Hayek on Morality

Tibor R. Machan

When he was about to receive the Nobel Prize in economic science, I interviewed F. A. Hayek for Reason magazine (at his home in Salzburg, Austria). Although he didn't believe that political economists should dwell on ethical issues per se, he was by no means "necessarily a moral relativist" as Francis Fukuyama asserts in his Sunday New York Times Book Review piece (5-8-2011) of the new edition of The Constitution of Liberty (edited by Ronald Hamowy for the University of Chicago Press, 2011).

Hayek did, of course, object to the notion, mentioned by Fukuyama, that "there is a higher perspective from which one person can dictate another's ends." However, the stress here needs to be on “dictate.” No one can do what is morally right when this is being dictated to or coerced from a person. That isn’t at all because ethics or morality is subjective or relative. It is because to hold someone responsible for either morally right and wrong actions, it is that person who has to be the cause of it. The criminal law recognizes this, as have most moral philosophers. And when it is denied that one has free will or can exercise free choice about what one will or will not do, morality disappears. This is why so many thinkers who embrace determinism either reject morality as bogus or transform it into a social psychological device by which desired behavior might be encouraged or prompted from people. (A good example is much of the current work by nureoscientists!)

As Hayek put it elsewhere, "It is only where the individual has choice, and its inherent responsibility, that he has occasion to affirm existing values, to contribute to their further growth, and to earn moral merit.” (“The Moral Element in Free Enterprise,” Studies in Philosophy, Politics and Economics [New York: Simon & Schuster, 1967], pp. 230.) However, this view does not depend on moral relativism but on the ancient idea, held by most moral philosophers, that for conduct to be morally significant, it must be done freely, as a matter of the free choice of the moral agent.

One way to discredit defenders of political and economic liberty is to allege that they do not take ethics or morality seriously, that they are indeed subjectivists or relativists. Most people are pretty sure that some human conduct is ethically wrong or right. They teach this to their children and hold to this idea as they judge their fellows, including politicians and international movers and shakers. So to suggest that someone like Hayek, who defends freedom of choice in the market place, is a moral relativist pretty much serves to dismiss his or her views. But it is a mistake.

Alas, the effort does not succeed even when it is made by a famous public intellectual like Francis Fukuyama. It would have been far more accurate to say that for Hayek the tenets of a sound ethics or morality aren’t directly relevant to political economy. As he said in the same interview for Reason magazine, “I don’t see why it should be necessary for political philosophy to have any view at all about what is right for man—unless the political system does something about it, it needn’t concern itself with what is right for man.” This may be objected to for a variety of reasons but not because it supports moral relativism. Indeed, something akin to this position is held by Professors Douglas Den Uyl and Douglas Rasmussen in their book Norms of Liberty (Penn State Press, 2005) when they argue that the principles of classical liberalism aren’t directly derivable from ethics but are, instead, meta-norms, meaning, norms that are required for the social realization of ethically significant conduct.

The relationship between objective personal morality and the principles of politics which are basic to a constitution such as Hayek’s constitution of liberty is a challenging aspect of political philosophy. It does not help to casually dismiss Hayek’s approach by caricaturing it as moral relativism.

Why Can’t I see Bin Laden’s Dead Body?

Tibor R. Machan

I am baffled by this secrecy surrounding Bin Ladens’ death. Someone needs to do more explaining than has been done thus far.

Why when American taxpayers have funded a massive manhunt and eventual assassination of Osama bin Laden are they forbidden to see Bin Laden’s dead body? Why does president Obama’s presumed personal discomfort about seeing Bin Laden’s dead body determine whether American citizens may see it? What kind of law authorizes the White House to dictate to American citizens whether they may or may not view Bin Laden’s dead body? And I am sure there are many other questions roughly along lines of the above ones that could be asked and for which answers are arguably due us.

Over the nearly ten years since 9/11 there have been all sorts of conspiracy theories circulating about just who ordered the vicious attacks on the Twin Towers and the completely unjustified murder of the airline passengers and World Trade Center workers. Some of the doubters of the official story are difficult to dismiss but arguably certain alternative accounts are far less credible than the official account.

Nevertheless hiding Bin Laden’s dead body from us all contributes to suspicions about the entire matter. Why did President Obama make a unilateral decision about how Bin Laden’s body was to be buried? Is there any legal justification for what he did and if so why isn’t it communicated to Americans and the rest of the world?

And why is it so important to be deferential to Bin Laden’s followers concerning how Bin Laden’s body should be treated? Since when do supporters of mass murderers get to decide on such matters? Since when do their feelings take precedence of the feelings of those who have been targeted by such mass murderers and by those who may be left without a proper closure because of how President Obama decided to handle this?

My questions above aren’t rhetorical ones. I am giving voice to questions I know others have been raising and to which no answers have been made available by the White House. The exact protocol seems to be shrouded in mystery and none of the officials in the know seem to want to provide a solution to it. Not only is this fuel for conspiracy theorists but it also amounts to a level of official arrogance on the part of those who are dealing with the matter.

It was President Obama who not very long ago made a lot of noise about how the American people need to share the responsibility for the recent economic fiasco; if so why don’t they get to share in the knowledge about Osama bin Laden’s death? Why is the White House so intent on enjoying exclusivity about all this? Who does President Obama think he is, our ruler or our president--the presiding officer of the government? Why does he get to say that he is strong enough to cope with the sight of Bin Laden’s dead body but the rest of us aren’t?

Clearly some explaining is needed here. Even if most citizens are satisfied with how Mr. Obama has handled this, not all of them are and they are entitled to have their preferences honored, not just those who think nothing is amiss with it all. Not to mention its being dubious public policy in a democracy to leave millions of citizens shut out of the proceedings.

Also, those who don’t want to view Bin Laden’s bullet riddled body do not have to look at any pictures the White House could show us. No one would be forcing them to look. But it is clear that the White House is forcing those who do want to see to remain dissatisfied.

I recall being told by Mr. Obama during his campaign for the presidency and thereafter that he favors transparency on the part of the federal government. This instance belies that declaration point blank. And it continues providing those who keep casting doubt upon his veracity with ammunition. Could it be that he likes it just that way? Maybe he is testing just how much manipulation of the American citizenry he can get away with. Maybe he is planning other deceptions he’d like to know he can get away with.

Review of Tim Sandefur’s The Right to Earn a Living, Economic Freedom and the Law (Washington, D.C., Cato Institute, 2011). $25.95

By Tibor R. Machan

Tim Sandefur’s The Right to Earn a Living is so far as I can judge a flawless, superb discussion of how a proper understanding of American constitutional law implies that in this country everyone has a basic right to earn a living. Although this isn’t my specialty, I am well enough versed to be able to tell that Sandefur has a far better handle on the issue than, say, Cass Sunstein or all those who keep defending the contrary thesis in, say, The New York Review of Books.

I have been following Mr. Sandefur’s career for a while—he has given lectures in my university’s law school, which he also attended after doing his undergraduate studies at Hillsdale College in Michigan. The lectures he has given that I have heard have been excellent--clear and well informed, passionate yet also intellectually well crafted. This to my knowledge is his second book for the same publisher, the Cato Institute, where his Cornerstone of Liberty: Property Rights in 21st Century America came out in 2006.

Although most of this book focuses on the law—and Sandefur explores thoroughly the way the law in America has been influenced by ideas completely alien to the nation’s political-economic tradition (e.g., by that thoroughly misnamed movement, progressivism)—there is an underlying normative thrust to it on which the legal philosophy of the author rests. That normative thrust is Lockean natural rights theory.

As the author makes clear, the right to earn a living is actually implied by the American founders' reworking of John Locke’s list of natural rights, as per James Madison’s rendering in the Virginia Declaration of Rights where we are told that “all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights.” These include “the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursing and obtaining happiness and safety.”

I find the book so agreeable that I will now spend just a few paragraphs discussing one possible misunderstanding that could arise from its title and some of what the author says in the spirit of that title. Much of the work is spent on discussing legal, in particular constitutional, topics focused on private property rights. The history of the U. S. Supreme Court’s way of addressing the topic is not a very pretty picture and may even raise the question of what is the use of a written constitution if justices are going to vacillate so drastically in how they read it. Isn’t a written constitution supposed to facilitate stability and predictability in a country’s legal affairs so citizens can make long range decisions?

Let me leave this issue to the likes of Mr. Sandefur, who focus their attention more on jurisprudence than on general political philosophy. I do wish now to address one area of basic political philosophy that some elements of this book leaves unexplored, namely, just how intimate is the connection between earning a living and ownership.

Quite a few people, both now and in the past, defend the right to private property, to individual ownership, based on the idea that whatever one earns—or creates, or makes, or produces—surely is one’s own property and others have no right to it. And up to a point this carries conviction but it doesn’t at all go far enough. The problem is that there is a lot that an individual owns without having earned--made, created, or produced—it. Yet it still is one’s private property and no one is authorized to take it from one. By risking leaving the impression that ownership arises from having earned what one owns, one may be taken to suggest that only if one has earned what one owns can it be legitimately one’s property. And this suggestion will then be exploited by those who would just as soon confiscate from individuals any property they have not earned—such as what they have inherited.

