An Interesting Political Phenomenon – Econlib

We observe a strange phenomenon that does not only affect America but currently looks especially virulent in this country. (Before the fall of the Soviet empire, it was more noticeable in Europe.) When an election is coming, each of the two main competing sides shouts that if the other 50% (plus 1% or whatever) wins, catastrophes will happen. The phenomenon has gradually intensified. Each of the two sides seems right: the government has become so powerful that it can seriously harm the interests and lifestyles of either side’s members. Nobody seems secure in his liberty and security.

It is not that the politicians of one side promise to do nothing (slogan: “We’ll let you pursue your peaceful activities and happiness”) while those on the other side intend to actively harm the opposing 50% (“We are coming after you”). If that were the case, we would understand that the side to be actively harmed and discriminated against would have good reasons to cry wolf; and we might realize that there is a moral and economic difference between not doing something to help somebody and to actively harm him. But this is not what is happening. Each side intends to actively harm one-half of the population by restricting what they want to do.

The incantation that the new president will be the president of all (of all Syldavians) is a sham. He or she cannot be the president of all by taking sides for one half against the other half. “What can I do for you? What can I forbid or mandate that would please you?”

The losing side of the election, whichever 50% it is, feels threatened and angry. And here is what’s most surprising: the losers do not conclude that the government should not have the power to harm them (whether they are 49% of the population or whatever); no, they conclude that their candidates must win next time to retaliate and satisfy their claims against the other tribe. From one election to the other, from one change of the guard to the other, government power continues to grow, and the population becomes more discontented. Granted that one-third of voting-age citizens do not vote, which does not prevent their liberty from being alternatively shrunk by one-third and then by the other third.

The strange phenomenon is actually explainable, especially after the advances of public-choice analysis over the past seven decades. Once political authorities have gained enough power to significantly harm the losing side in its liberties and opportunities, once the domain of collective choice has sufficiently invaded the domain of individual choice, politics becomes the only game in town.

For a couple of centuries, classical liberals and libertarians, whose insights are currently ignored, have argued against this absurd and dangerous race to power, like two angry would-be queens running to seize the throne. This system promotes politicization, conflict, and injustices, and represents a mounting threat to prosperity and liberty. Although liberals and libertarians continue to debate the exact limits of political power, their goal may be summarized by the motto live and let live. This is very different from competitive authoritarianism whether democratic or not.

It is worth reflecting on Anthony de Jasay’s simultaneously radical and reasonable definition of (classical) liberalism as “a broad presumption of deciding individually any matter whose structure lends itself, with roughly comparable convenience, to both individual and collective choice.” Since the 18th century, economic analysis has demonstrated how individual choices with the right institutional background generate a free and autoregulated society.

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