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Thursday, July 05, 2007
Critiquing the Critic
There was a time when I thought Louis Menand, an academic who writes for the New Yorker, was the smartest guy around. But I've changed my mind, because his review of Bryan Caplan's really ridiculous book is abysmal and totally misses the point.
To recap Caplan's argument: Irrational voters support economic policy that makes people worse off. And government mostly messes everything up (See here for more).
Menand's conclusion:
Negotiating the tension between "rational" policy choices and "irrational" preferences and anxieties—between the desirability of more productivity and the desire to preserve a way of life—is what democratic politics is all about. It is a messy negotiation. Having the franchise be universal makes it even messier. If all policy decisions were straightforward economic calculations, it might be simpler and better for everyone if only people who had a grasp of economics participated in the political process. But many policy decisions don't have an optimal answer. They involve values that are deeply contested: when life begins, whether liberty is more important than equality, how racial integration is best achieved (and what would count as genuine integration).
This is an unfair comparison. The productivity/distribution tradeoff is in part a factual proposition, and not a statement of values. Mainstream economists could be wrong about the tradeoff between productivity and redistribution, whereas I assume that there aren't many who contest the existence of a trade-off between liberty and equality. Menand should not be equating economic tradeoffs with classic examples of compromises in political values.
What's really happening is that Menand is making a defensive retreat- the classic retreat to "values" that is quite popular with liberals, as if the only thing government is good at is settling cultural disputes, or letting the country decide what it's economic values are and how to pursue them. This is a limited vision of government. Clinging to it puts contraints on what goverment can and should do, constraints that I think are too tight. Not that there shouldn't be constraints, of course; it's about where you put them and why.
Menand's conclusion, continued:
In the end, the group that loses these contests must abide by the outcome, must regard the wishes of the majority as legitimate. The only way it can be expected to do so is if it has been made to feel that it had a voice in the process, even if that voice is, in practical terms, symbolic. A great virtue of democratic polities is stability. The toleration of silly opinions is (to speak like an economist) a small price to pay for it.
Wow. Whatever happened to that old-fashioned right to self-government? But it is nice to hear that Menand thinks democracy is useful. It's pretty clear that he agrees with Caplan's assertion that most government policy doesn't promote the greater good.
Look, Caplan's book isn't merely anti-democratic- it's part of a sustained assault on the notion that government can do economic policy right. Menand ducks that argument entirely. If you critique a book, you'd think you'd question one of its central claims, you know? Otherwise it looks like you accept it.
By all means, let's keep up Prof. Caplan's book sales. But meanwhile, perhaps we should help readers know what he may have left out of his book, so that they can come to an informed conclusion about its argument. And then I can get back to thinking Menand is a smart dude, and that all is right with the world.
Posted by Matt Lewis
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