As those of my readers who
wander the World Wide Web would have discovered, I am, in another
life, an economist who does some academic work and some consulting.
(I am never paid by third parties to write and sign articles
on command, though.)
Or is it another life? True,
when I talk about state oppressions of which I am at the receiving
end (like gun or ID controls), my columns show “extremist libertarian
content,” as one blogger on the Western Standard website
recently put it. But aside from the pitfalls of looking at slavery
from the point of view of the slave, it remains that economics
has much to say about politics. One of the major schools of economic
analysis to have marked the last half century, called “public
choice,” has been concerned with applying the tools of economic
analysis to politics.
Here is an illustration. Assume
that a steel-armoured, computer-controlled, three-storey-high
pit bull has been built. It is invincible and will prevail over
any enemy, at home or abroad; even a nuclear bomb will not stop
it. It is so powerful that virtually everybody caves in before
its decrees; those who don’t are crushed. Now, the three-storey
pit bull is programmed to issue, every four years, three DVDs,
each one packed with a different set of policies for its clients’ welfare,
and to implement the set approved by a majority of votes in a
general election. Would you put yourself under the three-storey
pit bull’s protection?
The economist—and especially
the public choice economist—is trained to analyse this
sort of question. Economics deals with individual choices and
their aggregated, social consequences.
Let’s give a name to the three-storey
pit bull or similar creatures. Seventeenth-century political
philosopher Thomas Hobbes called it “Leviathan,” after the biblical
all-powerful monster. James Buchanan, the contemporary Nobel
economics prizewinner, made the name popular again, for example,
in his 1975 book The Limits of Liberty: Between Anarchy and
Leviathan.
The bad news is that Leviathan
does exist. It may be more or less effectively chained, but it
lives under the mantle of the state—the whole apparatus
made of the executive, the legislature and the judiciary. Instead
of being a single physical machine programmed by some naive geek,
Leviathan is a complex assemblage of institutions manned by politicians
and bureaucrats.
Public choice economics assumes
that these politicians and bureaucrats are ordinary individuals
who are no less self-interested than people who sell lectures
or potato chips. What will Leviathan do, given the incentives
of the individuals manning its institutions? Whose interests
will it further? What is the logic of the state institutions?
These questions are the bread and butter of public choice economics.
The economist can either advise
the state or advise the subjects. He can explain to the state
what will be the effects of its policies. For example, catering
to the “human rights” crowd will deliver the support of non-threatening,
grateful clients, while alienating groups that, probably, the
state can’t rely upon anyway. The state apparatus, contrary to
our stylized pit bull, does need the support of a sizable minority
of its subjects.
Alternatively, the economist
can warn the citizens against the consequences of state actions.
At the most general level, he can point out that once Leviathan
is let loose, it will likely act in its own interest against
the subjects or, at least, against some dirty, “denormalized” and
useless minorities. The basic question of politics was raised
by Latin poet Juvenal (in another context) nearly two thousands
years ago: Quis custodiet ispsos custodes?—Who
will protect us against our protector?
In the real world, most economists
advise the state against the citizens, for a simple reason: most
economists are employed, or subsidized, by state institutions.
And economists are just like ordinary individuals, bureaucrats
and politicians: except for eccentrics, they tend to adjust their
ideas to their interests more often than the other way around.
Now, I must confess a sin to
my readers: I have been providing economic research and advice
to a friend in the Conservative government. But I am still trying
to be the sort of economist who sides with the citizens.
|
