The poor in the US are doing very well compared to the poor in Kenya and enjoy things like quality housing, access to health care, basic education, and enough food so that obesity is their biggest nutritional threat.  The rich in this country are also far better off than the rich in Kenya.  There is a big difference in wealth between the richest and the poorest in both countries.  This is clear evidence that the rich in the US need to be taxed more.

That’s essentially the case presented by Nate Roberts at Recovering Evangelical.  Let’s restate the premises’ and conclusion of his argument:

Premise: The rich and the poor in the US are both far better off than the rich and the poor in Kenya.

Premise: Poverty is not life-threatening or grinding in the US.

Premise: The rich are really rich in the US.

Conclusion: We have a major problem that demands more taxes on the rich.

I agree with each premise, but in order for the conclusion to follow, one of two assumptions must first be true:

• There is a certain level of material wealth that is objectively immoral.

• There is a certain ratio of difference in material wealth between people that is objectively immoral.

Next, IF one or both of these assumptions are true; several secondary assumptions must also be true:

• It is possible to extract more taxes from the rich in the US.
• Increasing taxes on the rich will not change the overall system in a way that harms the poor.
• It is possible for government agents to redistribute income effectively so that it genuinely helps the poor and costs only the rich.
• It is possible to achieve and maintain a desirable ratio of difference in material wealth
• It is possible to accurately measure material wealth

Before examining each of the assumptions necessary for this argument to be true, I want to point out how bizarre it is that the article does not anywhere applaud the US for having essentially eliminated poverty of the type that exists in Kenya.  The author is apparently much more concerned with the amount of luxury enjoyed by the rich than the amount of suffering endured by the poor.  In reality, the poor the world over have seen tremendous improvement (most pronounced in countries with freer economies).  Watch this stunning time-lapse graph from GapMinder and consider that in 1880, the average American lived to be 39 and made about $4,276.  In 2000, there is not a country in the world with a life expectancy below 44.  A very poor country like Angola, with a life expectancy of 48 and average inflation-adjusted income of $5,056, is better off than the US just a handful of generations ago.

But let’s examine the assumptions.

Primary Assumption: There is a certain level of material wealth that is objectively immoral.

What is it?  I’ve never heard anyone willing to put a dollar amount or precise description of how much wealth is too much wealth for anyone to ever have.  The closest you’ll get is the claim that the richest of the rich today have, “too much”.  If that is true, vague as it is, are you willing to say that if you could flip a switch and tomorrow everyone in the world could enjoy Bill Gates’ standard of living you would not do it?  Put another way, if a wealth-capping policy had been enacted a few hundred years ago, so that no one could live better than the richest kings and titans of trade and industry at that time, most of today’s middle class in America would have to reduce their standard of living.

Everyone seems to believe that some wealth is objectively moral – hence the efforts to get more of it to those with little – yet it is often claimed that at some point it becomes immoral.  This is logically sloppy and morally empty.  Biblically there is no evidence that a certain level of wealth is immoral.  Wealth, like all earthly things, can be the object or tool of immorality, but is itself benign.  It is the human heart, not the dollar, that commits sin.

Primary Assumption: There is a certain ratio of difference in material wealth between people that is objectively immoral.

What is that ratio?  If the poorest in the world could be 20 times better off and thus avoid death, disease, starvation, etc, but only if the richest could be 40 times better off, would you oppose it?  Would that be compassionate to the poor?  Is reducing the wealth of the rich a more noble cause than relieving the suffering of the poor?

There is no logical or Biblical argument for a certain level of material equality.  All such sentiments are thinly veiled envy, and materialist idolatry.  To despise someone for their wealth and to desire them to have less of it (without even knowing the state of their heart) is a sin.  To desire that people to have a more equal level of material wealth is to focus on materials rather than hearts.  The obsession with how much people have relative to each other is revealing of an idolatry of both possessions and people.  The standard by which we measure ought to be Christ, not others, and the thing we measure against that standard should be our hearts, not our stuff.

A world of incredible inequality of wealth but tremendous love, compassion, and humility is far better than a world with material equality and hate.

Let’s assume one of the primary assumptions IS correct.  We still have several secondary assumptions to check:

Secondary Assumption: It is possible to extract more taxes from the rich in the US.

The richest 1% in the US account for 19% of the country’s total income and they pay 38% of the country’s total tax bill.  The richest 5% earn 33% of the national income and pay 57% of the tax bill.  The bottom 50% earn 19% of the income and pay 3% of the tax bill. (2007 data here).  If you’ve never heard of the Laffer Curve, you might want to read up on it.  Raising taxes on those already paying nearly all of them may not work as hoped.

Secondary Assumption: Increasing taxes on the rich will not change the overall system in a way that harms the poor.

Have you ever asked whether a (even somewhat) free-enterprise system and the inequality that comes with it is itself the driver of improved standards of living among the poor?  If the cost of successful entrepreneurial activity is increased, will you get more or less of it?  When an entrepreneur makes tons of money, do they do it by making something people value more than what they give up to get it?  Does it create jobs and incomes and higher standards of living only for the rich?  The ability to reap rewards is a great motivator that spurs innovation that helps everyone.  The poor in America are getting richer, and at a faster rate than the rich! (As an aggregate group, and more importantly and powerfully, as individuals).  Increasing the cost of success for the rich will also reduce wealth creation opportunities for the poor.

Secondary Assumption: It is possible for government agents to redistribute income effectively so that it genuinely helps the poor and costs only the rich.

What is the incentive of a government agency on poverty: to get rid of poverty and therefore eliminate the department, or to keep poverty alive, either in rhetoric or reality, to justify growing the department in power and resources?  Humans are humans, and as such they are self-interested.  A quick study of Public Choice Theory and the history of welfare programs and their inability to meet their own stated goals should bring this assumption into question.  We may not like some things about reality, but we ought to consider whether the outcomes are better or worse when we turn to government to fix things.  The evidence does not favor government.

Secondary Assumption: It is possible to achieve and maintain a desirable ratio of difference in material wealth.

If wealth was redistributed overnight so that everyone had an equal share, how long would that ratio last?  Inequality is a part of life – it’s how we were created and it’s wonderful!  We are different not only in ability, but in tastes.  I would sacrifice a much higher income to have a career that allows me more time with my family – others would eschew having a family for more income.  There is nothing immoral about the radical differences we were created with, and it is impossible to suppress them.

Secondary Assumption: It is possible to accurately measure material wealth.

In order to maintain a certain ratio of difference in wealth, we’d have to be able to measure wealth.  What is it?  Is it the dollar value of our stuff on the open market?  If that were so, then someone in the mid 1990’s who had no food or shelter, but a giant pile of Beanie Babies would be wealthy, even as they died of starvation.  A person in the dessert with no water but a bag of diamonds would be wealthy.  Clearly, it is not the market price of our goods that determines our quality of life.  Economic value is subjective.  For some hermit monks, material wealth may actually make them less happy.  If they have worked all their life to avoid the accumulation of possessions, and have only achieved it with great struggle and are now in a state of pure joy, are they to be counted as “poor”?  Should we rush in to force goods upon them?  When we attempt to aggregate and count wealth levels, all we are counting is the current market price for the goods people own.  Real humans don’t care about these things except to the extent they help in reaching the actual goal, happiness.

