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Why Do Economists Sympathize with the Right?

Saturday, April 11th, 2009

This is a legitimate question even though it doesn’t necessarily imply that economists (American such, at least) in general are Republicans. But it is a fact that economists in general tend to be to the “right” (according to the common understanding of the political right) of e.g. sociologists and political scientists. It is also a fact that you will find more libertarians in this discipline than in virtually any other such in academia. Why is this so?

The general leftist might not find this question troubling, since the “obvious” answer is that economists work with money and capital and therefore have a natural and benefiting relationship with capital owners in our capitalist economy. This may be an answer that explains some individuals’ actions and convictions, but it is hardly the reason economists in general – theoretically or in reality – tend to have free market ideals. But it may be an easy way of avoiding over-simplifying and over-politicizing the issue.

Some may argue the other side of the simplified leftist coin: that there is a “selection bias” and therefore that people who like money and capital(ism) are more likely to choose to work with and study money and capital. This too may explain why some of the individuals in economics feel they belong on the right. But it doesn’t explain why virtually a whole discipline identify with the “right” side of the political spectrum.

The real answer should be based in simple economic theory: the theory of incentives, or, rather, the assumption that people do what they have an incentive to do. This is a core understanding in economics of the true nature of human action. People do what they have an incentive to do, and understanding this may lead the individual economist researcher to the solution to many a problem. Understanding that people do what they have an incentive to do explains virtually any social standards or institutions.

What this means here is that economists think this way and therefore necessarily think this way also with respect to politics and the organization of government. Seeing that individuals in government are acting on their incentives means seeing all the possible problems with government. For instance, take any democratically elected parliament taking the proposed budget to a vote. If the members of parliament would pay whatever is spent themselves they would have a great incentive of minimize the budget, make sure that it is spent and distributed efficiently, that only projects with great chances of success and with real benefits would see the light of day. But this is not the case; politicians choose what to spend other people’s money on.

Imagine what this screwed up set of incentives would mean in another setting, e.g. a common grocery store. We know that the owner or manager of the store makes sure to hire those he can trust to sell (and not steal) the groceries and he will only buy those groceries he knows people will buy. Why? Because his ass is on the line – if he spends most of the budget on groceries nobody wants he will lose customers and therefore his own money…and perhaps the whole store. 

Now imagine the same situation but where the owner or manager can decide how much money he gets to spend through simply taking other people’s money. Whoever lives in the area has to pay whatever percentage of his income to the owner of the grocery store so that the grocerer can buy goods to offer his customers. Now what are the incentives for him to buy only good products, only products people will like, and hire people he can trust? It makes more sense to buy the cheapest groceries, no matter if people like them, and hire the people he likes or people he feels sorry for or people he wants to do a favor. 

It is not necessary to ask which grocery store will be of greater utility for the customer, even if some of the groceries in the “political” grocery store are for free. 

This is how any political parliament works: politicians claim they are limited by their budgets, but they get to decide the size of the budget (and take the money necessary) and even if they should stay within the budget. It is often the case that they spend way more than they take from people, thereby not only spending people’s earned incomes but also the money they will earn in the future. So any political organization is, in terms of incentives, totaly screwed up. Or, to translate it into economic lingo, the incentives between the principal (voter) and agents (politicians) are misaligned.

So it makes sense for economists to identify with whatever politician that seems to understand more (read: seems to be less ignorant) about these things. And these people, at least rhetorically, are often found in the political right. I say rhetorically, since it is pretty obvious to whoever understands politics that in the choice between Bush and Obama neither one understands the first thing about economics. But Bush was able to make it sound like he had a fraction of a clue. 

The interesting point is not really that economists identify with the political right, but rather why they do not follow their theoretical understanding all the way through and demolish the State – at least in their thinking. Some of them clearly do (I am one), but not very many. 

So what we have here is really a whole academic discipline that understands, or supposedly understands, economics and therefore can identify the lack of aligned incentives in political organization – but don’t do so all the way. Economists either do not fully believe economic theory or they do not believe government is what it is (and claims to be). Which is it?

