Must Corporations Be In Bed With Government?

Tibor R. Machan

For Karl Marx one reason laissez-faire capitalism would not last is that he believed big corporations would always subvert governments. The idea in support of such an economic system is that government can and must stay out of economic affairs. Economics, for champions of the fully free market, should be like religion, completely separate from government. Only that way would there be a level playing field in the economy, at least as level as that is realistically possible. (Clearly some people are born more talented, of parents with more resources than others, with physical advantages others don't have--so the idea of a completely level playing field is ridiculous.)

But critics of capitalism maintain that this level playing field is impossible to obtain when big corporations can appeal for support from governments. After all, even the most fair minded politician in a democracy requires support so as to get elected to office. And big corporations are in a better position to supply such support that small shops, universities, or other special interest groups. Which means big corporations will always be able to gain unfair advantages from governments. And so there really is no hope for a system of pure laissez faire capitalism, a fully free market such as advocated by libertarians. Business will always have the government on its side with all the powers it can offer to help out.

And this does sound like a good point. It is made these days by the likes of Ralph Nader, Michael Moore and others who claim that capitalism is inherently corrupt. Except for the fact that such a system is not actually a free market capitalist one, they are right. Once the government is legally allowed to accept favors from the citizenry, it is no big wonder that the richest of those citizens, mostly corporations, will be favored by governments. The task for those who support the idea of a genuine--bona fide free market, laissez faire--capitalist system is to establish legal bans against government and business coziness. Again, this is in principle akin to the ban on cozy church and state relations

Is this some kind of pie in the sky aspiration, to have a system in which it is illegitimate for business and government to get into bed together? Well, it would appear to be difficult, of course, since corporations do have the resources to seek out government favors--although so do some other institutions, such as unions and universities. But just because they can, it doesn't follow that they have to and will. Quite possibly laws and public policy can be established that make the ties between business and government illegal. What this requires is vigorous education, plain and simple, just as do all the provisions that make a political system less and less corrupt. Corruption is always a temptation and there is never any guarantee against it. All that is available to guard against corruption is citizenship vigilance and intelligence.

But many difficult objectives have been achieved throughout human history, so why not this? Slavery, which is so tempting for some, got abolished. The military draft is gone, at least in America. There is a first amendment in the USA that prohibits government censorship and any religious influence in government. Such improvements, and many others that rendered legal systems more and more just, could be accomplished and have been, despite enormous resistance. So why not the separation between business and government?

There is much to be said for such separation, even for big corporations--leaving them all to compete in a genuine free market without special help from government would seem to be something desirable all around. Yes, some will try to defeat that kind of system, thinking they can gain advantages not available to others. But over the long haul this is a myth. Corruption tends to undermine the whole system and produce harm to all those who are part of it, at least intermittently. So the case for cleaning up the system, for vigilant opposition to favoritism even when big powerful moneyed interest are vying for it, is a good one.

So while it is undoubtedly true that freedom is always susceptible to being undermined, in the last analysis there really isn't any better alternative. Such modern thinkers as John Maynard Keynes have tried to deny this--check out Kaynes' little 1926 book, The End of Laissez Faire--but they could present no alternative, nothing but the myth of the educated ruling elite. Yet throughout history this alternative has proven to be even more vulnerable to corruption than capitalism has ever been.

My Economic Vindication

Tibor R. Machan

When I was an undergraduate at Claremont Men's (now McKenna) College back
in the early 1960s, I took introductory economics from the now late
Professor Proctor Thomson, one of the less well-known Chicago Boys,
economists who studied under the late Milton Friedman and his colleagues at
the University of Chicago. He was a fascinating teacher and worked very
hard at explaining to us the mysteries of contemporary neo-classical
economics.

One of his lessons I recall well dealt with the concept of marginal
utility. He illustrated it by his own coffee drinking, pointing out that
the first cup for him was far more important than the next, and the next
was more important than the one that followed, etc. "More important" meant
pretty much the same thing as "of greater utility," utility in economics
being something entirely subjective, determined by the individual consumer
of goods and services, with no possibility of what was referred to as
"interpersonal utility comparison," which is to say of comparing one
person's preference with those of others. (I was a bit skeptical about
this myself since I thought my own preference for a painkiller when I have
a powerful headache might indeed be more important than your preference
for an M&M. Though this doesn’t by any means imply that I may take your
M&M away so I could get a painkiller!)

Another lesson that Professor Thomson tried to teach us had to do with
what was then considered to be a powerful concept of the famous British
economist, John Maynard Keynes, namely, the multiplier. This is the idea
that when the government injects funds into the economy, those funds
actually turn out to multiply and thus amount to greater economic value
(stimulus) than what they initially amounted to as taxes collected or
money borrowed. This is one reason that contemporary champions of
Keynesian economics such as Princeton University's Nobel Laureate in
economic science--and very influential columnist for The New York
Times--Paul Krugman are enthusiastic supporters of government stimulus
packages, so much so that they are critical of President Obama for not
injecting even more such stimulus into the economy (via public works,
borrowing, and such projects as clunkers for new cars).

When I was being instructed in the workings of the multiplier way back
then, I was a skeptic. I could not grasp how something could come from
nothing--if one injects $5 billion by way of government spending, how
could one get $7 billion worth of economic run for one's money? Never
mind that the entire scheme seemed thoroughly immoral to me--taking from
Peter to beef up the economic welfare of Paul just doesn't square with
admonitions such as "Do not steal."

But most economists--especially macroeconomists who focused on the total
economic system of the country and even the globe--were not very
interested in morality back then and few are interested in it now, come to
think of it. Yet even as a part of pure, value-free science the
multiplier just baffled me. You rob Peter of $5 and hand it to Paul and
it becomes $6 or $7. How is that possible? Especially when those who
administer the process will take their own bit from the original
amount--politicians and bureaucrats certainly don't do their part in all
this without compensation and are also prone to waste a lot of resources!

Professor Thomson nearly flunked me--I got a gentleman's C--in the course,
despite my having grasped well enough most of the rest of micro and
macroeconomics he taught us. (He was memorable, by the way, for
encouraging debates in class--I recall having many arguments with one
classmate who was an avid socialist!) He thought, however, that I had
this blind spot and didn't want to reward it, while I thought I would be
betraying my own loyalty to the metaphysics of Aristotle who thought
something couldn't come from nothing (as opposed to the modern philosopher
David Hume, who believed that if we could imagine it, at least it is
conceivable that something would emerge from nothing).

Well, I read this piece in the October 1 issue of The Wall Street Journal,
by Harvard Professor Robert J. Barro and recent graduate Charles J.
Redlick in which lo and behold the multiplier is debunked, good and hard.
According to the authors "The available empirical evidence does not
support the idea that spending multipliers typically exceed one, and thus
spending stimulus programs will likely raise GDP by less than the increase
in government spending." Moreover, they add, "there is empirical support
for the proposition that tax rate reductions will increase real GDP."

I must say I feel vindicated!

The Price of Compromise

Tibor R. Machan

Politics is sometimes said to be the art of compromise and this rings true enough, given the messiness of contemporary politics. Over the centuries those who aspired to rule and the later govern others had to contend with the fact that many don't like to be ruled and when it comes to being governed, they hold that certain standards apply to those who would govern. So compromises became the norm between the two factions. (There is no necessary progress revealed toward a just and free world in human history although there has been some. Compromises may just give away the bit of progress that has been made.)

The most important standard for making progress in governance is to institute a legal order that amounts to the protection of the rights of citizens, to secure their individual human rights. However much matters may vary from time to time and place to place, so long as what is at issue is human community life, some matters remain the same and this is such a one, namely that human beings require for their flourishing in life to be free of coercion. Oppression, regimentation, forcible manipulation are all enemies of humanity, even when many people fail to acknowledge this and placidly submit. (In personal relations, too, people often refuse to assert themselves but this doesn't make their subservience a good thing for them!)

The principles of human liberty, however universally valid for all individuals, are always under threat from people who would rather subdue others than deal with them on mutually agreed to terms. This is evident today in nearly all the controversies that dominate public affairs. Take that horrible war on drugs. Here is a cause that is mostly pushed by conservatives and it is a clear compromise of the principle of individual liberty. Or take such by now complied to policies as social security and Medicare. For the sake of some people running some other people's lives to secure them certain apparent benefits--often promoted under the banner of the public or common good--freedom is tossed aside.

Oh, there are numerous excuses for this, yes, but one thing is for sure. Once the compromise is accomplished, it is nearly impossible to recover the principle that is being violated. Consider, for example, that one argument in favor of a public option--that is to say, government provision of health insurance paid for by taxpayers whether they choose to or not--is that Americans have already accepted Medicare and many other government welfare measures, so how can they insist on rejecting government interference in this case? Surely not on principle! So why now, why here?

Yes, perhaps the answer is that enough is enough but this just will not work. The logic of the slippery slope defeats it. Once you accept that government ought to take care of our personal, private, and social--as distinct from public--problems, there is no principled reason to reject the next step toward further government encroachment. It may cost too much but then it is always possible to soak the rich or something, since no principle protects them or anyone else whose resources can be confiscated to fund it all--or just borrow against members of future generations who aren't around to even vote!