Let’s start with the simple cases. How about one’s second eye that another may well have great use for? Or one’s second kidney? Or indeed one’s heart if one is some kind of no good, lazy loafer and another who’s an ambitious genius with noble aspirations to save the world could make good use of? Then what about what one was given as a gift? Not always earned at all! Or what about what one has found, free and clear, by chance?

There are quite a few political philosophers and theorists, even moralists, whose views imply that if you didn’t earn it, others are entirely free to take it from you. And if what you own is not being put to proper use, then, too, it can be confiscated by the authorities and transferred to someone who is deemed to make wiser use of it. The famous City of New London, CT v. Kelo U. S. Supreme Court case (of July 2005) whereby city bureaucrats confiscated private property from citizens and gave it to others was decided on such spurious grounds. In the famous Harvard University professor John Rawls’ book, A Theory of Justice (Harvard University Press, 1971) the same idea emerges. Because no one actually earns all of his or her assets in life but comes by them through luck or fortunate upbringing, there is nothing objectionable in depriving people of what they are taken to own. After all, as Rawls put it, “The assertions that a man deserves the superior character that enables him to make the effort to cultivate his abilities is … problematic; for his character depends in large part upon fortunate family and social circumstances for which he can claim now credit” (104).

Nothing at all follows about other people having the authority to take from one something one hasn’t come by through hard work, through having actually earned, produced, or made it all. That’s plainly a non-sequitor. Only if one came by something through theft, extortion, robbery, burglary or similar violation of another’s rights is there justification for such taking.

Yes, one way to come to own something is by having produced or earned it—something that is made very clear in Sandefur’s book—but there are others, including having been born with it, having it as part of one’s very identity as the human individual who one happens to be, or having been given it. That’s enough. Others just have no warrant for butting in, however great their goals, be it the will of the people or of wise leaders or anything like that.

Private property rights flow from one’s having an unalienable right to one’s life, a life that is one’s own and no one else’s, not the family’s, not the tribe’s, not the clan’s, nor of the nation or community or some other group of other people who already own exactly what they have a right to, namely, their own lives. Sandefur suggests nothing other than this but still, it is important to make clear that it would be to misunderstand the nature of property rights to suggest that only when one earns property is it in fact one’s property.


So having come by something without having stolen or extorted it from someone is plenty or warrant for owning it. And then, of course, if one has put one’s mind to making good use of something no one else owns, that is also an excellent reason to be deemed its owner. It is also one of the best incentives for productive work.

All the supposed scholarship favoring collective, public, or community ownership results, mostly, in providing some private individuals with free goods—a type of rent seeking—who want to confiscate the property of other private individuals under the illusion or guise that they represent the public or the general will or some fathom entity like that. No, those groups are no more than a group of other people who want what doesn’t belong to them. Mostly they wish to promote the idea through the myth of the superior importance of the greater numbers. But there’s no substance to it—millions of people can all be plain takers, lead by misguided thinkers who just want to come by wealth without having to meet the terms of those who own it.

The right to private property applies not only to owning what one has created—although few of us create something entirely anew, from scratch—but also to what emanates from us, from who we are. So if by total accident I am a good-looking bloke and can cash in on it by getting a paid appearance on the cover of GQ, nobody is justified to take from me of my proceeds, not my neighbor, not the government, no one.

Some defenders of our private property rights are tempted to link ownership rights too intimately to merit but that’s folly for we are not always the owners of things—including our lives and limbs as well as much else we own free and clear—as a matter of merit. It can all still be our property if it isn’t anyone else’s. And whatever we do own others better keep away from unless we permit them to do otherwise. Any system of “laws” that fails to heed this point is, as Mr. Sandefur demonstrates in this excellent volume, ultimately illegitimate.

Some Consequences of Mixed Systems

Tibor R. Machan

China is what political economists call a market socialist country, with political socialism at a virtual dictatorial level (as distinct from, say, democratic socialist and liberal democratic countries) and is thus very precarious when it comes to its political stability, kind of like Chile was under General Pinochet. The rulers will keep trying to square the circle, having a largely free, capitalist economy and a one party socialist political regime. But everyone knows this is very vulnerable to upheavals, especially once the economic side of the equation makes enough ordinary people wealthy so they no longer look to the government to sustain their way of life.

When a country is politically socialist, this means that officially what is most important is the well being of society as a whole. Karl Marx referred to a socialist society as an organic whole or body and this implies that the different elements of it, the limbs, organs, cells, etc., are all subordinate to the whole society. This is why such a country is also called collectivist--it is the collection of everything, including people, land, natural resources, culture and achievements, that is important. Certainly the individual citizens are not except as they contribute to the society as a whole. By such an understanding of a society or country, anyone who isn’t fully on board with where the society is headed--as determined by the rulers who are, officially, the head of the organic body--is deemed to be mentally ill. Sometimes so much so that like some tumor in a human individual, such an individual might need to be cut out or otherwise pacified. Any idea that such an individual might simply be a legitimate dissident is officially alien in a bona fide socialist country.

Of course, there has never been a fully functioning socialist country--even in contemporary North Korea, which comes the closest to the idea, small segments of the population manage to function outside of the system. In the economy there is a sizable black market that operates without the full involvement of the government (which is the official policy). Indeed, in all the political economies around the globe referred to as “capitalist,” “socialist,” “fascist,” “communist,” or “welfare statist” the correspondence between what the theory requires and what exists in reality is rather loose.

Still, it is undeniable that when the legal system conforms mainly to socialist tenets--when the public sector is deemed to be far more important than the private sector--this will have practical consequences. In the official rhetoric of the rulers and their supporters there will be routine endorsements of the superior significance of the public versus the private interest in society. Non-profit endeavors will be favored, at least in official discussions. The idea that people are all a tiny part of the country--and that, for example, they ought not to ask what the country can do for them but ask what they can do for the country--will be embraced and seeking to advance one’s own agenda will be deemed objectionable, greedy, selfish, and narrowly individualist.

The welfare state, in turn, is indeed an explicit attempt to combine certain socialist and some capitalist political economic features. A more complicated mixed economy will have elements of most political economic systems combined in it, a kind of smorgasbord in which some of the items may not co-exist well with others and where if troubles arise it is difficult to tell which element made the greatest contribution to it. Nor will the successes be easily traced to their causes.

For example, the recent financial fiasco--some call it a meltdown--comes from a mixed system and not from the policies of one political economic arrangement and so to tell which of the various elements that have been in place for decades on end--or which combination of them--is responsible is very difficult to determine. This is one clear reason why when the likes of Paul Krugman point fingers at the free market elements, such as a bit of economic deregulation, as responsible for the mess, their claims can be seen as purely ideological, meaning indicative of their prior, unexamined commitment to anti-market economic policies. No one who is honest could tell from a quick examination that the meltdown or whatever one calls it was caused by one or another type of economic ingredient of the mixture that has been in operation for a very long time. It is possible to figure that out but it would take meticulous study since the different elements of the mixture do not operate in isolation from each other. It is as if one tried to determine why one caught food poisoning after a sumptuous smorgasbord. Any one or some combination of the items on the menu could have been responsible.

A statist will tend to blame the free market elements whereas a free market champion will look to statist elements to explain the mess. And this is not without good reason, since both have gained confidence in their ideas over time and do not consider it plausible that elements they champion would have produced havoc.

That is just one of the consequences of a mixed economic system.

More Foibles of Unlimited Democracy

Tibor R. Machan

It is certainly no secret that while democracy has certain merits as a method for reaching political decisions, it is liable to be abused without those limits. American democracy was always feared, even by the framers, and unless it is restrained by a good, just constitution, it can get way out of hand. It can turn into mobocracy, nearly as bad as an out and out dictatorship.

Unfortunately many who desire serious political change stop at democracy and do not proceed to consider its proper limits. This is what afflicts many countries across the globe, including most of those in the Middle East just now in upheaval. The countries that used to be Soviet colonies as recently as the 1980s are also struggling with just what kind of democracy should be adopted for them. Not very surprisingly while a good many embrace the democratic process, very often when this yields exactly the results one would expect--namely, produces public policies that the majority (more or less) wants--complaints are voiced about these results as if it weren’t crystal clear that the process will often yield something many citizens do not want. But if one really just wants pure democracy, no constitutional restraints with it, how can one complain? It makes no sense. That is just what a limitless democracy will yield, policies that most but definitely not all support. It is a bit like a jury driven courts system--whatever the jury decides has to be deemed acceptable (yes, even when the defendant is one O. J. Simpson).

In Hungary, for example a recent constitutional upheaval involves the democratically elected Fidesz Party which is changing the constitution in ways many are protesting. The size of the national debt is now limited, which of course doesn’t sit well with those who have dreams as their guide for public policy, kind of like our own liberal democrats. When one wants to base policies on fantasies like unlimited, costless indebtedness, ignoring the burdens of nonvoting future generations, constitutional limits on the debt will be upsetting.

