9. The Logic of Predation

1. The Hobbesian argument for government
2. Predation in the state of nature
1. Game-theoretic considerations
2. Social conditions affecting
   the prevalence of violence
3. Interstate violence
3. Predation in a totalitarian state
4. Predation under democracy
1. The tyranny of the majority
2. The fate of nonvoters
3. Voter ignorance and irrationality
4. Activism: a utopian solution
5. The news media: the sleeping watchdog
6. The miracle of aggregation
7. The rewards of failure
8. Constitutional limits
9. Of checks, balances, and
   the separation of powers
5. Conclusion

The direct use of physical force is so poor a solution to the problem of limited resources that it is commonly employed only by small children and great nations.

- David Friedman[1]

9.1 The Hobbesian argument for government

In the seventeenth century, Thomas Hobbes articulated one of the most influential accounts of the need for government.[2] Hobbes begins with the assumption that human beings are motivated entirely by self-interest and that they are of approximately equal mental and physical abilities, such that every individual may pose a serious threat to any other individual. Now imagine such beings living in the 'state of nature'; that is, a state without government or laws. These people would come into frequent conflict with one another, for three reasons. First, people would attack each other to steal each other's resources; Hobbes calls this 'competition'. Second, people would attack each other preemptively - that is, one may decide to kill or permanently injure another person, simply to prevent the other person from being able to injure oneself in the future; Hobbes calls this 'diffidence'. Third, people would fight for 'glory' - that is, one may attack another person to force the other person to express respect for oneself. For these reasons, Hobbes believed that the state of nature would be a state of perpetual war of everyone against everyone. There would be no industry, trade, or culture. Everyone would live in constant fear of violent death, and their lives would be 'solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short'.[3]

The solution, in Hobbes's view, was for everyone to agree to establish a government and to grant that government absolute power. The government would then be able to protect individuals from each other. Nor, in Hobbes's view, should the people fear injury at the hands of the state itself. The rulers will naturally want the people to survive and prosper, because that will make the rulers themselves more wealthy and powerful.

Why should the state be granted absolute power rather than only limited, well-defined powers? Hobbes's answer is twofold: first, there is no need to limit the state's power, because excessive state power has not caused any significant problems. Second, it is not possible to limit the state's power unless there is some other, even more powerful agent who can exercise control over the state.[4]

The essence of the Hobbesian argument for government can be separated from some of Hobbes's more extreme claims. One need not hold that human beings are entirely selfish to agree with Hobbes that the state of nature would be riven with conflict; serious conflict might arise if people are largely, even if not entirely, selfish. Nor need one follow Hobbes in embracing totalitarianism; perhaps there are better, less absolute forms of government.

The Hobbesian argument for government is essentially a game-theoretic one. It relies on two main contentions: first, that when power is distributed roughly equally among individuals, it is prudent for individuals to attack each other frequently; second, that when power is distributed extremely unequally, concentrated almost entirely in the hands of a single person or organization, it is prudent, both for the powerful agent and for everyone else, to cooperate peacefully.

Though few today embrace either Hobbes's radical egoism or his totalitarianism, many accept his basic argument in favor of government. It is commonly held that the more pessimistic one is about human nature, the more absolute the form of government one should endorse - so that Hobbes, with the most cynical view of human nature, naturally endorses totalitarian government. In contrast, it is often thought, anarchists must hold radically optimistic views about human nature.[5] All this, as I shall presently argue, is precisely backwards, as is Hobbes's analysis both of the state of nature and of government.

9.2 Predation in the state of nature

9.2.1 Game-theoretic considerations

Imagine that you and your neighbor Abel live in the state of nature. You are trying to decide whether it would be a good idea to attack Abel. Abel happens to have some tasty apples. The prospect of getting some food without having to work for it would be one potential advantage of attacking him. On the other hand, there is the disadvantage that the attack may lead to your being seriously injured or killed. There are three main reasons for this:

1. Abel will almost certainly attempt to defend himself. Being, as Hobbes says, of roughly equal mental and physical abilities to yourself, Abel would have a substantial chance of seriously injuring or killing you in the ensuing combat.

   Perhaps you might hope to catch Abel by surprise and thus kill him before he has a chance to kill you. It is unlikely, however, that you could devise a plan of this kind that would be without significant risk to yourself. Plans often go wrong, and one who makes a habit of plotting the deaths of others will most likely slip up before long and end up dead himself.

   You might hope that Abel, being anxious to avoid injury, would flee from your attack rather than fight back. But Abel is not likely to simply let your theft pass. If he allows your theft to pass without retaliation, he invites both you and any other predators who learn of the event to attack and rob him in the future. If Abel flees the scene, therefore, it will most likely be only to plot his revenge at a more opportune moment.[6]

2. One or more of Abel's family members or friends may decide to avenge his death. One reason for this would be that they are angry about your psychopathic murder (pace Hobbes, people care about their family and friends). Another reason is that they may wish to send a message to other potential predators: our family may not be attacked with impunity. Abel's avengers may attack you at a time and place of their choosing, and there may be more than one of them. Therefore, again, it is likely that you will be seriously injured or killed.

3. Recall that, on Hobbes's view, one of the three main sources of violence in the state of nature is preemptive attack (due to 'diffidence'). People interested in preemptive attacks are most likely to target those who pose the greatest threat. And those who have already engaged in unprovoked attacks against their neighbors are likely to be perceived as the greatest threats. So by attacking Abel, you mark yourself out for attack by diffident neighbors.

For these reasons, the risks of attacking your neighbors will normally greatly outweigh the potential benefits. Only if you were in danger of starvation and had no safe options for seeking food might it be prudent to attempt to rob Abel. You would naturally take precautions to avoid ever being in that situation.

What if, instead of attacking Abel on your own, you band together with a few like-minded predators to rob Abel and divide his property among yourselves? In this case, you are much less likely to be killed in the course of committing the crime. Nevertheless, this plan is fraught with danger. If you leave Abel alive, he may decide to take his revenge later, when you are alone. If necessary, he may bring his own gang to help. If you kill Abel, his family or friends may decide to avenge him. In either case, diffident other neighbors may decide that you are a threat that needs to be eliminated, and nothing prevents them from banding together just as you and your fellow thieves have done. Finally, there is the disadvantage that in order to carry out this plan, you must associate with a gang of thieves and (possibly) murderers. People of this sort are not known for their trustworthiness, so there is a fair chance that one or more of the others will at some point attempt to cheat you and/or kill you.

