Who Needs Austerity when some Are Rich

Tibor R. Machan

Portugal is broke but austerity measures there are protested persistently. Greece is in the same fix. And indeed in America, too, the Occupy Wall Street crowd appears to believe that if even a few folks are doing very well, no one need tighten his belt since all that’s needed is to rip off those well off and force them to continue to work hard.

The math is, of course, terribly off -- even if all the wealthy were raided for their resources, it would do very little to improve the situation of the vast numbers of those who need to cut back on their spending (including, especially, governments). It’s like a pyramid shaped storage of stuff, taking from the top and distributing it below isn’t going to create abundance. What is required for that is overall productivity, nothing less.

But these days millions of people, especially their politicians and academic agitators, hold the insane idea that wealth is collectively owned, sort of like in a family or commune. No private property is recognized so whatever anyone owns, everyone else owns as well. So if you have been profligate for years and now can’t pay your bills, never mind; there are those others with some money stashed away which can be confiscated because, well, it belongs to everyone. Never mind that it is just that kind of thinking and behavior that leads to widespread poverty, a direct result of the tragedy of the commons.

I have recounted this episode of my life before but it is relevant here again: At about 12 I was being lectured by a good communist teacher in my elementary school in Budapest about how we should all live by the Marxist idea, “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs” (taken from his famous essay, “Critique of the Gotha Programme”). I asked the teacher how would this work if my friend and I both started with a few bucks and I spent it on booze and he on wood. Once he made a nice little table, I'll simply drink myself under it, so would he have to help me out, would his table be my table, as well? And this landed me in hot water. (Both the Nazis and Commies dealt severely with students who asked the wrong questions, what today would be called politically incorrect ones!)

The idea now is that so long as other people are productive and lucky, the rest of us need not fret since we can always dip into their stuff and conscript them to work for us. But since the math in this “solution” sucks, it leaves everyone without sufficient wealth and, moreover, tends to discourage people from trying to increase theirs. Marx knew that this would happen so he envisioned communism as the society in which everyone became a "new man" and would automatically work for the commonwealth, the public interest (is how it is called now). With self-interest having been erased from the human race, no one would mind being poor, having to cope with austerity.

Sadly, the Occupy Wall Street people and others of similar attitude around the globe haven’t experienced this necessary alteration of human nature, whereby no one cares about himself and his intimates but only about the society as a whole. (Not that that would work out but at least people might put up with it more compliantly.) They are very much concerned mainly with their own and their loved ones’ well being. Certainly they care nothing about the well being of those who are productive, especially on Wall Street. Instead they hold the view that other people must all become fierce altruists while they themselves can remain self-indulgent. (At least that is how they behave, so I think it is fair to attribute that line of thinking to them.)

That there are free loaders among us is no news, nor a tragedy. What is, however, really disgusting is how many erudite people throughout academia, governments, and the media egg them on in their pathetic misconceptions.

Inequality

Tibor R. Machan*

Much consternation is spent on income and related inequality. Or call it unequal advantages in life. As if it were some kind of moral or political imperative that we must all enjoy equal benefits and burdens, though few will say why that would be a good thing or why it is right to aim for it, considering that throughout nature inequality is clearly the norm.

Isaiah Berlin is supposed to have stated that equality is a virtual axiomatic norm of social-political life, so Amartya Sen, the Harvard Nobel Laureate in economic science tells us in his book The Idea of Justice (2009). Professor Martha Nussbaum of the University of Chicago Laws School and Philosophy Department also adheres to this idea. Indeed, it is widely embraced by philosophers at the top schools everywhere. It has made its appearance in political history mainly in the writings of the French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau.

Yet, as hard as I have tried to locate an argument for the idea, I haven’t been able to find any. Even as a matter of moral intuition, something many contemporary thinkers in ethics favor, it doesn’t appear to be plausible that people everyone ought to be enjoying the same conditions of life and that when they don’t, it becomes a political and legal imperative to rearrange things so that they will. It was the late Robert Nozick who in his famous book Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1973) advanced an argument against the intuitive power of egalitarianism. He did this with his famous Wilt Chamberlain thought experiment in which we are all equally well off but then many of us decide to contribute some of our resources to Wilt so we can see him play his fabulous basketball game, which immediately upsets the supposedly desirable equality among us all since, of course, Wilt will be but the rest of us will not be very rich. So this will require constant readjustment, wealth redistribution, by the government which will of course have to be very powerful, much more so that the rest of us, and this once again shows that inequality is unavoidable.

Of course, we have different kinds of equality before us and some do appear to be imperative, such as equal protection of our rights in the legal system. But this is about a procedural matters, not about results. But perhaps the fact of our humanity alone supports the equality that egalitarians promote? Yet while people are alike in all of them being human, this itself goes hand in hand with immense legitimate diversity and inquality among us.

Just take a peak around you and confirm the plain fact that inequality is everywhere--in talents, beauty, athletic prowess, luck (good and bad), etc., etc. And there is, of course, that fact of the widespread inequality of wealth enjoyed by us, the inequality that appears to annoy so many people. I am not convinced it really is since we all live with it day in and out everywhere and peace still prevails among most of us. No doubt there are people who are heavily beset with envy and for them all inequality of advantage justifies massive political efforts to even things out. (Consider Occupy Wall Street as a case in point!)

Of course in some areas equality is imperative, if only to make things more interesting. For example, in foot races and such the competitors all start at the same point--none is supposed to enjoy an unequal advantage, at least not in their initial positioning. (Yet even there, some start with a good night’s sleep behind them, others with nerves having kept them awake all night long.) The oft mentioned “level playing field” is a myth, too, since while the field may be level in some cases, much else isn’t.

In life, including human affairs, inequality is routine. What matters is that whatever inequality exists not be the result of violence, if coercion. If my fellow marathon runners are unequal in their readiness for the race, so be it. But if they try to undermine the readiness of their competitors by spiking their breakfast or water bottles or tripping them up during the race, that’s where things become intolerable. Similarly with wealth. If you are Bill Gates or Warren Buffet but got there peacefully, without using force against those who didn’t, such is life and upsetting it merely increases the coercive power of some people (thus introducing the most insidious form of inequality among human beings).

So unlike in the wilds where many animals rule others by means of physical strength and brutality, in human society advantages are to be gained and kept without resorting to force or fraud. Once those are ejected from the sphere, the outcome cannot be objectionable other than as a matter of a wish or hope. Even those would be unbecoming, which is why envy is a vice, not some admirable sentiment toward those who are well off.

*Tibor Machan is the author of Equality, So Badly Misunderstood (2010).

My 11-12-11 lecture at the Adam Smith Forum in Moscow, Russia:

http://vimeo.com/32087866

Is The US Government Anti-Monopoly?

Tibor R. Machan

So you may have heard that the US Federal Government is opposed to monopolies and that is why the Department of Justice has its various rules against them. All those antitrust provisions are supposed to keep competition going and prevent any business from becoming the only one around to serve customers. Right, you have heard this -- I certainly have.

Only it isn’t true. The federal government is in fact dedicated to preventing competition one place where it could come in very handy. This is in the service of delivering first class mail! No one else is permitted by the government to do this apart from the United States Postal Service. So when one finds that this service doesn’t quite manage to suit one’s postal needs, there isn’t a thing to be done about it apart from hiring a helicopter and paying thousands of dollars to get some letter delivered. But, oops, even that is unavailable since if you were to start such a helicopter service, it would be illegal! The USPS simply forbids anyone else from providing first class mail service to us, period. No, Fed Ex or UPS isn’t allowed -- they may only serve us with parcel and not with first class deliveries.

