No Free Lunch: Economics for a Fallen World: Third Edition, Revised

Chapter Fourteen: Decision-making in Democracy: Public Choice 326 As demonstrated throughout this book, acting in self-interest (as opposed to greed) is not necessarily a bad motive—it just shouldn’t be our only motive. The apostle Paul admonishes us to look out not only for our own interests, but also the interests of others—considering others as better than ourselves (Philippians 2:4) . Notice that he doesn’t condemn self-interest; it just needs to be balanced with concern for others. Jesus’ Golden Rule encourages us to treat others as we would like to be treated ourselves; in other words, we need to extend our view of self-interest to include an interest of others. And if our self-interest conflicts with our responsibilities to serve God and man, we should deny ourselves (Luke 9:23) . In light of this, public servants acting in their self- interest are not necessarily bad, and that is not the claim of the field of public choice economics. What public choice does claim, and evidence strongly supports, is that one cannot assume public servants will act in the public interest if it is not consistent with their own self-interest. When we view the political sector through the lens of self- interest, we understand both the mixed performance of our public servants as well as the numerous scripture verses condemning lack of justice and wicked rulers. We often see people opposed to public choice analysis decry it as “cynical,” since it ascribes the “base” motive of self-interest to politicians as well as market participants. There are two issues here. First, we should note that Scripture condemns greed—not self-interest. Despite many conflations, these terms are not synonymous. Second, Scripture admonishes the naïve (Proverbs 14:15 ) and we are told not to be shocked (Ecclesiastes 5:8) at public malfeasance. God has described Himself as astute in dealing with the crooked, while remaining pure with the pure (Psalm 18:26) . Jesus tells His disciples to be as innocent as doves while being as shrewd as serpents (Matthew 10:16) . He tells them this because He knows that He is sending them out as sheep amongst wolves. God seems to call us to see truth, however beautiful or ugly the reality of that truth may be. We should not be naïve as to human nature; Scripture shows clearly that man is fallen and sinful, and that fallen state extends to those in positions of government. As Nobel Laureate James Buchanan was fond of saying, we need to view politics without romance; that is the essence of public choice. So the issue is not whether public choice analysis is cynical or not, but rather is it the most accurate way to model political behavior? In the last chapter we reviewed possible problems with markets, holding out the possibility that government might be able to improve on market outcomes. As we begin our discussion on government actions, it’s important to remember the following longer version of a quote attributed to Thomas Sowell (source unknown): “The first lesson of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all thosewhowant it.The first lessonof politics is todisregard the first lesson of economics.” Public provision or regulation of goods and services in no way overcomes the fundamental problem of economics—how we choose to allocate scarce resources against We need to view politics without romance; that is the essence of public choice