The ‘Common Good’ Policies of Old Produced the ‘Common Good’ Problems of Today

T here is a longstanding debate on the right, which resurged online this week, over whether it is enough for government to merely clear space for people to flourish, or if it must actively promote the “common good.” Is mere classical liberalism — the securing of natural rights so that individuals can pursue happiness as they define it — insufficient, or even damaging, to this common good? If so, perhaps the state must take a greater role in guiding us.

The common good is a slippery concept, but my colleague Michael Brendan Dougherty helpfully defines it as something many once enjoyed — an inherited “social treasury” that didn’t need to be purchased. This treasury yielded what many Americans still conceive of as the good life: get a solid education, find a stable job with good pay and benefits, marry relatively young, buy an affordable house in a youthful area, have children, send them to a neighborhood school, and age peacefully in place so that you can help your kids follow the same path.

(If you want this life in the modern age, by the way, I present to you Des Moines, Iowa.)

That all sounds very nice to me. My objection is not to this definition of the common good, or to the notion that it isn’t worth promoting. I do reject, however, the capacity of statecraft to help manufacture this good life for hundreds of millions of Americans. Especially because government already tried to mass-produce the good life in the postwar era. And many of the deficiencies common-good conservatives bemoan today can be attributed, at least in large part, to those policies.

The most successful common-do-gooder in American history was Franklin D. Roosevelt. He believed it was no longer enough for individuals to forge happiness for themselves. Government, Roosevelt said, must have “final responsibility for the well-being of its citizenship.” His New Deal and later social reforms would define this well-being and deliver it for the men returning home from war and for their children.

Progressives’ happiness package was not so different from what right-wingers yearn for now. In fact, the standard good life that they describe was partly built by government programs. A few generations later, however, those very same policies function to exclude and deny newcomers.

Take housing as the most prominent example. It was a common-good policy to encourage widespread homeownership in spacious suburban neighborhoods. So, the federal government hugely subsidized housing demand through mortgage guarantees and direct lending to make homeownership more accessible. To protect the character of new neighborhoods, local governments imposed myriad zoning laws and land-use rules.

Such policies are how postwar suburbia was made. They are also now what keep young people locked out. Excessive financing has driven up home prices to obscene levels, and rigid building restrictions ensure that they won’t come down.

Promoting education as a track to the middle class was another common-good policy. Government paved it with subsidies to attend college — guaranteed student loans and direct assistance — making a four-year degree the badge of advancement. Today, not only have these programs inflated the price of a college education, but they have also degraded its value. Half of college graduates naturally feel cheated when they end up working jobs that don’t require their degrees, which they just spent four years and many thousands of dollars to attain. Yet college has been made the norm, so not attending may be even worse.

Privileging unions was a common-good policy toward stable jobs. But unions could only maintain such jobs by protecting incumbents, thereby excluding younger workers from quality vocations. Tying health insurance to employment was a common-good policy to simplify family benefits. Until it obscured the true cost of health care, requiring ever more labyrinthine subsidies to afford.

Neighborhood schools with enrollment tied strictly to residence were a common-good policy to foster community. Now, they make attractive neighborhoods into closed enclaves. Property-tax breaks for seniors were a common-good policy to keep grandparents in their family homes. Now, the same incentive prevents younger families from moving in.

The story throughout is that interventions to fortify a certain way of life eventually sealed it off. Protections became barriers to entry; subsidies became effective taxes and transfers. The common good was made less accessible because it was defined and supported by state action.

Therein lies the basic conceit of the common-good form of politics. In an endlessly complex world, the competence of government to fabricate social outcomes, especially at scale, is profoundly limited. Tradeoffs are ubiquitous and unavoidable. One generation’s insulated good life may be another’s desperation. In that case, what is a benevolent government to do?

The conservative answer is for government to do what it can: Remove artificial barriers and distortions, and otherwise leave space for citizens to pursue the good life for themselves, comporting with the preferences of others as best they can manage. A society of spontaneous order will doubtless leave many people out in the cold. Yet fewer, perhaps, than a government so hubristic that it tries to entrench the common good.