Moral Responsibility and the Poor

Tibor R. Machan

Two central dogmas of contemporary liberalism are that the rich are to be blamed for all our ills and that in the end all people are the same and no one is more or less worthy than anyone else. Blaming those who are not so well off as others is unjust because they are not well enough socialized to be ambitious and diligent.

At the same time, those who are well off get a lot of moral criticism for failing to be generous, kind, charitable or giving. Indeed, they are so bad that they need to have their wealth reduced by way of heavy taxation--not just the familiar progressive kind but whatever else the politicians and bureaucrats with this line of thinking can manage to extort from them. (Remember, taxation is extortion. It is the legacy of the feudal era, the kin of serfdom.)

Not only that but even those who stand up defending the wealthy are morally guilty, deserving of scorn and contempt, not civilized discourse about the matter. I know this quite well since I have been standing up against extortion for decades now. For me it isn’t a matter of whether a wealthy deserve their wealth--I don’t know the bulk of them so I cannot tell--but whether anyone is justified it doing such extortion. (I may not deserve my good health or pretty face but this doesn’t justify anyone levying a tax on it!)

The liberal attitude about morality stems, in part, from widespread scientism, the view that science has invalidated morality, made it something bogus like astronomy has made astrology bogus. Extrapolating the empirical scientific method to everything else of interest to human beings achieves this distortion.

Everything is not subject to the experimental method--for example whether faking research is ethical isn’t. And this is the beginning of the confusion and obfuscation--those who are championing the abolition of morality are just as morally ticked off with those who distort their ideas as anyone else is with bad conduct. They become moralists, all of a sudden, never mind that no natural science can show there is anything amiss with faking research, with distorting anyone’s views, etc.

So from the git-go the effort to abolish the moral perspective fails. But what then about denying to those not so well off a moral criticism? Is it right to hold that the poor or disadvantaged cannot be held morally responsible?

That would be rank dehumanization. These folks are not invalids or infants but full human beings who for whatever reason lack substantial wealth. But that doesn’t mean they could not be guilty of acting irresponsibly. All bona fide human beings are subject to moral assessment, usually by those who know them well but when the conduct is evident to us all, to anyone aware of how they are acting. It doesn’t take intimate knowledge of a terrorist to know that what he or she is doing is contemptible. Or of a child molester or cheat.

In the realm of economics, also, that some people refuse to make the effort to lift themselves out of poverty is quite subject to criticism. Or that despite being poor, they keep producing children they cannot care for and then then dump on the rest of society as if others were the parents.

But if all this is true, then all this blaming the rich needs to be seriously reconsidered. Maybe the rich--or at least most of them--are the good guys, having worked hard or deployed their skills and talents wisely so they’d end up well enabled to carry on in their lives.

And all this also implies that the public policy debate about who is to be held responsible for housing bubbles, becoming debt ridden and unemployed and such needs some serious revision. Instead of penalizing the rich, perhaps most of them ought to be praised and held up as models for the rest of us. And the poor ought not to be let off so easy when they come under scrutiny. As Herbert Spencer observed,

“Sympathy with one in suffering suppresses, for the time being, remembrance of his transgressions….Those whose hardships are set forth in pamphlets and proclamations in sermons and speeches which echo throughout society, are assumed to be all worthy souls, grievously wronged; and none of them are thought of as bearing the penalties of their own misdeeds. “(Man versus the State, p.22)

Intolerable Nudging

Tibor R. Machan

Champions of government intervention in our lives make every effort, especially in a country with a tradition of libertarian political rhetoric, to disguise that they are embarking upon tyranny. Yes, much of it may be of the petty kind, such as thousands of government regulations produced by various congressional committees. But as politicians and bureaucrats always reach beyond their authority to gain power over us, these petty tyrannies, these minor intrusions that the nudging amounts to, begin to get out of hand. In time the population just will not stand for it. We get political movements like the Tea Party arising to defend our liberties even from these allegedly minor nudgings.
It was the influential Professor Cass Sunstein -- now President Obama’s regulation czar -- and his buddy Richard H. Thaler who wrote the book Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness (Yale UP, 2004) in which they developed the idea that what governments need to do is not deploy brute force and its threat to make citizens comply with their agendas but make use of small bits of coercion, to nudge them, so they do not find the process objectionable. They make use of the examples of people encouraging their friends, for example, to conform to various rules, as when they place a bunch of footwear by the door so that those coming to their party will take off their shoes before they come into the rest of the house or flat. They will not even notice that they have been forced into compliance with the house rules! They won’t complain or protest that they have been imposed upon.

Now the analogy here is a poor one because such encouragements usually occur in areas over which the guests don’t have rightful control, quite the contrary. Nudging is quite acceptable when it occurs within the nudger’s realm, his or her home or garden or yard or office. All of that is quite different from when governments nudge us, that is to say, push people around.

In public policy an example of nudging would be to provide special tax exemptions to married couples or to those who choose a certain profession or those who purchase homes -- e.g., the famous mortgage interest deduction that has been partly responsible for the housing meltdown by having encouraged people to buy homes never mind whether they can actually afford the mortgage.

All these manipulative techniques may seem harmless to those who have no objection to controlling other people for purposes they believe are worthwhile. But if one thinks about it, nudging is paternalistic -- indeed Thaler has called in “libertarian paternalism,” never mind that the very idea is an oxymoron, like pacifist military ethics.

Most folks will not do much to resist governmental nudging, mainly because it is too much trouble, too time consuming and expensive. Like most of us will not sue people who bump into us on a sidewalk or step on our toes on a tram. Yet, if this becomes routine -- if one runs across somebody who makes a habit of bumping people or of stepping on their toes or spilling coffee on them, etc., etc. (all minor intrusions on their own but capable of graduating to serious encroachments once regularly repeated) -- it stops being simply a nuisance. Indeed, if a society starts being overrun with nudging, it is likely to foster a good deal of acrimony among its citizens.

It is arguable that movements like the Tea Party are in part reactions to incessant nudging. Such public policy methods may well serve to wake up the citizenry to how public officials have become anything but public servants but grown into power hungry bureaucrats.

As with many aspects of human relations, it is one thing to accept minor intrusions if they are accidental, occasional and unintended; it is quite another when they become elements of deliberate public policy. Of course, power hungry people would like us all to accept all the nudging that drives us to do their bidding. And because most of us tend to be civilized and tolerate people, we do not speak up about these matters regularly. However, if they get out of hand, look out.

Another Criticism of “Animal Rights”

Tibor R. Machan

Though this is a topic that I have visited on several occasions, having recently become an avid fan of the Discovery Channel’s series on life in the deep oceans and other seas, I am motivated to observe just how absurd the notion of animal rights really is.

Here we have the oceans of the globe teeming with billions of critters of immense variety. Looked at close up these are often very beautiful animals, indeed, and their agility is fantastic, to say the least. Not that people cannot match what these animals can do, although some of their feats are not within human reach except with extensive technological assistance. But it is undeniable that the wales, octopuses, herrings, crabs, seals, sharks; they do have amazing lives and incidentally put on a great show. At times what they do takes one’s breath away!

But there is an element to the lives of all these animals that makes it very clear that although there is much that we humans share with them--as with other animals across the earth--there is one area where humans really are distinctive, namely, in having a moral dimension in their lives. The widespread and unrestrained carnage that is routine in the seas is something that is mostly found seriously objectionable when evident among people, at least for the last several thousand years. Not that human beings always conduct themselves peacefully, properly and in a civilized fashion. But that when they do not, it is properly found to be wrong, morally objectionable. It is no excuse to say, well that’s just how we are--carnivorous beasts, through and through. Animals, however, are mostly just that. And their fans among us testify to this when they direct their moral ire at us, not the killers among them.

Here what comes to my mind is the moral high ground claimed by those who object to eating meat, by vegans, for example, who choose to consume only vegetables not for reasons of nutrition but for supposedly moral ones. In short, the claim is that vegans act as we all should, refraining from killing and otherwise using animals. (Exactly why it’s OK to kill fruits and vegetables is a complicated story told by them.) Clearly, however, all those murderous animals of the seas, planes and forests are acting just as they must--there is nothing of “should or should not” about any of it. Right and wrong do not pertain to how nonhuman animals carry on, mainly because they have no choice about it, at least none that is evident. In contrast, people have identifiable standards that guide them to do what is right and avoid what is wrong. And when these are violated, they can be chided, even condemned. In short, people have a moral nature which other animals do not.

It can be wished for, of course, that the carnage in the wilds diminish, that wild animals behaved nicer toward one another but that is all it is, a wish. That’s the Bamby syndrome, as some call it, extrapolating from the human animal to the rest, a bit in the fashion of Disney animations.

But there is no justification for this, seriously! Any careful observation of the rest of nature will make it evident that applying moral criteria to how animals live is in error--what philosophers have called a “category mistake.” And at the same time and for similar reasons, ascribing rights to animals is also misguided, just as would be to ascribe guilt to them when they carry out their killings and maiming in the wilds.

I am not about to speculate on the motivation behind the way some animal lovers want us to relate to animals and why they insist on confusing them with us in certain important respects. These may vary a great deal. Certainly empathy plays a role--we do share a great deal with the rest of the animals, including the capacity for feeling pain and even loss. But none of these translate well into the moral point of view and making the attempt can lead to unnecessary hostilities among human beings and even worse, to public policies that are very intrusive.

