Trevor Burrus | Free Thoughts Blog

Recent revelations about the NSA’s broad surveillance of Americans’ phone records has some invoking the terrifying surveillance state of Orwell’s 1984. Others, from both parties, are justifying the program based on countering terrorist attacks. A tiny loss of privacy is a small price to pay to avoid the infinite costs of a nuclear weapon being set-off in Central Park, they argue.

This is the conservative version of the precautionary principle. The left often uses the precautionary principle to justify policies that fight global warming, arguing that “where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.” In other words, the plausibility of substantial harm puts the burden of proof on those who choose not to act to curtail that harm.

But I prefer to call it “apocalyptic consequentialism.” As I’ve written before, many problems in world come from the fact that people like different things. Sometimes, when confronted with someone who doesn’t adequately, in our view, value something we value, we turn to apocalyptic consequentialism to try to make our point. We say something like, “Oh, you don’t like trees? Well, that’s fine until all the trees are cut down and we go through an environmental catastrophe. When that happens, I’m sure you’ll wish you valued trees a little more.”

Similarly, conservatives will invoke apocalyptic consequentialism when it comes to the war on terror: “Oh, you don’t like the government snooping on your phone calls? You like privacy for its own sake? Well, that’s fine until a nuclear bomb is placed under Central Park. I’m sure you’ll wish you valued privacy a little less when that day comes.”

Apocalyptic consequentialism is pervasive in modern political rhetoric. Modern environmentalism so resembles a religion because it tends toward apocalyptic consequentialism. Nearly every religion believes the world is run by false values and that one day there will be a comeuppance in retribution for those false values. Modern environmentalism invokes the sins of “materialism,” “globalization,” and “consumption” as false values, and ultimate environmental catastrophe as the “rapture” that will demonstrate of how false our values are.

Apocalyptic consequentialism is used to eradicate the distinction between private and public acts, or to eradicate privacy altogether. Your choice of light bulbs, toilet volume, sexual partners, or phone calls are no longer private if they will result in apocalyptic consequences, be it environmental catastrophe, a replay of Sodom and Gomorrah, or a nuclear bomb in Central Park.

In the 17th Century, French philosopher Blaise Pascal invoked something like apocalyptic consequentialism to argue for belief in God. In his famous “Pascal’s Wager” he asked people to compare what they have to gain by believing in God to what they have to lose by not believing in God. The rewards for believing in God might be infinite, whereas the losses are trivial. The argument is sometimes reversed to focus on hell and the possibility of infinite losses for not believing. Either way, the logic is the same. If you believe in God and he doesn’t exist, well, that was the right gambit in the face of the possibility of infinite gains and infinite losses.

This argument is horrible. First, it is not really an argument for believing in God; rather, it is an argument for believing in believing in God. Second, and more importantly, it is an argument for taking any action that has a non-zero chance of avoiding infinite harm. There may, after all, be a god who infinitely punishes those who shave their eyebrows. Similarly, there may be a god who infinitely punishes those who keep their eyebrows. What is one to do in the face of such contradictory choices?

The answer, of course, is to look at the actual probabilities of such gods existing, thus putting us back at square one—that is, are there good reasons for believing in a particular god or a particular claim for infinite rewards or losses?

Like Pascal’s Wager, political apocalyptic consequentialists hope to avoid the debate over probabilities and move straight to action. Environmentalists roll their eyes when the probabilities of global warming are questioned in the slightest: “Whatever the probability,” they say, “the consequences of it happening are so awful that we must do something now!” Those who question government environmental action have “forgotten when the Cuyahoga river caught fire.” Similarly, conservatives don’t want to hear anything about the probabilities of nuclear weapons being placed in Central Park (very very low, from what I understand) or the consequences of a dirty bomb (bad, but not that bad). “Whatever the probabilities, the consequences of it happening are so awful that we must do something now!” Those who question government snooping have “forgotten 9-11.”

But those who question government snooping have not forgotten 9-11, we’re simply remembering everything we lost that day.

People like different things, and that’s a problem. It’s one that only exists, of course, in a world with scarce resources having alternate uses. Competition over resources means everyone cannot get everything they want.

