Under the mask – Econlib

In his book Minority reportHL Mencken writes: “The urge to save humanity is almost always just a false face for the urge to rule it. Power is what all messiahs really seek: not the opportunity to serve. This is true even for the devout brethren who share the gospel [sic] to foreign parts.”

With a little rewriting we can update the quote for protectionism:

“The urge to defend the nation is almost always just a false face for the urge to rule it. Power is what all protectionists seek: not the opportunity to serve.”

National defense is a common justification for protectionist tariffs, and it has been taken to absurd extremes: clothespins, sugar, and baby food have all been described as essential to national defense and subject to tariffs.

In a particularly wacky example: Senator Rick Scott of Florida has called for a ban on Chinese garlic because it threatens national security. If we were a nation of vampires, perhaps this statement would make sense. But it is difficult to see how garlic, even garlic that may be contaminated, poses a threat to national security. Scott says the garlic poses a potential health threat, but that is not the same as a national security threat.

The strange thing about the argument Scott makes is that he doesn’t need to ban Chinese garlic as a threat to national security if it is as dangerous as he claims. We already have a food safety program here in the US, and foreign goods are subject to it as well. If Chinese garlic poses a threat to public health, the FDA has the authority to act by issuing recalls and otherwise effectively banning the contaminated product if it poses a threat to human or animal health. It is unclear why Senator Scott’s action is necessary.

To return to a theme I’ve been pushing for in recent posts, any intervention must be justified and go beyond mere hypothetical musing. Just showing that there is some kind of intervention could be achieving a certain desired outcome does not mean that the action is justified or desirable. We must examine the current state of legislation and regulations to see whether the intervention is actually justified, or whether it is merely corruption hiding behind a false face. One question Senator Scott (or others defending this intervention) must answer is: Why is current law inadequate? In the US it is already illegal to sell contaminated food. If Chinese garlic poses such a threat, why hasn’t the FDA stopped it?

National defense is one of those justifications that people don’t seem to think about all that much. It is invoked and simply not questioned. This is probably why “national defense” is such a successful falsehood in rent-seeking: few look too closely at the mask. Perhaps, like the partygoers at Poe’s masquerade in the Mask of the Read Deaththe people who support false national defense claims are afraid to see what lies beneath that mask.