Le blog de Polyscopique

It seems that the Green Party is suddenly getting some attention just as it has reached 5% in polls. (The Green Party is not a new party; it was founded in the 1980s. But it was considered as insignificant until now) It looks like it is now trying to appeal to fiscally conservative and socially progressive voters, a voting group to which everyone now oddly seems to want to appeal to. (Belinda Stronach ran a leadership campaign almost exclusively fueled by such voters.) Jim Elve invites "libertarian voters on the right who have problems with the social conservatism of Stephen Harper" to think about the Green Party.

First of all, I think libertarians (or classical liberals) should realize that social conservatism is not necessarily incompatible with classical liberalism. Indeed, social progressives often have their own authoritarian egalitarian agenda whereby they want to aggressively use the powers of the State to eliminate any unequalities and especially discrimination everywhere in society. This is obvious in the increasing threat antidiscrimination laws pose to civil liberties and in "affirmative action" policies like pay equity that cost billions to taxpayers and subject businesses to inefficiencies and bureaucratic red tape. People who label themselves pro-choice on the issue of abortion often defend only the right of the woman to choose whether or not to get an abortion, your right to choose whether or not to fund this abortion goes out of the window with demands for ever more public funding of abortions. On the issue of Bill C-250, social conservatives, not social progressives, stand for liberty by defending freedom of speech and religion. If you read the answers Stephen Harper gave to a social conservative group, there really is little to be worried about from a classical liberal standpoint.

Second, economically right-wing people should remember that the Green Party is first and foremost an environmentalist party. When Green Party leader Jim Harris says "if we don't do something soon, in another 20 years we'll all be breathing bottled air", he is simply continuing the now 35 years old tradition of environmentalists erroneously making catastrophic predictions that call for policies with similarly catastrophic effects on the economy and our standard of living. This is after all the party that seriously considers opposing again the seal hunt even though Greenpeace does not consider it an ecological problem anymore. Their energetic policy emphasizing clean energy like solar and wind power and shunning thermal and nuclear power is also dubious. I should point out that I know particular area where big energetic efficiencies could be realized: Hydro-Québec could raise its electricity tariffs so that Quebecers don't waste untold amount of electricity heating their homes (instead of using gas or oil) But this is a distinctly provincial topic that no federal politican would want to touch even with a ten-foot pole.

But now, let us forget these considerations and concentrate our attention where the Green Party should be the most appealing to fiscal conservatives: the Green Party's economic policy.

There are certainly many good suggestions. The commitments to "lower taxes on income, profit and investment, to promote increased productivity and job creation", to "maintain a balanced budget and reduce the national debt" and to "reform the public sector to be more responsive and accountable" could come from the Conservative Party's program. The proposal to "shift taxes onto land use and away from incomes" could make sense depending on the specifics. The proposal to "raise taxes on harmful activities such as pollution" is also a sound one firm formulated by Milton Friedman as an alternative to top-down environmental regulations. This proposal can also lead to programs like emissions trading that are much reviled by some corners on the Left but are in fact a more efficient and economically sounder way of achieving better environmental outcomes. In short, the Green Party has some common sense in economics and cannot be dismissed as a bunch of socialists.

However, it only goes downhill from there on. They plan to "raise taxes on harmful activities such as [...] waste and inefficiency" without seeming to realize that incentives are already built in the market for companies to avoid waste and inefficiency: simply put, a company that is wasteful and inefficient will be less competitive, make less sales and earn less profit. The government does not need to weigh in. (Pollution is different as it is often a negative externality where a properly managed governmental intervention may make sense.) Maybe what the Green Party has in mind is to implement user fees for garbage collection and municipal water consumption - which are sound replacements to all-you-can-use systems - but this fall clearly in the jurisdiction of local and provincial governments, not the federal government.

The Green Party also suggests to "create well paying jobs in the service and technology sectors." But economic theory indicates that governments generally can't create jobs and the practical results of governments trying to do so have been pretty dismal. The most governments can do is to create a friendly macroeconomic and business environment where enterprises can create jobs. But this Green policy of "reducing the standard work-week" certainly does not help. When it was tried in France, the result was more unemployment since a reduction in the work-week implied an increase in the wage rate which produced a decraese in the demand for labor. The Green Party also endorses the buzzword-friendly but dubious doctrine of "corporate social responsibility".

Finally, the Green Party has included in its platform the disturbing commitment to "use tariffs when necessary to discourage unsustainable industries and human rights violations." There is of course absolutely no evidence that tariffs achieve any of these objectives. But there is plenty of evidence to show that tariffs and other protectionist policies are a way for goverments to tap into nationalistic sentiment and to hand out patronage to key interest groups as an indirect subsidy. In fact, free trade rather brings greater efficiencies and a better environment. When unsustainable industries endure and cause great environmental damage, it is more often than not because governments are busy subsidizing them - or shielding them with protective tariffs - since it is well known that sunset industries often wield considerable political clout. The federal government spends about a billion a year in grants and tax credits to Canada's natural resources and nuclear industries. The federal government spent about $3.5 billion (in 1998 dollars) over three decades to keep open the Devco coal mine, which produced low-quality coal that was particularly dirty and polluting. (The mine closed in 1998.) The NDP BC government spent $400 million in the 1990s to keep open the inefficient Skeena Cellulose paper mills. The fishing industry in Atlantic Canada was massively subsidized all the way into overfishing both directly through grants and indirectly through unemployment benefits to seasonal workers like fishermen.

Tariffs have also shown to be unable to tackle human rights violations. For example, boycotts on goods produced with the help of child labor mostly leave these children engaging in even more dangerous activities. Free trade has been shown to reduce child labor, mostly as a result of the greater prosperity brought on by free trade. Indeed, there is much evidence to show that greater economic contact through trade leads to a better safeguarding of human rights. While economic sanctions, if endorsed and enforced by the international community at large, might be justified in some circumstances, the Green policy proposal speaks only of "tariffs" and leaves open the possibility of using tariffs mostly as a feel-good measure or for outright protectionism.

In short, I see many elements in the Greens' economic platform that are troubling from a right-of-centre point of view. Libertarians and others who are economically conservative will find a better home in the Conservative Party.