Republicans who protest that the public option is socialized medicine have no leg to stand on, given AMTRAK and the US Postal Service and hundreds, even thousands of other measures they accept which amount to robbing Peter to pay Paul in our society. That is the price of compromise--you have lost the argument since you have no principle on which to base it. Once you have accepted just a little slavery, a bit of involuntary servitude for the citizens of your community, why not go further? Why not conscript their labors and resources whenever you see something important to pursue, just go for it. The pragmatists say, you need to judge things on an individual basis but this is basically nonsense, like saying we should judge rape that way.

Without principles there is no way to judge, to evaluate. All that's left is power--do you have it to get your way or don't you?

Public Funding Morally Odious Projects

Tibor R. Machan

Reportedly representative Bart Stupak, a Democrat representing Michigan's 1st Congressional district who opposes abortion, wants to impose a ban on federal health care funding for abortions. The reason, obviously, is that he and those who agree with him consider it objectionable that they are being forced to pay for something they find seriously morally odious, something that as they understand it amounts to the murder of "unborn children." (This is, of course, a question begging way of referring to the early fetuses slated for most abortions.)

But let me not enter the morass of the abortion debate but stick to the issue of public funding of projects many members of the public find morally wrong. Of course Mr. Stupak has no legal case, not the way our federal system works these days. A great many people object to all kinds of projects funded by the federal government. Some even consider such funding morally objectionable even when they support the projects since it involves robbing Peter to support Paul, a practice that is arguably wrong. Yet in our bloated, illiberal democratic system of governance such practices are ubiquitous and legally authorized.

In order for Mr. Stupak to be credible in his stance on the issue of federal funding of abortion, by whatever method this is brought off, he must oppose all such transfers of resources from citizens to projects these citizens oppose. And that is hardly going to work since as a politician he is routinely involved in supporting such transfer of resources. Why privilege the abortion issue, then? Yes, abortion is a hotly debated matter, very controversial. But then so is the war in Iraq, even in Afghanistan. The war on drugs is perhaps opposed by the majority of Americans, both because it is evil to convict citizens who have violated no one's rights and because it is a colossal failure. Yet I have not read anything about representative Stupak protesting these policies. Why?

I gather Mr. Stupak is not a very principled person and from what we know about most contemporary politicians, this should be no surprise. So his stance on federal funding of abortions isn't likely to bear on his moral conscience. It probably has to do with his particular constituency. And then it is mostly about trying to win their support for his continued service in the U. S. House of Representatives.

Notice, by the way, that Representative Stupak seems to have no objection to a government managed health insurance/care system per se. I doubt he ever objected to Medicare and he doesn't seem to be opposed to the current efforts either. All he frets about is whether abortions will be funded federally. But how about whether citizens will be forced to pay for liposuction or fixing up someone who got into an auto crash because of reckless driving? Many citizens would rather not fund such treatments. Indeed, there are millions of us who oppose vigorously, on moral grounds, federal involvement in medical care or insurance. Does this politician give that any thought? Or is he merely trying to capitalize on his own constituency's agenda?

The big problem with the bloated, illiberal democracy so prominent across the globe is that it lumps us all into a mob that's to be dictated to by those who are most politically active and savvy within that mob. Democracy should never have been expanded to be so applied. It should have be left to the limited task of selecting representatives who were to expand the provisions of the U. S. Constitution to new areas, ones impossible to anticipate fully by the Founders and Framers.

Yes, there are some gray areas there but what we now have, where majorities can dictate to us about nearly everything, is absurd. It is spawning a citizenry at constant odds with itself, where no individual realm of sovereignty is left, where individual rights are treated as grants of privilege from the government with no other basis (say, in human nature).

Well, I suppose Mr. Stupak should not be expected to think of all this but when he mouths off about his own pet projects, he should expect that he will be called upon to account for his inconsistencies.

Why are our selves demeaned?

Tibor R. Machan

If there is a common theme among nearly all political factions here or abroad it is that selfishness is bad, unselfishness is good. Yet, at the same time, no one can fully live up to this idea. We wake up and endeavor to take care of ourselves and those we love, not our neighbors, let alone strangers. As the poet W. H. Auden pointed up this paradox, "We are here on earth to do good for others. What the others are here for, I don't know."

One plausible explanation is that the human self had suffered from a very bad reputation via the theological doctrine of original sin. If we are corrupt at birth, we should reject ourselves and care for others most. We aren't worthy of being benefited except to the extend necessary for us to serve others. Yet this is odd, just as Auden noted, because why are others worthy of all the care we ought to give them when we aren't?

In addition to the original sin besmirching of the human ego, there was also the 17th century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes's very influential idea that the human self is a bundle of unruly passions, mostly vicious or psychologically troubled. Hobbes argued that all of us live in fear of death, mainly, from which all our other motivation flows. Only by means of an absolute monarch will we behave peacefully toward one another.

With such a pedigree, which went against the ancient Greek idea that human beings are rational animals and their emotions are shaped by their good or bad thinking--which is up to them to initiate--no wonder opinions about the human self or ego became nearly all negative. But for the control over us by the government, we could all turn out like the Marquis de Sade! What a prospect!

To mitigate this, nearly all subsequent moral philosophy, especially the influential system developed by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, advanced ideas that meant to tame us, to contain us, to make us more sociable and direct us away from selfishness (which meant something insidious). Of course, if the self is so bad, then the selves of those who were to tame us couldn't be so nice either, so government slowly became something to be feared, too. But that fear is now subsiding and intellectuals and even most of the general population is putting its faith in government again, in the chief of state, essentially, who knows best. Sure, there is democracy but how could the population keep a check on the huge Leviathan effectively? So government is getting out of hand. But anyone who points this out is branded selfish and greedy and insensitive and all because of the ego's bruised reputation over the last several hundred years.

Too bad because, in fact, people are innately neither good nor bad but free to become either or somewhere in between (like most are). And such people fare best in a fully free society, not in one the bullies run pretending that they can do so well and wisely. If the human ego's reputation could be improved, the belief that people need to be regimented, regulated, nudged and so forth might change. (Yet, of course, even with its current undeserved bad reputation, there is no justification for all the regimenting since those who would do this job must also, then, have corrupt egos.)

One option that is being floated by some people is that no self or ego exists at all, that it is all a myth, that what we are is cells in the body of humanity or society, not in any respect independent, sovereign individuals. This will not work for one reason, among many, namely that those who are advancing the idea are also individuals and pitted against, in this view, many other individuals. Human nature is individualistic, although by no means anti-social--our egos are both social and individual. We have wills of our own but we flourish best among others like us.

If only this constant badgering of the human self ended, there would be hope for much better relations among us.

Keynes and the Ideology of Planning

Tibor R. Machan

In recent months John Maynard Keynes has enjoyed a renewed prominence. In the course of doing so he has been presented to the current population of interested parties as a scientist or at least non-ideological thinker. Several books are out now giving Keynes much praise, despite the arguable failure of his policy recommendations (and the dubious honor of having said the Nazis could make the best use of the policies he advocates). This is in sharp contrast to the alleged lost dominance of so called market fundamentalists, as Paul Krugman likes to refer to those who prefer a free society to one run by the likes of him and other Keynesians.

Just to set the record straight, here are a couple of quotations from Keynes from a book that didn't make him famous and few now mention, The End of Laissez Faire, published in 1927 and based on lectures he gave in Berlin in June of 1926.

“Let us clear from the ground the metaphysical or general principles upon which, from time to time, laissez-faire has been founded. It is not true that individuals possess a prescriptive ‘natural liberty’ in their economic activities. There is no ‘compact’ conferring perpetual rights on those who Have or on those who Acquire. The world is not so governed from above that private and social interest always coincide. It is not so managed here below that in practice they coincide. It is not a correct deduction from the principles of economics that enlightened self-interest always operates in the public interest. Nor is it true that self-interest generally is enlightened; more often individuals acting separately to promote their own ends are too ignorant or too weak to attain even these. Experience does not show that individuals, when they make up a social unit, are always less clear-sighted than when they act separately.

“We cannot therefore settle on abstract grounds, but must handle on its merits in detail what Burke termed ‘one of the finest problems in legislation, namely, to determine what the State ought to take upon itself to direct by the public wisdom, and what it ought to leave, with as little interference as possible, to individual exertion’.” John Maynard Keynes, The End of Laissez Faire (Hogarth Press, 1926; London, L. & Virginia Woolf, 1927.)

The attitude for which Keynes is often praised, of looking at economic matters without bias and only with an eye to how to promote stability, especially in the labor market, is not in evidence here. Keynes shows clearly that he was completely opposed to the free market and considered it perfectly legitimate for government to plan aspects of the economy. He may have even had some sympathies for laissez-faire but these were not convictions, only weak preferences.

What Keynes was eager to promote is the idea of the government's unbridled authority to tinker with economic affairs. That is the point of insisting so vehemently that nothing exists that stands opposed to that authority, no notion of Adam Smith's natural liberty, John Locke's natural rights, and other classical liberal ideas that were at one time beginning to be used so as to pull the rug from under those who saw fit to interfere with other people's economic decisions and circumstances.

