Is There Progress in Philosophy?
Tibor R. Machan
Often those who study the history of philosophy and compare it to the history of other, especially scientific, disciplines, complain that in philosophy no progress is made, that philosophers keep talking about the same thing in each age, that nothing ever gets resolved, etc., and so forth. (Articles on this topic are available in many forums, e.g., Todd C. Moody, "Progress in Philosophy," American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 23 [January 1986]:34-46) and the entry "Philosophical Progress," in the on-line encyclopedia, Wikipedia [at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_progress]).
Here I am taking it as true that there is no progress in philosophy, not comparably to what is evident in, say, chemistry or physics or anthropology. It appears clear that in each age most of the same philosophical issues are debated, theorized about or reflected upon as are explored in others, albeit in somewhat different terms. Thus the topic of free will may get rechristened "human agency" yet the basic problem in focus is the same--are people free to determine or cause some of what they do? Ancient, modern, and contemporary philosopher all address it, with only a few exceptions and opposite positions are defended in every age. Whether God exists, does the universe have a beginning, what is the nature of moral goodness and evil--all these issues keep getting revisited and though answers are defended, they do not seem to have lasting power but seem to need renewed support again and again.
I want to suggest a reason why this is how it is with philosophy and why that fact doesn't diminish the discipline's importance, nor its capacity to arrive at true conclusions. It isn't a very complicated explanation, actually. It is modeled somewhat loosely on individual developmental psychology. To whit, it is well recognized that teens tend to resist explicitly stated advice from elders. Arguably they do accept, at least subconsciously, leadership if it comes in the way of examples set for them by intimates. Becoming financially responsible, for example, may involve encountering one's parents' or guardians' repeated responsible conduct--if they routinely pay their bills, keep their promises, etc., so the teens can witness this without however preaching the practice at them, this is quite likely to carry influence.
One reason may be that teens are in the process of taking over the management of their lives and want to learn about this from their very own experience and practice rather than from explicit instructions. They need to know directly that they are doing what they choose to do, not merely blindly following other people's advice. Even the more complex matters of accepting their family's values, religious or political, seem to follow this process. If the teens are not being badgered about what they should believe, about the convictions that their parents want for them to embrace, they are more likely than not to follow their parents. Teens are about to assume the governance of their affairs and to do this they would naturally want to start thinking for themselves. So they, or at least the bright ones among them, are likely to resist just being told everything.
It is quite probable that human beings confront their most important and basic issues, ones treated within philosophy, similarly. A new generation will not take kindly to just accepting, without question and personal involvement, the vital ideas from past generations even if these ideas turn out to be right. It seems more likely that they will want to reconsider the basics on their own, with just some help from those who dealt with them earlier. And philosophy is where the basics are studied, examined, criticized, accepted or rejected.
Philosophy is also a discipline in which discussions are not thoroughly fraught with specialized jargon but are conducted in fairly ordinary terms. Everyone can, with a bit of effort, access these ideas, in other words, instead of submitting to the authority of experts as one would normally do in the case of most of the sciences, even when these bear directly on one's life, such as medicine, nutrition, biology, psychology, or sociology (although in some of its special areas philosophy can get quite complex and even convoluted, just as do the sciences). Thus most who have an interest in philosophy will want to and are likely to be able to explore its topics directly or through participation in the work of contemporaries, not by reading up on the topics as dealt with in the past.
This, then, places into the hands of a certain group of people in every new generation the task of revisiting the topics of the field. These would include, as already noted, "Is there a God?" "Is there free will?" "Can we know the world?" "Is it possible to be objective?" "Are principles of conduct made up or discovered?" "What exactly is justice or equality or liberty?" And so forth and so on.
No new generation will want such matters to be simply handed down from earlier ones. Sure, help from those who have addressed them will be welcome but not decisive. So there is not going to be rapid progress in the field, if any progress at all. Refinements of well travelled solutions are more likely to be the products of philosophical inquiry and reflection and, significantly, there is not going to be any "at the end of the day" about them. The day of such investigations never ends. And that is just as it must be--anything else would go contrary to human nature!
Friday, February 19, 2010
Tiger Woods Dishonored Himself
Tibor R. Machan
So Tiger Woods apologized for his "selfish behavior." Of course, what he did was to dishonor himself, his human self that is, not benefit it at all. Indeed, this allegedly selfish conduct of Mr. Woods has produced a few hours of sensual pleasure at the expense of his very own happiness at home, millions of dollars, a stellar reputation, etc., and so froth. Nothing really selfish about it, if you think it over responsibly.
Dr. Nathaniel Branden, the well known psychologist and reported father of the self-esteem movement in his discipline--he wrote The Psychology of Self-Esteem back in 1969 (Nash Publishing)--wrote a wonderful book in which this stuff about the alleged selfishness of cads like Woods is ably cleared up once and for all. The very apt title of this work is Honoring the Self (Bantam 1985). It discusses extensively and brilliantly just how the concept of the human self became debased in modern intellectual history.
Consider, for example, what the world famous ancient Greek philosopher Socrates told his pupil Crito (in his dialogue Phadeo) about the way his students could best please him--meaning live up to his ethical expectations--namely: "follow my old recipe, my friend: do yourselves concern yourselves with your own true self-interest; then you will oblige me, and mine and yourself too." The reason Socrates believed that following one's self-interest is morally proper is that he held a view of the human self that included honorable attributes, traits the development of which would make for someone who is practicing the highest virtues. Human nature, for Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and many early thinkers--some of them those detested "dead white males"--amounted to having the potential for excellence, even greatness. While this did include generosity and liberality as praiseworthy ways to be, it was, first and foremost, a matter of being rational, of thinking about one's life and acting by the guidance of that thinking rather than haphazardly, recklessly. That's the way to living a successful human life!
It all changed with the very influential English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, not to mention the Italian Niccolo Machiavelli. For these thinkers people were mostly potentially bad, power-seeking, driving by untamed passions like brutal animals in the wilds. Even the influence of Christianity enhanced a lowly view of the human self, what with the stress on original sin, on how once Adam and Eve tasted the apple of the tree of knowledge, they became sinners and we have all inherited their sin and need to be purged of it (e.g., by being baptized).
Then came, a bit later, Sigmund Freud, the notorious father of psychoanalysis for whom deep down we are all driven by a death wish and by other unsavory motives. No wonder the human self acquired a lousy reputation. How could something so constituted act for oneself and exhibit any virtues at all? By such a conception of the human self Tiger Woods and members of the Mafia and all the other vicious people are indeed selfish. They are servicing, after all, something loathsome. This modern idea breads one of the most prominent views in our time, namely, rank misanthrope, hatred for humanity, including oneself.
But is this idea right? Are people by their basic nature evil and loathsome? No. They have to become either good or evil but have no predilection toward either to start with although at first they are mostly innocent, gentle and lovable--just recall most any baby you have met! And if they are taught to acquire pleasant attributes rather than detestable ones, these babies are very likely to grow up pretty nice, if not out and out admirable.
Sadly, the dogma of the mean and nasty human self is widespread. Among other things, it aids and abets those among us who are eager to rule others, who spread the lie that it is only with their intervention that people can be made likable. (Politicians and the clergy love this idea!) In fact, however, Tiger Woods was anything but properly selfish. He caused himself immense harm, as well as those who loved or even just liked him. Shame on him.
Tibor R. Machan
So Tiger Woods apologized for his "selfish behavior." Of course, what he did was to dishonor himself, his human self that is, not benefit it at all. Indeed, this allegedly selfish conduct of Mr. Woods has produced a few hours of sensual pleasure at the expense of his very own happiness at home, millions of dollars, a stellar reputation, etc., and so froth. Nothing really selfish about it, if you think it over responsibly.
Dr. Nathaniel Branden, the well known psychologist and reported father of the self-esteem movement in his discipline--he wrote The Psychology of Self-Esteem back in 1969 (Nash Publishing)--wrote a wonderful book in which this stuff about the alleged selfishness of cads like Woods is ably cleared up once and for all. The very apt title of this work is Honoring the Self (Bantam 1985). It discusses extensively and brilliantly just how the concept of the human self became debased in modern intellectual history.
Consider, for example, what the world famous ancient Greek philosopher Socrates told his pupil Crito (in his dialogue Phadeo) about the way his students could best please him--meaning live up to his ethical expectations--namely: "follow my old recipe, my friend: do yourselves concern yourselves with your own true self-interest; then you will oblige me, and mine and yourself too." The reason Socrates believed that following one's self-interest is morally proper is that he held a view of the human self that included honorable attributes, traits the development of which would make for someone who is practicing the highest virtues. Human nature, for Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and many early thinkers--some of them those detested "dead white males"--amounted to having the potential for excellence, even greatness. While this did include generosity and liberality as praiseworthy ways to be, it was, first and foremost, a matter of being rational, of thinking about one's life and acting by the guidance of that thinking rather than haphazardly, recklessly. That's the way to living a successful human life!
It all changed with the very influential English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, not to mention the Italian Niccolo Machiavelli. For these thinkers people were mostly potentially bad, power-seeking, driving by untamed passions like brutal animals in the wilds. Even the influence of Christianity enhanced a lowly view of the human self, what with the stress on original sin, on how once Adam and Eve tasted the apple of the tree of knowledge, they became sinners and we have all inherited their sin and need to be purged of it (e.g., by being baptized).
Then came, a bit later, Sigmund Freud, the notorious father of psychoanalysis for whom deep down we are all driven by a death wish and by other unsavory motives. No wonder the human self acquired a lousy reputation. How could something so constituted act for oneself and exhibit any virtues at all? By such a conception of the human self Tiger Woods and members of the Mafia and all the other vicious people are indeed selfish. They are servicing, after all, something loathsome. This modern idea breads one of the most prominent views in our time, namely, rank misanthrope, hatred for humanity, including oneself.
But is this idea right? Are people by their basic nature evil and loathsome? No. They have to become either good or evil but have no predilection toward either to start with although at first they are mostly innocent, gentle and lovable--just recall most any baby you have met! And if they are taught to acquire pleasant attributes rather than detestable ones, these babies are very likely to grow up pretty nice, if not out and out admirable.
Sadly, the dogma of the mean and nasty human self is widespread. Among other things, it aids and abets those among us who are eager to rule others, who spread the lie that it is only with their intervention that people can be made likable. (Politicians and the clergy love this idea!) In fact, however, Tiger Woods was anything but properly selfish. He caused himself immense harm, as well as those who loved or even just liked him. Shame on him.
From Health Care to Tyranny
Tibor R. Machan
Once government takes over the health care and health insurance provision system in a country, it is very easy to move on toward a regime of practically total micromanagement of the citizenry's life.
Do you remember when helmet laws began to be enacted and there were those motorcyclists who protested? Their pitch was simply, "We love to feel the wind in our faces and our hair; we associate it with freedom. Do not rob us of this feeling."
"Ah," came back the quite predictable answer, "but you are driving on public roads where government is the boss. Moreover, any mishap on public roads leads to some county hospital where the government usually picks up the bill for the medical care you receive. So don't whine to us about your freedom when we, the government, pay the bills for your indulgences."
Now since there are very few private roads and highways available to people where they might pay an extra premium to cover the risk of a traffic mishap, this argument has initial plausibility. Also, if you take seriously the connection between property ownership and responsibility, then so long as governments own the roads, they will have to be responsible for how these roads are managed, for keeping down costs, etc., etc. How then could you defend the liberty of some wild motorcyclists to abstain from taking care to be as safe as possible?
Well, once government takes over the total health care system, as the current administration would like it to--always, of course, out of a sense of public service, doing good to everyone, never out of a desire to wield power over anyone--the idea that you ought to be free to eat as you choose, to exercise or not, to dress warmly or not so warmly winter or summer--all this will no longer plausibly be something that must be up to the citizenry. Their near total dependence on government will have rendered them children of the state who need to answer to their politicians and bureaucrats on all matters that could relate to their health.
I can already see us all being herded out on various parade grounds and sports fields, like those millions of North Koreans in their blue pajamas in our day and those millions of Germans under the rule of the Third Reich or Young Pioneers under the Soviets, so that we keep as fit as we can and avoid imposing the cost of any possible health problems on the public that is footing the bill for the care and insurance. Any protests that this may well be a massive extension of governmental power over the citizenry will readily be met with the retort, "Well, but you asked for it when you accepted government's provision for your physical well being." Similar retorts are being made already to complaints about bans on smoking--"Just consider who will be paying your medical bills when smoking will have taken its toll on your health! We cannot let this be. He who pays the piper...." Well, you know the rest.
There are numerous lies involved in such retorts, starting with the one about having asked for it. Maybe some folks are asking to have their medical care be handled by government but a whole lot of them are being threatened with being pressed into such a system, like it or not. Then there is the issue of not everyone being better of by being supervised about health care and insurance matters--they are managing it just fine themselves. But the most important lie is that using public facilities like roads and highways implies having given up one's liberty.
Certainly not everyone is choosing to make use of those facilities; they were imposed on us by ancient habits of thought and practices that took it for granted that government is the sole possible provider of roads and highways. And even if it were, there was no package deal involved--"You provide the roads and highways and now you get to rule us to your heart's content!" The idea of limited government, so much a part of the American political tradition, was meant precisely to rebuff such package deals. Yes, some government, a little bit of it, but by no means total rule! This is not some benign dictatorship we have here in these United States of America, no paternalistic monarchy, no nanny state, even! Some few matters have been left to government to manage, maybe not wisely but only from the governmental habit that hasn't quite been given up. Maybe it is also a huge confusion between government as the protector of our rights and government as dictator of our way of life!
But mark my words--soon we will have more and more, even Draconian, intrusion, shortly after the health care and insurance systems have been appropriated by those people. One may well wonder, with the young Anne Frank, "I wonder how they let people like them grow so powerful?"
Tibor R. Machan
Once government takes over the health care and health insurance provision system in a country, it is very easy to move on toward a regime of practically total micromanagement of the citizenry's life.
Do you remember when helmet laws began to be enacted and there were those motorcyclists who protested? Their pitch was simply, "We love to feel the wind in our faces and our hair; we associate it with freedom. Do not rob us of this feeling."
"Ah," came back the quite predictable answer, "but you are driving on public roads where government is the boss. Moreover, any mishap on public roads leads to some county hospital where the government usually picks up the bill for the medical care you receive. So don't whine to us about your freedom when we, the government, pay the bills for your indulgences."
Now since there are very few private roads and highways available to people where they might pay an extra premium to cover the risk of a traffic mishap, this argument has initial plausibility. Also, if you take seriously the connection between property ownership and responsibility, then so long as governments own the roads, they will have to be responsible for how these roads are managed, for keeping down costs, etc., etc. How then could you defend the liberty of some wild motorcyclists to abstain from taking care to be as safe as possible?
Well, once government takes over the total health care system, as the current administration would like it to--always, of course, out of a sense of public service, doing good to everyone, never out of a desire to wield power over anyone--the idea that you ought to be free to eat as you choose, to exercise or not, to dress warmly or not so warmly winter or summer--all this will no longer plausibly be something that must be up to the citizenry. Their near total dependence on government will have rendered them children of the state who need to answer to their politicians and bureaucrats on all matters that could relate to their health.
I can already see us all being herded out on various parade grounds and sports fields, like those millions of North Koreans in their blue pajamas in our day and those millions of Germans under the rule of the Third Reich or Young Pioneers under the Soviets, so that we keep as fit as we can and avoid imposing the cost of any possible health problems on the public that is footing the bill for the care and insurance. Any protests that this may well be a massive extension of governmental power over the citizenry will readily be met with the retort, "Well, but you asked for it when you accepted government's provision for your physical well being." Similar retorts are being made already to complaints about bans on smoking--"Just consider who will be paying your medical bills when smoking will have taken its toll on your health! We cannot let this be. He who pays the piper...." Well, you know the rest.
There are numerous lies involved in such retorts, starting with the one about having asked for it. Maybe some folks are asking to have their medical care be handled by government but a whole lot of them are being threatened with being pressed into such a system, like it or not. Then there is the issue of not everyone being better of by being supervised about health care and insurance matters--they are managing it just fine themselves. But the most important lie is that using public facilities like roads and highways implies having given up one's liberty.
