One of the many interesting thing about the debate on collective action problems is that while liberals usually claim (with some justification) that it is the libertarians advancing simplistic models that bear no resemblance to the real world, in this case a lot of liberals were making arguments that rest, I think, on a fundamental mischaracterization of how the American government actually works.
The collective action problem is a very elegant idea, and easy to state simply, which is why it has become sort of the liberal equivalent of the tragedy of the commons. The basic idea is that there are certain equilibria which are better for everyone, but because every individual can make himself better off by cheating, the group can't get there. The solution usually proposed is a tax or regulation, but it doesn't have to be; you can, for example, sign an agreement that only kicks in if a sufficient number of people comply--much like what was done with Kyoto.
This is the basic premise of Mark Kleiman's response to me about collective action problems: Mr Kleiman is, he says, willing to give up $300 in tax money if you take, say, $20 million from a bunch of other taxpayers and add it to his $300 to fund scientific research. He is willing to purchase $20,000,300 of science with his $300, but not $300.
Now, in a simple model where there are 2,000 of us deciding whether to purchase a swathe of land in order to turn it into a fur-bearing trout refuge, this may be a moderately accurate description of how this all works. But in the real world, this just doesn't track legislative reality.
For starters, for this model to work you have to assume that the other people providing your $20 million are made better off by the new research. They might not think so. At that point, you have not a collective action problem, but a simple form of rent-seeking: Mr Kleiman using the power of the state to take money from people and spend it on things he values.
The bigger problem is, though, that tax revenues just don't track programs this way. You don't raise everyone's taxes by $300 in order to boost funding for the NIH. Taxes aren't earmarked. Even if you raised taxes this way year one, by year two economic and legislative variation would have erased the connection between the tax increase and the spending program.
But in fact, this doesn't even work year one. You get your taxes raised (or cut) by some politically desireable amount, and then in a very separate process, enormous bundles of programs--some of which you like, some of which you don't--are jumbled together and haphazardly kind-of-sort-of matched to the amount of expected revenue. Consider the three biggest fiscal actions of the Bush administration: the tax cuts, the war in Iraq, and the Medicare prescription drug benefit. In what way do these match up to the model proposed by Mr. Kleiman? Nor are Democrats better. All of the Democratic candidates have proposed, essentially, to raise taxes as much as they can on as many people as they can--which turns out to be repealing the Bush tax cuts only for the wealthiest recipients. The spending prescriptions are then vaguely tailored to the revenue, in the sense that everyone lies and says that their programs will cost just about what the tax increases will raise, though not in the sense of being actually in any way related to the tax revenue that purports to pay for them. This is pretty far from Mr Kleiman's suggestion.
This makes a big difference. If you could actually say "I only want to pay more taxes if I can use them to buy more scientific research", and everyone wanted scientific research, then this would be a valid example of a collective action problem that imposes no moral obligation on you to spend more now. But if what you are saying is "The government should provide a lot more stuff" then, well, you can purchase more of the stuff it already produces, such as early childhood education, roads, and so forth, right now. And no voter in America almost ever has the opportunity to peg their taxes to the services they receive in turn.
Moreover, whatever the protestations of some of my more sheltered commenters, there are a lot of people in this country who complain that rich peoples' taxes are too low, full stop. There are a lot of people who view the tax code as not only a vehicle for purchasing services, but an instrument of income redistribution. To the extent that you think "George Bush cut taxes on the rich" is a fact with some moral valence, then you are not merely concerned with getting the money to pay for necessary services. Nor am I--I favor a progressive income tax. But if you think that having a fair amount money imposes some sort of obligation to share with those less fortunate, then it seems to me that the correct moral response is to take whatever money you think you should pay in higher taxes and give it a good charity. You cannot seriously argue that there is nowhere in the country that could deploy, say, $5,000 on some more worthy cause than a kitchen renovation or a new car.
If you do not include yourself in the class of people who should pay higher taxes, then obviously you have no such moral obligation. But then we are back to my initial argument: most people mostly worry about raising taxes on other people.
Huh?
