Nudging Revisited

Tibor R. Machan

Ideas do have consequences and this is quite evident with the current administration's adoption of what has been labelled--or mislabelled--"libertarian paternalism." It was two political economists, Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, who proposed the notion that what government should do is not intervene in the market forcefully, the way champions of the New Deal would advocate, but by establishing numerous incentives that would nudge people to do the right thing. (This approach is nicely laid out in Franklin Foer and Noam Scheiber, "Nudge-ocracy," The New Republic, May 6, 2009.)

The approach favored by Thaler and Sunstein is one that is gaining much respect from center-left liberals because it avoids the failed and not too popular policies of aggressive interventionism, the sort that in fact had a lot to do with America's current economic mess. (It involved, for example, requiring mortgage providers to offer very low rates, ones that would never have been possible in a bona fide market economy.) Not ever wishing to give up on the policy of messing with the market instead of leaving it to its own resources, left of center liberals are happy to embrace nudge-ocracy since it keeps a bunch of conceited technocrats in charge of society. And here is where the problem lies, a problem that I do not see any of the advocates of this new approach confronting.

Thaler, Sunstein, Foer, and Scheiber simply ignore one of the most important insights of modern economics, namely public choice theory. Advocates of nudge-ocracy divide the country into two groups--economic market agents whose judgments they do not trust because they are supposedly baffled by the myriad of choices available to them, versus the politicians and bureaucrats in Washington and other corridors of power who have the benefit of superior wisdom, foresight, prudence, and even omniscience with which to manage the economy.

But as public choice theory shows, first and foremost these politicians and bureaucrats are not disinterested, neutral parties but have agendas of their own. Furthermore, considering how difficult if not impossible it is to know just what objectives should be pursued and foisted upon the citizenry by government intervention--including by means of nudging--there is the additional problem that partisan, biased regulators (or nudge-ocrats) cannot help but advance their own priorities as they make policy.

Just consider how difficult, if not outright impossible, it is to know all the details of the public interest, the general welfare, or the common good. (The American founders got it right: the public good is simply for everyone to be free to pursue his or her happiness!) Interventionists suffer from the conceit that they know what people ought to choose and proceed to set up their structure of incentives accordingly. But this is a fatal conceit, as F. A. Hayek so aptly described it--these folks do not know how people should choose; they only imagine they know. They have all kinds of nifty ideas of what sort of insurance programs are best for us all, what retirements programs workers should sign up for, whether people should save or spend money, etc., etc. The nudge-ocrats make no secret of their confidence that they know it all for the vast numbers of Americans. But this confidence is entirely unjustified. The problem is that since they do not know what is best for us all, when they make general policy they cannot get it right. There is simply no way to get it right for millions and millions of people with their highly varied priorities and opportunities.

But the nudge-ocrats insist that they do know it and proceed to forge elaborate schemes to steer us in the direction they believe we all ought to aim for. Since, first of all, this is a myth and, second, they have goals of their own which they mistake for the goals of those whom they propose to nudge, they will mostly foul things up good and hard. (Now and then, of course, they can get things right, too--as with the broken clock that gets the time right twice a day!)

With just a bit of attention to Hayek's thesis of the fatal conceit and the Tullock-Buchanan's thesis of public choice, the error of nudge-ocracy could become evident. But the conceit prevents these folks from even considering these obstacles to their outlook!

Assumptions of Democracy

Tibor R. Machan

One interesting aspect of democracy is that today and indeed in most epochs some of its foundations are threatened and even violated by its application. For example, democracy assumes that everyone in society who isn't a criminal has a right to participate in political decision making. This is simply an implication of everyone's basic right to liberty. Taking part in political decision making may not be undermined just as taking part in work or education or any other peaceful conduct may not be undermined or forbidden. Free men and women have the right to liberty which includes the right to participate in peaceful political affairs. No majority may breach this.

Political democracy is but the outcome of the right to liberty--adults are not to be hindered in their politically relevant actions any more than they are in other kinds of actions. Their right to liberty implies this, plain and simple. And the democratic endeavors of free men and women have limits, just as do any other endeavors. Everyone is free to work or travel or build homes or write books but no one may violate the rights of others to do the same thing or anything else that's peaceful. So if democratic endeavors involve limiting the rights of others, those are not justified. Put simply, no one may interfere with another's rights to life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, etc., even if one has joined a majority of the population in doing so. That is what is implied by the system of basic rights everyone has in a free society--no one, not even a majority of the citizenry, may violate those rights. Thus democracy is limited by everyone's basic, natural rights to be free.