Yet if that is what the democratic processes yields, how can champions of unlimited democracy protest? The Hungarians are also facing numerous other measures, such as officially stressing Hungary’s Christian roots (which of course doesn’t sit well with quite a few Hungarians). With the super-majority, the Fidesz Party is pushing for measures in education and even the media--they have no first amendment there, which would ban using the power of this super-majority from dictating matters in these areas--that limit the liberties of millions of Hungarians. Yet, so long as they simply want majority rule, they have nothing to complain about.

In America, too, there is a lot of fuss about what Republicans and, especially, Tea Party members and supporters want to make into public policy, despite the fact that this is just what is yielded up with the democratic process, one so eagerly embraced precisely by those who don’t like what the Republicans and Tea Party folks propose for the country. Well, sorry about that but you cannot have it both way--unlimited democracy with restrictions on what may be enacted. You have to take your pick. Will democracy be limited in its scope, in what may come under majority rule, or will it be the bloated kind which can extend to regimenting virtually everything in the country? When a party enjoys strong support, big numbers, the latter tends to be favored by its members; when it doesn’t well then limitations are urged upon it.

The real answer is to have democracy seriously confined to some issues, such as who will administer the laws of the land (but not to what those laws will be, which is supposed to be what the constitution determines). Some minor exceptions would involved the amendment process which would get supervision from the Supreme Court so it doesn’t amount to altering the principles on which he country’s laws rest. But majorities would not be permitted to transform the country into something alien like a socialist of fascist system. For that one would need a revolution, which is not easy to get under way.

It is understandable why elsewhere democracies are highly prized, limits or no limits. That’s because ordinary folks throughout human history have had little say about their political circumstances and with democracy they get some. But that’s just the beginning. The limits on democracy are as important as democracy itself.

Progressives are Reactionaries

Tibor R. Machan

The simple answer to why progressives are reactionaries is that they tend to want to empower governments to solve all of the problems that face people in their social lives and that is just the authority that kings, tsars, pharaohs, and other rulers have claimed for themselves throughout history. The literally progressive position is that no one gets to rule anyone else without that other’s permission. So a football coach or physician or orchestra conductor may rule only because he or she is permitted by those being ruled. But no one else has such authority without such consent. Today’s pseudo-progressives, however, want to assign such authority to governments without anyone consenting to being ruled about a great many matters that their favored governments want imposed on the citizenry.

More generally, governments that rule people have been the norm throughout human political history. Here and there and now and then this practice hasn’t prevailed but mostly it has. In contemporary times the term “ruler” is still used in, say, Libya and Dubai. It was the American Founders, or the majority of them, who demoted the English king and along with him all monarchs--no longer were they deemed the sovereign but a servant of the citizenry.

It is true that American conservatives, often associated with traditional values, have embraced much of what the Founders installed here and this may make it appear that what the Founders believed was itself conservative or traditional. Not so. In American it is the distinctive tradition to champion limited government and not the bloated state. So that is why American conservatives are really more radical than their modern liberal, welfare statists opponents.

The confusion is understandable but foes of the fully free society like to engage in discrediting what they do not like instead of arguing about it. In any argument there is no question that the political vision of the American founders wins hands down. It is a superior system to all those that went before which have all been more or less statist, gripped by the governmental habit. It is just this habit that modern liberals have reaffirmed, what with their wish to make government the caretaker of society, the nanny and ruler of us all. That is the old idea of politics and there is nothing truly progressive about it at all. Let’s just get this straight.

Sure the statism embraced by contemporary liberals, socialists, fascists and the like is somewhat different from the older kind, from mercantilism, from monarchism, from the rule of Caesars and tsars. Not all statists are the same. But what is crucial about all of them is that they are statists. They do not favor certain particular version of statism such as monarchism that had been demoted, overturned by way of the American revolution. The Founders were nearly libertarians except for some matters they probably didn’t know how to handle without some coercive laws, such as the funding of law enforcement and maintenance via taxation. But taxation is the feudal kin of serfdom--the treatment of those in a society as if they and their resources belonged to the government. That idea is not knew at all, nothing progressive about it whatever. It is however the idea that is close to socialism in which system all the major means of production are publicly owned, belonging to government (which goes by the euphemism of “the public”). And what does socialism see as the major means of production in a society? Human labor. So human labor--which is to say every human being--is owned by the state. The hallmark of serfdom and slavery.

Progressive my foot. This is thoroughly reactionary, taking contemporary politics back to an era that was prominent before the American revolution challenged it good and hard. This is crucial not just for purposes of political rhetoric, which can delude people who are not all that well versed in political history, but also for dealing competently with public policy. Any such policy that treats the citizen as a subject--subject to the will of the government, that is--must be rejected without any compromise.

A Most Costly Fallacy!

Tibor R. Machan

No need to keep readers in suspense--the fallacy is to aim for certainty beyond the shadow of doubt! It is very costly because by holding on to the belief that if one lacks such certainty, it’s OK to believe this or that and to do this or that, one is wasting enormous resources. And this is the basis of much public policy--especially, since the funds to engage in such fruitless pursuits can be obtained via the extortionist methods of taxation which creates the illusion of no limits. It is no accident that President Obama, for example, has linked his own public philosophy to the idea of hope--as seen in the title and theme of his famous book, The Audacity of Hope (Canongate, 2007). Pursuing what one can only hope for, mostly against all reason, is just how one produces enormous debts, especially when one doesn’t need to worry about who will have to foot the expense of such pursuits.

In the sciences, too, this is a major fallacy. For centuries, for example, there has been a debate about whether one can know if other people are conscious. It goes something like this: “No one can enter another person’s mind and all one can do is observe behavior, so isn’t it possible that everyone who superficially seems to be conscious like oneself is, in fact, mindless? Isn’t this possible? Can it be ruled out? Is it certainly so beyond a shadow of doubt? If not, well go for it!”

Well, if the standard of what can be ruled out is that it must be certain beyond a shadow of doubt that it could be, then most of what one imagines cannot be ruled out. Are we certain like that of anything at all? Isn’t it conceivable, imaginable, that I am dreaming that I am sitting at my computer now typing away? Can I be sure beyond a shadow of doubt that I am not? Sure, but what of it? Such doubtfulness is utterly pointless, irrational. It is why in a court of law the goal is certainty beyond a reasonable doubt, not a shadow of doubt.

If it were possible to gain certainty beyond a shadow of doubt, it would be impossible spell it out. For doubts can always be imagined past the current ones. What should be the standard is certainty of the kind that withstands doubts that are well grounded, for which reasons exists. So that if I were sitting at my computer and my vision and thinking became fuzzy and around me all were spinning in a fog, then I would have reason to doubt that my belief that I am indeed sitting there would rest on something worth exploring. As it stands, simply fantasizing that I might be out of my mind is a source of paranoia, not sensible concern. And costly visits to a psychologist!

So can we be sure that others are conscious even if we cannot get into their minds and check this out? Yes, indeed, we can--even those who toy with the notion that people might to be deny this notion in how they act and live, for example, by writing about the issue for readers they surely know are conscious enough to grasp what they are saying.



The fallacy of wishing for the kind of certainty that is beyond a shadow of doubt shows up everywhere--despite the lack of evidence for extraterrestrial life people and institutions invest enormous resources on searching for it. Despite no evidence for thinking that government stimulus packages can dig a country out of recessions or depressions, politicians and policy wonks keep up the hope that it is possible to do it--getting something out of nothing, to put the idea in its most basic form and thus indicating just how contrary to reality it actually is.

There are two very good books about this issue that should be read far more widely than they are. Shirley Robin Letwin’s The Pursuit of Certainty (Cambridge University Press, 1965), and Ludwig Wittgenstein On Certainty (Harper, 1969). The bottom line is that although it is sometimes, rarely, useful to base actions and policies on mere hope--if there is at least some credible reason lined up behind such hope--in the bulk of cases resting public policy and personal aspirations on the fact that one doesn’t know beyond a shadow of doubt that a course of action is futile is a very bad idea. And it is very very costly, unless you can steal the funds from others to support such fantastic explorations.

Who is Near Socialism Now?

Tibor R. Machan

Nearly all people who believe in a pro-active government--one that doesn’t merely make sure the rule of law by which individual rights are protected is followed but gets in there picking winners and losers--have a good deal in common with socialists. They are more or less avid statists. This includes monarchists, fascists, communists (with some peculiarities though), welfare statists, modern liberals, many conservatives and so on. Only classical liberals and libertarians are exceptions. They either adhere to a very limited role for the government--they are, in short, minarchists; or they may even embrace a kind of anarchism.

In America there are very few thinkers who come right out a identify themselves as socialists but quite a few are clearly statists. They believe government ought to make large contribution to the way the society and culture shapes up, from education, economics, science, all the way to the arts. Only religion and the press are excluded, mainly because the framers of the US Constitution to explicit and firm objection to government involvement in religion and journalism.

But there is a good test for telling if an American statists is in fact nearly a socialist, even a socialist of the Marxist variety. This is to see if he or she holds that people’s labor belongs to the society or to them--is one’s labor private or public property? The recent controversy about President Obama’s health care policy, one feature of which is that government is authorized to force citizens to purchase health insurance, is a kind of litmus test. This policy involves the government coercing people to engage in a certain kind of labor, even if only the labor of purchasing health insurance. Citizens, just for being citizens, are deemed subject to being forced to do something they may very well not choose to do, namely, to expand their labor and resources in ways they may believe is wrong.