Conclusion: Invalid, untrue and ineffective.

The idea that we must reduce inequality of wealth by taxing the rich is an ineffective means of achieving an immoral end.

The author ends the article with the famous “WWJD” question.  We needn’t ask what Jesus would do in the face of great wealth and poverty.  We can look at what he did do.  He helped the poor and instructed others to do the same, but he never forced anyone to help on threat of fine or imprisonment as our tax and welfare system does.  He told one rich man to give his possessions to the poor, but then let the man walk away.  Apparently, it was the rich man’s heart, not his possessions, Jesus was after.

Don’t get caught in the web of envy and idolatry that lurks behind the desire for greater material equality among people.  Seek to improve the lives of everyone, rich and poor, in ways that are genuinely meaningful, including but not limited to physical quality of life.  Whatever ends you seek, don’t rely the on ineffective and immoral means of coercive government programs.  Before you argue for something, check your assumptions.

——————————

Note: In the rambling post, Roberts also points out with disgust the huge sums the US spends on its military.  I am in complete agreement with the author that military spending in the US is appallingly high.

Post from: LibertarianChristians.com

Equality, Envy and Idolatry

The great political battles of the modern world have been fought around certain key words, one of which is Equality. The watch­words of the French Revolution, you recall, were “Liberty, Equal­ity, Fraternity.” Talleyrand got fed up with this slogan and once remarked that he’d heard so much talk about fraternity that if he had a brother he’d call him cousin!

There’s a sound reason for Talleyrand’s adverse reaction to the idea of brotherhood. The hu­man capacity for affection is lim­ited and it is selective. The de­mand for unlimited brotherliness puts human nature under a strain; it generates a backlash in the form of the either/or mood of the revolutionary who puts a gun to your head and says: “Be my brother, or I’ll kill you!” Sane so­cial living forbids murder; it strives after justice; and it re­serves brotherliness and love for family and friends.

Real friendship, even within a limited circle, is a genuine achieve­ment. Recall the words of La Bruyere, writing in the middle of the seventeenth century: “Some ask why mankind in general do not compose one nation, and are not contented to speak one lan­guage, to live under the same laws and agree among themselves to have the same customs and the same worship; whilst I, seeing how contrary are their minds, their tastes and their sentiments, wonder to see even seven or eight persons living within the same walls under the same roof and making a single family.”

We don’t have the word Fraternity in our political heritage, but the idea of Equality occupies a prominent spot. Our Declaration of Independence reads: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” Note well that the men who pre­pared this document did not say that “all men are equal”; they did not say that all men are “born equal”—both propositions being obviously untrue. They said “cre­ated equal.”

Now, the created part of a man is his soul or mind. Man’s body is compounded of the same chemical and physical elements which go into the make-up of the earth and its creatures, but there is a men­tal and spiritual essence in man which sets him apart from nature—his soul or psyche. It is an arti­cle of faith in our religious tradi­tion that the soul of each person is precious in God’s sight what­ever the individual’s outer cir­cumstances; and equality before the law is implicit in this premise—the idea of one law alike for all men because all men are one in their essential humanness.

But right here the likeness ends; human beings are different and unequal in every other way. They are alike in one respect only; they are equal before the law. Equality before the law is the same thing as political liberty viewed from a different perspec­tive; it is also justice—a regime under which no man and no order of men is granted a political li­cense issued by the state to use other men as their tools or have any other legal advantage over them. Given such a framework in a society, the economic order will automatically be free market, or capitalism. We are speaking now of the idea of equality in a politi­cal context. Later I shall deal with the opposing concept of economic equality, which is incompatible with limited government and the free market.

Equal Justice Before the Law

Political equality is the system of liberty, and its leading features are set forth in Jefferson’s First Inaugural Address: “Equal and exact justice to all men, of what­ever state or persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations—entangling alliances with none…. freedom of religion; freedom of the press; freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus;” and so on.

The idea of political equality—equal justice before the law—is a relatively new one. It did not exist in the ancient world. Aristotle opened his famous work entitled Politics with an attempted justifi­cation of slavery, concluding his argument with these words: “It is clear, then, that some men are by nature free, and others slaves, and that for these latter slavery is both expedient and right.”

Plato wished to see society con­structed like a pyramid. A few men at the top wielding unlimited power; then descending levels of power—the men on each level being bossed by those above and bossing, in turn, those below. On the bottom are the slaves, who outnumber all the rest of society. Plato knows that those in the lower ranks will be discontented with their subservient position, so he proposes to condition them with a “noble lie,” as he calls it. “While all of you in the city are brothers, we will say in our tale, yet God in fashioning those of you who are fitted to hold rule mingled gold in their generation,… but in the helpers silver, and iron and brass in the farmers and other craftsmen.” Fraudulent theories of this sort are invented by men who suspect gold in their own make-up!

Hinduism provides a contem­porary example of a system of privilege. The highest caste in Indian society is the Brahmin caste; the lowest caste is the Sudra. In between are the Kshat­riya and Vaisya castes—warriors and merchants, respectively; out­side the caste system altogether are the Untouchables. Men are born into a given caste, and that is where they stay; that’s where their ancestors were, and that’s where their descendants will be. There is no ladder leading from one level in this society to any of the others. Hinduism justifies these divisions between men by the doctrine of reincarnation, ar­guing that some are suffering now for misdemeanors committed dur­ing a previous existence, while others are being rewarded now for earlier virtue. This outlook breeds fatalism and social stagnation. The eminent Hindu philosopher and statesman, S. Radhakrishnan, defends the caste system. He lik­ens society to a lamp and says, “When the wick is aglow at the tip the whole lamp is said to be burning.”

Our Western Heritage

Politics rests upon certain as­sumptions in metaphysics, and we make different metaphysical as­sumptions than do the Greeks and Hindus. In other words, we have a different religious heritage. Our religious values come from the Bible. Christianity was introduced into the ancient world, and it has had important political conse­quences. We take personal liberty for granted and regard slavery as artificial because of nineteen cen­turies of emphasis on the worth of the individual soul. The soul of man was a battleground on which were thrashed out the issues of good and evil. The individual was held responsible for the proper ordering of his soul; that is, he had the gift of free will. His sal­vation was neither automatic nor guaranteed; it hinged on a series of voluntary decisions, choices freely made.

It takes a while, centuries some­times, for a new idea about man to seep into the habits, laws, and institutions of a people and shape their culture. It was not until the eighteenth century that Adam Smith came along and spelled out a system of economics premised on the freely choosing man. Smith referred to his system as “the liberal plan of equality, liberty, and justice.” The European so­ciety of Smith’s day was, by con­trast, a system of privilege; it was an aristocratic order.