One can put this in very practical terms. No majority may pass some law or public policy that violates anyone's rights, the right to life, liberty or property, just as no individual, however powerful, has the authority to do this. Thus democracy has a rather limited scope in a country in which the law protects individual rights. Fareed Zakaria, in his book The Future of Freedom, makes a valid distinction between liberal and illiberal democracies, the former being constraint by the rights of individuals while the latter is not, so majorities may do whatever they will. It is pretty plain to see that the fact that a majority chooses to act in some way that violates rights does not make such violation any less wrong than if it were some powerful single individual who did. The famous case of the lynch mob illustrates this perfectly well. (In that case the majority breaches the imperative of justice to follow due process.)

All of this is important to understand in the current eagerness of politicians to make policies that violate individual rights, such as providing funds to bail out failing companies from the future taxes of the citizenry. No individual has the authority to commit another individual to fund such bailouts, not without the consent of those who will be required to pay. Coming together and forming a majority does not change this.

Unfortunately too few people appreciate that policies that have the backing of a majority do not thereby become justified. Sadly democratic theorists failed to make this point even though without it the very foundations of democracies are undermined. Just as a majority isn't authorized to abolish democracy, as it has done on numerous occasions throughout history--most recently in Venezuela where Hugo Chavez gained near absolute power through the so called democratic process--neither is a majority authorized to perpetrated anything else that amounts to the violation of individual rights. This really ought to be crystal clear in a country that has as its founding documents the American Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights and has experienced the injustice of democratically supported slavery.

Unfortunately the place where this would come to light in the education of a citizen, during primary and secondary education, the system itself contradicts the very point. America's primary and secondary education is founded on the belief in unlimited majority rule! How can those teaching in such a system be expected to explain to their pupils that democracy has limitations, namely, the rights of individuals (including those being unjustly taxed so as to keep the institution funded)?

Problems with Pragmatism

Tibor R. Machan

Given that on several occasions President Obama has made it clear that he is no ideologue but a pragmatist, it could be useful to consider what these terms mean. What makes someone an ideologue? What makes one a pragmatist?

Ideologues are those who approach problem-solving from a general framework which they or someone they trust have found to be sound, at least in the long run. A Marxist or utilitarian or libertarian could each be an ideologue by bringing to the table certain principles that will guide the way he or she will solve problems. Most of us are ideologues about some things—for example, we tend to believe that people have rights and when we go about solving our problems, we must not violate these rights even if it seems convenient to do so. In matters of political economy there can be ideological thinking with a certain general orientation, so that, for example, in approaching the current economic mess bailouts will be unacceptable because of a firm belief in private property rights. Or imposing equal burdens on the citizenry will be considered proper, whatever the results. And ideological thinking can sometimes degenerate into dogmatism, lack of thoughtfulness.


Let me detour for a bit here. Sometimes “ideological” means “blinded by preconceptions or presuppositions.” It could also mean being guided by ideas that hide one’s true motives. But the most common use of “ideology” means “a general viewpoint.”

Now what about pragmatism? This outlook was forged by people who are very skeptical about any general viewpoint, any set of general ideas or principles, so that they embrace, instead, a flexible outlook. Thus they make it possible to do nearly anything they find appealing, no holds barred. A pragmatic politician, for example, will champion whatever policy that seems to him or her workable, practical, never mind any principles of ethics or politics that the policy might violate. An example would be someone who advocates a massive government stimulus package by which to try to solve the current economic mess regardless of whether this policy violates the notion that only those who are responsible for the mess ought to be burdened with the cost of solving it. This latter concern would show one to be bound by principles and pragmatists reject this. (Not even logic is treated as a firm system of principles in pragmatism—such pragmatist philosophers as C. I. Lewis, for instance, argued that logic is a mere invention the rules of which we may bend when we like.)

In the current political climate to be pragmatic is often seen as a mark of sophistication because unlike ideological thinking it looks open-minded, flexible, and freewheeling (unconstrained by notions laid out in a written document such as the U. S. Constitution). Pragmatists generally consider such loyalty a mark of laziness when contrasted with their open-mindedness. But pragmatism also has serious liabilities. It is, to begin with, very difficult to apply and can make it fairly easy to rationalize bad conduct and public policies. That's because no one can tell ahead of time what will work to solve the problems at hand, thus allowing for any option whatever. Why should we exclude theft, for example, if no principles are defensible, or torture?

