Political and moral philosophy are related to economics, and even less stealthily to the older political economy. The economist cannot recommend a government policy without making or accepting a value judgment consistent with who is going to be helped and who will be harmed. At least, he must believe that the policy falls within the ethically acceptable functions of government.
Some of the great economists of our time have also been great political philosophers. I am especially thinking of Friedrich Hayek, James Buchanan, and Anthony de Jasay. The latter is not as well known as the two others, both Nobel laureates and members of the academic corporation, but I believe he was as important a thinker—albeit a more radically dissenting one.
De Jasay defined himself as both a (classical) liberal and an anarchist. On Econlib, I very recently reviewed his 1997 book Against Politics: On Government, Anarchy, and Order. A quote from my review explains its title, “Princess Mathilde and the Immorality of Politics”:
Princess Mathilde, a niece of Napoléon Bonaparte, expressed a hedonistic-egoistic view of the state when she defended her late uncle by saying that, “without that man I should be selling oranges on the wharf in Marseilles.” Government, de Jasay argues, is essentially a redistribution mechanism, which some, like Princess Mathilde, use very effectively for their own purposes. Politics helps some to the detriment of others. This, he explains, is as true, or even truer, in a democratic system, where the majority defines what is the “common good” or “public interest.”
Glued to the zeitgeist of our time, most people will reject this thesis (I propose some criticism myself). But it is not possible to rationally reject it without first understanding it. This book is a good way to do this. As a collection of articles, it does not have the unity of de Jasay’s 1985 book The State but, on the other hand, it offers a choice between more and less technical discussions.
Many of the chapters are a must-read. De Jasay provides interesting critiques of both Buchanan and Hayek. I conclude my review:
Yet, Against Politics is a must-read for any political philosopher as well as for any economist interested in the philosophical implications of what he or she is doing. The book may become even more urgent for our descendants to read.
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DALL-E’s rather creative vision of Princess Mathilde, with your humble blogger responsible for the orange:
READER COMMENTS
Craig
Apr 24 2024 at 9:22am
“Princess Mathilde, a niece of Napoléon Bonaparte, expressed a hedonistic-egoistic view of the state when she defended her late uncle by saying that, “without that man I should be selling oranges on the wharf in Marseilles.”
I wonder if there is a modern parallel to Princess Mathilde today?
1 Loudoun County Virginia Virginia $147,111
2 Falls Church Virginia Virginia $146,922
3 Santa Clara County California California $130,890
4 San Mateo County California California $128,091
5 Fairfax County Virginia Virginia $127,866
6 Howard County Maryland Maryland $124,042
7 Arlington County Virginia Virginia $122,604
8 Marin County California California $121,671
9 Douglas County Colorado Colorado $121,393
10 Nassau County New York (state) New York $120,036
11 Los Alamos County New Mexico New Mexico $119,266
12 San Francisco County California California $119,136
13 Hunterdon County New Jersey New Jersey $117,858
14 Morris County New Jersey New Jersey $117,298
15 Somerset County New Jersey New Jersey $116,510
16 Forsyth County Georgia (U.S. state) Georgia $112,834
17 Calvert County Maryland Maryland $112,696
18 Nantucket County Massachusetts Massachusetts $112,306
19 Stafford County Virginia Virginia $112,247
20 Montgomery County Maryland Maryland $111,812
Government parasitism elevated to an art form.
Pierre Lemieux
Apr 24 2024 at 10:14am
Craig: What are these numbers?
Craig
Apr 24 2024 at 10:28am
They are the 2020 Census median household income stats which I got from here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-income_counties_in_the_United_States
The regime takes care of its mandarins.
Richard W Fulmer
Apr 24 2024 at 4:08pm
From your review of Against Politics:
In 2019, the Congressional Budget Office released a study indicating that the proposed $15 minimum wage would, as an NPR headline stated, “boost 17 million workers” at a cost of only “1.3 million jobs.” Thirteen times more people would be helped than hurt (ignoring, of course, any secondary and tertiary impacts of the wage hike). Clearly a no-brainer; the greatest good for the greatest number.