From Machan’s Archives: The Deficit and the Tragedy of the Commons

TIBOR R. MACHAN
(December 2004)

In the 4th century B. C. Aristotle identified a very important principle of community life. He demonstrated the social value of the right to private property. He said,

"That all persons call the same thing mine in the sense in which each does so may be a fine thing, but it is impracticable; or if the words are taken in the other sense, such a unity in no way conduces to harmony. And there is another objection to the proposal. For that which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it. Every one thinks chiefly of his own, hardly at all of the common interest; and only when he is himself concerned as an individual. For besides other considerations, everybody is more inclined to neglect the duty which he expects another to fulfill; as in families many attendants are often less useful than a few." (Politics, 1262a30-37)

This same idea was more recently clarified by Professor Garrett Hardin, in his 1968 article, "The Tragedy of the Commons," published in the prestigious magazine Science. Hardin gave the example of common grazing area used by several owners of cattle to feed their livestock. Because there are no borders identifying what area belongs to which cattle owner, the commons tend to be overused, not because of any greed but because each cattle owners wants to achieve the best possible results, namely, feed the cattle adequately.

The principle at issue has been very fruitfully applied to environmental problems and the conclusion has been drawn by many scholars that without extensive privatization of what are now treated as public properties - lakes, rivers, beaches, forests, and even the air mass - environmental problems will remain unsolved. Everyone knows that a problem exists with common ownership but no one can do anything about it without changing what is commonly owned to private property. The political will and savvy to achieve the solution is, of course, lagging far behind the analysis that identified the solution. Still, in this area, at least, such identification has occurred.

What has not been widely noticed is that a tragedy of the commons exists, as well, in our national treasury. We have here what by law amounts to a common pool of resources from which members of the political community will try to extract as much as will best serve their purposes. Be it for purposes of artistic, educational, scientific, agricultural, athletic, medical, or general moral and social progress, the treasury stands to be dipped into by all citizens in a democratic society. And everyone has very sound reasons to try to dip into it - their goals are usually well enough thought out so they have confidence in their plans. They know that if they receive support from the treasury, they can further their goals. So they will do whatever they can to do just that, namely, extract from the commons as much for their purposes as is feasible.

But, as both Aristotle and Professor Hardin knew, the commons are going to be exploited without regard to standards or limits - "that which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it." Which explains, at least in part, why the treasuries of most Western democracies are being slowly depleted and deficits are growing without any sign of restraint. Japan, Germany, Great Britain and, of course, the United States of America are all experiencing this, as are numerous other societies that make their treasuries available to the public to use for sheer private purposes. For how else can we construe education, scientific research, the building of athletic parks, the upkeep of beaches and forests and so forth than the pursuit of special private goals by way of a common treasury?

Some might try to obscure this by claiming that all these goals involve a public dimension. Of course. So does nearly every private purpose - including the widely decried phenomenon of industrial activity that produces the negative public side effect of pollution and contributes to the depletion of a quality environment. Private goals can have public benefits. But their goal is to serve the specific objectives of some individuals. When AIDs research is supported from the public treasury, the first beneficiaries of success would be those with AIDs, not those who haven't contracted the disease. When theater groups gain support from the National Endowment for the Arts, there may be beneficiaries beyond those obtaining funding but they are still the ones who benefit directly, immediately. When milk producers gain a federal subsidy by having the price of milk fixed or their withholding of production compensated, they are the first to gain from this, not some wider public.

And so on with thousands of other "public" projects - they are, actually, supporting private goals, first and foremost. One need only observe who lobbies for them. But because the treasure is public property, there is no way to allocate what is in there rationally, with proper budgetary constraints. Instead politicians embark on deficit spending - taking non-existing funds, ones not yet collected but only rather uncertainly anticipated, and funding the requests without restraint.

And there is no end in sight. Only when the country no longer has the credit worthiness in the world community, so that its bonds will no longer be backed by hopeful lenders, will the Ponzy scheme be called to a screeching halt. We will have to declare bankruptcy and those of our citizens who had nothing at all to do with the enterprise will be left to hold the empty bag, namely, our grandchildren.

Not unless the treasury stops allowing private projects to be funded from its coffers, confining itself to the support of bona fide public projects - the courts, the military, and police – will there be an end that avoids the perhaps greatest tragedy of the commons. To reach such a position of financial responsibility, the governments of our society will have to sell off all the unwisely held common assets - lands, parks, beaches, buildings, forests, lakes and such - to private parties. They will thus liberate members of our future generations from the shackles that have been so irresponsibly placed upon them by means of the tragedy of the commons.

--
Tibor R. Machan holds the R. C. Hoiles Chair in Business Ethics and Free Enterprise at the Argyros School of Chapman University. His (unproofed) columns are stored @ http://tibormachan.rationalreview.com/ & http://szatyor2693.wordpress.com/

Political Hyperbole!

Tibor R. Machan

I am baffled by how critics of some Tea Party stars engage in rank hypocrisy. For example, they--such as many commentators on CNN-TV--have been claiming to be utterly shocked with former Texas Governor Perry’s polemical answers to interviewers. He said, at one point, that it would be “‘almost treacherous or treasonous,’ if the Fed under Bernanke increased the money supply before next year’s election.” He added something about how such untoward policies might be dealt with in Texas, namely, harshly!

This is supposed to be some kind of intolerable, uncivilized outburst, not to be expected from any serious political candidate in the heat of election campaigning. Never mind that the Vice President of the United States just a week prior to Perry’s hyperbole, said something more indiscreet about the Tea Party. Biden was reported to have agreed with Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa) who said about some hard line Tea Party Republicans at a two-hour, closed-door Democratic Caucus meeting: “‘We have negotiated with terrorists,’ an angry Doyle said, according to sources in the room. ‘This small group of terrorists have made it impossible to spend any money.’ Biden, driven by his Democratic allies’ misgivings about the debt-limit deal, backed Doyle’s comment” with his own ultra-hyperbolic statement: “They have acted like terrorists.”*

Notice that unlike in Perry’s remark, there was no qualification in what Doyle and Biden said, nothing about “almost treacherous or treasonous.” Instead the words were, “They have acted like terrorists.” Both of these are, of course, polemical remarks but the formers is more cautious and thus more civilized than the latter. And the analogy with terrorism offered by Perry is also more accurate since what he was talking about is Bernanke’s plan to increase the money supply to such an enormous extent that it will most probably severely lower the value of millions of people’s income, retirement, savings, etc., etc., and breed inflation to boot. That kind of destructiveness is indeed reminiscent of what terrorists do, namely wreak havoc with whatever their targets value, including their lives all in the name of some supposedly higher goal.

All of this needs to be appreciated in the light of numerous complaints offered over the last few years about how Republicans and Tea Party folks especially are engaging in irresponsible rhetoric, how they have been uncivilized as they have engage in their political exclamations, outbursts, etc. President Obama himself chimed in about this, I recall, and so has, of course, his buddy Professor and pundit Paul Krugmann. Yet if one considered the two different hyperbolic statements, those made by Perry and those by Doyle and Biden, it is crystal clear that the latter have been far more indiscreet in how they have characterized--let’s call it what it is, besmirched--their adversaries.

Maybe one could say that all this is simply par for the course when it comes to campaign rhetoric. As many have noted, the same has been going on for a couple of centuries. Thomas Jefferson, Sam Adams, Alexander Hamilton, et al have done nothing less when they sparred verbally in their political encounters. (As someone who writes columns and receives letters about them galore, I can testify that exaggerated charges having little to do with substance and a whole to with character assassination are routine.)

So yes, there is nothing peculiar with all the heat (and little light) in what the different parties to the various current political exchanges say. What is remarkable, however, is that news anchors and reporters at places like CNN, CNBC, MSNBC, and Fox join in. That is blatant lack of professionalism. And if one is permitted to point this out in how Wall Street traders, politicians, physicians, educators, and other professionals conduct themselves, it is certainly appropriate to point it out in the case of journalists. Especially when these folks intone with such righteous indignation about the missteps others take as they express themselves, as they chime in on various topics. After all, journalists are supposed to be professionals at expressing themselves and when they do this badly, that should be pointed out by those who watch them since it amounts to out and out malpractice.

*http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0811/60421.html#ixzz1VUc0qtOE

The Keynesian Non-Answer

Tibor R. Machan

The New Republic editorialized recently about the current economic mess and it is worth quoting it because the central passage is largely non-hyperbolic, non-polemical: “The classic response to [our current economic] situation, put forth by John Maynard Keynes in the 1930s, is for the government to spend money. During the Great Depression and then World War II, the Roosevelt administration and its allies did this in part by employing people directly, an idea that still makes sense even if it’s utterly unfashionable. But there are other ways to prime the pump. Government can invest in public works, whether it’s building roads or fixing up schools. It can put money in the hands of those who will spend it, by increasing public assistance or by targeting temporary tax relief to the poor and middle class. It can also supply money to state and local governments, which because of balanced-budget requirements are busy laying off first-responders, teachers, and other employees—making the unemployment problem worse.”

Notice that of course, the editors simply take it for granted that governments are authorized to engage in this kind of economic regimentation. Never mind that when citizens decide not to spend money they are doing it with what belongs to them and may indeed know what they are doing. But this doesn’t matter to the advisers of master planners. Such moral issues are to them trivial. They think like statists have always thought--what matters for them is only what the king, czar, or some other government aims for.

