A recent opinion poll by the Wall Street Journal reveals that 50% of Americans support President Biden’s Covid-19 vaccine requirements for private-sector employers, while 47% oppose them. Other opinion polls over the past few decades and perhaps especially over the past few years have suggested, although perhaps not unambiguously, that American opinion has been shifting away from individual liberty and towards more power to political authority (see also my Econlog post “Many Americans Don’t Like Free Speech”).
Are we observing bumps in fickle public opinion about politics or instead witnessing a shift in long-term “opinion” taken in the more abstract sense of what the general public considers just? Like many classical liberals, Friedrich Hayek considered opinion in this last sense to be the justification and limitation of political authority. In volume 1 of Law, Legislation, and Liberty, published five decades ago, Hayek wrote (I am quoting from the University of Chicago Press new consolidated edition under the editorship of Jeremy Shearmur):
In this sense all power rests on, and is limited by, opinion, as was most clearly seen by David Hume. That all power rests on opinion in this sense is no less true of the powers of an absolute dictator than of those of any other authority. As dictators themselves have always known, even the most powerful dictatorship crumbles if the support of opinion is withdrawn. This is the reason dictators are so concerned to manipulate opinion through information which [it] is in their power to control.
Opinion is important for maintaining a free society:
And in a free society in which all power rests on opinion, this ultimate power will be a power which determines nothing directly yet controls all positive power by tolerating only certain kinds of exercise of that power.
One conclusion of Hayek’s economic-legal theory is that a free society cannot long survive outside a context of classical-liberal opinion. That it is worse in many other countries provides only a meager consolation.
Hayek’s more general thesis is that, in a free society, the only exercise of power allowed by opinion is the enforcement of abstract, impersonal, and non-discriminatory rules of conduct, as well as the administration of government subject to those rules (except for the special power of levying taxes). Note that justifying government intervention by omnipresent externalities is not consistent with this sort of society (see my “The Threat of Externalities,” Regulation, Fall 2021, pp. 18-24), even if Hayek’s explanations on that front may not be totally satisfactory (see pp. 130-133 and 137 ff. in the Shearmur edition). It is anyway worth reading Hayek, who was one of the most challenging thinkers of the 20th century, and not only challenging for conservatives and progressives.
READER COMMENTS
Roger McKinney
Dec 21 2021 at 11:04am
Mises said the same thing. As we have seen in the US, the Constitution disintegrated when public opinion turned against it with the election of Wilson.
What determines opinion? According to Huntington in Culture Matters say religion determines culture/opinions and those determine institutions.
Helmut Schoeck in Envy: A Theory of Social Behavior shows that envy drives public opinion and only Christianity has managed to suppress it. Envy powers socialism.
Pierre Lemieux
Dec 21 2021 at 12:34pm
You may be (partly) right, Roger. However, as I mentioned before, Gordon Tullock and James Buchanan added a caveat (in their 1962 book The Calculus of Consent):
You provided a rejoinder to this on Econlog before…
Roger McKinney
Dec 21 2021 at 6:31pm
I doubt Schoeck had Christian idealism in mind, just Christianity in general. Besides, individualism and equal freedom came from Christianity. See Larry Seidentop’s Inventing the Individual.
Roger McKinney
Dec 21 2021 at 6:39pm
Keep in mind Buchanan eas an atheist and not friendly to the idea that religion had any good effects.
Jose Pablo
Dec 21 2021 at 10:57pm
Then Buchanan is seriously mistaken on this regard. As a minimum religion does (did) a superb job keeping “envy” constrained as a driving social and economic force. Now, with “envy” unleashed we are seriously in trouble.
https://nassimtaleb.org/2013/04/nassim-taleb-on-the-role-of-religion/
See Taleb on this topic. It is very difficult not to agree with his basic argument:
Dismantling religion and substituting it with “economics” or “sociology” or “political” ¿science? is just suicidal.
Pierre Lemieux
Dec 22 2021 at 11:29am
Jose: It depends on which (sort of) religion, doesn’t it? Once you answer Yes to this question, Buchanan and Tullock’s criticism becomes relevant.
