Welcoming Troubles in Washington

Tibor R. Machan

Now and then my pen dries up, as it were, and I rake my brain for something I should write. But actually the problem isn’t that. It's rather that columnists or pundits are mostly expected to chime in with complaints about public affairs and I am actually a bit satisfied just now.

I mean with things falling apart in and near the White House, I am hard put to be upset. Indeed, I find it a relief. After all, it confirms my long held view that making politics such a vital part of our lives is a very big mistake. Most of these people, after all, just aren’t that smart and these upheavals may remind them of it themselves.

I thought this when our former president, Bill Clinton, saw things falling apart around him in Washington in his second term. I didn’t even wish to learn who was right, who wrong—frankly it didn’t matter to me and I didn’t think it mattered for the country. What mattered is that so many people in the capitol were bogged down good and hard and this may well have slowed them down a bit in the most insidious thing they keep doing all of the time, namely, thinking about and embarking upon meddling in our lives without any good cause.

That is one reason I favor political gridlock—in Washington, Sacramento, or wherever it’s possible to bring it about. I am convinced that most politicians and bureaucrats are relentlessly bent on meddling. They see it as their job, even as their life calling. Yes, they believe it is a wonderful thing—it gives them a sense of achievement if they find yet another issue they can stick their fingers into.

Mind you, they aren’t all that different from everyone else except their “work” usually involves interfering with the peaceful conduct of other people. And they do not even consider this insidious. Instead they are proud of it. Like those insufferable schoolmarms when we I was young, who just had to hover and find something to complain and wag their fingers about! (And it didn’t need to be a schoolmarm, only it usually was since elementary and high schools were swarming with such ladies, at least in my days.)

The real difference is that in the private sector when people get antsy, they mostly do something productive. They become entrepreneurial. Although even there we can find many bureaucratic types whose jobs involve bothering other people and who feel satisfaction with this because they think they are being helpful, serving some good cause.

At all the universities where I have taught, I could put my fingers on this when I learned of yet another set of forms one had to fill out, or yet another committee that had been formed to consider something largely superfluous. In the private sector, however, there is often a disincentive by way of the extra cost this imposes on a firm or private individuals, so they tend to be on the lookout for what amounts only to make-work. And make-work in private industry is more readily identified as such, whereas in government it is mostly welcome—people take pride in coming up with it, mistaking it for something valuable.

I was lucky to learn about this early in my life, when I was a draftsman in the US Air Force, working at Andrews AFB near Washington, DC. Following each Christmas, we suddenly found ourselves working overtime and I could tell we had no objective reason for this. After asking around, I was told, without the slightest embarrassment, that the reason was to make up for Christmas spending. And given that this was a typical government organization, no one seemed to mind—the money was, after all, coming from taxes.
There was also that regular routine of make-work at the end of a fiscal period, just before the new budget had to be submitted. We had to make up costly projects so that nothing would be left in the budget and we could ask for more.

Again, while the temptation to do this—often with the utmost earnestness since people who like their jobs naturally like to think of more things to do in it—exists everywhere, it is greatest in government since money can be ordered up without having to earn it.

Well, see, I did find something to lament when, actually, I wanted simply to say that if I were expected to write about all the fine things in my life, I would have a lot more to say. That’s because I follow diligently the prescription of a Seventh Day Adventist bumper sticker I saw many years ago driving about in the Deep South: “Notice the good and praise it!”

Never Mind How Much Worse Things Could Get

Tibor R. Machan

Ever since F. A. Hayek wrote his deservedly famous book, The Road to Serfdom in 1944, there has been a not negligible difficulty with criticizing the welfare state. Hayek’s own famous teacher, Ludwig von Mises, articulated the same menace Hayek did early in the 20th Century as well as in a talk in 1950, now part of his book of essays, Planning for Freedom (1952). As von Mises put it,

The middle-of-the-road policy is not an economic system that can last. It is a method for the realization of socialism by installments. Many people object. They stress the fact that most of the laws which aim at planning or at expropriation by means of progressive taxation have left some loopholes which offer to private enterprise a margin within which it can go on. That such loopholes still exist and that thanks to them this country is still a free country is certainly true. But this loopholes capitalism is not a lasting system. It is a respite. Powerful forces are at work to close these loopholes. From day to day the field in which private enterprise is free to operate is narrowed down. Of course, this outcome is not inevitable. The trend can be reversed as was the case with many other trends in history. ... What we need is neither anti-socialism nor anti-communism but an open positive endorsement of that system to which we owe all the wealth that distinguishes our age from the comparatively straitened conditions of ages gone by.

What could be wrong with saying this? It is largely true, in the sense that there is a greater likelihood of a country moving from a middle-of-the-road policy—which is what the welfare state is (or as contemporary Europeans often call it, The Third Way)—all the way to an authoritarian or totalitarian regime. So with the middle-of-the-road regime in place, it certainly is a shorter and simpler road to serfdom than if a country were a fully free, laissez-faire capitalist system.

Trouble is, this isn’t all or even the main thing that’s wrong with the welfare state. By fretting a bit too much about how such a state can lead to something worse, the evils of the welfare state itself tend to be overlooked or at least de-emphasized. Everyone is concerned about how bad it will be later, few people note that the welfare state is already a big enough mess, so we should stop it already, never mind how bad it can get later.

Welfare states are ones in which government is legally authorized—in the case of the USA largely because of perverse interpretations of the US Constitution by legislatures and courts—to administer selective coercion against the citizenry, in the name of innumerable worthy goals. But no big deal, it is tempting to think, that people in the various professions are subjected to relentless government regulation (a form of unjust prior restraint however you look at it) and innumerable other abuses. What matters most, it’s suggested, is how this can lead to far worse coercion.

Not true. If I slap you around a bit because I believe you don’t do what I want you to, although you haven’t raise a finger against me, this in itself is vicious enough, never mind that I could do worse by beating you with a baseball bat. Even if I contain myself all of the time and just keep on slapping you and others, it doesn’t make what I am doing justified simply because I am not taking matters farther.

Welfare states may never get worse, in fact, because too many people often tolerate some mistreatment but will not allow things to get worse. And welfare states admittedly do not use concentration camps, so if the only problem is how bad things can get because of what they may lead to, it can look like so long as the system is contained, no big problem exists. (Of course, for those in jail for victimless crimes, sometimes for 30 years on end, one would be hard put convincing them of this.) In a welfare state one usually has one’s right to freedom of expression protected and officials of the government are more restrained in how and to what degree of brutality they wield their powers. Civil liberties, such as the right to vote, to get a speedy trial, and so on get some protection, although often very unevenly. The ACLU, for example, goes to the aid of artists, political activists, educators and such but rarely lifts a finger when people in the business world are harassed, oppressed, and subjected to discriminatory treatment (such as piling on more and more regulations of the entire business community when a few bad apples are identified).

Sure, a problem with the less Draconian evils of the welfare state is partly that they could habituate people to accept coercion from governments, making the march toward a dictatorship more probable. However, that’s not the biggest problem. It is far more serious that the welfare state is a lingering political, moral, and economic malady already—it violates individual rights all over the place and people suffer from that plenty, never mind how much worse it all could get.

Pitfalls of Predictions

Tibor R. Machan

Many moons ago I listened to a lecture by an eminent economists who was predicting that with the unruly intrusiveness of the American federal and state governments, there would soon be a devastating economic downturn. The welfare state, he argued, can only last so long, after which there will definitely be a comeuppance.

That, actually, was also the teaching of one of the most famous free market economists of the 20th century, Ludwig von Mises, the leader of the Austrian School of economics. But he wasn’t alone—quite a lot of others in the discipline fancied themselves to be seers, forecasters short and long range. Be they of the Austrian, Marxist or neo-classical schools, they usually hold to a certain understanding of human nature, containing with various built in tendencies or inclinations, as well as to laws of history or the economic system, so they believe they can, with sufficient data on their hands, tells us what’s about to happen both in the overall economic system and in some cases also with individual human agents.

Of course, all social scientists who contend that such predictions can be made hedge their bets. They do so by way of the undeniable fact that none of us has command over all of the necessary information that would enable one to make a certain prediction—a bit like the weatherman. The most the bulk of them claim they can offer is pretty good estimates or probabilities. To be certain, they would need to know all the relevant facts and no one is so positioned; ergo, one can always provide an excuse for a bad prediction.

Problem is that the initial assumption of such forecasting and predicting is highly dubious. People aren’t robots hard wired to behave in predictable ways within any kind of environment. Their economic decisions often vary from person to person. Indeed, even a given individual can carry on differently in completely similar circumstances—how he or she will act is more often up to the individual than to any kind of fixed factors on which the people in the social sciences can base their clairvoyance.

