Leo Strauss, Neo-Conservatism & U. S. Foreign Policy
Tibor R. Machan
One has been hearing much about how U. S. foreign policy is influenced by neo-conservatives, especially the ideas of the famous political scientist Leo Strauss (1899-1973) and many of his students. One book, by Anne Norton, is even titled, Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire (Yale, 2004), suggesting that Strauss’s ideas are quite directly responsible for policies that precipitated the war against Iraq.
Strauss, who left Germany before the Nazis took over and came to the U. S. A., is, first of all, largely responsible for having reintroduced a serious study of classical Greek political philosophy. He promoted a very close re-reading of Plato and Aristotle, among others, believing that modern political philosophy—starting with Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) and Baruch (Benedict) Spinoza (1632-1677) and ending with the anti-politics of logical positivists such as A. J. Ayer (1910–1989)—laid the foundation for value free politics. This amounted to the belief that moral and political ideals cannot be rationally defended since reason can only deal with sensory evidence, nothing else. Since what is right and wrong in any area goes way beyond such evidence, right and wrong must remain notions beyond reason.
Strauss and his students believed this wrongful idea was responsible for many of the modern age’s problems, especially liberal democracy’s inability to defend itself intellectually against totalitarian and authoritarian ideologies like Hitler’s Nazism and Stalin’s Communism. Today they tend to hold that the same applies when it comes to the West’s inability to respond intellectually, philosophically to Islamic radicalism. The West has been intellectually disarmed by modern philosophy, so it is necessary to recover its superior ancient heritage.
Not that Strauss and Co. had much to offer even from those venerable sources—their view tended to be that philosophy really doesn’t provide us with any firm ideas, only with a wonderful exploratory intellectual journey. Some of Strauss’s students even came to advocate nihilism as the only honest philosophy; others adhered to the view, which Strauss ascribed to the great philosophers and seems to have embraced, namely, that ordinary folks just cannot cope with what serious philosophy has to offer—the hard truth, for example, that nothing much is known for certain about anything. So the public may have to be deceived for its own good. (For example, Alan Bloom’s famous book, The Closing of the American Mind [1987], is arguably such a work of “big lies.”)
However, one thing Strauss and his followers did champion without reservation is that philosophical reflection, conversation, exploration, and so forth are all extremely important. Even though no results can be expected from these, our only hope lies in a society that makes philosophy possible. And the only regime that does that is liberal democracy, with its substantially free institutions, especially freedom of inquiry—the press, religion, writing and reading and research of all kinds.
What follows from this is that we owe it to ourselves to defend this regime from all the totalitarian and authoritarian enemies that would squash its institutions, including, of course, the radical Islamic terrorists. Exactly how to mount this defense was not spelled out by Strauss and even by most of his students. I believe Strauss would have been inclined to promote peaceful means—advocacy, exemplification, exhortation, diplomacy and so forth—rather than aggressive military action. But some of those who learned at Strauss’s feet believed otherwise and did, in fact, come to believe that we need to defeat the enemies of liberal democracy before they get us.
Neo-conservatives are not all followers of Strauss but they have picked up a good deal from Strausseans and are among this latter group. The likes of Irving Kristol, founding editor of The Public Interest, which was the flagship publication of neo-conservatism, and his son, William, editor of The Weekly Standard, lean in this direction, as does the architect of significant portions of America’s current foreign policy, former Deputy Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz.
Many on the Left criticize neo-conservatism and, especially, its aggressive foreign policy but the Left is intellectually undermined in this because in its domestic policies, including most recently, environmentalism, the Left is also aggressive (“precautionary”), caring little about individual rights, civil liberties and due process. So we have in the U. S. A. two sides arguing about how to conduct foreign affairs neither of which has a clear cut, principled argument in favor of confining military action to genuine, bona fide defense.
This is not what one would have expected in a country begun with the presidency of George Washington who in his farewell letter warned us all quite explicitly against foreign entanglements.
Saturday, June 10, 2006
Altruism’s Bad Influence
Tibor R. Machan
Putting it plainly, altruism is very popular, at least as far as what people verbally champion. It’s not so popular in action because, well, it is impossible to practice consistently. As the poet W. H. Auden put it, “We are here on earth to do good for others. What the others are here for, I don't know.”
In fact, of course, what people much more reasonably support is benevolence, generosity and kindness, all in the right measure, not to a fault. It shows by what they do, not by what they say. Unselfishness may be advocated but it is hardly ever practiced much. That’s because unselfishness means devoting oneself first to other people—not just loved ones and in proper proportion but to all, and all of the time. Which is impossible.
Yet, because it is so popular to champion it as an ideal, despite being an impossible ideal it is promoted all over the place. Take, for example, business ethics, the discipline in which I do much work and which is teeming with theorists who preach the altruist line. They call it the “stakeholder theory.”
The idea, advocated by all sorts of business ethics professors who teach and write the subject across the world, is that when company officers make their decisions, they ought to keep in mind not shareholders—those for whom they work, the owners of the firm—but all those who have an interest in it, the stakeholders. Thus, instead of fostering the company’s bottom line, making it prosper, managers should give away the store to those who need help.
Take a company that may stay afloat and profitable only by moving from an expensive plant to one that is more affordable. Should they make the move? The shareholder theorists would agree—of course, move, since that will keep you solvent, may even bring in a profit. Stakeholder theorists, however, will argue—keep in mind all those in your neighborhood who depend on the presence of the firm, like the cleaner or the restaurant next door patronized by employees. If the plant is moved, they will suffer. So, don’t move.
Of course, one cannot run a business this way. My little gym I’ve been going to for two years just decided it had to move because the rent—driven, incidentally, by sudden higher tax assessments—increased beyond its means. So now it is moving, way out of my reach.
OK, but what about me? And what about the various establishments patronized around the corner by gym members who will lose their business? Stakeholder theorists, the altruists, advocate that the gym should think of these establishments and not leave them in a lurch. Never mind that the owners of the gym will be driven aground from such a decision.
The circumstances of my little gym are duplicated all over the place in the business world. Yet instead of urging managers to do the right thing and take their plant where the rent, etc., are affordable, they are being told by business ethicists—advocates of the social responsibility of corporations—that they have an obligation to take care of the stakeholders.
Nor is this an idea urged on managers as a matter of their free choice. No, the stakeholder theory is actually being promoted as the basis of public policy, of laws—for example, in various states so called hostile takeovers are legally prohibited, even though the takeovers would be friendly as all get out to the owners of the firms involved. Why? Because it is all so selfish for managers of companies to serve those who hired them instead of adjacent interested parties who have grown to expect the benefits they bring to the region.
Human beings in all walks of life ought to try to flourish. This includes being considerate, first of all, of their own well being and that of their intimates—family and friends. Then kindness and generosity to deserving strangers in need follow. Last come those we don’t know but who have been hit with some disaster—like a tsunami or hurricane.
