Day: July 4, 2020

Alfred Marshall argued that students of social science are bound to dwell on the \”limitations and defects and errors\” of whatever is popular and whatever will sell more newspapers. Conversely, any economist  who receives popular approval should assume that they have failed in their intellectual mission. The sentiment is actually attributed from A.C. Pigou to Marshall. It reads:

Students of social science, must fear popular approval: Evil is with them when all men speak well of them. If there is any set of opinions by the advocacy of which a newspaper can increase its sales, then the student who wishes to leave the world in general and his country in particular better than it would have been if he had not been born, is bound to dwell on the limitations and defects and errors, if any, in that set of opinions: and never to advocate them unconditionally even in ad hoc discussion. It is almost impossible for a student to be a true patriot and to have the reputation of being one in his own time.

The source of the quotation is \”In Memoriam: Alfred Marshall,\” a speech given by A.C. Pigou in 1924 and published as part of a Memorials of Alfred Marshall volume in 1925 (pp. 81-90). The  quotation attributed to Marshall appears on p. 89.

A number of interesting questions lurk here. Does an economist have a duty, to self and to society, to play the role that Marshall describes in public discourse? What about in ad hoc discussion? Is that duty appropriately called \”patriotism\”? It does seem to me that if you find yourself in a specific setting where you know more, there is some ethical or moral duty not to use your knowledge to take undue advantage of others. This applies to all professions–car mechanics and sommeliers, as well as financial advisers and economists. But it also seems to me that people wear different hats at different times, and a commitment to live all aspects of one\’s life enunciating \”the limitations and defects and errors\” of popular opinions seems to exalt an attitude of grumpy oppositional monasticism, which may not be a utility-maximizing way for economists (or anyone else) to live.

In the 21st century, I\’m not sure how many Americans would ever actually say \”my country, right or wrong.\” After all, it\’s not \”countries\” that are right or wrong, but actions of governments and people, and it seems ingrained in the American character (and thankfully so!) that criticizing one\’s government is not only acceptable, but often expected.

But perhaps the ultimate put-down for that point of view came from G.K. Chesterton, In a 1901 collection of essays, The Defendant, he includes an essay called \”A Defense of Patriotism.\” Chesterton writes:

\’My country, right or wrong,\’ is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, \’My mother, drunk or sober.\’ No doubt if a decent man\’s mother took to drink he would share her troubles to the last; but to talk as if he would be in a state of gay indifference as to whether his mother took to drink or not is certainly not the language of men who know the great mystery.

One can loosely divide American preferences about the role of government into two groups: those who think that because people and markets are not angels, more government actions are needed, and those who think that because people and government are not angels either, fewer government actions are needed. A classic statement behind this dilemma comes from James Madison in the Federalist Papers #51. In discussing the design of the US government, he wrote:

\”Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.\”

In arguing for the government to control itself, Madison laid out a system with a separation of powers with two different legislative houses; an executive branch headed by a separately elected president; and an appointed-but-subject-to-confirmation judicial branch. The idea wasn\’t new to Madison, of course. Arguments for the separation of legislative and executive are made in John Locke\’s (1690) Second Treatise on Government, although Locke tended to view the power of judging, via magistrates, as an offshoot of legislative power. Montesquieu is often credited with the the first explicit division of governing powers into legislative, executive and judiciary in his 1748 book The Spirit of the Laws. For example, Montesquieu writes (in translation) in Book XI, Chapter 6:

When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty; because apprehensions may arise, lest the same monarch or senate should enact tyrannical laws, to execute them in a tyrannical manner. Again, there is no liberty if the judiciary power be not separated from the legislative and executive. Were it joined with the legislative, the life and liberty of the subject would be exposed to arbitrary control; for the judge would be then the legislator. Were it joined to the executive power, the judge might behave with violence and oppression.

Economics is not willing to assume that angels are taking human form–not among business executives, workers, consumers, taxpayers, voters, nor among who are elected, appointed, or hired to government posts. It can feel frustrating when society and government seems to struggle against itself and may even become unable to act, with conflicts between branches and their differentiated responsibilities. But the alternative of a government in which acts without such constraints is, at least to me, a considerably less attractive prospect.