I wrote before about the excuse often offered for the failures of communism, as well as it atrocities, that the system itself is not to blame, the problem is simply that power was entrusted to the wrong people. (Cf. "The Wrong People") It is often accepted, even by those not well disposed toward communism, as it is an easy excuse to accept. Who could deny that Pol Pot, Stalin or Mao had problems of their own, independent of the communist system? On the other hand, the same logic could be used to argue that the Nazi system was a good idea, it was just Hitler that made it bad, and I doubt anyone is going to go in that direction.

But I am not going to enter that debate in this essay. I have made pretty clear ( "The Threat of Perfection ", "Utopianism and Disaster", "Greed Versus Evil", "In Praise of Contracts", "Recipe For Disaster", "The Endless Cycle of Intervention",  "The Cycle of Compassion", "The Inevitable Corruption of Protectionism ", "An End to War") that I think all forms of government intervention into private decisions, economic or otherwise, is doomed to eventual failure, making any farther explanation redundant. However, that is not relevant for the argument I am about to make. For the sake of this argument, I will allow that perhaps communism did fail due to the bad leaders with which most communist states have been saddled¹, that with the right leaders perhaps communism could function much better than has been experienced before now². My argument today is that those statements are themselves embodiments of the problem with communism, and other interventionist theories. Just like monarchy, oligarchy, aristocratic systems, or any other hereditary principle³, if communism relies on having the right people in office, then it is almost inevitable that it will have problems. In fact, as I shall argue, it is foolish to rely upon any system dependent on having the "right people", as it is certain, at some point, the system will break down, and the worst possible outcomes will become the most likely outcomes as well.

To begin let us define our terms, and state our assumptions. And first among those, let me make clear that I do not believe that communism, socialism, or even moderate interventionism, such as liberalism, can truly produce the results claimed. I do not think even the best people on earth are capable of making a government controlled economy⁴ function. It is only for the purpose of this argument that I concede the argument that intervention has so far failed only because of the bad choices made in selecting administrators. I will admit that the system will function better the more competent the administrators, and that honest and altruistic leaders tend to produce better outcomes than less worthy leaders, but that is not the same as saying such leaders could make the system work, just that the failure will be less dramatic. Still, for the purpose of our argument I am going to pretend interventionism has more potential than I really believe, and concede that competent leadership could make it work as advertised.

The next part is difficult, as we lack any sort of consensus, but let us try to come up with a definition of "success", in terms of an economy, or a government. In general, I think my definition from "In The Most Favorable Light" would be accepted by most ordinary people, an economy is successful to the degree it satisfies the wants of its members, the more people that experience greater satisfaction, the more successful the system. Similarly, most would find a government successful which fulfills certain expectations, such as protecting citizens from crime and war, settling disputes and so on. After that there is some parting of the ways, as those of us believing in absolutely minimal government would say that is all government must do, while others would ask it to build roads, provide fire services, and, in the case of those more favorable toward intervention, manages the economy, ensure fairness, and all the rest. However, I think I have a formulation which may work. Those of us who are minimalists believe the state can best help the economy by getting out of the way, while others believe in a more active roles for the state. To cover both, let us say a government is successful while provides protections for its citizens and creates an environment which fosters a robust economy, while providing all other services proper for government to provide.

Unfortunately, though that formulation covers well a wide range of opinions, there is a second stumbling block. Many, as I wrote in "The Right Way", "The Most Misleading Word", "Luxury and Necessity", ""It's Our Top Priority!"", "Absolute Values", "Consequences", "Cost-Benefit Analysis and Environmentalism", "How the Government Corrupts Relationships" and elsewhere, believe that there are values which are good in an absolute sense, and those which are absolutely bad. In other words, many refuse to accept that we should judge success based on individual, subjective valuation, but upon some external, fixed hierarchy of values. For these people, the state does not exist to satisfy the wants of individuals, but to make sure the citizens pursue the "correct" values. Which, clearly, is incompatible with the definitions we provided above.

Actually, it is incompatible with only one of the two definitions. The definition of government, as stated earlier, may work for such a perspective. After all, we said only that it must provide a robust economy, if we properly define "robust" we may be able to embrace even this definition of success. The only problem then is how to define success^5,6.

