We're accustomed to thinking of liberalism and conservatism as parallel ideologies, with conservatives preferring less government and liberals preferring more. The equivalency breaks down, though, when you consider that liberals never claim that increasing the size of government is an end in itself. Liberals only support larger government if they have some reason to believe that it will lead to material improvement in people's lives. Conservatives also want material improvement in people's lives, of course, but proving that their policies can produce such an outcome is a luxury, not a necessity.
The contrast between economic liberalism and economic conservatism, then, ultimately lies not only in different values or preferences but in different epistemologies. Liberalism is a more deeply pragmatic governing philosophy -- more open to change, more receptive to empiricism, and ultimately better at producing policies that improve the human condition -- than conservatism.
Now, liberalism's pragmatic superiority wouldn't matter to a true ideological conservative any more than news about the medical benefits of pork (to pick an imaginary example) would cause a strictly observant Jew to begin eating ham sandwiches. But, if you have no particular a priori preference about the size of government and care only about tangible outcomes, then liberalism's aversion to dogma makes it superior as a practical governing philosophy.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Approaches to politics
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It seems to me that there is (generally) a high level of agreement between (most) liberals and conservatives that there are things that the market (ie capitalist economy) does better than goverments (e.g. matching supply to demand, most normal commercial activities, etc). The outright failure or else shift to capitalism in all significant communist countries reinforces this.
The differences are rather around the extent to which market failures exist and should be corrected by goverment action. For instance, pollution which damages a lot of people a little (none of them enough to be worth suing over) will not be corrected by the market, and needs government action.
The failure of individuals to achieve adequate income to support themselves and their dependents is viewed by most liberals as a societal failure (usually due to a failure to provide true equality of opportunity) that requires intervention to provide support (extra training, temporary income support, etc). Many "conservatives" would consider this an individual failure that should not be paid for by the rest of society - essentially ignoring both the (usually massive) inequalities of opportunity - or at least only paid for to the minimum required to maintain socal cohesion (ie avoid collapse of civil society).
I think most conservatives argue for smaller government on the basis that government is costly both directly and by preventing maximal outcomes.
Since the indirect costs of goverment caused distortions are hard to quantify, this argument often reduces to a "because less govt is better"; however this doesn't mean they don't have a point. It is often easy to do things which seem helpful, but have large unintended consequences.
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