It does take a bit of the sting out of the swipe if it’s rewritten to include the nuance: “Other kinds of authority progressive liberals very much favor—as do conservatives, if some degree less so—like the authority of the government to interfere with what consenting adults do in the privacy of the marketplace.”

Also, it’s important to add that some goods would not only not be more efficiently provided by the market, but they would not be provided by the market at all—indigent healthcare, for one example, and various forms of policing, for another.

I would consider it an advance in public discourse if all parties to debates about taxing and spending in general—and if Tea Partiers debating health care in particular—affirmed Robert’s parsing of “the concession”: these are debates about the provision of common goods, some subset of which only the market can provide, some subset of which only government can provide, some subset of which government can and should provide because government can provide them more efficiently than the market, and some subset of which government might provide but should not because it can only do so less efficiently than the market.

The Tarnac 9′s manifesto, « l’Insurrection qui vient » caused quite a stir in Europe.

To answer his question, no, I do *not* say that government should never interfere with the transactions, economic or otherwise, of consenting adults. In my view, there are important values in the world besides economic efficiency, and these sometimes justify such interference. I support laws against prostitution and drug use, for example.

More deeply, even someone who thinks that efficiency is the only basis on which government may interfere with voluntary transactions should say that, sometimes, such interference is justified. Public goods (in the economic sense) are clear examples: the government interferes with individual choices by taxing people, taking away some of their money and so reducing their choices, in order to provide public goods. There are other examples too, as when the government prohibits or regulates transactions between consenting adults because they impose costs on third-parties (what economists call “externalities”). Thinking libertarians like Milton Friedman are explicit in recognizing such interventions by government.

Charlie thus raises a deep issue. For even the most extreme exponents of economic efficiency, the principle is not that the government should never interfere with transactions between consenting adults. The principle is that the government should never interfere when it is inefficient for it to do so. Usually, government interference with voluntary transactions is inefficient, but not always. Put another way, most goods are more efficiently provided by the market, but some are more efficiently provided by government. In each case, the good should be provided by the party that can do so most efficiently.

Which brings us to national borders. Charlie has a fascinating argument, but I doubt that national borders “lurk as a stubborn thorn in the side of free-market political economy.” Recognizing that national borders are a necessary condition of providing the public good of national defense, Charlie says that if such “public-good concerns are being introduced to restrict the free flow of labor that free-market economic theory otherwise supports,” then “if they are introduced here to qualify the marketplace, I see no reason [why] they can’t be introduced elsewhere.” Perfectly true, but this does not open the door to government interference in the market for any reason at all, or for any reason that anyone might argue is “for the common good” or “in the public interest.” The concession opens the door only to interferences needed for the government to deliver public goods—i.e., goods that the government can deliver more efficiently than the market. But libertarians like Friedman have always conceded that.

That said, I note that I’m very much in favor of expanding the immigration quotas we currently have in the United States, as I have explained on this site on a prior occasion. See the link below.

http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2006/12/miller-martino-and-high-stone-

I think Miller’s right that it’s simplistic to describe either the Left or the Right in America as simply anti-authoritarian, and Miller makes an admirable attempt to place the Tea Party and libertarian Right on a more respectable and coherent intellectual footing with his parsing of various forms of authority.

However, being the staunch conservative he is, Miller can’t resist a good swipe at liberals in the end: “Other kinds of authority progressive liberals very much favor, like the authority of the government to interfere with what consenting adults do in the privacy of the marketplace.”

I wonder if Miller is opposed to such interference himself, actually. I wonder, for example, if Miller breaks from the Tea Party line on illegal immigration, which is very much about the government interfering with what consenting adults are currently doing in the “private” marketplace.

I put “private” in scare quotes, because I think the only way to defend the Tea Party’s anti-immigration fervor is to give up the fiction of the marketplace being private in the sense that Miller’s above swipe at liberals requires. When it comes to illegal immigration, it will be said that nations have borders, borders must be enforced, etc. But these are public-good concerns that are being introduced to restrict the free flow of labor that free-market economic theory otherwise supports, and if they are introduced here to qualify the freedom of the marketplace, I see no reason they can’t be introduced elsewhere. Thus does the national border lurk as a stubborn thorn in the side of free-market political economy.

For Catholics, surely it’s questionable to throw one’s political weight behind forces that are biased towards the freedom of capital (and thus the rich) but against labor (and thus the poor). As long as borders are enforced against labor but not capital, I don’t see another way to interpret these forces and their bias.

The book doesn’t make any outlandish claims and doesn’t pretend to make a definitive statement, Instead it’s a theologically grounded essay, “a raid on the inarticulate rather than a comprehensive treatment… My interlocutors…include Yves Simon, Michael Polanyi, Oliver O’Donovan, Richard Hooker, the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission, and Dante Alighieri.” Herbert McCabe could be added to that list, so it’s an interesting and unusual collection of writers, one that shows the author to be sensitive to a wide variety of approaches. By the way, Dante is introduced in a chapter on authority in Paradise, a topic that receives a surprising and illuminating treatment.

The book also reflects the view of a working theologian, that is, one who is familiar with the outlook of the man on the street as well as academic approaches.

Again, these answers help clarify things a lot for me.

The essence of authority is the unchosen duty to obey. Experts and leaders of voluntary organizations do not have authority. Obedience to them might be prudent for furthering our own goals, but it is not morally obligatory in itself. Authority, properly speaking, is found in the family (in the father), in the state (in the government), and in the Church (in the episcopacy). I never chose to belong to any of these, but it would be impiety and treason to fail to recognize their claims on me. It is through authority that a group of people institutes its collective affirmation of the Good, its collective obedience to God. Real authority figures mediate between God and their subjects. I suppose this is a combination of the “public good” (since God, and a community’s acknowledgment of Him, are the ultimate public goods) and “judicial” (since it is God’s justice, not the public will, that true authority enforces) categories above.

With this less broad definition, it is clear that liberals really are enemies of authority. Through their impious “social contract” construction, they reduce the state to a creature of the public will, with no more duty to justice or to God than the public chooses. With their doctrine of neutrality toward accounts of the Good, they forbid the state from making that affirmation of the moral order that is the essence of authority. The Marxists, too, are committed to the emancipation of man from any unchosen moral order. Conservatives, by definition, are the defenders of authority.

Please excuse the length of this comment.

More Miller please.

As I made quite clear, I am using the phrase “public good” the way economists do, to mean a good that is non-excludable. Since it is usually feasible to charge people for health and education services, they are clearly not non-excludable and so not public good *in this sense.*

And before you jump to some other unwarranted conclusion, let’s be clear that just because we cannot justify the government’s providing health and education services on a public good (in the economic sense) theory, it does not follow that we cannot justify such things on some other theory.