Yes, this is not a Draconian measure for sure. And there are some other similar measures already on America’s law books, so it isn’t even entirely exceptional. But it is rather blatant and unabashed. Forcing people to get a license to work in some profession is similar but one might chalk that up to an overly zealous concern with safety, not to making people purchase what they do not want. The idea that a citizen’s labor belongs to the government to manage, to give direction to, is not just statist but indeed part and parcel of Marxian socialism.

Here is the late Professor Robert Heilbroner, famous mainly for writing The Worldly Philosophers (Simon & Schuster, 1961, a history of economic thought nearly all students are assigned upon entering college), spelling out the point in his less well know book, Marxism: For and Against (W. W. Norton, 1980):

“Indeed, the creation of socialism … requires the curtailment of the central economic freedom of bourgeois society, namely, the right of individuals to own, and therefore to withhold if they wish, the means of production, including their own labor. The full preservation of this bourgeois freedom would place the attainment of socialism at the mercy of property owners who could threaten to deny their services to society—and again I refer to their labor, not just to material resources—if their terms were not met…” (p. 157, my emphasis)

That is the crux of the issue: Not just private property but the private control or freedom of one’s labor is abolished under socialism; the state in that system (which is to say the group people in government) knows best what citizens need to do and have the legal authority, even duty, to make citizens comply for the good of society.

Is this what is involved in Obamacare? To a certain extent it is and if it is an intricate aspect of Mr. Obama and his supporters’ public philosophy, it signals that they are moving toward socialism, the state’s rule over the population of the society. (It bears out F. A. Hayek’s warning issued back in the 1940s about the heavy handed welfare state, in his The Road to Serfdom [Routledge & Sons, 1944]!)

And that means that all those who have made the charge that Obamacare is socialist have been on target and not engaging merely in badmouthing, besmirching the president’s efforts to solve an important social problem. And why protest the charge anyway? Why don’t Mr. Obama and his supporters admit outright that they want a socialist health care system and maybe even a socialist political economy in America? If such honestly were to obtain, we could start a real argument instead of engaging mostly in name-calling.

Ayn Rand & Libertarians Grossly Misunderstood

Tibor R. Machan

In my local paper a letter writer, apparently eager to besmirch Ayn Rand--which many have tried in vain--had this to say: “Rand’s libertarianism has an underlying philosophy that says that if you are not particularly smart, ambitious, disciplined or wealthy, and you become homeless, hungry, financially ruined and suffer from premature illness or death, then that is entirely your fault.” (April 25, Local p. 5)

Neither Ayn Rand nor libertarianism says any of this. What they both do say is that if you are in such a state, you by no stretch of the imagination have the authority to deprive others of their resources. You can ask, of course. And surely that is correct.

Even a person in the greatest of need has no warrant for stealing from others. What such a person most definitely is fully justified in doing is to request help from others which, in America especially, millions provide at little urging--just consider the help that they provide when something like Katrina or a tsunami strikes, and all the charitable contributions they send to the casualties of various similar mishaps. They do this far more than citizens of any other country.
Both Rand and libertarians support voluntary aid but oppose, most vigorously and vociferously, confiscating what other people own.

Nor do Rand and libertarians hold that everything the letter writer lists is one’s fault, quite the contrary. Many mishaps people experience, because of illness and natural disasters, are clearly not their and (most often) anyone else’s fault. Bad things do happen, be it to good or bad people.

What Rand and libertarians have believed, on pretty good grounds, is that when improvements are needed in people’s lives, relying on confiscating other people’s belongings and coercing them to do work to provide assistance are flawed and morally wrong remedies. Instead, voluntary cooperation is both the most ethical and the most effective way to go.

This idea is by no means odd. In broad terms it is recognized that countries the laws of which protect their citizens against coercion--violent criminals, intrusive or meddling governments--are in better shape than those ruled by strong rulers who impose their idea of what is good for everyone not by convincing citizens of what they believe is right but by imposing their will on them. Be this in small matters or large ones, history is replete with the lessons about how coercive force between human beings is an ill advised way to handle problems.

In one area, especially, this has proven to be true for the last few centuries. Ever since Adam Smith published his path-breaking book The Wealth of Nations in 1776, it has been understood by quite a few political economists that prosperity is best pursued in peaceful ways. Voluntary economic relations among people are what is now referred to a win-win situation, whereas coercive economic relations are primarily zero-sum games, meaning when one party gains the other loses. In most of human history, sadly, this latter is how wealth has been obtained and many still advocate the approach even today. This is in part because in a largely free markets--there has never been a fully free market anywhere, unfortunately--those seeking to have their needs and wants met, from gaining groceries to major medical treatments, have been able to find nearly exactly what they have in mind, suiting their particular, individual needs and wants instead of some general benefit that governments prescribe for everyone, something that always suffers from government’s ignorance of what it is that can benefit individual human beings. This may be one reason boosters of government involvement in our lives--in other words, statists--tend to speak mostly of the public interest or the public good or the common welfare since these are so indeterminate, to vague that no one can check out just exactly what they come to in practice.

Aside from all this, there is also the less well known greater generosity found in free societies than in those with top-down government regimentation of nearly everything in people’s lives. But this isn’t government “generosity,” involving robbing Peter so as to hand some of the loot to Paul. It is voluntary charity and philanthropy so it is likely to be far more efficient than what the government does when it sets out to “help” people, including the poor, indigent, hapless, or unfortunate among us. (It isn’t help when one doesn’t dig into one’s own pockets or bank accounts but those of other people and hands these to those in need of help. Moreover the welfare state didn’t emerge because private help was not forthcoming.)

Ayn Rand and libertarians have supported all voluntary contributions to the people the letter writer listed, provided those people aren’t set on robbing others to support their goals or urging the government to do so. Rand, in particular, did believe that focusing too intently on the needy is a mistake. After all, even the needy are much better off if the productive among us are championed. And how are the needy ever going to gain from rich bashing, by denigrating and discouraging those who create the resources from which they might benefit?

You Know He’s Desperate Now

Tibor R. Machan

So President Obama will create a task force to investigate if there might be crimes committed that lead to high gas prices. The operate term is “might.” That is what one says when one has zero evidence but intends to implicate unknown parties and please one's base which is committed to the class warfare idea of economic relations.

Of course gasoline costs a lot. Just look around the world--people are using more of it and the prognosis is they will be using even more in the near future; the places where oil is drilled are in shambles; the American government will not allow any digging where there’s plenty of oil in the USA, and on and on. Speculators, a perfectly decent bunch of people who try to take care of their and their clients’ economic welfare--part of the group of wealth care professionals in the land--will obviously try to buy oil futures now so as to escape the coming even higher prices. This is elementary economics and to be expected of people who choose to be prudent in their lives and economic affairs.

But Mr. Obama seems to want to cash in on it all by revving up the rhetoric of class warfare. Who must be behind rising gas prices? Someone, surely (even while he preaches about shared responsibility when it comes to the enormous debt the government has assumed). So who shall it be this time--Wall Street? The banks? Tea Party Republicans? No, this time it will be speculators, unnamed people who can be conjured up in the minds of people who already do not like business (wealth care) professionals. Mr. Obama needs those who harbor such hatred since they are the ones who hopes will go out and campaign for him. Who else would?

Now do I know that this is Mr. Obama’s intention? No, but I seriously suspect it. Moreover, there is better evidence for this suspicion than for the alleged suspicion Mr. Obama voiced, namely, that corrupt people in the oil industry are committing crimes and driving up gas prices. That, it should be noted, is sheer fantasy, totally baseless.

CNN News Room newsreaders are all for Mr. Obama doing this shadow chasing. What else can they do? Repeat elementary lessons in economics? Do they bring in experts on oil economics? No. That would be responsible journalism and by now we know that CNN gives us partisan news through and through--Mr. Obama can do no wrong and all his pronouncements are sincere, meant earnestly. Even Fox TV gives more room to opposing positions now.

But there is hope. Mr. Obama’s popularity is plummeting. Not because he will not prosecute--or is it persecute--oil people but, most likely, because he will not do the most elementary thing about all this, namely let companies drill, drill, and drill some more. That would lose him another part of his base, environmentalists. Which is to say, Mr. Obama is putting politics and his ambition to get a second term way ahead of the task of addressing the high gas prices, which he seems to be merely pretending to address.

Mr. President, please, pretty please, toss the task force idea and open up our known oils fields and hope the voters will realize you did the best you could. Just as with gold, so with scarce oil, prices will keep rising. But there is little gold to go around, while there is plenty of oil to drill for.

Why are these folks not getting it? I suppose the answer to this is manifold but one source is the late Mancur Olson’s theory that not until the bottom falls out will people and their lobbyists and politicians stop engaging in what economists call rent-seeking, urging that other people be ripped off so they can have an easier way in their lives. And for such a political climate to prevail one needs to come up with accusations against those whom one wishes to be ripped off. This task force idea of Mr. Obama achieves that goal--demonize oil people. Next time he can go back to demonizing Wall Street, the banks and, of course, Tea Party Republicans.