In the little book he wrote, way before his General theory, of Employment, Interest and Money (1936) for which he is so famous, Keynes compares the free market to a jungle where some animals have the natural attribute of being able to reach the leaves on top of the trees in the midst of a draught, thus making out far better than fellow creatures who are left hungry, unable to obtain food any longer. In this he was in agreement with another champion of egalitarianism, the recently deceased Harvard political theorist John Rawls, who in his A Theory of Justice (1971) also embraces the idea that men and women are pretty much helpless as to the place they hold in the economy and society in general. No one is really able to escape his or her fate. We are all like those giraffes and gazelles in the wild, with the former naturally advantaged while the letter naturally disadvantages when there is scarcity of food.

Now of course in the wild no one rises to the powerful position of a government to remedy matters, which is what Keynes is clearly lamenting. But he says that people are in much better shape because those unable to fend can be helped by governments if we only empower it to do this.

Without entering a lengthy debate, the one Burke was referring to, it is worth noting that Keynes is contradicting himself. In the first place people are helpless and end up economically disadvantaged but then it turns out that they aren't at all helpless but are able to empower governments to remedy their situation.

Now if they are able to do this complicated thing, why are they unable to improve their lot in the market place, by education, networking, innovation, entrepreneurship, and some luck? It seems that for Keynes the sole avenue for self-improvement is to go to governments and seek their coercive support. Among other things what he fails to notice, as did Burke and other statists, is that government is composed of people and all the people with the power (some) others bestow upon them (or they grab) are susceptible to all the foibles Keynes attributed to people in general. But while in the free market place--and in free societies, more generally--there are checks against people inflicting their will on others--such as the protection of their rights, a minimal government function that may actually be carried out successfully--when governments gain the power to plan an economy they tend not to do this with justice and wisdom but with arbitrary force. And that is indeed inescapable because governments don't really have a clue as to what to do for millions and millions of people from on high. So what is left for them to do? To advance the visions of government officials, that's what, visions that have to do with their agendas and not with any mythical public interest or common good.

Keynes was wrong back then and his followers are wrong now, thinking that our salvation lies with government.

Radicalization

Tibor R. Machan

Nearly everyone has complaints about the way others use words. One of my pet peeves is when people are referred to as "that," as in "the person that wrote this book," instead of "who," as in "the person who wrote this book." Rejecting the distinction between "that" and "who" suggests to me insufficient awareness of what it means to be human and of a willingness to think of persons as objects of some kind, non-human animals, instead of human beings proper. As anyone can gather, this beef of mine rests on certain views I have about the world, views the targets of my complaint appear not to share--such as that human beings are unique enough to deserve to be referred to differently from how other stuff in the world is.

So now I was watching the news recently and the reporters were discussing the several people who have been indicted or are said to be suspects in various terrorist plots. In one report it was mentioned that some suspects in these cases are thought to have been radicalized while in prison. And throughout the report the term "radical" or "radicalize" kept being used as if being indoctrinated into a point of view that can prompt someone to indiscriminately maim and kill hundreds, even thousands of human beings, amounted to being a radical.

In my dictionary a radical is someone who thinks about matters relating to how to conduct oneself and influence public institutions by way of considering the foundations of ethics and politics. Radical is supposed to contrast with conservative because the latter refers to approaches to forging actions and policies by gaining guidance from established, tried and true, traditional ideas. In a certain respect all major scientists are radicals because they think things through thoroughly, from the ground up, all the way from the roots of their discipline. A radical in politics is someone who believes that to find the best approach to problems in the policies of one's community requires one to go to the basics, the fundamentals.

The people to whom the reporters referred as radicals are, in contrast, simply brutal, mindless, dogmatic men and women, quite opposed to thinking things through thoroughly, as radicals are supposed to. So why did they get labeled with this perfectly honorable term?

Perhaps another use of "radical" is in reference to someone who departs completely from the mainstream, who has no respect for any of the ordinary practices civilized individuals would normally consider as they go about planning their conduct and institutions. It is indeed a drastic or radical departure from civilized conduct to kill and maim indiscriminately, with no regard for who has been found guilty by means of due process. That is to say, such people are drastically different in how they act, monsters if you ask me.

But it is too bad that "radical" is used this way. It thus besmirches a very appropriate alternative to dealing with problems, namely, one that goes to the roots, that examines everything very carefully before launching into action. Indeed, the conventional opposition between liberal and conservative fails to capture an important element of the dispute. This is that conservatives recommend a method for dealing with problems, be these private/personal, social, public, or international, that relies heavily on what is learned from traditions, customs, and long established habits of thought. And while, of course, these are very useful shortcuts to what is true and right, they cannot be the best answer since there are so many conflicting traditions, customs, etc. To be able to navigate among these when, as so often, they are in conflict, a firmer source of understanding is required. This, as the Ancient Greeks taught, is human reason which is supposed to be able to help identify, with the aid of experience, what is what, at least as best as possible for the time being. Radicalism is, in turn, reliance on reason.

Conservatives have often scoffed at this reliance. As the most famous conservative thinker, Edmund Burke, put it, "each man's private capital of intelligence is petty; it is only when a man draws upon the bank and capital of the ages, the wisdom of our ancestors, that he can act wisely." Yet, Burke himself uses his own reasoning to arrive at this insight, so it cannot be entirely true even in his own terms.

It would be best, I think, to counsel people to make use of what the past offers but not before they have thought it over and made sure it holds up to reason.

The Proper Role of Government

Tibor R. Machan

Most of the time those of us who write columns address fairly specific issues and have only a little space to call upon general principles. But it is such general principles that guide the thinking behind the comments on special topics. Even the most pragmatic among us, who think principles are a myth, implicitly invoke principles, if only the principle that power is the ultimate arbiter of right versus wrong.

In my own reflections and comments about various topics, I do invoke certain basic principles of political life and perhaps it will be useful to lay these out, briefly. Perhaps the most crucial aspect of these principles concerns the nature and limit of a proper, just government. And where the position I hold is most challenged is how much government ought to do for those who lack the ability and resources to get into various areas of social life with some reasonable hope of success.

The government's role in helping to get people into the game, so to speak, when they are virtually or completely out of it, is, as I understand it, nil: this just isn't the state's proper and safe function. Putting it another way, the government isn't there to be generous, kind, helpful, supportive, charitable and so forth -- it exists so as to make sure peace prevails and justice is done. We, as human beings in our various relations to one another, must deal with innumerable challenges as the government protects our rights mainly so we are then free to choose to do what is right on our own initiative. (The government, like referees at a sports event, must take care of the rules, not play the sport, as it were. The players must do that!) And the system of rules, or justice, requires that no one's rights be violated, no one's rights to life, liberty and property and all the derivative rights that flow from these.

Now this is of course something not likely to be fully realized, even if it is in fact realizable. (Here a very handy work is Tom G. Palmer’s Realizing Freedom [2009].) But it is imperative for those who understand it never to give up the fight. That is a duty of citizenship -- to strive to advance and uphold the principles of justice as much as that is possible to do, whatever disagreements and opposition one faces.

It is not that the government might not here and there, now and then, do some extra good besides maintain peace and justice -- even help deserving people. But on average it does so at paying a price that is prohibitive, namely, becoming a criminal organization that subdues and robs Peter to "help" Paul. Government isn't able to produce wealth with which to help -- it must forcibly get people to work and confiscate their wealth to provide its support. And that is plain assault and robbery, however much cost-benefit analysis has gone into the process.

When government gets into helping people by hurting other people, it loses sight of its proper job and that encourages very serious malpractice. One reason so much goes awry in countries around the globe is that the governments do not devote themselves to their proper task of securing individual rights but have gone about doing innumerable other things that destroyed its integrity as a peacekeeping organization. And once the government lends its hand -- its legitimate tool of physical force when properly limited -- to purposes other than keeping the peace -- securing our rights -- there is no end to the corruption. Everyone will want to have the same done for his or her vested or special interest. So, even those exceptions that may seem so minor and have such good reasons behind them contribute to the corruption of the proper function of governments.

As to democracy, its role isn't to set the rules or establish the principles governments should uphold but to select the personnel who will administer the rules and work hard, often valiantly, to protect those principles. Otherwise democracy becomes complicit in perpetrating injustice -- as when people vote to take property from each other, to restraint trade, to set wages or to control peaceful sexual practices and otherwise attempt to regiment people to behave well. This is an assault on the dignity of the human individual and democracy cannot justify that.

Obviously no brief discussion can do this topic sufficient justice. Still, it might be of some use to know where some of us concerned about the growth of the scope and size of government are coming from as we offer our criticisms of its expanding scope and power.

No Omniscience or Incorruptibility

Tibor R. Machan

Aristotle was a sage and his reply to Plato's presentation of an ideal society, The Republic, which was to have an incorruptible leader--an idea some think even Plato didn't mean for anyone to try to implement--was to admit that in theory a perfect leader might be swell but no one can guarantee incorruptibility. Actually, corruption is most likely in such cases. So it is better to embrace a system closer to one wherein citizens share in governing themselves instead of relying on the great, wise leader.

This lesson of Aristotle should be kept in mind by the dreamers, such as Professor Paul Krugman of Princeton University and of The New York Times, and some other fans of the early 20th century British economist John Maynard Keynes. Keynes liked free markets up to a point but because he associated them with cyclical problems--failing to see, as the Austrians have taught us, that the business cycle is mostly a government induced phenomenon--he also believed that some regulations, some government tinkering is necessary to keep the system stable. Stability is a big deal to the interventionists and since they do not trust that the spontaneous market place is going to be stable enough, they champion government intervention in the expectation that that's going to avert the problem.

