Greece in America

Tibor R. Machan

Most of us who are aware of world financial trends know that earlier this year thousands of Greeks took to the street and mercilessly engaged in destruction of property around Athens. They were upset about having to tighten their belts in the wake of the possibility that some of their entitlements will have to be cut and their retirement postponed past age 57. In short, they were upset that the freebies they had come to take for granted may have to be reduced, even completely cut. Few of them seemed to have a clue about how one cannot get blood out of a turnip. After decades of living off the work and incomes of other people and future generations -- via borrowed funds -- the gravy train is very likely to reach its termination point.

In much of Europe the attitudes of these Greeks is routine. They have welfare states in spades and few have ever warned them about the hazards of living in such systems. These last few years may finally have produced such a warning but only by creating hardship for those who have become completely dependent on the system. Greece, Portugal, Italy, and Spain are just the more drastic examples. But the entire continent is experiencing the consequences of decades of profligacy. Instead of testing a truly revolutionary alternative to socialism -- which of course crashed with the demise of the old USSR and its colonies -- namely a consistent free market, capitalist economic order (with a proper constitutional framework) -- what most Western European politicians chose to do is to turn toward socialism with a human face, of the democratic kind (i.e., without outright police state policies).

This has been a strategy adopted in America as well. Promoters of more and more entitlement programs and top down federal and state government economic regulations have been clamoring for America to become a so called compassionate system (and throwing around accusations that adversaries and critics of government profligacy are mean, lack heart, etc.). These and similar ways were meant to accommodate the moral and political sentiments of the former Soviet system. The only difference is that while the Soviets realized that their planned economy requires the police state and met their demise by applying police state policies, the Western welfare states try to square the circle by preaching compassion and kindness while enacting laws and regulations that in fact require a firm hand by the government.

So after it is becoming clear enough that no system can survive with the reckless economic policies of the welfare state, what is left? We see the answer on the streets of New York and elsewhere with the attacks on Wall Street. Just as the Germans turned upon Jews, whom they irrationally held responsible for their economic wows, the Wall Street protesters are scapegoating a segment of the American population that not only does not deserve this but may actually be the last hope of the American and even world economy. “We don’t much like our situation, so let’s pick on Wall Street traders and companies and blame them for it.” What these people are calling for is just a bit short of stringing up or liquidating the very people who are mostly hard at work trying to earn a living for themselves and their clients.

Yet given the mainly mindless commentaries on the Greek, Portuguese, and Italian economic situations, given how so very few mainstream observers pick the correct culprit -- namely, the welfare state and its coercive wealth redistribution and punishment of productivity -- it is not all that surprising that young Americans tend to turn on those who are managing to make it in this economy. They feel, having been so urged to feel, that they are owed a living -- they have gotten free education and most of them are still getting one (protesting vociferously every time tuition is raised) as an object lesson and now that this can no longer be sustained they are picking on precisely those who carry very little of the responsibility for their circumstances.

Why are so many surprised with this? Almost all of the teachers, from elementary to graduate schools, have preached the welfare statist mantra that we all have a right to be taken care of. So what is one to expect?

Obama the Wuss!

Tibor R. Machan

Here is why President Obama is a wuss. He has never shown much taste for the war on drugs yet he has done nothing to stop it. He could save a bundle of money (certainly vital in these times) and more importantly get people out of jail and prison who shouldn't be there if he urged its end. It would strengthen America’s reputation as a bona fide free country. It would embarrass the Republicans -- maybe even many Tea Party people -- by showing them up for the petty tyrants they are by backing this insane “war.”

Yet, what does Mr. Obama do? He lets the feds raid even medical marijuana clinics in California as a show of force. He misses showing up the Republicans up for their hypocrisy about state rights and federalism, two principles they keep championing in the abstract but betraying in practice in this case for sure.

Of course the main issue shouldn’t be one of showing up the other party for being hypocrites. The main thing should be getting rid of the despotic policy and here Obama could even count on his base, many of whom are supporters of people’s liberty to consume drugs of any kind, even those that may well harm them. (After all, a free citizen is one who may exercise his or her liberty by engaging in bad practices, like producing rotten works of art and worshipping false idols.)

Sadly while in some matters the current crop of Republicans are favoring human liberty, in others they do not. They keep rationalizing their war on drugs by reference to phony theories about how drug consumption is not a victimless crime after all since the perpetrators sometimes harm others under the influence. If that’s so, prosecute and punish them for violating the rights of others, not for being under the influence. (People can embark on violating the rights of others for hundreds of highly varied reasons which cannot and ought not to be the target of laws, only of education and persuasion -- that is the civilized way of dealing with people’s bad habits!)

The president is very fond of giving speeches and answering press conference question by stating what he wants people to do. You know, “Pass this bill,” which is actually an order and not becoming of the presiding officer of the government of a free country. But if he is so inclined, why not order the abolition of the villainous war on drugs? Go out and rally his team to do something worthwhile.

It seems that despite the widespread acknowledgement of the disaster of the country’s experience with alcohol prohibition, history is being repeated almost perfectly. What a shame that is. As a refugee from a Draconian tyranny, the so called communism (actually fascism) imposed on Eastern Europe and my original country, Hungary, I am truly disgusted and saddened by America’s drug war. Who do these people think they are to throw people in jail for taking huge risks with and even ruining their lives? (People take risks all the time, e.g., when they drive or go skiing, or … well anyone can fill in the rest of this sentence with but a minimum of thought and observation!)