Pitfalls of Shared Responsibility

Tibor R. Machan

President Barrack Obama asserted in a recent speech dealing with the country’s enormous debt that what the country needs is to live by an ancient principle, namely, “the principle of shared responsibility.” He invoked this in his defense of his championing of the increased extortion of the resources of the wealthy, those who earn $250K or more per year. Why this “principle” should be invoked he didn’t say--he seemed to think it’s obvious.

Frankly the details are not what’s important her--what is is that extortion from rich and poor alike is evil and destructive of the country’s economy. In addition, the idea of unassumed share responsibility for economic mismanagement (either by individuals who ought to care for their household finances or by public officials who ought to care for the country’s economic affairs) is a very harmful one. Shared responsibility applies only where those who are to share have freely volunteered to do so. I am not morally and should not be legally authorized to conscript my neighbors to share the household debts I have assumed for myself in, say, my repeated refinancing of my mortgage.

It is interesting that a good many policy wonks complain when companies dump their waste into the public sphere--the air mass, rivers, lakes, or oceans. And they are right--such dumping is intrusive, a violation of the property rights of those whose sphere has been used without their consent. The idea of sharing the responsibilities assumed by various public officials in the name of the citizenry is no different. Some, very few, public expenses are, of course, the responsibility of all citizens--national defense, maintaining the legal infrastructure of the country, etc. But when public officials spend resources on what they deem to be important projects, such as a bridge in their district or a dam or a school, these are no shared responsibilities by any stretch of the imagination. These are the responsibilities of those individuals who elected to assume them. The rest of us, who have assumed different responsibilities, are not to be imposed upon by making us all share the burdens of fulfilling such responsibilities.

There is an ancient principle that President Obama ought to consider before he imposes responsibilities on those who didn’t consent to assuming them. It is “the tragedy of the commons.” Perhaps the best statement of this principles comes from the ancient Greek philosopher, Aristotle, who pointed out that

“[T]hat which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it. Every one thinks chiefly of his own, hardly at all of the common interest; and only when he is himself concerned as an individual. For besides other considerations, everybody is more inclined to neglect the duty which he expects another to fulfill; as in families many attendants are often less useful than a few." (Politics, 1262a30-37)

This principle is widely embraced by environmentalists who realize that when spheres are commonly owned, they fall into neglect. The same holds for shared responsibilities--people tend to assume that others will fulfill them and they do not need to worry. Even more importantly, it is nearly impossible to determine for a huge population in a country such as the USA just what is to be shared and what is not. Is one to share the responsibility for another citizen’s crimes, debts, children, etc.? Why, if you decided not to have any children, must you shoulder the responsibility of supporting them? Why share the debt that others have assumed unless you are a close friend or associate?

No, the idea President Obama floated in his discussion of how to handle the enormous national debt is a nonstarter. And the idea of coercing those making $250K or more to shoulder most of it is obscene. No one is going to pay attention to balancing his or her budget if others will be forced to pay one’s debts. It is also a terrible practice to support by the leader of a supposedly free country in which citizens may not be punished unless they have been shown to have committed a crime.

In fact, all this sharing of responsibility amounts to letting off the hook all those who acted irresponsibly in their finances, private or public.

On Demeaning A Straw Men

Tibor R. Machan

A. C. Grayling, an normally sensible English academic--just check out his book, Liberty in the Age of Terror (Bloomsbury, 2009)--wrote recently in The New York Review of Books: “Of course, people who hold extreme political positions are not troubled by such conflict [as the one between wanting to make everyone economically equal and also making sure everyone is free]. They simply disown the values that they believe cause the conflict. The libertarian can say that only freedom matters and the totalitarian that personal freedom does not matter at all. But for people who are sensitive to the full range of moral values, the extreme views are not options....”

We can pretty much stop here since this setup embodies a serious distortion. To start with, the protection of the right to liberty is not a moral but a political value but once one concludes that it is of great importance in politics, there is ample room left to attend to moral responsibilities, that is, to one’s ethics. But for folks who want everything done by way of politics, this is a strange idea. Isn’t every value one holds supposed to be political, directing only public policies?

Libertarians do hold that the right to individual liberty across the board is the prime political value but by no means the prime value. Politics for libertarians can be thoroughly derivative, meant mainly to secure the possibility for a full moral or ethical life. Why be free? Mainly to be able to choose right from wrong, that’s why.

I don’t know about totalitarians but even there Grayling is offering a caricature. Most totalitarians aim to guide or make people to do what is right, which could be serving God or the public interest, following the democratic plan, saving the earth, conserving natural resources, etc., etc. But never mind totalitarianism. Is Grayling even nearly right about libertarians?

Since he gives us no libertarian to examine, no quotations from Rothbard, Nozick, Rand or the rest--and these days there’s a plethora of them who have written plenty to cite for anyone who wants to do them some measure of justice--we need to check what libertarianism means as one of the political options in our day and age.

As the term clearly indicates, it is all about liberty, in particular about a polity the legal system of which takes the right of every citizen to be free of coercive force from others as its highest value to be protected and preserved. As I already pointed out, this is just the beginning of a libertarian’s system of values. These are the politics that the libertarian holds will secure for citizens their sovereignty, their sphere of personal authority. Within that realm, however, innumerable moral challenges face a citizen. Libertarians do not address those qua libertarians but mostly as ordinary free men and women with their various sources of moral convictions.

The only thing libertarianism has to say about one’s moral convictions is that they may not include coercing anyone else to do anything. Coercion is using unprovoked force on people, ones who haven’t violated the rights of others. If you believe it is your moral duty or responsibility to rob Peter so as to help out Paul, that will not fly. It is like holding that one has the moral duty to rape or kidnap someone. Some may--and sadly some do--claim that this is what they ought to do but they are confused or vicious. Only vis-a-vis children or invalids could one have such moral duties or responsibilities, never toward intact adults.

Despite what we could call the thinness of libertarian politics--the opposite end of the thickness of any kind of totalitarian regime--it does not follow that libertarians hold “that only freedom matters.” That’s what matters politically but as far as how human beings should conduct themselves in their lives, a plethora of moral requirements will be on the agenda for everyone. Fathers, mothers, friends, colleagues, sports partners, farmers, engineers, doctors, and all others who occupy some such role in life have a list of virtues they ought to practice. Hence even college courses in medical, business, engineering and legal ethics, for example.

On top of it there is just the ethics for living one’s human life, ethics addressed by numerous philosophies and religions and nearly all libertarians embrace one or another of these in their personal, nonpolitical lives.

In The New York Review of Books it seems even largely libertarian folks must demean that political alternative. After all, if libertarianism is the politics of a good, just human community or country, there is very little meddling left for all those bright in its pages people to do. Who will they be nudging? Where will they practice their oxymoronic paternalist libertarianism? Put plainly, whom will they be pushing around so as to fulfill their aspirations when they fail to voluntarily enlist support from others?

Finally, what is so extreme about libertarianism? In fact is the common sense social philosophy of most civilized people. Fulfill your moral tasks as a matter of your own free will and leave others to do the same--they aren’t your children or subjects! But make sure no one gets to lord it over anyone who acts peacefully. Not so extreme, me thinks!

Republicans are Disarmed

Tibor R. Machan

In the current Democrat-Republican fracas Democrats want to ignore fiscal prudence and claim they are doing it for the poor and needy. Republicans, in turn, claim they don’t want higher and more taxes because of their speculative contention that taxing takes resources away from the market where jobs are created, especially by the rich who would spend what they have if its not confiscated from them.

When it comes to the strength of the two sides’ arguments, the Democrats win because they have the moral high ground, given that the Republicans lack a moral case in favor of their position. But there is one. But Republicans are as wedded to confiscating other people’s resources as are Democrats, only perhaps not as much of it as Democrats. The bulk of the members of each party believe in taxation for the goals that are dear to them. And with that premise, the Democrats have the upper hand since their goals are more compassionate, caring. Yes, the Republicans do embrace the virtue of prudence but in hard times generosity or charity trumps prudence. We all go out of our way to stand up when times are tough to help out, even if this is risky. People will jump into troubled waters to rescue someone even if they might perish. Not perhaps if they know they will perish but if they only might, the risk is worth it.

If, however, the Republicans took a principled stand against extortion and defended the idea that it must be those who own the resources who decide what should be done with them—whether to give it to the needy or invest it in productive endeavors, for example—then there would be a chance for them to win this argument. For, while people often sympathize with compassionate intentions and policies, they generally do not sympathize with coercing others to make them compassionate. Indeed, they sense that one cannot make other people do what is right—they must choose to do the right thing, whatever that happens to be.

What the Republicans ought to do is insist that whatever help people need in this country—or indeed anywhere—it must be given freely, not at the point of a gun. That theme may sit well with most American citizens since it is, after all, the centerpiece of the country’s political philosophy. Freedom! Republicans miss out on standing up for it against Democrats and come off as merely having a different scheme up their sleeves, one that seems like cronyism to Democrats and their supporters. Don’t tax the rich because it is an inefficient way to help the poor! This comes off as a bogus idea and it is to cave in, too, instead of to stand up for something really different.

