Since Ms. Blair was gracious enough to rebut my critique, I thought some buttressing was in order:
You’ve claimed that my argument hinges on two main
points: That the only incentive humans
respond to is profit, and that government is more virtuous than a group of
individuals. This is a gross mischaracterization
of my argument.
It is silly to believe that humans only respond to profits. That’s why, in addition to money, I specified
minimizing time and effort. And those
are just the incentives that are relevant to my examples. Even Adam Smith, the father of capitalism,
acknowledged that a warm, fuzzy feeling can serve as an incentive. (He used the
term "self-approbation"
in his Theory of Moral Sentiments. But I prefer “warm-fuzzies.”) It doesn’t matter what the incentive is. The point is that individuals, myself
included, care more about personal incentives than unintended consequences.
That is why we need good government: to avert the tragedy of
the commons. You claim this is futile
since we can’t perceive unintended consequences with perfect accuracy. This reminds me of a recent
exchange between Justices Stephen Breyer and Antonin Scalia at a Senate
hearing. True to form, Breyer defended the
“Living Constitution” as the best way to interpret the U.S. Constitution. Scalia, also true to form, advocated
interpreting the Constitution through originalism. Basically, it was the old “letter of the law
vs. spirit of the law” debate.
Breyer and Scalia have both been on the Bench for a long
time. They’ve had this debate over and
over. Both justices were equally skilled at illustrating how their opponent's position, when taken to the extreme, would result in a failure of government. They were probably a little bored
with the whole thing. Eventually, Breyer
asked Scalia to tell the audience about “the bear.” Scalia obliged, and proceeded to share an old
joke about two hunters being chased through the woods by an angry bear.
“It’s no use.” Says
the first hunter “We’re never going to outrun that bear.”
“I don’t have to outrun the bear.” Replies his companion “I just have to outrun
you.”
You’re right. We can’t
predict every unintended consequence.
And government policies are rarely, if ever, perfect. But I don’t need to prove that government is perfect,
just like you don’t need to prove that a stateless society is perfect. I only need to prove that a highly active
government is better than a largely inactive one.
You imply that active government is undesirable because it
is unresponsive. Allow me to share some
examples illustrating why government is responsive.
In the last paragraph of my post, I included a link to a
Wikipedia page about the Gravina Island Bridge.
In 2005, Alaska’s congressional delegation allocated federal funds for building
the bridge between mainland Alaska and Gravina Island, which housed only 50
residents. The cost of the bridge was
almost 400 million dollars, and it is frequently cited as an example of
wasteful spending.
However, this turns out to be a rather poor example of
government gone wrong, because the bridge was never built. The day after
the funds were allocated, a fiscally conservative Senator from Oklahoma suggested
redirecting the funds to something more useful.
Less than a month after it was proposed, the Bridge to Nowhere project
was stripped from the budget entirely.
Government adjusts policy all the time. The whole
purpose of the Federal Reserve is to adjust monetary policy based on what’s
working and what isn’t at any given time. Public schools are constantly trying new
teaching methods, keeping those that work, and scrapping those that don’t. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is in danger
of repeal because constituents disliked it so much that they voted a Republican
majority into the House the next election.
During George H.W. Bush’s first term, he reneged on his promise of “no
new taxes,” so voters chose Clinton instead of reelecting him. Government usually doesn’t react as quickly
as we would like, but that’s because of safeguards designed to limit its power. If you really want government to avert
unintended consequences more quickly, you’d need to make it bigger.
I don’t think anyone, especially I, would claim that
government is more virtuous than individuals.
Since no two people agree on what virtue is, I’m not even sure virtue
exists. I don’t expect virtue from the
government. I expect it to look at
incentives on a societal level rather than an individual one. Often, we’ll disagree with one another about
what those incentives are, and whether a given policy will achieve those
incentives. So we base our decisions on
majority rule, and hold politicians accountable through the electoral
process. If we like what they’re doing,
we keep them. If we don’t, we vote them
out. That’s American democracy, and it’s
worked pretty well so far. It’s the
reason I can take the freeway on my way to work. It’s the reason I can visit my favorite
national park during vacation. It’s the
reason I can prosecute someone who steals from me. It’s even the reason I’m educated enough to
engage in this debate.
I’ll take an active government, with all its faults, over a “solitary, poor, nasty,
brutish, and short” life without government any day. And that is why I don’t need to outrun the
bear.
* * *
Endnote: You
mentioned that you don’t find my examples compelling. Let me offer some extra details to help you
change your mind.
Deforestation, by its definition, means that a forest can't
be grown back. Forests aren’t as
renewable as you suggest, particularly old-growth forests. I wish that sustainable timber consumption
was the biggest problem of deforestation.
Deforestation means less plant-mass to convert CO2 into oxygen, which
means more greenhouse gases. It also
means less plant mass to absorb precipitation and runoff, which means greater
erosion. Since many ecosystems depend on
having a multitude of large trees, it means less biodiversity. Less biodiversity means fewer resources to
use for medical, agricultural, and other scientific research. In response to your inquiry “Deforestation? Really?” Yeah. Really.
Is cheap gas more evil than expensive gas? It very well could be. When I lived in New York, CITGO stations
often sold gas for 10 cents cheaper than Shell stations. When we needed gas and had to choose between
the two, you better believe we’d pull into the CITGO. So where do these companies get their
gas? Well, Shell is a global, public
company, based out of the UK and the Netherlands with vertically integrated production. That means that Shell found the oil,
extracted it, refined it, transported it, and sold it to you as gasoline. CITGO, on the other hand, is also part of a vertically
integrated company, but it’s owned by the Venezuelan government. Yep, the profits of that gas we bought from
CITGO went to President Hugo Chavez, an avowed socialist and opponent of
capitalism. How’s that for an invisible
hand?
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