Yes, Bill Gates Misspoke Himself
Tibor R. Machan
The letters section of the morning paper was filled with complaints about my Monday column critical of Bill Gates’ terminology of “giving back to the community.” Folks took off after me for being a libertarian, for sounding like Ayn Rand, for being confused or for saying nothing at all useful.
It’s nice to generate lots of letters for the paper with one’s column, so on that score I am pleased. As to the content, I am afraid readers had a problem with grasping my point, which is, trade isn’t unfair rip-off. Perhaps I didn’t make myself fully clear but more likely most just disliked what I said, namely, that Gates, if he made his wealth honestly, already gave back when he provided his customers with the goods and services he produced. The rest is generosity, charity, philanthropy, kindness, compassion but not “giving back” anything.
Sure, all this may be something unimportant to make mention of to many people but here is my take on it: the world of commerce and business is in desperate need of being better understood. The kind of thinking that produces such language as Bill Gates used is contributing to the widespread hostility toward capitalism and freedom of trade. It is that kind of thinking that spreads the myth that globalization is exploiting poor countries by rich ones. It is the kind of thinking that spreads resentment toward professionals who make a profit off providing their clients and customers with valued services. (Incidentally, that is just the kind of thinking that was on exhibit in the same paper that carried the critical letters, on the front page, featuring a “dissident” doctor who finds fault with his colleagues who make a profit from tending to the sick! As if the media, shoe makers, teachers or basketball players all were doing something wrong for charging people for what they provide for them!)
Despite all the complaints about how I mistreated Bill Gates’ remarks, the shoe is really on the other foot. Too many folks hold very warped ideas about commerce. They believe that it is producers who owe gratitude to society, the community, or customers for their wealth, whereas in fact it is clients and customers who owe gratitude to producers, creative geniuses, and the lot for making their talents and efforts available to the rest of us.
Just think—should it be the likes of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Goethe, Picasso, Michelangelo, Isaac Newton, Rembrandt, Albert Einstein, Frank Lloyd Wright who owe thanks to us all? Are we not the beneficiaries of their brilliant work? According to all those who think Bill Gates owes gratitude to the community, that he needs to give back something to us all, these kinds of innovators and creators should be grateful for the favor we do them when we enjoy the benefits of their work. That is perverse!
Sadly, too many of us go about our lives taking for granted thousands of benefits we would not enjoy if these people didn’t put their minds to work and make available the results to us in the market place, by means of free trade. To then insist that, yes, they must “give back to the community,” even after having made all of this available to the community in the first place (in return for mostly modest prices), is terribly misguided and, I suggest, ungrateful to boot.
But I guess we live in a culture in which the entitlement mindset is running rampant, in which the bulk of the population holds that what creative, productive people make available to us is something they should have by some natural right! It is these creative, productive people who must bow their heads in shame for making a buck from their work, while the rest of us can demand their work and have them thank us for letting them do it.
It is, I am pretty sure, this kind of thinking that’s gradually undermining the original American dream, the one that attracted millions to these shores: Work hard, make your work available to the market, and you shall be rewarded!
It didn’t take libertarians or even Ayn Rand to put this idea in circulation—it was in the air from the beginning of the American experiment. But it is certainly having a hard time being taken seriously now, having been eroded by the welfare state mentality that is so widespread in our time.
Saturday, June 24, 2006
Friday, June 23, 2006
True Liberal Democracy
Tibor R. Machan
When one objects to government’s meddling in people’s lives, often one gets the response that, after all, so long as government’s decisions are reached democratically, there’s nothing wrong with such meddling. This assumes that democracy is a benign way to arrive at policies that go contrary to what individuals want, even violate their unalienable rights. Why would such an assumption be accepted with little resistance?
One reason is that many people focus just on those democracies that occur in various voluntary associations—clubs, unions, corporations, and so forth. In such groups democracy functions well and is in fact unobjectionable because those taking part in the decision-making joined up voluntarily and have what economists call “the exit option.” You can leave the Rotary or Kiwanis Club, or an apartment house or gated community, if you really don’t like what the majority does. Your participation is up to you. So when this kind of group reaches decisions democratically, the decisions are accepted from the start—the rule is, “Anyone who joins us must accept how we reach decisions.”
Being a citizen of a country is both something similar and quite different. Most citizens do not join a country but are born into it, although quite a few do. So it is only just that the most minimal requirements are imposed on them. The American Founders spelled these out—respect the unalienable rights of all and that’s all you need to be a bona fide citizen of a free country. The only obligations you have are negative—do not violate other people’s rights.
Now this principle applies to everyone and so it also blocks democratic means for meddling with people who refuse to comply with the wishes of majorities. Freedom from coercion means also freedom from the coercion of the majority, not just a king or tsar or emperor. And this makes very good moral sense—why would it be OK for the majority to intrude on some when it is not OK for just one or a few to do so?
In recent mainstream public policy discussions these points have been raised in connection with the work of the journalist Fareed Zakaria, editor of the international edition of Newsweek, who wrote The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad (2003). While Zakaria’s thesis isn’t so radical as that of the American Founders, he does make a very good case against bloated, unrestrained democracies. After all, Hitler’s reign came about democratically and look at Hamas, the extremist group which won the Palestinian Authority's general elections in January. Both of these are cases illustrating that mere democracy isn’t enough for a country to be governed justly.