But before we, in President Biden’s words, “take the win,” perhaps we should ask who are the 17 million helped and who are the 1.3 million hurt?
The people helped are those most likely to keep their jobs, or to still be able to find jobs, after the wage hike. Logic tells us that these would be the most employable: the most educated, most experienced, most skilled, most physically and mentally able, and the least discriminated against. By contrast, the people hurt would be the least employable: the least educated, least experienced, least skilled, least physically and mentally able, and most discriminated against.
In other words, the hike will help those who need the least help and hurt those who need the most. How do we determine whether the 1.3 million are hurt thirteen times more than the 17 million are helped? I have no clue.
Pierre Lemieux
Apr 24 2024 at 4:59pm
Richard: I agree. I wrote about that in the Summer 2024 issue of Regulation: “From Minimum Wages to Maximum Politics.”
You write:
Indeed, there is no scientific way to do that. As Anthony de Jasay wrote,
Mactoul
Apr 24 2024 at 10:05pm
Any human act has unavoidably positive and negative impact on other people.
So i have trouble appreciating why an extension of this observation to government acts is supposed to be a knock-down argument.
Pierre Lemieux
Apr 25 2024 at 12:31am
Mactoul: Because it is coercive and systemically destabilizing for the autoregulated order.
Mactoul
Apr 25 2024 at 3:22am
Is there a single instance of a market order that grew without this coercion?
If you maintain that states are invariably damaging to the market order , then the difference between 19c British state and communist Russia is merely of a degree. Is this maintainable?
Pierre Lemieux
Apr 25 2024 at 3:50pm
Mactoul: I believe everything is a matter of degree. (There might be a few exceptions, which would imply that even this belief is a matter of degree.) Many examples of non-coercive social orders exist: language is one, and so are evolved morals. Hayek has written much on that. The lesson of history (as of political economy) is that the less effectively coercive is political authority, the more, and the more extensive, an efficient autoregulated order can emerge. Commerce in the High Middle Ages (after year 1000) in European cities is an example. The Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, which started in the UK and the Netherlands and not in Asia nor in tribal Africa, are two mighty examples. Reading Mokyr’s A Culture of Growth and Scheidel’s Escape from Rome is useful to understand that.
Mactoul
Apr 25 2024 at 10:32pm
Well the escape from Rome was hardly an escape into anarchist utopia and i doubt whether these North European towns and states were any less coercive or regulatory than African or Asian states.
Evolution of language and morality is neither here or there, I note that writing emerged in context of bureaucracy of Mesopotamian city-states.
And if we believe Julian Jaynes, the emergence of self-consciousness itself is bound up with living in larger and larger states and in particular with organized religion of the city-states.
Pierre Lemieux
Apr 25 2024 at 11:30pm
Mactoul: You have to read the books. Take the red pill.
Thomas L Hutcheson
Apr 24 2024 at 10:25pm
Of course if the unemployment come in the form of fewer hours spread over the same people, the redistributionist damage is less. And even if not, people might favor the measure thinking they will not be affected.
Still, why run the risk? It’s better to redistribute income more transparently with, say, a higher EITC.
Monte
Apr 25 2024 at 12:25pm
De Jasay’s “anarchy as the theoretical solution to all these problems of the state in general and the social contract in particular” is incomplete. Every good solution must be a model of the problem it solves. How does the stateless society secure to its citizens the rights and liberties as defined by de Jasay? He argues by “a theory of justice based on evolved conventions that simply prevent wrongs and thus circumscribe exceptions to a general presumption of liberty” (A Conservative Anarchist by Pierre Lemieux). But social conventions are not perfectly or infinitely self-regulating. They eventually breakdown and thus require an enforcement mechanism that can only be provided by what Posner describes as “the scope of feasible government action either to promote desirable norms or to repress undesirable ones” (Creating and Enforcing Norms, with Special Reference to Sanctions). In other words, the unavoidable preemption of de Jasay’s de facto society of conventions by government de jure.