So far, I have been appealing to your rational self-interest. But as noted in the previous chapter, human beings are only approximately rational and only approximately egoistic. Does this alter our conclusions?

No, it does not. First, note that the kinds of cases in which we typically observe failures of rationality do not affect the foregoing reasoning. The reasoning for avoiding predatory behavior in the state of nature is not too complex, unfamiliar, or abstract for an ordinary person to follow. Nor is it hindered by any of the heuristics and biases that psychologists have discovered; it does not matter, for example, if a person regularly falls prey to the conjunction fallacy, ignores base rates, and attempts to recover sunk costs.[7] None of those cognitive failings prevent one from grasping the straightforward argument against predation in the state of nature: if you attack your neighbors, your neighbors may attack you in turn.

Nor do any of the exceptions to the rule of human selfishness speak against our conclusion. Pace Hobbes, most human beings are not sociopaths. Most care about others, particularly their family and friends. Most have both strong moral objections and strong negative feelings about violence and theft. These facts could only strengthen the conclusion of this section. When both prudence and morality point in the same direction, almost everyone will choose that course. In a later chapter (Chapter 10), I will discuss institutions designed to deal with the few imprudent individuals who commit aggression despite the foolishness of doing so.

The general game-theoretic principle is this: Equality of power breeds respect. No rational person wishes to enter violent conflict with others who are of equal strength to himself. The chances of losing the conflict are too great. Even the nominal victor is likely to end up worse off than before the conflict, because the damage caused by fighting is almost always greater than the value of the resources that are in dispute. For these reasons, rational individuals fight only defensive battles.

9.2.2 Social conditions affecting the prevalence of violence

The broad game-theoretic considerations canvassed in the preceding subsection help to explain why most normal adults never partake of physical combat. However, interpersonal violence was much more common in earlier centuries than it is today.[8] Why? Were our ancestors less rational than we? Did they face different circumstances, such that the preceding game-theoretic arguments somehow did not apply to them?

At least three broad social factors may help to explain the decline in violence. One is a matter of social values. Members of modern, Western societies harbor far more liberal beliefs and attitudes, particularly on the subject of violence, than those that have held sway in most cultures for most of human history.[9] Historically, physical combat was often seen as honorable, whereas we today generally view it as horrible. Civilized eyes look back with horror at such practices as gladiatorial combat, public beheadings, and medieval torture chambers. And one need only peruse traditional religious texts to be shocked at the range of crimes for which earlier generations of humans considered death or dismemberment to be appropriate punishments.[10] A second important factor is economics. The game-theoretic argument for peaceful coexistence presupposes that the goods one needs for survival are available through peaceful means. In primitive societies, however, conditions of life-threatening scarcity were far more common than they are today; thus, people had less to lose by engaging in theft and violence. As human beings become more prosperous, the notion of fighting over resources becomes increasingly irrational. The third factor is weapons technology. The argument of the preceding subsection assumes that individuals pose approximately equal physical threats to one another, such that violent conflict between two individuals poses grave risks to both. But in earlier centuries, the capacity to defend oneself depended upon strength and skill with a sword or similar weapon, neither of which was evenly distributed among the population. Today, effective self-defense is available through modern firearms, requiring minimal strength and skill and only modest economic means. It was in view of this change that in the nineteenth century the popular Colt revolver came to be called 'the Equalizer'.

The main reasons for expecting the state of nature to be a state of peace do not apply with equal force in all social conditions. In a society with very scarce resources, limited weapons technology, and complacent attitudes toward violence, we should expect violent conflict to be much more common than in one characterized by prosperity, advanced technology, and a liberal culture.

A Hobbesian might argue that, if one begins with a primitive society in a state of nature, constant violent conflict will prevent the society from ever evolving into an advanced, prosperous society, unless the society first establishes a government. Be that as it may, once one has an advanced, prosperous, liberal society, the continuing need for government is far from clear, regardless of what role government may have played in bringing about that state of society. Game-theoretic arguments do not establish such a need. To defend a need for government, one would have to posit a high degree of irrationality and imprudence.

9.2.3 Interstate violence

It is natural to wonder whether the above analysis can be applied to nation-states as well as to individuals. Should we expect states to get along with each other peacefully, at least when they are of roughly equal power?

The answer is no. States are not individuals, and their behavior cannot be correctly explained in the same way as that of individuals - for example, by citing their beliefs and desires. States have no beliefs or desires of their own. The behavior of a state must be explained in terms of the choices of the individuals who have decision-making power within the state.

A state's decision as to whether to go to war differs in crucial ways from that of an individual deciding whether to enter physical combat with another individual. Most notably, the individual would bear the personal risk of injury or death should the other party prove difficult to subdue. But leaders who decide to take their country to war almost never personally bear the risks of injury or death that result from that war. In deciding to invade Iraq in 2003, for example, President Bush did not need to weigh the risk that he would be killed in the conflict. Thus, the main prudential argument that leads us to expect individuals to choose peaceful coexistence with other individuals does not apply to states.

Of course, no leader wishes to enter a conflict that his nation will lose. But when the costs of defeat are more along the lines of a loss of face rather than personal injury or death, leaders can be expected to evince far greater risk acceptance than an individual who decides whether to personally initiate mortal combat with another individual. For the same reason, it is not clear a priori that rough equality of power between two states will deter their leaders from initiating hostilities in the same way that we would expect it to deter private individuals. Indeed, scholarship in international relations has found that pairs of nations of comparable power are actually more likely to go to war than pairs with a large power difference.[11]

We will return to the question of the causes of war in Chapters 12, below. For now, the important point is that one should not assume that individual-level analyses of cooperation and conflict can be transferred to the level of government.