But then how exactly should democracy function in a free country? As noted already, in voluntary groups, where members can join or leave of their own free will, democratic means can be nearly unlimited. (I recall once when I gave a talk at a Kiwanis Club, there was a ritual of the master of ceremonies arbitrarily fining people various sums of money. He was authorized to do this in the bylaws, of course, and no one objected.) But in a country which most people do not join but are born into, democracy must be limited to decisions about policies that do not involve the violation of our unalienable individual rights. Would this not make democracy completely ineffectual and moot?
No, because there are decisions to be reached democratically that have to do with the administration of a system of laws aimed to secure our basic rights—e.g., who will sit as a judge, who will build the court house, who will appoint the generals, etc., etc. These are decisions that intrude on no one’s rights—and there are many others. In general terms, selection of the administrators of a just system can occur democratically without the violation of anyone’s rights.
But this is a properly limited scope for democracy. This is the proper understanding of liberal democracy, as well. Such a regime operates without depriving people of their liberties, unlike the democratic procedures with which most of us are familiar these days. It is but a defensive system, never an aggressive one.
The revolutionary idea of the American Founders and those political theorist who taught them wasn’t just that monarchs may not violate our rights. It also applied to majorities. They, too, must respect our basic rights. That is what limited government means—limited to applying measures that are just and peaceful.
Tibor R. Machan
When one objects to government’s meddling in people’s lives, often one gets the response that, after all, so long as government’s decisions are reached democratically, there’s nothing wrong with such meddling. This assumes that democracy is a benign way to arrive at policies that go contrary to what individuals want, even violate their unalienable rights. Why would such an assumption be accepted with little resistance?
One reason is that many people focus just on those democracies that occur in various voluntary associations—clubs, unions, corporations, and so forth. In such groups democracy functions well and is in fact unobjectionable because those taking part in the decision-making joined up voluntarily and have what economists call “the exit option.” You can leave the Rotary or Kiwanis Club, or an apartment house or gated community, if you really don’t like what the majority does. Your participation is up to you. So when this kind of group reaches decisions democratically, the decisions are accepted from the start—the rule is, “Anyone who joins us must accept how we reach decisions.”
Being a citizen of a country is both something similar and quite different. Most citizens do not join a country but are born into it, although quite a few do. So it is only just that the most minimal requirements are imposed on them. The American Founders spelled these out—respect the unalienable rights of all and that’s all you need to be a bona fide citizen of a free country. The only obligations you have are negative—do not violate other people’s rights.
Now this principle applies to everyone and so it also blocks democratic means for meddling with people who refuse to comply with the wishes of majorities. Freedom from coercion means also freedom from the coercion of the majority, not just a king or tsar or emperor. And this makes very good moral sense—why would it be OK for the majority to intrude on some when it is not OK for just one or a few to do so?
In recent mainstream public policy discussions these points have been raised in connection with the work of the journalist Fareed Zakaria, editor of the international edition of Newsweek, who wrote The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad (2003). While Zakaria’s thesis isn’t so radical as that of the American Founders, he does make a very good case against bloated, unrestrained democracies. After all, Hitler’s reign came about democratically and look at Hamas, the extremist group which won the Palestinian Authority's general elections in January. Both of these are cases illustrating that mere democracy isn’t enough for a country to be governed justly.
But then how exactly should democracy function in a free country? As noted already, in voluntary groups, where members can join or leave of their own free will, democratic means can be nearly unlimited. (I recall once when I gave a talk at a Kiwanis Club, there was a ritual of the master of ceremonies arbitrarily fining people various sums of money. He was authorized to do this in the bylaws, of course, and no one objected.) But in a country which most people do not join but are born into, democracy must be limited to decisions about policies that do not involve the violation of our unalienable individual rights. Would this not make democracy completely ineffectual and moot?
No, because there are decisions to be reached democratically that have to do with the administration of a system of laws aimed to secure our basic rights—e.g., who will sit as a judge, who will build the court house, who will appoint the generals, etc., etc. These are decisions that intrude on no one’s rights—and there are many others. In general terms, selection of the administrators of a just system can occur democratically without the violation of anyone’s rights.
But this is a properly limited scope for democracy. This is the proper understanding of liberal democracy, as well. Such a regime operates without depriving people of their liberties, unlike the democratic procedures with which most of us are familiar these days. It is but a defensive system, never an aggressive one.
The revolutionary idea of the American Founders and those political theorist who taught them wasn’t just that monarchs may not violate our rights. It also applied to majorities. They, too, must respect our basic rights. That is what limited government means—limited to applying measures that are just and peaceful.
True Liberal Democracy
Tibor R. Machan
When one objects to government’s meddling in people’s lives, often one gets the response that, after all, so long as government’s decisions are reached democratically, there’s nothing wrong with such meddling. This assumes that democracy is a benign way to arrive at policies that go contrary to what individuals want, even violate their unalienable rights. Why would such an assumption be accepted with little resistance?
One reason is that many people focus just on those democracies that occur in various voluntary associations—clubs, unions, corporations, and so forth. In such groups democracy functions well and is in fact unobjectionable because those taking part in the decision-making joined up voluntarily and have what economists call “the exit option.” You can leave the Rotary or Kiwanis Club, or an apartment house or gated community, if you really don’t like what the majority does. Your participation is up to you. So when this kind of group reaches decisions democratically, the decisions are accepted from the start—the rule is, “Anyone who joins us must accept how we reach decisions.”
