Hopefully Cecil will answer you regarding his claim.
Daniel
Please, let us not couch each others arguments in terms of extremes. I did not in any way imply that “conservatism would march towards law-of-the-jungle libertarianism if not scaled back”, and so please afford me the same dignity.
Socialism creates poverty? Surely not - as in the Game of Life referred to earlier, wealth will necessarily be concentrated in the hands of a few after a number of cycles. Poverty is natural, which is why taxation is used to ameliorate its worst human effects.
And so the only real point of contention is that socialism slows growth, and thereby increases human suffering. I strongly disagree that this is anything like the case, but even if it were: How much do the poor care about “progress” if they cannot afford basics?
Okay, I’ve finally got enough time to respond to some messages in detail, so here goes.
Warning: I’m using the ‘quote’ function and responding message-by-message, so there will probably be a fairly long string of messages from me coming up. So with that…
The real split is not economics/social policy, but government control vs laissez-faire. That applies to social issues as well as economic issues.
Now, I used the phrase ‘conservatism’ to characterize what should properly be called classical liberalism. In the U.S., ‘conservative’ has a somewhat different meaning. But remember there are plenty of other ‘conservatives’ in the world. So I guess that makes it a bad label. I’m hesitant to use ‘libertarian’, because many of the policies I’m talking about are NOT libertarian. Hayek was not a libertarian. Unfortunately, there are no good labels that haven’t been distorted. So I’m just going to stick to ‘conservatism’.
I’ve been hearing a lot about ‘fiscal conservativism’ from a lot of Democrats lately, but I am suspicious. I don’t think they are fiscal conservatives at all, except for one issue - balanced budgets. And even so, I suspect the impulse comes from opposition to Bush’s deficits than any real desire to see a balanced budget.
But hey, I’ll give them credit for the balanced budget notion, except for one thing - their mechanism for balancing the budget is invariably to raise taxes. This is not fiscal conservatism. Fiscal conservatism is better characterized as balancing budgets through spending restraint. I don’t see a whole lot of spending restraint on either side of the aisle in the U.S.
I don’t think you understand the concept. ‘Spontaneous order’ doesn’t mean random or chaotic, or some special condition that arises when everything is set up just right. It means order created through bottom up decision-making, rather than by central planning. The theory is this - if you put in place a series of rules, and then unleash people to act in their own interests, but within the limits of those rules, they will create order unintentionally. In computer terms, it’s like a rules-based expert system.
In fact, this same dividing line exists in artificial intelligence - for a long time, researchers tried to impose intelligence by planning every little detail of how a computer should think. Programming millions of exceptions, rules, facts, etc. The other way of doing it is to simply set up some simple rules, and then allowing the system to evolve on its own.
Speaking of evolution - this is another example of spontaneous order. Mutations happen, animals live or die based on choices, and with some simple rules about how the effects of choices can allow better mutations to survive and worse ones to fail, out of all that we have the natural world in all of its amazing complexity and order. With no central planning.
Another example is language. There was no central planning committee that decided what the English language should be. It just evolved. Spontaneous order. There was a need - people had to communicate. There were simple rules - limits of vision, vocal capabilities, comprehension. Out of that has evolved a fantastically rich language.
Yet another example is the Internet. It is based on some very simple rules - TCP/IP networking, HTTP messaging, and a handful of other basic standards. Out of that has grown a massively complex, yet very ordered and efficient world. No one involved in Arpanet could foresee that one of the biggest commercial uses of the internet would be a nationwide system for auctioning used merchandise, for example.
Let’s not stretch the analogy too far. You’re describing a monopoly and corruption. Nothing in what I have talked about precludes the ability to pass laws to prevent monopoly and corruption. In fact, I explicitly mentioned what markets need to function - multiple producers, multiple consumers, information availability, and a direct link between costs and benefits. The rules Hayek supported are rules to ensure these things, which is why he’s not a Libertarian.
But by considering this to be a common or likely occurance, you over-estimate this problem. You also under-estimate the ability of the market to correct such problems. Consider Enron - many people consider that a failure of the market. But I consider it a failure of government. After all, the market DID react to the scandal - You’ll notice there is no longer an Enron. Its stock price fell through the floor, capital fled, and the company went under. But how many Enron people has the government put in jail? How much of Enron’s excesses came because of its close ties to government? How many politicians protected Enron because of campaign contributions?
