COMMUNICATION I

Walter Block, in his review article, ”Public finance texts cannot justify government taxation: a critique” (Summer 1993), claims that Canadian public finance textbooks fail to provide any sound justification for taxation or even for the existence of government at all. While few could have taken Block too seriously, the editors of this journal ceded him thirty-eight pages and perhaps that alone indicates that some comment is necessary.

Block claims that those doing public economics should stick to positive economics, value-free analysis of the workings of the economy, and leave normative economics, which deals with “what ought to be” rather than ”what is” to the philosophers. While criticizing public finance writers for imposing their ethics on their readers, Block is seemingly unaware that he does the same thing as he promotes his ”ethic of laissez faire.” Block sees his value judgments concerning ”economic freedom” as ”an important part of the methodology of the profession” (p. 248) that is, according to him, supposed to be doing only positive economics.

For Block, only deviations from pure laissez faire require justification: ”The distribution [of income] arising from market interactions can only be justifiably criticized if the ethical norms ... [used to justify redistribution] are themselves valid. But no such proof has even been considered, much less offered” (p. 251). Block conveniently demands such proof from others while offering no proof that his laissez faire ethic is valid.

While failing to practise what he preaches, Block also reveals that he does not understand what the practice of public economics is ultimately all about, namely the ”art of economics.”

John Neville Keynes, in his classic The Scope and Method of Political Econo- m y , described this as the search for practical rules of action to attain given ends, such as equity and efficiency. This requires consideration of both positive and normative economics.

When Block criticizes the pervasiveness of normative economics in the texts, he is really attacking the way textbook writers practice the art of

Roderick Hill is at the University of New Brunswick, Saint John; Michael Rushton is at the University of Regina.

CANADIAN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION / ADMINISTRATION PUBLIQUE DU CANADA VOLUME 37, NO. 2 (SUMMER/ETE), PP. 365-366.

RODERICK i HLL, MICHAEL RUSHTON

economics. His real disagreement is with the claims that certain actions by the state can achieve a more efficient or more equitable allocation of re- sources than in the absence of state action. Block believes government action is always “a recipe ... for disaster” (p. 229).

Before lie will agree that some government action is justified, Block dtmands that public finance texts justify such action in any and all imagin- able situations. He turns to an abstract world of his own devising to attempt a wdiictio ad nbsiirdz~iiz, where any justification for government action in a specific situation is turned into a slippery slope that will lead us beyond the level of state control of the economy seen in “ ’the good old days’ of Stalin and Lenin” (p. 244).

He adopts this untenable position in the hope that his preferred alterna- tive, pure laissez faire, will win by default. He resorts to this because he can offer no evidence that, as a practical rule of action, it will be preferable to some form of government action.

Any teacher of public economics with any wit at all knows, and teaches, that government cannot solve all problems, that some market failures are, all tliings considered, worth dealing with and others are not, that govern- ments have their own inefficiencies. While Block pretends otherwise (e.g., p. 2281, public finance texts do not claim that government action is “perfect” and always justified.

Walter Block is an example par excellence of what conservative philoso- pher Michael Oakeshott, in his Iintiorialisin in Politics, called the Rationalist: one who constructs political systems in his head, believing himself to be following the only guide worth following, reason, and completely unwilling to believe that the collective experience, traditions, or the circumstances of real human beings in this particular time and place involve anything worth considering. But the practice of public economics must always include a judicious measure of common sense. It is an inappropriate field of study for the Rationalist, who demands institutions and policies invariant to all times and places.

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