Reacting to Democracy In Chains

Nancy MacLean’s book Democracy In Chains exposes the philosophical lineage of the radical libertarian ideas that have infiltrated modern American political discourse. Her work credits many of these ideas to James M. Buchanan, who is referred to frequently throughout this article. Engaging with these ideas raises questions such as “What does liberty mean?”, “Who has power now?”, “How do we define basic resources?”, and “What’s our common enemy?”. These are important and challenging questions. This article is my wrestling with some of these questions as they occurred to me while reading Nancy’s book. The format is quotes from the book followed by my response to that quote. The article is broken into four broad sections; personal responsibility, surprise agreement, unrestrained capitalism, and democracy. The personal responsibility section has 5 quote/response pairs. The surprise agreement section has 1, unrestrained capitalism has 3, and democracy has 3. The quotes that I have chosen do not represent the extent of the crucial discoveries that Nancy made. If you’re piqued by this article, buy a copy and check it out for yourself. Leave a comment below if you like/dislike any of the ideas I put forward.

 “We have two options as human beings. We have a choice between conversation and war. That’s it.” – Sam Harris

Personal Responsibility

“Indeed, rather than sympathize with the plight of black Americans, Buchanan later argued that the failure of the black community to thrive after emancipation was not the result of the barriers put in their way, but rather proof that “the thirst for freedom, and responsibility, is perhaps not nearly so universal as so many post-Enlightenment philosophers have assumed.”” – A Country Boy Goes to the Windy City, pg. 35

Responsible people work hard. Responsible people try to contribute to their own well-being, the well-being of their families, and that of their communities through consistent effort. The Greenwood district of Tulsa, Oklahoma was as responsible and freedom loving a neighborhood as one could find in 1921, two years after James M. Buchanan was born. The assertion that the economic disparity manifested between black and white America in the twentieth century was mainly the result of a lack of the thirst for freedom and responsibility flies in the face of documented American history.¹

“They should cease focusing on problems of resource distribution – what the field called “allocation problems” – because the very idea that inequality was a bad thing led to looking for remedies, which in turn led the discipline toward an applied “mathematics of social engineering.” Instead, they should adopt his radical methodological individualism in all that they studied, and assume that individuals always sought personal gain, whether in the economy or in politics.” – A Counterrevolution Takes Time, pg. 96

In my own arguments, I try to focus my animus against gross wealth inequality and distinguish that phenomenon from regular or even helpful wealth inequality. Inequality, as a concept, isn’t harmful in itself. The relative level and consequences of the particular instance(s) of inequality in question are what matter in the final analysis. Without some moderate healthy inequality, you couldn’t have olympic medal rankings, brand preferences, professional specialization, social visionaries, or basic standards. Some inequality is good and necessary. Gross inequality is viscerally repulsive. Every individual must decide which manifestations of inequality are healthy and which are harmful for themselves. Then, we can discuss our varied opinions, find commonalities across our views, and propose legislation. Standing against inequality has to be a legislative issue, not just a social one, because greed is a permanent feature of the human psyche and greediness will have to be levied against as long as people walk and think. The fact that so many people have to go into debt just to live a dignified life while so few are born into generational abundance is a problem in need of constant addressing.

“He fulminated against “financial need” as a criterion for college scholarships as a “Marxian concept,” warning, “’Need’ grows without bounds whenever it is severed from a responsibility for acquiring satisfaction through one’s own endeavors.” – Never Compromise, pg. 131

People should take responsibility for acquiring satisfaction through their own endeavors. Fortunately, the components of the floor on which they stand to begin those endeavors is a collective decision. Resource scarcity is a real challenge. The less scarcity the poorest among us have to suffer, the higher we can collectively aspire. Wealthy people protect their progeny from the enervation of growing financial need, as they should. Common and poor people, in contrast, bear almost all of the daily burden of financial insecurity. A federal VAT, a 0.2% transaction tax, and closing the most gaping tax loopholes will make no meaningful difference in the ability of the wealthy to protect their families from privation. Spreading that help directly to the common and the poor will make glowing and awesome improvements in their lives and have indirect benefits to the lives of the wealthy. $12k/yr means little to a millionaire. Helping the common with a basic income of that amount would aid wealthy families because having a slightly less resource deprived neighbor means having one less budding enemy in the ever present campaign against gross wealth inequality. Living in the commons is hard enough without our wealthiest neighbors standing on the principle that because some of their recent (or distant) ancestors acquired transmissible wealth they’re morally entitled to insist that common and poor people are responsible for endeavoring to acquire basic resources while they themselves want for nothing. I define basic resources as a roof, reliable internet access, and enough cash to eat. Offering these basic resources to all of our citizens isn’t “Marxian”. It’s decent.