Control by Conquest

England’s aristocratic order did not arise by accident, but through conquest; it may be traced back to the Battle of Hast­ings in 1066 and the Norman in­vasion. William of Normandy had a claim, of sorts, to the English throne, a claim which he validated by conquering the island. Having established his over lordship of England he parceled out pieces of the island to his followers as pay­ment for their services. In the words of historian Arthur Bryant, “William the Conqueror kept a fifth of the land for himself and gave one-quarter to the Church. The remainder, save for an insig­nificant fraction, was given to 170 Norman and French followers—nearly half to ten men.”¹

This redistribution of England’s territory was, of course, at the ex­pense of the Anglo-Saxon resi­dents who were displaced to make room for the new owners. The new owners of England from William on down were the rulers of Eng­land; ownership was the comple­ment of their rulership, and the wealth they accumulated sprang from their power and their feudal holdings. That is to say, they did not obtain wealth by satisfying consumer demand. Under the sys­tem of liberty where the economic arrangements are free market or capitalistic, the only way to make money is to please the customers. Under any alternative system, you make money by pleasing the poli­ticians, those who hold power. Either that, or you wield power yourself.

This was a fine system—from the Norman viewpoint; but the Anglo-Saxon reduced to serfdom viewed the matter quite differ­ently. It was obvious to the serf and the peasant that the reason why they had so little land was because the Normans had so much; and, because wealth flowed from holdings of land, the Anglo-Saxons reasoned correctly that they were poor because the Nor­mans were rich! It is always so under a system of privilege, where those who wield the political power use that power to enrich them­selves at the expense of other peo­ple. It makes little difference whether the outward trappings are monarchical, or democratic, or bear the earmarks of Orwell’s 1984; in a system of privilege, political power is a means of ob­taining economic advantage.

Keeping the Peace

When our forebears wrote that “all men are created equal,” they threw down a challenge to the system of privilege. They believed that government should keep the peace—as peacekeeping is spelled out in the old-fashioned Whig-Classical Liberal tradition. This preserves a free field and no favor—which is the meaning of laissez-faire—within which peaceful eco­nomic competition will occur. The term “laissez faire” never meant the absence of rules; it didn’t im­ply a free-for-all. The term comes originally out of chivalry and was used on the jousting field to signal the beginning of a match. Two armored knights got ready to ride at each other and the cry of “laissez faire” meant, in effect, “You boys know the rules; may the best man win.” Government, under laissez faire, does not in­tervene positively to manage the affairs of men; it merely acts to deter and redress injury—as in­jury is spelled out in the laws. This is the system of liberty championed by present-day liber­tarians and conservatives.

Adam Smith’s “liberal plan of equality, liberty, and justice” was never practiced fully in any na­tion, but what was the result of a partial application of the ideas of The Wealth of Nations? The results of abolishing political pri­vilege in Europe and starting to organize a no-privilege society with political liberty and a market economy were so beneficial that even the enemies of liberty pause to pay tribute.

R. H. Tawney, one of the most gifted of the English Fabians, was an ardent socialist and egalitar­ian. His most famous work is past affords the best example of the great multiplication of wealth which results from the release of individual human creativity under the system of liberty.

The Nature of Political Power

I’ve used the term “power” sev­eral times, so let’s note that the word “power” in this context re­fers to government. There’s only one genuine power structure in a given society, and that is the gov­ernment. Government possesses a unique, one-of-a-kind type of power, and unless the government deputizes or licenses some other person or agency no one in a given society may exercise the kind of power which government alone wields. We employ meta­phors when we speak of buying power or economic power. Govern­ment is the power structure. Only government can mobilize the police, the armies, the navies; only government can draft a young man to serve in Vietnam; only government can tax, and so on. The largest corporation in the land cannot force me to buy one of its products or work for it; I can ignore General Motors, but no one who chooses to live within these fifty states can ignore the real power structure—which is the political agency, government.

Under a monarchy, economic ad­vancement is obtained by pleasing the king or the queen. Royal fa­vorites lived well while enjoying the friendship of the ruler, but when they fell out of favor they sometimes lost their heads. The mass of people lived in what we would think of as poverty, and typically they lacked the guaran­tees of intellectual, religious, and civil liberties that we take for granted. Moreover, the entire na­tion from top to bottom lived quietly with the idea of economic stagnation; no one thought in terms of a progressive increase of the stock of goods so that every­one would move gradually up the economic ladder—they thought in terms merely of redistributing the existing stock of wealth. No one thought of increasing the size of the pie; the idea was to obtain a bigger slice for one’s self—either by seizing it in a direct power grab, or as largesse by being a friend of the powerful. A similar sentiment—anti-economic in na­ture—prevails today.

The big domestic political issue is poverty. The nation has been geared to welfare measures ever since the New Deal, a generation ago; then in 1964 Congress opened the Office of Economic Opportun­ity and declared war on poverty. Indigence may be measured in various ways, but whatever else it is, indigence is a lack. A person who is poor would be better off if he owned a larger and finer house, had several extra suits and sport jackets in his closet, enjoyed tas­tier and more nourishing food plus an occasional drink. After improving the situation at the level of necessities he’d move ahead to the amenities—to recre­ation, a second car, air condition­ing, and so on.

Poverty Overcome by Production

The point to note is that people move out of poverty only as they command more of the things which are manufactured, grown, or otherwise produced. Poverty is overcome by production, and in no other way. If you are seriously concerned with the alleviation of poverty your concern for in­creased production must be equal­ly serious. This is simple logic.

But look around us in this great land today and try to find some­one for whom increased produc­tivity is a major goal. There are some able production men in in­dustry, but most established busi­nesses have learned to live com­fortably with restrictive legisla­tion, government contracts, the foreign aid program and our inter­national commitments. The com­petitive instinct burns low, and the entrepreneur who is willing to submit to the uncertainties of the market is a rare bird. And then there are the farmers. Agri­cultural production has taken a great leap forward in recent years, but no thanks to those farmers who latch onto the government’s farm program and accept pay­ment for keeping land and equip­ment idle. Union leaders claim to work for the betterment of the membership, but no one has ever accused unions of a burning de­sire to be more productive on the job. Politicians are not interested in increased industrial production. As a matter of fact, it might be said that the national government is continually—by its interven­tions—manufacturing poverty, and the whole country lives at a level lower than natural economic necessity would dictate.

An overall increase in the out­put of goods and services is the only way to upgrade the general welfare, but there is no clamor on behalf of increased productivity—only an occasional murmur. The clamor is for redistribution, for political interventions which ex­act tribute from the haves and bestow largesse on the have nots. Present day politics is based on the redistributionist principle: taxes for all, subsidies for the few. Its alleged purpose is to elevate the low income groups by depress­ing the wealthy. President John­son, addressing Congress in Jan­uary 1964, phrased it thus: “We are going to try to take all of the money that we think is unneces­sarily being spent and take it from the ‘haves’ and give it to the ‘have nots’ that need it so much.”

Several years earlier a theo­logian of considerable reputation, Nels Ferre, expressed similar sen­timents, but gave them a religious flavor: “All property is God’s for the common good. It belongs therefore, first of all to God and then equally to society and the individual. When the individual has what the society needs and can profitably use, it is not his, but belongs to society, by divine right.”³

The Role of the Market

The rage for redistribution is upon us, and we might multiply statements similar to the ones I have quoted from Mr. Johnson and Dr. Ferre. Those who es­pouse this viewpoint hold the ut­terly mistaken notion that the dis­tribution of rewards in a free market society, or capitalism, is analogous to the parceling out of loot to members of a robber gang, or the division of spoils after a pirate expedition. Actually, these things are as unlike as night and day; there is no comparison between them. In the free econ­omy, a man is rewarded to the degree that he pleases consumers.