If principles are excluded as valid means for guiding conduct, why would even the most dastardly policies be objectionable? Only principles, based on past experience and careful reflection, can give us sensible guidance. So, in fact, pragmatists rarely if ever stick to their pragmatism. Instead they tend to cherry pick their principles. In our time we see this with how righteously friends of the Obama administration criticize the Bush administration's use of water boarding, of torture, as a means to try to achieve the worthwhile goal of gathering important information. In this case, it seems, some principles would be binding on us all.

In other words, what being pragmatic makes easier is to switch principles in mid course. Professing to be pragmatic liberates one from the limitations of personal integrity--when principles serve one's purpose, then let's use them, but when they stand in one's way, toss them.

Unfortunately some of those who are invoking pragmatism in their thinking and public posturing are well enough educated so as to gain the upper hand in debating the issue of what approach is most appropriate when it comes to governing. Few folks can handle the cleverness of Mr. Obama and Co., when they claim to be pragmatic while also opposing torture, for example, on principle! In fact, however, these clever moves are mostly ways to escape responsibility for one's ideas and policies. They cover up fundamental confusions in one's thinking and in how one sets out to govern, instead of making governing sensible and coherent.

Torture and Pragmatism

Tibor R. Machan

Torturing someone involves inflicting pain and misery on the victim in the hope of obtaining something he or she is unwilling to give up. The purpose can vary from simple cruelty, as when youngsters on the playground torture one of their kind to see the reaction, to seeking information from the victim that may save the life of some innocent person. The current concern with, for example, water boarding falls within the second category.

In either kind of cases torture as a rule must be avoided. That’s just part of civilized conduct. But is it always morally wrong? In very rare cases it would not be. This is when it’s used against someone whose information could save innocent people from carnage.

In a civilized society, however, there is no room for torture as official public policy, even when someone may deserve to be punished for a vicious crime or fails to help the authorities to rescue innocent victims. This latter is, of course, the sort of situation when it is most tempting to make official use of torture. Nonetheless, it would be wrong to make use of the method even then. It is a basic feature of a civilized human community to prohibit the use of physical force against someone other than in certain rare cases of defending innocent people. No offensive use of physical force is justified.

In the current debate about whether the Bush administration’s authorization of the use of water boarding was morally--and should have been legally--wrong, the case against torture stands, as a general principle. What is odd, however, is that the practice is being attacked by people in President Obama’s administration since the president has quite often explained that he is a pragmatist and eschews ideology, by which he must mean that he has no principled objection to any practice if it achieves a worthy purpose. That is what is meant by “pragmatic,” the refusal to be bound by principles and caring only about results.

So if some uses of water boarding yielded valuable information that might be used to rescue innocent victims of terrorists, the Obama administration would have no basis for objecting to it. The central tenet of pragmatism is never to discount anything as a method for achieving some valuable goal. It if works, it is then permissible. This is one reason why granting former Vice President Dick Chaney’s request to make public all the information on the uses of water boarding could be important. For if water boarding did in fact yield valuable information, then by the pragmatic approach advocated by President Obama it could be considered proper. And then the criticism of the Bush administration on the basis of its use of torture would fall apart since by their own standards Obama & Co. would have to approve of torture if it works.

Of course, one problem with pragmatism is that it makes it permissible, morally and politically, to use whatever policy one likes or believes might be of some use. Ahead of time it is never possible to know for sure if a policy is going to work--that remains to be seen. The point of a principled--if you wish, “ideological”--approach to actions, private or public, is that it uses what we have learned in the
past to form certain general principles that would guide our conduct at least until they have proven to be unworkable. For example, the dictum “Honesty is the best policy” is based on the widespread experience that lying gets us into trouble while honesty doesn’t. No, this is no absolute guarantee against a different outcome in the future but it is a good reason, nevertheless, to avoid lying.

Whenever a politician or indeed anyone proclaims to be pragmatic, the most reliable expectation from that is that the person wants no principles to constrain his or her actions. Carte blanche! And the plausibility of this stance comes from the fact that now and then, under very strange, exceptional circumstances, general ethical or political principles will not work. But as the saying goes, “Hard cases make bad law,” meaning, exceptional instances should not be generalized.

One thing is for sure--you cannot claim to be a pragmatist and also uphold a principled stand against water boarding or other forms of torture. For by your pragmatic outlook, if water boarding or torture may work to some benefit, you should use it. So it looks like the pragmatic critics of the Bush Administration’s policies vis-à-vis torture, including President Obama, have no basis for their objections. Since ahead of time no one can know whether water boarding is going to work in this particular case, why not use it then?