I know a fairly famous individual who has recently rediscovered Keynes and seems, based on his latest writings, sympathetic to these notions now even though in the past he has championed the free market, mostly on grounds of its overall superior productivity. By this is meant that free markets enable, even encourage people to make wealth, more wealth than any alternative system. A utilitarian would find this an irresistible reason for embracing a system since wealth to the utilitarian is nearly everything, including freedom. One can buy freedom if one is wealthy enough, goes the argument, so just get a system that is highly productive and have it done with, no need to argue about the individual's right to economic liberty endlessly. But because in relatively free markets there are occasional ups and downs of the entire system, my pal suggests that the Keynesian policy of injecting (artificial) demand into an economy is a good idea, at least in dire enough circumstances.

OK, it is not in much dispute that if there were some omniscient governmental agent or agency that could tell what needs to be done, it could help an economy to recover from down turns. Never mind what caused these down turns, let's just grant they exist now and then. And a super duper economic czar or committee may be just what could come in handy.

But here is the rub and where Aristotle's teaching, along with modern public choice theory, needs to be taken very, very seriously. For one, if the czar is corruptible, which by a sensible understanding of human nature and politics is undeniable, the expected and hoped for wise intervention is not going to be forthcoming. All the bright Keyneses and Krugmans and whoever will not be able to make sure that the best conceivable approach is taken to rescuing the economy, no sir. The best and the brightest can--and when they have massive power at their disposal will--go bad.

Furthermore there is that fatal conceit of which F. A. Hayek reminded us, the belief by the would be leaders, enamored by their smarts, that they can know what the economy needs--public works here, printing some money there, borrowing more somewhere else, funding infrastructure projects, etc. Oh how promising it all looks until you think it through and realize that, just as public works theory predicts, the funds meant for all this good stuff are going to be ignorantly--as well as and in part because of it corruptly--used. What in the imagination of a Plato or Keynes comes off as God sent turns into a disaster or, at most, a pretty messy effort to do something, anything whatever, to help matters.

My acquaintance, who appears to be a new Keynesian now, may find this too pessimistic, even misanthropic. I just think of it as Aristotelian realism and prudence.

Survey Says!

Tibor R. Machan

Very, very rarely I am contacted by some survey organization and I usually volunteer to answer the questions posed to me. Just a few minutes ago a taped interviewer, identifying herself as calling for the Rasmussen Group, called me up and I answered all the questions I was asked. Some of these dealt with my views on President Obama's current and expected performance and I answered pretty much as anyone who knows me would expect; I said, in essence, that his economic policies sucked.

I was also asked, however, a bunch of questions unrelated to my views, having to do with my ethnicity, age, income, etc. I reluctantly answered these except for one that I lied about. When asked my race I said "other" instead of "white." That was in my effort to discourage the outfit from taking race into consideration as surveys are being conducted. Answering such questions seem to me to amount to complicity in racial profiling, although the others, about my income or age, came pretty close to doing something like that too.

It is really annoying that a major, by many and by most mainstream news outfits regarded legitimate survey group engages in such profiling, something often condemned when done by, say, the police in the effort to flight crime. Why is it OK to deploy such profiling when people's views are being recorded? For one, I have held my views back when I earned a fraction of my present income, when I was a fraction of my present age, etc., etc. So what do these have to do with what an American citizen thinks about politics or President Obama's performance in office?

I was also asked about taxes, whether I consider raising or lowering them a good thing, as well as government involvement in the economy, ditto. Why would my age or race or income have any bearing on this? (And why was I not asked whether I consider the questions I was asked germane to figuring out what Americans think about foreign policy and the economy?)

OK, so those folks are supposed to know a thing or two about gathering information this way, by phone, on a Sunday afternoon, but some of what they did sounds fishy to me. Especially at a time when much of the citizenry throughout the country has given up on racism, agism, and similar kinds of categorizations with which bigots tend to assess the merits of someone's thoughts and actions. I am convinced that there should be a lot more about why one holds this or that view in the list of questions being posed--"Why do you consider raising taxes wrong?" "Why do you consider it wrong for the government to intrude on people's economic lives?" OK, this would take a bit longer to discover about us all--although they could do what they did here, namely select four or five possible answers and ask you to select from these--but it may be worth it since then it would foster critical thinking rather than political demagoguery.

Yes, that is one purpose of getting this information, namely, for politicians to gauge what the public is like so they can then appeal to their various irrelevant attributes and tempt them with offers they aren't likely to refuse. What age are you? Well, if there are lots of you that age, I will promise you retirement benefits and such. And so it goes for the other attributes that should have no bearing on anyone's political opinions, given that politics is supposedly about public affairs, not one's personal tastes and preferences. Ah, but who cares about what politics should be about? It is about bringing home the bacon, is it not?

Well, these are my reactions to being quizzed in the way the Rasmussen people go about quizzing those whom they contact by phone. I can fully appreciate it, by the way, that when the government takes its census, many people would find it very annoying and even inappropriate to be questioned along these similar lines.

Just thought I would make a public response to the Rasmussen people's approach to recording my views. It sadly tends not to be so much about my views but about the type or kind of sort of person I am, which should be completely off limits for responsible surveyors.

Homo Economicus vs. True Selfishness

Tibor R. Machan

For a year now much abuse has been heaped upon homo economicus or "economic man." The abuse got exacerbated when former Federal Reserve Bank Chief Alan Greenspan claimed that he had too much confidence in the idea. But what he said was very misleading despite the fact that he had been closely associated with Ayn Rand and her Objectivist philosophy, the ethical portion of which considers selfish conduct morally virtuous.

Greenspan's reference to "self-interest" is radically different from Ayn Rand's. The latter means by self-interest "whatever will enhance the objective well being of an agent." It calls to mind the exchange between Crito and Socrates in one of Plato's dialogues, the Phaedo, where Crito asks, "When you are gone, Socrates, how can we best act to please you?" and Socrates replies: "Just follow my old recipe, my friend: do yourselves concern yourselves with your own true self-interest; then you will oblige me, and mine and yourself too."

This is pretty much the substance of Ayn Rand's ethics of Objectivism: Do what in fact advances your best interest as the individual human being you are! In contrast, Greenspan was talking about the contemporary idea prominent in neo-classical economics, namely, homo economicus, according to which every free person always acts in his or her interest which is simply whatever anyone does if one is free to choose for oneself. The former idea of self-interest or selfishness requires of people to adhere to strict standards of conduct while the latter requires no standards for them to follow only to choose to do whatever they want to do.

Once again it is evident that the enemies of human liberty are desperately trying to stick it to the free market system by claiming that the empty homo economicus idea underlies it. In fact that idea underlies nearly all economics in our time, including that of John Maynard Keynes who is paraded around now as the great sage whose advices we did not follow and for which we are now paying with the current economic fiasco. Both Keyneseans and non-Keyneseans accept the "everyone is always selfish" view of market agents, the one Greenspan claims misled him.

That idea is in point of fact nearly useless since what it produces is vacuous claims, such as "Everyone will do whatever he or she will do if left alone, unregulated by the government." This is a wholly uninformative claim and that is, in fact, its main merit as far as many economist claim. Economists tend to stay away from morally or otherwise evaluating how people act in the free market. At least as economists they have no concern about that--as fathers, friends, citizens and so forth they may very well make such judgments but as economists all they care about is to explain what happens in markets. And they believe that assuming the truth of their idea of self-interested conduct, they can provide such explanations. This very, very broad "explanation" amounts, in essence, to the claim, "People do what they do in the free market because that is what they want to do."

The proper defense of the free market system is far more substantial than this. It states that if people aren't pushed around by governments and criminals, they will most likely do their best at figuring out what they should do, including how to earn and spend their resources. What the "best" is, however, cannot be told in general terms. But it can be told in particular cases, if one knows the agent well. And free men and women tend, in the main, to figure out what is best for them to do and pursue, objectively.

Whether the above is true is an important matter to determine but it isn't what Greenspan and other economists advance in defense of the free market place. (I think they should but that's another issue entirely.) Greenspan and most other prominent economists who favor markets tend to say simply that in free markets people are able to seek whatever they want. That is all they claim for freedom. But there is far more to it than this.