The entire history of political oppression rests on the theme that important goals, like helping the needy, require oppressing people, forcing them to labor for the greater good, for society, for the public interest. It has almost always been a ruse, of course, but it is difficult to rebut unless one has a sound alternative, namely, insisting on everyone’s right to decide how one’s labor and resources should be made use of. It isn’t about wealth but about choice!

What the Democrats and their supporters want is control over everyone’s resources. They have argued this position for centuries. They still argue that it isn’t really your wealth at all, it belongs to society, the public, and in a democratic republic its allocation must be left to politicians. Not true but sounds plausible enough.

Several of the major intellectual advocates of the Democrats’ way make this point quite explicitly. Consider the books The Myth of Ownership, by Thomas Nagel and Liam Murphy, and The Cost of Rights, by Cass Sunstein and Stephen Holmes. And the Democrats’ base, the Left, has for all its existence denied that people have a right to the products of their labor, let alone what they come by through luck. Property rights are the first to be abolished in Marx and Engels The Communist Manifesto. It is basic for the Left, including for the somewhat softer, watered down American version of it we find among the thinkers who forge the Democrats’ public philosophy.

Republicans, if they want to win, must attack this directly, not with supply side economics but with Lockean individual rights. Until that happens, they will remain losers.

Atomization & Commodification in Capitalism

Tibor R. Machan

That free market capitalism, if it existed, would atomize and commodify people is a charge that’s been around quite a while. It pops up for sure whenever someone means to disparage the free market economy.

Atomization is the idea that people, like the early conception of atoms, are fully self-sufficient, autonomous, in need of nobody, ruggedly individualist through and through. Is this view of people really assumed in a capitalist, free market economy?

Remembering first that no such economy exists, it isn’t possible to test the idea based on experience. What we live in is a mixed economic system and that means there are socialist, communist, fascist, capitalist, welfare statist and who knows what other economic styles in evidence through most developed countries, including America which is closely associated with capitalism but wherein free market capitalism hasn’t ever been realized. Zillions of economic regulations, meddling by politicians and bureaucrats, infest America’s economic order, as do government ownership of some enterprises (e.g., Amtrak, public forests, beaches and parks, first class mail delivery, roads, etc., etc.). America, also, is home to innumerable more or less sizable experiments in collectivist forms of life such as convents, kibbutzes, communes, and the like, and they all have economic features that impact the larger society.

But when it comes to political systems they can be scrutinized to a degree without their being fully actualized. Thought experiments, for instance, are one way to examine them. And, of course, some of them have been dominant enough in various periods of human history around the globe so that those interested can study them closely enough. So we might then conclude that whether free market capitalism tends to atomize the citizenry in America can be discerned if one pays close attention.

So are Americans atomized? Not by a long shot. What is true, however, is that in the field of economics, where free market capitalism is studied most directly, many use a model of the economy that assumes that the agents acting in it are atomized. Everyone is a utility maximizer, claim such prominent economists as the late George Stigler. Such folks do assume, but usually only for theoretical purposes, that all agents in the free market act self-sufficiently and choose all their social relationships, although only in a limited respect. Yet what the economist uses as a convenient tool is usually moderated by building into the model elements that closely resemble actually social lives. And there is a plethora of community life in America, consisting of ethnic, religious, athletic, and other groups by no means only of business corporations. What distinguishes them mainly from communities elsewhere is that most people largely enjoy the exit option--they are free to leave. And champions of collectivism tend to find this irksome. They don’t want folks to enlist but to be conscripted. For them to belong means not just to be closely, even intimately, associated but out and out kept tied down.

What about commodification? This, too, is a possibility but for most reasonable people only some with whom they work and trade get treated as a commodity, like most of us treat the cashier at the grocery store. But there are pals, colleagues and friends, as well as those in one’s family, who are anything but commodified.

Essential Capitalism

Tibor R. Machan

A while back I got caught up in a fracas about using the term “capitalism” to mean the free market, fully voluntary system of economic relations. It didn’t surprise me since I am aware that complicated matters often need to be discussed, well, in complicated ways so when one just refers to some system as “capitalist” or “democratic” or “socialist” or “libertarian,” one is likely to start a dispute as to just what the term is to mean in the language in which such issues are to be discussed.

For most of my life and career, much of it entangled in writing about political economy, I have taken “capitalism” to mean just that, the free market, fully voluntary system of economic relations. No such system has ever existed, of course, and yet the term is often used to refer to certain extant economies, such as those of England, America, Australia, Hong Kong (prior to its return to China), and so forth. Some even call today’s version of “communist” China a capitalist country. And with a bit of generosity this is no big problem. Such uses of “capitalist” or “capitalism” amount to indicating some of the most basic and distinctive features of a country’s economic order without at all implying that the country is adhering thoroughly to the principles of capitalism as a fully developed, consistently implemented economic order conceived by those who champion it without compromise.

I like to compare this to using the term “marriage,” since most marriages do not at all conform to the version of that institution that one has in mind in one’s most romantic imaginings. Yet, we use “marriage” or “married” without constantly having to qualify it with such terms as “more or less,” “troubled,” “half ass” or the like. We just say, “Harry and Susie are married,” realizing that what that amounts to it in their case may not be the pure thing of romance novels.

There is a problem, however, since unlike most uses of “marriage” or “married,” “capitalism” or “capitalist” rarely occur in nonpartisan contexts. Those using the terms are usually either critics or champions. And the critics will mostly zero in on what they regard as the liabilities of capitalism while the champions on the assets, not bothering to make very clear what is the central or core aspect of the system. Even when one spells it out, however, there will be those who will look for a chance to besmirch capitalism and those who will admit to no possible problems with it at all.

I am not going to clear all this up here but I would recommend, strongly, that when such terms are used, a bit of time and space be reserved to offering some details, some qualifiers, such as “I do not have in mind state or crony or similar version of capitalism but the unsullied sort we find in such advocates as Ludwig von Mises or Ayn Rand.” Sure, this may not pacify the determined critic and such a person is likely to associate capitalism with all kinds of features that no one who is honest would claim is a part of it. Thus, in a recent letter to me, in response to a column I wrote, someone insisted that capitalism must involve massive theft by the rich! And this zero sum idea about capitalism is evident in many discussions even though it is all wrong.

Of course, one can do a similar thing with all systems one does not favor, such as socialism or communism, and focus only on, say, the Soviet or North Korean version, not admitting that some forms may be rather mild and peaceful, such as the kind that we find in many a kibbutz or commune. Not that these will have escaped all the liabilities of a system in which the means of production are publicly owned but they may have managed to deal with them less harshly than the Soviets did when they collectivized Russia’s farms.

Most of us do not have the time to discuss even the most important issues in full so that we do take care to cover all crucial elements and avert most honest misunderstandings. But it may be worth giving it a try if it is likely to secure a civilized discussion instead of what turns out to amount to a mere slinging of political ad hominems.

Morality and Freedom Again

Tibor R. Machan

Quite a few people, among them some who are pretty bright and thoughtful, hold that people have moral responsibilities, that these aren’t mere preferences, and that a society that fails to accommodate this is flawed. For some who take morality seriously these responsibilities concern conduct that people ought to carry out for various ends or goals, such as fulfilling God’s will, helping others, promoting the public interest, creating beauty, advancing world peace, eliminating poverty, and so forth and so on.

Not that everyone accepts that people have any such responsibilities. Some influential thinkers are amoralists--they deny that there is any such thing as morality or ethics, that all talk about these matters is either outright bogus or merely a disguised way to discuss aspects of human psychology or sociology. In the social sciences most professionals and academics have held this view and still do, hoping that what they can do is show that a concern for how people ought to or should act is really about mental health or social adjustment, both manageable without recourse to talk about moral or ethical responsibilities, duties or human virtues. Hard core physical scientists, too, tend to deny morality and focus, instead, on the physical sources of desirable or undesirable conduct.

Almost needless to say, the denial of morality doesn’t easily square with much of public discourse. In politics and diplomacy, for example, nearly all parties openly blame their adversaries and praise their allies. Wall street is a favorite target of moral condemnation, as is Congress or the rich or Republicans or Democrats or so called market fundamentalists or socialists. No end of moralizing occurs in the editorials and columns published in newspapers, magazines, even in scientific ones such as Science News, Science, Scientific American, Nature, or Discover (at least whenever those who ask for reducing funding for science come under scrutiny).

But let me not dwell on moral skepticism here. Instead I want to explore the ideas of those who readily admit that people have moral responsibilities or duties. Some of these folks make the case that such moral responsibilities or duties are part and parcel of human life itself and when one is born, one already has these (although they are to be fulfilled only once one reaches maturity). My most favorite statement of this view comes from the French “father of sociology,” Auguste Comte, although others, such as the Harvard University professor of government Michael J. Sandel or Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor, could be cited. Here is Comte classic statement:

"Everything we have belongs then to Humanity…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.” From The Catechism of Positive Religion (Clifton, NJ: Augustus M. Kelley Publ., 1973), pp. 212-30.

