#econlib

Today at Econlib, we’re joining our friends at Liberty Matters in their celebration of the 250th anniversary of the publication of An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations through a series of six weekly essays. In the first of these, Eric Schliesser writes about implications of Adam Smith‘s theory of the division of labor. From the article: Book 1 of Wealth of Nations is a…

Sam Enright works on innovation policy at Progress Ireland, an independent policy think tank in Dublin, and runs a publication called The Fitzwilliam. Most relevant to us, on his personal blog, he writes a popular link roundup; what follows is an abridged version of his Links for January.  Blogs and short links 1. Henry Oliver on the literary anniversaries of 2026. Henry is also looking to hire…

We’ve posted the second of two cross-posted articles with Law & Liberty in response to the Supreme Court ruling in Learning Resources v. Trump. Today, David Hebert explains why the economic fallout from the tariffs can’t be reversed by the Court’s ruling. From the article: Just over a year ago, citing the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), President Trump began unilaterally…

This morning we’re hosting the first of two cross-posted articles with Law & Liberty in response to the Supreme Court’s decision in Learning Resources v. Trump. The first, by John O. McGinnis, provides an overview of the legal aspects of the ruling. From the article: The Supreme Court’s decision in Learning Resources v. Trump will have immediate political effects, substantial economic effects,…

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is upending professions as diverse as art, cinema, accounting, national defense, and education. Some even argue that AI will render almost all work obsolete. They say its ability to “think” and accomplish tasks previously solely in the realm of human ability will mean that humans will not need to work; the machines will do everything for us. Whether this…

Another point in al-Gharbi’s argument is that, in the guise of social justice activism, woke activists promote policies that benefit themselves, but are harmful to the poor and vulnerable, as a means of protecting their own status. He shows that when many of the policies associated with progressivism (or wokeism) today were first introducedduring the first Great Awokening. These included welfare and social aid programs, education requirements, increased and more rigorously enforced regulations, licensing and certification laws, zoning and development regulations, and technocratic economic management. As al-Gharbi notes, the early progressive movement originally pursued these policies as a means of ensuring high-status social positions would be kept out of reach of the “wrong” kind of people (women and racial and religious minorities in particular) and as a means of bringing about eugenicist goals. This creates an interesting situation. The goals and motivations of modern progressives are very different from the explicitly racist, classist, and eugenicist goals of the early 20th-century progressive movement. Yet in pursuit of outcomes that are the opposite of those intended by early progressives, modern progressives tend to advocate…basically the same set of policies.

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Another possible explanation is the bootleggers and Baptists approach: Some progressives are Baptists, and genuinely believe that, say, occupational licensing laws are beneficial on net and their absence would bring about all manner of terrible outcomes. Others, however, cynically use licensing laws to protect incumbents and shut people out of upward mobility, as in the case of Sandy Meadows, described here by George Will

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But Musa al-Gharbi’s explanation is that the proverbial bootlegger and Baptist are one and the same. The woke want to be upwardly socially mobile and protect their status — their inner bootlegger. But they also want to bring about egalitarian goals — their inner Baptist. When there’s a conflict between their inner bootlegger and Baptist, the woke behave like bootleggers and speak like Baptists – and construct narratives to convince others, but mostly themselves, that their behavior is also Baptist in its motivation as well. I think there some truth to this analysis. But, how much of the variance does it explain? I’m still skeptical that it explains much about why modern progressives support the policies of they do.

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Supposing I’m right about al-Gharbi’s support for an increased minimum wage, it naturally raises the question – if al-Gharbi can support this particular policy today for reasons contrary to the initial gatekeeping purposes it was meant to serve, can’t the same be true today of progressive who favor, say, licensing, certification, and educational requirements? And even if I’m wrong about al-Gharbi’s support for minimum wage increases, surly it’s not hard to imagine why progressives today might support that policy even while opposing the goals for which it was originally instated. Indeed, I suspect the vast majority of progressive simply have no idea that displacing the poor and vulnerable was the original goal of so many of the policies they support. I can’t help but wonder if there is a potentially much simpler explanation underneath it. But first, a digression into a different Scott Alexander post. In the post I have in mind, Scott Alexander describes (without necessarily endorsing) “the theory that the fear of disease is the root of all conservativism.” This elaborate theory, he points out, actually has a lot of fancy research supporting it:

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Both of these grand and complex theories Alexander was proposing were meant to explain a particular question – specifically, the difference between Republicans and Democrats on the issue of how to handle the possibility of an Ebola outbreak in 2014. At that time, the position among Republicans was that the disease should be contained through travel restrictions and strict quarantines of those who might have been potentially exposed. And the position among Democrats was that even suggesting the use of even very limited quarantines or lockdowns to contain the spread of disease was an unconscionable violation of civil liberties, was harmful to the poor and vulnerable, and was intrinsically racist.

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What’s interesting is this was written in 2014, which, dear reader, means it was written about a half-decade BC (Before Covid). And when Covid came around, suddenly the partisan divide flipped, with Democrats being overwhelmingly likely to embrace even widespread lockdowns and quarantines, and Republicans taking the opposite view. (Libertarians, by contrast, were consistently on the “oppose quarantines” side for both occasions.) This is pretty difficult to square with either of Alexander’s Grand Theories. However, in the same post, he does suggest there might be a simpler explanation: Is it just random? A couple of Republicans were coincidentally the first people to support a quarantine, so other Republicans felt they had to stand by them, and then Democrats felt they had to oppose it, and then that spread to wider and wider circles? And if by chance a Democrat had proposed quarantines before a Republican, the situation would have reversed itself? Could be.

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In the same way, it seems to me that a simpler explanation is that progressives initially recommended a variety of social and economic policies for particular reasons at the time. But over time, those policy positions themselves became durably coded as “progressive.” And, over decades, people who thought of themselves as progressive would simply adopt whatever policies were coded with the proper political valance. They weren’t progressive because they supported those policies – they supported those policies because they considered themselves to be progressive. As Arnold Kling would say, we choose what to believe based on who we believe.

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