View source for Ludwig von Mises Explains (and Solves) Market Failure

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{{DES | des = [[David Glasner]] points out that Hayek was not a libertarian and Mises supported conscription and taxes.  "[Mises] says that voluntary self-defense will not work. Why won’t it work? Because the market isn’t working." | show=}}
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Last week Major Freedom, a relentless and indefatigable web-Austrian troll – and with a name like that, I predict a bright future for him as a professional wrestler should he ever tire of internet trolling — who regularly occupies Scott Sumner’s blog, responded to a passing reference by Scott to F. A. Hayek’s support for NGDP targeting with an outraged rant against Hayek, calling Hayek a social democrat, a description of Hayek that for some reason brought to my mind Saul Steinberg’s famous New Yorker cover showing what the world looks like from 9th Avenue in Manhattan.

saul_steinberg_newyorker

Hayek was not a libertarian by the way. He was a social democrat. If you read his works closely, you’ll realize he was politically leftist very soon after his earlier economics works. Hayek was actually an economist for only a short period of time. He soon became disenchanted with free market economics, and delved into sociology where his works were all heavily influenced by leftist politics. He was an ardent critic of government, but not because he was anti-government, but because the present day governments were not his ideal.

Hayek favored central banks preventing NGDP from falling yes, but he was a contradictory writer. It is dishonest to only focus on the one side of the contradiction that supports your own ideology. If you were honest, you would make it a point that Hayek also favored monetary denationalization, of competitive free market currencies. He wrote a book on that for crying out loud. His contradictions are “Hayekian.” NGDP targeting is merely the Dr. Jekyll to his Mr. Hyde.

Then responding to the incredulity of another commenter at his calling Hayek a social democrat, the Major let loose this barrage:

From [Hans-Hermann] Hoppe:

According to Hayek, government is “necessary” to fulfill the following tasks: not merely for “law enforcement” and “defense against external enemies” but “in an advanced society government ought to use its power of raising funds by taxation to provide a number of services which for various reasons cannot be provided, or cannot be provided adequately, by the market.” (Because at all times an infinite number of goods and services exist that the market does not provide, Hayek hands government a blank check.)

Among these goods and services are:

“…protection against violence, epidemics, or such natural forces as floods and avalanches, but also many of the amenities which make life in modern cities tolerable, most roads … the provision of standards of measure, and of many kinds of information ranging from land registers, maps and statistics to the certification of the quality of some goods or services offered in the market.”

Additional government functions include “the assurance of a certain minimum income for everyone”; government should “distribute its expenditure over time in such a manner that it will step in when private investment flags”; it should finance schools and research as well as enforce “building regulations, pure food laws, the certification of certain professions, the restrictions on the sale of certain dangerous goods (such as arms, explosives, poisons and drugs), as well as some safety and health regulations for the processes of production; and the provision of such public institutions as theaters, sports grounds, etc.”; and it should make use of the power of “eminent domain” to enhance the “public good.”

Moreover, it generally holds that “there is some reason to believe that with the increase in general wealth and of the density of population, the share of all needs that can be satisfied only by collective action will continue to grow.”

Further, government should implement an extensive system of compulsory insurance (“coercion intended to forestall greater coercion”), public, subsidized housing is a possible government task, and likewise “city planning” and “zoning” are considered appropriate government functions — provided that “the sum of the gains exceed the sum of the losses.” And lastly, “the provision of amenities of or opportunities for recreation, or the preservation of natural beauty or of historical sites or scientific interest … Natural parks, nature-reservations, etc.” are legitimate government tasks.

In addition, Hayek insists we recognize that it is irrelevant how big government is or if and how fast it grows. What alone is important is that government actions fulfill certain formal requirements. “It is the character rather than the volume of government activity that is important.” Taxes as such and the absolute height of taxation are not a problem for Hayek. Taxes — and likewise compulsory military service — lose their character as coercive measures,

“…if they are at least predictable and are enforced irrespective of how the individual would otherwise employ his energies; this deprives them largely of the evil nature of coercion. If the known necessity of paying a certain amount of taxes becomes the basis of all my plans, if a period of military service is a foreseeable part of my career, then I can follow a general plan of life of my own making and am as independent of the will of another person as men have learned to be in society.”

But please, it must be a proportional tax and general military service!

The disgust felt by the Major for the crypto-statist Hayek is palpable, reminiscent of Ayn Rand’s pathological abhorrence of Hayek for tolerating welfare-statism. Ah, but Ludwig von Mises, there is a man after the Major’s very own heart.

In distinct contrast, how refreshingly clear — and very different — is Mises! For him, the definition of liberalism can be condensed into a single term: private property. The state, for Mises, is legalized force, and its only function is to defend life and property by beating antisocial elements into submission. As for the rest, government is “the employment of armed men, of policemen, gendarmes, soldiers, prison guards, and hangmen. The essential feature of government is the enforcement of its decrees by beating, killing, and imprisonment. Those who are asking for more government interference are asking ultimately for more compulsion and less freedom.”

