On Altruism, Externalities and Bossiness

At first glance, it is hard to understand the high dudgeon with which those on the political Right have responded to policies meant to address key pandemic externalities. It should be clear to everyone that efforts anyone makes to avoid getting Covid and to self-isolate once getting it are beneficial to everyone else in their county and everyone else in their nation. Thus, leaving aside any government policy, you are doing a good turn for others if you get vaccinated. (See “Two Dimensions of Pandemic-Control Externalities.”)

I know personally several articulate anti-vaxxers in the Covid context. One thing I hear from them is a deep resentment of being told what to do—not just by the government, but by heavy-handed attempts at social pressure. The delicious feeling of self-righteousness on the part of those who despise anti-vaxxers comes at a cost of extra resistance to getting vaccinated by those who hate being told what to do. Bossiness, which I myself can easily fall into, begets resistance—regardless of the good sense behind the bossy directive.

One important symptom of bossiness has been an effort to control the narrative. Sweet reason should be able to persuade without trying to suppress arguments.

Unlike the Leftist impulse to enforce policy by command and control—by government regulations and social pressure—the instinct of most economists is to deal with an externality by something in the spirit of a Pigou tax or subsidy. In the climate context, that would be a carbon tax. In the context of vaccination against Covid, we actually see a small Pigou subsidy in the prize lotteries for those who are vaccinated. Prize lotteries don’t make people angry like being told they are deplorable if they don’t get vaccinated.

In the absence of a Pigou tax or subsidy of the appropriate size, altruism matters. Rather than a long list of rules, a simple ethical principle for situations with externalities is to act as if there were an appropriate Pigou tax or subsidy in place.

Yet, I see it as always reasonable to argue for and lobby for an appropriate Pigou tax so one doesn’t have to try to be noble in relation to a particular externality. There is limited energy and attention that we have for ethical issues. Why not economize on that by converting as many ethical issues as possible into pragmatic issues of responding to an appropriately-sized Pigou tax or subsidy? Save our ethical energy and attention for issues that aren’t so easy to deal with by a simple measure. There are, for example, many areas where we need people to be good that can’t be observed as easily as whether they get vaccinated or not.

There is a fallacy I have seen in the Wall-Street Journal editorial pages. It says that people are totally free to donate to charity or to get vaccinated, so we don’t need any government intervention to encourage them to pay taxes or to get vaccinated. But it is totally rational for me to care about the state of the nation and of the least fortunate in the nation enough that I am willing to do my part in an effective collective effort to make things better, but for me to be selfish enough that the amount I can accomplish on my own to not be worth that same sacrifice. To be more formal, I think many people are altruistic enough that they would sacrifice a lot (as part of a collective effort where many people each individually sacrificed a lot) to have a huge number of strangers be better off, but not altruistic enough that they would sacrifice a lot to have a few strangers be better off. We admire those who are altruistic enough to sacrifice a lot to have a few strangers better off. And it is also meritorious to be willing to do one’s part in a joint effort!

To make the same point a little more vivid, if I have several siblings, I might be selfish enough to not want to take on the whole financial burden of caring for an aged parent, happy to do my part and worried that my siblings won’t do their part. In that situation, I might be glad that the government has set up social security taxes that take money from me and my siblings and give it to my aged parent.

Let me conclude by coming full circle to bossiness and its ilk. Unskillfulness in interpersonal relations across political chasms makes it hard for people to think straight. Enmity, self-righteousness and bossiness interfere with widespread wisdom.

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