In fact, under our budgeting rules, tax rates are decoupled both from spending on particular programs and from spending in general. What taxes are (inversely) coupled with, therefore, is addition to the national debt. And that debt is effectively a claim on each of us citizens (or our descendants).
That's why Megan's thesis (i.e., it's not a collective action problem -- it's an issue of whether you individually want to make a charitable donation) is wrong.
If I voluntarily pay an extra $10,000 in taxes this year, the only directly traceable effect is that the national debt will be $10,000 less. That means that each of my fellow citizens gets to free-ride by having the present value of their future coverage of that debt reduced. They or their descendants get a freebie of a lower future tax rate (or higher future services).
Why should I do that, unless I know that all other citizens are also going to kick in?
That's the way the collective action problem functions.
The great thing about Megan is that, when faced with overwhelming evidence of her errors, she'll continue to spin so furiously that she can't even keep her own nonsense straight.
It's so boring when people just concede that they were wrong and move on. The slo-mo trainwreck of ignominy that's become Megan's calling card is so much more fun to watch.
dcuser,
I agree with you 100% that it is unfair to expect you to kick in $10K toward the national debt if no one else does.
That said, this is a pretty explicit desire to raise taxes on other people.
Such a desire is not wrong , i.e. it's neither immoral nor irrational. but you are essentially agreeing with Megan's point. You believe that the country would be better off if you made such a donation, but it offends your sense of what is fair if you make the donation alone. Therefore, you would like other people's taxes to be raised in service to your sense of fair play.
Again, I think you are perfecty justified in this desire.
"That said, this is a pretty explicit desire to raise taxes on other people.
Such a desire is not wrong , i.e. it's neither immoral nor irrational."
This is where I disagree. It is immoral to want others to be taxed more while you pay the same or less. Everyone in favor of more spending and more programs should be shouting for more taxes on their income category. However it certainly is rational, since such people are saying "I would like someone to take money from those people and give it to me or someone I like.
Jim,
That's not how I read dcuser's comment. I suppose he (or she?) can speak for himself, but I think th implication was that he would be perfectly willing to pony up, but only if everyone else did too.
We can argue some other time about what consitutes paying your fair share (and you and I will probably agree more than we disagree), but I think dcuser does much better under Kantian moral criteria than you give him credit for.
So dcuser, you agree with Megan that Kleiman's claim that it's a collective action problem with regards to particular spending programs or spending in general is incorrect, then?
Why do people give to charities that benefits others at all, without knowing that all other citizens are going to kick in? If you feel that you're better off than the vast majority of other citizens, and that compared to a just system you are undertaxed, why wouldn't you?
Certainly one would not expect the vast majority of revenue to be raised this way, but charities do raise substantial amounts of money. Few of us feel like suckers or feel that we should skip contributing to a charity because other people aren't. All charities have potential collective action problems, yet manage to raise considerably more money than "tax me more" funds. Does Kleiman refuse to give to medical research charities unless he gets enough other people to pledge at the same time? The comparison says at least something about how people view the situation. (Tax deduction does not change the situation, since with the tax me more funds it only decides through what route the money goes to the government; if anything, the effect is that people are happier with charities that less money is going to the government.)
Of course, you may say that that is because charities target a specific goal that the donor likes very much, instead of the broad array of things that the government does. That is, however, very much Megan's point: government spending is not, by a large, a collective action problem because most of the spending is not for things that everyone agrees brings them to a better equilibrium, if only there weren't cheating. Instead, government spending is full of rent-seeking and benefits to some that look like pure waste and cost to others.
Take defense spending for example; if the collective action problem were the dominant explanation for government tax and spending policy, then we should expect defense spending to be insufficient. After all, there are a substantial amount of pure scientific research charities out there, implying that people are willing to give money, especially for health research, so the collective action problem should be worse in defense. Does Kleiman believe that? I don't.
The only way you can reduce it to a pure collective action problem is by focusing sheerly on the income redistribution effects of tax collection. And there, it seems like even if people agree that income redistribution to achieve greater income equality is a good thing, it's not a good enough thing for them to voluntarily achieve that level through taxation unless they know that they'll be maintaining the same relative income level.
