A meme dominated today in most of the world. It is a false idea, a myth that allows a small elite to convince and control the masses. It is a mind-game that has worked, still works, but is failing at the margins.
The inverse of this prevailing meme is unfolding, growing among the youth and leading to a revolution.
the prevailing meme is the Hobbesian idea that...
The antithetical opposite meme is unfolding: prosperity comes from individual freedom, peace from trade and security from self responsible defense.
Prosperity comes from living in peace and being secure, as individuals, not provided by armed government agents. Individuals should be armed to protect themselves, their families, their communities and their personal property.
(My newest blog,
living Free one community at a time
for more information on creating liberty for yourself and your community or county.)
This is the opposite of what exists around the world today: government provided peace & security via might-is-right or based on false
homo sapien sapiens assumptions, chaotically fighting and killing each other without a 3rd party to keep order...
but individuals living self responsible lives.
Those seeking elite control over people advocated Thomas Hobbes philosophy, that man who revert to chaos without a 3rd party to prevent it: government became the agent for insuring peace via security, justice via the courts and law enforcement. These became the assumed minimum government roles that have grown and become the engine behind warring and taking freedoms away for security.
I will present the case, some personal experiences, and reference
several libertarian writers who have written extensively on Peace and
Security issues and make the case with clarity. I include several links
and three Appendices of articles relevant to the topic. I hope you find
value in what is written here and in the excellent materials found at
the links and in the appendices.
Thomas Hobbes was wrong, individuals do not need a 3rd party, the State, to provide this. We can do it ourselves. But the state assumed this position and voila, we have State wars, tyranny and aggression all for the peace and security of its people.
Bah; humbug...
True and lasting Prosperity comes from living in peace and being secure. This means individual prosperity, individual peace and individual security. This comes from being master of your own body, mind and emotions. This means having the natural, God-given right to live your life, use your body and mind, and any natural resources found and turned into value for self or others. The right to life, liberty and property means the right to defend others from taking it from you.
This essay presents some ideas, principles and concepts that deflate and destroy the commonly held myth that the state can provide peace or security. I watched the Mal-application of this since the false flag of 911 and the take-over of America by dangerous war mongering ideologues. I saw what the EU and the Africa Union are doing with these ideas to destroy any individuality or hopes of prosperity within any of the member states, assuming the global view of Africa was the only way to avoid Hobbesian chaos, based on the EU's promotion of said-same model.
Knowing that any encroachment on private property of self or one's work or earnings, via regulation, taxation or decree is and remains wrong; wrong in an ethical sense and definitely wrong in a moral sense, if you believe as I do that all creation comes via the individual and not groups; that individuals bring life energy to the world, not group's or democracies legislating morality like Brussels or the AU in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Talk about an enigma wrapped in a mystery, (misquoting Churchill on Russia); The interventionist operating through the AU, a fortress with walls in the middle of Addis, with heavy security to get in, TSA searches into key buildings. elevator passes to get from one floor to another. All this in a country that ranks near the bottom for freedom and prosperity, run by a long series of tyrannical rulers, government controlled everything including telecommunications. A country where the dictates of the president are so feared that a mandate spoken in the morning by him is heard by the afternoon in every village and town causing fear and loathing among the peasants.
It was the possibility of working there for 1-2 years, where it struck me that this was anathema to my own beliefs. This possibility cut to the quick my self awareness of should I continue to support
full time an agency that promotes ideas that just are not viable in my world view? I decided I would not work there full time, but only as a short term consultant, where I could provide services and share my ideas without falling under their hierarchy of control over my actions.
I hope to offer enough ideas for the reader to better understand that any global solutions are a fallacy, that all forms of group think are illusions of those who seek to plunder you and your friends, assuming they know what is best for you and the world. Whether Climate change or peace or security, the fallacy remains the same, i know best for others; my views shall be implemented with the barrel of a gun for your own good.
I am reminded of the dominant economic taught around the world, based on the work of Keynes. His approach presents government via the Hobbesian view, as necessary for an orderly world. But as Simon Black writes (Appendix III), "
Taking that a step further and presuming that a government committee can
centrally plan an entire economy or financial system is just ludicrous.
But it doesn't stop people from trying." He goes on to say,
"John Maynard Keynes is one of the most famous economists in history;
decades ago he wrote THE economic playbook still used by governments and
central banks around the world today. His writings include such pearls of wisdom as:
-
"earthquakes, even wars... serve to increase wealth. . . "
-
"Can a country spend its way into recovery? Yes."
- "State-run capitalism must be run by the right people."
Precisely. And everyone else is just supposed to trust them to be good
guys.
Keynes was a staunch advocate of 'state-run capitalism', an oxymoron rivaled only by "almost pregnant" and "fight for peace".
I have seen this in the USA, EU and AU. The latter, trying to make Africa for Africans, but using a globalist or interventionist model to control and dominate all Africans, and via Peace and security work at the AU "fight for peace".
This is truly ludicrous, an oxymoron, a twisted logic that has become the myth of endless borrowings of funds from EU and other partners, literally bankrupting Africa in time, giving total resource base to foreigners over time. There is another model, self determination, the focus of this essay. However, as far as foreign aid, the Chinese have chosen a more reasonable model, providing the funds for rights to buy the resources from Africa, first. A bit more humane, more of a voluntary deal found in capitalism.
Richard Ebling in article (Appendix II) captures the difference today between the free market model and that of the prevaiing 'intervention' model of most countries and economic unions like the EU or AU or any of the international organizations like the UN, World bank, Etc. First I reference his eight free market points and then will list his eight interventionist points
Quoting, Ebeling, "Here are eight points that define a
genuine free-market economy, or what Mises referred to as the "unhampered
economy":
- All means of production are privately owned.
- The use of the means of production is under the control
of private owners who may be individuals or corporate entities.
- Consumer demands direct how the means of production –
land, labor and capital – will be used.
- Competitive forces of supply and demand determine the
price for consumer goods and the various factors of production including
labor.
- The success or failure of individual and corporate
enterprises is determined by the profits or losses these enterprises earn,
based on their greater or lesser ability to satisfy consumer demands in
competition with their rivals in the marketplace.
- The market is not confined to domestic transactions and
includes freedom of international trade, investment and movement of
people.
- The monetary system is based on a market-determined
commodity (e.g., gold or silver), and the banking system is private and
competitive, neither controlled nor regulated by government.
- Government is limited in its activities to the
enforcement and protection of individual life, liberty and honestly
acquired property.
Now, quoting him again,
Defining the Interventionist Economy:
"Unfortunately, many modern
politicians and academics who say they endorse free-market capitalism are
willing to tolerate a great deal of government intervention.
"When it comes to identifying the
role of government in their conception of the market order, many if not most
"conservative" economists still assume that government must be
responsible for a social safety net that includes Social Security, some form of
government-provided health care and unemployment compensation; must have
discretionary monetary and fiscal powers to support supposed desired levels of
employment and output; must regulate industry to assure "competitive"
conditions in the market and "fair" labor conditions for workers; and
must directly supply certain goods and services that the market allegedly does
not provide.
Indeed, many people who claim to be
"on the right" believe that government should institute some or all
of these "public policies." It should be appreciated, however, that
the very notion of "public policy," as the term is almost always
used, supports government intervention in the market in ways that are simply
inconsistent with a genuine free-market economy.
Interventionism as public policy is
not consistent with the free market since it intentionally prevents or modifies
the outcomes of the market. Here are the eight points of the interventionist
economy:
- The private ownership of the means of production is
either restricted or abridged by government.
- The full use of the means of production by private
owners is prohibited, limited, or regulated by government.
- The users of the means of production are prevented from
being guided by consumer demand through a network of government
regulations, controls, prohibitions and restrictions.
- Government influences or controls the formation of
prices for consumer goods and/or the factors of production, through such
interventions as price supports, subsidies, or minimum wage laws.
- Government reduces the impact of market supply and
demand on the success or failure of various enterprises while increasing
the impact of its own influence and control through such artificial means
as price and production regulations, limits on freedom of entry into
segments of the market and direct or indirect subsidies.
- Free entry into the domestic market by potential
foreign rivals is discouraged or outlawed through import prohibitions,
quotas, domestic content requirements, or tariffs, as well as capital
controls, and restrictions on freedom of movement.
- The monetary system is regulated by government for the
purpose of influencing what is used as money, the value of money and the
rate at which the quantity of money is increased or decreased. And all
these are used as tools for trying to affect the levels of employment,
output and growth in the economy.
- Government's role is not limited to the protection of
life, liberty and property.
After this extensive quoting of Ebeling, I try and return to the idea that peace and security are an example of an economic good that is a failing of government and reflects the mal investment in such a public view or good and would best be done via the private sector, as part of the natural order.
Richarh Maybury of the Early Warning Report (Search for this on web) and author of a series of books explaining libertarian ideas, his Uncle Eric series, says that the world, since the creation of the state sees the world as either must be run by tyrants or chaos so why not stick with the tyrant versus total chaos?! He points out that the America experiment, the American Revolution for self determination, an idea that spread rapidly around the world, was the birth of the THIRD alternative, FREEDOM. The idea was born that the alternatives were tyranny , chaos or freedom. And it is the idea of self determination, the individual against the POWERS-that-be, the ursurpers of your work and monies, the plunders, that would change the world forever and open the door to a true new way.
Like the Guttenburg press changed the world forever, the Internet has opened the door again and the youth of the world are clamoring for freedom from government with an exponential glee and resolve that can and will change the world. tyranny, like getting obese, feeds on its own failings, and seeks to dominate and control until the individuals are dying, unable to feed the beast any more, but the beast seeks more.
This some what disjointed essay is based on the works of several libertarians, but especially Hans-Hermann Hoppe; in particular his book of essays, "
The Myth of National Security: Essays on the theory and history of Security Production."
It is available on-line via mises.org and is a must read to fully grasp the alternative to the Hobbesian view held by all Western cultures, Europe in general and the world at large, that man is savage and needs a 3rd party to keep them from killing one another. Given this view, especially underlying the creation of the State as THAT entity in the late middle ages, has resulted in the perpetuation of the myth of the value of the state. this idea includes an economic fallacy too, that any monopoly can do other than provide less quality and quantity of a given good, in this case security and its higher order peace, at a higher cost! that is than if competition is allowed.
This reality, the failings of the state to provide any economic good, including security or even justice is so clearly evident but ignored by the statist. As stated later in detail and in appendix II, governments killed 120 million in the 20th century alone, non-combatants. the myth is exploded with this figure alone, as the beast of government is revealed as it wages war on others, its own people and makes them pay ever higher taxes and live ever less free from the regulations that slowly turn them into serfs and slaves over time by any definition used.
So, yes, Freedom First, Private property always or we lose all to the globalist (or Interventionist) tomorrow...
Freedom and liberty are words used to capture the idea of individual sovereignty. History is written by the victors and that has meant the conquerors of a place or people. They have presented their overload status as special and have become demigods, via self defined gods, kings and queens.
I have traveled the world doing development work for over thirty years. I have seen the prevalence of development banking and funding being used to gain control over people and lands, via government loans that rarely are repaid, but do give sovereignty over to the bankers or as Joseph P. farrell says, Banksters. this is a blending of banking and gangsters, a more apt description of what is going on today. (See his
writings and many books on this and related topics)
I leave that thought and want to move on to the idea that without a full understanding of private property, over self, your body and mind, we will lose our humanity. A respected and clear writer on this is Hans-Hermann Hoppe whose
writings make this self evident, this
article is a classic for understanding this topic, entitled "The Ethics and Economics of Private Property" is a must read. (Or see Appendix I below)
That said, I question my own history of working with development banks like the World Bank, even USAID. Each of these groups are really the front line agencies that promote the anti-private property or collectivist view as the preferred model for controlling human kind by an multi layers elite.
Like an Economic Hit Man role as written by ??? I have served the beast and now understand that too well. My singular hope is that my continued work with such groups will allow me to increasingly espouse the failings of their model and the value of free-market, not interventionism, less government and less regulation and taxation. Mind you, it is a horrendous task, a laviatnian of pro-government modeling as can be seen in the ever multiplying models like the regional groups seeking to oversee their geographic areas, like the Africa Union. Each of these are politically driven and without much if any merit-based work, seeking to collectively solve issues versus promote sovereignty of the individual or the country.
I mention but one area of concern; Peace and Security as a major pillar for the AU. Their model is the interventionist model, assuming that peace and security comes from the UN model of disarming the people, and arming only the armies of the government and larger collective groups of government armies. Sadly, this leads to move insecurity and more non peace, as so clearly shown in the writings of Hoppe referenced above.
