The Administrative State – Hillsdale College Packages Communism as “Constitutionalism”

Republicans lately claim that the most common form of decision making throughout history – tribal quorum – is actually some exceptional thing created by the US Constitution. And they claim that specialization and institutional knowledge production are evil, an un-American “oligarchy”. They claim that the action of the crowd, the public mob, is the design intended by the US Constitution. They use this idea to foment communist revolution, masquerading as American tradition.

For example, Republicans lately attack the Food and Drug Administration, seemingly believing that which medicines can be used for what should be decided on Twitter, or left to the decisions of individuals. It is obvious that a baker or carpenter does not have the time or knowledge to figure out for himself which medicines do what. And rather than different claims about drugs being filtered on Twitter or by popular gossip, there needs to be a specialist institution designed with some rules and incentives, to produce this knowledge. Independent knowledge institutions are not unconstitutional.

Republicans counter that such institutions are self-interested. And the only way that the decisions about what drugs do what can be decided in the public interest, is if it is decided by popular vote. Such an appeal to the public by demagogues, is communism. It is the idea that if the collective seizes conscious direct control of the means of production – whether factories or institutions that produce knowledge about drugs or the money supply – the output will better benefit the people. They are of course chasing a mirage. This is not some “populism” unique to the United States in the present day, but has been sold in every nation since the industrial revolution.

The freedom to decide which drugs work or what drug to use, by your own choice or by popular vote, has never existed and cannot exist. Most of the things people do, from starting fires to spelling words to tying their shoes, are done using knowledge provided to them by someone else. Republicans claim the teachings of churches are valuable, but none of these teachings were refined by a popular vote. Specialization and division of labor enable us to process more information and solve more problems than some sort of collective decision making through democracy. Cultural and other institutions then conserve and serve the knowledge refined.

The baker who feeds us has long been understood to be self interested. What we are supposed to be able to do in the United States, is design the processes and incentive structures that regulate such independent decision makers to serve the public benefit, whether courts, bakers, stock brokers, doctors, the FDA, or other businesses or institutions. The Constitution does not provide a means to decide everything by popular vote, but a legal structure to regulate and limit the incentives facing independent actors using law. The most basic fixed regulation, is our rights in the Bill of Rights. And the means of making sure independent decision makers don’t violate these rights, is not replacing their decisions with a 51% vote, but by going to court to enforce rights, contracts, and boundaries.

A recent video by Hillsdale College, complains that the government decides what ladders are safe, and then imposes this corrupt decision on the people, rather than letting the people decide what ladders are safe by popular vote or their own judgment (or letting a populist dictator decide). The Constitution does not exist to guarantee people can vote on what ladders are safe. The Constitution provides a means to sue under the Fifth Amendment, if your freedom to buy and sell what ladder you want, has been infringed by another independent actor. And then the court decides if your rights have been infringed. And if you don’t like what this present law allows, you can amend the Constitution. Discarding independent legal and knowledge institutions as inherently flawed (rather than reforming them or creating new ones), to instead decide things by the whim of the crowd (which is flawed much worse), is communist anarchy.

The Hillsdale College video also said that if crime exists, or the government is unable to solve every murder, or not enough people are arrested and cleansed off the streets, that is somehow against our Constitutional tradition. But crime and attempts to solve it (as well as perceived crime, heretics, and undesirables) have existed long before the US Constitution. And the idea that the government can create utopia by arresting more people is an ancient tribal impulse and exactly the opposite of our founding ideals. What American founding ideals really say, is increased government and power to cleanse people are abused and corrupted and operate irrationally, and therefore do not and cannot benefit the individual. The government must be restrained, from being endowed with power by the whim of the crowd to infringe the rights of individuals chasing mirages and inciting against scapegoats. It is a communist idea that a better world exists, but some evil independent actors are preventing the government from producing it on our behalf, and those people who are against the public spirit need to be crushed.

The general idea, whether promoted by Hillsdale College or Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, is that leaders of independent institutions (whether wealthy bankers and businessmen or government institutions such as judges or the Centers for Disease Control), are actually an elite aristocracy that should not exist according to our Constitution and founding ideals. But replacing independent decision makers with the collective will of the man on the street is not uniquely American, it is just communist agitation. It is saying the common man is a victim of anyone who ignores his opinion to make a decision. And Republicans advocate to instead give that power to a dictator, who promises to use that power to instead do what the common man wants. They argue the intention of the Constitution, is to enable a 51% majority to vote on what everyone should do.

The First Amendment is a law, it only exists to the extent it can be interpreted and enforced by a court. Huge crowds of people on the Internet offer competing opinions on who should say what, and who should be allowed to disassociate themselves with people whose statements they don’t like. These crowds of people then claim the dynamics of their behavior, is the American Constitutional design of “free speech”. They claim their shouting competition, and not a court, is the mechanism of enforcement of the Constitution and rule of law. The dynamics of the crowd have existed since the first two people had a child. Crowds shouting about what they want other people to do, is not the designed product of the US Constitution. The solution to protect political speech is not to agitate in public but to sue under the law. Or to change the laws creating incentives for or limiting independent actors, not to replace their decisions with a vote or a dictator.

Freedom and law are two sides of the same coin – law defines freedom – and democratic rule is their opposite. But people in the United States have embraced governance by mob on the Internet, and abandoned the concept of law (and what Friedrich Hayek called “the extended order”), they don’t even know what it is. They imagine that the opinion of the crowd, and the crowd getting their way and controlling everything, is law. They add to this the fake idea that the opinion of the crowd is the opposite of fascism, because they imagine dictators and autocrats they have heard about in other countries go against the will of the people.

Quite the opposite, fascist dictators are the arm of the will of the 51% majority. Fascist dictators are the means created by such crowds, to impose their whim on independent actors. The Federal Reserve or the FDA operating independently under dispersed legal regulation by the incentives decided by elected representatives, are the opposite of the crowd controlling everything through the arm of an autocratic executive branch. Autocrats are not the opposite of the will of the people, but rather obtain their power by promising to do what the people want instead of businessmen or judges deciding independently. The crowd will certainly have an opinion what drug you can use, and what words you can say, and no limits on their power to obtain it.

If people don’t like being banned on social media, or don’t like the decisions of the Federal Reserve or FDA, they can sue in court, or vote to change the law if they cannot. But the idea that Donald Trump or Vivek Ramaswamy will go in and eliminate all these institutions and replace them with people who do what the crowd demands, is fascism and communism masquerading as America tradition. The Constitution provides a dispersed system of laws and courts, an unconscious web of incentives and price signals to channel the energies of free independent actors, not conscious collective mob will. People who want to bypass the courts, and private business and cultural institutions, and replace the outcome of independent actors with the popular will, are communists. Hillsdale College is typical communist agitators wearing a poor costume of American tradition.