Being a citizen of a country is both something similar and quite different. Most citizens do not join a country but are born into it, although quite a few do. So it is only just that the most minimal requirements are imposed on them. The American Founders spelled these out—respect the unalienable rights of all and that’s all you need to be a bona fide citizen of a free country. The only obligations you have are negative—do not violate other people’s rights.
Now this principle applies to everyone and so it also blocks democratic means for meddling with people who refuse to comply with the wishes of majorities. Freedom from coercion means also freedom from the coercion of the majority, not just a king or tsar or emperor. And this makes very good moral sense—why would it be OK for the majority to intrude on some when it is not OK for just one or a few to do so?
In recent mainstream public policy discussions these points have been raised in connection with the work of the journalist Fareed Zakaria, editor of the international edition of Newsweek, who wrote The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad (2003). While Zakaria’s thesis isn’t so radical as that of the American Founders, he does make a very good case against bloated, unrestrained democracies. After all, Hitler’s reign came about democratically and look at Hamas, the extremist group which won the Palestinian Authority's general elections in January. Both of these are cases illustrating that mere democracy isn’t enough for a country to be governed justly.
But then how exactly should democracy function in a free country? As noted already, in voluntary groups, where members can join or leave of their own free will, democratic means can be nearly unlimited. (I recall once when I gave a talk at a Kiwanis Club, there was a ritual of the master of ceremonies arbitrarily fining people various sums of money. He was authorized to do this in the bylaws, of course, and no one objected.) But in a country which most people do not join but are born into, democracy must be limited to decisions about policies that do not involve the violation of our unalienable individual rights. Would this not make democracy completely ineffectual and moot?
No, because there are decisions to be reached democratically that have to do with the administration of a system of laws aimed to secure our basic rights—e.g., who will sit as a judge, who will build the court house, who will appoint the generals, etc., etc. These are decisions that intrude on no one’s rights—and there are many others. In general terms, selection of the administrators of a just system can occur democratically without the violation of anyone’s rights.
But this is a properly limited scope for democracy. This is the proper understanding of liberal democracy, as well. Such a regime operates without depriving people of their liberties, unlike the democratic procedures with which most of us are familiar these days. It is but a defensive system, never an aggressive one.
The revolutionary idea of the American Founders and those political theorist who taught them wasn’t just that monarchs may not violate our rights. It also applied to majorities. They, too, must respect our basic rights. That is what limited government means—limited to applying measures that are just and peaceful.
Tibor R. Machan
When one objects to government’s meddling in people’s lives, often one gets the response that, after all, so long as government’s decisions are reached democratically, there’s nothing wrong with such meddling. This assumes that democracy is a benign way to arrive at policies that go contrary to what individuals want, even violate their unalienable rights. Why would such an assumption be accepted with little resistance?
One reason is that many people focus just on those democracies that occur in various voluntary associations—clubs, unions, corporations, and so forth. In such groups democracy functions well and is in fact unobjectionable because those taking part in the decision-making joined up voluntarily and have what economists call “the exit option.” You can leave the Rotary or Kiwanis Club, or an apartment house or gated community, if you really don’t like what the majority does. Your participation is up to you. So when this kind of group reaches decisions democratically, the decisions are accepted from the start—the rule is, “Anyone who joins us must accept how we reach decisions.”
Being a citizen of a country is both something similar and quite different. Most citizens do not join a country but are born into it, although quite a few do. So it is only just that the most minimal requirements are imposed on them. The American Founders spelled these out—respect the unalienable rights of all and that’s all you need to be a bona fide citizen of a free country. The only obligations you have are negative—do not violate other people’s rights.
Now this principle applies to everyone and so it also blocks democratic means for meddling with people who refuse to comply with the wishes of majorities. Freedom from coercion means also freedom from the coercion of the majority, not just a king or tsar or emperor. And this makes very good moral sense—why would it be OK for the majority to intrude on some when it is not OK for just one or a few to do so?
In recent mainstream public policy discussions these points have been raised in connection with the work of the journalist Fareed Zakaria, editor of the international edition of Newsweek, who wrote The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad (2003). While Zakaria’s thesis isn’t so radical as that of the American Founders, he does make a very good case against bloated, unrestrained democracies. After all, Hitler’s reign came about democratically and look at Hamas, the extremist group which won the Palestinian Authority's general elections in January. Both of these are cases illustrating that mere democracy isn’t enough for a country to be governed justly.
But then how exactly should democracy function in a free country? As noted already, in voluntary groups, where members can join or leave of their own free will, democratic means can be nearly unlimited. (I recall once when I gave a talk at a Kiwanis Club, there was a ritual of the master of ceremonies arbitrarily fining people various sums of money. He was authorized to do this in the bylaws, of course, and no one objected.) But in a country which most people do not join but are born into, democracy must be limited to decisions about policies that do not involve the violation of our unalienable individual rights. Would this not make democracy completely ineffectual and moot?
No, because there are decisions to be reached democratically that have to do with the administration of a system of laws aimed to secure our basic rights—e.g., who will sit as a judge, who will build the court house, who will appoint the generals, etc., etc. These are decisions that intrude on no one’s rights—and there are many others. In general terms, selection of the administrators of a just system can occur democratically without the violation of anyone’s rights.
But this is a properly limited scope for democracy. This is the proper understanding of liberal democracy, as well. Such a regime operates without depriving people of their liberties, unlike the democratic procedures with which most of us are familiar these days. It is but a defensive system, never an aggressive one.