“Another impediment to the society’s vision of liberty was government backed “health and welfare,” which impaired “the normal workings of labor markets.” Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, employer-provided pensions and insurance: all those needed to be phased out—or, rather, over time, converted to individual savings accounts.” – The Kind of Force, pg. 195

The proponents of individual savings accounts frame their arguments as if they are supporting these ideas individually on their own merits.² But we know, thanks to this remarkable investigation by Nancy, that the thinkers espousing these ideas have almost invariably been trained in the Koch doctrine, usually at a Koch funded institute like the Heritage Foundation.³ We should all have our radars up for people pushing this issue.

Buchanan was having an exchange with Henry Manne, the retired dean of the George Mason School of Law, about protecting the economic freedom of business owners, phrased here as “liberty,” when government backed health and welfare were described as impediments to the normal workings of labor markets. Buchanan thinks the normal, optimal, workings of the labor market are such that common people HAVE to sell their labor to some owner at some point, if that commoner is to survive. He wants common people to HAVE to sell at least some of their attention in order to eat. I don’t think common people should have to sell ANY of their attention to anyone in order to eat. I suspect he and I would have to agree to disagree on that point.

“The solution to every problem—from young people loaded down with student loan debt to the care of infants and toddlers and the sick and the elderly—is for each individual to think, from the time they are sentient, about their possible future needs and prepare for them with their own earnings, or pay the consequences.” – Get Ready, pg. 221

People are animals. Therefore, there’s an ever present element of competition embedded in living itself. Society is largely an effort to blunt the most fatal effects of those indefatigable conflicts. A band of 100 apes that engages in mortal combat with every animal it considers an outsider is closer to our base instinctual organizing style than are modern nations with several million citizens. Primal tribalism is in many ways easier and more natural for us but it’s not better for the long-term survival of our species. The psychological affinity for in-group/out-group thinking is deep and probably permanent. The more we can commandeer those neural systems to produce an all humans as in-group/off planet invaders as out-group feeling the better. Short of an actual alien invasion, we must do that psychophilosophical work with consistent conscious effort. As a side, I don’t think our collective enemy has to be conceived of as a sentient being(s) but that phenomenon seems to operate with efficient psychological potency. It’s apparent to me that James M. Buchanan would let the owner animals out compete the common animals across generations to the point of popular destitution, widespread desperation, and normalized dependence on the owners’ charitable whims. I deeply disagree with that position and I think most commoners will as well. Still, we want people to get out of their huts and try to contribute to the world. We want to disincentivize grotesque wanton laziness for the common/poor and punish posh privileged laziness for the well heeled. I do understand the importance of hard workers keeping the lionshare of their winnings as fair reward for differential effort. I define lionshare as something like the progressive tax scheme tabled below. There will always be winners and losers. The winners can afford to share more than they currently do. The losers shouldn’t be condemned to crippling deprivation as standard operating procedure.

Progressive Annual Income Tax Brackets
0%	$0 – $24,000
10%	$24,001 – $40,000
15%	$40,001 – $85,000
20%	$85,001 – $165,000
30%	$165,001 – $215,000
35%	$215,001 – $500,000
40%	$500,001 – $2,000,000
50%	$2,000,001 – $5,000,000
60%	$5,000,001 – $20,000,000
70%	$20,000,001 – $40,000,000
80%	$40,000,001 – $90,000,000
90%	$90,000,001+

