Charity and Coercion

Tibor R. Machan

If one is concerned for the helpless or homeless or otherwise needy, what is the proper response? Just today someone I deal with nearly every other day told me he saw "Sicko," the Michael Moore "documentary" and was very upset that there are many homeless people who don't seem to receive medical help. Ordinarily this individual isn't very eager to go out and rob Peter to "help" Paul but in such cases he was ready to cheer for government support for those in dire straits.

I was very disappointed by the quality of the thinking exhibited by this individual. Despite our having known each other for over a year and discussing these kinds of issues on innumerable occasions, the emotional response to "Sicko" seems to have clouded my pal's judgment. He offered no discussion of how these folks got themselves into their dire straits; nothing about whether private charities could help; no mention about whether he himself ought perhaps to dip into his own resources instead of advocating expropriating from others, nada. The emergency nature of what "Sicko" depicted--of course, with little discussion of alternatives in the film itself--seems to have blinded my pal to any need for upholding the rights of those whose resources would be raided so as to satisfy his sentiments.

It all brings to mind this great remark by Herbert Spencer: "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) Somehow when sentiments rule, never mind about any prohibition of slavery or involuntary servitude. People who look with great sorrow and outrage at America's history of slavery, as well as slavery around the globe and throughout human history, seem to throw their principles aside and endorse the very thing they supposedly consider so dastardly because they believe that the deplorable conditions of some people's lives need to be remedied no matter what!

Some time ago I wrote an essay in which some of this was discussed at length and the following applies here particularly aptly:

"The virtue of generosity is a character trait that inclines one to extend oneself toward benefiting others in a spontaneous fashion, except for some of its more remote manifestations—i.e., through institutions. Generosity is a virtue when its development and practice is a matter of human choice. As such it requires the presence of a community in which the sovereignty of individuals is granted and respected. That sovereignty, in turn, implies the institution of the right to private property since to make decisive and responsible choices a person needs to act within a determinate realm of nature, a realm—great or small—within which he or she alone governs or chooses what will happen.

"Unless there is widespread voluntary acknowledgment of such sovereignty and suitable conduct that accommodates this, a community must at least have this sovereignty of individual human beings vigorously protected. This is necessary for any virtue to flourish, but especially for generosity because of its involvement with the disposition of what persons own, including their labor, skills, property, time, etc.

"There remains only one point to be covered, rather briefly, namely, whether governments themselves would ever be morally obliged to be generous. Would this not undercut their own rather particular mission of maintaining and preserving justice? Would it not make them into wealth-redistributors and thus instruments of regimentation of human action which would impede the possibility of individual and voluntary social virtuous conduct? Furthermore, if governments need to remain scrupulously fair in the performance of their primary mission, how could they remain fair while also extending themselves generously to­ward some people in society? If the duty of fairness is so vital in government, and if generosity consumes resources and extending it would generally involve favoring some citizens over others, would not all cases of generosity involve some breach of duty?"

Despite all this, it seems that for many people just feeling--former President Clinton's "I feel your pain"--for the helpless or homeless and then advocating government action in behalf of them suffices to feel morally virtuous. Sorry, that just won't do.

Bias at The News Hour

Tibor R. Machan

Often I check out newscasts from several sources, not just in print and on the Internet but also on radio and TV. One place where I check things out fairly regularly is PBS (Public Broadcasting Service) TV's The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, mainly because I am curious how a program funded to a considerable extent from money taken in taxes handles controversial topics. After all, the taxes are taken from all Americans who have a wide variety of viewpoints about the news while The News Hour has limited resources and time and obviously cannot give all these viewpoints an equal chance to be represented.

Not surprisingly, then, nearly all treatments of controversial matters are decidedly biased on this program. And while one can say the same about NBC-TV, ABC-TV, CBS-TV, CNN TV and Fox TV, those are all privately funded and they aren't taking money from people and covering stories in ways these people may very well find seriously objectionable. PBS has an obligation to do a creditable job of representing the wide variety of viewpoints, at least to some extent, while those other privately funded organizations do not other than in a professional sense, as journalists. PBS's responsibility is a political, not only a professional one, because they are funded by all taxpayers!

There is, of course, no doubt about the bias on The News Hour. For example, only two commentators are invited to offer opinions on various issues, David Brooks and Mark Shields, day after day, without a break other than when one goes on vacation. Needless to note, there is a far greater variety of opinions on the various topics in the country than what Brooks and Shields provide. These two represent mainstream conservatism and liberalism, at best, although even there many conservatives and liberals would probably find that their views never see the light of day at all.

But the bias is evident elsewhere, perhaps even more, This is when one of Lehrer's reporters brings in two or three economists, foreign policy experts, educators, business professionals and the like, again mostly lukewarm mainstreamers without a scintilla of a seriously challenging opinion coming from any of them. It is mostly people who would be offered space on the Op Ed pages of The New York Times or The Washington Post. Now and then a Wall Street Journal reporter or editor is invited but rarely.

Even part from the selection of "experts" in the various fields being discussed on the air, there is also the more blatant bias of some of the news reporters. For instance, in a recent report on the way President Obama's stimulus plan is being viewed around Washington, reporter Kwame Holmes made reference to some doubts about this policy by referring to "fears that President Obama's economic plan may not be enough...." He didn't mention fears that the president's plan may be wrongheaded, misguided, overblown, or the like--only that it may "not be enough," thus showing a bias in favor of just one way the plan might be improved, namely, by making the various bailouts even larger than what they are because as they stand they are too little.

In fact, of course, hundreds, even thousands of critics can be found across America's universities and think tanks who do find the plan misguided, wrongheaded, and so forth, as the list of them featured recently in a Cato Institute sponsored advertisement makes abundantly clear.

Has Jim Lehrer ever let anyone on the program who pointed out that President Obama grossly misrepresented whether there exists a consensus among academic economists concerning his stimulus policy? No. No one has appeared on the program, one paid for in part by all Americans, voicing criticism of the Obama policy apart from some Republicans who could then be dismissed as being purely partisan, without any scholarly credentials.

Bias on PBS TV and NPR (Nation Public Radio) abounds, of course, and one could do a doctoral dissertation ferreting it out but in a column I can only call attention to a few cases. Yet they should suffice to indicate that public television is anything but representative to the American public.

"It's Only Money!"

Tibor R. Machan

How is it you never hear prominent critics of Western materialism and capitalism defending the likes of Bernard Madoff with the exclamation, "It's Only Money!"? If their disdain for money is honest, if they consider it something dirty and unimportant in human life. at least in a decent, exemplary human life, then surely it should be of no great significance that some people like Madoff steal if from people big time.

Indeed, why is it that when there is an economic downturn like now all those folks who urge us to go back to nature--really they mean the the wilds--and who decry all the development that occurs in good times are deafeningly silent? There ought to be triumphant Op Ed pieces in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic, The Nation, The New York Review of Books or other publications that often publish pieces dubious about our materialist ways. Don't you think? This is just what such folks wanted--the destruction of the automobile, the de-industrialization of the country, the return of workers to labor in their gardens or the woods. What could be better than widespread unemployment to undermine the excessive commercialization of society? Without jobs, people will not be crowding the malls but, more likely, commune with nature in the hundreds of national parks and forest preserved for just the occasions when the rat race of capitalism has subsided?

Oh, but times like these make folks more honest than when it costs them nothing, not even embarrassment, to deride modern materialist society. Still. I would admire the people more if their integrity showed when it may be a bit tough to live by one's professed ideals. It would be admirable to see animal rights advocates out in the wilds defending small prey against the large, show that they are not only against the human use of animals but also against other animals' use of vulnerable animals. Or to have all the critics of modern civilization to step up and publicly applaud all the downsizing going on in Detroit and elsewhere, maybe even lend a hand to those who have become unemployed by, say, hiring them as gardeners or farmers and animal care givers--you know, all those jobs that leave the wilds intact and do not cause urban sprawl.

Alas, this reminds me of that well known quip that there are no atheists in foxholes (which, by the way, is a crock). Integrity, which is keeping in mind and acting on all the right values without ditching some of them when they become inconvenient, is in short supply. It is in extremely short supply with politicians and bureaucrats who are part of an essentially corrupt system, one that lives off the principle that it's perfectly fine to rob Peter in order to benefit Paul (and skim some of it in the process for one's troubles). It also brings to mind those celebrities on late night talk shows who insist on attempting to persuade the audience that they care nothing about money, nothing at all, only their art concerns them! Yes, and I have this bridge you may wish to purchase from me if you believe that bunk.

For all the people out there who are routinely disdainful about money, I call upon you to come to Bernard Madoff's defense--as well as the defense of others who defraud clients and rob banks and otherwise take other people's money without permission--by proclaiming loud and clear, "Hey, it's only money, so what's the big fuss?" I implore all the priests and ministers who keep telling their flock that "the love of money is the root of all evil," to now insist that Bernie Madoff & Co. are not worth fussing about since all they did was take the money, which, as the faithful have been told over and over again, isn't really what's truly worthwhile. (But then why bother about sending around the collection plate?)