Although my libertarianism has many different “foundations,” I want to focus on this one in particular. I take it as a truism that people like different things, and likewise that the world is full of scarce resources with alternate uses. Any system of human “governance” (in the broadest sense of the term) must come to terms with these two facts. I am a libertarian, at least partially, because I believe the market system tends to better rationalize different tastes and to produce more abundance of those scarce things.

What is an example of the problem that people like different things? Take trees. Some people value trees as beautiful things having as much a right to live as we do. Others value trees as paper, firewood, or houses. These values seem to clash. 

How can we solve this problem? We could have tree-lovers and tree-harvesters physically fight over the trees. This happens in many cases of value disagreement, of course, but it is far from an optimal solution. We could try to convince tree-harvesters that there will be bigger environmental effects to tree-harvesting, thus eventually harm something tree-harvesters love, such as oxygen. Also, of course, we could simply ban tree harvesting.

But there is only one solution that produces a rational, socially optimal result: property rights and rights of transfer. Those who own trees are free to do what they want with them, and if someone would rather do something else with the trees, then they can acquire those property rights. As an added bonus, property rights in trees will engender tree cultivation, thus rewarding both harvesters and conservationists.

Those points are often made but less often understood. Property rights create social cohesion because they keep us from fighting over how property will be used. They are a socially optimal solution to the problem that people like different things, and they can be endorsed by people with severely contrasting tastes. I let you have dominion over your property because I want dominion over mine. I’ll let you play your Barry Manilow if you let me play my Bob Dylan. And if you’re playing your music too loud, I’ll knock on your door.

Yes, this doesn’t solve all the problems that come with people liking different things, but it does an amazing job of solving most of them. Moreover, a system of respect for property rights does not invent new, unnecessary problems. Under normal situations, it is not a problem that you listen to Barry Manilow and I listen to Bob Dylan, as long as we respect property rights. If we politicize music preferences, however, we will invent a problem out of thin air, namely what are “we” going to listen to?

But some people aren’t happy with property rights as a socially optimal solution. They aren’t happy because property rights allow people, such as Barry Manilow fans, to persist in liking different things. Some people want to have sex in strange ways with people of the same sex, and others don’t like that. Some people want to raise their children with different beliefs, and others don’t like that. Some people want to ingest certain substances so they feel better, and others don’t like that. They don’t realize that property rights help both Barry Manilow and Bob Dylan fans, gay and straight couples, creationists and evolutionists, and teetotalers and potheads.  

Those who cannot accept people liking different things then look for a solution to this “problem.” What they need is a type of physical force (because they can’t seem to convince others not to like different things) that doesn’t put them in danger (because physically stopping undesirable behavior yourself is scary), and is seen as legitimate by those whose behavior they are trying to change. They quickly find their way to politics.  If they just get 50% +1 to agree with them, then they can wield the state’s considerable power against those who insist on liking different things. It is easy to see why this option is so attractive.

With politics in the picture, the whole game changes. The equilibrium of a property rights system is based on the mutually beneficial theory of “stay out of my way; I’ll stay out of yours.” When politics intrudes the question changes to “whoever can win the political game is free to get in everyone’s way.”

And that game has high stakes. Losers don’t just walk home with their tails between their legs, they lose the ability to live their lives according to their values and consciences. Being on the wrong side of  50% +1 can mean you will not be able to educate your children how you want, that you cannot marry who you want, that you can’t work in your chosen profession, and that you cannot listen to Barry Manilow. 

No wonder politics is so vicious. 

After something is politicized, “keeping to yourself” is no longer an option. Instead, you have to play the political game if you want to live your life according to your values. Energy that could be spent building new and exciting technologies or beautiful art is now invested in trying to defend your way of life in the political process. A fleeting victory—for example, legalizing gay marriage—may cause you to hold your hands up in a pose of victory, and rightfully so. But why did you ever have to play this game in the first place? 

I am a libertarian because I hate the game. We live in a time that increasingly fetishizes democratic choice as a method of rationalizing our disparate preferences. This is ludicrous. Democratic choice is at best a method of solving some collective action problems that are truly problems, and it is hardly ever a real problem that people like different things.

