I am due for a fascinating teleconference in 10 minutes, but I thought this Glenn Reynold’s post nicely illustrated a real blind spot for libertarians. We tend to be market- and economics-oriented, and any concentration of attention in one area creates blind spots in others. One of those blind spots has to do with the economically irrational but irreducibly human craving for non-material benefits in the form of status, recognition, etc.
My historian-brother often says that one of the most interesting phenomena that he’s observed is the cross-cultural willingness of people to trade away economic benefits for status. I suspect that this is one example of that. So, in a surprisingly similar way, is being a politician. That’s an obviously poor economic move for most folks. But one of the drug dealers in Price’s book talks about how he likes the way he becomes the center of attention when he enters a room full of junkies. Politicians, I think, get the same thing, especially in the bubble-environments of Washington, or state capitals. I suspect, in fact, that people are, to varying degrees, hardwired to get an endorphin rush from that sort of attention, just as they’re hardwired in varying degrees to respond to drugs.
As I say, I don’t know if Levitt talks about that or not, but I think it’s one possible explanation for a lot of stuff that looks economically counterproductive.
I have a niggling sense that there is a lot more to be said on this subject, but duty calls. Go read the Instapundit post, and as always, be sure to click the concluding “Indeed.”
I am not sure it is a blind spot. I would say reputation and status are very closely linked. Reputation is used by libertarians to describe why in the lack of regulations, businesses wouldn’t go all out to screw over their customers.
Also, economics is not solely concerned with the movement of little green pieces of paper, but incentives and disincentives to action (amongst other things). If someone valued x more dollars rather than attention from peers or hangers on, then they will go for the money rather than the attention. The fact that some do not just reflects their individual desires.
Anomdebus, I was about to respond, but you already hit the nail on the head.
I don’t see that seeking status is economically irrational. First, it often saves money: It’s usually much easier to get someone to smooth a path for you, comp you at a hotel, or even break rules for you because of your elevated status than because you’re handing out Ben Franklins. Second, the relative deprivation that state and federal politicians endure while in office is quickly washed away by high-paying jobs at law and lobbying firms, work on the lecture circuit, and hefty book advances.
First off, being a congressman isn’t economically irrational. Congressmen make more than $150,000 a year, plus untaxable housing benefits. Plus, every congressman wins a lifetime pension which is quite generous. Then there are the kickbacks, junkets, free stuff, etc. Moreover, congressmen walk out of the legislature and into cushy jobs in the military-industrial complex, universities, lobbying firms, or government consulting companies.
Secondly, studies have been done for corporations to try to figure out what motivates people. Money is obviously a big motivator, but acclaim is even more important than money. People will work for a bonus, but they will kill themselves for an award, a handshake, and a round of applause.
– Josh
Many of the values we seek are non-material in nature. If I travel 5000 miles to see my family is it a material benefit? Of course not! I am not travelling for the sake of physical travelling. I am traveling physically to achieve a non-material benefit.
Entertainment is another area where we spend huge amount of resources but the value derived is clearly non-material.
Since I’m not a proper libertarian, I don’t get too exercised when libertarians are characterized as seeing everything in terms of economics, a flawed analysis that I have run across several times. It is easier for those who mistrust the demand for liberty to debate with a cardboard cutout, i.e., the “economics is all” imaginary libertarian, than it is to engage the entire range of meaning that is encapsulated in the phrase, “We hold these truths to be self evident…”
We had a delightful debate on this blog a few weeks ago about the meaning of libertarian ideas. While there was a far ranging discussion of economic issues, my only comment at that time was that libertarian positions were moral principles, not simply economic doctrines.
Opponents of maximizing individual liberty find it much easier to discuss economic hypotheticals than broader questions of restricting peoples’ freedom of choice because it is so much easier to get libs on the defensive trying to defend a stereotype like the “robber baron” or the heartless polluter than to discuss the moral legitimacy of a government agent pointing a gun at the head of an ordinary, law abiding citizen and forcing them to perform actions against their beliefs and interests.
