Where Should the Burden of Proof Rest?
By Robert Higgs • Sunday January 15, 2012 10:53 AM PDT • 16 Comments
Perhaps you have been struck, as I have been repeatedly over the years, by the way in which certain disputes are framed. A writer, reporter, or discussant recognizes a difference of views on some matter: A maintains X, and B maintains Y. Yet, even though a difference is acknowledged, the question is resolved by concluding that X must be the case because B has not proven that Y is the case. This conclusion is often reached only on the assumption that A does not, or should not, bear a similar burden of proof.
Libertarians, for example, constantly encounter this situation when they argue against state provision of some good or service currently provided by the state. The libertarians might argue, say, that private suppliers can provide personal security in better quality or at lower cost than the government police can. Critics claim that the libertarians are wrong and note that the libertarians have not conclusively proven that private provision is better. Alternatively, critics sometimes claim that if private provision were actually better it would have already prevailed, conveniently ignoring the various ways in which the government has outlawed or burdened private provision, to destroy or cripple private competition with the state.
Even ostensibly impartial commentators generally lean toward placing the burden of proof on those who challenge the status quo, whether the dispute arises in science, politics, public policy, or any other domain in which an orthodoxy reigns or long-established institutions operate. This bias has a strongly conservative force in the sense that it helps to preserve whatever has gained sway, regardless of how it attained its current domination. Thus, replacement of the geocentric model of planetary motion in the solar system with the heliocentric model required more than a century. Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, and others had to adduce proof that their conception was superior to the Ptolemaic model, which was taken to be correct mainly by virtue of its having been accepted for a very long time.
Likewise, the modern nation-state has been a well established institution for hundreds of years, during which it has tended to expand its size, scope, and power, ultimately achieving its current near-totalitarian form. People living now are accustomed to what the state is and what it does, and they have difficulty in imagining how alternative arrangements might operate at all, much less how they might operate much more successfully for the general public. Hence, ordinary politics takes the form of arguments and policies that move the state back and forth between the 5 yard line and the 4 yard line, not far from the goal line of totalitarianism. The libertarians who propose to move the state back to the 50 yard line, or even to move it all the way to the opposite goal line of statelessness, have difficulty in gaining a hearing for their arguments, much less widespread acceptance of their proposals.
The libertarians’ critics invariably respond that the libertarians are Utopians, that they seek the impossible, notwithstanding that the modern nation-state did not always exist and that the hopes widely placed in the current nation-state—an institutional arrangement born in and sustained by periodic mass murder and continuous extortion and robbery—testify to a genuinely Utopian mindset. People dismiss the panoply of state crimes as aberrations or they adduce ad hoc explanations, rather than face the fact that across the extremely diverse times and places where unspeakably horrible large-scale crimes have been committed, the state has been the common denominator.
Like Winston Churchill, who famously quipped that democracy is the worst form of government except for all of the others, most people now presume—without seriously bearing a burden of proof—that the existing state system is superior to all the others. The libertarian has a right to demand: show me. Give me an organized, rational, fact-based argument, not simply the flippant dismissal that I am a dreamer. Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton were widely viewed as dreamers in their day, too.
Morally speaking, it would seem that those who opt in favor of coercive arrangements ought to bear the burden of proof. If the state is such a superior arrangement, by comparison with genuine, voluntary self-government, why must the state be propped up by all of its police and armed forces? Why must people be constantly threatened with imprisonment and death in order to bring forth the revenues that support the state’s activities? Walmart does not put a gun to my head to gain my patronage.
Of course, the standard mainstream-economics apology for this threat of violence against unwilling purchasers is that government provides a “public good” and hence must cope with a consequent “free rider” incentive to avoid payment. The trouble is that very little, if any, of what modern governments provide satisfies the criteria for categorization as a public good. The payments the government gives grandma in her pension are not a public good, nor are the payments that compensate doctors and hospitals for grandpa’s medical care, nor are the payments that purchase teachers and buildings to educate my neighbor’s kids (while I homeschool my own), and on and on. The “national defense” that serves as the usual example of a government-supplied public good is in fact a ludicrously poor example. Many of us wish the armed forces would cease their current activities in stirring up trouble for Americans around the world, killing innocent people, and destroying property in the service of the military-industrial-congressional complex. I would voluntarily pay to make these hired killers stop what they are doing, come home, and take up honest employment. Some public good!