Fact is, money represents hard work and some luck in our lives and we use it to obtain the products of other people's hard work and creativity (and a bit of their luck, too) if they are willing to sell them. To scoff at money is no smarter than to denounce theater tickets that get you in to see the show! And when one has it stolen from him, as the Madoffs are willing to do, one has every reason to be outraged. Because money matters!

Bad Deja vue

Tibor R. Machan

I was born on the eve of World War II and once I could think a bit for myself my life was surrounded in Budapest with the disaster of Soviet style socialism. One standard feature of that system is that everything is run or strictly managed by the government. This was even true with the press--what is today the media. And a constant, relentless offering in the state run newspapers included nasty cartoons depicting rapacious, viscous, ugly, gross capitalists. Every day you opened the papers on the editorial page you found some drawing in which American or Western capitalist were caricatured as the scum of the earth. As if they were child molesters or something truly vile, not the usually hard working financial experts, wealth care professionals these people actually were and still are.

Oh, my critics will immediately bring up Enron and this current bunch of crooks with Bernard Madoff on top of the list, followed by Texan billionaire Allen Stanford and of course Enron and the other firms that have deceived clients and customers, as if finance is the sole sanctuary for crooks in a free country. What about all the quacks in medicine, the dead beat professors in higher education, and, of course, the majority of politicians who live off stolen resources and hand out bailouts as if they were being generous benefactors instead of the worst kind of Robin Hoods! (Robin, by the way, actually stole from the taxman and returned the funds to his victims!)

But never mind. What came to mind for me in the last few days is just how the culture in America is slowly taken on the style of Hungarian, Soviet backed statism. Demonize those in finance, as if their profession were no better than that of hit men or bank robbers! From the President all the way to two bit locals who fawn over him these days as if her the Messiah--and perhaps in comparison to George W. Bush this is somewhat forgivable--there is now in America a generalized disdain for Wall Street and all those associate with it. Not that all such professionals are innocent of wrong doings but compared to the vile stuff pulled by people who are being elected to high office they are pretty much small fry.

What is scandalous is the class warfare mentality which I had thought would only flourish in a country ruled by puppets of the Soviet Union, ruled in all phases of life, including journalism and education where one received nothing but nasty anti-capitalist propaganda. Here in the USA there was to be a different attitude afoot. Although of course all professions have their crooks and malpractice is certainly evident on Wall Street, as much as on Main Street, this clearly prejudicial, indiscriminate derision of the community of financial professionals, just brings to mind for me the stuff with which I was bombarded as a kid by the "communist" regime. (They were, of course, just thugs, no more communist that the Mafia is Christian!)

Sure, we still have a reasonably free press, although who knows for how long, judging by the abuse heaped upon global warming skeptics at universities and by many who work in government. I can still write a column like this one, and even one that expresses grave doubts about global warming or the bailout, although the trend may be toward soon silencing the more influential folks like me. (Just read Patrick J. Michaels' Preface to his and Robert C. Balling, Jr.'s just published book, Climate of Extremes [Cato, 2009].) But yes, Virginia, it can happen here and there are signs it may very well, sufficiently to put lovers of liberty on alert!

Oddly, I may sound like a pessimist and in the short run I am. But there will always be bumps on the road to liberty and today we see many of them, although there are areas were freedom does flourish--women and gays are far freer now than before. But when these bumps do occur, it is the business of loyal friends of liberty to make sure no one forgets that freedom is a good thing even while officialdom is trying to besmirch it.

Bailouts versus bailouts

Tibor R. Machan

The current focus on bailouts brings to the fore a widespread confusion. Perhaps it can best be understood by comparing the bailouts many of us who are parents have performed, versus the government's bailout of banks, car companies, etc.

As a parent of three grown children I have on and off been approached by one or another of them asking me to please bail them out of, for example, credit card debts. The sums are not inconsiderable, given my economic standing, but I could usually manage, if only by going into temporary debt myself. Say my child maxed out his or her credit card to the tune of two or three grands. Being something of a pushover parent and not wishing to saddle them with bad debt early in their lives, I would comply with their requests. And I have done this several times, actually.

Each time, however, I would dip into my own savings or borrow on terms my lenders and I could agree on. I would not ransack the homes of my neighbors or friends in these undertakings. I certainly would not even think of using other people's resources without their consent (for instance, that of my my bank). Nor would I gather citizens of my community and use a democratic process to confiscate their wealth.

When you borrow money from other people on mutually agreed to terms, they assume a risk but with full awareness that this is what they are doing. And if they are at all economically savvy, they would make sure the terms insure them against loss and even bring in some profit by way of the going interest money would fetch at the time.

Now this kind of family bailout may have its downsides, of course. First of all it can send very bad signals to your children about the way money needs to be earned. Simply providing them with the bailout can suggest, if only implicitly, that money just grows on trees, at least on family trees. And in time this can come to haunt parents since they will at some point stop earning enough to keep increasing their savings, or have made some unwise investments, or the politicians and bureaucrats in Washington and other centers of economic interference have managed muck up the system so that one's money has come to be nearly worthless.

There are innumerable other ways that the parents (or grandparents) can start becoming less and less capable of doing these bailouts. Hopefully the children are mature enough that they, too, appreciate all this and begin to be more prudent, manage their resources more sensibly and stop needing and asking for bailouts. My own have nearly reached this point although not yet, even though they are now in their late or mid 20s. My idea is, however, what else am I to do with my resources if not first of all provide support for my children, hoping that I will be sensible about it and not send bad signals to them. (Some, by the way, are more eager for bailouts than others!)

When the federal government provides bailouts of the sort it has been doling out recently the situation is very different. And the central, most crucial difference, is that the government has no resources of its own--Mr. Obama and his team do not bail out anyone, nada. They do not go to their savings accounts and dip into these so as to help out failing banks or auto companies. They do not refinance their homes in order to enable them to do these bailouts. What Mr. Obama & Co. do, along with all the politicians and bureaucrats involved in these endeavors, is to place millions of Americans who have no say in the matter into very serious debt, a debt that will have to be paid by imposing confiscatory taxes on them, including their children and grandchildren who aren't even around to have some kind of electoral say about the matter. Mr. Obama & Co. view the country as their firm, a company they own that has resources they can use at their discretion, a company that can assume debt as would one in a free market place, only of course these assumptions are way off.

Sure, maybe the majority of the voters can be taken to have agreed to assume the debts incurred by the Obama team but what about those who didn't? Does democracy really mean one may vote on other people's use of their resources? Then why not on what religions they must subscribe to, what they may think and say? In fact, that's what many people argue, in effect taking it that the United States of America is a huge voluntary cooperative or corporation or commune or something and its political leaders are like conductors of orchestras. They completely ignore that fact that the country was founded on principles of individual rights to one's life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, etc., matters not subject majority rule! They ignore that the whole point of a country such as the US was meant to be--as per the Declaration of Independence--is to make these rights secure, including secure from the majority, not just some British king.

When parents bail out their kids it may not always be wise and prudent but it is honest. When Mr. Obama & Co. do a bailout it is dishonest since they do it always with the resource or future resources of millions of citizens who haven't consented to the policy and whose own purposes are thus just as severely thwarted as if a criminal had burglarized their homes and run away with what they own.

Acknowledging the Merits of Capitalism

Tibor R. Machan

Anyone with but a little knowledge of Marxism, at least Karl's version of it, knows that the old communist wasn't altogether hostile to capitalism. He regarded it as a necessary and indeed beneficial phase of the history of humanity. For Marx this history unfolded comparably to how an individual human being's history unfolds, with an infancy (tribalism), childhood (feudalism), adolescence (capitalism), young adulthood (socialism) and maturity (communism). But in the last analysis capitalism is undesirable, just as adolescence is, though with elements to it that are needed for the species to grow up properly.

One reason most American Leftists are confused is that they fail to see how the goal they all share, the planned economy--despite denying it a lot--requires this capitalist phase. Without it a society cannot advance because under capitalism the means of production develop powerfully so as to be taken over by the government under socialism. For a Marxist socialist to destroy capitalism amounts to killing the goose that lays the golden egg.

One of the flaws of Stalin's version of "communism" was that, well, it wasn't any kind of communism at all. It was in fact a form of fascism, something the late Susan Sontag very perceptively observed (to the consternation of many of her Leftist friends). Sure, Stalin, just as Lenin, invoked a kind of Marxist vocabulary in his rather inept ruminations about political economy. But the actual regime he headed up was a fascist dictatorship.

A very illuminating glimpse of this can be gained from Orlando Figes's The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia (2007). The review essay of this book, by Joseph Frank in The New York Review of Books (February 26, 2009) is itself a fascinating read. No one can get through the book, or even the review, without affirming the fundamental viciousness of Stalin's regime, both a moral and political viciousness, that makes sense of why there remain Russians who are nostalgic for it.

What jumped out at me in the review essay is not the central feature of it, or even of the book, but a remark Frank makes about capitalism, one that's rare among Leftists. He observes that "Collaborations with Western left-wing parties during the Popular Front period had already opened the way for books and films to offer a much more alluring image of life in the capitalist West," much more, that is, than that which was presented to Russians by Soviet propaganda. This has produced an attitude favorable to liberalization, albeit not much came of it back then.