One consequence of this is that while the social scientists build fixed models of the micro and macro world on which they base what they expect to happen—given even a reasonably clear anticipation of the circumstances people will face—actual human beings come up with surprising decisions in the face of these circumstances. That’s probably because they vary in the degree of attention they pay to them. Perhaps, also, when after a slew of bad policies have lead an economic system to the brink of disaster, many people will finally perk up and take notice of this and change their conduct and policies. So the dire predictions won’t come true because people will often change their old ways to new ones. Moreover, the dire predictions themselves can have the result that people will alter their conduct, having sometimes learned finally what is likely to happen if they carry on as before.

All this isn’t so only when it comes to how the economy works. Back in the early 70s, Paul Ehrlich, the famous Stanford University biologist, wrote the book The Population Bomb (1971), in which he made the prediction that in five years or so the vegetation of the globe will have shrunk to intolerable levels. But it didn’t happen. (Later Ehrlich made a bet with the late Julian Simon about whether certain vital resources would disappear, a bet Simon won because the resources didn’t disappear.)

I am not sure why exactly Ehrlich’s expectations turned out to be wrong but I would bet it had at least a little bit to do with how people began to change their thinking and acting upon learning of the dire warnings. Not perhaps everything—quite possibly Ehrlich made some very bad calculations.

The same with the eminent economists who kept saying that the welfare state cannot but degenerate into a dictatorship. People are likely to carry on negligently, recklessly for a long time but then pull back and take the needed measures to forestall the disastrous results that have been so confidently predicted. Or not—for sometimes the logic of what they did in the past will simply yield consequences that they try to avoid too late in the game.

Still, I think it makes sense not to be too trusting of the social scientists' way of thinking about people, as if we were simply more complicated versions of some classical physical system that can be predicted if known well enough. People will probably keep surprising us, for better and for worse—that, in fact, is one way they are different from the rest of the stuff in the world.

Column on School Employment at Will

School Employment at Will

Tibor R. Machan

Arnold Schwarzenegger and his supporters have managed to get several
items on the November 8 California ballot, including the proposal to
extend the trial period for government primary and secondary education
teachers to five years rather than the current two before they receive
tenure. Well, actually, they do not receive ?tenure? in the sense of full
job security but after two years they can only be let go by meeting
various ?due process? requirements?e.g., showing they are incompetent or
have broken some laws.

Ordinary employment situations rarely involve tenure, even in this
restricted fashion. If you hire someone to mow your lawn, clean your home,
handle your tax returns, or flip hamburgers at your fast food restaurant,
you can simply discontinue the relationship if you want to. You need not
demonstrate good reasons for this, although you may get some resistance if
you don?t?complaints, a bad reputation as an employer, etc. Or you can
negotiate an employment agreement that spells out the conditions under
which you may be let go, even conditions under which you may leave. It all
depends on what the contract says.

The policy of tenure, to which a great many government educational
institutions?as well as quite a few private ones that need to follow suit
so as to be able to compete?involves getting substantial job security
after a probationary period. The tenure at universities and colleges
usually amounts to job security provided the entire institution is
experiencing an economic down turn. (In state universities and colleges,
of course, this is usually met with raising taxes, thus meeting the
economic pressure, although even that can come to an end eventually.) Only
if one commits a crime or grossly misbehaves will tenure provide no
protection of one?s teaching position. But it usually takes seven years to
achieve tenure.

The traditional argument for tenure, especially at state higher education
institutions, had been that it will protect professors with controversial
ideas from arbitrary treatment from the administration. At elementary and
high schools this traditional justification is virtually completely moot.
Here the reasoning tends to be that given the low pay of teachers, they
will at least receive job security and thus have a pretty good reason to
carry on properly, even excel, at their profession.

Problem is that there?s an imbalance involved in teachers receiving
tenure, even of the moderate sort that guarantees due process when and if
they are to be dismissed. Think about it for a moment?why must the school
provide due process when a teacher is let go but the teacher who wants to
leave can do so at will? If, in other words, schools are forced by law to
show cause for letting a teacher go, why isn?t a teacher required, by law,
to show cause for wanting to leave?

When I recently posed this question to some who support the existing
tenure system of California?s public elementary and high schools, the
question wasn?t even understood. Yet it is plain?if one side in the
employment relationship must show cause for discontinuing that
relationship, surely it is only fair that the other side should do so as
well. Otherwise we have a case of blatant unjust discrimination!

Of course, how the employment relationship should be structured should
actually be left to the agreement that employees and employers reach among
themselves. That is how adult men and women should comport themselves in a
free society. If, then, teachers can negotiate a tenure-like contract, as
well as being able to leave anytime they wish, so be it. If not, so be it
again.

You may think, well the bargaining situation is quite uneven. School
administrators have a lot more clout than teachers, so teachers cannot be
expected to negotiate a favorable employment agreement. But this is
completely wrong.

The institutional clout of school administrators is matched virtually
fully by the clout of school teachers?by means of their unions. These
unions enjoy even more clout than in justice they should have, given that
governments have rules that mandate from employers the very conditions
that should be left up to the bargaining process to settle. For example,
many unions are authorized, in law, to bargain for employees who are
non-members. Non-members of many unions, especially public service unions,
are required to pay dues. (This varies some from state to state!)

There is also the injustice that governments have largely eliminated the
choice educational customers have, the choice that customers of
department, grocery, or shoe stores take for granted. They are, instead,
virtual monopolies. So their unions have even more clout than those in the
private sector where if a firm is struck, customers can shop at another
firm. (Indeed, the whole notion of public service unionization is an
anomaly in a free society.)

Alas, in our day certain people have come to take their special, unjust
privileges for granted, so much so that even to bring up the issue of this
injustice strikes them as bizarre. But that is no excuse for intelligent
citizens to let the matter pass.

Column on Helping People in Dire Straits

Kids aren?t A Resource

Tibor R. Machan

At times I watch BBC World News because it covers more international
issues than even CNN. So the other night I was watching and there was a
report on the AIDS epidemic in Africa. The report gave some harrowing
information as well as quotations from people trying to raise funds to
combat AIDS.

At one point the announcer read a quote from one AIDS worker to the
effect that it is especially vital that the children be saved. The reason,
I heard her quoting the AIDS worker, is that ?children are the future of
Africa.?

I have heard similar remarks being made when people discuss helping
children in various ways, educational, medical, economic, etc. Children
seem to be of concern because without them, the future of some country or
region of the world, or some important project is in jeopardy.

I have children and over their lifetime I have had ample opportunity to
provide for them in many different ways. But I must admit that my reason
was never, ever that they are needed for the future of America, the world,
or the Western Hemisphere or, indeed, my own future. My idea has always
been that as children of mine, I have signed on freely to give them
support so they can flourish in their lives a bit more and better than
they would without my support. In short, I was concerned with them, not
with what they might be good for.

The kind of thinking that lies behind wanting to give aid and support to
children because they are needed for the future of a country or science or
the arts seems to me to get it completely backwards. That?s because human
beings, as some moral philosophers have made abundantly clear, are ends in
themselves. That means their lives are for them, not some resource for
some other purpose.

Human beings, indeed, should never be thought of as instruments for the
advancement of something else, not unless that something else is chosen by
them as their own goal. People are important not because they make
contributions to something apart from them?sciences, the arts, politics,
business, the environment or whatever. They are important in and of
themselves. They matter as the individual persons they are.

Of course people make contributions to many projects throughout their
lives and whoever values those projects will welcome and encourage this.
But what makes those people worth supporting and helping when they are in
special need is not that they make such contributions. It is that they are
human individuals, like us, with lives and goals of their own.

If one generously supports the effort to combat AIDS in Africa or
anywhere else, one has no justification for demanding that some special
goal be advanced by those being helped. Generosity, charity, or
philanthropy are not the same thing as business whereby one expects to
gain returns from one?s investments. And even in business the gains depend
upon what those with whom we deal choose to exchange for what we choose to
exchange. It must all be voluntary otherwise it is bad business. But in
generous, charitable or philanthropic acts the point isn?t to derive
benefits for oneself or for something one supports, say, a cause or a
project. Such acts have to do with benefiting the recipients. And they
need not come up with something in return. Otherwise it is not generosity
at all that?s involved.

To think that the reason to help those afflicted with AIDS or any other
malady is to further some goal for which they can be useful is to
dehumanize these individuals, think of them as tools or instruments for
something more important than they are. Not that there is anything wrong
with advancing certain causes by supporting those who can help in this
task. But that?s not the point of helping people, not when they are in
dire straits, not when they are experiencing some emergency they aren?t
able to handle on their own.