And the USPS’s monopoly isn’t a very nice one either. (Of course, some of the personnel can be friendly but even the most generous of them follow the rules in ways a German soldier from the Third Reich could be proud of. For example, when I recently asked my postal clerks to please place my accumulated first class mail -- while I was on a week long trip -- into one of the boxes where they put parcels for customers to pick up, they said “No way! That is forbidden by the rules.” Why? Well, they had no idea why -- it’s just what the rules state, period, and you must live with it.

Yet what exactly is supposed to be the horror of monopolies? That they will refuse to allow for variety in the delivery of their services or products. Everyone must live with what the monopolists demand! That is why they must be broken up by the trust busters! Or so the story goes, never mind that the government’s most visible monopoly, the USPS, demands exactly that from us.

So the real story is that the US postal service, provided to us by the federal trust busters, is full of tedious unyielding rules no one may escape. Our post office, in particular, is open between 8AM and 4PM M-F and 10AM and 12AM on Saturday and if a resident who must pick up the mail there is unable to go to the office during these hours, that’s just too damned bad. No adjustment is allowed! This is exactly what we are told that monopolists would do if not broken up by the feds. But in the case of the USPS no other service is permitted by law to help with first class mail. The clerks at the local post office being such good soldiers will not go against their rules and will not place the mail into the boxes which normally contain only parcels so as to serve customers. Oh, but I forget -- government agencies do not have customers, only subjects! Like monarchs used to. They must all bend to the will of the rulers and the USPS is but an extension of the ruling government, certainly not ready to help out customers who might not be able to bend to its rules!

But you heard it everywhere -- the US government is opposed to nasty, dastardly monopolies. Just another lie the government tells us. But at least there is some justice in the world: the USPS is bust, bankrupt, unable to pay its bills. And given its unaccommodating service to some of us, this isn’t very surprising.

From Russia with Trepidations

Tibor R. Machan

The invitation was just too nice to turn down despite my increasing reluctance to do very long trips. (I did some such a while back, like twice to New Zealand and twice to Cape Town.) Back and knee troubles tend to impede such ventures these days. But my hosts in Moscow were very pleasant from the start and expressed very serious interest in what I might have to say (about social “contract” theories and Adam Smith and morality) and treated me like a VIP once I arrived. So despite the brevity of the visit, only five days there, I went and found it mostly rewarding. The visit was sweetened by superb accommodations for the trip itself and the stay.

The first thing that struck me -- and all I can report is that, since five days in not enough time to dig into a place -- is just how vast and busy Moscow is. People crowded every place, with the Metro and the immense avenues filled with them.

Much still reminded me of when the Soviets were occupying Budapest in the 1950s, including the “service” I received at the state owned hotel (where you are treated as you would be at the DMV here). Folks are often sullen, especially in service industries where they seem to feel like indentured servants instead of employees and where they show zero courtesy to customers. (This harks back to the good old days of Soviet Russia where the members of the working classes seemed to be the least happy bunch in society.)

The cultural offerings are a varied lot indeed, with everything from what recalls village life in Russia and elsewhere to cosmopolitan London or Milan. Do not expect people to speak even a word of English, not like everywhere else in Europe, outside of fashionable shops. But the signs around town do tend to be multilingual. Something that struck me is just how replete the place is with iPhones and iPads and electronic gadgets in general, even in the middle of the most dilapidated regions of the city.

The best thing about my hotel was the elevator (or lift). It worked great and came to your floor in seconds. But there were no amenities like a gym or pool or even a shop for trinkets. The one shop, selling designer clothing, was nearly always closed despite the signs that announced the hours it was to be open.

What was very welcome is just how intensely interested members of my audience -- students and faculty alike -- were in the topics I covered and how ready they were to explore arguments and take issue with them. Much better than at home, in my classes here at Chapman University (where it takes about two years for students to warm up to what they are supposedly there for). Of course, members of the audiences in Moscow came of their own accord, whereas students in many of my classes at Chapman are required to take the course they take from me and, sadly, do not connect their choice to major in business with the course they must then take from me. (A lot of them, no doubt, would just like to get the passing grade, never mind doing work in the subject. Only after a few terms in college do they begin to make the connection, probably because after having been forced into primary and secondary schools, they look upon college as a kind of liberation!)

From what I gathered in my discussion with my hosts and members of my audiences, Russia is understood by many people as in the grips of crony capitalism. There was little hope shown among those I met for changing this soon although most are aware of the bad end it will lead to.

Corruption is rife; the legal authorities are the farthest thing from upholding any sensible idea of the rule of law but tend, in the main, to be in the pockets of some special interest group. I know a lot of people who champion what they call anarchism and anarcho-capitalism, but what the anarchism in Moscow appears to many classical liberals and libertarians there has nothing at all with the political economy of capitalism, quite the contrary. Government is directly involved in calling winner and losers in the economic realm. Bribery appears to be routine. Arbitrary regulations of business as well.

All this was supplemented, sadly, with the grayest five days I have ever spent since I left Fredonia, NY, where I taught for some ten years and where we called the sun a purely theoretical entity.

What about the Cain Fracas?

Tibor R. Machan

I am not a devoted supporter of Herman Cain although I do find him an appealing person, someone who seems to be a straight shooter when it comes to discussing the issues facing candidates these days. But I have not committed to him in part because there are others among the Republican lineup whose views I consider much better, e.g., Gary Johnson and Ron Paul.

But the current problems Cain faces seem to warrant a few observations about the matter of the onus of proof when it comes to such “He said, she said” situations. Plainly put, Cain is accused of having harassed some women some years ago who, however, let the matter go for one or another reason. No charges have ever been filed, from what the news reports say. In one case someone who complained quit her job and received severance pay that appears to have been based on the organization’s wish not to deal with the situation any further than that. Over the years none of the women have pursued any grievance procedures until very recently when several have made claims of having been groped and such by Cain, claims that have not been proven true beyond any reasonable doubt beyond some friends of the woman saying they heard them before.

Given that Mr. Cain appears to me, from his various public presentations and discussions, to be a decent and bright enough individual, given that his candidacy is likely to pose a serious obstacle to Mr. Obama’s smooth reelection in 2012, and given the unprincipled conduct of many who support Mr. Obama--they proudly assert that they are pragmatists (who do not hold to any principles at all, thinking them all unfounded and unsupportable)--I admit to favoring Cain’s side in this controversy. “Show me,” as the state motto of Missouri states! Or “where is the beef?” And consider some of the dubious sources involved in the charges, nearly all of them in the Obama camp.

But aside from my own sentiments, there is the more important issue of who has the onus of proof here and what would such proof have to amount to in order for it to be compelling. Eye witnesses who can reasonably be taken to be impartial would work. Some kind of correspondence, emails or notes, telephone messages, etc. could strengthen the case against Mr. Cain but there are no such things in evidence here. It seems quite obviously no more than a case of some people who can reasonably be assumed to be opposed to Mr. Cain’s politics and candidacy making unsubstantiated claims that Mr. Cain had behaved in ways that amount to sexual harassment.