And here’s the other thing - government can punish Enron, but it can’t intelligently change the system to prevent future Enrons. Not to the extent that the market can, anyway. Because let me tell you, the Enron debacle sent shock waves through the market, and sparked tons of voluntary reforms. Why? Not because the heads of other businesses were saints. Other financial companies began reforming because the market demanded it. General Electric stock got hammered after Enron, because GE’s business model beared some similarity - it buys lots of companies, it has a large financial services division, nobody really understood all that it did, etc. So GE was forced by the market to react. It opened the books, hired independent auditors, called meetings of its managers and instituted new accounting practices, etc. The same thing happened in hundreds of other companies.
That’s not true. Liberal support of regulation comes from the desire to ‘fix’ society through the use of government. Remember Hillary’s ‘it takes a village’? What she really meant was ‘it takes a very large government’. Liberals want to move the entire health care industry into the arms of government. Liberals have been the champions of nationalized industry and opponents of privatization. Liberals support nanny-state regulation of everything from air bags in cars to what kind of labels have to be on soda pop cans. Liberals favor government day care centers for children, government programs for job training, government programs for managing technology (the silicon chip consortium, for example), government regulation of vehicle efficiency, state-run mass transit, etc. ad nauseum. The Liberal impulse when faced with a problem in society is to, A) blame the market, and B) propose some form of government program or regulation to fix it.
No argument from me. I’ve become very disillusioned with Bush, as have many other free market types. His domestic programs are actually more liberal than Bill Clinton’s were. Aside from taxes, Bush has been a dismal failure from the conservative viewpoint. He wants to intervene in science (cloning bans, etc). He has proposed massive expansions of federal education programs, a huge prescription drug plan for seniors, increases in many other programs.
However, it will be interesting to see his second term. Some people have suggested that Bush’s tax cuts were designed to intentionally create a huge deficit. And here’s why: There is much support for cutting taxes, so it’s politically feasible. There is NO political support for cutting the size of government. There is also very little political support for raising taxes.
So here’s the conservative ‘end run’ for a two term president - in the first term, you cut taxes massively. You leave spending alone. This makes everyone happy except the deficit hawks. The resulting economic boom (this is a Keynesian stimulus), coupled with increased spending on pet programs for liberals and independents, causes the president to win a second term decisively. Then, pressure builds to cut deficits, and now there is political will to cut spending. It’s unpopular, but why would he care? He can’t run for election again anyway. So you hand out the carrots in the first term, then the deficit stick comes out in the second.
The Iraq war, however, may have thrown a big monkey wrench into this plan, if indeed it was the plan at all. I thought it was intriguing two years ago, but now I think it’s just a last-gasp conservative hope. I think Bush is just like his dad, who was also a big spending Republican.
It doesn’t just look like it, I think that’s what it is. I think you go too far with the SEC Enron/Worldcom stuff, which I don’t think the administration really has a lot to do with, and I think you’re off the mark with the competitive bidding process in Iraq. The reason the companies who are in Iraq are there is because largely they are the only American companies with the capabilities to do the job. But I agree with you 100% when it comes to trade, tariffs, farm subsidies, etc. These are not conservative positions. Frankly, I think Karl Rove is responsible for that stuff. This is not a principled administration, at least when it comes to these things. This is pure political calculation, and very destructive at that. Bush’s decisions on steel and farm subsidies and the U.S. intransigence with the WTO is not just wrong, and not just destructive to the U.S. economy, it’s devastating to the poor people of the third world.
Now granted, it’s hard to cut subsidies, especially in an election year. Bush needs the farm votes, and he needs as much of the labor vote as he can get. But a smart conservative would have portrayed these trade issues as a leg of the war on terror - which they are. It is very much in the U.S.'s interests to solve the poverty problem in the 3rd world, and the very best way to do this is to liberalize trade. Those poor African nations are the next breeding ground for terrorists. And farm subsidies of the rich nations give them a legitimate grievance.
You have just contradicted yourself. You said you have no problems with capitalism, then you say that there is no evidence that it has ever resulted in anything desirable. Which is it?
Let’s phrase it the proper way: Are we willing to accept less overall wealth, less freedom, and slower economic growth for the sake of liberal values, or do we think that ultimately the answer to human suffering is to increase efficiency, maximize growth, maximize liberty, and make the pie bigger for everyone?
