The Freeman 1989 - The Ludwig von Mises Institute

44 THE FREEMAN. JANUARY 1989those unintended outcomes can be positiverather than negative, if they are policies thatrestrain government and maximize individualchoice.Adam Smith, Bastiat, Mises, Hayek, andMilton Friedman have explained unintendedoutcomes in economics. Now, Charles Murraydetails for us how both the invisible hand andthe invisible foot work in that vast spider web ofregulation, redistribution, and indoctrinationthat we call "social policy" today--coming tomany of the same conclusions as these freedomphilosophers, although his argument doesn'tbuild on theirs."First, I will associate myself with a particularset of views," he says bluntly. "Reducedto their essentials, these views are that man actingin his private capacity-if restrained fromthe use afforce-is resourceful and benign, fulfillinghis proper destiny; while man acting as apublic and political creature is resourceful anddangerous, inherently destructive of the rightsand freedoms of his fellowmen. I will explainthese views using the language and logic of theAmerican Founding Fathers. Next, I will suggestthat if one accepts that set ofviews of man,the way we assess social policy is pushed incertain directions. ' ,He starts this book by asking, "What constitutessuccess in social policy?" and goes on:,'For most of America's history, this was not aquestion that needed asking because there wasno such thing as a 'social policy' to succeed orfail. . . . As late as the 1930s, there was still nofederal 'policy' worthy ofthe label affecting thefamily, for example, or education, or religion,or voluntary associations."Murray finds complex answers to his questionby going back to the beginning, to the DeclarationofIndependence, and re-examining thatlittle-understood phrase, "the pursuit ofhappiness." He starts by asking, "What ishappiness?' ,There is a long philosophical tradition, orrather, there are two long philosophical traditionsthat assumed the question could be answereddefinitively and attempted to do so. Thefirst stemmed from Aristotle, focused on thenature of the good life, and attempted to defineand rank all aspects of happiness. The second,which arose in the eighteenth century, stressedindividual psychological satisfaction, but bothtraditions agreed substantially on how menshould pursue happiness--develop those talentsyou have, do your job well, raise a family, contributeto the community---even though theydisagreed profoundly on such issues as whetheror not an outsider could rank "happiness" forothers."It was not until the twentieth century, " saysMurray, "that social science dispensed with theintellectual content of both traditions and beganto define happiness by the response to questionnaireitems. " Despite this refreshing irreverence,he proceeds to examine more modem approachesto the question also, and summarizes awealth of argument, experiment, and data collectedby contemporary social scientists, toshow that there is hard evidence out there thatthere are objective criteria for the pursuit ofhappiness.Government, he says, can provide the "enablingconditions" for this pursuit, a frameworkthat has little or nothing to do with thedistribution of material resources other than toprotect a functioning market economy. Thewrongheaded focus on poverty has obscured theimportance of such things as safety from criminals,dignity and self-respect (Murray presentspersuasive evidence that self-respect cannot befaked, but results from the successful responseto challenge), and finally, the possibility ofself-actualization.Happiness, of course, pertains to individuals-groups,whether united by class, race,creed, or special interest cannot properly besaid to be happy. So taking the pursuit of happinessseriously as a standard exposes as meaninglessall the aggregate statistics that socialpolicy analysis relies on, statistics showing thata particular policy creates so many jobs, orsaves so many lives, or raises so many incomelevels. Murray hopes to tum the whole field ofsocial policy analysis on its head, by persuadinganalysts that they should ask instead, what effectwill this social policy have on the happiness(properly understood) of the individuals affectedby it?By this standard, our social policies arefound sadly wanting. The training program thatproduces such hopeful aggregate statistics isfound overwhelmingly more likely to teach any