9.3 Predation in a totalitarian state

We have seen that, in the state of nature, there were three fears holding you back from attacking and robbing Abel: first, that Abel may resist your aggression with force; second, that Abel's family or friends may avenge him; third, that apprehensive neighbors may see you as a threat needing to be neutralized. But now imagine that you have just been granted the power of government, which, in Hobbes's view, is as absolute as any human power can be.[12] Now all three reasons for respecting Abel's rights have been removed. If you decide to steal Abel's food, he will have no effective means of resistance. If you kill Abel, his family and friends will have no effective means of vengeance. And however much they may recognize you as a threat, diffident neighbors will have no effective means of trying to neutralize that threat. There is no longer anything to hold you back from whatever you might wish to do to your hapless neighbors. As a rational egoist, therefore, you will certainly want to consider stealing most of Abel's resources, then forcing him to keep working to produce more for you to steal. What about endeavoring, through good governance, to ensure that your society is as prosperous as possible? This will give you more to steal. As Hobbes proclaims, the stronger and more prosperous the people are, the stronger and more prosperous the ruler will be.[13]

While this is one reason for working to ensure a productive society, there are other reasons why you may not wish to bother. To begin with, if the society over which you rule is reasonably large, it should be possible to extort sufficient spoils from the population to keep yourself in comfort even if the people are destitute. Kim Jong-il, communist dictator of North Korea, amassed over $4 billion while millions of his subjects starved and his country's per capita GDP languished at just under one-fifth of the world average.[14] Granted, Kim might have accumulated even more wealth had his country had a more productive economic system. But wealth has diminishing marginal utility: after one gathers the first four billion dollars, most of one's needs have been satisfied, and the next billion makes relatively little difference to one's overall well-being. It is not worth going to any great trouble or giving up anything else that one cares about to collect more money. And good governance is often a difficult thing to achieve. It often requires wisdom, careful reasoning, and long hours of research. To identify the best policies, one must work tirelessly at remaining objective, gathering more evidence to test one's assumptions, and so on. All of this is intellectually and emotionally demanding. It is much easier to proclaim simple, ill-thought-out precepts and follow them dogmatically regardless of the evidence.

What about actually injuring or killing Abel? It might be thought that, once you possess absolute power, you will have no reason to attack Abel, since he is no longer a threat to you. Indeed, your subjects are the source of your power, so you should want to keep as many of them as possible, as long as they remain cooperative. If Abel is prudent, he will submit to all your demands, and despite the loss of most of his food and other goods, he will thereby remain alive.

Again, this is too optimistic. First, given the existence of a powerful government, the people who are most likely to wind up in control of that government are those who (a) have the greatest drive for power, (b) have the skills needed for seizing it (for example, the ability to intimidate or manipulate others), and (c) are unperturbed by moral compunctions about doing what is required to seize power. These individuals are not in the game for the money. They are in it for the pleasure of exercising power. The way one feels the exercise of power is, all too often, by abusing those under one's power while observing their helplessness to resist. This is among the lessons of the Stanford Prison Experiment, as discussed earlier (Section 6.7). Particularly if the ruler perceives some act of defiance on the part of subjects - for example, a subject criticizes the government in some way - the ruler is likely to feel a desire to demonstrate his power by crushing the subject. The motive would be precisely that passion for 'glory' that Hobbes considers among the causes of conflict in the state of nature.

Second, a great many people harbor hostility toward certain groups in their society - for instance, the members of a certain race, religion, or social class; or the people who adhere, or fail to adhere, to certain political doctrines. If the ruler happens to have some such prejudice, he may well feel it worth losing a few million subjects to indulge his hatred for that group.

The game-theoretic principle is this: Concentration of power breeds abuse. When one group of people holds great power over another group, the strong will typically use their power to abuse or exploit the weak for their own aggrandizement.

All this, tragically, is much more than armchair theorizing. It is also the horrifying lesson of history. Everyone knows that close to six million Jews were executed in Nazi Germany in the middle of the last century because the ruler hated Jews. Fewer people realize that that was only the tip of the iceberg of twentieth-century mass murder. The total number of people killed by their own governments in the twentieth century has been estimated at 123 million.[15] These victims, in general, were killed for belonging to the wrong groups, whether it be the wrong race, the wrong class, or the wrong ideology. The murderous regimes did not stop at the thought that their crimes against humanity would cost them a great deal of tax revenues, for they were not primarily seeking money. They were moved partly by hatred, partly by the love of power, and partly by the drive to remake the world in accordance with their ideologies. The number of people killed by their own governments in the twentieth century was more than four and a half times greater than the number killed by nongovernmental murderers[16] - which raises the question of whether a strong government should be counted more a source of security or a source of danger.

Hobbes was right to highlight human selfishness, though he overstates the point. He was right also to recognize the essential equality of the state of nature and the inequality created by government. But the political implications of these facts are the opposite of what Hobbes claimed. Equality of power breeds respect and peaceful cooperation; vast inequality breeds contempt and abuse. The more cynical one is about human nature, the more important it is to avoid great differences of power.

9.4 Predation under democracy

Fortunately, totalitarianism is not the only form of government. There are several ways of trying to limit the power of government and prevent its abuse: choosing leaders by popular election, dividing the government into separate branches, writing a constitution that defines and delimits the government's powers. All of these mechanisms provide some advantage. Nevertheless, they do not work exactly as advertised, and they do not fully solve our problems.

9.4.1 The tyranny of the majority

According to one simple argument for democracy, people generally know their interests and will vote on the basis of those interests when given the chance. Therefore, the leaders in a democratic state will be those who best serve the interests of the most people.

Perhaps the simplest problem with this system is that the majority may choose to abuse a minority. If the majority of people have even a slight preference for some policy, however noxious or unjust it may be to the minority, the majority can implement their preference through the state. This explains, for example, why gay marriage is not permitted in most of the United States. It explains the Jim Crow laws prior to the civil rights movement. And it explains how the Nazis could become the largest party in the Reichstag by 1932, despite their evident hatred of various groups of people.

9.4.2 The fate of nonvoters

Asimilar problem is that the government may disregard the interests of those who lack the vote. Typically, this includes convicted felons, children, and, most importantly, foreigners. This last category of people may be affected by the government's immigration policy, international trade policy, military policy, and other forms of foreign policy. The interests of foreigners are often ignored or severely discounted in these areas. In setting immigration policy, national governments discount the interests of potential immigrants. In setting trade policy, they discount the interests of producers and consumers in other countries. In deciding whether to go to war, they discount the interests of the foreign citizens who will be killed.

In America's most recent war with Iraq, for example, estimates of the number of Iraqi citizens killed vary from about one hundred thousand to over one million.[17] The war had an enormous impact on the Iraqi people, much more so than the American people. And yet the Iraqi people had no say in the decision to invade, which was made entirely by representatives of the American people. Any advocate of democracy must surely recognize this as a serious problem. This problem results from the extreme inequalities of power made possible by the institution of government. In this case, the U.S. government had sufficiently greater power than either the Iraqi people or the Iraqi government that the U.S. government had no need to consider the opinions of Iraqis.