Pierre Lemieux
Dec 22 2021 at 11:40am
Roger: Not all atheists are fools nor all believers wise men. Hayek was also an atheist (or at least an agnostic) but it did not prevent him, like Buchanan I believe, from seeing a useful social role of religion. Yet, Hayek also unintentionally hints at a drawback. He argues that laws imposing religious conformity are not legitimate laws (nomos) because, quoting vol. 1 of Law, Legislation, and liberty, they
Roger McKinney
Dec 23 2021 at 11:26am
I agree. But it was Christians who gave us religious freedom and separation of church and state, not the “Enlightenment” as some suppose.
Hayek wrote in fatal conceit that religion had kept people obeying general principles such as “thou shalt not steal” when no short term rationale would prevent it.
The Christian origins of classical liberalism have been hidden by atheist scholars for decades. Even Hayek admitted late in life that the theologians of the University of Salamanca, Spain, were the fathers of Austrian economics. He held a meeting of the Montpelier Society there to honor them. While Hayek was agnostic, he wasn’t antagonistic.
Thomas Lee Hutcheson
Dec 24 2021 at 7:08pm
The world has, fortunately, had so few examples of socialism, that it’s hard to tell if “envy” it what drove them. Envy is certainly not the main force behind many government interventions in the economy that some people sometimes foolishly call “Socialism.”
Envy does not drive taxes and regulations aiming at reducing negative externalities or (at least not obvious to me) state provision of many goods and services like schooling, parks, crime prevention, etc. On might think that envy is behind tax and transfer payments like SS and Medicare, but that certainly would not be the way the beneficiaries of these programs would describe their reasons for support. Other kinds of transfers — SNAP, Medicaid, are specifically aimed at a minority so this would be, what? vicarious envy of a majority on behalf of a minority?
Jose Pablo
Dec 21 2021 at 2:38pm
“Friedrich Hayek considered opinion in this last sense to be the justification and limitation of political authority”
Is not this, at the end, a “rephrasing” of the “cultural materialism” concept of “superstructure”?
If I get you right what you mean here is all relevant:
A liberal government cannot survive with a “non-liberal superstructure”
The “superstructure” is growing more “non liberal” in the United States.
Ergo … we are doomed, and all is just a matter of time.
An interesting question is why our “superstructure” is growing more “non liberal” by the day? I believe that this is, mainly, related with an increase in the prevalence of the idea:
“Governments can solve all the inequalities and other “humanity threatening problems” and the division of political and economic power is the only thing preventing them from doing so”.
Pierre Lemieux
Dec 21 2021 at 3:09pm
Jose: Two points. (1) Your parallel between the Marxists’ (or Gramsci’s) superstructure and the classical liberals’ opinion is intriguing, but then it would the former who would have rewritten David Hume. One difference would be that for the classical liberals, opinion was partly a matter of often non-articulated popular values instead of an elitist theory formulated by the avant-garde of the proletariat. (2) On why opinion may be changing, your last paragraph would require as much explanation as what it tries to explain.
Jose Pablo
Dec 21 2021 at 4:54pm
(i) I was thinking more in “cultural materialism á la Harris”. Marvís’ “superstructure” sure includes “non-articulate popular values” and religion. And sure, your “timeline” is the right one. I was just amazed by how the same idea keep striking thinkers of all ages.
(ii) I agree is not very articulate. I hear more and more (even among educated people) the old idea that there should be a “scientific” approach to politics (and to social and economic issues) that would allow us to “solve” the main problems affecting humanity (inequality, climate change, racial and sexual discrimination …). Problems that, by the way, “we” are running out of time to solve.
So, this “superstructural” idea leads most and most people to believe that governments (or experts) could implement THE “scientifically right” approach to solve everything. If they don’t do it, is just because they don’t have enough “power” to do so.
If this perception is right, then the “superstructure” is “pushing” (so to speak) for a change on the way we govern ourselves towards less “liberal “governments (less division of power, less economic power for individuals …).
In Harris’ model, the “infrastructure” is the limiting factor. But in a world of infinite debt and with an increasing number of people living out of government handouts, I wonder if the “infrastructure” is not helping the “illiberal” change too.
Jose Pablo
Dec 21 2021 at 5:54pm
Or to put it in another words. Maybe:
(a) our sacrosanct belief in the “division of powers” and in the capacity of markets to maximize social welfare is coming to an end (the allure of the American Revolution is fading). This hypothesis could be tested but I find it plausible.