The history in the passage is wrong. Roosevelt’s Keynesian schemes didn’t work, as it has been shown by numerous economists. (See The Critics of Keynesian Economics [1960] edited by Henry Hazlitt, and Hunger Lewis’s Where Keynes Went Wrong [2009], among many works that critically and mostly dispassionately address Keynesian economics.)

Investing in public works is a complete illusion--most of such spending by government is directed politically; it’s nearly always graft, and what else could it be since government officials haven’t the faintest clue as to what the money they have extorted from the citizenry should be spent on. So the spending will be a response to the pleas of lobbyists and others who can be of help in reelecting the politicians.

Of course, balanced budgets are very rarely implemented. Politicians do not want their hands tied.

The citizens who taxes are extorted could, of course, spend their own funds or invest them or place them in banks that can lend them out all of which would end up employing people for purposes that actually fulfilled what the public wants. Indeed, it is only such spending that amounts to support for public works since the so called public works are nothing but made up projects that serve the agendas of the politicians and bureaucrats. (The editors are evidently unfamiliar with public choice theory for which Professor James Buchanan received his Nobel Prize. The idea is, simply put, that politicians and bureaucrats do not spend on public projects but on what they regard is important. It should also be considered that even those who would try to serve the public interest stumble upon the difficulty of knowing what that might be, seeing that the public is made up of millions of people who have hardly any common interests or objectives.)

I have never managed to appreciate why these people keep assuming that the judgments and actions of government officials are superior to those of the citizenry throughout the world where these Keynesian proposals are being made and followed routinely. I keep asking, “Who are these people whom we can trust with such tasks as running a country’s economic affairs?” Somehow thousands of intellectuals who would never entrust government with tasks such as censoring literature and newspapers nevertheless have no compunction about entrusting them with the very delicate and idiosyncratic tasks of directing people’s economic affairs. (I tend to think it is the ancient governmental habit, left over from feudal times.)

Anatomy of the bona fide Compromise

Tibor R. Machan

On the current political front there is a lot of talk about whether to compromise on various issues, such as continuing or increasing the Keynesian economic stimulus, abortion, gay marriage, extending the debt ceiling, continuing the two--or is it three--wars America is involved in abroad, getting tough on illegal immigration, how to treat radical Muslims in the courts, etc., etc. The president’s stance, peculiarly, is urging compromise on all fronts and not sticking to any firm position based on principle but entering the discussion with a middle-of-the-road outlook.

Yet there is something basically amiss with Mr. Obama’s position and indeed with that of all those who insist that there is great virtue in compromise. The main problem is that a compromise is the outcome of discussions between those with basically different positions. So, for example, if you hold that injecting more stimulus into the American economy is a good idea and I believe that it is not, we might compromise by agreeing in the end that a bit of stimulus will be injected but not as much as promoters of the idea hope for. Thus, to take a concrete case, if Paul Krugmann of Princeton University and The New York Times believes that the government should inject massive amounts of fiat money into the economy, via public works and subsidies, and various make-work projects--one’s the free market would not fund but government officials believe might generate employment--and another economist, say Don Boudreaux of George Mason University and The Pittsburgh Tribune Review, argues for avoiding any policy of printing and spending any kind of fiat money to stimulate employment, the result of spending a modest amount of such fiat money might be a compromise.

Notice that in such a case the two sides did not enter the discussion with what the result turned out to be. Compromises, in short, are what come out of debates between people discussing what kind of public policy should be adopted. Just as the middle between two points is something that cannot be established without knowing where the beginning and the end lie, so a compromise is dependent on positions that aren’t themselves the results of compromises.

Anyone who argues like President Obama--and his cheerleaders such as CNN commentator Fareed Zakaria--that what is needed on all sides is more willingness to compromise haven’t a clear idea what a compromise is. If they did, they would start by laying out the two sides that they urge to reach a compromise and indicating what would it be given the base positions of the two sides. What is it, for example, that Krugmann and Boudreaux really want and then why should they give up their commitment to that position and go along with something else, namely, the proposed compromise the likes of Zakaria propose?

The bottom line is that in any important debate one rationally demand of the debaters that they compromise prior to the process that must preceded it, namely, the debate. Maybe in the debate one side will manage to demonstrate to the other that it’s position is better that the opposition’s. In principle this has to be a possibility. But if one starts with demanding that people who enter such debates start with compromises, one is asking for the impossible. After all, the reason people tend to have firm positions is that they believe them to be sound, to be the right solutions to problems. But because the problem faces groups of people who must come to some kind of common resolution, it is likely that they will not be able to succeed with having their firm positions accepted by all parties to the debate. So what is sensible to ask for is that everyone involved in the discussions will go slow and only accept changes if they see no other way to proceed. To put it differently, the result of a compromise is never desired by those debating issues. These results are grudgingly accepted at best and imply that neither side was successful in convincing the other of the soundness of its stance.

Bottom line is: Don’t urge people to compromise; urge them to debate seriously and intelligently. The resulting compromise will then be the best and only one that could be achieved among these people who have to make collective decisions.

From Machan's Archives: The Big Corporations Excuse

Tibor R. Machan

Anytime I mention to someone from the Left that I consider the scope of government way beyond justice and prudence, I am likely to be told that it is big corporations that make this necessary. And, furthermore, I couldn’t really favor liberty for all if I don’t see corporations as a threat and in desperate need of being reigned in.

So far as I understand it, corporations are just large groups of people who have hired some experts in management aiming to achieve some goal they couldn’t achieve on their own, like grow the company, make it seriously prosper. So long as they do this peacefully, without using coercion to get ahead, I see nothing wrong happening. Size is no problem. This is evident in how we deal with people--some are tiny, some medium sized, some huge but they can all get along fine if no one resorts of violence. And if some big fellow comes off intimidating, a few smaller ones can surely contain him--or her, for that matter.

What then is the big problem with corporations? As far as my Leftist pals would have it, they can wield economic power. But what’s that? They can buy stuff, expand their commercial reach, and flourish, yes, but not without first pleasing their customers. And that means they can only get ahead if they serve others in helping them do the same.

Yet there is one area where corporations can be a threat to liberty, justice, and other fine things. This is where they get into bed with governments. Only if governments are strictly limited in their scope of authority, in what sorts of things they are legally authorized to do, can this be avoided. If governments may yield to public pressure to undertake various tasks like giving subsidies, bailing out failing companies, restrict foreign trade, and so forth, this will invite business corporations to seek or lobby for their help. And there is only so much help governments can give, so those who will get it will have an unfair advantage and will also be able to wield influence and political power.

This is where the trouble with corporations arises, although various other associations can gain similar favors from government, such as unions or large professional groups. What is the answer?

There are those who say nothing can help but giving government the countervailing power which will keep corporations in check. I have never found that a convincing solution. After all, usually the problem is government and corporations (or some other group) getting into bed together and running roughshod over others. (This is that famous process euphemistically called wealth redistribution and commonly advocated, naively, as a means by which the unfortunate will be helped but which in fact involves a lot of what economists call rent-seeking, taking from Peter and providing for Paul.)

Krugmann’s Failed Analogy

Tibor R. Machan

Ok, so I’ll give him this: finally Dr. Krugmann put forth something akin to an argument instead of merely demonizing those with whom he disagrees! (See his column, The Hijacked Crisis, The New York Times, August 11, 2011.) The argument, however, is an analogy and as with many analogies, it fails to be an apt one.

Krugmann tells us that suggesting that what the US government should do is significantly cut back on spending is misguided because the economy is in need of immediate and drastic emergency treatment. Like a man who is bleeding profusely, this is not the time to counsel greater prudence and preventive treatment. What it needs is the infusion of massive doses of blood, as some patients require blood transfusions so as to save them from imminent death. We may assume, then, that once the infusion has done its job, the long term remedy of cutting spending can get under way. As he wrote recently, "For the fact is that right now the economy desperately needs a short-run fix. When you're bleeding profusely from an open wound, you want a doctor who binds that wound up, not a doctor who lectures you on the importance of maintaining a healthy lifestyle as you get older. When millions of willing and able workers are unemployed, and economic potential is going to waste to the tune of almost $1 trillion a year, you want policy makers who work on a fast recovery, not people who lecture you on the need for long-run fiscal sustainability. ... What would a real response to our problems involve? First of all, it would involve more, not less, government spending."

Looks like a good piece of advice initially, but it misses the mark. The economy, first of all, isn’t some biological system. (And Krugmann has never ever conceded that spending cuts are needed, ever! Government must always spend and thus stimulate the economy.) As to the first point, the government’s taking massive amounts of money from people so as to spend it on "public" works, as per the priorities of government officials and their advisers, doesn’t constitute an emergency measure but only a change of who will do the stimulation. Instead of having the citizenry spend its labor and resources on what it chooses to spend it on, it will be government officials--politicians and bureaucrats--who will do so.

Even if the analogy had some promise, there is no reason to believe that these officials are going to spend our labor and funds on projects that will stimulate anything, certainly nothing that will do so better than were the citizens themselves to spend their own labor and resources as they see fit. If anything, when government takes over what by right we should be doing, they are far more likely to misspend than we would. You and I have some pretty good idea as to what we need to spend our funds on, whereas those in government are at best getting their priorities via the political process which very likely distorts the feedback system that informs the economy about what is most important to invest in, to spend on. Worse than that, they actually get it from their own imagination and fantasy, as when they want to build huge dams or highways where they are not at all needed.

