Andrew Olmsted dot com: A Necessary Evil

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December 24, 2004

A Necessary Evil

In my post discussing the Washington D.C. city council’s decision to spend millions of dollars to build a stadium for the Washington Nationals in exchange for the team coming to Washington, I called government a necessary evil. I suppose I should have know that such a comment would draw the ire of those on the left who consider government a force for good, and who might therefore take such a description personally. To me, the statement is self-evident, but I’ll try to explain it more clearly.

I’ve noted previously that government boils down to force. Ultimately, the only way to get another person to do something they don’t want to do is through the threat or the use of force. Granted, you can try many other avenues first, but persuasion, begging, bribery, etc. are not guaranteed to get the results you want. Eventually, you’ve got to resort to force. Since government involves the creation of rules under which a society will exist, government assumes a monopoly or near-monopoly on the legitimate use of force. I believe it was George Washington who pointed out that government is force, and that you cannot refine it, and it’s true. As long as we choose to organize ourselves at a level above anarchy, we must accept the ability of the government to use violence.

Government hands the tool of violence over to a limited number of citizens. I’m confident that the vast majority of people who involve themselves in government do so for the best of reasons. But in any society there is a percentage of the people who want to force their fellow citizens to act in certain ways. When government is the avenue we provide to legally coerce others to do certain things, it should not surprise anyone that it will attract that fraction of the people who are driven to control other people’s lives. (This is elaborated in some detail in Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom.) We see this every day, whether in complaints to the FCC attempting to ban certain programming from radio and TV or environmentalists who want to treat carbon dioxide as a regulated substance. Both of those groups want to force the rest of us to act in certain ways, and they want to use government’s legal monopoly on force to get their way. They generally want to do it for good reasons: because they think it’s the right thing to do. But that doesn’t change the fact they’re ultimately willing to use force to make us do what they consider the right thing.

These two facts make government an evil to me: government gives the power to use force to a relatively small number of people. If that isn’t an idea fraught with potential for abuse, I can’t imagine what would be. That is precisely the reason the founders attempted to limit government’s power: they were familiar with the damage unrestrained government could do, and they hoped to prevent such damage from being inflicted again. So they sat down and tried to puzzle out what the absolutely necessary functions of government were and limit the government to only those powers. That worked for a time, but there people seeking additional power slowly eroded those limits to our present situation, where the federal government has only a very tenuous restraint holding it back, and those restraints are subject to a court system that is more concerned with outcomes than processes.

Government can be a force for great good. There are some things that only government can do. Without a system of government, the capitalist system that has enriched us all so greatly could not exist, because businesses would have no easy way to enforce contracts. Nor am I sanguine about the ability of large groups of individuals to build a military capable of defending a country as vast as the United States, or to negotiate with foreign powers in any consistent manner. But government by its nature involves force and violence, even if it rarely has to exercise those powers. Too often, we forget that fact, and so we ask government to do things that we consider good without addressing whether or not we’re willing to use violence to accomplish those goals.

And that is, to me, the greatest evil of government: by disguising the use of force, it makes it so much easier to use it without considering the consequences. If you think of government only as people voting and letting the majority rule, it doesn’t sound like a problem. Until you realize that the 49% who voted against what the majority wants can either go along with the majority or face the promise of violence. (I should think this would be self-evident to those on the left: if you don’t like something the government is currently doing, try not paying whatever fraction of your taxes goes to fund that activity and see what happens.)

I don’t advocate anarchy. But I do believe that using government is much akin to being a mahout: as long as you’re careful and you keep the elephant on a tight leash, it can accomplish many things you could never do on your own. But the number one cause of death among mahouts is being killed by their own elephants, because they failed to keep their eye on what they were doing. Government, by its nature, is always a threat to do the same thing to the societies it is supposed to work for.

Posted at December 24, 2004 11:12 AM

Andrew Olmsted

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Comments

First, let me assure you that your previous comments did not elicit ire nor did I take them personally.

We agree that the government claims for itself a monopoly on the use of force (whether it actually has this monopoly is another matter). We also also agree that this is an improvement over an anarchic situation where everyone reserves for themselves the right to use force. Finally, we agree that herein lies the potential for serious abuse. We disagree, however, over the implications of these propositions.

You seem to think that these propositions entail a minimal state which provides the bare minimum necessary for a society's survival. I, on the other hand, support the state getting involved in education, health care, protecting the environment, and helping the poor -- to name a few. If I understand your argument, your objection to this laundry list of state services runs as follows:
1) The more services the state provides, the more force it must use (i.e. because it must expropriate resources through taxation to pay for these services).
2) Using less force is always better than using more force.
3) Therefore, a minimal state is better than a non-minimal state.

