Published in the Laissez Faire City Times, December 17, 2001.
After a lecture where I developed a model of the exploitative state, a colleague of mine (who is not an economist) raised an intriguing objection. My approach was in line with the Public Choice approach: individuals don’t change from nasty egoists to altruist angels when they walk from the market to the public sector, they remain the same, i.e., mainly interested in their own advancement and satisfaction (or “utility,” in economic parlance); hence, they will try to use state power to exploit others. My colleague argued that statocrats, i.e., politicians and bureaucrats, are not that nasty, but simply want to be loved.
There is something intuitively appealing in this objection but, as often, intuition is deceptive or, at least, it does not tell the whole story.
Is universal love attainable by the statocrats? They can certainly be loved by certain groups of individuals, but the price they pay is to be hated by other groups. Most of their actions confer benefits on some but impose costs on others. The statocrats have to choose by whom they will be loved, and by whom they will be hated.
If they choose to be loved by subsidy recipients, say, artists, people on social welfare or corporations, they accept to be hated by hard-pressed middle-class taxpayers. If they earn the love of the public-health industry, city dwellers, anti-hunters or people opposed to self-defense, they get hated by smokers, country people, hunters, and defenseless individuals.
This relates to Anthony de Jasay’s theory of the state. Although he is not a household name, I think de Jasay will be remembered as one of the most original economists of the 20th century. Published in many academic books and articles, de Jasay’s work is concerned with the economic analysis of political processes. Indeed, his most famous book, first published in 1985, is called The State.
De Jasay explains that the State’s main activity is to coercively redistribute money and other advantages of life from some individuals to others. It takes from Peter and gives to Paul. It forces one to behave in ways that the other prefers. The only difference between the autocratic state and the democratic state is that, in the former, redistribution goes from the people to the autocrat and his court, while in the latter, it goes from some part of the people to some other part (perhaps a majority, but not always).
Back to our loving statocrats. If being loved was one of the politicians’ basic motivation, you would expect them to make trade-offs between the support of their electoral clients and the probability of being elected, on the one hand, and the love of the people, on the other hand. They would often propose and enact measures that would put their political power in jeopardy. Now, this is not what happens: politicians generally want to be loved by those whose support they need. In other words, they don’t want power in order to be loved; they want love as a means to power.
Government bureaucrats face a different environment, with less competition to earn the love of supporting clienteles. After all, the bureaucrat will keep his job whether he is in the business of caring for the sick or of prosecuting Microsoft and drug dealers. Yet, he cannot be loved by all politicians and all the people. A BATF or IRS agent cannot attain universal love.
My colleague and those who think like him may have two replies to this love-and-hate approach. First, they might say that government actions in the general interest earn everybody’s praise. Second, they might claim that few people really hate the state, as perhaps few really love it; whether one is advantaged, or disadvantaged, by public policy, one has only mild feelings, if any, towards those who make it. In our times, neither of these counter-arguments holds much water.
First, very little of what the state does can now be said to be in the interest of everybody. The standard example of such “public goods” is public protection: the police, the courts, and national defense. These make up for around 10% of total public expenditures in Western countries. A significant part of expenditures on protection is spent on regulations favourable only to special interests. Moreover, much of public protection is actually aimed at controlling honest citizens – a fact that will only become more obvious after the flood of new “anti-terror” measures. For some people, being searched by government agents for nail clippers when they board a flight is not a public good, but a public bad. At any rate, the remaining 90% of government budget operations amount to take from Peter and give to Paul and, often simultaneously, to take from Paul and give to Peter. Only a small of social expenditures actually reach the poor.
When, a hundred years ago, governments took 10% of what people produced and earned, the argument that the state worked for the public interest had some prima facie validity. Now that total government take has reached a global rate of 35% to 50% or more, depending on the country, the argument is impossible to support.
This leads us to the second counter-argument, i.e., love and hate are too big words to apply to politicians and bureaucrats. Here, we reach the crux of the matter, and the reason of its importance.
When the state does little for, or against, you, there is little to love or hate. You can go on living your peaceful life, with your eccentricities and preferred hobbies, your chosen pleasures and unavoidable anguish. You can live mostly out of the view of “the authorities.” But when the state regulates and hinders unpopular lifestyles, while other, privileged groups are lavishly catered to, when the state installs a wide network of surveillance and administrative controls, things change. More people fall in love the state. More people also start hating the state. They often have good reasons to.
The state will react, of course. When it is limited by constitutions or the rule of law (so-called), it will metamorphose into a gentler and kindler police state. This process was already going on before September 11. The excuse of terrorism only accelerated it and made it more obvious. The result is that freedom-lovers now have more reasons to hate the state.