The radical remedy Krugmann favors could well work in the case of a human individual, a biological entity whose medical needs can be ascertained by most physicians. But when it comes to an economy such as that of the USA, wherein the “demands” of the citizenry are inordinately diverse and can, thus, be best assessed locally, not by planners from Washington or even state capitols, doing the kind of stimulus Krugmann favors is just impossible (a la Hayek’s good teachings). Which is why the stimulus didn’t work before and isn’t working now.

So, yes we finally have something of an argument from Paul Krugmann. But it involves a misguided analogy. Individual human organisms are one thing; economic systems of a huge country another entirely. So what he attempts to derive from his analogy is in fact a colossal non-sequitor. It doesn’t follow and never has.

Further Distortions of Libertarianism

Tibor R. Machan

In his essay “The Tea Party Jacobins,” with its hyperbolic and besmirching title, Mark Lilla, whose The Reckless Minds: Intellectuals in Politics I once favorably reviewed, advances the notion that the Tea Party’s “libertarian irruptions … [attracted] individuals convinced that they can do everything themselves if they are only left alone.”

I am reminded of this point by Andrew Hacker’s essay “The Next Election: The Surprising Reality,” in The New York Review of Books (August 18, 2011), which quotes Lilla favorably. But check this: Libertarians demonstrably do not believe what Lilla claims they do. Libertarians aren’t “convinced that they can do everything themselves if they are only left alone.” What they believe, instead, is that free men and women can do things much better than bureaucrats and politicians, mostly in voluntary associations. Teams, orchestras, clubs, corporations, choirs, and many other such associations aren’t “individuals convinced that they can do everything themselves.” No libertarian I have every known--and I have known a great many, having edited one of the first collection of essays by libertarians for Nelson-Hall Publishers of Chicago back in 1973 (The Libertarian Alternative)--is convinced of such an idiotic idea. None want to do things “themselves.” What they want is not to be coerced into associations to which they may object, especially by the government. They don’t believe people ought to be forced to contribute to social security, medicate, and similar programs not of their own choosing. It is a complete non-sequitor to hold that this means they want to do things by themselves.

Comments like those by Lilla suggest to me that critics of libertarianism are running very low on bona fide objections to the position. Instead they need to make it appear that the libertarian positions embraces ideas that it clearly does not embrace or even remotely implies. Only that way can they come of up with criticisms of it.

This has been going on for centuries, actually. For example, Marx argued that individualists, the libertarians of yesteryear, think they are self-sufficient and defend the right to private property so as to make use of what they own arbitrarily and selfishly. As he put it, “the right of man to property is the right to enjoy his possessions and dispose of the same arbitrarily, without regard for other men, independently from society, the right of selfishness.” This line of criticism, along with the charge that free market advocates believe in atomistic individualism, has been repeated over and over again, not just by the Left but also by the Right. And it is bunk.

In fact, the main thing that the right to private property secures is the individual’s liberty to choose how to dispose of his or her labor or resources. It is this choice that bothers the critics who all contend that they, not you or I, can decided best how we ought to use our labor and goods. Indeed, under socialism your and my labor is public property and to be allocated as the party leaders decide because they have the requisite knowledge, something you and I supposedly lack. (Why they but not we is an unanswered question!)

Anyway, Lilla and his ilk just don’t want to deal with the bona fide libertarian viewpoint. They need the nonsense they impute to libertarians so as to make the position appear ridiculous. But contrary to what they suggest, it is not at all ridiculous. It does not hold that people are all isolated atoms who believe they can fend for themselves, all alone. No sane person believes this. But once you allege that some people do, they can be dismissed as nut cases, which is just what it seems Lilla & Co. would like to do with the Tea Party folks. One cannot help thinking that what these critics are after isn’t to get it right about politics and economics but to secure for themselves the exclusive authority to call the shots for everyone.

Getting Serious About Recovery
This is how economic recovery can be encouraged by all levels of governments in the U. S.:

1.Remove all preemptory government regulations of all the professions and businesses.
2.Cut taxes to the bone, when possible totally abolish them.
3.Cut all subsidies and protectionist measures.
4.Eliminate all minimum wage laws.
5.Close down all the alphabet soup agencies (a corollary of #1).
6.Sell off all government properties that do not relate to the military defense of the country.
7.Abolish the war on drugs.
8.Abolish all blue laws, everywhere (including states, counties, and municipalities).
9.Stop all non-defensive military endeavors.
10.Basically and most generally, follow the edict of the Declaration of Independence where it assigns to government the job of securing the basic rights of the citizenry.
It is by freeing up human productivity and creativity that economies are most likely to grow. Apart from natural calamities, governmental interventions are the worst obstacles to economic development. Makes perfectly good sense. Government is no good at picking winners and losers. Bureaucrats and politicians have no more wisdom and virtue than do the rest of us, so they must not take over the direction of our lives, including our economic affairs. The top down regimentation of economic affairs is perverse and will surely prolong our economic wows.

If these measures aren’t followed, the country will continue to struggle and decline.

Cleaver’s Bad Theology

Tibor R. Machan

Representative Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri produced a sound bite following the recent passage in Congress of the compromise bill on the dept ceiling and spending cuts. Even as this bill didn’t by any means manage to demonstrate Congress’s serious understanding of economic reality, Cleaver said that the bill amounts to a devil’s sandwich, by which he meant that it amounts to the defiance of centuries of teachings of the world’s greatest religions about how one must look out for the poor and needy as one lives one’s life.

The remark needed to be put in the sound bite form because any detailed investigation of those teachings would reveal something very different from what Cleaver had in mind. Let us grant that most religions do implore us to lend those in need a hand, to help the poor and indigent. Indeed, there is no ethical system that doesn’t make some room for this idea. Even the ethics of Aristotle implore us to be generous, even as we strive to achieve our happiness in life. Indeed, generosity or liberality is a virtue people ought to practice, or so Aristotle teaches. And comparable teachings can indeed be found in most of the world’s religions.
.
Yet the use to which Rep. Cleaver wants to put this idea is quite perverse. He doesn’t urge us to be generous, kind, compassionate, charitable and such. No he urges us to engage in robbery and to use the loot we obtain by this means to provide help to those the robbers believe should get some of it. Generosity and the like are supposed to be virtues that people ought to practice in their own lives. It’s individuals who ought to help out the needy. It is they who must choose to be generous, charitable and such. Nothing less will serve as virtuous, ethical or moral conduct then good deeds that are chosen by the agent.

Stealing from someone else and handing some of the loot to a needy individual will not do. It simply isn’t virtuous to do that since it is tainted by a serious immorality. Generosity or charity with other people’s labor or resources is impossible. Both Representative Cleaver and President Obama have shown their utter misconception of the nature of generosity or charity, claiming, falsely, that it involves robbing Peter so as to benefit Paul. This is very similar to the widespread misunderstanding of the legend of Robin Hood who didn’t rob the rich to help the poor but recovered the loot taken by the tax man and returned it to those who had been deprived of it by taxation.

And even the simplest common sense morality rejects that one can do good deeds on the backs of others. A good deed must come from oneself. It is into one’s very own picket that a generous person must dig in order to earn moral credit for giving away his or her own labor or resources. And that is certainly not what Rep. Cleaver had in mind. He was making devious and corrupt use of the idea that is taught by most of the world’s religions and morality, namely, that one ought to help those in dire straits. That is cynicism, not bona fide ethics or morality. Putting a gun to other people’s heads and thus enabling oneself to “help” others is morally wrong, plain and simple. It is a sign of how morally ignorant many in Congress and other centers of political power across the globe tend to be to hold otherwise.

As the old saying has it, charity must start at home--and it must end there, as well.

Just Say “No”

Tibor R. Machan

After sustained profligacy comes the dreaded cold turkey. Any kind of habitual indulgence can only be stopped if at some point the “addict” says “no,” with no excuses.

I would assume most people have been through this. I know a few personally. They have kept up spending in the face of lacking funds an even lacking the promise of funds. Credit card companies accept clients with hardly any creditworthiness--indeed, I have been there myself. So how is this to be brought to a halt?

I would suggest that deep cuts in one`s spending habits is the best way. Sure, few people can go cold turkey on food or necessary medicine. But what about going to fancy nail salons? What about having premium coffees every morning, noon and afternoon? What about getting top of the line clothing and cars?

The trick profligate politicians use is to raise the specter of Draconian elimination of, say, social security and medicare benefits but this is a phony ploy. After all, both of these programs are supposedly funded by beneficiaries themselves. They are supposed to be more like insurance than like welfare.

What is certainly not essential to anyone is, for instance, subsidies to all the varieties of special interest groups. Or huge public works that only benefit some select but influential citizens. What about selling off some public lands? Why does the government, any government, own and maintain national forests and parks? Who will go without basic necessities if these are seriously cut back?

One could continue forever with the list of available cuts in federal and other government spending that would not impact the indigent or elderly. Never mind that even here the idea that government exists to fund such programs is perverse. Does that count as securing our rights? Certainly not--no one has a right to other people`s money and work, not unless there has been a mutually agreed to deal about these.

The debt ceiling must be dealt with by administering a total halt and this may well be the time to fess up to that fact. Think of it as indispensible financial house cleaning, something every family needs now and then. It would be unthinkable to dump all of one`s debts on total strangers who happen to live nearby. And it would be even less thinkable to dump it all on members of future generations who aren`t even around to protest or consent.

Of course some people will feel the pinch of the ceiling. But that is the price that has to be paid when so many people think they can get something from nothing. However drastic the remedy, it is indeed a remedy.