In truth, the state occupies itself massively in snatching private wealth, transferring much of it to favored supporters, wasting a great deal of it, and retaining the balance to pay its own legions of bullies, do-gooders, and time-servers, as well as its palace guard of police and military forces. This whole vile apparatus has no claim to self-evident superiority to alternative arrangements; it ought to bear the burden of proof for every step it takes; and we ought to recognize that the blackboard proofs proffered by mainstream economists, which compose so-called modern welfare economics, will not feed the baby. This entire body of thought ought to be dismissed as more a corpus of apologetics than a serious attempt to justify the state’s pervasively invasive actions in modern life.
Much more might be said along these lines, of course, but enough has been said, I hope, to make the case that placement of the burden of proof is utterly crucial in the resolution of disputes, whether they be in science, public policy, or economic analysis. Moreover, we need to be constantly aware that if an arrangement depends on violence or the threat of violence to keep it afloat, it almost certainly has severe deficiencies. Raw force is always the resort of someone who cannot present a persuasive argument in support of his actions. Although the modern state enjoys the support of countless court intellectuals and apologists, it rests firmly on violence in the event that we do not accept the excuses it makes for its crimes. That so many of us fear and loathe the state should in itself be sufficient to indicate that the state, not those of us who long for freedom, should always bear the burden of proof.
Tags: Economics, Liberty, Military, Morality, Personal Liberty, Philosophy, Police, Politics, Power, Taxation, The State, War 
I absolutely love having Dr. Higgs on our side!
Robert Fellner | Jan 15, 2012 | Reply
Government and Progressive economists don’t care if their proposals are “true”. They are primarily and above all apologists for government actions “for the good of us all”.
Their economic theory only has to be plausible at the shallowest level, to give a veneer of respectability to what politicians want to do. It is useless to point out contradictions in their beliefs.
You might as well attempt to argue with a robber that his actions hurt everyone, and are shameful also to the robber. The robber doesn’t care. He wants the money and power.
Andrew_M_Garland | Jan 15, 2012 | Reply
You may just become this generation’s Mencken.
A Country Farmer | Jan 15, 2012 | Reply
And in religious matters, where is the burden, if any, of proof?
richard | Jan 16, 2012 | Reply
richard, The burden of proof is the same as in any field. As C.S. Lewis noted, the question is a matter of the evidence and intrinsic probability. However, most naturalists first assume that theism (and Christianity in particular) is false and that only the natural world exists, and by doing so they exhibit a fideism that will not tolerate any contrary evidence or argument. This naturalist intolerance is essential to the secular theocracy and why its compulsory funding and edicts in erecting and ever expanding nation states are crucial to its existence and operation.
David Theroux | Jan 16, 2012 | Reply
Not to mention that laws that are not laws pervert justice, and jeopardize the entire human race.....just a little something we don’t like to talk about when the subject comes up.I am thinking of abortion, euthanasia, and capital punishment. What right does the State have in cold-blooded killing at all? When you kill one man in cold blood, you’ve killed the world entire. “Roe”, for instance, is just a simple thing, except it is the law that abolishes man; it is the law to end all laws. “No biggie?” That’s what they tell them when they ask about it. But is is THE Biggie.
http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html#SECTION_G008
Doc Kimble | Jan 16, 2012 | Reply
David (responding to Richard, above):
I do not understand atheism as assuming that theism is false. Nor do I understand why it would be wrong to ask a person who asserts the existence of god to either offer proof or admit that no proof can be had, in which event the belief rests entirely on faith.
This is far from Robert Higgs’ column which is interesting, as always. One modern view of legal regimes is that they persist as long as they are mutually advantageous from the perspective of the major interest/political/social groups. Are we reaching a point, first in Europe perhaps but also in the USA with OWS and the Tea Partiers, where large groups will press for regime change because they believe that existing arrangements no longer benefit them?