May I take the time, have the talent to frame my thoughts and words to develop this argument based on Austrian economics, the works of Mises, Rothbard and hoppe, each a disciple of the former and who together has literally formulated the depth behind what I would like to cover.
As Richard Maybury said, most of the world only knows Tyranny or chaos; whereas the America Revolution and history brought to light the value of individual liberty and freedom or the THIRD choice FREEDOM. The Internet has provided the channel and means for anyone, anywhere to research and learn that their is now available freedom as a choice not just tyranny and chaos.
Anyone researching on the web can now learn that prosperity is higher among countries moving toward less government and less taxation than those moving toward more regulation and taxation. Anyone can learn that governments that tax more are ever more intrusive into your lives and see you as cattle or human resources to be robbed and used to take from and give your hard earned money to special interests. fight wars or live the high life.
having recently traveled to Africa, I was surprised by the number of soldiers with weapons and the level of security at various locations, mini TSA-type security at entrances, then again at each building. And then realize that no one can have personal protection! It is so sad to see the right to be armed and take responsibility for oneself is negated and treated as a crime, but the soldier or police is ever more intrusive and bullying in behavior and demanding you behave.
As discussed by Richard Ebeling in article below, the EU impact and take-over in political modeling and using collectivism, we-know-better-than-you what is good for you, they instill, enforce and make sure only the 'government' has guns, not the people. They state that having control over you and your right to self defense, will lead to peace and security. That tribal wars and culture differences do not matter and can be mitigated by giving to the government, those in power, the use of force and coercion and strife and warring will end.
It never has and can not. For the one with the gun will use it to destroy those in disfavor, wrong color, ethnic group or whatever. It is the way of power and those in power since forever. How many times has a government disarmed a populace, a group usually for 'their own well being' and then turned around and performed genocide for some reason or the other? Eight times I can recall, list available if just search Internet.
Any libertarian who studies power and freedom, studies the history of power, discovers what makes prosperity work, private property. But government under the guise of interventionism, communism and socialism and even fascism having failed time and again, having killed hundreds of millions of non combatants in the 20th century alone, is an abysmal failure of political philosophy. So, now those seeking to plunder---and that is what governments do, plunder---use interventionism to run people's lives and life off taxes on the people, regulating them from birth to death.
Hoppe writes about this. One principle he points out is that any monopoly leads to lower quantity. less quality and higher cost regardless of the situation, regardless of the culture, whether in private or public delivery of the service. Secondly, that competition lead to the opposite, lower cost, greater availability and higher quality. Once you realize this, you must ask, WHY would anyone give the right to protect people to a single group, government? It has always and forever lead to oppression of the people, mass killings and all in the name of its for the betterment of all. Boulder dash...
The American revolution and Switzerland are the sterling examples of leaving private property of body, mind and soul, plus any productive use of any resource in the hands of the individual. This means leaving trade alone, leaving it free to be done as a voluntary action between two individuals. that they remain in control of their own defense, and, only as an organized local militia or Action Group, stand ready to work together in emergencies for the community, against aggression, foreign or domestic and as the home land defense model that works!
An armed society is a polite society. Security is self responsible behavior, not the policeman down the street. He is a political lacky for a politician, not for you. Your safety in a dark alley is not walking in dark alleys, but if you do, to be prepared to defend yourself from any aggressor as necessary. And a 9mm or 45 speaks volumes; someone wants to rob you or rape you? You are the only one that can make that moment be the first one for a self determined future versus a victim to tyranny and a crazy seeking to take what is your, your life, your possessions even your sanity in an act of violence.
Each country where I have been and now around the USA, the SWAT team, bullying police have become the norm, especially where the people are without weapons for self protection. I find it strange, bu true that most democrats, most politically liberal or progressive people like being victims, like depending on the police if attacked or homes broken into; strange, then the system can report the crime, the rape, the death caused, the robbery of your goods.
History of all collectivist of 20th century shows 120 million NON-military deaths from armed governments. That is, arm the government and the deaths go up.
Arm the people and deaths go down.
I urge you to read Mises.org; lewrockwell.com; read the works of Austrian School and learn how prosperity comes from less government, less regulation and less taxation; not more. But the governments of the world keep pushing the opposite.
Look into not one world order, but nullification and secession, more smaller sovereign communities. I rather live in a free society, a sovereign community that favors liberty and freedom versus the one next door that favors taxation and regulations. Give individuals the option to move where and do what they want within a like-minded community versus a single all encompassing one world order or an EU or an AU or whatever group of jurisdiction trying to legislate, regulate and tax you to death.
Democracy is soft socialism and socialism is collectivism, favoring the elite few to run your life. Study the history of the American Revolution, the idea of republic and the model of Switzerland. Study the value of the idea of the power of the PURSE and the SWORD. The latter, is premised on each individual, each FREE man is self responsible and part of a militia for the sovereign community or city-state to serve as the homeland security for emergencies and invasion, foreign or domestic if government goes awry.
DC has gone awry, taken over by globalist, if not something more sinister.
Attached is an excellent overview of self ownership and then another article on free markets and the interventionist clash...
Sincerely
Wulirider
Appendix I
Argumentation and Self-Ownership
I
will first state this general theory of property as a set of rulings
applicable to all goods, with the goal of helping to avoid all possible
conflicts by means of uniform principles, and I will then demonstrate
how this general theory is implied in the nonaggression principle.
According to the nonaggression principle, a person can do with his body
whatever he wants as long as he does not thereby aggress against another
person's body. Thus, that person could also make use of other scarce
means, just as one makes use of one's own body, provided these other
things have not already been appropriated by someone else but are still
in a natural unowned state.
As
soon as scarce resources are visibly appropriated — as soon as somebody
"mixes his labor" with them, as John Locke phrased it,[1]
and there are objective traces of this — then property (the right of
exclusive control), can only be acquired by a contractual transfer of
property titles from a previous to a later owner, and any attempt to
unilaterally delimit this exclusive control of previous owners or any
unsolicited transformation of the physical characteristics of the scarce
means in question is, in strict analogy with aggressions against other
people's bodies, an unjustifiable action.[2]
The compatibility of this principle with that of nonaggression can be demonstrated by means of an argumentum a contrario.
First, it should be noted that if no one had the right to acquire and
control anything except his own body (a rule that would pass the formal
universalization test), then we would all cease to exist, and the
problem of the justification of normative statements simply would not
exist. The existence of this problem is only possible because we are
alive, and our existence is due to the fact that we do not, indeed
cannot, accept a norm outlawing property in other scarce goods next to
and in addition to that of one's physical body. Hence, the right to
acquire such goods must be assumed to exist.
Now,
if this is so, and if one does not have the right to acquire such rights
of exclusive control over unused, nature-given things through one's own
work (by doing something with things with which no one else has ever
done anything before), and if other people have the right to disregard
one's ownership claim to things which they did not work on or put to
some particular use before, then this is only possible if one can
acquire property titles not through labor (i.e., by establishing some
objective, intersubjectively controllable link between a particular
person and a particular scarce resource), but simply by verbal
declaration, by decree.[3]
However,
the position of property titles being acquired through declaration is
incompatible with the above-justified nonaggression principle regarding
bodies. For one thing, if one could indeed appropriate property by
decree, this would imply that it would also be possible for one to
simply declare another person's body to be one's own. Clearly enough,
this would conflict with the ruling of the nonaggression principle,
which makes a sharp distinction between one's own body and the body of
another person.
Furthermore,
this distinction can only be made in such a clear-cut and unambiguous
way because for bodies, as for anything else, the separation between
"mine and yours" is not based on verbal declarations, but on action. The
observation is based on some particular scarce resource that had in
fact — for everyone to see and verify because objective indicators for
this existed — been made an expression or materialization of one's own
will or, as the case may be, of somebody else's will.
More
importantly, to say that property could be acquired not through action
but through a declaration would involve an obvious practical
contradiction, because nobody could say and declare so unless his right
of exclusive control over his body as his own instrument of saying
anything was in fact already presupposed, in spite of what was actually
said.
As I
intimated earlier, this defense of private property is essentially also
Murray Rothbard's. In spite of his formal allegiance to the
natural-rights tradition, Rothbard, in what I consider his most crucial
argument in defense of a private-property ethic, not only chooses
essentially the same starting point — argumentation — but also gives a
justification by means of a priori reasoning almost identical to the one just developed. To prove the point I can do no better than simply quote:
Now, any
person participating in any sort of discussion, including one on
values, is, by virtue of so participating, alive and affirming life.
For if he were really opposed to life, he would have no business continuing to be alive. Hence, the supposed
opponent of life is really affirming it in the very process of
discussion, and hence the preservation and furtherance of one's life
takes on the stature of an incontestable axiom.[4]
So
far it has been demonstrated that the right of original appropriation
through actions is compatible with and implied by the nonaggression
principle as the logically necessary presupposition of argumentation.
Indirectly, of course, it has also been demonstrated that any rule
specifying different rights cannot be justified. Before entering a more
detailed analysis, though, of why it is that any alternative
ethic is indefensible, a discussion which should throw some additional
light on the importance of some of the stipulations of the libertarian
theory of property — a few remarks about what is and what is not implied
by classifying these latter norms as justified is in order.
In
making this argument, one would not have to claim to have derived an
"ought" from an "is." In fact, one can readily subscribe to the almost
generally accepted view that the gulf between "ought" and "is" is
logically unbridgeable.[5]
Rather, classifying the rulings of the libertarian theory of property
in this way is a purely cognitive matter. It no more follows from the
classification of the libertarian ethic as "fair" or "just" that one
ought to act according to it, than it follows from the concept of
validity or truth that one should always strive for it.
To
say that it is just also does not preclude the possibility of people
proposing or even enforcing rules that are incompatible with this
principle. As a matter of fact, the situation with respect to norms is
very similar to that in other disciplines of scientific inquiry. The
fact, for instance, that certain empirical statements are justified or
justifiable and others are not does not imply that everybody only
defends objective, valid statements.
On
the contrary, people can be wrong, even intentionally. But the
distinction between objective and subjective, between true and false,
does not lose any of its significance because of this. Instead, people
who would do so would have to be classified as either uninformed or
intentionally lying.
The
case is similar with respect to norms. Of course there are people, lots
of them, who do not propagate or enforce norms that can be classified as
valid according to the meaning of justification I have given above.
However, the distinction between justifiable and nonjustifiable norms
does not dissolve because of this, just as that between objective and
subjective statement does not crumble because of the existence of
uninformed or lying people.
Rather,
and accordingly, those people who would propagate and enforce such
different, invalid norms would again have to be classified as uninformed
or dishonest, insofar as one had made it clear to them that their
alternative norm proposals or enforcements cannot and never will be
justifiable in argumentation.
There
would be even more justification for doing so in the moral case than in
the empirical one, since the validity of the nonaggression principle
and that of the principle of original appropriation through action as
its logically necessary corollary must be considered to be even more
basic than any kind of valid or true statements. For what is valid or
true has to be defined as that upon which everyone — acting according to
this principle — can possibly agree. As I have just shown, at least the
implicit acceptance of these rules is the necessary prerequisite to
being able to be alive and argue at all.
Why
is it then that other nonlibertarian property theories fail to be
justifiable? First, it should be noted, as will become clear shortly,
that all of the practiced alternatives to libertarianism and most of the
theoretically proposed nonlibertarian ethics would not even pass the
first formal universalization test and would fail for this fact alone!
All
these versions contain norms within their framework of legal rules that
have the form, "some people do, and some people do not." However, such
rules that specify different rights or obligations for different classes
of people have no chance of being accepted as fair by every potential
participant in an argument for simply formal reasons.
Unless
the distinction made between different classes of people happens to be
such that it is acceptable to both sides as grounded in the nature of
things, such rules would not be acceptable because they would imply that
one group is awarded legal privileges at the expense of complementary
discriminations against another group. Some people, either those who are
allowed to do something or those who are not, would not be able to
agree that these were fair rules.[6]
Since
most alternative ethical proposals, as practiced or preached, have to
rely on the enforcement of rules such as "some people have the
obligation to pay taxes, and others have the right to consume them," or
"some people know what is good for you and are allowed to help you get
these alleged blessings even if you do not want them, but you are not
allowed to know what is good for them and help them accordingly," or
"some people have the right to determine who has too much of something
and who too little, and others have the obligation to accept that," or
even more plainly, "the computer industry must pay to subsidize the
farmers, the employed for the unemployed, the ones without kids for
those with kids," or vice versa. They all can be discarded as serious
contenders to the claim of being a valid theory of norms qua property
norm, because they all indicate by their very formulation that they are
not universalizable.
What
is wrong with a nonlibertarian ethic if this is resolved and there is
indeed a theory formulated that contains exclusively universalizable
norms of the type "nobody is allowed to" or "everybody can"? Even then
the validity of such proposals could never hope to be proven — not
because of formal reasons but because of their material specifications.