“Not Guilty” isn’t “Innocent”

Tibor R. Machan

An indication of the sad state of journalism is how often when people show support for the Casey Anthony verdict they are labeled as Casey Anthony supporters. But they could very well be supporting just one thing. That would be to accept the “not guilty” verdict. It is, after all, the result of an arguably elaborate jury trial in what is supposedly an entirely legitimate court of law. Once the jury reached its verdict, Anthony and any other accused person must be regarded not guilty as charged, in her instance primarily of murder. She wasn’t judged innocent, which would require omniscience on the jury’s part. Like her or not, believe what you will, the process that one must go through in this kind of situation resulted in “not guilty.”

It is odd that standing up for the result once it is reached is considered supporting Casey Anthony. Only in one respect is it a kind of “support.” That is that within the framework of the criminal law, the case against the accused wasn’t made successfully. She wasn’t shown guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

Some folks, on the other hand, appear to believe that the prosecution had to make the insurmountable achievement of proving Ms. Anthony guilty beyond a shadow of doubt. That would be impossible to do since shadows include fantasies, imagination, wild guesses and so forth. Instead the prosecution needed to prove only that all reasonable doubt about her guilt had been rebuffed. And as the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein pointed out in his book On Certainty, such a doubt must be well grounded. But every member of the jury agreed that they didn’t manage to overcome all reasonable doubt, so they reached the only verdict they could reach.

As Voltaire is supposed to have said, better for a thousand guilty to go free than one who isn’t be convicted. Why so? Well, for one--aside from how precious human liberty is--because the prosecution has enormous resources with which to mount its efforts to get a conviction. It is, after all, THE PEOPLE vs. Casey Anthony. Symbolically or literally, the entire state of Florida was at work to convict Ms. Anthony before its legal representatives, namely the members of the jury. And it couldn’t do so.

The O. J. Simpson trial resulted in a similar acquittal because the jury didn’t find the prosecution’s efforts to prove him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt successful. In a civilized country that is the end of the case. Another reason is that members of the jury are presumed to have had the best opportunity for studying the pros and cons. The defense had to concentrate on refuting what the prosecution produced, while the latter had the responsibility and ample opportunity to make the case against the defendants. You and I didn’t, nor did all those who were outside the courtroom dissatisfied with what resulted from these trials and many others.

Of course, hope isn’t often rational, so once the prosecutors pick a likely suspect, many of those who have been aggrieved--whose relative has been murdered or otherwise violated--will become partisans instead of objective evaluators of the case made as the jury must be. But civilized men and women must resist such partisanship in the pursuit of justice which is supposed to be blind to favors and sentiments.

It is most important here to remember that these trials are a decent enough approximation to the best search for justice human beings can come up with. Only if someone has been shown to be guilty in the eyes of members of the community, represented by the jury, may the accused be deprived of his or her liberty. That liberty is, in a reasonably free country, a very if not the most precious element of a citizen’s public life. So the only way to lose it is if the accusation of a severe crime is proven true beyond any reasonable doubt.

As one of the signs said outside the jail from which Casey Anthony emerged on Sunday morning, July 17th: “She is not guilty! Live with it.”

Public Works on Steroids

Tibor R. Machan

What the Obama administration and its cheerleaders call “the stimulus” is by all sensible accounts the macroeconomic version of steroids. And you can get quite addicted to these--just as some athletes can to their versions.

Now there are lots of things wrong with these artificial public works projects although sometimes they look benign enough. Many folks will not objects to having extra upgrades and improvements on their roads and highways. After all, nearly everything suffers from some measure of wear and tear. And who can tell without considerable expertise when it is time for justified improvements on the infrastructure. Usually such matters are decided upon by individuals in their particular lives--like when should their cars be washed, when should they get an oil change, when is it time to visit the dentist again. Or when is it time to get a complete medical check up! Or get one’s pants cleaned or shirts laundered. These are individual matters and highly contingent on personal and family factors, such as needs and budgets.

When it comes to roads and highways the local public work departments make these kinds of decisions based on the advice of the road engineers and on the budget bureaucrats. Some kind of rationale is arrived at, although with public works there is always the problem of some version of the tragedy of the commons. Too much attention to the parks may get in the way of enough attention to the recreation facilities or city pools. But when one adds the artificial stimuli provided by politics that’s guided by the fantasy of Keynesian economics--you know, the multiplier and such--no rationale is possible. It is nearly all guesswork. Unless one has roads with gaping pot holes that just cannot accommodate traffic anymore, the time to spend funds on upgrades and fixes turns out to be arbitrary. Kind of like how many steroids should a body builder use--it is an artificial aid and no one can tell just how much if any of it is the right amount.

In my region of the country, Orange County, California, ever since I moved here about 12 years ago there’s always been some road construction afoot. But not so much as to cause too many delays and detours. After years of experience with the local needs, those responsible manage to figure reasonably accurately just when the work is needed. But the stimulus funds arrived, which enabled the local authorities to spend on all kinds of projects whether any real need exists, it becomes a spectacle of arbitrary public works. Dozens of roads get shut down out of the blue. Thousands and more commuters need to stand and wait in long lines so the work can get done. Gasoline is wasted, not to mention people’s time--life, actually--and who knows what other unintended harmful consequences result.

Never even mind for now the fact that the stimulus consists of loot extorted from citizens who are imposed and encroached upon with all kinds of cost that no one can tell buys anything worthwhile. I am certainly unable to tell if that shovel-ready road job that is keeping me from getting to work on time is required or invented by Keynes-inspired magical economics. I cannot judge whether the gasoline used standing idly by at innumerable road blocs is being wasted or not. No one can, I bet. We are all simply informed to put up and shut up--these are, after all, public works and interference from ordinary citizens can land one in jail!

It is bad enough that people are so much at the mercy of the decisions that are made about public works and, more generally, public affairs and not unless they vote out the team is there a chance of changing the guard. But when the policy if injecting funny money into the system is carried out, nothing resembling a rational system can be expected.

I believe it was my very first scholarly paper in a philosophy journal, titled “Justice and the Welfare State,” that laid out the case showing that under the welfare state simple justice is impossible. Causes and results cannot be linked, responsibilities are vague and defuse.

The current policy with stimulus-driven public works is just another case in point.

Ignorance Amidst Erudition

Tibor R. Machan

Stanley Kauffmann is the film reviewer of The New Republic and his work in this area is worth the time it takes to read it, at least for me. He is what I would consider an erudite film critic, drawing on a vast familiarity with the history of cinema. Indeed, while the magazine has been turning more and more statist--in it early days it was actually an interesting ideological hybrid, guided by old or classical as well as new or modern liberal values--most of its good stuff comes from the back of the book, namely, the reviews it publishes. And from Kauffmann’s comments on films.

So I was taken aback when in a recent review of the movie Too Big to Fail by Curtis Hanson translation of Andrew Ross Sorkin’s book on the recent financial fiasco, Kauffmann opines that “The economy requires radical political intervention and we ducked that.” Just goes to show you that being knowledgeable and smart about movies can go hand in hand with utter ignorance of economic theory and history.

One need not be what Paul Kurgmann and even President Obama likes to refer to, disdainfully, as a market fundamentalist--i.e., someone who holds that as a general policy it is better to rely on free market processes than to trust the bureaucrats--to see that Kauffmann is way out of his depth. For starters, political intervention has been part of the norm in the American economic system from the beginning, with but very few lulls in that approach. (I once ran across a book published in the 1840s in which the author severely criticizes government involvement in the American economy and for its thwarting of free trade on innumerable fronts!) Alexander Hamilton, one of the prominent founders, had supported many measures that run against the principles of a free market economy and involve extensive and “radical political invention” in the economy. What is it that Kauffmann refers to when he states that “we ducked” such intervention? Does he mean the country never did opt for out and out socialism? On that score he is correct but such a remark assumes that financial and other economic messes are avoidable under a socialist economy. Yeah? Tell that to the former Soviet Union and its colonies and to the many European near-socialist governments that have been struggling with such problems.

Of course, Kauffmann’s idea is rather routine among intellectuals who take their economic education from the likes of the late Paul Samuelson (whose introductory text, Principles of Economics, was the main source of readings in college economics course for decades). While there have been some free market economists whose influence has been felt throughout higher education--and this is true now as well--the majority of students who take econ courses get mostly lessons in the wisdom of the mixed economy, the kind we see in most of Europe, North America, New Zealand and Australia. Such systems are riddled with political intervention!

The idea that such intervention is what an economic system needs so as to be functional itself rests on the myth that some people--politicians and bureaucrats--have special talents for guiding the economic conduct of others. This is quite literally a fascist conviction! It is diluted by mixing in democratic and capitalist and other features in the system--that’s why it is called a mixed economy--and it seems Kauffmann does not hesitate to embrace it.

Now mind you, what is really off in Kauffmann’s remark is the association with political intervention with radicalism. In fact it is the free market system that has brought to the fore a radical economic idea given that political intervention has been around from time immemorial. Mercantilism, which was the dominant economic doctrine prior to Adam Smith’s writings, especially his The Wealth of Nations (1776), is a thoroughly politicized economic system! Feudalism and nearly all the economic ideas and policies of the old order were nothing if not completely political.

So it seems that Mr. Kauffmann, who must be at least as old as I am by now, needs to go back to night school and take a good course in economic history. He would then perhaps admit that his comments about what the economy needs could at least use serious revision.