It is remarkable how when one considers capitalism in contrast to the Stalinist era--just as if one considers it in contrast to, say, (Cuba's) Castro's or (Venezuela's) Chavez's version of so called socialism (which is, as noted earlier, just a type of fascism)--even authors writing for a Leftist publication such as The New York Review of Books acknowledge that capitalism is superior. Of course, the capitalism they are talking about is actually a kind of welfare state "liberalism." But the essentials of capitalism, its system of private property rights, freedom of expression, democracy and so on, clearly compare favorably to the dictatorial regime that any large scale socialist system requires.

It would be useful if Leftists kept this in mind and instead of insisting on pushing Western welfare states further toward a planned, statist political economy they got on board with all those who want to develop the capitalist system to achieve its best version.

Of course, the concept "capitalism" is used to mean different systems by different people but the basic element of it, one that is acknowledged implicitly in both Figes's book and Frank's review, is its individualist social philosophy. Whatever the details of capitalism, about which there is a good deal of controversy--for example, there are so called left-libertarians who reject its embrace of the business corporation because it involves, they argue (dubiously, in my view), a form of statism--it should be evident by now, both from history and from theory, that the system is far more humane, far more productive, and far more just that all those put in opposition to it.

It is gratifying to read that some who would ordinarily be expected to oppose it actually acknowledge its merits.

Troubles with Economics

Tibor R. Machan

The social science of economics became distinct when several French intellectuals and the Scottish moral philosopher Adam Smith isolated the field for special study. From a long time thereafter certain assumptions underpinned the discipline, mostly about human behavior. These assumptions arose from the work of the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes who believed that all people, not just market agents, are motivated to act so as to seek power over their environment. The reason Hobbes held this view is that he considered human behavior just a manifestation of the behavior of all material things that populate reality. (For him reality had nothing but material content and was ruled by the laws of classical physics.)

Even the contemporary idea that everyone is a profit or utility maximizer, taught in most introductory economics courses, derives from this basic notion, one that is credible even apart from Hobbes' use of it because the goal of prosperity is quite normal for most people. Of course, there are now different schools of economics and they each have modified the assumption somewhat but the basic idea is still very prominent, namely, that people have an innate drive to seek wealth or some other form of satisfaction. This is something they cannot help--it’s part of the psychology of every human being. The assumption is used to explain what happens in the market place--if the market is free, unimpeded by government or criminals, market agents will move ahead, quite predictably, to seek to enrich themselves and prosperity will result. The role of law is merely to make sure that these market agents do not intrude on each other by theft, robbery, and other violations of people’s rights. It is all a bit like a marathon race--everyone will move forward provided they aren’t permitted to trip up each other.

The race in the market place, however, is endless. If something stops or interrupts it, the overall economy is going to suffer. So many economists who support free markets dislike government intervention, think it mostly means trouble, rarely helps. But there are a whole lot of other type of economists, too, like those who have been influenced by Karl Marx or John Maynard Keynes. These tend to believe in a decisive role of government in economic affairs. They think the unregulated, free market is cruel, ruthless, and destructive of many human values. So they favor regulating market agents even if those agents haven’t harmed anyone--in a sense they believe in something that is often rejected in the legal system of a free country, namely, prior restraint. And the support for the authority to regulate comes from democratic theory, although it resembles, also, the older economic tradition of mercantilism (wherein the agents of the king saw themselves as authorized to meddle in the economic lives of their subjects).

In today’s fiasco there is a lot consternation about whether the free or the regulated market produced the mess. But there has not been a free market in place anywhere for many decades and even before then it has had only a limited scope in the economies of most countries. Politicians always took it for granted that they may manipulate the market, regiment market agents, both in small localities where they passed blue laws and curfews, and in the larger community where they passed protectionist laws and subsidies for faltering industries.

Many other examples could be listed but the main point is that no free market has ever existed, not under Lincoln, nor Wilson, nor Hoover, certainly not FDR, or Eisenhower, Regan or Bush. And it certainly isn’t likely to exist under Barack Obama.

When politicians and bureaucrats intrude on the work of market agents they cause serious distortions but market agents will most often adjust to these and try to profit from them. They will anticipate such intrusions and bank on them, invest accordingly, at least in a country where striving to prosper is something quite acceptable if not outright admirable. And this leads to even great distortions.

Many market agents do not bother supporting a fully free market but simply work with the regulated market in which they find themselves. But because this does involve serious distortions on how a genuine free market is supposed to operate, their behavior will often come off as excessively greedy, oblivious to principles of proper market conduct. They tend to go with the flow, for example, by aligning themselves with various political interests.

One thing is certain. The idea that the mess we are facing now was produced by the free market is preposterous and those economists and politicians who make that claim are almost certainly engaging in demagoguery. They wish to gain power from the fiasco by discrediting a system that some may support in theory but which is only spottily included in the country’s actual economy, one that requires politicians to stay out of economics just as they must stay out of religion and journalism.

A Yes and a No

Tibor R. Machan

President Obama made two important points during his Monday evening news conference, the first of his presidency. One was when he observed that old habits are very hard to shed. How true that is and how his own policies vis-a-vis the economic calamity demonstrates it. After all, one of the oldest and worst habits human beings find nearly impossible to be rid of is the governmental habit, that of turning to government as if it could perform miracles, superhuman deeds. This idolatry about government and its officials as a terrible habit and needs to be tossed ASAP.

The other important point, which was, however, completely wrong, is that the policy of stimulating the American economy by means of enormous spending programs is not opposed by economists around the country. This is false and it is difficult to imagine that President Obama doesn't know it to be false. And if he does, then we have here the same old, same old Washington practice of lying to the American people. The enormity of the falsehood is best noted by listing all the economists around the country who consider the stimulus the wrong approach to dealing with the crisis. The Cato Institute of Washington, DC, has published a list of those economists, several of them Nobel Laureates, and I will simply reproduce their names and affiliations here:

BURTON ABRAMS, Univ. of Delaware
DOUGLAS ADIE, Ohio University
LEE ADKINS, Oklahoma State University
WILLIAM ALBRECHT, Univ. of Iowa
RYAN AMACHER, Univ. of Texas at Arlington
J.J.ARIAS, Georgia College & State University
HOWARD BAETJER, JR., Towson University
CHARLES BAIRD, California State University, East Bay
STACIE BECK, Univ. of Delaware
DON BELLANTE, Univ. of South Florida
JAMES BENNETT, George Mason University
BRUCE BENSON, Florida State University
SANJAI BHAGAT, Univ. of Colorado at Boulder
MARK BILS, Univ. of Rochester
ALBERTO BISIN, New York University
WALTER BLOCK, Loyola University New Orleans
CECIL BOHANON, Ball State University
MICHELE BOLDRIN, Washington University in St. Louis
DONALD BOOTH, Chapman University
MICHAEL BORDO, Rutgers University
SAMUEL BOSTAPH, Univ. of Dallas
DONALD BOUDREAUX, George Mason University
SCOTT BRADFORD, Brigham Young University
GENEVIEVE BRIAND, Eastern Washington University
IVAN BRICK, Rutgers University
GEORGE BROWER, Moravian College
PHILLIP BRYSON, Brigham Young University
JAMES BUCHANAN, Nobel laureate
RICHARD BURDEKIN, Claremont McKenna College
RICHARD BURKHAUSER, Cornell University
EDWIN T. BURTON, Univ. of Virginia
JIM BUTKIEWICZ, Univ. of Delaware
HENRY BUTLER, Northwestern University
WILLIAM BUTOS, Trinity College
PETER CALCAGNO, College of Charleston
BRYAN CAPLAN, George Mason University
ART CARDEN, Rhodes College
JAMES CARDON, Brigham Young University
DUSTIN CHAMBERS, Salisbury University
EMILY CHAMLEE-WRIGHT, Beloit College
V.V. CHARI, Univ. of Minnesota
BARRY CHISWICK, Univ. of Illinois at Chicago
LAWRENCE CIMA, John Carroll University
J.R. CLARK, Univ. of Tennessee at Chattanooga
GIAN LUCA CLEMENTI, New York University
R.MORRIS COATS, Nicholls State University
JOHN COCHRAN, Metropolitan State College at Denver
JOHN COCHRANE, Univ. of Chicago
JOHN COGAN, Hoover Institution, Stanford University
LLOYD COHEN, George Mason University
JOHN COLEMAN, Duke University
BOYD COLLIER, Tarleton State University
ROBERT COLLINGE, Univ. of Texas at San Antonio
PETER COLWELL, Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
MICHAEL CONNOLLY, Univ. of Miami
LEE COPPOCK, Univ. of Virginia
MARIO CRUCINI, Vanderbilt University
CHRISTOPHER CULP, Univ. of Chicago
KIRBY CUNDIFF, Northeastern State University
ANTONY DAVIES, Duquesne University
JOHN DAWSON, Appalachian State University
A. EDWARD DAY, Univ. of Texas at Dallas
CLARENCE DEITSCH, Ball State University
ALLAN DESERPA, Arizona State University
WILLIAM DEWALD, Ohio State University
ARTHUR DIAMOND, JR., Univ. of Nebraska at Omaha
JOHN DOBRA, Univ. of Nevada, Reno
JAMES DORN, Towson University
CHRISTOPHER DOUGLAS, Univ. of Michigan, Flint
FLOYD DUNCAN, Virginia Military Institute
FRANCIS EGAN, Trinity College
JOHN EGGER, Towson University
KENNETH ELZINGA, Univ. of Virginia
PAUL EVANS, Ohio State University
FRANK FALERO, California State University, Bakersfield
EUGENE FAMA, Univ. of Chicago
W. KEN FARR, Georgia College & State University
DANIEL FEENBERG, National Bureau
of Economic Research
HARTMUT FISCHER, Univ. of San Francisco
ERIC FISHER, California State Polytechnic University
FRED FOLDVARY, Santa Clara University
MURRAY FRANK, Univ. of Minnesota
PETER FRANK, Wingate University
TIMOTHY FUERST, Bowling Green State University
B. DELWORTH GARDNER, Brigham Young University
JOHN GAREN, Univ. of Kentucky
RICK GEDDES, Cornell University
AARON GELLMAN, Northwestern University
WILLIAM GERDES, Clarke College
JOSEPH GIACALONE, St. John’s University
MICHAEL GIBBS, Univ. of Chicago
OTIS GILLEY, Louisiana Tech University
STEPHAN GOHMANN, Univ. of Louisville
RODOLFO GONZALEZ, San Jose State University
RICHARD GORDON, Penn State University
PETER GORDON, Univ. of Southern California
ERNIE GOSS, Creighton University
PAUL GREGORY, Univ. of Houston
EARL GRINOLS, Baylor University
DANIEL GROPPER, Auburn University
R.W. HAFER, Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville
ARTHUR HALL, Univ. of Kansas
STEVE HANKE, Johns Hopkins University
STEPHEN HAPPEL, Arizona State University
RICHARD HART, Miami University
THOMAS HAZLETT, George Mason University
FRANK HEFNER, College of Charleston
SCOTT HEIN, Texas Tech University
RONALD HEINER, George Mason University
DAVID HENDERSON, Hoover Institution,
Stanford University
ROBERT HERREN, North Dakota State University
GAILEN HITE, Columbia University
STEVEN HORWITZ, St. Lawrence University
DANIEL HOUSER, George Mason University
JOHN HOWE, Univ. of Missouri, Columbia
JEFFREY HUMMEL, San Jose State University
BRUCE HUTCHINSON, Univ. of Tennessee at Chattanooga
BRIAN JACOBSEN,Wisconsin Lutheran College
SHERRY JARRELL,Wake Forest University
JASON JOHNSTON, Univ. of Pennsylvania
BOYAN JOVANOVIC, New York University
JONATHAN KARPOFF, Univ. of Washington
BARRY KEATING, Univ. of Notre Dame
NAVEEN KHANNA, Michigan State University
NICHOLAS KIEFER, Cornell University
DANIEL KLEIN, George Mason University
PAUL KOCH, Univ. of Kansas
NARAYANA KOCHERLAKOTA, Univ. of Minnesota
MAREK KOLAR, Delta College
ROGER KOPPL, Fairleigh Dickinson University
KISHORE KULKARNI, Metropolitan
State College of Denver
DEEPAK LAL, UCLA
GEORGE LANGELETT, South Dakota State University
JAMES LARRIVIERE, Spring Hill College
ROBERT LAWSON, Auburn University
JOHN LEVENDIS, Loyola University New Orleans
DAVID LEVINE, Washington University in St. Louis
PETER LEWIN, Univ. of Texas at Dallas
W. CRIS LEWIS, Utah State University
DEAN LILLARD, Cornell University
ZHENG LIU, Emory University
ALAN LOCKARD, Binghampton University
EDWARD LOPEZ, San Jose State University
JOHN R. LOTT, Jr., Univ. of Maryland
JOHN LUNN, Hope College
GLENN MACDONALD,Washington
University in St. Louis
HENRY MANNE, George Mason University
MICHAEL MARLOW, California
Polytechnic State University
DERYL MARTIN, Tennessee Tech University
DALE MATCHECK, Northwood University
JOHN MATSUSAKA, Univ. of Southern California
THOMAS MAYOR, Univ. of Houston
DEIRDRE MCCLOSKEY, University of Illinois at Chicago
JOHN MCDERMOTT, Univ. of South Carolina
JOSEPH MCGARRITY, Univ. of Central Arkansas
ROGER MEINERS, Univ. of Texas at Arlington
ALLAN MELTZER, Carnegie Mellon University
JOHN MERRIFIELD, Univ. of Texas at San Antonio
JAMES MILLER III, George Mason University
JEFFREY MIRON, Harvard University
THOMAS MOELLER, Texas Christian University
JOHN MOORHOUSE,Wake Forest University
ANDREA MORO, Vanderbilt University
ANDREW MORRISS, Univ. of Illinois
at Urbana-Champaign
MICHAEL MUNGER, Duke University
KEVIN MURPHY, Univ. of Southern California
DAVID MUSTARD, Univ. of Georgia
RICHARD MUTH, Emory University
CHARLES NELSON, Univ. of Washington
WILLIAM NISKANEN, Cato Institute
SETH NORTON, Wheaton College
LEE OHANIAN, UCLA
LYDIA ORTEGA, San Jose State University
EVAN OSBORNE, Wright State University
RANDALL PARKER, East Carolina University
ALLEN PARKMAN, Univ. of New Mexico
DONALD PARSONS, George Washington University
SAM PELTZMAN, Univ. of Chicago
TIMOTHY PERRI, Appalachian State University
MARK PERRY, Univ. of Michigan, Flint
CHRISTOPHER PHELAN, Univ. of Minnesota
GORDON PHILLIPS, Univ. of Maryland
MICHAEL PIPPENGER, Univ. of Alaska, Fairbanks
TOMASZ PISKORSKI, Columbia University
BRENNAN PLATT, Brigham Young University
JOSEPH POMYKALA, Towson University
WILLIAM POOLE, Univ. of Delaware
BARRY POULSON, Univ. of Colorado at Boulder
BENJAMIN POWELL, Suffolk University
EDWARD PRESCOTT, Nobel laureate
GARY QUINLIVAN, Saint Vincent College
REZA RAMAZANI, Saint Michael’s College
ADRIANO RAMPINI, Duke University
ERIC RASMUSEN, Indiana University
MARIO RIZZO, New York University
NANCY ROBERTS, Arizona State University
RICHARD ROLL, UCLA
ROBERT ROSSANA, Wayne State University
JAMES ROUMASSET, Univ. of Hawaii at Manoa
JOHN ROWE, Univ. of South Florida
CHARLES ROWLEY, George Mason University
JUAN RUBIO-RAMIREZ, Duke University
ROY RUFFIN, Univ. of Houston
KEVIN SALYER, Univ. of California, Davis
THOMAS SAVING, Texas A&M University
PAVEL SAVOR, Univ. of Pennsylvania
RONALD SCHMIDT, Univ. of Rochester
CARLOS SEIGLIE, Rutgers University
ALAN SHAPIRO, Univ. of Southern California
WILLIAM SHUGHART II, Univ. of Mississippi
CHARLES SKIPTON, Univ. of Tampa
JAMES SMITH, Western Carolina University
VERNON SMITH, Nobel laureate, Chapman University
LAWRENCE SOUTHWICK, JR., Univ. at Buffalo
DEAN STANSEL, Florida Gulf Coast University
HOUSTON STOKES, Univ. of Illinois at Chicago
BRIAN STROW, Western Kentucky University
SHIRLEY SVORNY, California State
University, Northridge
JOHN TATOM, Indiana State University
WADE THOMAS, State University
of New York at Oneonta
HENRY THOMPSON, Auburn University
ALEX TOKAREV, The King’s College
EDWARD TOWER, Duke University
LEO TROY, Rutgers University
WILLIAM TRUMBULL, West Virginia University
DAVID TUERCK, Suffolk University
CHARLOTTE TWIGHT, Boise State University
KAMAL UPADHYAYA, Univ. of New Haven
CHARLES UPTON, Kent State University
T. NORMANVAN COTT, Ball State University
RICHARDVEDDER, Ohio University
RICHARDWAGNER, George Mason University
DOUGLAS M.WALKER, College of Charleston
DOUGLAS O.WALKER, Regent University
MARCWEIDENMIER, Claremont McKenna College
CHRISTOPHERWESTLEY, Jacksonville
State University
ROBERTWHAPLES, Wake Forest University
LAWRENCEWHITE, Univ. of Missouri at St. Louis
WALTERWILLIAMS, George Mason University
DOUGWILLS, Univ. of Washington Tacoma
DENNISWILSON, Western Kentucky University
GARYWOLFRAM, Hillsdale College
HUIZHONG ZHOU, Western Michigan University

I expected to disagree with President Obama on a number of substantive matters but I really didn't expect--didn't think to expect--outright deception from him. That, to me, is very sad and confirms the suspicion that despite his claim that he is going to bring change to the nation's capital, no significance change is going to be forthcoming, certainly not about whether politicians will now be honest.

Saying No to FDR's Version of Liberty

Tibor R. Machan

One of my colleagues at Chapman University reported to me how much he favors the following sentiment expressed by FDR: "I am not for a return to that definition of liberty under which for many years a free people were gradually regimented into the service of the privileged few." What kind of liberty was FDR talking about? Presumably the kind of liberty that would prohibit anyone from interfering with the actions of others unless those others endeavored to coerce their fellows, unless they violated their basic rights to life, liberty, and property. Such as system does make it possible for some to rise above others, provided they do not use force or fraud in the process.