For now I do not wish to dispute the moral position Comte and many others hold, namely, that people ought to serve others. It does pose some dilemmas, of course, such as the one apparently pointed out by the poet W. H. Auden who reportedly exclaimed: “We are here on earth to do good for others. What the others are here for, I don't know.” Instead I wish to point to an inconsistency about one use to which the position that we are obligated to society or others (or whomever) is put, namely, to support coercive measures that make fulfilling such an alleged obligation legally mandatory. This is that moral choice must be made freely, without anyone making another do the morally right thing. It is impossible to do the morally right thing at the point of a gun. Coerced morality is a contradiction in terms. Only when one does what is right or wrong voluntarily, of one’s own free will or initiative, does it amount to something morally significant.

However much someone believes that we should all serve God, society, the arts, the poor or any other possible beneficiary of our conduct, the last thing this could possibly justify is using coercive force against those who are supposed to comply with the edict.

What may mislead some to overlook this is the term “obligation.” It suggests something legally enforceable but that is not so when it pertains to ethics or morality, only when it applies to law. One may be obligated to respect other people’s rights and this may be legally required, made part of the law. But if one has a moral obligation to help one’s unfortunate fellows, promote the arts, conserve resources, or guard against the destruction of ancient ruins--all of that and anything similar has to be undertaken voluntarily, not at gunpoint. That’s the nature of moral or ethical obligations and responsibilities.

The Story of Entitlement Addiction

Tibor R. Machan

Welfare states rely on a complacent population, like spoiled children on spineless parents. So when finally the jig is up, no more vital fluids to leach, it is impossible to change course without serious pain. What the Republicans are asking for now is that the Democrats and their constituents agree to simple withdrawal and not scream from the pain of it all. With the public philosophy of the Democrats this is hopeless since they have been preaching that all you need to pay for it all is to rip off the rich, to rob them of their wealth and redistribute it throughout the land. But no amount of confiscation from the rich is going to fulfill the expectations of the millions of people who have become hooked on entitlements.

Of course, for a good while this entitlement mania could be satisfied because its comeuppance could be kicked down the path for the next generation to deal with. Social security, medicare, subsidies of all sorts, unemployment compensation, funding of wildly speculative and minimally productive scientific adventures, price supports for farmers, military adventures, nearly limitless support for state colleges and universities, foreign aid, and so on and so forth--all this piled up and now the chicken are coming home to roost. And politicians and their bureaucrats didn’t prepare the population for it, so it just crashed upon the country even though many marginalized smart and decent people who knew better kept warning us. One good example was F. A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, not to mention several of Ludwig von Mises’s long and short books. And then there was Ayn Rand’s monumental novel of 1957, Atlas Shrugged, that pretty much foretold what we are now witnessing and must tell about to our children and grandchildren who will be the most severely hit by it all. All these warnings were waved aside by the entitlement pushers, the ones who wanted to be elected and to run the managerial state. They misunderstood or more likely refused to see how it goes when one postpones coming to terms with Draconian profligacy.

Even today the statists among us are blaming everything on freedom, on the admittedly present but certainly not decisive corruptions that occur in the welfare state’s market place--which lack the proper institutional restrains of a genuine free market. All one needs to do is follow the writings of Paul Krugman, the most avid and visible contemporary apologist for the welfare state--the more his chicken come home, the more he advocates stricter controls of people’s economic conduct. Yes, control, control and more control is the statist’s answer to everything, as if statists had a clue how to manage things without running them to the ground like virtually all statists systems (that do not benefit from cheap oil or other vital resources) do eventually.

Truth is we are in for a rough ride and few people will weather it well. And our leaders--would be rulers, in fact--don’t want to admit it since they always want to reserve the right to restart the welfare state so they can continue to pretend to serve the public. But as I recently discovered Charles de Gaulle to have said, "In order to become the master, the politician poses as the servant." We all will be asked for sacrifices and to accept that those in charge of the public treasury are blameless; they were merely responding to their constituents and hadn’t a chance to inform them of the facts of economic life, the plainest of them being that one just cannot get blood out of a turnip.

One bit of silver lining: all this isn’t new; states throughout human history have gone bankrupt and somehow climbed out but mainly because they did not hesitate to subdue and plunder neighboring countries, to kill and maim their populations without mercy just to stay the course. But in our time, at least in the West, that option is no longer welcome a great deal; it is generally frowned upon to start a war to rip off largely peaceful countries. Instead, rulers resort to financial chicanery which ultimately amount to trying to square circles around the globe. All in the name of serving the people!

Still, lessons might be learned and the very slow and oft-interrupted road to liberation may continue.

Statism vs. Labor & Persons

Tibor R. Machan

Under hard line statism, such as centrally planned socialism and absolute monarchy, everyone belongs to society--there are no individuals, no privacy, no private property, etc. Thus, for instance, in Marxism all vital property is collectively owned and administered by the state/government. Since the most vital of all property is human productive labor, everyone's productive labor belongs to the society and must be administered by the state/government. (The late Robert Heilbroner, the author of The Worldly Philosophers, a book that for many decades was required reading for many incoming college freshmen, is one Western Marxist who acknowledged this in his book Marxism: For and Against.) It follows from it that those who tried to escape from Easter Germany were officially taken to be stealing the state's property, taking it to the West, and this had to be opposed and prevented. Shooting those who tried to scale the Berlin Wall amounted to shooting thieves!

Given Marx’s labor theory of value, it follows that a socialist system involves public ownership of human labor. And that pretty much implies the public ownership of human beings.

Yet it isn’t only Marxists who are philosophically committed to the idea that people belong to society. Charles Taylor, the Canadian communitarian philosopher from McGill University holds that people belong to their communities. Just what counts as one’s community is difficult to be sure about--in one sense everyone belongs to innumerable communities, such as families, neighborhoods, professions, political parties, drivers of Volkswagens, joggers, twenty-somethings and on and on. None of these have a claim on any human beings beyond being associated with many, many others who share in a common purpose or in some common activities. All are associations that are voluntarily entered into or continued and are easily ended.

The kind of belonging Taylor and others have in mind is more forceful, coercive, the sort one cannot unilaterally end. Like being from a certain country or being a member of an age group or, again, having a given ethnicity. These communities are part of what some would call one’s identity and by the communitarian account have a claim on one’s life, labor, resources and such. One might even say that one belongs in such cases as one might belong to a proprietor. It calls to mind slavery or at least serfdom. It comes, as communitarians such as Harvard University’s famous Professor Michael J. Sandel (the host of the program Justice on PBS TV and author of a book by that title) holds, with unchosen obligations, duties that government may enforce, like doing military service to the country or paying taxes.

It is this element of communitarianism that qualifies it as mainly a statist political position and indeed there are some conservative champions of the doctrine as well. Even the avowed individualist conservative, the late William F. Buckley, Jr., advocated national service for teens! In either case it is, pace Buckley, the source of hostility toward individualism, be that the mild one according to which everyone has the basic right to choose on his or her own initiative what kind of life he or she will live, or the more radical type which holds that we are all self-sufficient, independent persons. The extreme version of the communitarian idea is th that we all belong to society or humanity or humankind. And here the “belong” is meant in the proprietary sense.

The most forceful statement of this collectivist view was put forth by Auguste Comte, the French “father of sociology” in the following passage:

"Everything we have belongs then to Humanity…Positivism never admits anything but duties, of all to all. For its social point of view cannot tolerate the notion of right, 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. (It was Comte who coined the term “altruism”!)


What was unique in the American political tradition, which drew on John Locke instead of the likes of Comte, is the rejection of this reactionary idea! That is what made America exceptional, albeit, sadly, incompletely so.

It may be of some interest to you that I have been asked to be interviewed on C-Span’s *Book TV/In Depth*, a three hour call-in program, on Sunday, May 1, 2011, focusing on my books. A week before this I will learn the phone numbers, e-mail address and related information that will enable viewers to reach me and ask me question, offer criticism, etc., etc. My recent writings are stored at http://tibormachan.rationalreview.com/ & http://szatyor2693.wordpress.com/ and Google Search takes you to
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Tibor+R.+Machan&ie=UTF-8&tbm=blg&tbs=sbd:1#q=Tibor+R.+Machan&hl=en&prmd=ivnslbo&source=lnms&ei=cheaTc-1Bsu10QGyl_iBDA&sa=X&oi=mode_link&ct=mode&cd=1&ved=0CCcQ_AUoAA&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=80ab9cbe03966427 for additional information about me.

Tibor R. Machan
TMachan@gmail.com

Extortion in the Name of Science

Tibor R. Machan

While the country is going into more and more debt by the seconds, and while some even in Washington are beginning to be concerned--after all, their share of the loot taken from citizens year round and culminating on April 15th each year could shrink just as will everyone’s who leaches off taxpayers--I admit I have heard nothing at all about cutting funding for science.

That science’s take is huge can be gleaned just from the fact that, according to Nature magazine, within a small segment of it, synthetic biology, the funding in America since 2005 came to about $430 million (compared to all of Europe’s $160 million). Why is there no discussion of this, not even on Fox TV? Is science the sacred cow of our time so when scientists get support from the government’s confiscation of our resources, it is left unscrutinized?