Some clearly do not understand and do not wish to understand economic theory nor apply it on other things than their precious formulas and functions. Such economists will never find any truth and will not produce anything of value to anyone. But what about the rest? It is clear that many economists live in symbiosis with the State and therefore do not wish to think about it in less positive terms. After all, the government employs a lot of economists and economists find it very prestigeous to work for the people with political power. So they simply neglect to apply their economic understanding on the organization they wish to serve.

So how about the rest, i.e. economists who do understand economic theory and wo do not find it necessary to lie to themselves in what regards the State? The answer to this question is what is very sad. It should be the case that economists who end up identifying with the political “right” while supporting government simply do so because they are as brainwashed as most people. Despite being scholars in economics they have learned throughout their lifetimes that there is no way to survive without government.

Economists (many of them) may not like government, but they accept it and even support it. And they use their sound theories to make government more efficient and effective – simply because they have been taught that there is no other way. To a free-thinking individual with economic understanding this is of course the same as saying that a certain industry “must” function like the “statist” grocery store mentioned above – but that we need to make its wasteful operations as efficient and effective as possible not to get “too much waste.”

Anyone understanding the competitive market understands that waste is not acceptable, that waste is minimized automatically through the profit motive and the pressure from competition. The problem here is not only that government is a monopoly and that the profit motive is nonexistent. The problem is also that it is an organization that can “legitimately” force its customers (and non-customers) to pay for its costs while it can supply whatever it wishes at whatever cost it finds most appropriate. 

Government, in other words, is an organization that is much much worse than any monopoly mentioned in economic theory – it is a monopoly cubed, judging from the weird incentives it creates and the effect it has on the market. There is therefore no way of understanding economists’ support for government other than that they have given up in the sense not applying what they know to it. Brainwashing works, even on those who have dedicated your whole professional lives to learning the truth – and when the truth speaks out clearly against government.

Posted in Economics, Political Economy | No Comments »

Starving Politicians

Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008

When starved people find food they tend to desperately swallow everything and not take time to chew the food properly. We’ve all felt the same thing: when we’re really, really hungry and finally get that so desired meal our heartrates go up, we feel stressed, and we eat as quickly as we can without really knowing why. In a sense, we give in to the beast within, the stoneage man who thinks only about survival and reproduction. When food is scarce, which is what hunger means to us, we devour as much as possible to make sure we survive.

Of course, in our modern and civilized society, at least in the so-called West, there’s almost no reason to quickly devour the food. There’s plenty of food and plenty of time to eat it, and eating too fast is usually a bad thing – our bodies tell us to slow down. But the instinct is hard to overcome, since it is and has been so fundamental for our survival as species for three million years.

So when we’re really hungry and are served food we basically give in to the caveman withing – we forget everything that is civilized and expected of us only to get those calories our bodies need to continue functioning.

The same seems to have been the case in politics in this century. Just like people used to eating a lot easier get hungry, politicians learned in the 20th century that they had a lot of power within their grasp. In fact, their powers increased greatly during the last centry, often as a product of unnecessary (the propaganda somehow left out the “un” of the word) wars fought only to increase the powers of the State. With such an appetite built up by the political class, we’re bound to see a quickly growing State – and thus to see our liberties being quickly undermined and taken away.

Then came the crises in the 1970s and the following credit-based “glorious” 1980s, and with them came a change that the statists on the left are still talking about: the so-called revolutions of Thatcher in the UK and Reagan in the US. These were not regimes as great for individual liberty as statists on the right often claim they were, but they nevertheless to some degree forced back the State in certain areas. In other words: political power was forcefully decreased – mostly in rhetoric, but also to some degree in reality. A new trend was seen in the Western world, where the State was slightly pushed back in order to utilize the enormous wealth producing potential of the market.

Politicians, often in the statist left, loudly complained about sometimes fictional and sometimes obvious injustices caused by these new economy-supporting (big business fascist) polices. The so-called globalization that this caused has since been a bad word for leftist statists.