Children with AIDS need help as the individuals who they are, not as
means to some other ends. That is why one ought to give emergency support
to them, not to advance some geopolitical or cultural objective. Thinking
of them as means to various goals is to fail to fully appreciate their
humanity. People, to put it bluntly, aren?t our or anyone else?s resources
but their own.

Column on Prestige versus Excellence

Prestige versus Excellence

Tibor R. Machan

Not unlike most of us, I tend to take it for granted that the prestigious
institutions in our world are also those with the best people in them, be
this in the arts, sciences, business, education, think tanks, whatever.
For example, just to focus on my own specialty, Harvard University,
Princeton, Yale, Stanford, Oxford, Cambridge and the rest?surely those who
teach and do research and scholarship there are the best in their fields.
That?s where the Noble Prizes go; that?s where all the political stars get
their training; that?s where all the endowment money goes, and so forth.
So who could doubt that this is also where excellence will be found?

Over the years, as I have done my tenure at various academic institutions
and scholarly think tanks, I have not really questioned the above
assumption. I figured I am small potatoes compared to those giants?or if
not, I was just not lucky enough, or held the wrong ideas on everything,
so I didn?t manage to gain entrance there. (In any case, I don?t much fret
my own positioning so long as I got to do what I wanted, write the books,
articles, and papers I want, teach reasonably good students and lecture to
interested audiences.)

Over the last several years, however, as I have been invited to give
talks to various organizations?think tanks, universities, colleges and so
forth?I have noticed that some of what goes on at these is much better
than what comes out of those very prestigious places. The papers are often
clearer and make more significant points than those written by the stars;
the talks are more enthusiastic, better delivered and the questions from
the audience tend to be really super. The same happens with journals and
other publications?those from highly reputed places do not compare very
favorably with those with lesser reputations.

So, at one point it occurred to me that perhaps I?ve been looking at this
all wrong. I simply took it for granted that whatever the prestige, it
must be the direct result of excellence but now I think there is reason to
doubt this.

Consider that the overall quality of our culture is not all that
outstanding. To start with, the voting population appears to be made up of
a great many chumps?people who arrive at their political convictions with
little serious thought, elect politicians to office who are really quite
pathetic and totally inept, stand for utterly confusing and out and out
vile public policies, and, on the whole, tend to be a very unprincipled,
morally dubious lot. There are scandals left and right in places where
what is wanted is responsible, creative conduct. World affairs are not in
good shape, so the diplomats and bureaucrats who handle it all cannot be
said to be doing a commendable job. The economy is teeter tottering all
the time, with little sustained confidence from those who tend to
understand such matters.

There is the world of the arts, too, where very little truly magnificent
work is in the offing at the prominent museums and concert halls. Not that
everything is bad?indeed, there is good stuff but not, for example, on the
best seller lists, interestingly enough, nor among the works selected for
review in the prestigious publications. Museums aren?t exactly filled with
riveting works, either, and the serious music coming our way tends to be
more very bizarre than very good. Poetry, the novel, you name it?there?s
little to be awed by in our highfalutin forums.

Now if the culture in which we live is generally in rather lamentable,
faltering shape, maybe these prestigious institutions are not really where
excellence is going to be located. Maybe, just maybe, some of the best
work is done in universities, think tanks, and other institutions that are
not on the star lists and the impacts of which aren?t allowed to be very
significant. (Maybe even the best acting isn?t done by the most renown
stars in Hollywood and Broadway but, instead, by unheralded ones at out of
the way theaters and studios.)

To check all this out one would need to do a very rigorous, elaborate and
expensive study, but, of course, only the prestigious institutions can
afford to do that. So, for the time being, I merely raise the possibility:
things may in fact be quite topsy-turvy in our world and what is held in
awe is really not what deserves it most. So I urge you to check this out
in your own world, where you know things best, and see if there is
something to what has occurred to me.

Column on Financial Paternalism

Paternalism at Yale and The Times

Tibor R. Machan

This, folks, really takes the cake for me: David F. Swensen, chief
investment officer at Yale University, has penned an Op Ed for The New
York Times, in defense of rank financial paternalism. As he puts it, ?what
began as a reasonable opportunity for sophisticated investors has become a
killing ground for naïve trend-followers, with scandals and frauds
prompting predictable calls for increased regulation of hedge funds. But
if Congress and the Securities and Exchange Commission really want to
protect individual investors, they should prohibit unsophisticated players
from participating in hedge funds.?

It doesn?t surprise me a bit that this Op Ed appeared in The New York
Times, that venerable member of the fourth estate that has become an
unrestrained cheerleader for paternalism on nearly every front of human
social life. It is rather typical: an organ promoting a political agenda
of egalitarianism?let?s treat everyone with equal respect?then turns right
around and asserts shameless elitism. I, the amateur, should be barred
from the hedge fund markets. You the expert, get a pass.

Let?s just assume that what Swensen says about this issue is true. Here
are some more of his thoughts: ?Less informed investors rely on an
intermediary (often a fund that invests in a variety of hedge funds) to
make fund choices. Again, the principle of adverse selection applies. The
best fund managers avoid these ?funds of funds,? which operate with
shorter time horizons, in favor of a direct relationship with big
long-term investors. Of course, the funds of funds add more fees to the
already overburdened hedge fund investor, further reducing chances for
success.?

And, of course, there is more of this. But none of it addresses one of
the vital issues: how some governmental body is going to differentiate
between sophisticated and unsophisticated investors, what tests will be
given and, most importantly, how dare they meddle in all this in the first
place. Nor does it address an even more vital topic: How dare anyone
propose banning anyone else from doing something entirely peaceful?
Perhaps, however, it?s no wonder this sophistication comes from one of the
Ivy League universities. Those are places that foster one of the most
outrageous inequalities in the country as they refuse to voluntarily share
their enormous endowments with less fortunate colleges and universities
(even as their professors and other spokespeople preach egalitarianism and
paternalism left and right).

If I were a joshing sort of guy, say a P. J. O?Rourke or a Dave Barry, I
might propose that ?if Congress and the Securities and Exchange Commission
really want to protect [us,] they should prohibit unsophisticated players
from? writing Op Ed pieces of the sort that Mr. Swensen penned for The New
York Times. How might one be able to tell the difference between a
sophisticated and an unsophisticated pundit? The first thing I would
consider is whether he or she is championing paternalistic government
measures.

Since America has flatly rejected the monarchical system of
government?wherein the king or queen is ?the keeper of the realm? and
supposedly has God-given powers of making sure all the subjects carry on
properly in their lives?Mr. Swensen?s advice about how to deal with
unsophisticated investors clearly lacks sophistication, that is,
sufficient learnedness. His ideas are obsolete; they belong in the
pre-Revolutionary era, not in a society that is supposed to treat us as
sovereign citizens instead of subservient subjects. Alas, my type of humor
is different. I don?t do well at being ironic and I am afraid to offer a
reductio ad absurdum so as to make my point lest some of these
unsophisticated blokes take me seriously and abolish the First Amendment
to the US Constitution.

If, however, the First Amendment?s philosophy is sound and anyone may say
anything at all, anywhere he or she can find a forum, never mind how
unsophisticated the person is, then so is the free market philosophy which
proposes that no one?not Congress, not the SEC, not anyone?ought to have
the legal power to ban people from investing as they choose. Just as the
philosophy of the First Amendment presupposes that free men and women are
capable of obtaining good advice on matters they read in The New York
Times, should they be so unsophisticated as to need such advice, a free
market presupposes that free men and women will be able to find good
advice about how to invest their resources prudently.

There is really no difference between the two philosophies?that of the
First Amendment and that of the free market. They both rest on the idea
that adult men and women are normally capable of protecting themselves
from bad ideas about any subject whatsoever.

Column on Entitlements versus Rights

Entitlements versus Rights

Tibor R. Machan

These days there is much consternation about entitlements. But what
exactly are they?

Having title means that within the law one has come to own something?a
home, a car, etc. To be entitled to something then means that one has a
proper legal claim to it. Being entitled to a minimum wage, for example,
means that when one works the law will require one not to be paid less
than that wage.

But does an entitlement signify a right? In a limited sense yes?the legal
authorities have established one?s legal right in whatever one is entitled
to. So here ?legal right? and ?entitlement? amount to the same thing.

But in the American political tradition what the legal authorities may
affirm as one?s right is limited by a system of basic, non-legal, natural
individual rights. These are laid out in the Declaration of Independence.