Now, the market is not a magic instrumentality which comes up automatically with the right an­swer for every sort of question. The market is a sort of popularity contest; it tells us what people like; it’s an index of their prefer­ences. The market provides a very valuable piece of information, but it’s not the whole story. It’s im­portant for a shoe manufacturer to project an accurate guess as to whether women next season will prefer chunkies to wedgies; but a similar fingering of the popular pulse is out of keeping in the in­tellectual and moral realms—un­less one is a liberal intellectual! I refer to the proclivity of the current crop of opinion molders to ask: “What’s going to be the fashion in ideas this season?” One glaring example of this—a former professor of mine was a leading clerical spokesman for involving the United States in World War II; now he’s a co-chairman of SANE. This man has a good market in the intellectual realm, but of course he opposes the market in the economic realm.

The market is the only device available for serving our creatur­al needs while conserving scarce resources; but the market is no gauge of the truth or falsity of an idea. The market measures the popularity of an idea, but not its truth. Mises and Hayek are better economists than Samuelson and Galbraith but the market for the services of the latter pair is enor­mously greater than the popular demand for Mises and Hayek. Likewise in aesthetic questions. An entertainer’s popularity is no index of his musicianship, and a best selling novel may fall far short of the category of literature.

The market is simply a mirror of popular preferences and public taste; but if we don’t like what the mirror reveals, we won’t im­prove the situation by throwing rocks at the mirror! There is much more to life than pleasing the cus­tomer, but if the integrity of the market is not respected consumer choice is impaired and some peo­ple are given a license to foist their values on others. Permit this kind of poison to infect economic relationships and our ability to resist it elsewhere is seriously weakened.

We throw rocks at the mirror whenever we undertake programs of social leveling, aimed at eco­nomic equality. The government promises to aid the poor by redis­tributing the wealth. This is a power play, and it is the poor—generally the weakest members of society—who are hurt first and most in any power struggle. Fur­thermore, economic inequalities cannot be overcome by coercive redistribution without establish­ing political inequalities. Every form of political redistributionism widens power differentials in so­ciety; officeholders have more power, citizens have less; political contests become more intense, be­cause control and dispersal of great wealth is at stake.

Every alternative to the market economy—call it socialism or communism or fascism or what­ever—concentrates power over the lives and livelihood of the many in the hands of a few. The principle of equality before the law is dis­carded—the Rule of Law is in­compatible with any form of the planned economy—and, as in the George Orwell satire, some men become more equal than others. We head back toward the Old Regime—the system of privilege. Every state tends to create the means of its own support—com­prising citizens and pressure groups who realize their depend­ence on the state for such eco­nomic advantages as they enjoy. The court at Versailles was the symbol of this under the Old Regime; the symbol in our time is a deep freeze, a vicuna coat, a television set, the relief racket, a lush government contract, farm subsidies, predatory labor unions, or what have you.

Human beings are imperfect now and forever, and the societies we form exhibit all the imperfec­tions individuals display and more besides. There’s no way to achieve utopia; heaven on earth is an im­possible dream. But human beings will do better under the system of liberty than under any other social arrangement.

In the nineteenth century, as Tawney pointed out, the abolition of privilege got rid of slavery and serfdom; it turned the peasant into a human being. Furthermore, this was a comparatively peaceful century—between the Congress of Vienna and the First World War. Real wages doubled, redoubled, and doubled again. Diseases were diminished and people lived long­er; illiteracy almost disappeared, and people were freer in their daily lives than ever before.

Things were far from perfect, but they were more than tolerable—until a few people got the idea that human affairs could be per­fected if the lives of all men were put under political direction and control. This would create a vast power structure on top of so­ciety; but the fear of power was overcome by the thought that power, this time, was democratic and majoritarian in nature, and thus benign. The tragic fallacy here is that power obeys the laws of its nature, no matter what the sanction. Political power is invari­ably coercive, and if used wrongly destroys what it is set up to secure.

Fans of Lewis Carroll will re­member his poem, “The Hunting of the Snark.” Every time the hunters closed in on their quarry the snark turned out to be a boojum. Every time a determined group of people have concentrated power in a central government to carry out their program, the pow­er they have set up gets out of hand. The classic example of this is the French Revolution, which turned and devoured those who had started it.

It is not so much that power corrupts, as that power obeys its own laws. Our forebears in the old-fashioned Whig-Classical Lib­eral tradition were aware of this, so they sought to disperse and contain power. They chose politi­cal liberty, in full awareness that in a free society the natural dif­ferences among human beings would show up in various ways; some would be better off than others, but there would be no political inequality.

The alternative to the free economy is a servile state in which a ruling class enforces an equality of poverty on the masses. To embark on a program of economic leveling is like trying to repeal the law of gravity; it’ll never work, and trying to make it work defeats our efforts to attain rea­sonable goals.

—FOOTNOTES—

¹ Story of England, Arthur Bryant, Vol. I, p. 164.

² Religion and the Rise of Capital­ism, but in 1931 he wrote a book entitled Equality, arguing, in effect, that no one should have two cars so long as any man was un­able to afford even one. He wished to take from those who have and give to those who have not, in or­der to achieve economic equality.

³ Christianity and Society, p. 226.

Originally published in the September 1969 edition of The Freeman. Read more from the Edmund Opitz Archive.

Post from: LibertarianChristians.com

Two Concepts of Equality

The eighteenth century writers, seeking to set forth the features of a system of liberty, confronted a European society stratified into orders of rank, caste, and priv­ilege. At the top was royalty and the aristocracy; at the bottom, peasants and serfs. In between were the independent yeomen, the artisans, merchants, and those born to serve. The stratification was not as rigid as, say, Indian society, but it was a society of status where people were locked into their station in life genera­tion after generation. This in­equitable social arrangement was reinforced by a set of taboos and, when need be, was enforced by the police power.

The liberating movement of the Enlightenment challenged this monolith with an idea, the idea of equality. Adam Smith, in his Wealth of Nations, elaborated on what he called "the liberal plan of equality, liberty, and justice." On this continent, the writers of our Declaration believed it axi­omatic that "all men are created equal." Not "are equal," not "born equal," but "created equal." The created part of a man was his soul—in terms of the metaphys­ics of the period—and the souls of all men were precious in God’s sight whatever the individual’s outer circumstances. Equality be­fore the law appeared to follow from this premise—the idea of one law alike for all men because all men were one in their essential humanness. But right there the likeness ceased; men were dif­ferent and unequal in every other way. Equality before the law is political liberty viewed from a different perspective; it is also justice, being a regime under which no man and no order of men are granted a political li­cense issued by the state to use other men as their tools or have any other legal advantage over them.