Certainly not everyone is choosing to make use of those facilities; they were imposed on us by ancient habits of thought and practices that took it for granted that government is the sole possible provider of roads and highways. And even if it were, there was no package deal involved--"You provide the roads and highways and now you get to rule us to your heart's content!" The idea of limited government, so much a part of the American political tradition, was meant precisely to rebuff such package deals. Yes, some government, a little bit of it, but by no means total rule! This is not some benign dictatorship we have here in these United States of America, no paternalistic monarchy, no nanny state, even! Some few matters have been left to government to manage, maybe not wisely but only from the governmental habit that hasn't quite been given up. Maybe it is also a huge confusion between government as the protector of our rights and government as dictator of our way of life!
But mark my words--soon we will have more and more, even Draconian, intrusion, shortly after the health care and insurance systems have been appropriated by those people. One may well wonder, with the young Anne Frank, "I wonder how they let people like them grow so powerful?"
Thursday, February 18, 2010
On Sandel's Misguided Thinking
Tibor R. Machan
In 2004--not that long before he got to be a TV star on PBS-- Michael J. Sandel, the Harvard University professor of political philosophy got the enviable job of presenting his views on justice via the support of PBS television to a great number of viewers, made the following observation: "Today, in the thrall of markets and market-oriented thinking, we are all too tempted to think of democracy in economic terms alone. That is why it is worth asking whether we are a commonwealth still. To put that question at the center of our public debate, we need to remind ourselves of the civic goods that markets do not honor and money cannot buy."
All this sounds very kind and gentle--who, after all, could object to civic goods? Who could find anything wrong with the idea of a commonwealth? These are the marks of civilized society where instead of the rule of force, we have the rule of law. But don't be fooled. If you have listened to Professor Sandel's PBS lectures on justice you have by now realized that what the very prominently placed educator actually favors is a highly regimented society, one in which the idea of the consent of the governed is royally demeaned. Instead of choice and freedom, what Sandel champions is order and lock step pursuit of some kind of one size fits all public good that the market allegedly doesn’t sell.
It is scandalous how this man, using a good bit of taxpayer funds, gets to preach his message of collectivism and show his contempt for American values of individualism and liberty all in the middle of the country he seems to dislike and which he seems to enjoy misrepresenting in the middle of his so called educational endeavors.
Just consider the above claim that America is "in the thrall of markets and market-oriented thinking." If so, how come the majority of Americans elected Barack Obama their president, a man who has been quite up front in his dislike of markets and what he likes to dub the ideology of free markets, not any kind of “market-oriented thinking”? How cam Americans, on the whole, embrace public--government administered and conducted--education from the fist grade all the way to graduate school? How come their only passenger train service is provided by a government funded (and pretty much bankrupt) rail system, Amtrak? And why are they completely complacent about having a government postal service that prohibits anyone else from providing first class mail service? And how come these Americans who are "in the thrall of markets and market-oriented thinking" did not rise up in protest against the federal governments purchase of General Motors Corporation and bailout of banks and other enterprises that are by no stretch of the imagination market institutions?
What kind of a highly honored educator engages in this kind of rank distortion? Market-oriented thinking my foot! Most Americans, including especially the educated ones and those doing the education of America's youth, do not like the free market. (I have been in the midst of American higher education since 1965 and have found nearly uniform disdain toward the free market except by some economists who defend it mainly because they focus on which system manages to be more productive, more consumer friendly. As some Russians who came to visit American universities after the fall of the Soviet Union pointed out, there are far more Marxists and near Marxists in American higher education than there have ever been in the Soviet bloc!)
Now, of course, professor Sandel has the basic human right to be wrong about what Americans are in thrall of, a right he seems very eager to exercise. In a free society one doesn't get punished for misguided thinking except by the reality that is likely to bite one in the butt in consequence of it.
But while Sandel is free to be wrong, the rest of us don't have to sit at his feet and complacently accept his misinformation, even if it has the prestige of Harvard University and PBS television supporting it. No, we are still free to protest what Sandel is peddling. And we are also still free to point out the specious manner in which he does his peddling, namely wrapping it in the vocabulary of civility and democracy.
Let us, please, not let the man fool us. Freedom and democracy do go hand in hand--it takes freedom for the people to be involved in politics! And freedom is not divisible--you cannot have freedom of religion, speech, and thought without free markets in which books, educational equipment, buildings for churches and newspapers, printing presses, and the labor of educators are available to be purchased instead of conscripted as in the collectivist paradise—a warped commonwealth--that Sandel wishes to impose on us all.
What Sandel has convinced himself of is that he is for the good, the public good, while those who tend to favor the American political tradition are only for human liberty, almost license. But this is bunk.
There can be no human good without human liberty for doing what is good requires the freedom to choose it. Otherwise the good is being pursued at the point of a gun and not as a matter of one's own convictions, the only way it means anything.
Tibor R. Machan
In 2004--not that long before he got to be a TV star on PBS-- Michael J. Sandel, the Harvard University professor of political philosophy got the enviable job of presenting his views on justice via the support of PBS television to a great number of viewers, made the following observation: "Today, in the thrall of markets and market-oriented thinking, we are all too tempted to think of democracy in economic terms alone. That is why it is worth asking whether we are a commonwealth still. To put that question at the center of our public debate, we need to remind ourselves of the civic goods that markets do not honor and money cannot buy."
All this sounds very kind and gentle--who, after all, could object to civic goods? Who could find anything wrong with the idea of a commonwealth? These are the marks of civilized society where instead of the rule of force, we have the rule of law. But don't be fooled. If you have listened to Professor Sandel's PBS lectures on justice you have by now realized that what the very prominently placed educator actually favors is a highly regimented society, one in which the idea of the consent of the governed is royally demeaned. Instead of choice and freedom, what Sandel champions is order and lock step pursuit of some kind of one size fits all public good that the market allegedly doesn’t sell.
It is scandalous how this man, using a good bit of taxpayer funds, gets to preach his message of collectivism and show his contempt for American values of individualism and liberty all in the middle of the country he seems to dislike and which he seems to enjoy misrepresenting in the middle of his so called educational endeavors.
Just consider the above claim that America is "in the thrall of markets and market-oriented thinking." If so, how come the majority of Americans elected Barack Obama their president, a man who has been quite up front in his dislike of markets and what he likes to dub the ideology of free markets, not any kind of “market-oriented thinking”? How cam Americans, on the whole, embrace public--government administered and conducted--education from the fist grade all the way to graduate school? How come their only passenger train service is provided by a government funded (and pretty much bankrupt) rail system, Amtrak? And why are they completely complacent about having a government postal service that prohibits anyone else from providing first class mail service? And how come these Americans who are "in the thrall of markets and market-oriented thinking" did not rise up in protest against the federal governments purchase of General Motors Corporation and bailout of banks and other enterprises that are by no stretch of the imagination market institutions?
What kind of a highly honored educator engages in this kind of rank distortion? Market-oriented thinking my foot! Most Americans, including especially the educated ones and those doing the education of America's youth, do not like the free market. (I have been in the midst of American higher education since 1965 and have found nearly uniform disdain toward the free market except by some economists who defend it mainly because they focus on which system manages to be more productive, more consumer friendly. As some Russians who came to visit American universities after the fall of the Soviet Union pointed out, there are far more Marxists and near Marxists in American higher education than there have ever been in the Soviet bloc!)
Now, of course, professor Sandel has the basic human right to be wrong about what Americans are in thrall of, a right he seems very eager to exercise. In a free society one doesn't get punished for misguided thinking except by the reality that is likely to bite one in the butt in consequence of it.
But while Sandel is free to be wrong, the rest of us don't have to sit at his feet and complacently accept his misinformation, even if it has the prestige of Harvard University and PBS television supporting it. No, we are still free to protest what Sandel is peddling. And we are also still free to point out the specious manner in which he does his peddling, namely wrapping it in the vocabulary of civility and democracy.
Let us, please, not let the man fool us. Freedom and democracy do go hand in hand--it takes freedom for the people to be involved in politics! And freedom is not divisible--you cannot have freedom of religion, speech, and thought without free markets in which books, educational equipment, buildings for churches and newspapers, printing presses, and the labor of educators are available to be purchased instead of conscripted as in the collectivist paradise—a warped commonwealth--that Sandel wishes to impose on us all.
What Sandel has convinced himself of is that he is for the good, the public good, while those who tend to favor the American political tradition are only for human liberty, almost license. But this is bunk.
There can be no human good without human liberty for doing what is good requires the freedom to choose it. Otherwise the good is being pursued at the point of a gun and not as a matter of one's own convictions, the only way it means anything.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Are our "Leaders" Superior?
Tibor R. Machan
When people talk about how market agents need to be regulated because, well, without it they could do bad things, it never fails to amaze me how narrow-minded is this line of reasoning. When human beings are fit for regulation by others, they are usually children and the others are their parents or guardians. So it has to do with who is an adult, who is not. Makes sense.
But when it is about adult citizens allegedly requiring regulation by other adult citizens, it is simply baffling. It used to be, back in the really old days (and in some regions of the globe even now), that societies were segmented into separate classes, upper, middle, lower and such, but that is all nonsense. While we may not all be equal in our intelligence, beauty, health, and the like, it is pretty clear now that as far as our rights to our lives and liberties are concerned, we are indeed equal. That means no one gets to rule someone else, not any other adult, not unless there has been someone who is to be ruled has done something criminal, violated another's rights in the first place or consent has been given as we give it to our surgeon. But barring this, no one is supposed to rule anyone else. Equal liberty all around, that is the principle of a free society.
So then where does all this government regulation come from? Does our mutual equality disappear simply because a lot of people may wish to intrude on a bunch of others? Does democracy trump our mutual rights to equal liberty? How could it, when democracy itself is based on such rights--that why we all have the right to participate in public affairs, because we all have equal rights and no one is superior to another in the matter of having rights or authority. Self-rule is the name of the game, not a bigger group ruling a smaller one.
So bigger numbers do not justify greater, unequal authority. Nor does expertise. One's doctor or dentist or butcher or plumber is an expert at something one may know nothing about or only very little but that doesn't support the doctor's or dentist's or butcher's rule over others who lack their skills. They still require full consent from those they guide, their patients or customers. Consent is central to the way civilized adult people interact. You must gain another's permission to give him or her orders, to have them comply with your orders. That is the way of a free society.
But this bothers many people who think that we are all beholden to others, especially past generations, and thus we have obligations to fulfill. And it is indeed plausible to hold that many people owe much to their elders, both intimates and strangers. Surely the inventions and creations from past generations have produced enormous benefits to members of the current one and maybe this creates some obligations, duties, that the current population needs to fulfill.
What is not true is that this entitles anyone to enforce those obligations. Adult human beings must come to see that they owe something to others. That's the origin of contract law. We enter into binding agreements with others. No third party gets to determine these obligations without our consent. And certainly no one gets to force us to comply with obligations we haven't freely assumed except when we are children and cannot be expected to fend for ourselves.
Well then what about all this government regulation being imposed on innumerable professionals, regulation that a great many haven't ever been asked to accept let alone given their consent to? Notice, the government regulations are pre-emptive--those being regulated haven't done anything wrong, so they haven't deserved the regulation, the impositions, the burdens the regulators meet out. (In the criminal law no one gets to be punished or penalized unless it is shown, in line with due process, that they have done something to deserve punishment or penalties. Why not with government regulation?)
How come the regulators--or rather rulers--get to tell people what to do? Never mind that they haven't the moral authority to do this, nor some kind of special status--more naturally virtuous than the rest of us, perhaps--that would justify their intrusions into other people's lives. Never mind that they are all just as capable of making mistakes as are market agents and, indeed, more so because they have power over people which, as Lord Acton noted, tends to corrupt.
So you think free men and women are susceptible to making mistakes? Well, their rulers are far more susceptible to do so, something that is borne out by even a cursory study of human history.
Tibor R. Machan
When people talk about how market agents need to be regulated because, well, without it they could do bad things, it never fails to amaze me how narrow-minded is this line of reasoning. When human beings are fit for regulation by others, they are usually children and the others are their parents or guardians. So it has to do with who is an adult, who is not. Makes sense.
But when it is about adult citizens allegedly requiring regulation by other adult citizens, it is simply baffling. It used to be, back in the really old days (and in some regions of the globe even now), that societies were segmented into separate classes, upper, middle, lower and such, but that is all nonsense. While we may not all be equal in our intelligence, beauty, health, and the like, it is pretty clear now that as far as our rights to our lives and liberties are concerned, we are indeed equal. That means no one gets to rule someone else, not any other adult, not unless there has been someone who is to be ruled has done something criminal, violated another's rights in the first place or consent has been given as we give it to our surgeon. But barring this, no one is supposed to rule anyone else. Equal liberty all around, that is the principle of a free society.
So then where does all this government regulation come from? Does our mutual equality disappear simply because a lot of people may wish to intrude on a bunch of others? Does democracy trump our mutual rights to equal liberty? How could it, when democracy itself is based on such rights--that why we all have the right to participate in public affairs, because we all have equal rights and no one is superior to another in the matter of having rights or authority. Self-rule is the name of the game, not a bigger group ruling a smaller one.
So bigger numbers do not justify greater, unequal authority. Nor does expertise. One's doctor or dentist or butcher or plumber is an expert at something one may know nothing about or only very little but that doesn't support the doctor's or dentist's or butcher's rule over others who lack their skills. They still require full consent from those they guide, their patients or customers. Consent is central to the way civilized adult people interact. You must gain another's permission to give him or her orders, to have them comply with your orders. That is the way of a free society.
But this bothers many people who think that we are all beholden to others, especially past generations, and thus we have obligations to fulfill. And it is indeed plausible to hold that many people owe much to their elders, both intimates and strangers. Surely the inventions and creations from past generations have produced enormous benefits to members of the current one and maybe this creates some obligations, duties, that the current population needs to fulfill.
What is not true is that this entitles anyone to enforce those obligations. Adult human beings must come to see that they owe something to others. That's the origin of contract law. We enter into binding agreements with others. No third party gets to determine these obligations without our consent. And certainly no one gets to force us to comply with obligations we haven't freely assumed except when we are children and cannot be expected to fend for ourselves.
Well then what about all this government regulation being imposed on innumerable professionals, regulation that a great many haven't ever been asked to accept let alone given their consent to? Notice, the government regulations are pre-emptive--those being regulated haven't done anything wrong, so they haven't deserved the regulation, the impositions, the burdens the regulators meet out. (In the criminal law no one gets to be punished or penalized unless it is shown, in line with due process, that they have done something to deserve punishment or penalties. Why not with government regulation?)
How come the regulators--or rather rulers--get to tell people what to do? Never mind that they haven't the moral authority to do this, nor some kind of special status--more naturally virtuous than the rest of us, perhaps--that would justify their intrusions into other people's lives. Never mind that they are all just as capable of making mistakes as are market agents and, indeed, more so because they have power over people which, as Lord Acton noted, tends to corrupt.
So you think free men and women are susceptible to making mistakes? Well, their rulers are far more susceptible to do so, something that is borne out by even a cursory study of human history.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
PBS & NPR, America's Pravda and Izvestia
Tibor R. Machan
It is a feature of American culture that's most upsetting though hardly anyone makes much of it at all. Indeed, I know several avid defenders of the free society who make regularly and eager appearances on National Public Radio and I have to confess that I myself have appeared on one or two Public Broadcast Service programs when allowed to make a pitch for a society that would have no such things, partly government funded TV or radio network.
When I first left Hungary, in 1953, and came to live in the West, I settled for a while in Munich where my father and stepmother worked for Radio Free Europe. This outfit was partly American government--CIA--funded, beaming programs into Eastern European, Soviet bloc countries and supposedly countering communists propaganda. But at heart the idea of the American government doing this turned out to be a paradox since what is wrong with communist countries is precisely that they place everything in society under state control, including broadcasting the news, educating the young, doing science, entertainment or athletics. That is just what is supposed to be so different between communism and capitalism; yet here was RFE doing just what the communists were doing, entrusting government with broadcasting. (I recall how eager I was at one point shortly after I came West to have the American government give massive funding to Olympic hopefuls so they would defeat Soviet athletes and show how much better American athletes can be than Soviet ones, not realizing for a good while how paradoxical this was--sports should not be the purview of government in a genuine free country.)
Yet, what we have had in America and many Western countries for decades on end is, you guessed it, virtually the same thing as they had in the Soviet Union and its colonies, namely, government run radio and TV, just like the two government published and managed "newspapers" in the USSR, Pravda and Izvestia, not to mention all their other media. Instead of showing a confidence in the institutions that emerge spontaneously in a free country, from the initiative of free men and women, Americans abandoned the principles of their system to mount a counter-offensive. Let's defeat communism by becoming, well, partly communist! What a self-defeating policy that is.
