Bentham v. Hume

David Brooks writes an entertaining piece on our choices for health care reform and climate change policy. He contrasts "Bentham," who thinks he knows how to find cost savings in the health insurance industry and which technologies can reduce global warming, with "Hume," who confesses he's not smart enough to reorganize major sectors of the economy and therefore proposes market-based solutions.



On the economics, Brooks is absolutely right. On the politics, ludicrously wrong. His punch line:



I’ve introduced you to my friends Mr. Bentham and Mr. Hume because they represent the choices we face on issue after issue. This country is about to have a big debate on the role of government. The polarizers on cable TV think it’s going to be a debate between socialism and free-market purism. But it’s really going to be a debate about how to promote innovation.



The people on Mr. Bentham’s side believe that government can get actively involved in organizing innovation. (I’ve taken his proposals from the Waxman-Markey energy bill and the Baucus health care bill.)



The people on Mr. Hume’s side believe government should actively tilt the playing field to promote social goods and set off decentralized networks of reform, but they don’t think government knows enough to intimately organize dynamic innovation.



So let’s have the debate. But before we do, let’s understand that Mr. Bentham is going to win. The lobbyists love Bentham’s intricacies and his stacks of spending proposals, which they need in order to advance their agendas. If you want to pass anything through Congress, Bentham’s your man.



Notice that Brooks can point to real people with real policy proposals pushing the Benthamite view. By contrast, he can't point to any person or proposal pushing Hume's view. So the practical choice before us is not between Bentham and Hume, it's between Bentham and a character that I'll call Org. Bentham believes that government can step in and fix our problems through sheer intelligence. Org thinks that if he sticks his fingers in his ears and shouts Na-na-na-na loud enough, the problems will miraculously go away.