9.4.3 Voter ignorance and irrationality

One might assume that a democratic state will at least serve the interests of the majority of voters. Yet even this need not be true.

To see why, first consider the amount of practical power you wield by virtue of your ability to vote. For simplicity, assume that you are voting in an election with exactly two candidates. You as an individual are in a position to determine the outcome of the election if and only if the outcome turns on a single vote - that is, without your vote, the two candidates' vote totals would have differed by no more than one. If the totals would have been tied, then you can cast the tie-breaking vote; if one candidate would have won by a single vote, you can cause the election instead to be tied. In all other cases, your vote makes no difference to the outcome. If the candidates' vote totals differ by two or more, then the winning candidate would have won regardless of how you voted. But given the circumstances voters are actually in and can expect to be in for the foreseeable future, the probability of a national election turning on a single vote is negligible. So for all practical purposes, each voter knows in every election that his vote will make no difference whatsoever.

It is true that the voters as a whole have a great deal of power, in that they determine who holds the reins of government. But that is not our concern now. Our concern at the moment is how it is rational for you, as an individual, to behave. From the standpoint of rational choice, it is irrelevant what others can do; what is relevant is what you can do. You cannot make everyone else, or even a majority, vote in a particular way; you can control only your own vote. And this gives you approximately zero power over election outcomes.

Now assume that you are a rational egoist. Should you vote for the candidate who best serves your own interests? At first glance, since your vote will have no effect on what policies you get, it simply does not matter whether you vote for a candidate who serves your own interests, a candidate who serves the interests of society, or a candidate who is so terrible that he serves no one's interests. But this is not exactly right. There is a minuscule but nonzero chance - perhaps one in ten million[18] - that an election will turn on a single vote, so as long as it costs you nothing to vote for the candidate who best serves your interests, you might as well do so. Is this tenuous motivation enough to make democracy work?

The problem is that it does cost you something to vote for the candidate who best serves your interests. To know which candidate best serves your interests, you must first gather detailed information about all the available candidates. If they have served in public office, you will need to look up their voting records. Then you will need to look up a large sample of the bills or other proposals on which they voted. You will need to attempt to understand these bills. To assess in each case whether the proposals would have served your interests, you will need to research an array of complex economic and social issues. You may need to take some courses in economics to figure out the effects of some of these policies. Since human beings tend to be affected by strong biases with regard to political issues, you will need to make a special effort to identify and overcome your biases. All of this would require enormous time and effort. The probability that this effort will be rewarded with some actual effect on election outcomes is minuscule. Thus, it does not make sense to do what is necessary to vote consistently in your own interests.[19]

Accordingly, many surveys have found strikingly low levels of public political knowledge. Caplan summarizes some of these results:

About half of Americans do not know that each state has two senators, and three-quarters do not know the length of their terms. About 70 percent can say which party controls the House, and 60 percent which party controls the Senate. Over half cannot name their congressman, and 40 percent cannot name either of their senators. Slightly lower percentages know their representatives' party affiliations. Furthermore, these low knowledge levels have been stable since the dawn of polling, and international comparisons reveal Americans' overall political knowledge to be no more than moderately below average.[20]

What sort of things do Americans know about politics? Delli Carpini and Keeter give the flavor of public political knowledge:

The most commonly known fact about George [H. W.] Bush's opinions while he was president was that he hated broccoli. During the 1992 presidential campaign 89 percent of the public knew that Vice President Quayle was feuding with the television character Murphy Brown, but only 19 percent could characterize Bill Clinton's record on the environment. Also during that campaign, 86 percent of the public knew that the Bushes' dog was named Millie, yet only 15 percent knew that both presidential candidates supported the death penalty. Judge Wapner (host of the television series 'The People's Court') was identified by more people than were Chief Justices Burger or Rehnquist.[21]

Now imagine that you are an elected official in a democratic state. You know the foregoing facts. You know that most of your constituents do not know your approximation, that it is certain that the two major candidates' vote totals will differ by ten million or fewer. And suppose that we assign an equal probability to each possible vote total within that range. Then each possibility, including the possibility that the totals differ by zero (that is, the election is tied), has a one-in-ten-million probability.This method might overestimate the odds, since it is not 100 percent certain that the vote totals will fall in the specified range. However, if we suppose that it is only, say, 80 percent certain that the totals differ by less than 10 million, then we get a lower bound for the probability of a tied election of 0.8/10,000,000, or one in 12.5 million. On the other hand, this may be an underestimate of the odds, because vote totals closer to equal are more likely than ones that are less equal; in a more precise approach, we would assign a bell-shaped probability distribution, with the peak closer to the middle.All things considered, the one-in-ten-million estimate is of the right order of magnitude for present conditions in the United States. This suffices for the present argument.

Sadly, this is more than idle theorizing; it explains the consistent experience of any modern observer of government. It is not possible here to examine the myriad actions of any contemporary government that bear this out. Here I simply select one example to illustrate what I mean.

As of mid-2012, the most recent farm bill in the United States was the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008.[22] Among other things, this law continues the federal government's established policy of farm subsidies, which total over $12 billion per year, most of which goes to large commercial farms.[23] This benefits a small number of mostly wealthy people at the expense of the rest of the country. The $12 billion, spread over 311 million Americans, comes to just under $40 per person. Of course, without researching this particular law, you would not know these figures; but let us suppose you know that, in general, if you did enough research, you could find various laws of this kind that cost you amounts of money in this neighborhood. In each case, you could attempt to influence the legislation, with a chance of success of perhaps one in a million.

It is not in your interests to research the provisions of the latest farm bill and how your representative voted on it to secure a one-in-a-million chance of saving yourself something on the order of $40. The exact numbers are immaterial. Even if the law cost you much more money - say, $400 per year - and your chances of altering the law were much better - say, one in a thousand - it still would not be in your interests to do anything about it.

On the other hand, the businesses that receive the government's largesse have reason to pay close attention. Each of them stands to gain millions or billions of dollars, and they have millions of dollars to spend in the attempt to influence the legislative process. Accordingly, agribusiness spent $80 million on lobbying in the year leading up to the passage of the farm bill.[24] The farm bill was also criticized for its contribution to the world food crisis. World food prices have risen dramatically in recent years, leading to hunger and food riots. According to a World Bank study, the increased use of biofuels in developed nations was responsible for a 75 percent rise in food prices between 2002 and 2008.[25] The 2008 U.S. farm bill came under fire for exacerbating the problem through increased support for biofuels.[26] This problem, however, mainly concerns people in developing nations, who have even less chance of influencing U.S. policy than the average American.