The revolutionary idea of the American Founders and those political theorist who taught them wasn’t just that monarchs may not violate our rights. It also applied to majorities. They, too, must respect our basic rights. That is what limited government means—limited to applying measures that are just and peaceful.
Another Blunder at “Public” Schools
Tibor R. Machan
The Miami Herald reported the other day that “A parent's challenge to a book about Cuba resulted in the Miami-Dade School Board voting to ban it—along with 23 other books in the series, even though no one objected to them.” This action then prompted the ACLU to sue, demanding that the books be put back on the shelves.
This is another wonderful—or, actually, horrible—case where the true culprit is not being identified in the major media or even by the interested parties. The most prominent conservative commentator on the air, Rush Limbaugh, also managed to miss the point completely, offering, instead, his rant against the book in question that depicted Cuba glowingly.
Yes, one can appreciate it when a parent is outraged who grew up in a Communist or Nazi country and sees his or her child exposed to “education” that ignores the vile aspects of those systems. It’s like putting books in children’s hands that show only the wonderful German Autobahn as Hitler’s legacy. Yet, in a free country there is nothing a government should do about such misuses of the right to free expression. The protestations must be left to private parties.
Trouble is, of course, that when it comes to elementary, secondary, and even much of higher education, the United States of America is not a free country. The bulk of these institutions are run by—and paid out of taxes extorted from us—by governments. As such, education in the U. S. A. is effectively nationalized, a part of the public sector.
And here then comes to ACLU! They know that when it comes to the public sector, playing favorite with those who hate Cuba is technically illegal. (Let’s face it, the ACLU also defended the Nazis when they wanted to march on public roads in Skokie, Illinois, some decades ago!) So, what’s the solution?
Abolish government education, that’s what. Education ought to be approached the very same way religion is in this country, in any free country, in fact. There should be a powerful wall of separation between state and education. Once education is fully privatized, whether one school or another will have favorable or critical books about Cuba or the Third Reich or North Korea in its libraries will be up to those who own the school and those who are considering sending their children there. The ACLU will have no role in the matter whatsoever. Nor will some politicized bureaucracy, such as the state, county, or city school board.
Until this state of affairs is realized, there will forever be protracted squabbles about whether to have this or that kind of fiction, poetry, or non-fiction in the libraries and curricula of public schools. Citizens with different political ideas and ideals, different commitments, dreams, hopes and such, will fight others about what books children should be reading.
A privatized system avoids this kind of ugly mess. There is no public education to control, for any faction of the citizenry which members of other factions can then resist since they, too, are made to pay for it all.
Unfortunately, as with so many other matters in most societies, at this stage of the discussion defenders of government control of education bring up the supposedly sad state of the poor who, they alleged, will be left uneducated in a fully free country. This is bunk, no different from a claim that without government shoe stores, the poor will have no shoes—or any other goods and services traded in the mostly free market place in many societies.
But never mind that for now. The main point here is that if the likes of Rush Limbaugh or the ACLU have problem with what kinds of readings children must do in schools, they ought to consider, very seriously indeed, the privatization of all of education. There is no better solution to their problem.
Tibor R. Machan
The Miami Herald reported the other day that “A parent's challenge to a book about Cuba resulted in the Miami-Dade School Board voting to ban it—along with 23 other books in the series, even though no one objected to them.” This action then prompted the ACLU to sue, demanding that the books be put back on the shelves.
This is another wonderful—or, actually, horrible—case where the true culprit is not being identified in the major media or even by the interested parties. The most prominent conservative commentator on the air, Rush Limbaugh, also managed to miss the point completely, offering, instead, his rant against the book in question that depicted Cuba glowingly.
Yes, one can appreciate it when a parent is outraged who grew up in a Communist or Nazi country and sees his or her child exposed to “education” that ignores the vile aspects of those systems. It’s like putting books in children’s hands that show only the wonderful German Autobahn as Hitler’s legacy. Yet, in a free country there is nothing a government should do about such misuses of the right to free expression. The protestations must be left to private parties.
Trouble is, of course, that when it comes to elementary, secondary, and even much of higher education, the United States of America is not a free country. The bulk of these institutions are run by—and paid out of taxes extorted from us—by governments. As such, education in the U. S. A. is effectively nationalized, a part of the public sector.
And here then comes to ACLU! They know that when it comes to the public sector, playing favorite with those who hate Cuba is technically illegal. (Let’s face it, the ACLU also defended the Nazis when they wanted to march on public roads in Skokie, Illinois, some decades ago!) So, what’s the solution?
Abolish government education, that’s what. Education ought to be approached the very same way religion is in this country, in any free country, in fact. There should be a powerful wall of separation between state and education. Once education is fully privatized, whether one school or another will have favorable or critical books about Cuba or the Third Reich or North Korea in its libraries will be up to those who own the school and those who are considering sending their children there. The ACLU will have no role in the matter whatsoever. Nor will some politicized bureaucracy, such as the state, county, or city school board.
Until this state of affairs is realized, there will forever be protracted squabbles about whether to have this or that kind of fiction, poetry, or non-fiction in the libraries and curricula of public schools. Citizens with different political ideas and ideals, different commitments, dreams, hopes and such, will fight others about what books children should be reading.
A privatized system avoids this kind of ugly mess. There is no public education to control, for any faction of the citizenry which members of other factions can then resist since they, too, are made to pay for it all.