What’s With Social Security?

Tibor R. Machan

When shortly after I arrived on these shores I got my first job as an usher in a cinema in Philadelphia, back in the fall of 1956, I asked about the deduction from my paycheck that went to social security. I had no agenda, just curiosity.

My employer said those funds are taken by the federal government and put aside so that when I get old I would have a nice little bundle instead of spending it now and being left with nothing for old age. I recall asking but why not just rely on my own worries about my old age, worries that would surely prompt me to put away something for my old age. My employer had no answer to this. But he did try to assure me that I should relax because at least there will be this stash awaiting me when I get old and won’t be making much money anymore.

Well, I never bought the paternalism of this policy but neither did I have the savvy and know-how to resist paying the feds. They are clever in how they make employers do the dirty work so that if you resist they don’t need to deal with it but leave it to their unwilling subjects to handle the matter. (I guess when it comes to extortion, the feds like to farm it out rather than deal with it directly.)

At this point in my life, having reached the age a while back when the feds allow me to get back some of the funds taken for me for my own good, I hear noises from the President of the United States of America that unless the debt ceiling is increased now, it may lead the feds to stop paying social security to those legally entitle to it. How’s that? Wasn’t the money that was taken from my paycheck put into a fund from which I would later be able to get some support, support I was told I couldn’t arrange for on my own, only with the intervention of the feds? If that is what they did with my funds, namely put it away for me for my old age, how could it be that they will have to stop paying it out to me? What on earth did they do with those funds? I was never asked about this, no one appealed to me for permission to raid them instead of holding them for me what I became old. Had I had the option of putting the funds aside, I would most likely have invested it so that these funds would have gained a good deal of interest or made me prosper some other way. But no, the feds claimed they know better how to provide me with financial security in my old age than I do! And yet now the president tells me that the feds need to borrow money so as to make sure I get my money back?

What’s curious, also, is that no one appears to have noticed this funny accounting by the feds and called the president on the carpet for putting social security payers in a bind. He keeps warning about the good faith and credit of the feds but right here, up front, this good faith and credit appears to have been betrayed already. And even though I read a bunch of Op Ed pieces in the major papers, especially The New York Times, no one seems to be aware of this; certainly no one is throwing a fuss, pointing an accusing finger at Washington for having betrayed all social security payers like this. Why not? Why is everyone so silent about this dirty deal? Is there some kind of secret pact here that no one wishes to make public?

And this is the organization that millions of Americans, especially prominent and influential ones, want to entrust with our health insurance? And with taking care of us in innumerable other areas of our lives like guarding us against financial mismanagement and pharmaceutical malpractice?

Isn’t that a joke? Why are people so gullible? Sure, they don’t mean to be stupid but stupidity isn’t something people consciously intend to cultivate. No, stupidity is mostly a function of gross negligence and when it comes to light people usually say, “But I didn’t mean it.” Yeah, well but you didn’t bother to think about it either. The result is malfeasance and imprudence galore, usually with other people’s resources.

Tea Party Confusion

Tibor R. Machan

The idea that politicians should sign a pledge to promote personal morality is contrary to the avowed Tea Party commitment to small government. If you want the government to have a restricted scope, you should stick to the US Declaration as your guide: Government is instituted so as to secure our rights! It is not instituted, at least in the American political tradition, so as to be our moral police!

This is the kind of inconsistency that will bode very ill for the Tea Party and the Republicans. IT is just like the liberals’ inconsistency of preaching choice in the abortion debate but loving to take it from us in nearly everything else. Obama care comes to mind which commands people to buy health insurance and is, thus, anything but pro choice. And what about coercing us all to buy green light bulbs?

Who are these people, imposing their standards of right conduct on the rest? Both sides of the political spectrum are still wedded to their tyrannical ways. No wonder so few people vote.

Here is the pledge Tea Party Republican Rep. Michell Bachmann wants candidates to sign:
“Therefore, in any elected or appointed capacity by which I may have the honor of serving our fellow citizens in these United States, I the undersigned do hereby solemnly vow* to honor and to cherish, to defend and to uphold, the Institution of Marriage as only between one man and one woman. I vow* to do so through my:
Personal fidelity to my spouse.
Respect for the marital bonds of others.
Official fidelity to the U.S. Constitution, supporting the elevation of none but faithful constitutionalists as judges or justices.
Vigorous opposition to any redefinition of the Institution of Marriage – faithful monogamy between one man and one woman – through statutory-, bureaucratic-, or court-imposed recognition of intimate unions which are bigamous, polygamous, polyandrous, same-sex, etc.
Recognition of the overwhelming statistical evidence that married people enjoy better health, better sex, longer lives, greater financial stability, and that children raised by a mother and a father together experience better learning, less addiction, less legal trouble, and less extramarital pregnancy.
Support for prompt reform of uneconomic, anti-marriage aspects of welfare policy, tax policy, and marital/divorce law, and extended “second chance” or “cooling-off” periods for those seeking a “quickie divorce.”
Earnest, bona fide legal advocacy for the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) at the federal and state levels.
Steadfast embrace of a federal Marriage Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which protects the definition of marriage as between one man and one woman in all of the United States.
Humane protection of women and the innocent fruit of conjugal intimacy – our next generation of American children – from human trafficking, sexual slavery, seduction into promiscuity, and all forms of pornography and prostitution, infanticide, abortion and other types of coercion or stolen innocence.
Support for the enactment of safeguards for all married and unmarried U.S. Military and National Guard personnel, especially our combat troops, from inappropriate same-gender or opposite-gender sexual harassment, adultery or intrusively intimate commingling among attracteds (restrooms, showers, barracks, tents, etc.); plus prompt termination of military policymakers who would expose American wives and daughters to rape or sexual harassment, torture, enslavement or sexual leveraging by the enemy in forward combat roles.
Rejection of Sharia Islam and all other anti-woman, anti-human rights forms of totalitarian control.
Recognition that robust childbearing and reproduction is beneficial to U.S. demographic, economic, strategic and actuarial health and security.
Commitment to downsizing government and the enormous burden upon American families of the USA‟s $14.3 trillion public debt, its $77 trillion in unfunded liabilities, its $1.5 trillion federal deficit, and its $3.5 trillion federal budget.
Fierce defense of the First Amendment‟s rights of Religious Liberty and Freedom of Speech, especially against the intolerance of any who would undermine law-abiding American citizens and institutions of faith and conscience for their adherence to, and defense of, faithful heterosexual monogamy.”

Some of this is of course redundant--anyone who takes the oath to defend the US Constitution has made many of these pledges, namely, those that involve protection of individual rights. But many of them are meddling pieces of political posturing as the citizenry’s moral guide, as our nannies, just as Al Gore wants to be our moral guide vis-a-vis global warming or other environmental issues.

Live and Let Live: not in Silverado

Tibor R. Machan

Where I live quite a few neighbors are what are affectionately called Tree Huggers. What such neighbors, by no means even the majority, have in common is that they oppose anything that remotely resembles development (e.g., including a tiny wine tasting structure one of their neighbors wants to erect). But of course their main targets are any new homes that might be built, not to mention any groups of homes someone might build on his or her rightly owned land. It makes no difference at all that the members of the Tree Huggers do not own the land on which the development might occur. No sir. They don’t mean to actually purchase such places, to put their money where there mouths are, only to prevent those who own them to make use of it, especially built any homes there.

It has been a long fight around the globe to establish the institution of private property rights. In most previous eras monarchs owned the realm and ordinary people were sometimes privileged to live and work on it. Private property rights, while always discussed by some political theorists and economists, had for centuries been denied to the bulk of the population. Only select folks could own land and built on it as they deemed desirable. The rest were, essentially, serfs or at least men and women without their rights acknowledged and protected in the law.

Then such developments as the establishment of the United States of America changed things somewhat. The doctrine of individual natural rights was worked out and implemented on the American continent and a few other places, although the assignment of private property had always been controversial. Still, the idea that ordinary citizens could own property--from a shack all the way to a huge ranch or factory--caught on. And when this occurred the liberty of millions became more secure then ever before. On your own land you can do as you will and if the law backs this up, you can be secure in what you choose to do. It is this realm of individual choice--applied to single individuals or voluntary groups of them--that served as a basic liberator. Churches, businesses, homes, recreation facilities, communes, kibbutzes, farms, ranches, and so forth could all exist with substantial legal protection--that, at least, was the idea even if not consistently and fully implemented. But it gained respect and that itself was a big leap forward in the realization of human liberty and independence, not to mention productivity and prosperity.

But this idea never quite became widespread enough public policy. Even the U. S. Constitution mostly assumed it, although it is mentioned in the 5th amendment. And many state constitutions make explicit mention of it and its protection in the law.

Yet, the idea and its institution met with much resistance from those who believe that they may run roughshod over other people and what belongs to them, just as the monarchs did all along when they wouldn’t recognized the private property and other rights of the people who lived in the realms they often brutally ruled. Fancy arguments had been invented and deployed to rationalize the ongoing violation of private property rights. For socialists like Karl Marx and Frederick Engels the denial or abolition of private property rights was a necessary step toward their ideal collectivist system, one in which a few people get to plan how everyone else is to live, work, create, etc.