As such questions are likely to end up either bogging us down in ever more convoluted descriptions, full of qualifiers and conditionals, or else create a set of mutually contradictory definitions, one for each system of beliefs, I suppose the easiest way to satisfy this is to have recourse to vague words, whose meaning can shift with the beliefs of the listeners⁷. And the best vague words are the ones I wrote about being the most dangerous⁸, "want" and "need". So, let us say that a government is successful to the degree it satisfies the wants and needs of its citizens, within the limits of the proper role of government. Depending on how we read it, that could cover anything from my minimalist beliefs to the most ardent communist to even those who believe the state should be almost an asylum, forcing incompetent citizens to make the "right" choice. So, meaningless as it is, it at least gives us a framework within which we can work.

And now that we have a definition of success, let us look at why an interventionist system, regardless of degree of intervention, when it depends upon "the right people" (and all such systems do), will of necessity fail at some point to meet our definition of success.

We must first look at the mechanisms for selection in such systems, and there are many, and usually multiple systems within the same government, as the more powerful a government becomes, the larger the bureaucracy becomes, and the more unelected individuals share in the ability to make executive decisions⁹. The upper levels of government may be installed through the nominal selection process, be it direct election, parliamentary systems, appointment for life, military coup, or anything else. But below them there will inevitably grow a host of bureaucratic offices, which have an ever increasing influence over policy decisions, and where promotion is based almost entirely on the principles of bureaucracy¹⁰. As a result, a lot of the government's power will be controlled by those whose primary qualification is an ability to keep their heads down while serving time.

This may actually be one of the reasons that coups throughout history have usually been followed by a period of rejuvenation, even when the new ruler was less than inspiring. When the state is overthrown, the bureaucracy tends to be shaken up as well. Many in the lower echelons may remain, but the upper levels tend to be doled out as rewards to followers. As a result, people take charge who come to the task with fresh perspectives, and, more importantly, who have not been dealing with bureaucrats for their entire careers. As a result, the bureaucratic mindset plays less of a role for a period of time. And that likely helps to improve the functioning of the state for a time after a revolution.

But, whether or not bureaucracy serves as a major influence on governmental failure is not the main question here.Yes, increasing bureaucratization will inevitably cause the stagnation of the state, and it does show how even the "right people" will have trouble ruling an interventionist state effectively, But my main point here is how the rule by individual personality will inevitably fail, not how all interventionist systems are doomed.

There are three reasons why a government of "men not laws" will fail, which we will now discuss in order. First, there is the scope of their authority. Second, there is the simply overwhelming breadth of their responsibilities. And finally, the monolithic and final nature of decisions. And with a discussion of that final issue, I think we will be able to make one final case against all intervention and bring our discussion to an end.

The scope of decisions is a problem because the more areas in which government is involved, the more people who will feel the effects of any decision, and the more powerful the government, the most strongly they will feel those decisions. Let us take one example. If there is a state whose sole power over international trade is the ability to impose a uniform tariff between 0% and 5% on all goods, it can effect the lives of many people with that tariff, but only to a small degree, and, more importantly, with a uniform tariff, will effect everyone identically. And, since it is a small tariff, it will likely be felt little if at all.

Now let us imagine that state has the power to impose quotas on individual products, as well as impose tariffs from 0% to 10,000% on individual goods. Now that state can make thousands, millions of decisions. It can have a huge effect on different groups, and each will feel the decision in different ways. It is a system which would be impossible for any one individual to handle properly, the chance for making a decision with unforeseen negative consequences is very high. And even if such an error is not made, the chance of being seen by one group or another as hostile is high as well. And, though we did not discuss it in our definition, it seems that popular resentment toward the government is not compatible with the idea of "success".

The second topic is related to the first, in fact was mentioned in the paragraph above, and that is the scope of what is regulated being too much for nay individual. In fact, too much for even a group of individuals. Even if we allow that somehow humans could rationally control the economy¹¹, the fact remains that no one person could. And so we instead have individual groups examining smaller segments of the economy and submitting their summaries to a central authority for final decisions. But there are two problems there. First, the central authority cannot review each segment in the detail the expert group did, as we said no single individual can control everything, and so he must rely on the summary, and thus he must count on all his advisors being good people as well. Which means we have gone from needing one good person to needing hundreds. And even one error could have some pretty dire consequences.

The second, and bigger problem, is, by splitting the economy into lots of little compartments, we have cut off our view of repercussions across those boundaries¹². Even if we assume experts are perfect and can anticipate everything within their field, there is still the problem that they are woefully underinformed about other areas, and likely will never anticipate consequences their decisions have elsewhere. And so, though we may have decisions which look terrific, odds are very good there will be problems no one anticipated.