The altruistic ideal that our lives must be devoted to others, first of all, is a good case of the “perfect” being the enemy of the good. This standard for proper human behavior—“[of] assuming a duty to relieve the distress and promote the happiness of our fellows....to ... maintain quite simply that a man may and should discount altogether his own pleasure or happiness as such when he is deciding what course of action to pursue,” to quote the philosopher W. G. Maclagan’s characterization of it—is very bad advice. But it sounds good and has been repeated by moralists mainly because it has the ring of sociability about it. Yet it undermines even that, since if one runs oneself to the ground, as in business, there will be no chance of serving anyone’s interest anymore.
--------------------
Machan is RC Hoiles Professor of business ethics & free enterprise at the Argyros School of Business & Economics, Chapman University, and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He also advises Freedom Communications, Inc., on public policy issues.
Tibor R. Machan
Putting it plainly, altruism is very popular, at least as far as what people verbally champion. It’s not so popular in action because, well, it is impossible to practice consistently. As the poet W. H. Auden put it, “We are here on earth to do good for others. What the others are here for, I don't know.”
In fact, of course, what people much more reasonably support is benevolence, generosity and kindness, all in the right measure, not to a fault. It shows by what they do, not by what they say. Unselfishness may be advocated but it is hardly ever practiced much. That’s because unselfishness means devoting oneself first to other people—not just loved ones and in proper proportion but to all, and all of the time. Which is impossible.
Yet, because it is so popular to champion it as an ideal, despite being an impossible ideal it is promoted all over the place. Take, for example, business ethics, the discipline in which I do much work and which is teeming with theorists who preach the altruist line. They call it the “stakeholder theory.”
The idea, advocated by all sorts of business ethics professors who teach and write the subject across the world, is that when company officers make their decisions, they ought to keep in mind not shareholders—those for whom they work, the owners of the firm—but all those who have an interest in it, the stakeholders. Thus, instead of fostering the company’s bottom line, making it prosper, managers should give away the store to those who need help.
Take a company that may stay afloat and profitable only by moving from an expensive plant to one that is more affordable. Should they make the move? The shareholder theorists would agree—of course, move, since that will keep you solvent, may even bring in a profit. Stakeholder theorists, however, will argue—keep in mind all those in your neighborhood who depend on the presence of the firm, like the cleaner or the restaurant next door patronized by employees. If the plant is moved, they will suffer. So, don’t move.
Of course, one cannot run a business this way. My little gym I’ve been going to for two years just decided it had to move because the rent—driven, incidentally, by sudden higher tax assessments—increased beyond its means. So now it is moving, way out of my reach.
OK, but what about me? And what about the various establishments patronized around the corner by gym members who will lose their business? Stakeholder theorists, the altruists, advocate that the gym should think of these establishments and not leave them in a lurch. Never mind that the owners of the gym will be driven aground from such a decision.
The circumstances of my little gym are duplicated all over the place in the business world. Yet instead of urging managers to do the right thing and take their plant where the rent, etc., are affordable, they are being told by business ethicists—advocates of the social responsibility of corporations—that they have an obligation to take care of the stakeholders.
Nor is this an idea urged on managers as a matter of their free choice. No, the stakeholder theory is actually being promoted as the basis of public policy, of laws—for example, in various states so called hostile takeovers are legally prohibited, even though the takeovers would be friendly as all get out to the owners of the firms involved. Why? Because it is all so selfish for managers of companies to serve those who hired them instead of adjacent interested parties who have grown to expect the benefits they bring to the region.
Human beings in all walks of life ought to try to flourish. This includes being considerate, first of all, of their own well being and that of their intimates—family and friends. Then kindness and generosity to deserving strangers in need follow. Last come those we don’t know but who have been hit with some disaster—like a tsunami or hurricane.
The altruistic ideal that our lives must be devoted to others, first of all, is a good case of the “perfect” being the enemy of the good. This standard for proper human behavior—“[of] assuming a duty to relieve the distress and promote the happiness of our fellows....to ... maintain quite simply that a man may and should discount altogether his own pleasure or happiness as such when he is deciding what course of action to pursue,” to quote the philosopher W. G. Maclagan’s characterization of it—is very bad advice. But it sounds good and has been repeated by moralists mainly because it has the ring of sociability about it. Yet it undermines even that, since if one runs oneself to the ground, as in business, there will be no chance of serving anyone’s interest anymore.
--------------------
Machan is RC Hoiles Professor of business ethics & free enterprise at the Argyros School of Business & Economics, Chapman University, and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He also advises Freedom Communications, Inc., on public policy issues.
Another Assault on Liberty
Tibor R. Machan
Back when Robert Nozick wrote his path breaking libertarian academic treatise, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (Basic Books, 1974), the philosopher Thomas Nagel wrote a review essays highly critical of Nozick’s work. In an essay, “Libertarianism Without Foundations,” Nagel had a lot to say about how Nozick allegedly failed to provide adequate support for his libertarian position. But one point Nagel made quite apart from whether Nozick’s position had adequate foundations stood out for me. Here is the passage that stuck in my mind:
Most people are not generous when asked to give voluntarily, and it is unreasonable to ask that they should be. Admittedly there are cases in which a person should do something although it would not be right to force him to do it. But here I believe that the reverse is true. Sometimes it is proper to force people to do something even though it is not true that they should do it without being forced. It is acceptable to compel people to contribute to the support of the indigent by automatic taxation, but unreasonable to insist that in the absence of such a system they ought to contribute voluntarily.
Nowhere in his essay on Nozick, nor anywhere else, did Nagel every justify this very pessimistic view. But is it really very odd?
Notice that what this position endorses is outright involuntary servitude. As Nozick himself noted, “taxation of earnings from labor is on a par with forced labor” I think it is actually more on par with extortion. In any case, it puts certain people—the king, the government, Thomas Nagel himself perhaps—in a position to coerce others into providing those in need with resources, including their labor. The funds we are taxed, of course, come from what most of us earn through our labor!
This is a view that is endorsed by most political philosophers today and it has been endorsed by them for decades on end, certainly ever since Franklin D. Roosevelt came up with his list of “the second bill of rights,” each of which places us into servitude to other people. But even before Roosevelt signed on to this notion that everyone is in bondage to other people who are in need, there have been the likes of the French father of sociology, Auguste Comte, who endorsed the idea. Here is what Comte had to say:
Everything we have belongs then to Humanity… We are born loaded with obligations of every kind, to our predecessors, to our successors, to our contemporaries. Later they only grow or accumulate before we can return any service.... All human rights then are as absurd as they are immoral. This ["to live for others"], the definitive formula of human morality, gives a direct sanction exclusively to our instincts of benevolence, the common source of happiness and duty. [Man must serve] Humanity, whose we are entirely.
