, you are turning the clock back 100 years at least to the bad old days of Upton Sinclair's Jungle.
It would be nice to think that individuals would be smart enough not to buy unsafe devices and manufacturers would be benevolent enough not to produce them. But unfortunately this is not the way the world works. Companies will not on their own accord undertake measures that will cut into profits and consumers, by and large, will not voluntarily pay for safety devices at additional cost.
My example of the table saws illustrates this perfectly. It seems that someone has invented a device that shuts down a saw instantly the moment it comes in contact with soft tissue. If it were present on all table saws, it would prevent the loss of thousands of fingers and limbs each year. Yet if I were buying a saw and you asked me, would I pay an extra 50 or 100 dollars for this device, there's a good chance I would say 'no.' Of course, I plan on being exceedingly careful, and could not possibly imagine a case in which my attention might wander. Yet this is precisely what happens to thousands of people each year. This technology has actually been around for quite some time and the inventor tried hard to no avail to get the major tool manufacturers interested before giving up and starting his own business. So the answer is no--this will not happen by itself, the invisible hand will not protect itself from accidental amputation. Only when the government steps in and mandates these safety devices will they become viable. Yet the tool manufacturers are lobbying tooth and nail to prevent the mandate. In fact if you look back at just about any safety regulation currently in place you'll find that it was passed over the adamant protests of the companies involved.
Here is an example from real life provided by Lena. Contractors working on her real estate company have to use several tools with safety devices on them. The problem is that the life-time of these device is significantly shorter than that of the tool itself. Plainly speaking, those devices break quite often. Do these contractors go and buy a new tool? No, they find a way to bypass the safety device and use the tool without it. The only problem is that since they got used to rely on the safety of the tool, they are not as careful as they should be and probability of the accident increases by a large margin.
ReplyDeleteBesides, government regulation is not the only recourse people have in the case of accidents. This country has a well developed civil justice system and possibility of the likely law suites in case a worker is injured due to an unsafe device is a good enough deterrent against large companies making their worker use cheap and unsafe tools. At the same time, people who work for themselves are, as a rule, knowledgeable and skillful enough to use cheaper (it is their productivity on the line) tools to do the job.
Bottom line: regulate or do not regulate, if the customers do not feel the need to use the regulated product, they would not. An attempt to regulate in this case hurts everyone: manufacturers of the devices, their users, and general public that is forced to pay a stepper price for whatever is produced by those more expensive and less reliable safe tools. The only big winner here is that bureaucrat who earns his wages by producing more and more regulations. To be continued.
I believe what you're referring to is called planned obsolescence, and it plagues not only safety devices but any number of products on the market. The logic is simple--create products that only last a few years and are invariably superseded by newer models and the consumer will be forced to more money on the same thing.
ReplyDeleteI certainly wouldn't argue that all regulations are necessary and appropriate or that all safety devices are well-designed and effective. But you're taking the matter to a whole new level by arguing that any and all regulations beyond the minimum standard of the 'night watchman state' are harmful. Do the ‘dangers’ you cite from regulation really outweigh the thousands perhaps even millions of lives that are saved by state regulation? Are you really saying we should go back the days when the state played no role in protecting the health and safety of its citizens?
Actually there is a very good test case of a completely unregulated market. I am referring to the market for illegal drugs. I don’t think anyone would dispute that despite its illicit character the drug market is a market like any other—governed by the law of supply and demand, driven by entrepreneurs who take risks in expectation of a profit. But by declaring this market illegal the state had abdicated any and all claims to regulate its operation. Illegal drugs are the ultimate free market—a libertarian’s dream come true!
ReplyDeleteSo what do we find in this libertarian dreamland? First and foremost, a total and utter disregard for the well-being of consumers. I’m not even referring to the inherent dangers of the products themselves. At least here you can place some of the blame of the consumers themselves—they’re aware of the risks, yet they continue to use drugs. Suppliers are only meeting this demand, proving the maxim that as long as people are willing to pay the price, someone will produce the goods. What strike me are the things that users generally don’t know—like the various additives and contaminants that they ingest along with the drugs. Just this week I read somewhere that as much as 70% of all cocaine seized in America contains the additive levamisole, a deworming agent for horses that can cause potentially fatal infections and allergic reactions among humans. It’s already been recognized as a serious public health threat, but does this matter to our free market entrepreneurs? Levamisole is profitable—it allows the suppliers to stretch the pure cocaine further while enhancing its effect, fooling the users into believe that they’ve received a pure product. Perhaps it seems far-fetched to compare behavior in the unregulated, but illicit drug market with the potential behavior of legitimate business in the absence of regulation. But I disagree. Look at the food and drug industries in the 19th century, before regulations on purity and safety were put into effect. Despite the fact that these industries were operating fully within the framework of the law as it existed at the time, we see a similar pattern of abuse. The litany of horror stories is well-known and I won’t bother reciting it.
