The State versus Broadcasting
by Tibor R. Machan
In 1927 Congress nationalized the ether—now known as the electromagneticspectrum. This is the sphere where broadcast radio and television signalstravel. Instead of treating the realm as subject to homesteading and othermeans of allocation as private property—which is how it should have beendone in a bona fide free country—the politicians, led by a NebraskaSenator, just took the whole thing for the government—in the name of thatinsidious pseudo entity, "the public."
Like "the community" or "society" or "the people," "the public" is avirtually empty concept. Yes,there can be proper uses of it—such as when we say that protection ofindividual rights is a public good, meaning, it is really to everyone'sbenefit in a country. But this is very rare. Mostly "the public," as "thecommunity," is rolled out as a cover forvarious special interests.
So now when the two companies, XM and Sirius, propose merging into a $13billion satellite corporation, claiming that such consolidation providesthe only economically feasible means for saving radio, there are againvoices insisting that "the public interest" demands governmentinterference! And again, of course, it is a ruse.
In an Op Ed piece for The New York Times, sociology (1) professor EricKlinenberg who wrote the book Fighting for Air: The Battle to ControlAmerica's Media, puts in a plea thus:
"It's time for Congress and the F.C.C. to consider policy ideas intended toserve the public interest, like requiring broadcast radio stations to airoriginal programming on the new digital stations, or allowing satellitecompanies to run local news, talk and music. Mega-mergers are unlikely toprovide any real benefits to citizens and consumers. Why resort to evenmore consolidation when we already know it doesn't work?"
Notice how the interest of some people who like to listen to radio andwant it to broadcast "local news, talk and music," is used to asa justification for government requiring what a business must be requiredto do. No, let us not leave it to market forces, supply and demand—whichwould let the company sink or swim, as any other business based on itsperformance and management. Instead bring in the feds because, of course,government's running of broadcast firms, as any other kind, has proven tobe such a roaring success everywhere around the globe. And all sonecessary, given how it is in the public interest.
Here is Klinenberg's powerful case:
"Radio is our most intimate medium—it wakes us in the morning, follows usinto the shower, accompanies us during commutes and becomes a lifeline inemergencies. But radio is struggling to attract and retain an audience."
To start with, radio is not "our" medium. Listeners purchaseradio offerings just like they do other things, only in a slightly morecomplicated way; namely, through accepting advertising along with theprogramming, as it happens when we visit all those “free” web sites or paya token price for newspapers and magazines—far less, in any case, thanwhat they actually cost to produce.
Professor Klinenberg gives away his case by admitting that radio has beenhaving a problem attracting and retaining a sufficiently large audience tomake all those wishing to be in the business succeed. Which means it isclearly not a "public good," something for everyone, like policeprotection or the courts that are good candidates for what does serve agenuine public interest. In other words, millions and millions of us arequite happy living without "our" supposedly most intimatemedium. Instead of listening to radio, the members of the public oftenjust purchase CDs or buy programming from the Internet. Or, maybe, theydon't at all listen to what radio offers, not music, not talk shows, notnews, because they have different interests or sources.
But because one academic sociologist, along with maybe a pretty sizablespecial interest group, would like to have radio handed to it on the backsof the rest of us, with Congress and the FCC regimenting the industry totheir heart's content, government is supposed to treat radio servicedifferently, as if it were the legal system or the military standing indefense of everyone's rights.
I hope this isn't going to happen. Let the Republican administration atthe FCC resist this plea for the feds to get into it all again, as whenthey made that awful judgment back in 1927 to make the electromagneticspectrum "ours."
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Europe's “Philosophical” Problem
by Tibor R. Machan
France, England, Holland, Germany and some other countries are reeling from it now. It is the controversy over young Muslim women wearing the veil in schools. But I do not agree with a recent reviewer, David A. Bell, in The New Republic, who exclaimed, "This is one of the strangest, most philosophically rattling, controversies in recent European memory ..." He said this after observing that "Jack Straw, the leader of the British House of Commons, recently attacked the wearing of veils as a 'visible statement of separation and of difference,' and requested that women remove them when visiting him."
The reason this is little more than hyperbole is that a philosophically rattling controversy would have to be far more basic, bear on far more fundamental issues, than does the one about wearing veils in public. For example, "Is there a God?" or "Are human beings free?" or "Can the human mind understand things as they really are?" Now those would be philosophical.
This isn't to say that the veil issue is insignificant. But there is a plain enough solution to it and in America that solution has been tried in some areas of our highly diverse culture. This is to significantly diminish the public square. If one keeps much of society—church, home, work, recreation, travel and the like—within the private sector, there can be an unexpected measure of diversity about how people comport themselves without this posing any kind of controversy. Yes, in America we also face the (by no means philosophically but otherwise) bothersome controversy of what to do with young people who are herded into public schools as a matter of the nearly one-size-fits-all public policy of coercive and publicly funded education. But that's kind of a relic and all the fuss about school choice and charter schools and independent schools testifies to this fact.
In a bona fide free country different groups of people with their different religious and philosophical convictions, habits, rituals and such have no trouble following their own ways. That is because of the institution of private property rights! Yes, Virginia, the right to private property accommodates all such peaceful differences among a citizenry. Only when people are drafted, conscripted into some sphere, such as primary and secondary schools, do troubles arise. (Just ask the Amish about all this; they’ll tell you a sorry story.)
Indeed, ever since the U. S. military has eliminated conscripting young citizens into the services, they, too, no longer face this problem of the impossible, uncomfortable, often offensive mix. American society, with its innumerable ethnic and religious and other culturally divers groups manages to do quite well provided people aren't coercively made to mingle. Of course, when you extort money from everyone, via taxes, so as to pay for various practices that some object to, such as stem cell or climate change research, abortion, publishing propaganda in support of (or against) sex education and so forth, then trouble is not far away. That's because peaceful mingling is, well, peaceful but coerced mingling produces considerable acrimony.
If so-called public resources or public spheres are utilized for some purposes but not others, those among the public not favoring the purpose that benefits from such resources or is provided space in such spheres will be upset. To use what is "ours" for goals that are not in fact ours at all is naturally going to be found objectionable. Why should Roman Catholics, whose religion rejects abortion, have to pay for abortion clinics? It places them into a morally unacceptable situation, namely, funding what they consider morally wrong. Why should a school that wants to make it possible for all students to learn without distraction have to admit and make room for a few who insist on displaying their faith for all to have to confront?
In a free country, however, these problems are solved by the institution of the right to private property—different groups can practice their ways without imposing them on others within their own borders. In the very few public places, such as, say, a court house, the rules of the public realm would apply to all equally! And that is hardly a source of major displeasure. But the same isn't true when it comes to such phony public places as a community swimming pool. There, if one is coerced into some uniform practice of, say, wearing a certain kind of bathing garb, members of some groups will object and justifiably feel put upon.
So, it turns out Europe's main philosophically troubling controversy is manageable along lines shown by much of American society—place borders around groups so they can exclude those who refuse to conform and subject only the very few public spaces adhere to uniform policies.
by Tibor R. Machan
France, England, Holland, Germany and some other countries are reeling from it now. It is the controversy over young Muslim women wearing the veil in schools. But I do not agree with a recent reviewer, David A. Bell, in The New Republic, who exclaimed, "This is one of the strangest, most philosophically rattling, controversies in recent European memory ..." He said this after observing that "Jack Straw, the leader of the British House of Commons, recently attacked the wearing of veils as a 'visible statement of separation and of difference,' and requested that women remove them when visiting him."
The reason this is little more than hyperbole is that a philosophically rattling controversy would have to be far more basic, bear on far more fundamental issues, than does the one about wearing veils in public. For example, "Is there a God?" or "Are human beings free?" or "Can the human mind understand things as they really are?" Now those would be philosophical.
This isn't to say that the veil issue is insignificant. But there is a plain enough solution to it and in America that solution has been tried in some areas of our highly diverse culture. This is to significantly diminish the public square. If one keeps much of society—church, home, work, recreation, travel and the like—within the private sector, there can be an unexpected measure of diversity about how people comport themselves without this posing any kind of controversy. Yes, in America we also face the (by no means philosophically but otherwise) bothersome controversy of what to do with young people who are herded into public schools as a matter of the nearly one-size-fits-all public policy of coercive and publicly funded education. But that's kind of a relic and all the fuss about school choice and charter schools and independent schools testifies to this fact.
In a bona fide free country different groups of people with their different religious and philosophical convictions, habits, rituals and such have no trouble following their own ways. That is because of the institution of private property rights! Yes, Virginia, the right to private property accommodates all such peaceful differences among a citizenry. Only when people are drafted, conscripted into some sphere, such as primary and secondary schools, do troubles arise. (Just ask the Amish about all this; they’ll tell you a sorry story.)
Indeed, ever since the U. S. military has eliminated conscripting young citizens into the services, they, too, no longer face this problem of the impossible, uncomfortable, often offensive mix. American society, with its innumerable ethnic and religious and other culturally divers groups manages to do quite well provided people aren't coercively made to mingle. Of course, when you extort money from everyone, via taxes, so as to pay for various practices that some object to, such as stem cell or climate change research, abortion, publishing propaganda in support of (or against) sex education and so forth, then trouble is not far away. That's because peaceful mingling is, well, peaceful but coerced mingling produces considerable acrimony.
If so-called public resources or public spheres are utilized for some purposes but not others, those among the public not favoring the purpose that benefits from such resources or is provided space in such spheres will be upset. To use what is "ours" for goals that are not in fact ours at all is naturally going to be found objectionable. Why should Roman Catholics, whose religion rejects abortion, have to pay for abortion clinics? It places them into a morally unacceptable situation, namely, funding what they consider morally wrong. Why should a school that wants to make it possible for all students to learn without distraction have to admit and make room for a few who insist on displaying their faith for all to have to confront?
In a free country, however, these problems are solved by the institution of the right to private property—different groups can practice their ways without imposing them on others within their own borders. In the very few public places, such as, say, a court house, the rules of the public realm would apply to all equally! And that is hardly a source of major displeasure. But the same isn't true when it comes to such phony public places as a community swimming pool. There, if one is coerced into some uniform practice of, say, wearing a certain kind of bathing garb, members of some groups will object and justifiably feel put upon.
So, it turns out Europe's main philosophically troubling controversy is manageable along lines shown by much of American society—place borders around groups so they can exclude those who refuse to conform and subject only the very few public spaces adhere to uniform policies.
Saturday, February 24, 2007
Is Free Will Incredible?
Tibor R. Machan
As someone who became convinced early in my life and even more so in my career as an academic philosopher that human beings normally possess free will, I have been fighting something of an uphill battle about the issue despite how ubiquitous the assumption is that we indeed do have this capacity. Anytime we hold people responsible, or urge that they alter their conduct, resist a temptation, battle some bad habit, and so forth, the free will idea lurks in the background. The criminal and even tort law, of course, assumes people could have done otherwise than they did, all things being equal. Politics, with all of its blaming and praising, is in the same situation, as is personal morality where none of its would make sense unless we had the capacity to choose how we act and thus can be faulted for failing to do what’s right. As the famous German philosopher Immanuel Kant said, "ought" implies "can."
On the other hand, in most scientific disciplines, both natural and social, the idea of free will has gotten a very bad rep. Most social scientists want to find the factors or causes that explain how people behave and declare themselves value-free, free, that is, of any moral or ethical evaluation of our conduct. With the rise of the influence of genetics as a field wherein causes of human behavior, even attitudes, feelings, thoughts, ideas, and the rest are explored, the conviction has become virtually universal among scientists of all kids that everything about us is fully, unexceptionably caused by various innate, hard-wired biological attributes or properties or by prompters in the environment.
Most recently, for example, the notion that the habit of smoking is something fully physiological got a boost from findings about someone who had an injury to a part of his brain and suddenly had no inclination to smoke whatsoever. Similar findings have made the news about our intentions—they seem to researchers to be irrelevant to what we do. As the UK weekly, THE WEEK reported in its February 17, 2007, issue: “neuroscientists have, for the first time, used brain imaging techniques to work out people’s future intentions.” Specifically, “the research involved asking volunteers to decide whether to add or subtract two numbers they had not yet seen, before being given a brain scan using a technique called functional magnetic imaging resonance…[and] the researches were able to predict, with a 70% success rate, whether the volunteers would add or subtract the numbers when they were flashed up on screen.”
But it isn’t just some of this, still not fully interpreted, work that gives the determinists their confidence. From early on when the natural sciences got their big boost, around the time of Galileo, philosophers like Thomas Hobbes and Baruch Spinoza inferred from the findings of physics and astronomy that free will must be a self-delusion. In the 20th century, with the emergence of quantum physics, some of this came under criticism but even with uncertainty as a feature of the world, most scientists, such as Stephen Hawking, simply said, well we may never be able to fully prove determinism but it is really the only game in town. Such philosophers as Daniel Dennett and Paul and Patricia Churchland followed suit and today there is widespread consensus among both the scientists and the philosophers that the determinism that says all of what we do has to happen as it does and our minds are not in control of our actions seem to carry the day.
Why, then, might one hold out in favor of free will? I am no mystic; I do not believe in “spooky” things, to use Dennett’s way of characterizing the idea of human agency, or self-determination. What then? Is it sheer stubbornness, the desperate need to believe that I am in control of things? Others can do without the idea and so could I if I didn't think determinism makes little sense. And the determinist's idea just doesn’t make sense, in the end.
As I write these lines, I observe that I am in control. Indeed, the very idea that some of these bright folks have a handle on how things are with human behavior couldn’t make sense if they were not free to check it out without prejudice, without having their minds already hard-wired to think in certain ways. And the evidence against free will also seems a bit odd—when one drives down the road and a car suddenly veers into one's lane and one quickly steers to avoid it, how is it that one's intention is predictable? No one knew of the veering of the car and what someone would do—indeed, many may have gotten into a crash at such a point. Too much in our lives is unpredictable quite apart from free will and how we will act in light of such events then could hardly be predicted.
Even that evidence about parts of the brain suggesting that our habits are innate is a bit fishy—all of that may well be a matter of correlation, not causation. Sure, ongoing practices leave traces in the brain, that’s to be expected, and these are likely to become factors in the development of habits. But the initial practices could well have been a matter of free choice.
There’s much more to the discussion. It is a vital one for many reasons. But certain features of our lives, especially those having to do with independent—indeed, scientific—thinking support that there is a central element of freedom in human existence that is impossible to deny.
Tibor R. Machan
As someone who became convinced early in my life and even more so in my career as an academic philosopher that human beings normally possess free will, I have been fighting something of an uphill battle about the issue despite how ubiquitous the assumption is that we indeed do have this capacity. Anytime we hold people responsible, or urge that they alter their conduct, resist a temptation, battle some bad habit, and so forth, the free will idea lurks in the background. The criminal and even tort law, of course, assumes people could have done otherwise than they did, all things being equal. Politics, with all of its blaming and praising, is in the same situation, as is personal morality where none of its would make sense unless we had the capacity to choose how we act and thus can be faulted for failing to do what’s right. As the famous German philosopher Immanuel Kant said, "ought" implies "can."
