Recently I came across a story again that has been circulating around the internet in various versions for quite some time. This time it was a “story about two bridges.” So as not to burden the reader with following a link, here is a brief summary of the gist. Two bridge builders talk about the most memorable projects in their lives. The first one remembers a grand project that the best minds prepared for several years, and on which enormous resources were spent. The second one remembers how he and a friend, having drunk some vodka, threw a rope across a gorge for fun. The residents of villages located on different sides of the gorge began to use the rope for their own purposes. After some time, someone threw a second rope across. Children ran along the ropes for entertainment. Then, from two ropes they constructed a small bridge, making it possible to carry small goods across. Trade began between the settlements and they started to grow. The needs of trade over time transformed what was initially a rope into a full-fledged bridge. As is fitting in parables, in the end it turns out that the story is about the same location. The first grand bridge turned out to be needed by no one and was demolished, while the second one still stands.
In general, the political-economic moral is clear. The difference between the projects arises from a misunderstanding of goals and means. In the first case, the bridge was an end in itself; in the second, it gradually emerged as a means for people pursuing their own goals. That is, in the first case the state (or some other hapless planner) in effect calculated that it knew in advance, with certainty, the goals of those who would (possibly) use the bridge and, naturally, it was wrong.
This story also illustrates the process of economic growth and, in general, the creation and maintenance of social institutions. Growth emerges as a result of the efforts of people pursuing their own goals, during which they create new opportunities for other people, who can now pursue more valuable goals, and so on. Social institutions (the bridge) are one of the results of this process. Social institutions exist in the quantity and of the quality—rope, two ropes, a wooden suspension bridge—that enable them to bring benefit to specific people in their specific activities. The improvement of these institutions is part of the activity of people pursuing their goals. A real social institution is “tested” by everyone who uses it at every moment in time and exists, improves, or falls into decay depending on the results of these “tests.”
Of course, this story is also about state regulation, since it is the state that undertakes “large-scale projects” here, and this is even often credited to it as a merit. The cost of the inevitable error is clearly visible: the enormous resources used for state projects are squandered. Worse, resources are diverted from the productive activities of individuals. Put another way, the construction of one such mega-bridge not only means the waste of resources used in constructing this particular object; it also means a multitude of ropes not thrown across gorges, wells not dug, trees not planted, and so on. It also means the destruction of the process of coordination and growth—that is, a rope thrown when resources are forcibly seized for state projects may never turn into a bridge, although under different circumstances this could well have happened.
However, the most important point I would like to address in connection with the story of the two bridges is as follows. Stories of this type (a more well-known version is the legend of wise builders who waited until people had worn paths between houses, then asphalted them) always appear as a comparison of two types of planning and, in general, regulation. In this story, the statist approach simply looks more foolish and wasteful, while the “liberal” one looks wiser and more economical. But at the same time, both are considered as “methods of design” within the framework of state regulation. And when it comes to things that seem obvious to the public, the “liberal” approach loses. Well, who “in the real world” would wait until people had trampled paths themselves? Or how can one “pursue a non-intervention policy” when it is clear to everyone that right here and right now the state simply must build a hospital, a road, or the same bridge? The liberal position of “non-intervention” looks naive and idealistic, if not outright idiotic. Yes, it may well be that state regulation is more costly and destroys possibilities about which we will never learn, but there are tasks that need to be solved right now and, so to speak, at any cost.
All this is to say that if you intuitively like the second variant of the bridge, then the argument against the proponents of the first is not that your method is better. If you accept the necessity of state intervention itself, you completely deprive yourself of all arguments. The idea of “waiting until it grows on its own” will always lose to the idea of voluntarist intervention. After all, if the state has the means, it would simply be a sin not to use them for noble purposes.
The fact that the entire political-economic discourse is framed by state regulation hinders liberals, because they begin to object within the same discourse. In reality, however, the main liberal argument consists in the following: whether the state wants it or not, people throw ropes across gorges and this is part of their plans (let us recall that the second engineer in our story was not building a bridge, but simply amusing himself). People, regardless of their political views and attitude toward state regulation, simply by the fact of their own activity and interaction with each other, create social institutions every second, and nothing can influence this process. The state cannot know the goals of all people and cannot predict the results of their interaction. Even if we were to allow that the state, for its activities, had somehow magically learned not to seize resources from society, its projects here would simply be superfluous and would cause damage already by the fact that resources would be required for their dismantling.