John Thacker wrote: The only way you can reduce it to a pure collective action problem is by focusing sheerly on the income redistribution effects of tax collection.
My community recently passed, by a strong margin, a mill levy to produce funds for construction of a new, larger public library building. Barring intervention by e.g. the Gates Foundation, what are the odds the funds could have been produced (particularly in the same time period) purely by voluntary tax contributions? Sure, most people wanted a better library facility, but how many of them would give $xyz in isolation, without the assurance that everyone else in the community would be contributing a share in-kind?
Megan's thesis seems to be, people wanting the library should have been inquiring about how to donate "their" share a long time ago, and furthermore, the mill levy passed only because everyone expected others to pay for the library. I wouldn't doubt there were a few people thinking the latter at the time, but it seems more reasonable to believe that most people simply wanted a new library, and recognized that a broad-base tax increase was a yes-or-no means of paying for it.
IMO Megan has not quite run off the rails on this one, but she has gotten stalled on a siding by confusing the basic nature of the collective action problem, with the way some liberals would try to use it: "No, really, every program we support is something everybody wants to pay for, the trouble is simply in the collective action!" Well, no, sometimes the problem is that the collective did act, and they told you to buzz off (and take program X with you, please).
Once upon a time, Karl Hess -- Barry Goldwater's speechwriter -- and Oregon Senator Mark Hatfield proposed allowing each voter to select the program up to 10% of his/her taxes could go to. Geez, what an awkward sentence.
Obviously the idea went no where. The idea of taking that level of decision-making -- or part of it -- was approximately as popular as... well, choose your analogy.
Which point I bring up as an example of how a relatively small introduction of individual choice into a coercive system causes system proponents to froth at the mouth.
JimS:
Is it similarly immoral to want others to be taxed the same or slightly less while you yourself are taxed much much less?
Me? I pay too much in taxes already! It is those rich people that need to be taxed at higher rates!
This is taxation politics in a nutshell. The answer is low taxes for everyone, not lower taxes only for all people equal or below you personally in income (or wealth).
Megan, the more you say on this subject the less sure I am that I understand you. Now, my belief is that the people we're talking about (I'll pick up on Jay's suggestion from an earlier thread and call them "Martians", since "liberals" doesn't seem to please) favor the following options in the following order:
(1) Everyone but me (speaking in the character of a Martian) pays more to the govenment.
(2) Everyone including me pays more to the government.
(3) No one pays more to the government.
(4) No one but me pays more to the government.
When you started all this, I took you only to be saying that the Martians' revealed preference for (3) over (4) implies that they also prefer (1) over (2). That's hard to argue with. Did you really mean to suggest that it also implies they prefer (3) over (2)? While this could also be true, it doesn't follow from their preference for (3) over (4). At least, it doesn't follow without the aid of an additional premise: that Martians are unselfish enough to be willing to pay for benefits which go almost entirely to other people.
I'll admit that this buried premise is easy to take for granted, given the tendency of Martians to claim that their stated preference for (2) over (3) somehow makes them less selfish than the rest of us.
John Thacker:
If you come to my door and say "hi, I'm John Thacker and I'd like you to donate $50 to my private charity" I'm much less inclined to fork over than if you say "hi, I'm John Thacker from the United Way and I'd like you to donate $50." Answer: we DON'T give without knowing that many others are going to kick in. That's the whole point. Also, for charities like the United Way and March of Dimes we have some general idea of what our money is going to be supporting; a general donation to the federal government could be used for absolutely anything, even things we vehemently oppose government doing. On the other hand, a tax increase is always tied to a specific program or set of programs, and is therefore easier to accept.
I thought Megan's point was that we don't have a system where tax revenue and government action actually bear any relation to one another, that tax policy and government spending are so disconnected that the traditional notion of collective action holds no real meaning.
And I always thought the basic truth was that most people want more government services for everyone and lower taxes for themselves ... with little thinking about what that entails.
