With the election cycle underway, the talk around the office has turned political. I’ve had a number of interesting conversations recently with one particular co-worker who believes himself to be a small-government fiscal conservative. Like most people, he’s accustomed to discussing politics “by the book” – primary results, potential nominees, odds of winning, etc. He’s quite knowledgeable about these things, but I think I’m becoming a real source of frustration for him because I rarely approach political issues from the comfortable perspective of the Sunday morning news shows. Instead of simply accepting the role of government as it currently exists, I always ask two basic questions about any government program: how can the intervention be justified on ethical grounds, and how can the intervention be more efficient than voluntary market solution?
These two questions can be a real head-scratcher if you haven’t heard them before, as my friend from the office can attest (although to his credit he is at least willing to consider them, which is more than most people). He and I have gone back and forth on a number of issues, including public education and the roads. When I ask him my two basic questions, his natural reaction is to justify the public funding of these services on the basis of some benefit that accrues to certain individuals or to society as a whole. For example, he believes government has a legitimate role in education because we all benefit from having an educated populace. Similarly, when we discussed the roads I pointed out that although we both live in north Texas, we pay for road construction in places like Galveston even though neither of us have even been there. His response was, “Well, maybe I have relatives in Galveston who benefit from the roads.”
At this point, I was the one getting frustrated. The idea that government is justified in doing anything whatsoever as long as it is possible to identify some benefit – no matter how limited, expensive, tangential, or inconsequential that benefit may be – is troubling to say the least, particularly when it comes from an alleged conservative. If the mere existence of a benefit is sufficient for government intervention in the marketplace, then ultimately there can be no limits on government whatsoever. It will always be possible to identify or invent some benefit for some group in order to justify ever-increasing government restrictions on liberty.
My friend’s default position, although obviously not reasoned out to any significant degree, seems to be some sort of watered-down utilitarianism. But instead of following the maxim of “the greatest good for the greatest number of people,” his philosophy (to stretch the term) seems to be better stated as “some good for at least a few people,” which provides at least anecdotal confirmation of the suspicions that I have always had about the utilitarian approach. Although defenders of classical liberalism such as Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill have tackled the subject from a utilitarian perspective, I always felt their arguments were built on a shaky foundation. Utilitarianism superimposes the fiction of measurable objectivity over the thoroughly subjective notion of happiness, and grants those in power far too much leeway both to define the greatest good and to determine which policies will lead to it.
Thus, the consequentialist approach is more likely to open the door to creeping socialism than one based on the natural rights tradition, which more carefully delineates the proper function and limits of government. The Lockean philosophy that helped provide the philosophical foundation for the American Declaration of Independence and the Constitution draws bright lines around those government actions which are designed to protect liberty, and allows one to identify actions that exceed those bounds and are therefore detrimental to liberty. Thus, a well-understood concept of natural rights is a more effective constraint against government overreach than a utilitarian approach, which is always subject to endless debates over what constitutes the nebulous “greatest good.”
Indeed the entire Progressive movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and its contribution to socialism is a good example of the dangers of a political philosophy based on the idea that government exists to do whatever the electorate seems to desire, rather than one based on individual rights. The limitless nature of government expansion justified solely by some benefit to a particular group lays the seeds for endless predations on the wealth of the citizens. As government moves into the provision of more and more services (roads, schools, health care), it naturally crowds out private actors from those areas. Once people begin to utilize the now-public goods – as they must – the government can use this as a de facto justification of its initial intervention and as “evidence” that there must have been something inadequate with the original voluntary, market-based solution. Thus utilitarian arguments enable the government to lay claim to an ever-increasing percentage of the individual’s income, with no identifiable limit.
This used to be understood. Although the reader would be hard pressed to find any trace of it today, there was a time when the publishers of The Economist actually understood economics and even defended the free market. Thomas Hodgskin, who served as editor for the magazine, identified the risks inherent in the utilitarian approach in the following critique:
“…Messrs. Bentham and Mill, both being eager to exercise the power of legislation, represent it as a beneficent deity which curbs our naturally evil passions and desires (they adopting the doctrine of the priests, that the desires and passions of man are naturally evil) — which checks ambition, sees justice done, and encourages virtue. Delightful characteristics! which have the single fault of being contradicted by every page of history…[in the utilitarian view] Man, having naturally no rights, may be experimented on, imprisoned, expatriated or even exterminated, as the legislator pleases. Life and property being his gift, he may resume them at pleasure; and hence he never classes the executions and wholesale slaughters, he continually commands, with murder — nor the forcible appropriation of property he sanctions, under the name of taxes, tithes, &c., with larceny or high-way robbery. [Sir Robert] Filmer’s doctrine of the divine right of kings was rational benevolence, compared to the monstrous assertion that [quoting Mill] “all right is factitious, and only exists by the will of the law-maker.” But though this may be comfortable doctrine for legislators, it will not satisfy the people; and in spite of false theories and unreasonable practices, events are now teaching mankind to place a just value on law-making. Day does not follow day, without increasing our knowledge of the consequences of actions; and it is fast becoming apparent, that the wise men, such as Cicero and Seneca, as Bacon and Locke, and as Burke and Smith, who have advocated a totally different system from that of Messrs. Bentham and Mill and their arrogant disciples, have not cast the seeds of their faith in nature, on a barren and ungrateful soil.”
Mr. Hodgskin was quite perceptive. Government is either strictly limited to a few key functions or it is total – everything in between is just killing time. As soon as those in power are able to appeal to the greater good as justification for their actions, the individual no longer factors into the equation. Under these circumstances the best one can hope for is merely to be ignored. At worst, the individual can be eliminated if those in power deem his existence inconvenient or detrimental. After all, it would be a lot easier to achieve the greatest good for the greatest number of people if there just weren’t so damn many people in the first place. The bloody history of the various experiments with totalitarianism during the 20th century should be enough to prove the point.
