Finding Liberty’s Sweet Spot

Maybe it’s not where you thought…

By Christopher Cook – July 9, 2024

Yesterday, I posed a question: what does “limited government” mean? Where exactly is the line drawn between acceptably limited and unacceptably large? What amount of government is acceptable? Where do you draw the line?

I don’t know that anyone has a good answer. It might not even be possible to have a good answer. And even if someone were able to give an answer, could they say why?

In the absence of a good answer, then, “limited government” conservatives have only one remaining fallback position: that some small amount of government force is better than none at all, because it will protect individuals from the violations of their rights that would take place in government’s absence.

This presumption assumes that in the absence of government, there would be more and/or worse rights violations than would exist in the presence of a limited government.

This is of course the argument made by the American Founders and the Enlightenment philosophers from whose wellspring they drew: that we have natural rights, but those rights are “insecure” in a “state of nature,” so our only choice is to surrender some of those rights in order to protect the rest.

This is actually similar to the Laffer Curve we discussed yesterday, in which he posited a theoretical tax rate at which government revenue is maximized (Rmax). Beyond that rate, revenue returns go negative because people start shielding their money from taxation. (Laffer was arguing for tax cuts.)

We can determine that there is a similar “sweet spot” at which enjoyment of individual rights is maximized and disruptions thereto are minimized. We will define this as a condition of a maximum liberty (Lmax).

The Founders’/Enlightenment “limited government” argument, then, is this:

In a state of nature, there are disruptions to individual freedom. Government also disrupts individual freedom, but if it is kept strictly limited, the disruptions caused by government will more bearable than the disruptions that occur in the state of nature.

Here is a simplified depiction:

We could also call this the fear of anarchy argument. It relies on an assumption: that some government is better than none at all. Is that assumption true?

Anarchists (libertarian anarchists, talking about actual libertarian anarchism) obviously say no.

Our argument in this regard can be broken down into at least three supporting claims:

  1. If you are looking to find a sweet spot at which enjoyment of individual rights is maximized and disruptions thereto are minimized, you do not begin by creating a system (government) that disrupts enjoyment of individual rights as a part of its normal function,
  2. It is possible for mechanisms to arise in a condition of anarchy/state of nature that protect individual rights without the automatic disruptions thereto caused by government, and
  3. While disruptions to the enjoyment of individual rights in a condition of anarchy/state of nature will not be zero, the overall balance (Lmax) will be superior to that which can be achieved by any amount of “limited” government.

(And then, of course, we might also go on to point out that no one can say for sure what amount of limited government is the right amount, and even if they could—and even if they could achieve that amount—it would not remain limited for long. That is an important, but separate, argument.)

Libertarian anarchists, then, will place the Lmax sweet spot at 0% government.

If we were to assign a figure desirable to libertarian minarchists, we might posit an Lmax at roughly 5% government: the “night watchman” state, which “barely escapes being no government at all.”

Mainstream libertarians might be at, say, 10 or 15%.

Most conservatives want a government that is a bit more active—albeit far less than anything the left wants—so their Lmax would be somewhat higher than that.

Some of the Founders—Anti-Federalists like Henry, Mason, and S. Adams—could perhaps be described as the minarchists of their day. Hamilton and the rest of the Federalists, though, were miles off from that. (That is the problem with referring to some notion of a Founders’ “original vision.” There was no one such vision.)

Obviously I have come to believe that the sweet spot is at 0% government. However, the argument that some amount of government is better than none at all certainly does have respectable origins and a noble classical-liberal pedigree…

As discussed above, in America, it comes to us through the American Founders, who took it fairly directly from the natural lawyers (Locke, Blackstone, Grotius, et al) of the Enlightenment.

These natural lawyers, in turn, drew from a body of classical-liberal thought going back through the Renaissance to the development of common law; the natural-law teachings of Aquinas; Magna Carta; and resistance to the Norman Yoke. And then even deeper—to King Alfred (and the Judeo-Christian teachings from which he drew), Germanic tribal kingship, all the way to Cicero and other classical philosophers.