A few years ago I made a friend from Bulgaria, a former commie country and one that still suffers much from that disastrous episode in its history. Yet places of entertainment in Sofia, the capital city, can stay open much longer than ones in America. That may not be very important to some folks but it does illustrate just how often Americans are willing to tolerate various tyrannical measures in their midst. Which allows its enemies to point a finger at how many people linger in prisons for various victimless crimes. It allows its detractors to discredit the country’s supposed exceptionalism.

For those of us who love liberty and used to love America for a system that was at least approximating the free society and had gotten rid of slavery, the most blatant contradiction of its free heritage, this situation is really distressing. Hopefully it will turn out to be yet another fading legacy of the governmental habit.

Prohibition hasn’t Ended

Tibor R. Machan

One of my grown children and I watched the first installment of Ken Burns’ new series, Prohibition. There was a lot of information, details one would know only if one studied the history closely but one matter came through clearly and accessibly. That is just how stupid or vicious the current supporters of the disgusting war on drugs are. I mean all the politicians, citizens, members of courts and so forth, people who appear to have learned absolutely nothing from the alcohol prohibition that made criminals out of millions of peaceful American citizens.

What a scandal and catastrophe! A country that has had a reputation throughout the globe for institutionalizing a mostly small and free federal government and for being on record championing liberty for the citizens of the entire globe is undeniably hypocritical and has been such for much of its history, at least in some of serious areas of American society. There was slavery, of course; and prohibition, and detention for Japanese Americans and now the insanity of placing thousands and thousands of citizens in jails and prisons for, well, nothing that could possibly be reasonably considered a violent crime.

Not only is this feature of the country unjust and devastating for all those who are its victims but it is a colossal public relations disaster. All along politicians in the country have laid claim to serving the principles of liberty only to oversee what is without any doubt a series of institutional assaults upon those principles in the public policies they have supported.

As a friend and I wrote several years ago, “The war on drugs received several major increases in funding during the 1980s, and the U.S. military is now heavily involved in drug-law enforcement. Despite these increased resources we are no closer to success with drug prohibition than socialism is at creating a ‘new economic man.’ The fact that a full array of illegal drugs is available for sale throughout the Federal prison system, the Pentagon, and in front of the Drug Enforcement Administration building in Washington, D.C., demonstrates that little has been accomplished.” Sadly it also demonstrates how little the supporters of the war on drugs have learned from the earlier prohibition.

But of course the most offensive feature of the war on drugs is how it violates the rights of all drug users and traders. Never mind that it may well be morally objectionable to use and trade many drugs. So can be pornography or various forms of imprudence, such as laziness and sloth. But such practices must not be banned in a free society. They need to be combated without resort of coercion since these are all peaceful and victimless.

Just who do these people think they are to impose their will on others when it comes to what they ought to put into their bodies and other personal failings? Oh, it is excused because some drug users and abusers undertake various tasks in the performance of which they might injure innocent bystanders. Yet this is a really feeble excuse--people who pursue perfectly decent tasks can harmfully impact others, such as drivers (who expose other drivers to lethal risks) and students or office workers (who can spread diseases). It is the violent acts that must be prohibited and punished, not the people with various conditions that may or may not lead them to such acts. (This is a point that can also be made vis-a-vis so called hate crimes. It is not the feeling of hate that must be banned or punished but actions that violate the rights of victims.)

Isn’t it about time to live up to the principles of the American political tradition, one that recognizes individuals rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Having such rights means, mainly, that they might be exercised in objectionable ways, just as having the right to freedom of speech and religion can be. But the stupid governmental habit keeps getting in the way of achieving a fully free society. Would be good idea to stop letting it.

Ron Paul’s Foreign Policy Troubles

Tibor R. Machan

When he was recently booed by a lot of the audience in Tampa, Florida, for invoking the infamous blow-back doctrine, some of Representative and Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul’s defenders blamed those who did the booing. Yet at least one friendly commentator made mention of the fact that Dr. Paul has a tough road to hoe because the matter of explaining how to understand anti-Western/American terrorism is not simple, not susceptible to sound bites.

Is it a good idea to explain 9/11and other terrorist attacks on Western and especially American populations by reference to the fact that the West has inserted itself into many regions of the Muslim world without much popular support from those who live there? The idea is that because governments such as that of the US have indeed done this, there can be no complaint when those who live there carry out attacks on Westerners including hundreds of innocent people who had nothing at all to do with the foreign policy that perpetrated the insertions.

Consider that in most civilized societies if one protects one’s property against invasion, vandalism or loitering by setting up lethal booby traps, one will be prosecuted even if those who invade it are deemed to have trespassed, violated the owner’s rights. In a similar vein, even if American and Western countries have intruded on various Middle Eastern and Islamic states--via oil operations, military outposts, etc.--if these have not been lethal or have produced only moderate violations of the rights of local populations, the response--the blow back--of murdering 3000 innocent individuals (and countless others around the globe who probably had little to do with engineering the invasive policies) is way over the top. Put bluntly, the blow back would have to be no more severe than the invasion. There is no proportionality here and thus justice is not served.

Of course, things get complicated because many in the regions involved have been complicit in the West’s “invasions.” Lots of these have at one time and even recently welcomed Western oil companies into their countries so as to take advantage of Western technology in extracting oil there. Similarly, quite a few of the governments in those regions have asked for and welcomed military support, often with consent from at least a large portion of the population--think Saudi Arabia.