This "liberal plan of equality, liberty, and justice" was central to classical Liberalism. It was never applied one hundred per cent, but what was the result of a partial application of this idea? The results of abolishing political privilege in Europe and organiz­ing a no-privilege society were so beneficial that even the enemies of liberty pay tribute. R. H. Taw­ney was one of the most gifted of the English Fabians, an ardent socialist and redistributionist, but honest enough to give the devil his due. He writes:

With the abolition of restrictions on freedom of movement, on the choice of occupations, and on the use of land and capital, imprisoned en­ergies were released from the nar­row walls of manor and guild and corporate town, from the downward pressure of class status, and from the heavy hand of authoritarian gov­ernments, to unite in new forms of association, and by means of them to raise the towering structure of in­dustrial civilization. It was not only in the stimulus which it supplied to the mobilization of economic power that the movement which leveled le­gal privilege revealed its magic. Its effect as an agent of social emanci­pation was not less profound. Few principles have so splendid a record of humanitarian achievement…. Slavery and serfdom had survived the exhortations of the Christian Church, the reforms of enlightened despots, and the protests of humani­tarian philosophers from Seneca to Voltaire. Before the new spirit, and the practical exigencies of which it was the expression, they disappeared, except from dark backwaters, in three generations…. It turned [the peasant] from a beast of burden into a human being. It determined that, when science should be invoked to increase the output of the soil, its cultivator, not an absentee owner, should reap the fruits. The principle which released him he described as equality, the destruction of privilege, democracy, the victory of plain people…. [It was] the end of institu­tions which had made rich men ty­rants and poor men slaves.1

Century of Emancipation

Walter Lippmann in 1937 looked back at the nineteenth cen­tury and called it "the great cen­tury of human emancipation. In that period," he continued, "chat­tel slavery and serfdom, the sub­jection of women, the patriarchal domination of children, caste and legalized class privileges, the ex­ploitation of backward peoples, autocracy in government, the dis­franchisement of the masses and their compulsory illiteracy, official intolerance and legalized bigotry, were outlawed in the human con­science, and in a very substantial degree they were abolished in fact."2

It is a peculiar thing about so­cial evils that in their grossest forms they may last for centuries and be accepted as part of fate, rather than as curable evils. But when circumstances improve to a certain degree, that is to say, when people move up a notch or two out of poverty, filth, degrada­tion, and disease, and the means of further improvement are in sight, then circumstances come to seem intolerable. Men refuse to credit "the liberal plan of equal­ity, justice, and liberty" for such improvements as they enjoy; they condemn it for not having com­pleted their liberation! It is as if a totally paralyzed person un­dertook a treatment which re­stored his powers except for one limb, and instead of praising the treatment for what it accom­plished, blamed it for his game leg.

The system of political liberty—limited government and the free market—aimed at equality before the law and necessarily re­sulted in inequalities in material goods. Everybody was levered above the subsistence level, and many went from rags to riches. But nearly everyone thought he deserved better. In this new dis­pensation economic inequalities came to be regarded as the intol­erable bane of modern life, which it is the function of government to overcome. The result has been that the political slogans of the twentieth century have played variations on the theme of soak the rich and subsidize the poor. Present-day politics is based on the redistributionist principle: Taxes for all, subsidies for the few. Its purpose is to elevate the low income groups by depressing the wealthy. This social leveling is supposed to bring about eco­nomic equality—or as close an approximation thereto as is prac­tical.

Concentration of Power

Economic inequalities cannot be overcome by political means with­out establishing political inequal­ities. Every form of political re­distributionism widens power dif­ferentials in society; every form of socialism concentrates power over the life and livelihood of the many in the hands of a few. The principle of equality before the law is discarded and, as in the George Orwell satire, some men become more equal than others. We head back toward the Old Regime.

But things will not stop here; forces have been set in motion and their momentum will carry us beyond where their instigators would want to stop. The first stage was political equality with the consequent economic inequalities.

The second stage was the delib­erate designing of political in­equalities in order to bring about economic equality. At this point one might think pragmatically and regard the situation merely as a choice between two ideas of equality—political equality or economic equality, each with its necessary accompanying inequal­ities. People in our time have ac­cepted political inequality and the enhancement of power differen­tials in society because they be­lieve that this power, under pop­ular sovereignty, would reduce economic inequalities. But power obeys its own laws, and one of its basic laws—exemplified by political power wherever it has existed and whatever form it as­sumes—is to use political power to enhance the economic well-be­ing of officeholders and their friends, at the expense of the rest of the nation. Albert Jay Nock designated this perversion of government as The State, a two-headed monster comprising (a) those who wield political power, and (b) their friends who derive economic advantage from its exercise. "Votes and taxes for all; subsidies for us and our friends." Every government tends to create the means of its own support. The court at Versailles was the symbol of this under the Old Regime; the symbol in our time is a deep freeze, a vicuña coat, a television set, the relief racket, or what have you.

But these things merely scratch the surface. A hundred billion tax dollars are siphoned into Washington annually, and every dollar of it spent by the govern­ment creates a vested interest in the continuance of the spending program. The result is a malin­vestment and a maldistribution of wealth, and an aggravation of economic and political problems. Political inequalities introduce class divisions into society, and the resulting economic inequal­ities become sharper as they cease to reflect the rendering of goods and services in willing exchange.

A generation and a half ago H. G. Wells observed sadly that things will get worse before they start getting better. Well, they’ve gotten worse!

—FOOTNOTES—

¹ R. H. Tawney, Equality (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1931), pp. 119, 120, 121.

² Walter Lippmann, The Good Society (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1937), pp. 192-3.

Originally published in the June 1964 edition of The Freeman. Read more from the Edmund Opitz Archive.

Post from: LibertarianChristians.com

Which kind of Equality?

Madam Speaker, I rise today in support of H.B. 2020, the National Eyeball Allocation and Regulation of Sight (NEARSight) Act of 2011.

Our great nation was founded on the principles of liberty and equality. Without liberty, we can’t be equal. Without equality, we can’t have liberty. So when some Americans are treated unequally, it’s an assault on the liberty of each and every one of us. We have a sacred duty to those Founding Fathers who fought and bled for our freedom to bring equality to every American.

Some may say that we are free and we are equal, because we see freedom and we see equality everywhere. But do we? Sadly, not all of us see those things equally — because not all of us see equally well. It is to rectify this incredible injustice that I beg you to join me in using the full moral might of this government to bring equal sight to all. To do less than pass this legislation is to confess before all of us that you hate equality and that you hate liberty.

Most people in our great land have two functioning eyeballs, while some struggle to exist in a dreary and barren land devoid of color or light or hope. No, friends, it’s not Detroit that I speak of. It’s the land of blindness. Those with two eyes aren’t morally superior. They didn’t earn their eyeballs. No, it was just a cruel twist of fate that gave some people sight and others darkness. Many Americans have two eyeballs while others have just one or none at all. Clearly, a redistribution program, as detailed in the National Eyeball Allocation and Regulation of Sight (NEARSight) Act of 2011, is in order. And we are here today to bring this light and hope to those without sight and without hope.