A system wherein such rights are diligently protected is often attacked on the grounds that some people might be employed by other people who then could give them directions, who could "regiment them." Remember that whenever you hire someone who willingly accepts your terms of employment and whose terms you accept, you can given them directions or "regiment" them. Think of your gardener, barber, auto mechanic, house cleaner, employee at your firm, cashier at your grocery store, etc., and so forth. All these people voluntarily accept being directed by you as to what they will do to satisfy their terms of employment.

And, yes, among them there will be some who accept your terms reluctantly, believing that the terms could be different, more favorable to them, less favorable to you and so forth. And some of them will be unable to act on their reluctance because they lack resources just yet needed for them to gain different, more favorable employment.

I certainly recall when I was a new refugee in the USA and took my first job as a movie house usher in Philadelphia where I worked daily in that capacity, pretty much not liking what I did (e.g., watching the same movie fifty times or so before a new one took its place while telling people to quiet down and helping them find a seat in the crowded theater). Then I was a short order cook, not the greatest job one could have, then a bus boy, and then, once I acquired some skills, a draftsman at a famous air conditioning company, etc., etc., until I finally reached the kind of work I found fulfilling, namely, teaching philosophy. Many, many folks I know and millions I don't have gone through a roughly similar process in order to get to do the work they preferred doing, for folks they wanted to work for or, perhaps, to establish a firm they could run and where they would employ others who found the work they could do there promising.

By FDR's edict, all these folks, including I, would need to abandon their liberty to work for others, "the privileged few," who may themselves have risen through the ranks akin to the way I and millions of others did. Sure, some people are born with a silver spoon in their mouths but to keep the spoon there they, too, needed to find work that others wanted from them--if they were heads of huge companies, they needed to steer the firm successfully (unless they got protection from the government against competitors!).

The bottom line is that FDR's sentiments are utopian and fascistic on top of that--he would probably want to be the one who would rearrange the economy so that the privileged few would get demoted and some others would take their place. Or if he aimed to eliminate all privileges and inequalities of economic status, he would have to employ a humongous police force to make sure that no one rises above anyone else--no basketball player better his or her fellow players in the eyes of the paying public, no movie star manages to rake in more income than another, no professor would get his books published by a house that's better than those that publish his or her fellow academics'. This would be a police state! That is just what it appears FDR favored, seeing that he admired, of all people, Mussolini!

So thanks but no thanks to FDR for his revised--actually perverted--idea of human liberty. The privileges that are objectionable have always tended to come from governments favoring some firms with protection against competition, domestic or foreign, starting with the monarchs who bestowed limited liability upon companies they permitted to be formed so they could gain taxes from them even as they acted destructively. So, yes, some firms need to have their privileges discontinued and they need to enter the free market place where they would compete on the basis of their achievements instead of of being the darlings of politicians and bureaucrats. That kind of reform is justified. But FDR's proposal is perverse and unbecoming of a genuine free country.

Taxation With No Possible Representation

Tibor R. Machan

Among the many flaws in the policy of massive bailouts few have mentioned how it violates the principle of "no taxation without representation," a principle the breach of which prompted the American Revolution. But, sadly, quoting now Anon, "Life is blighted by the tyranny of the urgent over the important.

In this case the urgent is to feel satisfied about doing something, anything, about the economic mess that mainly the government created--with its policy of making home buying easy for everyone, including for those who couldn't afford homes--and the important is to return to a more prudent way of spreading the wealth or whatever is left of it. This prudent way would be to slowly, carefully open the road to serious productivity instead of printing gobs of phony money and burdening future generations, ones not in the position to vote or voice their opinions, with fantastic amounts to debt.

Yes, Virginia, there was a time when nearly all Americans were outraged about being taxed without having their right to vote about the policy violated left and right. They were in fact so upset that they began a process of overthrowing the government that did the violating, that of George III of Great Britain. It was the beginning of the revolution which ended by declaring the governments are not sovereign but citizens are. So government must serve the people, not rule them by imposing coercive policies on them. Those Americans believed, as Jose Ortega y Gasset later put it, that "Civilization is nothing more than the effort to reduce the use of force to the last resort."

So, one thing that's dreadful about the current administration's--and the former's--policy vis-a-vis the fiscal mess is that the remedies proposed all impose massive taxation on future generations, people who haven't the ghost of a chance to speak up for themselves. It is done, in large part, in the name of a English economist, the late John Maynard Keynes, who believed that by pumping non-existing resources into the economy and creating phantom demand for goods and service, the country can be gotten back on its feet, at least economically. And the sooner and faster the better!

But as I have pointed out in previous columns, several researchers have pointed out, after researching the matter in great detail, that the Keynesian policies of FDR's New Deal did not rescue the country from the previous economic mess, the Great Depression and all of its awful side effects. To make the point again, here is what Alan Brinkley said in The New Republic (not in Reason Magazine, nor in Liberty, both of which are committed defenders of laissez-faire economics):

"Roosevelt's initiatives did not, in the end, left the country out of the Great Depression. At no time in the first eight years of the New Deal did unemployment drop below 15 percent. At no time did economic activity reach levels comparable to those of a decade earlier; and, while there were periods when the economy seemed to be recovering, none of them lasted very long. And so this bold, active, and creative moment in our history proved to be a failure at its central task. Understanding what went wrong could help us avoid making the same mistakes today..."

What's more, it appears that no one in the major media has the guts or savvy to challenge the Obama team, judging by, for example, how this matters is not brought up ever on The News Hour With Jim Lehrer, a program I watch diligently not so much because I trust them to be objective any more than say, Fox TV News but because of how it is often lauded by my liberal friends and colleagues for its journalistic integrity. Not a word about no taxation without representation, nada.

Good luck America with this current crop of leaders and the fourth estate watching them all!

Obama: "I take full responsibility"

Tibor R. Machan

This expressions has come mean nothing at all in Washington, nothing. As many others have pointed out, taking responsibility has to have some consequences--if you take it for something good, the consequence would be a reward or compliment or some such positive thing, while if you take it for something bad, the consequence would be a loss of some sort.

But when President Obama said he takes full responsibility for the mess with several of his nominees, especially with former House Majority Leader, Democratic ex-Senator from North Dakota, Tom Daschle, nothing at all appears to have happened in terms of adverse consequence for Mr. Obama. Did he have to resign? No. Did he have to pay a fine? Nothing happened even to the Democratic Party's reputation which should have suffered most in the eyes of voters. It seems to be all A-Okay! What on earth then does it mean for President Obama to take full responsibility?

And he of course is by no means the only one who keeps using this phrase without any seriousness at all. Many politicians do so, both Democrats and Republicans. Every time it occurs, it prompts me to wonder whether some kind of secret agreement has been made in Washington and perhaps throughout the political landscape that when some malpractice occurs, someone will stand up and say this and that's it, nothing else will happen. Taking responsibility will thus come to mean nothing and amount to nothing.

And the media appears to go along with all this since when President Obama said on ABC-TV News that he takes full responsibility for the Daschle mess, no one followed up with a question, "And what exactly will your punishment be, given that you take full responsibility?" Or perhaps they all believe that such misconduct by politicians will only come to be dealt with in the afterlife so there is no need to worry about it here.

Responsibility means having been a primary cause of what one is responsible for--say you take responsibility for a car accident or the collapse of a building of which you were the building supervisor or a botched up operation where you are the chief surgeon. In all such cases if you are the responsible party and it's discovered, usually certain serious adverse consequences follow. Like a demotion, for example, in the military, or the loss of a job in a civilian line of work. But if nothing at all follows from being responsible for an adverse result, then it is really quite pointless to say someone was responsible for it. More likely, taking responsibility without such adverse consequence demeans the very idea of responsibility, renders is vacuous.

What, for example, should criminal defendants, who get convicted of a crime for which they are found to have been responsible, think of this loose use of the concept of responsibility? Why should they feel any regret, why should they accept their punishment for what they did? After all, no one is punishing the President of the United States when he proclaims to be responsible of the nomination of a tax dodger to his cabinet?

President Obama made a lot of noise during the election campaign, and even after it, about how there will be change in Washington when he gets there and specifically about how ethics will be front and center during his presidency. By failing to take real responsibility for having chosen several people for his team who have tainted legal and ethical records, his claims on this matter can be dismissed as disingenuous. His critics will have every justification for saying that he isn't trustworthy, he is no better a politician than those he and his supporters have criticized in magazines, Op Ed pieces, TV commentaries.

It would be interesting to hear former President Bush and Vice President Chaney as they witness how the righteous team of President Obama is faltering so early in the Obama presidency. I can just hear what Rush Limbaugh must be making of all this!

But more important than all of that is the fact that very likely what President Obama is experiencing is simply unavoidable in a bloated welfare state like America has become. When the government is in the business of wealth redistribution, handing out favors right and left, to various special interest groups and powerful allies, how on earth can anyone expect there to be ethically and legal spotless politicians? It is part of such a welfare state that it breeds corruption.

Whose Wealth Is It?