Free Markets vs. Pope Benedict XVI

Tibor R. Machan

It is of course the time now, with everyone pretty confused about just how much free market capitalism had to do with the economic mess for the enemies of economic liberty to rise up and seize the day! That way they may get some mileage out of it all for their ongoing mission, namely, to prepare people throughout the society for being ruled, managed, regimented, regulated by, you guessed it, them!
In his recent book, Caritas in Veritate: On Integral Human Develpment in Charity and Truth (Ignatius Press, 2009), we are implored by the Pope to love all instead of trade, as if this really were possible among billions of people. Such dreaming has done terrible damage to humanity for centuries, so why should the current Pope not buy into it? The kind of Christian love the Pope is promoting seems to him to be anathema to free markets. His reason? That the pursuit of profit precludes love among human beings.
As one reviewer of the Pope's book, Professor David Nirenberg of the University of Chicago's Committee of Social Thought, points out in The New Republic (9/23/09)--in an attempt to simplify the book's message, I assume--"In pursuit of profit, every individual attempts to extract the highest possible price, treating fellow citizens not as friends but as 'foemen,' thereby destroying the love of fellow citizens that is necessary for the common good of the polity." The reviewer brings in Socrates/Plato in support of his and the Pope's point against self-interest.
But in fact while Plato warned against crude self-interest, he also wrote, "Crito, 'When you are gone, Socrates, how can we best act to please you?' Socrates: 'Just follow my old recipe, my friend: do yourselves concern yourselves with your own true self-interest; then you will oblige me, and mine and yourself too.'" What the Pope and the reviewer of his book miss is that love cannot be spread thin across the world, not even across the market place. Trade does respect individual sovereignty and thus shows a certain sensible measure of love for others. But the deeper love that the Pope and so many others, among them most notably Karl Marx, demand of us all (in opposition to self-love and a measured respect we show other people in the course of trade) is impossible except among intimates--family, friends, maybe some comrades in arms and colleagues. That kind of love requires detailed knowledge of others and such knowledge is simply unavailable to us except about very few other people (not all of whom, moreover, will deserve our love).
The dreamers, like the Pope and his allies, would destroy genuine, realistically possible love of some few people for the sake of the shallow kind professed by politicians and celebrities. Interestingly enough, Socrates and Plato knew this when they sketched the ideal city in which love rules as against trade by quite arguably making it a utopia, something that cannot actually exist. The ideal city, like the ideal woman on the covers of Vogue or Elle, is a model imagined not a blueprint to be implemented. Yes it needs to be kept in mind but only a fool or fanatic would attempt to imitate it.
Socrates and Plato, when closely read, are clearly warning us against political idealism, against trying to transform the polity--or city or country--into an intimate group that's governed by principles of loving friendship. Trade, contrary to what is intimated by these idealists, by no means precludes genuine love among people. It doesn't insists, admittedly, that all who trade ought to love one another. The trade relationship is sensibly limited in scope--when you go shopping you need not get involved in the butcher's family life, the car dealers hobbies, or the dentist's personal problems. It is friends and relatives who do that, not those who populate the market place for the limited purpose of striking a good deal. And that purpose not only does not preclude pursuing friendship and other intimacies elsewhere but makes that pursuit economically possible, affordable, if you will.
As that saying I like so much states, "The perfect is the enemy of the good." Markets are not the highest of human institutions but they are excellent for the purpose for which most of us use them.

The Expanding Public Realm

Tibor R. Machan

Virtually every time someone promotes increasing the scope of government's involvement in our lives, the excuse is that the problem being tackled is a social or public type, not one of individuals. In some cases this is credible, as when a contagious disease surfaces. But in the cases now being dealt with by means of government intervention, such as smoking and even helping people to be happy, this is a phony excuse serving primarily to expand the reach of government into the life of everyone.

Both the Left and the Right resort to the tactic. When the Right advocates drug prohibition, the story goes that drug use spreads among people and is not the problem of individuals, nor can it be dealt with on an individual basis. Nearly all the victimless crimes, from prostitution to drug abuse, have been defended on the grounds that the conduct they involve spreads around the community and must be stopped in the name of protecting the community.

Of course, this is a plausible enough line in support of such laws because on and off people clearly take up vices because their neighbors engage in them. Bad conduct, as well as good, is often copied. It can be said of vices that they spread. But this is arguably a metaphor, not literally true. Choices are still the main determinants when people take up harmful drug use. The choices may not involve deliberation but they do involve intention, which is entirely sufficient for holding people responsible for what they do. (Just think of how criminal negligence rests on the presence of intention!)

The Left, in turn, invokes the collectivist ploy by claiming that other vices, such as greed and racism are fostered by way of peer pressure. Theorists of human conduct--they like to refer to it as behavior because that does not presuppose choice on the part of the agent--from both the Left and the Right effectively deny human volition when it comes to the kind of conduct they disapprove of and urge governments to ban. Since private conduct tends to be something both Left and Right accept as not government's business to meddle in, this theory of how the favorite vice spreads across the society is widely invoked by each.

Consider, also, how New York politicians and bureaucrats are now working to make smoking illegal even in wide open public parks, claiming that the smoke invades non-smokers' lungs even there. Never mind that non-smokers or anyone who wants to escape the smoke are very likely able to find a place free of it. But because sometimes the smoke travels to people who would rather avoid it, it is now a target for prohibition. It all becomes a matter of public policy which is the preferred way to organize society as these public administrators see it.

In a recent issue of The Sunday New York Times Magazine one article details how various benefits to people, such as being of a cheerful, happy disposition, can be enhanced by a process of osmosis, not by means of personal achievement and effort. Once gain, the idea is being reinforced that individual conduct is negligible in the shaping of one's life. Instead what works best is for groups to follow various practices. And from this it is but a skip and jump to the idea that such practices need to be imposed on people--if you want folks to be happy in their lives, make them get together with neighbors who enjoy themselves. That way, instead of by means of good personal judgment and conduct, happiness is spread around in the community. And how does that get accomplished? Well, naturally, by wise leadership, by instituting the Nanny State. (Books advocating "making people moral" and "making them just" have been produced over the decades by various academics--e.g., by Princeton University Professor Robert P. George and Notre Dame Professor James P. Sterba--who champion this kind of engineered society.)

As I noted earlier, of course osmosis can give support to people's well being and even happiness but could that be sufficient? And would appointing various wise leaders to engineer such an outcome not rob citizens of their sovereignty, their self-government? Of course it would but in the name of such projected consequences, why should one object?

More sensible is the idea that happiness, health and other good things come one's way by means of sound judgment and conduct and the role of osmosis is derivative, not primary. But this idea does not support the kind of petty tyrannies both the Left and the Right believe in.

Inventing Animal "Rights"

Tibor R. Machan

Among the truly bad guys in the Obama administration none can outdo Professor Cass Sunstein, now of Harvard Law School but earlier a colleague of Adjunct Professor Barack Obama at the University of Chicago School of Law. The really bad thing about Professor Sunstein is that he is championing one of the most reactionary and corrupt ideas in legal theory. This is that human rights are mere inventions of governments.

He and his co-author Stephen Holmes have argued, in The Cost of Rights, Why Liberty Depends on Taxes (1999), that, as they put it, “individual rights and freedoms depend fundamentally on vigorous state action” and “statelessness means rightlessness.” In other words, the idea here is exactly what the American Revolution was meant to refute, namely, that the government--king, czar, Caesar, or majority--grants citizens rights instead of securing the rights they have by virtue of their human nature. As Charter 08 of the Chinese (!) dissidents put it, "Human rights are not bestowed by a state. Every person is born with inherent rights to dignity and freedom. The government exists for the protection of the human rights of its citizens. The exercise of state power must be authorized by the people. The succession of political disasters in China’s recent history is a direct consequence of the ruling regime’s disregard for human rights." But Professor Sunstein rejects this and as a reward President Obama has appointed him, suitably, as the super administrator of all of the federal government's regulations.

Among the results of this development is that Professor Sunstein, who is apparently very fond of various animals, wants the government to grant animals rights, just the sort human beings have. And why not? After all, if rights depend on governments granting them, then whoever is the government is empowered to invent rights so long as the politicians and regulators will go along with this. There is really nothing very surprising about the idea since despite what the American Founders argued--having learned it from the English philosopher John Locke (who developed the theory of natural human rights)--American politicians, no less so than others around the globe, have been inventing "rights" all over the place.

Just now of course the most consequential of these inventions is the "right" to health care, health insurance, etc. The minimum wage was such a "right" invented earlier, as was the right to social security and to unemployment compensation. Indeed, this populist political idea has been around for quite a while and the U. S. Supreme Court has been declaring it constitutional despite the fact that it clearly is not. The entire edifice of entitlements that the American welfare state has concocted rests on this notion, that governments can simply cook up human rights and there need be no basis for them apart from that.

Of course, the cost of it all is enormous, which is one reason Professor Sunstein and his co-author were so eager to make the case for heavy taxation while denying that rights come from our human nature. Those rights, spoken of in the Declaration of Independence, are essentially negative--they spell out our sphere of liberty, not any entitlement to other people's labor and resources. That idea returns us to the time when people in a country were deemed to be subjects of the will of the monarch, essentially serfs, who can be forced to perform involuntary servitude never mind what they want to do with their lives.

And now come animal "rights," a phony notion of there ever was one. Animals are not moral agents and cannot have rights like human beings. One may have the responsibility to be humane to animals but not because of animal rights but because it would be cruel and mean to treat them badly without good reason. But for such reasons as medical research or feeding the hungry, animals may be used by people, just as may trees or fruits.

But if you don't like these niceties, sign up for the invented rights of the Obama team and see your freedom destroyed as a result in the name of what animals need from you, what they are entitled to.

On Respecting the Presidency

Tibor R. Machan

After one senator shouted out "liar" during President Obama's speech to Congress the other evening, one of Mr. Obama's cheerleaders at The New York Times intoned gravely that even if one disapproves of a given office holder, one ought to show respect for the office. Well, not really, not any more.

