Daniel McCarthy — Distinguished Fellow in Conservative Thought at the Heritage Foundation — recently penned in the pages of American Spectator, an obituary of sorts for libertarianism. His essay is just the latest contribution to what has become a torrent of triumphalist declarations by pundits on the left and right that we Americans, having gorged ourselves on this junk-food philosophy, are now turning to a healthier diet of statism.
Yet McCarthy’s eulogy, like the others, is marred by mistakes. Here are three.
First — the least important, in my view — is that, in the course of arguing that libertarianism has failed, McCarthy oddly lists libertarian victories, to wit: “What had long been radical libertarian views on gay rights, recreational drug use, pornography and vices such as gambling have now become law throughout the Western world.” One need not approve of these developments (I’m sure McCarthy doesn’t) to recognize that they are libertarian successes.
A second flaw is subtly evidenced in the way McCarthy words the above description of these libertarian successes. What he describes as having become “law throughout the Western world” on these libertarian fronts is the removal of state-imposed restrictions on adults’ consensual participation in peaceful activities that had long been prohibited by the state. McCarthy doesn’t explicitly claim that libertarians approve of gambling, drug use, pornography, and other vices. Indeed, he acknowledges that libertarianism “didn’t demand” participation in these activities. But his essay sometimes slides from libertarians’ defense of the freedom to engage in such activities toward attributing to libertarianism an affirmative cultural approval of these activities and their consequences. He writes, for example, that for persons “who had already begun to experiment with ‘alternative lifestyles’ or countercultural rebellion, libertarianism offered a principled, coherent philosophical defense.” The suggestion is that libertarianism defends these activities when, in fact, libertarianism merely defends the right to engage in these activities free of state obstruction.
I admit that, in my many years of affiliation with the libertarian world, I recall encountering a handful of positive defenses of drug use, pornography, prostitution, and other personal vices. (I also have encountered many libertarians who object to these activities.) But these defenses are hardly essential to the libertarian case. I’m sure that there’s no shortage of non-libertarians who have offered positive defenses of any number of vices. Think of the endorsement of LSD by Timothy Leary. The libertarian case is no defense of vice or of alternative lifestyles; instead, that case is limited to the insistence that the state should not prevent adults from engaging in whatever peaceful activities they, with their own money, choose to engage in, even if these activities are correctly believed to be self-destructive.
The libertarian argument is against state action, not for personal indulgence or, indeed, for any particular set of behaviors by individuals beyond minding their own business.
It remains mysterious to me why so many pundits, professors, and politicians are unable to distinguish the statement that “I believe that the state should not prevent Mr. Jones from snorting cocaine or paying for the services of prostitutes” from the statement “I don’t disapprove of Mr. Jones snorting cocaine and patronizing prostitutes.”
For the record, let me — a libertarian — note that my sincere advice to everyone is that they should avoid dangerous intoxicants, gambling, prostitutes, and other vices incompatible with emotional and physical well-being, as well as with one’s obligations to one’s family and friends. But I also do not fancy myself to be so superior to you that I’m entitled to impose my preferences and beliefs on you. If for no reason other than my wish to remain free to live my life as I choose, I grant to you the same freedom to live your life as you choose. Yet my granting this freedom to you in no way implies my approval — or even my lack of disapproval — of any use you may make of it.
The third and most serious flaw in McCarthy’s libertarian obituary is its tendentious caricature of market-oriented economists. He writes — as if it’s a fact as obvious and indisputable as gravity — of “the coldness that libertarian economists exhibit toward ordinary human concerns about neighborhood or nation” in the face of free trade. Tellingly, McCarthy doesn’t quote any such frigid free-marketeer, the reason being that no such serious person exists. While some such individuals might be discovered amidst the detritus of social media posts, no credible economist fits this strawman image. Scour the works of ardent free traders such as Adam Smith, Frédéric Bastiat, Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek, Milton Friedman, James Buchanan, Thomas Sowell, Deirdre McCloskey, David Henderson, Russ Roberts, Sam Gregg, or Scott Lincicome. Nowhere will you find any such coldness.
What you will find in these works is steadfast determination to examine not only the most-obvious consequences of economic activities and policies, but also their follow-on consequences — follow-on consequences typically ignored by protectionists and other free-market skeptics. This determination is rooted in economists’ understanding that lovely initial impressions often mask ugly unintended or unseen consequences.
Competent economists (libertarian or not), for example, understand full well that new imports sometimes bankrupt local factories and, in turn, cause particular towns or regions to suffer economic decline. These economists also understand, and sympathize with, the hardship that this decline entails for workers and families in those towns or regions.
But competent economists also understand other realities that are lost on pundits like McCarthy. The most notable of these other realities is that attempts by the government to protect particular factories and jobs from economic competition impose burdens on fellow citizens. Once these burdens are recognized, opposition to protectionism is revealed not as coldness toward ordinary human concerns about neighborhood or nation, but as recognition that the government can artificially prop up some industries and jobs in the nation only by artificially stifling other industries and jobs in the nation.
The moment the inescapability of this trade-off is recognized, the case for protectionism loses most of its appeal. This fact is one reason why protectionists routinely portray international trade as a zero-sum struggle of “us” versus “them,” with “us” being the good people of the country and “them” being a combination of foreigners and greedy corporate elites. Economists expose the falsity of this portrayal by explaining that the economic welfare of ordinary citizens Andrews, Baker, and Collins can be artificially propped up by government only by lowering the economic welfare of ordinary citizens Williams, Young, and Zimmerman. And then economists ask: What reason is there to worsen the lot of the latter group in order to better the lot of the former? Objecting to the use of government to better the lot of the former group isn’t coldness toward that group but, rather, an expression of concern for the unseen groups who would be harmed by such government intervention. It’s an expression of genuine fairness to all people of the nation.
What McCarthy takes to be economists’ coldness toward the first group, therefore, is instead economists’ refusal to play favorites. Were we economists to respond to protectionists by building and slaying our own straw men, we would accuse people such as McCarthy of acting with “coldness” toward fellow citizens who are harmed by protectionist policies. Yet we issue no such accusations, understanding, as we do, that protectionists support tariffs and other trade restrictions that harm people not because protectionists are cold-hearted but instead, because protectionists are economically ill-tutored. And yet, although the facts of free trade and protectionism have been repeatedly explained to protectionists for centuries, protectionists cannot resist attributing economists’ support for free trade to economists’ alleged moral failings.
As for McCarthy’s claim that libertarian economists are indifferent to the welfare of the nation, that too is unwarranted. It’s yet another straw man lurking in the shadows of McCarthy’s essay – a straw man that insists that we Americans should support free trade because it is our duty to enrich foreigners at our expense.
Yet in fact the economic case for free trade is that it is a policy that enriches the nation. Of course economists recognize that when trade is made freer in America, benefits accrue also to non-Americans. But the core case for making trade freer in America is not that it enriches non-Americans but, instead, that free trade enriches Americans. In short, everyone who wants to make America great should support free trade even if they are so illiberal that they couldn’t care less about non-Americans.
Going forward, people like Daniel McCarthy would do the cause of intellectual discussion a good service if, before tapping away on their keyboards, they took the time to read carefully what serious libertarian scholars write and say.