Since, according to that statement of basic political principles,
everyone has a basic right to his or her life, liberty, and pursuit of
happiness, no entitlements may be established by law that violates these
basic rights. So, for example, being entitled to a minimum wage is
actually unjustified, even if the law affirms it, because it violates the
rights of individuals to trade freely?one of the implications of their
right to liberty. If people freely enter into an employment relationship
that specifies certain work provided for a certain wage, this isn?t
something the law may void since it is their right to do so; the minimum
wage law violates this right.

This simply shows that a great many entitlements actually violate basic
rights?entitlements to health care (provided at others? involuntary
expense), to subsidies (again extracted form others without their free
consent), to regulations imposed on professionals (coercing them to suffer
a kind of prior restraint), etc. Nearly everything Franklin D. Roosevelt
called a ?right? amounts to such violation of basic individual rights
since to provide people with what he thought they were entitled or had a
right to, the basic rights of others have to be violated.

Now there are those who believe that rights do not exist as a matter of
our human nature but because governments grant them. This is what was
believed of monarchies?kings are superior people who could, by God?s
authority, grant or withdraw rights to others. Nowadays the story is that
rights are granted by governments by means of the democratic method. So if
by this method entitlements are established, then they do not violate
basic rights.

But this is to get things completely backwards. You see, the democratic
method itself rests on natural rights?no one had to grant us the right to
be participants in the political process. Simply being human beings in our
communities establishes this right. Otherwise the very right to take part
in the democratic process?the right to vote, for example?would be
vulnerable to being voided democratically.

So rights come before democracy and they also limit democracy to certain
issues on which voting is OK. But no one may vote to deprive others of
their basic rights! (Indeed, that is what motivated the inclusion of the
Bill of Rights in the US Constitution!)

Natural individual rights are basic principles for organizing human
community life. Legislation and the common law can elaborate them, apply
them to novel areas. But it may never violate them. Sure, there is always
the power to violate them?just as criminals can have the power to violate
one?s rights all over the place. But it is wrong to do so and having a
great many people agree to something that is wrong does not make it right.

So a great many entitlements people now have by law can be seen to be
wrong whenever they involve the violation of our basic rights. Sadly,
making such violations legal does encourage the unthinking belief that
they are OK. It also encourages the growth of a population that?s come to
be dependent on government?s violation of our basic rights.

In time, however, it will become evident that this is a very bad
development, for example, by way of enormous deficits and police actions
against innocent people who simply wish to hold on to what is theirs or do
what they freely choose to do. And we are beginning to witness such
developments around the country and the world.

Column on Backlash against Pets?

Backlash against Pets?

Tibor R. Machan

I cannot recall when I have not had pets. Now, perhaps, is the first
time. My gorgeous black cat Vegas was felled by some kind of heart ailment
and I haven?t invited a new kitty into my home since then.

One reason is simply that pets get to be almost one?s friend and friends
cannot simply be replaced. But it?s been a long time now.

The other reason I hesitate is PETA and all the animal rights/liberation
fanatics. I am scared they will get enough political clout to sic the
government on pet owners everywhere. With all those phony rights these
zealots insist animals possess, animals may gain extensive intrusive
?protection? from the gendarmes soon, so they might be coming around
uninvited so as to inspect just how you are treating yours. They do this
already with commercial animal farms.

One thing human freedom desperately requires is firm respect for property
rights. What?s mine is mine and others would need to gain my permission to
mess with it?that is how it ought to be. Not unless there is evidence of
my violating another?s rights may anyone interfere with what is mine.

But not so in our current legal atmosphere. Meddlesome, intrusive, and
regulating governments at all levels?federal, state, county, or
municipal?have the power granted to them by legislatures and courts to
snoop and intrude on us for all sorts of reasons. Maybe you grow plants
they don?t like; or have de-clawed your kitty; or have some medicine in
your cabinet they don?t want you to have, etc., and so forth.

The famous saying by William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, made in 1763, that
served so well to define how property is to be treated in a free
society?namely, that ?The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to
all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail?its roof may shake?the wind
may blow through it?the storm may enter?the rain may enter?but the King of
England cannot enter; all his forces dare not cross the threshold of that
ruined tenement??isn?t even widely respected, let alone enshrined in law.
Yes, the Fourth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution states, unambiguously,
that ?The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses,
papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not
be violated.? However, government, including the courts, have managed to
violate the idea all over the place.

So, in order to reduce the likelihood of them coming to mine to flex
their muscles, I will not get a pet. Or not likely?I may break down
because I?d like to have one. As I said, I?ve had cats, dogs, rabbits,
horses, parakeets, gerbils, fish and the lot. But I do not want some
eager-beaver officer, installed by the likes of PETA so as to ?protect?
pets, to come and lord it over me and my home.

Why, you might ask? Because the distrust PETA & Co. show toward ordinary
human beings?by insisting that the way to make sure animals are treated
decently, humanely, is to ascribe to them the kind of basic rights human
beings have?is insulting, intrusive, and very irksome. The fact is that
animals, though different from rocks and trees, are subject to ownership
by humans. But once the right to private property is abolished in law,
people no longer enjoy the protection of their property rights and eager
beaver zealots then have no legal barriers standing in their way to invade
your home or estate. Sure, tradition would still discourage abusive
trespass but gradually it will be overcome by the new attitude and soon a
guardian class of paternalists and their enforcers will be intruding
anywhere they want to make sure we all behave the way they think we ought
to.

So, for the time, I am resisting bringing into my house any pet whose
?rights? could induce the local animal police to hassle me. I suspect some
other folks are beginning to think this way as well, slowly unleashing a
backlash against the animal ?rights? crowd.

Column on what "biologically important" means

Empty Environmentalism?

Tibor R. Machan

In the community where I live, as in many others but a bit more so,
environmentalist are hard at work to put a stop to all developments,
meaning all efforts to increase the available housing and other human
amenities that come from people wanting to live there. Orange County, CA,
is a highly prized area?the weather is very desirable, there is nowadays
an abundance of jobs, and schools are passable, the entertainment and
amusement being offered up better than in most places around the globe and
so forth. So it?s no wonder people want to live there and those with land
find a demand to fill for homes and other amenities?developments, as they
have been dubbed, probably because the designation tends to remove from it
the human element and suggests raw greed.

Just now the biggest land owner in the region, the Irvine Company, has
proposed what is referred to the ?East Orange scheme? which is the nemesis
of the local and other branches of the Sierra Club. The Club and all its
allies are hard at work to try to bring the project to a halt. Their first
line of attack is based on the contention that the new development is
likely to grind the local traffic to a halt. But, in fact, this is only
the first of their salvos. The far more important sounding reason they
offer?when you check out their web site at www.Eastorange.org?is that
?These lands are part of one of the most biologically important open space
areas in the entire state.?

I admit to not being very eager to go to the defense of the Irvine
Company, mainly because it is one of those huge corporations that has no
compunction about getting into bed with the government so as to enhance
its economic fortunes. (For more on the company, see [
http://www.irvinecompany.com/aboutus/in_the_news/Bucking_a_trend/page_3.asp
]http://www.irvinecompany.com/aboutus/in_the_news/Bucking_a_trend/page_3.asp.)
It began in 1864, when James Irvine made a killing in the California Gold
Rush and later bought up 120,000 +/- acres of ranchland in what became
Orange County, Southern California. The land the company owns covers the
region several miles inland from the Pacific Ocean all the way north to
the Cleveland National Forest where I live, in Silverado Canyon.

Anyway, what struck me about the crucial reference to how ?biologically
important? is the land to be used for development is that while it sounds
significant, if one thinks about it a bit that phrase carries very little
meaning. Suppose it said that the land is botanically important? Or
zoologically important? Or residentially important? All these might convey
some nearly clear meaning because they point to an area of life that the
land may benefit. It may help plants, or animals, or people looking for
someplace to live. ?Biologically? is too broad a category and, since the
company?s plans to develop it for human habitation implies that human
beings will be living there, that, too, may well be part of what makes it
important. We are, after all, biological entities and when land is used to
provide us with living space, that could be construed as being
biologically important.

Surely, however, this is not what the Sierra Club & Co., want to convey
by that phrase. But then what? Something, one may assume, that is left
deliberately unspecified in the text on the Web Site.

For something to be important, it must be important to something else.
Water is important for most life, as is oxygen and inhabitable land.
Because, however, there is probably more demand for such land in certain
regions of the world than is available, priorities need to be set.

In a free society the priorities are set by way of the pricing system
because how much things cost shows just how badly people want it. This
amounts to a reasonably sensible rationing process, with how much, and how
good, people get to have dependent on how well off they are, how hard they
have worked to be so well off, how lucky they have been, etc., and so
forth. All this works out without some group of central planners of the
kind they had in the old Soviet Union, groups that are in the end clueless
about how to allocate resources rationally.