So how will our great plan work? As outlined, passage of this bill would ensure that all Americans have at least one eyeball by taking from those who have two and giving to those who have none. This legislation will create a new Regulatory Eyeball Transfer and Implant National Agency (RETINA), which will have the full power to control who has eyes and who doesn’t. Once every American has one eyeball the remaining eyeballs will be rotated through the populace switching hosts on a regular six month cycle. Those who come out against this bill clearly have only their own interests at heart. They care little for other people. That these citizens cannot see the problem as clearly as those without eyes is as sad as it is ironic.

I do want to assure those who have asked that this bill includes a small provision that exempts members of Congress, their staffs and their families from this act. This small concession has been made in the name of national security, because we must always be vigilant in the protection of our citizens — and we need full sight to protect them.

This bill is an important step forward for the less fortunate. Passage of this bill will not only ensure at least one eyeball for every American, but provide jobs, save consumers money, and enhance our nation’s security. We’ll also get free cookies at the doctor’s office, and eye patches. Eye patches are cool.

I have a vision. A vision that one day all Americans will have vision. Or one eyeball, at least. I urge my colleagues to support this bill and yield back the balance of my time.

Post from: LibertarianChristians.com

Federal Government will bring sight to the blind

The real American revolution of two hundred years ago took place in the minds of people; it was a philosophical revolution which evolved a new temper and state of mind. There were some dating assumptions about the nature of the human person, with his Creator-endowed rights, as set forth in the catalog of self-evident truths contained in the Declaration of Independence. The acceptance of these novel truths about the human person led logically to a new conception of government, a theory of right political action radically different from all previous theories of the purposes of government in human affairs.

Government, according to the Declaration, is instituted for one purpose only—to secure every person in his God-given rights. Period. No longer was the State to exercise the positive function of ordering, regulating, controlling, directing, or dominating the citizens. The new idea was to limit government to a negative role in society; government’s task is to protect life, liberty, and property by using lawful force against aggressive and criminal actions. Government would discipline the anti-social, but otherwise let people alone. The law was to apply equally to all; justice was to he impartial and even-handed.

Along with the words Life, Liberty, and Property, the word Equality has a prominent place in the political vocabulary of American thought.

Our Declaration of Independence reads: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” Note well that the men who prepared this document did not say that all men are equal; they did not say that all men are born equal or should be equal, or are becoming equal. These several propositions are obviously untrue. The Declaration said: “created equal.” Now, the created part of a man is his soul or mind or psyche. Man’s body is compounded of the same chemical and physical elements which go into the makeup of the earth’s crust, but there is a mental and spiritual essence in man which sets him apart from the natural order. Man alone among the creatures of earth is created in God’s image—meaning that man has free will, the capacity to order his own actions, and so become the kind of person God intends him to be.

The political theory enunciated in the Declaration is based upon certain assumptions about human nature and destiny which were ingredients of the religion professed by our fore-bears. It was an article of faith in the religious tradition of Christendom — a culture compounded of Hebraic, Greek, and Roman elements – that man is a created being. To say that man is a created being is to affirm that man is a work of divine art and not a mere accidental by-product of physical and chemical forces. Man is God’s property, said John Locke, because He made us and the product belongs to the producer. As an owner, God cares for that which belongs to Him. Therefore, the soul of each person is precious in God’s sight, whatever the person’s outward circumstances. “God is no respecter of persons.” (Acts 10:34) He “. . . makes His sun to rise on good and bad alike, and sends the rain on the honest and dishonest.” (Matt. 5:45) Equality before the law is the practical application of this understanding of the nature of the human person. Equal justice means that a nation’s laws apply, across the board, to all sorts and conditions of men, regardless of race, creed, color, position, pedigree, income, or whatever. In the eyes of the law, all are alike.

But right there the likeness ends; human beings are different and unequal in every other way; they are male and female, in the first place—and they are tall and short, thick and thin, weak and strong, rich as well as poor, and so on. They are equal in one respect only; they are on the same footing before the law. Equality before the law is the same thing as political liberty viewed from a different perspective; it is also justice—a regime under which no man and no order of men is granted a political license issued by the State to use other men as their tools or have any other legal advantage over them. Given such a framework in a society, the economic order will automatically be free market, or capitalistic. (We are speaking now of the idea of equality in a political context. Later I shall deal with the opposing concept of economic equality, which is incompatible with limited government and the free market.)

Political Equality

Political equality is the system of liberty, and its leading features are set forth in Jefferson’s First Inaugural Address: “Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations,—entangling alliances with none . . . freedom of religion, freedom of the press; freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus” and so on.

The idea of political equality—equal justice before the law—is a relatively new one. It did not exist in the ancient world. Aristotle opened his famous work entitled Politics with an attempted justification of slavery, concluding his argument with these words: “It is clear, then, that some men are by nature free, and others slaves, and that for these latter slavery is both expedient and right.”

Plato conceived the vision of a society constructed like a pyramid. A few men are at the top wielding unlimited power; then descending levels of power—the men on each level being bossed by those above and bossing, in turn, those below. On the bottom are the slaves, who outnumber all the rest of society. Plato knew that those in the lower ranks would be discontented with their subservient position, so he proposed a myth to condition them with—in his words—a “noble lie,” or an “opportune falsehood.” “While all of you in the city are brothers, we will say in our tale, yet God in fashioning those of you who are fitted to hold rule mingled gold in their generation . . . but in the helpers silver, and iron and brass in the farmers and other craftsmen.” You know dam well that fraudulent theories of this sort are in vented by men who suspect gold in their own makeup!

Hinduism, with its system of castes, provides a contemporary example of a system of privilege. Men are born into a given caste, and that’s where they stay; that’s where their ancestors were, and that’s where their descend ents will be. There is no ladder leading from one level in this society to any of the others. Hinduism justifies these divisions between men by the doctrine of reincarnation, arguing that some are suffering now for misdemeanors committed during a previous existence, while others are being rewarded now for earlier virtue. This outlook breeds fatalism and social stagnation. The eminent Hindu philosopher and statesman, S. Radhakrishnan, defends the caste system with a metaphor. He likens society to a lamp and says, “When the wick is aglow at the tip the whole lamp is said to be burning.”

Politics—it must be emphasized—rests upon certain assumptions in basic philosophy. We of the West make different philosophical assumptions than do Greek and Hindu philosophers, for we have a different religious heritage than they. The fountain source of the religious heritage of Christendom is, of course, the Bible. The Bible was the textbook of liberty for our forebears, who loved to quote such texts as “Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty,” (2 Cor. 3:17) and, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” (Jn. 8:32) And they turned often to the Old Testament prophets with their emphasis on justice and individual worth.

Let me quote a few lines from an unsigned editorial appearing in the magazine Fortune some years ago:

The United States is not Christian in any formal sense, its churches are not full on Sundays and its citizens transgress the precepts freely. But it is Christian in the sense of absorption. The basic teachings of Christianity are in its bloodstream. The central doctrine of our political system—the inviolability of the individual—is the doctrine inherited from 1900 years of Christian insistence upon the immortality of the soul.