Tibor R. Machan

There is an application of the tragedy of the commons little discussed but worth knowing about. Public wealth, actual or borrowed, is subject to being raided by everyone who can manage to do so since nearly everyone believes the public weal is available to any member of the public who can get his or her hands on it. That's what explains the proliferation of lobbyist through the political landscape. Send in the experts who can bring home the bacon to you and yours! As one sensible commentator put it on a recent The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, the demonization of lobbyists is wrongheaded. And he was a supporter of Barack Obama!

When I was smuggled out of Hungary back in October of 1953, four adults were part of the group making its way out of the country to Austria (and then who knows were in the West). I came penniless but the four adults had thousands of Hungarian forints with them, having raided the Hungarian national motion picture assocation's treasury for which they were working. Of course, they thought they were doing nothing at all wrong--the money belonged to all the people of Hungary and they were some of those people, so what could be wrong with taking a goodly portion of it?

The tragedy of the commons is clearly evident here--people think that what is commonly owned is theirs as much as anyone else's and by now very few people believe that governments have any moral authority to decided who gets what. After all, why should those people, perfectly like us (unlike they were thought to be in feudal days), be the ones to make such important decisions?

The more American society becomes a collective community, the more the people will start thinking of the funds in the public treasury as belonging to whoever can get it dip into first. Why not? The people are said to own all the wealth, no? That is what famous political theorists are telling us now, namely that private ownership is a myth! So public ownership is the alternative and being a member of the public entitles everyone to grab some of the booty.

The point many thinkers, starting with Aristotle, saw in a system of private property rights was exactly to ration wealth according to a reasonable, ethical first come, first serve basis. Find it or make it or get it as a gift from willing others, then go ahead and keep it, use it, sell it, bequeath it, whatever. It's yours. And this applies to everyone and the government is supposed to secure your right to your property and all your other rights.

But no, dreamers of a collective utopia want to destroy this system, laid out originally by John Locke and later by jurists and political economist who refined it, and regiment us all as some kind of army of servants to the whole, to "the people." That means, of course, that some of us will have to rule the process of using the common weal and here is where all the trouble starts--who will be the rulers and why they, not you or I? Who will redistribute the wealth for various valuable purposes and who will establish what is valuable?

With the private property system, with its often chided but actually quite harmless inequality of riches, there is a simple answer: you own it and you decide what is going to be done with it. Others do not get to steal, rob, burglarize, trespass, intrude or otherwise violate your private property and other rights, and you don't get to violate theirs. And government is simply there to make sure anyone who breaches this rule doesn't get away with it.

It is this system, which is of course quite complex and nuanced but can be simply stated as above, is a moral and practical invention and now a great many utopians want to ruin it. I hope they do not get away with that plan!

Daschle--it's Simply Shocking, you think?

Tibor R. Machan

Only those with a completely blind faith in governments would be shocked at the revelations that former Senate leader Tom Daschle, as well as some other nominees of President (change Washington) Obama, cannot manage to remain lawful even as they present themselves as public servants par excellence. These are only one whose dubious conduct has been exposed. There are hundreds and hundreds who manage to do their indiscretions under cover of public service.

Why is anyone shocked? Over twenty years ago Professor Jim Buchanan received the Noble Prize in economic science for the work he and his friend Gordon Tullock did in the sub-discipline of public choice theory. The gist of this theory, as I understand it, is that government officials in our redistributive state simply cannot avoid serving their own agenda rather than the mythical public interest. There are two reasons for this, I think. One is that whenever people work, they tend to work for their own goals, first and foremost. Now this can sometimes be reconciled with a sincere professionalism, as when a medical doctor takes the oath to serve the interest of patients because doing so will also advance his or her interest. But in government that make impossible promises all over the place there is no way to actually serve the public interest since virtually all interests are private or special ones--that of artist, educators, farmers, veterans and so on. Serving the interest of these folks isn't serving the public interest but is often mislabeled so. And one must do one's service selectively. Among all the people who voted for someone and live in a politician's district, only some can be served and guess who those will be? Usually the ones who gave the greatest backing to the politicians who went to some capital, national or state, to do service. Thus to serve the public is hardly likely--the public, in fact, has but few common interests to be served anyway, even if by some miracle a politician really tried.

One reason a case such as Tom Daschle's is so routine, why the percentage of those who are party to such illegal behavior is high, is that in reality nearly everything politicians do in office is to help out private or special parties, never really the public at large as they claim or promise they do. and when these private or special parties want to repay the favor, for most it is contributions to some fund that helps reelect or otherwise support the politician. This is not actually, only nominally, different from provide the politician with various perks. So when they receive these perks in unconventional ways, instead as contributions to a fund, for example, they can hardly see the difference. Why then pay taxes on such benefits? One need not do so when one receive political contributions!

The entire welfare state is a theater of what economist call rent seeking, getting something legally at the expense of others. Sure, there is some effort to make it fair or at least provide a cover of fairness to it all but that's all a sham. It is like hypocrisy, the compliment vice pays to virtue.

What is gratifying to me about all of this is that President Obama turns out to be just as vulnerable to the corrupt ways of Washington as all those his campaign rhetoric was aimed at, all those naughty lobbyists he was going to expel from the changed nation's capitol. He should have studied public choice and I am actually surprised that as someone who taught law at the University of Chicago, where so much of public choice theory is discussed both by economic and law professors, he wasn't properly educated in the field.

A great advantage of limited government is that it would restrict the scope of governmental operations and thus minimize the opportunity for corrupt politics. As my favorite analogy--namely refereeing competitive games--to such a government shows, if you keep the job of the professionals limited to something they can in fact do, they will not very likely go astray. Otherwise all bets are off.

More Lies at The Times

Tibor R. Machan

As a teacher of business ethics I often encounter the quip, "Isn't that an oxymoron?" It is not but what is more interesting is how readily ordinary folks give a pass to journalistic malpractice, something there's probably more of than unethical business.

Given how often people and leaders of public opinion demean money and its making, meaning of course business, it is quite contradictory of them to be so critical of business misconduct. After all, if money isn't so important in life, why is it important that its makers misbehave? Journalistic malpractice, however, should outrage people far more since many profess to admire pundits, writers, editors and others associated with the press, in print or on the air.

If one is looking for journalistic misconduct, leafing through the Sunday editions of The New York Times is likely to be a fount of treasure. I ran across several instances just the other day when writers in The Times repeatedly presented the New Deal in a thoroughly biased fashion, as if it were uniformly accepted that its policies rescued American from the Great Depression. Even some of the writers in The New Republic observed that this is hogwash--though in more polite terms. As for example Alan Brinkley noted a couple of issues ago, “....Roosevelt’s initiatives did not, in the end, lead the country out of the Great Depression. At no time in the first eight years of the New Deal did unemployment drop below 15 percent. At no time did economic activity reach levels comparable to those of a decade earlier; and, while there were periods when the economy seemed to be recovering, none of them lasted very long. And so this bold, active, and creative moment in our history proved to be a failure at its central task. Understanding what went wrong could help us avoid making the same mistakes today....”

But never mind. In The Magazine of The Times David Leonhardt states, without any reservations that "... Once [as for instance during The New Deal] governments finally decided to use the enormous resources at their disposal, they have typically been able to shock an economy back to life. They can put to work the people, money and equipment sitting idle, until the private sector is willing to begin using them again. The prescription developed almost a century ago by John Maynard Keynes does appear to work..." No dice, as has been argued in great deal and very convincingly by Amity Shleas, in her Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, and by Jim Powell in his FDR's Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression. They support Brinkley's point with extensive research.


If you now turn to The Times' Sunday book review you will read the following from Debby Applegate: "Werth [an author whose book she is reviewing] is a gifted writer, and his subject is especially important in our current economic crisis, as Americans are reassessing their belief that social progress will grow naturally out of unfettered free-market economics." Americans believe this? Maybe four or five thousand of them but the other millions are completely captive to the governmental habit--they vote for more and more special favors from Washington, they elect as their president by a wide margin someone who champions government wealth redistribution, their colleges and universities are filled to the rim with professors of government, history, political science and the rest who favor a bloated welfare state on the model of Europe's Sweden and France. They belong to labor unions that keep asking for protectionism galore, their farmers have the same agenda, their artists want government to subsidize the arts, and so on and so forth. Yes, this evidence clearly shows that American are committed to the principles of free-market economics. Give me a break.

Oh, perhaps Ms. Applegate is just ignorant and innocently states her untruth! No chance. She is writing for a publication that has never supported free market economics, not at least for the last hundred years. Yet that same publication has reported, back on September 30, 1999, under Stephen A. Holmes' byline, that "Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits..." So the current economic crisis appears to have been prompted mainly by the expansive credit policies of the Clinton Administration which urged both Fanny Mae and Freddy Mack to lend money at very low interest so as to satisfy thoroughly anti free-market objectives, namely, to provide everyone with loans that hardly cost them anything!

Lies and more lies coming from the pages of a prominent newspaper but does anyone complain? Well, no since such complaints usually get published in newspapers and other media and just as with most professions, these folks stand shoulder to shoulder in defense of their colleagues regardless. There are, of course, some exceptions--I work for some of those publications, ones that conscientiously eschew lying and prevaricating. But not the leader of the gang, The New York Times.