There are, of course, other complexities involved and to sort them all out would take an elaborate scholarly discussion, involving such disciplines as morality, history, geography, politics, economics and so forth. Yet since most people in Western, quasi-democratic societies are called upon to form judgments about these matters, it is safe to say that the simple idea that “we asked for 9/11 and other atrocities” is entirely unjustified, even if there is some small truth hiding in it.

Perhaps when it comes to Ron Paul’s foreign policy positions it would be helpful to know that they are importantly informed by the positions of the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, and that the organization’s stance has been heavily influenced by the views of the late Professor Murray N. Rothbard, among others, famous or infamous for a principled anarcho-libertarian politics in terms of which all governments are criminal organizations. This is what Llewellyn Rockwell, president of the Mises Institute wrote about this recently:

“Every close observer of the events of those days knows full well that these crimes were acts of revenge for US policy in the Muslim world. The CIA and the 911 Commission said as much, the terrorists themselves proclaimed it, and Osama underscored the point by naming three issues in particular: US troops in Saudi Arabia, US sanctions against Iraq, and US funding of Israeli expansionism.”

It is all the West’s fault. They asked for it! As if the reactions from “the Muslim world” were quite rational, quite just instead of dastardly over the top! They were crimes for the likes of Rothbard’s followers only in the sense in which many unjust laws make just conduct criminal.

Now, Professor Rothbard, a brilliant economist -- check out his magnum opus, Man Economy and State (Princeton, N.J., Van Nostrand, 1962) -- was not just a WW I but also a WW II revisionist historian, a frequent critic of Western and especially American foreign policy positions during the Cold War, often favoring the Soviet as opposed to American stance. These positions at least indicate where someone who follows his lead would stand on such matters as dealing with anti-Western terrorists from the Middle East. They are merely responding to Amerca’s imperialism! Mr. Rockwell’s points confirm this.

In my own estimation, Professor Rothbard’s and his followers’ anarcho-libertarianism has inclined them to oppose everything that the American government does, in part because it is the closest of big governments and thus one that deserves the most concentrated opposition from champions of justice and anarchism. All governments are evil but those nearby are the greatest threats! So attacking them is the moral high road! At least, so seems to go the Rothbardian thesis that has most likely influenced Dr. Paul’s foreign policy position, the one rightly booed by many in Tampa for its crude anti-Western, anti-American outlook.

Good Bye Reason?

Tibor R. Machan

“Every one of us has our perceptions filtered by the thousands of stories and assumptions and rituals that constitute our culture. Every one of us has held beliefs that seemed self-evidently accurate but were actually contingent elements of the time and place that produced us. This is true not just of the people reading this article, but of every person, in every era, who has been capable of perceiving anything at all. You can stretch those perceptions, expose yourself to new worldviews, learn new things, but you'll always be embedded in a cultural matrix....”

This passage comes from the managing editor of Reason Magazine, which I helped launch back in 1970 and which set out to be a corrective to our society’s widespread embrace of various versions of subjectivism and relativism. The passage exemplifies just such a viewpoint, whereby no one is capable of objectivity and everyone is caught in some set of preconceptions.

The aspiration at Reason had been to further the cause of using our reasoning powers so as to avoid being caught in the traps of prejudice, hasty generalization, bias, preconception, and the like, all of them foes of getting it right about the world. Indeed, some had argued even back then that prejudice is inevitable, we are all afflicted by it no matter how hard we try to rid ourselves of it. Racists were particularly fond of this line of thinking since it would have served them well had it been sound. Who can help but be prejudiced? No one, just as the passage above indicates.

Of course, there is that famous problem with such an outlook of being hoisted on its own petard. After all, if we are all “embedded in a cultural matrix” no matter how carefully we consider evidence, argument, facts, etc., then the passage itself would be no more than a declaration of the author’s own prejudice about, well, prejudice!

Of course, there is a great deal of prejudicial thinking afoot everywhere since human beings aren’t automatically careful in how they see the world. Many do permit their tastes, preferences, biases, wishes, and the like to dictate how they will understand the world, including--and some would argue, especially--themselves. That is supposedly one reason for getting a decent education, studying logic and scientific methods, and getting a clear head before undertaking difficult, challenging tasks. That is why those who care about the outcome of their investigations try hard to overcome powerful emotions that might intrude, including their hopes and agonies.

No one in his right mind can claim that it is easy to be objective, to overcome all the likely obstacles to thinking clearly. All those devices in the sciences, natural or social, by which one tries to secure a reliable, dependable picture of the world, are designed to stave off the evident enough threat of tainted judgments. And not all of us succeed, that is for sure.

However, some do, which is fortunate for us all since otherwise one couldn’t have any confidence in any of the work done in the fields that attempt to understand the world. The claim that it is all hopeless is, of course, an ancient one. It is advanced at various levels of sophistication. Perhaps the most impressive skeptical view comes to us from the 18th Century German philosopher, Immanuel Kant who didn’t so much hold that we are all biased, all the time, but that whether we are or are not isn’t something we can ascertain. We might be right but we will never be able to tell since in order to tell, we would need to overcome the kind of obstacles listed in the paragraph from Reason Magazine. And that is impossible.