So what is one who has some interest in this matter to believe? Based on the tradition of due process in American criminal law and the common sense idea that when people come forth with damaging claims against others they need to make a good case in order to be taken seriously, the sensible attitude now is to leave Mr. Cain to his campaigning activities and ignore those who keep harassing him with unfounded accusations. Never mind public opinion, which is very largely driven by partisanship in the face of no solid evidence in sight. If such evidence were to emerge, one’s views may need to be updated. But not before then. For the time being Mr. Herman Cain ought not to be regarded as being guilty of any wrongdoing of the kind he is being accused of by the women, anonymous or not.

Is my suspicion that some of this is motivated by politics unreasonable? May there be some echoes of the Clarence Thomas hearings here as well--meaning that the prospect of an intelligent, likable black conservative political figure irritates liberal democrats so much that at least some of them, the more opportunistic, pragmatic types, would be willing to resort to dirty tricks to discredit such an individual? You bet you! But this is not very much more than speculation, an at least not uneducated guess.

Machan’s Archives: Imperialism, Left and Right

Tibor R. Machan

No, I am not talking about foreign policy. My concern is with how both Left and Right seem to have their straight jackets into which they want everyone to be strapped, like it or not. It is disturbing in part because a high point of the American way of life has always been the 'live and let live' principle. And the USA, with its substantial commitment to the principle of private property rights, has managed to live up to that idea quite well.

Just consider religion--in America there are no serious religious wars because the faithful of each religion are able to conduct their affairs in peace, undisturbed by others with whom they disagree. Consider how different this is from, say, Jerusalem, where the faithful of several religions are constantly bickering about who should rule the turf. Here, in contrast, the public square is secular and the faithful are free to assemble where they will, on private property, and carry on just as their doctrine requires.

But there are some exceptions, unfortunately. Too many among the religious right have it in big time against gays now, so whenever gays get various concessions from the legal authorities, they are attacked. So long as there is a public component to being gay, gays have to contend with the political clout of the religious right. And since the state has for centuries made it its business to treat marriage as its preserve, issuing licenses and conferring rites on those who would marry, there is no peace for the unusual, unorthodox, or odd. It is a bit like interracial marriages used to be, namely, a province of state regulation, so voters could make their desires, prejudices, hates, loves felt on the topic. That is pretty much what happens whenever something that ought to be private, a matter of voluntary consent, is invaded by government. In dictatorships the big Kahuna says how it goes and in democracies it becomes an invitation to various hordes of people meddling in the affairs of others.

The environmentalist Left is, of course, no different. Just notice how quickly they get into the fray where public spheres such as roads or parks or coastal regions are concerned. For them SUVs, for example, are virtually open targets. Many feel no compunction expressing their hate for people who own SUVs and initiating legal actions of one or another kind against the vehicles, urging the government to cut them down to the size they feel they should be, never mind what the actual SUV owners wants. No live and let live here either, no way Jose. The religion here is not a traditional one but more recent, fueled from within the religion and academic discipline of ecology. And environmentalists, not unlike those from the Christian right, have acquired sacred texts of their own in terms of which what they dislike can be condemned with a tone of moral righteousness. They invoke what they refer to as 'the Gaia hypothesis.' According to this doctrine, which is accepted by more and more environmentalists, 'all of life on earth can be seen as whole that is more than the sum of its parts, this whole being like a huge super-lifeform . . . (after the name for the ancient Greek goddess of the earth).'

Why is this a Left wing movement? Because it preaches, as does Socialism, that human beings are part of a large organism ' in their own words, 'that the earth is alive and that we are part of it.' Socialism confines this collectivism to people, either in some nation (for the national socialists) or the globe (for international socialists). We might call environmentalists geological socialists. They argue that 'Living systems have a tendency to keep themselves in balance but also to adapt and evolve over time.' They go on to claim that 'scientists have found that the earth also has these tendencies, with feedback mechanisms to 'keep in balance' the temperature and oxygen levels of the atmosphere, just as our bodies maintain the temperature and oxygen levels in our arteries.'

Once you have elected yourself as the spokesperson for such a viewpoint, where you speak for Earth, just as when you speak for God, the move toward the missionary--indeed, the holy warrior--role is a very easy one to make. After all, the rest of us are by these doctrines deemed to be anything but sovereign citizens. We are all parts of and thus must owe allegiance to the Whole! Anything you do or I do immediately comes under the supervision of the protectors of the holy--or this time scientific--mission.

It's a ruse, that's what it is, of course. Environmentalists are no better positioned to know what amounts to the proper harmony of all of nature, including what kind of cars other people should purchase and drive, than are those of the Christian Right qualified to tell how reality should be ordered, including who should or should not be married. In any case, it's none of their business. Even if there is some insight or wisdom to be imparted on the various topics from these groups, there is certainly no justification for imposing such wisdom--after all, all those speaking on the topic are just parts of the whole, even from their own perspective, as are you and I.

I suggest that we be very, very careful about letting folks get away with claiming to be the authoritative representatives of either God or Nature. They are too often up to something invasive, intrusive, and aggressive when they see themselves in that light.

Machan's Archives: Equality or diversity? Which one do Leftists want?
You can’t have both

by Tibor R. Machan

For the last couple or so decades the universities and colleges where I have taught–and by all accounts, most of them in the USA–have had two mutually exclusive social objectives. (Yes, Virginia, higher education is now mostly embarked upon pursuing social policies, not so much educating students.) These two are equality and diversity.

On the one hand there is a big push toward eliminating any kind of inequality in the way students are being regarded and treated. Everyone is equal, just as Barrack Obama’s Vice President Joseph Biden insisted in one of his rallying cries. As he put it in the course of a moving eulogy for his mother (according to the Associated Press), “My mother’s creed is the American creed: No one is better than you,” he said. “Everyone is your equal, and everyone is equal to you. My parents taught us to live our faith, and to treasure our families. We learned the dignity of work, and we were told that anyone can make it if they just try hard enough.”

Of course Mr. Biden didn’t mean we are all equal today or will be tomorrow. What he meant is that in a rightly ordered world, one ruled by him and his associates, there would be total equality among human beings, on the model of, say, ants in their colony (excepting the chief ant, of course, just as this would be and has been the case with any large scale egalitarian experiment). I am not exaggerating. Just go and read Vice President Biden’s comment in full (here) and check out the many very prominently published books on the issue denouncing such dastardly inequalities, among others, as being more beautiful than someone else. Take, for example, Naomi Wolff’s The Beauty Myth from the 1980s and the recently published work of Deborah L. Rhode, The Beauty Bias (2010).

But at the same time that the push for full equality among people is carried out with official support, we also find widespread academic support for the idea of diversity –an idea that assumes, of course, that people aren’t the same at all but quite different–so our various prominent institutions must be inclusive of widely different people.

The differences at issue tend, of course, to be controversial. Some support ideological or philosophical or religious differences, so that those with different ideas, faiths, convictions and the like need all to be included. Some focus upon diversity in racial or ethnic or gender membership. Some stress differences in socio-economic status.

Whatever is the sort of diversity being considered, it is evident beyond any reasonable doubt that people are not equal by a long shot and their unequal status needs to be taken account of in how the relevant institutions–universities, high schools, clubs, corporations, etc.–are being managed, administered or governed. This is not merely a fact of life but a celebrated fact of life, given how so much of educational policy and administration is devoted to doing it justice.