Politicians on the statist right enjoyed their time in the sun, since they rhetorically are advocates of a less restricted economy and therefore in the minds of people were the creators of the new economy and the great prosperity it generated. (How politicians can be thought of as creators of something good in any normal sense of the word is completely incomprehensible – they are at best relatively harmless parasites.) But the statist right soon found that a somewhat liberated people and economy is much more difficult to command – while they had gained and strengthened their power as the economy seemed to be booming (in pre-inflation numbers, of course) they were losing power at a fast rate as people got richer.

In some sense, but hardly in general terms, the powers of the State were somewhat more restricted compared to what it had been before. Or rather: the steady and ever increasing rate of bigger government in the Western world throughout the 20th century had somewhat declined. And, as we know, with a learned habit to consume large volumes of wealth comes a great appetite. This appetite could not be satisfied, and so the politicians suffered.

It was not until the terrible events on 9/11 that the trend could be reversed. President Bush and his hungry lackees quickly seized the opportunity and played on people’s fears to gain support for radically strip Americans of their rights and freedoms while starting wars in order to further keep the people in the dark and make them agree to support “temporarily” established torture champers, to not mind thousands of dead soldiers in foreign lands, to approve of increased taxes (mostly indirectly through government debt), and to accept the “need” for government to seize totalitarianism powers domestically.

Bush and his league of starved, power-craving parasites took advantage of the situation and did what any starving caveman would at a table filled with foods: they devoured anything they could get their hands on, and they did it quickly – possibly (hopefully) more quickly than they should’ve.

As soon as cavemen (politicians) around the world learned of this opportunity they set out to do the same thing. After all, they too were starving for greater powers and unrestricted possibilities of growing their supply of it. And so countries all over the world have adopted the “anti-terrorism” laws that fundamentally restrict the domestic populations and strip them of any rights against the government that they supposedly used to enjoy. That these laws do not target terrorists or even people the State would consider terrorists (i.e., people not paying “enough” taxes) to the same degree they are all directed towards the domestic population.

Surveillance and control hardly ever target such things terrorists would be likely to use (the government doesn’t have such great imagination); they only target what most people use or do most of the time. We now have large-scale phone and e-mail surveillance, video-monitored public places, and a large number of authorities that need to approve of our intention to do certain things. Who can truthfully say they believe politicians sincerely thing they will stifle terrorism through listening in on your aunt’s phone calls or monitor her actions while riding the subway or buying groceries?

The new powers established by and for the State are even more ridiculous considering where these measures have been taken. For instance, Sweden will shortly allow its military to routinely save and catalogue all e-mail and phone traffic at any point transmitted across the national border. Now who would’ve thought that Sweden, the cowardly State not even brave enough to take a stand as the Allies were winning WWII, would be a target for terrorists? The fact that all parties unreservedly support this large-scale surveillance should tell us something – it is so obviously in the political powers’ interest to have this infrastructure of surveillance that they don’t even bother to make it seem like there are differences between the parties.

What we’re seeing is simply starving politicians devouring everything they can get their hands on. And they will be at it for as long as people let them, since there are of course no real restrictions on government. They are in power and they make the restrictions; they can at any time repeal or ignore these restrictions if it is in their interest.

I, for one, hope they devour our liberties so fast they choke to death – or at least get a really bad stomach ache.

Posted in Political Economy, Politics | 2 Comments »

The Tragedy of Wikipedia

Wednesday, April 30th, 2008

A well-known problem in philosophy and political economy since the time of Thucydides and Aristotle, and in modern economics since 1968, is what Garrett Hardin termed the “tragedy of the commons.” The classic example is that of an “open” village pasture equally available to shepherds. It is, unless the villagers somehow agree to regulate the use for the sake of their common good, inevitable that the pasture will be destroyed and that the destruction process will begin almost immediately.

The reason for this is that each herder will recognize that the cost of adding one more animal to the pasture is zero to the individual herder, whereas the benefit is great. He will also realize that if he does not take the opportunity to put the additional animal on the pasture someone else will. The benefit will thus be reaped by someone, the question is but by whom.

So in order not to be beaten to it by the others, each herder will rush to maximize their benefits through adding as many animals as possible to the pasture. This will soon degrade the land and make it unusable due to the excessive overuse caused by the rational benefit-seeking herders. The more obvious the profit, the faster and more devastating will be the overuse.