Kant was mistaken, however, mainly because he held the odd view that the human mind instead of being an instrument for coming to know things is, in fact, a source of interference. That is like saying that the spoon we use to eat our soup is an obstacle to proper eating, not a means to it. Or that our eyes are not organs that enable us to see but ones that stand in the way of pure seeing.

The discussion will, no doubt, go on as long as there are people around to think of ways to make the case pro or con. However, I am sad that one effort to put in a solid, unyielding defense of our capacity to think objectively, namely Reason Magazine, now seems to be managed by someone who finds the effort futile.

Infra-structure Stimuli

Tibor R. Machan

One of my colleagues, who is in substantial agreement that the free market is best, argues that if one is going to have a stimulus--and given how politicians always need to do something, whatever it is, this is very likely in the face of crises such as the current one--it might as well be directed to improving (“investing” in) the country’s infra structure. If such stimulus were to be handed to the citizenry randomly, leaving it to their discretion where the system will be stimulated, there is too much of a risk that the more important and stable productive factors will not be what’s going to be given support. People may just take the money and blow it in Vegas or on something trivial and short lived.

Now it is never really fruitful, as I see it, to argue about what kind of investment is best. After all, wherever productivity is in force, people will be earning a buck or two and thus will spend these funds on various projects that need to be produced, i.e., by which economic activity and employment will be generated. But there is a prima facie plausibility to the claim that investing in largely permanent improvements of a country, such as its infra-structure, is better than risking the stimulation on productivity that creates temporary features such as entertainment or sports.

Yet, as already suggested above, since no one can tell what those who obtain resources from infra-structure stimuli will spend them on, this appearance is misleading. Moreover, why would investing in family entertainment or vacations or even a trip to the Vegas tables amount to frivolous spending? Those who earn their income in these lines of work may very well spend what they earn very productively, even more productively than members of road crews.

Furthermore, all that infra-structure investment can go mighty wrong--when old style roads and rails are refurbished only to be made obsolete by yet unforeseen future innovation. Who knows for sure that renovating the roads with stimulus funds according to current technological possibilities will be of benefit once something else takes the place of the roads or when later on much better ways of improving them is discovered?

There is no substitute for the planning done in the market place or at the local level where those doing the planing have at least a reasonable chance of knowing what is likely to be needed and when. The saying “all politics is local” should be supplemented with “all economics is local.” By that insight the best thing to do is not to extort funds from citizens and move them through the bureaucracy--where much of those funds is lost--but to leave them with the citizenry who have a reasonably good idea what needs to be done with it. And a hug side benefit of this is that those citizens have a better grasp on budgetary constraints than do politicians and bureaucrats who routinely forget about the source of the funds they spend and are subject to the dynamics of public choice, self-dealing and similar malfeasance that afflicts the public sector’s administrators.

For my money trying to figure out what is the best way to spend stimulus funds is akin to trying to figure out how best to spend loot gotten in a bank heist. There is simply no way to calculate such a thing. Stolen or extorted funds cannot be correctly, properly or rationally allocated. Recall, also, that when major infra-structure projects, such as highway systems or dams are built, not long after it priorities can change, such as when environmental concerns had develop and these huge projects turned out to become threats to endangered species or the wilds that some want desperately to preserve. But once the huge projects are there, it is very tough to change course--the damage may well have been done forever.

So appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, the idea of these infra-structure stimuli turns out to be flawed, even apart from the issue of how dare these people meddle in our lives all the time, taking our resources for purposes we haven’t consented to.

Liberty versus Stimulus

Tibor R. Machan

Despite all the bad blood and heated rhetoric--name calling, besmirching, hyperbole and other polemics--involved in our current political-economic controversies, there really is a substantive point of considerable difference at issue. Put bluntly, the Obama team is convinced that unless people get a push from the state, or some kind of prompters, they will not move; whereas many in the Tea Party and their allies believe that people will move on their own once they are free to do so.

Free market champions tend, in the main, to believe that what is needed for economic growth--including the ensuing surge in productivity, sales, investments and employment--is for the government to stop butting into people’s economic lives. Once that happens, the bulk of libertarians and free marketeers think, there will be plenty of action, generated by the people who will then be free to exercise their initiative. Freedom of enterprise is the main issue for these folks. They aren’t mean, they do not lack compassion, they just have greater confidence in human beings picking themselves up by their own bootstraps then in others beating them into action, stimulating them to move out, etc. As to those who need help, this too is best left to private initiative than to state action which is fraught with corruption.

In the most general way the Keynesians who are advising and cheering on President Obama consider this free enterprise doctrine primitive, something for which the philosophical and scientific basis has been thoroughly discredited. The grandfather of the American system, John Locke, often spoke as if people did have free will--basically they are all free and independent, he held. Similarly Adam Smith believed that a regime of liberty will unleash the kind of energy that gets people to seek to prosper--that is the gist of the invisible hand idea. Governments may need to help with keeping the peace since there will always be some miscreants who want to cheat their way to prosperity on the backs of their fellows but in the main those are exceptions, The bulk of the population in a society can get on with the job of earning a living, of creativity and productivity, without government meddling and prodding and waiving around all sorts of artificial inducements for people to get to work.

That has been, roughly, the outlook of modern free market political economists, although that’s not to say that all of its champions have been in full agreement about the basic ideas. Free will, for example, isn’t what all champions of economic and political liberty accept but even those who do not hold to the idea that there is some kind of inner drive--some call it self-interest, some the profit motive, some the instinct for survival--that will be unleashed in a free system.