AND
(b) our actual level of prosperity (and the ability of governments to forever increase debt) allows us not to worry that much about optimizing the use of resources. After all, nobody is worried about not having the level of prosperity that “could have been achieved” once a “nice level of prosperity” is provided.
If (a) and (b) are right them a change in our form of government is all but inevitable, “pushed” by the change in our “superstructural believes” and not “contained” by our “structural limitations”. And sure, you can count on our politicians to diligently implementing it. Even if assaulting Congress is required.
Thomas Lee Hutcheson
Dec 24 2021 at 7:26pm
“Solving” problems sounds quite utopian and unrealistic, “scientifically” or not. [Christians think of this as a consequence of Original Sin.] It does seem feasible and desirable, however, to ameliorate some of those problems.
Take the damage (increasing over time) being caused by the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere. Bringing together physical sciences and economic analysis should be able to find ways to mitigate and possibly eventually reverse the increase at minimum cost.
Neel Chamilall
Dec 22 2021 at 12:50am
Thank you for this post, Professor Lemieux.
Dicey’s Lectures on the Relation between Law and Public Opinion in England during the Nineteenth Century is an interesting book on the issues you raise in your post (although he was concerned with England in the 19th century).
Also, I have always wondered why Hayekian scholars do not explore further Hayek’s distinction between constitutive and speculative opinions/ideas in Scientism and the Study of Society.
Pierre Lemieux
Dec 22 2021 at 11:20am
Neel: Dicey, which Hayek often quotes, has been on my reading projects for decades! On your second point, the distinction that you make corresponds to the opinion one “holds” and the opinion one “professes,” right? What is the import of this distinction in the evolution of public opinion is indeed an interesting question.
Neel Chamilall
Dec 23 2021 at 9:47am
Professor Lemieux, this is how Hayek distinguished between constitutive ideas and speculative ideas in Scientism and the Study of Society:
“(…) in the social sciences it is necessary to draw a distinction between those ideas which are constitutive of the phenomena we want to explain and the [speculative] ideas which either we ourselves or the very people whose actions we have to explain may have formed about these phenomena and which are not the cause of, but theories about, the social structures.”
The distinction you refer to, that between the opinion one “holds” and the opinion one “professes,” seems closer to the ideas Timur Kuran developed in his fascinating book, Private Truths, Public Lies.
Milton and Rose Friedman often referred to Dicey’s Lectures in some of the papers they co-authored. As they say in one of their papers, “The Tide in Human Affairs,”
“How tides begin in the minds of men, spread to the conduct of public policy, often generate their own reversal, and are succeeded by another tide—all this is a vast topic insufficiently explored by historians, economists, and other social scientists.” I would add that the topic is unsufficiently explored because it is such a complex one! (To come back to Hayek, they refer to “The Hayek Tide” in this paper.)
Seasons’ greetings
Thomas Lee Hutcheson
Dec 22 2021 at 11:42am
A vaccine requirement is not an an unambiguous restriction on liberty. Restrictions on behavior that harms other people, as choosing not to be vaccinated does, is legitimate. Now the cost to person being restricted has to be commensurate with the harm avoided (they might even be due compensation) but restriction, per se, cannot be ruled out.
Jose Pablo
Dec 22 2021 at 6:01pm
“Now the cost to person being restricted has to be commensurate with the harm avoided”
Since you cannot do that in any meaningful way, your “criteria” to rule out restrictions cannot be used and so is useless. After all:
“2.- Cost is subjective; it exists in the mind of the decision-maker and nowhere else.
(…)
4. Cost can never be realized because of the fact of choice itself; that which is given up cannot be enjoyed.
5. Cost cannot be measured by someone other than the decision-maker because there is no way that subjective experience can be directly observed.”
Buchanan “Cost and Choice,” in Collected Works, vol. 6, 41–2
But what keeps surprising me is why MMR vaccines mandates are widely accepted and very lightly opposed and the opposition to covid-19 vaccines is so “virulent” (no pun intended). I mean what are the reasons behind this “double standards”? and, are those reasons reasonable?
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