Unfortunately, as with so many other matters in most societies, at this stage of the discussion defenders of government control of education bring up the supposedly sad state of the poor who, they alleged, will be left uneducated in a fully free country. This is bunk, no different from a claim that without government shoe stores, the poor will have no shoes—or any other goods and services traded in the mostly free market place in many societies.
But never mind that for now. The main point here is that if the likes of Rush Limbaugh or the ACLU have problem with what kinds of readings children must do in schools, they ought to consider, very seriously indeed, the privatization of all of education. There is no better solution to their problem.
Family Leave Expanded in Massachusetts
Tibor R. Machan
TIME leads off its June 26, 2006, central story as follows: “Every new parent knows that having~a baby means weeks without sleep. Should it also mean weeks without a paycheck?” The suggestion is that TIME is in favor of forcing companies pay families whose members cannot show up for work, or at least considers it a palatable development in public affairs. Rush Limbaugh spent some time with the item one days but he missed the major problem.
It is well known that one of the serious impediments to entrepreneurship throughout Europe is that companies are bound by labor laws to provide employees with nearly cradle to grave security. In consequence of this, these countries are experiencing slow growth and minimal start-ups in business. No wonder. If by law, not by freely formed employment agreement (that could contain some kind of mutually accepted exit option and heed market conditions), employees must provide innumerable benefits to employees, those thinking of starting a business will hesitate and often desist. Their investment will have to be calculated accordingly and will turn out to be far greater than market conditions may justify. Ergo, no business. Ergo, no employment. Which accounts for double digit unemployment figures in France, German, Spain, and elsewhere.
In the quasi-free market, capitalist U. S. A., in contrast, there are no federal laws mandating the provision of extensive benefits to employees, at least not yet. The Massachusetts legislature will not rest easy with this and is, accordingly, mimicking the German labor laws.
Of course, this will appear to be all so “generous” (with others’ resources) to those who will take advantage of the extended family leave. However, such coercive imposition of benefits ignores market conditions and therefore isn’t likely to be economically sound.
It seems like the legislators in Massachusetts and others who are pushing for these sort of Draconian labor regulations have not learned anything from the collapse of Soviet socialism. The entire Soviet bloc was rife with these kinds of laws—many people in those societies destroyed by such laws still pine after them nostalgically, unaware or forgetful of the damage such a system did to millions of people. The dream of guaranteed welfare provisions, put on the backs of people in the business world, can appear to be very cool until one tries to live them for a while. Then shortages, low wages, unemployment, lousy services, and mounting abuse finally calls attention to how terrible it is to be guided by such dreams.
A country that leaves business to fend for itself—i.e., no subsidies but also no mandated benefits to employees—may not appear to be sweet and lovely until one checks out its history, its employment market, its overall productivity. There cannot be too many false promises in such a country. Thus many shortsighted folks will find it wanting: “I might lose my job,” “I may have to wait with having kids until I can really afford having them,” or “My family will have to save up for children and the care they require and not be able, legally, to dump the cost on others.” Yes, all this sounds awful.
Except that it is a far more realistic, and ultimately successful, approach to the employment situation. Massachusetts's politicians, of course, have been bathing in this dream world, what with Edward Kennedy & Co. in leadership positions there and the Boston university community awash with promoters of socialist public policies and methods.
Yet there is a chink in their armor, even apart from how bad their ideas are for the economy and from their very own point of view. These very same folks who dream of a socialist paradise here on earth are also strong advocates of population control and environmental precaution. Well, here is the news: promoting extended family leave and other mandated family benefits which help people avoid coming to grips with the full cost of parenthood is just the sort of policy that will increase child bearing. That, in turn, will be added burden to the environment, as well as to the public school system and all sort of related facilities the same parents who expect a free ride in these areas will expect in other areas of their lives.
At that point, look out. The prospects for a Soviet style meltdown will be approaching. In contrast to the anxieties associated with the free market capitalist system, that meltdown will be a true disaster all around.
Tibor R. Machan
TIME leads off its June 26, 2006, central story as follows: “Every new parent knows that having~a baby means weeks without sleep. Should it also mean weeks without a paycheck?” The suggestion is that TIME is in favor of forcing companies pay families whose members cannot show up for work, or at least considers it a palatable development in public affairs. Rush Limbaugh spent some time with the item one days but he missed the major problem.
It is well known that one of the serious impediments to entrepreneurship throughout Europe is that companies are bound by labor laws to provide employees with nearly cradle to grave security. In consequence of this, these countries are experiencing slow growth and minimal start-ups in business. No wonder. If by law, not by freely formed employment agreement (that could contain some kind of mutually accepted exit option and heed market conditions), employees must provide innumerable benefits to employees, those thinking of starting a business will hesitate and often desist. Their investment will have to be calculated accordingly and will turn out to be far greater than market conditions may justify. Ergo, no business. Ergo, no employment. Which accounts for double digit unemployment figures in France, German, Spain, and elsewhere.
In the quasi-free market, capitalist U. S. A., in contrast, there are no federal laws mandating the provision of extensive benefits to employees, at least not yet. The Massachusetts legislature will not rest easy with this and is, accordingly, mimicking the German labor laws.
Of course, this will appear to be all so “generous” (with others’ resources) to those who will take advantage of the extended family leave. However, such coercive imposition of benefits ignores market conditions and therefore isn’t likely to be economically sound.