One need but take account of the demographics of the United States of America, let alone the globe, in order to apprehend the underlying basis of this fact. People are not only of the same species, homo sapiens, but are at the same time individuals and members of innumerable special groups, most of them entirely legitimate (unlike, say, membership in the Ku Klux Klan or the Mafia). As a favorite social philosopher of mine, Steve Martin the very inventive and funny actor and writer, put it in the novel, The Pleasure of My Company, “People, I thought. These are people. Their general uniformity was interrupted only by their individual variety.”

So, on the one hand the objective is supposed to be, as VP Biden suggests, to erase all differences and render everyone equal in all important respects. On the other hand, as much of educational administrative policy suggests, diversity is to be celebrated, and the homogeneity that would be part and parcel of an egalitarian world, is to be rejected.

So then which will it be? An acknowledgment of benign human diversity or an insistence of homogenization so as to fulfill the egalitarian dream? There is no doubt about it for me: diversity is not just a fact of human life but a highly welcome one at that.

Markets aren’t Zero Sum Games

Tibor R. Machan

The more I read about “Occupy Wall Street,” including the pundits who apologize for it, the more I find that people still believe that market exchanges are zero-sum games wherein for someone to gain, someone must lose. But this is plain bunk, as economists since Adam Smith have shown conclusively.

But consider--is a marathon race a zero-sum game? Does someone’s running really fast make all others run slow? Clearly not. How fast the winner runs doesn’t slow down or speed up the losers. When a person buys a watch at the mall, both the merchant and the costumer are getting what they want from the other, no one is being ripped off. And the same applies to all honest deals on Wall Street. I buy some shares in a company and it is doing well with its products or services and so the monetary value of the shares increases. Those who didn’t buy these shares do not make the gains I did but not because I prevented them from doing so, only because the purchasing public didn’t want the services or products of the companies in which they bought shares, unlike in the case of my choice of company.

Like marathon races, market processes do not involve what happens in a boxing ring--no one is knocked out so that another may be triumphant. Yet it seems nearly all those who sympathize with the people marching in the Occupy Wall Street parades, as well as the people who speak up for them in their midst, fail to see the difference.

Put bluntly, Bill Gates billions do not make me or anyone else poor. In fact, his billions make it possible for a lot of folks to improve on their economic circumstances. Bill goes out and buys a lot of stuff or just gives his money away in Africa and people will then go out and maker standard purchases with these funds. No one has lost anything, not a dime.

All the wealthy folks in my neighborhood who live on lakes in fancy homes and have yachts and Bentleys aren’t making anyone poor. So resenting them is nothing but sheer envy, a filthy vice! Like hating someone with a great voice when one cannot carry a tune! Or a tall basketball star when one is too short to play the game.

We are often very different from one another--indeed we are all individuals and then gather into groups--and some of this means that what we have stuff and opportunities that others do not, whether they badly want it and even need it. But those who have it aren’t guilty of any wrongdoing except in the fantasy world of egalitarians which is, being a fantasy world, a distortion of the real world in which problems need to be solved. This is, however, a welcome thing to most of us who give it but even a little thought. After all, since you aren’t like me, you will want different stuff from what I will and that way we can trade quite fruitfully, with both of us ahead once the trade is done. Yes, sometimes the market value of what you get from the trade is much lower than of that which I get from it. But so what? If I badly want to have your worn out gloves and am willing to give you my fabulous sunglasses for them, some will see this as a huge rip off but who are they to tell? In most cases they wouldn’t know and in any case they have no business butting in. (They may offer some advice but that’s all.)

Ever since I arrived on these shores many, many moons ago, I have had zero sympathy for people who insisted that we should all enjoy equal wealth, equal advantages, etc. Why? No reason. Maybe what such folks missed out in their education is the study of Orwell’s Animal Farm, Vonegut’s Harrison Bergeron, and Rand’s Anthem. I see get thee back to the classroom and off the streets, especially Wall Street.

Column on Dyson's Nonsense

Tibor R. Machan

In a recent review essay Freeman Dyson flatly asserts that “social justice demands equality. Fair reward for enterprise and achievement demands inequality.” Well, neither of these is true but for soundbites in a publication like The New York Review of Books one could do much worse. Social justice is neither social, nor just. It is an excuse for some people to run everyone else’s life.

But Dyson doesn’t stop there and adds this:

Advocates on both sides of the debate have tended to take extreme positions. Numerous utopian communities have been founded to put egalitarian principles into practice. Few of them have lasted longer than one generation. Children have a regrettable tendency to rebel against their parents’ dreams. Meanwhile, advocates of extreme free market capitalism have been preaching the gospel of greed. They glorify greed as the driving force that creates new industries and in the end will make everyone wealthy. Unfortunately in many parts of the world where free market capitalism prevails, the rich are growing richer and the poor are growing poorer. [“The Case for Far-Out Possibilities,” Freeman Dyson, NYRB, 11/10/11, p. 27]

Much of this is simply wrong--no free market capitalist champion preaches any gospel of greed. The closest may be some economists who claim that each of us is motivated to make out well in life, a point so broad that it can mean nearly anything. As Milton Friedman put it, “. . . every individual serves his own private interest . . . . The great Saints of history have served their 'private interest' just as the most money grubbing miser has served his interest. The private interest is whatever it is that drives an individual.” ["The Line We Dare Not Cross," Encounter, 11/76:11] So being “greedy” is merely to want to do something, anything, one likes. Self-interest is just having some interest, some goals, never mind what they are. No gospel of greed here, none!

Will freedom produce industries? Well, that and also art and athletics and family life and whatever free men and women choose to pursue. Again, nothing here that should offend any sensibilities.

Does free market capitalism prevail anywhere? Not by a long shot. At best we have some welfare states, mixed economies that include a few elements of capitalism, such a moderate protection of the right to private property and some, fewer and fewer, voluntary contracts, in the midst of innumerable socialist features and fascistic political powers. And where capitalism has made some inroads, the poor are definitely not getting poorer but growing rich, though perhaps not as rapidly as those who focus mostly on wealth care.

So why then is a famous public intellectual saying such misleading things? Maybe because his fame comes from doing work in physics, not in political economy. And maybe also because the common sense account of making it rich still owes too much to the times when that goal was pursued through pilfering, murdering, robbing and otherwise depriving others of what they have. In short, for most of the history gaining wealth was a zero sum game, not the win win situation that modern economists have found far more productive. Peace, not ripping people off, is the road to riches.

Dyson is of course saying all this nonsense in a publication that tries every which way to discredit human economic liberty. He promotes some kind of middle way, between liberty and slavery, at least in the realm of economics. But it makes no sense. It rests on obsolete theory about what gets people to create and produce wealth and ignorance about economic history and reality.

Maybe Dr. Dyson should return to physics and leave economics be. Although quite a few so called economists get it wrong just as he does, especially the Keynesians who believe that one can make something out of nothing. That confusing idea ought to be offensive a physicist for sure.

Occupy Wall Street’s Lack of Focus

Tibor R. Machan

Rolling Stone magazine ran a piece recently arguing that what OWS is doing doesn’t amount to attacks on money or banking but is aimed at corruption. While this is a spin that may work for some folks, it doesn’t sound credible for me.