Surprise Agreement

“The problem with the university, according to Buchanan and Devletoglou, began with its distinctive structural features: “(1) those who consume its product [students] do not purchase it [at full-cost price]; (2) those who produce it [faculty] do not sell it; and (3) those who finance it [taxpayers] do not control it.” – A World Gone Mad, pg. 104

I mostly agree with Buchanan’s and Devletoglou’s sentiment here even as I would phrase the diagnosis slightly differently. Education is not a product. It’s an activity. I would phrase the problem this way; Those who pursue university education do not purchase it at full-cost price and those who finance it do not control it. I believe in public education. I attended public schools my entire life. The way that public university education is financed is broken and it’s hurting us all. I propose a trade-off that James and I might agree on. In order to bring the cost of education down, I recommend that 18 year olds not plan to apply to university at all. That’s counter to boomer logic but the world is different now. I recommend that they set up some reliable high speed internet for themselves or have their parents help them out with that, decide what topic or industry they want to pursue, get a desk, clear their schedule, and dig in for a couple of years. Many, if not most, will find that the route into their industry of choice requires no university at all. The learners that do decide on university will be the most fully engaged and will likely consider the price of admission worth the sacrifice. As long as taxpayers refuse to prop up inflated prices, loss of demand should drive prices down. Universities will have to cut their non productive budgets, i.e. most administrators, and focus on activities that bring in active learners, e.g. basic research and renowned professors, and activities that actually turn a profit, e.g. sports. I do think tax dollars can play a helpful role in university education. However, the role they are currently playing needs to be deeply reexamined.

Unrestrained Capitalism

“In particular, those waging the campaign sought “to make the protection and enhancement of corporate profits and private wealth the cornerstones of our legal system.” – Large Things Can Start, pg. 126

I think this passage is important because we, Americans, can see its negative effects popping up every day. The wealthier you are, the more you can get away with. I’m grateful that Nancy has pointed out that this trend is not happenstance. It’s the intended, desired result of over a century of cunning political strategy.

“Apparently no one confronted the import of the incentive structure at the outset, for libertarians steadfastly refused to acknowledge wealth as a form of power, but the sheer amount of money Charles Koch was giving would affect all the players in time.” – Never Compromise, pg. 142

How is power currently distributed in our nation? The vote, the arrest, and the buy. The vote is the power to choose which people at which times possess the power of the arrest. The arrest is the power to determine which people are a threat to our common survival and physically separate those persons from the general population against their will. The buy is the power to guarantee proportional amounts of human attention, on top of your own, will align with your will. Libertarians often recognize the power of the vote and the power of the arrest viscerally but they are frequently hesitant to recognize the power of the buy. Naturally, i.e. biologically as an organism, my individual attention is the only attention that I can guarantee will align with my will. Buying power of a living wage, let’s say $60k, means I can guarantee the best part at least 1 other person’s attention will align with my will for a year. If I had a buying power of $60M, I could guarantee 1000 attentions for the year. A buying power of $1B means I can align well over 16k attentions with my will and still have money leftover for Chipotle. Money is power, certainly. It feels like there a competition between voting power and buying power for who controls arresting power. I push for voting power to control arresting power every day of the week, that’s democracy.

“The new staff had shown terrible judgment in advertising the “Chief of Staff Weekend Retreats” at which figures such as sitting U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and “experts” from such think tanks as Cato and Reason addressed “senior congressional staff” on “a variety of important policy issues, while maintaining relevance to the legislative calendar.” And ordinary Web surfers, to say nothing of IRS employees, did not need to know that the Buchanan Center had been tutoring top legislative staff in such areas as strategies for privatizing Social Security and Medicare, “downsizing government,” and promoting unlimited campaign spending as a form of free speech.” – The Kind of Force, pg. 203

Giving no weight to legality or illegality, are the weekend retreats described above unethical or immoral to a degree that does more harm than good? Who do they harm? What are they good for? Legality and illegality are irrelevant to our considerations about ethics and morality because we live in a nation in which feeding homeless people, a deeply ethical act, is illegal in several cities and enslaving someone because they’ve been found guilty of a crime, a deeply unethical act, is sanctioned by the Constitution. Mostly, laws, ethics, and morals overlap. Most of the time, an illegal act is a wrong act. Still, public standards change over time. We, as citizens, are constantly engaged in a tug of war over which behaviors are considered moral and which are not. A single person can only pull the rope so far in a given direction. A movement of unified actors can move the center even further. Institutions funded by billions of private dollars have pushed our popular moral understanding of finance ethics so far off the traditional American map that unlimited corporate donations to political campaigns, an act that was illegal and widely understood as unethical and immoral in the early 20th century, is now not only legal but celebrated in country club dining rooms nationwide.⁴ These retreats, and events like them, harm the demos and help the oligarchy.