It seems like the legislators in Massachusetts and others who are pushing for these sort of Draconian labor regulations have not learned anything from the collapse of Soviet socialism. The entire Soviet bloc was rife with these kinds of laws—many people in those societies destroyed by such laws still pine after them nostalgically, unaware or forgetful of the damage such a system did to millions of people. The dream of guaranteed welfare provisions, put on the backs of people in the business world, can appear to be very cool until one tries to live them for a while. Then shortages, low wages, unemployment, lousy services, and mounting abuse finally calls attention to how terrible it is to be guided by such dreams.
A country that leaves business to fend for itself—i.e., no subsidies but also no mandated benefits to employees—may not appear to be sweet and lovely until one checks out its history, its employment market, its overall productivity. There cannot be too many false promises in such a country. Thus many shortsighted folks will find it wanting: “I might lose my job,” “I may have to wait with having kids until I can really afford having them,” or “My family will have to save up for children and the care they require and not be able, legally, to dump the cost on others.” Yes, all this sounds awful.
Except that it is a far more realistic, and ultimately successful, approach to the employment situation. Massachusetts's politicians, of course, have been bathing in this dream world, what with Edward Kennedy & Co. in leadership positions there and the Boston university community awash with promoters of socialist public policies and methods.
Yet there is a chink in their armor, even apart from how bad their ideas are for the economy and from their very own point of view. These very same folks who dream of a socialist paradise here on earth are also strong advocates of population control and environmental precaution. Well, here is the news: promoting extended family leave and other mandated family benefits which help people avoid coming to grips with the full cost of parenthood is just the sort of policy that will increase child bearing. That, in turn, will be added burden to the environment, as well as to the public school system and all sort of related facilities the same parents who expect a free ride in these areas will expect in other areas of their lives.
At that point, look out. The prospects for a Soviet style meltdown will be approaching. In contrast to the anxieties associated with the free market capitalist system, that meltdown will be a true disaster all around.
Are We Making Progress?
Tibor R. Machan
Of all the studies that make the news, I’d like to read of one that measures whether there has been significant progress toward the free society. Yes, there are records kept on which country is more free (in the relevant sense, roughly, of enjoying respect for and protection of individual rights in the Lockean tradition, the tradition that spawned the Declaration of Independence). This includes elements of a legal infrastructure emphasizing due process, civil liberties, private property rights, freedom to enter and exist contracts, etc., and so forth.
Yet my own curiosity here focuses on the relative progress of classical liberal, libertarian ideas vis-Ã -vis all the varieties of statism that are being promulgated. Even though I’ve been focusing on the respective merits of the free society vis-Ã -vis more or less statists ones since 1961—when I started to read philosophy and then discovered Ayn Rand, Ludwig von Mises, F. A. Hayek, et al. (oddly, via first becoming aware of William F. Buckley Jr.’s National Review), I have never managed to get a confident grasp of whether the movement is gaining ground on its opponents.
When I started into this movement, there had been the Foundation for Economic Education, the Nathaniel Branden Institute, and a few other more or less consistent think tanks and advocacy organizations working on various aspects and problems of the free society. In time the Institute for Humane Studies, the Reason Foundation, the Cato Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Mises Institute, the Independent Institute, The Pacific Research Institute, the Pacific Legal Foundation, the Institute for Justice, the Heartland Institute, the International Society for Individual Liberty, Free Market News Network, and similar organizations (many with prominent web presence now) emerged so that today there are umpteen such outfits publishing books, journals, magazines, and pamphlets, producing Webcasts, organizing conferences and seminars, and generally making a very decent effort at getting competent, erudite, and civil presentations of the case for liberty within not just American but what may roughly be called Western culture and beyond. (There are free market think tanks in the UK, Hungary, Rumania, the Czech Republic, Poland, as well as Pakistan, Nigeria, India, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and many other places. And I was recently contacted by someone from China who is starting such an institute!)
OK, but when compared to what statists are doing, is this anywhere sufficient to advance the cause of liberty? Is it only that the pie of intellectual activism is growing, with everyone having pretty much the same percentage of a slice of it as forty years ago or is the percentage of the slice with libertarian content growing compared to the rest?
I cannot begin to answer this question, although here and there some hopeful signs are in evidence. Take the growth of the media company for which I work half time, Freedom Communications, Inc., of Irvine, CA. It’s flagship newspaper, The Orange County Register, is in excellent shape, having managed to fend off numerous attempts by The Los Angeles Times to obliterate it. The company has some 30 daily papers across the country, as well as another 25 or so weeklies, some of them published in Spanish. The organization has grown but what about others pushing for the opposite trend, for expanding the entitlement or welfare state?
Not that my own vigilance would diminish at all were I to learn that the movement toward a fully free society is lagging or flourishing big time. Still, with the prospect for the latter improving, I would certainly be more hopeful about what kind of lives my own children will have, and the children of my friends, and, indeed, the children of millions and millions. So the issue is certainly not merely academic.
Yes, the price of liberty is eternal vigilance but it is not unreasonable to hope for some genuine progress, to see some fruit to one’s labors. I think most of those who have devoted much of their energy to studying and defending the free society, in various areas of specialty or in the most general terms, would wish to know just how the movement is faring. I am sure those who are championing opposite ideas and ideals would also like to know how well they are doing in the war of ideas. I do know that some have reached great influence, for example, with the United Nations, The World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and similar outfits. And they have no compunction about utilizing money extorted from the rest of us to promote their agenda. (Is that a great advantage they enjoy? Or is it, like most matters touched by the state, actually a liability?)
Maybe someday there will be a graduate student in political economy or some related discipline who will shed some light on this concern of mine. Maybe someone has already but I’ve missed it.