Last week, Aaron questioned the claim made in a Democratic National Convention video that “government is the only thing we all belong to.” I certainly agree that it seems deeply odd when “anyone looks at Washington and feels a sense of belonging.” Nevertheless, the video gives us a chance to explore the concept of “belonging” and what it has to do with political theory.

Any system of social ordering that eschews consensus—that is, any system that will make people abide by a result they did not consent to, or perhaps even objected to—must be concerned with a sense of “belonging,” or what I will call a “perception of meaningful participation.” Without a perception of meaningful participation—and here perception really is what’s important—nonconsenting or objecting people likely won’t abide by the decision of the majority and may even actively try to undermine it. Social order will rapidly become social disorder.

A court of law is a useful analogy. The primary purpose of a court is not so much to resolve a dispute by discovering what really happened, but to provide a method of resolution in which both parties will abide by the result. Someone must feel that he has “had his day in court,” especially if it means respecting a decision he knows is inaccurate.

Similarly, if political systems impose the preferences of a bare majority onto an objecting minority, then the minority must feel as though they “had their day in court.” That is, that they “belong” because they meaningfully participate.

Libertarians have a unique, and some would say strange, view of the state. Whereas most tend to view the state as “us”—as a collective apparatus through which “we” make decisions on how our world will look—libertarians regard the state as “them”—an alien and possibly illegitimate association grafted onto civil society like a parasite.

As an indication of its otherness, the government will do things that seemingly no one, or at least only a small group, wants it to do. It will subsidize ethanol despite an increasing awareness of the harmful effects. It will escalate a war against marijuana users just as public acceptance of marijuana use increases.

The opposite view comes from what I will broadly call the “anti-market” side. Non-libertarians, particularly from the left side of the political spectrum, tend to view the market, not government, as “them.” The market, particularly in the form of Wall Street and international corporations, is an alien and illegitimate association grafted onto civil society like a parasite.  

Similarly, as an indication of its otherness, the market will do things that seemingly no one, or at least only a small group, wants it to do. Much beloved local stores will fall victim to big box stores imbued with vast amounts of capital derived from “foreign” sources. Meanwhile, other much-in-demand things, such as the fabled high-quality electric car, never come to market.  

For each side, the “other-sphere” derives its otherness from two main sources: 1) a general opinion that the personality traits that bring success in that sphere are not only undesirable but nearly inhuman; 2) a view that the “voucher” for participation in the other-sphere—money for markets; voting for government—is in some way inadequate.

For those who are anti-market, markets are driven by greed and self-interest. Successful market participants get there through rapacious and self-gratifying motives, entirely devoid of human sympathy and care. Although markets can produce good things, encouraging their unfettered expansion also promotes undesirable behaviors. Thus, the market is an other-sphere populated by people with anti-“belonging” dispositions.

For libertarians, the political sphere is also driven by a type of self-interest: the elitist, technocratic, and disingenuous self-interest of career politicians and bureaucrats. Politicians say and do anything to remain in office, even making statements—“I smoked marijuana, but I didn’t inhale”—that a satirist would balk at writing. Expanding the political sphere means giving such two-faced charlatans more control over our lives.

This view leads libertarians to focus more on process than partisanship and more on systemic problems than fleeting solutions. Libertarians also reserve many of their harshest words for the political classes and the illusions of influence and participation that the democratic process gives.

Second, both other-spheres offer different vouchers of participation. The anti-market crowd has understandable complaints about money as a method of participation: markets favor those with more money, people do not start out with equal amounts, and its distribution does not correlate to needs or worth, only wants and base desires.

Libertarians have similar ideas about voting as a method of participation. Many libertarians view the political process as a trial in which the average citizen does not get his day in court. Between public choice theory, Arrow’s theorem, and the rational ignorance of the average voter, democracy is a pretty ineffective way for any single person to actualize their preferences in the world. A vote is a voucher that gives you the illusion of influence in exchange for a loss of freedom.

Finally, as both the sphere of government and the sphere of the market grow, they are often accompanied by a diminishing perception of meaningful participation. First, as information accelerates, so do markets. Transactions occur at blinding speeds and seem to have a mind of their own. Both day-traders and local grocers have difficulties predicting the vicissitudes of accelerating markets.   

