Tyler Cowen on Blackwater: It's More than "Perception"

Tyler Cowen has tackled (or should I simply say “molested”) a favorite topic of mine—the question of when, exactly, “the market” yields a better solution than “the government.” Tyler’s opening shot is a New York Times op-ed in which he argues that if Blackwater is misbehaving in Iraq, why then blame it on the government that hired them (link).

In a blog entry today, he characterizes his own argument as saying that “perception and accountability are important enough in contemporary Iraq that we should be using contractors less in these capacities (link). I suspect the problem goes as god deal deeper than “perception.” “Accountability” is surely part of it, but I suspect there are deeper issues here that we (= at least Tyler, and I) haven’t yet begun to articulate. We’re all inured to the point of tedium with the notion that “the government,” aka “the mess in Washington,” aka “the pointy-headed bureaucrats,” aka “the commissars,” can’t get anything right. We’re not nearly so well schooled in the proposition that a lot of the problems of “the government” may be endemic to any large organization, public or private. And I suspect we haven’t done nearly well enough in identifying those vices/defects that are endemic to private (as distinct from public) enterprise.

Fifty years ago, we were all accustomed to the proposition that any evil was a problem of “capitalism,” and that come the revolution, we would all have egg in our beer. Most of us now understand the rhetorical deficiency of comparing an actual capitalism to a hypothetical socialism. We don’t seem to be so alert yet to the insight that it works the other way round: nothing to be gained by comparing an actual public entity with a hypothetical market.

Here and elsewhere, Tyler uses a quaint and affecting rhetorical strategy. Skim his piece the first time and you think you are reading the George Mason mantra—markets in tooth and claw. On second look, he says: hey, I didn’t really mean that, I know that things are complicated, and I’m wide open to exploring and discussing the complications.

Well, pin a rose on him for that. I’ll even give him an A for effort (okay, maybe a B plus). But there’s a lot more to be done and (lacking the talent and/or energy to do it myself), I look forward to his forthcoming, more ambitious and insightful forays.

Afterthought: Somewhere, perhaps tucked away in a cubical-office at Cal State Pimento, an untenured political science professor is crying—“hey, I know the answer to that question! Call on me! Call on me!" He just might be right.