>>ABSTRACT:
>> There is a secret paradox at the heart of social contract
>> theories. Such theories assume that, because personal security
>> and private property are at risk in a state of nature, subjects
>> will agree to grant Leviathan [the state] a monopoly of violence. But what
>> is to prevent Leviathan from turning on his subjects once they
>> have lain down their arms? If Leviathan has the same incentives
>> as his subjects in the Hobbesian state of nature, he will
>> plunder them more thoroughly than ever they plundered themselves
>> in the state of nature.
This is exactly the same point that John Locke made hundreds of years ago
against Hobbes (though his explicit target was Robert Filmer). It's been
summarized as "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely" and
has had a lot of answers before now (e.g., the concept of absolute property
rights (Locke) or the need for constitutional government).
>> Thus the social contract always leaves
>> subjects worse off, unless Leviathan can fetter himself.
what happened to all of the previous answers to this very old question? Why
don't people study old books and go outside their narrow fields of
specialization?
>> And how
>> can Leviathan bind himself, if he can always impose confiscatory
>> taxes or choke off trade through inefficient regulations? This
>> Article suggests that schemes of progressive taxation, in which
>> marginal tax rates increase with taxable income, may be seen as
>> a useful incentive strategy to bribe Leviathan from imposing
>> inefficient regulations. Income taxes give Leviathan an equity
>> claim in his state's economy, and progressive taxes give him a
>> greater residual interest in upside payoffs. Leviathan will then
>> demand a higher side payment from interest groups to impose
>> value-destroying regulations. Of course, progressive taxation
>> imposes its own incentive costs, by reducing the subject's
>> private gains. However, these costs must be balanced against the
>> gains from correcting Leviathan's misincentives, and it may that
>> such gains exceed the costs of progressive taxation.
An interesting justification for progressive taxation! (I'd have to check
what Hobbes said about this. He was more progressive in his normative
prescriptions concerning taxation than Locke was.) But it begs the
questions concerning the need for limits on Leviathan's power. Why would
Leviathan accept this scheme?
Wojtek writes:
>Of course, the problem with that reasoning is the conceptualization of
>gov't as a single individual who has 'self-interest.' That is a blatant
>fiction. Organizations or 'fictitious persons' do not have self-interests,
>only 'physical persons' do. In which case, the actions of an organization
>result from some form of combination of the interests of the organization's
>staff - as the institutionalists maintain. Thus, we need to examine the
>self-interest of individual actors as well as their power within the
>organization to explain how that organization ("leviathan") behaves.
It seems to me that the various efforts by people working for the state to
maximize their own incomes can be harmonized by increasing the aggregate
income of the state (avoiding all sorts of turf wars). So in effect, the
authors avoiding of this question is no major sin. (Anyway can people
address _all_ questions -- taking _nothing_ for granted -- without
producing huge tomes? Remember that Marx, who tried to take nothing for
granted, finished almost none of his books.) If we presume that the state
already exists (as a hangover from the past) and mechanisms for dealing
with internal conflicts have been developed (as they have been, mostly),
then maximization of tax revenue helps the state persist.
>In this specific case, while government staffers may find it in their best
>interest to increase the tax base (wage increases, job tenures), that is
>not so for the elected officials. The latter's main source of income (in a
>long run) is not their public sector's salaries, but payments received in
>various forms (e.g. political contributions, speaking fees, contracts, or
>after-the-term-in-the-office sinecures) from the constituents. It thus
>follows, that such individuals' self-interest is to protect the interest of
>their paying clients i.e. constituents whose best interst is maximizing
>private wealth my minimizing taxes (the prisoner's dilemma applies here)...
Wojtek, though this point is valid, I think you're presuming a
constitutional set-up that the authors do not. I haven't read their
article, but I believe they see progressive taxation as being some sort of
substitute for democratic and constitutional control of the state.
>To summarize, the authors' conceptualization of the 'Leviathan problem" is
>fundamentally flawed in that it fails to account for the collective nature
>of that entity, and the prisoner's dilemma influence on its behavior. That
>is an 'internal criticism' i.e. using the conceptual framework of the
>rat-choice approach assumed by the authors.
In addition, the major problems with the whole framework are (a) the
unreality of the social contract and thus the need for an historical
analysis of Leviathan's rise rather than this public-choice nonsense; and
(b) the ignoring of the class nature of society, which makes the question
of the state very different from the standard "public goods"
interpretation. (BTW, I'm getting an article on this stuff published in
POLITICS & SOCIETY sometime next year. If anyone wants a copy of the
near-to-final manuscript, please write to me, off-list.)
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] &
http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/jdevine.html