On the other hand, in most scientific disciplines, both natural and social, the idea of free will has gotten a very bad rep. Most social scientists want to find the factors or causes that explain how people behave and declare themselves value-free, free, that is, of any moral or ethical evaluation of our conduct. With the rise of the influence of genetics as a field wherein causes of human behavior, even attitudes, feelings, thoughts, ideas, and the rest are explored, the conviction has become virtually universal among scientists of all kids that everything about us is fully, unexceptionably caused by various innate, hard-wired biological attributes or properties or by prompters in the environment.
Most recently, for example, the notion that the habit of smoking is something fully physiological got a boost from findings about someone who had an injury to a part of his brain and suddenly had no inclination to smoke whatsoever. Similar findings have made the news about our intentions—they seem to researchers to be irrelevant to what we do. As the UK weekly, THE WEEK reported in its February 17, 2007, issue: “neuroscientists have, for the first time, used brain imaging techniques to work out people’s future intentions.” Specifically, “the research involved asking volunteers to decide whether to add or subtract two numbers they had not yet seen, before being given a brain scan using a technique called functional magnetic imaging resonance…[and] the researches were able to predict, with a 70% success rate, whether the volunteers would add or subtract the numbers when they were flashed up on screen.”
But it isn’t just some of this, still not fully interpreted, work that gives the determinists their confidence. From early on when the natural sciences got their big boost, around the time of Galileo, philosophers like Thomas Hobbes and Baruch Spinoza inferred from the findings of physics and astronomy that free will must be a self-delusion. In the 20th century, with the emergence of quantum physics, some of this came under criticism but even with uncertainty as a feature of the world, most scientists, such as Stephen Hawking, simply said, well we may never be able to fully prove determinism but it is really the only game in town. Such philosophers as Daniel Dennett and Paul and Patricia Churchland followed suit and today there is widespread consensus among both the scientists and the philosophers that the determinism that says all of what we do has to happen as it does and our minds are not in control of our actions seem to carry the day.
Why, then, might one hold out in favor of free will? I am no mystic; I do not believe in “spooky” things, to use Dennett’s way of characterizing the idea of human agency, or self-determination. What then? Is it sheer stubbornness, the desperate need to believe that I am in control of things? Others can do without the idea and so could I if I didn't think determinism makes little sense. And the determinist's idea just doesn’t make sense, in the end.
As I write these lines, I observe that I am in control. Indeed, the very idea that some of these bright folks have a handle on how things are with human behavior couldn’t make sense if they were not free to check it out without prejudice, without having their minds already hard-wired to think in certain ways. And the evidence against free will also seems a bit odd—when one drives down the road and a car suddenly veers into one's lane and one quickly steers to avoid it, how is it that one's intention is predictable? No one knew of the veering of the car and what someone would do—indeed, many may have gotten into a crash at such a point. Too much in our lives is unpredictable quite apart from free will and how we will act in light of such events then could hardly be predicted.
Even that evidence about parts of the brain suggesting that our habits are innate is a bit fishy—all of that may well be a matter of correlation, not causation. Sure, ongoing practices leave traces in the brain, that’s to be expected, and these are likely to become factors in the development of habits. But the initial practices could well have been a matter of free choice.
There’s much more to the discussion. It is a vital one for many reasons. But certain features of our lives, especially those having to do with independent—indeed, scientific—thinking support that there is a central element of freedom in human existence that is impossible to deny.
Friday, February 23, 2007
Morality and Illiberal Democracy
by Tibor R. Machan
When the term "democracy" is used loosely, as in geopolitical discussions, it is used to mean that kind of political system in which everyone can have an input into decisions bearing on public affairs. What is left mostly unspecified is just what count as public affairs.
In a totalitarian state everything counts as the public realm; in a free country there are strict limits. In most existing countries today it's somewhere in between. Democratic decisions impact taxation, government regulation, international diplomacy, education and health policies, and whatever else the government is involved in. The idea of limiting the public realm has gone out of fashion and was never taken very seriously except by some few political theorists and even fewer politicians, let alone bureaucrats. Once in power, there is a very strong temptation to expand the reach of the power one has. People who get chummy with government tend not to like it when its powers are limited—they have agendas and such limitations could impede their efforts to carry them out.
And in democracies the politicians' constituency often urges government to expand its power so as to provide the voters with various benefits —ones, however, that have to be obtained by confiscating other people's resources, including their labor.
In short, democracy often tilts quite powerfully against morality. No, there is no consensus about what is the right morality for people to practice, but there are some general principles or virtues most of us support at least in the realm of private conduct. Few people champion robbing Peter so as to "help" out Paul—we usually believe that Peter needs to agree to the idea. Instead of confiscation, stealing, most would tend to endorse generosity and charity. The same is true about honesty—on the whole, other than in exceptional cases, most of us value straight talk and have contempt for liars. I think the same can be said about respecting the liberty of others—we hire them if we would like them to work for us and do not coerce them into doing such work. Millions of others do valuable labor but we tend to consider it wrong to conscript this labor for our benefit.
So while there are disagreements about various moral matters—abortion, assisted suicide, child-raising and so forth—there is a very large sphere of agreement, too. Yet when we look at the way democracy functions in most countries, it is in these areas of basic moral agreement where a serious discord is evident. Democratic decisions do, in fact, lead to robbing Peter so as to "help" out Paul. (I use the scare quotes because one can hardly call forcing people to part with their resources bone fide help given to anyone! This is why government cannot be compassionate!) Democratic decision making routinely endorses conscripting people's labor, limiting their liberty, making them act as they do not choose to even when they are not violating anyone's rights, and so forth. In short, illiberal, unlimited democracy is routinely in conflict with standards of morality or ethics.
In practical terms this means that most countries are replete with public policies that are out and out immoral ... yet widely accepted, too. Is it so curious, then, that young people in these countries get mixed messages about how they ought to conduct themselves? If it is OK for politicians and bureaucrats to make promises they not only will not but cannot keep, who is to communicate any objections to this in how young people comport themselves toward each other and their elders? Why should they not lie when governments do so all the time? If it is OK for democratically established public policies to violate strictures of ethics—let's take Peter's wealth (he has too much, he doesn't need it so much, she is using it badly, etc., and so forth) and transfer it to Paul (but take a good chunk on the way to pay for our diligent transfer efforts)—why should young people abstain from stealing? What if, especially, they get peer approval—isn't that like democracy, after all?
Throughout the schools in most Western countries democracy is hailed day in and day out but at the same time some of the worst kind of human conduct is carried out in democracy's name, with the democratic process's sanction. Does this not tell those students that, well, when there is wide consensus for breaching morality and ethics, it's just fine to perpetrate the breach? So go ahead and cheat, copy other's tests, plagiarize, bully some kids, steal from a few, and so on. I would think it does.
It seems clear to me that if one expects the younger generation to grow up to be decent people, illiberal democracy isn't helping to facilitate this.
by Tibor R. Machan
When the term "democracy" is used loosely, as in geopolitical discussions, it is used to mean that kind of political system in which everyone can have an input into decisions bearing on public affairs. What is left mostly unspecified is just what count as public affairs.
In a totalitarian state everything counts as the public realm; in a free country there are strict limits. In most existing countries today it's somewhere in between. Democratic decisions impact taxation, government regulation, international diplomacy, education and health policies, and whatever else the government is involved in. The idea of limiting the public realm has gone out of fashion and was never taken very seriously except by some few political theorists and even fewer politicians, let alone bureaucrats. Once in power, there is a very strong temptation to expand the reach of the power one has. People who get chummy with government tend not to like it when its powers are limited—they have agendas and such limitations could impede their efforts to carry them out.
And in democracies the politicians' constituency often urges government to expand its power so as to provide the voters with various benefits —ones, however, that have to be obtained by confiscating other people's resources, including their labor.
In short, democracy often tilts quite powerfully against morality. No, there is no consensus about what is the right morality for people to practice, but there are some general principles or virtues most of us support at least in the realm of private conduct. Few people champion robbing Peter so as to "help" out Paul—we usually believe that Peter needs to agree to the idea. Instead of confiscation, stealing, most would tend to endorse generosity and charity. The same is true about honesty—on the whole, other than in exceptional cases, most of us value straight talk and have contempt for liars. I think the same can be said about respecting the liberty of others—we hire them if we would like them to work for us and do not coerce them into doing such work. Millions of others do valuable labor but we tend to consider it wrong to conscript this labor for our benefit.
So while there are disagreements about various moral matters—abortion, assisted suicide, child-raising and so forth—there is a very large sphere of agreement, too. Yet when we look at the way democracy functions in most countries, it is in these areas of basic moral agreement where a serious discord is evident. Democratic decisions do, in fact, lead to robbing Peter so as to "help" out Paul. (I use the scare quotes because one can hardly call forcing people to part with their resources bone fide help given to anyone! This is why government cannot be compassionate!) Democratic decision making routinely endorses conscripting people's labor, limiting their liberty, making them act as they do not choose to even when they are not violating anyone's rights, and so forth. In short, illiberal, unlimited democracy is routinely in conflict with standards of morality or ethics.
In practical terms this means that most countries are replete with public policies that are out and out immoral ... yet widely accepted, too. Is it so curious, then, that young people in these countries get mixed messages about how they ought to conduct themselves? If it is OK for politicians and bureaucrats to make promises they not only will not but cannot keep, who is to communicate any objections to this in how young people comport themselves toward each other and their elders? Why should they not lie when governments do so all the time? If it is OK for democratically established public policies to violate strictures of ethics—let's take Peter's wealth (he has too much, he doesn't need it so much, she is using it badly, etc., and so forth) and transfer it to Paul (but take a good chunk on the way to pay for our diligent transfer efforts)—why should young people abstain from stealing? What if, especially, they get peer approval—isn't that like democracy, after all?
Throughout the schools in most Western countries democracy is hailed day in and day out but at the same time some of the worst kind of human conduct is carried out in democracy's name, with the democratic process's sanction. Does this not tell those students that, well, when there is wide consensus for breaching morality and ethics, it's just fine to perpetrate the breach? So go ahead and cheat, copy other's tests, plagiarize, bully some kids, steal from a few, and so on. I would think it does.
It seems clear to me that if one expects the younger generation to grow up to be decent people, illiberal democracy isn't helping to facilitate this.
Abortion Debate Redux
Tibor R. Machan
Sometimes a debate or discussion goes completely astray because concepts are used that are entirely confusing. The abortion debate is a case in point.
It begins with the cryptic terms used to classify the opposing sides: Pro-life versus pro-choice. While such labels should never be taken literally, in this case they tend to be. Those who are on the pro-life side seem really to think they are for life, while their opponents are against life. Yet, of course, pro-life advocates aren’t, for example, defenders of animal rights which they would have to be if they were pro life period. What they seem to be is pro human life. And here is the problem—while life may well begin at conception, it doesn’t not follow from this that what begins then is the life of a human being. A fetus is something that’s alive, as is a tooth or a strand of hair. But no one is concerned about pulling a tooth or cutting off of a strand of hair—it isn’t deemed to be murder. What is murder is the unjust killing of a human being. If, however, there is no human being around yet, only a fetus, a potential human being, then there can be no murder (although it could still be ethically objectionable).
So the real issue so called pro-lifers ought to be concerned about is when a human being comes into existence, not when life beings. Even sperm are alive, yet these are killed routinely without anyone suggesting that it constitutes murder. (Well, “anyone” may be an exaggeration!)
On the pro-choice side, in turn, the real issue isn’t choice. For one, many who believe in “the woman’s right to choose” confine this right to the choice to kill a fetus or, as pro-life folks (question-beggingly!) refer to it, “an unborn child.” Many who defend the right of women to have abortions do not believe in their right to choose not to pay taxes, to smoke dope, to refuse to sell a home to blacks, etc., etc. They aren’t really in favor of choices of which they disapprove, just as pro-lifers aren’t.
Indeed, a choice to murder someone is not one anyone ought to have a right to make. Whether “a woman’s right to choose” is worth defending depends on what the choice is about. If it is a choice to kill another human being—even if that human being is inside the woman (after all one’s child is inside one’s home and no one may commit infanticide there or anywhere, for that matter)—no one has a right to make it.
I suppose it is unrealistic to expect that most parties to this debate will get down to the business of trying to resolve it in fair and accurate terms. They are too committed either way. But there has to be a resolution—it should be either legally right or wrong to have (or to ban) abortions. What is an abortion in the majority of cases? The deliberate killing of a fetus before or around the 24th week of pregnancy. (We aren’t here talking about late term abortions, which are extreme cases and deserve separate treatment.) May a woman kill or have killed such a being? If yes, then abortions must remain legal, just as any other actions that do not violated the rights of anyone must (a point many pro-choice folks miss). If no, they must be banned, just as any murder must be.
To reiterate, pro-life people aren’t actually pro life, per se. The bulk of them have no problem with killing chicken or fish or even monkeys for purposes of medical testing. They are only against killing human beings and they believe abortion involves doing so. Most pro-choice folks, too, don’t much care about choices, only about the choice of a woman to terminate a pregnancy and they hold that this may not be prohibited because it does not involved murdering a human being.
So the real issues is when does a human being come into existence. Is it at conception? Is it when the fetus acquires some capacity to think—based on “man is a thinking animal”? Or is it when someone is born—we celebrate birthdays then, thus it's the beginning of someone’s human life?
With these questions before us, I am confident that more progress would be made in this highly divisive and acrimonious debate. It may even be lead to a rational resolution of it.
Tibor R. Machan
Sometimes a debate or discussion goes completely astray because concepts are used that are entirely confusing. The abortion debate is a case in point.
It begins with the cryptic terms used to classify the opposing sides: Pro-life versus pro-choice. While such labels should never be taken literally, in this case they tend to be. Those who are on the pro-life side seem really to think they are for life, while their opponents are against life. Yet, of course, pro-life advocates aren’t, for example, defenders of animal rights which they would have to be if they were pro life period. What they seem to be is pro human life. And here is the problem—while life may well begin at conception, it doesn’t not follow from this that what begins then is the life of a human being. A fetus is something that’s alive, as is a tooth or a strand of hair. But no one is concerned about pulling a tooth or cutting off of a strand of hair—it isn’t deemed to be murder. What is murder is the unjust killing of a human being. If, however, there is no human being around yet, only a fetus, a potential human being, then there can be no murder (although it could still be ethically objectionable).
So the real issue so called pro-lifers ought to be concerned about is when a human being comes into existence, not when life beings. Even sperm are alive, yet these are killed routinely without anyone suggesting that it constitutes murder. (Well, “anyone” may be an exaggeration!)
On the pro-choice side, in turn, the real issue isn’t choice. For one, many who believe in “the woman’s right to choose” confine this right to the choice to kill a fetus or, as pro-life folks (question-beggingly!) refer to it, “an unborn child.” Many who defend the right of women to have abortions do not believe in their right to choose not to pay taxes, to smoke dope, to refuse to sell a home to blacks, etc., etc. They aren’t really in favor of choices of which they disapprove, just as pro-lifers aren’t.
