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Palin's Libertarian Pork

by Micah Tillman

Do you ever laugh at the television because you could make a better case for a candidate than her spokesman is making?

Rick Davis, campaign manager for McCain, was thoroughly trounced recently by (of all people) Fox News's Chris Wallace. The topic was Palin and Pork.

If Davis had a response to Wallace's charges of Palinic hypocrisy over earmarks and lobbying, I didn't hear it. I heard a lot of jumbled partial sentences, but Wallace was having none of it.

The transcript is pretty accurate. Lots of "crosstalk." Davis got "owned," as the kids say.

Fortunately for Mr. Davis, however, I have some helpful advice:

Next time the subject comes up, Mr. Davis, just say two words. "Yves Simon."

Not the singer. The philosopher.

Simon wrote (among other things) A General Theory of Authority, which deals with (among other things) the very question Davis flubbed: How can one person seek both the common good and her own particular good?

In a hierarchical system, Simon notes, each person must do just that: work for their own particular good even while desiring the common good (pp. 50ff).

The head of a department, for instance, must both make managerial decisions for the good of her department and be willing to cooperate with her bosses to ensure the good of the company as a whole.

But it's not the department manager's job to worry about what is best for the company. That's the CEO's job. The department manager's job is to worry about what's best for her department.

And working for the good of your department means (among other things) managing its budget: keeping spending under control as well as sending funding requests to the higher-ups.

A manager who tamps down on spending by his workers, and yet requests more money for his department from his superiors, is not a hypocrite. Controlling spending and increasing the size of your budget both serve the particular good of your department.

Or your small town. Or your snowy northern state.

A mayor/governor who cuts local/state pork even while requesting federal pork is not a hypocrite. She's a good leader. And if she ever were elected to federal office, one would expect her to control federal pork even while requesting international pork (if there were such a thing).

That would be what was best for the nation.

The point is not simply to shun earmarks, therefore. It's to work for the good of the group you manage. Simon even argues that things would fall apart if this kind of dynamic didn't occur (e.g., pp. 78-79).

If everyone only worked for their own particular goods if those goods served the common good, the common good would never be accomplished. We'd have a common collapse instead.

And while Simon was more a personalist than an individualist (pp. 67ff), I think libertarians would agree with him about the consequences of collectivism.

"Libertarian pork" need not be contradiction, in other words. Working for what's best for me and mine need not necessarily keep me from cooperating in the common good.

In fact it would be a catastrophic loss if everyone pretended that the common good was the only good. Particular (personal, familial, departmental, etc.) goods are goods too.

Palin shouldn't be presenting her past treatment of federal earmarks, therefore, as indicative of what her approach to federal earmarks would be as part of a McCain administration. It's her treatment of local and state earmarks that are the better analogy, the better predictor.

Whatever Palin's faults may be, being anti-pork (in her role as a "manager") and pro-pork (in her role as a "subordinate") is not one.

Micah Tillman is a lecturer in the School of Philosophy at The Catholic University of America.

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Comments

The whole argument about pork barrell spending is not about spending levels at all, but about who decides how the money is spent. Appropriated pork means that Congress, working with and for local elected officals, decide how the money is spent, except that it uses line items rather than stand alone bills. The alternative is for the unelected appointees and civil servants to make these spending decisions. Is is woefully naive to assume that absent earmarks the money is not spent.

Also, this is the free liberal site, is it not? Using theories of hiearchy to justify any action is not what we are about here. I would hope that to be libertarian means to be free in all spheres of life, not just in relation to the government. Maximizing liberty and democracy means crushing hierarchical arrangements at all levels, at least to me.

# posted at by Anonymous

The whole argument about pork barrell spending is not about spending levels at all, but about who decides how the money is spent. Appropriated pork means that Congress, working with and for local elected officals, decide how the money is spent, except that it uses line items rather than stand alone bills. The alternative is for the unelected appointees and civil servants to make these spending decisions. Is is woefully naive to assume that absent earmarks the money is not spent.

Also, this is the free liberal site, is it not? Using theories of hiearchy to justify any action is not what we are about here. I would hope that to be libertarian means to be free in all spheres of life, not just in relation to the government. Maximizing liberty and democracy means crushing hierarchical arrangements at all levels, at least to me.

# posted at by Michael Bindner

No hierarchies, eh?

Should Mr. Capozzi resign, then?

:-)

Starting about now, I am eligible to receive Social Security (SS) and Medicare benefits. I am a libertarian (who so as not to "throw his vote away" to a third-party candidate will be voting for McCain in November, afaik). One and only of the following sentences is true. Which do you think is true?

1. I paid mumble1 dollars into SS and mumble2 dollars into Medicare, and therefore I will not feel guilty about taking it back until I take more than $ mumbleN.

2. As in #1, but I will not feel guilty until I take more than $ mumbleN adjusted for inflation.

3. Tillman is right. I will maximize my family's self-interest, and not feel guilty at all. The law is the law.

4. I will refuse SS and Medicare on the principled reason that I would have voted against them were I able to vote about them.

Not expecting that SS and Medicare would necessarily be there for me when I got older, I feathered my nest enough to be able to live independent of them, so I am not in desperate need, a luxury that some Americans do not have.

My grandmother received SS benefits until she died at 108, and her father did too from the day SS started until he died at 105, neither of them on medication or under a physician's care, so our family has already taken more than our share, one of the fine benefits of healthy living and good DNA.

So which of the four choices will I make?

Did you guess that I took the benefits? Right. The trouble with the "common good" is the so-called "tragedy of the commons."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

If everyone does what I am about to do starting soon, the whole SS thing may break.

Yves Simon's Dilbertesque scenario seems to me to be flawed, but it's the nature of these "Prisoner's Dilemma" questions that the flaw must be in the assumptions, since the reasoning is logical.

Dilbert's pointy-haired boss is an incompetent manager because he does not have anyone's interests in mind other than his own, and he is just dumb enough that he doesn't even get those right.

The right question about Palin is not whether she acted in what she regarded as the best interests of those she served, but whether in fact those *were* the best interests of those she served.

That's a much harder question.

# posted at by Gene Chase

Don't let me give Simon a bad rep. It could be that I've misread him.

The book is available for previewing on Amazon (and perhaps elsewhere), and I've included some of the relevant page numbers above.

I think Simon's most important argument is that particular goods and the common good need neither be causally connected nor mutually exclusive.

Catholic philosophers have been saying this for years.

The fact that I torture you for the good of your soul or pass a law that has backfiring consequences has no relevance to the Church as a whole.

It never occurs to these people murder and theft through Catholic altruism is the problem, a cover for organized crime. Have faith, and don't look at that Papanazi behind the curtain.

# posted at by ken

Catholic philosophers have been saying what for years?

That doing what's good for you because it's good for you isn't necessarily a bad thing, no matter what the collectivists say?