In contrast, the sort of view of human nature found in Keynes and among his followers comes to the idea that to get moving from their natural and preferred state of rest, people have to be pushed or stimulated. Only if policies that exhibit these features are implemented will there be economic activity. (Even the free market champions embrace some of this when they claim, as a lot of them do, that what gets people to work is “demand.” The famous supply and demand idea suggests this, although there are free marketeers who are what used to be called supply-siders, which is to say that they believe the way the economy gets going is with people thinking up stuff to produce and taking it to market which will then generate purchases, etc. So the issue isn’t neatly describable.)

So, the crux of the debate is between those who expect economic growth to come from personal initiative that is usually thwarted by governments and those who believe some super agency needs to spur us all into action--via thousands of regulations and the planning of the economy in ways the state agents think important but the economic actors do not have in mind.

Thus the stimulus that Mr. Obama & Co. advocate comes with state generated public works that are supposed to beef up the infrastructure, create demand for what they think would be important to produce, etc. The free market people, in contrast, leave the economic growth to the multitude of interactions among free economic agents who aren’t told to do this or that, to build roads or bridges or paint or write or whatever (which is what planners usually count on for getting economic activity going). No, the free market champions leave it to the people and their creative and productive initiative to generate economic activity, with results that aren’t predictable and that cannot be planned out by politicians and bureaucrats.

So, the bottom line is that the big dispute is indeed a substantive one, between those who have confidence in freedom and those who trust manipulation--out right force or substantial nudging.

SS: Ponzi Scheme Isn’t the Problem

Tibor R. Machan

Everyone by now knows what a Ponzi Scheme amounts to. We all became familiar with it when Bernie Madoff was caught using it to amass a fortune at the expense of clients who were unaware that his plan to put away money for them amounted to such a scheme.

The issue in the case of Madoff wasn’t actually so much the scheme but the lack of full disclosure about it. Ponzi schemes are legion around the world and people knowingly take part in them. Most insurance companies use them, collecting funds from new clients and paying old ones in part from the new cash. Retirement systems make use of the scheme as well. Those who have paid in are often getting the funds the new clients pay now. So with the social security system.

But the social security system would be no problem if it were voluntary and those who are part of it knew from the start the risks involved. Fractional reserve banking is like that too: when people deposit their money in banks the money isn’t all left in vaults until they withdraw it but much of it is used to give loans and make investments. And clients of the bank know this but figure the bankers are skilled at what they are doing and will not use the funds recklessly, irresponsibly. But they do not expect all costumers to suddenly withdraw their funds; the banks could handle that. But since it is common knowledge, nothing is amiss in such arrangements.

So that’s not what’s wrong with the social security system. The problem is that once you work, you are forced to be part of them system (with only some exceptions, such as when the state you work in has its own similar scheme in play). This, just like the income tax, is a form of extortion. Just like what happens when organized criminals force merchants to cough up money for them or they will burn down the business! Sending working people to jail or imposing immense fines on them unless they pay their taxes, social security or otherwise, is just like that. One has no choice if one wants to make a living: “Pay the government or have no job!”

When Republican candidate Rick Perry called the social security system a Ponzi scheme, a bunch of his critics, even fellow Republicans, expressed shock. Their ire, however, is misplaced. But the Republicans have no more leverage with pointing out that social security is mandatory than would the Democrats. Republicans and Democrats--indeed all political parties other than the Libertarians--favor extorting funds from the citizenry, only for different purposes. So what they argue about isn’t really all that important. Ponzi schemes are everywhere. What is much more problematic is when everywhere some people force others to carry on in certain ways, take part in various schemes, whether they chose to or not.

If there is a feature of the modern world that is basically different from ancient systems is that it is less enamored by outright force--slavery, serfdom, torture, etc. Such things are these days more widely seen as uncivilized, barbaric. And if a political system or public policy embodies coercive force that some use on others, it is now more suspect than it used to be in olden days. Not everywhere, of course, and not even in so called Western democracies. After all, democracies can contain a great deal of coercion and do everywhere you look. Still, the coercion in democracies is less brutal than in systems with top down dictatorial rulers such as the ones in the Middle East.

What needs to be discussed about social security in not the Ponzi scheme element but that is forcibly imposed on all working people in the country, never mind whether they want it or not. It would be quite enlightening if this aspect of social security were debated. That would bring up a central feature of most governments, namely, their coercive nature. That is what the American Founders and Framers were concerned about and while they didn’t reject all coercive policies --e.g., slavery, taxation--they were very hesitant about them.

Welfare Statism and Compassion

Tibor R. Machan*

There are many debates in political theory, most of them focused on what kind of legal system is just. It is an ancient topic, of course, and the various positions do not change all that much, merely get slightly revised by their new generation of champions.

Yet, whatever one’s political convictions, there is widespread enough agreement about what is a political versus an ethical position. The welfare state is a political idea, whereas, say, altruism or utilitarianism is an ethical one. Of course, which is the correct ethical position, which ought to guide human conduct, is also widely debated and has been from time immemorial.

Anyone aware of this elementary point of the history of ideas knows, also, that it is a central feature of any ethical position that when it is practiced by people, they need to practice it voluntarily. No moral credit accrues to someone who does what ethics requires because he or she is coerced to do so. Every parent knows that a child begins to mature ethically when good behavior is exhibited as a matter of free choice, not out of fear of physical punishment. This is regardless of what school of ethics is expected. Whichever ethics is correct, it only earns moral merit if it is done from choice, never because it is done from fear.