Indeed, a choice to murder someone is not one anyone ought to have a right to make. Whether “a woman’s right to choose” is worth defending depends on what the choice is about. If it is a choice to kill another human being—even if that human being is inside the woman (after all one’s child is inside one’s home and no one may commit infanticide there or anywhere, for that matter)—no one has a right to make it.
I suppose it is unrealistic to expect that most parties to this debate will get down to the business of trying to resolve it in fair and accurate terms. They are too committed either way. But there has to be a resolution—it should be either legally right or wrong to have (or to ban) abortions. What is an abortion in the majority of cases? The deliberate killing of a fetus before or around the 24th week of pregnancy. (We aren’t here talking about late term abortions, which are extreme cases and deserve separate treatment.) May a woman kill or have killed such a being? If yes, then abortions must remain legal, just as any other actions that do not violated the rights of anyone must (a point many pro-choice folks miss). If no, they must be banned, just as any murder must be.
To reiterate, pro-life people aren’t actually pro life, per se. The bulk of them have no problem with killing chicken or fish or even monkeys for purposes of medical testing. They are only against killing human beings and they believe abortion involves doing so. Most pro-choice folks, too, don’t much care about choices, only about the choice of a woman to terminate a pregnancy and they hold that this may not be prohibited because it does not involved murdering a human being.
So the real issues is when does a human being come into existence. Is it at conception? Is it when the fetus acquires some capacity to think—based on “man is a thinking animal”? Or is it when someone is born—we celebrate birthdays then, thus it's the beginning of someone’s human life?
With these questions before us, I am confident that more progress would be made in this highly divisive and acrimonious debate. It may even be lead to a rational resolution of it.
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Defending Capitalism's Integrity
by Tibor R. Machan
For most of its history the capitalist economic system has been both admired and criticized. Its capacity for making productivity possible in human communities is unparalleled and hardly anyone can deny this. Even the late American Marxist, Robert Heilbroner, famous for his book The Worldly Philosophers, acknowledged this after the fall of the Soviet Union. He wrote in The New Yorker Magazine that "... Ludwig von Mises ... had written of the 'impossibility' of socialism, arguing that no Central Planning Board could ever gather the enormous amount of information needed to create a workable economic system. ... It turns out, of course, that Mises was right. ..." And Mises, of course, was one of the most consistent, uncompromising defender of pure, laissez-faire capitalism.
Yet, even after the demise of the Soviet system of socialism—the only type that ever aspired to be a fully consistent version of that kind of political economy, with full collective ownership of the means of production (including, as Heilbroner himself noted in his own book, Marxism, For and Against), human labor—many keep criticizing the fully free market system of capitalism. Libertarianism, which is the broader political equivalent of it, also gets this criticism, namely, that it has no room for a safety net for those in dire straits, those who are helpless, indigent, needy, unprepared to deal with market processes, etc. This is the usual mantra of the critics. More extreme versions of them, of course, don't like anything about capitalism and want some kind of dreamlike fully egalitarian system where the wealth is nearly evenly distributed, even if this means the complete destruction of productivity in such a human community. Better we are all equal and poor than we are unequal and most of us quite well off, with some even extraordinarily wealthy.
Never mind this last alternative—it's a loser for sure and only some dreamers who would attempt to remake human nature support it. But what about those who find fault with full, laissez-faire capitalism because of its refusal to allow government to provide for those in dire straits and such? Don't they have a point?
Yes, they do—but they make inferences from it that do not follow. It is possible in a fully capitalist system for some to remain left out. There can be innocent hard luck cases, there is no doubt about that. What doesn't follow is that government ought to do something about this. Instead, free men and women would have to muster the resolve to lend a hand where that's needed. And it's rank cynicism to deny that they would—after all, it is precisely in semi-capitalist systems that charity and philanthropy thrive today! Furthermore, to think that such help would not be forthcoming undermines the very idea that it is used to support, namely, that democratic governments can step in and do the job. That's because such governments are a reflection of the population, if they really are democratic. Which means if the people are mean and heartless, government would be so in spades.
But even beyond these replies to the critics, there is the problem that once the principles of a fully free society are compromised in the legal system, all hell breaks loose. Even if government might be effective in lending its hand to those in dire straits, as soon as it would do this nearly everyone in society would insist that their agenda deserves support, too. There is no way to hold back this logic—a legal system that allows favoritism for even the most extraordinarily needy will be unable to resist yielding to the pleas of all others, and all others would mount massive lobbying efforts to achieve this. All of it is all too evident in current welfare states across the globe and it produces financial crises and more poverty everywhere than what a fully capitalist system would likely produce.
The bottom line is that a fully free society is really the best idea for human community life and even the hard luck cases are more likely to benefit from it than they would from societies with government interference.
by Tibor R. Machan
For most of its history the capitalist economic system has been both admired and criticized. Its capacity for making productivity possible in human communities is unparalleled and hardly anyone can deny this. Even the late American Marxist, Robert Heilbroner, famous for his book The Worldly Philosophers, acknowledged this after the fall of the Soviet Union. He wrote in The New Yorker Magazine that "... Ludwig von Mises ... had written of the 'impossibility' of socialism, arguing that no Central Planning Board could ever gather the enormous amount of information needed to create a workable economic system. ... It turns out, of course, that Mises was right. ..." And Mises, of course, was one of the most consistent, uncompromising defender of pure, laissez-faire capitalism.
Yet, even after the demise of the Soviet system of socialism—the only type that ever aspired to be a fully consistent version of that kind of political economy, with full collective ownership of the means of production (including, as Heilbroner himself noted in his own book, Marxism, For and Against), human labor—many keep criticizing the fully free market system of capitalism. Libertarianism, which is the broader political equivalent of it, also gets this criticism, namely, that it has no room for a safety net for those in dire straits, those who are helpless, indigent, needy, unprepared to deal with market processes, etc. This is the usual mantra of the critics. More extreme versions of them, of course, don't like anything about capitalism and want some kind of dreamlike fully egalitarian system where the wealth is nearly evenly distributed, even if this means the complete destruction of productivity in such a human community. Better we are all equal and poor than we are unequal and most of us quite well off, with some even extraordinarily wealthy.
Never mind this last alternative—it's a loser for sure and only some dreamers who would attempt to remake human nature support it. But what about those who find fault with full, laissez-faire capitalism because of its refusal to allow government to provide for those in dire straits and such? Don't they have a point?
Yes, they do—but they make inferences from it that do not follow. It is possible in a fully capitalist system for some to remain left out. There can be innocent hard luck cases, there is no doubt about that. What doesn't follow is that government ought to do something about this. Instead, free men and women would have to muster the resolve to lend a hand where that's needed. And it's rank cynicism to deny that they would—after all, it is precisely in semi-capitalist systems that charity and philanthropy thrive today! Furthermore, to think that such help would not be forthcoming undermines the very idea that it is used to support, namely, that democratic governments can step in and do the job. That's because such governments are a reflection of the population, if they really are democratic. Which means if the people are mean and heartless, government would be so in spades.
But even beyond these replies to the critics, there is the problem that once the principles of a fully free society are compromised in the legal system, all hell breaks loose. Even if government might be effective in lending its hand to those in dire straits, as soon as it would do this nearly everyone in society would insist that their agenda deserves support, too. There is no way to hold back this logic—a legal system that allows favoritism for even the most extraordinarily needy will be unable to resist yielding to the pleas of all others, and all others would mount massive lobbying efforts to achieve this. All of it is all too evident in current welfare states across the globe and it produces financial crises and more poverty everywhere than what a fully capitalist system would likely produce.
The bottom line is that a fully free society is really the best idea for human community life and even the hard luck cases are more likely to benefit from it than they would from societies with government interference.
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Health Care is a Value, not a Right
Tibor R. Machan
Health care is not a right—one cannot have a right to other people’s service. Those must be provided voluntarily. A better understanding of the relationships people have to health care is that the latter is a value that doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals would, if they were free men and women, provide to people they would choose as recipients, on terms they regard as acceptable.
These values are not owed to anyone unless first agreed to be provided. Doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals may not be placed into involuntary servitude to people needing their services. The relationships must be voluntary, no matter how vital the services in question are to the recipients.
The belief that people may justly be coerced so as to secure funds to pay medical professionals who then will service those who need their work is an error—or a ruse. In a free country adult men and women must treat each other as ends in themselves, not as unwilling tools, instruments, or means to each other’s ends. Just as someone may not go over to one’s neighbors’ homes to conscript them to come and mow one’s lawn or drive one to the hospital but must ask for this and await willingly given help, so any service such as medical care must be obtained without coercion.
Some people believe that once it has been democratically determined that people must pay for medical services to everyone, there is nothing wrong with collecting taxes for this purpose. This view is wrong because no group—or majority of a group—may take what belongs to others. It is no less unjust to do such a thing than it is to hang someone because the majority in some town decides it is acceptable to do so, without first following due process, namely demonstrating through a justice system that the hanging is deserved.
The myth of having a right to medical care, and all sorts of other services that need the work or resources of others, leads to the view that people can proceed with their lives without having to be responsible for producing—or obtaining via voluntary interaction—whatever living requires. There are all kinds of costs people must cover and be prepared to cover, alone or with the voluntary cooperation through trade, charity, generosity, or grant of loans of others. Imposing such costs on unwilling others is like dumping pollution on unwilling others, a natural crime.
Arnold Schwarzenegger should not be complicit in perpetrating the myth of health care rights. He should follow the lead of his late friend, Milton Friedman, and champion a truly free society, including a completely voluntary system of doctor-patient relationships. Anything else is bad for both parties, although it may appear otherwise—as most moral shortcuts do, initially. Securing health care by means of the police power of government is bad for us all.
I am probably whistling in the dark about this (and many other matters having to do with how people should relate to one another on a completely voluntary basis). Too many hope that when the government secures for them what others can do they will escape being victims of such coercion. Slavery, even the more moderate version involved in the universal health care scheme, gains its support mostly from folks who think they will never be the salves, only the masters.
Yet as history shows, this is a futile hope. When the policy of obtaining services form others through coercion gains widespread acceptance, in the end no one can escape becoming a victim. This is one reason the American founders opted for a country in which everyone has unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and no one may be coerced for any purpose at all—that’s what unalienable means! But their teaching was largely premature. Too many of us still suffer from the governmental habit, the worst habit of them all.
Tibor R. Machan
Health care is not a right—one cannot have a right to other people’s service. Those must be provided voluntarily. A better understanding of the relationships people have to health care is that the latter is a value that doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals would, if they were free men and women, provide to people they would choose as recipients, on terms they regard as acceptable.
These values are not owed to anyone unless first agreed to be provided. Doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals may not be placed into involuntary servitude to people needing their services. The relationships must be voluntary, no matter how vital the services in question are to the recipients.
The belief that people may justly be coerced so as to secure funds to pay medical professionals who then will service those who need their work is an error—or a ruse. In a free country adult men and women must treat each other as ends in themselves, not as unwilling tools, instruments, or means to each other’s ends. Just as someone may not go over to one’s neighbors’ homes to conscript them to come and mow one’s lawn or drive one to the hospital but must ask for this and await willingly given help, so any service such as medical care must be obtained without coercion.
Some people believe that once it has been democratically determined that people must pay for medical services to everyone, there is nothing wrong with collecting taxes for this purpose. This view is wrong because no group—or majority of a group—may take what belongs to others. It is no less unjust to do such a thing than it is to hang someone because the majority in some town decides it is acceptable to do so, without first following due process, namely demonstrating through a justice system that the hanging is deserved.
The myth of having a right to medical care, and all sorts of other services that need the work or resources of others, leads to the view that people can proceed with their lives without having to be responsible for producing—or obtaining via voluntary interaction—whatever living requires. There are all kinds of costs people must cover and be prepared to cover, alone or with the voluntary cooperation through trade, charity, generosity, or grant of loans of others. Imposing such costs on unwilling others is like dumping pollution on unwilling others, a natural crime.
Arnold Schwarzenegger should not be complicit in perpetrating the myth of health care rights. He should follow the lead of his late friend, Milton Friedman, and champion a truly free society, including a completely voluntary system of doctor-patient relationships. Anything else is bad for both parties, although it may appear otherwise—as most moral shortcuts do, initially. Securing health care by means of the police power of government is bad for us all.
I am probably whistling in the dark about this (and many other matters having to do with how people should relate to one another on a completely voluntary basis). Too many hope that when the government secures for them what others can do they will escape being victims of such coercion. Slavery, even the more moderate version involved in the universal health care scheme, gains its support mostly from folks who think they will never be the salves, only the masters.
Yet as history shows, this is a futile hope. When the policy of obtaining services form others through coercion gains widespread acceptance, in the end no one can escape becoming a victim. This is one reason the American founders opted for a country in which everyone has unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and no one may be coerced for any purpose at all—that’s what unalienable means! But their teaching was largely premature. Too many of us still suffer from the governmental habit, the worst habit of them all.
Revisiting Human Nature
Tibor R. Machan
False alternatives are often presented as if there is nothing else to choose—like, love me or hate me, or being kind or mean. But in most cases there are many other options.
Throughout the history of ideas there has been a false alternative that’s been paraded before us, that of human beings as either naturally, innately good or evil. In modern philosophy the two positions are represented by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Thomas Hobbes. For Rousseau we are all born good but then get corrupted by society. According to Hobbes we are all driven by dark motives, mostly fear of death, to seek power over nature and others.
In religion, too, there is the idea that basically human beings are sinful and need to be lifted out of this awful state; in some other religions, however, we are deemed to be good from the start. Before considering this idea that its either one or the other, it is worth considering that conservatives have championed the Hobbesian idea, as well as its religious version, namely, that we are all basically corrupt. The conservative believes, as David Brooks points out, “a universal human nature; that it has nasty, competitive elements; that we don’t understand much about it; and that the conventions and institutions that have evolved to keep us from slitting each other’s throats are valuable and are altered at great peril.” Idealists or utopians think people are essentially good (or might, at least, be reengineered to be so).
Yet, think about it: if we are really so bad at heart, why should anyone think those conventions and institutions that have evolved aren’t the fruits of our evil nature? Why trust them? Quite the opposite would follow—naturally evil beings spawn evil practices, customs, laws and so forth. Also, how come we are born good but somehow society—which is, after all, the lot of us—makes us bad? Seems a weird idea.
There is also the problem that “competitive” is mistaken for “combative.” People, very nice ones indeed, compete throughout the world without in the slightest being nasty. Also, if we don’t understand human nature, how come David Brooks and others with whom he aligns himself on this issue have so much to say about it? From ignorance nothing follows, so why are they not just silent about it all?
But by far the most important problem here is that we are presented with a significant false alternative. So, suppose Rousseau was mistaken. Does it follow that Hobbes is correct? The evidence does not bear this out at all.
