Parrot talk: the repetition of common fallacies.

• Author: de Jasay, Anthony

Many social scientists and political journalists keep parrots as useful labor-saving pets. These parrots are hidden in their masters' bosoms and are so well trained that when they start talking, we believe we hear their masters' voices. One can nevertheless recognize that it is the parrot holding forth, by the fact that it is always the same few texts that are repeated. Most of the parrots like one or other of the brief texts that are reproduced here in italics.

The Production-Distribution Nexus

The social market economy, as well as market socialism, rests on the principle first enunciated by the great liberal thinker J. S. Mill that production must be governed by the laws of economics, but distribution of the product is for society to decide.

It is a sad truth that Mill did in fact say this. He must have imagined, as do so many social reformers to this day, that production and distribution are two distinct events that follow one another in real time. First, the cake is baked, and then we set about slicing it and distributing the slices. At this stage, it is decided whether the slices are to be equal or whether some should be bigger than others, who shall get which slice, and whether all should get slices. Fortunately, the cake has already been baked and will neither shrink nor swell depending on how it is sliced.

This, of course, is a childish fairytale image, for a moment's thought reveals that production and distribution are simultaneous aspects of the economic process. Output is distributed while it is produced. Wage earners get some of it as wages in exchange for their efforts; owners of capital get some of it as interest and rent in exchange for past saving. Entrepreneurs get the residual as profit in exchange for organization and risk bearing. By the time the cake is "baked," it is also sliced and those who played a part in baking it have all got their slices. No distributive decision is missing, left over for "society" to take.

What "society" can and typically does do is to use the state's coercive powers for taking possession by direct and indirect taxation of bits of everybody's slices. Thus, it can modify the primary distribution by a secondary redistribution. However, if you believe that doing this does not impinge on the "baking of the cake" that is taking place at the same time, you will believe anything.

The Myth of Equal Opportunity

Extreme egalitarianism is not a realistic objective. The aim should not be equality of outcomes, but equality of opportunity.

Once again, the parrot has been taught a childishly naive misunderstanding of how individuals cooperate and compete in making their way in society. The misunderstanding appears in its most catchy and persuasive form in the American philosopher Ronald Dworkin's much-cited phrase about "equality at the starting gate" as the proper aim of social justice. But there is no such thing as "the starting gate." More precisely, every day's march on the way we travel in life is both a "starting gate" to the way ahead and an "outcome" of the voyage travelled so far.

It is impossible to line up in some kind of "starting gate" all individuals at a certain age, say at 12, 18, or 24, in such a way that they should all have "equal opportunity"--each having the same chance to win as every other. The well-known American social scientist Bruce Ackerman, no doubt the master of a voluble parrot, has...