You Should Belong to Washington!

Tibor R. Machan

Back in the times of feudalism, a system the American Revolution was supposed to have overthrown, people belonged to government. The king owned everyone and all the wealth in the country. People were subjects, at the disposal of the will of the monarch not to their own. Decisions about everyone's life was made by the head of state. It was government that was sovereign, self-governing, not citizens!

All of this was what the American revolution managed to abolish, at very great cost. That event put on record the declaration that all human beings have unalienable rights to their lives. And while practical reality took a good while to catch up with this declaration--African Americans did not manage to get their basic right to life recognized until after the Civil War--the principle took root firmly enough so that much of the legal system in time adjusted to it.

It's about time for all this to be over, according to a very prominent and long article in The New York Times Magazine, Sunday February 1, 2009. The author, David Leonhardt, states without reservations that "... Once [e. g., during The New Deal] governments finally decided to use the enormous resources at their disposal, they have typically been able to shock an economy back to life. They can put to work the people, money and equipment sitting idle, until the private sector is willing to begin using them again. The prescription developed almost a century ago by John Maynard Keynes does appear to work..." ("The Big Fix," The New York Times Magazine, Sunday, February 1st, p. 23). Read it carefully--you are to be a government resource according to Mr. Leonhardt, along with everything else in the country, a resource the government "can put to work."

This would be a most revolting development in the supposedly freest country in human history, the leader of the free world. Yet that it is a philosophy Mr. Leonhardt is eagerly urging upon the new administration of President Barack Obama, which is also a great irony. It was, after all, black Americans who continued to belong not to themselves but others, with full sanction from the governments of Southern states. And Mr. Obama's ascent to the American presidency has been hailed as the final step in the long march out of that bondage only to have the current crop of statist intellectuals, such as Mr. Leonhardt, writing in perhaps the most prestigious newspaper in the nation, urge the reversal of the trend and return the country to its pre-revolutionary time when everyone belonged to the government.

All this is advocated, of course, for the laudable cause of reviving the American economy. That kind of supreme objective is exactly what the Soviet government used to justify its disastrous Five Year Plans and what all tyrants use to excuse their system of subjugation. Never mind. These current, American cheerleaders of the reactionary policies of George III, and of mercantilism in general, have no care for individual rights, for the hard won liberties of Americans. All they want is to be in on a phony rescue mission the ultimate result of which is most likely to be a full scale dictatorship in which people and the wealth of the country will be "put to work," like it or not.

According to Mr. Leonhardt and the political economist he lines up in support of this dangerous agenda, namely Stanford University's professor Paul Romer, "The choices that determine a country's growth rate 'dwarf all other economic-policy concerns'." Because of the distorted history of the New Deal accepted by Mr. Leonhardt--and, probably, Professor Romer, a "history" that has been refuted over and over again by the recent work of such researchers as for example Amity Shleas in her Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, and by Jim Powell in his FDR's Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression--the country's most fundamental principles are to be cast aside and its population is to be returned to the status of serfdom--which is what comes to being an economic resource.

It is going to be difficult to counter all this enthusiasm for old style, mercantilist statism--the hunger for power in these times is enormous. Leonhardt mentions the late economist Mancur Olson who observed many years ago that the time for serious change in a country is when it experiences an upheaval like the one that's threatening American now. And of course Leonhardt urges his statist pals to seize the day.

If Olson was right, it is vital that these enemies of human liberty meet with total failure, that they do not get to seize the day in favor of a regimented, top-down planned American economy. For that a widespread and effective counter movement needs to be sustained.

That Myth of the Stimulus

Tibor R. Machan

Don't get me wrong--it is possible, though not very likely, that some of the huge sums the government plans to steer toward the market place will actually help generate creative, produdctive employment and, thereby, revive some measure of economic growth. But it isn't very likely because of politics.

If you look at the details of the stimulus package--some $800 billion borrowed against future taxes no one knows will be forthcoming and from foreign countries that need to be paid back at some point--a great deal of it amounts to pork, funds directed toward projects that put money into the pockets of the voters in the districts of the politicians who are shaping the stimulus and who feel the need to satisfy those who voted and are expected to vote for them.

This is where the theories of the famous early 20th century economist John Maynard Keynes go astray--he believed that when the economy is faltering it requires substantial and maybe even massive government spending to revive it. Which gave the idea of such spending a boost. President Nixon said once, "We are all Keynesians now!"

But Keynes did not specify in detail how the money is to be infused into the economy--mostly he believed that doing it through funding public works will do the trick. But his current followers are changing Keynes' recommendations. They want the government funds to be given specific direction and believe, moreover, that the folks in Washington, D.C., are able and willing to figure out where such funds will do the most good, how the funds will have what economists of this school of thought call the multiplier effect. This is the supposed phenomenon of getting blood out of a turnip--or repeatedly increasing the investment the government makes by its being reinvested over and over again, never mind that those receiving the money doing the investment have no initiative, no entrepreneurial motivation, to create or produce anything, only to spend the funds. I get funds from Uncle Sam and spend it on a car and the dealer then takes that money and buys furniture for himself and then the furniture store owner and workers spend what they have made from this to improve the shop and support their families, and so on and so forth--as if the money remained the same all through the chain and as if this alone served to actually increase, not only circulate, wealth.

Also, the money does not remain the same amount--at each step some of it becomes a sunk cost, a lost amount consumed by those involved in the transactions. Yes, some of the consumption does generate some income for yet others but not all. If one buys food, for instance, the store and the farmer do gain an income but some of that goes to goods and services that cannot be recovered. The bread and butter or apple I eat are gone, although I will use some of it to supply me with the energy needed to go to work tomorrow. And some people may actually use some funds for a creative purposes, to invent some new, labor saving gadget. But by no means all of it because the funds were not theirs and they didn't think up anything creative, like a new investment, to use the money "to stimulate" anyone.


But this isn't really the worst of it--if it were only this, then the benefits might be greater then the costs. But because these projects the government picks aren't usually what you and I and the rest of the consuming public would have picked, the "investment" is not actually productive. It's sham, like the art works that were produced with the funds the government spent on artists, back under the New Deal. Very little of those works were wanted by anyone. Hardly any fetched a price so the artists could then spend it on further creative works.

The most important thing the Keynesians overlook is that despite the propaganda about how the government's support will go to truly productive undertakings, a great deal of those funds support unproductive adventures, those referred to as earmarks the politicians include in the bills that provide the funds. Of course that is what politicians will do since their reelection depends on it and also, frankly, they are pretty much devoted to helping those who voted for them, never mind whether that help will enhance economic growth.

This is one of the findings of public choice theorists, findings that old and new Keynesians ignore. (In a recent very long essay praising Keynes to high heaven in The New Republic not a word addressed public choice theory, even though it is a direct challenge of Keynes' policy recommendations for which the architect of the theory, Professor James Buchanan, received the Nobel Prize in economics.)

Bottom line is that government ought to get out of the business of investing in various ventures and leave that to citizens, with no special support for any kind of project in any area of the economy. Like referees at a game, government isn't there to get into the game! The players are far better at figuring out what to do on their own initiative.

Obama’s Supreme Court Plans

Tibor R. Machan

This is just a rumor but it seems like President Obama will attempt to place Harvard University Law Professor Cass Sunstein on the U. S. Supreme Court. This idea has been aired on the Internet at The Washington Independent web site. For the time being Sustein has been tapped to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs but, as the site reports, “Sunstein has also been mentioned as a potential Supreme Court pick under Obama, although a position in the administration might reduce the likelihood that he’ll move to the bench.”

This is an ominous prospect, to say the least, given that Professor Sunstein has been a constant critic of a prominent element of the American legal tradition, namely, the institution of the right to private property. The Fifth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution mentions this right explicitly when it states that “nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.” Indeed, the only such taking that is permitted is “for public use,” which is to say, strictly speaking, for a use of the entire citizenry--for example, a military based, a court house, or a police station. These are the kind of facilities that qualify as public ones since their function is to serve the entire public, not certain special or private purposes.

The reason the July 2005 U. S. Supreme Court ruling in Kelo v. City of New London, CT., was such a departure from the U. S. Constitution is that it sanctioned the taking of private property of private use--the City was going to transfer Kelo’s property to some private industry that would pay higher taxes. (Nothing has been developed on that property so far, by the way!)

Professor Susntein believes, judging by the book he coauthored with Stephen Holmes, Cost of Rights: Why Liberty Depends on Taxes (W.W. Norton, 2006), that the public at large--meaning the government--owns all the wealth in the country and taxation is merely its way of leaving some of that wealth for private citizens to use as they see fit--that is to say, whatever remains in their hands once the public via government has assumed control of the wealth it supposedly owns.

This is a thoroughly reactionary view of property, given that a basic characteristic of the regime overthrown by the American Revolution as that it owned the country. In a feudal system the government--king, tsar, pharaoh, or some such ruler--owns the entire country, even its citizenry or, rather, subjects! The American Revolution was in part about rejecting this idea and affirming its opposite, namely, that it is citizens who own the wealth, privately, and have the right to hold it, trade it, or give it way as they choose. Taxation is merely a payment for government’s services, such as providing the defense of the country, its court system, its police force and the like. Everything else is private property.