Suppose as a fan of the sport of baseball you have discovered that umpires across the country have become corrupt. They take payoffs, get sloppy with their calls, favor some players or teams based on personal prejudices and biases, etc. It is all over the place, you notice. Your child, however, is in Little League and the coach has invited a prominent umpire to give a talk at some celebration. Given the widespread corruption among umpires, you protest the invitation and when this is ignored by the powers that be, you go to the event and shout out or carry some kind of sign of protest. Those around you express dismay saying, well, yes, many, many umpires are admittedly corrupt, but the office of baseball umpire should still receive respect.

You then consider this and reply, well, the office may well be a good idea but when it is filled with crooks, respecting it is no longer possible or desirable. This reply holds in the case of politics, too.

In most countries it is pretty much a given that politicians are and have for centuries been corrupt. This is true even in so called civilized societies since politicians take bribes, payoffs, and favor special groups of citizens rather than the citizenry as a whole. Here and there one may find some poor, lone member of parliament who is doing his or her best to keep to the straight and narrow but then he or she is promptly defeated since what the public seems to want is not sticking up for principles but bringing home the bacon.

There used to be some hope for America's politicians, albeit minimal, because they were working in a system the basic principles of which aimed at keeping power out of their hands, certainly the arbitrary type that guarantees corruption among them all. The U. S. Constitution, with its Bill of Rights and separation of branches, was intended to keep politicians and their power in check. Alas, this intention has been thoroughly subverted over time, if it ever had a chance in the first place. Even in the time of Jefferson, Adams, Lincoln and other luminaries, corruption was rampant, if only the kind that amounted to overstepping the authority of the office these individuals were holding.

Today the entire field of politics, no matter which party is running the show, amounts to nothing much better than an extortion racket. You vote for me and I will let you have some money, favors, whatever; if you don't vote for me, don't support my candidacy, I'll show you who is boss. Wealth redistribution, the major task of national or local politicians--with armies of bureaucrats ready to do the detailed work--simply has no way of being done honorably. It is like asking bank robbers to be decent as they divvy up their loot; it cannot be done--that "honor among thieves" bit is an oxymoron from the get-go.

So don't preach about respecting the presidency when the presidency has been in the hands of people who have used it mostly for larceny or worse. That presidency has long lost its claim on anyone's respect. This is no less so than it would be with being a baseball umpire or football referee or judge at the Olympics if all those holding such offices caved in to the temptation to violate the principles of their office. That is exactly what the bulk of politicians across the country over the last several decades have done, yielded to the temptation to subvert their office in the name of various phony agendas, all of which mascaraed as working for the public interest. If you buy that one, I have a bridge for sale for you at an excellent price!

Chinese Fight for Genuine Freedom

Tibor R. Machan

Over the last four centuries the idea of basic natural individual (human) rights has had a rough career. After surfacing in history as far back as ancient Greece, then coming to nearly full fruition at the hands of the English philosopher John Locke--who had a major influence on the American Founders--several prominent political thinkers gave it a thumbs down. The English jurist Jeremy Bentham ridiculed such rights, calling them all "nonsense upon stilts." Although the idea had been adopted to serve the thinking of some major legal theorists, philosophers were skeptical. This is because philosophers began to move in the direction of the belief that only what could be observed could be known to be true and moral or political ideas could not pass this test, one that the sciences employed and benefited from.

Indeed, until the mid-20th century, ethics, morality, politics and aesthetics--all areas where one is concerned with norms, with how we ought to or ought not to think and act (where right versus wrong is most significant)--had been dismissed as literally meaningless. Yes, what to ordinary people is the most important area of human life, namely the issue of what standards ought to guide our conduct, to the major academic philosophers had no foundation at all. This is because of the widespread philosophical belief that only what is perceivable can be meaningful--"I am from Missouri, show me!".

This outlook lasted a long time, at least until it was realized, finally, that if it were true, then the rejection of these ideas would also lack any foundation. After all, the skeptic is saying, "You ought not to use ethical, political or aesthetic notions," and that, of course, amounts to the ethical notion that it is wrong to think in terms of what we ought to do or ought not to do.

But many people in the academic philosophical world, including some very prominent legal philosophers, hung on to the skeptical position so that even in our day some of the most influential ones reject the idea that politics could be based on principles of right versus wrong. Public opinion, majority rule, governmental edicts are all that can be invoked, meaning, of course, that in the end all we have is power underlying our morality and laws.

This is one reason that the idea of rights is no longer based on human nature but on governmental power. Several prominent legal theorists, some working in the new administration of Barack Obama, think that no one has any rights without government first giving it to them. Contrary to the American Founders, who stated clearly in the Declaration of Independence that government has as its job the protection of our bone fide rights--rights which exists without any government, rights based on human nature--these modern thinkers are taking us all back to the earlier era when rights were thought to be grants of the monarch, the king, Caesar or the voting majority. This, of course, goes against the belief of the Founders that even the democratic majority is constrained by the rights of the people and just like the lynch mob, may not violate those rights.

This is one reason that in our day governments--politicians, courts, bureaucrats and the lot--take themselves to be the granters instead of discoverers of rights. And ironically, it is now in countries across the globe that have had and still have governments that violate rights all over the place that the American Founders' and John Locke's views are dominant. For example, the Chinese Charter 08 group, under the leadership of Liu Xiaoba and 302 dissidents, has written as follows:

"Human rights are not bestowed by a state. Every person is born with inherent rights to dignity and freedom. The government exists for the protection of the human rights of its citizens. The exercise of state power must be authorized by the people. The succession of political disasters in China’s recent history is a direct consequence of the ruling regime’s disregard for human rights."

It is truly amazing that today it is people who have lived under tyranny instead of in relative freedom who make such a declaration.

Stealing a Penny

Tibor R. Machan

Over the centuries it had been pretty much routine for some (powerful) folks to raid the wealth of those not fit or well armed enough to resist this. Widespread trade entered the picture late in the game, as did generosity, charity, and other voluntary transfers of resources useful to people. In time, however, it dawned on most people that involuntary transfers are wrong and even to be prohibited. Yet this development has not always been fully embraced, not, especially, by certain formidable advocates of political economic systems that rest on wealth redistribution.

In a recent book highly critical of the free society as understood by libertarians, The Libertarian Illusion (CQ Press, 2008), the author, William Hudson, makes a snide comment by which I can only imagine he means to indicate how ridiculous the right to private property really is. He says, and I am paraphrasing, that taking even a penny from a millionaire is regarded by libertarians as theft. Now how silly can they be!?

Well, I am not willing to accept this "reductio ad absurdum" argument. Consider another area libertarians consider important, namely, personal liberty such that, say, rape or assault is regarded by them to be impermissible and should be illegal. Of course, there are relatively minor instance of date rape or quasi-sexual engagements with minors, as well as cases of minimal assault, such as bumping someone while walking past him or stepping on someone's toes and libertarians would not give these a pass either. Even some really minor sexual intrusiveness, such as ogling some very young person, may qualify for moral and even legal rebuke. Few may have suffered major injuries from such conduct, perpetrated by others against them, although some kind of untowardness could well have come from them, such as causing fright or anxiety. But it is clear that these would be minor, compared to out and out rape or mugging.

Well, we are in a similar situation with stealing even a penny from someone who is very rich and might not notice it. But stealing isn't merely removing something from another. It is a kind of invasion. Even the removal of a penny could be seen as such because for some folks it could be very important to hang on to whatever belongs to them and anyone who breaches this could produce serious malaise for them.

But even aside from any specific harm that could well come from stealing even a penny from a rich person--or just well to do one--what about the slippery slope effect? It is like telling white lies which in an of themselves could receive a pass but in forming someone's character is likely to lead to serious damage. If stealing of even little things is going to be approved of, especially by moralists, ethics teachers, and so on, at what point will a theft reach a level that may be condemned as morally wrong?

It is one thing to overlook, forgive, various minor moral transgressions, another entirely to approve of them, including as public policies. When governments perpetrate the transfer or redistribution of wealth from completely innocent citizens to others, they are not only injuring the former but establishing a precedent. So now it is fine to do a bit--or maybe even a good bit--of stealing because, well, Barack Obama made it clear that he approves of it (in his chat with Joe the Plumber during the election campaign). Indeed, reportedly House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told several wealthy people in a talk she gave in San Francisco that "You have money and we are going to take it from you."

Ethical transgressions, even legal ones, are not like violations of the principles of Euclidean geometry of formal logic but neither are they inconsequential matters to indulge in, not among civilized people at least. The entire point of being civilized, of being civil, is to deal with one's fellow human beings peacefully, respectful of their rights, even in small matters. And while small transgressions can be forgiven, they should never be praised.

Instead, though, in our current public policy climate we have out and out official flaunting of the fine points of human morality, especially those pertaining to respecting other people's property rights. From the U. S. Supreme Court to the Congress and the President, officials are practically proud of not caring about adhering to such principles of right conduct. The president of the United States of America and many of his supporters in the academy proclaim themselves to be pragmatists, which is to say indifferent to principled conduct and willing to bend ethics and principles of social life whenever these stand in the way of their grand plans.

But this is the way to building a corrupt society, not just an impoverished one.