I stress here that there is nothing special about farm policy. This is how modern democracy works. Concentrated, well- organized special-interest groups use the apparatus of the state to extract profit at the expense of the majority of their own society, often in addition to hapless victims in other countries. Farm policy is just one of many illustrations.[27]

9.4.4 Activism: a utopian solution

Some say that the solution to the problems with democracy is for the public to be more active, to watch what their representatives are doing and pressure them to do what is best for society.[28] We should write letters to our representatives, organize demonstrations, and so on.

This is a utopian solution. It is utopian because it requires changes in human nature without proposing a realistic mechanism to bring about those changes. The democratic failures that I have described are not a mysterious accident, nor are they the product of a few bad actors. They result from the operation of normal human selfishness within the incentive structure of a democratic state. It is not in individual citizens' interests to keep tabs on their elected representatives. The behavior of citizens and elected representatives will not change unless either the incentive structure changes or people become much less selfish than they are.

I do not mean that social activism cannot solve any problems. Major political advances have been brought about by popular social movements, as in the case of the abolitionist movement, the women's suffrage movement, the Indian movement for independence from Britain, and so on. Occasionally, popular social movements arise to combat large and simple injustices, particularly when these involve glaring inequalities between the treatment of different groups.

What I find utopian is the suggestion that popular activism might be the solution to the constant, everyday malfeasance of government, that people might be called forth to set aside their own interests and concerns and summon the time and energy to actively monitor the thousands of activities of the government as a permanent way of life.[29] Some human beings may enjoy monitoring the daily activities of their government, but for the vast majority, it is a mind-numbing chore. This chore would consume every spare moment of one's life, if one were to take seriously one's alleged obligation to oversee the state. The 2008 farm bill I have been discussing comprises 663 pages of legalese. Just knowing what the bill contains is a feat in itself, but tracing the effects of its hundreds of sections would require a background expertise in such areas as economics, agriculture, energy use, and international relations that would probably require years of study to acquire. And that bill was just one of the over ten thousand bills introduced into Congress that year.[30] The most conscientious activist could only monitor a minuscule fraction of his government's activities, even if doing so was his sole occupation.

Conceivably, the activists could divide up the work. We could each choose one of a thousand different areas in which to monitor government activities. But this is not realistic. On those rare occasions when social movements inspire large segments of the public to become involved in politics, it is because some large, glaring injustice stirs our passions. But no one will become passionate about monitoring a thousandth of the daily activities of government. To propose that the general public voluntarily sacrifice large portions of their lives to the task of studying such tedious matters as the provisions of the latest farm bill, all so that each can have a microscopic chance of improving a microscopic fraction of government policies, is at least as utopian as proposing that we all simply agree henceforth to work selflessly for the good of society.

9.4.5 The news media: the sleeping watchdog

Instead of our having to monitor the everyday activities of government officials, we might in effect delegate that responsibility to the news media, which could assign people full time to watching the government. Journalists would warn the public when the government was doing anything particularly bad, at which point voters would take appropriate action. If the mechanism worked well, so that wayward politicians were reliably punished, only occasional warnings would be needed.

Without further explanation of what might maintain this happy state of affairs, however, this solution to the problems of democracy is overly utopian. It does not matter if we say that this is the media's 'job' or what the media is supposed to do. What matters is the incentive structure. Is it in the interests of media companies to play the role of alert watchdog?

There are three reasons why it is not. First, monitoring the tens of thousands of government activities is a difficult, expensive, and time-consuming task. When reporting on government activities, it is easier to accept government officials' own statements as one's source of information rather than attempt to confirm or refute them. It is easier to run opinion pieces and reports on simple, entertaining items such as celebrity gossip than to prepare detailed reports on complex social issues.

Second, the government is the most powerful organization in society; it possesses an enormous and irresistible apparatus of coercion, and reports critical of government officials are likely to anger the government. At a minimum, government officials will refuse to give interviews or information to journalists who establish a reputation for criticizing the government. In more serious cases, the government deploys force directly against journalists or their sources.

A famous case in point is that of Daniel Ellsberg, who in 1971 leaked a classified Pentagon study revealing that the government knew the Vietnam War was an unwinnable quagmire. The government brought twelve felony counts against Ellsberg (ultimately dismissed), and President Nixon ordered illegal wiretaps and a breakin at the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist in an effort to find information to discredit Ellsberg.[31]

A more recent case is that of Wikileaks, which published thousands of government documents in 2010, most of which concerned the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, including videos showing U.S. troops killing civilians. The uniform reaction from American politicians on both the left and the right was one of outrage at both Wikileaks and its sources. Vice President Biden called Wikileaks founder Julian Assange a terrorist and promised that the Justice Department would be looking for ways to prosecute him. Former Arkansas governor and sometime presidential candidate Mike Huckabee called Wikileaks' source a traitor and called for his execution. As of this writing (mid-2012), Wikileaks' source for the Iraq documents, U.S. military intelligence analyst Bradley Manning, is being prosecuted by the military under numerous charges, including 'aiding the enemy', a capital offence (though the government will not seek the death penalty).[32]

These cases show that not everyone is easily intimidated. But they also show that journalists and their sources have rational cause for fear should they publish information embarrassing to the government.

The third and most important reason why it is not in the media's interests to act as an alert watchdog is the demands of the consumer. Newspapers, magazines, television stations, and radio stations depend upon the interest of their audience; it does not matter how diligent and courageous their reporters are if the public does not want to tune in. For the reasons discussed above, average citizens are not willing to expend significant time, money, or effort learning about the government. Suppose, for example, that one television station is running a story about the upcoming farm bill. The story discusses some of the features of this bill, its impact on the budget, its wider effect on the economy, and so on. Academic economists and agricultural experts are interviewed. Meanwhile, another station runs a gossip piece about popular entertainer Lindsay Lohan, who has just gotten into trouble again. Which station gets more viewers?

Farm policy is boring. Lindsay Lohan's misadventures are titillating. Farm policy is complicated and hard to understand. Lohan is simple and easy to understand. The story about farm policy has graphs and statistics. The story about Lohan has pictures of Lohan.

