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When the foundations of free society are considered pre-established features of (human) nature, it is tempting to spurn politics as a wilful and detrimental intervention into the natural course of things. More specifically, the idea is that, human nature being what it is, we are required to honour a certain set of social arrangements. Politics may have a role to play in ensuring these conditions, but once the requisite framework is in place, we should put our trust in complying with it rather than trying to build society by our discretion.
I am not sympathetic to the idea, often expressed by people on the left, that laissez faire is a ruse reverted to by scheming capitalists and their henchmen. For the most part, I think, people genuinely believe in it. If they do not, they are free to join the regressive left who has never failed to embrace disingenuous profit-seekers. I am not saying the right is idealistic and the left is dishonest; what I am saying is that people tend not to promote their narrower interests by choosing a political preference. It appears to me that political convictions are for most people rather articles of faith, than tools for strategic aggrandisement.
In saying that "the first lesson in politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics [namely that we live in a world of infinite desires and finite resources]," Thomas Sowell is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Of course, there are politicians and consumers of politics that champion irresponsible resource use, but as a feature of modern society political activity is subject to rational constraints and figures as an economising institution. Admittedly, there is a competition going on between (a) politics as a means to losing one's grip on reality and (b) political gravitation toward realistic aims. After all, politics is the gateway to the hitherto unheard-of, to change, reform and revolution. At the same time, in a free society everyone is free to throw her weight in to keep changes from becoming preposterously off-course. There are good reasons and good chances for a free and naturally zigzagging society to keep on course by mean-reversion (return to the mean). See my The Corridor of Success.
Politics as an Economising Institution
Much of the economic "waste" associated with political efforts deserve to be seen in the context of keeping society within the corridor of success, sparing it the tremendous costs of durable straying.
Politics spares us the cost of dystopias that initially look like promising utopias. Politics spares us the costs of social disorganisation and anarchy. Politics is the base of a peaceful productive society, whose wealth would not be forthcoming without the competition, the negotiations, and the compromises of politically active citizens.
My main insights expressed below are: the rules by which we live are not givens, but involve human volition and design. Once this is realised politics assumes a more respectful position in the gamut of human affairs. Shedding our prejudices against politics, we are free to recognise its necessity and benefits, which include improved information (minimally needed to work out reasonable compromises), the management of political scarcity (irreducible value differences), violence reduction, trust building, and resource pooling. Politics can be viewed as a device helping us to economise on violence, mistrust, destructive divisiveness, ignorance of our mutual concerns and potential for cooperation.
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P010 - Political Scarcity from 01/09/2013
Human beings create constantly what Riker (“Liberalism vs. Populism”) calls “moral or political scarcity”: a need to take decisions for which (especially general, multitudinous) support is scarce compared to attaining the objective without encountering appreciable friction. [...]
Unfortunately, modern libertarianism ignores the classical liberals, most notably David Hume, who (quoting me from a comment made at Cafe Hayek)
” … has paved the way toward a differentiated incentive-structure-analysis of government, by discovering that “rights are not deriv’d from nature but from artifice.”
I should add: once you challenge the dogma that “rights … are deriv’d from nature” you unblock the path that leads to an analysis of what “deriv’d by artifice” means. That’s the moment when you start to look at the world as it is, and you discover politics and the state, however much you may dislike them, are decisive parts of the process that churns out rights, good and bad. [...]
There may be good reasons to disdain politics, the state and democracy, but you should have a sound and well-developed theory of the state, politics and democracy before you go advertising this contempt as your sole default position. Libertarians do not have such theories – how would they if the said phenomena are being prejudged self-evidently to be uniformly evil.
It seems to me that my fellow-libertarians have a strong tendency to avoid the hardest part of liberty. Making it happen in a world that will never be free of politics and state structures.
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Continued here.
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