No once can dispute that there is a lot that’s objectionable in what human beings have done but no one can reasonably deny that human beings have also achieved much that’s admirable. Even all the conservative laments about how we are all “slouching toward Gomorrah” (a book title by Robert Bork) is an exaggeration—those looking back to the good old days conveniently forget that at least America’s good old days were filled with slavery, conscription, male chauvinistic laws, censorship, a murderous war, and lots of awful public policies. But, yes, there were also glorious things in the past, like the rule of law, respect for private property rights, civility in discourse, and so forth and so on. In short, human history has been replete with good and with evil.
What does this suggest? Certainly not that people are naturally good. Nor that they are naturally evil. Indeed, what it does seem to support is that human beings are neither one or the other, at least at the outset of their lives—they are what even the Bible suggests, quite without good or evil but with the capacity to embrace either, more or less, over their lifetimes.
The idea that people possess free will supports this, as well. Yes, they have a human nature—maybe even a firmly fixed one—but this could well amount to the fact that they are capable of thinking and, in consequence, choosing how they will conduct themselves. Some will choose well, some badly, none has to do just one or the other.
There really is much more support for this view of human nature—one that understands us with the freedom to choose our character for good or for ill—than what the conservatives or the utopians present. If the conservatives were right, humanity would have been doomed from the start. If the utopian idealists, then we would have no problems and all would go well all of the time. And clearly neither of this is what the evidence shows.
It is interesting that the American legal tradition gives credibility to this view of human nature, when it treats those not convicted of a crime as “not guilty.” That’s how we should see ourselves.
Tibor R. Machan
False alternatives are often presented as if there is nothing else to choose—like, love me or hate me, or being kind or mean. But in most cases there are many other options.
Throughout the history of ideas there has been a false alternative that’s been paraded before us, that of human beings as either naturally, innately good or evil. In modern philosophy the two positions are represented by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Thomas Hobbes. For Rousseau we are all born good but then get corrupted by society. According to Hobbes we are all driven by dark motives, mostly fear of death, to seek power over nature and others.
In religion, too, there is the idea that basically human beings are sinful and need to be lifted out of this awful state; in some other religions, however, we are deemed to be good from the start. Before considering this idea that its either one or the other, it is worth considering that conservatives have championed the Hobbesian idea, as well as its religious version, namely, that we are all basically corrupt. The conservative believes, as David Brooks points out, “a universal human nature; that it has nasty, competitive elements; that we don’t understand much about it; and that the conventions and institutions that have evolved to keep us from slitting each other’s throats are valuable and are altered at great peril.” Idealists or utopians think people are essentially good (or might, at least, be reengineered to be so).
Yet, think about it: if we are really so bad at heart, why should anyone think those conventions and institutions that have evolved aren’t the fruits of our evil nature? Why trust them? Quite the opposite would follow—naturally evil beings spawn evil practices, customs, laws and so forth. Also, how come we are born good but somehow society—which is, after all, the lot of us—makes us bad? Seems a weird idea.
There is also the problem that “competitive” is mistaken for “combative.” People, very nice ones indeed, compete throughout the world without in the slightest being nasty. Also, if we don’t understand human nature, how come David Brooks and others with whom he aligns himself on this issue have so much to say about it? From ignorance nothing follows, so why are they not just silent about it all?
But by far the most important problem here is that we are presented with a significant false alternative. So, suppose Rousseau was mistaken. Does it follow that Hobbes is correct? The evidence does not bear this out at all.
No once can dispute that there is a lot that’s objectionable in what human beings have done but no one can reasonably deny that human beings have also achieved much that’s admirable. Even all the conservative laments about how we are all “slouching toward Gomorrah” (a book title by Robert Bork) is an exaggeration—those looking back to the good old days conveniently forget that at least America’s good old days were filled with slavery, conscription, male chauvinistic laws, censorship, a murderous war, and lots of awful public policies. But, yes, there were also glorious things in the past, like the rule of law, respect for private property rights, civility in discourse, and so forth and so on. In short, human history has been replete with good and with evil.
What does this suggest? Certainly not that people are naturally good. Nor that they are naturally evil. Indeed, what it does seem to support is that human beings are neither one or the other, at least at the outset of their lives—they are what even the Bible suggests, quite without good or evil but with the capacity to embrace either, more or less, over their lifetimes.
The idea that people possess free will supports this, as well. Yes, they have a human nature—maybe even a firmly fixed one—but this could well amount to the fact that they are capable of thinking and, in consequence, choosing how they will conduct themselves. Some will choose well, some badly, none has to do just one or the other.
There really is much more support for this view of human nature—one that understands us with the freedom to choose our character for good or for ill—than what the conservatives or the utopians present. If the conservatives were right, humanity would have been doomed from the start. If the utopian idealists, then we would have no problems and all would go well all of the time. And clearly neither of this is what the evidence shows.
It is interesting that the American legal tradition gives credibility to this view of human nature, when it treats those not convicted of a crime as “not guilty.” That’s how we should see ourselves.
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Are We All Snitches Now?
by Tibor R. Machan
Periodically I go shopping, like many other people. And I have even hired some folks to do cleaning at my house. There is even a handyman in my neighborhood who does extensive work on my house.
Now in none of these cases have I ever asked the people with whom I engage in commerce for any kind of identification, proof of citizenship, nada. If they are well recommended, if I am convinced their track record is fine, I'll take my chances. And the last thing I would want is for the government to force me to check up on these folks.
It is bad enough that government forces employers to do the dirty work of extorting money from employees, by means of the withholding process—it kind of hides the nasty business and makes it look like government isn't really perpetrating the crime. But then to force businesses to do the government's job of crime control, that's quite over the top.
In the last several days I've been hearing how Bank of America, with which I do some little business—checking, savings, etc.—hasn't been insisting that its customers prove whether they are American citizens. So what? Unless these customers are doing something wrong, why should the bank butt in with such detective work? That's not what banks are supposed to do. They are supposed to make sure that they do business profitably—that's what they are on record doing for their owners and investors.
In a free country people are innocent unless proven guilty and that is how they are expected to treat one another in many endeavors. The people I may bowl with or with whom I may shoot baskets or play tennis or do all kinds of other things—worship, attend school, travel, and so forth—who haven't done anything untoward to me will be left in peace by me and I would expect the same treatment from merchants. Accordingly, when I take my clothes to the cleaners, or my car to the mechanic or purchase a phone at Circuit City I am not asked for an ID. So long as I pay up, do what I promise, I expect to be left in peace about who I am, where I come from, what my religion is, whom I date, etc., and so forth.
So I am baffled ... why all this hostility toward Bank of America when all the bank is doing is following the spirit of due process? Do not bother people unless there is some kind of case against them you are aware of.
Some argue, not surprisingly, that it is because bank deposits are backed by the FDIC—which is another body the government ought never to have established and funded from taxes—banks may be coerced to act as snitches. This is bunk; it is also yet another move toward the creeping police state—people are “given” another subsidy only to have it accompanied by all sorts of restrictions and demands.
So perhaps all this brouhaha about the bank isn't really about what they are doing wrong but rather about what doesn't please those who are eager to catch illegal aliens. OK, I am not in favor of illegal aliens but neither do I believe it is a bank's or anyone else's business outside of law enforcement to chase them down.
Maybe if our government didn't get involved in millions of other tasks, it could concentrate its energies on what it was instituted to do by America's founders, namely, secure our rights—protect us from criminal conduct. But no. It seems to be more and more farming out that job to private citizens and organizations, ones not trained in the proper methods of law enforcement.
But then the business of making employers collect taxes, social security and other monies the government extorts from us, has habituated too many of us into thinking that everyone is part of the government, everyone must act like a cop, like an enforcer of the laws. This reminds me of when back in communist Hungary we were all expected to report on everyone around us who didn't toe the government's line about innumerable matters. We were all snitches there. Maybe this is happening in America now, too.
by Tibor R. Machan
Periodically I go shopping, like many other people. And I have even hired some folks to do cleaning at my house. There is even a handyman in my neighborhood who does extensive work on my house.
Now in none of these cases have I ever asked the people with whom I engage in commerce for any kind of identification, proof of citizenship, nada. If they are well recommended, if I am convinced their track record is fine, I'll take my chances. And the last thing I would want is for the government to force me to check up on these folks.
It is bad enough that government forces employers to do the dirty work of extorting money from employees, by means of the withholding process—it kind of hides the nasty business and makes it look like government isn't really perpetrating the crime. But then to force businesses to do the government's job of crime control, that's quite over the top.
In the last several days I've been hearing how Bank of America, with which I do some little business—checking, savings, etc.—hasn't been insisting that its customers prove whether they are American citizens. So what? Unless these customers are doing something wrong, why should the bank butt in with such detective work? That's not what banks are supposed to do. They are supposed to make sure that they do business profitably—that's what they are on record doing for their owners and investors.
In a free country people are innocent unless proven guilty and that is how they are expected to treat one another in many endeavors. The people I may bowl with or with whom I may shoot baskets or play tennis or do all kinds of other things—worship, attend school, travel, and so forth—who haven't done anything untoward to me will be left in peace by me and I would expect the same treatment from merchants. Accordingly, when I take my clothes to the cleaners, or my car to the mechanic or purchase a phone at Circuit City I am not asked for an ID. So long as I pay up, do what I promise, I expect to be left in peace about who I am, where I come from, what my religion is, whom I date, etc., and so forth.
So I am baffled ... why all this hostility toward Bank of America when all the bank is doing is following the spirit of due process? Do not bother people unless there is some kind of case against them you are aware of.
Some argue, not surprisingly, that it is because bank deposits are backed by the FDIC—which is another body the government ought never to have established and funded from taxes—banks may be coerced to act as snitches. This is bunk; it is also yet another move toward the creeping police state—people are “given” another subsidy only to have it accompanied by all sorts of restrictions and demands.
So perhaps all this brouhaha about the bank isn't really about what they are doing wrong but rather about what doesn't please those who are eager to catch illegal aliens. OK, I am not in favor of illegal aliens but neither do I believe it is a bank's or anyone else's business outside of law enforcement to chase them down.
Maybe if our government didn't get involved in millions of other tasks, it could concentrate its energies on what it was instituted to do by America's founders, namely, secure our rights—protect us from criminal conduct. But no. It seems to be more and more farming out that job to private citizens and organizations, ones not trained in the proper methods of law enforcement.
But then the business of making employers collect taxes, social security and other monies the government extorts from us, has habituated too many of us into thinking that everyone is part of the government, everyone must act like a cop, like an enforcer of the laws. This reminds me of when back in communist Hungary we were all expected to report on everyone around us who didn't toe the government's line about innumerable matters. We were all snitches there. Maybe this is happening in America now, too.
Why Skepticism is Sound
Tibor R. Machan
In the global warming debate the big issues is whether what human beings do contributes significantly to global warming. That global warming is occurring is not much in dispute, although some scientists do make a good deal of the point that there have been warming periods in the past, some of them far greater than those being recorded in our time. There has of course been steady global warming, on average, since as the earth evolved it was at certain early times, following the initial cooling, covered with ice and quite uninhabitable by anything alive. Warming was a precondition to the emergence of life. But the warming never increased steadily and there have been periods of both, warming and cooling all along. Even after serious warming had commenced, there were long periods during which cold spells reemerged. (The most up to date picture of this can be found at http://www.scotese.com/climate.htm and indicates a volatile history, with coolings as well as warmings throughout the last 500 millions years, with a huge span of cooling during the last 4 million, the renewed warming.)
At this time, however, there is discernible warming, although the actual records—as distinct from computer projections—show only very small increases in the temperature of the earth. And in some places no warming is occurring at all. However, the history of temperature rise is not what concerns many of the skeptics about climate change. Nearly everyone agrees that there has been a rise recently. What is in dispute is (a) how much of an increase is likely to occur in the future and (b) whether human activities have had, are having, and will have a significant impact on global warming.
As to (a), the evidence is mixed and the more dire predictions are all based on several computer models combined with other computer models. And as the saying goes, "garbage in, garbage out." Here is the first place where skepticism occurs. Are those doing the modeling doing it right and can they actually be trusted to do it right? Is the science and technology on which modeling is based itself—and the scientists themselves—reliable?
Given that global warming research now consists of a mostly government subsidized industry across the globe, including the United Nations, with millions of dollars in grants going to those doing work in the field, there is understandable concern about whether those involved are stacking the deck in favor of a Doomsday scenario. It is often noted by private industry research critics that profit can corrupt research but the same is hardly ever noted in mainstream circles about government subsidized research. Furthermore, skeptics well understand that without a scare, there are fewer funds forthcoming. Government funding requires, ultimately, political support and such support relies heavily on a concerned, even frightened constituency. No Doomsday scenario, no concerned citizenry, and no allocation of funds obtained via taxation.
But there is more. In my own community the rangers put warnings out each day about fire hazards, ranging from "moderate" to "extremely high." Interestingly, the "moderate" sign is displayed even if it is pouring rain. In the ten years I have lived here, there hasn’t been a fire. Yet the "extremely high" has been displayed (by my assessment) routinely roughly 70% of the year. It is a tendency of those assigned to be on the lookout to exaggerate hazards. Vigilance calls for it, as they see their jobs.
As to the human factor, here the skeptics are often concerned about what may be dubbed (following a book by that title by Jonathan R. T. Hughes) the governmental habit—if global warming were unrelated to human activity, there isn’t a lot that politicians and bureaucrats could promise to do about it. Or, alternatively, if the best approach to encouraging responsible human conduct would be to leave politicians out of the picture and simply deploy various measures banning or containing what economists call negative externalities—bad side effects from normal productive processes—that, too, would leave the politicians out of the picture. And then what would they do, how would they gain the power most of them hunger for? There is, then, a strong probability that Doomsday scenarios will be projected by government officials and all those who work for them—get financial support, appointments to prestigious committees, invited to plush conferences, etc., etc.
So when one puts together the lack of solid science and technology behind the claim that global warming is imminent and that human conduct significantly contributes to the probable global warming, the attitude of skepticism is most reasonable. Or, to put it differently, how reasonable is it to trust politicians about their need for increased powers over the rest of us?
Tibor R. Machan
In the global warming debate the big issues is whether what human beings do contributes significantly to global warming. That global warming is occurring is not much in dispute, although some scientists do make a good deal of the point that there have been warming periods in the past, some of them far greater than those being recorded in our time. There has of course been steady global warming, on average, since as the earth evolved it was at certain early times, following the initial cooling, covered with ice and quite uninhabitable by anything alive. Warming was a precondition to the emergence of life. But the warming never increased steadily and there have been periods of both, warming and cooling all along. Even after serious warming had commenced, there were long periods during which cold spells reemerged. (The most up to date picture of this can be found at http://www.scotese.com/climate.htm and indicates a volatile history, with coolings as well as warmings throughout the last 500 millions years, with a huge span of cooling during the last 4 million, the renewed warming.)