Another elementary point is that while support for a given political position can gain one moral credit, that too must be voluntary. If you place a gun to someone’s head and march the individual down to the polling place and he or she votes for a candidate or measure because you have forced it on him or her to do so, that is not credit worthy either. Whichever is the correct political position, it too must be a matter of free choice for one to gain credit for championing it.

So once this is appreciated, let’s suppose that it is morally creditworthy for people to act compassionately, to offer their help to those who need it. Once again one could gain credit only if one acted so because that is what one wants to do. And that’s so with other virtues as well. One is morally praiseworthy only if one practices the virtues because one wants to. Accordingly the flack received by Representative Ron Paul from some of his critics because he does not believe government should engage in welfare policies must be seen in a certain light. It isn’t a sign of Dr. Paul’s lack of compassion to reject government’s role here, not at all. That’s because compassion, too, must come from a free choice, not because government takes one’s resources as hands these to the needy.


So when in his New York Times column on September 16th Paul Krugman chided the likes of Ron Paul (as have some other democrats or liberals) for their lack of compassion in their refusal to back government administered funding of health care, etc., he was quite confused. Just consider: a few days ago the news showed about a dozen people pitching in to lift an automobile so a motorcyclist who was pinned under it could be pulled out and saved. We may assume that these people pitched in voluntarily, not because someone made them do so. But Professor Krugman and his fellow critics of Rep. Paul would have had to consider it far more compassionate had these people reached for their guns at the scene of the accident and forced others to pull out the motorcyclist from under the car. That is the crux of the difference between Professor Krugman's conception of compassion and Rep Ron Paul's.

Those who champion government programs to provide support to anyone, the poor, farmers, artists, or others are not in fact being compassionate. They are bullies aiming to make others act in ways that would be compassionate if individuals did it of their own free will. But they are not being compassionate, not by a long shot.

*Machan is the author of Generosity, Virtue of Civil Society (1998).

Machan’s Archives: The Myth of Job Creation and Security (1996)

Tibor R. Machan

During one of his campaigns for the presidency Bill Clinton was stomping one state with a talk parts of which were aired on National Public Radio, the radio network of record on what pleases the modern liberal establishment. The excerpts were typical. Mostly the pres was taking his lines from that funny little movie, DAVE. In it the fictional president-stand-in, played by Kevin Kline, proclaims that first on his political agenda is the secure a job for everyone in the country.

It is one of these pitches coming from politicians that are truly sick. This is because if there is one promise on which politicians cannot possibly deliver it is the one about providing jobs or job security. No one can give another person job security, not unless someone else is placed into involuntary servitude. That is, to secure a demand for some productive activity in the market place, others must make the free choice to purchase its result. This means that there is no way to guarantee any job for anyone if potential customers are treated as sovereign, free agents. If, however, job security is promised to us, those who make such a promise must give up on treating customers as sovereign, free persons. They have to be treated as slaves to the products that have to be purchased in order to secure the jobs in question.

Consider my job. I was at this time a tenured university professor at a large state university. Only if I committed a crime could I be fired or laid off (unless the entire institution were abolished by the politicians in the state). (Which is to say that even politicians cannot force people to keep paying for something, as the Soviet Union found out.) The only way I could have had job security is by forcing the taxpayers of the state to give up their income for the goals I serve, teaching college level philosophy courses.

I, then, had job security only because the citizens of my state were placed into involuntary servitude for the sake of supplying the productive service of college teaching. I lived off their involuntary service, extracted from them in the form of taxes -- that is, the forcible relinquishing of a portion of their earnings -- each April 15th. The reasons here do not matter -- many think education is so important to produce that people ought to be forced to pay for it, never mind their own choices in the matter. This is one of those places where talk about what "we" want hides the fact that some people may well not want it, so the "we" really is just some of us, while the others are being coerced.

In a relatively free society bits and pieces of such job security may get by, even if they, too, are something of a fraud since, after all, the majority of voters may change their minds, too, and pull the rug from under the tenured professors sometime. This has already happened at some colleges and universities that have abandoned tenure and even reneged on it because the money wasn't there to continue this job security myth. But to promise, as President Clinton did, job security to all workers is rank deception.

No one can deliver jobs or job security to workers in the private sector. A company would be lying if it made such a commitment. How are they going to keep their customers coming back for their product -- at the point of a gun? That is exactly what would be needed to deliver on that kind of a promise. And even then the enforcers may go on strike! Eventually the country can collapse from lack of personal initiative. So the promise is phony in any kind of society. Mostly it is phony in one that pretends to some measure of citizen -- including consumer -- sovereignty.

Wishful thinking has won many elections and, no doubt, without some alternative and realistic vision to take its place, this fraudulent ideal of jobs and job security will once again gain Democrats sizable support in American electoral politics. But the ideal itself is corrupt and that means we will pay for pursuing it -- or rather our children will when stagnation sets in as it inevitably must from attempts to institute forced labor in a society.

Who Builds Obstacles to Real Stimulus?

Tibor R. Machan

Where I work we have a retirement plan. It comes with the job so once you get your employment you are also part of the system.