My bet is that the Sierra Club people are just as clueless about that as
were those in the Kremlin, although I am sure they fancy themselves very
wise. And this they evidence by using such ambiguous and thus useless
language as exemplified by the phrase ?biologically important.?

Don?t get me wrong?gridlock on Orange County roads can be hellish, in
part because they are build by government which tends to plan much like
those guys did in the Kremlin, without a clear idea what actually is in
demand and how much will it cost. Still, one can appreciate worries about
crowded roads and other infrastructure challenges. What is a mystery,
however, is what on earth ?biologically important? should be understood to
mean.

Column on Police Malpractice

Corruption of the Police

Tibor R. Machan

My youngest daughter and I were driving about when she told me her theory
about contemporary police officers. Her idea was that police departments
in our time attract bullies, people who have always liked to flex their
mussels, show who is boss. She said, ?Look what these people are required
to do?hassle us who are doing no one any harm, just because they smoke
some stuff that?s been banned, or sell sexual favors, or break some rule
that?s almost surely arbitrary.?

She was about 20 when she said this mouthful but I was impressed. I have
never pushed my kids in the direction of my own thinking, mainly because
my thinking is that people need to come to their own conclusions, not be
told what to think. Sure, some elementary guidance is vital but not their
politics, religion, and other convictions. I will give them help with
examples, mostly with how I live, but that?s it.

So this insight on my daughter?s part impressed me. I thought about it
more and concluded that it at least made good sense. Who would join a
police force that required officers to go about busting people for
victimless crimes? Mainly someone who liked pushing people around. Yes, of
course, it is their job to enforce the law?but when police officers must
enforce bad laws, this is likely to attract bad people into the force.

What is the right job for the police? To defend citizens against
aggressors, that?s what. They are to serve us in the capacity of
protectors against violence. When murder, assault, rape, robbery, burglary
and such are perpetrated, that?s when a just police force goes out to do
its job. As our Declaration of Independence says, ?governments are
instituted to secure [our] rights.? And the most directly force-yielding
element of our government is the police and the military. They are to
protect our rights. That idea of the American Founders is the most
civilized, the most enlightened, concerning the proper function of
government and its armed forces.

Some among those who love and champion freedom everywhere say government
is always a bad thing?they are anarchist libertarians. But they, too, want
law enforcement, with some differences from the limited government
faction. Bottom line is, however, that what those who enforce the law must
do is to also stick by the law that needs to be enforced. There is really
just one such law, namely, protect everyone?s individual right to liberty,
to be free of the aggression of other people.

In that capacity, as protectors of our rights to life, liberty and
pursuit of happiness, the police would be doing something noble. They
would be warriors in a good cause, namely, our freedom. With such a job
they may even gain the respect of the citizenry, including young people
who don?t mind it when cops fight genuine crime. They just mind it when
they are being hassled for what they chose to do without hurting anyone
else. But when the cops start hassling them, they lose all respect. They
dub them corrupt cops. They are the equivalent, only far more dangerous,
of a medical malpractice culprit or quack.

If you pay any attention to the news, you know that in all corners of the
country cops are getting rougher and rougher. It is perfectly natural?they
see themselves not as protectors of the citizenry but as rulers, ones who
enforce the way of life preferred by the administrators of our government.
This makes cops enemies of the people. And that is too bad. They are the
Dr. Frankensteins of our world, people who pretend to be helpers but in
fact are monsters.

Oh, there are exceptions but it is difficult to be such a cop since one?s
duties as an officer of the law now include out and out violence,
something that?s only by degrees different from the duties of Nazi or
Soviet police officers. This way a perfectly honorable profession, that of
the police officer, is fundamentally corrupted.

Column on What Ailed the USSR

USSR Didn?t Fail Because of USA

Tibor R. Machan

I took part in a panel discussion recently, following the screening of
the movie Crash where I teach. After much talk about who should be blamed
for racism, sexism, poverty and the rest of the ills of the world?pop
answer: ?the class system??we touched on how different political economic
systems compare concerning solving socio-economic problems.

At my turn I said that although there is much that can be improved about
the USA, in the main its semi-capitalist, mixed economic system tends to
solve problems better than such alternatives as socialism, Fascism,
theocracies, monarchies and others found in recent history and around the
globe. I argued that in the main in the USA people are still required to
look out for themselves via voluntary institutions and this approach to
problem-solving is more effective than top-down government management.

One panelist responded to this claiming that while Cuba, which is
ostensibly a socialist dictatorship, and other centralized systems are
cruel and mean?to, say, gays and journalists?their main problem is the
USA; this country just will not allow them to flourish. Then he added that
this was the problem with the Soviet Union?countries of the West would not
permit its socialist dictatorship to succeed as it would have, had it been
left to its own resources.

I took a bit of umbrage at this, having myself lived under the Soviet
system in Hungary?which was its satellite country back in the late 40s and
early 50s until the late 1980s?and having witnessed the economic
devastation their system wrought. We had no decent food, no appliances, no
housing, dilapidated apartments everywhere, collective farms that didn?t
produce nearly enough for the population, and, of course, near marshal law
day and night. People were being deported to Siberia for voicing criticism
or dissenting views, many of them committing suicide before they were
picked up to be sent there, and there was no free press, religion was
nearly squashed; the place was basically a prison.

Back then the USA had virtually nothing to do with Eastern Europe and the
Soviet Union. In fact, if anything, because the USA and USSR were allies
against Nazi Germany for the latter part of the Second World War, the USSR
had US economic support back then. It even lasted for a lot of years
thereafter.

In the ensuing time, until its collapse, the Soviet Union was not impeded
economically by the USA but mostly left to its own resources. True, they
spent an inordinate amount of money on building up their military during
these times; the rulers told the people this was because of imminent
dangers from the West. But, in fact, it was all a ruse. The West mostly
took precautionary measures, mounting what was a defensive military
posture and doing nothing much to threaten the Soviet bloc. Even when a
huge majority of the people in some of the satellite countries rebelled,
as in Hungary in October 1956, there was no military support offered from
the West.

In fact, what happened was predicted by the eminent chief of the Austrian
School of Economics, Ludwig von Mises, back in his 1920 book, Socialism.
That is that a country with a socialist, top down managed economy will
sooner or later come a cropper. This is because one cannot plan what
people want and what people can produce?it requires the free market
system, in which freely chosen buying and selling, via the price system,
send signals to all concerned parties and manage most effectively to
coordinate economic activities. Once the top down socialist system of the
USSR went bust, even famous American socialists like John Kenneth
Galbraith and the late Robert Heilbroner publicly admitted that von
Mises?s analysis was correct. As he put it, in The New Yorker, September
10, 1990, ??Ludwig von Mises...had written of the ?impossibility? of
socialism, arguing that no Central Planning Board could ever gather the
enormous amount of information needed to create a workable economic
system....It turns out, of course, that Mises was right....?

Despite the historical evidence showing and the theoretical analysis
predicting that socialism is an economic dead end, various dreamers
continue to yearn for the system right here in the USA. And their efforts
are paying off in failed federal programs, to which they respond by asking
for more. This is the result of thinking magically?some stuff will be made
and some saints will distribute it just right, without letting free men
and women do so.

It is very sad that this sort of thinking promotes the very measures that
my fellow panelist laments and blames on the foresighted critics of
socialism.

Column on Animals vs. Artifacats

Animals versus Artifacts

Tibor R. Machan

So I am reading my latest copy of Science News, the magazine that keeps
me reasonably up to date about what?s going on in all the sciences. I have
been reading this publication for over twenty years?it gives you a pretty
good run down on what?s new in a great variety of disciplines and always
tells you where to go for details.

OK, so I am munching on my dinner and reading through all these summary
presentations of new stuff when I run across one of the magazine?s more
extensive reports, this time on how, to quote the subtitle, ?Cultural
artifacts are crawling with damaging microbes.?

The gist of the story is that a great many ancient paintings, sculptures,
and ruins are being threatened by various micro-organisms that have
festered within them for centuries and are now beginning to cause major
damage. In several decades or at least centuries, some of these paintings,
sculptures and historical artifacts will simply fall apart, so virulent is
the assault on them by all kinds of tiny critters. The report also makes
no bones about the fact that scientists are hard at work trying to fend of
the damage, thinking of ways to destroy?albeit in environmentally friendly
ways?what is doing the damage.

No, this time there is no intimation at all that some human agency is the
ultimate cause, although I am sure some folks were eager to link it all to
exactly such agency, just as some have been so eager to find human agency
behind Katrina, Rita, last year?s tsunami and perhaps even the recent
devastating Pakistani earthquake. Sadly, misanthropy is all around us, yet
in this case there was no sign of it at all?the culprits are indeed
microorganisms, tiny animals, and scientists are making no secret of their
hope and intentions of destroying them so they cannot devastate, for
example, the Maya temples at Ek? Balam in Yucatán, Mexico.