Moreover (and this is for those who have not read much of Mises but invariably pipe up, “but even Mises is not an anarchist”), certainly the younger Mises allows for unlimited secession, down to the level of the individual, if one comes to the conclusion that government is not doing what it is supposed to do: to protect life and property.

Well, the remark about Hayek’s support for — perhaps acquiescence in would be a better description — conscription (see the Constitution of Liberty) reminded me that in Human Action no less – for the uninitiated that’s Mises’s magnum opus, a 900+ page treatise on economics and praxeology — Mises himself weighed in on the issue of military conscription.

From this point of view one has to deal with the often-raised problem of whether conscription and the levy of taxes mean a restriction of freedom. If the principles of the market economy were acknowledged by all people all over the world, there would not be any reason to wage war and the individual states could live in undisturbed peace. But as conditions are in our age, a free nation is continually threatened by the aggressive schemes of totalitarian autocracies. If it wants to preserve its freedom, it must be prepared to defend its independence. If the government of a free country forces every citizen to cooperate fully in its designs to repel the aggressors and every able-bodied man to join the armed forces, it does not impose upon the individual a duty that would step beyond the tasks the praxeological law dictates. In a world full of unswerving aggressors and enslavers, integral unconditional pacifism is tantamount to unconditional surrender to the most ruthless oppressors. He who wants to remain free, must fight unto death those who are intent upon depriving him of his freedom. As isolated attempts on the part of each individual to resist are doomed to failure, the only workable way is to organize resistance by the government. The essential task of government is defense of the social system not only against domestic gangsters but also against external foes. He who in our age opposes armaments and conscription is, perhaps unbeknown to himself, an abettor of those aiming at the enslavement of all.

There it is. With characteristic understatement, Ludwig von Mises, a card-carrying member of the John Birch Society listed on the advisory board of the Society’s flagship publication American Opinion during the 1960s, calls anyone opposed to conscription an abettor of those aiming at the enslavement of all. But what I find interesting in Mises’s diatribe are the two sentences before the last one in the paragraph.

He who wants to remain free, must fight unto death those who are intent upon depriving him of his freedom. As isolated attempts on the part of each individual to resist are doomed to failure, the only workable way is to organize resistance by the government.

Here Mises says that we have to defend ourselves to maintain our freedom, otherwise we will be enslaved. OK. And then he says that voluntary self-defense will not work. Why won’t it work? Because the market isn’t working. And what causes the market to fail? “Isolated attempts on the part of each individual to resist” will fail. In other words, defense is a public good. People will free ride on the efforts of others. But Mises has the solution. Impose a draft, and compel the able-bodied to defend the homeland and force everyone to pay taxes to finance the provision of the public good, which the unhampered free market is unable to do on its own. Of course, this is just one example of market failure, but Mises doesn’t actually explain why the provision of national defense is the only public good. But, analytically of course, there is no distinction between national defense and other public goods, which confer benefits on people irrespective of whether they have paid for the good. So Mises acknowledges that there is such a thing as a public good, and supports the use of government coercion to supply the public good, but without providing any criterion for which public goods may be provided by the government and which may not. If conscription can be justified to solve a certain kind of public-good problem, why is it unthinkable to rely on taxation to solve other kinds of public-good problems, whose existence Mises, apparently unbeknown to himself, has implicitly conceded?

With the logical rigor that his acolytes find so compelling, Mises concludes this particular diatribe with the following pronouncement:

Every step a government takes beyond the fulfillment of its essential functions of protecting the smooth operation of the market economy against aggression, whether on the part of domestic or foreign disturbers, is a step forward on a road that directly leads into the totalitarian system where there is no freedom at all.

Let’s think about that one. “Every step a government takes beyond the fulfillment of its essential function of protecting the smooth operation of the market economy against aggression . . . is a step forward on a road that leads into the totalitarian system where there is no freedom at all.” Pretty scary words, but how logically compelling is this apodictally certain praxeological law?

Well, I live in Montgomery County, Maryland, a short distance from US Route 29. When I visit Baltimore about 35 miles from my home, I often come back from Baltimore via Interstate 70 which starts at a park-and-ride station near Baltimore and continues for about 2153 miles to Cove Fort, Utah. I am happy to report that I have never once driven from Baltimore to Cove Fort. In fact the first exit off of Interstate 70 puts me on US Route 29. What’s more, even if I miss the exit for Route 29, as I have done occasionally, there are other exits further down the highway that allow me to get to Route 29; just because I drive the first four miles on Interstate 70 from Baltimore, it doesn’t necessarily follow that I will wind up in Cove Fort, Utah. So this particular example of the supposedly impeccable Misesian logic sure seems like a non-sequitur to me.
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