Even before Comte’s wrote those lines, at the beginning of the 19th century, there was the doctrine that not only our resources but we ourselves belong to the state. The theory of monarchy holds this view about human beings—the king owned us, or at least we are bound to the king’s land as serfs. We as individuals own nothing at all, everything is owned by the government. And that exact position was recently reiterated by Nagel and his co-author, Liam Murphy, in the book The Myth of Ownership (Oxford, 2004). Clearly the idea is not a progressive, forward looking one but reactionary as all get out.
All of these thinkers stand in the way of genuine progress toward a world in which individual human beings have a fundamental, natural right to their own lives, liberty and property. This is the revolutionary idea that libertarians champion and it is one that needs constant reiteration, re-visitation, and re-justification, since nearly all the major political theorists, inside and outside the academic world, line up against it.
Nagel’s idea, pressed against Nozick, is, of course, an insult to human beings everywhere. It contends that of their own free will they would fail to be generous and they must be coerced to give of themselves to those who are helpless. Paradoxically, if it were true, Nagel’s idea would certainly consign all those in need of help to perpetual helplessness for when human beings acquire power—when they join the government—the last thing they are interested in is helping others! As Lord Acton noted, “power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely”—the last thing it issues in is generosity.
Tibor R. Machan
Back when Robert Nozick wrote his path breaking libertarian academic treatise, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (Basic Books, 1974), the philosopher Thomas Nagel wrote a review essays highly critical of Nozick’s work. In an essay, “Libertarianism Without Foundations,” Nagel had a lot to say about how Nozick allegedly failed to provide adequate support for his libertarian position. But one point Nagel made quite apart from whether Nozick’s position had adequate foundations stood out for me. Here is the passage that stuck in my mind:
Most people are not generous when asked to give voluntarily, and it is unreasonable to ask that they should be. Admittedly there are cases in which a person should do something although it would not be right to force him to do it. But here I believe that the reverse is true. Sometimes it is proper to force people to do something even though it is not true that they should do it without being forced. It is acceptable to compel people to contribute to the support of the indigent by automatic taxation, but unreasonable to insist that in the absence of such a system they ought to contribute voluntarily.
Nowhere in his essay on Nozick, nor anywhere else, did Nagel every justify this very pessimistic view. But is it really very odd?
Notice that what this position endorses is outright involuntary servitude. As Nozick himself noted, “taxation of earnings from labor is on a par with forced labor” I think it is actually more on par with extortion. In any case, it puts certain people—the king, the government, Thomas Nagel himself perhaps—in a position to coerce others into providing those in need with resources, including their labor. The funds we are taxed, of course, come from what most of us earn through our labor!
This is a view that is endorsed by most political philosophers today and it has been endorsed by them for decades on end, certainly ever since Franklin D. Roosevelt came up with his list of “the second bill of rights,” each of which places us into servitude to other people. But even before Roosevelt signed on to this notion that everyone is in bondage to other people who are in need, there have been the likes of the French father of sociology, Auguste Comte, who endorsed the idea. Here is what Comte had to say:
Everything we have belongs then to Humanity… We are born loaded with obligations of every kind, to our predecessors, to our successors, to our contemporaries. Later they only grow or accumulate before we can return any service.... All human rights then are as absurd as they are immoral. This ["to live for others"], the definitive formula of human morality, gives a direct sanction exclusively to our instincts of benevolence, the common source of happiness and duty. [Man must serve] Humanity, whose we are entirely.
Even before Comte’s wrote those lines, at the beginning of the 19th century, there was the doctrine that not only our resources but we ourselves belong to the state. The theory of monarchy holds this view about human beings—the king owned us, or at least we are bound to the king’s land as serfs. We as individuals own nothing at all, everything is owned by the government. And that exact position was recently reiterated by Nagel and his co-author, Liam Murphy, in the book The Myth of Ownership (Oxford, 2004). Clearly the idea is not a progressive, forward looking one but reactionary as all get out.
All of these thinkers stand in the way of genuine progress toward a world in which individual human beings have a fundamental, natural right to their own lives, liberty and property. This is the revolutionary idea that libertarians champion and it is one that needs constant reiteration, re-visitation, and re-justification, since nearly all the major political theorists, inside and outside the academic world, line up against it.
Nagel’s idea, pressed against Nozick, is, of course, an insult to human beings everywhere. It contends that of their own free will they would fail to be generous and they must be coerced to give of themselves to those who are helpless. Paradoxically, if it were true, Nagel’s idea would certainly consign all those in need of help to perpetual helplessness for when human beings acquire power—when they join the government—the last thing they are interested in is helping others! As Lord Acton noted, “power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely”—the last thing it issues in is generosity.
Gay Marriage Ban Blues
Tibor R. Machan
The charge that George W. Bush is merely trying to kowtow to his base with his promotion of a constitutional ban on gay marriage sounds plausible enough but that’s really not the crucial issue. Never mind his motives. Is the idea sound is what counts. (Too many appear to have forgotten about what matters in these disputes—certainly not the varied, complicated, nearly undetectable motivations of the players!)
Should the U. S. Constitution be amended to ban gay marriages? Lets see why such a ban is supported. Bush says it has to do with upholding and supporting traditional marriages. Some others claim that the matter needs to be taken out of the hands of courts and placed into the hands of “the people.”
Sticking just to these points, is it really the business of the supreme law of the land to worry about upholding traditional marriages? Imagine if that were really the case. Wouldn’t Congress and the president have to start meddling in the lives of millions of couples throughout the country? Marriages are, after all, failing part everywhere—some 50% of the break up. So if it is the proper task of government to uphold and support traditional marriages, we would need a powerful marriage police.
In fact this isn’t the proper task of courts. Nor of “the people,” that is, the majority.
Conservatives especially, who supposedly champion what the American Founders had defended, should keep such meddlesome functions away from the government. Does a ban on gay marriage amount to securing our basic, unalienable human rights? No, it clearly does not. No one has a right to have others marry in a fashion one prefers. Quite the opposite is true—everyone has the right to marry as he or she, along with the partner, chooses. That is what the law would uphold in a free society, not what “the people” or their political representatives prefer.
Notice that none of this bears on the issue of whether gay marriages are a good idea. So what if they are or are not? The bulk of what people decide on in their lives, for better or for worse, is their own business and has nothing at all to do with the job the government has in a free country. What should I eat? How often should I exercise? What career should I choose? When should I take my vacation? Should I have yet another child? Should I add another chapter to the manuscript I plan to send to the publisher? Should I purchase a new car or house or pair of pants?
With regards to any of the matters and millions of others people can make good or bad choices. Whether they do is not the government’s concern. It may well be the concern of their friends, family, pals, neighbors, and others with whom they have civilized, peaceful relationships and who are welcome to attend to what choices they should make in life. Government isn’t part of this interested, concerned entourage, that’s for sure.
The government is at most about keeping the peace and in an atmosphere of peace there can be no official meddling in the institution of marriage. It is between the parties who would marry, that’s all. Except where matters of public health enter the situation, no governmental authority exists to order people about so far as whom they wish to marry is concerned.