Some people may prefer hearing about farm policy. But the majority of media outlets cater to the majority of people. A few small outlets cater to intellectuals, but this is not enough to stop most government misuse of power; the impact of the tiny minority of people who enjoy reading statistics about farm policy will be swamped by the much larger group of people who don't know of the existence of farm policy and wouldn't care even if they knew.

9.4.6 The miracle of aggregation

According to a recent theory in the literature on democracy, it does not matter if most voters are ignorant, since a small minority of informed voters are enough to swing an election.[33] To see how this might be so, assume that we have an election between two candidates, Superior and Inferior, with Superior being the objectively better candidate. There are millions of voters, 90 percent of whom are completely ignorant; when they enter the voting booth, they vote completely at random. The remaining 10 percent are well informed and invariably vote for the better candidate. Who wins the election?

Superior wins, with near 100 percent probability. Since the uninformed voters vote randomly, they split about evenly, half for Inferior and half for Superior. The informed voters, however, all vote for Superior. Superior thus beats Inferior, 55 to 45 percent. If this model were correct, we could have very low levels of average voter knowledge yet still achieve results as good as those of a fully informed electorate.

The weak link in the argument is the assumption that ignorant voters vote randomly, as if by a coin flip. People who lack relevant information are more likely to vote on the basis of biases rather than flipping a coin. They might decide to vote for the candidate who is better looking or more likable, the candidate who ran more television ads, or the candidate whose name sounds most familiar. They might automatically vote for the Democrat or automatically vote for the incumbent.[34] It doesn't matter exactly what the basis is; the point is simply that there is likely to be something about a candidate that causes people to vote for him, even if that feature is mostly irrelevant to the candidate's objective qualifications to hold the office. Whatever that factor or cluster of factors is, it may well swamp the support or opposition of the informed voters.

For illustration, suppose that, as before, 10 percent of the electorate are well informed and always choose the better candidate. But this time, suppose that only 70 percent of voters vote by flipping a coin. The remaining 20 percent always vote for the more charismatic candidate. Who wins?

The more charismatic candidate wins, with near 100 percent probability. If Superior happens to be more charismatic, then he wins with 65 percent of the vote (half of the coin-flipping voters, plus all of the charisma-driven voters, plus all of the informed voters). But if Inferior happens to be more charismatic, then he wins with 55 percent of the vote (half of the coin flippers plus all of the charisma voters). As long as there are more charisma voters than well-informed voters, charisma determines the outcome, regardless of what the well-informed voters think. The general point is that the less rational and informed the electorate is, the more likely it is that irrelevant factors will outweigh the small influence of the quality of candidates' policy positions.[35]

9.4.7 The rewards of failure

On 11 September 2001, America suffered the most devastating terrorist attack in history. Four airplanes were hijacked and destroyed, the Pentagon was attacked, and the World Trade Center was destroyed, resulting in close to three thousand fatalities. This was many times worse than any other terrorist attack ever suffered by the U.S. or any other country.

What were the consequences for the United States government? First, the president's approval rating underwent an immediate and enormous jump, from about 55 percent to almost 90 percent. Over the following seven years, it dropped steadily, finally ending below 30 percent in 2008.[36] Though this remains a matter for speculation, it is plausible that George W. Bush would not have been reelected in 2004 if not for the terrorist attack.

On the face of it, this is paradoxical. If there was anyone whose job it was to protect Americans from this sort of attack, it would be the executive branch of the U.S. government. As the head of that branch, George W. Bush might have been expected to come under criticism. As an analogy, imagine that you have hired a company to provide security for your building. You have just learned that last night, vandals broke into the building and destroyed thousands of dollars' worth of equipment. Someone now asks you what you think of the job that your security company is doing. What do you say? 'Best security company ever!'?

Why did Americans so enthusiastically approve of Bush after the attacks? Partly, it was because they felt that it was patriotic to support the president, and that is partly because people tend to confuse the country with the government and the government with the government's officeholders.

My aim in raising this example is not to blame the government for 9/11. My aim is to examine the incentives applying to the government. What happens when the government fails to achieve its purposes? Often, the result is that the government is more rewarded than punished. In the present case, Bush reaped the highest approval ratings of his career, along with the opportunity to expand executive power in ways that otherwise would have met with much greater resistance.[37]

Similar things are true of other parts of government. Suppose that a city suffers from a crime wave. What will be the effects on the police department? It is much more likely that the police department will receive greater funding to combat the problem than that their funding will be cut. Or suppose that a society suffers from a severe increase in poverty. If the government has no agencies designed to combat poverty, one or more will probably be established. If some already exist, they will most likely receive greater funding rather than less. Few public figures would have the temerity to argue that the poverty programs should be cut because there is too much poverty. The general lesson is that if some part of the government fails in its function, it will most likely be given greater funding and power. Of course, the purpose of this is not to reward failure; the thinking would be that more money and power will enable the agency to solve the problem. But the effect is that government grows when social problems grow, and thus it is not in the government's interest to solve society's problems.

My claim is not that government agents actually try to fail. I do not think, for example, that the Bush administration actually wanted 9/11 to occur. My claim is twofold: first, that government agencies simply do not try as hard as they could to succeed at their assigned tasks, because they do not suffer from the negative consequences of failure. Second, that unsuccessful government programs tend to persist and grow, with the result that over a period of decades the government will come to be dominated by such programs.

Of course, other anecdotes could be told about government officials' losing their jobs because of some prominent failure. My claim is not that failure is always rewarded; my claim is that failure tends to be rewarded in a large range of cases, leading to serious problems in democratic states. If a government official is guilty of some simple and demonstrable malfeasance, with large and well-publicized negative consequences, then that official will probably lose his job. If a government agency that is felt to be dispensable - for example, NASA or the NEH - fails in simple and well-publicized ways, then that agency's funding will likely be cut, and the agency might even be eliminated. But suppose that some essential part of the government - say, the court system or law enforcement - fails chronically in ways that are complicated, difficult to understand, and not readily traceable to specific actions by a small number of individuals. Then that part of the government will more likely be rewarded than punished. People will feel that eliminating the dysfunctional agency or branch is not a feasible option, and since there are no specific individuals to blame, none will lose their jobs over it. The members of that part of the government will blame inadequate funding, and ill-informed voters are likely to find that explanation more understandable than the complicated truth. Thus, over time, the kinds of failures we should expect to see accumulating are low-profile and systemic failures in essential government services.