Megan:
Does the fact that they might not think so necessarily mean that they wouldn't? And why would I advocate other people provide $20 million if they would NOT be made better off by my research? Do you automatically assume nefarious ulterior motives on any request I make? (Hmm, on second thought, don't answer that...heh)
I get the sense that you are trying to make this statement in a dispassionate, non-judgmental way, simply stating a fact. The problem is, the way it is worded carries an implicit indictment of people who think that way as hypocrites. It may be literally true that most people worry about raising taxes on other people; but that is a consequence of other people having the money available to be taxed, not because of envy or hypocrisy.
Your ideas intrigue me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Paul Zrimsek,
Good day,
FWIW, I read Megan as saying exactly what you fear her to be saying. She may not MEAN to be saying it, but she is.
It's impossible to tell if people prefer for everyone, including themselves, pay on the one hand, or for everyone else BUT them to pay on the other. Similarly, we don't know if people are actually paying for the chance to see everyone else pay, or if they actually want to be a part of the paying, and just want to make sure that enough people pay to make a real impact on the government's coffers before they chip in. The information doesn't necessarily lead us to one conclusion or the other.
And again, in order for Megan's argument about hypocrisy, moral obligation, consistency and the like to work, the people who want their own taxes to be higher must be people who want their taxes to be higher in some abstract vacuum. But since she pointed out early in this whole discussion that the people who want their taxes to be higher wish this because they think the government needs more money to do its job, then collective action become a legitimate concern for those people.
Just giving more money to the government, like, arbitrarily, won't solve any of the funding concerns these people (leftists, Martians, or what have you) have. So they are not made inconsistent by failing to giver more money to government above and beyond their taxes.
Dan Simon's question about why liberals don't ban together to try to overcome some of these collective action problems was a better one. Large scale efforts can get off the ground and raise allot of money, even without enforcement mechanisms, so it seems *possible* that something similar could happen with "tax-me-more" funds.
But when a leftist, Martian or what have you has a choice between giving to ALREADY ESTABLISHED charities which give directly to the social ill you would like to alleviate (and simultaneously giving to candidates who will return tax levels to where you like them) on the one hand, and trying to form an organization large enough to overcome collective action problems on the other, it seems the latter is the less rational option.
In other words, there are two choices:
A) Giving to charities which have the advantage of already having the organizational and financial apparatus to put your funds to good use, AND giving to political candidates who will put taxes at levels more to your liking,
or
B) Since it's theoretically possible for large-scale groups efforts to overcome collective action barriers, they should spend their time on trying to form some sort of organization large enough to do so.
A seems like the more rational option.
And it's not necessarily that leftists (or Martians) prefer private charities to government, it's just that when the government has insufficient tax levels (in their eyes) then the next best option is to try to get someone in political power who will raise taxes and use the mighty enforcement mechanism, since this is the best way to overcome collective action problems. Also in the mean time, the money not spend on getting their favorite candidates elected can be donated to a favorite charity.
Even if there is some legitimate disagreement over which option (A or B) is more rational (trying to be charitable her) it's at least not obvious that B is better, and Megan is saying that it is obvious.
I hope by now everyone can see how silly that argument is. Of course Megan seems determined to keep making it.
Jay
Anony-mouse has given us a good example to play with: an actual referendum for a property tax increase to fund a specific project.
Now, one might ask a couple of questions about this: (1) What was the margin by which it passed? and, (2) How many of the voters actually own property to tax?
Megan seems to be implying that once government grows to a certain stage, operating the government stops becoming a collective action problem.
Does that mean any further growth in government should be funded by voluntary donations?
I am not sure that it is a contradiction if everyone believed, "I am not better off if I alone give an extra $300 to the government to buy more 'stuff', but I am better off if everyone gives $300 to the government to buy more 'stuff'"
Jay,
To libertarians, it is obvious that B is better then A.
B doesn't involve coercively forcing people who disagree with you to contribute to your scheme. Even if you think it's for their own good, you're denying them important autonomy. There may be cases where this is justified, but it should be a last resort, not a first one.
If you could implement your scheme without forcing the unwilling to contribute, it would be much, much better.