So, let us assume for a moment that there is something amiss with gay marriage. The solution is for people to work it out with the advice of their intimates. Not unlike there being something amiss with someone’s career choice or religious preference. And do not tell me these aren’t sufficiently consequential matters in people’s lives. They definitely are, every bit as consequential as whom they choose to marry. Yet no government has any just authority to meddle in these matters.
But, sadly, these days everything has turned into a public affair—whom one chooses to marry, what kind of automobile one chooses to purchase, whether one chooses to smoke, whether one is going to use fossil fuel—you name it and it is the concern of the likes of Al Gore and George W. Bush. They only differ in their choice of what goes into the basket of personal, private concerns they want to make a province of public policy.
Gay marriage or no gay marriage—leave it to the actual concerned individuals, namely, those involved in the decision, not the rest of us.
Tibor R. Machan
The charge that George W. Bush is merely trying to kowtow to his base with his promotion of a constitutional ban on gay marriage sounds plausible enough but that’s really not the crucial issue. Never mind his motives. Is the idea sound is what counts. (Too many appear to have forgotten about what matters in these disputes—certainly not the varied, complicated, nearly undetectable motivations of the players!)
Should the U. S. Constitution be amended to ban gay marriages? Lets see why such a ban is supported. Bush says it has to do with upholding and supporting traditional marriages. Some others claim that the matter needs to be taken out of the hands of courts and placed into the hands of “the people.”
Sticking just to these points, is it really the business of the supreme law of the land to worry about upholding traditional marriages? Imagine if that were really the case. Wouldn’t Congress and the president have to start meddling in the lives of millions of couples throughout the country? Marriages are, after all, failing part everywhere—some 50% of the break up. So if it is the proper task of government to uphold and support traditional marriages, we would need a powerful marriage police.
In fact this isn’t the proper task of courts. Nor of “the people,” that is, the majority.
Conservatives especially, who supposedly champion what the American Founders had defended, should keep such meddlesome functions away from the government. Does a ban on gay marriage amount to securing our basic, unalienable human rights? No, it clearly does not. No one has a right to have others marry in a fashion one prefers. Quite the opposite is true—everyone has the right to marry as he or she, along with the partner, chooses. That is what the law would uphold in a free society, not what “the people” or their political representatives prefer.
Notice that none of this bears on the issue of whether gay marriages are a good idea. So what if they are or are not? The bulk of what people decide on in their lives, for better or for worse, is their own business and has nothing at all to do with the job the government has in a free country. What should I eat? How often should I exercise? What career should I choose? When should I take my vacation? Should I have yet another child? Should I add another chapter to the manuscript I plan to send to the publisher? Should I purchase a new car or house or pair of pants?
With regards to any of the matters and millions of others people can make good or bad choices. Whether they do is not the government’s concern. It may well be the concern of their friends, family, pals, neighbors, and others with whom they have civilized, peaceful relationships and who are welcome to attend to what choices they should make in life. Government isn’t part of this interested, concerned entourage, that’s for sure.
The government is at most about keeping the peace and in an atmosphere of peace there can be no official meddling in the institution of marriage. It is between the parties who would marry, that’s all. Except where matters of public health enter the situation, no governmental authority exists to order people about so far as whom they wish to marry is concerned.
So, let us assume for a moment that there is something amiss with gay marriage. The solution is for people to work it out with the advice of their intimates. Not unlike there being something amiss with someone’s career choice or religious preference. And do not tell me these aren’t sufficiently consequential matters in people’s lives. They definitely are, every bit as consequential as whom they choose to marry. Yet no government has any just authority to meddle in these matters.
But, sadly, these days everything has turned into a public affair—whom one chooses to marry, what kind of automobile one chooses to purchase, whether one chooses to smoke, whether one is going to use fossil fuel—you name it and it is the concern of the likes of Al Gore and George W. Bush. They only differ in their choice of what goes into the basket of personal, private concerns they want to make a province of public policy.
Gay marriage or no gay marriage—leave it to the actual concerned individuals, namely, those involved in the decision, not the rest of us.
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
To Whom it May Concern:
About a year ago David Gordon put out a list of a hundred books on liberty he believed merited special attention. As an author of quite a few books on liberty, beginning with the edited work The Libertarian Alternative (1973) and more recently The Passion for Liberty (2003) and the co-authored Libertarianism, For and Against (2005), I sent him a post complaining that he didn't list even one of my books, not even ones I edited featuring a host of libertarian luminaries. (Another such book would be The Libertarian Reader [1982]; there is also the series I edited for the Hoover Institution Press, Philosophical Reflections on a Free Society, which include ten volumes featuring four excellent essays in each mostly by classical liberal and libertarian scholars.)
At a blog (see below) some took me to task for making my complaint. Among other things the person said is that I made an ass out of myself by sending it. (Much of it is reproduced in the blog, so I need not reiterate my points.)
What is odd is that my effort to promote my work would meet with such hostility from someone who supposedly admire the free society and the free market. What about advertising, what about promotion, what about marketing? My complaint was a species of advertising--I was hoping to encourage David Gordon to pay more attention to some very good work on liberty produced by me. Or did it upset the blogger that I consider some of my work very good? Give me a break--what else is one to expect from the producer, creator of products and services?
Tibor Machan
http://remarq.blogspot.com/2005/06/tibors-tantrum.html
About a year ago David Gordon put out a list of a hundred books on liberty he believed merited special attention. As an author of quite a few books on liberty, beginning with the edited work The Libertarian Alternative (1973) and more recently The Passion for Liberty (2003) and the co-authored Libertarianism, For and Against (2005), I sent him a post complaining that he didn't list even one of my books, not even ones I edited featuring a host of libertarian luminaries. (Another such book would be The Libertarian Reader [1982]; there is also the series I edited for the Hoover Institution Press, Philosophical Reflections on a Free Society, which include ten volumes featuring four excellent essays in each mostly by classical liberal and libertarian scholars.)
At a blog (see below) some took me to task for making my complaint. Among other things the person said is that I made an ass out of myself by sending it. (Much of it is reproduced in the blog, so I need not reiterate my points.)
What is odd is that my effort to promote my work would meet with such hostility from someone who supposedly admire the free society and the free market. What about advertising, what about promotion, what about marketing? My complaint was a species of advertising--I was hoping to encourage David Gordon to pay more attention to some very good work on liberty produced by me. Or did it upset the blogger that I consider some of my work very good? Give me a break--what else is one to expect from the producer, creator of products and services?
Tibor Machan
http://remarq.blogspot.com/2005/06/tibors-tantrum.html
Why I am a Fly Swatter
Tibor R. Machan
When the Russian born American novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand decided to discontinue The Ayn Rand Letter—her publication in which she advanced nifty ideas about various aspects of the (mostly social) world—she explained her decision by quoting Frederick Nietzsche who said that “it is not your job to be a flyswatter.” Nietzsche preceded this advice by advising, “Flee, my friend, into your solitude: I see you stung all over by the poisonous flies. Flee to where a rough, strong breeze blows! ...No longer raise your arm against them! They are innumerable, and....