The story was to illustrate that when you meddle in the market to fix a perceived problem, you create more problems. These in turn require more interventions to fix them. This is Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom”. Once you begin to meddle in the market, you are led to further and further meddling. Freedoms begin to be restricted, goverment grows, efficiency is hurt, and in the end you wind up with something very destructive.
You can see this in action all around the world.
Your example arises because the model is incomplete. These are indeed flaws of the model I described. So what would the ‘bottom up’ solution be? Well, have a look at the structure of the market. Advertising, consumer surveys, brokers, other intermediaries.
The big thing my example is missing is the benefit to the producer. Let’s assume that the people who walk these paths are going to pay money for their use - and the shorter the path, the more money they’ll pay. Now there’s incentive for the producers to maximize revenue by appealing to the most people possible, and providing the shortest paths possible. That solves your wheelchair problem. In fact, perhaps the wheelchair bound would be premium customers, because at least other people can cut across the grass, while the wheelchair people gain more benefit from paved paths.
Now, no doubt you can manufacture other ‘flaws’. This is, after all, a very simple model. And the real market is very, very complex.
Then how did I get to where I am? I came from a dirt-poor background. Now I’m firmly in the upper middle class. And my case is not unique - fully 20% of people in the bottom quintile in the U.S. move up two or more quintiles in economic standing within a 10 year period. And an equal number at the top move down two or more quintiles.
We can dispute the amount of suffering markets cause, but let’s also remember that by far the most suffering of humanity in the last century came at the hand of government.
But yes, totally unfettered markets will fail in some areas, and some of those failures may create a lot of damage. That’s why Hayekian capitalists (probably the best term for it) are not libertarians or anarchists. We recognize market failures happen. We recognize that some small social safety net is a good thing. We recognize that the will of the people is to keep some aspects of the market in check. But we start from the perspective that he who governs best governs least. So interventions in the market should be done very carefully, with an eye towards allowing as much functioning of market mechanisms as possible. For instance, if we recognize that pollution is a problem the market isn’t solving efficiently, a Hayekian would prefer something like tradable pollution credits over direct government regulation and micromanagement of factories.
Here’s a perfect example along the same lines - hybrid cars get great gas mileage, and may be a good technology. They may even be cost-effective, IF all of the costs of alternatives were borne by consumers (tailpipe emissions, greenhouse gases, political instability from reliance on middle-east oil, etc). Let’s say we can agree that it would be good if 10% of the people drove hybrids. A liberal solution might be to mandate that manufacturers must make 10% of their fleet hybrids. A Hayekian solution would be to calculate the cost to society of the non-hybrid, and then offer an offsetting tax cut for purchase of a hybrid to level the playing field, and then to simply let the market shake it all out.
How did this morph into a ‘failure of policy safeguards’? This is a discussion of markets and conservatism. The Soviet Union was a ‘failure of policy safeguards’, but that has nothing at all to do with markets. And neither do any of your examples.
Hayek and Friedman were good friends, but they differed with each other on a number of issues. You’re right that Friedman is more of a libertarian, but for my money they are both close enough to be interchangable, compared to how far away we are from the ideal today.
I’m also more a Kemp guy than a Trent Lott type. I’m not even sure what Trent Lott is. I think his #1 issue is keeping Trent Lott in government. Same as most politicians. Newt Gingrich was the last politician I can think of who tried to actually make a principled stand for ideas, and he was run out of town on a rail.
I wish the Libertarian party was just a little more pragmatic. I think there’s a winning formula for a politician in the United States who is willing to stand up for balanced budgets, a hand-off social policy, free trade, an elimination of trade subsidies, a tough foreign policy, dynamic policies with respect to science and technology (i.e. no cloning bans, support for private space efforts) and a philosophy of personal responsibility. This is essentially a libertarian position (other than the aggressive foreign policy), but this person is going to have to play within the rules of the modern state. Let’s face it - social security is not going away. Neither is most of government. The change is going to happen in the margins. The libertarians won’t budge from their idealism, and are destined to be trivial players.
Sam:
Yes, it would be great if those Republicans not aligned so closely with religious conservatism and those Libertarians not aligned so closely with the “tear everything down” crowd could get together and forge a platform around the base you described. Following Friedman’s lead, I like to distinguish between the big “L” Libertarians (party members) and the small “l” libertarians who take a more practical approach as you described. The latter, though, are pretty marginalized in the Republican party. Perhaps they may be able to appeal to the next generation of voters who won’t be so tied to the traditional, socially restrictive Republicans who seem to typify the party today.