It is very clear, to all but the utterly deluded collectivist, that recognizing the rights of free individuals to live and work as they see fit has resulted in the creation and dispersal of wealth at a level totally unimaginable even to those who believed that affirming the rights of free citizens would be beneficial and stimulate progress in society.
But it is not the results which justify freedom, but the moral correctness of liberty which demonstrates its value by becoming the fertile soil in which a multitude of creative ideas and efforts can flourish, with the benefits derived from those ideas and efforts accessible to more and more of the human race.
Jefferson, for example, envisioned a free society of artisans, merchants, and sturdy yeoman farmers, living together in peace and freedom, each benefiting from the efforts and ingenuity of the others. He might not have been able to predict General Electric, or Ford Motors, or IBM, or even approve of them, but he would be able to understand them as the economic expression of a moral force—people making choices for what they understood as their own best interests.
The specific results of free people making choices for their own purposes might be good in one instance, and lousy in another. It is the moral value attached to the right to live and make choices that matters, not any particular result. As we have so often said, the ends do not justify the means.
For human beings trying to live on this earth, the means of liberty and freedom of choice are their own justification. The love of liberty is not an economic program, but a moral position which cannot be surrendered without surrendering the very meaning of what it is to exist as a truly human person.
Good stuff, veryretired.
I’m not sure I agree with Robert Clayton Dean that libertarians do in general have this particular blind spot, though naturally I agree with him that if they do, they shouldn’t. Fact is, though ,I have seen lots of writing on the moral rather than the economic angle. No offence, Robert, but I think you may be accepting a mischaracterisation put about by people who don’t much like us anyway.
Well put VR. I have seen too much defensive biteback, just as you have said, on this blog.
See, this is what happens when you post in a hurry.
I agree with most of what is posted above. What I may have been trying to get at is the prevailing perception of libertarians as being obsessed with economics, and that this perception is not entirely groundless.
I mean, c’mon, when you think of leading libertarian thinkers, many of them are economists, after all. I don’t think anyone would doubt that by far the dominant libertarian meme is that of the free market, for example.
We tend to foreground economics and economic-style arguments (anything utilitarian “feels” like economics). This isn’t to say that there aren’t moral arguments as well for libertarian policies, but for some reason that is not how we are seen in the public square.
I must say that I hold a somewhat irrational view in this regard. I would gladly give up the 15% raise I recently received if my boss would stop being such a jerk to me. This boss is not the one who gave me the raise. I’ve got nothing against him, but I also had nothing against him prior to the raise. Of course, I’m also partially supported by my parents, so money isn’t a huge issue for me. I only have a job at all because I feel bad about sponging off of them.
I’m afraid RCD’s post doesn’t compute at all, as far as I’m concerned. Liberty is about being allowed to do what you feel like doing, and for most people that involves a certain amount of reading books, watching telly, calling Mum, playing football, having sex, having children, brushing teeth, chatting about stuff and scratching one’s backside. What on Earth has any of that got to do with economics ? Trade and money and exchange and economic relations represent a small fraction of what we all feel like doing – that small fraction where our wishes cannot be reconciled with another person’s wishes, whose co-operation we require, without some reconciling item, often cash. So far as I understand it, the only special point that libertarians make about this limited class of human interactions – economic ones – is that there isn’t anything special about them. They should be treated just like any other activity – people should be free to get on and do them as they please. If anybody is obsessed by economics it’s socialists, social democrats and liberals in the American sense. While getting terribly exercised about freedom to do non economic things, they insist on a whole special moral and legal code for one class of human interactions – economic ones – where the normal rule of do what you feel like is deemed inapplicable. The idea that libertarians are the people who are obsessed by economics is the precise opposite of the truth.
Leave aside whether libertarians think about economics too much.
Any economist will instantly tell you that people do not do things for money. They do them to maximise their utility. Acclaim, social status (especially important that one, leads to shagging opportunities), leisure, feeling good about oneself, all are included, not just money, in the calculations that people make about what they do. What struck me about Glenn’s original post was that he didn’t already know that.