“Statocrats” is an old French word (statocrate) recycled by Bertrand de Jouvenel and meaning “a man who derives his authority only from the position he holds and the office he performs in the service of the state” (On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth, 1945 for the original French edition). I extend the term to encompass the Prince’s academic or quasi-academic advisors who partly or totally depend on the state for their incomes. (I am not implying that all academic advisors or even all government employees are the Prince’s minions.) I have a New Year’s resolution to recommend to statocrats.
In general, a New Year’s resolution is a commitment device: it helps one keep one’s promise to oneself by publicizing or at least clearly expressing a goal to be reached. If you want to quit smoking or stop drinking wine (or stop whining–pardon the New Year’s pun), a New Year’s resolution can help. But such a resolution won’t have much effect if self-control only works at the time the (reasonable) resolution is made.
I thought about this resolution for statocrats when re-reading the remarkable article published in 2014 by a group of self-described “prominent economists” (it’s really in the text of the article and you can read by clicking the link): Frank Chaloupka et al. “An Evaluation of the FDA’s Analysis of the Costs and Benefits of the Graphic Warning Label Regulation,” Tobacco Control 24). The article is remarkable in the sense that its nine economist authors, some of whom are prominent, push behavioral economics at its limit. They argue that, in the case of smoking, ordinary individuals lack the self-control necessary to act in a way to maximize their real utility. Consequently, government must control addicted smokers and force them to do what’s good for them, presumably with the assistance of consulting economists and public-health busybodies.
Public-health researchers and activists and recently some economists seem addicted to the addiction versus self-control gospel. In reality, life is a long addiction, that is, a long series of instances of doing what one likes to do given one’s past experience of doing the same. This understanding of addiction is quite close Gary Becker and Kevin Murphy’s theory of rational addiction, explained in their famous 1988 article, “A Theory of Rational Addiction,” Journal of Political Economy 96(4).
Self-control is useful if only to manage addictions in a way to maximize utility. Some addictions interfere with other things including other addictions. For example, if you drink too much, you may end up beating up your neighbor and going to prison, where there is no alcohol and few other addictive pleasures. A large part of practical learning in life consists in developing self-control and in overcoming the many cognitive biases that psychologists and behavioral economists have isolated.
Behavioral economics can also be misused, as seen in in the prominent economists’ article. On the general topic, I strongly recommend the recent article of Dwight Lee and J.R. Clark, “Can Behavioral Economists Improve Economic Rationality?” Public Choice 174 (2018): 23-40. In a recent post, my co-blogger Scott Sumner also exposed a pedagogical trap of behavioral economics.
Self-control is even more important for the controllers than for the controlled. Controllers and their advisers should improve their self-control and resist the elitist temptation to dictate to the “Deplorables” how to live their lives: this is the New Year’s resolution I would recommend to statocrats.
Even if they follow my advice and adopt this resolution, the more difficult will be to implement it. Self-control is necessary to improve self-control. They might not have enough self-control to keep their commitment. They may lack full information about tyranny and its danger. They may be addicted to government power. Their cognitive biases may lead them astray. In brief, they might be as subject to information and cognitive problems as the ordinary people they claim to save from those problems.
A good New Year’s resolution by statocrats would not be sufficient. In the classical-liberal tradition, the political system should not rely on individual virtue and self-control by the statocrats. It should be, to all extent possible, impervious to tyrannical actions. Its powers should be severely limited. Let’s wish that, at the minimum, these powers won’t be expanded in 2019.
READER COMMENTS
Jon Murphy
Dec 31 2018 at 7:59am
Good stuff. I’d also add that they take a look at Roger Koppl’s new book Expert Failure. Expert failure in the book is akin to market failure, that is some deviation from the optimal level. Roger’s argument focuses primarily on the knowledge problem when it comes to experts, as well as potential bias (either known or unknown) that can lead to bad expert advice. It’s a powerful book on self-humility.
But there is also another issue that poses a danger: even if we assume the experts guiding the State are perfect in every way, there is still a risk of their message being misunderstood by the receiver. This is a major issue in law.
Consider, for example, the following (which I borrow from J.M. Keynes):
The Archbishop of Canterbury is playing cards with a bunch of people. He is the dealer. What is the probability that the Archbishop deals himself a royal flush conditional on him being an honest dealer? Answer: 0.000154%.
Now, let’s ask a very similarly-worded but radically different question: What is the probability that the Archbishop of Canterbury is an honest dealer conditional on the fact he delt himself a royal flush? That answer is likely closer to 100% (say, 99.9%. Statistics means never having to say you’re certain).
The expert may be answering the latter question, but the receiver (be it a jury, judge, administrator, Congressional committee, etc) may think he’s answering the former. And that can have dramatic repercussions (there is a legal case out of Georgia that centered around precisely this problem, but unfortunately I am on vacation and my book is not so I cannot cite it and I do not wish to speculate).
“Statocrats” and those who support their rule assume specialised knowledge is general. And that is a dangerous assumption.
John Alcorn
Dec 31 2018 at 11:56am
Dr. Lemieux,
Statocrats have a different, commonplace construal of addiction: dynamic inconsistency of preferences. In plain English, a person (addict), in reflective moments (or under scrutiny), asserts, ‘I want not to smoke’ (drink, gamble, have sex with a stranger), but then smokes anyway.
It would be hard to find a Statocrat who says, ‘I want not to nudge, I want not to prohibit, but I can’t help myself, and so I nudge and prohibit anyway.’
The Statocrats are correct to distinguish addiction from paternalism. But that doesn’t justify paternalism!
The commonplace construal of addiction casts too wide a net, further empowering the Statocrats. To paraphrase Thomas Szasz and Bryan Caplan: Many (or most?) persons who (a) say they want to quit and (b) don’t quit, actually don’t want to quit. Their primary behavior (say, smoking) causes social friction, because the behavior is (or seems ) self-defeating, socially repugnant, or burdensome to others. Persons who actually don’t want to quit — unlike addicts who do want to quit — then pretend to want to change, in order to please their critics and thereby avoid additional friction (social desirability bias). The ratio of hypocrites to addicts is an empirical question.
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