Democracy

“[Buchanan’s Virginia school] teaches that all such talk of the common good has been a smoke screen for “takers” to exploit “makers,” in the language now current, using political coalitions to “vote themselves a living” instead of earning it by the sweat of their brows. Where Milton Friedman and F.A. Hayek allowed that public officials were earnestly trying to do right by the citizenry, even as they disputed the methods, Buchanan believed that government failed because of bad faith: because activists, voters, and officials alike used talk of the public interest to mask the pursuit of their own personal self-interest at others’ expense.” – Introduction: A Quiet Deal in Dixie, xxxii

The definition of liberty, as with every word/concept, evolves over time. In evolution, whichever expressed trait(s) assist or cause a survival advantage tend to spread and become persistent features. The concept of liberty contains this trait; “I have accumulated resource wealth via voluntary trades with consenting mature traders. I have the liberty to do as I wish with 100% of those earnings”. From that trait springs “Taxation is theft.” The concept of liberty contains this trait; “I don’t own you. You don’t own me. I have the liberty to pay attention to whatever I want, whenever I want, for as long as I want, as long as it does not infringe on someone else’s liberty.” In America today, we are engaged in the conflict between the liberty of the powerful buyer and the liberty of the common citizen. Voting and democracy are the most liberating practices, with respect to the common person, our species has ever seen. The powerful will always assert that their liberty is more important than yours. As they should. The common will always assert that our liberty is more important than theirs. As we should. Society will thrive when powerful actors, large and small, argue their points in the public eye. By casting doubt on our collective ability to pursue the common good, James has weakened the ability of the common person to fully trust those democratically elected into power and shifted public scrutiny away from the private powers operate in the shadows.

“Buchanan found a way of thinking about fairness in Wicksell’s work that matched his own inclinations as a man of the midcentury right (which was ironic, because Wicksell was a man of the left who had in mind disenfranchised wage earners who were being taxed for the projects of a monarchical government in which they had no vote).” – A Country Boy Goes to the Windy City, pg. 43

I like this passage because demonstrates one of the limits of human communication. We are all flawed and fallible. The idea that James could so deeply misunderstand one of his intellectual inspirations reminds me to tap the chip on my shoulder more frequently.

“Anyone who tries to expose what this cause is up to thus must ask herself: Will I become the target of similar scurrilous attack? Wouldn’t it be wiser to keep quiet? The cadre even has an economics euphemism for harassment to intimidate—they call it “upping the transaction costs for the other side.” – Get Ready, pg. 232

This final quote is so important because it’s a portent of personal decisions that many public thinkers will have to make in years to come. Powerful buyers delight at the prospect of the arresting authorities enforcing rules that favor them over us. We will always have the greedy and the lazy with us. Voting keeps the greediest in check; democracy. Trading keeps the laziest in check; capitalism. When traders work to silence voters, and vice versa, they are working against themselves.

Thank you Nancy MacLean for doing this incredibly important work. I believe it is possible and preferable that we argue ideas for the common good as best we can in full light of the public eye and shame those who consciously mask their intentions. We the people can agree on the best standards for liberty, finance, and democracy, if we try. It’s all hands on deck if we are to survive what nature will inevitably throw at us. It’s best we lay our arguments out now.

References

¹John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967)

²Robert Bellafiore, The Case For Universal Savings Accounts (Washington, DC: Tax Foundation, 2019)

³Robert Bellafiore, LinkedIn Profile (Linkedin.com: LinkedIn, 2020)

⁴Pawel Laider, The Tillman Act (Cambridge.org: Jagiellonian University Press, 2018

Podcast: Play in new window | Download