More 1st and 2nd best fun

I enjoy this so much that I'm not going to let my own comments on Rodrik's blog languish there. The quoted material below is from Dani's post in response to Alex Tabarrok (along with more, previously covered here).

the rest of us in the classroom would roll our eyes at the stupidity of the questioner.

And my wife calls libertarians mean?

They envisage a real good world out there that looks like nothing we have now (or have ever had), and they want us to get there.

I think that's essentially correct: take all of the evidence we have of institutions that worked, improve them, and see what happens.

"Most importantly, I believe government can be a force for good; they do not."

The second part is true of the anarchists, not so of the minarchists. The key phrase in the first part is "can be". It can also not be.

"But third, libertarians hold on to their priors so strongly that they seem impervious to evidence. They shrug off the fact that there is more freedom and more wealth in those parts of the world where the government is stronger, not weaker. With respect to industrial policy proper, they refuse to engage with the fact that every nation that has grown rapidly has made use of it."

Partly true, partly false, partly misleading. This is the problem with Dani's posts: he wants to claim evidence, but then loads the dice with heavy rhetoric, implying that he doesn't want an honest debate. This is why Alex believes that his argument can be boiled down to "I'm sophisticated, you're simple."

I agree there is strong correlation between governance and freedom/prosperity (the truth); I think it would truer to characterize it as "good" rather than "strong" government. Totalitarian governments are strong, but not good, and their people are poor and not free. I think it might also be fair to say that in some cases those people are free/prosperous in spite of government, not because of it, while he seems to assume/imply causality.

Also, Dani tends to conflate everything from those things minarchists would accept (defense) to those things few accept (the list is long) under "legitimate government responsibility" (the misleading). Although he is unfortunately not alone in this confusion, there is a symmetrical problem on the libertarian side: it is the tendency to defend the actions of private actors benefiting from state-induced distortions as "free market" (defending GM and Exxon, for example, as if the massive public investment in roads was not an indirect subsidy of the oil and auto industries).

The false bit is the claim that libertarians are impervious to evidence. Actually that would also be misleading - I submit that they are neither more nor less impervious than Dani. He isn't arguing about evidence, he is arguing about interpretation of it and claiming that his is fact. Instead of setting for himself a task to discriminate between things properly left to a market or government, he seems to be determined to try to figure out how to justify everything the government does and maybe find new tasks for it. Proof? He said so:

I look at the world and see some government programs that work and others that fail. I want to understand what determines these outcomes, and to know how we can improve the ratio of the first to the second.

Some libertarians would rather say "I look at the world and see some institutions that work and others that fail. I want to understand what determines these outcomes, and to know how we can improve the ratio of the first to the second. As a side constraint, I want to prevent the world from becoming dominated by a few powerful people."