One of the great things about mobile devices is that thy turn wasted time into productive time. I’m currently sitting in line at the Memphis Vehicle Inspection Bureau, where I’m waiting with my engine running, AC running, and stereo playing (U2′s “War,” if you’re curious). Times like this are opportunities to reflect on arguments for and against government.
First, inspections like these are all-or-nothing. They’re pRt of a broader war against marginal reasoning. I have too often had to pay ponderous sums to fix cars that just barely failed inspections in Tennessee and Missouri.
The obvious response is that I’m a malcontent deserving of scorn because I’m upset about being inconvenienced for the greater good. Here, interventionists are making a clear mistake by assuming that their policies produce their desired results. I won’t go into detail, but it isn’t that hard to imagine that these inspections are, on net, bad for the environment (they’re good for mechanics and car companies, which would be an interesting Baptists-and-Bootleggers investigation). First, the infrastructure has to be built and maintained. Second, I (and every other driver in Memphis) has to sit for a pretty long time with a car running (or perpetually having to stop and re-crank). Third, getting a car fixed produces additin intrusions on air and water quality. It’s not an environmental free lunch. And I haven’t even brought up the burden on the poor.
This raises a point about rhetorical strategy. Moral arguments for liberty are sufficient, but I don’t think they’re usually necessary. Most of the proposals for intervention that I see claim that a particular intervention (mandatory inspection of older vehicles) will produce a desired result (cleaner air). Often, it’s easy to show that these policies are not merely ineffective, but counterproductive. The case for intervention falls apart quickly when we establish the unintended-but-inevitable consequences.
As a matter of rhetorical strategy, I think this is pretty robust. In discussions of the TSA, for example, those who are telling us to “bend over” are basing their recommendation on an incorrect understanding of the net effects and the tradeoffs. Whether you have the right to touch my junk or threaten me with jail for failing to have my vehicle inspected is, I think, of secondary importance once we establish that the interventionists’ desired consequences will not materialize.
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This raises a point about rhetorical strategy. Moral arguments for liberty are sufficient, but I don’t think they’re usually necessary.
I contend the exact opposite: The idea that utility trumps morality* is one of the things that has gotten us into this mess. Utility varies; preference is heterogeneous, but if one’s interlocutor denies the essential morality of self-ownership, at least one knows with whom one is dealing.
*I know that Professor Carden is not arguing for utility as preferable or superior to morality. One of the most potent things liberty has going for it is its impartiality: the advantages of liberty are equally available to all (the advantages to state intervention, conversely, are most available to political rent-seekers and those with favorable connections).
I think his point was that if something fails to even do what it is claimed to do, one doesn’t even need to get into the morality of it; it fails on its own terms.
I see your point, but doesn’t the response to pointing out its ineffectiveness become, “Do it again, only harder?” or “With the right people in charge, it would have worked!”?
I think going straight to the morality puts us in the position of arguing from principle, which we should be doing in any case, and has the benefit of guillotining the usual counter-arguments.
Thanks for the comments. I don’t think the arguments to which I allude are utility-based, nor do they lend themselves to “try again” and “elect the right people.” The beauty, for example, of Mises and Hayek’s arguments against socialism is that they showed how even under the best of all possible circumstances, rational economic calculation in the socialist commonwealth is literally impossible. We can do the same with a ton of other interventions, like the minimum wage. Unless someone can show convincingly that there is only one buyer of labor, the minimum wage will always and everywhere create unemployment and waste resources. Shay was right: by their stated goals, interventions fail.
This isn’t to say we shouldn’t make moral arguments, and in the intellectual division of labor there are people who are well equipped to do it. We can save ourselves a lot of frustration by showing the interventionists that even by the interventionist’s standards for what counts as moral, right, and just, intervention fails.
Ah, I see your position more clearly now. Your last sentence in this comment is helpful. Thanks.
You’re welcome. Thanks for the comment!
When pondering such interventionist and socialistic interferences I find it convenient to start with three suppositions which Mr. Carden eludes too:
1. It is always about money and power–Always! Even if those involved were truly high-minded–unlikely–it will quickly morph into a cesspool of money and power (corruption). I just assume this and look for the benefactors if I need to know the specifics.
2. The government always accomplishes the opposite of the STATED goal of its intervention. Always! This is always my starting point when analyzing what the effect of some government action will be.
3. As Hayek points out, government’s natural position is one of conflict. So I assume conflict is always baked into the mix.
The corollary to all of this is that government takes money and power from the people and produces only what it can which is conflict.
My thanks to Mises.org, as all of this has popped-out of my reading and studying on this site and the books recommended here.
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