These days a good example is PBS's broadcast of Professor Michael Sandel's lectures on justice from Harvard University. Sandel is smart and erudite but at heart a propagandist for a planned society, only in degrees different from what the most earnest of the Soviets had hoped for (but, of course, couldn't bring off because of how it contradicts human nature). There is, of course, nothing objectionable about Harvard broadcasting Sandel's lectures at its own expense but there is decidedly something wrong with Sandel getting even partial government funding for his partisan lectures. He is not a teacher who gives an fair and accurate representation of different ideas of justice but someone who subtly nudges his students and audience in a particular ideological direction.
Am I exaggerating in considering Sandel a propagandist, albeit a subtle one? Well, here is how he handled Aristotle's political philosophy.
The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle defended a fairly intrusive type of political system in which the government or state--although some dispute this interpretation--aimed at making people good. OK, this is a pretty standard rendition of Aristotle but in laying it out one needs to make note of the fact that it may well miss something vital about justice. This is that very likely no one can really make people good--that task needs to be everyone's own (other than those crucial impeded). Human goodness is arguably something every individual has to bring about for himself or herself. Otherwise it is nothing but regimentation and what we get is perhaps good behavior but clearly not morally virtuous conduct. Aristotle, probably somewhat influenced by the experience of the extreme tyranny of the city state of Sparta, accepted the idea that people can be forced to be good. This is what the classical liberal ethos has corrected about ancient political philosophy--human beings need to choose and cannot be forced to be good!
Now Sandel gave no mention of this problem with Aristotle. He made it appear (by failing to discuss the point) that whereas Aristotle had a noble concern with human goodness, the more recent tendency in (especially American libertarian) political philosophy to restrict the power of government and leave citizens to their own resources when it comes to living a morally good life was inferior to it. But it isn't. Classical liberals pay plenty of attention to human goodness but they realize it cannot be engineered! Communitarians and welfare state liberals to the contrary notwithstanding, people cannot be forced to be good! It is a distinctive element of human life that people's goodness must be their own doing not that of behavior modifiers, brain-washers or the bureaucrats.
To make it appear that this approach to politics fails to promote human goodness is a distortion. That is why I call Sandel's lectures propaganda. If they were fair-minded, by presenting this kind of critique of Aristotle and others who want to force us to be good, it would be educational. And by being put on PBS, a partly government funded TV network, the lectures come very close to resembling what the citizens of the Soviet Union and its colonies received from Pravda and Izvestia.
Tibor R. Machan
It is a feature of American culture that's most upsetting though hardly anyone makes much of it at all. Indeed, I know several avid defenders of the free society who make regularly and eager appearances on National Public Radio and I have to confess that I myself have appeared on one or two Public Broadcast Service programs when allowed to make a pitch for a society that would have no such things, partly government funded TV or radio network.
When I first left Hungary, in 1953, and came to live in the West, I settled for a while in Munich where my father and stepmother worked for Radio Free Europe. This outfit was partly American government--CIA--funded, beaming programs into Eastern European, Soviet bloc countries and supposedly countering communists propaganda. But at heart the idea of the American government doing this turned out to be a paradox since what is wrong with communist countries is precisely that they place everything in society under state control, including broadcasting the news, educating the young, doing science, entertainment or athletics. That is just what is supposed to be so different between communism and capitalism; yet here was RFE doing just what the communists were doing, entrusting government with broadcasting. (I recall how eager I was at one point shortly after I came West to have the American government give massive funding to Olympic hopefuls so they would defeat Soviet athletes and show how much better American athletes can be than Soviet ones, not realizing for a good while how paradoxical this was--sports should not be the purview of government in a genuine free country.)
Yet, what we have had in America and many Western countries for decades on end is, you guessed it, virtually the same thing as they had in the Soviet Union and its colonies, namely, government run radio and TV, just like the two government published and managed "newspapers" in the USSR, Pravda and Izvestia, not to mention all their other media. Instead of showing a confidence in the institutions that emerge spontaneously in a free country, from the initiative of free men and women, Americans abandoned the principles of their system to mount a counter-offensive. Let's defeat communism by becoming, well, partly communist! What a self-defeating policy that is.
These days a good example is PBS's broadcast of Professor Michael Sandel's lectures on justice from Harvard University. Sandel is smart and erudite but at heart a propagandist for a planned society, only in degrees different from what the most earnest of the Soviets had hoped for (but, of course, couldn't bring off because of how it contradicts human nature). There is, of course, nothing objectionable about Harvard broadcasting Sandel's lectures at its own expense but there is decidedly something wrong with Sandel getting even partial government funding for his partisan lectures. He is not a teacher who gives an fair and accurate representation of different ideas of justice but someone who subtly nudges his students and audience in a particular ideological direction.
Am I exaggerating in considering Sandel a propagandist, albeit a subtle one? Well, here is how he handled Aristotle's political philosophy.
The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle defended a fairly intrusive type of political system in which the government or state--although some dispute this interpretation--aimed at making people good. OK, this is a pretty standard rendition of Aristotle but in laying it out one needs to make note of the fact that it may well miss something vital about justice. This is that very likely no one can really make people good--that task needs to be everyone's own (other than those crucial impeded). Human goodness is arguably something every individual has to bring about for himself or herself. Otherwise it is nothing but regimentation and what we get is perhaps good behavior but clearly not morally virtuous conduct. Aristotle, probably somewhat influenced by the experience of the extreme tyranny of the city state of Sparta, accepted the idea that people can be forced to be good. This is what the classical liberal ethos has corrected about ancient political philosophy--human beings need to choose and cannot be forced to be good!
Now Sandel gave no mention of this problem with Aristotle. He made it appear (by failing to discuss the point) that whereas Aristotle had a noble concern with human goodness, the more recent tendency in (especially American libertarian) political philosophy to restrict the power of government and leave citizens to their own resources when it comes to living a morally good life was inferior to it. But it isn't. Classical liberals pay plenty of attention to human goodness but they realize it cannot be engineered! Communitarians and welfare state liberals to the contrary notwithstanding, people cannot be forced to be good! It is a distinctive element of human life that people's goodness must be their own doing not that of behavior modifiers, brain-washers or the bureaucrats.
To make it appear that this approach to politics fails to promote human goodness is a distortion. That is why I call Sandel's lectures propaganda. If they were fair-minded, by presenting this kind of critique of Aristotle and others who want to force us to be good, it would be educational. And by being put on PBS, a partly government funded TV network, the lectures come very close to resembling what the citizens of the Soviet Union and its colonies received from Pravda and Izvestia.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Are all of us Always Selfish?
Tibor R. Machan
The idea that everyone is always acting selfishly comes from Thomas Hobbes, mostly, though others have voiced it too. For Hobbes we are all moved by passions, such as for power or wealth or such, and this is merely the human version of the way matter behaves in the world. Everything moves forward unless stopped by something. The normal process is to go forward.
This idea was taken over by political economists, including in some measure by Adam Smith. They held that we are all eagerly motivated to gain wealth, to prosper. It is what has come to be known as the profit motive and one learns of it in Economics 101. Also goes by the name "utility maximization," to drive to increase to as much as possible what one wants or desires.
All of this isn't really up to us, it's automatic or instinctual, not something anyone can choose or refuse to do, any more than one's blood choses to circulate or hair chooses to grow or fall out. Many believe in something like this as they try to make sense of human affairs. It seems former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan did, along with many economists, along with the notion that when this forward movement, this utility maximization process, proceeds undisturbed, the economy would just purr along nicely, correcting itself when veering on some missteps, just as everything else in the biological, zoological, or physiological realms does.
Clearly such a picture of human affairs precludes freedom of choice. Just as many, many natural and social scientists, and a good many philosophers, believe in our day and have believed before. Free will had been and still is mostly something religious people believe, except for some who believe that nature includes some (few) beings with that capacity. (This is my view.) And thus the idea the we are all selfish is really something that starts with very basic assumptions about the world, ones worked out by classical physicists, and is the exported to how people need to be understood.
But is this correct? Well, common sense would dispute it, of course, since millions of human beings quite evidently act contrary to their best interest, quite unselfishly or, rather, self-destructively. People often abuse their bodies, their psyche, undermine their marriages or careers and get into intractable conflicts with their fellows on all fronts which certainly does them no good. Selfish? Quite the contrary, it seems.
So why does this not convince? After all, newspapers, books, magazines, TV broadcasts and many others sources of reports about human life, including the bulk of history, seem to give evidence of how unbelievably self-destructive people are, how they mess up instead of proceeding nicely forward in life. Why then the persistence in the view by so many, especially in the discipline of economics, that everyone is selfish?
Maybe it is because the belief isn't based on evidence but on a powerful and promising theory that holds out hope that applying it will render everything clear and simple. Reducing all human affairs to appear as if they were just the same as the movements of atoms in space could serve the purpose of helping us explain ourselves more simply than the more involved psychological, moral, political and similar explanations seem to do. And this idea is both very ancient and contemporary--all that exists are atoms or their equivalent--say tiny strings--the rest is merely illusion, sort like those sand objects on the beach that have different shapes but come to nothing more than sand.
Take this small case: I once drove across an intersection and noticed myself speeding up to help those behind me make the green light. Simple but not consistent with the selfishness idea. Why would I care? These people following me were not family, friends, and so forth. But I seemed to have acted generously toward them by speeding up so they wouldn't get caught by the next red light. I won't even go into all the help some give to those in dire straits.
Yet the "everybody is always selfish" view makes no sense of this except by some torturous reasoning--"I did it so in the future when I find myself following others, they would move and let me go through, etc., etc. Or I did it to feel good." But I didn't. I monitor myself well enough to know. (And if one wants to be skeptical about that, one will have to discount all testimony of witnesses or reports to doctors about one's pains and aches and memories, etc. It's too much to give up to save a dubious theory!) Moreover, millions of people show generosity, charity, kindness, considerateness toward others, even if only once they have taken reasonably good care of their own affairs, so the "always" in that idea of Hobbes goes counter to what we know well enough about ourselves and other people.
People have many and different motives for what they do and advancing their own interest is just one among these, even if perhaps it ought to be the main one since, to begin with, otherwise they will risk neglecting something only they can really work on. Still, the notion that everyone is always selfish just doesn't cut it.
Tibor R. Machan
The idea that everyone is always acting selfishly comes from Thomas Hobbes, mostly, though others have voiced it too. For Hobbes we are all moved by passions, such as for power or wealth or such, and this is merely the human version of the way matter behaves in the world. Everything moves forward unless stopped by something. The normal process is to go forward.
This idea was taken over by political economists, including in some measure by Adam Smith. They held that we are all eagerly motivated to gain wealth, to prosper. It is what has come to be known as the profit motive and one learns of it in Economics 101. Also goes by the name "utility maximization," to drive to increase to as much as possible what one wants or desires.
All of this isn't really up to us, it's automatic or instinctual, not something anyone can choose or refuse to do, any more than one's blood choses to circulate or hair chooses to grow or fall out. Many believe in something like this as they try to make sense of human affairs. It seems former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan did, along with many economists, along with the notion that when this forward movement, this utility maximization process, proceeds undisturbed, the economy would just purr along nicely, correcting itself when veering on some missteps, just as everything else in the biological, zoological, or physiological realms does.
Clearly such a picture of human affairs precludes freedom of choice. Just as many, many natural and social scientists, and a good many philosophers, believe in our day and have believed before. Free will had been and still is mostly something religious people believe, except for some who believe that nature includes some (few) beings with that capacity. (This is my view.) And thus the idea the we are all selfish is really something that starts with very basic assumptions about the world, ones worked out by classical physicists, and is the exported to how people need to be understood.
But is this correct? Well, common sense would dispute it, of course, since millions of human beings quite evidently act contrary to their best interest, quite unselfishly or, rather, self-destructively. People often abuse their bodies, their psyche, undermine their marriages or careers and get into intractable conflicts with their fellows on all fronts which certainly does them no good. Selfish? Quite the contrary, it seems.
So why does this not convince? After all, newspapers, books, magazines, TV broadcasts and many others sources of reports about human life, including the bulk of history, seem to give evidence of how unbelievably self-destructive people are, how they mess up instead of proceeding nicely forward in life. Why then the persistence in the view by so many, especially in the discipline of economics, that everyone is selfish?
Maybe it is because the belief isn't based on evidence but on a powerful and promising theory that holds out hope that applying it will render everything clear and simple. Reducing all human affairs to appear as if they were just the same as the movements of atoms in space could serve the purpose of helping us explain ourselves more simply than the more involved psychological, moral, political and similar explanations seem to do. And this idea is both very ancient and contemporary--all that exists are atoms or their equivalent--say tiny strings--the rest is merely illusion, sort like those sand objects on the beach that have different shapes but come to nothing more than sand.
Take this small case: I once drove across an intersection and noticed myself speeding up to help those behind me make the green light. Simple but not consistent with the selfishness idea. Why would I care? These people following me were not family, friends, and so forth. But I seemed to have acted generously toward them by speeding up so they wouldn't get caught by the next red light. I won't even go into all the help some give to those in dire straits.
Yet the "everybody is always selfish" view makes no sense of this except by some torturous reasoning--"I did it so in the future when I find myself following others, they would move and let me go through, etc., etc. Or I did it to feel good." But I didn't. I monitor myself well enough to know. (And if one wants to be skeptical about that, one will have to discount all testimony of witnesses or reports to doctors about one's pains and aches and memories, etc. It's too much to give up to save a dubious theory!) Moreover, millions of people show generosity, charity, kindness, considerateness toward others, even if only once they have taken reasonably good care of their own affairs, so the "always" in that idea of Hobbes goes counter to what we know well enough about ourselves and other people.
People have many and different motives for what they do and advancing their own interest is just one among these, even if perhaps it ought to be the main one since, to begin with, otherwise they will risk neglecting something only they can really work on. Still, the notion that everyone is always selfish just doesn't cut it.
Public Service Work and Unionization
Tibor R. Machan
Just now in many states of the United States of America, especially in California, there is a crisis brewing in the public service employment region. No longer to public service employees are expected to be motivated by service, as distinct from their private sector colleagues who are pretty much looking for the best deal they can strike with potential employers. In public service work one is supposedly doing part of one's labor from a sense of devotion to the public good, not from the private motive! Or so you may have thought.
Consider, however, why labor unions exist in a free society: to facilitate employees' efforts to improve their bargaining power in negotiating with employers. This, in turn, presupposes a free market system. Employees are free to organize into unions so as to bargain and get a good deal and employers are free to hire different workers whose offer they prefer to those of the organized group's. But most importantly, prospective customers are free to find some other firm from which to purchase goods or services, ones not seriously encumbered by crippling labor disputes.
Now public workers are different because they work for public or government agencies that are usually monopolies. Only one first class mail delivery outfit, the US Postal System; only one source of "free" education for which property owners are forced to pay, etc. You get the point.
So when public workers threaten to strike, there is usually nowhere for the customers to go to purchase the services they want other than the government agency that employs these public workers. When public workers organize into a union and threaten to go on strike, their employers are the only game in town. There is nowhere else the customers can go to obtain these services, no competition with public agencies and, therefore, with public services workers.
Now this is patently wrong. If customers aren't free to shop elsewhere, if they are hostage to the government agencies providing the public service, those who work for those agencies ought not to be able to threaten and walk of their jobs. That's especially so with the likes of members of teacher unions whose income depends upon confiscated resources, obtained via taxation. In free markets if the employees want to use their sizable numbers to improve their bargaining power, they aren't the only one's with such clout. Customers can also leave the employee and shop elsewhere for their wares without breaking the law. But if taxpayers want to change the employers with whom they want to deal, those in public schools or private ones, they aren't free and will be breaking the law if they stop paying taxes.
All the wrangling about public service unions and how they are able to secure for their members enormous retirement benefits tend not to take these points into consideration. These unions are very different from labor unions in free market systems where such workers must compete with others and offer terms to employers that are not impossible to meet and which competing workers are free to contest. They aren't exorbitant as are the pay demands of a great many public service unions, especially in the state of California. And while economists use the term "demand" to characterize what customers want from providers, actually no demands are in play at all--they are just proposals from which the parties can walk away until the deals have been struck. But in the case of public service employees there really are demands being made--"You will pay us this, or we walk off the job and no other options for obtain our kind of work are available to you!"