At this time, however, there is discernible warming, although the actual records—as distinct from computer projections—show only very small increases in the temperature of the earth. And in some places no warming is occurring at all. However, the history of temperature rise is not what concerns many of the skeptics about climate change. Nearly everyone agrees that there has been a rise recently. What is in dispute is (a) how much of an increase is likely to occur in the future and (b) whether human activities have had, are having, and will have a significant impact on global warming.
As to (a), the evidence is mixed and the more dire predictions are all based on several computer models combined with other computer models. And as the saying goes, "garbage in, garbage out." Here is the first place where skepticism occurs. Are those doing the modeling doing it right and can they actually be trusted to do it right? Is the science and technology on which modeling is based itself—and the scientists themselves—reliable?
Given that global warming research now consists of a mostly government subsidized industry across the globe, including the United Nations, with millions of dollars in grants going to those doing work in the field, there is understandable concern about whether those involved are stacking the deck in favor of a Doomsday scenario. It is often noted by private industry research critics that profit can corrupt research but the same is hardly ever noted in mainstream circles about government subsidized research. Furthermore, skeptics well understand that without a scare, there are fewer funds forthcoming. Government funding requires, ultimately, political support and such support relies heavily on a concerned, even frightened constituency. No Doomsday scenario, no concerned citizenry, and no allocation of funds obtained via taxation.
But there is more. In my own community the rangers put warnings out each day about fire hazards, ranging from "moderate" to "extremely high." Interestingly, the "moderate" sign is displayed even if it is pouring rain. In the ten years I have lived here, there hasn’t been a fire. Yet the "extremely high" has been displayed (by my assessment) routinely roughly 70% of the year. It is a tendency of those assigned to be on the lookout to exaggerate hazards. Vigilance calls for it, as they see their jobs.
As to the human factor, here the skeptics are often concerned about what may be dubbed (following a book by that title by Jonathan R. T. Hughes) the governmental habit—if global warming were unrelated to human activity, there isn’t a lot that politicians and bureaucrats could promise to do about it. Or, alternatively, if the best approach to encouraging responsible human conduct would be to leave politicians out of the picture and simply deploy various measures banning or containing what economists call negative externalities—bad side effects from normal productive processes—that, too, would leave the politicians out of the picture. And then what would they do, how would they gain the power most of them hunger for? There is, then, a strong probability that Doomsday scenarios will be projected by government officials and all those who work for them—get financial support, appointments to prestigious committees, invited to plush conferences, etc., etc.
So when one puts together the lack of solid science and technology behind the claim that global warming is imminent and that human conduct significantly contributes to the probable global warming, the attitude of skepticism is most reasonable. Or, to put it differently, how reasonable is it to trust politicians about their need for increased powers over the rest of us?
Saturday, February 10, 2007
The Lives of Others is a riveting, poignant, factually and emotionally perfect movie about central European communism, in particular East Germany. It depicts this era in microcosm, not as Fateless or Schindler's List do the Nazi era. It is the particular lives of the characters that energize this movie. It has intellectual punch, but avoids outright didacticism. And it is an exciting story as well. Now it may have a bit more impact on me as someone who actually lived a part of my early life in exactly the circumstances recounted here but I think that isn't really what makes the movie excellent even for me. It is, also, perhaps the first time I heard the term "socialism" used as it should be, instead of all the romanticized, sentimental uses one encounters among too many contemporary political theorists and other intellectuals in the West. Don't walk, don't even just run, but sprint to see it.
Tibor
Tibor
Friday, February 09, 2007
Unauthorized Government is Wrong
Tibor R. Machan
What was most horrible about the bulk of political history is that some people ruled others, often to the point of using them entirely against their will, even sending thousands and thousands of them to their death or using their lives for purposes they had no part in choosing. The big deal about the American revolution was the idea that one owns one’s life—the Lockean idea of the unalienable right to one’s life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. This was so radical a notion—although here and there expressed by earlier thinkers but never really given official endorsement—that even now most folks just don’t get it. No one owns you—not your country, not your family, not your neighborhood, not your community, no one. You are the one who owns your life and properly gets to say what will be done with it. To reiterate what Lincoln so aptly said about this, “No one is good enough to govern another without that other’s consent.” And in some respects everyone has an inkling of this idea—it is entirely unacceptable for a doctor to operate without the patient’s consent, for an auto mechanic to work on your car without your giving permission, and so forth. Plain as anything can be!
Yet we are still in grips of public policies that directly contradict this idea and hark back to a time when government treated people as its resource, as its possession, as if only the ruling head and elites had the authority to set agendas with the rest of us having to tow the line. Day in and day out politicians and bureaucrats manage to make laws—in fact, the term law is all too honorific for most of their petty rules—by which the rest who have not consented must live their lives lest they be subject to fines or incarceration.
This distinctively American political idea has often been criticized—and today it is mostly denigrated by communitarians like Charles Taylor and Robert N. Bellah—for an alleged failure to stress the importance of community in human affairs, a lament that's entirely misguided. The founders had no prejudice against community, our social nature. What they did insist upon, however, is that human community life needs to be voluntary, un-coerced. They had a clear notion that unless a community is founded on the principle of voluntarism—unless each member of that community has his or her unalienable rights respected and protected—the result is not a genuine, bona fide human community but something akin to a bee hive or an ant colony. But because human beings are self-directed, because they have the freedom of the will to give meaning and direction to their lives—and only when they do so does it achieve full meaning—they realized that it is a condition of a human community that coercion is excluded from it. In other words—using the parlance of contemporary public policy—the public (human) good cannot involve the violation of basic rights. Those rights in fact serve to define what is the public good, namely, a society in which those basic rights are protected and promoted. That is what is meant by what the Declaration states, namely, that the just powers of government are derived from consent and such just powers have as their purpose to secure our basic rights.
None of this is against community but in favor of a community of free men and women. A community that rejects these criteria fails to be properly human, fit for proper human living.
But, because the propagation of the idea that some get to rule others is so entrenched, having for millennia served to rationalized the more or less arbitrary rule of some by others, even in America, let alone the rest of the world, it is still thought odd that one would oppose oppressive governments, including those which deploy the democratic method in achieving their oppression. Democracy that oppresses is no less oppressive than out and out dictatorship. It merely disperses the process of oppression so that it is somewhat disguised.
Those who appreciate the full impact of the words of the Declaration are few—even America’s founders only went a certain distance to fully realize them. Still, it is just the thing to realize if one is serious about aiming for establishing and maintaining a just human community.
Tibor R. Machan
What was most horrible about the bulk of political history is that some people ruled others, often to the point of using them entirely against their will, even sending thousands and thousands of them to their death or using their lives for purposes they had no part in choosing. The big deal about the American revolution was the idea that one owns one’s life—the Lockean idea of the unalienable right to one’s life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. This was so radical a notion—although here and there expressed by earlier thinkers but never really given official endorsement—that even now most folks just don’t get it. No one owns you—not your country, not your family, not your neighborhood, not your community, no one. You are the one who owns your life and properly gets to say what will be done with it. To reiterate what Lincoln so aptly said about this, “No one is good enough to govern another without that other’s consent.” And in some respects everyone has an inkling of this idea—it is entirely unacceptable for a doctor to operate without the patient’s consent, for an auto mechanic to work on your car without your giving permission, and so forth. Plain as anything can be!
Yet we are still in grips of public policies that directly contradict this idea and hark back to a time when government treated people as its resource, as its possession, as if only the ruling head and elites had the authority to set agendas with the rest of us having to tow the line. Day in and day out politicians and bureaucrats manage to make laws—in fact, the term law is all too honorific for most of their petty rules—by which the rest who have not consented must live their lives lest they be subject to fines or incarceration.
This distinctively American political idea has often been criticized—and today it is mostly denigrated by communitarians like Charles Taylor and Robert N. Bellah—for an alleged failure to stress the importance of community in human affairs, a lament that's entirely misguided. The founders had no prejudice against community, our social nature. What they did insist upon, however, is that human community life needs to be voluntary, un-coerced. They had a clear notion that unless a community is founded on the principle of voluntarism—unless each member of that community has his or her unalienable rights respected and protected—the result is not a genuine, bona fide human community but something akin to a bee hive or an ant colony. But because human beings are self-directed, because they have the freedom of the will to give meaning and direction to their lives—and only when they do so does it achieve full meaning—they realized that it is a condition of a human community that coercion is excluded from it. In other words—using the parlance of contemporary public policy—the public (human) good cannot involve the violation of basic rights. Those rights in fact serve to define what is the public good, namely, a society in which those basic rights are protected and promoted. That is what is meant by what the Declaration states, namely, that the just powers of government are derived from consent and such just powers have as their purpose to secure our basic rights.
None of this is against community but in favor of a community of free men and women. A community that rejects these criteria fails to be properly human, fit for proper human living.
But, because the propagation of the idea that some get to rule others is so entrenched, having for millennia served to rationalized the more or less arbitrary rule of some by others, even in America, let alone the rest of the world, it is still thought odd that one would oppose oppressive governments, including those which deploy the democratic method in achieving their oppression. Democracy that oppresses is no less oppressive than out and out dictatorship. It merely disperses the process of oppression so that it is somewhat disguised.
Those who appreciate the full impact of the words of the Declaration are few—even America’s founders only went a certain distance to fully realize them. Still, it is just the thing to realize if one is serious about aiming for establishing and maintaining a just human community.
Science and State
Tibor R. Machan
By now it has become predictable that each time a new president of the USA is elected, the letters sections of major newspapers, such as The New York Times and The Washington Post, fill up with pleas from various professionals who believe that their services must not be left to the uncertain, volatile forces of the market place. Instead, they must be assured of funding by the government, via coercion, taxation.
If memory serves me right, the loudest bunch of folks who advance this plea are scientists of all stripes—natural, social, applied, you name them, they are in line with their hands reaching out, expecting to have the benefits of coerced funding because, well, what they are doing is so vital and so few people appreciate this that the money just cannot be expected to come voluntarily. Never mind that everyone can cook up this rationale for innumerable projects, personal, professional, political, philanthropic, whatever. Too many of us are convinced that on our agenda are gathered the most profound and urgent items, while other people’s priorities can certainly wait. Or so it would appear, given how the scientists line up to demand special treatment. It has become so bad that what might be deemed special is now indeed the norm—nearly everyone wants to escape having to convince the public of the merits of his or her projects, to go about raising support in a civilized, peaceful way. Instead nearly all seem to be convinced that support is due them automatically, that the allocation of funds based on the extortion that is taxation is what they are entitled to.
There are a few folks who have argued against funding sciences, let alone other endeavors, in this coercive fashion but they are by no means many. Terrence Kealey, in his book The Economic Laws of Scientific Research (Macmillan, 1996) is one of the few and his efforts to defend a free market in funding of research and development quickly came under criticism from those who want to continue with the now well established practice of exempting the sciences from having to make their case without the benefit of political clout. (I edited a book not long ago, Liberty & Research and Development [Hoover Institution Press, 2002], in which this topic is debated by the various contributors.)
But here my focus is not so much whether it is just to have science—or, indeed, any other human endeavor—supported coercively. I am convinced that it is not except where science supports bona fide law enforcement and defense against foreign aggression. Just as in the criminal law, force may only be used defensively, not to achieve various goals that may not be popular with enough people for them to gain support. But another aspect of this matter has become evident to me, although I speak about it as an amateur. I have in mind whether all this funding of science by coercive means isn’t actually having a corrupting effect.
Over the last twenty years or so I have been an avid reader of the little weekly magazine, Science News, which carries many reports of recent and current work in most of the sciences. And what I have noticed is that a great deal of what is being done just has no plausible relevance to anything at all except that it interests the scientists doing the work. This is easy enough to appreciate when it comes to various obscure studies in astrophysics or paleontology, for example. Why are millions and millions of dollars taken from citizens and handed to these professionals to produce findings that, well, are little more than curiosity items? Yes, they might turn into something more and there is plenty of evidence in the history of science that the results of work motivated by nothing more than curiosity eventually turn out to be useful. Good, but that means at best that we have been lucky—it does not imply any kind of imperative for the coercive support of such curiosity, none, nor that the bulk of it bears fruit for all those who are coerced to fund them!
I am willing to bet that if some God’s eye perspective could be found—an impossible idea, I admit—a very great deal of what scientists spend money on could be used better if left for the taxpayers to spend on projects of their own. But because the idea is so foreign, it seems evident that the way the politicians and bureaucrats allocate the funds is best. But there really is no good reason to think so.
Tibor R. Machan
By now it has become predictable that each time a new president of the USA is elected, the letters sections of major newspapers, such as The New York Times and The Washington Post, fill up with pleas from various professionals who believe that their services must not be left to the uncertain, volatile forces of the market place. Instead, they must be assured of funding by the government, via coercion, taxation.
If memory serves me right, the loudest bunch of folks who advance this plea are scientists of all stripes—natural, social, applied, you name them, they are in line with their hands reaching out, expecting to have the benefits of coerced funding because, well, what they are doing is so vital and so few people appreciate this that the money just cannot be expected to come voluntarily. Never mind that everyone can cook up this rationale for innumerable projects, personal, professional, political, philanthropic, whatever. Too many of us are convinced that on our agenda are gathered the most profound and urgent items, while other people’s priorities can certainly wait. Or so it would appear, given how the scientists line up to demand special treatment. It has become so bad that what might be deemed special is now indeed the norm—nearly everyone wants to escape having to convince the public of the merits of his or her projects, to go about raising support in a civilized, peaceful way. Instead nearly all seem to be convinced that support is due them automatically, that the allocation of funds based on the extortion that is taxation is what they are entitled to.
There are a few folks who have argued against funding sciences, let alone other endeavors, in this coercive fashion but they are by no means many. Terrence Kealey, in his book The Economic Laws of Scientific Research (Macmillan, 1996) is one of the few and his efforts to defend a free market in funding of research and development quickly came under criticism from those who want to continue with the now well established practice of exempting the sciences from having to make their case without the benefit of political clout. (I edited a book not long ago, Liberty & Research and Development [Hoover Institution Press, 2002], in which this topic is debated by the various contributors.)
But here my focus is not so much whether it is just to have science—or, indeed, any other human endeavor—supported coercively. I am convinced that it is not except where science supports bona fide law enforcement and defense against foreign aggression. Just as in the criminal law, force may only be used defensively, not to achieve various goals that may not be popular with enough people for them to gain support. But another aspect of this matter has become evident to me, although I speak about it as an amateur. I have in mind whether all this funding of science by coercive means isn’t actually having a corrupting effect.
Over the last twenty years or so I have been an avid reader of the little weekly magazine, Science News, which carries many reports of recent and current work in most of the sciences. And what I have noticed is that a great deal of what is being done just has no plausible relevance to anything at all except that it interests the scientists doing the work. This is easy enough to appreciate when it comes to various obscure studies in astrophysics or paleontology, for example. Why are millions and millions of dollars taken from citizens and handed to these professionals to produce findings that, well, are little more than curiosity items? Yes, they might turn into something more and there is plenty of evidence in the history of science that the results of work motivated by nothing more than curiosity eventually turn out to be useful. Good, but that means at best that we have been lucky—it does not imply any kind of imperative for the coercive support of such curiosity, none, nor that the bulk of it bears fruit for all those who are coerced to fund them!
