Knowledge And Decisions

The political advantages to “insiders” of postponed knowledge availability are more readily seen in economic terms, but the same principle applies in noneconomic policy areas as well. One can produce “peace in our time” as British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain did in 1938, at costs that become manifest in later times — though not late enough for Chamberlain’s political career in this particular case. Japan’s militarists produced exhilarating triumphs at Pearl Harbor and Bataan, whose ultimate costs were paid at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Hitler likewise produced a great national exhilaration with a series of triumphs for Germany at later costs that included German cities more devastated than Hiroshima or Nagasaki, though by pre-nuclear technology. It was not simply that Tojo or Hitler miscalculated. Rather, they took calculated risks whose magnitudes (costs) were insufficiently understood by their respective peoples during the decision-making period. More politically successful cost concealments abound, however. On a smaller scale, social experiments of various sorts have produced immediate political benefits for their partisans at costs only much later manifested in demonstrable consequences.

The classical criticism of the growth of government has been that it threatens both efficiency and freedom — that it is “the road to serfdom.”⁶⁰ While many inefficiencies of government are too blatant to deny, the big-government threat to freedom has been denied and ridiculed. It is claimed that “nothing of the sort has happened.”⁶¹ “Nor need we fear” that “increased government intervention” will mean “serfdom. ”⁶² It is pointed out that “in none of the welfare states has government control of the economy — regardless of the wisdom and feasibility of the regulatory measures — prevented the electorate from voting the governing political party out of power. ”⁶³ Such views are not confined to the liberal-left portion of the political spectrum. A leading economist of the “Chicago School” has stated: “hardly anyone believes that any basic liberties are seriously infringed today. ”⁶⁴

Part of the problem with the argument that freedom has not been impaired by big government is the arbitrarily restrictive definition of “freedom” as those particular freedoms central to the activities of intellectuals as a social class. But the right to be free of government-imposed disabilities in seeking a job or an education are rights of great value, not only to racial or ethnic minorities — as shown by the civil rights movements of the 1960s — but also to the population at large, as shown in their outraged (but largely futile) reaction to “affirmative action” and “busing” in the 1970s. Even aside from the question of the substantive merits or demerits of these policies, clearly people perceive their freedom impaired when such vital concerns as their work and their children are controlled by governmental decisions repugnant to, but insulated from, the desires of themselves and the population at large. This loss of freedom is no less real when others make the case for the merits of the various social policies involved or denounce as immoral the opposition to them. Freedom is precisely the right to behave contrary to the values, desires or beliefs of others. To say that this right can never be absolute is only to say that freedom itself can never be absolute. Much of the loss of freedom with the growth of big government has been concealed because the direct losses have been suffered by intermediary decision-makers — notably businessmen — and it is only after the process has gone on for a long time that it becomes blatantly obvious to the public that an employer’s loss of freedom in choosing whom to hire is the worker’s loss of freedom in getting a job on his merits, that a university’s loss of freedom in selecting faculty or students is their children’s loss of freedom in seeking admission or in seeking the best minds to be taught by. The passions aroused by these issues go well beyond what would be involved in a simple question of efficiency, as distinguished from freedom. Nor can the passionate opposition be waved aside as mere “racism.” Not only are minorities themselves opposed to quotas and busing: so are others who have fought for racial equality long before it became popular. Nor are racial issues unique in arousing passions. Even such an apparently small issue as mandatory seat belt buzzers created a storm of protest against government encroachment on the freedom of the individual. The quiescence of intellectuals as long as their freedom to write and lecture remained safe may be less an indication of the preeminence of these particular freedoms than of the insularity of intellectuals.