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An underlying tension in libertarianism
On the one hand, [Charles] Murray says he wants to liberate citizens from the welfare state so they can live life however they choose. On the other hand, by liberating citizens from the welfare state, he hopes to force them back into lives of traditional bourgeois virtue.
Read more here. Many Swedes, of course, consider themselves highly individualistic, precisely for this reason.
Thanks to www.politicaltheory.info for the pointer.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on March 31, 2006 at 07:29 AM in Political Science | Permalink
Comments
"Underlying tension in libertarianism" might be an overstatement. Some libertarians are also libertines so they welcome looser mores. Some libertarians think that price mechanisms alone will select (in the evolutionary sense) politeness, preocupation for reputation and restraint. ...
Posted by: Gabriel Mihalache at Mar 31, 2006 7:48:59 AM
Murray's idea is not particularly original; it's very similar in effect to the negative income tax that Milton Friedman proposed. In fact the negative income tax is a more polished version, since Murray's plan would for example give $10,000 to someone making $200,000 and then presumably tax them ~$50,000 or more, resulting in a senseless churning.
Anyway, it's still a good idea. I do think that Murray is mistaken if he thinks that this will lead to an increase in the bourgeious virtues, but as someone who is more on the other side of the libertarian camp I don't really care.
Posted by: bbartlog at Mar 31, 2006 9:14:58 AM
The underlying impulse is exactly as described and should give any libertarian pause, because if the proposal didn't perform as desired (time inconsistency!) what other devices would Murray and others turn to in order to build a republic of virtue?
Posted by: Roland at Mar 31, 2006 9:35:49 AM
Hmm. if Murray really is a moralist, why not use the welfare state to promote his values. This is actually the way the Swedish welfare state works. Child care, gender and income equality, universal healthcare, and livable pensions are articulated as social goods. This is combined with an ideology of work - to be able to claim the goodies, you have to work or minimally "be available to the work force." The availability is enforced: when unemployed you can reject two work offers from the "labor market agency" but you have to accept the third, otherwise your benefits are withdrawn.
Hmm, seems a lot like Murray's vision, only less clandestine and with the exception that he prefers serial monogamy to be prefaced by marriage.
Posted by: Dan K at Mar 31, 2006 9:55:32 AM
I think Jeffrey Friedman’s libertarian straddle is actually a more problematic tension. The flimsy assumptions of non-consequentialist libertarianism are often bolstered by pointing to empirical evidence. This is problematic as it points to the deficiencies in libertarian philosophy and because the empirical record is ultimately unconvincing to anyone not predisposed to see it in such a way. Though in fairness, partisans of all stripes similarly weave between their ideological beliefs and whatever real world evidence they can find.
Posted by: forged prescriptions at Mar 31, 2006 10:02:22 AM
I'm going to channel Deidre McCloskey here, and ask what's the matter with bourgeois virtues? As I interpret them, bourgeois virtues are an evolved (and evolving) set of norms that internalize incentives that lead to high productivity, and high growth. And, in the bargain, high happiness for lots of people because of the lives that they are then able to create for themselves.
Posted by: Lynne at Mar 31, 2006 12:17:23 PM
Can you explain what you mean about Swedes? I find it interesting but I didn't understand it.
Posted by: David J. Balan at Mar 31, 2006 3:35:04 PM
I also don't see the tension here. Why should Libertarians be associated with
loose morals? That's Republicans.
Posted by: will mcbride at Mar 31, 2006 4:05:00 PM
“This is combined with an ideology of work - to be able to claim the goodies, you have to work or minimally "be available to the work force."”
You are 20-30 years too late. These demands are long gone, and people are now eligible for welfare without any demand for work.
This is part of the reason the effective employment rate has collapsed (the official one has “only” gone down by 10 percentage points, but official wedish figures include long term sick leave, government programs, and many other groups that don’t actually work).
“the empirical record [for liberterian arguments] is ultimately unconvincing to anyone not predisposed to see it in such a way.”