I think Megan's intuition, and mine as well, is that there are many people who prefer A because they actively want to force rich, unwilling, people to pay more than they want to. They think it's more just.
I don't.
I always wondered why no one ever pushed for allowing you to earmark your own tax money. We've got 100 million people filing tax returns every year - why not add a page at the end where they can decide how their tax money is spent? You could give each person 100 pts and they could give as many of those to as many of the items listed. Their paid income taxes would then be divided proportionally, with any unallocated portion given to the Congress to allocate. You'd make the items sufficiently broad that they fit on a single page but specific enough that people can find a nice fit. Of course Congress still decides what the items are on the form, but at least it would provide a much finer granularity than D vs R for deciding what programs are worth funding.
Gil,
Let's not lose sight of the ball here.
Megan claims that those who think that their taxes should be higher, and that this is a moral matter, are under moral obligation to send more money in to the government.
Now, if it turns out that the reason that they think their taxes should be higher is that they want government to have enough money to do its thing, then just arbitrarily sending their money in won't alleviate their reason for wanting their taxes to be higher in the first place.
And if it turns out that it's not obvious which option (A or B in my previous post) is a more efficient way to fix the social problem the leftists (or Martians or what have you) wish to fix, then they AREN'T under moral obligation to send more money in to the government.
This argument is not about, nor has it ever been about, which option (A or B) is "better" is some vague value-judgment way.
Rather, the argument has been about, once you establish the GIVEN that some people want their taxes to be higher as a moral matter so that the government can have enough money to do its thing, then what obligations are those people now under in order to alleviate the social ill they wish to alleviate?
And anyone can see that it's not at all obvious that B is a more effective way to cure the perceived ills.
This isn't about some broad, "Libertarian vs. Liberal" moral match-up, this is about the particular argument Megan made, which is obviously silly.
You see?
Incidentally, it's no big deal to be wrong or to misperceive an issue. Even if this happens several times over the course of a fews days, this is no crime.
Allot of people say that things strike them as odd, inconsistent, puzzling, etc.
But Megan seems fond of throwing that extra moralistic "umph" on there sometimes.
The problem with that is, while it's not big deal to be wrong, when haughty moralism is tossed on top, then one risks being wrong about calling someone else a hypocrite, or asserting that others aren't meeting their moral obligations.
It seems worse (or at least more personal) to be wrong about stuff like this, which is why a more reflective (or at least an aversion to hastily declaring that others fail to meet their moral obligations) approach seems better.
I realize some liberals do this too, but so what? I say the same thing to them.
Well, there you have it. Let's vote.
Jay,
Well, to me it's not that interesting that there might be a theoretically coherent position that would include advocating higher-taxes without being willing to contribute to a charity with similar goals, or having the unwilling rich getting soaked as an independent goal.
I'm more interested in what actually explains reality; and I think Megan's position is more plausible, and more consistent with my experiences discussing issues with higher-tax advocates.
I don't think it means that these people are bad, or have bad intentions. But, I do think they are affected by what I consider to be a mistaken theory of justice. And, they recognize that it's not very pretty when it's laid out starkly, so they reach for far-fetched rationalizations when called out.
I'd be more impressed by people who were more honest about this, and either defended their desire to soak the rich, or considered changing their minds about how best to achieve their ends.
As a lifelong liberal who lives surrounded by many other lifelong liberals, I strongly doubt Megan's assertion that lots of liberals are indignant about the Bush tax cuts because they want the wealthy to suffer. The liberals I know are indignant about the Bush tax cuts because we believe the government badly needs money to spend on education, infrastructure, entitlements, poverty programs, etc. etc., and that the tax cuts impoverish these programs. And to the extent that the tax cuts returned more money to the rich while giving only small relief to the middle and working classes, this makes them worse--not because we want the rich to suffer, but because the rich aren't in as much financial need as the middle and working classes.
Megan's argument is largely based on a belief about liberals that is simply false.
I do think there is a difference between taxation and theft, but I also think there is a matter of principal in property rights that should be considered as well. A while back, Volokh ran a thread on suggesting constitutional amendments. I thought there should be one limiting the proportion of the economy made up by government - or perhaps a maximum statutory tax burden.