In our era, at least in the West, it is under the guise of caring for the environment that many eagerly violate individual private property rights. In Silverado, a canyon community in Orange County, California, the Tree Huggers carry on this crusade to plan the lives of others, never mind that they have no proper authority to do so, only sometimes the legal power they have immoral obtained. In protest of this, I have placed a bumper sticker on my car that reads: “Share the Canyons,” indicating that it would be right and proper not to interfere with people who want to come to live here and make use of their land and other property in peaceful ways.

Many of my neighbors have stopped to comment on and quite interestingly approve the idea on that bumper sticker. As long as one doesn’t use one’s property to invade someone else’s or injure another person, there is every reason to uphold and respect private property rights--for everyone. Everyone has a right to liberty and without private property no liberty can flourish, only permissions and privileges granted to people by their more powerful neighbors.

Recently I was picking up my mail at the tiny post office in Silverado and as I was getting back into my vehicle someone from behind shouted out asking what my bumper sticker meant. I told him that it means that whoever can obtain, via free exchange or any other voluntary means, a piece of property in the canyon ought to be at liberty and welcome to do so. Upon having said this the person who posed the question started to shout at me, angrily voicing the idea that he doesn’t want anyone to come into his canyon and do stuff he doesn’t welcome. I don’t recall exactly the sentences he shouted at me but I do recall that he kept repeating the phrase “my canyon” over and over again. It was amazing, actually, since there were a few other canyon residents standing by, observing this, not to mention me who lives there as well. But evidently with no self-awareness whatsoever this person kept shouting as if the canyon community belonged only to him.

Just like the old monarchs, who believed they ruled the realm. Right here in the United States of America, a country founded on the abolition of monarchical rule! Go figure!

Am I A Corporate Shill?

Tibor R. Machan

It has always been my view that corporations are groups of people united for various purposes, often to benefit from a business venture guided by competent management. Initially I worried little about the legal details, nor even about the legal history. A bunch of people incorporate or form a company to achieve certain perfectly acceptable, even admirable goals. Sometimes this can be done via a partnership, sometimes by incorporating, sometimes for profit, sometimes not.

Then I started to get involved in political philosophy and found that there is a whole lot of hostility toward these outfits, mainly from Leftists but also from some so called left-libertarians. I am not sure why from the latter. I figured why from the former, though, namely because promoting one’s economic prosperity either alone or in the company of a large number of others had to amount to ugly greed. And that I found to be way off course, just the sort of nonsense that they tried drumming into me in my native Hungary back in the lovely days of Stalinism.

These days, for example, if you are not falling in line with the anthropogenic global warming message, it is very likely that you will be labeled by the true believers a shill for corporations. Sure enough, a few days ago I sent some numbers and analyses to someone I know who is an AGW champion because I get along with him reasonably well (although we aren’t friends, merely pals, perhaps) and I always hold out hope that people will consider arguments that go against their beliefs and support mine.

I received an email from this bloke dismissing what I sent to him as the production of corporate shills, specifically people funded by the Koch brothers, Charles and David. The Koch brothers are indeed wealthy from doing very solid business in oil-refinement, I think, but I am not sure. I know both of them just a tad, enough to know that they are honestly convinced of whatever they claim to believe and don’t put the cart before the horse by manufacturing evidence, argument and research so as to buttress their pet notions or personal or economic interests. As with me, so with them, if I recall right, the convictions in the sphere of political economy came way before the chance to make some money from working in support of them. Indeed, I became a libertarian and a defender of the free market system of economics, first and then I did make a few bucks from speaking at some conferences, publishing, etc. While I certainly wish I could have made much more money from all this, I didn’t and the idea of holding some belief about something not because I thought it reasonable and true but because it supported some prejudice of mine would be so self-debasing that I could not do it.

Nonetheless the pal of mine had no trouble implicating me in selling my soul to corporate interests. Just how does he know this? And how does he know that the Koch brothers do not sincerely believe in libertarianism but support it merely because they see economic benefit from it?

Now it is true that even some libertarian economists are reductionists and hold that everything someone does comes from the belief that it will promote one’s economic advantages. On this score Marxists and some free market theorists see eye to eye. But whatever the source of the idea, it is bunk. Most of us haven’t much of a clue about whether holding certain beliefs will advance our prosperity. We may come to accept that there is more hope for us being libertarians than being communitarians or Marxists but no one can be sure. In my own profession, as a university educator, I am pretty sure in retrospect that I would have made out much better financially and in terms of holding a prominent post had I never found libertarianism convincing, had I joined the bulk of academic political philosophers who tend to be located on the Left.

I suppose when you have no arguments it is then tempting to impugn your adversary’s integrity. It’s a coward’s escape, I believe.

The Pleasures of Humiliation?

Tibor R. Machan

Call me old fashioned, and in some matters I proudly am, but for me entertainment needs to contain a solid dose of enjoyment. So when I select my movies or TV fare, I usually check whether I will be enjoying what I am about to encounter. Of course, sometimes I want to experience tragedy, information, complexity, and other ingredients in what I chose for my entertainment but even then some upbeat stuff must be a feature of it.

I have only very few contemporary television programs I choose to watch -- mostly some science and wilderness shows (the latter usually with the sound muted so I don’t have to hear the lopsided pleadings of environmentalists while I get the benefits of learning about and witnessing the Russian or Alaskan wilderness). Then there are some news programs I watch almost regularly, although if they are too lopsided in their viewpoint, like Bill O'Reilly or Fareed Zakaria, I will quickly, after watching for just several minutes, delete them from my list of recorded shows.

As far as entertainment is concerned, there are again only a few offerings I find pleasurable. One is White Collar, another Burnt Notice (most of the time, especially when Michael’s mother, played by Sharon Gless, who’s a consummate guilt warrior, is absent). Mostly I stick to reruns of Perry Mason, Have Gun Will Travel, Rockford Files, or Maverick. I did enjoy Boston Legal, even though the political and public policy values guiding it, apart from the respectable bits of the rule of law, were often despicable -- corporation and profit bashing were running themes.

I usually check out new shows, once or twice, and that’s what I did with the recently begun Suits. So far it has proved to be a disappointment for me, mostly because the two initial shows contained orgies of humiliation among the characters as the primary means of entertainment, of the fun being offered up viewers. Yes, the repartee has been bright and fast but mostly at someone’s expense. Indeed, the most likable character, the one with the brains and with solid work habits and ethics, is constantly subjected to one-upmanship by other characters who are cads and usually play his administrative superiors. And those, then, are also subjected to humiliation by their superiors, and on and on and on. I suspect that somewhere down the line most of these arseholes will get their comeuppance but in the meantime viewers must endure this ongoing torture by the nitwits of their betters. It is like those violent programs, including movies, in which a great deal of brutality is depicted, relentlessly, before finally the perpetrators get what’s coming to them.

I am just not one who finds such cruelty, whether psychological or physical, enjoyable. Some of this may well have to do with me personally, since I have experienced a fairly hefty dosage of both early in my life. And, yes, entertainment is, to a significant extent, personal, maybe even subjective -- although that is a misleading characterization of playing to people’s idiosyncrasies. But in fact I am quite baffled when I find that someone I respect and like finds programs enjoyable in which such devices are routinely deployed. In Suits -- and the two installments I’ve seen may not be representative of what’s coming -- not only is humiliation a constant among the players but there is little of substance beyond it. Boston Legal, even when morally obtuse, had at least the steady dosage of fictional law to keep one’s interest. While most television fiction, as well as movies, dwell too much on relationship issues, at the expense of seeing anyone doing any kind of creative, productive work, the legal fictions tend to have some substance, too. But in the two episodes of Suits there was nothing much to demonstrate the competence of any of the characters. Mostly it was all about mutual and nasty manipulation, with very few admirable attributes on display.

By the way, I am an avid reader of novels, especially WW II spy stories by, among others, Philip Kerr, and also of legal thrillers (when they get to the attempt to solve crimes, resolve disputes in court, etc.), as well as a few plain old whodunits. (I am a fan of Henning Mankell, despite his naive politics. And I am a great fan of Daniel Silva and Alan Furst.) But I also readily put down a novel even if I have reach the halfway point if something annoying starts to dominate it.

The cynicism and misanthropy of the two installments of Suits that I have seen are for me very unpleasant. Still, on the advice of family and friends, I will give the show one or two more chances. Yet time is precious when one gets old and so I think I may be looking for some more reruns, like Barney Miller, perhaps?

Morality, the Professions and Politicians

Tibor R. Machan

While I see strong merits to an ultraminimal government idea, whereby the state has no other function than to protect the rights of the citizens from criminals and foreign aggressors, I do not share the view that politicians are necessarily corrupt. Sure, a welfare state attracts the kind of politicians who see little wrong with taking from some people to make available for others, including themselves, when they feel it is important enough. This is no different from how vice squad work attracts moralizing or puritanical police officers rather than ones who believe that victimless crimes should not exist and police should stick to guarding the peace -- they used to be called “peace officers.”

Any corrupted profession is likely to be a Haven for people who yield to various temptations to do wrong because they can now do it with legal approval. The Nazi doctors who experimented on innocent victims were certainly that segment of the medical profession that had already gone bad. And going bad in this way is a subtle, psychologically complex process, beginning with the person convincing himself, first of all, that the policy being followed is acceptable, even necessary. So most of these people are quite sincere!

How does one encourage genuine ethics in the various professions? First, the profession must itself be morally upright -- Murder, Inc., certainly isn't going to be manned by saints. So if a profession already embodies some measure of evil, it's going to be tough to ask of its members to behave themselves. Politicians in a system which legalizes theft are not likely to resist the temptation to steal! Medical or legal professionals whose prestigious associations support monopolies will probably lean in the direction of some immoral practices, ones that reflect the organization's policies.