Charlie | Jan 16, 2012 | Reply
Thank you Prof Higgs,
This is the second article of yours in as many days that I’ve had the pleasure to encounter.
It’s very nearly a bootstrap problem. How to argue against “the box” of the status quo when one has no choice but to debate from inside it.
Once you persuade some to recognize their box as a box (a numbing feat in itself) then the next stage–presenting an alternative. What is their usual reaction? It’s like landing on another planet, and describing your world as peaceful and compassionate, and then (before you can grab your gun) being torn to shreds. Such is history. :)
Certain Quirk | Jan 17, 2012 | Reply
“It is useless to point out contradictions in their beliefs.”
Many people are indeed persuaded by the most coherent argument. Arguments are not intended for people who don’t care about reason, not even deliberately specious ones. They are always ultimately intended to persuade people who care about and prefer truth. Perhaps introspection will convince you that such people do, in fact, exist. So, even sophists believe such people exist in significant numbers, otherwise they wouldn’t bother with sophistry. Rational arguments are not only the best, but the only defense against sophistry.
So, it is not useless to point out the contradictions of the sophists, but rather it is essential, as even the sophists believe. That argument doesn’t accomplish everything you wish, shouldn’t disabuse you of this important fact.
vikingvista | Jan 23, 2012 | Reply
The state ostensibly exists to “protect life, liberty, and property”. But the state demonstrably exists, by its very definition, and its universal practice, to curtail liberty. State action, e.g. taxation, is not for what free people want–for which voluntary action provides an unhindered outlet–but rather for what people do NOT want, which is why it must be violent imposed upon them.
There can be no logical consistency between state action and liberty. Statist libertarians, the most common libertarian breed, are living breathing contradictions, as are antimonopoly statist economists, which are the most common breed of economist.
vikingvista | Jan 23, 2012 | Reply
The neurotics who thoughtlessly and incorrectly claim voluntaryism is Utopian, confuse an unwavering opposition to violent aggression against peaceful innocents for a belief that violent aggression can be extinguished. And in making this error, they don’t merely attempt to allow for a little compromise between freedom and agression. Instead, they advocate for the single greatest source of violent aggression and human devastation that the world has ever known.
vikingvista | Jan 23, 2012 | Reply
“Many of us wish the armed forces would cease their current activities in stirring up trouble for Americans around the world, killing innocent people, and destroying property in the service of the military-industrial-congressional complex. I would voluntarily pay to make these hired killers stop what they are doing, come home, and take up honest employment. Some public good!”
This is the type of irresponsible rhetoric that undercuts everything good and valid Robert Higgs has to offer.Until he, and other like-minded Libertarians, can temper these types of disingenuous emotional outbursts their movement will remain on the fringe of American politics. It’s a shame, too, because a good, temperate, morally persuasive argument can be made for significantly limiting the size of government and the military.
Mark | Jan 24, 2012 | Reply
Dear Mark,
You describe my quoted statement as an example of a type of “disingenuous emotional outbursts.” I assure you it is not disingenuous in the least. It is emotional only in the sense that I do indeed react emotionally to the U.S. empire’s senseless slaughter of innocent people around the world. Do you remain coldly indifferent to it?
As for the libertarian movement, I do not pretend to speak for it. I speak only for myself. Inasmuch as I am neither a missionary nor an aspiring politician, I do not worry about “remain[ing] on the fringe of American politics.” I have no interest in politics except as a subject of study. I do not believe that anything I say, however “good,” “temperate,” or “morally persuasive” you might consider it, will have the slightest effect on the course of events. My aims are only to try to understand what is happening, to evaluate it, and to pass my views along to anyone who might have an interest in them. Politics is a fool’s errand for freedom lovers; grasping for power and plunder is not their game. When the bulk of the people want to be free, the battle for their freedom will already be effectively won. Until then, the handful of freedom lovers can have no significant effect on the course of U.S. politics, which will continue to carry all Americans toward totalitarianism.
Robert Higgs | Jan 24, 2012 | Reply