I am willing to bet that if some God’s eye perspective could be found—an impossible idea, I admit—a very great deal of what scientists spend money on could be used better if left for the taxpayers to spend on projects of their own. But because the idea is so foreign, it seems evident that the way the politicians and bureaucrats allocate the funds is best. But there really is no good reason to think so.
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
Even Astronauts are People
by Tibor R. Machan
No, I am not at all gleeful about Astronaut Lisa Nowak's indictment for attempted murder. But I do consider it instructive that someone from an elite group of men and women can apparently turn out to be quite vicious. It shouldn't need to be said but, sadly, it does. On one Los Angeles radio station, for example, a commentator intoned with great indignation about the event, lambasting Nowak not for what she is supposed to have done but for doing it while an Astronaut with NASA. How dare someone with such a prestigious outfit turn out to do bad things, maybe even end up a bad person?
I wish I could have replied to this ignorant exclamation right on the spot, just in case some listeners didn't appreciate its full implications. Are certain groups of human beings supposed to immune to evil, lack the freedom of will to do the wrong thing? Surely that is a hopelessly delusional idea, embrace by the likes of those who believe in the innate goodness of certain groups of people.
We have so many examples of the supposedly elite going bad; we have Aristotle teaching that the hypothetically best regime governed by the best among us will not work because the best rulers often turn into despots; and we have ourselves to check out so as to confirm that anyone is capable of going bad. Not that anyone must go bad—the idea of innate evil is as insidious as the idea of innate goodness. What makes the human species distinctive is precisely that anyone can become either good or bad or hover somewhere in between, in mediocrity.
Of course there is a long tradition of some folks managing to pull off the ruse that they are a special breed and those who aren't of their ilk, just aren't up to snuff. This has served thousands of those in the upper echelons of society very nicely for thousands of years. But it was and continues to be nothing more than a ruse. We are all capable of turning out to do things right or to do thing wrong or, as is often the case, do a bit of this and a bit of that throughout our lives.
The belief that suggests that NASA folks are a special breed and that Lisa Nowak is thus some freak lends credence to one of the most insidious aspects of social thought. It goes hand in hand with the many varieties of tribalism, whereby Germans are superior to Jews, Muslims to Christians, white folks to black ones, men to women—or vice versa, you name it. And it is responsible for a huge amount of the misery that we find throughout human history.
Instead, the best understanding of human nature suggests that keeping on the straight and narrow is a matter of constant vigilance, of shaping and keeping in good shape one's moral character, of never stopping the monitoring process whereby one conducts oneself virtuously instead of viciously. The temptation to become lax in this task can lead to disaster, and indeed most of the avoidable disasters in human history have been due to such negligence and the subsequent efforts to cover it up.
So the lesson from astronaut Nowak's story may well turn out to be important not only for her and some of the folks in her life but for all those who are tempted to believe that going into some line of work, some profession, or some calling will spare one the trouble of having to work at being a decent human being. There is no formula for achieving that apart from one's own relentless, full focus on what it takes to live one's individual life as best as one can. While there can be some practices that will make this come about at greater ease than without them, even then constant vigilance is unavoidable since the future can always pose unexpected challenges, temptations, obstacles and diversions.
by Tibor R. Machan
No, I am not at all gleeful about Astronaut Lisa Nowak's indictment for attempted murder. But I do consider it instructive that someone from an elite group of men and women can apparently turn out to be quite vicious. It shouldn't need to be said but, sadly, it does. On one Los Angeles radio station, for example, a commentator intoned with great indignation about the event, lambasting Nowak not for what she is supposed to have done but for doing it while an Astronaut with NASA. How dare someone with such a prestigious outfit turn out to do bad things, maybe even end up a bad person?
I wish I could have replied to this ignorant exclamation right on the spot, just in case some listeners didn't appreciate its full implications. Are certain groups of human beings supposed to immune to evil, lack the freedom of will to do the wrong thing? Surely that is a hopelessly delusional idea, embrace by the likes of those who believe in the innate goodness of certain groups of people.
We have so many examples of the supposedly elite going bad; we have Aristotle teaching that the hypothetically best regime governed by the best among us will not work because the best rulers often turn into despots; and we have ourselves to check out so as to confirm that anyone is capable of going bad. Not that anyone must go bad—the idea of innate evil is as insidious as the idea of innate goodness. What makes the human species distinctive is precisely that anyone can become either good or bad or hover somewhere in between, in mediocrity.
Of course there is a long tradition of some folks managing to pull off the ruse that they are a special breed and those who aren't of their ilk, just aren't up to snuff. This has served thousands of those in the upper echelons of society very nicely for thousands of years. But it was and continues to be nothing more than a ruse. We are all capable of turning out to do things right or to do thing wrong or, as is often the case, do a bit of this and a bit of that throughout our lives.
The belief that suggests that NASA folks are a special breed and that Lisa Nowak is thus some freak lends credence to one of the most insidious aspects of social thought. It goes hand in hand with the many varieties of tribalism, whereby Germans are superior to Jews, Muslims to Christians, white folks to black ones, men to women—or vice versa, you name it. And it is responsible for a huge amount of the misery that we find throughout human history.
Instead, the best understanding of human nature suggests that keeping on the straight and narrow is a matter of constant vigilance, of shaping and keeping in good shape one's moral character, of never stopping the monitoring process whereby one conducts oneself virtuously instead of viciously. The temptation to become lax in this task can lead to disaster, and indeed most of the avoidable disasters in human history have been due to such negligence and the subsequent efforts to cover it up.
So the lesson from astronaut Nowak's story may well turn out to be important not only for her and some of the folks in her life but for all those who are tempted to believe that going into some line of work, some profession, or some calling will spare one the trouble of having to work at being a decent human being. There is no formula for achieving that apart from one's own relentless, full focus on what it takes to live one's individual life as best as one can. While there can be some practices that will make this come about at greater ease than without them, even then constant vigilance is unavoidable since the future can always pose unexpected challenges, temptations, obstacles and diversions.
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Revisiting Taxation's Origins
by Tibor R. Machan
Come tax day each year it is important to recall just what gave rise to this practice of government extorting money from us. Not that the good people at the IRS confine their crimes to April 15 or thereabouts—the 17th in 2007. There are hundreds of hidden and not so hidden taxes involved in virtually all our commercial undertakings. (The exception I know of seems to involve horses—but don't tell anyone!)
First a little history: In feudal times, and even before, the monarch or whoever else pretended to be the "keeper of the realm" was deemed to have been granted ownership of a country, either with absolute title or with some constraints. (As the feudal era lost its dominance, the constraints became stricter and in time monarchies came to be mostly ceremonial—the still very expensive—as in the UK.) But the framework in all feudal systems involved statism—the government owned nearly everything. So if one lived in this realm and worked there, it collected rent, just as an apartment owner does form those renting in the building. The entire system rested on the firmly held assumption that the head of the state owned the country and could collect taxes from others who lived and worked there.
With the American revolution a new idea emerged, namely, that no head of state owned anything. Governments were now deemed to be instituted as a kind of service agency assigned the task of protecting the basic (and derivative) rights of all those who lived in the country. And it was these folks, not some king, tsar, pharaoh or some other keeper of the realm, who owned stuff. The right to private property had been identified as a proper instrument for deciding who owns what. John Locke, the grandfather of the American political tradition, claimed that people came to own stuff by mixing their labor with raw nature. While a challenging idea, it had the ring of truth about it far more than that story about the king owning it all!
With this new political notion the system of serfdom or involuntary servitude—whereby people were tied to the land that the king owned and needed the king's permission to act as they wanted to—had been consigned to the dustbin of history in most places in the West as well as a few others. But taxation remained in place because it hadn't been figured out how governments might be funded. However, severe limitations had been conceived so that all that taxes would do was fund a highly limited government.
Now as they say, the best laid plans of mice and men—well, taxation quickly got out of hand and we are now nearly back where we were with all those monarchs. Governments are claiming ownership of their countries' wealth—and some of their apologists are making sophisticated arguments defending the idea. (See Liam Murphy and Thomas Nagel, The Myth of Ownership [Oxford UP, 2002].) To put the matter differently, the current system of taxation is a reactionary policy that conflicts with the idea of the right to private property and the right to one's life and liberty, as well.
But then how might the valid functions of a government be funded, if taxation is really but extortion? There are answers but no one at major, prestigious centers of learning is doing research on the details. In broad outline, the proper substitute is a contract fee. Most people take advantage of contracts and these need a legal order for them to function properly. But it is not necessary to do so—it's technically optional. (For more on this, see my "Dissolving the Problem of Public Goods, Financing Government Without Coercive Measures" in my edited volume, The Libertarian Reader [Rowman & Littlefield, 1982].)
Men and women have lived with many unjust institutions and policies but that isn't sufficient to construe them acceptable, morally and politically. Nor should taxation be taken as an exception. An alternative must be found that avoids its injustices.
by Tibor R. Machan
Come tax day each year it is important to recall just what gave rise to this practice of government extorting money from us. Not that the good people at the IRS confine their crimes to April 15 or thereabouts—the 17th in 2007. There are hundreds of hidden and not so hidden taxes involved in virtually all our commercial undertakings. (The exception I know of seems to involve horses—but don't tell anyone!)
First a little history: In feudal times, and even before, the monarch or whoever else pretended to be the "keeper of the realm" was deemed to have been granted ownership of a country, either with absolute title or with some constraints. (As the feudal era lost its dominance, the constraints became stricter and in time monarchies came to be mostly ceremonial—the still very expensive—as in the UK.) But the framework in all feudal systems involved statism—the government owned nearly everything. So if one lived in this realm and worked there, it collected rent, just as an apartment owner does form those renting in the building. The entire system rested on the firmly held assumption that the head of the state owned the country and could collect taxes from others who lived and worked there.
With the American revolution a new idea emerged, namely, that no head of state owned anything. Governments were now deemed to be instituted as a kind of service agency assigned the task of protecting the basic (and derivative) rights of all those who lived in the country. And it was these folks, not some king, tsar, pharaoh or some other keeper of the realm, who owned stuff. The right to private property had been identified as a proper instrument for deciding who owns what. John Locke, the grandfather of the American political tradition, claimed that people came to own stuff by mixing their labor with raw nature. While a challenging idea, it had the ring of truth about it far more than that story about the king owning it all!
With this new political notion the system of serfdom or involuntary servitude—whereby people were tied to the land that the king owned and needed the king's permission to act as they wanted to—had been consigned to the dustbin of history in most places in the West as well as a few others. But taxation remained in place because it hadn't been figured out how governments might be funded. However, severe limitations had been conceived so that all that taxes would do was fund a highly limited government.
Now as they say, the best laid plans of mice and men—well, taxation quickly got out of hand and we are now nearly back where we were with all those monarchs. Governments are claiming ownership of their countries' wealth—and some of their apologists are making sophisticated arguments defending the idea. (See Liam Murphy and Thomas Nagel, The Myth of Ownership [Oxford UP, 2002].) To put the matter differently, the current system of taxation is a reactionary policy that conflicts with the idea of the right to private property and the right to one's life and liberty, as well.
But then how might the valid functions of a government be funded, if taxation is really but extortion? There are answers but no one at major, prestigious centers of learning is doing research on the details. In broad outline, the proper substitute is a contract fee. Most people take advantage of contracts and these need a legal order for them to function properly. But it is not necessary to do so—it's technically optional. (For more on this, see my "Dissolving the Problem of Public Goods, Financing Government Without Coercive Measures" in my edited volume, The Libertarian Reader [Rowman & Littlefield, 1982].)
Men and women have lived with many unjust institutions and policies but that isn't sufficient to construe them acceptable, morally and politically. Nor should taxation be taken as an exception. An alternative must be found that avoids its injustices.
Sunday, February 04, 2007
Free Speech is Dead
Tibor R. Machan
When Senators Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and Jay Rockefeller (D-West Virginia) wrote their bipartisan letter to demand that the giant oil corporation Exxon “end any further financial assistance [to those] whose public advocacy has contributed to the small but unfortunately effective climate change denial myth,” I recalled the following report about Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak: “There are freedoms, but they can’t contradict our traditions,” the president intoned some years ago as he opened a book fair in Egypt. “We must guarantee that freedom of expression agrees with our values.”
In a genuine free society there must be freedom of expression even about matters that are highly unpopular and perhaps conflict with received scientific truth, if that idea makes any sense at all in science. Scientists have been notorious throughout the ages for tilting against windmills, for being skeptics about mainstream thinking. And in our day mainstream thinking has it that human beings are a very significant contributing cause to global warming. There are dissidents regarding this view and maybe they are wrong—that isn’t the point here. What is the point is that Snowe and Rockefeller are in the wrong about whether Exxon has the right to support organizations such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
Reportedly, Exxon made its decision to withdraw its support of CEI before this letter went out, so that, again, isn’t the issue. What is very disturbing is that the one remaining liberty in the United States of America, due to how the courts have read the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights, is now being threatened by the very agency that is supposed to be making our rights secure. Governments are instituted among us for that purpose, according to the Declaration of Independence.
Of course, when this is noted, apologists will come forth and claim that the Exxon case is special. Richard Littlemore of the blog Desmog.com, for example, writes that “The problem is that this kind of speech [Exxon’s support of CEI] is not ‘free.’ In distracting us from addressing an issue that threatens the world in an unprecedented way, it is costing us all a price that we may never be able to pay.”
Notice how the concept “free” is being twisted around by Littlemore—from meaning that no one may interfere with someone else’s speaking out or funding other’s doing so to meaning that something doesn’t cost anything. Hardly related, if at all! Mubarak is far more honest when he states what Snowe and Rockefeller actually mean, namely, that “we must guarantee that freedom of expression agrees with our values.” But that’s Egypt, which is a virtual dictatorship, not the United States of America where politicians constantly stress how everyone is free, especially as far as thinking and saying what they will.
I happen to agree that there is a bit of confusion about what the freedom is that Snowe and Rockefeller are threatening, although there is a lot of expert debate about this. For example, in the campaign financing debate many who oppose caps consider it a violation of freedom of speech to impose them. I think it is more accurate to view this as a violation of the right to private property. However, since private property is now hardly protected in America, many have decided to attempt to defend our right to give support to causes and political candidates on the basis of the right to freedom of speech and expression. In any case, what is at issue is human freedom and those like Snowe, Rockefeller, Littlemore and Mubarak clearly care nothing about it.
It is no big surprise, of course. There is that famous quip from William Pitt who answered similar arguments by saying, “Necessity is the excuse for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of the tyrant and the creed of the slave.” From the Right it is national security or the dire necessity to spread democracy across the globe that serves to justify the abridgement of liberty. From the Left it is poverty, inequality, and, now, environmental precaution that serve to invalidate our rights and undermine the government’s duty to secure our rights.
