Economists assume that each individual has his own preferences that guide his actions. The moral problem starts when an individual wants to force his preferences on other individuals’ choices. If, for this kind of moral sin, God had wanted to strike Steve Bannon off his horse on the road to Damascus and perhaps punish him with a nervous breakdown, He would have done exactly what He did on August 20: get Bannon arrested by federal agents on a Coast Guard boat.
Bannon is the former executive chairman of Breitbart News and Trump adviser. A believer in providential or natural justice (which is of course something different from economics) might think that Bannon’s arrest was a wake-up call or punishment for his protectionist crimes, that is, conspiring to impose his own preferences by force on individuals who want to trade.
We can imagine that when Bannon saw the Coast Guard boat approaching the yacht on which he was sailing along the Connecticut coast, his nationalist heart bounced in his manly chest. He must have thought something like: “Here is our great Coast Guard tasked with keeping foreigners and their goods off our coasts (including Mexican rapists if they ever try to get around The Wall). The mighty Coast Guard is here to protect me, an American citizen.”
Caravaggio, Conversion on the Way
to Damascus (Wikipedia Commons)
In fact, the Coast Guard was there to arrest him—another instance of a military unit assuming internal police functions, the sort of thing that the Founders feared from a permanent army.
I don’t know if Bannon is guilty of the crimes he is accused of, which have not been proven in court. And I will not discuss here the economics and ethics of the plethora and reach of laws that, in America like in other Western countries, give an air of quasi-inevitability or even quasi-normalcy to the words of Lavrentiy Beria, chief of Soviet state security under Joseph Stalin: “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime.”
It was not the least irony of Bannon’s nationalist adventure of August 20 that the Coast Guard originated from Revenue-Marine, a service created by Congress in 1790 at the request of Alexander Hamilton with the purpose of collecting customs duties—even if, at that time, tariffs were used more to finance a small government than to protect Americans from foreign goods. As usual for a government bureaucracy, mission creep has proceeded.
READER COMMENTS
Alan Goldhammer
Aug 23 2020 at 12:02pm
This is a curious statement. Times change and the mission changes along with it. Were we to have had the Coast Guard stay in place with its 1790 duty only, it would not be needed. Maybe that’s fine from a strict libertarian point of view but it ignores reality.
Pierre Lemieux
Aug 23 2020 at 12:48pm
@Alan: Would you say the same for the Constitution? Is there no need for constraints and commitment devices?
Craig
Aug 24 2020 at 12:15am
Often one will hear that the Constitution doesn’t authorize the Air Force. It expressly notes an army and a navy. In its infancy the Air Force was the Army Air Force. The issue is really semantics there and really this is where the ‘magic words’ doxtrine comes into play.
The Coast Guard is just a subset of the Navy. They can enforce the tariff, save lives or do anything any given navy might do up to and including enforcing the blockade against the Soutb in the Civil War or patrolling for German submarines in WW1 and WW2 or maybe even to assist the main Navy against the Soviet Baltic Fleet.
Perhaps its law enforcement role in the War on Drugs bothers you because you favor drug legalization or decriminalization.
Sometimes though I would suggest some take opposition to the War in Drugs to the point where one would oppose the use of the Coast Guard in any law enforcement role?
Nevertheless Founders were not quite as opposed to using the military to enforce the law, see for instance the Whiskey Rebellion. Posse Comitatus doesn’t come until much later and that is a statute, its not a constitutional requirement and navy and Coast Guard aren’t covered, neither are the state National Guard units. We ha e a tradition of civilian law enforcement, sure, but it should be noted Coast Guard was bringing the postal police in.
Phil H
Aug 23 2020 at 2:03pm
I believe it is a straightforward mistake to read the statements of charlatans as though they are statements of principle. If Bannon lived in a communist country, he would be a communist. He is a self-interested opportunist only.
Fazal Majid
Aug 23 2020 at 2:05pm
England successfully used mercantilism against the Dutch to usurp Amsterdam’s position as the center of world capitalism at the end of the 17th century. In assuming the Northern US states’ own mercantilism was not by design, you are implying Hamilton et al were clueless, which was most certainly not the case.
Pierre Lemieux
Aug 23 2020 at 8:51pm
@Fazal: Two quick points: (1) In his latest book, The Decline and Rise of Democracy, David Stasavage claims that the problem in the Low Countries was that the government was too much democratic and thus too easily captured by mercantile interests. My review will be in the forthcoming issue of Regulation. (2) This looks similar to what happened in the United States, with every business wanting to be protected as a compensation for the high prices of those that were already. In his Clashing over Commerce: A History of US Trade Policy (a book I strongly recommend), Douglas Irwin quotes Democratic congressman Samuel Fox describing American protectionism at the end of the 19th century:
Jon Murphy
Aug 23 2020 at 7:17pm
Your reference to Beria is quite apropos given he would find himself on the wrong end of that police state infrastructure he helped build when his protector (Stalin) was dead.
Pierre Lemieux
Aug 23 2020 at 10:42pm
@Jon: Good point. The same could happen not only with Trump’s former friends like Cohen, Manafort, or Bannon, but also with Trump himself. From a mob chanting “lock her up!” and another mob chanting “lock him up!”, the difference is summarized in two letters.
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