America is supposed to be a free country, as are in fact all others supposed to be, and here some semblance of such a country had been attempted. But public service unions, as many other "pseudo-market" agents--companies receiving subsidies and protection from foreign competition--are subverting this attempt. It is high time to put an end to it all.
Tibor R. Machan
Just now in many states of the United States of America, especially in California, there is a crisis brewing in the public service employment region. No longer to public service employees are expected to be motivated by service, as distinct from their private sector colleagues who are pretty much looking for the best deal they can strike with potential employers. In public service work one is supposedly doing part of one's labor from a sense of devotion to the public good, not from the private motive! Or so you may have thought.
Consider, however, why labor unions exist in a free society: to facilitate employees' efforts to improve their bargaining power in negotiating with employers. This, in turn, presupposes a free market system. Employees are free to organize into unions so as to bargain and get a good deal and employers are free to hire different workers whose offer they prefer to those of the organized group's. But most importantly, prospective customers are free to find some other firm from which to purchase goods or services, ones not seriously encumbered by crippling labor disputes.
Now public workers are different because they work for public or government agencies that are usually monopolies. Only one first class mail delivery outfit, the US Postal System; only one source of "free" education for which property owners are forced to pay, etc. You get the point.
So when public workers threaten to strike, there is usually nowhere for the customers to go to purchase the services they want other than the government agency that employs these public workers. When public workers organize into a union and threaten to go on strike, their employers are the only game in town. There is nowhere else the customers can go to obtain these services, no competition with public agencies and, therefore, with public services workers.
Now this is patently wrong. If customers aren't free to shop elsewhere, if they are hostage to the government agencies providing the public service, those who work for those agencies ought not to be able to threaten and walk of their jobs. That's especially so with the likes of members of teacher unions whose income depends upon confiscated resources, obtained via taxation. In free markets if the employees want to use their sizable numbers to improve their bargaining power, they aren't the only one's with such clout. Customers can also leave the employee and shop elsewhere for their wares without breaking the law. But if taxpayers want to change the employers with whom they want to deal, those in public schools or private ones, they aren't free and will be breaking the law if they stop paying taxes.
All the wrangling about public service unions and how they are able to secure for their members enormous retirement benefits tend not to take these points into consideration. These unions are very different from labor unions in free market systems where such workers must compete with others and offer terms to employers that are not impossible to meet and which competing workers are free to contest. They aren't exorbitant as are the pay demands of a great many public service unions, especially in the state of California. And while economists use the term "demand" to characterize what customers want from providers, actually no demands are in play at all--they are just proposals from which the parties can walk away until the deals have been struck. But in the case of public service employees there really are demands being made--"You will pay us this, or we walk off the job and no other options for obtain our kind of work are available to you!"
America is supposed to be a free country, as are in fact all others supposed to be, and here some semblance of such a country had been attempted. But public service unions, as many other "pseudo-market" agents--companies receiving subsidies and protection from foreign competition--are subverting this attempt. It is high time to put an end to it all.
Friday, February 12, 2010
Oh, that Egalitarian Feeling!
Tibor R. Machan
If I recall this right, the prominent philosopher and legal theorist, Martha Nussbaum of the University of Chicago (where she is the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics), has argued that while it is true that full human equality is not something found in the world, we are, nevertheless, obligated to try to bring it about. She wrote, in her book Sex and Social Justice (Oxford UP, 1999), "At the heart of this tradition [of liberal political thought] is a twofold intuition about human beings: namely, that all, just by being human, are of equal dignity and worth, no matter where they are situated in society, and that the primary source of this worth is a power of moral choice within them, a power that consists in the ability to plan a life in accordance with one's own evaluation of ends." (SSJ,57) She has also written, in that same work, that "Human beings have a dignity that deserves respect from laws and social institutions. This idea has many origins in many traditions; by now it is at the core of modern liberal democratic thought and practice all over the world. The idea of human dignity is usually taken to involve an idea of equal worth: rich and poor, rural and urban, female and male, all are equally deserving of respect, just in virtue of being human, and this respect should not be abridged on account of a characteristic that is distributed by the whims of fortune."
Professor Nussbaum has, accordingly, devoted herself to just that mission, via several global initiatives, working with the World Institute for Development Economics Research, which is an organization connected with the United Nations. (Full disclosure: she once very kindly penned a foreword to a book I co-authored with Craig Duncan, Libertarianism: For and Against [Rowman & Littlefield, 2006], making no bones about which side of the debate featured in that book she supported.) I am afraid her good will in attempting to rearrange the world so that all humans are equal, especially in economic matters and how they fare medically, educationally, and in other eras where inequalities are evident, is misguided and can do much more harm than good.
A good start on understanding why this is so can be made by considering the short story by the late Kurt Vonegut, titled Harrison Bergeron, in which we are offered a good debate about perfect equality as well as a picture of what a country would look like in which it is the ruling regime. But this is fiction and too many slights of hand can sneak in, so let me just make clear why the egalitarian world Professor Nussbaum advocates is a very bad idea.
To start with, the egalitarian ideal isn't that of the American Declaration of Independence in which we are told that "all men are created equal." Never mind about the precise process of creation the Founders had in mind, divine or natural, the equality they were referring to is what most people know is equality under the law or procedural equality. In particular, what the Declaration declared is that all human beings are equal in possessing the rights to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness and whatever other rights are implied by these. (The U. S. Constitution is an attempt to work out just what they are and the U. S. Supreme Court often struggles with the task of applying the principles of the Constitution to concrete cases put before it.)
To be plain about the matter, the Declaration's conception of human equality acknowledges that everyone has the right to live, to act freely, to devote oneself to peaceful goals of one's choosing. Accordingly, however, one can be quite unequal in one's life conditions to others. One may not be as healthy as one's neighbor, nor as wealthy or good looking or bright or lucky. So long as these unequal conditions are attained peacefully, without violating anyone's rights, that is perfectly acceptable and just, as it is perfectly acceptable that the outcome of a marathon race would be decisively unequal for the participants. Indeed, although many speak of the Declaration's support of "equality of opportunity," that isn't quite right either. After all, just as in a marathon or virtually any other race the participants come to it with very different abilities, preparation, motivations--e. g., not everyone runs to win, some do it for the exercise or to simply have the experience--so in life the starting point is very different for different people.
Now inequality is clearly objectionable from this position when it is created by violence, by imposing on people by oppressing them, limiting their liberty to strive for a good life either on their own or in free, voluntary associations with others. But it isn't the inequality per se that's the problem but the intrusiveness, oppression, tyranny and so forth which often produces it. Clearly, without such interference there could still be inequality among human beings, based on one's natural attributes and life conditions. Yet it is not all that easy to sort out just why inequalities occur. At times it is evidently something that's no one's doing, as when someone is very tall while another very short in physical stature (although even in this the poverty that others may have imposed on someone or someone's family could be instrumental).
Bottom line, however, is that no matter how diligently Professor Nussbaum and all who agree with her might work at it, there is no reasonable prospect for establishing total human equality, nor is it a value to be pursued. Why would it be a good thing to have us all equal? Our equal human dignity does not imply that we are better off if we are equal in our benefits and burdens to all others. It is a non-sequitur to believe that! Indeed, many of our greatest benefits in our social lives come from the prominence of inequalities among human beings, even some that are undesirable. For example, doctors and medical researchers benefit from the presence of the sick! Teachers benefit from the presence of ignorant students. The superb talents of artists and athletes are of benefit to all who enjoy witnessing what such persons can but they cannot do!
One source of the desire for full equality is clearly that in our families and small associations there is cause for insisting on some of it. Families ought to share the benefits of a superb dinner or household and in a college classroom all the students ought to be attended to professionally and helpfully by the teacher.
But notice the limited range of these cases where equality is a valid objective! Extrapolating from them to societies at large, let alone to the entire globe, is unjustified and the attempt to do it has wrought havoc in the world whenever it has been tried seriously. The dystopian vision of Vonegut, then, has it right, after all, as do the warnings off all those who insist that imposing the vision of full equality in human societies will mean very little equality--after all, those doing the imposing will certainly always be unequal to the rest--but a whole lot of grief from the deployment of massive government coercive force.
Finally, are all of us of equal worth, really? At birth, perhaps, although it is probably more correct to say that at that point our moral worth, our dignity, hasn't really surfaced yet. Only once we begin to make an impact on the world, including our own lives, do we earn our dignity, provided we do a commendable job of that task. And it is a myth to think that everyone does so. Even egalitarians will have to contend, implicitly at least, that opponents of their project aren't so deserving of dignity as are those who support it.
Tibor R. Machan
If I recall this right, the prominent philosopher and legal theorist, Martha Nussbaum of the University of Chicago (where she is the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics), has argued that while it is true that full human equality is not something found in the world, we are, nevertheless, obligated to try to bring it about. She wrote, in her book Sex and Social Justice (Oxford UP, 1999), "At the heart of this tradition [of liberal political thought] is a twofold intuition about human beings: namely, that all, just by being human, are of equal dignity and worth, no matter where they are situated in society, and that the primary source of this worth is a power of moral choice within them, a power that consists in the ability to plan a life in accordance with one's own evaluation of ends." (SSJ,57) She has also written, in that same work, that "Human beings have a dignity that deserves respect from laws and social institutions. This idea has many origins in many traditions; by now it is at the core of modern liberal democratic thought and practice all over the world. The idea of human dignity is usually taken to involve an idea of equal worth: rich and poor, rural and urban, female and male, all are equally deserving of respect, just in virtue of being human, and this respect should not be abridged on account of a characteristic that is distributed by the whims of fortune."
Professor Nussbaum has, accordingly, devoted herself to just that mission, via several global initiatives, working with the World Institute for Development Economics Research, which is an organization connected with the United Nations. (Full disclosure: she once very kindly penned a foreword to a book I co-authored with Craig Duncan, Libertarianism: For and Against [Rowman & Littlefield, 2006], making no bones about which side of the debate featured in that book she supported.) I am afraid her good will in attempting to rearrange the world so that all humans are equal, especially in economic matters and how they fare medically, educationally, and in other eras where inequalities are evident, is misguided and can do much more harm than good.
A good start on understanding why this is so can be made by considering the short story by the late Kurt Vonegut, titled Harrison Bergeron, in which we are offered a good debate about perfect equality as well as a picture of what a country would look like in which it is the ruling regime. But this is fiction and too many slights of hand can sneak in, so let me just make clear why the egalitarian world Professor Nussbaum advocates is a very bad idea.
To start with, the egalitarian ideal isn't that of the American Declaration of Independence in which we are told that "all men are created equal." Never mind about the precise process of creation the Founders had in mind, divine or natural, the equality they were referring to is what most people know is equality under the law or procedural equality. In particular, what the Declaration declared is that all human beings are equal in possessing the rights to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness and whatever other rights are implied by these. (The U. S. Constitution is an attempt to work out just what they are and the U. S. Supreme Court often struggles with the task of applying the principles of the Constitution to concrete cases put before it.)
To be plain about the matter, the Declaration's conception of human equality acknowledges that everyone has the right to live, to act freely, to devote oneself to peaceful goals of one's choosing. Accordingly, however, one can be quite unequal in one's life conditions to others. One may not be as healthy as one's neighbor, nor as wealthy or good looking or bright or lucky. So long as these unequal conditions are attained peacefully, without violating anyone's rights, that is perfectly acceptable and just, as it is perfectly acceptable that the outcome of a marathon race would be decisively unequal for the participants. Indeed, although many speak of the Declaration's support of "equality of opportunity," that isn't quite right either. After all, just as in a marathon or virtually any other race the participants come to it with very different abilities, preparation, motivations--e. g., not everyone runs to win, some do it for the exercise or to simply have the experience--so in life the starting point is very different for different people.
Now inequality is clearly objectionable from this position when it is created by violence, by imposing on people by oppressing them, limiting their liberty to strive for a good life either on their own or in free, voluntary associations with others. But it isn't the inequality per se that's the problem but the intrusiveness, oppression, tyranny and so forth which often produces it. Clearly, without such interference there could still be inequality among human beings, based on one's natural attributes and life conditions. Yet it is not all that easy to sort out just why inequalities occur. At times it is evidently something that's no one's doing, as when someone is very tall while another very short in physical stature (although even in this the poverty that others may have imposed on someone or someone's family could be instrumental).
Bottom line, however, is that no matter how diligently Professor Nussbaum and all who agree with her might work at it, there is no reasonable prospect for establishing total human equality, nor is it a value to be pursued. Why would it be a good thing to have us all equal? Our equal human dignity does not imply that we are better off if we are equal in our benefits and burdens to all others. It is a non-sequitur to believe that! Indeed, many of our greatest benefits in our social lives come from the prominence of inequalities among human beings, even some that are undesirable. For example, doctors and medical researchers benefit from the presence of the sick! Teachers benefit from the presence of ignorant students. The superb talents of artists and athletes are of benefit to all who enjoy witnessing what such persons can but they cannot do!
One source of the desire for full equality is clearly that in our families and small associations there is cause for insisting on some of it. Families ought to share the benefits of a superb dinner or household and in a college classroom all the students ought to be attended to professionally and helpfully by the teacher.
But notice the limited range of these cases where equality is a valid objective! Extrapolating from them to societies at large, let alone to the entire globe, is unjustified and the attempt to do it has wrought havoc in the world whenever it has been tried seriously. The dystopian vision of Vonegut, then, has it right, after all, as do the warnings off all those who insist that imposing the vision of full equality in human societies will mean very little equality--after all, those doing the imposing will certainly always be unequal to the rest--but a whole lot of grief from the deployment of massive government coercive force.
Finally, are all of us of equal worth, really? At birth, perhaps, although it is probably more correct to say that at that point our moral worth, our dignity, hasn't really surfaced yet. Only once we begin to make an impact on the world, including our own lives, do we earn our dignity, provided we do a commendable job of that task. And it is a myth to think that everyone does so. Even egalitarians will have to contend, implicitly at least, that opponents of their project aren't so deserving of dignity as are those who support it.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Another Pitch for Pragmatism
Tibor R. Machan
This article surprised me a bit because I have been reading The New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof for a long time and he never appeared to me an unprincipled person. Yet in an essay for The New York Review of Books, titled "On Isaiah Berlin," he pushes for unabashed pragmatism, which is the philosophy of expediency, of "anything that works."
Kristof's essay is about the late philosopher and historian of ideas Isaiah Berlin, most famous for his essay "Two Concepts of Liberty." In that essay Berlin laid out and clarified a notion that had been making the philosophical rounds for about a century if not more--for example, in the writings of the English idealist philosopher, T. H. Green--namely that in politics two ideas of human freedom are prominent, negative and positive. Basically negative freedom or liberty amounts to not intruding on someone, leaving him or her be. This is the liberty endorse by John Locke and by the American Founders.
The other type of freedom is positive, meaning one gets to be supported by other people so as to have the ability--freedom--to advance in one's life, for example, the freedom to get health care or insurance or public housing or whatever is produced, via coercion, for those who need it by those who can. If others are forced to provide (foregoing some of their values), then they will be free to pursue the values they need and want to have.
Berlin never thought this distinction is all-encompassing but he believed it covers a good deal of what goes on in contemporary welfare states where both types of freedom are supposedly being secured by governments. And he embraced a very controversial view about morality, ethics and politics, namely, that we can have values--ideas of what is right and wrong, good and bad or evil--that are in conflict, that it is false that "there must somewhere be a true answer to the deepest questions that preoccupy mankind." While he noted that great minds throughout human history had assumed this, the idea is nevertheless false!
Kristof thinks he knows why Berlin held to this belief--he gives a typical psycho-historical explanation based on Berlin's early life and later experiences with totalitarianism and what Berlin liked to call "unbridled monism" (the idea that the universe hangs together seamlessly and although we rarely know how it does so, in principle we could; this is pretty much what is assumed in all the sciences other than, perhaps, in chaos theory, so Berlin's helter-skelter account of the world would seem to be the odd one, not that offered by those who seek, even if they cannot find, a comprehensive account).
But what stands out most in Kristof's essay is how he attempts to enlist Berlin to support pragmatism. As he puts it, "What exactly is Berlin's legacy in philosophy? To me, it is his emphasis on the 'pluralism of values,' a concept that suggests a nonideological, pragmatic way of navigating an untidy world." He does this without bothering to explain how Berlin's (or indeed anyone's) version of pragmatism could give support to Kristof's own favorite causes, including rescuing women who are oppressed across the globe. Can a pragmatist really object if someone replies, "Well it is very useful to oppress women (or whoever else), at least to us here in this country or region"?