I am still not fully despondent, though, mainly because the habit of crushing human liberty is a very old one and difficult to shake, like most bad habits are. But to quote another favorite philosopher of mine, the jazz pianist and song writer Mose Allison, “I am not downhearted, but I’m gettin’ there.”
Tibor R. Machan
When Senators Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and Jay Rockefeller (D-West Virginia) wrote their bipartisan letter to demand that the giant oil corporation Exxon “end any further financial assistance [to those] whose public advocacy has contributed to the small but unfortunately effective climate change denial myth,” I recalled the following report about Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak: “There are freedoms, but they can’t contradict our traditions,” the president intoned some years ago as he opened a book fair in Egypt. “We must guarantee that freedom of expression agrees with our values.”
In a genuine free society there must be freedom of expression even about matters that are highly unpopular and perhaps conflict with received scientific truth, if that idea makes any sense at all in science. Scientists have been notorious throughout the ages for tilting against windmills, for being skeptics about mainstream thinking. And in our day mainstream thinking has it that human beings are a very significant contributing cause to global warming. There are dissidents regarding this view and maybe they are wrong—that isn’t the point here. What is the point is that Snowe and Rockefeller are in the wrong about whether Exxon has the right to support organizations such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
Reportedly, Exxon made its decision to withdraw its support of CEI before this letter went out, so that, again, isn’t the issue. What is very disturbing is that the one remaining liberty in the United States of America, due to how the courts have read the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights, is now being threatened by the very agency that is supposed to be making our rights secure. Governments are instituted among us for that purpose, according to the Declaration of Independence.
Of course, when this is noted, apologists will come forth and claim that the Exxon case is special. Richard Littlemore of the blog Desmog.com, for example, writes that “The problem is that this kind of speech [Exxon’s support of CEI] is not ‘free.’ In distracting us from addressing an issue that threatens the world in an unprecedented way, it is costing us all a price that we may never be able to pay.”
Notice how the concept “free” is being twisted around by Littlemore—from meaning that no one may interfere with someone else’s speaking out or funding other’s doing so to meaning that something doesn’t cost anything. Hardly related, if at all! Mubarak is far more honest when he states what Snowe and Rockefeller actually mean, namely, that “we must guarantee that freedom of expression agrees with our values.” But that’s Egypt, which is a virtual dictatorship, not the United States of America where politicians constantly stress how everyone is free, especially as far as thinking and saying what they will.
I happen to agree that there is a bit of confusion about what the freedom is that Snowe and Rockefeller are threatening, although there is a lot of expert debate about this. For example, in the campaign financing debate many who oppose caps consider it a violation of freedom of speech to impose them. I think it is more accurate to view this as a violation of the right to private property. However, since private property is now hardly protected in America, many have decided to attempt to defend our right to give support to causes and political candidates on the basis of the right to freedom of speech and expression. In any case, what is at issue is human freedom and those like Snowe, Rockefeller, Littlemore and Mubarak clearly care nothing about it.
It is no big surprise, of course. There is that famous quip from William Pitt who answered similar arguments by saying, “Necessity is the excuse for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of the tyrant and the creed of the slave.” From the Right it is national security or the dire necessity to spread democracy across the globe that serves to justify the abridgement of liberty. From the Left it is poverty, inequality, and, now, environmental precaution that serve to invalidate our rights and undermine the government’s duty to secure our rights.
I am still not fully despondent, though, mainly because the habit of crushing human liberty is a very old one and difficult to shake, like most bad habits are. But to quote another favorite philosopher of mine, the jazz pianist and song writer Mose Allison, “I am not downhearted, but I’m gettin’ there.”
Dinesh D’Souza Goes Bananas
Tibor R. Machan
D’Souza is a man to reckon with. He is no fool and many of his ideas have considerable merit. But in his latest book, The Enemy At Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11, D’Souza has gone over the top big time. The theme of this work is that 9/11 is partly the responsibility of the American Left, which, as Publishers Weekly characterized the work, "roots the blame for the 9/11 attacks in the left wing's ‘aggressive global campaign to undermine the traditional patriarchal family’."
The flaw in this is elementary and is contained in that famous saying, "Sticks and stones may break my bones (but words will never hurt me)." The main point, a serious one, is that human beings can be unavoidably hurt only when physically attacked. Otherwise, when insulted or offended, they are free to turn and walk away from what doesn’t please them. There is, in short, nothing coercive about verbal assaults.
In turn, of course, the response to such "assaults" must be peaceful, non-aggressive. However much one may take exception to what someone else says, thinks, advocates, promotes, suggests, intimates, and so forth, none of it justifies responding with violence. Yes, there may some borderline cases, as with all things human. But those are few and far between—if someone is grieving for an intimate and you insult the person, the pain may be too difficult to bear and the response could be violent and excusable. Even in the criminal law in some countries crimes of passion are forgiven because, well, they are deemed to have been provoked. But that’s already too lenient, too willing to accept as an excuse one’s failure to act in a civilized fashion, namely, with proper restraint.
When the Danish newspapers ridiculed Mohammed, those were insults. A civilized response would not have gone beyond a verbal, if firm, protest. Instead many Muslims went out and burned down buildings and killed people. No insults warrant this.
So Mr. D’Souza is wrong to blame the American Left, with all of its moral relativism and support of decadence and licentiousness, for how Muslims acted, specifically when they assaulted and murdered innocent people in New York City on September 11, 2001. They should have confined themselves to criticizing those in the West, including, perhaps, those on the Left, for being wrong. Instead they acted like barbarians. And for this neither the Left nor anyone else besides the perpetrators are responsible.
Mr. D’Souza has a compatriot on the Left in this matter. Catherine MacKinnon, the University of Michigan law professor and author of the book, Only Words (Harvard University Press, 1993), argued against first amendment protection for pornographers because, well, their words, pictures, and films should be construed as being equivalent to physical weapons. But they aren’t. And when people who read or view pornography engage in violent conduct, it is not the pornography that’s responsible but they are. That is the meaning of human freedom of thought, namely, that the bulk of what we are offered without coercion is not assault by any stretch of the imagination. It may be offensive, insulting, annoying, irritating, blasphemous, and so forth; but it is no justification for violent reaction from any human being. If one’s culture taught one that being offended justifies violent response, one’s culture is misguided, wrongheaded, period.
The idea behind this is that human beings can read and view anything and freely accept or reject it—they have free will and aren’t coerced into doing what the material they read or view urges them to do. This is, indeed, the basis for the First Amendment’s protection of the right of freedom of speech and expression in the U. S. Constitution. It is the height of civilized law! The fact that many Muslims are unwilling to act accordingly cannot be blamed on those whose words and deeds offend them.
Mr. D’Souza, who has written some fine things about America and why it is such a free and essentially great country, seems to have forgotten his own ideas in this latest book.
Tibor R. Machan
D’Souza is a man to reckon with. He is no fool and many of his ideas have considerable merit. But in his latest book, The Enemy At Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11, D’Souza has gone over the top big time. The theme of this work is that 9/11 is partly the responsibility of the American Left, which, as Publishers Weekly characterized the work, "roots the blame for the 9/11 attacks in the left wing's ‘aggressive global campaign to undermine the traditional patriarchal family’."
The flaw in this is elementary and is contained in that famous saying, "Sticks and stones may break my bones (but words will never hurt me)." The main point, a serious one, is that human beings can be unavoidably hurt only when physically attacked. Otherwise, when insulted or offended, they are free to turn and walk away from what doesn’t please them. There is, in short, nothing coercive about verbal assaults.
In turn, of course, the response to such "assaults" must be peaceful, non-aggressive. However much one may take exception to what someone else says, thinks, advocates, promotes, suggests, intimates, and so forth, none of it justifies responding with violence. Yes, there may some borderline cases, as with all things human. But those are few and far between—if someone is grieving for an intimate and you insult the person, the pain may be too difficult to bear and the response could be violent and excusable. Even in the criminal law in some countries crimes of passion are forgiven because, well, they are deemed to have been provoked. But that’s already too lenient, too willing to accept as an excuse one’s failure to act in a civilized fashion, namely, with proper restraint.
When the Danish newspapers ridiculed Mohammed, those were insults. A civilized response would not have gone beyond a verbal, if firm, protest. Instead many Muslims went out and burned down buildings and killed people. No insults warrant this.
So Mr. D’Souza is wrong to blame the American Left, with all of its moral relativism and support of decadence and licentiousness, for how Muslims acted, specifically when they assaulted and murdered innocent people in New York City on September 11, 2001. They should have confined themselves to criticizing those in the West, including, perhaps, those on the Left, for being wrong. Instead they acted like barbarians. And for this neither the Left nor anyone else besides the perpetrators are responsible.
Mr. D’Souza has a compatriot on the Left in this matter. Catherine MacKinnon, the University of Michigan law professor and author of the book, Only Words (Harvard University Press, 1993), argued against first amendment protection for pornographers because, well, their words, pictures, and films should be construed as being equivalent to physical weapons. But they aren’t. And when people who read or view pornography engage in violent conduct, it is not the pornography that’s responsible but they are. That is the meaning of human freedom of thought, namely, that the bulk of what we are offered without coercion is not assault by any stretch of the imagination. It may be offensive, insulting, annoying, irritating, blasphemous, and so forth; but it is no justification for violent reaction from any human being. If one’s culture taught one that being offended justifies violent response, one’s culture is misguided, wrongheaded, period.
The idea behind this is that human beings can read and view anything and freely accept or reject it—they have free will and aren’t coerced into doing what the material they read or view urges them to do. This is, indeed, the basis for the First Amendment’s protection of the right of freedom of speech and expression in the U. S. Constitution. It is the height of civilized law! The fact that many Muslims are unwilling to act accordingly cannot be blamed on those whose words and deeds offend them.
Mr. D’Souza, who has written some fine things about America and why it is such a free and essentially great country, seems to have forgotten his own ideas in this latest book.
Saturday, February 03, 2007
Business and Money
Tibor R. Machan
On a recent trip to a college in Louisiana I was in a discussion with some academic philosophers one of whom advanced the idea that business isn’t guided by ethical principles since its purpose is to make money. A 1961 essay by the late Milton Friedman, a Nobel Laureate in economics, from The New York Times Magazine and reprinted in many business ethics readers, seems to give support to this idea. Friedman argued that the social responsibility of corporate managers is to earn a profit. And this does appear to mean that nothing other than making money hands over fist should motivate those in the profession of business.
Actually, Friedman made clear that while people in business ought to strive to make money, they need to do so while adhering to "the rules of the game," as it were. And these rules include the criminal law as well as basic ethical principles such as truthfulness, keeping promises, etc. Still, Friedman’s essay left the impression that all business is about is making money. And if this is so, one might ask—as the professor I spoke with did—why bother with any standards other than whether one’s professional decisions lead to making money.
But, of course, business isn’t just about making money, anymore than medicine is just about advancing health. A doctor who would attempt to advance the health of a patient by deceit—say, by failing to fully disclose what’s amiss to the patient—or by theft—say, of someone else’s vital organs—and so forth would not be carrying on professionally. Such a doctor would engage in malpractice. A manager of a firm who would produce shoddy goods so as to make a quick buck would be no different.
Indeed, properly understood, businesses are highly varied, some involved in producing products, some services, some investing in other firms—all aiming for prosperity, yes, but not at any price. Any profession could be corrupted by failing to heed the standards of producing what it is about. So an educator, for example, who seeks to impart knowledge by means of deception or taking advantage of the naiveté of students would be engaged in misconduct. It is not only when the teacher becomes a preacher that he or she misbehaves. And it is not only when someone in business fails to heed the bottom line that there’s malpractice.
Indeed, business is never just about making money—even when it seems to be so. For making money even while managing money requires adherence to certain standards of conduct based on the simple fact that one is a human being making money by dealing with other human beings. In the employment relationship, for instance, it is wrong to hire and promote on the basis of factors irrelevant to the business at hand. This is why racial or sexual discrimination, nepotism and such, are deemed violations of business ethics even though they do not directly involve neglecting the bottom line.
In any profession one can carry on badly while seeming to pursue the ends that define the profession. A journalist could obtain an interview on false pretenses, gain information dishonestly and even steal it, in which case the job of producing information for his or her clients would be mishandled.
One reason that my academic pal may have maintained the perverse thesis that nothing else matters in business but making a buck is that some economists actually advocate this idea, just as the late Milton Friedman appeared to (although, once fully understood, didn’t, in fact). Economists have for centuries argued that the best explanation of how people act in the market place is that they are driven by the profit motive. This wasn’t actually an idea that came from economists, originally, but from a 16th century philosopher, namely, Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes held that we are all driven to behave as we do because we seek power, because we are afraid of death. For Hobbes right versus wrong conduct amounted to no more than doing what felt right versus what didn’t. And that itself could be explained by how we are made to feel good by improving our changes of survival.
This idea was derived form the more basic notion of Galilean physics that everything moves ineluctably until it is stopped by some force. It introduced mechanistic determinism as a way to understand human behavior. Economists tended to adept this to their efforts to make sense of how markets work. Morality was excluded from the picture, especially since so many moral theorists believe that self-interested conduct is unethical. Going the mechanical route avoided having to contend with these moralists. And it still does, to a large extent.
In fact, however, market conduct, as any other conduct, is governed by ethical principles. That includes, of course, the vigilant pursuit of profit—but not at any cost.
Tibor R. Machan
On a recent trip to a college in Louisiana I was in a discussion with some academic philosophers one of whom advanced the idea that business isn’t guided by ethical principles since its purpose is to make money. A 1961 essay by the late Milton Friedman, a Nobel Laureate in economics, from The New York Times Magazine and reprinted in many business ethics readers, seems to give support to this idea. Friedman argued that the social responsibility of corporate managers is to earn a profit. And this does appear to mean that nothing other than making money hands over fist should motivate those in the profession of business.
Actually, Friedman made clear that while people in business ought to strive to make money, they need to do so while adhering to "the rules of the game," as it were. And these rules include the criminal law as well as basic ethical principles such as truthfulness, keeping promises, etc. Still, Friedman’s essay left the impression that all business is about is making money. And if this is so, one might ask—as the professor I spoke with did—why bother with any standards other than whether one’s professional decisions lead to making money.
But, of course, business isn’t just about making money, anymore than medicine is just about advancing health. A doctor who would attempt to advance the health of a patient by deceit—say, by failing to fully disclose what’s amiss to the patient—or by theft—say, of someone else’s vital organs—and so forth would not be carrying on professionally. Such a doctor would engage in malpractice. A manager of a firm who would produce shoddy goods so as to make a quick buck would be no different.
Indeed, properly understood, businesses are highly varied, some involved in producing products, some services, some investing in other firms—all aiming for prosperity, yes, but not at any price. Any profession could be corrupted by failing to heed the standards of producing what it is about. So an educator, for example, who seeks to impart knowledge by means of deception or taking advantage of the naiveté of students would be engaged in misconduct. It is not only when the teacher becomes a preacher that he or she misbehaves. And it is not only when someone in business fails to heed the bottom line that there’s malpractice.
