The religious right and their reflexive wish to use the legal mechanisms of the state are an example of the urge to moralize on our society taking place. The Libertarian (reflexively?) resists this. However, Shannon Love at the Chicago Boyz in this post had an interesting suggestion that the moralist arises (from a societal evolutionary perspective) as an urge to suppress (as elimination is not possible) the free-rider problem.
Mr Love has a follow-up post, here, in which is a small essentially real world laboratory test case of the free-rider/moralist problem but which avoids much of the emotional and political baggage associated with these issues. That is, vaccinations. Vaccinations carry a small risk. If the minority vaccinate, vaccination is clearly advantageous to avoid disease. However, if a large percentage of the population does vaccinate, the free-rider can benefit from a low risk of disease (by living in a sea of vaccinated people) while personally avoiding risks associated inherent in the vaccination itself.
The “moralist” in many cases in our society acts by means of governmental agency either requiring vaccination and certification (children for example face any number of legally required vaccinations) and additionally there are public subsidies and “fairs” in which vaccinations are provided for free to encourage participation. Free-riders exist in some numbers, consider the number of healthy adults not receiving flu shots. These individuals are free riders (and have a short memory of the early 20th century influenza pandemic).
The question that the libertarian faces however is the societal force that they wish to eliminate is essentially the moralist force in society. If, as persuasively argued by Mr Love, the moralist is the societal evolutionary or societal immunological response as an attempt to repress the free-rider. Therefore the Libertarian, before it can become a viable political option must come up with alternative mechanism to suppress free riders. Otherwise, whatever society so joined by and for Libertarian means and motives will have it’s own moral majority/pharisaic problem. And likely, if the government is absent of such mechanisms, those mechanisms will be extra-governmental and unconstrained by any order by design (which is likely to be worse).
I think this actually understates the problems with libertarianism, unless you broaden the definition of free-ridership to include any person or entity that manages to “cheat” at pure capitalism. You mentioned welfare recipients and those who don’t get vaccinated, but probably a bigger problem for the libertarians are companies or people which unfairly externalize costs like monopolies which use their power to destroy competition or price gouge or companies that exploit workers or pollute. Left unchecked, those factors will destroy the free market, while free-riders can often live within the system without bringing it down, more like the billions of harmless bacteria that live in our bodies than the ones which make us sick.
Perhaps a better way to work with the moralists is to redirect them — why are so many mad at hippies who live off their parents and have lots of sex instead of at corporations that pollute our water or exploit their workers? I suspect that there is an innate “cheater” detector in our brains which evolved to spot the free-riders in the traditional tribe of 20 or 60 people that is ill-suited to identifying the true threats in a society of hundreds of millions. Where liberals in the past managed to “wage class war” and focus this impulse against the fat cat exploiters, in the past few decades, the impulse has been focused on e.g. “welfare moms” and gay people. Maybe this is the famous pendulum that goes back and forth, ideally checking excesses in either direction. Unfortunately, the tools of rhetoric too often sway people the wrong way.
JA,
Perhaps what I’m suggesting is that the way to deal (possibly) with moralists is to institutionalize them. To develop a methodology for identifying free-riders and their moralist opposition and put legal checks and balances in place with conscious intent.
However, I’m dubious, as it seems are you, that this would really happen. Take social security for example, Ponzi schemes are unstable (and illegal) … but did that stop the government?
Actually the moralists in our midst have done a pretty good job of cleaning up our industrial act, the environment has very much improved in the last 30 years largely because of moralist activism.
btw, w.r.t. the “gay people” remark, I’m curious why you chose not to remark on my recent post which took a shot in that direction. Was my English prose too dense (or laden with errors)? If I might ask, let me know when I write something that doesn’t make any sense or is too confusing. In general, that’s because your misunderstanding is likely due to my poor (but hopefully improving) writing skills. Let me know … I’ll gladly rewrite for greater clarity.
Mark:
Perhaps what I’m suggesting is that the way to deal (possibly) with moralists is to institutionalize them. To develop a methodology for identifying free-riders and their moralist opposition and put legal checks and balances in place with conscious intent.
Well, that’s exactly what we have done with anti-trust laws, with welfare reform, with OSHA, with the EPA, etc. Basically, everything libertarians hate.
However, I’m dubious, as it seems are you, that this would really happen. Take social security for example, Ponzi schemes are unstable (and illegal) … but did that stop the government?
Social security is not inherently unstable as long as the population continues to grow OR the economy continues to grow. We may need to make some changes sometime in the next few decades, but it’s not nearly as bad as Republicans want you to think. It won’t even start to be a serious problem until the 2040s or 2050s and even then, it’s enough to cover about 80% of benefits if we do absolutely nothing about it. I’m not saying we shouldn’t take responsible steps now, but the threat is seriously overhyped.
Actually the moralists in our midst have done a pretty good job of cleaning up our industrial act, the environment has very much improved in the last 30 years largely because of moralist activism.
Good point, although we haven’t made much progress on global warming.
btw, w.r.t. the “gay people” remark, I’m curious why you chose not to remark on my recent post which took a shot in that direction. Was my English prose too dense (or laden with errors)? If I might ask, let me know when I write something that doesn’t make any sense or is too confusing. In general, that’s because your misunderstanding is likely due to my poor (but hopefully improving) writing skills. Let me know … I’ll gladly rewrite for greater clarity.
No, it was written fine. I must have just missed it or not been in the mood the first time around.
Sorry. I just wrote a response over there. Better late than never.