Never mind. Barack Obama has declared himself a loyal pragmatist, at least in economic policy, so his cheerleaders, among them Nicholas Kristof, are doing whatever they can to make this a respectable outlook. Is it? Or is it a rationalization for unprincipled personal conduct and public policy? I suspect it is the latter. The more one can shore up the credibility and respectability of shooting from the hip, never mind justification and, more importantly, justice, the more unchecked power one can claim is necessary to do one's work. Dangerous stuff, I'd say.
Tibor R. Machan
This article surprised me a bit because I have been reading The New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof for a long time and he never appeared to me an unprincipled person. Yet in an essay for The New York Review of Books, titled "On Isaiah Berlin," he pushes for unabashed pragmatism, which is the philosophy of expediency, of "anything that works."
Kristof's essay is about the late philosopher and historian of ideas Isaiah Berlin, most famous for his essay "Two Concepts of Liberty." In that essay Berlin laid out and clarified a notion that had been making the philosophical rounds for about a century if not more--for example, in the writings of the English idealist philosopher, T. H. Green--namely that in politics two ideas of human freedom are prominent, negative and positive. Basically negative freedom or liberty amounts to not intruding on someone, leaving him or her be. This is the liberty endorse by John Locke and by the American Founders.
The other type of freedom is positive, meaning one gets to be supported by other people so as to have the ability--freedom--to advance in one's life, for example, the freedom to get health care or insurance or public housing or whatever is produced, via coercion, for those who need it by those who can. If others are forced to provide (foregoing some of their values), then they will be free to pursue the values they need and want to have.
Berlin never thought this distinction is all-encompassing but he believed it covers a good deal of what goes on in contemporary welfare states where both types of freedom are supposedly being secured by governments. And he embraced a very controversial view about morality, ethics and politics, namely, that we can have values--ideas of what is right and wrong, good and bad or evil--that are in conflict, that it is false that "there must somewhere be a true answer to the deepest questions that preoccupy mankind." While he noted that great minds throughout human history had assumed this, the idea is nevertheless false!
Kristof thinks he knows why Berlin held to this belief--he gives a typical psycho-historical explanation based on Berlin's early life and later experiences with totalitarianism and what Berlin liked to call "unbridled monism" (the idea that the universe hangs together seamlessly and although we rarely know how it does so, in principle we could; this is pretty much what is assumed in all the sciences other than, perhaps, in chaos theory, so Berlin's helter-skelter account of the world would seem to be the odd one, not that offered by those who seek, even if they cannot find, a comprehensive account).
But what stands out most in Kristof's essay is how he attempts to enlist Berlin to support pragmatism. As he puts it, "What exactly is Berlin's legacy in philosophy? To me, it is his emphasis on the 'pluralism of values,' a concept that suggests a nonideological, pragmatic way of navigating an untidy world." He does this without bothering to explain how Berlin's (or indeed anyone's) version of pragmatism could give support to Kristof's own favorite causes, including rescuing women who are oppressed across the globe. Can a pragmatist really object if someone replies, "Well it is very useful to oppress women (or whoever else), at least to us here in this country or region"?
Never mind. Barack Obama has declared himself a loyal pragmatist, at least in economic policy, so his cheerleaders, among them Nicholas Kristof, are doing whatever they can to make this a respectable outlook. Is it? Or is it a rationalization for unprincipled personal conduct and public policy? I suspect it is the latter. The more one can shore up the credibility and respectability of shooting from the hip, never mind justification and, more importantly, justice, the more unchecked power one can claim is necessary to do one's work. Dangerous stuff, I'd say.
Tuesday, February 09, 2010
Same Old Song
Tibor R. Machan
Meg Whitman is running for governor of California and I haven't a clue what her chances are. I know I don't want anyone like Arnold to get elected but then I don't want hardly anyone to be either reelected or elected. And Meg Whitman gives a good example of why.
Her ads on California TV stations are all about giving stuff to people. Yes, her big, novel, revolutionary political pitch is to provide more and more stuff to the electorate. She says so explicitly in her television ads. No bones about it, nothing about principle, nothing about throwing all the lobbyists out, nada. It's all about stealing from these citizens and handing the loot to those. How else are you going to do more for "the people"?
And this pattern is repeated all around the country these days. No one even pretends to stand for a principle of justice that is to everyone's equal benefit, like making sure there is no more debt citizens are stuck with. No mention about refusing to place members of future generations in debt even though, contrary to a major American founding principle--no taxation without representation--such a policy is glaringly perverse in this country.
Why can't Ms. Whitman come up with something really different when she claims to offer us change? But then so did Mr. Obama who now seems to be going down the exact same road that George W. Bush did, deficits, debt, entanglements in foreign wars, the continuation of the war on drugs, etc., etc.
It is not in my philosophy to construe politics innately corrupt. There could be decency there, yes, provided the idea the American founders had were still what would guide those running for office. Politics should stay out of our lives and only do what referees do at a game, make sure the rules are followed. The rules, in turn, are to act peacefully in all realms of our lives, no exception. Yes, yes, on some very rare occasions someone may deploy just a bit of force, as when a hysterical uncle needs to be restrained. But that is a very rare exception indeed, and so would be the use of coercion in a decent society, especially by the government the job of which is to secure our rights, period.
Ms. Whitman, however, is no agent of serious change but is going to continue the widespread destructive governmental habit, promising to redistribute wealth just like all the other politicians are trying to do, thereby impoverishing the country--including the state of California in spades--at every turn.
Of course, it would be a mistake to think that the American people, including the bulk of California's citizenry, are innocent. Most are, after all, the ones who invite the likes of Ms. Whitman to run for office instead of someone who is committed to weaning us of the governmental habit.
Back when Arnold got into the game I actually was stupid enough to vote for him, but only because I considered The LA Times's efforts to discredit him by writing a story on the eve of his election about how he frolicked on the set of some of his movies. Well, I figured, that was such a low blow that I should come to his rescue! Dumb move; no good reason to vote for someone. Rash. I will never do that again.
But any other basis for selection from among current candidates seems even worse since all they do is offer themselves up as your hired thief rather than someone else's. Yes, that is the ploy of most of them--"free" health care, "free" insurance, "free" maternity leave from your job, "free" unemployment compensation, etc., etc., all of it anything but free, of course, but all put on the backs of others and of members of future generations.
Maybe some day there will be a citiznery that will repeal the authority of politicians to engage in all this larceny. Maybe. But do not hold your breath because that governmental habit is a very powerful one.
Tibor R. Machan
Meg Whitman is running for governor of California and I haven't a clue what her chances are. I know I don't want anyone like Arnold to get elected but then I don't want hardly anyone to be either reelected or elected. And Meg Whitman gives a good example of why.
Her ads on California TV stations are all about giving stuff to people. Yes, her big, novel, revolutionary political pitch is to provide more and more stuff to the electorate. She says so explicitly in her television ads. No bones about it, nothing about principle, nothing about throwing all the lobbyists out, nada. It's all about stealing from these citizens and handing the loot to those. How else are you going to do more for "the people"?
And this pattern is repeated all around the country these days. No one even pretends to stand for a principle of justice that is to everyone's equal benefit, like making sure there is no more debt citizens are stuck with. No mention about refusing to place members of future generations in debt even though, contrary to a major American founding principle--no taxation without representation--such a policy is glaringly perverse in this country.
Why can't Ms. Whitman come up with something really different when she claims to offer us change? But then so did Mr. Obama who now seems to be going down the exact same road that George W. Bush did, deficits, debt, entanglements in foreign wars, the continuation of the war on drugs, etc., etc.
It is not in my philosophy to construe politics innately corrupt. There could be decency there, yes, provided the idea the American founders had were still what would guide those running for office. Politics should stay out of our lives and only do what referees do at a game, make sure the rules are followed. The rules, in turn, are to act peacefully in all realms of our lives, no exception. Yes, yes, on some very rare occasions someone may deploy just a bit of force, as when a hysterical uncle needs to be restrained. But that is a very rare exception indeed, and so would be the use of coercion in a decent society, especially by the government the job of which is to secure our rights, period.
Ms. Whitman, however, is no agent of serious change but is going to continue the widespread destructive governmental habit, promising to redistribute wealth just like all the other politicians are trying to do, thereby impoverishing the country--including the state of California in spades--at every turn.
Of course, it would be a mistake to think that the American people, including the bulk of California's citizenry, are innocent. Most are, after all, the ones who invite the likes of Ms. Whitman to run for office instead of someone who is committed to weaning us of the governmental habit.
Back when Arnold got into the game I actually was stupid enough to vote for him, but only because I considered The LA Times's efforts to discredit him by writing a story on the eve of his election about how he frolicked on the set of some of his movies. Well, I figured, that was such a low blow that I should come to his rescue! Dumb move; no good reason to vote for someone. Rash. I will never do that again.
But any other basis for selection from among current candidates seems even worse since all they do is offer themselves up as your hired thief rather than someone else's. Yes, that is the ploy of most of them--"free" health care, "free" insurance, "free" maternity leave from your job, "free" unemployment compensation, etc., etc., all of it anything but free, of course, but all put on the backs of others and of members of future generations.
Maybe some day there will be a citiznery that will repeal the authority of politicians to engage in all this larceny. Maybe. But do not hold your breath because that governmental habit is a very powerful one.
Friday, February 05, 2010
Avatar's (and Sandel's) Misanthropy
Tibor R. Machan
Perhaps it isn't all people but only Americans that Avatar presents in an unfavorable light but the movie clearly suggests that human beings are largely no good, except for just a few of them and they only barely. In contrast, the natives are all the sweetest, nicest, most loving type one can imagine. Kind of like those who inhabited Paradise before the Fall. Evil is unknown to these creatures, so that even their silliest superstitions are depicted as worthy, benign. It is an ancient myth, of course, that the ideal human being would be one who melds in seamlessly with the rest and humanity is really just this beehive type of huge community, with some benevolent dictators in the leadership driving it toward some glorious end. Every dictator, tsar, king, and the like has tried to sell us on this vision.
Even as Avatar is seducing the critics--if one can call a bunch of swooning admirers in the media "critics"--PBS, the government funded television service, is showing a program on justice that broadcasts the Harvard University lectures of Professor Michael Sandel, the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor there, who unhesitatingly takes advantage of his captive audience of adolescents by preaching to them the virtues of his version of communitarianism and never misses the opportunity to put down the idea of free consent. (Yes, here we are, taxpayers, funding what is quite a clever bit of indoctrination since no one else but Sandel is featured and he is unabashedly partisan, insisting over and over again that what he considers justice is the real McCoy. And why, when he doesn't believe in free consent, should he be concerned that other people are coerced into funding his PBS lectures? That would be granting some credence to the idea that the consent of the citizenry is important, a notion that would undermine Professor Sandel's political philosophy of coercive communitarianism.)
The central message Sandel is preaching is that we all have obligations to society--or government or the state--that we have never chosen, that can be enforced on us without asking for our consent. This is the beehive or the anthill notion of community, wherein you belong wether you want to or not, and those who are the leaders can make us do what they deem is in the public interest, pursue the common good, never mind pursuing our own happiness.
And the ideal community, as depicted in Avatar by how the natives live (whose land is being raped and pillaged by the terrible American looking humans) is just like that. Everyone submits, everyone is a part, everyone belongs, no one stands for his or her own agenda, no one is unique, no one has an individual, personal vision for that would distract from the common purpose everyone must pursue. The idea doesn't even come up.
Both the most prominent Hollywood fiction and the most prominent public philosophy today are messages about how the American notion of individualism--whereby you and I and everyone has a right to his or her life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness--is misguided and in need of being purged from our midst. Yes, that is the message of both. Your consent, which is such a highly valued ingredient of justice according the Declaration of Independence, the American founding, is an obstacle to justice!
It isn't even considered that perhaps real justice is not really like what Professor Sandel is promoting, that real justice involves everyone's liberty to strive to realize his or her individual human good, some of which unites us all but a good deal of it includes a very large dosage of one's purely personal agenda.
While not endorsing it outright, Professor Sandel gleefully quotes the political philosopher Montesquieu who observed that in an ideal world no one would have any friends since friendship involves a prejudice in favor of some people and in justice we owe loyalty to everyone, intimate or stranger alike. He didn't mention how exhausting life would be with everyone on intimate terms, how we would no sooner celebrate someone's good fortune then we would have to rush off to lament another's loss.
Human beings aren't fit to be close associates of everyone! It is quite right that they would have but few close friends and render to others respect for their rights or liberties, period. Neither Sandel nor Avatar gave a nod to this quintessentially American notion, the most liberating idea of human political history. Not a good omen, I'd say
Tibor R. Machan
Perhaps it isn't all people but only Americans that Avatar presents in an unfavorable light but the movie clearly suggests that human beings are largely no good, except for just a few of them and they only barely. In contrast, the natives are all the sweetest, nicest, most loving type one can imagine. Kind of like those who inhabited Paradise before the Fall. Evil is unknown to these creatures, so that even their silliest superstitions are depicted as worthy, benign. It is an ancient myth, of course, that the ideal human being would be one who melds in seamlessly with the rest and humanity is really just this beehive type of huge community, with some benevolent dictators in the leadership driving it toward some glorious end. Every dictator, tsar, king, and the like has tried to sell us on this vision.
Even as Avatar is seducing the critics--if one can call a bunch of swooning admirers in the media "critics"--PBS, the government funded television service, is showing a program on justice that broadcasts the Harvard University lectures of Professor Michael Sandel, the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor there, who unhesitatingly takes advantage of his captive audience of adolescents by preaching to them the virtues of his version of communitarianism and never misses the opportunity to put down the idea of free consent. (Yes, here we are, taxpayers, funding what is quite a clever bit of indoctrination since no one else but Sandel is featured and he is unabashedly partisan, insisting over and over again that what he considers justice is the real McCoy. And why, when he doesn't believe in free consent, should he be concerned that other people are coerced into funding his PBS lectures? That would be granting some credence to the idea that the consent of the citizenry is important, a notion that would undermine Professor Sandel's political philosophy of coercive communitarianism.)
The central message Sandel is preaching is that we all have obligations to society--or government or the state--that we have never chosen, that can be enforced on us without asking for our consent. This is the beehive or the anthill notion of community, wherein you belong wether you want to or not, and those who are the leaders can make us do what they deem is in the public interest, pursue the common good, never mind pursuing our own happiness.
And the ideal community, as depicted in Avatar by how the natives live (whose land is being raped and pillaged by the terrible American looking humans) is just like that. Everyone submits, everyone is a part, everyone belongs, no one stands for his or her own agenda, no one is unique, no one has an individual, personal vision for that would distract from the common purpose everyone must pursue. The idea doesn't even come up.
Both the most prominent Hollywood fiction and the most prominent public philosophy today are messages about how the American notion of individualism--whereby you and I and everyone has a right to his or her life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness--is misguided and in need of being purged from our midst. Yes, that is the message of both. Your consent, which is such a highly valued ingredient of justice according the Declaration of Independence, the American founding, is an obstacle to justice!
It isn't even considered that perhaps real justice is not really like what Professor Sandel is promoting, that real justice involves everyone's liberty to strive to realize his or her individual human good, some of which unites us all but a good deal of it includes a very large dosage of one's purely personal agenda.
While not endorsing it outright, Professor Sandel gleefully quotes the political philosopher Montesquieu who observed that in an ideal world no one would have any friends since friendship involves a prejudice in favor of some people and in justice we owe loyalty to everyone, intimate or stranger alike. He didn't mention how exhausting life would be with everyone on intimate terms, how we would no sooner celebrate someone's good fortune then we would have to rush off to lament another's loss.
Human beings aren't fit to be close associates of everyone! It is quite right that they would have but few close friends and render to others respect for their rights or liberties, period. Neither Sandel nor Avatar gave a nod to this quintessentially American notion, the most liberating idea of human political history. Not a good omen, I'd say
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
Are Corporations Persons?
Tibor R. Machan
Actually, no one thinks corporations are persons but some do believe they are groups of persons. No one thinks orchestras, or football teams or universities are persons but many do think they are variously configured people. If this is so, then they, as groups of persons, have rights, including the right to private property and freedom of speech.