Really? Care to give examples? The failure of the US in the 19th century perhaps? Hong Kong? The amazing success of big government in solving social problems?
“I interpret them, bourgeois virtues are an evolved (and evolving) set of norms that internalize incentives that lead to high productivity, and high growth.”
Brilliant argument, I completely agree. Bourgeois virtues are what many people will *voluntarily* strive for, in order to improve their lives and the lives of their children. If this is indeed the care there is absolutely no “underlying tension” in Murrays argument.
Many highly educated libertarians confuse libertarian politics with values that (elite) libertarians often hold privately. But a successful libertarian society is much more likely to lead to “socially conservative” norms among large segments of the population, in order to solve many problems inherent in human nature. The Tyler Cowen types may not need bourgeois virtues to succeed in life, but most people do.
My guess is that Cowen is referring to social liberal and privately individualistic norms that Swedes are shown to hold in international surveys (i.e we are one of the least religious peoples in the world, have week family norm etc). Social Democrats are very proud that the state has made the family and (voluntary) community unnecessary.
But do not confuse Swedish “individualism” with anything remotely libertarian. This is again socialism in action (East Germany has almost exactly the same figures).
The anti-family situation and gender work divisions are a good example. This is NOT something that people choice voluntarily in an undistorted market. The government uses laws and massive subsidies to make it hard for women to stay at home with their children (that so many do it anyway is a testament that much of these values are indeed close to human nature). Unlike what many think Swedish woman are less successful that American women in combining work and family, in that we have fewer women top managers for example.
Swedish “individualism” has anything to do with the ideals that government should stay out of people’s private lives. Using the state to actively destroy bourgeois virtues is hardly libertarianism.
Posted by: Teller at Mar 31, 2006 4:46:13 PM
Tyler,
This is an underlying tension in anybody who believes that the word "freedom" conveys something meaningful, which is a group far larger than libertarians.
To wit, if freedom is defined as an absence of coercion, then its definition is dependent on what we believe to be coercion. So if Murray believes the welfare state to be coercive, then his implicit premise is that without the welfare state, the environment that forces people to adopt certain lifestyles is not a form of coercion. If we, however, define coercion in a different way, Murray's stand becomes problematic.
This is a tension in anyone who uses the word "freedom." Within libertarianism, the tension largely doesn't exist, since we, as libertarians, have a certain way of defining freedom--when comparing libertarianism to socialism, it does exist, but that it does is somewhat obvious.
Incidentally, the legal realist movement--the reaction to classical liberalism--uses as one of its primary texts a piece by Robert Hale reviewing an economics text in the late 19th century. Hale argued that everything was coercion--the state coerces people by recognizing property rights and it coerces people by not recognizing property rights. And so, by his lights, freedom was meaningless, and so the classical liberal concentration on freedom was silly.
Many of my leftist friends are swayed by the argument--I think it proves too much. If freedom is non-existent, then one wonders what the slaves were fighting for.
Posted by: Scott Scheule at Mar 31, 2006 7:58:49 PM
Charles Murray has a deep sympathy for the plight of the left half of the Bell Curve, which is otherwise lacking in American intellectual discourse.
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Apr 1, 2006 3:50:25 AM
Give-everyone-the-same-amount-of-money-and-tax-it-back-from-the-rich has been around for a long time and has a name: 'demogrant'. I recall it emerging into popular discussion at one time, I think during the Nixon-McGovern election.
Posted by: David Tomlin at Apr 1, 2006 4:19:34 AM
Teller: I gather that you never have tried to make a living on the Swedish welfare state. If anything, Swedish welfare is less generous now than 20 years ago. If you mean that people rarely are allowed to exit the welfare system, you have a point. But you have to work. You can always discuss the the utility and meaning of the public jobs offered, but I reckon that they at least competes well with packing brown bags at the grocery store in that regard.