We owe every one of these people a debt.

But were they right? Are we sure that some government is better than none at all? Are we sure that here in the modern era, we couldn’t develop mechanisms that protect individual rights without the automatic disruptions imposed by government?

These were great thinkers and statesmen, but they were also products of their time. They drew on what they knew, and what was possible in their moment in history.

Has it ever occurred to you that this notion might be due for an upgrade?

Cicero knew the Roman republic, and railed against the arrival of empire. He synthesized his knowledge into a set of philosophical and moral beliefs, based on his time and context. His ideas continue to ring down through the centuries. (Note: government officials beheaded him for those ideas. Just sayin’.)

King Alfred knew Saxon tradition, rooted in Germanic tribal customs handed down from his forebears—customs that flowered into something new in the fertile English soil. And he knew the Bible. He synthesized his knowledge into his Book of Dooms and his philosophy of governance, which was quite “libertarian” for the time. But he was still a product of his time.

The natural lawyers of the Enlightenment were writing at a time when hereditary rule was the norm and criticizing it was risky.

The American Founders walked through the door opened by the natural lawyers, but they still only knew monarchy and the examples of the republics and democracies of classical antiquity.

Yes, they all assumed that the complete absence of government would be worse than a limited government. Why does that mean we must assume the same thing? Why must that notion be frozen in amber forever?

If you read between the lines in the Founders’ work, you can see hints of cognitive dissonance. The phrase “necessary evil” is especially telling. They knew. Brilliant though they were, they were products of their time. They could not do anything about it, but they knew.

I cannot prove it1, but I also believe that the same cognitive dissonance bothered them (and probably also Locke et al) regarding the ‘social contract’ argument they were all using…

After all, their greatest conviction was that human beings are created equal and endowed with natural rights. And then to turn around and say that the individual human person’s consent to the “social contract” is “tacit” and “implied”—well, that is barely an upgrade from Hobbes’ argument that we “agree” to surrender our rights to an all-powerful “sovereign.”

On some level, they had to know that this was a philosophical workaround—a cheat code they needed to reconcile their belief in natural rights with the incompatible notion that a “social contract” had to be forced on people.

These men, from Jefferson to Cicero and beyond, were brilliant. But they were not perfect, and they were products of their time.

We have now had the benefit of another 250 years of work by men and women who are every bit their equal in brilliance. If you have not availed yourself of writings done on the philosophy of governance post-1789, you are missing out. Times have changed. Our knowledge has grown.

We have also had a technological explosion…

Because of new technology, it is no longer necessary, for example, to fret that the roads cannot possibly be done privately because there would have to be tolls everywhere. We have transponders now.

We have also had the benefit of 150 years of modern economic development…

It is no longer necessary, for example, to fret that private agencies would never be able to provide the kinds of services that governments do. They’re doing it now: Providing private arbitration services and private security. Adjudicating disputes without any government involvement—including abiding by decisions reached in private courts of final appeal. Businesses are able to reconcile and harmonize disparate procedures in intra-agency disputes—including across international boundaries.

Modern systems and practices, in other words, allow for unprecedented levels of cooperation and sophistication, without any centralized guiding hand. All of this can be expanded. Government is increasingly looking outdated. Things have changed.

Setting aside the unprecedented carnage in the twentieth century (nearly all of which was perpetrated by governments) our risk of death at the hands of another human being has been falling steadily since about 1400. Things change.

I am not saying that human nature has fundamentally changed. But things change. Knowledge changes. Practices improve.

This assumption—that without some amount of government, things would definitely be worse—is based on old information.

Are you sure your ideology isn’t due for an upgrade?

 

1 Perhaps someone who knows their writings in more depth may have evidence for this cognitive dissonance.

The Freedom Scale

 

[Ed: We have to yield some of our liberty in order for those we hire to be able to govern us. Here’s how Madison put it:

“It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. … If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” – James Madison]