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by Adrian Sobers
“We need to realise that there are only trade-offs, not ‘solutions.’” – Thomas Sowell
In his tribute to George J. Stigler, Thomas Sowell said Stigler “never seemed troubled by the popular question: ‘But what would you put in its place?’ Stigler was not a social engineer, but a thinker who was teaching others to think.”
Economics for Stigler, says Sowell, was “not some magic formula to be used to produce personal fortune or national miracles.” Rather than proposing “solutions”, Stigler exposed “the dangerous illusion that politicians can pull rabbits out of a hat to give us free lunches.”
No doubt you have heard variations of the aforementioned popular question: “So wuh you would do?”; “How about bringing solutions to the table?!”; “Why doesn’t the government ‘do something’?!”
In Super Safety, Sowell explained that politics and economics are not just different but antagonistic.
“The basic premise of economics is scarcity: There is never enough to satisfy everybody [no, not because of “greed”]. That means there is no free lunch, no “solutions” but only trade-offs. Politics is full of “solutions.” There are free lunches for every voting bloc. The name of the game in politics is to do a little good, right under your nose, and ignore all the harm created elsewhere.”
The above excerpts from Sowell are from an essay collection, Is Reality Optional? For those who constantly propose and demand “solutions”, the answer is a resounding “Yes”.
Two recent cartoons in the Jamaica Observer illustrate Dr. Sowell’s point. The cartoons are funny in their own right, but at the same time they are no laughing matter and reveal different aspects of the underlying malady that causes economic angst.
In the first cartoon, a terrified soul labelled CONSUMERS is in a boat called INFLATION. He is desperately clinging to the Minister of Agriculture who is standing in the boat with outstretched hands saying: “PRICE BE STILL!” (Talk about dark humour.) In the distance an incoming wave (CHICKEN PRICE HIKE), is headed straight for the boat.
This cartoon highlights the issue of consumers clinging to government intervention for “salvation”. The state can temporarily, through tinkering with distortions like price controls and tariffs, mask the symptoms of inflation and other ills, but eventually the bill comes due for this political patchwork.
This is a general problem in how we are governed and it especially applies to social (in)security systems.
Dealing with underlying issues takes more thought, time (and political capital) than is available in the typical election cycle. (Wunna could talk, I got an election to worry ‘bout). This puts us in an infinite loop of short-term patchwork that tries to postpone the bill that will eventually come due.
This means that underlying issues are never really dealt with given the mismatch between the political horizon (short-term) and what is best for the country in the long run.
Some might argue that the long run is an abstraction; we only need to focus on the here and now. Sir Roger Scruton’s comments in Conservatism on Edmund Burke are instructive here.
Burke rejected the liberal idea that the social contract is a deal that only applies to the living. Burke argued that the social contract is more akin to a trusteeship, and does not stop at the living but extends to the grave (democracy of the dead), and the unborn.
Sir Roger described this trusteeship as “a shared inheritance for the sake of which we learn to circumscribe our demands, to see our own place in things as part of a continuous chain of giving and receiving, and to recognise that the good things we inherit are not ours to spoil but ours to safeguard for our dependents.” This is another discussion, but it is still worth noting here.
The second cartoon explains the trade-off from the “solution” being proposed. A truck labeled “IMPORT DUTIES EASE!” is dumping chicken while a lady representing CONSUMERS says, “Back to the 70s again…GOVT to dump cheap chicken parts!” On her mind is an image alluding to the soaring price of local chicken.
The government’s “solution” is, of course, not being well received by local small chicken farmers.
In Time of the Tinkerers, Sowell explains that you “cannot simply accept the benefits of a complex market economy and then decide that you will improve it” by tinkering.
“What is lacking in this conception is any sense that a society, an institution, or even a single human being, is an intricate system of fragile inter-relationships, whose complexities are little understood and easily destabilised.”
Nassim Taleb makes a similar point in Antifragile about the economic policy fragilista “who mistakes the economy for a washing machine that continuously needs fixing (by him) and blows it up.”
Sowell ended with a reminder for our friends in Extremistan who will probably interpret this as all intervention is bad: “None of this means that reforms should never take place.” Taleb issues a similar caution, “Let me warn against misinterpreting the message here. […] I am just warning against naive intervention and lack of awareness and acceptance of harm done by it.”
Sowell cites Burke who put it best, “A society without the means of change is without the means of its conservation.” More importantly, Burke suggested how we should attend to the defects of the state, not with reckless abandon and a myriad of “solutions”; but as if attending to the wounds of our father: with a sobering sense of responsibility. A responsibility not only to those who are alive, but to those who went before, and those who will follow.
Adrian Sobers is a prolific letter writer and social commentator. This column was submitted as a Letter to the Editor.