Moreover, expanding markets attenuate the connections between cause and effect. Distant markets in foreign countries cause our coffee to double in price overnight. Rainstorms inSouthern Floridaaffect not just the price of oranges, but also, somehow, the price of wheat, avocados, and industrial solvents.

Lastly, expanding markets brings diversification. Due to the relative scarcity of music in the 1980s, the Venn diagrams of individuals’ music tastes overlapped heavily. Now, it is very likely that if you meet a random person you’ll have almost no music tastes in common. The same is increasingly true for nearly everything: books, news sources, and movies, just to name a few. This level of diversification can decrease the perception of meaningful participation in the market by making people ask, “Who is this new singer? I’ve never even heard of him, and no one I know has heard of him.” Just as 40 year-olds feel no sense of participation in the marketplace for the current teenage fad, people increasingly feel no sense of participation in the same marketplaces as the guy who lives across the hall. More and more it seems as if we’re just leaves in the wind of market forces, along for the ride.

Of course, the expanding sphere of government can produce a similar effect. As more local choices are made by distant technocrats, as the channels of government become more labyrinthine, as our votes seem to do less to directly affect our lives, the perception of meaningful participation decreases. 

Perhaps these observations can help us better understand the other side better and realize that our frames of reference will often clash, especially in terms of the institutions to which we feel a sense of belonging. 

For too long, libertarians have been characterized as Scrooges who believe that the wealthy and the poor both merit their stations in life. Should we be encouraging such spurious arguments by raising the unnecessary and morally charged idea of merit as a justification for free markets?

I think not, but Bryan Caplan is again making excellent, meritorious points against my anti-meritocratic views. In this short response I hope to clarify a few distinctions as to what I think our debate is actually about.

First, as I see it, the following questions are at issue:

1. How strong is the correlation between success and merit?
2. If the correlation is strong enough, should this be raised as a reason to believe in free markets?

If the answer to question 2 is “no”—that is, that the issue of merit should not be raised by free-market advocates—then this could be for two reasons: 1) because the question of merit is incidental to the case for free markets, or 2) because bringing up merit is bad rhetoric for libertarians who wish to be convincing.

As I argued in my last post, I believe there is a strong correlation between success and merit, but a less strong one between “failure” and merit. I believed this when I wrote my initial post, and I still believe it. Nevertheless, I still think that, for both reasons 1 and 2, merit arguments should be generally avoided in making the case for free markets.

Bryan asks, if the question of merit is incidental to the case for free markets, then “[d]oesn’t the same hold for prosperity, tolerance, culture, and all the other good stuff that libertarianism is supposed to deliver?”

No. First of all, prosperity, tolerance, and culture are not morally charged, individualized assessments. Saying that “the free market delivers prosperity” as a general observation is very different from saying “the free market delivers prosperity to those who merit it.” The same is true for the abstract concepts of tolerance and culture. It is a virtue of the free market that it will tend to deliver prosperity, tolerance, and culture regardless whether the individual recipients are meritorious.

This dovetails into Bryan’s question about whether merit has essentially nothing to do with my belief in free markets: “If you looked at the world and saw nothing but lazy, drunken idiots making money hand-over-fist while hard-working, sober geniuses begged for spare change, wouldn’t that bother you?” Yes, I would be upset, but this would not affect my belief in free markets as long as the reason that those lazy idiots were making money hand-over-fist was that they were creating mutual gains from trade through a system of just exchanges.

Which brings me to my final point: Perhaps we should clarify the difference, if any, between merit and desert. To me, merit carries far more moralistic weight. It implies things about the quality of your character, facts about your history, and the state of the world around you. Desert, however, is far less morally weighty. I am prepared to say—in the vein of Nozick’s entitlement theory—that a series of just and consensual exchanges creating mutual benefits from trade is sufficient for the resulting gains to be “deserved.” Whether it is sufficient for the gains to be merited, however, that’s an open question.

This addresses Bryan’s excellent observation that rhetoric opposing free markets is often awash with arguments from merit, and that maybe we shouldn’t use the same critiques of free markets as our opponents. Bryan writes, “What do revolutionary socialists tell the have-nots to stoke the fires of alienation and resentment? That successful people earned what they’ve got, fair and square? Or that success is all a matter of chance?”