Alas, for great creative geniuses such as Ayn Rand and Frederick Nietzsche—and the superior human beings he was instructing in his famous work, Thus Spoke Zarathustra—the advice makes perfectly good sense. Occupying themselves with going after all the nonsense being put forth by thousands of people who sound of—and may, alas, have some influence in their culture—could be a waste; unless these flies produce deadly poison, that is. Mere irritants clearly do not warrant the attention of the geniuses among us—they would do much better thinking up grand ideas instead of responding to the zillions of silly ones being created in endless streams.
But it is not only geniuses who fight the good fight in most cultures. There are all the foot soldiers who also put pen to paper and with the emergence of all the means of communication and record keeping, some fly swatting seems to be very much in order for them.
I am, of course, just such a fly swatter. I have not had too many original ideas—one I can recall has to do with why nostalgia is so appealing, but it’s no great shucks, that one. Mostly I have found others, the geniuses, who have taught me a thing or two and after making sure they are sound ideas, I have set myself the task of applying them to various problems I see around me, including the problem of being “stung all over by the poisonous flies.”
Not only that but I also see that it is imperative that those good ideas I have learned from the geniuses must be reiterated many times over. As George Orwell is supposed to have opined, “Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious.” Notice his careful choice of words—intelligent men isn’t the same thing as geniuses!
A few days ago I ran across a discussion of some of my works at a blog and found that there are people out there in cyberspace who find it really annoying that I repeat points in various forums—books, essays, articles, scholarly papers, conferences, lectures, seminars and so forth. These critics haven’t said why exactly it is a fault to repeat oneself, especially if the repetition is spread out over, say, forty years or writing and several dozens of books and hundreds of papers and thousands of columns. But never mind that. On its face it does appear that too much repetition is pointless and boring, does it not?
When I try to figure out why it doesn’t seem to me that this is true, I think of the guy who has fallen into a well and keeps yelling “help,” “help,” and “help,” over and over again. It would surely be idiotic to shout down to him to say, “Stop being so repetitious, you are boring us to tears.”
Fact is, some matters are important enough to be repeated a lot, especially when one is good at doing so and isn’t taking time from more important tasks, such as those one would have if one were a genius. I have admittedly repeated myself, though I hope in interesting enough and varied ways, about some crucial matters. Mostly I have been on alert to watch out for all those flies, with their poison, who would throw overboard the principles of human liberty in a jiffy and must be stopped from doing so, at least in the realm of punditry, of public discussion.
So unless I am found out to be a genius and learn that fabulous notions are being left undeveloped by me because I spend so much time crying “help, “help” as the enemies of liberty keep producing their poison, I shall continue despite my critics’ lament. I think it is not a wasteful thing for me to do this.
Tibor R. Machan
When the Russian born American novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand decided to discontinue The Ayn Rand Letter—her publication in which she advanced nifty ideas about various aspects of the (mostly social) world—she explained her decision by quoting Frederick Nietzsche who said that “it is not your job to be a flyswatter.” Nietzsche preceded this advice by advising, “Flee, my friend, into your solitude: I see you stung all over by the poisonous flies. Flee to where a rough, strong breeze blows! ...No longer raise your arm against them! They are innumerable, and....
Alas, for great creative geniuses such as Ayn Rand and Frederick Nietzsche—and the superior human beings he was instructing in his famous work, Thus Spoke Zarathustra—the advice makes perfectly good sense. Occupying themselves with going after all the nonsense being put forth by thousands of people who sound of—and may, alas, have some influence in their culture—could be a waste; unless these flies produce deadly poison, that is. Mere irritants clearly do not warrant the attention of the geniuses among us—they would do much better thinking up grand ideas instead of responding to the zillions of silly ones being created in endless streams.
But it is not only geniuses who fight the good fight in most cultures. There are all the foot soldiers who also put pen to paper and with the emergence of all the means of communication and record keeping, some fly swatting seems to be very much in order for them.
I am, of course, just such a fly swatter. I have not had too many original ideas—one I can recall has to do with why nostalgia is so appealing, but it’s no great shucks, that one. Mostly I have found others, the geniuses, who have taught me a thing or two and after making sure they are sound ideas, I have set myself the task of applying them to various problems I see around me, including the problem of being “stung all over by the poisonous flies.”
Not only that but I also see that it is imperative that those good ideas I have learned from the geniuses must be reiterated many times over. As George Orwell is supposed to have opined, “Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious.” Notice his careful choice of words—intelligent men isn’t the same thing as geniuses!
A few days ago I ran across a discussion of some of my works at a blog and found that there are people out there in cyberspace who find it really annoying that I repeat points in various forums—books, essays, articles, scholarly papers, conferences, lectures, seminars and so forth. These critics haven’t said why exactly it is a fault to repeat oneself, especially if the repetition is spread out over, say, forty years or writing and several dozens of books and hundreds of papers and thousands of columns. But never mind that. On its face it does appear that too much repetition is pointless and boring, does it not?
When I try to figure out why it doesn’t seem to me that this is true, I think of the guy who has fallen into a well and keeps yelling “help,” “help,” and “help,” over and over again. It would surely be idiotic to shout down to him to say, “Stop being so repetitious, you are boring us to tears.”
Fact is, some matters are important enough to be repeated a lot, especially when one is good at doing so and isn’t taking time from more important tasks, such as those one would have if one were a genius. I have admittedly repeated myself, though I hope in interesting enough and varied ways, about some crucial matters. Mostly I have been on alert to watch out for all those flies, with their poison, who would throw overboard the principles of human liberty in a jiffy and must be stopped from doing so, at least in the realm of punditry, of public discussion.
So unless I am found out to be a genius and learn that fabulous notions are being left undeveloped by me because I spend so much time crying “help, “help” as the enemies of liberty keep producing their poison, I shall continue despite my critics’ lament. I think it is not a wasteful thing for me to do this.
Gay Marriage Ban Blues
Tibor R. Machan
The charge that George W. Bush is merely trying to kowtow to his base with his promotion of a constitutional ban on gay marriage sounds plausible enough but that’s really not the crucial issue. Never mind his motives. Is the idea sound is what counts. (Too many appear to have forgotten about what matters in these disputes—certainly not the varied, complicated, nearly undetectable motivations of the players!)
Should the U. S. Constitution be amended to ban gay marriages? Lets see why such a ban is supported. Bush says it has to do with upholding and supporting traditional marriages. Some others claim that the matter needs to be taken out of the hands of courts and placed into the hands of “the people.”
