After the morally
disastrous (but nominally "victorious") debate with Juan Cole
on Iraq, NRO's Jonah Goldberg debates online again. This time with TNR's Jonathan Chait,
over economics. Here is an analysis of their dialog.
It all started with Chait's TNR essay on the liberal and conservative views on economics. In the debate, Chait stresses his main point clearly, at the beginning of each response:
The point, in short, was that conservatives believe that smaller government is an end in itself, because it promotes freedom. Liberals, on the other hand, do not see bigger government as an end in itself. Therefore, on economic policy, liberals are much more interested in what works than are conservatives. If you're a conservative, who cares if a given social program can achieve its goals at no cost to economic growth if the very existence of that program impinges upon our economic freedom?
My fundamental point is that conservatives see smaller government as an end in itself, while liberals do not see larger government as an end in itself.
Chait also explains his descriptive approach in the original essay:
I began the piece with a thought experiment. I imagined God intervening to support every conservative empirical claim on economic policy (tax cuts encourage massive growth, regulations are costly and ineffective, etc.), and alternatively intervening to support the liberal side. I argued that liberals would have to change their minds if the data was proven to work against them, whereas conservatives would not. I used God as a device simply to imagine an incontrovertible authority.
Here is how Chait elaborated his point immediately after the thought experiment:
...conservatism, unlike liberalism, overlays a deeper set of philosophical principles. Conservatives believe that big government impinges upon freedom. They may also believe that big government imposes large costs on the economy. But, for a true conservative, whatever ends they think smaller government may bring about--greater prosperity, economic mobility for the non-rich--are almost beside the point. As Milton Friedman wrote, "[F]reedom in economic arrangements is itself a component of freedom broadly understood, so economic freedom is an end in itself."
We're accustomed to thinking of liberalism and conservatism as parallel ideologies, with conservatives preferring less government and liberals preferring more. The equivalency breaks down, though, when you consider that liberals never claim that increasing the size of government is an end in itself. Liberals only support larger government if they have some reason to believe that it will lead to material improvement in people's lives. Conservatives also want material improvement in people's lives, of course, but proving that their policies can produce such an outcome is a luxury, not a necessity.
Goldberg does his best to muddy the waters. He misinterprets the thought experiment with God as a "
shabby accusation of bad faith". He picks up Chait's conclusions that liberalism is a more pragmatic ideology, more open to empiricism and new facts, and 'ridicules' them with the standard conservative rethorics that liberals "
are proven wrong so often".
But Chait backs his conlusions with concrete examples (health care; experiment nature of the New Deal; shifts in Clinton policies; shifts in Republican economic policies since Eisenhauer and Nixon; citations of George Will, Milton Friedman, Paul O'Neil and NRO). Goldberg easily overlooks them and presents basically no empirical examples himself. Instead, he fires back:
But what's interesting is that Jonathan nowhere in fact demonstrates that liberal positions are empirically "better" than conservative ones. Nor does he demonstrate, empirically, that liberals are better empiricists than conservatives.
Goldberg's empirical facts? Here is the short list: Clinton "agreed" to reform welfare. (Factual misrepresentations aside, this example just confirms that liberals are open to new facts.) The US health system is very good for advanced medical research and rich princes. Bjorn Lomborg
(haha...) Socialism... And we must trust his Enterprise Insitute experience. Goldberg even shows a charming misunderstanding of empiricism:
[Chait's] version of reality cannot explain liberals who disagree with him. [...] If liberals always go where the facts take them [...] how is it that liberals ever disagree?
Well, Johan, it is much easier to disagree if you rely on facts than when you rely on dogma. That's the difference between empirical science and religion.
Goldberg's objections to the specific Chait's statement are not very visible. He says that it is
- either "very uninteresting" (some conservatives would accept empirical data against their economic philosophy, some would give preference to 'personal liberties' regardless economical implications),
- or very wrong (presumably, Goldberg wants to say that there can be no empirical facts against conservatives).
