Knowledge And Decisions

The moralistic approach to public policy is not merely a political advantage to those seeking greater concentration of power. Moralism in itself implies a concentration of power. More justice for all is a contradiction in terms, in a world of diverse values and disparate conceptions of justice itself. “More” justice in such a world means more forcible imposition of one particular brand of justice — i.e., less freedom. Perfect justice in this context means perfect tyranny. The point is not merely semantic or theoretical. The reach of national political power into every nook and cranny has proceeded in step with campaigns for greater “social justice.” A parent forced by the law and income to send his child off to a public school where he is abused or terrorized by other children is painfully aware of a loss of freedom, however much distant theoreticians talk of justice as they forcibly unsort people, and however safe the occupational advantages of intellectuals remain from governmental power.

The myopic conception of freedom as those freedoms peculiar to intellectuals, or formal constitutional guarantees, ignores the many ways in which options can be forcibly removed by administrative or judicial fiat, or by the government’s ability to structure financial or other incentives in such a way as to impose high costs or grant high rewards according to whether individuals and organizations do what the government wants done — whether or not the government has any explicit statutory or constitutional authority for controlling such behavior. More than a century ago, John Stuart Mill saw the dangers in the growth of the extralegal powers of government:

Every function superadded to those already exercised by the government causes its influence over hopes and fears to be more widely diffused, and converts, more and more, the active and ambitious part of the public into hangers-on of the government, or of some part which aims at becoming the government. If the roads, the railways, the banks, the insurance offices, the great joint-stock companies, the universities, and the public charities were all of them branches of the government; if, in addition, the municipal corporations and local boards, with all that now devolves on them, became departments of the central administration; if the employees of all these different enterprises were appointed and paid by the government, and looked to the government for every rise in life; not all the freedom of the press and popular constitution of the legislature would make this or any other country free otherwise than in name.²⁴¹

Freedom is endangered both internationally and domestically. The international danger turns ultimately on military power, and the domestic danger on ideology. It is not merely that an ideology may be wrong — everything human is imperfect — but that the zeal, the urgency, and the moral certitude behind it create special dangers to a free constitutional government of checks and balances, for maintaining that constitutional freedom often seems less important than scoring a victory for “justice” as envisioned by zealots. When a segment of these zealots are able to pose as disinterested “experts” the dangers are compounded.