Contra Krugman Again

Tibor R. Machan

A repeated theme of Paul Krugman of The New York Times and Princeton University is that Ronald Reagan was a "market fundamentalist" and too many of the critics of President Obama's economic policies are blinded by this ideology, so much so that they are retarding the great leap of progressivism that would come our way from the President and his team of experts. if only these critics got out of the way! Column after column Krugman criticizes Reaganomics. So let's take a look at this for a moment.

It turns out that Ronald Reagan didn't introduce anything radical or even very different from his predecessors (such as Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon) that can justly be called market fundamentalism. Nixon had declared that "We are all Keynesians now" and even went so far as to impose wage and price controls, just what an interventionist like Paul Krugman would welcome under certain circumstances and totally anathema to free market economic philosophy. And while Reagan didn't do that, he didn't deregulate much either as it is often contended by his detractors.

In a review of The Age of Reagan, The Conservative Counterrevolution 1980-1989, by Stephan F. Hayward, the reviewer, Ross Douthat, quotes Hayward thus: "Reagan successfully curbed the excesses of liberalism [but] he did not curb liberalism itself." Douthat himself adds, "The angst of his opponents notwithstanding, Reagan's budgets hardly touched the Great Society, let alone the New Deal. The conservative era he ushered in was, in fact, conservative: It halted liberals in their tracks, without significantly rolling back the state that Roosevelt and Johnson had built" (The NY Times Book Review, 9/06/09, p. 9). So all the angst Krugman has been voicing about Obama's critics and their Reagenomics seems to be unwarranted since, well, Reagan was actually quite in line with the policies spawned by Keynes (via Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon).

What this shows is once again that instead of arguing policy, numbers, history, and such, Krugman prefers to engage in name-calling, in labeling and besmirching. As if he didn't trust his readers to be able to follow arguments, as if economics for him were some kind of mysterious science only the in-crowd can grasp. For the rest, what is best is to assault the character of those who disagree with the Professor.

When it comes to facts and figures, however, Krugman is no better. As economist Donald J. Boudreaux of George Mason University writes, "Noting that 'it's important to have some perspective,' Paul Krugman argues that while Uncle Sam's budget deficit is now large, 'we also have a huge economy, which means that things aren't as scary as you might think' ('Till Debt Does Its Part,' [The New York Times,] August 28). Whew! No cause for much concern, for the size of America's GDP swamps the size of the budget deficit.

"During the Bush years, however, Mr. Krugman preached a different gospel. For example, in his February 11, 2005 column--devoted to condemning tax cuts--he insisted that 'the deficit is indeed a major problem.'

"So let's take Mr. Krugman's advice and get some perspective. In 2005, when Mr. Krugman insisted that government's budget deficit was 'indeed a major problem,' that deficit was 2.5 percent of GDP. Today, when Mr. Krugman no longer is very concerned about the budget deficit, that deficit will be about 11 percent of GDP."

Ok, so why bother with Professor Krugman's various infelicities? Because he is a big gun and if such big guns are allowed to carry on with their bad ideas unchecked, there is certainly going to be a high price to pay. Not that refuting them is always going to stem their influence--they often play to wishful thinking and arguments are not very effective means by which to counter their pitch. But one has to try--going down in defeat is far less painful if one has made the effort to set things right.

Today the Left's pitch is effective, in large measure, because George W. Bush has undermined any coherent defense of American values, mainly by his tax and spend policies as well as with his very suspect behavior when it came to the military measures the US took under his watch, indeed, under his command. So when it comes to resisting Leftist policies from President Obama and his academic cheerleaders, it is hopeless to rely on Republicans. What might do the trick is for those of us to keep on watch and exert pressure with criticism who aren't tainted with Bushism.

The Burden of Liberty

Tibor R. Machan

It was a contribution that the French philosopher and playwright Jean-Paul Sartre made to 20th century thinking, within his Existentialist outlook, to point out that although human beings are, unlike other stuff in the world, free to choose, this freedom is a big burden to them. For Sartre the burden came from the absence of God and any of helpful moral standards, a kind of absurd freedom that human beings must suffer instead of enjoy. Yet even if you acknowledge that there are standards for people to follow in their lives, standards by which to tell right from wrong, it is still not so very easy to make the choice the proper way.

So while for centuries most people lived in servitude and wanted out from under, once some did manage to free themselves--or were helped to freedom--it wasn't always something they welcomed with open arms. The reason isn't so difficult to see.

Freedom means not only choice but also responsibility. Free men and women have to face up to the fact that it is up to them to do the right thing, to find out what that is and to make the effort to do it. The zillions of small and large decisions made by them all require some attention, although because people can cultivate habits--like the habit of driving carefully, of working out, or of being polite to neighbors and such--it isn't always terribly burdensome to have to choose. They can, with admitted initial difficulty, commit themselves to a wise and prudent course and then stick to it and that way not need to handle every choice anew.

Still, the very prospect of being able to go wrong with how one acts can be frightening, so many folks escape into mindless routines or accept other people's rule over them. Just think of this health care mess--isn't it possible that millions simply don't want to have to cope with having to prepare for the prospect of ill health, of having to think ahead and save up and choose a good insurance system early enough in their lives with which to anticipate getting older and more frail? Instead of taking up the challenge oneself, it seems it's simpler and easier to get a bunch of politicians and bureaucrats to handle it all. Never mind that that assumes other people are responsible for one instead of oneself. Never mind that one is signing up for some kind of bondage and relinquishing one's liberty. But it seems such a hassle to start having to think of what the future may bring and how one needs to forgo current benefits so as to make sure enough that the future will not be left unmanaged.

Trouble is that this temptation to escape freedom is readily accommodated by those who like it when they are made to be in charge of others. Nothing like getting control of portions of other people's lives, to feel that macho and saintly feeling! Thus, in their eagerness to unburden themselves of responsibility, many folks find it ping to entrust the politicians and bureaucrats with jobs they don't like to do themselves. And this will make it seem that some folks are heroes, great people, leaders of us all--like the late Senator Ted Kennedy who recently, posthumously, found himself virtually canonized just because he took it upon himself to take care of people (with other people's resources, of course).

Sartre was on to something. Freedom isn't so easy to handle. But I would like to amend his thinking by suggesting that when one does assume the responsibilities that come with freedom, one will have something to be proud of. One will have lived up to the task of a human being to shoulder one's own problems--maybe with a little help from friends--and not dump dealing with them on other people who, after all, have problems of their own to deal with. And there is always getting together with others quite apart from the political. That, of course, also involved having to figure out which associations are the wisest, which are hazardous. But it will help one not only to act freely but to make as sure as one can that others are also free to choose for themselves.

Why Exactly is Slavery Wrong?

Tibor R. Machan

Hardly anyone in America disputes that slavery is wrong. It's an institution that must be prohibited, never to be readmitted into society. Indeed, slavery is so wrong that it is very tempting for decent men and women to devote time and resources to ferret it out abroad, wherever it is still being practice in measures large or small.

But why is slavery so wrong, so horrible? It is, simply put, because it obliterates an individual's self-governance or sovereignty. It takes over that person's life by others who have not obtained any authority to do this. Of course one can have peaceful relationships with others that could superficially appear like slavery does--when one is employed by another, virtually night and day; the difference is, however, that employment is voluntary. It avoid subjugating another against his or her will but involves coming to mutually agreed to terms. Sure, at times one party might be hard up a good bit and will more easily yield to the terms another wants but still, the employment relationship even at its most unpleasant contains the exit option. You are free to exit it and no one may go capture and return you to the employer. You are free, even if you may go hungry for a while.

Slavery, in contrast, means you are not free even if you're terribly well fed, even if your health is well taken care of by your master, even if you are being educated at your master's expense, even if your retirement is guaranteed. If the condition of your existence involves being coerced to perform services for someone, if you may not leave without loss of everything, if you are obligated to others regardless of your refusal to give your consent, you then are enslaved or, at best, suffer the condition of severe involuntary servitude.

Yet, while nearly no one would support slavery, the kind where on person is said to own another--which is morally impossible--millions believe in the idea that you belong to society, that you are not sovereign but in bondage to the rest, somehow. The most forceful expression of this idea comes from the French father of sociology, August Comte, who wrote:

"Everything we have belongs then to Humanity…[Comte's favored system,] Positivism never admits anything but duties, of all to all. For its social point of view cannot tolerate the notion of right[s], constantly based on individualism. We are born loaded with obligations of every kind, to our predecessors, to our successors, to our contemporaries. Later they only grow or accumulate before we can return any service. On what human foundation then could rest the idea of right, which in reason should imply some previous efficiency? Whatever may be our efforts, the longest life well employed will never enable us to pay back but an imperceptible part of what we have received. And yet it would only be after a complete return that we should be justly authorized to require reciprocity for the new services. All human rights then are as absurd as they are immoral. This ["to live for others"], the definitive formula of human morality, gives a direct sanction exclusively to our instincts of benevolence, the common source of happiness and duty. [Man must serve] Humanity, whose we are entirely" (Auguste Comte, The Catechism of Positive Religion [Clifton, NJ: Augustus M. Kelley Publ., 1973], pp. 212-30).