Sticking just to these points, is it really the business of the supreme law of the land to worry about upholding traditional marriages? Imagine if that were really the case. Wouldn’t Congress and the president have to start meddling in the lives of millions of couples throughout the country? Marriages are, after all, failing part everywhere—some 50% of the break up. So if it is the proper task of government to uphold and support traditional marriages, we would need a powerful marriage police.
In fact this isn’t the proper task of courts. Nor of “the people,” that is, the majority.
Conservatives especially, who supposedly champion what the American Founders had defended, should keep such meddlesome functions away from the government. Does a ban on gay marriage amount to securing our basic, unalienable human rights? No, it clearly does not. No one has a right to have others marry in a fashion one prefers. Quite the opposite is true—everyone has the right to marry as he or she, along with the partner, chooses. That is what the law would uphold in a free society, not what “the people” or their political representatives prefer.
Notice that none of this bears on the issue of whether gay marriages are a good idea. So what if they are or are not? The bulk of what people decide on in their lives, for better or for worse, is their own business and has nothing at all to do with the job the government has in a free country. What should I eat? How often should I exercise? What career should I choose? When should I take my vacation? Should I have yet another child? Should I add another chapter to the manuscript I plan to send to the publisher? Should I purchase a new car or house or pair of pants?
With regards to any of the matters and millions of others people can make good or bad choices. Whether they do is not the government’s concern. It may well be the concern of their friends, family, pals, neighbors, and others with whom they have civilized, peaceful relationships and who are welcome to attend to what choices they should make in life. Government isn’t part of this interested, concerned entourage, that’s for sure.
The government is at most about keeping the peace and in an atmosphere of peace there can be no official meddling in the institution of marriage. It is between the parties who would marry, that’s all. Except where matters of public health enter the situation, no governmental authority exists to order people about so far as whom they wish to marry is concerned.
So, let us assume for a moment that there is something amiss with gay marriage. The solution is for people to work it out with the advice of their intimates. Not unlike there being something amiss with someone’s career choice or religious preference. And do not tell me these aren’t sufficiently consequential matters in people’s lives. They definitely are, every bit as consequential as whom they choose to marry. Yet no government has any just authority to meddle in these matters.
But, sadly, these days everything has turned into a public affair—whom one chooses to marry, what kind of automobile one chooses to purchase, whether one chooses to smoke, whether one is going to use fossil fuel—you name it and it is the concern of the likes of Al Gore and George W. Bush. They only differ in their choice of what goes into the basket of personal, private concerns they want to make a province of public policy.
Gay marriage or no gay marriage—leave it to the actual concerned individuals, namely, those involved in the decision, not the rest of us.
Tibor R. Machan
The charge that George W. Bush is merely trying to kowtow to his base with his promotion of a constitutional ban on gay marriage sounds plausible enough but that’s really not the crucial issue. Never mind his motives. Is the idea sound is what counts. (Too many appear to have forgotten about what matters in these disputes—certainly not the varied, complicated, nearly undetectable motivations of the players!)
Should the U. S. Constitution be amended to ban gay marriages? Lets see why such a ban is supported. Bush says it has to do with upholding and supporting traditional marriages. Some others claim that the matter needs to be taken out of the hands of courts and placed into the hands of “the people.”
Sticking just to these points, is it really the business of the supreme law of the land to worry about upholding traditional marriages? Imagine if that were really the case. Wouldn’t Congress and the president have to start meddling in the lives of millions of couples throughout the country? Marriages are, after all, failing part everywhere—some 50% of the break up. So if it is the proper task of government to uphold and support traditional marriages, we would need a powerful marriage police.
In fact this isn’t the proper task of courts. Nor of “the people,” that is, the majority.
Conservatives especially, who supposedly champion what the American Founders had defended, should keep such meddlesome functions away from the government. Does a ban on gay marriage amount to securing our basic, unalienable human rights? No, it clearly does not. No one has a right to have others marry in a fashion one prefers. Quite the opposite is true—everyone has the right to marry as he or she, along with the partner, chooses. That is what the law would uphold in a free society, not what “the people” or their political representatives prefer.
Notice that none of this bears on the issue of whether gay marriages are a good idea. So what if they are or are not? The bulk of what people decide on in their lives, for better or for worse, is their own business and has nothing at all to do with the job the government has in a free country. What should I eat? How often should I exercise? What career should I choose? When should I take my vacation? Should I have yet another child? Should I add another chapter to the manuscript I plan to send to the publisher? Should I purchase a new car or house or pair of pants?
With regards to any of the matters and millions of others people can make good or bad choices. Whether they do is not the government’s concern. It may well be the concern of their friends, family, pals, neighbors, and others with whom they have civilized, peaceful relationships and who are welcome to attend to what choices they should make in life. Government isn’t part of this interested, concerned entourage, that’s for sure.
The government is at most about keeping the peace and in an atmosphere of peace there can be no official meddling in the institution of marriage. It is between the parties who would marry, that’s all. Except where matters of public health enter the situation, no governmental authority exists to order people about so far as whom they wish to marry is concerned.
So, let us assume for a moment that there is something amiss with gay marriage. The solution is for people to work it out with the advice of their intimates. Not unlike there being something amiss with someone’s career choice or religious preference. And do not tell me these aren’t sufficiently consequential matters in people’s lives. They definitely are, every bit as consequential as whom they choose to marry. Yet no government has any just authority to meddle in these matters.
But, sadly, these days everything has turned into a public affair—whom one chooses to marry, what kind of automobile one chooses to purchase, whether one chooses to smoke, whether one is going to use fossil fuel—you name it and it is the concern of the likes of Al Gore and George W. Bush. They only differ in their choice of what goes into the basket of personal, private concerns they want to make a province of public policy.
Gay marriage or no gay marriage—leave it to the actual concerned individuals, namely, those involved in the decision, not the rest of us.
Monday, June 05, 2006
The Best Solution
Tibor R. Machan
Now and then champions of the fully free society are told they are being too simplistic for offering freedom as the best solution for all the problems that face us in the world. Of course, such champions quickly retort: But then the critics also offer just one solution for every problem, namely, government coercion. Tit for tat, I suppose.
Yet the issue is a substantive one—is freedom really, truly the best solution, or is coercion?
Most of us who comment on public affairs aren’t close enough to people’s problems to be able to tell what exactly will solve some problem, other than our own. So we are talking mostly about very general means for solving problems, never the details. And as such, the solution offered by champions of liberty would indeed have the most going for it. The reason is that it is based on the fact that human beings are, by their very nature, productive, creative, and innovative, not a species that’s guided by hard-wired instinct and drives. For us when problems need to be solved, unleashing our productive, creative, and innovative capacities is a prerequisite. If, however, we are caged up, regimented about, coerced into doing things, it is our unique human capacity that’s being thwarted. Under compulsion people simply don’t do very well.
