Liberty and consequentialism

A few years ago a good friend of mine and I came out of a coffeeshop and she stopped in front of a women's clothing store and pointed at a then-new fashion trend and said:

I don't understand the fashion industry, the vast majority of women would look absolutely ridiculous in that.

And I, rather insensitively, said, "Well yes." That's the whole point of fashion. It serves women who want clothing that distinguishes them from most women—I can wear this and you cannot.

Later, when these same women are a little older, most begin to oppose fashion that reduces their "agency". That is to say the ability to convincingly play a role that will enable them to have desired effects on others. And we are all like that. We desire agency above liberty.

The problem is that our agency is necessarily threatened by the agency of others. When I am young and hot with clear, taut skin, a narrow waist and firm breasts (metaphorically speaking) I seek the kind of fashion that will allow me to exercise the agency those assets can achieve most effectively. When I am a little older and I need a little help hiding my weaknesses to achieve my desired agency, I'm not so enthusiastic about bare midriffs, short skirts and minimal support bras—and it's not just that I don't want to wear them, I don't want others wearing them either.

And the same happens with government. When my party or ideology is ascendant, I want the government to have lots of agency. When my party or ideology is in eclipse, I want to do to government what the Lilliputians did to Gulliver. And that goes triple if I feel alienated from or threatened by the political process at all times. That is what Bryan Caplan misses.

We keep assuming that people who push for more bureacracy are naive Weberians mistakenly thinking bureaucracy can be efficient when it may well be that it is giving them exactly what they want—a couple of more strings holding Gulliver down. Another way to look at is this: just because something doesn't look rational to me doesn't mean it isn't rational. I may say, look this bureaucratization of society doesn't produce an optimal result but who am I to say it isn't doing exactly what other people want of it.