But as I read through the report I suddenly stopped. What about the
alleged rights of these microbes? According to some animal liberation
theorists and activists, these little critters have every right to go
about their business of devouring the human artifacts as we do when we
devour the food stuff we find about us in the world. Indeed, by some
accounts laid out in the animal liberation, animal rights movement, we
have no right to feed off what other animals find nourishing for them. It
amounts to violating the rights of such animals or, put in a different
terminology of certain theorists and activists, interfering with their
liberty to thrive.

Oh, some might way, when animal liberation or animal rights are being
talked about, the issue isn?t about microbes and bacteria, like those that
are doing damage to the historical artifacts. It?s all about great apes
and other animals that are nearly as mentally developed as are human
beings.

No, that retort will not work. Actually, both the animal rights and the
animal libertarian movement go much farther down on the evolutionary
ladder, all the way to laboratory mice, for example, used in testing
medicines or other stuff, such as cosmetics, people use for their
purposes.

The crucial point is that some of the reasoning offered in support of
this is that as long a living being has certain identifiable interests, it
is fully entitled to carry on to its heart?s content and we must stay out
of its way. But by this reasoning, of course, the microbes and other tiny
critters that are the targets of these scientists? diligent efforts to
impeded the animals? assault upon the historic artifacts must also be left
alone. They have interests big time?namely to eat up those paintings and
ruins and whatever. Given that the argument that for many animal
liberationists clinches the case for prohibiting interference with any
beast that it has interests, that it can do well or badly at living
depending on various activities it embarks upon, we must abstain from
intruding on the activities of the bacteria that do damage to the
artifacts.

Alas, there was no mention of this potential conflict between the
scientists or the historical preservationists, and the animal liberation
movement. And I am a little worried that my calling attention to the issue
could, actually, alert some members of PETA to take some drastic action
against the scientists. (So keep this under raps, please, if you are
reading.)

My point is simply that the scientists bent on protecting historical
artifacts have, at least so far, their priorities intact. But they do so
mainly from habit. One wonders if they are prepared to deal with animal
liberationists, should they hear about their murderous plans.
-----------------
Machan teaches business ethics at Chapman University, Orange, CA, He
authored Putting Humans First, Why We Are Nature?s Favorite (Rowman &
Littlefield, 2004).

Column on Dissing Only Past Europeans

Silence About the Incas

Tibor R. Machan

October 10th, Columbus Day, has for the last several decades been a time
when the Europeans who came to the Americas have been roundly condemned in
the spirit of political correctness. There is little doubt that some of
them, maybe even a great number, did some awful things to the natives on
this continent. And so did many people everywhere do awful things to
others?as they still do, sadly enough.

However there is a tendency in our time to focus only on the misdeeds of
those who hailed from Europe. This form of what amounts to a type of
self-flagellation is, of course, part and parcel of political correctness.
Just as environmentalists often denounce human beings and wallow in
misanthropic sentiments, so others?some of them multiculturalists who hold
to a doctrine of moral equivalence about all cultures except what is
usually lumped together as Western type?cannot say anything nice about
Columbus and his pals.

I was recently watching an installment of the program Globe Trekker, this
one reporting on Peru, and there was a good deal of talk about how
terrible the Spanish were to the Incas, who were, in the end, pretty much
displaced by them in that region of the world. Of course, there are many
people who trace their heritage back to the Incas or Mayas in that part of
the globe and they often hold celebrations in memory of their ancestors.

What was quite interesting about the program, aside from all the natural
and cultural lessons it contained, is that the narrator said absolutely
nothing about the human sacrifices that used to be standard fare under the
reign of the Incas. As many as 200 children used to be killed so as to
please some god or another. And sometimes the sacrifice would involve
cutting out the heart of a living individuals so as to please some deity.

None of this is noted here so as to whitewash what the Conquistadors and
their predecessors perpetrated in the efforts to get in on some of the
riches in the Americas. But while the program made plenty of mention of
that sorry part of history in the region, nothing was said to besmirch the
innocence of the Incas.

Sad. History should not fall prey to such distortions simply because some
people are eager to paint certain men and women of the past in an
unfavorable light. Indeed, doing this betrays a nasty habit of
condescension?it treats certain people of the past as not entirely human,
unable to do what other humans do routinely, namely act badly, violently,
brutally toward their fellows.

By acknowledging that all kinds of peoples around the globe and
throughout history have been capable of malfeasance, one acknowledges
these people?s fundamental humanity. No doubt, at different times and in
different places more or less malfeasance has occurred, just as is
occurring in our own time. But it is rank racism and ethnic prejudice to
make it appear that only Europeans had the inclination and capacity to do
bad things to others. By all reasonable accounts of the history of
humanity, there is no group of humans who have managed to rid themselves
of the capacity for evil. But when one picks on just one group as having
such an inclination or capacity, when in fact there is plenty of evidence
their sharing it with the rest of the human race, a gross injustice is
being perpetrated and seeds of continued prejudice are planted that all of
us can do without.

Sure, in the past it was non-Europeans who bore the much of such
prejudice. But nothing good comes of a kind of payback attitude, as if
unleashing injustice now on the Europeans of the past would remedy
matters. There is no remedy of past injustices?the victims cannot be
compensated, no apologies can be delivered to them.

The only thing that can be done that will make a difference is to stop
all this collective praise and blame and to recognize that justice
requires looking at and judging all human beings individually, based on
their own choices to act well or badly.

Column on why non-commercial seems virtuous

Commercial Free, Babble Full

Tibor R. Machan

My favorite radio station is a local so called public radio FM
broadcaster with only jazz and blues for its programming fare. It raises
support by way of two or three week (or so) long appeals to listeners and
from some government grants. Each time some announcement pitches the
virtues of the station to listener, he or she makes a big deal about how
it doesn?t broadcast any commercials. This, it seems, the managers
consider a great plus since the amount of babble on the station is
apparently no less than on one with commercials.

Yes, there is endless talk, mostly about the talent being showcased, jazz
and blues events around town, interviews with musicians, etc., etc. For
those of us who would just as soon simply listen, all this chatter is no
better than a lot of ads that do not interest us. Once you add the
righteousness, however, about how the station eschews advertising, all
this comes off as quite offensive. Why on earth would not having ads on
make the station so much better when the percentage of non-commercial?well
not really quite non-commercial?chatter consumes as much time as
commercials do on other stations?

I suppose the culprit is the general hostility toward commerce among
those who are attracted to ?public? broadcasting. But why are they so
convinced that there is something underhanded, lowly, and suspect about
commerce whereas ?public? undertakings, including broadcasting, are all
virtuous? The facts do not support this. After all, within the public
realm?i.e., government affairs?there is ample vice. Every day some local,
state or federal politician or bureaucrat gets arrested and convicted for
some kind of malpractice. Non-commercial outfits like universities and
hospitals reek of malfeasance such as plagiarism, trading in body parts,
to name only two rather prominent examples in my region. (And these never
prompt any of the pundits to advocate massive government regulation, as
comparable malpractice at Enron tends to!)

So, the evidence doesn?t support the position implicit in the
self-promotion of the non-commercial radio station either in my region or
anywhere else. (And there is much of this going on elsewhere, as when PBS
advocates air their pleas to keep that institution on the air via
government support.) Instead, the anti-commercialism theme goes back
centuries, at least to Plato, who in his most famous dialogue, The
Republic, consigned merchants to the lowest rung in his ideal society,
declaring them incapable of even a shred of nobility. Then, also, many
religions and secular philosophies, Christianity and Marxism among them,
took a dim view of profit seeking.

The main reason striving for prosperity is at least tolerated in much of
the Western world is that economists have succeeded in making it appear
that the profit motive is something inbred, innate, or instinctual; so
being motivated to seek profit cannot be something for which someone can
be blamed. As the late George Stigler, a Nobel Laureate in the discipline,
put it, "man is eternally a utility-maximizer?in his home, in his office
(be it public or private), in his church, in his scientific work?in short,
everywhere." If so, then we cannot help ourselves and all must be forgiven
when we seek utility, wealth, or prosperity.

Since, however, many do not buy into this view, an since in morality
seeking riches is still mostly considered a sign of the unforgivable sin
of greed, commerce just cannot gain respect. The views of such rebels as
Ayn Rand?who maintain that self-dealing is perfectly OK, even admirable,
since if one understands what it means, it simply counsels us all to do
well in our lives on all fronts, including the economical?have too great
an obstacle to overcome to be received with understanding and support.