It takes a while, centuries sometimes, for a new idea about man to seep into the habits, laws, and institutions of a people and shape their culture. It was not until the eighteenth century that Adam Smith came along and spelled out a system of economics premised on the freely choosing man. Smith referred to his system as “the liberal plan of equality, liberty and justice.” The European society of Smith’s day was, by contrast, a system of privilege; it was an aristocratic order.

The Rise of Aristocracy

England’s aristocratic order did not rise by accident; it was imposed by a conqueror. England’s social structure may be traced back to the battle of Hastings in 1066 and the Norman invasion of England. William of Normandy had a claim, of sorts, to the British throne, a claim which he validated by conquering the island. Having established his overlordship of England he parceled out pieces of the island to his followers as payment for their services. In the words of historian Arthur Bryant, “William the Conqueror kept a fifth of the land for himself and gave one-quarter to the Church. The remainder, save for an insignificant fraction, was given to 170 Norman and French followers—nearly half to ten men.” [1] In other words, 55 per cent of the territory of England was divided among 170 men, ten of whom got the lion’s share, or 27 per cent among them, while 160

men got the rest. This redistribution of England’s territory was, of course, at the expense of the Anglo-Saxon residents who were displaced to make room for the new owners. The new owners of England from William on down were the rulers of England; ownership was the complement of their rulership, and the wealth they accumulated sprang from their power and their feudal privileges and dues.

Norman overlordship was a system of privilege. That is to say, the Norman rulers did not obtain their wealth by satisfying consumer demand. Under the system of liberty, by contrast, where the economic arrangements are free market or capitalistic, the only way to make money is to please the customers. Under the various systems of privilege you make money by pleasing the politicians, those who hold power. Either that, or you wield power yourself.

This was a fine system—from the Norman viewpoint; but the Anglo-Saxon reduced to serfdom viewed the matter quite differently. It was obvious to the serf and the peasant that the reason why they had so little land was because the Normans had so much and, because wealth flowed from holdings of land, the Anglo-Saxons reasoned correctly that they were poor because the Normans were rich! It is always so under a system of privilege, where those who wield the political power use that power to enrich themselves economically, at the expense of other people. It makes little difference whether the outward trappings of privilege are monarchical, or democratic, or bear the earmarks of 1984; in a system of privilege, political power is a means of obtaining economic advantage.

When our forebears wrote that “all men are created equal,” they threw down a challenge to all systems of privilege. They believed that the law should keep the peace—as peacekeeping is spelled out in the old-fashioned Whig-Classical Liberal tradition, as liberty and justice for all. This preserves a free field and no favor—which is the real meaning of laissez faire—within which peaceful economic competition will occur. The term laissez faire never meant the absence of rules; it doesn’t imply a free-for-all. Government, under laissez faire, does not intervene positively to manage the affairs of men; it merely acts to deter and redress injury—as injury is spelled out in the laws. This is the system of liberty championed by present-day exponents of the freedom philosophy—whether they call themselves Libertarians, or Conservatives, or Whigs, or whatever.

The Wealth of Nations

Adam Smith’s “liberal plan of equality, liberty and justice” was never practiced fully in any nation, but what was the result of a partial application of the ideas of The Wealth of Nations? The results of abolishing political privilege in Europe and starting to organize a no-privilege society with political liberty and a market economy were so beneficial that even the enemies of liberty pause to pay tribute.

R. H. Tawney, one of the most gifted of the English Fabians, was an ardent socialist and egalitarian. His most famous work is Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, but in 1931 he wrote a book entitled Equality, arguing, in effect, that no one should have two cars as long as any man was unable to afford even one. He wished to take from those who have and give to those who have not, in order to achieve economic equality. But he acknowledged that there was an earlier idea of equality—equal treatment under the law. Here is what Tawney writes about the beneficial results of the movement toward political liberty and the free economy in the early decades of the nineteenth century, the movement known as Classical Liberalism:

Few principles have so splendid a record of humanitarian achievement . . . Slavery and serfdom had survived the exhortations of the Christian Church, the reforms of enlightened despots, and the protests of humanitarian philosophers from Seneca to Voltaire. Before the new spirit, and the practical exigencies of which it was the expression, they disappeared, except from dark backwaters, in three generations . . . . It turned [the peasant] from a beast of burden into a human being. It determined that, when science should be invoked to increase the output of the soil, its cultivator, not an absentee owner, should reap the fruits. The principle which released him he described as equality, the destruction of privilege. [2]

Smith’s “liberal plan of equality, liberty and justice”means the practice of political liberty. Now, when people are free politically and legally equal, there will still be economic inequalities. There will continue to be rich and poor, as there have been wealth differentials in every society since history began. But now there’s this difference: in the free economy the wealthy will be chosen by the daily balloting of their peers in the marketplace, and the wealthy won’t necessarily be the powerful, nor will the poor necessarily be the weak.

Variation is a fact of life; individuals differ one from another. Some are tall and some are short; some are swift and some are slow; some are bright and others are not so bright. The talents of some lie along musical lines, others are athletes, a few are mathematical wizards. Some people in every age are highly endowed with a knack for making money; whatever the circumstances, these people have more worldly goods than others.

Rich and poor are relative terms, but every society reveals a population distribution ranging from opulence to indigence. This occurs under monarchies, and it occurs in primitive tribes which measure a man’s wealth by cattle and wives; it occurs in communist states where, as Milovan Djilas pointed out in a famous book, a “new class” emerges out of the classless society, and the “new class” enjoys privileges denied the masses.

Under the system of liberty, the free market will reward men in differing degrees so that some men will make a great deal of money while others, such as teachers and preachers, have to get by on a very modest income. But under the system of liberty even those in lower income brackets enjoy a relatively high standard of living, and, furthermore, the practice of the Rule of Law guarantees that there’ll be no persecution for deviant intellectual and religious beliefs. The government does not try to manage the economy or control the lives of the citizens; it keeps out of people’s way—unless rights are violated.

Under conditions of political equality—which is the system of liberty, with the Rule of Law and the market economy—a man’s income depends upon his success at pleasing consumers, at which game some people are much more successful than others. A certain American entertainer earned millions of dollars last year by gyrating and howling in public places. He didn’t get any of my money, and except for the fact that I believe in liberty, I might have paid a substantial sum to keep him permanently tranquilized! On a somewhat higher level, there are talented people who are sensitive to consumer demand, and so they produce the kinds of goods or render the kinds of services that people will be able and willing to buy. They’ll make a bundle, in virtue of their ability to attract customers in free market competition.

Our own country’s past affords the best example of the enormous multiplication of wealth—broadly shared—which results from the release of human creativity under a system of liberty. But reintroduce a system of privilege, and dreams of prosperity fade.

Helping the Poor

The big domestic issue is poverty. Ever since New Deal days in the 1930s, governments have legislated various welfare schemes designed ostensibly to help “the poor,” spending trillions of dollars in these efforts. And the big issue is still poverty! it’s only the relative prosperity of the private sector, working against politically imposed obstructions, which has provided the funds to fuel the futile political programs touted as the remedy for economic distress. These are false remedies. The truth of the matter is that only economic action can produce the goods and services whose lack is indigence and destitution. Misguided political programs actually manufacture poverty by hampering productivity. Should we trust further government interventions to correct the very conditions government has caused by its earlier interventions?