The other thing we see in our free market test case is the way in which normal market competition can quickly spin out of control and cross the line into violence and bloodshed, to the point where the state can’t control it even if it tries. The situation in Northern Mexico is a vivid case in point. The violence between drug gangs competing for market share in the American drug business has brought the state, at least on the local level, close to the point of collapse. We saw a similar situation with prohibition during the 1920s. Yet what’s striking is how quickly the violence abated once prohibition was abolished and the state stepped in to regulate the production and consumption of alcohol.
My point here is that markets need regulation going well beyond the minimal ‘night-watchman’ function of protecting property. The public and private spheres are partners, not antagonists. Businesses may well chafe at state regulation, but these regulations help to maintain a balance between the interests of producer and consumers without which the system would collapse. I find it perplexing that libertarian conservatives, blinded by their dogmatic ideology, find it difficult to acknowledge this basic fact.
One last point. I agree completely about the importance of the civil justice system. But I find it somewhat ironic that you bring this up, since 'tort reform' has been one of the great battle cries of conservatives over the past few years. Yes we have the ability to sue manufacturers of harmful and dangerous products, but not for long if conservatives have their way.
ReplyDeleteI do not even know where to begin. Example with prohibition is particularly funny because prohibition is the ultimate in state control of consumption and production. Once the state got out of the prohibiting consumption of alcohol, you are right, the problems just disappeared. I still think that even now there are too much of state interference in it, but given the nature of the product, some of the regulations such as the legal drinking age are quite justifiable, and no reasonable libertarian would argue against them.
ReplyDeleteHowever, your example with illegal drugs shows that you just misunderstand the nature of free market. With the same logic you can call manufacturing of illegal clothing in former Soviet Union in Brezhnev's time an example of a perfectly free market. Why not? The state did not regulate it with exception, of course, of a such a small thing as putting its participants to jail. To think that any kind of illegal operations can represent a libertarian dreamland means to have a very vague understanding of free markets and libertarianism. For instance, any libertarian would tell you that free markets cannot exist without the Rule of Law (in Hayek's sense), and libertarians, contrary to what you might believe, never advocated anarchy or the law of the jungles as a prerequisite for free market. So, sorry, but it appears that instead of discussing libertarian ideas as they are, you are fighting monsters that your own imagination created out of liberal prejudices and misconceptions.
I'm glad to see that you agree with my main premise--that a genuine free market cannot exist without regulation and the rule of law. The question is where to draw the line--when does necessary regulation become harmful intervention?
ReplyDeleteI don't believe I was equating libertarian conservatism with pure anarchy, although the parallels between libertarians and anarchists are undeniable. I did mention the model of the "night watchman state" in which rule of law is focused primarily on protection of property and the state refrains from any interference in the economic interaction of private individuals. Isn't this more or less the same as Hayek's "bare minimum" that you referred to earlier? If not how is it different? If I am misinterpreting libertarianism every step of the way, perhaps you can enlighten me on the proper role of the state. I say this, because it seems to me that although conservatives will make pious pronouncements about the need for rule of law, when confronted with specific scenarios they invariably come out against regulation. If you can't even accept the need for safety devices on dangerous tools, what will you accept?
Perhaps my examples were a bit extreme, although I still think there's something to my thought experiment of viewing the illicit drug trade as a case study of what other markets might look like in the total absence of regulation. But I don't think I was simply chasing monsters from the liberal imagination (although I like the image). Rather I was simply taking the ideas I saw in your comments and extending them to their logical conclusions. The results may not be pleasant, but I think it's a useful exercise. If your ideals take you to places you don't want to be, perhaps they need to be reconsidered.
