Here is an interesting paper by Christopher Coyne and Steve Davies. It counters the argument that empire produces public goods by pointing to the many public bads of empire.
Source link: http://archive.mises.org/6276/public-goods-and-bads/
Public Goods and Bads
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Good stuff!
For those interested, David Schmidtz has written a pretty interesting book on the topic; mostly destroying the public goods argument as a basis for governmental action, by showing ways to get public goods provided without state interference.
[David Schmidtz, The Limits of Government: An Essay on the Public Goods Argument (1991)]
Foreign intervention out of favor? Who is the writer kidding. All presidents drunk with power (Are they all?) and weak Congresses (Are they all?) go off on their own adventures into the wonder world of involving the nation in other peoples problems. This current one had a whopper of a justification, 3000 dead on 9/11/01, so the few critics there are were stiffled. They are beginning to speak out.
There are no public goods to war. War is the ultimate tradeoff between individual liberty, limited government, free-markets and peace for violence, destruction, coersion and poverty. The reasons are simple:
1. The people who decide on the war do not have to pay the gigantic cost of the war.
2. The people who decide on the war are not the ones being shot at.
Besides, history is kind to warrior politicians and not very kind to the do-nothing peacenick types.
A cautionary note: Through using that “Politics IV” metric, a pro-imperialist could use the data presented in Tables 1 (p. 26 in the paper; p. 24 in the PDF) and 3 (pp. 34-5 in the paper; pp. 32-3 in the PDF) to conclude that the U.S. government’s track record, in terms of bringing “international stability,” is getting better over time. In other words, that the U.S. government is learning from intervention experience, or is “learning the ropes” of Empire.
Thanks for posting this. Perfect for sending to those “conservative” friends who think that every anti-war argument must be a liberal one.
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