I had a minor hit yesterday on Twitter with
the observation
that difficult political questions are usually not about what
government action would be “best” (meaning most just, or most
efficient), but rather about what policy can actually be implemented
in the only way governments can implement policy, by making them
directions to a bureaucracy.
The specific example that brought this point to mind was the
suggestion from
@AvengingRedHand that illegally
obtained evidence should be used in court, but the individuals who
illegally obtained it should also be punished for their offence.
That is perfectly just. It is also, as far as I know, the law here in
Britain. (If you want legal advice, though, ask a lawyer). Not that I
actually recall anyone ever being prosecuted for obtaining evidence
illegally.
And that’s the point. The US rule that makes the product of illegal
searches inadmissible is not directly beneficial to justice, but it
has the intended effect that somebody in the whole process has an
actual reason to draw attention to illegal searches — specifically,
the defense. The suggested rule may be better, if perfectly
implemented, but it just isn’t going to be perfectly implemented.
And that’s it, really. Whatever your goals are in politics — justice,
efficiency, kittens and rainbows — it’s no good just working out what
everybody needs to do to achieve them. It’s not even enough to think
also about how you’re going to get and retain power to make people
do what they need to do, though that is also necessary. At the same
time, you have to understand that governments, like all other large
organisations, works through bureaucracy, and what a government
actually does is not “enforce laws”, or “redistribute wealth”, but
issue commands to a bureaucracy which will then respond to those
commands. And it won’t normally respond to them by obeying them
totally in letter and in spirit.
We all fall into this error from time to time, but I consider it the
fundamental fallacy of progressivism. Take Rawls’ “Theory of Justice”
for example. As an anti-progressive reactionary with libertarian
tendencies, what do I think of his reasoning? Actually, it’s not
bad. I could maybe quibble a bit, but I won’t bother, because it’s a
reasonably sensible answer to an absurd question — the question “what
should society do to maximise justice?” Whatever the theory, society
will do what it damn well wants. The question of politics is, “what
instructions should be issued to a bureaucracy to achieve some kind of
acceptable standard of life for society?”
Many critiques of progressivism attack the fallacy, but then fail to
notice that it applies also to the critique. Libertarianism correctly
observes that socialism doesn’t provide the incentives for individuals
to act in a cooperative manner, and identifies market forces as a way
of providing that incentive, albeit imperfectly. However,
it fails on the
grounds that the night-watchman or nonexistent state does not provide
the incentives for groups to refrain from political activity. They
just say, “groups should not gain advantage at the expense of other
groups by political activity”. That would be nice, but who’s going to
stop them? They’re left talking about a “new man”, just like the
utopian socialists.
To borrow a metaphor frequently employed in biology, politics is not
about identifying the perfect form of a cake, it is about finding the
best recipe for making a cake, that can be made with the tools and
ingredients available.