When people come together for some common purpose, they do not lose their basic human rights. So all the hollering about how the recent Supreme Court ruling about whether corporations have the right to engage in political advocacy, based on the allegation that corporations aren’t persons, is off base.
Even those who oppose the ruling implicitly acknowledge the above. Thus Justice Stevens, the major dissenter on the Court, wrote, that “[T]he distinctive potential of corporations to corrupt the electoral process [has] long been recognized.” But only persons can corrupt something! Theodore Roosevelt advocated prohibiting "all contributions by corporations to any political committee or for any political purpose." And this, too, implies that corporations are made up of people, people who have rights! There is no other way corporations can make contributions--buildings, trees, land, the sea, none of these can make contributions, only people can. Ergo, corporations are people!
In any case, I have no idea what else corporations would be. Yes, they have some kind of legal identity but that is completely derivative of their being made up of people. Usually, it is a bunch of people who get together and incorporate--now that monarchs no longer create such associations--which is to say they form a specific type of organization, usually involving pooling some resources and hiring specialists to administer these resources either for profitable or non-profitable purposes. But whichever it is, it is persons who are doing this and nothing else. You may not like those types of persons but in a democracy they have the right to obtain and wield political power.
Now it is true that when people unite with one another, they tend to gain in influence, even power, if power is at issue. Sadly, given how much politics is not a matter of upholding principles, as the American Founders envisioned it, but of confiscating funds and then distributing them--that whole redistribution thing that candidate Obama had out with Joe "the Plumber"--having united powers can go a long way to gaining political clout. But this has nothing to do with corporations as such, which are perfectly benign outfits unless they commit crimes, just as this is so with individual citizens.
So then what is up with all the corporate bashing? Mostly that if you aren't a part of the corporation but a lot of others are, it is they and not you who will wield more political power. And if one believes in democratic politics, why complain about this? If a huge company, owned by thousands of stockholders and other investors, exerts power, such is democracy. You cannot cherry pick which group of citizens should get democratic power and which should be ignored.
The remedy for out of control corporate political influence and power is to limit democracy to very few tasks in the country, such as the selection of public officials. They will then represent those who elected them but not by doing them special favors but by helping in extending the principles of the country to new and uncharted areas of the law.
I am no corporate attorney, nor a constitutional scholar but our legal system must make sense to all citizens, not just to experts. And as a plain, ordinary citizen it seems to me that all the derision extended toward corporations amounts to rank prejudice, bias, as a generalized dislike of movie actors or farmers would be. This is nothing to be proud of, that's for sure, even if it is widely accepted and practiced. So was racial prejudice once. Not that those who have shares or manage corporations are all fine people, not by a long shot, but neither are all doctors, teachers, engineers or bureaucrats upstanding citizens. At any given time the bulk of the members of a professional could be engaged in malpractice or be decent in how they conduct themselves.
But there is no reason to suspect those who own or run corporations of any greater predilection toward malpractice than anyone else. Sometimes, of course, they operate in a system that encourages corruption, which the welfare state clearly does, what with all the selling and buying of political favors it involves. And big firms will probably be able to get more from politicians than little ones. That, however, is the problem of the system, not of any given profession.
Tibor R. Machan
Actually, no one thinks corporations are persons but some do believe they are groups of persons. No one thinks orchestras, or football teams or universities are persons but many do think they are variously configured people. If this is so, then they, as groups of persons, have rights, including the right to private property and freedom of speech.
When people come together for some common purpose, they do not lose their basic human rights. So all the hollering about how the recent Supreme Court ruling about whether corporations have the right to engage in political advocacy, based on the allegation that corporations aren’t persons, is off base.
Even those who oppose the ruling implicitly acknowledge the above. Thus Justice Stevens, the major dissenter on the Court, wrote, that “[T]he distinctive potential of corporations to corrupt the electoral process [has] long been recognized.” But only persons can corrupt something! Theodore Roosevelt advocated prohibiting "all contributions by corporations to any political committee or for any political purpose." And this, too, implies that corporations are made up of people, people who have rights! There is no other way corporations can make contributions--buildings, trees, land, the sea, none of these can make contributions, only people can. Ergo, corporations are people!
In any case, I have no idea what else corporations would be. Yes, they have some kind of legal identity but that is completely derivative of their being made up of people. Usually, it is a bunch of people who get together and incorporate--now that monarchs no longer create such associations--which is to say they form a specific type of organization, usually involving pooling some resources and hiring specialists to administer these resources either for profitable or non-profitable purposes. But whichever it is, it is persons who are doing this and nothing else. You may not like those types of persons but in a democracy they have the right to obtain and wield political power.
Now it is true that when people unite with one another, they tend to gain in influence, even power, if power is at issue. Sadly, given how much politics is not a matter of upholding principles, as the American Founders envisioned it, but of confiscating funds and then distributing them--that whole redistribution thing that candidate Obama had out with Joe "the Plumber"--having united powers can go a long way to gaining political clout. But this has nothing to do with corporations as such, which are perfectly benign outfits unless they commit crimes, just as this is so with individual citizens.
So then what is up with all the corporate bashing? Mostly that if you aren't a part of the corporation but a lot of others are, it is they and not you who will wield more political power. And if one believes in democratic politics, why complain about this? If a huge company, owned by thousands of stockholders and other investors, exerts power, such is democracy. You cannot cherry pick which group of citizens should get democratic power and which should be ignored.
The remedy for out of control corporate political influence and power is to limit democracy to very few tasks in the country, such as the selection of public officials. They will then represent those who elected them but not by doing them special favors but by helping in extending the principles of the country to new and uncharted areas of the law.
I am no corporate attorney, nor a constitutional scholar but our legal system must make sense to all citizens, not just to experts. And as a plain, ordinary citizen it seems to me that all the derision extended toward corporations amounts to rank prejudice, bias, as a generalized dislike of movie actors or farmers would be. This is nothing to be proud of, that's for sure, even if it is widely accepted and practiced. So was racial prejudice once. Not that those who have shares or manage corporations are all fine people, not by a long shot, but neither are all doctors, teachers, engineers or bureaucrats upstanding citizens. At any given time the bulk of the members of a professional could be engaged in malpractice or be decent in how they conduct themselves.
But there is no reason to suspect those who own or run corporations of any greater predilection toward malpractice than anyone else. Sometimes, of course, they operate in a system that encourages corruption, which the welfare state clearly does, what with all the selling and buying of political favors it involves. And big firms will probably be able to get more from politicians than little ones. That, however, is the problem of the system, not of any given profession.
Monday, February 01, 2010
The Face of Envy
Tibor R. Machan
In THE WEEK, January 16, 2010, the item "The last word" is given to someone whose attitudes and ideas have always put me off. I am speaking of Barbara Ehrenreich, a prolific author whose major theme tends to be that the world needs to make equality its primary public purpose and until that comes about, let everyone be miserable.
Her latest book appears to reinforce this impression. Her Smile or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World (Granta, 2010) is a relentless, over the top rant against a group of authors and advocates who have produced much print aiming to ease the agony of those who are suffering from cancer. Ehrenreich herself had recently survived a bout with breast cancer and as most good writer-entrepreneurs are wont to do, made this experience the basis of a book which expresses her exquisitely sour outlook on life by dissing all those who would wish to inject some measure of relief into the lives of those who have been hit with the often fatal malady. No doubt there is much hokum in these books, which essentially follow the doctrine promoted most prominently by Norman Vincent Peale's 1952 The Power of Positive Thinking. Many of them have a desperate tone, especially the one by Anne McNervey titled The Gift of Cancer: A Call to Awakening.
Yet who could begrudge the effort, albeit at times inept and desperate, of authors and readers alike to find some solace in the midst of fear and pain? Who would make a fuss, spend precious time writing an entire book debunking those who try to manage and even flourish in the midst of their calamity?
It would be Barbara Ehrenreich, of course, the quintessential sourpuss of American popular culture. In THE WEEK article, which is excerpted from her book, she is actually depicted in a photograph from the UK newspaper, The Guardian, frowning out at the reader holding, you may not believe this, a happy face balloon! Talk about making a concerted effort to rain on other people's parade!
Yet this is no surprise, not at least to those who have followed Ehrenreich's paper trail, the numerous books she has penned which attack bourgeois society for even caring about the enjoyment of life! And no one can accuse Ehrenreich with false advertising--one of her books of essays is called The Snarling Citizen, a very apt description of her indeed. Yet despite this admittedly accurate self-assessment, Ehrenreich lacks a crucial quality of a sound cultural commentator, especially one whose focus is America. This is the realization that one size does not fit all. Perhaps for some folks the dour attitude of a Barbara Ehrenreich makes sense but it certainly does not make sense for everyone struck by misfortune. And since many, many folks will shake off a negative disposition even while undergoing hardship and distress, Ehrenreich appears to want to make them all feel bad, just as she prefers to feel. It seems to her to be even a sign of astuteness and erudition to reject a pleasant state of mind, or so at least would her writings suggest. But why?
I am not personally privy to the details of Ehrenreich's personality and so I do not want to guess at what in her life may have supported her morose outlook. But I do suggest that whatever reason she has for apparently feeling so down all of the time, as a matter of intellectual discipline she ought to resist trying to recruit everyone to share the feeling. Because recruiting is just what she is after, especially with this latest book of hers. And that suggests a profound sense of envy toward all those who, unlike her, manage to have a fairly bright outlook on their lives even while in trouble. I suggest the more power to them and the less to Ehrenreich.
Fortunately my reaction to Ehrenreich's efforts to spread her attitude of doom and gloom is shared by some who have access to prominent publications. Thus Amy Bloom provides a nice antithesis to Ehrenreich's preaching, in her essay "The Rap on Happiness" (The New York Times Book Review, January 31, 2010). Bloom is not endorsing the peddling of false hope, not by any means. But she recognizes that Ehrenreich's pitch is shrill and not needed at all. As she concludes, "I don't see how even the most high-minded, cynical or curmudgeonly person could argue with" the reasonable understanding of human happiness Bloom presents in her short missive, one that identifies five components of such a state, namely, having basic necessities, getting enough sleep, having relationships that matter (i.e., not spreading oneself thin), extending generosity to others just as prudence to oneself, and going to work on stuff one is interested in. Not a bad list, me thinks--reminiscent, in fact, of Aristotle.
Tibor R. Machan
In THE WEEK, January 16, 2010, the item "The last word" is given to someone whose attitudes and ideas have always put me off. I am speaking of Barbara Ehrenreich, a prolific author whose major theme tends to be that the world needs to make equality its primary public purpose and until that comes about, let everyone be miserable.
Her latest book appears to reinforce this impression. Her Smile or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World (Granta, 2010) is a relentless, over the top rant against a group of authors and advocates who have produced much print aiming to ease the agony of those who are suffering from cancer. Ehrenreich herself had recently survived a bout with breast cancer and as most good writer-entrepreneurs are wont to do, made this experience the basis of a book which expresses her exquisitely sour outlook on life by dissing all those who would wish to inject some measure of relief into the lives of those who have been hit with the often fatal malady. No doubt there is much hokum in these books, which essentially follow the doctrine promoted most prominently by Norman Vincent Peale's 1952 The Power of Positive Thinking. Many of them have a desperate tone, especially the one by Anne McNervey titled The Gift of Cancer: A Call to Awakening.
Yet who could begrudge the effort, albeit at times inept and desperate, of authors and readers alike to find some solace in the midst of fear and pain? Who would make a fuss, spend precious time writing an entire book debunking those who try to manage and even flourish in the midst of their calamity?
It would be Barbara Ehrenreich, of course, the quintessential sourpuss of American popular culture. In THE WEEK article, which is excerpted from her book, she is actually depicted in a photograph from the UK newspaper, The Guardian, frowning out at the reader holding, you may not believe this, a happy face balloon! Talk about making a concerted effort to rain on other people's parade!
Yet this is no surprise, not at least to those who have followed Ehrenreich's paper trail, the numerous books she has penned which attack bourgeois society for even caring about the enjoyment of life! And no one can accuse Ehrenreich with false advertising--one of her books of essays is called The Snarling Citizen, a very apt description of her indeed. Yet despite this admittedly accurate self-assessment, Ehrenreich lacks a crucial quality of a sound cultural commentator, especially one whose focus is America. This is the realization that one size does not fit all. Perhaps for some folks the dour attitude of a Barbara Ehrenreich makes sense but it certainly does not make sense for everyone struck by misfortune. And since many, many folks will shake off a negative disposition even while undergoing hardship and distress, Ehrenreich appears to want to make them all feel bad, just as she prefers to feel. It seems to her to be even a sign of astuteness and erudition to reject a pleasant state of mind, or so at least would her writings suggest. But why?
I am not personally privy to the details of Ehrenreich's personality and so I do not want to guess at what in her life may have supported her morose outlook. But I do suggest that whatever reason she has for apparently feeling so down all of the time, as a matter of intellectual discipline she ought to resist trying to recruit everyone to share the feeling. Because recruiting is just what she is after, especially with this latest book of hers. And that suggests a profound sense of envy toward all those who, unlike her, manage to have a fairly bright outlook on their lives even while in trouble. I suggest the more power to them and the less to Ehrenreich.
Fortunately my reaction to Ehrenreich's efforts to spread her attitude of doom and gloom is shared by some who have access to prominent publications. Thus Amy Bloom provides a nice antithesis to Ehrenreich's preaching, in her essay "The Rap on Happiness" (The New York Times Book Review, January 31, 2010). Bloom is not endorsing the peddling of false hope, not by any means. But she recognizes that Ehrenreich's pitch is shrill and not needed at all. As she concludes, "I don't see how even the most high-minded, cynical or curmudgeonly person could argue with" the reasonable understanding of human happiness Bloom presents in her short missive, one that identifies five components of such a state, namely, having basic necessities, getting enough sleep, having relationships that matter (i.e., not spreading oneself thin), extending generosity to others just as prudence to oneself, and going to work on stuff one is interested in. Not a bad list, me thinks--reminiscent, in fact, of Aristotle.
Friday, January 29, 2010
Anti-Abortion Murder or Not
Tibor R. Machan
In Wichita a trial is under way in which Scott Roeder is charged with the murder of Dr. George R. Tiller. No disputing the charege that he did the killing and the only issue up for debate is wether the killing was murder or justifiable homicide.
The main line of argument in defense of Mr. Roeder is that Dr. Tiller murdered children--60,000 of them as reported in The New York Times--and his killing was the only way to prevent further such murders. As The Times reports, “'George Tiller shed the blood of 60,000 innocent children,' Randall Terry, the founder of Operation Rescue, told reporters. Mr. Terry ... said that he was neither condoning nor condemning Mr. Roeder’s actions, but that people should remember the children."
So, then, the defense relies on the view that if there is injustice in a country, if the laws permit unjust acts to be committed, then citizens who want to remedy this may take the remedy they believe in into their own hands. I, for example, believe that taxation in official extortion by the government and all those who facilitate this extortion are engage in unjust acts. By the reasoning of the Roeder defense team, I would be legally justified in taking into my own hands the effort to remedy the injustice being committed by those complicit in taxation. If I felt the way to stop them all would be to blow up their office buildings or inflict serious injuries on tax collectors, I would have the legal authority to do this, according to the argument in support of Mr. Roeder.
Never mind for now that the belief that abortion amounts to homicide, let alone to murder, is if not out and out false then at least highly debatable. A human being is supposed to be rational animal and prior to a certain point of the development of the fetus only a potential human being exists since no cerebral cortex is present to make rationality possible. (The case becomes different with so called partial birth abortions--some of these may be homicide and even murder, some of them self-defense. The matter is not amenable to a simple discussion but even her taking the law into one's hands is impermissible.) The notion of an unborn child is a virtual oxymoron when most abortions occur--no child exists then.
But one need not enter the abortion controversy fully to consider Mr. Roeder a murderer. This is because in a civilized society even someone who has murdered another may only be punished by following due process--by being arrested, brought to trial, convicted, and then sentenced to a particular punishment. Citizens only very rarely may avoid this process and take the law into their own hands and even then they need to follow some due process measures, such as making a citizen's arrest and bringing the alleged culprit to the legal system for prosecution. This is the crucial issue for even those who do agree that Dr. Tiller was guilty of injustices and needed to be brought to justice.