Posted by: Dan K at Apr 1, 2006 9:16:32 AM
I haven't read the Murray book yet (I'll probably buy it on Amazon in the next day or two), but from his previous writing, I haven't seen him advocating forcing anyone into middle-class values. Instead, I've seen him wanting to get rid of incentives to avoid those values, since they're the most straightforward way for most of us to get to reasonably successful lives for ourselves and our kids.
And as Steve said, I think this is driven by a concern for poor people, and especially poor people who also aren't very bright. Both _Losing Ground_ and _The Bell Curve_ were concerned with the impact of various social policies on those folks, and a lot of that impact has been to give short-term incentives to do things that don't pay off in the long run--things like hold down a basically crappy job so they can get some work history, pay ther bills, get married and help raise their kids, etc.
Posted by: albatross at Apr 1, 2006 10:44:39 AM
Sorry--to clarify, various social policies take away the incentives to do those things. Murray has said before he'd like to change that, so that people had incentives to stay at a crappy job, get married and raise their kids, etc.
Posted by: albatross at Apr 1, 2006 10:46:39 AM
Part of the tension is that there is an economic basis to traditionally-organized families, and nontraditional ways of living are expensive. Divorce is a financial disaster for most, especially kids, and kids born outside of marriage don't fare much better. Permanent singlehood or gay lifestyles insure that there won't be kids around for support and help in old age, and "one to many" or "many to many" partnering relationships create all sorts of financial complexities that are minimized for the committed "nuclear" family.
A libertarian society with less social support would put the cost of nontraditional lifestyles squarely on participants and insure that these lifestyles go back to what they've usually been: largely for the rich or at least the truly committed.
Posted by: Foobarista at Apr 1, 2006 3:13:32 PM
Dan K
Really? I lived on Swedish welfare for 14 years. My parents are still making a comfortable living from different programs (pension and sick benefits), and non of them has ever actually worked. Never having worked gives you a pension of ca 1200 $ per month in this case, with free health care, dental care, etc.
A huge percentage of immigrants live on welfare, never even entering the labor market. The same is increasingly true of young native Swedes. Many who have worked but leave the labor market stay out, never re-reentering before retirement.
In total 22% of the Swedish adult population is living full time on various government programs. Many do so for years, this is not some sort of short term phenomenon. The economical payoff of not working and holding a low paying job are quite similar, in terms of pension benefits etc.
“you have to work”
Eh, no, you don’t. If you did the effective employment (minus permanent sick leave and government programs) rate would not have fallen from almost 80% to 67%.
The single largest component of those living on welfare is early retired (10% of adult population), that have no demand what so ever of working. Living of direct “welfare” is generally coupled with no demands, in regions with many immigrants especially the welfare office assumes you can live of this as long as you like.
With sick leave again there are no demands (another 4% of the adult population, although some are of course actually sick).
The demands if you are unemployed are very easy to handle. They don’t generally offer you jobs anyway, but “training”, for example sending e-mails, writing CVs, learning languages. (a friend of mines father is a Scottish native, and has not worked for 10 of the 11 last years. He was offered a course in beginnings English by the unemployment office…)
“utility and meaning of the public jobs offered, but I reckon that they at least competes well with packing brown bags at the grocery store in that regard”
The difference is that packing brown bags is an ACTUALL JOB, not a fake program created by the state to keep people busy. Packing groceries for 7 dollars per hour creates some value for society. It you can hold the job a few years it signals future employers that you have certain characteristics that are needed in the labour market, such as basic work ethic. Most importantly it enables you to live of your own labor, as opposed to being a parasite on the rest of society.
Of course if you hold modern Social Democratic norms I don’t expect you to understand the distinction between creating value, if ever so small, and be able to live of your own toil, as opposed to take handouts from taxpayers.
Posted by: Teller at Apr 1, 2006 3:19:05 PM
Dan K
Really? I lived on Swedish welfare for 14 years. My parents are still making a comfortable living from different programs (pension and sick benefits), and non of them has ever actually worked. Never having worked gives you a pension of ca 1200 $ per month in this case, with free health care, dental care, etc.