Indeed, while the alternatives that can be refuted easily as regards
their claim to moral validity on simple formal grounds can at least be
practiced, the application of those more sophisticated versions that
would pass the universalization test would prove for material reasons to
be fatal: even if one tried to, they simply could never be implemented.
There
are two related specifications in the libertarian property theory with
at least one of which any alternative theory comes into conflict.
According to the libertarian ethic, the first such specification is that
aggression is defined as an invasion of the physical integrity of other people's property.[7] There are popular attempts to define it as an invasion of the value or psychic integrity
of other people's property. Conservatism, for instance, aims at
preserving a given distribution of wealth and values and attempts to
bring those forces that could change the status quo under control by
means of price controls, regulations, and behavioral controls. Clearly,
in order to do so, property rights to the value of things must be
assumed to be justifiable, and an invasion of values, mutatis mutandis, would have to be classified as unjustifiable aggression.
Not
only does conservatism use this idea of property and aggression;
redistributive socialism does too. Property rights to values must be
assumed to be legitimate when redistributive socialism allows me, for
instance, to demand compensation from people whose chances or
opportunities negatively affect mine. The same is true when compensation
for committing psychological, or "structural violence" is requested.[8]
In order to be able to ask for such compensation, what one must have
done, namely affect my opportunities, my psychic integrity, or my
feeling of what is owed to me, would have to be classified as an
aggressive act.
Why
is this idea of protecting the value of property unjustifiable? First,
while every person, at least in principle, can have full control over
whether or not his actions cause the physical characteristics of
something to change and hence can also have full control over whether or
not those actions are justifiable, control over whether or not one's
actions affect the value of somebody else's property does not
rest with the acting person but rather with other people and their
subjective evaluations. Thus, no one could determine ex ante if his actions would be qualified as justifiable or unjustifiable.
One
would first have to interrogate the whole population to make sure that
one's planned actions would not change another person's evaluations
regarding his own property. Even then, nobody could act until universal
agreement was reached on who is supposed to do what with what, and at
which point in time.
Clearly,
because of all the practical problems involved, everyone would be long
dead and nobody could argue any longer, well before agreement could be
reached.[9] Even more decisively, this position regarding property and aggression could not even be effectively argued
because arguing in favor of any norm implies that there is conflict
over the use of some scarce resources; otherwise there would simply be
no need for discussion.
However, in order to argue that there is a way out of such conflicts it must be presupposed that actions must be allowed prior
to any actual agreement or disagreement because if they were not, one
could not even argue so. Yet if one can do this (and, insofar as it
exists as an argued intellectual position, the position under scrutiny
must assume that one can), then this is only possible because of the
existence of objective borders of property — borders which anyone
can recognize as such on his own without having to agree first with
anyone else with respect to his system of values and evaluations.
Such a
value-protecting ethic, too, in spite of what it says, must in fact
presuppose the existence of objective property borders rather than of
borders determined by subjective evaluations, if only in order to have
any surviving persons who can make its moral proposals.
The
idea of protecting value instead of physical integrity also fails for a
second related reason. Evidently, one's value, for example on the labor
or marriage market, can be and indeed is affected by other people's
physical integrity or degree of physical integrity. Thus, if one wanted
property values to be protected, one would have to allow physical
aggression against people.
However,
it is only because of the very fact that a person's borders — that is
the borders of a person's property in his own body as his domain of
exclusive control, which another person is not allowed to cross unless
he wishes to become an aggressor — are physical borders
(intersubjectively ascertainable, and not just subjectively fancied
borders) that everyone can agree on anything independently (and
agreement means agreement among independent decision-making units!).
Only
because the protected borders of property are objective (i.e., fixed and
recognizable as fixed prior to any conventional agreement), can there
be argumentation and possibly agreement of and between independent
decision-making units. Nobody could argue in favor of a property system
defining borders of property in subjective, evaluative terms because
simply to be able to say so presupposes that, contrary to what theory
says, one must in fact be a physically independent unit saying it.
The
situation is no less dire for alternative ethical proposals when one
turns to the second essential specification of the rulings of the
libertarian theory of property. The basic norms of libertarianism are
characterized not only by the fact that property and aggression are
defined in physical terms; it is of no less importance that property is
defined as private, individualized property, and that the meaning of
original appropriation, which evidently implies making a distinction
between prior and later, has been specified.
It is
with this additional specification as well that alternative,
nonlibertarian ethics come into conflict. Instead of recognizing the
vital importance of the prior-later distinction in deciding between
conflicting property claims, they propose norms which in effect state
that priority is irrelevant for making such a decision and that
late-comers have as much of a right to ownership as first-comers.
Clearly,
this idea is involved when redistributive socialism makes the natural
owners of wealth and/or their heirs pay a tax so that the unfortunate
late-comers can participate in its consumption. It is also involved when
the owner of a natural resource is forced to reduce (or increase) its
present exploitation in the interest of posterity. Both times it only
makes sense to do what one does when it is assumed that the person
accumulating wealth first, or using the natural resource first, has
thereby committed an aggression against some late-comers. If they had
done nothing wrong, then the late-comers should have no such claim
against them.[10]
What
is wrong with this idea of dropping the prior-later distinction as
morally irrelevant? First, if the late-comers (those who did not do
something with some scarce goods), indeed had as much of a right to them
as the first-comers (those who did do something with the scarce goods),
then nobody would ever be allowed to do anything with anything, as one
would have to have all of the late-comers' consent prior to doing what
one wanted to do.
Indeed,
as posterity would include one's children's children — people who come
so late that one could not possibly ask them — to advocate a legal
system that does not make use of the prior-later distinction as part of
its underlying property theory is simply absurd, because it implies
advocating death but must presuppose life to advocate anything.
Neither
we, nor our forefathers, nor our progeny could, do, or will survive and
say or argue anything if one followed this rule. In order for any
person — past, present or future — to argue anything it must be possible
to survive now. Nobody can wait and suspend acting until everyone of an
indeterminate class of late-comers happens to come around and agree to
what one wants to do.
Rather,
insofar as a person finds himself alone, he must be able to act, to
use, to produce, and to consume goods straightaway, prior to any
agreement with people who are simply not around (and perhaps never will
be). Insofar as a person finds himself in the company of others and
there is conflict over how to use a given scarce resource, he must be
able to resolve the problem at a definite point in time with a definite
number of people instead of having to wait unspecified periods of time
for unspecified numbers of people.
Simply
in order to survive, then, which is a prerequisite to arguing in favor
or against anything, property rights cannot be conceived of as being
timeless and nonspecific regarding the number of people concerned.
Rather, they must be thought of as originating through acting at
definite points in time for definite acting individuals.[11]
Furthermore,
the idea of abandoning the prior-later distinction would simply be
incompatible with the nonaggression principle as the practical
foundation of argumentation. To argue and possibly agree with someone
(if only on the fact that there is disagreement) means to recognize the
prior right of exclusive control over one's own body. Otherwise, it
would be impossible for anybody to say anything at a definite point in
time and for someone else to be able to reply, for neither the first nor
the second speaker would be a physically independent decision-making
unit anymore at any time.
Eliminating the prior-later distinction, then, is tantamount to eliminating the possibility of arguing and reaching agreement.
However,
as one cannot argue that there is no possibility for discussion without
the prior control of every person over his own body being recognized
and accepted as fair, a late-comer ethic that does not make this
distinction could never be agreed upon by anyone. Simply saying
that it could be would imply a contradiction, for one's being able to
say so would presuppose one's existence for an independent
decision-making unit at a definite point in time.
Hence, one is forced to conclude that the libertarian ethic not only can be justified and justified by means of a priori reasoning, but that no alternative ethic can be defended argumentatively.
Notes
[1] John Locke, Two Treatises on Government, ed. Peter Laslett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), esp. vols. II, V.
[2] On the nonaggression principle and the principle of original appropriation see also Rothbard, For A New Liberty, chap. 2; idem, The Ethics of Liberty, chaps. 6—8.
[3]
This is the position taken by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, when he asks
us to resist attempts to privately appropriate nature-given resources
by, for example, fencing them in. He says in his famous dictum;
"Beware of listening to this impostor, you are undone if you once
forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth
itself to nobody" ("Discourse upon the Origin and Foundation of
Inequality Among Mankind," in Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and Discourses,
ed. G.D.H. Cole [New York: 1950], p. 235). However, to argue so is
only possible if it is assumed that property claims can be justified
by decree. How else could "all" (even those who never did anything
with the resources in question) or "nobody" (not even those who made
use of it) own something unless property claims were founded by mere
decree?
[4] Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty, p. 32; on the method of a priori reasoning employed in the above argument see also, idem, Individualism and the Philosophy of the Social Sciences (San Francisco: Cato Institute, 1979); Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Kritik der kausalwissenschaftlichen sozialforschung. Untersuchungen zur Grundlegung von Soziologie und Ökonomie
(Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag 1983); idem, "Is Research Based on
Causal Scientific Principles Possible in the Social Sciences? Ratio (1983); supra chap. 7; idem, A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism, chap. 6.
[5] On the problem of deriving "ought" from "is" see W.D. Hudson, ed., The Is-Ought Question (London: Macmillan 1969).
[6] See Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty, p. 45.
[7]
On the importance of the definition of aggression as physical
aggression see also Rothbard, ibid., chaps. 8—9; idem, "Law, Property
Rights and Air Pollution," Cato Journal (Spring, 1982).
[8] On the idea of structural violence as distinct from physical violence see Dieter Senghass, ed., Imperialismus und strukturelle Gewalt (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1972). The idea of defining aggression as an invasion of property values
also underlies both the theories of justice of John Rawls and Robert
Nozick, however different these two authors may have appeared to be to
many commentators. For how could Rawls think of his so-called
difference-principle ("Social and economic inequalities are to be
arranged so that they are reasonably expected to be to everyone's —
including the least advantaged ones — advantage or benefit," John
Rawls, A Theory of Justice
[Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press 1971], pp. 60—83, 75ff.),
as justified unless he believes that simply by increasing his
relative wealth a more fortunate person commits an aggression, and a
less fortunate one then has a valid claim against the more fortunate
person only because the former's relative position in terms of value
has deteriorated?! And how could Robert Nozick claim it to be
justified for a "dominant protection agency" to outlaw competitors,
regardless of what their actions would have been like? (Robert Nozick,
Anarchy, State, and Utopia
[New York: Basic Books, 1974], pp. 55f.) Or how could he believe it
to be morally correct to outlaw so-called nonproductive exchanges,
i.e., exchanges where one party would be better off if the other one
did not exist at all or at least had nothing to do with it (as, for
instance, in the case of a blackmailee and a blackmailer), regardless
of whether or not such an exchange involved physical invasion of any
kind (ibid., pp. 83—86) unless he thought that the right to have the
integrity of one's property values (rather than its physical
integrity) preserved existed? For a devastating critique of Nozick's
theory in particular see Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty, chap. 29; on the fallacious use of the indifference curve analysis, employed both by Rawls and Nozick, idem, Toward a Reconstruction of Utility and Welfare Economics (New York: Center for Libertarian Studies, Occasional Paper Series, No. 3, 1977)
[9] See also Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty, p. 46.
[10] For an awkward philosophical attempt to justify a late-comer ethic see James P. Sterba, The Demands of Justice
(Notre Dame, Ind.: Notre Dame University Press, 1980), esp. pp.
58ff., 137ff.; on the absurdity of such an ethic see Rothbard, Man, Economy, and State, p. 427.
[11]
It should be noted here that only if property rights are conceptualized
as private-property rights originating in time does it then become
possible to make contracts. Clearly enough, contracts are agreements
between enumerable physically independent units which are based on the
mutual recognition of each contractor's private ownership claims to
things acquired prior in time to the agreement and which then concern
the transfer of property titles to definite things from a definite prior
to a definite later owner. No such thing as contracts could conceivably
exist in the framework of a late-comer ethic!
Reprinted from Mises.org.
August 21, 2010
Appendix II
The
Free Market vs. the Interventionist State
April 15, 2014
Editorial By Richard Ebeling
In whatever direction we turn, we
find the heavy hand of government intruding into virtually every aspect of
American society. Indeed, it has reached the point that it would be a lot
easier to list those areas of people's lives into which government does not
impose itself – and, alas, it would be a very short list. But it was not always
that way.
Around a hundred years ago, say, in
the first decade of the 20th century, all levels of government in the United
States only taxed away and spent about 8 percent of national income, leaving 92
percent of what individuals had produced and earned in their own hands to use
and spend as they thought best as free people.
