If I Were on the Left

While I would agree that markets don’t always provide results that are “properly earned” I don’t hold out much hope we will get people to agree on what “properly earned” means.

I think focusing on transparency would get better results. Unregulated markets often move toward less transparency rather than more. Markets work best with lots of transparency but market participants rarely want that for their own transactions. And they almost never lobby for it.

It is not just the mortal authority of government that has diminished in the last few decades. Even more fundamentally, the cultural norms that used to constrain market participants from engaging in legal but unethical behavior have withered.

Being “driven by greed” and earning your success are not mutually exclusive concepts. In fact, since a leftist would have to believe that all successful humans are driven by greed, in a free market, successfully reaching the goal that greed drives you towards requires you to do what is most valuable to society is arguably one of the best arguments for markets. This is what confuses me about leftist, if they indeed “feel for the poor”, why do they pursue strategies that allow for the greedy to succeed in a way not beneficial to society?

Nice post. It would be nice if left and right could both focus on how to improve market rules, but alas “politics is not about policy.”

“I see government failure as intrinsic to its centralized, monopolistic structure”

That’s exactly what I said in the comments here twice. I think this idea is important to combating the ideas of the left. We have to break through their resolve that government can make things better if we just get the right people in place. What is intrinsic to government is that the wrong people (libido dominandi) tend to be in place and even if we have the “right” people, they couldn’t know what to do.

I’d add to your statement that because of the centralized, monopolistic structure and access to the use of violence; government failure tends to be larger in scale, longer lasting, and deeper in its consequences than market failure. Markets that fail often self correct in time and sometimes non market cooperation has been known to evolve/emerge on its own to overcome times when markets fail.

There was a woman economist who studied this. She studied how societies handle situations like the tragedy of the commons. I can’t remember who she is though. I do remember her conclusions though. Big centralized government is not needed to resolve these kinds of problems.

I would argue with Matt H above. Both institutions — markets and governments — are aggregated moral value systems of the people and society from which they are created. The founding component is the adult’s value system created by that society in the yes, moral, social and value character of that child, deeply influenced by that culture, its limitations and foci. Analysing the effect of greed becoming your society’s ‘god’ and the altar few remain embarrassed to worship upon and an incentive and reward structure that celebrates fatuous “celebritism” and success based on lowest values, often the opposite of ‘moral authority’, might be a critical place to begin.

It’s actually not that hard, if you know anything about the development of character and raising the human child well or poorly, to see how we got here. What’s hard is to keep hearing all the subsequent justifications for the flawed belief that it is an inevitable result as opposed to admitting the obvious gradations in that very result in societies all around us. (Of which the US of the last 30 years is a lesson in how to move backwards on that very scale of moral authority.)

It does seem, as Matt H. suggests, that it would be worth deconstructing how to move forward on that same scale and analyzing the societies/governments that legitimately have. Personally, I would start with how we raise and educate the children in that same corrosive, fatuous value system and then seem so confused by the subsequent but fairly logical result.

I would argue with Matt H above. Both institutions — markets and governments — are aggregated moral value systems of the people and society from which they are created. The founding component is the adult’s value system created by that society in the yes, moral, social and value character of that child, deeply influenced by that culture, its limitations and foci. Analysing the effect of greed becoming your society’s ‘god’ and the altar few remain embarrassed to worship upon and an incentive and reward structure that celebrates fatuous “celebritism” and success based on lowest values, often the opposite of ‘moral authority’, might be a critical place to begin.

It’s actually not that hard, if you know anything about the development of character and raising the human child well or poorly, to see how we got here. What’s hard is to keep hearing all the subsequent justifications for the flawed belief that it is an inevitable result as opposed to admitting the obvious gradations in that very result in societies all around us. (Of which the US of the last 30 years is a lesson in how to move backwards on that very scale of moral authority.)

It does seem, as Matt H. suggests, that it would be worth deconstructing how to move forward on that same scale and analyzing the societies/governments that legitimately have. Personally, I would start with how we raise and educate the children in that same corrosive, fatuous value system and then seem so confused by the subsequent but fairly logical result.

Matt H.

“1. Don’t some government institutions work better than others? Some countries better than others? ”

Yes this is true of all organizations, public and private. Most organizations are ill conceived, poorly run with only a few exceptions. The difference is that in the private sector, effective organizations tend to survive while ineffective organizations tend to either fix themselves up or die. Over time you have lots of effective private organizations and lots of ineffective government organizations. Private organizations are great at duplicating success, while government organizations are not.

Regarding the last paragraph…nah, don’t think so. You’re describing the views of “the left” from the standpoint of someone on “the right”.

Those on the left are not concerned with market efficiency. They “care” about “fairness” (ala Haidt)…i.e., their “caring” is their religion and “fairness” is defined as social justice ala Rawls.

They believe the individuals in government can function at least as well as those in any large organization in the private sector (the moral authority arguments are just to stake out the high ground). They envision reasonably well running government that will be continually improving and that is good enough as long as progress is being made via redistribution to achieve equality.

I’m not sure I would describe any of the 3 main UK political parties as anything other than ‘self-serving, slightly off-centre, self-preserving’ in nature. They are largely populated by people who have little relevant experience of the lives most people live. They play to the <40% of people who care to vote, using the channels of lazy media and public gullibility. There is relatively little difference in the real economic policies of the left-lite and right-light when you consider the effects of a few billion either way, but the reporting and perceptions arising from those relatively low-cost decisions make them make-or-break for politicians and governments. The description of views / parties / policies as far-left and far-right is part of the cosy protection of the centre ground.

“Where I claim the difference lies is that people on the left believe that with sufficient moral authority, government can be made to work better. I see government failure as intrinsic to its centralized, monopolistic structure.”

What if the argument was not about sufficient moral authority, but instead sufficient checks & balances, democracy, trial and error, transparency, etc? Don’t some governments and cultures work better than others? Isn’t it possible to improve upon government and regulation by creating the right environment, the rights checks on government power, the right decentralized and democratic structure which might reduce/improve upon the ‘centralized, monopolistic structure’ somewhat? Might there creative solutions that could perhaps help government to work better?

The problem is that electoral democracy is not adequate to controlling a giant administrative state. A citizen can vote for a Congressperson, a couple of Senators, and a President, but has millions of bureaucrats affecting their lives. If and when the bureaucracy screws up, they have very little recourse, unless they’re rich or insanely stubborn. To make things worse, many if not most of the elected people in government favor the bureaucracy over the electorate, and the bureaucracy itself is protected with civil-service laws.

Even if you figure out to have a more responsive system for managing the bureaucracy, you’d still have the “monopoly problem” to deal with: how do you know whether a government program is effective or not? Since there’s no competing programs, “success” ends up being defined by the very bureaucracy responsible for implementing the existing program, and shockingly, it ends up defining success as “do what we’re currently doing, but more of it”. All you have to compare with is programs in other countries or theoretical constructs from think-tanks or academia.