When someone, some organization or an institution is charged with corruption, this is a serious matter. It is comparable to accusing some people of malpractice in medicine, education, engineering or the like. And such a charge requires specific proof in order to make it credible. Otherwise is it irresponsible.

All the while OWS has been afoot, however, no specific accusations have been laid out by the participants or leaders or supporters. It is all vague and unfocused. It is much more like scapegoating those on Wall Street, given that the group doesn’t bother to be specific and fails, moreover, to go after the main culprits, for example those in Washington who urged the banks to make borrowing easy. In 1992 Bill Clinton’s administration did, in fact, implore banks to do just that, through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, for example. So why are these not the targets of OWS?

Of course there is another little thing that’s odious about OWS. This is the use of the term “occupy.” That term is used to refer to what huge, imperialist countries do with some of their neighbors, namely, send in troops to occupy them, to run roughshod over them, and to raid and pilfer them good and hard. Is this what OWS is proposing to do with the firms that are located on Wall Street or associated with them? Are they going to invade these just as Hitler did some of Germany’s neighbors and Stalin did with the Soviet Union’s? I do not believe this is any kind of an attractive image or even analogy. It easily makes OWS out to be aggressors.

There is no doubt that OWS folks can list numerous general failings that have occurred on Wall Street, plenty of misdeeds that have been perpetrated thereabouts, usually with the support of Washington’s politicians and bureaucrats. Yet there doesn’t appear to be much recognition of this within the ranks of the OWS folks. When they are interviewed they tend to lash out imprecisely, even blindly, and mostly at those in American society who are doing reasonably well, economically. The strategy seems to be to garner the sadly widespread prejudice around the country directed at those in the business community. In other words, OWS appears to be but a current version of the age old mentality and practice of business bashing. This is what fueled much of what the Third Reich was all about, including the deadly anti-Semitism evidenced during that era. While OWS doesn’t show direct hostility to Jews, it does appear to pick on those within the business community, giving the clearly guilty politicians a pass at the same time.

Of course there are other problems with many who join OWS, not the least of which is the mentality most of them share about how they are entitled to free goods and services from others in American society. Protesting tuition at higher educational institutions is but a more glaring symptom of this, the belief that others must be forced to pay for the education of young protesters. Why exactly? (Here one failing of the media covering OWS becomes quite evident since hardly any journalists pose the challenging question to protesters about why other people’s resources ought to be confiscated so as to support them?) And if the purpose of some protesters is to complain about unemployment and general economic malaise, wouldn’t it be imperative that they actually figure out who is mostly responsible for these, what policies have produced them? And shouldn’t members of the media press the issue with them when they are being interviewed?

Or is OWS simply a noisy lament with nothing better than ignorance backing it, a kind of shaking one’s fist at the sky when one’s picnic has been rained out? Which isn’t a very useful thing and certainly points at no one who may be guilty of anything at all.

Did Rubio’s Parents Do Right?

Tibor R. Machan

Despite what Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio has reportedly believed throughout much of his political career, it seems that his parents didn’t flee Fidel Castro's communist Cuba for political freedom in the US. What some media appear to have “revealed” is that they came to the US in 1956, prior to Castro’s rise to power, so as to improve their lives. And, as reports to tellingly make clear, this is a mere economic reason for emigrating, not the noble one of escaping oppression.

Let me tell you right away that when you live in a hopelessly defunct country, it makes little difference whether you are oppressed or impoverished. Both can kill you good, and both are mostly the result of how the country is being run by the politicians who have taken it over. Batista versus Castro--who cares? Hitler versus Stalin--who cares? Bad news either way and responsible folks, especially parents with young kids, will do the right thing and get out before it’s too late.

When I was smuggled out of Hungary at age 14, I left mainly because of my very bad prospects there, economic or otherwise. I had already begun to open my mouth in unwise ways, such as questioning Karl Marx’s dictum in school, “From each accordingly to his ability, to each according to his needs.” I used to run past the Soviet Embassy and shout obscenities at the frozen guards and tell jokes like “Why is that woman in that famous statue on top of Gellert Hill holding her palm leaf up high? Because beneath her stands a Soviet soldier and she is afraid he will steal it form her.” Or, “How come just seconds after Molotov told Stalin that they’re driving out to the countryside did Stalin’s chauffeur enter the room reporting that his car was waiting for him? Because Radio Free Europe announced the trip a couple of seconds ago.”

I don’t know whether my mother in Budapest and father in Munich, who were considering helping me escape, felt the threat to me was economic or something else. They fortunately decided that it would be safer for me to live in the West. Let’s just say when one is threatened by a dictatorship, often this occurs via economic oppression and deprivation--loss of one’s job, confiscation of one’s property, eviction from one’s abode, etc., etc.--not just out and out jail and torture. Of course, there are also those and deportation--mainly to somewhere like Siberia back in those days in communist countries--or outright murder. All in all the idea is that one’s life is going to suck big time or get snuffed out!

I don’t know about the parents of little Marco Rubio but in any case, I would applaud their actions and as an adult, the Senator is rightly thankful for what they did for him and themselves. Ah, but when it comes to political haggling, any possible weakness in one’s opponent is fair game. Never mind his policies, never mind yours, just besmirch the opponent good and hard and gain power any which way, right?

I supposed leaving a country for reasons of wanting to escape poverty and improving one’s economic circumstances is not noble enough for the members of the US media who delight in this kind of “revelation.” Gotcha is what matters. But why is pointing out that Rubio’s parents left for America for the allegedly “conventional reason of economic improvement” something newsworthy?

Well because of an ancient prejudice among millions of people against those who want to live well, who want economic success instead of failure. To endure poverty is heroic, to escape it petty, by this line of thinking. Never mind that when one’s child lacks food and clothing and the rest of those lowly economic advantages in life, the kid’s likely to grow up in hardship and will need some serious catching up to do.

My parents wanted me to do well enough in life to get a good start and the uniform gross mismanagement of Hungary at the hands of the communists--and, earlier the fascists--was a good enough reason to get me out of there.

Of course, I took a big risk too, since fleeing was hazardous--the border was booby trapped, guards were targeting all those who fled on foot like I and my companions did. (Not that I fully grasped this--for me it was more like an adventure.) But needless to say, it was all worth it, even if we had failed--trying is better with those damned dictators than putting up.

I personally am glad that Sen. Rubio’s parents had the foresight to get him out of Cuba before Castro took over the place and started to make a royal mess of it.

Abusing the Social Contract

Tibor R. Machan

At the outset it needs to be noted that whatever is called the social contract, it is not actually a contract which is “an agreement entered into by two or more parties with the serious intention of creating a legal obligation or obligations, which may or may not have elements in writing. Contracts can also be formed orally (parol contracts). The remedy at law for breach of contract is usually ‘damages’ or monetary compensation. In equity, the remedy can be specific performance of the contract or an injunction.”

So then, contracts are legal instruments, means by which legally backed agreements are recorded and used to settle disputes about the parties’ obligations. The idea of a so called social contract is, actually, an oxymoron since most social acts aren’t legal ones. A better term for what is usually meant by “social contract” would be social compact, an plain agreement of some kind.

The idea has been around for centuries. Even Socrates touched on it in Plato’s Republic, but it gained prominence mainly in the writings of the English political philosopher Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes used the device of an imaginary social compact that everyone in society would enter into. The purpose of it is to come up with the most sensible principles of social organization. What if we all got together and reached an agreement about what principles should govern the way we live in a society? What, indeed, would everyone agree to if they had a chance to take part in such an event?