If you add to this the difficulties widely recognized about construing ordinary abortions as homicide, let alone murder, then what Mr. Roeder did cannot be legally excused. No one has assigned him the job of administering justice in the state of Kansas. As I noted already, someone who considers taxation outright extortion, as I do, still must proceed by following due process in the effort to stop the policy. There are circumstances, of course, when the government's failure to administer justice can serve as a justification for "taking the law into one's own hands," but these circumstances must come very close to those of totalitarian tyrannies where other methods of making changes in the legal system are completely unavailable. And when the matter is so thoroughly fraught with disputable allegations on all sides as is abortion, then going slow on how to make the needed changes, assuming they are needed, is especially necessary.
The reason there are courts of law and trials in a civilized country is that great care must be taken when someone is charged with an legally codified injustice and may be convicted by taking his or her liberty and even life. A carefully laid out system, honed by years and years of legal precedence, serves the purpose of not turning the process into back alley jurisprudence. So even if the defense offered up by Mr. Roeder is plausible, it is unreasonable even if one grants that abortion is itself something highly debatable. Its debatability is due in part to the fact that the determination of the exact beginning of a human being--which is what the issue is in abortion, not whether human life is involved, which is very ambiguous--is a serious problem. This is no geometry, after all, but biology and ethics. One must not demand the same precision here as one can in that other, more formal, discipline, something against which Aristotle had warned some 2500 years ago.
Tibor R. Machan
In Wichita a trial is under way in which Scott Roeder is charged with the murder of Dr. George R. Tiller. No disputing the charege that he did the killing and the only issue up for debate is wether the killing was murder or justifiable homicide.
The main line of argument in defense of Mr. Roeder is that Dr. Tiller murdered children--60,000 of them as reported in The New York Times--and his killing was the only way to prevent further such murders. As The Times reports, “'George Tiller shed the blood of 60,000 innocent children,' Randall Terry, the founder of Operation Rescue, told reporters. Mr. Terry ... said that he was neither condoning nor condemning Mr. Roeder’s actions, but that people should remember the children."
So, then, the defense relies on the view that if there is injustice in a country, if the laws permit unjust acts to be committed, then citizens who want to remedy this may take the remedy they believe in into their own hands. I, for example, believe that taxation in official extortion by the government and all those who facilitate this extortion are engage in unjust acts. By the reasoning of the Roeder defense team, I would be legally justified in taking into my own hands the effort to remedy the injustice being committed by those complicit in taxation. If I felt the way to stop them all would be to blow up their office buildings or inflict serious injuries on tax collectors, I would have the legal authority to do this, according to the argument in support of Mr. Roeder.
Never mind for now that the belief that abortion amounts to homicide, let alone to murder, is if not out and out false then at least highly debatable. A human being is supposed to be rational animal and prior to a certain point of the development of the fetus only a potential human being exists since no cerebral cortex is present to make rationality possible. (The case becomes different with so called partial birth abortions--some of these may be homicide and even murder, some of them self-defense. The matter is not amenable to a simple discussion but even her taking the law into one's hands is impermissible.) The notion of an unborn child is a virtual oxymoron when most abortions occur--no child exists then.
But one need not enter the abortion controversy fully to consider Mr. Roeder a murderer. This is because in a civilized society even someone who has murdered another may only be punished by following due process--by being arrested, brought to trial, convicted, and then sentenced to a particular punishment. Citizens only very rarely may avoid this process and take the law into their own hands and even then they need to follow some due process measures, such as making a citizen's arrest and bringing the alleged culprit to the legal system for prosecution. This is the crucial issue for even those who do agree that Dr. Tiller was guilty of injustices and needed to be brought to justice.
If you add to this the difficulties widely recognized about construing ordinary abortions as homicide, let alone murder, then what Mr. Roeder did cannot be legally excused. No one has assigned him the job of administering justice in the state of Kansas. As I noted already, someone who considers taxation outright extortion, as I do, still must proceed by following due process in the effort to stop the policy. There are circumstances, of course, when the government's failure to administer justice can serve as a justification for "taking the law into one's own hands," but these circumstances must come very close to those of totalitarian tyrannies where other methods of making changes in the legal system are completely unavailable. And when the matter is so thoroughly fraught with disputable allegations on all sides as is abortion, then going slow on how to make the needed changes, assuming they are needed, is especially necessary.
The reason there are courts of law and trials in a civilized country is that great care must be taken when someone is charged with an legally codified injustice and may be convicted by taking his or her liberty and even life. A carefully laid out system, honed by years and years of legal precedence, serves the purpose of not turning the process into back alley jurisprudence. So even if the defense offered up by Mr. Roeder is plausible, it is unreasonable even if one grants that abortion is itself something highly debatable. Its debatability is due in part to the fact that the determination of the exact beginning of a human being--which is what the issue is in abortion, not whether human life is involved, which is very ambiguous--is a serious problem. This is no geometry, after all, but biology and ethics. One must not demand the same precision here as one can in that other, more formal, discipline, something against which Aristotle had warned some 2500 years ago.
Monday, January 25, 2010
Why the First Amendment?
Tibor R. Machan
It has puzzled me for some time why campaign contribution is considered a First Amendment constitutional issue. If I write out a check to some candidate, I am not talking, writing an essay, carrying some poster in a parade or anything that could be construed as speech or writing, so the freedom to speak or write is moot in this context. What I am doing is making use of my own money or resources and that, of course, in a bone fide free country everyone has the right to do. Like sending money to the Red Cross or Haiti's earthquake victims. This should all be considered under the protection to the right to private property. My money, therefore my decision how it will be used. Unless I use the money to violate someone's rights, there can be no objection to my use of it.
Suppose, now that I have started a company and others are voting stockholders in it and we have decided, by following faithfully the legal bylaws, to spend some of our resources on supporting some political measure or candidate. Why should this be anyone's business other than those whose funds are being used? Why, moreover, is this thought to be a first amendment issue? It has nothing to do with religious freedom, with writing editorials or books, or pamphlets that express some viewpoint. It is giving what belongs to us, the corporation--that is to say, a bunch of incorporated free citizens citizens with full rights recorded in the Constitution--to the organization. And free men and women may not be barred from doing this.
I have heard it exclaimed that corporations are not individuals with rights. But why not? Corporations are established and maintained by individuals with rights, no different from teams or orchestras. I always think of these when this issue is raised--surely those groups are composed of individuals with rights and thus when they make a collective decision voluntarily, they are exercising their individual rights. Can't see why not. And if we have some resources we have pooled among ourselves with which to conduct business and decide that some of the funds should be spent on making a contribution to some cause, political or otherwise, who in earth could have any just authority to stop us? No one.
And all this is a matter of property rights, like my giving my car to some group soliciting such "in kind" contributions (as many now are). Or giving it to some friend. When I do this I am exercising my right to private property--doing what I choose to do with what belongs to me. And if I am part of a large group like a corporation, with all kinds of internal rules establishing how decisions about using and disposing the company's funds must be made, and these rules are followed, why would anyone from the outside get to have a say about where our funds may or may not go (so long as the recipient is no outlaw)?
All the fuss about the various US Supreme and other court rulings pertaining to campaign contributions would, I believe, subside once the matter were put into the right framework, namely, the exercise of the right to private property. It is not about free speech but about freedom to use what belongs to one as he or she--or they-- see fit.
Maybe the reason this approach has been so widely ignored is that people who favor the freedom to be able to spend one's money how one wishes to do it lack confidence these days in the Constitutional status of the right to private property, a right only mentioned in the Fifth Amendment and implicit in several others that prohibit government to embark upon various intrusive policies--unreasonable searches and seizures or the like. Sadly only the First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution amounts to a flat out, nearly unambiguous statement of individual rights, comparable to what is found in the non-legal Declaration of Independence. So in order to secure the right of private property despite its neglect in the U. S Constitution, supporters have decided to try to convert the First Amendment to one that defends private property rights. But this tactic has proven to be muddled and confusing and, ultimately, disingenuous.
Tibor R. Machan
It has puzzled me for some time why campaign contribution is considered a First Amendment constitutional issue. If I write out a check to some candidate, I am not talking, writing an essay, carrying some poster in a parade or anything that could be construed as speech or writing, so the freedom to speak or write is moot in this context. What I am doing is making use of my own money or resources and that, of course, in a bone fide free country everyone has the right to do. Like sending money to the Red Cross or Haiti's earthquake victims. This should all be considered under the protection to the right to private property. My money, therefore my decision how it will be used. Unless I use the money to violate someone's rights, there can be no objection to my use of it.
Suppose, now that I have started a company and others are voting stockholders in it and we have decided, by following faithfully the legal bylaws, to spend some of our resources on supporting some political measure or candidate. Why should this be anyone's business other than those whose funds are being used? Why, moreover, is this thought to be a first amendment issue? It has nothing to do with religious freedom, with writing editorials or books, or pamphlets that express some viewpoint. It is giving what belongs to us, the corporation--that is to say, a bunch of incorporated free citizens citizens with full rights recorded in the Constitution--to the organization. And free men and women may not be barred from doing this.
I have heard it exclaimed that corporations are not individuals with rights. But why not? Corporations are established and maintained by individuals with rights, no different from teams or orchestras. I always think of these when this issue is raised--surely those groups are composed of individuals with rights and thus when they make a collective decision voluntarily, they are exercising their individual rights. Can't see why not. And if we have some resources we have pooled among ourselves with which to conduct business and decide that some of the funds should be spent on making a contribution to some cause, political or otherwise, who in earth could have any just authority to stop us? No one.
And all this is a matter of property rights, like my giving my car to some group soliciting such "in kind" contributions (as many now are). Or giving it to some friend. When I do this I am exercising my right to private property--doing what I choose to do with what belongs to me. And if I am part of a large group like a corporation, with all kinds of internal rules establishing how decisions about using and disposing the company's funds must be made, and these rules are followed, why would anyone from the outside get to have a say about where our funds may or may not go (so long as the recipient is no outlaw)?
All the fuss about the various US Supreme and other court rulings pertaining to campaign contributions would, I believe, subside once the matter were put into the right framework, namely, the exercise of the right to private property. It is not about free speech but about freedom to use what belongs to one as he or she--or they-- see fit.
Maybe the reason this approach has been so widely ignored is that people who favor the freedom to be able to spend one's money how one wishes to do it lack confidence these days in the Constitutional status of the right to private property, a right only mentioned in the Fifth Amendment and implicit in several others that prohibit government to embark upon various intrusive policies--unreasonable searches and seizures or the like. Sadly only the First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution amounts to a flat out, nearly unambiguous statement of individual rights, comparable to what is found in the non-legal Declaration of Independence. So in order to secure the right of private property despite its neglect in the U. S Constitution, supporters have decided to try to convert the First Amendment to one that defends private property rights. But this tactic has proven to be muddled and confusing and, ultimately, disingenuous.
Tennis & Luck
Tibor R. Machan
Being an avid tennis fan, it has irked me that Woody Allen appears to believe that whether you win or lose a match is a matter of luck. That seems to have been his viewpoint in the movie he made a few years ago, appropriately titled Match Point. Then more recently he wrote and directed Whatever Works, starring Larry Davis, which seems also to drive home the notion that there is not much point in approaching one's life by way of a sensible plan. No it is all pretty much random circumstances and the pragmatic attitude of, well, "whatever works" that's going to determine how things go for a person. And one need not gather the message from his movies alone--after all, these are works of fiction and maybe Woody thinks the idea has artistic merit, true or not. So as not to leave any doubt about it, in several interviews Woody has reinforced the impression one gets from his films.
Although I find nearly every work of his intelligent and stimulating, I also consider this positions he appears to be driving home to his audiences quite mistaken. And watching the matches at the Australian Open, as I have been doing these last few days, and many of them at the U. S. Open, the French Open, Wimbledon, and the other tournaments I try to catch year after year suggest quite strongly that Woody is wrong about how tennis matches are won, at least the majority of the time.
There is one piece of evidence for this that shows in nearly every game played by the lineup of extraordinarily talented and hard working tennis players one sees watching these matches. This is that whenever luck does appear to play a role in winning a point, the beneficiary of this luck makes a gesture of apology, saying in effect, "I am sorry that I got you by sheer luck instead of as I would have liked, namely, my better play." Why would one make such a gesture if it is all a matter of luck? If every point is won by chance, not through concentration, training and skill, why single out the points won accidentally, so to speak, for mention? If it is all equally a matter of luck or chance, no such mention makes sense.
No one in his right mind can hold that luck or chance play not significant role in how well or badly one comes off in one's life. These certainly factor in and to deny that amounts to sticking one's head in the sand. For those who believe that we are all simply driven by impersonal forces to either succeed or fail in our endeavors, the Woody Allen thesis would come in handy. It's all just que sera, sera. Never mind how insulting this is to all those who work their butts off to get ahead and whose efforts then seems to pay off. Never mind that even the observation that it's all chance or luck loses merit, even if true, since one's making it becomes also just a matter of chance of luck, not paying attention and having figured things out carefully, correctly. And never mind how destructive it can be for people to come to believe this idea, possibly leading them to give up on trying, on learning, on training and so forth since by the tenets of the thesis none of that matters, it is all an illusion.
So this is why I revisit and try to make an effort on and off to suggest elements of life that refute this viewpoint, attempting to counter it in my small ways, so that I contribute something to the task of spreading the notion that it does matter a great deal whether one pays attention, exerts effort and so on as one goes about pursuing the goals one has chosen to pursue in one's life.
Tibor R. Machan
Being an avid tennis fan, it has irked me that Woody Allen appears to believe that whether you win or lose a match is a matter of luck. That seems to have been his viewpoint in the movie he made a few years ago, appropriately titled Match Point. Then more recently he wrote and directed Whatever Works, starring Larry Davis, which seems also to drive home the notion that there is not much point in approaching one's life by way of a sensible plan. No it is all pretty much random circumstances and the pragmatic attitude of, well, "whatever works" that's going to determine how things go for a person. And one need not gather the message from his movies alone--after all, these are works of fiction and maybe Woody thinks the idea has artistic merit, true or not. So as not to leave any doubt about it, in several interviews Woody has reinforced the impression one gets from his films.
Although I find nearly every work of his intelligent and stimulating, I also consider this positions he appears to be driving home to his audiences quite mistaken. And watching the matches at the Australian Open, as I have been doing these last few days, and many of them at the U. S. Open, the French Open, Wimbledon, and the other tournaments I try to catch year after year suggest quite strongly that Woody is wrong about how tennis matches are won, at least the majority of the time.
There is one piece of evidence for this that shows in nearly every game played by the lineup of extraordinarily talented and hard working tennis players one sees watching these matches. This is that whenever luck does appear to play a role in winning a point, the beneficiary of this luck makes a gesture of apology, saying in effect, "I am sorry that I got you by sheer luck instead of as I would have liked, namely, my better play." Why would one make such a gesture if it is all a matter of luck? If every point is won by chance, not through concentration, training and skill, why single out the points won accidentally, so to speak, for mention? If it is all equally a matter of luck or chance, no such mention makes sense.
No one in his right mind can hold that luck or chance play not significant role in how well or badly one comes off in one's life. These certainly factor in and to deny that amounts to sticking one's head in the sand. For those who believe that we are all simply driven by impersonal forces to either succeed or fail in our endeavors, the Woody Allen thesis would come in handy. It's all just que sera, sera. Never mind how insulting this is to all those who work their butts off to get ahead and whose efforts then seems to pay off. Never mind that even the observation that it's all chance or luck loses merit, even if true, since one's making it becomes also just a matter of chance of luck, not paying attention and having figured things out carefully, correctly. And never mind how destructive it can be for people to come to believe this idea, possibly leading them to give up on trying, on learning, on training and so forth since by the tenets of the thesis none of that matters, it is all an illusion.
So this is why I revisit and try to make an effort on and off to suggest elements of life that refute this viewpoint, attempting to counter it in my small ways, so that I contribute something to the task of spreading the notion that it does matter a great deal whether one pays attention, exerts effort and so on as one goes about pursuing the goals one has chosen to pursue in one's life.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Choice and Rights
Tibor R. Machan
It's about who is to choose! Our rights identify the realm of our choices, where we and not others get to decide about how things go. When rights are violated, the violator deprives the rights holder of his or her proper, morally justified authority to chose.
So often both defenders and critics of private property rights get this wrong. They contend that property rights are mostly about who gets to have something. And while that's part of it, the more important matter is who gets to choose what happens to something.
