Professors and Libertarians
July 19, 2010 | 1 Comment
Stephen Gordon has a (relatively) new post at Worthwhile Canadian Initiative. The good professor is, again, tackling the census controversy (which I have already covered here). Knowing his feelings on the census (he’s pro-) and the importance he places on the census (he’s very pro-), I was a little worried the post would be an attack on libertarian strawmen by someone who knows better than them.
But it’s always good to read the actual post, as this was not really the case.
Prof. Gordon goes through a number of rebuttals to the idea that the Conservative govrenment’s new census plan (ie gutting it of any significance and, likely, making it even more expensive and unwieldy). As Prof. Gordon writes, “[i]f this were the the position of a principled, reality-based libertarian government, then it would be a powerful argument. But it isn’t.”
(This dovetails nicely with the debate about the degree to which libertarians should align themselves with conservatives – a debate currently raging at The League of Ordinary Gentlemen – but I’ll leave that for some other post.)
Most of the rebuttals Prof. Gordon notes are rather persuasive; unfortunately, one is not. In his defense of “reality-based libertarians”, he quotes Bill Robson of The Globe and Mail:
If you are one of the many Canadians who would like government to do less but do it better, this spectacle risks making you tear your hair. The state’s role in our economy and society has grown prodigiously over the past century – and not only radical libertarians worry about the resulting cost to prosperity and freedom. As governments’ reach grows, however, so does the need for information with which citizens can hold them to account. In eliminating the census long form, the libertarians have taken out the wrong target…
For those who want government to do less but do it better, good information is indispensable. If the census long form is gone for good, libertarians will have won the wrong fight.
This is a really faulty, and a little insulting, form of argumentation. Mr. Robson is not only suggesting he knows better than libertarianisms (fair enough, he’s a pundit – right now I’m suggesting that I know better than Mr. Robson), but also that understands libertarians better than they do – that if they (we… I’ll admit it) want to achieve their goals (as he defines them), they must follow his advice and analysis (which, coincidence of coincidences, just happens to coincide with his preferred policy).
Look, motherhood statements like ‘golly gee, let’s all try to make the government work better regardless of its size‘ are all well and good; few will likely argue in favour of bad government for the sake of bad government, but such agreement doesn’t really advance policy debate very much.
This completely ignores the argument that if you give the government lots of information, they will feel the need to Do Something. I’m not suggesting that we’re stumbling toward some socialist dystopia where information stolen from the minds of otherwise free men is turned into shackles of oppression. I’m merely suggesting that by giving the government lots of information, problems will be gleaned and government intervention will be called for, at least by some. We already have enough battles to fight with government overreach; we needn’t provide them ammunition for further fights.
Unfortunately, the census battle is very poorly focused, and for this, I blame Tony Clement and the Conservative government. They have attempted to co-opt libertarian policy and philosophy for cover as they throw some red meat to their base – which, unfortunately, leans more populist than it does libertarian. To predict that such a defence would quickly become incoherent and innumerate was not very difficult.
The argument against the census (or against the long form census) goes beyond policy and politics (which is as far as the government’s case seems to go); it is, at its core, philosophical. It goes to the roots of freedom and the relationship between the individual and the state. It tackles the debate surrounding the allowable use of force and coercion by the state.
I can certainly see how an argument that proposes limiting the census in order to try to fight government overreach seems like Starve the Beast redux, and, to a certain extent, it is. As Mr. Robson points out, if the only battle ‘libertarians’ win is to eliminate the census, they “will have won the wrong fight.” However, to consider this a persuasive argument is to have an incredibly pessimistic worldview… in fact, to be persuaded by such an argument would be cause to quite punditry and policy debates altogether, as, obviously, there’s no point in winning one battle; you’re just going to lose all the others.
It’s ridiculous to suggest that ‘libertarians’ are wrong on this because their policy agenda is unlikely to be embraced in full. It suggests that ‘liberatarians’ need not propose a comprehensive policy agenda, and that they should just latch on to whatever someone else is proposing in hopes of doing the least harm… though still willfully doing some harm. Sure, we can argue that politics is the art of the possible, but we’re not talking about politics right now; we’re talking about policy. If it’s all going to be one big negotiation between political philosophies, why should libertarianism come to the table having already made concessions?
Thankfully, Prof. Gordon’s argument is a little more gracious and thoughtful:
Claiming that a certain question is ‘too intrusive’ is not an argument for making the long form voluntary; it is an argument for removing it from the questionnaire. The long form is not set in stone: many questions have been added and removed over the past 140 years. Statistics Canada even has a formal consultation process for just such a purpose – why not use it?
It’s a pretty basic argument. There are mechanisms in place to address any issues one might have with the census (though the cynical among us might scoff at the alledged efficacy of such a process). Unfortunately, Prof. Gordon’s post requires one last jab, lacking in grace:
There is a libertarian case to be made against the census, but it is only convincing in the simple and simplistic world of Ayn Rand novels. The one we live in is a much more complicated, nuanced and interesting. It’s no place for glib, cookie-cutter absolutism.
Prof. Gordon is correct. There is a libertarian case to be made against the census. He is wrong, however, to suggest that it could only be glib, simple and simplistic. A libertarian argument could be made on the grounds of the proper roles of the individual and the state. It could declare that it is not the role of the individual to be submissive to the state, but the state’s role to avoid, the vast majority of the time, infringing upon the liberty of the individual.
Such an argument could harken to the necessity of choices, the significance of failures and the importance of repecting the autonomy of the individual. It could place above the value of the census the value of preserving the personal sovereignty of the individual and guarding against conscripting the individual to the state’s whims. I have written about my libertarianish political philosophy before. I have also written about the need for political philosophy to be applied with an eye towards the social context. I fail to see how an argument rooted in such political viewpoints qualifies as glib or simplistic. I would argue that taking stock of the context of an issue while maintaining a principled mindset is less absolutist than either Prof. Gordon or Mr. Robson’s arguments.
Comments
One Response to “Professors and Libertarians”
Leave a Reply
November 17th, 2010 @ 7:36 pm
[...] been a touch harsh on Tony Clement this past year, but I’m with him now. I’m all for [...]