Why Economic Libertarianism Is So Naive

Bill Maher, of course, has his show Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO.  What some people don’t know is that he has also taken to filming Overtime With Bill Maher afterward.  Overtime, essentially, is a 7 – 10 minute extra feature in which he brings out all of his guests for that night’s episode and they discuss questions submitted by his audience over the internet.  It airs on HBO On Demand a few days after Real Time is broadcast.

Last night I was watching Overtime and one of the questions culled by Maher’s staff asked whether people were getting “stupider” or “meaner.”  Maher, of course, answered “both.”  This provoked a mild objection from his guest Penn Jillette, the illusionist and Libertarian, who argued that while it always seems to us as if things are getting worse, over the great arc of time the human condition has improved dramatically.  Jillette also took issue with Maher’s assertion that people are generally nasty pieces of work, and argued instead that the great majority of us are actually very nice people.

Maher’s response, essentially, was that if people have gotten less violent and generally kinder in their dealings with each other over the centuries that doesn’t reflect any change on behalf of the human species so much as it reflects improvements in human institutions.  As we’ve gotten better at governing ourselves, Maher asserted, we’ve tamped down on some of the inherent viciousness of which we are capable.

But Jillette took issue with this too.  I think because of his Libertarian leanings, Jillette found it difficult to accept that restrictions on human conduct might be necessary, and so he kept stressing that the vast, vast majority of people have no wish – for example – to rape or kill others.  And then the conversation devolved to a discussion about religion and whether religious beliefs are necessary to ensure moral conduct.

This back-and-forth between Maher and Jillette got me thinking about our regulatory institutions and how they should be structured. 

To the extent Jillette seemed to suggest that humans don’t really need any strictures to control our behavior because most people are “inherently good” – well, he’s right about most people being “inherently good” but he’s wrong about everything else.  It is true that most of us are inherently good people who would never rape, or murder, or steal, or inflict suffering on others for our personal gain . . . but some would. 

In fact, I would argue that in the absence of any controlling rules or prohibitions on human conduct there would be an inexorable tendency over time for more and more people to act worse and worse toward each other.  Even if just 1% of the human population consists of ruthless, self-centered pricks – and the other 99% are angels – there isn’t much doubt that over time the 1% will tend to acquire more power and more resources than the other 99%.  (Sound familiar?)  If I’m willing to shoot you to take our goods, your horse, or your woman and you aren’t willing to shoot me to do the same . . . guess who’s going to end up with two thumbs and all the goods, horses, and women?

It is very probably true that most people wouldn’t willingly shoot another just to take what the other person has, but when they are competing against others who are willing to do so the pressure to descend to that more vicious level is greater until eventually, without a formal social structure punishing such ruthlessness, “mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.”

This is precisely why we need the minimal business regulations – with real teeth in them should they be violated – that Libertarians such as Jillette tend to find anathema.  It may be that most merchants would never think of cheating their customers by using filler instead of real food, or selling a 7 ½ ounce can of something and labeling it “8 ounces,” or lying about the quality of their products – but some would.  Without a way to police bad behavior, an inexorable pressure builds upon all the competitors in a particular market to cut a little corner here, shave off a little there, or keep their thumb on the scale when their customers can’t see it; they can always console themselves with the idea that “everybody does it.”

Simply stated, it would be foolish to construct a regulatory scheme – or to do without one entirely – based on what “most people are like”; regulatory schemes have to be constructed based on what “some people will do.”

We don’t have to believe – as Maher seems to – that we’re all bastard-coated bastards with a creamy bastard filling . . . but it would be naive to refuse to recognize – as Jillette wishes to -- that some of us are.

Does Modern Debate Foster American Ignorance?

The New York Times had a story yesterday about how American students know less about U.S. history than any other subject.  This seems to be old news.  I remember reading a story a year or so ago that reported a significant portion of American adults were unable to correctly identify two of the three countries America fought in World War II.

I remember marveling when I read that.  Even if no one surveyed ever attended a history class in his or her life, World War II is part of our national culture -- had none of those people ever seen a WWII movie?  Sure, Italy tends to get short shrift in these films, but I just don't understand how one can grow to be an adult in our country and not at least know that WWII involved us fighting Germany and Japan.

