In chapter V of On Liberty, John Stuart Mill eloquently explained one important reason for Americans today to oppose any further centralization of power in Washington:
The third, and most cogent reason for restricting the interference of government, is the great evil of adding unnecessarily to its power. Every function superadded to those already exercised by the government, causes its influence over hopes and fears to be more widely diffused, and converts, more and more, the active and ambitious part of the public into hangers-on of the government, or of some party which aims at becoming the government. If the roads, the railways, the banks, the insurance offices, the great joint-stock companies, the universities, and the public charities, were all of them branches of the government: if, in addition, the municipal corporations and local boards, with all that now devolves on them, became departments of the central administration; if the employés of all these different enterprises were appointed and paid by the government, and looked to the government for every rise in life; not all the freedom of the press and popular constitution of the legislature would make this or any other country free otherwise than in name. And the evil would be greater, the more efficiently and scientifically the administrative machinery was constructed—the more skilful the arrangements for obtaining the best qualified hands and heads with which to work it.
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I’ve just read this passage from my French translation (Gallimard, “Folio essais” no. 142 pp. 233-234, 1990) and I think the translation seems inaccurate. “interference” is “intervention” in French but maybe Mill meant “ingérence”, “interférence”, “intrusion” or even “parasite” as well…? “hangers-on of the government” is only “parasites” in French, and “of some party which aims at becoming the government” is only “comploteurs” in French (that is to say “plotter” in English)…
But Mill also prefixed his essay with what he called a “motto” from Wilhelm von Humboldt’s Sphere and Duties of Government, published in 1854: “The grand, leading principle, towards which every argument unfolded in these pages directly converges, is the absolute and essential importance of human development in its richest diversity.”
And in your postings I’m somehow missing diversity or at least some acknowledgement of the existence of diversity. Instead most postings here are what Tyler Cowen claims Masonomics is not about: “Austrian economics (don’t try to reduce every topic to what some iconic Austrian figure said about ; if you listen to some self-proclaimed Austrians [Don Boudreaux?
], it too often sounds as though there is nothing new to learn or study)”
Stephan, “… I’m somehow missing diversity or at least some acknowledgement (sic) of the existence of diversity.” Yes. Yes, you are missing it. In the three years I’ve been reading this blog I would use the word diversity as a descriptive characteristic of its content, its approach to economic thought, and in the general writing Don and Russ. Are you confusing your blogs? Are you just in a snippy mood?
Stephan,
Your argument seems to be suffering from a grave case of equivocation. Mill’s “diversity of human development” seems to be different from the diversity you speak of (you didn’t even care to define it).
Also, you seem to be missing the point of the argument: that a government with unlimited power and reach can cause injury to its defenseless citizenry. It is slavery by another name.
Why oh why is almost any debate on this blog heading towards such extremes? You raise the single-payer scheme or the public option from a European perspective. And you end discussing euthanasia and Nazis looming everywhere. You start with questioning diversity and it takes only one post to contemplate whether government is just about to enslave citizenry.
Get real folks. Your government does not plan to pull the plug on grandma. And there’s no conspiracy on the way to enslave ordinary US citizens. It might be better to consider whether a financial oligarchy is right now thinking very hard how to further expropriate you guys.
What I mean with diversity is simple. It means there are a lot of ideas arround and even if they don’t fit the Austrian paradigma the people who have them are not simply idiots and it might be worth to fool around with this ideas instead of dismissing them as foolish.
Stephan,
You raise a lot of important issues, all of which I cannot cover in one short post. So I’ll try to respond to the comments relevant to the original post.
I think the following appropriately encapsulates the spirit of the quote: “Every function superadded to those already exercised by the government… converts, more and more, the active and ambitious part of the public into hangers-on of the government.” That hanging-on, that dependency created by the government, creates a relationship not unlike that between a master and his slave. When a businessman has a choice between improving his product to increase his sales or to appeal to government for help in undercutting his opponents or the market, how can we reasonably expect him to choose the less-expedient former option? The same logic applies to other pressure groups, advocacy organizations, etc, vis a vis the government.
It is government overreach itself that creates those financial oligarchs you warn us about, not the properlyy functioning free market of a capitalist society.
Stephen, Re: “Tyler Cowen claims Masonomics is not about: “Austrian economics (don’t try to reduce every topic to what some iconic Austrian figure said about ; if you listen to some self-proclaimed Austrians [Don Boudreaux?
], it too often sounds as though there is nothing new to learn or study)”"
First, that was Kling’s interpreation of Cowen’s assessment, but that is really no matter. I agree with the Kling/Cowen assessment of Austrian economics, but I’d be careful about parenthetically including Don in there. While there’s no doubt Don doesn’t usually quibble about whether we have a conclusive answer on a question, I think Cafe Hayek is one of the few discerning Austrian venues out there. Don is always willing to point to a bad Austrian argument and reject it.
What an excellent quote.
BTW, for those who have not read the book and would like to have it on audio, you can download it free from librivox.org. I have and am currently listening to it as I go to and fro here in Houston.
I still think Federalist #10 has the best analysis. And it goes one better than theory. Madison offers a practical solution: a federal republic designed to balance faction against faction so that a tyranny is almost impossible. It still works pretty well.
This is one of Madison’s weaker arguments in Federalist #10. The factions have not been canceling each other out; rather, they are all being paid off (except the “shrink the government” faction). Sure, our Republic has quelled Jacobin-style tyranny, but Tocquevillian soft tyranny is in full effect.
It is an effective design, but it would seem the protections were not strong enough–or at least not CLEAR enough that the courts could not subvert them. But, hindsight is always 20:20.
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