Plus, there was no regular deficit
spending because the federal government in Washington, D.C. annually balanced
its budget; and it often even ran budget surpluses with which it paid down
government debts accumulated during past "national emergencies,"
usually a war that had earlier needed rapid funding with borrowed money.
Today, all levels of government –
federal, state and local – tax or borrow and, then, spend around 40 percent of
the Gross Domestic Product in the United States. And if one adds the financial
cost imposed upon the citizenry in the form of economic and social regulations
to which businesses and enterprises must conform, the total burden of
government is significantly higher.
Government has also influenced the
American people in another way: They have lost their understanding of what a
free-market society was, could and should be. The growth in the interventionist
and redistributive state over the last 100 years has resulted in several
generations who have come to think that political paternalism is as normal and
"American" as apple pie.
The Change in American Economic
Policy
This shift in the role of government
in American society was noticed by the free-market, Austrian economist, Ludwig von Mises, while traveling around the
United States on a lecture tour back in 1926. After returning to Austria, he
delivered a talk on "Changes in American Economic Policy" at a meeting
of the Vienna Industrial Club. He explained:
"The United States has become
great and rich under the rule of an economic system that has set no
restrictions on the free pursuits of the individual, and has thereby provided
the opportunity for the country's productive powers to be developed. America's
unprecedented economic prosperity is not due to of the richness of the American
soil; instead, it is due to an economic policy that has reflected how best to
exploit the possibilities offered by the land.
"American economic policy has
always rejected–and still rejects today–any protection for inferior or less
competitive against that which is efficient and more competitive. The success
of this policy has been so great that it is hard to believe that Americans
would every have reasons to change it."
But Mises went on to tell his
Viennese audience that new voices were being heard in America, voices that
claimed that America's economic system was not managed "rationally"
enough and that it wasn't "democratic" enough because the voters did
not have it in their immediate power to influence the direction of industrial
development. Governmental controls were being introduced not to nationalize
private enterprise but to direct it through various regulatory methods.
The American economy was certainly
far less regulated by government than the countries in Europe, Mises pointed
out. However, there were strong trends moving the United States along the same,
more heavily interventionist path Europe had been traveling for a long time. In
the America of 1926, Mises observed, "But today both major parties, the
Republicans as well as the Democrats, are ready to undertake very radical steps
in this direction in order to win the votes of the electorate." He
concluded, "There can be no doubt that the results America would achieve
from such a policy would be no different than what it has 'achieved' in
Europe."
In Europe, the trend towards collectivism in the 1930s and 1940s took some
extreme forms. Socialism, communism, fascism and Nazism were all tried on the
other side of the Atlantic. They represented a total rejection of a free
economy and individual liberty. In America, the collectivist trend never went
to such an extreme, though Franklin D. Roosevelt's first New Deal came very
close to the fascist model.
Defining the Free Market Economy
Socialism, communism, fascism and
Nazism are now all but dead. They failed miserably. But they have been replaced
by what is merely another, more watered down form of collectivism that may be
called "interventionism." Indeed, interventionism is the predominant
economic system in the world today. In 1929, Ludwig von Mises published a
collection of essays under the title, "Critique of Interventionism."
He argued,
"All writers on economic policy
and nearly all statesmen and party leaders are seeking an ideal system which,
in their belief, is neither [purely] capitalistic nor socialistic, is based
neither on [unrestricted] private property in the means of production nor on
public property. They are searching for a system of private property that is
hampered, regulated, and directed through government intervention and other
social forces, such as labor unions. We call such an economic policy
interventionism, the system itself the hampered market order."
He added, "All its followers
and advocates fully agree that it is the correct policy for the coming decades,
yea, even the coming generations. And all agree that interventionism
constitutes an economic policy that will prevail in the foreseeable
future."
With the demise of communism in the
1990s, public policy around the world, including in the United States, is back
to where it was when Mises wrote these words 85 years ago. Comprehensive
government ownership of the means of production and a fully centralized planned
economy has very few adherents left, even "on the left." At the same
time, in spite of all the casual rhetoric about the triumph of capitalism, we have not seen much evidence of
a movement toward a truly free-market system.
Here are eight points that define a
genuine free-market economy, or what Mises referred to as the "unhampered
economy":
- All means of production are privately owned.
- The use of the means of production is under the control
of private owners who may be individuals or corporate entities.
- Consumer demands direct how the means of production –
land, labor and capital – will be used.
- Competitive forces of supply and demand determine the
price for consumer goods and the various factors of production including
labor.
- The success or failure of individual and corporate
enterprises is determined by the profits or losses these enterprises earn,
based on their greater or lesser ability to satisfy consumer demands in
competition with their rivals in the marketplace.
- The market is not confined to domestic transactions and
includes freedom of international trade, investment and movement of
people.
- The monetary system is based on a market-determined
commodity (e.g., gold or silver), and the banking system is private and
competitive, neither controlled nor regulated by government.
- Government is limited in its activities to the
enforcement and protection of individual life, liberty and honestly
acquired property.
Defining the Interventionist Economy
Unfortunately, many modern
politicians and academics who say they endorse free-market capitalism are
willing to tolerate a great deal of government intervention.
When it comes to identifying the
role of government in their conception of the market order, many if not most
"conservative" economists still assume that government must be
responsible for a social safety net that includes Social Security, some form of
government-provided health care and unemployment compensation; must have
discretionary monetary and fiscal powers to support supposed desired levels of
employment and output; must regulate industry to assure "competitive"
conditions in the market and "fair" labor conditions for workers; and
must directly supply certain goods and services that the market allegedly does
not provide.
Indeed, many people who claim to be
"on the right" believe that government should institute some or all
of these "public policies." It should be appreciated, however, that
the very notion of "public policy," as the term is almost always
used, supports government intervention in the market in ways that are simply
inconsistent with a genuine free-market economy.
Interventionism as public policy is
not consistent with the free market since it intentionally prevents or modifies
the outcomes of the market. Here are the eight points of the interventionist
economy:
- The private ownership of the means of production is
either restricted or abridged by government.
- The full use of the means of production by private
owners is prohibited, limited, or regulated by government.
- The users of the means of production are prevented from
being guided by consumer demand through a network of government
regulations, controls, prohibitions and restrictions.
- Government influences or controls the formation of
prices for consumer goods and/or the factors of production, through such
interventions as price supports, subsidies, or minimum wage laws.
- Government reduces the impact of market supply and
demand on the success or failure of various enterprises while increasing
the impact of its own influence and control through such artificial means
as price and production regulations, limits on freedom of entry into
segments of the market and direct or indirect subsidies.
- Free entry into the domestic market by potential
foreign rivals is discouraged or outlawed through import prohibitions,
quotas, domestic content requirements, or tariffs, as well as capital
controls, and restrictions on freedom of movement.
- The monetary system is regulated by government for the
purpose of influencing what is used as money, the value of money and the
rate at which the quantity of money is increased or decreased. And all
these are used as tools for trying to affect the levels of employment,
output and growth in the economy.
- Government's role is not limited to the protection of
life, liberty and property.
It is also important to note that
the "public policies" these eight points represent must be
implemented through violent means. Only the threat or use of force can make
people follow courses of action that are different from the ones that they
would have peacefully taken if it were not for government intervention. There
is really nothing "public" about these policies, after all; they are
coercive policies imposed by government.
Free Markets and the "Law of
Association"
Contrast these policies with the
policies of the free market. What is most striking is the voluntary nature of
market arrangements. The means of production are privately owned, and the owners
are free to determine how those means of production will be employed. Thus,
control over the means of production is depoliticized, that is, outside of the
control or influence of the government. Since control is not located in one
political place but is dispersed among a wide segment of the society's
population, it is also decentralized.
Individuals, therefore, own and
control the means through which they can maintain and improve their own
circumstances, and not be dependent upon a single political source for
employment or the necessities and luxuries of life. But it is not just the
owners of the means of production who have a high degree of autonomy in the
free-market economy; consumers do, too, since they are the ones who determine
what products and services will be in demand.
The basis of society, Ludwig von
Mises emphasized, is what he called "the law of association." Men can
more successfully improve their individual condition through cooperation, and
the means through which that cooperation can be made most productive is the
division of labor. By taking advantage of individual talents and circumstances
through specialization, the total quantity and quality of society's output can
be dramatically improved. Individuals do not have to try to satisfy all their
own wants through isolated activity.
Once they specialize their
activities, they become interdependent; they rely upon each other for the vast
majority of goods and services they desire. But it is this very interdependency
that gives production its real and true social character. If men are to acquire
from others what they desire, they must devote their energies to producing what
those others are willing to accept in trade.
The fundamental rule of the market
is mutual agreement and voluntary exchange. Each member of society must orient
his activities toward serving the wants of at least some of the other members
in an unending circle of trade. The Scottish moral philosopher Adam Smith observed over two hundred years
ago:
"Man has almost constant
occasion for the help of his brethren, and it is in vain for him to expect it
from their benevolence only. He will be more likely to prevail if he can
interest their self-love in his favor, and show them that it is to their own
advantage to do for him what he requires of them. Whosoever offers to another a
bargain of any kind, proposes to do this. Give me that which I want, and you
shall have this that you want is the meaning of every such offer; and it is in
this manner that we obtain from one another the far greater part of those good
offices that we stand in need of. It is not from the benevolence of the
butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their
regard for their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity, but
to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their
own advantages."
This is what assures that the uses
for which the means of production are applied are guided by consumer demand.
Each individual must find a way to satisfy some of the needs of others before
he can successfully satisfy his own. As a result, the prices for consumer goods
and the factors of production are not decreed by government but are formed in
the marketplace through the competitive forces of supply and demand. Success or
failure is determined by the profits and losses earned on the basis of the
greater or lesser ability to meet consumer demand in competition with rivals in
the marketplace.
Abandoning Our Constitution
In 1936, the Swiss economist and
political scientist William E. Rappard delivered a lecture in Philadelphia on
"The Relation of the Individual to the State" in which he emphasized
that no one could read the accounts of the constitutional debates of 1787 or
the famous "Federalist Papers" without realizing that the Founders
were "essentially animated by the desire to free the individual from the
state." He even went on to say, "I do not think that anyone who has
seriously studied the origin of the Constitution of the United States will deny
that it is an essentially individualistic document, inspired by the suspicion
that the state is always, or always tends to be, dictatorial."
Reflecting upon the trends he
observed in the United States in the New Deal era of the 1930s, Professor
Rappard concluded: "The individual demanding that the state provide him
with every security has thereby jeopardized his possession of that freedom for
which his ancestors fought and bled."
Is Soviet-style communist central
planning now in the ash heap of history? Yes. Are masses of people in the West
willing to walk in blind, lockstep obedience to fascist demagogues in
torchlight parades? No. And hopefully, neither form of totalitarianism will ever again cast its dark
collectivist shadow over the West. However, nearly 80 years after Professor
Rappard's observations about statist trends in America and around the world,
Western democracies are still enveloped in the tight
grip of the interventionist state.
Private property increasingly exists
only on paper. And with the abridgment of property rights has come the
abridgment of all the other individual liberties upon which a free society is
based. Our lives are supervised, regulated, controlled, directed and overseen
by the state. Look at any part of our economic and social lives and try to find
even one corner that is free from some form of direct or indirect government
intrusion. It is practically impossible to find such a corner.
This is because our lives are not
our own anymore. They are the property of the state. We are the tools and the
victims of public policies that are intended to construct brave new worlds
concocted by intellectual and political elites who still dream the utopian dream that they know better than us
how our lives should be lived.
Today, it is not free-market forces
but political directives that most often influence what goods and services are
produced, where and how they are produced and for what purposes they may be
used. If we pick up any product in any store anywhere in the United States we
will discover that hundreds of federal and state regulations have actually
determined the methods by which it has been manufactured, its quality and
content, its packaging and terms of sale and the conditions under which it may
be "safely" used by the purchaser. If we buy a tract of land or a
building, we will be trapped in a spider's web of land-use, building code and
environmental regulatory restrictions on how we may use, improve, or sell it.
Every facet of our lives is now subject to the whims of the state.
Economics, Morality and the Law
In an environment in which
"public policy" determines individual lives and fortunes and in which
social and economic life has become politicized, it is not surprising that many
Americans have turned their attention to politics to improve their market
position and relative income share. Legalized coercion has become the method by
which they get ahead in life.
And make no mistake about it: Every
income transfer, every tariff or import quota, every business subsidy, every
regulation or prohibition on who may compete or how a product may be produced
and marketed and every restraint on the use and transfer of property is an act
of coercion. Political force is interjected into what would otherwise be a
system of peaceful and voluntary transactions.
Over
time, interventionism blurs the distinction between what is moral and what is
not. In ordinary life, most people take
for granted that certain forms of conduct are permissible while others are not.
