SW Richmond's  Instablog

Many economics bloggers and posters are totally concentrated on markets and market phenomena.  This was more true in times past.  Lately, the focus of economics blogging has become political.  Why the shift?  More importantly, is it truly a shift at all?

Sometimes it’s important to state and restate the obvious.  For me at least it helps to clarify issues, bringing into focus what needs to be done.  What are we trying to do, how important is it, why does it matter?

Nearly all of the interactions most of us will have with the other inhabitants of this planet are economic in nature.  Either we are buying goods and services or selling them to others.  Even when we are engaging in leisure activities we are interacting with others economically, often engaging others in their livelihoods to help us.  The importance of this cannot be overstated: economic cooperation is the basis of human coexistence.

What, then, is the purpose of politics?  That depends entirely on several factors.  Simply put, political systems fall into two categories: systems characterized by force, and systems characterized by voluntary action.  Either:

1. The political system is a reflection of the underlying economic system.
2. The economic system is an imposition by the underlying political system.
   

In both of these cases the political system decides who gets to keep the output of economic activity.  Historically, some pretext was used to seize the output of the commoners for the maintenance of a ruling class and to pay an armed force to hold power.  This system could be maintained as long as the commoners were unable to arm themselves and resist. 

If on the other hand economic actors are to be “permitted” freedom to act economically within the system in nearly any manner they see fit, the political system those actors will create will be a reflection of this freedom to act, and the system’s stated purpose will be to protect the right of the actors to pursue their own economic ends.  Note that under such a system, given that most of the interactions we have with others are economic, the system elevates both self-interest AND cooperation.   For this reason the cooperation is voluntary.  The need for an internal armed force is negated by the inherently voluntary nature of the system.

This notion is uniquely American, and is the thing that is being murdered before our eyes. 

Locke’s Two Treatises of Government must have read like Atlas Shrugged to the men of the day.  Here was a total refutation of the existing system of human coexistence, primogeniture, really a system of class and privilege, imposed from above by armed men who served by working the master’s will upon everyone else under threat of death.  I can easily imagine America’s founders, many of whom are known to have been greatly influenced by Locke, realizing they were in the right place at the right moment in history to unleash human creativity.  The shining star that was once America was their monument.  America is more than what it has become.

Today America is being overtaken by a movement that promises a return to a rigid system imposed from above and that is decidedly non-voluntary in nature.  It might be difficult to hang a name on it, but it is plainly there for all to see.  The system contains elements of socialism, fascism, and certainly is oligarchic.  Its most stark features, though, are that it is characterized by force and privilege.  Internal armed enforcement has returned as a distinct feature of our system.  There is no need to name this system; it is not voluntary, and I want nothing to do with it.  We must stop it; failure means our future is in chains.