The same type of problem is haunting the Internet, since the Internet technology makes a number of activities almost or totally free. The very structure of Internet builds on the free transmission of data on any suppliers’ networks, which means it is an easy target for anyone who can make a profit out of its use.

Spamming is the most obvious “tragedy of the commons” problem. Since e-mailing is virtually free, anyone can contact anyone else with an e-mail account at no cost – and it does not cost more to send one million e-mails than it costs to send only one or two. Radically increasing the volume is therefore “free,” which means that anyone who can make money out of sending e-mails will tend to do so. This is why so many spend hours of their potentially productive time clearing their inboxes of numerous unsolicited and anonymous e-mails with misspelled offers of Viagra, penis enlargements, and women “for sale.”

The problem of spamming is further increased by the Internet making it possible – indeed, even easy – to send such e-mails anonymously. The structure of the Internet allows for far-reaching privacy through hiding one’s whereabouts, and it is also an open system, which makes it easy to pretend to be someone else. The result of a commons that allows its users anonymity is obvious: it will suffer from hyper overuse.

Another problem on the Internet, which is not as commonly identified, is so-called trolling. This phenomenon is often described as people using commons such as Internet discussion forums to post irrelevant, offensive, and possibly harmful messages in great quantities. The obvious reason for such anti-social behavior is to disrupt and destroy the discussions (or the web site), but it is also the case that these so-called “trolls” find pleasure in being seen (however anonymously so).

Trolls haunt practically any setting on the Internet that supplies a costless framework for discussion or sharing, and since the Internet is built on the principles of freedom, gratis, and anonymity it has proven very difficult to be successful in charging for such services. Thus: discussion forums and other such “collective” free services develop different methods to keep trolls in check and minimize their damage. Such methods include anything from moderating and surveillance to blocking of IP addresses and users. But since it is easy for a troll to, e.g., simply create a free e-mail account and re-register, most measures taken to get rid of trolls are rather ineffective.

The trolling problem is increasing all over the Internet and it has lately become a rather great problem with the world’s largest encyclopedia: Wikipedia. With its success it has become increasingly important for the organizations and people with “articles” on Wikipedia to make sure they look good and that the articles do not give them bad will. In other words, it has been noted that e.g. the CIA has routinely edited articles that are of interest for the United States government – the government wants to keep sensitive information (about its illegal and oppressive policies) out of the Wikipedia and far from common people’s knowledge. Also, it has been discovered that the Vatican is also editing Wikipedia entries in order to hide not-so-beneficial details of its past and present.

Of course, big business has also recognized that they can lose a lot of the goodwill they might have in the market place through letting people write “anything” in “their” Wikipedia entries.

Part of the negative information added to the Wikipedia articles might not be true and some might even be slanderous. Since the Wikipedia allows anyone to update and edit articles, one would think that the positive and negative extremes would even out so that most information in the articles are true or mostly true. This is however not the case, partly because of the commons problem, which is why the Wikipedia has appointed volunteer editors and even hired people to check the quality of entries.

But the problem with Wikipedia is greater than a lack of quality. It is easily targeted for campaigns due to its nature of being a “commons.” There are a great many trolls out there, and they seem to have a lot of time on their hands.

For instance, it has been noted that pro-global warming trolls are very active in changing Wikipedia entries on scientists who are skeptical towards the “imminent man-made catastrophe” scenarios. They therefore edit entries as part of their campaigns or even delete entries they are not very fond of. The National Post wrote about the scientist Fred Singer who, the Wikipedia entry said, believed in Martians.

The NP writes, for example, on U.K. scientist Benny Peiser:

Wikipedia refused to accept Peiser’s critique, or his interpretation ofhis own views, or an account of his views that he had provided to me, or an account of his views published in a peer-reviewed journal, or an account of his views published in The Wall Street Journal, or an account of his views published by the U.S. Senate committee on environment and public works.

Instead, the Wikipedia trollers insisted that all of the above sources were disqualified or irrelevant under Wikipedia rules, and that the trollers’ own understanding of Peiser’s views trumped all others.