These are the Golden Rules we live
by. Government's task in human society is to enforce and protect these rules,
which are summarized in two
basic principles: Neither force nor fraud shall be practiced in dealings with
others; and the rights and property of others must be respected. In the
moral order that is the free-market economy, these principles are the
wellspring of honesty and trust. Without them, America is threatened with
ultimate ruin – with a war of all-against-all in the pursuit of plunder.
When
individuals began to ask government to do things for them, rather than merely
to secure their individual rights and honestly acquired property, they began
asking government to violate others' rights and property for their benefit.
These demands on government have
been rationalized by intellectuals and social engineers who have persuaded
people that what they wanted but didn't have was due to the greed, exploitation
and immorality of others. Basic morality and justice has been transcended in
the political arena in order to take from the "haves" and give to the
"have not's." Theft through political means has become the basis of a
"higher" morality: "social justice," which is supposed to
remedy the alleged injustices of the free-market economy.
But
once the market becomes politicized in this manner, morality begins to
disintegrate. Increasingly, the only way to
survive in society is to resort to the same types of political methods for gain
as others are using, or to devise ways to evade the controls and regulations.
More and more people, therefore, have been drawn into the arena of political
intrigue and manipulation or violation of the law for economic gain. Human
relationships and the political process have become increasingly corrupted.
In the 1920s, Ludwig von Mises
explained a crucial aspect of this corruption of morality and law:
"By constantly violating
criminal laws and moral decrees [people] lose the ability to distinguish
between right and wrong, good and bad. The merchant, who began by violating
foreign exchange controls, import and export restrictions, price ceilings,
etc., easily proceeds to defraud his partners. The decay of business morals . .
. is the inevitable concomitant of the regulations imposed on trade."
Mises was, of course, repeating the
lesson that the French classical economist Frederic Bastiat had attempted to teach in
the 1850s in his famous essay, "The Law." When the state becomes the
violator of liberty and property rather than its guarantor, it debases respect
for all law. People in society develop an increasing disrespect and disregard
for what the law demands. They view the law as the agent for immorality in the
form of legalized plunder for the benefit of some at the expense of others. And
this same disrespect and disregard sooner or later starts to creep into the
ordinary dealings between individuals. Society verges on the brink of
lawlessness.
Trends Can Change – With the Will to
Make It Happen
Bastiat predicted the moral
bankruptcy that has been brought on by the interventionist state. But are we
condemned to continue in a state of moral and political corruption?
Many thoughtful observers shake
their heads and conclude that the answer is, "Yes." But it is worth
recalling that in 1951 Ludwig von Mises wrote an essay called "Trends Can
Change." He was replying to those who despaired at that time that
socialist central planning was increasingly dominating the world. The situation
seemed irreversible; political, economic and social trends all seemed to be
heading in the direction of comprehensive collectivism. Said Mises:
"One of the cherished dogmas
implied in contemporary fashionable doctrines is the belief that tendencies of
social evolution as manifested in the recent past will prevail in the future,
too. Any attempt to reverse or even to stop a trend is doomed to failure . . .
"The prestige of this myth is
so enormous that it quells any opposition. It spreads defeatism among those who
do not share the opinion that everything which comes later is better than what
preceded, and are fully aware of the disastrous effects of all-round planning,
i.e., totalitarian socialism. They, too, meekly submit to what the
pseudo-scholars tell them is inevitable.
"It is this mentality of
passively accepting defeat that has made socialism triumph in many European
countries and may very soon make it conquer in this country [the United States]
too . . .
"Now trends of evolution can change, and hitherto they
almost always have changed. But they changed only because they met firm opposition. What
[Hilaire] Belloc called the servile state will certainly not be reversed if
nobody has the courage to attack its underlying dogmas."
The trend towards totalitarian
socialism was reversed. It was reversed by its own inherent unworkability. It
was reversed by the faith of millions of people in the Soviet bloc who would
not give up on the dream of freedom and by a courageous few who sacrificed
their careers, their property and even their lives to make that dream a
reality. And it was reversed by friends of freedom in the West who helped
prevent its triumph in their own homelands and who provided an intellectual
defense of liberty and the free market.
Interventionism in America in these
early decades of the 21st century is a trend that can also be reversed. Its own
inherent unworkability and strangulation of the wealth-creating mechanisms of
the market will start the reversal process. But that is not enough. We must
rekindle our belief in and desire for freedom. And some of us have to speak out
and refute the rationales for interventionism.
We need to share with our fellow
citizens a powerful vision of the free society and the unhampered economy. If
we succeed, the trend of the 21st century can be a trend toward greater
individual freedom, an expanding global free marketplace and rising standards
of living and opportunity for all.
- See more at:
http://www.thedailybell.com/editorials/35213/Richard-Ebeling-The-Free-Market-vs-the-Interventionist-State/#sthash.qrsf7vHE.dpuf
Appendix III
Simon black; April 21, 2014
Sovereign Valley Farm, Chile
Having traveled to well over 100 countries, I have seen some pretty shocking signs of poverty around the world.
In parts of Asia, it's not uncommon for parents in poor villages to sell
their children for bags of rice... or for children to be stolen
outright and sold as orphans to unsuspecting foreigners.
In Africa, I've seen people who are so destitute they intentionally
mangle and gash their own bodies just to give themselves good cause to
shock foreign tourists into donations.
But I'd have to rank poverty in Cuba as the most extreme.
Going to Cuba is like going back in time. The country lacks basic
products and services, many of which we consider staples in modern
life.
Most roads and buildings are in horrendous condition. And the average
person in the country has to make do with just a few dollars a month.
All of this stems from a system of central planning in which government
essentially owns and controls... everything. Businesses. Property.
Medical services. Anything larger than a bicycle.
Teams of bureaucrats lord over the Cuban economy trying to manipulate
and control every possible variable. They dole out housing allowances.
They set manufacturing quotas. They control prices of goods and
services.
Nevermind that any high school economics student understands why price controls don't work... and typically lead to shortages.
That's precisely what's happening right now.
Cuba's state-run condom distributor has been centrally planning safe sex
for years. And, surprise, surprise, they're not doing a very good job
of it.
Condoms are now at critically low levels in Cuba. And the government's
solution is to sell expired condoms from two years ago. It's genius.
Like the toilet paper shortage in Venezuela, the infamous electrical
blackouts in Argentina, or those mythical stories of Soviet boot
factories, it's clear that central planning simply does not work. Ever.
Even in a single industry as innocuous as toilet paper or condoms, there are simply too many variables in the equation.
Taking that a step further and presuming that a government committee can
centrally plan an entire economy or financial system is just ludicrous.
But it doesn't stop people from trying.
John Maynard Keynes is one of the most famous economists in history;
decades ago he wrote THE economic playbook still used by governments and
central banks around the world today.
His writings include such pearls of wisdom as:
"earthquakes, even wars... serve to increase wealth. . . "
and my favorite:
"Can a country spend its way into recovery? Yes."
Keynes was a staunch advocate of 'state-run capitalism', an oxymoron rivaled only by "almost pregnant" and "fight for peace".
Keynes believed that we little people aren't competent enough to arrange
our own finances, and "the duty of ordering the current volume of
investment cannot safely be left in private hands".
He was also a staunch advocate of modern central banking-- the concept
of awarding a tiny unelected banking elite with total control of the
money supply.
He saw it perfectly fine to have a group of men sitting in a room making
monetary decisions that would literally impact the entire world... so
long as it was the right men.
As he wrote, "State-run capitalism must be run by the right people."
Precisely. And everyone else is just supposed to trust them to be good
guys.
Cuba may be centrally planning its condom industry. But the United
States is centrally planning the entire global monetary system.
Cuba may be selling expired condoms... but the United States is selling expired credibility.
And just as in Cuba, they are creating bubbles, panics, shocks, crises, and gargantuan inefficiencies.
Like Cuba, the cracks are showing and the system is decaying rapidly.
Major governments and central banks are now insolvent, particularly on a
mark-to-market basis.
History shows that central planning has always had a finite shelf life.
Do you really want all of your assets, savings, and income invested in
this system as it collapses?
Appendix IV
The Democratic Dilemma and the Need to Limit Government
This is, in a sense, the modern democratic dilemma.
Over the last one hundred years, there have been fewer and fewer
restraints on what is viewed as the proper role of government in
society. The arena in which government may take an active part, both in
the United States and around the world, grows ever wider. This widening
arena of government has become the playground of special interest
politicking from both the political "left" and "right" by those hoping
to gain something through government intervention at the expense of
others in society.
In 2013, there were over 12,000 registered lobbying groups in
Washington, D.C. They officially spent more than $3.2 billion in 2013 to
influence legislation on behalf of special interest groups from across
the political spectrum, and reflecting virtually every sector of the
U.S. economy. Just since this century began in 2001, annual spending by
Washington-based lobbying groups (in
real inflation-adjusted dollars) has increased by nearly 50 percent.
How do we break out of this dilemma, and return to limited
government? Unfortunately, there are no electoral "quick fixes" or
political sleights-of-hand that can reduce or eliminate the political
paternalism and plunder land of the modern interventionist welfare
state.
A Return to the Idea of Individual Rights Inviolable by Government
It requires a sea change in the philosophical, ethical and
political-economic premises upon which American society operates. In
other words, those of us who believe in and desire liberty and a free
society must return to "first principles" and articulate the same to
others.
We must hone our own understanding of the ideas and ideals upon which
the United States was originally founded, and most especially as
enunciated in the Declaration of Independence, where it was clearly and
explicitly stated that freedom is inseparable from the recognition and
defense of those inalienable rights to "life, liberty, and the pursuit
of happiness" that are universally possessed by each and every
individual.
In more modern times, Ayn Rand expressed this concisely and insightfully in her essay, "Man's Rights" (1963):
"If one wishes to advocate a free society – that is, capitalism
– one must realize that its indispensible foundation is the principle
of individual rights. If one wishes to uphold individual rights, one
must realize that capitalism is the only system that can uphold and
protect them.
"'Rights' are a moral concept . . . the
concept preserves and protects individual morality in a social context –
the link between the moral code of a man and the legal code of a
society, between ethics and politics. Individual rights are the means of
subordinating society to moral law . . .
"A 'right' is a moral principle defining
and sanctioning a man's freedom of action in a social context. There is
only one fundamental right . . . a man's right to his own life . . .
The right to life is the source of all rights – and the right to
property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other
rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own
effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no
means of sustaining his life. The man who produces while others dispose
of his product, is a slave . . .
"The United States regarded man as an
end in himself, and society as a means to the peaceful, orderly,
voluntary coexistence of individuals . . . and that the only moral
purpose of a government is the protection of individual rights . . .
"To violate man's rights means to compel
him to act against his own judgment, or to expropriate his values.
Basically, there is only one way to do it: by the use of physical force.
There are two potential violators of man's rights: the criminals and
the government.
"The great achievement of the United
States was to draw a distinction between the these two – by forbidding
to the second [government] the legalized version of the activities of
the first [private plunder]."
As long as people believe that "society" or the "democratic majority"
or some empty notion of the "general welfare" comes before and is above
the rights and interests of the peaceful individual, then there will be
no breaking out of the trend towards the growing size and scope of
government's controlling reach over all of us.
It must become "second nature," a "habit of the mind" for Americans
in general to once more take it for granted that certain things are,
well, "just not done." And more precisely, that it is the duty of
government to protect the right of each individual to his life, liberty,
and honestly acquired property, and not to violate that person's
rights.
For it to become "second nature" and a "habit of the mind" again,
people must rediscover the reason for and rightness of an inviolable
"right" of each individual to his own life, which should not be
sacrificed to some mystical and imagined "higher good" or any collective
entity called "the nation," or the "state" or "society."
This is why, in answer to her own question, "Philosophy, Who Needs
It?" Ayn Rand once argued that each of us does; we must become
intelligent students of the theory of individual rights based on reason
and reality.
Changing the Course of Human Events with Right Ideas
Enough of us have to have sufficiently done so that we can explain to
others the essentials of such a theory of individual rights, and with
sufficient persuasiveness that those other, too, come to see the
rightness in them. Then it won't matter that most people never have an
incentive to know enough to decide whether the U.S. Department of
Education is spending too little or too much on a "common core"
curriculum or whether the Defense Department has just the right number
of aircraft or ocean vessels to "police the world."
Enough people will enter the voting booth and think as "second
nature" and as a "habit of the mind," is this candidate for or against
respect for and protection of individual rights? Does this party
platform advocate or oppose private property and free market capitalism?
Does this party and these candidates believe that the function of
government is to defensively protect the citizens of the country from
the clear and present dangers of foreign aggressors or do they wish to
sacrifice the lives and fortunes of Americans in foreign adventures and
wars?