No, Nathan, I do not agree with your basic premise because Rule of Law is not synonymous with regulations, and as far as I am concern, it is a logical or linguistic fallacy even to put these two terms next to each other. Unless, of course, you want to explain the distinction between them. Seeing how deeply the confusion about these concepts is engrained in the liberal minds, I guess I will have to write a special post on the topic making an honest attempt to clarify them.
ReplyDeleteAt this point I just would like to add that nothing in your example with drug trade can be construed as a logical development of libertarian views no matter to what extreme you would develop it. I already said that no kind of illegal endevor can model free markets, but since it appears that this point has escaped your attention, I want to reiterate it again.
So, Lev, is it fair to say that you believe in the rule of law but reject regulation absolutely and completely? I'm having a hard time following the twists and turns of your thinking here, but if this is indeed the case, then you've proved my point about how conservatives/libertarians profess adherence to the rule of law but fight tooth and nail any time law is applied in the form of concrete regulations.
ReplyDeleteFrankly, I'm baffled by this supposed dichotomy between law and regulation. In the rarefied air of your Randian heights you can concoct whatever formulations you like, but down here in the real world these terms have specific meanings derived from centuries of legal precedent and administrative practice. And in the real world law and regulation are inextricably linked. Laws originate as legislative acts and set forth the guiding principles underlying a particular set of policies--something like No Child Left Behind, to give a random example. The way in which laws are implemented and enforced are determined through regulations created by the administrative bodies charged with the task of putting the law into effect. Because regulations are an extension of the law, they carry behind them the full force of law--a violation of a regulation is juridically indistinguishable from a violation of the underlying law. In this sense, there can be no rule of law without regulations, since regulations are the mechanisms through which law is applied and enforced.
This is not some kind of abstract philosophical speculation on my part. I am describing how our system of government actually works. If this isn't to your liking, perhaps there's some other government that would be more amenable. Somalia, perhaps? Mozambique, Yemen? Sharia law? Tribal law? Otherwise, I'm hard pressed to come up with any functional modern state that does not govern through the combined force of law and regulation.
There is another way that the actual term regulation is used. When we speak, for example, of "state regulation of financial markets" we are referring not so much to the specific statutes and conditions set by regulators as to the general practice of regulation--the process of oversight through which the state establishes limitations and guidelines--sets in place the rules of the game. But the process through which these rules are established inevitably involves legislation, and once in place the rules are enforce by the power of law--you break the rules, you go to jail. So once again law and regulation go hand in hand. Am I missing something here?
I am afraid that you are, indeed, and this is why I feel that I will have to devote a special post to this topic. Meanwhile, let me give you a preview of what it will be about. A very concrete example of the laws and regulations. Just yesterday, Lena and I discussed property taxes in New York and their practical implementation. Undoubtedly, there is a law determining the way these taxes are computed. By the law they are a certain percent of the value of the property. The regulatory part comes via determination of this value, which is done through some "formula" by bureaucrats in the New York Department of Finance. And when you try to understand this "formula" you realize that this process allows unelected, and, therefore, uncontrolled by the public bureaucrats to make virtually arbitrary decisions. The decisions they make using these powers are not directed at enforcing the law but are used to solve their present day problems. For instance, this year, when as we all know the housing prices went down or at least stayed flat, they suddenly decided to increase valuation of various properties in Manhattan by as much as 20%, significantly increasing the city's revenue in the time of budget deficit. There is no doubt in my mind that this was an absolutely arbitrary decision made by the City bureaucrats to solve their budgetary problems. This use of regulations is diametrically opposite to the true Rule of Law, which presumes consistency, predictability and impossibility of the changes on someone's whim. The lesson of this example: the Rule of Law should not provide opportunities to bureaucrats for arbitrary changes in the way the law is applied, and if it does, it is not a Law (with capital L) but a regulation. The Laws are subjected to a democratic process, while reliance on regulations expresses the authoritarian nature of the state.
ReplyDeleteInteresting example--one which, when properly analyzed will, I believe, illustrate my point on the nature of regulation quite well. But I agree that this should be the topic of a separate post. We've drifted far off the initial topic. So I'll look forward to a new discussion, and you, Lev, can look forward to my response. Maybe I'll also write something up myself about the whole drug trade issue which I think needs some further explanation.
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