Of course, they can come up with solutions even then. Just consider how many professions are under the gun to come up with solutions for this or that problem. Car makers come to mind immediately, given how often government regulators impose standards for how cars must be built and how readily the car makers manage to comply. Indeed, all government regulation involves coercing people to do things the way the government’s bureaucrats say they must be done. And things do get done, nonetheless. So doesn’t this prove that people can solve problems when a gun is being pointed at them?
Yes, to a limited extent this is true. Fear is a motivator. And so is the prospect of getting the bureaucrats off one’s back so one can get back to doing what one wants. This is explainable in part by what the famous Laffer curve demonstrates. Arthur Laffer showed that they have a threshold up to which they will work and even increase their efforts when they are thwarted. People will often put up with a good deal of hassle before they quit completely. And that’s because they are left with some measure of liberty to do what they want to. Even in a prison, people often will make due with the tiny measure of liberty their confinement makes possible so as to achieve some very limited personal goal.
Yet, the more liberty is curtailed, the less people engage in free thinking, in imaginative problem solving, over all. And they will focus a great deal on how to escape their rulers instead of seeking new problem solving horizons. Just consider the huge legal departments of so many enterprises, all devoted to fending off the government, to help the entrepreneurs navigate the maze of rules and regulations placed before them by governments.
So the general principle holds—most people work best when free of the intrusions of others they haven’t asked to get involved in their tasks. Both domestic and international economic development is going to flourish best when this principle is heeded. That is the very point of championing liberty everywhere—in freedom people function better than in bondage. So despite the fact that we cannot tell the details of how various problems may and will be solved, we can make the point that, first of all, they need to get free of intervention, regulation, regimentation, intrusion and other versions of coercion governments and criminals are so good at imposing on us all.
This principle isn’t ad hoc, made up out of thin air, but learned from the study all the branches of human history. The more a country upholds the right to individual liberty for all in its legal system and public policy, the more its population embarks upon the successful solution of the problems it faces. Abolishing serfdom, slavery, tyranny—and, yes, their less draconian cousins, such as government regulation and intervention—is the best road to handling the minor or major problems we face in the world. Taxing us, using extortion to separate us from our resources, and regulating us may seem to work but they are, in fact, obstacles to problem solving.
So champions of liberty should continue to get out the news, if indeed it is still news to some: freedom works best. Because it is the right and just policy to follow.
Tibor R. Machan
Now and then champions of the fully free society are told they are being too simplistic for offering freedom as the best solution for all the problems that face us in the world. Of course, such champions quickly retort: But then the critics also offer just one solution for every problem, namely, government coercion. Tit for tat, I suppose.
Yet the issue is a substantive one—is freedom really, truly the best solution, or is coercion?
Most of us who comment on public affairs aren’t close enough to people’s problems to be able to tell what exactly will solve some problem, other than our own. So we are talking mostly about very general means for solving problems, never the details. And as such, the solution offered by champions of liberty would indeed have the most going for it. The reason is that it is based on the fact that human beings are, by their very nature, productive, creative, and innovative, not a species that’s guided by hard-wired instinct and drives. For us when problems need to be solved, unleashing our productive, creative, and innovative capacities is a prerequisite. If, however, we are caged up, regimented about, coerced into doing things, it is our unique human capacity that’s being thwarted. Under compulsion people simply don’t do very well.
Of course, they can come up with solutions even then. Just consider how many professions are under the gun to come up with solutions for this or that problem. Car makers come to mind immediately, given how often government regulators impose standards for how cars must be built and how readily the car makers manage to comply. Indeed, all government regulation involves coercing people to do things the way the government’s bureaucrats say they must be done. And things do get done, nonetheless. So doesn’t this prove that people can solve problems when a gun is being pointed at them?
Yes, to a limited extent this is true. Fear is a motivator. And so is the prospect of getting the bureaucrats off one’s back so one can get back to doing what one wants. This is explainable in part by what the famous Laffer curve demonstrates. Arthur Laffer showed that they have a threshold up to which they will work and even increase their efforts when they are thwarted. People will often put up with a good deal of hassle before they quit completely. And that’s because they are left with some measure of liberty to do what they want to. Even in a prison, people often will make due with the tiny measure of liberty their confinement makes possible so as to achieve some very limited personal goal.
Yet, the more liberty is curtailed, the less people engage in free thinking, in imaginative problem solving, over all. And they will focus a great deal on how to escape their rulers instead of seeking new problem solving horizons. Just consider the huge legal departments of so many enterprises, all devoted to fending off the government, to help the entrepreneurs navigate the maze of rules and regulations placed before them by governments.
So the general principle holds—most people work best when free of the intrusions of others they haven’t asked to get involved in their tasks. Both domestic and international economic development is going to flourish best when this principle is heeded. That is the very point of championing liberty everywhere—in freedom people function better than in bondage. So despite the fact that we cannot tell the details of how various problems may and will be solved, we can make the point that, first of all, they need to get free of intervention, regulation, regimentation, intrusion and other versions of coercion governments and criminals are so good at imposing on us all.
This principle isn’t ad hoc, made up out of thin air, but learned from the study all the branches of human history. The more a country upholds the right to individual liberty for all in its legal system and public policy, the more its population embarks upon the successful solution of the problems it faces. Abolishing serfdom, slavery, tyranny—and, yes, their less draconian cousins, such as government regulation and intervention—is the best road to handling the minor or major problems we face in the world. Taxing us, using extortion to separate us from our resources, and regulating us may seem to work but they are, in fact, obstacles to problem solving.
So champions of liberty should continue to get out the news, if indeed it is still news to some: freedom works best. Because it is the right and just policy to follow.
Is Globalization for Everyone?
Tibor R. Machan
Mostly “globalization” is used to refer to the policy of extending the
principles of a free market, capitalist political economy beyond the
borders of countries where they have taken substantial root. These
principles then would have global scope, produce a global free market.
Opponents of the effort to globalize often suggest that they find it
wrongheaded to try to subject all countries to the same kind of economic
principles because, well, countries—people—are different. While it may be
fine for the U.S.A. or Great Britain to be governed mainly by principles
of free trade, the story goes, this will not work for much of Africa or
the Middle East. Cultures differ, as do individuals, so it isn’t true that
what’s good for the goose is also good for the gander.
The point has plausibility. Regarding innumerable matters it holds quite
true. People, for example, do not need the same type of shoes, shirts, or
gloves—it depends on various particulars what they ought to be wearing.
The same is true about what people should eat, what careers they should
train for, whether they should marry or not, etc., and so forth. Yet,
there are also matters wherein variety isn’t quite the ticket. And indeed
quite a few people who would not ordinarily be expected to advocate
globalization seem to agree.
I have been doing quite a lot of traveling around the globe over the last
few decades—most recently I visited South Africa to attend an ethics
conference, for example. And on several fronts it appears that
globalization is very eagerly embraced even by those who resist it when it
comes to political economy.