Most people, if they see a person drop their wallet will pick it up
and hand it back to them, because as "second nature" and "habit of the
mind" they take for granted that taking what belongs to another is
"wrong." For a free society to prevail it is necessary for many people
to no longer give even a second thought that it is ethically right for
them to run to government and take by political power what they would
never think of stealing in their private interactions with others.
It is not that advocacy of liberty should become a "prejudice," that
is, a preconceived idea not based on reasoned reflection or learned
experience. A mere "faith" in freedom without a well-grounded set of
reasons for advocating it will not sustain a free society in the long
run.
What it does mean is the each generation must be encouraged to think
about and learn the meaning of individual rights, and what they imply
about the nature of man, human associations, and the role and place of a
government in society.
If properly and effectively understood, it will become the generally
accepted notion that, "Well, every thinking and reasonable person knows
that . . . using the coercive power of the government to compel any man
to sacrifice his life for others is as ethically not right as expecting
others to be forced to sacrifice for him."
Then, as a matter of implied "first principles" it will be impossible
for some in the society to successfully coerce others through the tools
of political power, because it will be culturally counter to the
general "habit of the mind" that liberty is too precious as both a moral
and practical matter to be forgone for even the most attractive
short-run gains from political paternalism and plunder.
It is neither an easy nor a quick task to change, in this sense, the
"climate of opinion" about the appropriate moral order to sustain a
free, prosperous and ethically healthy society. But we have no tools
other than our minds and our reason and an understanding that it is in
our own self-interests to try.
If enough of us take on this task the growth in government can be
both halted and reversed. The world of coercive plunder can be replaced
with a human community of free men pursuing mutually beneficial peaceful
production. The democratic dilemma of every growing government will be
brought to an end.
- See more at:
http://www.thedailybell.com/editorials/35234/Richard-Ebeling-Why-Government-Grows-and-How-to-Reverse-It/#sthash.HDHUikUn.dpuf
Why Government Grows, and How to Reverse It
April 22, 2014
Editorial By Richard Ebeling
Regardless of where someone may view himself along the
political spectrum (conservative, libertarian, or modern liberal), there
are always a variety of government programs and activities that they
either think are not worth the money or should not be the business of
government in the first place. Yet, it seems almost impossible to rein
in government. It keeps growing in size and scope in one direction after
another. Why? And is there any way to reverse it?
Increasing Government Spending and Taxing
The federal government keeps getting bigger and more intrusive and
more costly. In the 2013 fiscal year that ended on September 30, 2013,
Washington spent a bit more than $3.4 trillion. This compares (in
inflation-adjusted 2013 dollars) with 2.1 trillion in 1993. In other
words federal spending has increased by 62 percent over the last twenty
years.
The same dramatic growth has occurred on the revenue side. The
federal government took in about $2.8 trillion in taxes in fiscal 2013,
compared to $1.7 trillion in 1993 (in 2013 inflation-adjusted dollars),
for a 65 percent increase in government revenues compared to two decades
ago.
This increase in expenditures and revenues over the last twenty
years is reflected in the tax burden on the American people. The average
household paid $28,205 in taxes to the federal government in 2013, up
from $22,230 (in inflation-adjusted 2013 dollars) in 1993, or a 27
percent increase in twenty years. While the population of the country
has increased by around 22 percent during this time period, per capita
federal government spending has risen by 33 percent.
Both "entitlement" spending (Social Security, Medicare) and
"discretionary" spending (including defense) have significantly
increased over these two decades. Discretionary spending went up about
50 percent over this period, while entitlement spending rose by 100
percent.
Special Interests and the Growth in Government
According to "public choice" theory, this growth in government
transcends the political differences in modern democratic society.
Rather, it is structured into the existing political system itself.
Public choice theorists are economists who argue that the political
process should be studied in the same manner as markets are analyzed.
Over the last several decades, they have attempted to explain the
factors behind the growth of government in modern democratic society.
They say that individuals in the political arena are motivated by
self-interested goals (which can include ideological or ethical ends, as
well as financial gains).
This
self-interest
prompts individuals and "special interest" pressure groups to weigh the
costs and the benefits in deciding to be for or against various
government policies; and they attempt to influence political outcomes
through their votes, their campaign contributions, and their lobbying
expenditures.
Their goal to obtain through either government regulations or income
redistribution what they cannot or do not want to peacefully and
voluntarily acquire on the open, competitive market: other people's
money.
Rather than earning the revenues or income they desire by offering
the consuming public more, better and less expensive products, they turn
to government to get anti-competitive domestic regulations, import
restrictions against foreign rivals, or subsidies or government
contracts to acquire the additional wealth they want – all at taxpayers'
and consumers' expense, of course.
If they are "non-profits" such as many environmental groups, they
turn to government to restrict people's use of their own private
property through land use prohibitions or regulations, or through
government control and ownership of land and wildlife they want
preserved from private access and development. Unable to persuade enough
of their fellow citizens to voluntarily contribute sufficient money to
buy up and maintain the land they wish "untouched by man," they turn to
the coercive power of government to get what they want through taxes and
regulations.
Politicians, Bureaucrats and the Growth in Government
Politicians, on the other hand, desire to be elected and reelected.
They gain political office by "selling" programs, regulations, and
spending taxpayer dollars for the benefit of various constituent groups
whose campaign contributions and votes they hope to receive.
Why do they want to be elected or reelected? So they can impose on
the citizenry – both supporters and those who may have voted against
them – programs and spending and taxing that they arrogantly presume to
be good for "the people," under the presumption that they know what is
good for others; and which those others would want of their own free
will if only they were intelligent enough to have the wisdom and values
that those holding political office believe they possess.
Of course, sometimes the desire for political office arises out of
pure personal ambition, including the desire to "leave their mark on
history," their "legacy" that future generations of little children will
learn about in government schools. And, sometimes, it is the simple
desire for power over others, and any material wealth that can come
their way through political plunder and manipulation.
Those who run the government bureaucracies desire larger budgets and
greater administrative responsibilities over economic and social
affairs. They hope to gain promotions, higher salaries, and more control
through discretionary decision-making.
Larger budgets and expanded regulatory authority opens the door to
promotions and higher salaries in the government pay grades. In
addition, some of those in the government departments, bureaus, and
agencies suffer from the "psychology of the petty bureaucrat" who craves
power over others; others who deferentially have to come to them and
plead for the regulatory and licensing permissions without which the
honest men of the market place cannot go about their productive
business.
Bureaucrats' Incentive to Never Get the Job Done
There is also a perverse incentive mechanism within the halls of
bureaucratic power. Those who manage and work in these government
departments and agencies have little or no incentive to "solve" the
problems for which their department or agency was originally created. If
they do so they lose the rationale for maintenance of or increase in
the budgets and authority without which they have neither their incomes
nor positions.
This stands in stark contrast to the incentives for the private
enterpriser in the competitive market. In the free market there is only
one way to gain and retain the consumer business from whose purchases
market-base enterprises earn their revenues: to solve people's problems.
It may be a tastier coffee or frozen dinner; or a more wrinkle-free
shirt or suit; or a longer-lasting chewing gum; or better fitting and
lighter wearing prescription eye glasses; or a better quality and less
expensive private education; or a wider covering and lower premium car
insurance or health insurance policy. Whatever it may be, in the
voluntary free market attracting customers and winning their repeat
business requires private enterprisers to make people's lives easier,
more comfortable and less expensive.
There are no such incentives within the government bureaucracies, in
which the "servants of the people" have monopoly control over certain
services and regulatory rules and permissions. In addition, they acquire
their incomes not through voluntary transactions but through compulsory
taxation.
If this is the crude, but no less true reality behind the "public
interest" and "general welfare" political rhetoric and ideology with
which those in political power attempt to mesmerize citizens and
taxpayers, then why, once it is understood, does the governmental system
of paternalism and plunder persist?
Concentration of Benefits, Diffusion of Burdens
One of the core ideas of the public choice theorists is that there is
a bias toward growth in government spending and redistribution that
results from the pattern of a "concentration of benefits and a diffusion
of burdens." The logic of this process was actually explained more than
a century ago, in 1896, by the famous Italian economist and sociologist
Vilfredo Pareto.
Imagine that in a country of 30 million people, the government
proposes to tax each citizen $1 more, and then redistribute the extra
$30 million among a special interest group of 30 individuals. Each
taxpayer will have one extra dollar taken away from them by the
government for the year, while each of the 30 recipients of this wealth
transfer will annually gain an extra one million dollars.
Pareto suggested that the 30 recipients would collectively have a
strong incentive to lobby, influence, and even corruptly "buy" the votes
of the politicians able to pass this redistributive legislation. Each
individual taxpayer, on the other hand, will have little incentive to
spend the time and effort to counter-lobby, influence, and petition
members of the legislature merely to save one dollar off his or her tax
bill.
Let's look at the U.S. federal government's budget. In 2013, the per
capita amount of government expenditures was around $11,000 for every
man, woman and child. Not everyone, of course, pays taxes. The average
taxpayer burden of government spending in 2013 came to around $26,000.
However, the cost of each of the government departments and bureaus and
the specific line items in their respective budgets was only a fraction
of the overall tax burden.
Big Government Spending, Individual's Tax Burdens
Suppose a "conservative" is critical of the Department of Education,
thinking that many of its activities are misplaced, or perhaps that the
whole department should be abolished. While the Department of Education
spent nearly $72 billion last year, the average taxpayer only shoulder
$522 of this expense or on average only $43.50 in monthly taxes, which
came to around $1.45 a day. This is far less than a latte at Starbucks
or a lunch meal at a fast food establishment.
In most instances, it would be hard to interest a member of the
general taxpaying public to learn enough about the pros and cons of the
actual programs run by the Department of Education for him to make an
informed decision as to whether nor not what the Education Department
was doing was really worth it. After all, even if the Department of
Education was abolished, it would save the average taxpayer less than
two dollars a day, assuming taxes were cut by the full amount.
On the other hand, that $72 billion is concentrated on the incomes
and activities of, at most, several hundreds of thousands of teachers,
educators, school administrators, and textbook and school-supply
providers. Those federal dollars represent a sizable portion of their
administrative budgets, take-home pay, and business profits. The
lobbying and voting incentives, therefore, will be heavily on the side
of those who see financial and related gains from continuing and
increasing federal spending on government-funded education.
Someone on the "liberal" side of the political spectrum might be
equally critical of some of the line item spending in the Department of
Defense budget, or on subsidies to corporate agri-businesses funded by
the Department of Agriculture. But the same bias would work in these
areas of government activity, as well, making it difficult to create the
necessary political counterweights to lobby for the reduction or
elimination of these federal programs.
The Defense Department's spending on warplanes and battleships,
uniforms and boots, ammunition and weaponry, spying devices and unmanned
drones represents hundreds of millions, sometimes billions of dollars
to the various contractors who win and fulfill these military contracts.
They have a strong incentive to lobby and influence for the greatest
amount of defense-related spending, and to know every detail and
potential rationale to demonstrate that such expenditures are in the
"national interest" and why they are the right ones to get the
taxpayer-funded procurement deals.
But how many taxpayers will have the motive and incentive to wade
through all the (unclassified) details concerning the various parts of
Defense Department spending to make an informed decision about how much
defense spending America needs and of what type, considering that even
if some programs were to be cut back or eliminated it would maybe result
in a cut in his personal taxes by the equivalent of a few dollars a
day. For most individual citizens their time and attention have a higher
value in doing other things.
Because of this, government tends to grow in many directions in the
form of concentrated benefits for special interest groups of all types
at the expense of the general citizenry and taxpayers. The dispersed
financial burden that falls on each taxpayer as his "contribution" to
fund these programs nonetheless adds up, of course, to hundreds of
billions, indeed trillions, of dollars a year of government spending.
Division of Labor and the Bias Toward Producer Interests
Since the time of
Adam Smith
in the eighteenth century, economists have emphasized the productive
benefits from specialization through the division of labor. Each of us
will be materially far better off if we specialize in what we are
relatively more productive at doing, and then trade away our particular
good or service for what others are offering to sell us. This is really
the basis for all the material, scientific, intellectual, and cultural
advancements of modern civilization.
But near the beginning of the twentieth century, British economist
Philip Wicksteed pointed out, in his "The Common Sense of Political
Economy" (1910), that such specialization also tends to create a bias
against the open, competitive market in which people need to apply
themselves in the most productive and cost-efficient ways. This was also
strongly emphasized by the free market, German economist Wilhelm Röpke,
in his work, "The Social Crisis of Our Time" (1942).
Once individuals have divided their labors, each becomes the producer
of one product (or at most a small handful of things) and the consumer
of all the multitudes of goods that others in society produce. But it is
impossible for any of us to buy the goods that others offer to us as
consumers, unless we have first succeeded in earning an income from what
we are selling on the market in our own role as a producer.