Both misinterpretations miss Chait's point. Liberals are more pragmatic and empirical since they do not absolutely stick to predetermined policy scheme, they are rather interested in which policies work better, and they wish to apply the useful ones. No one says that conservatives do exactly the opposite. The observation is that conservatives firmly believe their ideology so much that they won't compromise it a little bit even for significant overall gain. It is true that some developments confirm their ideology. But it is far from obvious that limited government is always the best solution. In the latest response, Goldberg goes really rich by comparing a working government-run health care system to a perpetual-motion machine. He claims outright,
...the chief reason most conservatives and libertarians wouldn't agree to such a plan has nothing whatsoever to do with our love of freedom and everything to do with empirical fact-finding. Conservatives wouldn't agree because you cannot prove such a thing.
That's precisely what Chait predicted right away:
Our health care system is indeed the best at minimizing the role of government. France, on the other hand, produces better measurable health outcomes at a vastly lower cost. Yet conservatives would consider the notion that France has a better health care system than the United States to be self-evidently false.
I hope Chait will find opportunity to use
this material of himself. Anyway, Goldberg still have to argue with these Chait's propositions:
...you didn't attempt to address the substance of my rebuttal. [...] I replied that conservative predictions about the disastrous effects of the minimum wage, child labor laws, the income tax, environmental regulations, and so on have all been repudiated, both politically and intellectually, without conservatives having acknowledged their errors. I further pointed out that Ronald Reagan warned Medicare would be the end of freedom in America, but George W. Bush radically expanded Medicare.
Lately Goldberg did mention Bush and Medicare in one sentence, but sorry, Jonah, that passage is bullshit.
To sidestep Chait's argumentation, Goldberg uses some cheap measures, such as "let me say I'm a bit dissapointed" or
I hoped to defend my initial argument that liberals aren't more "reality based" than conservatives, but Jonathan's dogged determination to paint a world in which liberals always deal with the facts and tackle every new problem with an open-mind (stop laughing) seems to make that argument for me.
But most often he goes into 'clarification' of labels and definitions. Although logically labelling and definition are opposite things (you put labels precisely when you do not care to specify or follow any defining principles), he is happy to mix that up. Goldberg looks very sensitive to specifications of conservatives. Ok, Jonah, we got that you are for 'limited' government, not 'smaller'. But then,vwhy do you insist that liberals mechanically seek bigger government, or that they want to use it for every problem, even when Chait stressed more than once that liberals themselves do not subscribe to these interpretations? (Recently, I commented on other tale imposed by conservatives, "
liberals against states rights".)
Quite predictably, Goldberg also insists on blurring liberals with socialists. Most ironically, at one point Goldberg ridicules liberals that they would behave just as socialists if socialist propositions would work, at other point he recalls
My very libertarian friend Ronald Bailey of Reason magazine has been telling me for years that if socialism worked better, he'd be a socialist.
You almost got it, Jonah: Liberals would be like conservatives, libertians, socialists or other pure ideologs, IF that ideology would always work best. But empirical inquiries are still out there, or they are fatally settled (as with socialism). What's your point with draging out "scientific socialism"? In the formal Popper sense, that was an empirical theory, but it failed, just like the flat Earth theory.
Here is other example of Goldberg's terminology muddling:
[If] I spend too much time talking about motives [...] let me use a different word: ideology.
Motives and ideology are different things, especially in Chait's argument. I assume that Chait's side remark
...President Bush and his allies insisted in 2001 that their tax cuts would not put any pressure on popular spending programs and that the largest share of benefits would accrue to the lowest-earning workers. In fact they wanted to cut taxes precisely in order to put pressure on popular programs and to reduce the progressivity of the tax code.
is settled. I can add to the point (about misleading rationales) by reminding this Bush statement:
"My plan reduces the national debt, and fast. So fast, in fact, that economists worry that we're going to run out of debt to retire." - radio address, Feb. 24, 2001.