I was reminded of that when I read the New York Times story and saw that one example of our country's high school seniors' ignorance of American history is that few were "able to identify China as the North Korean ally that fought American troops during the Korean  War."  Was this really supposed to be surprising?

Korea is often referred to as "the forgotten war," and with good reason.  WWII basically supports an entire entertainment industry, as does the Vietnam War.  But you just don't see a lot of documentaries or films being made about the Korean War.  And I don't recall ever learning anything about that war when I was in high school, or even during the history classes I took in college.  In fact, the only reason I learned that China was a North Korean ally is because - like a lot of people my age - I grew up watching M.A.S.H.  Pathetically, the sum total of my knowledge of the Korean War comes from that television show.

Which makes me wonder why the New York Times's Sam Dillon picked this factoid to put in the first paragraph of his article.  Is it really the case that most people think the Korean War was a central conflict about which all U.S. high school students should know?  Or is it more the case that - like me - Dillon absorbed a few basic facts about the Korean War from watching one of the most popular television shows of all time and now can't comprehend how other people don't know what the both of us unthinkingly imbibed through our popular culture?

Its ability to round out my knowledge of recent events is one of the reasons I am a big fan of popular culture, at least that part of it we have easy access to.  Watching movies and television shows, listening to music, and reading popular books produced in the 50's, 60's and 70's catches me up on a lot of stuff I missed simply because I wasn't around for it.  Pop culture can't supplant studying actual history, of course, but it can supplement it to a great degree.  Especially with the Internet, recent pop culture is more accessible now than ever before.

Which is one of the reasons I get so incensed when I see people opine on things about which they do not know, and then when called on it reply:  "Well, that was before my time."  As if because it was before their time is sufficient reason not only for them not to know about it, but for them to dismiss it as irrelevant.

The most egregious example of which I am aware occurred about two years ago, back when President Obama had been in office for about 5 months and was struggling (as supposedly he still is) to get the economy back on track.  Meghan McCain had been invited to appear on Real Time With Bill Maher, ostensibly for what she had to contribute on presidential politics. 

At one point, McCain claimed that it was inappropriate for President Obama to blame the country's economic problems on George W. Bush -- I mean, sure Bush had been in charge for 8 years but by the time this show rolled around he already had been gone 5 months.  When Paul Begala pointed out that after taking office Ronald Reagan blamed Jimmy Carter for the nation's economic slump for years, McCain attempted to dismiss this fact with the non sequitor "I wasn't even born yet so I don't know," and Begala - rightly - schooled her for it:

What rankles is not that Meghan McCain did not know recent presidential history -- though this appears to be what she was invited on the show to discuss -- but that she so obviously didn't think she should be expected to know anything that occurred prior to her own birth.  Even more, she seemed to think that her own ignorance somehow rebutted actual facts presented by someone who disagreed with her.

Translating this attitude into rational sentences, you end up with something like this:

Advocate:     I assert Proposition A.

Opponent:     History shows that Proposition A is incorrect.

Advocate:      Well, I don't know about that because that happened before I was
                      born.  Since I don't know about that, I don't have to accept it.
                      Therefore, you haven't proven me wrong.

In the end, it comes down to a very basic misunderstanding that seems to prevail in our modern discourse:  that all views, so long as they are sincerely held, are equally valid.

It doesn't make any sense, of course, but given that we seem increasingly to be turning into a "now oriented" society, given our media's refusal to present facts to their audiences instead of simply reporting competing claims, and given that literally everything (does smoking cause cancer?  do carbon dioxide emissions lead to climate change? does life actually evolve?) is unsettled and up for debate so long as even one person sincerely claims it is, what more can we expect?

In fact, given that this is how policy debates increasingly are conducted in our country, aren't we simply fostering ignorance?  It used to be that if you wanted to prevail in an argument, you had to be able to marshal facts.  Now you just have to be able to marshal sound bites.  And if you can maintain ignorance about what you are talking about, you never run the risk of being forced to accept a fact you don't like.