Liberalism versus Conservatism in the USA

Can we talk a bit more this week about liberalism, classical liberalism, neoliberalism, and conservatism in the context of US political discourse? I know I do it a lot, but not sure I’ve done a storm recently, and I have a few additional thoughts on the matter.

One thing that might help is to consider that 18th century anti-monarchical “classical liberalism” had a political component, democracy, and an economic component, markets. Equivocation on the term “liberal” as it applies to those two components is I suppose a common source of confusion. We’re not fighting monarchism again just yet. We have a democracy of sorts. And we commonly use markets of sorts. Political discourse in the USA has long been about the interaction of those two: democratic government and markets. It’s no longer about the historical artifact “classical liberalism.” The economic, markets, element of “classical liberalism” is what leads some modern US conservatives to call themselves “classical liberals” or “true” liberals or what have you. That’s a rhetorical word game that seeks to suppress the real issues between modern US liberalism and conservatism.

In terms of real issues, modern US liberalism is all about the political component of “classical liberalism,” democracy, and specifically how it interacts with economic policy, markets, and so on. US conservatism is all about the economic component of “classical liberalism,” all about markets. US liberals see economic systems as created by and properly responsive to democracy, so responsive to voters providing normative inputs on economic values, objectives, goals, evaluation, policy. US conservatives see markets as sacrosanct and are all about keeping voters, democracy out of it. Formerly, both sides accepted democracy as the political mechanism, so the debate between liberals and conservatives was all about economics, markets. In general, liberals perceived some issues with our economic system conservatives did not, and the wanted to use democracy to address those issues. By “economic systems” I mean here broadly speaking the resolving of interpersonal conflicts of preferences as over goods, services, scarce resources, so systems for allocating or distributing resources, which might involve the use of economic power in markets or various other systems. Liberals argued for activist democratic government expressing voters’ normative, ethical, moral views on economics including via regulation, market interventions, alternatives. Conservatives argued for “small” or “inactive” democratic government that did little or nothing beyond setting up markets.

Recently, of course, their views have diverged to a greater degree. Liberals have remained where they have long been, arguing voters should be able to use democracy to express economic values, and expressing their own typically “left” values as well. However, conservatives have moved to the right. Whereas formerly conservatives were willing to make their case to voters, accept the results, modern conservatives have taken the anti-democracy sentiments latent in their market utopianism and moved on to trying to undermine, manipulate, or end democratic government. Modern conservatives have various views giving rise to anti-democracy sentiment running from activist “crony capitalist” fascism with a deal making boss to authoritarian conservative government that does little but enforce conservative economic values and keep other people out of it. Modern conservatives play a lot with utopian anarchism (rhetorically useful for ending democracy) and fake anarchism / crypto-fascism / “libertarianism” as far as promoting the idea small, inactive government that does nothing but express conservative economic values is like no government at all. Then, of course, there are conservative theocratists as Christo-fascists who go beyond secular market utopianism to imbue markets with divine attributes or provenance and profess to want to keep democratic government out of it on that account.

The final wrinkle, which I’ve discussed before, and often, but let’s do it here as well just to complete the set, is this business about “neoliberalism,” which creates problems because of the ambiguous nature of the “neo” playing off the formerly mentioned issues with the word “liberal.” One take on the “neo” in “neoliberalism” is that it is new as in resurgent, which makes it resurgent (classical) “liberalism,” which if one focuses on the market component makes “neoliberalism” into “resurgent US conservatism.” An entirely different take on the “neo” in “neoliberalism” is that it means new as in changed, revised, reformed, in which case it becomes revised liberalism and specifically US liberalism revised to become, as far as economics at least, conservatism, US liberalism revised to become its opposite. In both formulations, “neoliberalism” ends up meaning US conservatism; however, agreement at that level masks underlying confusion at the level of the term “liberal” by which for some a “neoliberal” is also a “liberal,” while for others a “neoliberal” is the opposite of a “liberal.” I have long argued interpreting “neo” to mean revised, reformed, changed US “liberalism” makes a great deal more sense than interpreting it to mean “resurgent” because it was historically first applied to erstwhile US liberals circa 1980s, while economic conservatism long pre-dates that era. Also, of course, because the resurgent interpretation of “neo” brings up the issues I mentioned earlier relating to trying to apply the historical combined political and economic concept of 18th century anti-monarchical “classical liberalism” to modern political issues and controversies.