The trolls are numerous and they are always there, which makes it very difficult to make sure the truth is kept for long in the articles. This is a problem for a great many people who are slandered on Wikipedia and cannot seem to have the slanderous remarks removed. Others have entries added only to see them be deleted over and over again even though they seem to comply with Wikipedia policies.

In this case, scientifically proven truths are tested by popular vote. If a sufficient number of people editing Wikipedia consider it important to have only one view on global warming on Wikipedia, then it seems this will be the case. But scientific truths aren’t subject to popular vote; on the contrary, it is science that is supposed to challenge our faulty world views through offering new theories and empirical proof that we are, indeed, wrong.

After all, if science was subject to popular vote, then we still wouldn’t have begun using the wheel and we certainly wouldn’t have adopted the view that the Earth is round – not flat. Popular belief 500 years ago was that the world was the center of the universe and that it was flat – that one could fall off if traveling too far in one direction. Was the discovery that the earth is indeed round a step forward, or would we be better off with the popular view?

I am myself a victim for such a trolls’ campaign on Wikipedia as described above. The last few years there has been an article on me emphasizing my anarchist views and political writings. But beginning the summer of 2007 there were constant “flags” on the article stating that it was up for deletion. The reason? I’m not “notable” enough. This may be true, I don’t know, but it seems strange to me that I was notable for three years or so before anyone questioned my notability – and that notability became an issue only after I had become somewhat known for my writings. Or was it an issue because I had become “notable”?

I tend to think the latter, since my views are hardly respected by most – and I have even received quite a few death threats, which would prove that some people aren’t too accepting of my views.

I’m personally not very interested in whether I’m on Wikipedia, but it was fun to see how the article evolved. It is not allowed for the person to edit articles on him-/herself, so I stayed away – but I checked it a little now and then and was amazed about how people could keep track of my views, my background, my whereabouts, and my ideological evolution. Most of it, I must say, was absolutely correct – even dates and places were correctly noted in the article.

An article was also added on the web site I started back in 1999 (or was it 1998?), Anarchism.net. But as soon as the article on Per Bylund was flagged or deletion, so was the article on Anarchism.net. A debate followed on the Wikitalk pages, and it was repeatedly decided that the article on me should not be deleted. But just like it isn’t possible to keep politicians at bay through clearly advising them against their wishes in a referendum (have you noticed how they always seem to hold another referendum soon after the first one if they aren’t pleased with the outcome?), one cannot beat trolls in a democratic vote.

The article on Per Bylund was kept the first, the second, and – I think – the third times it was up for deletion. Between each “flagging” it was updated by people who had more references and information, so the article quickly grew. This was not enough, however. The trolls finally won the battle through being more persistent than the anti-trollers, and both the articles on Per Bylund and Anarchism.net are now deleted from Wikipedia.

The interesting thing in this “war” on Wikipedia was that as soon as a deletion “flag” had been removed, another one was added. And there were only two or three people adding the deletion flags every time, at least one of them being a Wikipedia editor (with rights to make the final call to delete or keep). They obviously had a strong interest in not having these articles on Wikipedia. One would think nobody should think it important whether there would be an article on Per Bylund on Wikipedia, but obviously a couple of people thought it extremely important not to have it there.

I was continuously updated on what was going on by people with an interest in editing articles on Wikipedia. It was an interesting experience, to see how some people so eagerly invest such enormous amounts of time into having an article on someone so insignificant as myself removed from a free, online encyclopedia. I hope their gain, which I suspect is at best “feel-good,” was worth the trouble.

These are just a couple of examples, on that I experienced first-hand, of the tragedy of the commons problems on Wikipedia. The solution for Wikipedia is of course the same as for any such problem: adding cost to the use (and especially abuse) of the resource. Paying as little as 1/10 cent for editing a page would keep all or almost all trolls away. They are, after all, only doing it because it is at the expense solely of others.

In a sense, these trolls are unsuccessful politicians. Whereas politicians manage to get their hands on power and enrich themselves through making use of the that great [force-based] commons called the State, the trolls on Wikipedia and elsewhere don’t get further than their personal computer. But they have a lot in common – both thrive off the use of commons and eagerly invest in other people’s misery.

Posted in Economics, Philosophy, Political Economy | 4 Comments »

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