The final problem is one I discussed in many essays on interventionism and centralization. By being able to apply only a single decision, or single rule, no matter how many conditional clauses it may contain, the central government will never be as flexible as individual decisions and will always be less satisfying that individual choice. However, there is another problem. If we allow individual decision, odds are very good not every individual will make an error and do something damaging to himself. On the other hand, it is very likely among all those decisions the state makes that it will make a damaging decision at least once. As a consequence, that decision will be forced onto everyone. There is simply no way to avoid the fact that at some point the state will make everyone do the wrong thing, to one degree or another¹³.

And that is truly one of the better arguments against all intervention. (Cf "Greed Versus Evil", "Planning For Imperfection", "With Good Intentions", "An End to War", "Why Freedom Is Essential", "In Praise of Contracts", "History Repeats Itself (And We Learn Nothing From It)", "Inflexibility and Bureaucracy", "A New Look At Intervention", "Julius Caesar, Elliot Spitzer and Andrew Jackson") If we force a single decision on everyone, it will either be the same as they would make, and thus useless, or worse, and thus harmful. At least if they were not in error. If they were in error, then in a few cases, the state might save them a mistake. On the other hand, by forcing the same decisions on everyone, in many, many more cases it will leave people a little, and sometimes a lot, less happy than they would have been. On the whole, it will be more costly than beneficial.

Not only is it costly, but it also will prevent any number of improvements. Even if each state ruler is a genius, who finds hundreds of great ways to do things, I doubt he could come up with as many solutions as the entire populace. Edison might have been a prolific inventor, but he did not apply for even 1% of the patents granted in his working lifetime. And that is the the problem with intervention. By imposing one state solution on all, it keeps us from making a host of mistakes, but also prevents a host of superior solutions as well, solutions which at least would be more pleasing to those making them, and may even have been adopted by others. We will never know, as the one size fits all state solution keeps them from ever being made. It is this unseen cost which may be greatest of all.

And that is the answer to this whole problem. When making a choice about who will decide, who will provide all the answers, we have to ask, is it really a choice between being ruled by the "right people" or the "wrong people"? Is there not also the option of each of us ruling ourselves? A few are probably wrong, a few right, but most fall in the middle. What reason is there to make them less happy in the hopes that the ruler we put over them might do better than they would? If they want advice, they can seek it. But if they want to decide for themselves, why must we prevent it out of an ostensible fear they might fail? After all, if they are willing to risk failure in order to make their own choice, why should we stop them¹⁴?

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1. I argued in "An Interesting Thought", "An Old Idea I am Taking More Seriously" and "What Makes Politicians So Special?" that elected office tends to attract glad handing opportunists, too enamored of exercising power and prone to assuming government is the solution to all problems.  And, the more power the government has at its disposal, the more ardently will such people fight for it, making it likely such systems will be ruled by the most ruthless, opportunist, amoral types (or perhaps the most fanatical, as sometimes devotion can beat out lack of morals). Though I won't go into it in this essay, it seems this is another good argument against such states, the tendency to attract to government service the very "wrong people" they claim ruin the system.

2. I still contend the inability to gauge true demand and establish anything approximating a price mechanism (see "The Illogic of Sex Offender Registries and Preventive Detention Continues, With a Technocrat Twist", "In The Most Favorable Light", "The Limits of "Scientific" Management", "The Limits of Econometrics", "The Limits of Technocracy", "Some Additional Thoughts on Technocrats", "A Thought on Technology and Technocrats", "The Nonsensical Nature of Some Statistical Analysis") means communism cannot work in the long run, but I do not want to argue that here. Instead let us just say with the right people it would be much more efficient than it has been in our experience and leave it at that. Whether it would be sufficiently efficient to surpass a free market system, or even simply to avoid collapse, is an argument for another day.