There is a limited (and possibly transient) pot of potential tax revenues to fund an unlimited appetite for entitlements. At some point taking other people's money should be subject to a constitutional limitation. I'm quite sure participants above would disagree on the amount, but the notion itself?
And this might apply to borrowing as well as taxation....
(I realize the comment suggested voting on the stated "Intuition", but the idea is relevant to the thread).
Gil,
With all due respect, it shouldn't matter all that much what you're interested in.
Megan has made an assertion about groups of people, that if they feel X, they are morally obligated to do Y.
If that turns out to be a bogus argument, then it it seems legitimate to point it out, especially since that tinge of moralism was unnecessary to the argument, and it isn't the first time Megan has injected that kind of thing into her posts.
If you're concerned about people being honest about their intentions, I see no reason why you shouldn't be concerned about defending people who are wrongly charged with failing to meet their moral obligations.
If you're concerned about one more than the other, it doesn't seem like you're being objective enough.
And BTW, I have no idea what a "mistaken" theory of justice would be.
If you are worried about progressivity in the top quintile, consider the following: on the one hand the the folks in that top 1% "pay" the lion's share of corporate taxes - via their large share of corporate ownership. On the other hand, they pass it on to their customers through higher prices, etc.
We might get a little more progressivity and a little less distortion by relieving the corporate taxes and re-integrating dividend and capital gain taxation with income taxes.
But taxing corporations feels so much like taxing other people - to get back to Megan's point.
Gil,
Since I've addressed what you're not interested in, let me address what you are interested in:
The information we're relying on in this series of entries could be explained a couple (or maybe more) of different ways,
1) People who wish for higher taxes really just want other people to pay, but they're not primarily interested in paying themselves. Since the best to enjoy watching others get coercively soaked is probably to participate in the system yourself, they're willing to pay taxes for this purpose.
2) People who wish for higher taxes really just want government to have enough ("enough" is always a perception, which was given) money to do what it does (BTW, Megan acknowledged this early on). The only way for government to have enough money to do what it does, is for a very large number of people to pay into the system. And the best way to get a very large number of people to pay into the system is to have an enforcement mechanism. Therefore, these people are perfectly happy to pay into the system, but they would like to be very confident that others will participate as well. If they can't be confident that others will pay as well, then they very well may be wasting their money by just arbitrarily paying more in. So they're happy to pay, but want to be confident that others will pay too.
Between these two, there's no answer which flows with necessity. If you cite your experience, well I cite mine too. And it tells me #2 is right, while yours tells you #1 is right. Where does that leave us?
Well, pretty much nowhere. But in looking back, we can say that although you may lean toward Megan's interpretation, to present it as objectively true is just unwarranted.
And I have absolutely no idea why #2 is more far fetched than #1. If that too is based on your experiences, you'll have to forgive me for being underwhelmed.
Megan: If I understand you correctly, we are now arguing about people who think they are not taxed enough (i.e., people who believe government should provide more public goods, and claim they are willing to pay their fair share), yet don't donate any money to charity. You say they are hypocrites because they have some excess money but selfishly use it for private consumption.
In fact, this behavior can perfectly explained even under standard assumptions of rationality. It is very likely that many people (most people, in fact) derive more utility from private consumption than from the same amount of government spending. Let's express this as U(pc) > U(gs).
These people favor higher taxes because their utility from a lot of public goods is higher than their utility from some private goods. The good part about taxation is that it ensures the production of a lot of public goods. This means that U(n*gs) > U(pc), with n the number of taxpayers. Obviously U(pc) > U(gs) and U(n*gs) > U(pc) are not contradictory statements.
There is no hypocrisy here, because we are never talking about moral judgments, only about utility maximalization.
Adding charity into the mix, it is not inconsistent (or immoral) for people to prefer private consumption to charity. The statements U(pc) > U(charity) and U(n*gs) > U(pc) are obviously not contradictory.
