By John C. Goodman
Saturday, April 13, 2013
In Britain they are mourning the death of Margaret
Thatcher. They are also celebrating. Celebrating? Yes, celebrating.
"Ding Dong the Witch is Gone," reads one sign.
"I Still Hate Thatcher," reads another. Then there is "Rejoice,
Thatcher is Dead" and "The Bitch is Dead." Try this link if
you're up to viewing a lot of sickening photos and a lot of disrespect for Britain's
greatest leader.
Granted, any crazy person can create a sign. But this is
a good time to remember the conflict in Margaret Thatcher's Britain was not
just about slogans on signs. She was actively engaged in a war of ideas.
Most of us have a good idea of Thatcher's political philosophy.
Could you explain the political philosophy of her opponents? I think the basic
beliefs of the left in Britain are not all that different from the beliefs of
the left in this country. Yet you almost never hear it spelled out in clear
detail.
So let me give it a try.
Let's start with what the left does not believe. Do they
believe the political system should make everyone have the same income and the
same wealth? No. Do they believe in the Rawlsian principle that public policy
should always favor the least well off? No. Do they believe that government
should intervene in the economy if and only if intervention increases GDP? No.
Do they believe that government should intervene in the economy if and only
if…?
Ok. Let's stop. The problem with all the ideas in the
preceding paragraph is that they would restrict political decision making to a
principle. If politicians were restricted to a principle — any principle — they
would have very little discretion.
Let's suppose that we wrote the Rawlsian principle into
the Constitution. Then we can imagine a Supreme Court striking down any law
that did not benefit the least well off. Is this something that would appeal to
the anti-capitalist mentality?
Here's what you need to understand about the political
left. The last thing in the world they want is to take discretion away from
government — at least in the economic realm.
So what do they believe in? Two things.
First, government should have virtually unrestricted
authority to intervene in the economic sphere. It should be able to set prices,
control output, dictate quality standards, nationalize companies, create
cartels and restrict entry into markets for any reason whatsoever. In
particular, they believe that government should have unlimited ability to
intervene in the market to help Peter at the expense of Paul, regardless of who
Peter is and regardless of who Paul is. By that last point I mean that Peter
can be rich and Paul poor, or vice versa. Peter can be young and Paul old, or
vice versa. Peter can be happy and Paul can be sad, or vice versa. Peter and
Paul can be anybody.
Second, people should be able (and even encouraged) to
form special interest groups to pressure government for the express purpose of
taking from Peter to benefit Paul. Further, there should be almost no limit on
what kind of favors interest groups should be able to extract from government.
To understand the contrary point of view, consider the
case of New Ice House vs. Liebmann (1932). In that case Oklahoma City granted a
monopoly to one firm and refused to allow any other firm to deliver ice to
consumers. The Supreme Court, however, was unable to find any legitimate
purpose behind the regulation. There was nothing showing that the ice house
monopoly in any way was promoting the "general welfare." Therefore,
the Court struck down the regulation on the grounds that it unconstitutionally
interfered with the natural liberty the Constitution is presumed to protect.
Now if you listened to the rhetoric of the left, you
would think that this decision would be lauded at every Democratic national
convention. Here is a greedy (for-profit) ice house that undoubtedly convinced
friendly politicians to give it exclusive control over the market for ice. Its
monopoly profits were at the expense of consumers, including working class
folks struggling to get by. If you favor the little guy over the vested
interests, how could there be any question about what is the right side?
Yet, it is an article of faith on the left that the
Supreme Court decided this case incorrectly. The left, to repeat, wants
virtually no restriction on government's ability to intervene in the economy.
The only thing that differentiates the radical left from
the more moderate left is the degree to which they are willing to allow special
interests extort favors. In the "winter of discontent" (1978-79), the
British economy was ground to a halt by the labor unions. As Megan McArdle
writes:
Trash piled up in the streets. The truck drivers who
ferried goods all over Britain went on strike — and the ones who didn't, like
oil tanker drivers, began feeding their destinations to "flying
pickets" — mobile groups of strikers who would go from location to
location, blockading them so that workers couldn't get in and goods couldn't
get out. The BBC called them the "shock troops of industrial action"
and that's an accurate picture; effectively mobilized, flying pickets can grind
the wheels of industry to a halt…
In Liverpool, the gravediggers went out, leaving bodies
unburied for weeks. By the end of January, half the hospitals in Britain were
taking only emergency cases. Full of righteous fury, the unions flexed every
muscle, demonstrating all the tremendous power that they had amassed by law and
custom in the years since the Second World War.
These were the excesses that brought Margaret Thatcher to
power. If there is any criticism on the left it is only that these activities
were "excessive." Almost no one on the left disagrees with the
principle that government should be able to grant a monopoly to a labor union —
just as the Medieval guilds monopolized their trades in earlier times. Almost
no one on the left disagrees with the idea of a picket line — an extra legal
activity designed to intimidate and coerce private citizens. Rarely will you
hear any criticism on the left of the unions' discrimination against outsiders
— of their long history of excluding women, blacks and other minorities. The
difference between the British Labor Party and liberal Democrats in the United
States is similarly only one of degree.
As I have written before, unions are not formed to help
those at the bottom of the income ladder. They are organized against the lowest
paid workers. A union can succeed in obtaining above-market wages only if it
can keep other workers out of the market.
Unions are not about altruism. They are about the raw
pursuit of self-interest. What we generally call "liberalism" is
about accommodating that pursuit of self-interest. Think of the political
sphere as a special kind of Hobbesian jungle in which each group tries to rig
the rules of the game in order to enhance its share of the economic pie at the
expense of everyone else. During the administration of Franklin Roosevelt, the
federal government tried to codify this process — economy wide:
At [Roosevelt's] behest, Congress passed the National
Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), which attempted to regulate the entire economy,
based on the Italian fascist model. In each industry, management and labor were
ordered to collude to set prices, wages, output, etc. (acts that today would be
a criminal violation of the anti-trust law). So intrusive were these
regulations that what in retrospect seems like an incredibly silly regulation
made it all the way to the Supreme Court, which responded by declaring the
entire scheme unconstitutional.
Roosevelt was among the most collectivist
(anti-individual rights) presidents the United States has ever had. And not
just in the economic realm. Although Abraham Lincoln and Woodrow Wilson before
him had suspended constitutional rights in the time of war, Roosevelt went
further than any president before or since. On his orders Japanese Americans
were rounded up and forced into detention camps (for no other reason than the
fact that they were of Japanese ancestry) for the duration of World War II.
("What is Classical Liberalism?")
One more thing. The left is devoted to process, not to
results.
When Britain turned Hong Kong over to the Chinese (1997),
per capita income in Hong Kong was higher than it was in Britain. Think about
that. This former British colony has no natural resources. It is basically a
large rock sitting in the sea. Its citizens are mainly refugees who immigrated
with little or no wealth. The only thing Hong Kong had going for it was that it
had the freest economy in the whole world.
So how many people in the Labor Party said "Hong
Kong's political economy works better than the political economy of the mother
country"? Not a one.
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