9.4.8 Constitutional limits

Perhaps the failures of government can be mitigated through a written constitution strictly limiting the state's functions. The fewer things the government is responsible for, the easier it will be for the people to monitor its activities, and thus the more responsive the government will be.[38]

We cannot simply assume, however, that if a constitution exists it will be followed. Without a realistic mechanism to induce compliance, it is overly utopian to assume that a government will restrain its activities simply because a document directs it to do so. As an analogy, imagine that I propose to solve the problem of predation by writing on a piece of paper, 'No one should attack or rob other people.' Without some sort of enforcement mechanism, this would be inadequate. What will cause self-interested human beings to obey the directives written on that paper? The central question about constitutions is the same. Who will enforce the constitution? No other organization has the power to coerce the government. Therefore, we will have to rely upon the government to enforce constitutional restrictions against itself.[39] Why is this more realistic than the parallel proposal that ordinary criminals be left to arrest and punish themselves?

Perhaps one branch of the government can be tasked with enforcing the constitution against the other branches. The courts, for example, may invalidate a law when they find it to be unconstitutional. But what mechanism induces the courts to faithfully discharge this duty? What stops them from nullifying laws that are constitutional but that they simply disagree with or putting their imprimatur on laws that are in fact unconstitutional? As always, when we hire one group of people to watch over others, the question arises, 'Who will watch the watchers?'[40]

Constitutional limits have in fact been tried. How well have they worked? I focus again on the experience of the United States. Some aspects of the U.S. Constitution have been followed closely, particularly those describing institutional structures. The government is divided into executive, legislative, and judicial branches, just as the Constitution prescribes; the legislature is divided into a Senate and a House of Representatives; and so on. However, with respect to the extent of government power, constitutional restrictions are routinely and unapologetically flouted. It is worth devoting a few pages to this case study.

The Ninth and Tenth Amendments to the Constitution make clear that the powers of the government are to be limited to what are listed in the document itself, whereas the rights of the people are open-ended and not limited to what has been listed:

Amendment 9: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Amendment 10: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

The Ninth Amendment may be difficult to apply - it refers to rights that are not enumerated, but how is one to know what these rights include? The Tenth Amendment, however, is clear. The federal government is not permitted to do anything other than the things that the Constitution grants it the power to do. All else is unconstitutional. This much is uncontroversial; even the government has never denied it.

What, then, does the Constitution grant the government the power to do? Of most relevance is Article I, section 8, which delineates the powers of the legislature:

Section 8

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

To borrow money on the credit of the United States;

To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;

To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;

To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures; To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;

To establish Post Offices and Post Roads;

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;

To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations; To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;

To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years; To provide and maintain a Navy;

To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;

To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions; To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings; And

To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.

That is the entire section, and the entire list of legislative powers. The constitutional authority for every federal law must be found in that list.

The list includes authority to establish a post office, a military, and a system of federal courts, all of which the country has. But which clause in that list authorizes the establishment of a CIA, an Environmental Protection Agency, or a Department of Health and Human Services? Which clause authorizes the federal government to control the wages employers may pay, what drugs people may ingest, or how fast people may drive? Why may the federal government subsidize agribusiness, give loans to college students, and send people into space? None of these things even remotely appears to be included, explicitly or implicitly, in the list of congressional powers. Nor do myriad other present-day government activities. Any randomly chosen U.S. federal law, program, or agency today is almost certain to be clearly unconstitutional.

Why has the Supreme Court not struck down all these laws? Here is the official story: appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, they are all really authorized by the Constitution. A typical illustration of the logic is provided by the case of Wickard v. Filburn, decided in 1942.[41] The Roosevelt administration had successfully sponsored a law designed to increase the price of wheat by restricting the amount of wheat that farmers could grow. Roscoe Filburn was a farmer growing wheat entirely for use in feeding livestock on his own farm. Filburn exceeded the amount allowed by the law and was fined by the Department of Agriculture. Filburn then sued in federal court to prevent the enforcement of the law against him, arguing that there was no constitutional authority for the federal government to control how much wheat he grew on his farm. The Supreme Court unanimously upheld the law, claiming that it was authorized by the third clause in Article I, section 8, which grants Congress the power 'To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.' The court reasoned that because Filburn grew wheat to feed his livestock, he would therefore buy less wheat from other farmers. If many farmers were to do this, it would significantly lower the price of wheat. This, in turn, would have an effect on commerce in wheat, some of which crosses state borders. Therefore, by fining Filburn for growing too much wheat, the federal government was simply exercising its constitutional power to regulate interstate commerce.

It is hard to believe that any unbiased observer competent in the English language would read the phrase 'regulate commerce [ ... ] among the several states' in this way. Here is the unofficial but more truthful account of events: At the beginning of his presidency in the early 1930s, Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal programs were repeatedly and decisively struck down for exceeding the powers granted by the Constitution.[42] President Roosevelt sought to circumvent these decisions by proposing the Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937, which would have given him the power to appoint six new justices to the Supreme Court, bringing the total to fifteen. Had the plan gone through, Roosevelt would have selected only candidates who would support the New Deal. However, shortly after Roosevelt proposed this plan, the court switched direction and began to approve of Roosevelt's programs (though only by a narrow margin);[43] FDR thus abandoned his 'court-packing' plan. Over the next few years, several judges retired and were replaced by Roosevelt appointees anyway, with the result that by the time of the Wickard case, eight of the nine Supreme Court justices owed their tenure to Franklin Roosevelt.[44] These judges were determined to approve of Roosevelt's agenda, no matter what the Constitution said. They therefore invented rationalizations for reversing earlier court opinions.

On this account, the problem lay not in any ambiguity or unclarity in the Constitution, such as might have been remedied by a more judicious choice of words at the time the document was written. There was no misunderstanding; the judges simply chose not to enforce the Constitution. The particular content of the opinion penned by Justice Jackson in the Wickard case is essentially irrelevant. It functions as a very thin veil to disguise the intentional expunction of the constitutional limits on the power of Congress - but if that veil had not been available, there would have been another one. If the commerce clause did not exist, the court would have devised another rationalization. Perhaps they would have claimed that the New Deal law fell under the fifth clause, permitting Congress 'To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures.' The restriction on wheat production had an effect on wheat prices; in that sense, it affected the value of money (the lower prices are, the more valuable a given quantity of money is). So perhaps Congress was only exercising its power to regulate the value of money.