Clearly, the weak premise is (2). First, I'm not sure that force is a bad thing provided that it is consensual. Consider, for instance, the case of Oddyseus when we wanted to hear the Siren's song. He ordered his men to tie him to the mast and to not release him no matter how loudly he cried. In this case, his men used force against him, but it's not clear that doing so was a bad thing. One could argue that, at least in some circumstances, the governed consent to the government in just this fashion. If this is true, then it isn't necessarily wrong for the state to use force.

But even if using force is a bad thing, it's only a bad thing all else equal. I agree that, all else equal, less force is better than more. But all else is rarely equal. If, say, the state can provide everyone with health care only by expropriating the resources of some, why shouldn't it? Just because doing so involves using force? Or just because the more services it provides the greater is the potential for abuse? Honestly, neither of those answers is especially compelling.

Posted by: Mike at December 26, 2004 05:19 PM

Your assessment of my argument is inaccurate, and therefore your reasoning fails. Proposition one is certainly accurate, but proposition two is simply that, since government action necessitates the use of force, government should act only to accomplish things people cannot accomplish on their own. People cannot raise an army or a police force or judiciary without a framework of control, i.e. a government. People can get health care, schools, and other services without government. That is the difference. You say why not use government to accomplish your favored tasks, because you're willing to use force to get your way. That's not atypical of the left: it's how we got fascism and communism, after all. The good of the many and all that, right?

You don't worry about the potential for abuse. And so you will no doubt be blindsided when it comes. But it will come; it already has. Or do you honestly believe that nobody in the U.S. government has ever abused the power placed in his or her hands?

I am well aware that there is no argument I can make that would compel you to my side, because you care more for security than liberty. You're free to do so. All I can do is try to convince those whose minds are not closed, and be ready to fight against your kind when you try to take my rights.

Posted by: Andrew at December 26, 2004 05:36 PM

Andrew,

Before you go reaching for your gun, why not give rational discourse another chance?

You say that "since government action necessitates the use of force, government should act only to accomplish things people cannot accomplish on their own." Do you mean this literally? After all, people have raised private armies in the past, so surely it's POSSIBLE for people to create an army without government intervention.

My point here is that you cannot limit government to providing only those things that people LITERALLY cannot provide for themselves. There are no such things. Rather, your statement should be revised as follows: "government should be limited to providing only those things that it can provide more effectively than individuals can." This principle would justify the creation of a government run army and police force. But it would also open the door for government to provide services and opportunities that people cannot as effectively secure for themselves, such as health care and education. I still don't see why you object to this expansion, but perhaps, as you say, I'm being closed-minded.

Perhaps your real objection lies in the idea that liberty is of paramount importance, and that a larger government is a threat to liberty. If you mean liberty in the purely negative sense (i.e. freedom from interference), then I fully agree that an expanded government is a threat to liberty. On the other hand, if by liberty you mean something like people's actual opportunity to pursue their conception of a worthwhile life, then I disagree that an expanded government is necessarily a threat to liberty.

Regardless of how you define liberty, I don't see why we should regard liberty as the only thing that is valuable in itself. You say that I value security over liberty, but this isn't accurate. I value liberty and security, but I also value social justice and human flourishing. I don't think any of these things is necessarily more important than the other, so I support a system that strives to reconcile the competing claims of these values.

Posted by: Mike at December 27, 2004 10:07 AM

You make some good arguments about the inherent evils of unconstrained government. Consider adding this one: that even in a democratic order, an unconstrained government puts infinite power over all of us into the hands of a single man: the voter who casts the winning vote -- and beforehand, we can't even know who he'll be. (Essay at http://www.eternityroad.info/index.php/weblog/single/consensus_and_constitutional_order_the_one_vote_effect/)

Posted by: Francis W. Porretto at December 27, 2004 06:01 PM

Social Justice. Fine phrase that can mean exactly what you want it to mean, no more and no less. Who is to define the phrase? Society? We are back to the fact that 50.000000000001 percent of the population can vote to have 'social justice' mean what ever they want. My idea of justice may be at serious variance to what you believe.

This country was originally founded with the principle that our "inalienable rights included life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". There are not and can be no guaranteed results of happiness for all.

People will always disagree on what is a fair government. To force your beliefs of what is 'fair' on me and others is just as bad as those religious fanatics who insist that only their religion should be allowed to flourish.

Posted by: dad at January 2, 2005 03:08 PM

Posted by: phentermine at January 19, 2005 02:45 AM

December 24, 2004

A Necessary Evil

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