Thus we have the spectacle of non-commercial radio and TV broadcasters
running fund raising promotional sessions, two or three a year, all of
which seek money, denouncing money-seeking via commerce where both sides
are getting what they want and no charity is involved.

Too bad. Because how on earth do all those listeners get the funds they
will send to these non-commercial stations unless they themselves carry
out some successful commercial undertakings? As Rand used to say, ?Blank
out!?

Column on Whether Markets Will Do It

Will the Market Do It?

Tibor R. Machan

I am a bit concerned about this expression, ?the market will do
it??there?s even a joke in which a libertarian is asked how many people
will it take to screw in a light bulb and answers, ?None, the market will
do it??because it treats markets as if they were persons. But most of us
know that the idea is that the task, whatever it is, will get done without
government needing to stick in its fingers because free men and women are
enterprising enough to get it done and make a living from it.

Recently, as I was running out to get some groceries, I listened to KFI
AM Radio, the Los Angeles all talk and news ABC affiliate, and heard an ad
for a company that provides other companies with the service of handling
their human resources tasks. This reminded me of yet another local
company, called Government Solutions, Inc., which specializes in providing
private firms with the needed expertise to obtain various government
permits to carry on their business. For example, a private developer has
been trying hard to get a project involving 12 large homes built near
Silverado Canyon, where I live, and this company has been leading the
various battles with the several layers of government, including planning
groups and courts, to get the deal done.

Now what caught my attention is the fact, easily noted around the country
once you think about it, how readily such companies are started by various
entrepreneurs simply because there is a demand for their type of service.
Frankly, I am not always very happy with how eager some of these
entrepreneurs are to go into business as a sort of liaison between private
firms and public agencies. That relationship seems to me altogether too
cozy for comfort for those of us who are convinced that government and
business alliance tends to perpetrate more harm than good. But let?s leave
that aside for the moment.

What is important is how responsive people are to the weirdest types of
demands that spring up in a community. Does this not suggest that if the
government itself got out of trying to solve every other problem people
face, there would be a great many entrepreneurs who would step in to
handle them? In short, the market is very likely, indeed, to do it and all
the complaints that we need the government to get things done tend to stem
from a bad?the governmental?habit, not from serious reflection and
historical evidence.

Of course, it is difficult if not impossible to fully anticipate just how
in particular the market will respond. If there is a need for old age
security provisions, product quality control, workplace safety measures,
and all the rest, precisely how markets will meet the need may be
impossible to predict. Just as sometimes when a person is asked the
question, ?Well, what are you going to do (in some novel situation)?? the
best answer could be, ?I?ll think of something,? so with how people in a
market system will address various needs?they will most likely think of
something.

What this suggests to me is that folks who insist that governments must
address most problems in human communities?big ones, small, medium,
immediate, or long range ones?really show a distrust of human nature. Why
they, then, trust governments is beyond me, since all governments are is a
bunch of human beings equipped with the most dangerous of all tools, raw,
aggressive power. So these folks appear to believe that men and women in
the market place, since they are forbidden to use aggression to make
things happen, simply are useless, whereas governments that wield such
power are just the ticket for solving problems.

The truth, however, is precisely the other way around. Governments and
their tool, aggressive power (exhibited by the police and the military)
are at most useful in defending against criminals and invaders from
abroad. They are, however, not much use for anything else?to get anything
done, they actually need to conscript labor and talent from the market.

So, yes, the answer is, the market will do it. Far better than government.

Column on whether rights are created

Are Our Rights Created by the Framers?

Tibor R. Machan

One of the world?s most influential and honored legal theorists,
Professor Ronald Dworkin of Oxford and New York Universities, has recently
expressed a view that has been gaining more and more support in
intellectual circles. This despite the fact that it is quite reactionary,
returning to a time when its was understood that it is the monarch who
grants rights to the people of a country and these subjects have no rights
apart from what the monarch grants.

In a fascinating essay, ?Judge [John G.] Roberts on Trial,? discussing
the judicial philosophy?or rather, lack thereof?of the recently confirmed
Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, Professor Dworkin makes the
following revealing aside:

...A constitution shapes democracy by assigning powers to different
institutions?by specifying the composition and responsibilities of the
legislative, executive, and judicial branches?and its regulates democracy
by creating individual rights that act as constraints on what those
different branches of government may do.... (The New York Review of Books,
October 20, 2005, p. 15)

There is a great deal in the piece that could be discussed but for those
who are convinced that human beings have basic rights?e.g., to life,
liberty and property?by virtue of their nature and not because someone
grants them their rights, this comment deserves special attention. It is
just one, but a rather clear cut, statement of the growing political
viewpoint that what is basic to human community life is that it must be
democratic, not that individuals have certain rights. Rights are created,
according to Dworkin?and many others, such as Professor Cass R. Sunstein,
of the University of Chicago?and not identified as a feature of human
reality. So, democracies come first; rights then are created to guide it
in one or another direction?e.g., it can be a nearly unlimited democracy
or one with some limits, in virtue of whatever rights have been created by
the constitution.

A central issue here is that the shape of a democracy is entirely
optional; it depends on what rights a constitution?that is, those who
frame it?has created. Which is to say, any insistence that a democracy
itself must be constrained in specific ways is thus sidestepped.
Democracies are the given, the rights are an afterthought!

Yet this is quite disputable. Democracy, after all, rests on the idea
that those in a society?all of them?possess the equal right to take part
in the political process. So the individual rights of those who make up a
democracy must precede, not follow, democracy. Without individual rights,
in another words, democracies as such are groundless.

Another famous public philosopher, Professor Richard Rorty, shares the
view that democracies come before rights. For him, writing in the first
volume of his collected essays, Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth
(Cambridge University Press, 1991), human rights are impossible to
identify because the idea of human nature is too unstable. More
importantly, Rorty also holds that democracy comes before everything, even
philosophy and objective knowledge. He too fails to contend with the
objection, noted above, that democracy is groundless without individual
human rights.

If, however, one admits that conceptually?and in fact?individual rights
come before democracy, then democracy cannot be of just any scope someone
happens to prefer. Democracy itself would be strictly limited by the fact
that individuals have other rights besides the right to take part in the
political process. And these other rights would be a firm constraint on
what can be done via the democratic process. (We all understand this when
we see, clearly, that a lynch mob, though democratic, is morally and
legally intolerable!)

When famous legal theorists relegate individual rights to a status of an
invention or creation by framers of a constitution, they sanction anything
those framers, just like monarchs, might get into their head to do. If,
however, such influential thinkers acknowledge the priority of individual
rights, they sanction the principle that governments, democratic or
otherwise, must be limited in their powers. But this is just the idea of
which Professor Dworkin, Sunstein, Rorty, and all too many others may not
want to remind us. It would undermine their embrace of almighty government!

Column on impartial government

Myths of Neutrality?Governmental or Otherwise

Tibor R. Machan

Driving to school yesterday I listened to a talk program on KNX AM Radio,
the Los Angeles all news CBS affiliate. It was a consumer help-out show,
with the host taking calls about various beefs people have with their
banks, barbers, department stores and the like. In this case the focus was
on how easy it is to steal people?s credit and debit card numbers and what
banks are doing about it. (It?s interesting that the perks banks offer
seem almost like entitlements to customers now, probably because of
getting used to this from government.)

In the course of giving some advice to one of the callers the host of the
program made a comment that brought me up short. ?With this matter you
probably be best of going to the State of California since they will be
unbiased.? Oh? Why should that be so? But no one asked that question of
the host and the matter was simply dropped.

Now this idea that government is an unbiased, nonpartisan agency has wide
currency in certain circles, including the academy. Whereas scholars who
do research for some business corporation are immediately suspected of
bias, those who get their work funded by the government never get so
accused. There is a famous case in which the animal liberation activist
philosopher, Peter Singer, now at Princeton but earlier at some Australian
government university, refused to go to a conference sponsored by Shell
Oil and made a big deal of announcing to the world that he will not take
part in something funded by a profit making company since it is
undoubtedly biased, the agenda loaded. Yet he and thousands of other
scholars go to hundreds of university sponsored and government funded
conferences all around the globe without ever giving it a thought that
these, too, have their biases.

What would such a bias be? Well, just as the KNX radio host assumed that
if you bring in the State of California, you will get impartial treatment
and matters will be looked at objectively, so, too, many, many folks think
that universities funded by governments are impartial forums of discussion
and research. But they are not. For instance, very few people at
universities, even private ones, ever challenge the idea that government
ought to be involved in higher education?they are entirely blind to that
notion and, of course, that is precisely where their bias lies. In
government funded or heavily subsidized universities and, indeed, all
schools, the idea that such subsidies are wrongheaded, even unjust, isn?t
likely to be explored. Many other topics also tend not to be explored with
care and openness at such institutions of learning?whether affirmative
action policies are proper, whether special sensitivity seminars dealing
with sexual harassment might not be themselves quite insensitive. (Why not
other types of harassment or student exploitation, why focus only on sex?)