I stumbled across an obscure article in which it’s equally obscure author poses the question: Can an anarchy be a state? She ultimately concludes that a society lacking territorial integrity with no legal authority to represent its citizens either within or outside of some imaginary boundary “is incompatible with the nature of a state.” It seems to me this decisively relegates de Jasay’s “theoretical solution” to the dustbin of history.
Pierre Lemieux
Apr 25 2024 at 3:33pm
Monte: De Jasay’s argument is that efficient conventions are self-enforcing. His chapter on conventions in Against Politics specifically deals with that issue and is worth reading (as is the whole book). David Friedman’s Law’s Order presents similar arguments focussed on the common law. As for Thomas Baty/Irene Clyde’s argument, the first page of his/her article is strange in many respects (and doesn’t suggest a knowledge of autoregulated orders); I have ordered the article from the library.
Mactoul
Apr 25 2024 at 8:40pm
I wonder if these conventions aren’t just a rebranding of dreaded customs?
For some reasons, the libertarians from Mills onwards (perhaps even earlier) tend to be down on customs and prefer to replace them by conventions. What material difference does it make I have been unable to see.
Pierre Lemieux
Apr 25 2024 at 11:41pm
Mactoul: There are two traditions of classical liberalism: the empiricist and evolutionist one following Smith, Hume, etc.; and the more constructivist and “rationalistic” continental tradition (although Mill would be in the latter). See Hayek’s crucial 1946 article “Individualism, True and False,” reproduced in Individualism and Economic Order. He may push the distinction a bit far though. In his terms, Buchanan would be on the constructivist side. De Jasay probably straddles both sides.
Monte
Apr 26 2024 at 9:28pm
Pierre,
Yet he concedes that these spontaneous conventions, theoretically sound as they are, have been superannuated by excessive reliance on Leviathan:
As for Baty’s writing (this page taken, I believe, from a chapter in his treatise, International Law), I agree, it seems strange, but one learns upon further reading that he supports the rights of the individual in the face of encroachments motivated by the convenience of the State:
This at least hints at a knowledge of spontaneous order.
Monte
Apr 27 2024 at 5:35pm
Disregard. Taken from The American Journal of International Law.
Monte
Apr 25 2024 at 12:31pm
BTW, DALL-E’s vision of Princess Mathilde (from whom I would have bought her entire supply or oranges) is so much more beautiful than the real one.
Pierre Lemieux
Apr 25 2024 at 3:15pm
Monte: That’s the sort of comment I would have made when I was younger. Perhaps DALL-E secretly wishes ze were a blood-and-flesh man.
Monte
Apr 25 2024 at 4:01pm
I guess that makes me a dirty old man. At any rate, competing for her affection is a zero-sum game for either DALL-E or me.
Pierre Lemieux
Apr 25 2024 at 4:30pm
Monte: It’s a NEGATIVE-sum game, since she doesn’t exist and you would have to use scarce resources to compete for her affection.
Monte
Apr 25 2024 at 4:37pm
LOL!! Thanks for the clarification, which has cured me from my obsession.
Mactoul
Apr 25 2024 at 10:37pm
Liberalism from Locke onwards viewed government as necessary to protect private property. I would go further — state of laws is necessary to even define property rights in their fullness.
So inclusion of anarchism as a variety of classical liberalism is confusing and productive of nothing more than indulgence of Jasay’s self-identification as a classical liberal and an anarchist.
Jose Pablo
Apr 25 2024 at 11:28pm
state of laws is necessary to even define property rights in their fullness.
There is no such thing as a “government of governments”, and yet governments do have property rights. A fact, that, I think, falsifies your point.
Mactoul
Apr 26 2024 at 12:52am
I believe you are not sufficiently discriminating between the state of laws and the government.
I don’t know what you mean by government of governments and property rights of government?
A government as a corporate entity could own property. But that doesn’t vitiate against the idea that a state of law is required.