Well no, but other issues are much more difficult to quantify, and harder to discuss without devolving into subjectivity. In addition, it’s important to recognize that the wellspring of much social good is wealth.
Then it’s a good thing we’re not talking about anarchy. Again, let me re-state the position: the best way to run an economy is to set up a system of rules that ensure competition, protect people from fraud, allow torts to let people seek justice when wronged, and then to leave the system alone. The point is that once you have set up the rules, order will arise in the market around those rules. Systems will be created, markets will evolve, etc. You should avoid the impulse to constantly tinker with the market to ‘improve’ it, because this tinkering is destructive.
Liberals are constantly claiming that this meddling required because the market must be tightly regulated and controlled to prevent it from running amok. Conservatives say that the market can regulate itself just fine except in some very rare circumstances, as long as you leave it the hell alone. Furthermore, conservatives point to things like regulatory capture to show that well-meaning meddling often winds up with an industry controlling the regulatory process to the detriment of the very people the original regulation was supposed to protect.
I think the extension of the ‘college sidewalk’ analogy was taking an illustration and stretching it beyond reason to try to make a point.
A better statement of this point would be, "Given a set of rules that ensure basic rights of citizens and set up some broad rules for how markets must behave, an order will arise naturally that is highly efficient.
You’re right that there is nothing in the market economy that guarantees a small gap between the haves and have-nots. Neither does the market guarantee anything else in particular, other than that it is a reflection of the aggregate demands of consumers and supplier’s ability to meet that demand within the price range set by consumers. But that’s enough. And the market, by the way, does address social concerns, inasmuch as consumers are willing to pay for those concerns. Paul Newman has raised hundreds of millions of dollars with his salad dressings, and I’m sure that one of the main selling point of those dressings is that, all else being equal, people will spend their money on a product that gives profit to charity. Likewise, Ben and Jerry’s has parlayed its social conscience into a competitive advantage. And numerous companies have taken competitive hits when their business practices met with the disapproval of consumers.
I disagree, for reasons I described in a previous message.
Perhaps it would be more useful to the discussion if you actually gave some examples, and we can discuss them.
First and foremost, thanks for the thorough replies. Second:
This statement smacks of the same anti-liberal propaganda that has been spouted incessantly by extremist conservative ax-grinders. I am surprised that you would buy the Limbaugh/Coulter line. It is just as disingenuous to accuse the left of the above statement as it is for the right to be painted as profit-mongering reptiles. As per usual, there is some truth to both perspectives at the extremes on each end, but hardly enough to support either as a truth. The intentions and philosophy of mainstream liberal political activism are precisely as I have stated them and your disagreement and re-statement of liberal ideology is basically nothing more than spin.
What is factual is that regardless of which ideology you espouse, the U.S. government has evolved over the last 200+ years to indeed be the principle mechanism for effecting social change in this country. That’s not a liberal or conservative opinion - it’s a structural fact. As democratically enfranchised citizens, successive generations of Americans have already decided that representative government is the way “we the people” will go about changing society.
(five minutes later)
…y’know - you may have hit on a key to the level of animosity that has infiltrated ideological debate these days. If your statement is truly the way mainstream conservatives think and act in opposition to what they percieve as liberal ideals, the net result is an implicit effort on the part of “staunch” or “real” or “true” conservatives to roll back the powers of representative democracy upon which the very idea of the United States is founded.
Imagine it - a nation governed by economics, powered by corporations, in a free-market system that we have already determined (I haven’t seen any posts or published research that argues to the contrary) inherently and inevitably results in accelerating levels of social and economic inequality with little or no opportunity for mobility between the two. I can dispute very little of the academic conclusions you and other economists have theorized - such a nightmare scenario would likely be extremely stable and relentlessly efficient. I certainly hope I do not live to see such an “efficient” state.
In my opinion, this thread has succeeded admirably in better defining what it is to be “a conservative” in general ideological parlance. And in its success, it has also succeeded admirably in confirming in clear, concise, intellectually unassailable terms and examples my initial impression that conservative ideology is utterly devoid of the empathetic, compassionate, altruistic behaviours I believe are fundamental to the continuing success of the United States as a nation, and homo sapiens as a species.