Jay J,
I think we may have hit on the reason that, even though liberals and libertarians agree on quite a few issues, they generally get along like cats in a sack. (I'm a libertarian, for the record)
To a liberal, there is a moral good to be had from collective action in pursuit of a national goal. Your position (and I apologize if I am misrepresenting you) is that there are a certain set of goods that the government ought to provide, and that it is only right and just that everyone contribute their fair share toward providing those goods.
As a practical matter, these goods require such large sums of money that an individual contribution simply does not have sufficient impact, and it is thus necessary for us all to pull together.
As a libertarian, I start at the other end of the equation. Not at what we are trying to accomplish, but at who we will force to pay for it. Because I am not particularly thrilled with the idea of the government taking people's money (and because I see collective action as a distasteful but occasionally necessary chore) your collective action looks to me like a tax hike, well spiced with "soak the rich" style populism.
You see the government's (laudable) goal as the moral focus, and the question of paying for it as a necessary evil, one that should be accomplished as fairly as possible.
I see people's right to keep their money (and mor generally, their freedoms) as the moral focus, and the occasional bout of collective action as a necessary evil, on that should be performed as rarely as possible.
Hence, cats in a sack.
Jay,
Megan's argument can be useful and powerful without being exhaustive of all theoretical positions. If it captures the positions that many people actually hold, then it can be enlightening.
In fact, I don't think anybody holds all of their positions because they logically deduced them from first principles.
I think we adopt them in various ways, get comfortable with them, and then resist changing them when confronted with arguments by searching for rationalizing loopholes that don't describe why we believe what we do.
So, I think calling the argument "bogus" isn't useful. Even if it's not a proof, it can still accurately describe an inconsistency that many people might have been operating under without realizing it.
And, BTW, being useful is also the criterion I have in mind when referring to various theories of justice as "mistaken." I think focusing on voluntary (non fraudulent) processes that respect property rights is more useful at promoting cooperation likely to lead to human flourishing than focusing on the distribution of outcomes and interfering to promote (or avoid) particular patterns.
Now, you may not care what I think, or agree with my goals, or my judgements about how best to promote them, but you should now have some idea of what a "mistaken" theory of justice would be.
And, since I started this comment before seeing your later one, let me just add that what I lean toward is a combination of #1 and #2. Of course people are interested in the public goods that governments promise. But, many of them also see soaking the rich as a feature that justifies trying to achieve these goals via increased taxes to government (which never seems to actually work very efficiently), rather than alternatives.
heedless,
Good comment. I agree with everything you said.
As for me, I fancy myself on of those "Liberaltarians" that Brink Lindsey talks about from time to time.
In practical matters, this leaves me feeling like an old fashioned New England Republican most of the time, which causes me to vote for Democrats most of the time, while cringing at many of their statements about the economy. I liked what you had to say on Matt's post about Iceland, and I think I find myself more or less agreeing with Matt's post about the desirability of the Icelandic or Swedish model (to whatever extent we have an accurate perception of these countries doesn't matter so much, so long as we can imagine the model clearly, of course).
But generally, I do see the government as capable of providing goods that will improve out society, and that it is a moral matter to try to bring this about.
It seems to me though that everyone is subject to the objections to this, anarchists excepted.
I mean, minimal statists want government to provide roads, police protection, property rights, military protection, etc. Anarchists don't. The minimal staters would have to coerce the anarchists into participating in the tax system, and the minimal-staters might have some hesitancy about just arbitrarily sending in money, since they may be concerned that the anarchists wouldn't, unless there were an enforcement mechanism. Then we're right back to square one it seems. The only difference is proportionality. And I saw nothing about that in Megan's post. One person sees coercion as a necessary evil for roads and police, and another person sees coercion as a necessary evil for welfare and health care. The difference are ones of value, which according to Milton Friedman, are differences about which "men can only fight."
So on the one hand, we've got some background argument going on, having to do with the things you and Gil brought up.
On the other hand, we've got the particular argument Megan made, which was more than just a summary of the differences between political groups, but made some assertions (several times) that seem indefensible.
Good comment though...
Gil,
I see what you mean more clearly now, yes.