In Hobbes the social compact or contract had been the central device for identifying the principles of justice. No other edicts would be drawn upon, although implicitly the device assumes that participants would all be reasonable, rational people who are pursuing their self-interest. The result of the establishment of such a compact would be a system of principles and laws that would aim to secure peace and prosperity. Everyone can easily be imagined to sign on because such a system would be in everyone’s interest.

Hobbes also imagined that such a system would need an enforcer, a nearly absolute monarch, so as to keep people from breaching the agreement they entered into when they felt like they could get away with this. The powerful monarch or government would dissuade them from breaking the law. But if the near-absolute monarch turned out to be a serious threat to the lives of the citizenry, they could resist and depose such a ruler.

This idea, by the way, found its way into the Declaration of Independence. Here is how it’s put there: “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.”

In the writings of the grandparent of the American political tradition, John Locke, the idea changes somewhat because Locke believed that the principles of justice are derivable from human nature and agreement is only necessary for selecting who would secure or protect those principles. So, in effect, the social compact creates the means by which just law is to be protected. The governing body is created by the compact, not the principles of government! And for Locke this isn’t only hypothetical but quite literal. It is why the Declaration talks of the consent of the governed, something that Hobbes’ theory doesn’t require except hypothetically.

The idea made its appearance in the works of Immanuel Kant, too, although in a rather convoluted fashion and, more recently, in the work of John Rawls’s, the most prominent political philosopher in the 20th century whose book A Theory of Justice (Harvard, 1971) invokes, once again, an imaginary social compact. Everyone supposedly enters into this “behind a veil of ignorance,” meaning, without knowing who one will be in the country established by it. (That is one way that such a system would be a fair one, which was a very important goal for Rawls.)

Social compact/contract theories are appealing for being anti-elitist, for not invoking the idea of a natural ruler, political elite or aristocracy. They are, however, also too committed to the ideal of majority rule, as if gaining the hypothetical consent of the people justified all kinds of oppressive measures against individuals. Moreover, such theories leave it quite undecided who is authorized to implement and maintain them.

Just as, for example, Massachusetts politician Elizabeth Warren recently declared that taking private property is justified by some alleged social contract and authorizes her and other politicians to do this taking in the name of this contract, so many others who make use of the idea deploy it for the sake of making riding roughshod over the citizenry by some large number of them palatable. As she put it, “part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that [what you have earned] and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”

But this is a non-sequitor--no such contract has established Warren’s or anyone else’s authority to violate the basic individual rights of citizens of a free country. And even if it had, no one has consented to Warren or anyone else doing any taking in the name of society! No one can agree to violating rights, especially other people’s, which one has by nature.

Warren’s Non-Sequitor

Tibor R. Machan

So Elizabeth Warren, Massachusetts candidate for the US Senate, says "there is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody." And so she is said to reject that it is possible for Americans to become wealthy “in isolation.” (As if someone defended that silly idea!)

So she sounds off about this, with evident righteousness, as follows: "You built a factory out there? Good for you,... But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did." And she goes on to declare, "Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea? God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along."

First of all, nothing at all follows from any of this about how Ms. Warrant has any authority at all to rearrange the world her way. My nose and ears and kidneys and eyes weren’t created on my own but none of that implies for a second that Elizabeth Warren is entitled to start invading my body and decide how its parts ought to be used. Nor even that my parents actually own me!

Of course, property rights start simple enough and then become complex. But that is just why a free country has a law of property instead of Ms. Warren as a tyrant who orders us all to do as she wishes.

It is necessary to be careful about how property is properly allocated, with close attention to original and subsequent creation, with what has been voluntarily shared, given away, earned through work and exchange, etc. Why?

Well, from the time of Aristotle it has been clear to quite a few political theorists and economists that common ownership sucks. As the ancient Greek sage put the point:

“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).

Then there was Thucydides on the commons, noting that “[T]hey devote a very small fraction of the time to the consideration of any public object, most of it to the prosecution of their own objects. Meanwhile, each fancies that no harm will come to his neglect, that it is the business of somebody else to look after this or that for him; and so, by the same notion being entertained by all separately, the common cause imperceptibly decays.” (Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War, bk. I, sec. 141).

So John Locke came along who didn’t even deny that to start with property is commonly owned but that it is best to create a system of private property so that property will be taken good care off and because those who work hard to improve it are justified in benefiting from it and make use of it as they see fit.

So not only is Ms. Warren way off with her idea that the state gets to decide what happens to property and that there is some kind of unwritten--i.e., not consented to--social contract that obligates us all to give to the state. But it is a wasteful and bad idea, as the Soviets and other socialists who disallow private property in their realm, have found out to everyone’s despair.

But of course it is not going to be easy to get agreement to statist redistribution policies if all this is admitted. So Warren needs to attempt the impossible and show that she, not you and I, get to say what happens to what we own because how we obtained it involved other people! Again, it doesn’t follow!

Machan's Archives: Disputing Positive Rights



Tibor R. Machan*



An influential idea in contemporary political philosophy is positive rights. It has been advanced by political thinkers on both the Right and the Left. In contrast to the theory of basic natural rights that John Locke developed, in terms of which every individual must be left free from the uninvited interventions of other persons, positive rights require us to provide resources and services to others who are in serious need. Champions of natural rights consider positive rights as imposing involuntary servitude on us, by requiring that people be forced to provide services and benefits for others. Positive rights theorists claim, however, that these resources or services are due others, they are owed them. Positive rights arguably gave rise to the doctrine of entitlements among those involved in forging public policy.

Positive rights also check the principles of a fully free economy as understood in the classical liberal tradition of political economy. If people have such rights, one has no basis for refusing resources or services to them if they seriously need them. That implies that what people have in their possession may very well belong to others, including some of “their” skills, marketable attributes (e.g., good looks or talents). They could then be required by law—or, as the negative rights champions would have it, be conscripted or coerced—to serve the needs and wants of various other people regardless of their own choices. It is the government in a society that would secure the fulfillment of the obligations that arise from the existence of positive rights (that is, entitlements), either by means of direct performance (as when health care professionals would be mandated to provide their services to those who need them) or indirectly (as when government taxes the citizenry, usually along progressive lines, so as to provide resources or services for those who have a positive right or are entitled to them).

Furthermore, the doctrine of positive rights helps establish the case for government regulations, including of businesses. While negative rights proponents may construe such regulations as a type of prior restraint, supporters of positive rights tend to argue that others have a right to be provided with safety and risk prevention at that need to be paid for by those who have the resources to do so. The customary idea of free trade is, thus, rejected, at least to the extent that some significant portion of what is ordinarily taken to be one’s wealth is not one’s own to allocate as one sees fit. (This matter surfaces during efforts to cut taxes—are the taxes the property of taxpayers or that of governments and simply held by taxpayers or citizens?)

Some argue that all rights are in fact positive rights.[1] This is because the means of protecting all rights would have to be the provision of government services that would secure or protect them, services that amount to a performance of certain sorts of actions (e.g., the police answering calls, judges ruling on conflicting claims, the military defending the country against attacks).

