The Evil of Term Limits
by Walter Block
If I hear just one more time, from a supposed libertarian,
about the greatness of term limits, I think I’m going to be
sick.
Yes, yes, I know all the arguments. Kick the bums out. Promote political
competition. Incumbency confers Soviet style (99%) voting majorities.
This way, at least we’ll get new thieves.
There is only one problem with this scenario: it runs dab smack into an
important insight of Hans Hoppe’s new book,
Democracy, the God that Failed: The Economics and Politics of Monarchy,
Democracy and Natural Order. (My extended review of this book
will appear in a forthcoming issue of The American Journal of
Economics and Sociology; here, I shall comment, only, on the insights
we can glean from the publication regarding term limits.)
The main message of this brilliant economist-philosopher is, of course,
that the only justified political economic system is what he calls
"natural order," or what is commonly characterized in
libertarian circles as anarcho-capitalism, or free-market anarchism. And
his contribution to this line of reasoning is superb. However, a
secondary message emanating from this book is that, given, arguendo, that
we must have a government, monarchism has several strong, indeed,
overwhelming advantages over democracy. (Take that, pinko liberal
democrats, neo-conservatives, and all other denizens of the
political-economic swamp.)
And why is this you may ask (if you’ve been Rip Van Winkling it for the
past several months)? Simple: a monarch in effect "owns" the
kingdom over which he is in charge. As such, he can afford to take a long
run view of it, and, also, can maximize his "take" by pursuing
policies that prove to be of benefit to the economy, or at least do not
harm it too quickly. "Why kill the goose that lays the golden
eggs," might well be his motto. As king, he will likely be around in
the long run, by which time, to mix metaphors, he will be able to reap
what he had previously sown. If he has any desires to benefit his
progeny, he would prefer to hand over to them a functioning enterprise,
rather than one that has been looted for short-term benefit.
In contrast, the democratically elected head thug (sorry, I meant
president) has a very different time perspective. Not for him the pursuit
of policies that will bear fruit in the long run. He will not be around
then to benefit from them. He has only eight years, at most. Nor can he
hand over to his children the keys to the treasury. No, in order to
maximize his revenues, he has to grab what he can, now, and the devil
take the future. His motto might be "make hay while the sun
shines," or "let’s kill the golden goose,
now."
What has all this to do with our subject under discussion? Term limits
are to ordinary democracy without them what the latter is to monarchy. An
alternative way of putting this is that the system furthest removed from
monarchy is democracy with term limits. Democracy with no term limits at
all occupies a position in between these other two. The ordinary
politician (with no term limit) need not take an extremely short run
perspective. He knows, if he can avoid being caught in bed with a dead
boy, or, if he is a Republican, with a live girl (the rules are slightly
different for Democrats, given the hypocrisy of the feminist movement),
he’ll be in office for a nice long while. The advantages of incumbency
and all that. Why, several thieves (sorry, I meant congressmen) have been
in office for decades. "In the long run they are all
dead," true, but if the long run takes dozens of years, the
incentive to loot and run is somewhat attenuated.
However, once introduce term limits, and all bets are off. Now, the focus
is on making off with as much of the silverware as possible, in the short
term specified by the term limit. Take term limits to their logical
extension in order to see them for what they are: suppose the term limit
were exceedingly short; not eight years, or even eight months. Suppose it
was eight weeks, or, even better yet, only eight days. Can you imagine
the feeding frenzy such a system would give rise to! Why, there wouldn’t
even be the pretence of "public good," "making the world
safe for democracy," "a chicken in every pot" or any of
that other politician babble. It would be a pure race to accumulate
riches, with very little pretense.
One implication of this insight: the longer the term limit in term
limits, the better. A term limit of hours, days or months would be an
absolute disaster. Many years is better, and decades even more so. A
lifetime term limit would not be so bad, as far as these things go. Then,
when we arrive at the "term limit" which affords the ability to
bequeath to one’s children the crown, e.g., full monarchy, we arrive at
the other end of the spectrum. The point is, given any government at all,
the closer to monarchy the better. The problem with term limits is that
they move us in the wrong direction. If anything, we ought to be
expanding present terms of office.
Although this can only be speculative, the reason many people, even
libertarians, have been fooled by the siren song of term limits is that
they are still in thrall to the idea that mainstream politicians (I make
an exception for Ron Paul and a handful of other libertarian office
holders) are legitimate. If these politicos were seen in a true light,
the last thing we would want to do is leash an unending stream of them
upon us, with little or no incentive to rein in their natural tendencies
to pillage. If have them we must, then let us wish them the longest
possible terms of office.
--
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