Tibor R. Machan
Of all the studies that make the news, I’d like to read of one that measures whether there has been significant progress toward the free society. Yes, there are records kept on which country is more free (in the relevant sense, roughly, of enjoying respect for and protection of individual rights in the Lockean tradition, the tradition that spawned the Declaration of Independence). This includes elements of a legal infrastructure emphasizing due process, civil liberties, private property rights, freedom to enter and exist contracts, etc., and so forth.
Yet my own curiosity here focuses on the relative progress of classical liberal, libertarian ideas vis-Ã -vis all the varieties of statism that are being promulgated. Even though I’ve been focusing on the respective merits of the free society vis-Ã -vis more or less statists ones since 1961—when I started to read philosophy and then discovered Ayn Rand, Ludwig von Mises, F. A. Hayek, et al. (oddly, via first becoming aware of William F. Buckley Jr.’s National Review), I have never managed to get a confident grasp of whether the movement is gaining ground on its opponents.
When I started into this movement, there had been the Foundation for Economic Education, the Nathaniel Branden Institute, and a few other more or less consistent think tanks and advocacy organizations working on various aspects and problems of the free society. In time the Institute for Humane Studies, the Reason Foundation, the Cato Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Mises Institute, the Independent Institute, The Pacific Research Institute, the Pacific Legal Foundation, the Institute for Justice, the Heartland Institute, the International Society for Individual Liberty, Free Market News Network, and similar organizations (many with prominent web presence now) emerged so that today there are umpteen such outfits publishing books, journals, magazines, and pamphlets, producing Webcasts, organizing conferences and seminars, and generally making a very decent effort at getting competent, erudite, and civil presentations of the case for liberty within not just American but what may roughly be called Western culture and beyond. (There are free market think tanks in the UK, Hungary, Rumania, the Czech Republic, Poland, as well as Pakistan, Nigeria, India, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and many other places. And I was recently contacted by someone from China who is starting such an institute!)
OK, but when compared to what statists are doing, is this anywhere sufficient to advance the cause of liberty? Is it only that the pie of intellectual activism is growing, with everyone having pretty much the same percentage of a slice of it as forty years ago or is the percentage of the slice with libertarian content growing compared to the rest?
I cannot begin to answer this question, although here and there some hopeful signs are in evidence. Take the growth of the media company for which I work half time, Freedom Communications, Inc., of Irvine, CA. It’s flagship newspaper, The Orange County Register, is in excellent shape, having managed to fend off numerous attempts by The Los Angeles Times to obliterate it. The company has some 30 daily papers across the country, as well as another 25 or so weeklies, some of them published in Spanish. The organization has grown but what about others pushing for the opposite trend, for expanding the entitlement or welfare state?
Not that my own vigilance would diminish at all were I to learn that the movement toward a fully free society is lagging or flourishing big time. Still, with the prospect for the latter improving, I would certainly be more hopeful about what kind of lives my own children will have, and the children of my friends, and, indeed, the children of millions and millions. So the issue is certainly not merely academic.
Yes, the price of liberty is eternal vigilance but it is not unreasonable to hope for some genuine progress, to see some fruit to one’s labors. I think most of those who have devoted much of their energy to studying and defending the free society, in various areas of specialty or in the most general terms, would wish to know just how the movement is faring. I am sure those who are championing opposite ideas and ideals would also like to know how well they are doing in the war of ideas. I do know that some have reached great influence, for example, with the United Nations, The World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and similar outfits. And they have no compunction about utilizing money extorted from the rest of us to promote their agenda. (Is that a great advantage they enjoy? Or is it, like most matters touched by the state, actually a liability?)
Maybe someday there will be a graduate student in political economy or some related discipline who will shed some light on this concern of mine. Maybe someone has already but I’ve missed it.
Sunday, June 18, 2006
Coercion Addiction
Tibor R. Machan
In a recently published missive I had expressed skepticism about Al Gore’s story of global warming and climate change. So not surprising I received some harsh rebukes for this.
I am not a trained climatologist and so I rely in my understanding on those who make themselves clear to me and also embrace certain principles as they propose solutions to problems they identify. Now this means, very briefly, that the sort of call to arms found in Al Gore’s movie, “An Inconvenient Truth” and similar offerings is unacceptable.
As an example of his predilection to go to government for solutions, Al Gore is most upset with George Bush for refusing to increase government regulation of whatever has an impact on the environment. Gore’s solutions, in other words, are exclusively coercive—give more power to the Department of the Interior and the Environmental Protection Agency (under his leadership, of course) and we will then be on our way to solving the problems he and his team of experts have identified.
What Gore & Co., ignore is not environmental but economic science and sound principles of political economy. Economist have successfully shown the inefficiency of government intervention for purposes of solving nearly any problem at all. For his work on this issue, James Buchanan received the Nobel Prize in 1986. He developed “public choice theory,” a set of principles he and his colleague Gordon Tullock laid out in their book, Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy (University of Michigan Press, 1962). It shows beyond any reasonable doubt—certainly less doubt than what Al Gore gives us—that when one entrusts problem-solving to government agents, one can expect that there will be mismanagement because bureaucrats promote their own vested interest and agendas when they hold their positions, not the so called “public interest.” (Part of the problem is that in most cases what some group labels “the public interest” is actually the private or vested interest of that very group. Yes, even scientists working for government exhibit this behavior pattern—they are very interested in garnering government grants and subsidies whether the work these support has anything at all to do with the welfare of the citizenry.)