A huge percentage of immigrants live on welfare, never even entering the labor market. The same is increasingly true of young native Swedes. Many who have worked but leave the labor market stay out, never re-reentering before retirement.
In total 22% of the Swedish adult population is living full time on various government programs. Many do so for years, this is not some sort of short term phenomenon. The economical payoff of not working and holding a low paying job are quite similar, in terms of pension benefits etc.
“you have to work”
Eh, no, you don’t. If you did the effective employment (minus permanent sick leave and government programs) rate would not have fallen from almost 80% to 67%.
The single largest component of those living on welfare is early retired (10% of adult population), that have no demand what so ever of working. Living of direct “welfare” is generally coupled with no demands, in regions with many immigrants especially the welfare office assumes you can live of this as long as you like.
With sick leave again there are no demands (another 4% of the adult population, although some are of course actually sick).
The demands if you are unemployed are very easy to handle. They don’t generally offer you jobs anyway, but “training”, for example sending e-mails, writing CVs, learning languages. (a friend of mines father is a Scottish native, and has not worked for 10 of the 11 last years. He was offered a course in beginnings English by the unemployment office…)
“utility and meaning of the public jobs offered, but I reckon that they at least competes well with packing brown bags at the grocery store in that regard”
The difference is that packing brown bags is an ACTUALL JOB, not a fake program created by the state to keep people busy. Packing groceries for 7 dollars per hour creates some value for society. It you can hold the job a few years it signals future employers that you have certain characteristics that are needed in the labour market, such as basic work ethic. Most importantly it enables you to live of your own labor, as opposed to being a parasite on the rest of society.
Of course if you hold modern Social Democratic norms I don’t expect you to understand the distinction between creating value, if ever so small, and be able to live of your own toil, as opposed to take handouts from taxpayers.
Posted by: Teller at Apr 1, 2006 3:19:16 PM
Of course, the committed nuclear family can still suffer from sudden death of one of the partners. And divorce may be financially harmful, but sometimes it really is necessary. Then what?
Posted by: Damien at Apr 2, 2006 4:04:16 AM
Swedish “individualism” has anything to do with the ideals that government should stay out of people’s private lives.
Interesting evidence from a non-native speaker that "any" is the second half of a "double negative" construction -- yes, even in standard English.
Back to the topic at hand: what happens when it turns out that the things people are naturally disposed to do include trying to promote tribal memes by hook or by crook? How can a liberatarian, who is also a skilled social scientist, think that separating out institutional force while preserving human nature even makes sense?
Posted by: J. Goard at Apr 2, 2006 3:30:19 PM
In Europe, he says with evident disdain, ``the purpose of life is to while away the time as pleasantly as possible.''
Uh, like Paris Hilton, certain political families and other members of the rentier classes who have guaranteed incomes from inherited wealth? I do think we see a double standard here, where Murray considers dependency on the welfare state corrupting and shameful, but not dependency on income from multi-generational inheritances that the current recipients did nothing to create.
Posted by: Mark Plus at Apr 2, 2006 5:48:04 PM
There is no evidence that Murray has positive views of the Kennedy's.
Posted by: kyle8 at Apr 3, 2006 7:53:29 PM
David Tomlin: Yea, you're right: this idea is not new. I remember being first introduced to it when I was taking undergraduate economics and the professor mentioned this idea having been floated by one of Nixon's adivsors.
Anyway, I think it's a great idea... think of the vast bureaucracy that would be eliminated while still maintaining social ideals. Plus, with a system like this, it suddenly becomes politically feasible to do other things, like killing min. wage...
Posted by: KL at Apr 4, 2006 8:40:57 AM
bbartlog: A lot of this excess "churning" can be dealt away with by integrating this with the IRS. The benefit of this over the negative income tax is that this provides a flat-line basic-necessity net that can serve as a replacement for social security and other welfare programs.
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Posted by: levan at Sep 7, 2006 3:14:29 AM