Poverty may be measured in various ways, but whatever else it is, poverty means a lack of the things which sustain Fife at the basic level, or not enough of the things which make life pleasant and enjoyable. A genuinely poor person in the United States lives in a shabby room, dresses in hand-me-down clothing, and eats meals running heavily to starchy food, with little meat and fruit. A person who is this poor would be better off if he enjoyed a larger and finer house, had several extra suits, and ate tastier and more nourishing food. After improving the situation at the level of necessities he’d move ahead to the amenities: to recreation, a second car, air conditioning, and so on. The point to note is that people move away from poverty and toward prosperity only as they command more economic goods, more of the things which are manufactured, grown, transported, or otherwise produced.

Poverty is overcome by production, and in no other way. Therefore, if we are seriously concerned with the alleviation of poverty, our concern for increased production must be equally serious. This is simple logic. But look around us in this great land today and try to find anyone for whom increased productivity is a major goal. There are some able production men in industry, but many established businesses have learned to live comfortably with restrictive legislation, government contracts, the foreign aid program, and our international commitments. The competitive instinct burns low, and the entrepreneur who is willing to submit to the uncertainties of the market is a rare bird. And then there are the farmers. Agricultural production has taken a great leap forward in recent years, but no thanks to those farmers who latch onto the government’s farm program and accept payment for keeping land and equipment idle. Union leaders claim to work for the betterment of the membership, but no one has ever accused unions of a burning desire to be more productive on the job. Politicians are not interested in increased industrial or agricultural production, which is why government welfare programs manufacture poverty, and the economic well-being of the nation as a whole sinks below the level of prosperity a free market economy would achieve.

Confirmation of this point comes from a New York Times Magazine article by the celebrated economist, Thomas Sowell:

To be blunt, the poor are a gold mine. By the time they are studied, advised, experimented with and administered, the poor have helped many a middle class liberal to achieve affluence with government money. The total amount of money the government spends on its anti-poverty efforts is three times what would be required to lift every man, woman, and child in America above the poverty line by simply sending money to the poor.

An overall increase in the output of goods and services is the only way to upgrade the general welfare, but there is no clamor on behalf of increased productivity. The clamor is for redistribution, for political interventions which exact tribute from the haves and bestow largesse on the have-nots. Present-day politics is based on the redistributionist principle: taxes for all, subsidies for the few.

I’m arguing on behalf of a philosophy of government which understands the primary function of the Law as the defense of the life, liberty, and property of all persons alike. Such a political establishment leads to the kind of society in which bread and butter issues are handled by the market. So now, a few words about the nature of the market.

The market is not a magic instrumentality which comes up automatically with the fight answer for every sort of question. The market is a sort of popularity contest; the market tells us what people like well enough to buy; it’s an index of their preferences. Thus, the market provides a very valuable piece of information, but it’s far from the whole story. It’s important for a manufacturer to project an accurate guess as to where the hemline will be next season, or what people will look for when the new car models are unveiled. But a similar fingering of the popular pulse is an abomination in the intellectual and moral realms—unless one is a liberal intellectual! I refer to the proclivity of the current crop of liberal opinion molders to ask: “What’s going to be the fashion in ideas next season?” One glaring example of this—a former professor of mine was a leading clerical spokesman for involving the United States in World War II; but when the climate of opinion changed he became a co- chairman of SANE. This man has a good market in the intellectual realm, but of course he opposes the market in the economic realm!

The market is not some entity; the market is only a word describing people freely ex-changing goods and services in the absence of force and fraud. The market is the only device available for serving our creaturely needs while conserving scarce resources. But the market is no gauge of the validity of ideas. The market measures the popularity of an idea or a book or a system of thought, but not its truth or worth. Mises and Hayek are, for my money, far better thinkers and economists than Samuelson and Galbraith; but the market for the services of the latter pair is enormously greater than the popular demand for Mises and Hayek. Likewise in aesthetic questions. An entertainer’s popularity is no index of his musicianship, and a best-selling novel may fall far short of the category of literature.

The Market as Mirror

The market is simply a mirror of popular preferences and public taste; but if we don’t like what the mirror reveals we won’t improve the situation by throwing rocks at the glass! There is a great deal more to life than pleasing the customer, but if the integrity of the market is not respected, consumer choice is impaired and some people are given a license to foist their values on others. Permit this kind of poison to infect economic relationships and our ability to resist it elsewhere is seriously weakened.

We are throwing rocks at the mirror whenever we undertake programs of social leveling, aimed at economic equality. The government promises to aid the poor by redistributing the wealth. This, of course, is a power play, and it is the poor—generally the weakest members of a society—who are hurt first and most in any power struggle. Furthermore—and this is an important point—economic inequalities cannot be overcome by coercive redistribution without increasing political inequalities. Every form of political redistribution widens power differentials in society; officeholders have more power, citizens have less; political contests become more intense, because the control and dispersal of great amounts of wealth are at stake.

Every alternative to the market economy—call it socialism or communism or fascism or whatever—concentrates power over the life and livelihood of the many into the hands of the few who constitute the State. The principle of equality before the law is discarded—the Rule of Law is incompatible with any form of the planned economy—and, as in the George Orwell satire, some people become more equal than others. We head back toward the Old Regime—the system of privilege.

Those who have assumed Or seized power to take from the “haves” and give to the “have-nots” will eventually realize that they are operating a dumb racket. The “have-nots” who may be on the receiving end at the beginning are generally not society’s best and brightest, not the kind of people the power brokers like to hobnob with. The politically powerful who operate the transfer system will—when the light dawns—continue to plunder the “haves” but will then divvy up their take between themselves and the beautiful people who possess enough sensibility to realize the rightness of running a society for the benefit of such as they! The poor are squeezed out; they are worse off than before. And the nation is saddled with the “democratic despotism” predicted by Alexis de Tocqueville as far back as 1835.

Those of you who are fans of Lewis Carroll will remember his poem, “The Hunting of the Snark.” Hunters pursued this strange beast, but every time they thought they had their quarry the snark turned out to be a quite different beast—a boojum! Every time a determined group of people have concentrated power in a central government to carry out their program, the power they have set up gets out of hand. The classic example of this is the French Revolution, which turned and devoured those who had started it. It is not so much that power corrupts, as that power obeys its own laws. Our forebears in the old-fashioned Whig-Classical Liberal tradition were aware of this, so they sought to disperse and contain power. They chose liberty. They chose liberty in full awareness that in a free society the natural differences among human beings would show up in various ways; some would be economically better off than others. But in a free society there would be no political inequality; everyone would be equal before the law.

The alternative to the free economy is a servile state, where a ruling class enforces an equality of poverty on the masses, and lives at the expense of the producers. To embark on a program of economic leveling, then, is like trying to repeal the law of gravity; it’ll never work, and the energy we waste trying to make it work defeats our efforts to attain the reasonable goals which are within our capacity to achieve.

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1.   Story of England, Arthur Bryant, Vol. I. p. 164.

2.   Equality, R. H. Tawney, pp. 120-121.

Originally published in The Freeman, April 1988.

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