Because of this, our interest as a producer always tends to take
precedence over our role as a consumer, it has been argued. If I oppose
some special interest group that is trying to get a subsidy from the
government, I may save a dollar in my role as taxpayer and consumer (to
use the earlier example from Pareto). But is it worth the cost in time,
effort and expenditure to do so?
On the other hand, lobbying and otherwise influencing the legislative
process to win some favor or privilege for myself and the others in my
sector of the economy may produce better financial results. A protective
tariff to limit foreign competition, for example, or a regulatory or
licensing rule that restricts new domestic rivals can increase my income
per year by tens of thousands of dollars, in my role as a producer.
The Democratic Dilemma and the Need to Limit Government
This is, in a sense, the modern democratic dilemma.
Over the last one hundred years, there have been fewer and fewer
restraints on what is viewed as the proper role of government in
society. The arena in which government may take an active part, both in
the United States and around the world, grows ever wider. This widening
arena of government has become the playground of special interest
politicking from both the political "left" and "right" by those hoping
to gain something through government intervention at the expense of
others in society.
In 2013, there were over 12,000 registered lobbying groups in
Washington, D.C. They officially spent more than $3.2 billion in 2013 to
influence legislation on behalf of special interest groups from across
the political spectrum, and reflecting virtually every sector of the
U.S. economy. Just since this century began in 2001, annual spending by
Washington-based lobbying groups (in
real inflation-adjusted dollars) has increased by nearly 50 percent.
How do we break out of this dilemma, and return to limited
government? Unfortunately, there are no electoral "quick fixes" or
political sleights-of-hand that can reduce or eliminate the political
paternalism and plunder land of the modern interventionist welfare
state.
A Return to the Idea of Individual Rights Inviolable by Government
It requires a sea change in the philosophical, ethical and
political-economic premises upon which American society operates. In
other words, those of us who believe in and desire liberty and a free
society must return to "first principles" and articulate the same to
others.
We must hone our own understanding of the ideas and ideals upon which
the United States was originally founded, and most especially as
enunciated in the Declaration of Independence, where it was clearly and
explicitly stated that freedom is inseparable from the recognition and
defense of those inalienable rights to "life, liberty, and the pursuit
of happiness" that are universally possessed by each and every
individual.
In more modern times, Ayn Rand expressed this concisely and insightfully in her essay, "Man's Rights" (1963):
"If one wishes to advocate a free society – that is, capitalism
– one must realize that its indispensible foundation is the principle
of individual rights. If one wishes to uphold individual rights, one
must realize that capitalism is the only system that can uphold and
protect them.
"'Rights' are a moral concept . . . the
concept preserves and protects individual morality in a social context –
the link between the moral code of a man and the legal code of a
society, between ethics and politics. Individual rights are the means of
subordinating society to moral law . . .
"A 'right' is a moral principle defining
and sanctioning a man's freedom of action in a social context. There is
only one fundamental right . . . a man's right to his own life . . .
The right to life is the source of all rights – and the right to
property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other
rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own
effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no
means of sustaining his life. The man who produces while others dispose
of his product, is a slave . . .
"The United States regarded man as an
end in himself, and society as a means to the peaceful, orderly,
voluntary coexistence of individuals . . . and that the only moral
purpose of a government is the protection of individual rights . . .
"To violate man's rights means to compel
him to act against his own judgment, or to expropriate his values.
Basically, there is only one way to do it: by the use of physical force.
There are two potential violators of man's rights: the criminals and
the government.
"The great achievement of the United
States was to draw a distinction between the these two – by forbidding
to the second [government] the legalized version of the activities of
the first [private plunder]."
As long as people believe that "society" or the "democratic majority"
or some empty notion of the "general welfare" comes before and is above
the rights and interests of the peaceful individual, then there will be
no breaking out of the trend towards the growing size and scope of
government's controlling reach over all of us.
It must become "second nature," a "habit of the mind" for Americans
in general to once more take it for granted that certain things are,
well, "just not done." And more precisely, that it is the duty of
government to protect the right of each individual to his life, liberty,
and honestly acquired property, and not to violate that person's
rights.
For it to become "second nature" and a "habit of the mind" again,
people must rediscover the reason for and rightness of an inviolable
"right" of each individual to his own life, which should not be
sacrificed to some mystical and imagined "higher good" or any collective
entity called "the nation," or the "state" or "society."
This is why, in answer to her own question, "Philosophy, Who Needs
It?" Ayn Rand once argued that each of us does; we must become
intelligent students of the theory of individual rights based on reason
and reality.
Changing the Course of Human Events with Right Ideas
Enough of us have to have sufficiently done so that we can explain to
others the essentials of such a theory of individual rights, and with
sufficient persuasiveness that those other, too, come to see the
rightness in them. Then it won't matter that most people never have an
incentive to know enough to decide whether the U.S. Department of
Education is spending too little or too much on a "common core"
curriculum or whether the Defense Department has just the right number
of aircraft or ocean vessels to "police the world."
Enough people will enter the voting booth and think as "second
nature" and as a "habit of the mind," is this candidate for or against
respect for and protection of individual rights? Does this party
platform advocate or oppose private property and free market capitalism?
Does this party and these candidates believe that the function of
government is to defensively protect the citizens of the country from
the clear and present dangers of foreign aggressors or do they wish to
sacrifice the lives and fortunes of Americans in foreign adventures and
wars?
Most people, if they see a person drop their wallet will pick it up
and hand it back to them, because as "second nature" and "habit of the
mind" they take for granted that taking what belongs to another is
"wrong." For a free society to prevail it is necessary for many people
to no longer give even a second thought that it is ethically right for
them to run to government and take by political power what they would
never think of stealing in their private interactions with others.
It is not that advocacy of liberty should become a "prejudice," that
is, a preconceived idea not based on reasoned reflection or learned
experience. A mere "faith" in freedom without a well-grounded set of
reasons for advocating it will not sustain a free society in the long
run.
What it does mean is the each generation must be encouraged to think
about and learn the meaning of individual rights, and what they imply
about the nature of man, human associations, and the role and place of a
government in society.
If properly and effectively understood, it will become the generally
accepted notion that, "Well, every thinking and reasonable person knows
that . . . using the coercive power of the government to compel any man
to sacrifice his life for others is as ethically not right as expecting
others to be forced to sacrifice for him."
Then, as a matter of implied "first principles" it will be impossible
for some in the society to successfully coerce others through the tools
of political power, because it will be culturally counter to the
general "habit of the mind" that liberty is too precious as both a moral
and practical matter to be forgone for even the most attractive
short-run gains from political paternalism and plunder.
It is neither an easy nor a quick task to change, in this sense, the
"climate of opinion" about the appropriate moral order to sustain a
free, prosperous and ethically healthy society. But we have no tools
other than our minds and our reason and an understanding that it is in
our own self-interests to try.
If enough of us take on this task the growth in government can be
both halted and reversed. The world of coercive plunder can be replaced
with a human community of free men pursuing mutually beneficial peaceful
production. The democratic dilemma of every growing government will be
brought to an end.
- See more at:
http://www.thedailybell.com/editorials/35234/Richard-Ebeling-Why-Government-Grows-and-How-to-Reverse-It/#sthash.Yu0VoSmR.dpuf
Why Government Grows, and How to Reverse It
April 22, 2014
Editorial By Richard Ebeling
Regardless of where someone may view himself along the
political spectrum (conservative, libertarian, or modern liberal), there
are always a variety of government programs and activities that they
either think are not worth the money or should not be the business of
government in the first place. Yet, it seems almost impossible to rein
in government. It keeps growing in size and scope in one direction after
another. Why? And is there any way to reverse it?
Increasing Government Spending and Taxing
The federal government keeps getting bigger and more intrusive and
more costly. In the 2013 fiscal year that ended on September 30, 2013,
Washington spent a bit more than $3.4 trillion. This compares (in
inflation-adjusted 2013 dollars) with 2.1 trillion in 1993. In other
words federal spending has increased by 62 percent over the last twenty
years.
The same dramatic growth has occurred on the revenue side. The
federal government took in about $2.8 trillion in taxes in fiscal 2013,
compared to $1.7 trillion in 1993 (in 2013 inflation-adjusted dollars),
for a 65 percent increase in government revenues compared to two decades
ago.
This increase in expenditures and revenues over the last twenty
years is reflected in the tax burden on the American people. The average
household paid $28,205 in taxes to the federal government in 2013, up
from $22,230 (in inflation-adjusted 2013 dollars) in 1993, or a 27
percent increase in twenty years. While the population of the country
has increased by around 22 percent during this time period, per capita
federal government spending has risen by 33 percent.
Both "entitlement" spending (Social Security, Medicare) and
"discretionary" spending (including defense) have significantly
increased over these two decades. Discretionary spending went up about
50 percent over this period, while entitlement spending rose by 100
percent.
Special Interests and the Growth in Government
According to "public choice" theory, this growth in government
transcends the political differences in modern democratic society.
Rather, it is structured into the existing political system itself.
Public choice theorists are economists who argue that the political
process should be studied in the same manner as markets are analyzed.
Over the last several decades, they have attempted to explain the
factors behind the growth of government in modern democratic society.
They say that individuals in the political arena are motivated by
self-interested goals (which can include ideological or ethical ends, as
well as financial gains).
This
self-interest
prompts individuals and "special interest" pressure groups to weigh the
costs and the benefits in deciding to be for or against various
government policies; and they attempt to influence political outcomes
through their votes, their campaign contributions, and their lobbying
expenditures.
Their goal to obtain through either government regulations or income
redistribution what they cannot or do not want to peacefully and
voluntarily acquire on the open, competitive market: other people's
money.
Rather than earning the revenues or income they desire by offering
the consuming public more, better and less expensive products, they turn
to government to get anti-competitive domestic regulations, import
restrictions against foreign rivals, or subsidies or government
contracts to acquire the additional wealth they want – all at taxpayers'
and consumers' expense, of course.
If they are "non-profits" such as many environmental groups, they
turn to government to restrict people's use of their own private
property through land use prohibitions or regulations, or through
government control and ownership of land and wildlife they want
preserved from private access and development. Unable to persuade enough
of their fellow citizens to voluntarily contribute sufficient money to
buy up and maintain the land they wish "untouched by man," they turn to
the coercive power of government to get what they want through taxes and
regulations.
Politicians, Bureaucrats and the Growth in Government
Politicians, on the other hand, desire to be elected and reelected.
They gain political office by "selling" programs, regulations, and
spending taxpayer dollars for the benefit of various constituent groups
whose campaign contributions and votes they hope to receive.
Why do they want to be elected or reelected? So they can impose on
the citizenry – both supporters and those who may have voted against
them – programs and spending and taxing that they arrogantly presume to
be good for "the people," under the presumption that they know what is
good for others; and which those others would want of their own free
will if only they were intelligent enough to have the wisdom and values
that those holding political office believe they possess.
Of course, sometimes the desire for political office arises out of
pure personal ambition, including the desire to "leave their mark on
history," their "legacy" that future generations of little children will
learn about in government schools. And, sometimes, it is the simple
desire for power over others, and any material wealth that can come
their way through political plunder and manipulation.
Those who run the government bureaucracies desire larger budgets and
greater administrative responsibilities over economic and social
affairs. They hope to gain promotions, higher salaries, and more control
through discretionary decision-making.
Larger budgets and expanded regulatory authority opens the door to
promotions and higher salaries in the government pay grades. In
addition, some of those in the government departments, bureaus, and
agencies suffer from the "psychology of the petty bureaucrat" who craves
power over others; others who deferentially have to come to them and
plead for the regulatory and licensing permissions without which the
honest men of the market place cannot go about their productive
business.
Bureaucrats' Incentive to Never Get the Job Done
There is also a perverse incentive mechanism within the halls of
bureaucratic power. Those who manage and work in these government
departments and agencies have little or no incentive to "solve" the
problems for which their department or agency was originally created. If
they do so they lose the rationale for maintenance of or increase in
the budgets and authority without which they have neither their incomes
nor positions.
This stands in stark contrast to the incentives for the private
enterpriser in the competitive market. In the free market there is only
one way to gain and retain the consumer business from whose purchases
market-base enterprises earn their revenues: to solve people's problems.
It may be a tastier coffee or frozen dinner; or a more wrinkle-free
shirt or suit; or a longer-lasting chewing gum; or better fitting and
lighter wearing prescription eye glasses; or a better quality and less
expensive private education; or a wider covering and lower premium car
insurance or health insurance policy. Whatever it may be, in the
voluntary free market attracting customers and winning their repeat
business requires private enterprisers to make people's lives easier,
more comfortable and less expensive.
