“There is no such thing as a free lunch” is a saying that expresses most economists’ belief that doing anything has a cost, even if only in the sense that pursuing one alternative reduces the time or money to do other things.
Economics is the study of how people weigh the trade-offs when choosing between alternatives. Trade-offs exist between the right to unfettered political speech and the right to pursue legal, productive activities.
I strongly value our constitutional rights to free speech, peaceable assembly and petition. I have friends who are animal geneticists, trade officials, development economists and Latin American diplomats. I respect them as individuals, and I respect the work they do.
Thus, when I hear that some person or groups intends to “shut down” a meeting of the International Society for Animal Genetics, the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank or the Organization of American States, I feel some concern.
The recent spate of protests against the organizations places the trade-offs inherent in democratic institutions in sharp focus. Free speech, assembly, and petition are fundamental to democracy. Indeed, many would argue that in their absence, true democracy no longer exists. But people also have the right to go about legal daily activities, such as participating in a conference.
When one group expresses its political or moral sentiments in a way that prevents others from performing legal activities that may produce useful goods or services, society as a whole will suffer an economic loss, in addition to the loss of freedom of activity.
In the age of television, one’s ideas are likely to be given much broader coverage if they are expressed in a manner that produces a telegenic event. That often means physically impeding others so as to provoke the sort of confrontation that will attract news cameras. A small minority may attack people or property for the same reason.
Breaking the law to make a political point is troublesome. Many major religions, including Christianity, Judaism and Islam, agree that ultimately individuals must follow their moral convictions when such seem to contradict the laws of governments. But these religions also stress obeying the law in most matters and respecting the autonomy of other humans.
Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King demonstrated that civil disobedience and nonviolent resistance are powerful tools to overturn unjust laws. Both emphasized that such actions were to be used only when all legal means of protest had been exhausted. And both acted to secure rights for people who were legally or systematically barred from self-determination or participating in democratic activity.
Thus, while religion and moral leaders sanction civil disobedience and nonviolent resistance in extreme cases, they do not advocate taking such actions lightly.
While I agree with recent protestors that we are paying insufficient attention to possible harmful effects of genetically modified organisms, I cannot agree that our democratic process has broken down, or that opponents’ legal efforts have been ignored.
I see dangers from careless introduction of GMOs, but I also see dangers from small groups of people shutting down a scholarly conference, or the meeting of a multinational government organization such as the WTO, World Bank or Organization of American States.
The costs imposed on society by the overly quick assumption that a particular issue warrants nonviolent or violent civil disobedience may be direct monetary ones as well as the opportunity cost of foregone outcomes.
Minneapolis police probably over-prepared and, in hindsight, spent taxpayer dollars unnecessarily. Governments also spent millions of dollars in Washington D.C.; Windsor, Ontario; and Detroit to prevent protestors from shutting down the World Bank/IMF and OAS meetings. The funds spent on these efforts are funds that governments do not have for health, education, roads or day-to-day law enforcement.
These conflicting values did not begin with the meetings and protests mentioned above in 1999 to 2000. The same sort of trade-offs between free speech and the right to engage in legitimate activities apply when abortion protestors impede women seeking a legal medical procedure, or when striking union members impede those legally crossing a picket line.
In both cases, courts have had to establish pragmatic rules to protect competing freedoms. You may yell epithets at someone driving a delivery truck across a picket line, but you may not throw a rock through her windshield or set her truck on fire. You may cajole or berate a woman walking toward an abortion facility, but you may not physically bar her way, or approach within a certain distance.
Such situations inevitably will arise in any democracy as long as people have moral convictions that differ. If citizens are responsible about avoiding violence or even resorting to nonviolent civil disobedience, the direct monetary and broader opportunity costs will be minimal.
Those calls and resulting actions will impose economic and social costs on the rest of society. Democratic societies inevitably will weigh such costs in deciding how lightly or severely to punish illegal protest activities.
One can only hope that any eventual reaction against protestors going beyond legitimate free speech and assembly will not impair such freedoms themselves. That would be too high a cost to pay.
© 2000 Edward Lotterman
Chanarambie Consulting, Inc.