Ideology or economics?

I blogged yesterday about a post on Liberal Conspiracy (LC) which I decried for being too ideologically motivated rather than motivated by scientific investigation. As I said, I file LC under politics in my Google Reader. However, I do file Marginal Revolution (MR) under economics - along with a number of other blogs written by economists of a libertarian persuasion - however, I'm wondering whether I should reconsider.

There's a constant, ongoing debate between libertarian economists, and non-libertarians of various stripes; the latest instalment is summarised in the post that has motivated this post by Tyler Cowen at MR. It appears a few non-libertarians have challenged libertarians on a point I consistently think about libertarians - they are a little loose in how strictly they apply the need for liberty amongst all members of society, ignoring the cases where the price mechanism will not operate to yield liberty to all but will in fact restrict liberties to many.

While I don't agree with everything the critics (at Crooked Timber, another interesting if politically slanted blog) have to say, I find Cowen's response striking. He basically says two things:

1) Show me some data.
2) Employees behave just as badly as employers so let's shine the light on them.

I find response (1) a little weak - it's the kind of response one says when one can't think of a good solid, analytical response. I mean, for sure, it would be great if we had empirical studies on all these things, yet it hasn't stopped economists debating for years and years and years. The appeal to empirical work is all the more ironic because many of the more staunch libertarians tend to ignore all economic data and attempts to use it as useless since the world is so complicated and it's hard to control for all possible causal factors involved.

There is probably a 1(b) here too - Tyler says essentially "are you sure workers want this, or is it just the bloggers that want it?". For me this has to count as the most stupid question ever. If you approach workers and say "would you like some more rights and representation?", I don't think that many will say "no thanks!".

But on to (2), this is the biggest point of contention for me. Apparently, two wrongs make a right, to use common parlance. But more importantly from the perspective of being an economist, the question is the following: Which way is the causality? For sure, workers will steal in the workplace if they can get away with it, and for sure, firms will try and shirk their responsibilities to their workers also, if they can get away with it.

But why doesn't Tyler consider the idea it might be that workers steal from work because they feel they get ripped off daily, paid way beneath what they are worth to the company, etc?  Could it not be the case that a firm that makes all its workers feel like they are part of the company, valued, paid their worth, included in decision making etc., sees less workplace theft?

The causality could, of course, be entirely the other way - it could be that workers are just thieves, and hence firms respond by being nasty to their workers. I'd love to see an empirical study on this!

But why doesn't Tyler explore this? My sense is it's because of the libertarian leanings in him, rather than anything else. The economist should be asking this question, and an economist of Tyler's calibre could analyse these things infinitely better than I ever could, and hence should be asking this question instead of mouthing off in the way he does - invoking personal experience, another common trait of the libertarian.

So I'd file this post from Marginal Revolution, often a great economics blog, more under the "politics/ideology" section of my Google Reader, if I could.