Countering this rhetoric is important, but we do not need the concept of merit to do it. We only need to point out that a free society based on general, universally applicable rules does not concern itself with such obscure and unwieldy concepts as merit. Instead, we only ask whether a person’s accumulated gains from trade derived from just and consensual exchanges—that is, that they are “deserved” in a minimally normative sense. Even raising the morally weighty issue of merit opens the door to the idea that such considerations are relevant to the case for the free market. They aren’t.

Does it matter whether the free market rewards merit? Should libertarians argue to skeptics that free markets reward merit? Over at the Library of Economics and Liberty, Bryan Caplan has responded to my post, Bad Arguments for Libertarianism: Merit. Bryan’s post also has links to a fascinating exchange on the same subject between him and Shikha Dalmia (here, here, here, and here), as well as a Cato Unbound essay by Roderick Long and Bryan’s response.  

Bryan’s critiques give me a welcome occasion to expand on my original post, which contains many philosophical holes. Originally, I wrote:

If merit comes from striving, effort, or overcoming adversity, then a free market works to diminish the amount of meritorious action in order to increase productivity. Efficiency is preferred over toil. If holes need to be dug, then they should be dug in the most efficient manner possible, not in the most meritorious manner. Digging a hole is hard work, and digging a hole with only one arm is even harder work, but it would be odd if we determined the value of hole-digging based on these considerations.

Bryan responds:

Simple answer: All else equal, the efficient use of resources is meritorious.  This is hardly an eccentric Objectivist invention.  Common-sense morality praises people who use their time wisely, who save for a rainy day, and who calmly weigh their options instead of running around like chickens with their heads cut off.  Of course these aren’t the only things that common-sense morality praises, but they are on the list.

In short, Bryan argues that “the correlation between market success and merit is imperfect, [but] still fairly high.” Great success can come to the lucky and lazy, but they tend to be the exceptions rather than the rule.

I agree. I respect those people who have risen to the top, and I understand that very few of them got there through pure luck. Even for those imbued with natural intelligence and other advantages of birth, success doesn’t just happen.

But the correlation between merit and success is less exact for those who are not successful—that is, there are many people who have worked very hard, have been unlucky, and are not successful. I’m thinking of undiscovered bands, brilliant entry-level workers who had apathetic mentors, and would-be superstar executives who simply didn’t have the right friends. There are also countless people who put in years of good, hard work at companies that eventually failed and who are now over-50 and struggling to find a job in a horrible economy.

But whatever the relationship is between success and merit, it is not integral to the case for the free market, and, if pushed too strongly, it may in fact be harmful to libertarian arguments. The intent of my original post was not only to ask whether libertarians lead with our chins if we decide to include merit in our pro-market rhetoric, but also to ask whether the relationship between markets and merit is a reason we should believe in free markets.    

For me, merit has essentially nothing to do with why I believe in free markets. Insofar as market success imperfectly correlates to what I believe is meritorious, I regard it as almost a coincidence.

Let’s look at some related counterfactuals:

1. If everything that Bryan pointed to was false—if only a smattering of those who are successful could be described as meritorious under any definition of the word—would there still be a convincing case for the free market?
2. If someone had an idiosyncratic view of merit—perhaps that “invisible hand” motives are an immoral using of others’ needs and wants to fulfill selfish desires—should that person still believe in the free market?

Yes and yes.

Admittedly, it may be a tougher sell, but even in the face of such obstinacy a successful case for the free market can be made based on the Hayekian/Austrian argument against central planning and the concept of individual rights. These arguments have the added virtue of being both less subjective than opinions about merit and less potentially demeaning to those who, right or wrong, feel cheated by the market.

Depending on your moral philosophy, opinions about merit may not be entirely subjective, but they do come quite close to being merely matters of taste. Many criticisms of free markets ultimately derive from such matters of taste: for example, the idea that the market is not adequately rewarding some characteristic—such as the ability to create innovative and boundary-pushing music rather than bubble-gum pop hits—to the degree that is deserved. Academics, in particular, are susceptible to this wrong-headed thinking about markets, particularly when it comes to whether the market adequately rewards academics. My recent review of Michael Sandel’s What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets highlights many of Sandel’s preferences masquerading as political theory.