Some others, such as James P. Sterba, have maintained that positive rights exist because the possession of negative rights, by the very poor or unfortunate, entails or implies them. Sterba argues that “a libertarian ideal of liberty leads to a right to welfare.”[2] That is because negative rights themselves are supported by the claim that without such rights no effort to live well is possible, if some cannot live well anyway, and only if others provide them with resources will they manage to make the effort to live well, then surely they do have a right to those resources, a right that is positive now, not negative.[3]

There are certain insurmountable problems with all these views. Shue, Holmes and Sunstein, who believe that we have positive rights to the services of the state and, thus, to the earnings of taxpayers who must pay for these services, fail to show that any right to being provided with protection exists without a prior negative right to liberty which one exercises so as to elect to have it protected and then delegates to an agency, such as government or a body guard, to do the protection for oneself. They ignore the “consent of the governed” provision in the establishment of government and so they treat that institutions as unproblematic or explainable by reference to positive rights. Yet, as negative rights theorists maintain, it is through the exercise of negative rights—say, the right to enter into a contract or form a compact—that some derivative positive rights are created.[4]

Yet, to obtain protection for something presupposes that one has the right to liberty to take such actions that will produce it. This right amounts to voluntarily combining with others for the purpose of gaining self-protection by establishing a government or similar authority that may act to protect rights because that authority has be freely delegated to it by rights possessors. That original right, however, is a negative one, requiring that others abstain from intervening in one’s affairs.

So, the services of government, according to negative rights theorists, are something people must freely choose to obtain, by their consent to be governed, and they do not have a natural right to those services prior to having freely established such a rights protecting institution.

Sterba, in turn, makes the mistake of generalizing into a principle of law what amounts to a rare moral emergency case⚊namely, when some innocent people are totally helpless and should obtain resources by stealing them. Pace Sterba, those extraordinary circumstances do not generate any rights for people, although those who attempt to meet them by way of stealing might very well be forgiven because of their very limited options.

The doctrine of positive rights has an appeal to those who are faced with the theory of government that guides American law and politics. This theory is a source of promise to their efforts to elevate what people badly need to what they have rights to. America was founded on a theory that every individual human being has the unalienable right to, among other things, life, liberty and property. These rights that John Locke first identified—following several centuries of political and legal thinking during which various theorists have begun to identify them more or less precisely—are, as noted already, negative. Those political theorists who consider it important to retain some elements of the political outlook which Locke’s position displaced, namely, the view that people belonged to the country—were, in fact, subjects of the country’s head, the king, not sovereign citizens—found a way to use the concept of human—but now positive, not negative—rights to advance their position.[5] They appropriated some elements of the concept of negative human individual rights and attached it to the idea of needs or important values that people often have so as to manage to secure what others might provide for them. That element is that if one has rights, one is not just authorized to but in fact ought to secure their protection. As the U. S. Declaration of Independence so succinctly put it, it is “to secure these rights [that] governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Now if we also have positive rights, then governments would also have the task to secure them, namely, the performance by us of those actions that will provide what others have a positive right to.

Probably the most serious problem of positive rights arises from how they compare with how negative rights are understood in the Lockean natural rights classical liberal tradition. In that framework a conflict of (justified, true) rights claims cannot exist. In this political framework when a claim is made as to someone's having a basic (not, however, legal) right, this claim may be checked for whether it is true by reference to a correct understanding of human nature. That such an understanding is possible is itself a controversial issue that need not concern us for now.[6]

Why is the Lockean approach to rights superior to the positive rights approach? Because the natural rights position understands human nature to rest on our correct grasp of an aspect of reality. With the understanding of human nature and the character of human social life we discover that morality and politics have emerged as uniquely human concerns in reality. For example, we learn by the use of our reason, as Locke puts it, that men and women ought to strive to succeed in their lives but face avoidable threats from others who refuse to accept mutually supportive conditions for striving. In this light we need to answer a question concerning ourselves, namely, "How we ought to live?" This is because human beings lack the instinctual, innate or hard wired information that will just take care of their living for them, that will secure their successful living automatically. Furthermore, given our social nature, which Lockeans and other classical liberals and libertarians by no means reject[7]—pace the claims of Taylor and other communitarians who claim that this tradition assume an atomistic idea of human nature[8]—we need to answer the question "How should we organize ourselves in communities?"

As per the Lockean negative rights framework, in both these human normative spheres, ethics and politics, we are still, as in the sciences, dealing with reali­ty, albeit a special dimension of it. So here, just as anywhere else—say in economics and biology—no conflict is tolerable between true claims.[9]

Furthermore, the natural rights classical liberal tradition identifies the rights, for example, to life, liberty and property as basic for human community organization but not, however, for human life at the personal, non-political level.[10] No concern with rights can arise on a desert island for Robinson Crusoe. Only among strangers, in larger communities, does the issue of how we ought to treat one another become pre-eminent and thus of great significance for political and legal purposes.

None of this holds for positive rights. The very fact of scarcity introduces inherent conflicts between allegedly true positive rights claims. And, of course, for those who accept both negative and positive rights as basic to human community life, the conflicts multiply. For example, the negative right of a doctor to liberty is inherently in conflict with the positive right of a patient to health care. So, a serious problem of positive rights theories is that positive rights are unable to function as fundamental criteria of political justice, criteria that serve to assess the merits of claims citizens make concerning their range of authority in society. Instead, with positive rights, since they are in mutual conflict and since they also conflict with other rights many positive rights theorists accept as having at least some standing, there cannot be the rule of law, only the rule of rulers who will decide which of the inherently conflict rights will be protected. This way the whole point of rights as fundamental to a political society is lost and we are back to the arbitrary rule of government, be it monarchic, democratic or whatever.

Any bona fide political system must be organized in large measure so as to protect the rights to life, liberty and, in the practical aspect of both of these, the right to private property.[11] Thus any political rights—to be free to engage in decision making vis-a-vis political matters—must not violate those basic rights. Political rights include the right to vote, serve in government, take part in the organization of political campaigns, etc. Practically speaking, the exercise of one's political rights may have an impact on who governs, various internal rules of government, and the organization of political processes. But there is no political right within the negative rights framework to override anyone's right to life, liberty or property. Any evidence of some community's legal system overriding these rights is ipso facto evidence of the corruption of that system from a bona fide civil polity into one of arbitrary (even if majority) rule. Indeed, one of the failings of contemporary conservative legal theory is not to appreciate the intimate connection between Lockean individualism and democracy. Because of this, many think democracy may trump our basic rights.

The main reason that the American founders established a government that was to secure our rights is that they agreed with Locke and a few others throughout human history that justice requires that communities fit human beings as moral agents, with their personal responsibility to govern their own lives. This is perhaps clearest when we notice their strong emphasis on the right to religious liberty. Worship has always been closely associated with morality and to argue that worship must be freely carried out, not coerced (as per, for example, the Holy Inquisition), strongly suggests a general belief in the justice of removing coercion from morality.

The founders also thought that the only chance of government by law, and thus justice, is the institution of a constitution that contains the criteria for justice, namely, basic rights that are coherent and consistent, that apply to all and can be protected for all.

With the introduction of the conceptual contrivance known as positive rights, it turns out to be in principle impossible for government to govern by a set of consistent standards, standards that had been provided with reasonable completeness by the theory of individual rights. Positive rights must be in inherent conflict. And they conflict, most of all, with our basic negative rights to life, liberty and property.