Yet apart from all this, much else is wrong with current thinking about professional ethics. For one, the prominent moral teachings of our time are confusing, indeed. Perhaps the best statement of this fact came from Adam Smith, who is known mostly as the founder of scientific economics but was in his own eyes and by his university appointments actually a moral philosopher. Here, in a someone lengthy passage, is the gist of our problem with contemporary thinking on morality: "...In the ancient philosophy, the perfection of virtue was represented as necessarily productive to the person who possessed it, of the most perfect happiness in this life. In the modern philosophy, it was frequently represented as almost always inconsistent with any degree of happiness in this life, and heaven was to be earned by penance and mortification, not by the liberal, generous, and spirited conduct of a man. By far the most important of all the different branches of philosophy became in this manner by far the most corrupted" (Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations [New York: Random House, 1937], p. 726.)


Smith got it right: moral teaching for the last several centuries has been mostly of the self-sacrificial variety: those who care to live well aren't morally worthy, those who care to make others live well are, period. One reason for this is that much of theology and even some social science claims that people are innately selfish, so why bother teaching them how they need to care for themselves, how to be prudent, how to do well at living? Isn't that hard wired into everyone?


Actually, no it is not. But another thing that suggests that unselfishness is the height of ethics is that professionals do often take an oath to help others who seek them out. But they do this mainly because they find the profession rewarding to themselves. Indeed, nearly all parents urge their children, and teachers their students, to find a line of work that is self-fulfilling instead of a constant drudgery or chore.


But the ethics most widely championed tells us mainly that it's good only if it hurts. Not that simply self-indulgent conduct is ethical, no. If one lives by following his or her desires, nothing else, this can neither promote one's life or that of other people. It is senseless, helter-skelter. But it is the business of ethics to guide one to the true, actual, serious enhancement of oneself as a human being.


If one understands that the human being has a self that can flourish only by being alert to the world, including other people, a self-enhancing moral code will leave plenty of room for generosity, kindness, compassion, without being self-sacrificing, self-denying.


It is especially pointless to talk about business ethics, for example, if all one means is that people in business should give up trying to succeed in order to be ethical. That simply means business people will disregard ethics altogether. And disaster waits along such a route.


If, however, it is clear that business -- or education, art, science, medicine, etc. -- is a professional calling that requires success within certain limits, just as, indeed, all life does, ethical business can make clear sense. It will not include, for example, trying to profit from deeds that are unethical, since profit itself will have to be understood as meaning prosperity that is productive, not destructive.


Unless moral education changes toward teaching folks to be ethical because that is how happiness is achieved in life, many folks will indeed try to avoid doing the right thing. If you think that cheating, lying, stealing, and so forth are the road to happiness, while honesty, justice, prudence, generosity and the like make you a looser in life, it is not surprising that you will often choose to do the wrong thing.


It doesn't have to be that way, however. Ethics is a discipline that's supposed to help us live, to flourish. Even when we are generous or charitable toward other people, such policies are supposed to enrich our own lives in the process. The virtuous life is suppose to be something beneficial to those who live it.


Once morality is recognized as life enhancing, it is not going to be very difficult to champion it among our professionals, including politicians. A culture that makes morality constantly painful, however, cannot very well expect morality to be well received.

The Times’ kudos to European Petty Tyrants

Tibor R. Machan

In The New York Times of Monday, June 27th, an editorial heaps compliments upon the bureaucrats of many European cities who have imposed innumerable obstacles to their fellow citizens who want to use the automobile for transportation. This piece of cheer-leading in support of these would be tyrants is an embarrassment in a country that’s about to celebrate its becoming independent of precisely such meddling European governments.

First of all, "cities" are people. They aren’t some kind of supreme consciousness sitting atop the inert bodies made up of the rest, the serfs. So in fact the story should have begun as follows: “Some people in Europe want other people not to drive.”

OK, but then so what? Why are these people privileged with power to have their desires imposed on their fellows? (Why not have an editorial about that very important issue?) "Cities" aren't some holy persons who know best and who are all virtuous. Cities--meaning the people who rule them--can be tyrannical as all get out. And too many people in Europe's cities are guilty of just this one-size-fits-all rule about driving. I say break it up, let folks discover their own best form of transportation.

So, you may say, but the roads are public spheres and require making all conform to a set of one-size-fits-all rules, isn’t that the truth? No, it isn’t As with everything else, a principled approach to governing, including governing cities, requires finding out and implementing policies that do not do violence to the principles involved. One may need to get to the grocery store quickly but it is not an option to trespass on the properties of one’s neighbors. One may wish to have a constant companion but it is not an option to enslave some unwilling “partner.” One may wish to spend more on amenities but it isn’t an option to go into endless debt so one is able to do it, nor to rob one’s neighbors so as to build up one’s resources.

Of course, the people who rule cities in Europe and elsewhere, including sadly in the United States of American which is supposed to be the leader of the free world, are eager to forget all this and make the cities their own personal domain where they can impose policies that they prefer, never mind the rest of the citizenry. They have that typical governmental hubris of believing that their preferences trump those of everyone else.

It is perhaps time for prominent advocacy journalists such as the editors of The New York Times to affirm the principles of the American Declaration of Independence and promote liberty instead of all the bits and pieces of tyranny that pleases the meddling bureaucrats around the globe. How about teaching them a thing or two about why freedom matters, including the freedom to make use of whatever transportation one can afford? And if this doesn’t appear feasible at this point, why not investigate the option of, say, private roads (one that has been laid out by several scholars, such as Professor Walter Block of Loyola University of New Orleans) instead of following the discredited and immoral practice of subjugating everyone to the methods of transport-imperialists.

Of course, it is difficult to teach liberty when one refuses to practice it. And those at The New York Times have only one liberty they scream about all the time, namely, the liberty of the press. Which is, no doubt, a vital species of liberty but it ought not to function as a special privileges others may not enjoy because they want to be free not in writing and publishing but in using a great variety of transport. By making it appear that public roads are the only option, these champions of petty tyrannies give clear evidence of the famous insight William Pitt (the younger) who taught that “Necessity is the plea of every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.” (1783)

Machan Archives: What to Promise Voters

Tibor R. Machan

Do voters actually believe it when candidates promise them health, happiness, vacations, clean air, and all those other goodies while also demanding that they stop being selfish, stop joining special interest groups and dedicate themselves only to the public good? I doubt it very much. This sort of pitch seems to me to put most reasonable voters on guard. Something is up, a ruse is afoot, for no one can deliver on these promises. (Or are voters like all those gamblers flocking to Las Vegas who think they will come away big winners?) So a great many people stay away from the voting booth and it's all left in the hands of dreamers.

I am not sure if candidates have actually given this a try but I would count on a different strategy. How about promising voters just one thing, namely, a competent defense against the violence of those of their fellows who are inclined to be violent, against those who wreak crime and war. And then urge them not to stop being selfish but to be intelligently self-interested. That would be thinking of some broad benefits that we all should be striving for, such as freedom, the security of our rights, peace, and justice. These are benefits all voters would gain from big time! So they are objectives that are quite reasonably considered self-interested, for everyone.

But such self-interested benefits need some education to be effectively appealing to voters. Too many people shun being thought of as selfish because they associate selfishness with trivial pursuits. Yet, genuine, serious, big time selfishness is about broad, lasting values such as justice and peace. Those are what is really good for us all!

In that very famous movie, Casablanca, Rick, the character of Humphrey Bogart, turns to Ilsa, the character of Ingrid Bergman, near the end of the film and delivers a little speech that goes like this: “Ilsa, I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you'll understand that. Now, now... Here's looking at you kid….”

Unfortunately a great many who’ve seen the film take Rick to be talking of self-sacrifice whereas, in fact, what he is talking about is devotion to great values, such as liberty and justice--values that Ilsa will in time realize outweigh those she would like to have now, namely, romantic bliss.

If those running for office were truly devoted to high ideals, they could explain to voters that these high ideals are of great importance to all. They are to everyone’s self-interest both short and long term.

That is what proper, uncorrupted politics is about: devotion to very high human community values, such as rights, liberty, justice, the rule of law, peace and all those conditions that are indispensable for people aiming to live flourishing lives in their communities. To think that devoting oneself to these amounts to unselfishness, self-sacrifice, is bizarre. These are everyone’s most important values, with everything else--including (and this comes from a died in the wool romantic) a great romance--paling in comparison.

Urging people to renounce their self-interest will simply never fly for very long. The idea that serving others is more important than serving oneself just sounds nice--yes, nice--but is by no means noble. Noble objectives are all elevating to those who pursue them. Saving one’s child from a blazing fire is noble but not because it is unselfish. (Is there anything that’s more genuinely selfish than saving one’s family from disaster? And one’s friends, and sometimes even strangers?)

No, candidates need to educate voters about how utterly selfish and proper it is for them to vote for those who will secure for them justice, the protection of their rights, peace and other social conditions that make a decent, good human life possible for us all. And if they cannot do this, then they are not good candidates for political office. Then they are merely vying to gain power so as to implement some kind of agenda they can never fulfill.

Bona fide politicians, serving us as honest political representatives, are very much to our self-interest. And the candidate who can deliver on that promise must also see it as something of grave importance to him or her! That is the way constituents and politicians can come together without cynicism, without suspicion.
Reply