Turns out that the accounts set up can contain quite a lot of cash. However, even if one is over the age of 65, even 70, the plan does not permit one to make any cash withdrawals if one is still working full time. One is able to take out loans but these, of course, need to be paid back in monthly payments, so they offer little help with one’s expenses in bad times like ours.

Anyway, what is most interesting is that freeing up some of the retirement funds--say about 15 or 20 %--could make it possible for many of those who work at such places to inject substantial funds into the economy by paying off a mortgage, making improvements on one’s home, purchasing an automobile, taking a vacation or whatever. This is just what the current administration in Washington aims to achieve with money printed or borrowed, i.e., with non-productive economic stimulus.

I haven’t got the figures but I bet that the change of such plans at various companies, universities, hospitals and so forth, so that participants could withdraw some funds and use them to make purchases of various kinds, could amount to a pretty penny! Might even help jump start a dormant system!

When one looks into why these plans do not permit any cash withdrawals, at first it appears that the rule is made by the employers and changing them would require some procedures that a single employee is rarely set up to carry through but a group of them might manage. With some tenacity they could. But a little more investigation shows that it is useless to appeal to the employer. It is certain Department of Labor regulations that in fact coerce employers to disallow such withdrawals by working employees.

In particular, Chapter 4 (Payment of Benefits) of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) “sets standards for most employer and union sponsored plans in private industry and imposes responsibilities on those running the plan.” Aha. I was almost convinced that my employer experienced a fit of paternalism at some point and set up the retirement plan in a way that no cash withdrawals are possible if one is still working full time. (Never mind now whether such withdrawals might be wise or not--one size does not fit all in these as in many other cases.) But it turns out that my employer’s hands are tied by federal law.

Talk about government regulation that imposes severe restrictions on citizens regarding how they may use their own resources. That, of course, is the idea behind social security--coercing us all to “save” for our old age! Never mind, once again, that different folks could well use different strokes here, as elsewhere.

It is odd that at this time, when Washington is desperate for some genuine, bona fide economic stimulus, real funds that make it possible for citizens to go to market and generate commerce, including, of course, employment, that very same Washington is prohibiting the use of funds for just that purpose. Instead, it promotes using artificial funds, money printed and borrowed, with which to engage in a Keynesian pseudo-stimulus, with its bizarre device of the multiplier, the something from nothing idea that injecting such phony funds into the market will produce multiples of those funds--as if the law of the conservation of mass and energy had been overturned.

It is sometimes useful to check out the obstacles to coping effectively with some of life’s challenges. It may appear that they are placed there by corporations, businesses, and other economic institutions and one might actually be able to have a chance of removing them by persuading the people at these institutions to change their minds. But, no, it is often the federal government--in this case the Department of Labor via ERISA--that renders it impossible to make adjustments that could help citizens to manage their affairs and, also, downturns in the economy.

Obama’s Keynesian Superstition

Tibor R. Machan

President Obama gave a speech on Thursday afternoon announcing the American Job Creation Act. There were numerous points that were open to criticism but before dealing with a few, it is important to state what creates jobs: Jobs are created when people who have earned an honest buck go to the market and purchase goods and services that other people need to produce. If a good many go to the market to do this, there will be many jobs, if only a few, there will be few jobs. Moreover only if the people get to choose what purchases they make in the market will the resulting jobs be more than make-belief, artificial jobs, like digging holes and filling them up again.

Mr. Obama and his team appear to believe that printing money and handing it to people who may or may not take it to the market and spend it on goods and services serves to create jobs but this is sheer superstition. It is like thinking that steroids produce healthy muscles in one’s body. Such spending is more akin to fueling artificial production--like getting a bunch of extra haircuts with phony money one has obtained from a forger. Or numerous baths or car washes--as if people had no ability to allocate their limited resources prudently but will do well by spending the phony funds (or other peoples’) on duplicate goods and services. So, bottom line: jobs are created from people spending honestly earned income, not from spending phantom income.

Now back to Mr. Obama’s address. He started by telling us all that “the millions of Americans who are watching right now do not care about politics.” Oh? Who are those millions of people who take part in primary elections, in caucuses, and in all the campaigns around election times?

Obama continues: these millions of Americans “have real life concerns,” as opposed to politics. What a thing to say for a lifelong politician. It is a strange confession, to proclaim that politics is not a real life concern. How these little asides turn out to be very revealing from a Harvard educated politician!

Obama also told us that all these Americans “know that Washington hasn’t always put their interests first.” No kidding--”hasn’t always”? How about has very, very rarely. Anyone with only a cursory familiarity with public choice theory--an idea Professors James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock developed (for which Buchanan received the Nobel Prize), in their book The Calculus of Consent (1962)--can appreciate that Obama completely understated the degree to which Washington fails to put the interests of Americans first. For one, Americans are a highly varied lot and they have zillions of interests which plainly cannot be addressed by Washington. Politicians aren’t deities, Mr. President.

Then, also, politicians are mostly busy looking out for their own interests--mostly getting reelected the next time they run for office--except when looking out for the interests of special groups and major donors that happen to further their own. So this entire line of reasoning on which it seems the president is basing his American Job Creation Act is fallacious.

Here is yet another howler from Mr. Obama: “The people in this country work hard to meet their responsibilities.” Well, some do but some don’t. Many people in America believe that they are entitled to benefits from the government simply because they exist, they have been born here, kind of like the what millions of Greek citizens evidently believe. And many believe that they are credit worthy even while being anything but. Which is to say millions of Americans have expected to be provided with loans to buy homes even though they had no idea how to pay them back or had the collateral to back them. This does not testify to what the president has claimed about the people of this country.

