Thursday, September 10, 2009
Is Anything in Life Not Economic?
In my Constitutional Law class the other day I came across a rather troubling idea: that nothing in life is not economic in nature, or--if you just shuddered at the sight of a double negative--that everything in life is economic in nature.
Let me back up a second and explain how such a preposterous notion came up in a class on the Constitution. There is a clause in the Constitution called the Commerce Clause (Art. I, § 8, cl. 3), which gives Congress the power to regulate "commerce...among the several states." At the beginning of this nation's history, this clause was interpreted rather narrowly. "Commerce" meant essentially only merchant and trading activity, and was usually distinguished from manufacturing, farming, and producing goods for sale. But, over time lawyers started playing fast and loose with the definitions (I know, you simply can't believe that). The Commerce Clause soon encompassed not only commerce but also manufacturing and production.
That's a pretty broad definition of commerce, isn't it? Well, you ain't seen nothing yet. During the New Deal, commerce came to include anything that "in the aggregate might have a substantial effect" on commerce. Pretty soon lawyers and judges were simply using "economic regulation" as a shorthand reference for Congress' power to regulate commerce. And, what's more appalling, these same lawyers and judges were allowing Congress to regulate everything in sight, on the grounds that everything in life is economic.
Fortunately, the Supreme Court appears to have put a stop to some of this insanity in two recent cases (United States v. Lopez and United States v. Morrison) and ruled that Congress cannot declare everything economic and then regulate it. In Lopez, the Supreme Court held that the federal government did not have power under the Commerce Clause to outlaw guns in school zones. It's not that the Supreme Court was in favor of guns in schools; it's just that it's a simple non-economic criminal matter for the states to handle. But--the government's lawyers pleaded--if you allow guns into one school in Texas, that can affect the way students there behave; and if those students don't behave well, they won't perform well academically; and if they don't perform well academically, they won't get good enough jobs; and that in the long run, repeated thousands of times, will affect interstate commerce. A simple crime by a dumb teenager has been transformed (by crafty lawyers) into an assault on the economic foundations of America.
But, how did we get to the point where many of the brightest people in the land think that carrying a gun in a school is an economic activity? It's more than just a devious tactic employed by lawyers to win cases. On the contrary, it has been theoretically justified by many thinkers, and reflects the course of society in the last 250 years. At first blush, it may remind you of Karl Marx's economic determinism. But this idea has also been advanced by at least one leading contemporary legal scholar, who is usually (though, in my opinion, mistakenly) considered a free market zealot. Judge Richard Posner, the maven of the Law and Economics movement, has defined crime in purely economic terms as the "coercive transfer of either wealth or utility from victim to wrongdoer." The word "utility" is telling. It should remind you of the theory of utilitarianism, first systematically articulated and named by Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. What Posner (and many modern libertarians) have contributed to Bentham's and Mill's theories is an emphasis on modern economic analysis as a way of determining the "aggregate social value" of an activity. Economics no longer examines individual choices, but arrogates to itself the right to judge everything in society.
So, is there anything that's not economic in nature? Can we prove the utilitarians wrong? I think many readers of this post (if indeed there are many readers of this post) would automatically name examples of non-economic activities such as art or love. And they would of course be right. But, what about blogging? As one cynical website explains blogging: "Never before have so many people with so little to say said so much to so few." Doesn't that prove that blogging has no real utility, and therefore isn't economic in nature?
I think that we here at the Guild Review should transform this cynical witticism into a joyful affirmation of blogging, and of non-economic activity in general. We do it because it's useless--we do it because it's not economic!
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4 comments:
I did not know about Morrison, though I remember some mention of Lopez in Principles of American Politics... Glad to see that the Supreme Court is doing their job and (a) being sensible and (b) reigning in Congress.
I've always thought of economics as more of a discipline, a way of thinking, rather than as an activity. Economics is about value, about costs and benefits: how we measure them, how we maximize or minimize them, how we exchange them, and how we communicate information about them. There are some activities - such as manufacturing or trade - that better lend themselves to economic analysis, but there is nothing entirely outside the bounds of economics (just as there is no text that cannot be subjected to literary criticism, though the phone book might make for rather dreary work).
The problem, it seems, is that some have construed "interstate commerce", a particular kind of activity with fairly obvious parameters, to mean "anything which we can subject to economic analysis", which is darn near everything.
It would not surprise me if this problem has run in parallel with a problem in higher education: students are no longer taught disciplines, different ways of thinking, but are instead taught information (with a splash of political correctness). The result are graduates who have only a limited ability to think for themselves (though they may know a great deal of information). Such graduates have little practical experience distinguishing subjects (or activities) from disciplines.
Finally, regarding blogging: yes, it is, in a certain sense, a useless activity. If we accept "use" to be a narrow, materialist term. I would in fact contend that blogging serves a whole host of uses, though most of them are intangible. Thus, I'm more likely to think of blogging as a rejection of materialism and a celebration of the incorporeal than a "useless" or "non-economic activity". But call it what you will, and keep up the fine posts!
"Economics" can be understood in very broad terms. The word actually has oikos as its root, a word which means "house". Economics is originally household management (see here: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=economy) and I find no reason to think that it must always pertain to the kinds of exchanges where one measures by "profit". Indeed, one would measure successful household management by things like having good food to eat and making sure the children are educated, etc.
I think actually it's the focus on profit as the end that makes economics a kind of dirty science. I'm reminded of what Pope Benedict said in Caritas in Veritate: "Profit is useful if it serves as a means towards an end that provides a sense both of how to produce it and how to make good use of it. Once profit becomes the exclusive goal, if it is produced by improper means and without the common good as its ultimate end, it risks destroying wealth and creating poverty." (So... it would be a good thing if your blog were profitable, so long as profit wasn't the end in itself.)
In any event, I have no problem with an extremely broad characterization of the science of economics as long as within that science it can be remembered that material profit is not the end. Living is, and this other stuff is only good so far as it supports life.
The principle issue raised here by Stephen is just a question of legal definition. The word "commerce" is simply too elastic in its present use. (Or is it?) Words change meaning over time, so laws based on these words will change too. "Framers' intent" is quickly irrelevant since it's impossible to translate directly into our present time. If we don't want the Federal Government intruding into matters of State and local governance, then I think we actually need to be revising the Constitution proactively for the purpose of such exclusion. It's inevitable otherwise that consolidated power, and its legal justification, will continue to expand.
(By the way--the passage in Caritas in Veritate that is cited is from paragraph 21.)
Good comments. However, I would still contend that the focus on economic analysis (even broadly defined) still can't be applied to many situations. For instance, I quoted Judge Posner's definition of crime in conjunction with Morrison because Morrison involved a case of rape. I have a hard time seeing how even the broadest definition of utility can be applied to a case of rape. The rapist's motivations cannot be reduced (even after the fact by a distinerested third party) to some of kind of cost-benefit analysis or minimization of risk. Rape, then, seems essentially uneconomic. A lot of other crimes of a similar nature are uneconomic as well.
As for Paul raising the question of language and original intent--you seem to suggest that we be constantly revising the Constitution proactively. Yet, the whole point of having a written constitution is that it shouldn't have to be amended often. At times I think that the most honest solution is to admit that we're not going to stay true to a narrow set of ideals from 1787, and just do away with the Constitution. Great Britain has an unwritten constitution, and that hasn't caused any serious problems for them.
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