OK, now it follows from this that whatever problem is at issue, calling upon governments to solve it is very risky if not outright delusional. My own skepticism about Al Gore & Co. isn’t so much about the diagnosis but the cure, although even the diagnosis shows plenty of evidence of special pleading. (Nearly all the predictions are put in terms of what “may” happen, not what will.)
But most of all what is of very serious concern is how readily the likes of Al Gore will toss aside considerations of due process and civil liberties, not to mention private property rights, just so as to implement what they call “precautionary” policies, ones that do as much damage to the principles of a free society as any part of the Patriot Act. In another words, Al Gore & Co., are—and pardon my derivative language here—addicted to government.
Now there are those who will cavalierly dismiss my concerns as right wing, oil-interest-driven ideology that simply blinds the likes of me to what is imperative for humanity’s survival and welfare. Au contraire!
It is, instead, the folks lined up with Al Gore who show an unwavering, dogmatic commitment to handling all problems by means of coercion, the governmental way. (There is a wonderful book about this, Jonathan R. T. Hughes’ The governmental habit: Economic Controls from Colonial times to the Present [Basic Books, 1977; republished by Princeton University Press, 1991].) To test whether I am right about this, just ask anyone who joins Gore & Co., what their solutions involve. They involve state imposed restrictions, higher taxation, an environmental disaster czar, and similar measures that are not becoming of a free society but of a top down tyranny.
Until and unless those showing great concern for the environment demonstrate that they understand the public choice problems of reliance on government and they respect the rights of individual human beings as they approach the problem, they do not deserve respect. Some of what they produce may be diagnostically sound but as to their cure, forget about it.
--------------------
Machan is the R. C. Hoiles Professor of Business Ethics & Free Enterprise at Chapman University's Argyros School of B&E and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, CA. He wrote Putting Humans First, Why We Are Nature’s Favorite (Rowman & Littlefield, 2004).
Tibor R. Machan
In a recently published missive I had expressed skepticism about Al Gore’s story of global warming and climate change. So not surprising I received some harsh rebukes for this.
I am not a trained climatologist and so I rely in my understanding on those who make themselves clear to me and also embrace certain principles as they propose solutions to problems they identify. Now this means, very briefly, that the sort of call to arms found in Al Gore’s movie, “An Inconvenient Truth” and similar offerings is unacceptable.
As an example of his predilection to go to government for solutions, Al Gore is most upset with George Bush for refusing to increase government regulation of whatever has an impact on the environment. Gore’s solutions, in other words, are exclusively coercive—give more power to the Department of the Interior and the Environmental Protection Agency (under his leadership, of course) and we will then be on our way to solving the problems he and his team of experts have identified.
What Gore & Co., ignore is not environmental but economic science and sound principles of political economy. Economist have successfully shown the inefficiency of government intervention for purposes of solving nearly any problem at all. For his work on this issue, James Buchanan received the Nobel Prize in 1986. He developed “public choice theory,” a set of principles he and his colleague Gordon Tullock laid out in their book, Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy (University of Michigan Press, 1962). It shows beyond any reasonable doubt—certainly less doubt than what Al Gore gives us—that when one entrusts problem-solving to government agents, one can expect that there will be mismanagement because bureaucrats promote their own vested interest and agendas when they hold their positions, not the so called “public interest.” (Part of the problem is that in most cases what some group labels “the public interest” is actually the private or vested interest of that very group. Yes, even scientists working for government exhibit this behavior pattern—they are very interested in garnering government grants and subsidies whether the work these support has anything at all to do with the welfare of the citizenry.)
OK, now it follows from this that whatever problem is at issue, calling upon governments to solve it is very risky if not outright delusional. My own skepticism about Al Gore & Co. isn’t so much about the diagnosis but the cure, although even the diagnosis shows plenty of evidence of special pleading. (Nearly all the predictions are put in terms of what “may” happen, not what will.)
But most of all what is of very serious concern is how readily the likes of Al Gore will toss aside considerations of due process and civil liberties, not to mention private property rights, just so as to implement what they call “precautionary” policies, ones that do as much damage to the principles of a free society as any part of the Patriot Act. In another words, Al Gore & Co., are—and pardon my derivative language here—addicted to government.
Now there are those who will cavalierly dismiss my concerns as right wing, oil-interest-driven ideology that simply blinds the likes of me to what is imperative for humanity’s survival and welfare. Au contraire!
It is, instead, the folks lined up with Al Gore who show an unwavering, dogmatic commitment to handling all problems by means of coercion, the governmental way. (There is a wonderful book about this, Jonathan R. T. Hughes’ The governmental habit: Economic Controls from Colonial times to the Present [Basic Books, 1977; republished by Princeton University Press, 1991].) To test whether I am right about this, just ask anyone who joins Gore & Co., what their solutions involve. They involve state imposed restrictions, higher taxation, an environmental disaster czar, and similar measures that are not becoming of a free society but of a top down tyranny.
Until and unless those showing great concern for the environment demonstrate that they understand the public choice problems of reliance on government and they respect the rights of individual human beings as they approach the problem, they do not deserve respect. Some of what they produce may be diagnostically sound but as to their cure, forget about it.
--------------------
Machan is the R. C. Hoiles Professor of Business Ethics & Free Enterprise at Chapman University's Argyros School of B&E and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, CA. He wrote Putting Humans First, Why We Are Nature’s Favorite (Rowman & Littlefield, 2004).
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