Chait never said that there is something wrong with ideology, quite contrarily. Technically, we may agree with Golberg that
Ideology is merely a checklist of priorities and principles we bring to the real world.
We may agree that conservative ideology put priorities on freedom, security, prosperity, family, even happiness, and that there may be trade offs between priorities. But that does not mean that liberals do not have these priorities. A big difference between conservative and liberal ideologies is that the list of conservative priorities does not contain enhancing social opportunity for less fortunate.
Now we came to the most interesting Goldberg's counter-arguments:
...my ideology includes the notion that freedom is an end in itself. Your ideology - ironically called "liberalism" - does not.
Maybe Jonathan doesn't think economic freedom is a form of freedom. Or maybe he doesn't think freedom is an end in itself. But if it's the former, why does he want to give poor people more "opportunity," and if it's the latter what the hell is he calling himself a liberal for?
Here is the catch. Freedom is indeed on the list of liberal priorities. And economic freedom is a form of freedom. But liberals don't think that giving poor people more opportunity, by itself, impinges any economical freedom. Giving more opportunity increases economic freedom for those people, clearly. Does this measure decrease economic freedom of other people? Liberals don't think that this measure by itself decreases that freedom. We may agree that harsh wealth 'redistribution' does a lot of economical injustice, and does diminish individual freedoms. But some measure of wealth distribution can improve opportunities and economical freedom for all people - that's what liberals believe and want to determine empirically.
We can contrast this belief with this Goldberg's commentary on Milton Friedman's quote (in the 4th quotation block from above):
...it is a fairly mild claim that government interventions come at the expense of some personal liberties.
I don't really see logical equivalence of this interpretation with Friedman's quote. But Chait clearly understands this conservative believe (see the same quoted paragraph). The question is: does this conservative believe about bigger government has empirical basis?
By itself, the statement that government interventions (and wealth distribution in particular) always impinge economic freedom is a perfectly valid statement which can be refuted or confirmed by empirical facts. Do we have enough facts to settle the issue? This question deserves a good discussion. There is need for specifications what exactly are the observed intrusions into economic freedoms.
Perhaps we should not confuse economic freedom with economic power. To pre-empt an obvious conservative rant, let me formulate the following: Liberals, unlike socialists, do not seek to limit individual economic powers. They just seek to limit abuse of economic power, which is a moral issue. Equivalently, liberals are concerned with economic freedoms of less powerfull. On the other side, conservatives admittedly do not wish to pay special attention to economic freedom of less powerfull.
To get back to the debate's contention, Chait obviously stresses other difference between conservatives and liberals. I supplement the first few quotes with the following two:
This preference for removing power from Washington is simply something that either you accept or you don't. It's neither right nor wrong in an absolute sense. It does, however, make empirical reasoning pointless.
Contemporary economic liberalism is less of an ideology than the absence of one - a rejection both of dogmatic fealty and hostility to the free market.
So ideology for liberals is just
a checklist of priorities as Goldberg put it. More presicely, these are not methodological priorities, but aspiration priorities. They have to be achieved according to empirical criteria. For conservatives, limiting government is rather a methodological priority. They seem to employ it regardless consequences. In principle, it can be empirically tested how limited (or less limited) government is effective economically. The relation between government size and individual economic freedom can also be tested, if some intrusion specifictions are given. But in the first case, conservatives do play tricks with their economic motivation, as Chait demonstrated. In the second case, conservatives never specify what they mean by 'freedom impringement'. Therefore the conservative policy of limiting government does look like a dogma, insensitive to empirical facts.
I think that Goldberg does not have more excuses to misunderstand Chait's point. The best he can do is to show how empirical is the conservative belief in limiting government. Questioning liberals' allegiance to freedom was a smart step, but that rather starts a new topic. Chait did a good job in cornering Goldberg on the misinterpretations. But he should give less chances for Jonah to dive into name-calling diversions.