I've got a friend who is always finding use is ideas that I find to be wrong at their core, that is, their explicit claims can be shown to be wrong.
But he gets something out of them. He lets me know, I get the benefit too. But then when I point out how some of the explicit claims are bunk, he acknowledges that too.
So I guess I'm not arguing with what you're saying. But I did, since you replied to my post, think that perhaps you were defending MM's explicit claims.
My posts were designed to deal with the particular claims which MM made, and seems determined to make again and again.
But from a bigger picture view, I guess I can't refute anything you've said, even if my leanings may be a little different.
BTW, if a claim is specific enough, and it is persistently restated, then I think "bogus" is a fair term to describe it, particularly when it started out hastily asserting the moral failings of people, and acting as if something was deductively true that wasn't.
But we may just have to agree to disagree on that...
I think this is the bit that really offends me. I can prove any of a number of other things, do I vote, sometimes, in such a way as to increase taxes on myself? Yes. Do I pay more taxes both in absolute amounts and as a percentage as a result(again, sometimes)? The answer is still yes.
But how do I prove intent? I can't. All I can say is that wanting other people to pay taxes is not my primary motivation.
It gets worse. Libertarians have no intention of trying to provide evidence for this statement of motivation. They also provide no way, not even in theory, to disprove this supposition.
Iow, it's unprovable as formulated. After having my intents speculated upon in such an unseemly manner, I have no problem in saying that this was precisely the intention of those who made the statement.
Why else would they make such unprovable assertions?
I would say this how the vast majority of 'liberals' feel - and libertarians too, for that matter, when it comes to their pet projects - but how can you prove this over and above simply taking someone's word that this is their motivations are as stated?
Libertarians here seem to be engaging in a certain logical fallacy of the 'it does not follow' type, but I'm enough under the weather not to be able to name it off the top of my head. Let me give an example: "If you do not grant the Telecom companies immunity from prosecution, that means you want the terrorists to win."
It seems that this is the type of connection they are trying to make with the original 'revealed preferences' post.
I suppose you mean logical necessity. But I am skeptical of anyone whose experience is that 'liberals' just want to raise taxes, unless they're using a definition of the 'No true Scotsman' type. Particularly since at this point, I honestly, really have no idea what libertarians mean when they say someone is a 'liberal'. It seems to be little more than code for 'people who disagree with me'.
I fail to see how you arrive at this characterization. Is it a 'moral good' that there is provisions for a national defense? Is it a moral good that we have police, courts of law, etc?
Or are these items somehow different, or special? And by what criteria? Iow, this 'moral good' argument seems to apply to libertarians as well, and is thus not a good distinguishing criterion.
And you're saying that, to me, reeks of exceptionalism. I would say that most people look at the issues this way. We don't have regulations regarding, say, meat quality, just because some 'liberals' decided one day that this would be a fine thing, and then ran rough-shod over the objections of anyone who dared raise their voice against them.
We have those regulations because they were a last resort. And in fact, we did go with other options first, the preferred libertarian options. I do not think it revisionism to say that those options were found desperately wanting, and that it was only after the libertarian experiment in this area failed - spectacularly, I might add - that 'liberals' (who seem like ordinary man-in-the-street types to me) turned to the heavy hand of government, citing, of course, necessity.
So it seems to me, in fact, that your libertarian prescriptives are tried much more often than not.
What you object to then is not that they are not tried, but that other people have tried them, and found them wanting, and it is this with which you disagree. Let's be honest about that, okay?
Let's also be honest that you're 'soak the rich' seems to preclude any honest disagreement on how much the rich should be paying, irrespective of any appeals to morality or fairness.
No, I don't think I'm being particularly moralistic or populist when I say 'the rich' should be paying more as a percentage of their wealth and income; that simply follows from my assessment of how much benefit they derive from the system. Nothing more, nothing less. Oh, I suppose you could call say this flows from some notion of 'morality', but this 'morality' is sufficiently inclusive and broadbased that I really don't want people who don't believe that one should pay their bills to live in the same country as me. The people who don't believe otherwise? Those are the sorts you find in Rwanda.