However, I am delighted also by the confirmation (again, in a clear, reasoned, academic fashion) that the current administration is in fact not remotely representative of “true” conservatism. I apologize for any unwarranted demonizing of conservatives by association with the Bush administration of which I may have been guilty. I will henceforth reserve my disdain for Dubya and his cronies specifically - all you conservatives are off the hook (for the time being, at least). And last, but not least, I will count on all of you to put your money where your mouths are and vote to evict Dubya if he indeed does not represent your beliefs.
P.S. Sam - I should think the utility industry (ENRON, California power problems from a couple years back, recent blackout) and financial services (burgeoning scandals with mutual funds, conflicts of interest between financial institutions and the companies whose stocks they push, etc., etc.) would be easy and recent enough examples to discuss inability of economic sectors to regulate themselves.
You’re telling me that characterizing liberals who seek to use government to fix problems in society is an extremist characterization? I beg to differ. Who screams for regulation when someone writes an article about a pollution problem? Who is the first to demand government action on everything from second-hand cigarette smoke to the cost of prescription drugs to mandating air bags in cars? I don’t think it’s unfair at all to say that liberals can be characterized by their desire to use government to ‘fix’ problems in society, whereas conservatives are more likely to trust market-oriented solutions or accept the problems as the price of freedom.
This is not even remotely close to being true. Just what ‘social change’ do you think the government has effected? If you look at the changes in social structure in the last 50 years, almost all of it is spontaneous, or driven by random factors. What sparked the teen rebellion of the 60’s? It sure as hell wasn’t government. More likely, it was the rise of the automobile and the freedom it gave teens. What changed our sexual habits? Not government - the Pill had far more to do with it, as it did the rise of feminism.
Government does not shape social change. Government reacts to it.
It is not. It may be the way liberals seek to change society, but conservatives largely resist this impulse. And in either case, as I’ve said, government is a small part of the social order. The vast majority of human interactions in a capitalist society take place outside of the scope of government action.
I’m afraid you’ll have to expound on this. I don’t really understand what you’re trying to say.
This characterization is totally unfair and untrue. While it may lead to a greater gap between the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’, there is significant mobility between the classes. In a capitalist country, you are free to rise as far as your skills will take you, and free to fall as far as your screw-ups will cause. This inherent fact causes people to move back and forth through all levels of the wealth spectrum.
Go have a look at Hong Kong. Is that your ‘nightmare scenario’? It has been run with an almost totally laissez-faire government for decades. Have a look at its economic performance and standards of living, even for the poorest, and compare it to other nations that started out from similar circumstances.
You are painting a picture of capitalism that you think inevitably leads to a small collection of oligarchs who own everything while the huddled masses starve in the streets. There is no evidence for this. In fact, the evidence is overwhelmingly opposite - if you look at the quality of life for workers and the poor in countries throughout the world, and map it to the degree with which those countries have embraced free market principles, you’ll find something very startling - capitalism is the poor’s best friend.
Well, you apparently pulled that notion out of thin air, because I’ve said absolutely *nothing negative about those issues. You also make the false assumption that people who do not support government charity are somehow uncharitable. You also neglect the capitalist argument that institutionalized charity creates barriers which harm poor people most of all. For example, look at the liberal idea of public housing. I grew up in public housing. Do you know what public housing does? It collects the disadvantaged and unemployed together into ghettos, where they are stigmatized, where there are no role models for children, and where fatalism and despondency become the prevailing attitude. My family broke out of there due to my mom’s hard work. Many of my friends stayed, and they are STILL there - second and third generation welfare recipients. That government charity was the worst thing that ever happened to them.
Well, you demonized us on several other grounds, so I’m not sure this admission helps a whole lot.
Well, at least as far as we are totally lacking in compassion and caring for our fellow men, eh?
Just as soon as a better alternative comes along. But I’m Canadian, so I won’t be voting for any of them. But for all of Dubya’s faults, at least he doesn’t want to nationalize health care like Howard Dean does. This would be a monumental error that would dwarf anything Bush has done.
But I’ve already used them to show how market regulation DOES work. The government did diddly-squat, but the market punished them heavily. It is self-correcting in a way that government isn’t.
After all, when a business adopts bad practices and runs out of money, it goes out of business. When a government program gets mismanaged and blows its budget, it gets more funds and expands. If you want to discuss the failures of the market, we need to balance it off by discussing the numerous failures of government.