Professor Sunstein, an arguably likely choice of President Obama for the U. S. Supreme Court, wants to take American back to pre-revolutionary days and affirm that it is government, not the citizens, that owns property. He joins, thus, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels who in The Communist Manifesto declared as the first job on the road to the essentially reactionary--rather than progressive--system of communism the abolition of private property.

Of course, Professor Sunstein and others who hold this position and have published prominent works advancing their case, do have arguments that need to be addressed. I am here not debating whether they are right or wrong, although I do think their position is impossible to sustain philosophically, ethically, or politically. For now, however, my aim is to make it clear to my readers that President Obama’s objective is indeed a radical change in how American is to be governed. He seems to embrace at least one of the basic tenets of socialism and communism, namely, that all property must be public and controlled by the government.

We are in for some serious changes indeed.

Obama's Job Self-Description

Tibor R. Machan

In his book The AUDACITY of HOPE, Barack Obama provides readers with a pretty clear sense of his understanding of politics and why he finds the Declaration of Independence unsatisfactory as his guide in matters of governance. Very early in the book Obama mentions the genesis of his political career and what kept him going even in the face of obstacles such as his strange name, something called to his attention by a media consultant who pointed out the fact that the "political dynamics have changed" by showing a newspaper to Obama with the name "Osama bin Laden" prominently featured on the front page. Nevertheless, Obama pressed on and he explains why: It was "the legislative work, the policy making that had gotten [him] to run in the first place."

Now in a free country the legislative work and policy making is confined to figuring out how best the secure the rights of the citizenry. As the Declaration states, governments are instituted to secure our rights, so politics is about that, nothing else. By this approach the job description of a politician is to work hard to make sure that we have our rights well secured, protected. These rights, if you will recall, include our life, liberty, pursuit of happiness and similar conditions of freedom. The American political tradition is all about such negative rights, as political theorists call them--rights that specify what others may not do to us, rights in terms of which our sovereignty is established. Unlike the regimes of the past, in which politics involved to a very large extent the management of society--religion, science, art, commerce and all--in the new American political system politics was not about these tasks at all but about serving the public by fending off domestic and foreign aggression.

As the world evolves the proper way to secure our negative rights must be adjusted because the violation of these rights can take numerous novel forms. It is the function of the legislature of a free society to keep up with these novel threats to our individual rights so that government can keep being effective in securing them all. In the bloated welfare state that America has become the job description of a politician isn't figuring out the best ways to secure the rights of the citizenry. In welfare states and in the even more robust systems of socialism and fascism the job of the politician changes from a concern about how to protect our individual (negative) rights to "policy making." Which is to say, politicians are once again the managers of the society and make policy instead of securing the rights the protection of which make it possible for the citizenry to engage in their own peaceful, non-aggressive policy making.

The souls of our politicians are different from how the American Founders understood they should be. Politicians who were to serve us after the American Revolution--which rejected government that would manage us all as if we were subjects (as we are under the king)--would not be making policy. They would be at work on how to make it possible for us all to make policy in our lives, professions, businesses, arts, and all other human endeavors. Like referees at a football game, politicians are supposed to be there to play the game--to make policies about the innumerable undertakings of free men and women--but to provide protection against those who would seek to make trouble by breaking the rules, by violating our rights.

Sadly, Barack Obama, along with all the other welfare state politicians in our era, did and does not see his job description in the light that the American Founders laid out. Rather he wanted very badly to make policy for the rest of us. And of course, then, the Declaration of Independence would not contain the political philosophy he would wish for. Instead it is the old regime, whereby monarchs ran society, that would suit him much better.

The Genesis of Tyranny (corrected)

Tibor R. Machan

One of my neighbors has built a small shed next to her home, maybe 8x8X8, if that much. Its not connected to her house. Indeed, it is nearly invisible from the outside--you must actually be snooping in order to get a decent look at it. The purpose of it, I have been told, is to store a stroller and some other objects associated with her young children. It couldn't possible be a hazard to anyone near or far.

Nonetheless a neighbor of hers down the street, roughly 120 yards from her on the other side, snitched on her, calling the local county authorities and reporting that not everything about the shed is in full compliance with what the planners like. By doing this our nasty neighbor will have imposed several thousand dollars worth of totally useless expense on the family that built the shed.

When I found out about this I asked what on earth might have motivated the snitch and was told that it was politics--the folks who built the shed are conservative-libertarians and the snitch is a statist through and through (which I could confirm from the bumper stickers on her vehicles, including a nifty BMW SUV). I believe, though do not know it for sure, that this snitch works at a local community college which is why one of her bumper stickers lamented that education doesn't receive enough funding form the government (a self-dealing complaint for sure).

This episode in my little community goes to illustrate several aspects of political philosophy. One is the utter utopianism of that currently prominent doctrine called communitarianism. It is this doctrine today that has replaced the utopianism of communism--indeed it amounts to small scale communism. It worships at the altar of community harmony, fraternity, promoting the notion that unlike in capitalist markets, under communitarianism people will share and support one another without rivalry, without hostility. Give me a break.

Another element of this episode is just how in the absence of strictly protected individual--especially private property--rights, citizens lack protection against the prejudices and ill will of their fellows. I recall back in communist Hungary--as well as in Nazi Germany--wherein the idea of social solidarity ruled, all kinds of assaults on people were carried out by folks who didn't like their politics or religions or just their style of life, all in the name of community solidarity, of having to follow some kind of pseudo-common good that the powerful members of society laid down for everyone. The suspicions this reaped within the population of various communities was felt by everyone--is my next move going to provoke someone to turn me into the government? Will someone report my private actions, even thoughts, to the authorities who will then intrude on my and my intimates' lives good and hard?

So much for communitarianism, so much for the false ideal of harmony within all neighborhoods! This is just what a system within which privacy--individual rights to life, liberty and property--is respected and protected is meant to avoid. No one can do away with nosy neighbors, with their gossip and ill thoughts but their attempt to impose their ideas on others will have no legal standing in a society wherein such rights are respected and protected. This false ideal of community is based on a misunderstanding or at least total lack of appreciation of human individuality. It fails to recognize and respect genuine human diversity, so that, for example, my or my neighbor's small shed in our front or back yards may be built even if others frown upon its style or purpose.

Another lesson from this episode in my neck of the woods is that it's not always politicians or bureaucrats who champion arm-twisting--many citizens do, as well, so long as it serves their hostile purposes, so long as it serve to impose on others what they prefer, even if only to express their prejudices and dislikes of whatever kind, including political. This is, after all, one way that one can get back at those in one's community who refuse to bend to one's will!

Jon Stewart is Correect

Tibor R. Machan

One day last week I decided to check out The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, given that it is a popular left of center offering totally devoted to Barack Obama and virulently contemptuous of the American Right. Sure enough one segment feature a stream of clips and stills of various Right wing luminaries, such as Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly and Dennis Miller. At the clip with O'Railly Stewart stopped and embarked on a fairly length lecture about values. This is because O'Reilly was depicted saying that yes, now and then, our security requires the sacrifice of our values. This sentiment is naturally quite controversial and is its refutation is nicely suggested in that famous quote from Benjamin Franklin, to wit, "They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security."

Franklin's idea actually hedges the issue by talking about "an essential liberty for temporary security" since it doesn't address the case of an essential liberty for long term security but never mind. I am on the same page with those who take Franklin to have suggested that violating our right to liberty for the purpose of gaining security is going to backfire, so we ought not do it.

Jon Stewart's little lecture focused on a similar them, namely, that if something is a bona fide value, a fundamental principles of ethics or politics, there is no excuse for breaching it. And I pretty much agree, although there may be certain very exception cases when such a breach could be proper. Still, it isn't a fundamental value, a basic principle, if one may discard it in the face of difficulties. The whole point of ethical and political, including valid legal, principles is that they must be the guide to conduct under all circumstances. Its like principles of good health or nutrition--these aren't to be tossed aside for any reason but ought to be loyally followed.

The curious thing about Jon Stewart's lecture about values is that the side he has been supporting in our political confrontations in this country doesn't believe at all what he was telling his audience. Indeed, a prominent virtue of Barack Obama, for example, is supposed to be his pragmatism and lack of ideology. This latter is simply a derogatory term for principled thinking--those who have an ideology and follow it loyally are people who believe in certain principles no matter what. They think such principles are the right guidelines to coping with the challenges of ethical and political life and to sacrifice them means caving in the the temptation to become unprincipled, disloyal to the right ways to act.

Of course, many people who champion pragmatism are also inconsistent in this and go on to announce their loyalty to certain select principles. And on such occasions they wish to cash in on the general notion that being principled in matters of ethics and politics is a good thing. This is what America's modern liberals do when they stand up and righteously denounce torture, for instance, pretending for the time being that they care about a principled opposition to such policies. Of course, when it comes to basic individual rights, such as the right to private property, they have no problem with being unprincipled--just consider how readily they back eminent domain policies that violate our property rights if such violation aims to cleaning up blight or promoting a higher tax base for government.

No Jon Stewart may not be a source of serious political and ethical thought but he does seem to have a sizable following among Americans and it may be useful to point out that integrity isn't one of the virtues and his side of the political debate cherish much.