There are no such incentives within the government bureaucracies, in
which the "servants of the people" have monopoly control over certain
services and regulatory rules and permissions. In addition, they acquire
their incomes not through voluntary transactions but through compulsory
taxation.
If this is the crude, but no less true reality behind the "public
interest" and "general welfare" political rhetoric and ideology with
which those in political power attempt to mesmerize citizens and
taxpayers, then why, once it is understood, does the governmental system
of paternalism and plunder persist?
Concentration of Benefits, Diffusion of Burdens
One of the core ideas of the public choice theorists is that there is
a bias toward growth in government spending and redistribution that
results from the pattern of a "concentration of benefits and a diffusion
of burdens." The logic of this process was actually explained more than
a century ago, in 1896, by the famous Italian economist and sociologist
Vilfredo Pareto.
Imagine that in a country of 30 million people, the government
proposes to tax each citizen $1 more, and then redistribute the extra
$30 million among a special interest group of 30 individuals. Each
taxpayer will have one extra dollar taken away from them by the
government for the year, while each of the 30 recipients of this wealth
transfer will annually gain an extra one million dollars.
Pareto suggested that the 30 recipients would collectively have a
strong incentive to lobby, influence, and even corruptly "buy" the votes
of the politicians able to pass this redistributive legislation. Each
individual taxpayer, on the other hand, will have little incentive to
spend the time and effort to counter-lobby, influence, and petition
members of the legislature merely to save one dollar off his or her tax
bill.
Let's look at the U.S. federal government's budget. In 2013, the per
capita amount of government expenditures was around $11,000 for every
man, woman and child. Not everyone, of course, pays taxes. The average
taxpayer burden of government spending in 2013 came to around $26,000.
However, the cost of each of the government departments and bureaus and
the specific line items in their respective budgets was only a fraction
of the overall tax burden.
Big Government Spending, Individual's Tax Burdens
Suppose a "conservative" is critical of the Department of Education,
thinking that many of its activities are misplaced, or perhaps that the
whole department should be abolished. While the Department of Education
spent nearly $72 billion last year, the average taxpayer only shoulder
$522 of this expense or on average only $43.50 in monthly taxes, which
came to around $1.45 a day. This is far less than a latte at Starbucks
or a lunch meal at a fast food establishment.
In most instances, it would be hard to interest a member of the
general taxpaying public to learn enough about the pros and cons of the
actual programs run by the Department of Education for him to make an
informed decision as to whether nor not what the Education Department
was doing was really worth it. After all, even if the Department of
Education was abolished, it would save the average taxpayer less than
two dollars a day, assuming taxes were cut by the full amount.
On the other hand, that $72 billion is concentrated on the incomes
and activities of, at most, several hundreds of thousands of teachers,
educators, school administrators, and textbook and school-supply
providers. Those federal dollars represent a sizable portion of their
administrative budgets, take-home pay, and business profits. The
lobbying and voting incentives, therefore, will be heavily on the side
of those who see financial and related gains from continuing and
increasing federal spending on government-funded education.
Someone on the "liberal" side of the political spectrum might be
equally critical of some of the line item spending in the Department of
Defense budget, or on subsidies to corporate agri-businesses funded by
the Department of Agriculture. But the same bias would work in these
areas of government activity, as well, making it difficult to create the
necessary political counterweights to lobby for the reduction or
elimination of these federal programs.
The Defense Department's spending on warplanes and battleships,
uniforms and boots, ammunition and weaponry, spying devices and unmanned
drones represents hundreds of millions, sometimes billions of dollars
to the various contractors who win and fulfill these military contracts.
They have a strong incentive to lobby and influence for the greatest
amount of defense-related spending, and to know every detail and
potential rationale to demonstrate that such expenditures are in the
"national interest" and why they are the right ones to get the
taxpayer-funded procurement deals.
But how many taxpayers will have the motive and incentive to wade
through all the (unclassified) details concerning the various parts of
Defense Department spending to make an informed decision about how much
defense spending America needs and of what type, considering that even
if some programs were to be cut back or eliminated it would maybe result
in a cut in his personal taxes by the equivalent of a few dollars a
day. For most individual citizens their time and attention have a higher
value in doing other things.
Because of this, government tends to grow in many directions in the
form of concentrated benefits for special interest groups of all types
at the expense of the general citizenry and taxpayers. The dispersed
financial burden that falls on each taxpayer as his "contribution" to
fund these programs nonetheless adds up, of course, to hundreds of
billions, indeed trillions, of dollars a year of government spending.
Division of Labor and the Bias Toward Producer Interests
Since the time of
Adam Smith
in the eighteenth century, economists have emphasized the productive
benefits from specialization through the division of labor. Each of us
will be materially far better off if we specialize in what we are
relatively more productive at doing, and then trade away our particular
good or service for what others are offering to sell us. This is really
the basis for all the material, scientific, intellectual, and cultural
advancements of modern civilization.
But near the beginning of the twentieth century, British economist
Philip Wicksteed pointed out, in his "The Common Sense of Political
Economy" (1910), that such specialization also tends to create a bias
against the open, competitive market in which people need to apply
themselves in the most productive and cost-efficient ways. This was also
strongly emphasized by the free market, German economist Wilhelm Röpke,
in his work, "The Social Crisis of Our Time" (1942).
Once individuals have divided their labors, each becomes the producer
of one product (or at most a small handful of things) and the consumer
of all the multitudes of goods that others in society produce. But it is
impossible for any of us to buy the goods that others offer to us as
consumers, unless we have first succeeded in earning an income from what
we are selling on the market in our own role as a producer.
Because of this, our interest as a producer always tends to take
precedence over our role as a consumer, it has been argued. If I oppose
some special interest group that is trying to get a subsidy from the
government, I may save a dollar in my role as taxpayer and consumer (to
use the earlier example from Pareto). But is it worth the cost in time,
effort and expenditure to do so?
On the other hand, lobbying and otherwise influencing the legislative
process to win some favor or privilege for myself and the others in my
sector of the economy may produce better financial results. A protective
tariff to limit foreign competition, for example, or a regulatory or
licensing rule that restricts new domestic rivals can increase my income
per year by tens of thousands of dollars, in my role as a producer.
The Democratic Dilemma and the Need to Limit Government
This is, in a sense, the modern democratic dilemma.
Over the last one hundred years, there have been fewer and fewer
restraints on what is viewed as the proper role of government in
society. The arena in which government may take an active part, both in
the United States and around the world, grows ever wider. This widening
arena of government has become the playground of special interest
politicking from both the political "left" and "right" by those hoping
to gain something through government intervention at the expense of
others in society.
In 2013, there were over 12,000 registered lobbying groups in
Washington, D.C. They officially spent more than $3.2 billion in 2013 to
influence legislation on behalf of special interest groups from across
the political spectrum, and reflecting virtually every sector of the
U.S. economy. Just since this century began in 2001, annual spending by
Washington-based lobbying groups (in
real inflation-adjusted dollars) has increased by nearly 50 percent.
How do we break out of this dilemma, and return to limited
government? Unfortunately, there are no electoral "quick fixes" or
political sleights-of-hand that can reduce or eliminate the political
paternalism and plunder land of the modern interventionist welfare
state.
A Return to the Idea of Individual Rights Inviolable by Government
It requires a sea change in the philosophical, ethical and
political-economic premises upon which American society operates. In
other words, those of us who believe in and desire liberty and a free
society must return to "first principles" and articulate the same to
others.
We must hone our own understanding of the ideas and ideals upon which
the United States was originally founded, and most especially as
enunciated in the Declaration of Independence, where it was clearly and
explicitly stated that freedom is inseparable from the recognition and
defense of those inalienable rights to "life, liberty, and the pursuit
of happiness" that are universally possessed by each and every
individual.
In more modern times, Ayn Rand expressed this concisely and insightfully in her essay, "Man's Rights" (1963):
"If one wishes to advocate a free society – that is, capitalism
– one must realize that its indispensible foundation is the principle
of individual rights. If one wishes to uphold individual rights, one
must realize that capitalism is the only system that can uphold and
protect them.
"'Rights' are a moral concept . . . the
concept preserves and protects individual morality in a social context –
the link between the moral code of a man and the legal code of a
society, between ethics and politics. Individual rights are the means of
subordinating society to moral law . . .
"A 'right' is a moral principle defining
and sanctioning a man's freedom of action in a social context. There is
only one fundamental right . . . a man's right to his own life . . .
The right to life is the source of all rights – and the right to
property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other
rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own
effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no
means of sustaining his life. The man who produces while others dispose
of his product, is a slave . . .
"The United States regarded man as an
end in himself, and society as a means to the peaceful, orderly,
voluntary coexistence of individuals . . . and that the only moral
purpose of a government is the protection of individual rights . . .
"To violate man's rights means to compel
him to act against his own judgment, or to expropriate his values.
Basically, there is only one way to do it: by the use of physical force.
There are two potential violators of man's rights: the criminals and
the government.
"The great achievement of the United
States was to draw a distinction between the these two – by forbidding
to the second [government] the legalized version of the activities of
the first [private plunder]."
As long as people believe that "society" or the "democratic majority"
or some empty notion of the "general welfare" comes before and is above
the rights and interests of the peaceful individual, then there will be
no breaking out of the trend towards the growing size and scope of
government's controlling reach over all of us.
It must become "second nature," a "habit of the mind" for Americans
in general to once more take it for granted that certain things are,
well, "just not done." And more precisely, that it is the duty of
government to protect the right of each individual to his life, liberty,
and honestly acquired property, and not to violate that person's
rights.
For it to become "second nature" and a "habit of the mind" again,
people must rediscover the reason for and rightness of an inviolable
"right" of each individual to his own life, which should not be
sacrificed to some mystical and imagined "higher good" or any collective
entity called "the nation," or the "state" or "society."
This is why, in answer to her own question, "Philosophy, Who Needs
It?" Ayn Rand once argued that each of us does; we must become
intelligent students of the theory of individual rights based on reason
and reality.
Changing the Course of Human Events with Right Ideas
Enough of us have to have sufficiently done so that we can explain to
others the essentials of such a theory of individual rights, and with
sufficient persuasiveness that those other, too, come to see the
rightness in them. Then it won't matter that most people never have an
incentive to know enough to decide whether the U.S. Department of
Education is spending too little or too much on a "common core"
curriculum or whether the Defense Department has just the right number
of aircraft or ocean vessels to "police the world."
Enough people will enter the voting booth and think as "second
nature" and as a "habit of the mind," is this candidate for or against
respect for and protection of individual rights? Does this party
platform advocate or oppose private property and free market capitalism?
Does this party and these candidates believe that the function of
government is to defensively protect the citizens of the country from
the clear and present dangers of foreign aggressors or do they wish to
sacrifice the lives and fortunes of Americans in foreign adventures and
wars?
Most people, if they see a person drop their wallet will pick it up
and hand it back to them, because as "second nature" and "habit of the
mind" they take for granted that taking what belongs to another is
"wrong." For a free society to prevail it is necessary for many people
to no longer give even a second thought that it is ethically right for
them to run to government and take by political power what they would
never think of stealing in their private interactions with others.
It is not that advocacy of liberty should become a "prejudice," that
is, a preconceived idea not based on reasoned reflection or learned
experience. A mere "faith" in freedom without a well-grounded set of
reasons for advocating it will not sustain a free society in the long
run.
What it does mean is the each generation must be encouraged to think
about and learn the meaning of individual rights, and what they imply
about the nature of man, human associations, and the role and place of a
government in society.
If properly and effectively understood, it will become the generally
accepted notion that, "Well, every thinking and reasonable person knows
that . . . using the coercive power of the government to compel any man
to sacrifice his life for others is as ethically not right as expecting
others to be forced to sacrifice for him."
Then, as a matter of implied "first principles" it will be impossible
for some in the society to successfully coerce others through the tools
of political power, because it will be culturally counter to the
general "habit of the mind" that liberty is too precious as both a moral
and practical matter to be forgone for even the most attractive
short-run gains from political paternalism and plunder.
It is neither an easy nor a quick task to change, in this sense, the
"climate of opinion" about the appropriate moral order to sustain a
free, prosperous and ethically healthy society. But we have no tools
other than our minds and our reason and an understanding that it is in
our own self-interests to try.
If enough of us take on this task the growth in government can be
both halted and reversed. The world of coercive plunder can be replaced
with a human community of free men pursuing mutually beneficial peaceful
production. The democratic dilemma of every growing government will be
brought to an end.
- See more at:
http://www.thedailybell.com/editorials/35234/Richard-Ebeling-Why-Government-Grows-and-How-to-Reverse-It/#sthash.Yu0VoSmR.dpuf