Indeed, business is never just about making money—even when it seems to be so. For making money even while managing money requires adherence to certain standards of conduct based on the simple fact that one is a human being making money by dealing with other human beings. In the employment relationship, for instance, it is wrong to hire and promote on the basis of factors irrelevant to the business at hand. This is why racial or sexual discrimination, nepotism and such, are deemed violations of business ethics even though they do not directly involve neglecting the bottom line.
In any profession one can carry on badly while seeming to pursue the ends that define the profession. A journalist could obtain an interview on false pretenses, gain information dishonestly and even steal it, in which case the job of producing information for his or her clients would be mishandled.
One reason that my academic pal may have maintained the perverse thesis that nothing else matters in business but making a buck is that some economists actually advocate this idea, just as the late Milton Friedman appeared to (although, once fully understood, didn’t, in fact). Economists have for centuries argued that the best explanation of how people act in the market place is that they are driven by the profit motive. This wasn’t actually an idea that came from economists, originally, but from a 16th century philosopher, namely, Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes held that we are all driven to behave as we do because we seek power, because we are afraid of death. For Hobbes right versus wrong conduct amounted to no more than doing what felt right versus what didn’t. And that itself could be explained by how we are made to feel good by improving our changes of survival.
This idea was derived form the more basic notion of Galilean physics that everything moves ineluctably until it is stopped by some force. It introduced mechanistic determinism as a way to understand human behavior. Economists tended to adept this to their efforts to make sense of how markets work. Morality was excluded from the picture, especially since so many moral theorists believe that self-interested conduct is unethical. Going the mechanical route avoided having to contend with these moralists. And it still does, to a large extent.
In fact, however, market conduct, as any other conduct, is governed by ethical principles. That includes, of course, the vigilant pursuit of profit—but not at any cost.
BBC Biased Environmental Correspondent
Tibor R. Machan
Reporting on a meeting at which various organizations came together to address the issue of global warming, climate change, and the possibility of having to cut greenhouse gas emissions, the BBC’s environmental correspondent, Richard Black, wrote how US Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman declared that energy companies will reduce greenhouse gas emissions because, well, they cared about the environment. As Bodman reportedly put the point, "I believe that the people who run the private sector, who run these companies: they too have children, they too have grandchildren, they too live and breathe in the world. And they would like things dealt with effectively."
In response to this the reporter for the BBC offered this: “Call me cynical if you will, but my first thought was, so you mean, what, corporations like Enron? Or Arthur Andersen? Or WorldCom? And I was not alone. Mr Bodman had momentarily silenced an entire press corps.”
Now just consider the companies Mr. Black mentioned as he considered Mr. Bodman’s comment—Enron, Arthur Andersen, WorldCom. All of these have recently committed some kind of corporate crime, or have been charged with criminal conduct, although one of them has recently been nearly completely exonerated from all criminal culpability. Now imagine another scenario. A representative of the Roman Catholic Church offers a declaration that the church cares about young people, their education, their upbringing, their future. Mr. Black, who is in the audience when this declaration is made, writes about this as follows: “Call me cynical if you will, but my first thought was, so you mean, what, the Roman Catholic clergy, like those in Boston and San Francisco and Los Angeles, care about children? And I was not alone. The Roman Catholic spokesman had momentarily silenced an entire press corps.” Or consider the following: At a conference of university medical systems a representative of university hospitals declares that these institutions are concerned about the health of the citizenry in their neighborhoods, whereupon Mr. Black reports, “Call me cynical if you will, but my first thought was, so you mean, what, hospitals like the one at UCLA or UC Irvine care about patients? And I was not alone. The university hospital spokesman had momentarily silenced an entire press corps.”
Now perhaps my own response to Mr. Black’s report will not be fully appreciated by most people, probably because they have not followed the scandals involving Roman Catholic priests who have molested children entrusted into their care or the scandals at university hospitals where body parts have been selling on the black market and other gross malpractice has occurred, for instance, involving obtaining livers to be used in transplants. This would be understandable. The mainstream media is far more eager to report malfeasance in the business community than in the Roman Catholic clergy or at university medical schools. Yes, at first the news did make headlines but it never became the grounds for widespread condemnation of either the clergy or university medical care as such. The scandals were treated, rightly, as exceptions to the rule.
If Mr. Black and his colleagues took a count, they would learn that among all the major corporations doing business throughout the globe, only a very, very small minority is involved in malfeasance. Therefore to indict the integrity of all of them, to be cynical as Mr. Black and his fellow journalists reportedly were, is irresponsible and unprofessional. Might it be something of an indictment of professional journalism, perhaps? But it is best to recall that those who go into environmental journalism are a minority and tend to be ideologically motivated and, frankly, largely anti-business, not fully representative of journalists.
As to whether Mr. Bodman and others in the business community are justified in being concerned over greenhouse gas emissions, that’s a different topic. Perhaps they, like millions of other people, are victims of a hoax or the exaggerations of environmentalist doom-sayers. Whatever the case, the idea, conveyed by BBC reporter Richard Black, that people in corporate commerce must all be like a certain few corporate villains is disgraceful. It is completely unbecoming of someone in his own profession!
Tibor R. Machan
Reporting on a meeting at which various organizations came together to address the issue of global warming, climate change, and the possibility of having to cut greenhouse gas emissions, the BBC’s environmental correspondent, Richard Black, wrote how US Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman declared that energy companies will reduce greenhouse gas emissions because, well, they cared about the environment. As Bodman reportedly put the point, "I believe that the people who run the private sector, who run these companies: they too have children, they too have grandchildren, they too live and breathe in the world. And they would like things dealt with effectively."
In response to this the reporter for the BBC offered this: “Call me cynical if you will, but my first thought was, so you mean, what, corporations like Enron? Or Arthur Andersen? Or WorldCom? And I was not alone. Mr Bodman had momentarily silenced an entire press corps.”
Now just consider the companies Mr. Black mentioned as he considered Mr. Bodman’s comment—Enron, Arthur Andersen, WorldCom. All of these have recently committed some kind of corporate crime, or have been charged with criminal conduct, although one of them has recently been nearly completely exonerated from all criminal culpability. Now imagine another scenario. A representative of the Roman Catholic Church offers a declaration that the church cares about young people, their education, their upbringing, their future. Mr. Black, who is in the audience when this declaration is made, writes about this as follows: “Call me cynical if you will, but my first thought was, so you mean, what, the Roman Catholic clergy, like those in Boston and San Francisco and Los Angeles, care about children? And I was not alone. The Roman Catholic spokesman had momentarily silenced an entire press corps.” Or consider the following: At a conference of university medical systems a representative of university hospitals declares that these institutions are concerned about the health of the citizenry in their neighborhoods, whereupon Mr. Black reports, “Call me cynical if you will, but my first thought was, so you mean, what, hospitals like the one at UCLA or UC Irvine care about patients? And I was not alone. The university hospital spokesman had momentarily silenced an entire press corps.”
Now perhaps my own response to Mr. Black’s report will not be fully appreciated by most people, probably because they have not followed the scandals involving Roman Catholic priests who have molested children entrusted into their care or the scandals at university hospitals where body parts have been selling on the black market and other gross malpractice has occurred, for instance, involving obtaining livers to be used in transplants. This would be understandable. The mainstream media is far more eager to report malfeasance in the business community than in the Roman Catholic clergy or at university medical schools. Yes, at first the news did make headlines but it never became the grounds for widespread condemnation of either the clergy or university medical care as such. The scandals were treated, rightly, as exceptions to the rule.
If Mr. Black and his colleagues took a count, they would learn that among all the major corporations doing business throughout the globe, only a very, very small minority is involved in malfeasance. Therefore to indict the integrity of all of them, to be cynical as Mr. Black and his fellow journalists reportedly were, is irresponsible and unprofessional. Might it be something of an indictment of professional journalism, perhaps? But it is best to recall that those who go into environmental journalism are a minority and tend to be ideologically motivated and, frankly, largely anti-business, not fully representative of journalists.
As to whether Mr. Bodman and others in the business community are justified in being concerned over greenhouse gas emissions, that’s a different topic. Perhaps they, like millions of other people, are victims of a hoax or the exaggerations of environmentalist doom-sayers. Whatever the case, the idea, conveyed by BBC reporter Richard Black, that people in corporate commerce must all be like a certain few corporate villains is disgraceful. It is completely unbecoming of someone in his own profession!
Why Skepticism is Sound
Tibor R. Machan
In the global warming debate the big issues is whether what human beings do contributes significantly to global warming. That global warming is occurring is not much in dispute, although some scientists do make a good deal of the point that there have been warming periods in the past, some of them far greater than those being recorded in our time. There has of course been steady global warming, on average, since as the earth evolved it was at certain early times covered with ice and quite uninhabitable by anything alive. Warming was a precondition to the emergence of life. But the warming never increased steadily and there have been periods of both, warming and cooling all along. Even after serious warming had commenced, there were long periods during which cold spells reemerged.
At this time, however, there is discernible warming, although the actual records—as distinct from computer projections—show only very small increases in the temperature of the earth. And in some places no warming is occurring at all. However, the history of temperature rise is not what concerns many of the skeptics about climate change. Nearly everyone agrees that there has been a rise recently. What is in dispute is (a) how much of an increase is likely to occur in the future and (b) whether human activities have had, are having, and will have a significant impact on global warming.
As to (a), the evidence is mixed and the more dire predictions are all based on several computer models combined with other computer models. And as the saying goes, "garbage in, garbage out." Here is the first place where skepticism occurs. Are those doing the modeling doing it right and can they actually be trusted to do it right? Is the science and technology on which modeling is based itself—and the scientists themselves—reliable?
Given that global warming research now consists of a mostly government subsidized industry across the globe, including the United Nations, with millions of dollars in grants going to those doing work in the field, there is understandable concern about whether those involved are stacking the deck in favor of a Doomsday scenario. It is often noted by private industry research critics that profit can corrupt research but the same is hardly ever noted in mainstream circles about government subsidized research. Furthermore, skeptics well understand that without a scare, there are fewer funds forthcoming. Government funding requires, ultimately, political support and such support relies heavily on a concerned, even frightened constituency. No Doomsday scenario, no concerned citizenry, and no allocation of funds obtained via taxation.
But there is more. In my own community the rangers put warnings out each day about fire hazards, ranging from "moderate" to "extremely high." Interestingly, the "moderate" sign is displayed even if it is pouring rain. In the ten years I have lived here, there hasn’t been a fire. Yet the "extremely high" has been displayed (by my assessment) routinely roughly 70% of the year. It is a tendency of those assigned to be on the lookout to exaggerate hazards. Vigilance calls for it, as they see their jobs.
As to the human factor, here the skeptics are often concerned about what may be dubbed (following a book by that title by Jonathan R. T. Hughes) the governmental habit—if global warming were unrelated to human activity, there isn’t a lot that politicians and bureaucrats could promise to do about it. Or, alternatively, if the best approach to encouraging responsible human conduct would be to leave politicians out of the picture and simply deploy various measures banning or containing what economists call negative externalities—bad side effects from normal productive processes—that, too, would leave the politicians out of the picture. And then what would they do, how would they gain the power most of them hunger for? There is, then, a strong probability that Doomsday scenarios will be projected by government officials and all those who work for them—get financial support, appointments to prestigious committees, invited to plush conferences, etc., etc.
So when one puts together the lack of solid science and technology behind the claim that global warming is imminent and that human conduct significantly contributes to the probable global warming, the attitude of skepticism is most reasonable. Or, to put it differently, how reasonable is it to trust politicians about their need for increased powers over the rest of us?
Tibor R. Machan
In the global warming debate the big issues is whether what human beings do contributes significantly to global warming. That global warming is occurring is not much in dispute, although some scientists do make a good deal of the point that there have been warming periods in the past, some of them far greater than those being recorded in our time. There has of course been steady global warming, on average, since as the earth evolved it was at certain early times covered with ice and quite uninhabitable by anything alive. Warming was a precondition to the emergence of life. But the warming never increased steadily and there have been periods of both, warming and cooling all along. Even after serious warming had commenced, there were long periods during which cold spells reemerged.
At this time, however, there is discernible warming, although the actual records—as distinct from computer projections—show only very small increases in the temperature of the earth. And in some places no warming is occurring at all. However, the history of temperature rise is not what concerns many of the skeptics about climate change. Nearly everyone agrees that there has been a rise recently. What is in dispute is (a) how much of an increase is likely to occur in the future and (b) whether human activities have had, are having, and will have a significant impact on global warming.
As to (a), the evidence is mixed and the more dire predictions are all based on several computer models combined with other computer models. And as the saying goes, "garbage in, garbage out." Here is the first place where skepticism occurs. Are those doing the modeling doing it right and can they actually be trusted to do it right? Is the science and technology on which modeling is based itself—and the scientists themselves—reliable?
Given that global warming research now consists of a mostly government subsidized industry across the globe, including the United Nations, with millions of dollars in grants going to those doing work in the field, there is understandable concern about whether those involved are stacking the deck in favor of a Doomsday scenario. It is often noted by private industry research critics that profit can corrupt research but the same is hardly ever noted in mainstream circles about government subsidized research. Furthermore, skeptics well understand that without a scare, there are fewer funds forthcoming. Government funding requires, ultimately, political support and such support relies heavily on a concerned, even frightened constituency. No Doomsday scenario, no concerned citizenry, and no allocation of funds obtained via taxation.
But there is more. In my own community the rangers put warnings out each day about fire hazards, ranging from "moderate" to "extremely high." Interestingly, the "moderate" sign is displayed even if it is pouring rain. In the ten years I have lived here, there hasn’t been a fire. Yet the "extremely high" has been displayed (by my assessment) routinely roughly 70% of the year. It is a tendency of those assigned to be on the lookout to exaggerate hazards. Vigilance calls for it, as they see their jobs.
As to the human factor, here the skeptics are often concerned about what may be dubbed (following a book by that title by Jonathan R. T. Hughes) the governmental habit—if global warming were unrelated to human activity, there isn’t a lot that politicians and bureaucrats could promise to do about it. Or, alternatively, if the best approach to encouraging responsible human conduct would be to leave politicians out of the picture and simply deploy various measures banning or containing what economists call negative externalities—bad side effects from normal productive processes—that, too, would leave the politicians out of the picture. And then what would they do, how would they gain the power most of them hunger for? There is, then, a strong probability that Doomsday scenarios will be projected by government officials and all those who work for them—get financial support, appointments to prestigious committees, invited to plush conferences, etc., etc.
So when one puts together the lack of solid science and technology behind the claim that global warming is imminent and that human conduct significantly contributes to the probable global warming, the attitude of skepticism is most reasonable. Or, to put it differently, how reasonable is it to trust politicians about their need for increased powers over the rest of us?
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