In the last analysis, the doctrine of positive rights leaves government free to impose its arbitrary standards of government—one day it is to help AIDS research, the next to foster the arts by supporting Public Broadcasting Service, yet another day the provision of our national interest[12] in oil in the Middle East and then the next day it is to solve the problem of immoderate smoking habits among the citizenry. No standards of restrain apply—indeed, as in a fascistic system, anything goes the leaders think is important. The only difference is that the leaders still abide some modicum of democracy.

As we judge communities across the globe, we must keep in mind that what is comparatively best is not always the best that is in fact possible. Thus we can affirm the greater merits of certain political communities or countries despite their evident violation of basic rights. Just as in personal assault cases we can distinguish between major and minor cases, as well as those in between, we can also tell when communities rest on principles that render those systems entirely corrupt, those that simply are confused and messy, and those that come reasonably near to meeting the standards of basic human rights. In a formal way we already apply this method of judging communities, even if not for all purposes. We should go much farther and apply it more strictly and substantively, including as we appraise our own country's laws.

The doctrine of positive rights is seriously, probably fatally, flawed. With its abandonment a more promising idea may gain currency. This is that instead of positive rights, there are values some are in dire need of and some of those who can relieve them may have the moral responsibility to do so, one they ought freely to choose to carry out. Without the impossible dream of everyone have the right to such relief, as an enforceable obligation from others, this more promising albeit non-utopian view will gain greater impact, thereby fostering the solution of problems that the advocates of positive rights only pretend to tackle, however benign their intentions may be.



Endnotes:

*R. C. Hoiles Chair, Argyros School of Business & Economics, Chapman University, Orange, CA 92866.

[1] Among them are Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978), Henry Shue, Basic Rights (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), and Stephen Holmes and Cass R. Sunstein, The Cost of Rights: Why Liberty Depends on Taxes (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999).

[2] James P. Sterba, “Progress in Reconciliation: Evidence from the Right and the Left,” Journal of Social Philosophy, Vol. 28 (Fall 1997), p. 102. It might be worth pointing out that there is nothing at all that is “Right” about libertarianism. The Right is conservative, even reactionary, and has traditionally rejected many of the tenets of classical liberalism or libertarianism, even its principled adherence to the right to private property and free trade. One need but think of Pat Buchanan’s vociferous opposition to free trade to confirm this point or, if one wants more respectable evidence, of Edmund Burke’s and other conservatives’ (e.g., Russell Kirk’s) criticism of individualism, a central feature of the libertarianism at issue here. Indeed, by some accounts libertarianism is Left because it is close to Enlightenment ideas that champion reason and science.

[3] There are many approaches taken to defending the libertarian stance. Some that are advance mainly by economists do not involve rights, only the overall efficiency of free institutions. Others take rights as a starting point, while yet others rest negative rights on prior ethical theory about the responsibility to strive for excellence. Sterba has argued against those libertarians who take either liberty or the right to liberty as crucial in their positions. Others have argued against negative rights that they rest on shaky foundations and thus cannot be justified. For example, Adrian Bardon, “From Nozick to Welfare Rights,” Critical Review, Vol. 14, No. 4 (2000), pp. 481-501, rejects what he takes to be the two important arguments for property rights, based on autonomy (or respect) and on desert, respectively, he finds in Robert Nozick. The natural rights position relies on neither of these but on the unique identity and sovereignty of human beings that makes them unavoidable for involuntary servitude or public use and on their nature as free and morally responsible, thus in need of the moral space Nozick mentions so as to make decisions about right and wrong conduct. If there is any ground for respect, it lies in the fact that one’s humanity imposes on everyone the task of making life supporting decisions. If there is any desert, it comes from the routine but not necessary requirement that assets and resources one owns need to be allocated effectively, productively. Yet, initial assets—talent, beauty, inherited wealth—need not be deserved, only be a part of one’s identity as the individual person one is. It is one’s right to one’s life that justifies others’ obligation not to intrude on one, not that one has earned special moral respect or deserved the property one happens to have. This should be evident from the fact that it is absurd to think that one deserves one’s life, as if one had struggled to be born is now rewarded with freedom for having done so.

[4] For how children’s positive rights emerge, see Tibor R. Machan, “Between Parents and Children,” Journal of Social Philosophy, Vol. 23 (Winter, 1992), pp. 16-22.

[5] For the most thorough theorist now arguing for the idea that we belong to—and are not only members of—our communities, see Charles Taylor, Philosophy and the Human Sciences (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 187-210. This belonging is akin to the way the heart, liver or nose is a part of the body and isn’t a member of it; so, by this account, human individuals are a part of society, not free members who may elect to cancel their membership.

[6] The skepticism here, as in many other cases, stems mainly from a wholly unrealistic conception of what it takes to know something. With the idea that when we know something we have the clearest, most self-consistent, and most complete conceptualization possible to date of what it is we supposedly know—in contrast to the idea that when we know something we have a final, perfect, understanding of it—the most serious and destructive kind of skepticism does not arise. I discuss this in Tibor R. Machan, “Epistemology and Moral Knowledge,” The Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 36 (1982), pp. 23-49.

[7] I discuss the mistake Taylor and other communitarians make in such an ascription of atomism to the classical liberal, libertarian school in Tibor R. Machan, Classical Individualism (London: Routledge, 1998) and Generosity; Virtue in Civil Society (Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 1998)

[8] Op. cit., Taylor, Philosophy and the Human Sciences; Amitai Etzioni, The Spirit of Community (New York: Crown Publishing Co., 1993); Robert Bellah, et al., Habits of the Heart (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1985), and Thomas A. Spragens, The Irony of Liberal Reason (Chicago: University of Chicagor Press, 1982). For a critical examination of the misattribution of atomism to classical liberal and libertarian politics, see Aeon Skoble, “Another Carica­ture of Libertarianism,” Reason Papers, No. 17 (1992), pp. 107-112.

[9] True ethical and political—including basic rights—claims are no less factual and thus no less in need of conforming to the criteria of consistency and coherence as those in the natural sciences. The reason is ultimately metaphysical, in the last analysis, justified in Aristotle's defense of the Law of Non-Contradiction, a defense that still stands and the challenge of which is unavoidably self-defeating. For the details of this line of defense of the Lockean rights stance, see Tibor R. Machan, Individuals and Their Rights (LaSalle, IL: Open Court Publishing Co., Inc., 1989).

[10] This conflicts with Taylor’s claim to the contrary. Taylor says the following about the Lockean position, something quite wrong in light of Locke’s own reference to a law of nature—namely, ethics that our reasoning faculty can grasp “if we but consult it”—that is prior to and required for the conceptualization of negative rights:

Theories which assert the primacy of rights are those which take as the fundamental, or at least a fundamental, principle of their political theory the ascription of certain rights to individuals which deny the same status to a principle of belonging or obligation, that is a principle which states our obligation as men to belong to or sustain society, or a society of a certain type, or to obey authority or an authority of a certain type. (p. 188)

[11] See Tibor R. Machan, The Right to Private Property (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 2002).

[12] In contrast to national security, which is but a generalization from the individual security from negative rights violations that citizens may elect to obtain via government.

Greece in America

Tibor R. Machan

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

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

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

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

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

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

Obama the Wuss!

Tibor R. Machan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Prohibition hasn’t Ended

Tibor R. Machan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ron Paul’s Foreign Policy Troubles

Tibor R. Machan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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