Take, for example, bans on smoking in public places. It seems that there
is a very fervent effort afoot to globalize bans on public smoking,
indeed—everywhere one goes to, especially in airports, airplanes and so
forth, bans on smoking are being put in place. Sure, many, many people
dislike these bans but to no avail. Why? Because those pushing for the
bans insist that subjecting people to cigarette smoke is wrong. And while
one might quibble about whether one really can universalize such a policy,
there seems to be some plausibility about it—after all, most people have
lungs and these would seem to be at risk for exposure to cigarette smoke.
And when the exposure is imposed on them without their consent, that would
seem to be especially objectionable.
Now I do not wish to take up the matter of secondhand smoking—I am, at
any rate, convinced that more is made of it than is justified by the
evidence. Still, certainly there are several practices people take up that
can be argued to be nearly universally harmful and the effort to
discourage them globally would appear to make sense.
Well, the same is true about going global with the principles of free
market, capitalist economics—free trade, to put it quite simply. These
principles are arguably right for us all, never mind in which corner of
the globe we live. Why? Because they give expression to something
universal about human beings, namely, their need to enjoy freedom from
interference from others.
That’s all there really is to free trade, namely, the removal of
impositions by governments on those who would engage in trade. It is no
different from advocating global removal of censorship or assault or
kidnapping. Who would wish to claim that while it may be OK to ban
censorship of literature, poetry, editorializing and so forth in the
U.S.A., doing so in China or North Korea would be misguided—those people
must have government tell them what to think and write?
Come to think of it, some folks may, in fact, try to sell us this idea
but they would be way off. That’s because it is a universal human need to
be free to think, say, and write what one chooses, not confined merely to
some of us, here and there, in this age or that. And globalization has to
do with the same thing: freedom for people anytime, anywhere to carry out
their commercial affairs without uninvited parties meddling in them.
Now it is true that when trade is free of such interference, some could
see benefiting a bit from certain restrictions on others. If I own a
coffee shop in a certain corner of the city in which I live, I might
benefit for a while from forbidding others to open one across the street
from mine. Protectionist measures like that—be they on the street where on
has a shop or in a large region of the world where one is doing
business—do hold out some promise of temporary benefits, though economists
have shown just how temporary they tend to be, given that what goes around
tends to come around.
There are many aspects of human life that should not be generalized—what
kind of food one is to have for breakfast, probably, what line of work one
should embark upon, what form of entertainment will be most satisfying,
what clothes one should wear, etc., and so forth. Even in medicine, where
some basic rules of good health can be generalized, the specifics can vary
a great deal from one person to another.
But just as those who champion discouraging everyone from polluting his
or her lungs via smoking, regardless of where in the world this might be
happening, it is also true, even more so, that freedom of trade is
something none ought to thwart. Globalization is a good thing, indeed,
provided it is properly understood to apply to basic principles of human
conduct, be this in matters of health or matters of economics.
Tibor R. Machan
Mostly “globalization” is used to refer to the policy of extending the
principles of a free market, capitalist political economy beyond the
borders of countries where they have taken substantial root. These
principles then would have global scope, produce a global free market.
Opponents of the effort to globalize often suggest that they find it
wrongheaded to try to subject all countries to the same kind of economic
principles because, well, countries—people—are different. While it may be
fine for the U.S.A. or Great Britain to be governed mainly by principles
of free trade, the story goes, this will not work for much of Africa or
the Middle East. Cultures differ, as do individuals, so it isn’t true that
what’s good for the goose is also good for the gander.
The point has plausibility. Regarding innumerable matters it holds quite
true. People, for example, do not need the same type of shoes, shirts, or
gloves—it depends on various particulars what they ought to be wearing.
The same is true about what people should eat, what careers they should
train for, whether they should marry or not, etc., and so forth. Yet,
there are also matters wherein variety isn’t quite the ticket. And indeed
quite a few people who would not ordinarily be expected to advocate
globalization seem to agree.
I have been doing quite a lot of traveling around the globe over the last
few decades—most recently I visited South Africa to attend an ethics
conference, for example. And on several fronts it appears that
globalization is very eagerly embraced even by those who resist it when it
comes to political economy.
Take, for example, bans on smoking in public places. It seems that there
is a very fervent effort afoot to globalize bans on public smoking,
indeed—everywhere one goes to, especially in airports, airplanes and so
forth, bans on smoking are being put in place. Sure, many, many people
dislike these bans but to no avail. Why? Because those pushing for the
bans insist that subjecting people to cigarette smoke is wrong. And while
one might quibble about whether one really can universalize such a policy,
there seems to be some plausibility about it—after all, most people have
lungs and these would seem to be at risk for exposure to cigarette smoke.
And when the exposure is imposed on them without their consent, that would
seem to be especially objectionable.
Now I do not wish to take up the matter of secondhand smoking—I am, at
any rate, convinced that more is made of it than is justified by the
evidence. Still, certainly there are several practices people take up that
can be argued to be nearly universally harmful and the effort to
discourage them globally would appear to make sense.
Well, the same is true about going global with the principles of free
market, capitalist economics—free trade, to put it quite simply. These
principles are arguably right for us all, never mind in which corner of
the globe we live. Why? Because they give expression to something
universal about human beings, namely, their need to enjoy freedom from
interference from others.
That’s all there really is to free trade, namely, the removal of
impositions by governments on those who would engage in trade. It is no
different from advocating global removal of censorship or assault or
kidnapping. Who would wish to claim that while it may be OK to ban
censorship of literature, poetry, editorializing and so forth in the
U.S.A., doing so in China or North Korea would be misguided—those people
must have government tell them what to think and write?
Come to think of it, some folks may, in fact, try to sell us this idea
but they would be way off. That’s because it is a universal human need to
be free to think, say, and write what one chooses, not confined merely to
some of us, here and there, in this age or that. And globalization has to
do with the same thing: freedom for people anytime, anywhere to carry out
their commercial affairs without uninvited parties meddling in them.
Now it is true that when trade is free of such interference, some could
see benefiting a bit from certain restrictions on others. If I own a
coffee shop in a certain corner of the city in which I live, I might
benefit for a while from forbidding others to open one across the street
from mine. Protectionist measures like that—be they on the street where on
has a shop or in a large region of the world where one is doing
business—do hold out some promise of temporary benefits, though economists
have shown just how temporary they tend to be, given that what goes around
tends to come around.
There are many aspects of human life that should not be generalized—what
kind of food one is to have for breakfast, probably, what line of work one
should embark upon, what form of entertainment will be most satisfying,
what clothes one should wear, etc., and so forth. Even in medicine, where
some basic rules of good health can be generalized, the specifics can vary
a great deal from one person to another.
But just as those who champion discouraging everyone from polluting his
or her lungs via smoking, regardless of where in the world this might be
happening, it is also true, even more so, that freedom of trade is
something none ought to thwart. Globalization is a good thing, indeed,
provided it is properly understood to apply to basic principles of human
conduct, be this in matters of health or matters of economics.
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