My own views? I’m a (US) liberal. I support democracy including the right guaranteed by the US Constitution of voters to register their normative views on economic values, objectives, policies. I myself have what would likely be generally considered “left” economic values and I argue for those. However, I’m not trying to set myself up as ruler of the world, and if voters use democracy to demand something else, then so be it. I’ll continue to argue my positions, of course. I oppose conservatism formerly for its flawed take on economics and now especially also its opposition to democracy.

Roadblock Arguments in Bad Economics

I know I’ve made reference to what I call “roadblock” arguments in the context of the rhetoric of anti-democracy bad economics in the conservative style before, but I don’t recall doing a proper storm on them, at least recently. How about that this week?

I discuss “fake (distributional) indifference” often enough, which involves conceits like economists ostensibly as a matter of proper professional conduct applying neoclassical welfare economic arguments to reality without accounting for relevant differences between reality and the Fairy Land. Just to clarify, the Fairy Land here is the Fairy Land of Economic Theory, an odd place in which interpersonal ethics have been banished, the inhabitants are not real people but cyphers who have preferences over only a restricted range of issues, have perfect information, are perfectly rational. “Roadblock arguments” use the fact any set of interpersonal ethics will theoretically have some associated “economically efficient,” that is, “Pareto optimal” outcome, to propose one should go to any Pareto optimal outcome, or if at one maintain it, then go to whichever such outcome one prefers. The “roadblock” refers to the arbitrary restriction of getting to some ethically irrelevant Pareto optimal outcome first, which may be theoretically impossible except as an approximation of some undefined degree, and then going to another in only particular, difficult, impossible ways. Roadblock arguments have similar effect to fake indifference because one can never be at a close enough approximation to a Pareto optimal outcome of a theoretical purely competitive market to consider pursuing another and if close enough, one finds it difficult to move from it.

There is nothing in real neoclassical welfare economics to support roadblock arguments. Others are not closer to their preferred Pareto optimal outcome if they go to any other random Pareto optimal outcome rather than a non-Pareto optimal outcome that better reflects those ethics. Not is it easier, more practical or feasible, less costly to go from one Pareto optimal outcome to another, never going through a non-Pareto optimal outcome. Indeed, given typically expansive definitions of the markets involved, it’s not entirely clear that’s logically possible. In ethical arguments relating to the Fairy Land, one may take one’s little pen and change “initial endowments,” which allows one to arrive at any Pareto optimal outcome one likes. There is no counterpart in reality. Anything one does in reality will have certain effects. Specifically, anything one does may be cast as interfering with whatever market is producing the Pareto optimal outcome, so changing anything to go to another without leaving Pareto optimality may be basically cast as logically impossible. Even if one concedes that let’s say taxes or other (re)distributional policy are consistent with a “free market” (an approximation of a perfectly competitive market?) meant to generate a Pareto optimal outcome, they’re not necessarily the easiest or least costly approach to change. Those issues seem to depend on the form the relevant interpersonal ethics take. Are they about people one can identify, verify, and so on? Or also about contexts, particular goods, say housing, food, education? What policies do voters think makes sense, support? How costly are they to implement? Again, there’s no justification in real neoclassical welfare economics to throw up random roadblocks to addressing equity concerns. If others prefer some non-Pareto optimal outcome to some Pareto-optimal one based on interpersonal ethics, economists have no business trying to block them.

Do typically philosophically clueless economists not understand the issues associated with their own peculiar, idiosyncratic ethical half-theory? Or do they understand them but cynically try to use that theory rhetorically to mislead and manipulate others? I don't know. Some of both? You tell me. Don’t know what any of that means? Never heard of “economic efficiency” or “Pareto optimality” or maybe even models of “perfectly competitive” markets? Well, then I suppose one is in no fit state to address the rhetoric of anti-democracy bad economics in the conservative style. Maybe if one resolutely ignores it others will too? Or maybe one might take a few moments to learn enough about the normative argument in neoclassical welfare economics to make sense of the rhetoric of anti-democracy bad economics in the conservative style and be able to address it?