Web Letter: Marco Roth responds to Yascha Mounk

Web Letter: Marco Roth responds to Yascha Mounk

Web Letter: Marco Roth responds to Yascha Mounk

Marco Roth responds to Yascha Mounk?s ?Nuclear Disaster and Liberal Democracy?:

I?m afraid I find myself in need of a few more facts if I?m to share Yascha Mounk?s fear that faith in liberal democracy may be one of the more esoteric fallout victims of Japan?s Fukushima nuclear disaster. Mr. Mounk assumes that TEPCO, a private utility company, was following a ?liberal ethos? of protecting individual lives at the expense of the collective when they withdrew all but fifty workers from the damaged reactor. Until the crisis is over, and depending on how much the public is able to learn about TEPCO?s decision making process, we won?t be able to say whether the company was paralyzed by a tragic choice, as Mr. Mounk believes, or whether they were acting as pure capitalists, rather than, say, liberal democrats, when they chose to minimize the potential liability damages they might face from putting extra workers in harm?s way. In other words, who?s to say, without having scrutinized TEPCO?s employee contracts, whether concern for human life or concern both for TEPCO?s bottom line and corporate self-respect had the most influence?

Similarly, we don?t yet know what kind of choices the Japanese government imagined themselves to have, nor what the government knew and when it knew it, as regards the severity of the unfolding disaster. First it was a pump failure in one reactor, then a fire, but not one that damaged the containment area, then more explosions, but well into the morning of the third day, American readers, at least, were being assured that it was under control. Perhaps we should assume the Japanese government was told the same? If it turns out that the Japanese government was acting or not acting based on insufficient or misleading information, or that it was simply giving TEPCO the benefit of the doubt, the Fukushima disaster would have more immediate parallels to both the recent U.S. banking crisis and the BP oil spill. In both these crises, ?liberal democracy? could be said to have failed, not because of a liberal ethos of respect for individual lives, but because of a mistaken application of the classical liberal reluctance to impinge on the sacred private sphere, even when actions taken within that sphere risked doing horrific damage to the public at large. Before I?m going to be persuaded to adopt a government that can send me to my death for the common good at a moment?s notice, I?d first like to know if we can understand ?liberal democracy? in a way that can sensibly balance protections for the public interest and care of individual human lives with its respect for the property of private corporations.

-Marco Roth is an editor of n+1

Yascha Mounk replies:

I want to thank Marco Roth for taking up my invitation to debate the most troubling question I raised in my article?whether or not a certain kind of liberal ethos might make us prone to dealing with emergencies too timidly. His is an insightful contribution to an important debate.

Mr. Roth makes two main points. First, he argues that TEPCO?s apparent lack of concern for containing a looming nuclear disaster had nothing to do with liberal principles. Might the company?s managers, he asks, have made a conscious decision not to risk the lives of their employees out of fear for potential liability damages? Even though I am as loath to ascribe altruism to TEPCO as is Mr. Roth, I find this extremely unlikely. Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that TEPCO?s managers were indeed primarily worried about liability damages. Well, TEPCO would also be liable for the consequences of a full-scale nuclear disaster. Surely, then, the fear of these immense financial costs should have outweighed the fear of having to compensate workers harmed in the containment effort. This much we can say even without ?having scrutinized TEPCO?s employee contracts.?

In any case, TEPCO?s motivation is ultimately moot: for it is the Japanese government, not TEPCO, that has primarily fallen prey to liberal pieties. This brings us to Mr. Roth?s second point. He argues that the government may simply have been left in the dark?both about the true events unfolding at Fukushima and about possible ways to mitigate them. If that was the case, he suggests, then the botched response to this nuclear disaster might have similar causes to the BP oil spill and the banking crisis: ?a mistaken application of the classical liberal reluctance to impinge on the sacred private sphere, even when actions taken within that sphere risked doing horrific damage to the public at large.?

On this point, we are actually in complete agreement. I myself have argued that the Japanese government failed not because liberal principles make an adequate response impermissible (that?s what the neoconservatives think), but simply because of a mistaken understanding of what those liberal principles require of us in emergency situations. In good times a liberal government will be loath to ask any of its citizens?including soldiers?to risk their lives in the interests of the collectivity. Similarly, while it should always regulate industry to protect public safety and further economic justice, in good times a liberal government will restrain from interfering directly with private property. Nonetheless, in times of emergency, liberal governments already have the right to ask soldiers to risk their lives for their country. And they also have the right to take temporary control of a nuclear power plant that poses a clear and present danger to the lives of citizens. Mr. Roth helps to clarify my argument when he emphasizes more heavily than I did that a mistaken application of liberal principles concerning private property is just as dangerous in emergency situations as is a mistaken application of liberal principles concerning the rights of soldiers. But our substantive view seems to me to be much the same: while it is perfectly possible to respond resolutely to emergencies without violating liberal principles, it is very dangerous to misunderstand what these very principles require of us in extreme situations.

I would like to close by saying a few words about the extent to which my argument does, or rather does not, hinge on my particular interpretation of the events in Japan. As Mr. Roth rightly points out, we do not yet know, will not for a long time know, and may indeed never know why the Japanese government reacted so poorly. We both are therefore, to some degree, forced to speculate about what precisely happened in Fukushima. This seems as good a reason as any to privilege larger normative questions over our empirical disagreement about Japan.

Allow me to point out, then, that we are in agreement about two points that are much more central to my argument. First, we both deny the neoconservative claim that liberal principles, from the get go, make us unable to respond adequately to emergencies. Second, we both believe that liberal regimes sometimes go wrong because they mistakenly restrain themselves from doing what they should in emergency situations. (In fact, Mr. Roth has helpfully adduced two more examples, the banking crisis and the BP oil spill, to help make this point.)

To see whether we are in full agreement, Mr. Roth will have to answer two further?and perhaps even more important?questions, which he has so far chosen not to address. Does he agree that, when faced with potential nuclear disaster, it would be legitimate for a liberal government to put troops in harm?s way to contain this catastrophic danger? And, if so, does he agree that we must make sure that our leaders will have the steely nerves to take such a heartbreaking decision, even as they remain deeply aware of the tragic costs involved? I look forward to hearing his views on these pressing matters.

-Yascha Mounk