Freedom, Justice, and Economics

British territorial abdication following WWII caused disasters around the world. Two were particularly grievous.

First, the British failed to prevent partition of India and Pakistan or create conditions of safe passage for the religion-based mass migration that occurred. Hatred and fear during the exchange of 15 million people between the two new nations resulted in between 200,000 and 1 million deaths. The over-hasty British abdication on the subcontinent also caused a half-century of suspicion and war, now overhung with nuclear threat.

Second, the British let the Jews and Arabs fight it out in Palestine. The result was a tenuous state, surrounded by enemies, with millions of universally unwelcome refugees just across its borders.

Tired after WWII, and incapable of sustaining Empire, the British around the world just left. I do not quibble with their decision to depart; but for the tragedies their abdication of responsibility invited, we are more than fair to blame Britain.

Addendum:  Pankaj Mishra’s excellent recent review of Indian Summer by Alex von Tunzelmann concludes, “The rival nationalisms and politicized religions the British Empire brought into being now clash in an enlarged geographical arena; and the human costs of imperial overreaching seem unlikely to attain a final tally for many more decades.”

Somehow the debate about gay marriage seems to have quieted. Surely this state of affairs is temporary. When the debate resumes, what light can be shed in terms of the virtues of freedom and justice and the science of economics?

First, a note that it’s not clear or uncontroversial what “marriage” means. Dictionary.com has wholly ten definitions; Merriam-Webster has at least a couple that are relevant. Both refer once or more to a “legal and social institution.” I’ll take this to mean that (from a policy perspective) marriage is a form of contract.

This definition is fortunate, since economics hasn’t come up with much worthwhile to say about love, but has a whole lot of good insight into contracts. Economics (and the New Institutional Economics, specifically) teaches us that governments should enforce contracts but leave people with the freedom to devise contracts pretty much however they wish. To the extent a marriage results in a set of contractual rights and responsibilities, economic theory suggests that any individuals (ie, individuals of any sexual orientation, and any number of individuals) should be free to marry.

From this perspective, the right policy solution in relation to marriage is to have the state do what it ordinarily does: enforce contracts. Moreover, it should make no difference to the state whether those contracts are called marriages, civil unions, domestic partnership agreements, or something else. To minimize conflict (really!), I would favor the state ignoring “marriage” entirely, and recognizing only some contract labelled with a less inflammatory name like “civil union.”

Having reserved the state’s ordinary role to the state, it is fitting that we reserve the ordinary role of private community institutions to private community institutions. These institutions, including churches, mosques, and synagogues, define memes and respond with speed and grace to what their members wish. Giving their members the thrill and honor of marriage, however they define it, should be their right entirely, not the government’s.