If the politicians and bureaucrats extort 40% of my earnings I do not get to decided what happens to this. I might have squandered it, yes, just as that enemy of private property rights Karl Marx argued. But I could also have done something else, such as sent part of it to a charity, contributed it to some innovation, stashed it away so my kids might get it when they grow up, or sent it to a political candidate I support. But this is just what the confiscators of my resources prohibit me from doing. They want to destroy my proper authority to use my resources and use it themselves.
Check me out. In all cases of taxation what happens is that the taxed lose the opportunity to allocate the resources that belong to them and those who tax gain this opportunity without any consent from the taxed. But why should they? Democracy doesn't justify such confiscation, nor does being some monarch or bureaucrat or whatever, only our permission would. We are supposedly equal in having rights, including private property rights. No one else may, therefore, take what is mine or yours or anyone's and start deciding what happens to it however good intentioned that tax-taker might be, however noble are that tax-taker's goals. This is why it is so important to understand that private property rights are about our choices to do one thing, another, or yet another, not primarily about having wealth, about greed or such.
But that is just what the enemies of private property rights, starting with Marx, cannot stomach--our having the opportunity to use and dispose our labor and its results. They want it! This despite all that talk about how labor belongs to the laborer. No, that is not what the taxers believe. They believe, and many of them have actually said this, that your time and labor and skills belong to society! And they, of course, must be the representatives of the people, of society.
But that is a ruse, just as when kings claimed that they are the representatives of society or God or History. No, these folks represent only themselves and when they tax you and me and the rest and deprive us of the choices our rights entail, they are extortionists, thieves, or robbers. But most of all they remove from us the opportunity to exercise free choice with what belongs to us.
Some have tried to refute these points by the fairy tale that all wealth belongs to society, the people, or even the government. Again, these are lies. Sure, our resources are acquired with a lot of support from and cooperation with others, including the lawmakers who enacted sound principles way before we were born. But that's all irrelevant. Artist, too, paint with colors that have existed way before they started to use them but these colors, once made into pictures, become theirs and no one else has the authority to intrude on what they do with it, not unless it involves the violation of another's rights somehow.
It is best that whenever politicians and their cheerleaders speak "for us" it is recognized that they are speaking only for themselves and all that talk of "we" or "the people" or "Americans" or "humanity" is meant to disguise this fact. It's time they are stopped in carrying out this gross deception. If not, they will continue to shut off our choices in life and imposing theirs on us all.
Tibor R. Machan
It's about who is to choose! Our rights identify the realm of our choices, where we and not others get to decide about how things go. When rights are violated, the violator deprives the rights holder of his or her proper, morally justified authority to chose.
So often both defenders and critics of private property rights get this wrong. They contend that property rights are mostly about who gets to have something. And while that's part of it, the more important matter is who gets to choose what happens to something.
If the politicians and bureaucrats extort 40% of my earnings I do not get to decided what happens to this. I might have squandered it, yes, just as that enemy of private property rights Karl Marx argued. But I could also have done something else, such as sent part of it to a charity, contributed it to some innovation, stashed it away so my kids might get it when they grow up, or sent it to a political candidate I support. But this is just what the confiscators of my resources prohibit me from doing. They want to destroy my proper authority to use my resources and use it themselves.
Check me out. In all cases of taxation what happens is that the taxed lose the opportunity to allocate the resources that belong to them and those who tax gain this opportunity without any consent from the taxed. But why should they? Democracy doesn't justify such confiscation, nor does being some monarch or bureaucrat or whatever, only our permission would. We are supposedly equal in having rights, including private property rights. No one else may, therefore, take what is mine or yours or anyone's and start deciding what happens to it however good intentioned that tax-taker might be, however noble are that tax-taker's goals. This is why it is so important to understand that private property rights are about our choices to do one thing, another, or yet another, not primarily about having wealth, about greed or such.
But that is just what the enemies of private property rights, starting with Marx, cannot stomach--our having the opportunity to use and dispose our labor and its results. They want it! This despite all that talk about how labor belongs to the laborer. No, that is not what the taxers believe. They believe, and many of them have actually said this, that your time and labor and skills belong to society! And they, of course, must be the representatives of the people, of society.
But that is a ruse, just as when kings claimed that they are the representatives of society or God or History. No, these folks represent only themselves and when they tax you and me and the rest and deprive us of the choices our rights entail, they are extortionists, thieves, or robbers. But most of all they remove from us the opportunity to exercise free choice with what belongs to us.
Some have tried to refute these points by the fairy tale that all wealth belongs to society, the people, or even the government. Again, these are lies. Sure, our resources are acquired with a lot of support from and cooperation with others, including the lawmakers who enacted sound principles way before we were born. But that's all irrelevant. Artist, too, paint with colors that have existed way before they started to use them but these colors, once made into pictures, become theirs and no one else has the authority to intrude on what they do with it, not unless it involves the violation of another's rights somehow.
It is best that whenever politicians and their cheerleaders speak "for us" it is recognized that they are speaking only for themselves and all that talk of "we" or "the people" or "Americans" or "humanity" is meant to disguise this fact. It's time they are stopped in carrying out this gross deception. If not, they will continue to shut off our choices in life and imposing theirs on us all.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Business Versus Business
Tibor R. Machan
One can think of business as a profession, like medicine or engineering, and ask whether it is worthwhile or valuable. Should people in their communities welcome business or not? Or one can think of business as the collection of commercial institutions, such as the banks, corporations, shops, and so forth that are active in one's community.
It is one thing to oppose the former, quite another to be critical of the latter. One may well find business valuable as an institution in a human community, something to be embraced and supported, even as one considers the great majority of existing businesses guilty of innumerable types of malpractice. The same can be so with any other endeavor, such as medicine or entertainment or farming. While as properly understood all of those could be assets in a human community, their actual manifestation at any period of time could also be highly lamentable.
In America, just as elsewhere in the world, it is arguable that too many businesses are engaged in malpractice even while the institution of business, sans the malpractice, is something very much to be prized and in considerable need. The malpractice I am referring to involves mainly getting into bed with politicians and bureaucrats whereby too many businesses are actually attempting to subvert the very nature of their profession. These outfits run to Washington and other centers of political power to gain favor against their domestic and foreign competitors and thus flagrantly betray the institution of business. Of course this is not too difficult to understand, even to excuse, given that government has become thoroughly corrupt by involving itself by picking winners and losers, in favoring various businesses and disfavoring others, with special legislation, regulation and other policies that undermine free and open competition in the market place.
Consider as an analogy professional sports. If the organizations that administers the rules of a given sport were to have established as a routine practice favoring certain teams over others, if referees and umpires took bribes as a matter of course, it would be no surprise that the various teams would try to outdo each other with their offer of bribes to these officials. Or if a judge in some criminal jurisdiction established a record of corruptibility, it would be no surprise if litigants tried to approach their case not with good arguments, not with facility with the law but by way of coming up with the most attractive bribe for the judge. Those making use of bribes would, of course, be complicit in the corruption of the system but the main fault would lie with those in the administration who make a practice of selling out, of in effect betraying their oath of office.
When Bill Gates's Microsoft Corporation was being hounded by the Department of Justice for allegedly violating antitrust laws--supposedly by means, for example, of bundling its products, something that should never be deemed objectionable let alone illegal--he was reportedly advised that his practice of staying away from Washington, of refusing to fund politicians running for election, was the source of how he was being treated. In time Gates learned his lesson and began to game the system. Instead of remaining independent of politics and relying mainly on technological and market savvy, he followed the practices of his competitors by supporting politicians of both major parties running for office. By now, of course, Microsoft Corporation is there with all the others who take part in what some call crony capitalism or what is simply the corruption of capitalism. (If the sport of tennis were administrated similarly, would we call it crony tennis or simply corrupt tennis?)
One can be an enthusiastic supporter of business as an upstanding institution in a human community but at the same time be vehemently critical of how actual firms are being managed vis-a-vis their ties with politics. But the main source of the problem is how the system of government in a society makes it not just possible but nearly imperative for people in business to become corrupt so as to be able to survive and prosper.
Tibor R. Machan
One can think of business as a profession, like medicine or engineering, and ask whether it is worthwhile or valuable. Should people in their communities welcome business or not? Or one can think of business as the collection of commercial institutions, such as the banks, corporations, shops, and so forth that are active in one's community.
It is one thing to oppose the former, quite another to be critical of the latter. One may well find business valuable as an institution in a human community, something to be embraced and supported, even as one considers the great majority of existing businesses guilty of innumerable types of malpractice. The same can be so with any other endeavor, such as medicine or entertainment or farming. While as properly understood all of those could be assets in a human community, their actual manifestation at any period of time could also be highly lamentable.
In America, just as elsewhere in the world, it is arguable that too many businesses are engaged in malpractice even while the institution of business, sans the malpractice, is something very much to be prized and in considerable need. The malpractice I am referring to involves mainly getting into bed with politicians and bureaucrats whereby too many businesses are actually attempting to subvert the very nature of their profession. These outfits run to Washington and other centers of political power to gain favor against their domestic and foreign competitors and thus flagrantly betray the institution of business. Of course this is not too difficult to understand, even to excuse, given that government has become thoroughly corrupt by involving itself by picking winners and losers, in favoring various businesses and disfavoring others, with special legislation, regulation and other policies that undermine free and open competition in the market place.
Consider as an analogy professional sports. If the organizations that administers the rules of a given sport were to have established as a routine practice favoring certain teams over others, if referees and umpires took bribes as a matter of course, it would be no surprise that the various teams would try to outdo each other with their offer of bribes to these officials. Or if a judge in some criminal jurisdiction established a record of corruptibility, it would be no surprise if litigants tried to approach their case not with good arguments, not with facility with the law but by way of coming up with the most attractive bribe for the judge. Those making use of bribes would, of course, be complicit in the corruption of the system but the main fault would lie with those in the administration who make a practice of selling out, of in effect betraying their oath of office.
When Bill Gates's Microsoft Corporation was being hounded by the Department of Justice for allegedly violating antitrust laws--supposedly by means, for example, of bundling its products, something that should never be deemed objectionable let alone illegal--he was reportedly advised that his practice of staying away from Washington, of refusing to fund politicians running for election, was the source of how he was being treated. In time Gates learned his lesson and began to game the system. Instead of remaining independent of politics and relying mainly on technological and market savvy, he followed the practices of his competitors by supporting politicians of both major parties running for office. By now, of course, Microsoft Corporation is there with all the others who take part in what some call crony capitalism or what is simply the corruption of capitalism. (If the sport of tennis were administrated similarly, would we call it crony tennis or simply corrupt tennis?)
One can be an enthusiastic supporter of business as an upstanding institution in a human community but at the same time be vehemently critical of how actual firms are being managed vis-a-vis their ties with politics. But the main source of the problem is how the system of government in a society makes it not just possible but nearly imperative for people in business to become corrupt so as to be able to survive and prosper.
Friday, January 22, 2010
Tipping the Scales for Liberty
Tibor R. Machan
It has been my experience that people who take politics seriously tend to want to have their idea of a good or just system of laws fully implemented. Yet these people aren't ignorant about the poor prospects of achieving their goal. Unless a society is being ruled by some incredibly powerful individual or tight knit group, the public policies and laws will be a reflection of a hodge podge of ideas, principles, objectives and so forth. Largely democratic societies are not hospitable to just some given system of justice but will routinely be a reflection of many different notions of how human communities ought to be configured.
Nonetheless, those of us who are serious about politics will not just settle for the plain fact that we cannot have exactly what we judge best, namely, that their pure system of this or that political economy will come to dominate the realm. It would require silencing or making impotent all those with whom one disagrees, something those who strive for liberty may not even consider. Because people aren't likely to be persuaded of a particular view of how a community should be arranged--something that is true even if there is such a system that has been conceived by some of them--the best that can be achieved is some kind of a mixed political order. And no such mixed system is likely to remain in place for very long because the percentage of those who favor some one way of doing things will keep fluctuating. No sooner will a population emerge with a certain number of socialists, communists, libertarians, monarchists, theocrats and whatever combination of these can be conceived, another one will replace it, one with different percentages exerting influence over laws and public policies.
Nonetheless, despite the truth of the above, it is not futile to strive to bring about the correct, proper, truly just political-economic order. The reason is that the prospect of getting things right about how people ought to live together in their communities is so vital that the mere but real possibility of its actualization makes the striving worth it all. It's a little like striving to be as healthy or fit or, especially, as good a human individual as one can possibly be. Even without the likelihood of success it is worth giving it all a try. One way to see this is to think of it as a pursuit that is worth undertaking because were it to come to full fruition, nothing much greater could be achieved. That is how important justice is in human communities, as important as moral excellence is in a person's life.
Sometimes this outlook is deemed to be idealistic or utopian, a virtual guarantee of failure. And, yes, failure is more likely than not, although even the bits of success in this or that human community, for a more or less lengthy period of time, is by no means negligible. And without making the effort to bring about a just society, even such partial accomplishments are going to be absent from most human communities. Just as one's regular exercise routine undertaken reasonably frequently will not make one perfectly fit or healthy, it will do much more than nothing. The fight for justice is similar--even the fight itself has its valuable results and if one adds the practical accomplishments that come from even a failed effort, its value cannot be disputed.
It is important to come to terms with all this in mixed systems such as those that dominate most of the developed world. Indeed, it is coming to terms with these points and following their practical implications that has made the beneficial development of that world possible. So for those who might be tempted to become discouraged with where the fight for liberty is headed just now it should be pointed out that even a little bit of progress (or prevention of regress) is significant. Yes, the statists are making headway toward re-establishing a coercively run society in many parts of the world but those who understand how destructive this is need not despair. They need to keep in mind that without their vigilance statism would be far more extensive than it is. So they need to keep it up, and not relent, ever.
Tibor R. Machan
It has been my experience that people who take politics seriously tend to want to have their idea of a good or just system of laws fully implemented. Yet these people aren't ignorant about the poor prospects of achieving their goal. Unless a society is being ruled by some incredibly powerful individual or tight knit group, the public policies and laws will be a reflection of a hodge podge of ideas, principles, objectives and so forth. Largely democratic societies are not hospitable to just some given system of justice but will routinely be a reflection of many different notions of how human communities ought to be configured.
Nonetheless, those of us who are serious about politics will not just settle for the plain fact that we cannot have exactly what we judge best, namely, that their pure system of this or that political economy will come to dominate the realm. It would require silencing or making impotent all those with whom one disagrees, something those who strive for liberty may not even consider. Because people aren't likely to be persuaded of a particular view of how a community should be arranged--something that is true even if there is such a system that has been conceived by some of them--the best that can be achieved is some kind of a mixed political order. And no such mixed system is likely to remain in place for very long because the percentage of those who favor some one way of doing things will keep fluctuating. No sooner will a population emerge with a certain number of socialists, communists, libertarians, monarchists, theocrats and whatever combination of these can be conceived, another one will replace it, one with different percentages exerting influence over laws and public policies.
Nonetheless, despite the truth of the above, it is not futile to strive to bring about the correct, proper, truly just political-economic order. The reason is that the prospect of getting things right about how people ought to live together in their communities is so vital that the mere but real possibility of its actualization makes the striving worth it all. It's a little like striving to be as healthy or fit or, especially, as good a human individual as one can possibly be. Even without the likelihood of success it is worth giving it all a try. One way to see this is to think of it as a pursuit that is worth undertaking because were it to come to full fruition, nothing much greater could be achieved. That is how important justice is in human communities, as important as moral excellence is in a person's life.
Sometimes this outlook is deemed to be idealistic or utopian, a virtual guarantee of failure. And, yes, failure is more likely than not, although even the bits of success in this or that human community, for a more or less lengthy period of time, is by no means negligible. And without making the effort to bring about a just society, even such partial accomplishments are going to be absent from most human communities. Just as one's regular exercise routine undertaken reasonably frequently will not make one perfectly fit or healthy, it will do much more than nothing. The fight for justice is similar--even the fight itself has its valuable results and if one adds the practical accomplishments that come from even a failed effort, its value cannot be disputed.
It is important to come to terms with all this in mixed systems such as those that dominate most of the developed world. Indeed, it is coming to terms with these points and following their practical implications that has made the beneficial development of that world possible. So for those who might be tempted to become discouraged with where the fight for liberty is headed just now it should be pointed out that even a little bit of progress (or prevention of regress) is significant. Yes, the statists are making headway toward re-establishing a coercively run society in many parts of the world but those who understand how destructive this is need not despair. They need to keep in mind that without their vigilance statism would be far more extensive than it is. So they need to keep it up, and not relent, ever.
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