By using arguments based on merit, libertarians open themselves to arguments based on matters of taste. This is true whether or not Bryan’s observation that the “All else equal, the efficient use of resources is meritorious” is just a “matter of taste.” If the fact that markets tend to reward hard work and high skill is a reason to believe in markets, then anyone who doesn’t value hard work or high skill can disagree with markets for the same reason. These people may not be as uncommon as Bryan supposes. Many movements in twentieth-century art and music were based on a conscious rejection of skill, practice, and many other meritorious virtues traditionally associated with quality art. While the market may not adequately reward such art according to the subjective standards of merit held by the practitioners, those artists can still believe in the market because it fosters the productivity that allows them to exist at all.

Libertarians are often accused of advocating for a merit-based society. The free market, the argument goes, produces a distribution that more-or-less corresponds to how meritorious the people are. If you’re poor, you likely deserve to be poor; if you’re rich, the same. To mess with the market is to mess with that moral order.

Even worse than those who pigeon-hole libertarians into that argument, however, are those libertarians who actually make this argument. Bad arguments for libertarianism not only harm the cause of liberty over all, they divert attention from the arguments that deserve the most consideration. Moreover, because we tend to better remember the bad arguments for ideas we oppose, bad arguments get recycled by our opponents more than the good ones.

Merit should have nothing to do with why libertarians advocate for free markets. At any given time-slice in a free market some people are up and some people are down. Why they are up or down is beyond the ken of both the market and those who support markets.

The first question to ask, of course, is what merit is. This question proves quite difficult, but it seems, at a minimum, that merit refers to the characteristics that make an activity praiseworthy rather than the characteristics make it valuable. The free market “determines” value through a freely flowing price system that quickly accounts for changes in supply and demand. Merit, however, looks beyond the market value to assess the quality of the individual action.

For example, someone may become incredibly good at a video game, and they may do so despite overwhelming odds (vision or tactile impairment, perhaps). Many would consider this a meritorious accomplishment, but it is one that has little value in the marketplace. Similarly, someone may become quite wealthy despite expending little effort or cleverness. This may be meritorious or not, but the market cares little.

A properly functioning free market does not reward people based on merit; it rewards people based on output. If someone produces goods or provides services that are valued by others, then she will be rewarded for it. Perhaps this comes easily to her, or perhaps it’s difficult. There are some born with innate talents while others struggle to learn viable skills. Still others are born into propitious circumstances that make success easier, while others begin life in situations that hinder their future success.

We are all bundles of hindrances and abilities. Some of these may be the product of nature, the product of our family life, or just a learned skill. It is because of these complex backgrounds and subjectivities that the market must rely on objective criteria such as output, rather than subjective criteria such as merit. By focusing on the objective criteria of output, we avoid subjective determinations of value. We also encourage productivity, which ultimately broadens the possibilities for success and makes wealth available to more people.

If merit comes from striving, effort, or overcoming adversity, then a free market works to diminish the amount of meritorious action in order to increase productivity. Efficiency is preferred over toil. If holes need to be dug, then they should be dug in the most efficient manner possible, not in the most meritorious manner. Digging a hole is hard work, and digging a hole with only one arm is even harder work, but it would be odd if we determined the value of hole-digging based on these considerations.

Still, some libertarians, particularly of the objectivist bent, may align market success with merit. Many characters in Rand’s novels, after all, are heroes whose successes in the marketplace are indications of their virtue and merit. If you wish to admire the character traits that lead someone to become a steel tycoon, that’s fine. But it does not follow that those who failed to become tycoons are less meritorious. The singer-songwriter who makes a decent living crafting excellent songs and playing small venues can also be praised as meritorious. Most importantly, we can point to the wealth produced by the free market as the primary reason why singer-songwriters can even make a living.  

Wealth is not a sign of merit, and poverty is not a sign of failure. As I’ve argued before, we should champion the free market as a system where productivity allows people to be artists, record store clerks, or even bums. We can personally praise or chastise anyone for their life-choices and values, but we should not argue that the market is there to do it for us.