Many today might argue that it was a good thing that the Court chose to overrule the Constitution, because the document as written was overly restrictive. Think of how many wonderful federal programs would not exist today if we had to stick to a natural reading of the words in the Constitution! But regardless of what one thinks of these programs, the American experience should give pause to any democrat who would place his faith in the power of constitutions to limit governmental power. Even if the New Deal programs were good policy, they should still, in theory, have required a constitutional amendment before they could be enacted. The fact that they did not and that so many other clearly unconstitutional laws are routinely passed without apology bears witness to the fundamental problem facing a constitutional regime. The constitution is a law, and laws require enforcement. But once we establish a supreme authority, there is no one to enforce the law against that authority.

9.4.9 Of checks, balances, and the separation of powers

Americans are taught that they live under a system of 'checks and balances', whereby the executive, judicial, and legislative branches of government each restrain the others from abusing their power. This idea derives from Montesquieu, who influenced the framers of the American Constitution.[45] Thus, the judiciary has the power to strike down unconstitutional laws, thereby serving as a check on the power of the legislature. The executive branch has the power to appoint judges, which the legislature must approve; thus, the executive and legislative branches act to ensure the integrity of the judiciary. The legislature has the power to impeach the president, and the legislature may thus check the power of the executive branch. And so on. No branch of government is supreme, and each has important powers over the others.

This theory is missing one crucial element. That is an account of why each branch of government should be expected to use its powers to prevent the other branches from abusing their powers rather than, say, to assist the other branches in abusing their powers or to prevent the other branches from carrying out their legitimate functions. Again, it does not matter what our theory labels as the proper function of government officials. What matters is the incentive structure. Do the three branches of government each have an interest in ensuring that the other branches function properly without overstepping their constitutionally prescribed bounds?

Perhaps the theory is that the three branches are to some degree in competition with each other, such that no branch wishes to see the others become too powerful.[46] Neither Montesquieu nor the American founders, however, clearly explain why this should be thought to be the case. The legislature makes laws, the judiciary interprets the laws and determines when they have been violated, and the executive enforces the laws. Now suppose that the legislature passes laws that extend beyond the matters that the Constitution authorizes it to regulate. By this I mean, not laws that infringe upon the powers of the other branches of government, but laws that infringe upon the liberties of the people. In what way would this render the executive or judicial branches worse off? If anything, the latter two branches should be expected to expand. The more laws there are to enforce, the larger the executive branch will have to be. Likewise, the more restrictive the legal regime is, the more cases the courts will have to try and thus the larger the judiciary will have to be. If each branch wants to be larger and more powerful, there is some reason to think they should make common cause. There is, at any rate, no obvious reason to think they should each try to prevent the others from infringing upon the freedoms of the people.

Nor is there any reason to think that the powers each branch of government has over the others can be used only for good and not for ill. Take the power of the executive branch to appoint judges. The president could use this power to ensure the integrity of the judiciary. Or he could use it to ensure a lack of integrity - for example, to ensure that only judges who share his ideology and are prepared to advance that ideology without regard to the Constitution are appointed. The realistic pessimism with which the American founders viewed human nature should have led them to see the latter possibility as far more likely than the former.

All of this is borne out by experience. At least since the time of the New Deal, Presidents have routinely appointed judges according to ideology, and both the executive and judicial branches of government have been complicit in the expansion of legislative power. The various unconstitutional federal agencies and programs are by now so entrenched that it is extraordinarily unlikely that any judge would at this point vote to start enforcing the Tenth Amendment. Any individual suspected of harboring attitudes sympathetic to such a move would have no chance of being appointed by any president nor of being confirmed by the Senate.

9.5 Conclusion

We human beings are selfish social animals. We live together, and yet we each care much more about ourselves than about the vast majority of others. As a result, we face the fundamental social problem of predation: how are things to be arranged so that human beings do not continually exploit and abuse each other?

The standard solution in social philosophy begins by proposing a radical inequality: a single institution with power over all other individuals and organizations. For Hobbes, the solution ends there. For democratic theorists, a series of fetters must next be attached to the central authority in the effort to restrain it from exploiting and abusing the rest of society. The mechanisms of restraint include popular elections, a free press, constitutional limits, and the separation of powers.

Despite their limitations, these mechanisms have proved valuable. They produce a form of government markedly less abusive than the typical totalitarian government. Democratic societies rarely suffer acute, easily preventable disasters, and they almost never murder large numbers of their own people. Some of the more blatant governmental misdeeds are reported in the popular press, so that the worst sort of excesses are deterred. Judges have been sympathetic to at least some constitutional restrictions on government and have therefore chosen to enforce them. Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion are usually fairly well preserved in constitutional democracies. Thus, if one is confined to the design of a state-based social system, the traditional mechanisms of restraint are by no means to be scorned.

My aim, however, has been to argue that these mechanisms cannot satisfy all the hopes that democratic theorists have pinned on them. The ballot box is of limited utility in ensuring responsive government, since it is not in the interests of individual voters to make more than token efforts at rational and informed voting. The complexity of modern government makes it impossible for even the most dedicated citizen to stay informed about more than a vanishingly small fraction of the state's activities. The news media are of limited utility, since it is not in their interests to report on the great majority of governmental errors and turpitudes. Constitutions are of limited use, since one must rely upon the government to enforce the constitution against itself, and it is rarely in the government's interests to do so faithfully. Finally, the separation of powers is of limited utility, since the separate branches of government stand to gain more by making common cause in extending government power than by vigilantly restraining each other's power. As a result, even democratic governments have grown to enormous proportions in modern times and developed into tools for small, well-organized interest groups to exploit the rest of society.

To make further headway on the problem of social predation, we must confront its underlying cause. Predatory behavior does not occur merely because human beings are selfish. It occurs because human beings are selfish and some human beings are much more powerful than others. Powerful, selfish people use their positions to exploit and abuse those much weaker than themselves. The standard solutions to the problem of human predation all start by cementing the very condition most likely to cause predatory behavior - the concentration of power - and only then do they try to steer away from its natural consequences. The alternative is to begin with an extreme decentralization of coercive power. How such a system works will be discussed in more detail presently.

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The Problem of Political Authority

An Examination of the Right to Coerce and the Duty to Obey

Michael Huemer

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