A great many professors in higher education are unabashed champions of
extensive government involvement in, you guessed it, higher education and
nearly every other aspect of society. I recall one minor star at Auburn
University who even went about the state of Alabama urging politicians to
increase funding of higher education, giving it no thought that this
qualified as gross self-dealing, something professional ethics classes
teach professionals to shun as a matter of their ethics!

Indeed, there is a great deal of nonsense going around about
impartiality. A great many journalists actually believe that because they
do not deliberately slant their stories, their values and those of their
editors play no role in what is selected for coverage, what is ignored. It
would be far more honest, in fact, if they did peddle some of their values
so readers could tell immediately where they stand?because stand they do,
someplace, no matter how much they protest, and it?s going to have its
influence on their work.

Still, my first concern here is to disabuse people of the myth that when
they bring in government, they will get fairness and impartiality. That?s
bunk. Government is now so vast, so much involved in promoting various
projects for special interests groups that to think of it as one thinks of
an impartial judge or referee is quite naïve.

Column on Oregon's Assisted Suicide Law

[Please proof read before using!]

Oregon?s Right to Suicide Law

Tibor R. Machan

If the Ninth Amendment to the US Constitution were heeded by our
courts
and legislatures, there wouldn?t be public controversies about whether a
person has the right to commit suicide. This would be understood as one of
the many un-enumerated rights reserved to the people, just as saying a
prayer, worshiping Satan or playing bridge are. We have the right to do
all this and nobody has the just power or authority to interfere (beyond
certain measure that make sure this is really what we want to do).

Unfortunately the United States of America has become a country
just like
the country from which it gained its independence back in the late 1700s.
It is now managed by government and nearly everything people want to do
that doesn?t please some other people needs to gain public permission.
Thus we have the US Supreme Court hearing arguments about whether Oregon?s
law permitting doctors to dispense drugs that can be used to commit
suicide is constitutional. Of course it is. The big idea about the US
Constitution, as argued so astutely by Professor Randy E. Barnett in his
Restoring the Lost Constitution, the Presumption of Liberty (Princeton,
2004),
is that citizens are free to do everything apart from just a few matters
that are the purview of their governments. Like fight wars with foreign
nations or establishing the final court system. These are matters that
governments
were empowered to do but everything else is--or should be--none of the
government?s
business.

Now they are. So, the issue is not our liberty but who gets to
control
us?states, municipalities, counties, or the feds. That is a disaster in the
development of a country that the world still considers to be largely
free. And
our public officials still pretend that they represent a free people and
are promoting freedom abroad. But heaven help Iraq if it gets the kind of
legal system under which Americans live today. The only reason the
tyrannical implications of this system are not prominently displayed in
the lives of Americans is that the earlier understanding?itself merely
partial?of the meaning of the US Constitution had been that individuals
have rights that are indeed unalienable. The momentum that such an
understanding
created is still evident, from which we get our relatively free society?a
mostly free market, due process of law, civil liberties, freedom or
religion and
the press, and some semblance of respect and protection of the right to
property and drafting of contracts.

This momentum, however, is slowly petering out and the courts and
legislatures
are doing nothing to abate that trend. No, instead they are hastening the
demise of those aspects of the country that had earned it the designation
of "a free society." (Of course, it
never was fully free?consider, among other things, slavery and
conscription as just two major contradictions to that ideal.)

Think about it for a moment: What business is it of the voters of
Oregon,
the federal government, the US Supreme Court or anyone else if someone in
the city of Eugene elects to obtain some help from a doctor in his or her
efforts to end his or her life, especially a life that is unbearable to
live for that person? Who are these meddlers anyway to burst in on such a
person and order him or her to desist?

May I remind you that we are talking about adult US citizens, not
children, ones who have in the course of making their decision to seek
such
help passed a bunch of tests to show they are of sound mind when they made
their decision? May I remind you that these adult human beings have an
unalienable right to their lives, which means they may not be intruded
upon
as they decide whether to live or to die? (Having a right means one must
be left free
by all others, including the government, to decide about what one has a
right to!)

But no. These free citizens of a supposedly free country are
required
first to ask permission of Oregon?s voters. Then they need to fend off the
United States Federal Government that wants to override the voters?
decision. And then they need to submit all of this to the US Supreme
Court, which should long ago have stated very simply: ?Leave these folks
around, it is their life, so let them decide about it!?

Instead, we have the ugly spectacle of free adult men and women
going
around in circles, begging for permission from all kinds of strangers, to
do
what is clearly their unalienable right to do.

And you wonder why the rest of the world may be a bit confused as
to just
what the government of the United States of America is promoting around
the globe?

Column on why many accept "Public" Crimes

Why They Keep Doing it?

Tibor R. Machan

Few people we know approve of break-ins, bank robberies, forced labor,
trespassing and other crimes. Sure, there are the criminals but even among
them most do not generally approve of their crimes; they tend to
rationalize them in various ingenious ways. But among the rest of us such
deeds are not tolerated, even from desperate folks. These latter should,
most will contend, find some alternative way to manage their emergencies.

On the other hand, there are millions who fully approve of voting in
various ?public? policies that amount pretty much to break- robberies,
forced labor, trespassing and other deeds. Or they vote for people who go
to various centers of political power and cast votes in favor of such
policies. And then there are all those who give support to these by
working in various government bureaus that administer the ?public?
programs that basically involve the commission of the crimes that very few
of us tolerate when they are committed without the cover of being ?public.?

Now, one answer defenders of such ?public? policies will give is that
after all, the measures had democratic support. So they couldn?t amount to
crimes (in the sense of violating basic principles of community life),
could they? However, this doesn?t clear things up fully since few among us
approve of lynch mobs whereby the majority of a community perpetrates,
say, a hanging. Even though the majority backs it, the hanging is widely
understood to be unpardonable.

There may be no ?one-size-fits-all? answer available to my question. Why
certain people accept criminal conduct dubbed ?public? policies may be
different from why others do. And most would not accept that these
?public? policies are akin to the crimes they uniformly condemn. But why?
Why don?t they appreciate that getting a great many people together and
thus empowering various ?officials? or ?authorities? to commit the crimes
amounts, well, simply to magnified criminal conduct?

One widely voiced reason given in academic circles for why the two things
aren?t at all the same is the democratic one but another is that there is
some kind of tacit agreement people in societies enter into that
authorizes the ?public? measures that are, in fact, criminal in other
contexts. Such a belief in a mythical social compact or contract has
recently surfaced in the popular press when Professor Michael Ignatieff of
Harvard?s JFK School of Government advanced it in The New York Times
Magazine. He claimed that citizens who were hurt by hurricane Katrina had
a valid complaint about lack of government help since governments exist to
protect people against disasters and other adversities.

It is true enough that in the old era of monarchies, government was seen
to be the ?keeper of the realm.? In return for this it had nearly full
authority to tell the people what they must do with their lives. The
divine right of kings doctrine helped shore up this idea. But in most
instances such government ?authority? came about by default?after some
realm had been conquered, whoever?s army did the conquering simply assumed
full powers over the conquered and their territories. There was no
question about right and wrong, about whether this was justified, only
about who had the power to carry off the deed of conquest.

In the wake of this ancient?and not so ancient?attitude about who is
authorized to control society, many people tend toward a kind of realism
in political matters. While at the personal level they disapprove of
theft, break-ins, forced labor, trespassing, and so forth, they also
embrace the notion that when it comes to the interaction of large groups,
insisting on moral standards is sort of naïve. Instead, we need to accept
that if some group is powerful enough, it will be impossible to protest
effectively against its policies once it?s been labeled ?public.? (It
doesn?t extend to the Mafia, of course.) Those who protest are seen as
idealists?including the American Founders.

Another way some defend crimes masked as ?public? policy is to claim that
as the outcome of public debate, they are legitimate. It?s a bit like
justifying a heist on the grounds that, after all, those perpetrating it
had a long and intense discussion about whether to do it. This lends the
deed a semblance of civility.

None of this passes muster. Such criminal public policies are just that,
criminal. It does, however, suggest why it?s so difficult to sell this to
millions?and to all those among them who own and manage the media. No
matter how many people approve of and back it, crime by any other name is
still a crime. The government deeds amounting to such crimes are every bit
as objectionable as when individuals carry them out. This isn?t easy to
sell, especially when so many hold out hope that they, too, will sometimes
benefit from these crimes.