3. I have discussed this in passing in a few essays, for example "Misunderstanding Democracy" and "Power and Disorder". The problems with hereditary monarchy are many. First, and most problematic, those unhappy with the state have no recourse other than violent overthrow, as there is no mechanism for peace change of government. However, another serious problem is that monarchies tend to degenerate over time. A strong leader becomes monarch. His successor, often trained by him personally before attaining power, may be another good leader, but usually by the third generation, the energy has been sapped and the feeling of entitlement tends to produce arrogant, ineffective leaders. A quick look at the many dynasties that ruled Rome will show how often this pattern was followed: Julius Caesar, Augustus then Tiberius and Caligula. Antoninus Pius, the Marcus Aurelius, followed by Commodus. Vespasian followed by Titus, then his brother Domitian. That last does not truly follow the pattern, as Domitian was born and reared out of power, and was troubled long before his father took the reins of the state. Still, it does show how quickly a strong monarchy can degenerate into tyranny.

4. Though I am using the term "economy", I have in mind all forms of government control, as it is simply impossible to separate economic from "non-economic", as everything is effectively economic. In my thoughts, when I say "economic", I am considering all matters in which humans make decisions based on their subjective valuations. As should be obvious, this includes almost every action it is possible to regulate, and so, though I use the term "economy", I really mean any and all government intervention. (See also "Bad Economics Part 16".)

5. Looked at consistently, there are a number of problems with any rigidly defined hierarchy imposed upon everyone, but since I want to argue that intervention fails even when granting all of the interventionists' assumptions, I am going to accept their somewhat hazy logic on this point and pretend there is a rationale for the imposition of "higher" values, ignoring the logical inconsistencies and failings.

6. Sadly, the idea that there are values which everyone should embrace, that there are actions or goods which are absolutely good or bad, and the rest of these assumptions are not limited to the political left. Many on the right are just as prone to such foolishness. Just recall how many times you have heard those on the right say "we are borrowing too much", "we don't save enough", "we need more investment", "health should be pursued at all costs" or something similar. The right, unfortunately, is as prone to imposing their own prejudices on others as the left, even among those who claim to favor small government. ("Debt", "Living Beyond Their Means", "To Correct Debra Saunders", "How the Government Corrupts Relationships", "More Thoughts on the FairTax", "Single Point of Failure and the FairTax", "The State and Morality", "A Bit More Explanation", "Misplaced Blame and A Power Play", "Remember I Predicted It", "Protectionism", "Fear of Trade", "Free Trade, Employment, Outsourcing, and Protectionism", "Cheap Lighters, Overseas Dumping and Monopolies", "Jobs, Jobs, Jobs, and More Jobs", "Protectionism Right and Left", "Bad Economics Part 6", "Pro Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc", "The Sky's Not Falling Part 2")

7. Sort of the way politicians use weasel words that mean different things to different audiences so they won't get tied down to anything specific. See "The Candidate as Inkblot".

8. See "The Most Misleading Word" and "Luxury and Necessity".

9. This was mentioned in passing in "Bureaucracy and Arbitrary Power".

10. I discussed bureaucracy in great detail in my posts "Bureaucratic Management and Self-Policing", "The Inevitability of Bureaucratic Management in Government Enterprises", "Bureaucracy and Arbitrary Power", "Fear Driven Enterprises", "Killing the Railroads", "Adaptability and Government", "Inflexibility and Bureaucracy", "In Praise of Contracts",  "Bureaucratic Management", "The Bureaucratic Mind" and "Bureaucracy Revisited".

11. Obviously I do not concede this point. See "A Thought on Technology and Technocrats ", "Some Additional Thoughts on Technocrats " and especially "The Limits of "Scientific" Management".

12. This is akin to what I discussed in "The Problem of the Small Picture" and "Keyhole Thinking".

13. As I do not believe decisions can be objectively right or wrong, what I mean here is that the state will make a decisions such that the decision, or its consequences, will both result in outcomes contrary t the desires of the state, and which all or almost all citizens feel are against their own interests, or, at the very least, are much worse in their outcomes than the decision they would have made had they been allowed to do so.
 
14.Sadly, as I discuss in "How Conservatives Defeat Themselves", "Defending Freedom?", "Why We Lose", "Giving Away the Game", "The Single Greatest Weakness",  "What We Deserve", "What is Wrong with Us", "Pyrrhic Victories", "Who Is To Blame?", "Don't Blame the Politicians", "The Difficulty of Principle", "Damn the Torpedoes!" and "You Lose When You Think You Win", many seem to have decided to surrender their autonomy to the state. I would like to think this is only because they have been raised knowing no better, and perhaps it is. But if people have really decided that it is better to let others decide lest they (or those hypothetical "other people") make a mistake, then we are in truly sorry shape.