The entire plan of the jobs bill amounts to nothing more than artificially manufacturing jobs, from phony money, phony demand. And this doesn’t even address the issue of Mr. Obama’s favorite superstition, namely, his idea that he can somehow turn America into a showcase of green life without incurring massive expenses for this, expenses the country cannot afford. (It is interesting how Obama has avoided the subject of his giving awards to certain companies that went green big time and then went belly up!)

One could go on. Sadly if an Obama enthusiast were to come across these points they would most probably be dismissed as nothing but dirty Republican or Tea Party politics. No one of Obama’s team ever confronts the arguments--they just ridicule the people who put them forth, even demonize them.

And don’t forget the persistent rich bashing that made its appearance in this lecture just as it tends to in every other given to us by Mr. Obama or members of his team. Ok, so some rich folks are doing well even these days. So why begrudge them this? It’s like wanting to injure able bodied folks because there some some who are disabled. Disgusting. Moreover, even as a public finance, the idea of targeting the wealthy is ridiculous. If all those with over $250,000 had their money confiscated by the feds, hardly any dent would be made on the national debt, especially if one subjects the idea to more public choice analysis.

Mr. Obama, you aren’t going to make jobs and you aren’t going to do any good to most Americans apart from some of your pals in the bureaucracy with what you want to do. Take an entirely different approach, namely, remove government regulations and lower taxes for everyone and that will most likely energize the country’s economy.

Liberty: Both Radical & Traditional

Tibor R. Machan

At times libertarian or classical liberal--or, in yet other words, pure laissez faire capitalist--ideas are dismissed as part of a misguided modernity that’s lacking proper pedigree. But this is all wrong. Already back in circa 600 B.C.E. the Chinese sage Lao Tzu had weighed in with libertarian ideas, writing

"Why are people starving?
Because the rulers eat up the money in taxes.
Therefore the people are starving.

"Why are the people rebellious?

"Because the rulers interfere too much.
Therefore they are rebellious...."

And in ancient Greece, Xenophon records an exchange between Pericles and Alcibiades in which the latter dismisses all government edicts that are coercive as plainly unlawful. As he put it, “It would seem to follow that if a tyrant, without persuading the citizens, drives them by enactment to do certain things--that is lawlessness.”

Of course, merely because a good idea has seen the light of day at some point in time, it doesn’t mean it actually carried the day. Ideas of individual liberty did not begin to animate actual political affairs until rather late in the day, starting around the 11th century A. D. A good example of some such ideas beginning to make an impact is the Magna Carta. And then, in time, came the American Founders, with the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. They managed, finally, to use the libertarian position, which they absorbed through their reading of history and philosophers such as John Locke, for practical, legal purposes. Why so late with the emergence of practical legal measures that support individual liberty?

One reason is that in much of human history what carried the day was unmitigated, unabashed physical coercion, the powerful and well armed running roughshod over the rest. Conquering thugs, armed to the teeth by monarchs and tribal chiefs, would not let up on their brutal subjugation of the population so they could extort from them their labor and whatever meager resources they have accumulated. There had been slave and peasant revolts but not until a substantial middle class emerged, with the capacity to create wealth, did those not in the ruling class manage to be able to mount a resistance to the rulers. And while some knew about the ideas that supported individualism and libertarianism, many were hoodwinked by stories of the divine rights of monarchs and the widely promulgated myth of class privilege.

In the modern era what stood in the way of the liberation of individuals, the overturning of class rule, is the idea that individualism had been invented to serve the economically lucky and powerful. This was a ruse, of course, perpetrated by the cheerleaders of modern rulers, the likes of Auguste Comte and Karl Marx, who had no patience for individual rights and liberation but believed in a collectivism that included the entire globe! They appealed to the myth of tribalism which they managed to sell to millions of people who, in turn, signed up for a unity of the workers but, of course, under the leadership--read: brutal rule--of the likes of Lenin and Stalin. Or they gave up their chance for freedom to national socialists or fascists like Hitler and Mussolini.

Even today the ideas and ideals of individual liberty fare badly because of the many excuses people use to keep others oppressed. The idea of class warfare that even American politicians deploy, for example, undercuts individualism. Ethnicity, racism, gender politics, and the like are all obstacles to making headway for bona fide individualism, with its politics of everyone’s equal unalienable natural rights as the foundation of the legal system, even as their proponents sometimes invoke individualist ideas to excuse the special political privileges they seek.

The Marxists dismissed individualism as an ideology that supposedly served the capitalist, thereby aiming to destroy the most efficient social engine of productivity, the one that unleashed the enormous energy of individual initiative and entrepreneurship. We are, sadly, still in the grips of the big lie that individualism is some kind of insidious ideology.

What’s the remedy? Relentless, vigilant education in the history and philosophy of individualism and libertarianism. That’s the greatest hope for human liberation.

Moral Responsibility and the Poor

Tibor R. Machan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Intolerable Nudging

Tibor R. Machan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Another Criticism of “Animal Rights”

Tibor R. Machan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TIBOR R. MACHAN
(December 2004)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Political Hyperbole!

Tibor R. Machan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Keynesian Non-Answer

Tibor R. Machan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anatomy of the bona fide Compromise

Tibor R. Machan

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

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

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

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

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

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