And many others promote this kind of collective slavery, all over the modern academy, in prominently published books, at conferences, in Op Ed pages, in prominent political speeches, everywhere. Yes, we are surrounded by loud voices that champion the very idea that used to mar whatever element of morality American culture had going for it, namely, slavery. You do not have a right to your life, to your liberty, to your resources, nothing. This is what is now advocated in books like The Myth of Ownership (Thomas Nagel, Liam Murphy) and The Cost of Rights (Cass Sunsten, Stephen Holmes). Well rewarded philosophers, like Charles Taylor of Canada's McGill University--recent recipient of the hefty Templeton Prize--proselytize that you belong to your community, that it is the community that has the right to your life and not you. This is the exact outlook that was defended by East German communists who justified shooting those who tried to jump over the Berlin war by claiming that these were, after all, thieves who were stealing the society's labor! "... In Germany the phrase for chattel slaves or indentured servants was Leibeigenen, for the bodies belonged to their owners; now we have the new concept of Geisteigene, for minds and spirits are also part of the new social property relations. When a bureaucracy considers itself to be the owner of literature, then it has the absolute personal right not only to cultivate its own garden but also to remove ruthlessly such weeds as it deems harmful." [Francois Bondy, "European Diary, Exist This Way," Encounter, 4/81, pp. 42-3] This very thing can be said about when a bureaucracy considers itself to be the owner of all wealth, of what the citizenry earns or comes by through peaceful means.

Collectivism of this sort is in principle the very same thing as slavery. Yet is it now being advocated in the United States of America. And it is terribly wrong and must be stopped however sweet the words are with which it's championed. When will those of us who refuse to submit to national health service be deemed to be weeds who need to be removed ruthlessly? I am not being paranoid--it has happened in the 20th century in superbly civilized Europe (a place loved by American liberals now for its wonderful welfare states) and can easily happen in the 21st unless Americans refuse to submit. Some already show this kind of disdain toward those who oppose their way!

What Reality has Society?

Tibor R. Machan

The question of how real is society can arise whenever people make reference to "obligations that citizens have to society," obligations in the name of which individual liberties are said to need restriction. (Other ways of putting the ideas is "obligatory service to the common good, public interest, etc.") Especially the liberty to own, trade, exchange, hoard, save, and so forth. The claim is that this kind of liberty may not be "absolute" because of those enforceable social obligations or responsibilities everyone has. (Especially anyone who has united with others to form a business corporation--the CSR or corporate social responsibility ruse, is what I humbly consider it.)

Please bear with me while I take you on this little philosophical journey. I teach and every year since the fall of 1970 I have met my various classes and taught for them various philosophy courses. I have obligations to my classes--for example, to know my subject, to arrive on time each period, make my assignments and grading policies clear to them, etc.

What, then, are my classes? Best as I have been able to determine over the more than four decades of dealing with them is that they are groups of individual students with a common chosen objective, namely, to become familiar with the subject matter of the course they are all taking. The class is, you might say, a group with a common educational purpose.

Is society something like this? A group with a common purpose?

That seems like a candidate except that members of my university classes are, as young adults, free to sign up or reject signing up for the pursuit that's the objective of the course they may or may not come to take. No one may enroll any of them without their explicit or sometime implicit consent--the latter if the course is part of a package of courses that amount to a concentration or major which includes it. But consent it crucial.

When one is part of a society one can join inadvertently, by being born to those who are already part of it. No consent is required, not at least initially. And when one is born into a society, unlike when one signs up for a class, one isn't assuming various obligations, although if one wishes to remain a part the others may impose some, few, elementary requirements--no killing, no theft, no assault, no similar aggressive conduct is acceptable, so those who choose to engage in these will be banished (e.g., to jail). (Remember Devil's Island? That was the idea of it.) Or one can join by requesting that one be admitted as a member--immigration is one such way).

Now some societies have rules that are imposed on members and some of these are reasonable, just, but others can be anything but. If they aren't reasonable and just, they aren't really fit for human membership. Some clubs within a society could, of course, exist that has rules that would make a large, human society unjust. For example, in some subgroups one might have to give up all of one's belongings or renounce eating on Fridays or even worship at the feet of some select members of the group. So long as membership isn't mandatory, this could well be acceptable--one size does not fit all.

But the larger society, the one into which one can be born, would only have rules that derive from what the members are all about, human beings. A human society, in other words, needs to accommodate human nature, just as an ant or bee or termite society would only be fit for its membership if it accommodated the nature of those members. This is not so with a university class I or thousands of other teachers teach since apart from needing to fit human nature, classes must also fit the purposes for which they exist, such as learning about biology or philosophy or law. One in effect takes an oath when one signs up for a class and if one seriously breaches that oath, one can be ejected (as many students routinely are).

Now what rules would fit a human society per se, just as such, a human society, with no special purpose that some members might like to sign up for? It depends upon human nature. Which is where the idea of natural law and natural rights comes from. By being natural, based on human nature, on what everyone has to be just to be human, these laws and rights indicate what rules members need to accept as well as what rules they may reject as unsuitable to human social life. Thus a society that has rampant violence, corruption, etc., as its constituent parts would not be fit for human inhabitation.

What then of the various claims that the membership has numerous obligations to serve society? What about a position like this one: “The ability that any of us have to earn income and acquire wealth depends only partly on our own individual efforts. It relies as well on the operation of political, economic, and social institutions that make it possible for any of us to ‘earn a living.’ . . .Viewed in this light, those deductions from my paycheck can be seen as reimbursements to society for that portion of my earnings derived from social goods” William E. Hudson, The Libertarian Illusion: Ideology, Public Policy, and the Assault on the Common Good (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2008), p. 43.

Sorry, this won't do. It would--and does, where it prevails--amount to imposing involuntary servitude on members of society, even if most members do benefit from the various features of the society; nothing may be imposed on members apart from having to act peacefully, non-aggressively. Anything else would amount to oppression, subjugation and the removal the most essential element of a bona fide human society, namely, respect for individual liberty.

On Freedom's Advances

Tibor R. Machan

The freedom of central concern to human beings is that of the adult individual not being intruded up, not governed by others no authorized to do so. Different types of freedom are sometimes talked about but they don't concern the law--such as being free of headaches or to fly off to a pleasant vacation spot. Those kinds of freedom can best be secured when one is free in the first sense, free of the aggression of one's fellows.

Of course, norms that are significant in community affairs needed being well enough understood before they could be tried out in practice. For centuries on end the freedom basic in human relations was constantly, often systematically crushed--as was done by slavery, serfdom, and similar institutions, or class systems wherein some were deemed superior to others by birth and thus entitle to rule them attests to this.

Nor is there any clear sign that steady advance toward realizing freedom--to use the title of Tom G. Palmer's new book of superb essays published at the Cato Institute--is forthcoming. It ought to, of course, but what ought to be done can be severely neglected. This is both because an understanding of the implications of the right to individual liberty grew slowly and because even once it was well and widely enough understood it was also widely and powerfully resisted by those whose rule over others was challenged.

Even today the most ingenious rationalizations are being regularly cooked up by theorists whom I call cheerleaders of statism. Those who are loyal to individual liberty simply cannot afford to relax their vigilance, never. To take a break from the effort may be necessary now and then, so as to enjoy what liberty one does possess and to be rejuvenated for resuming the fight. But such tasks never get completed since there is always a new crop of hopeful thugs ready to cash in on any relaxation by freedom's warriors.

As to the way understanding freedom has advanced, we can appreciated it from reflecting on how for many centuries the main focus on liberty dealt with various groups of people getting rid of other groups bent on oppressive them. Thus, for example, when Machiavelli identified the main task of the prince (or government) it was to secure as best as possible the freedom and independence of the principality, the country that was under his rule. This didn't much concern the freedom or liberty of individuals but it was a step in the right direction--not unlike the way talk of the self-determination of a country or group of people is an advance toward the most important form of self-determination, namely, that of adult human beings. Countries have no selves but the people who make up countries do and reference to their self-determination can be understood as a valuable step toward the main objective, namely, establishing the legal regime of individual rights. (It was John Locke who successfully redirected the concern for liberty toward individuals, away from states.)

Don't get me wrong, in human affairs there is no automatic, historically driven progress toward any good thing--even in science and technology there is need for vigilance otherwise regress will set in. That's because unlike the rest of the living world that is subject to evolutionary forces, when it comes to people with their free will and moral responsibility as central aspects of their lives, nothing moves forward without the personal effort needed to drive it.

Unfortunately, while over the long haul there is little dispute that individual liberty has made significant advances--at the hands of its dedicated champions on all the fronts where they need to exert the different types of effort--there is at the present evidence of regress, too. The promoters of human subjugation aren't unintelligent, stupid people; they are often quite vicious politically, yes, but not without brains. Just like all the minions and apologists of the monarchs throughout the ages, they are aware of the myriad ways individual liberty can be curbed, arrested, and reduced by means of fancy, sophistic excuses and clever, righteous calls for sacrifices for the alleged public interest or common good. (Check out a recent book devoted to this mission, written by one William E. Hudson, titled The Libertarian Illusion: Ideology, Public Policy, and the Assault on the Common Good [Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2008], wherein many old and new twists and turns are deployed so as to enhance the power of the state and deprive individuals of their liberty (which could be used to resist that power).

So please consider this missive as a reminder of the truth of that famous clarion call: "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance"--or as it was put originally in 1790 by an Irish judge, John Philpot Curran, "The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime, and the punishment of his guilt."