A most recent copy of a prominent science magazine--I subscribe to a few but all contain these tidbits and several go on record after every presidential election to insist that no reduction in what is spent on science should be on the agenda of the new administration--reports that one recent study showed the vital finding that “For pythons, indulging in a meal not only distorts physique, it also reshapes microbial communities living in the gut” (Nature, June 2010, p. 849). Dozens and more of such items are reported and I do not see how the majority of the research being funded and conducted bears in the slightest on what the job of government ought to be, protection of our rights. This job could require some scientific research, of course, in forensics, military hardware, etc., etc. But hardly any of the money being used to fund science goes for such expenses. The bulk goes to university science schools and their departments or to research labs, with all their theorists and researchers doing admittedly (at least sometimes) interesting--maybe even ultimately useful--work. None of it seems to me to justify taking it from others who haven’t chosen to make it their responsibility.

But that goes for me without saying. I am someone who considers extorting funds from innocent citizens for even the most noble purposes thoroughly immoral and not at all the function of a government of a free country. Am I, however, completely out of line with my stand here?

Well, judging by the deafening silence in the mainstream media it appears that I definitely am. (When I edited the book Liberty and R & D for the Hoover Institution Press, back in 2002, I had the hardest time finding just a few scientists who would join me in critically examining the practice of science funding by governments.) One reason, I suspect, is that most fields of science are so terribly esoteric, so crammed with the kind of jargon that no ordinary citizen can understand, that to take a look at the area with a critical eye, focused even just on its funding, is intimidating. And even among skeptics a blanket rejection of government funding of non-military, non-police related science work appears too radical--surely some work in the sciences is important enough to warrant the transfer of resource from the citizenry at large to the scientific community, even at the point of the gun!

Well, no it isn’t. But the governmental habit is very, very old. Since time immemorial governments (i.e., rulers) have wrested for themselves the task of doing a great deal of the work of a society--science, the arts, religion, education, transportation, etc., etc. Weening scientists from their traditional sources of funding, confiscated resources of the citizenry that used to be so natural under monarchies, would appear to be an impossible task, maybe comparable to supporting gay marriages! (But, hey, these are no longer taboo!)

It is time, I think, for knowledgeable folks, to follow the lead of the likes of Terrence Kealey (see his courageous book, The Economic Laws of Scientific Research [Macmillan, 1996]) and go on record with the case for science without government--without coercion, in other words. Criticisms from the likes of me are too easy to wave off since we are not among the initiated in this highly specialized area of human concern, namely, scientific research.

Libertarian Civics Lesson #438

Tibor R. Machan

It is customary, sadly, for critics of a viewpoint to distort it, caricature it, besmirch it and the like--or at least to mention only aspects of it that could turn out to be untoward some human interests. So, of course, with libertarianism which is the most radical, novel political idea around--in contrast to the relentlessly statist ideas and practices that have dominated human political history. So you will hear that libertarians are crass individualist, mindless egotists, anti-social, atomistic, and the like. And while one can find one or two such people among those calling themselves libertarian, the charge is largely bogus. Every viewpoint has its least palatable versions and some will go the distance of affirming it, if only out of frustration and spite. (Professor Walter Block, an economist at Loyola University of New Orleans, did this with his book Defending the Undefendable [1976]) in which, for example, he championed littering on public roads as a kind of civil disobedience!)

The charge that libertarianism is anti-social, etc., is palpably false. The thing about that irks many people is that social relations within a prospective libertarian country would all have to be voluntary, never coerced. (One famous scholar who finds this very annoying is Professor Michael J. Sandel, so much so that his recently published, Justice, What is the Right Thing to do? [Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009], based on his very popular PBS TV and Harvard University lectures by that same term, begins with a frontal attack on libertarianism [a la the late Robert Nozick].) Sandel’s central complaint is that libertarianism doesn’t acknowledge that everyone has unchosen obligations to society. The famous American and classical liberal idea that government must be consented to by the governed is tossed aside for this reactionary idea that when you are born you are already legally ensnared in innumerable duties to others which, of course, government is authorized to extract from you. The idea, most forcefully defended by the French father of sociology, Auguste Comte, is a ruse and used mostly to make people into serfs, subject them to involuntary servitude, however noble sounding the sentiments behind it.

In any case, I just have a small example to present in which the claim that libertarians are anti-social, un-neighborly is shown to be false. I have a deck on which I spend a good deal of time. My neighbor’s roof is nearly even with it so that when his fireplace is used, the smoke is often sent to where I sit. And it can get a bit annoying even while there is that nice rustic smell to it which I actually like. (Who knows what it is doing to my lungs!)

If I were terribly sensitive to the smoke, I would just go to my neighbor and request that the smoke be redirected or contained. (Economists call it a negative externality if it does indeed cause damage and sometimes worry that such externalities may not always be internalizable, contained, in other words.) My other neighbor has done exactly this when he found my stereo blasting too loudly in the middle of the night--gave me a call and asked me to turn it down, which I did, of course. Similar mini-altercations occur across my neighborhood and, of course, throughout the world and once it is clear who is in charge of the realms being affected, they are managed with no fuss in I would assume 90% cases. Only small minded folks fail to cope with them, or ignorant ones or ones who have a gripe against a neighbor to start with.

If, however, one experiences such minor incursions on public places, the situation changes. The old tragedy of the commons arises for no one knows who is in charge and whose desires should be honored. Some head honcho needs to be selected and the hope will spread that this individual or committee will make a fair determination of just how much annoyance everyone must accept for the sake of the community (it is always said). And no end of grumbling comes from this arrangement. No one tends to like the outcome since everyone thinks his or her share of burdens is too great and benefits too little. As Aristotle noted some 3000 years ago:

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

So stop it already about how anti-social the free society would be. Quite the contrary is true.

Machan Archives: Published Letters to The New York Times since 1986

August 3, 1986
Ayn Rand's Philosophy
To the Editor:
In his review of Barbara Branden's ''Passion of Ayn Rand'' (July 6), Peter L. Berger betrays his ignorance of Objectivism by dismissing it as simple without even a morsel of evidence or argument.
In fact, from the initial outline Ayn Rand provided, a very rich and powerful philosophy emerges - e.g., it solves such problems as science versus free will and moral responsibility, knowledge versus the fact of fallibility. Merely because Rand's ideas were not born in academe or developed in full detail by her, it cannot be concluded that they are unsound. TIBOR R. MACHAN Auburn, Ala.



November 7, 1988
Thinking in Hungarian
LEAD: To the Editor:
To the Editor:
''As any student of etymology knows,'' Debra J. Silberstein asserts, ''the words we use represent how we think'' (letter, Oct. 17). What does she say, then, about a culture, such as Hungary's, wherein male chauvinism is rampant, but the language is gender neutral? TIBOR R. MACHAN Auburn University, Ala., Oct. 17, 1988.



February 26, 1997
Evolving China Merely Resembles a Dynasty
To the Editor:
You argue (Week in Review, Feb. 23) that China is a fascist, not a Communist, system. This recalls Susan Sontag's pithy statement that ''Communism is successful fascism,'' presumably by virtue of its being more totalitarian, leaving no loopholes by which to transform itself into a democratic system.
Of course, fascism is not capitalism -- no one has the right to private property, and people own things only when the government finds this conducive to public policy. Since China was about to go belly-up economically after Mao Zedong, no wonder its leaders felt the need to open things up.
The bottom line, though, is that citizens are still treated as children, not as adults. Under capitalism the opposite is the bottom line: people's economic decisions are not dictated by the state.

TIBOR R. MACHAN
Orange, Calif., Feb. 24, 1997



January 28, 1998
Why Programming Skill Is Cheap; No Discrimination

To the Editor:
Norman Matloff (Op-Ed, Jan. 26) regards hiring mostly young programmers as ''rampant age discrimination'' and notes that companies are ''focusing their hiring on new or recent college graduates, who are cheaper and can work lots of overtime.'' But age discrimination means refusing to hire solely on grounds of age. When it is a matter of salaries and greater availability of employees, that is economics, and employers owe their shareholders precisely the service of finding such employees so as to bring in better returns on investment.
While it might be nice to hire workers of any age, this is a luxury that many companies cannot afford. To regard this as age discrimination is to belittle their legitimate concerns.

TIBOR R. MACHAN
Orange, Calif., Jan. 26, 1998

The writer is a professor of business ethics at Chapman University.


July 5, 2000
Black, White, Gray: America Talks About Race; The Newsroom

To the Editor:
Re ''Between the Lines, a Measure of Hurt: A Newsroom Divides After a Healing Series on Race'' (''How Race Is Lived in America,'' front page, June 29):
The dispute between the black journalist and the white journalist over the word ''niggardly'' is really about what people owe one another. If you know that someone is going to be upset by the use of a word and you can use another word with equal profit to what you want to say, it is thoughtless or even callous for you to go ahead and use it. But if you aren't aware of some particular sensitivity about a word on the part of your audience, need you go to considerable lengths to learn what words will upset them and then avoid using those?
This is a question of ethics, not race. Not every issue between blacks and whites is necessarily a racial one.

TIBOR R. MACHAN
Silverado, Calif., June 29, 2000