To Blame or Not to Blame

Tibor R. Machan

Most people will readily find fault in others and blame them for it. But doing so assumes these others could have done otherwise, acted properly, ethically.

Blaming and praising presuppose that people are largely in control of their own actions and when these actions go astray, they are responsible for it. Bernie Madoff, for instance, didn't have to bilk his clients but chose to do so. Nor did congress have to promote home ownership for all those who couldn't afford the mortgage. Nor did all those who took out easy loans have to do this--they chose to get what appeared to them a free ride. Misconduct by human beings isn't some affliction but a matter of choice, albeit a bad one.

If all this is wrong then what we have is lamentable, never blameworthy, conduct, sort of how most of us deal with the rain that ruined our picnic. Or with the dog that bit the postman. We blame no one in such cases but merely lament what happened. Even if there are some, very few, higher animals that engage in moral reflection--is this right, is that wrong, etc.--it is only people whose lives are enmeshed in an ocean of moral choices.

The data concerning this issue is always mixed because neither a deterministic nor self-responsible account of how people should be understood is obviously true or false. No one is observed as a free agent, nor as one being pushed around by impersonal forces. The issue can only be resolved by using the method of comparative analysis--is the free will hypothesis or the determinist one more consistent with observable facts?

Resolving this conflict requires comprehensive investigation by specialists in a great variety of disciplines. Ordinarily most of us rely on evidence from our own case but this evidence tends to be tainted by our preconceptions. It doesn't have to be but it often is, probably because people like to come off smelling like roses! Self blame doesn't come easy to anyone since it suggests that one's credentials as a good guy would be undermined. This despite the fact that one swallow does not make a springtime, Aristotle's way of reminding us that rare cases don't capture what is generally true.

Nonetheless, few will fess up to being negligent or sloppy or otherwise at fault as their conduct is placed under scrutiny. If I am late for a meeting it is very tempting to blame it on the weather or traffic or something else I have no control over. But should I receive praise for, say, my work, most of the time I am very happy to take the credit. Yet this implies that I could have failed instead. Helpless in one case, in charge in another.

Even public policy is influenced by the schizophrenia. Many influential people explain away criminal conduct by completely abandoning free will as something spooky, something that just does not fit with how the world works. Accordingly, many such folks are at work trying to influence the legal system and purge it of notions that suggest that defendants could help it when they did something wrong. (A huge amount of money was recently donated to a team of neuroscientists at UC Santa Barbara whose project is to help revise the criminal law, to purge it of the idea that people can be culpable.)

However, when these people are criticized, critics are generally regarded as guilty of something, some oversight or stubbornness or narrow mindedness. And the critics mostly assume that those who don't agree with them are wrong and should change their minds. Throughout the political arena and the academy criticism of this kind abounds. What many forget is that it also implies, among other things, that those being criticized could have done otherwise, that they are free agents and not robots being pushed around by their genes or environment! Someone who criticizes is committed, at least implicitly, to the view that those being criticized might have acted differently from how they did. Yet, a good many commentators see most people as unfree, thus not deserving of any kind of criticism. This is the issue addressed so artfully in West Side Story: "Gee, Officer Krupke, we're very upset; We never had the love that ev'ry child oughta get. We ain't no delinquents, We're misunderstood. Deep down inside us there is good!"

The dissident, who insists on assigning blame for misconduct is, oddly, deemed to be fully blameworthy for failing to see the light! Of course one cannot have it both ways--with the poor being blameless while the well off are free and thus blameworthy for disagreeing about whether the poor might need to shape up on their own. The well of and the not so well off are both in the same boat concerning whether they are free to choose or determined by forces over which they lack control.

Such a contradictory outlook very likely stems from wishing to gain political support, including votes, rather than from wanting to face the facts of the matter helpfully.

Is Government Preparing Us for Censorship?

Tibor R. Machan

In a series of articles on climate change the villain is gradually being identified as, you should have guessed it, freedom of thought!

One Jon Gertner of The New York Times Magazine wrote the other day that “What makes CRED’s work [the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions] especially relevant ... is that various human attitudes and responses--How can there be global warming when we had a frigid January? What’s in it for me if I change the way I live?--can make the climate problem worse by leaving it unacknowledged or unaddressed. Apathetic and hostile responses to climate change, in other words, produce a feedback loop and reinforce the process of global warming (4/19/09).”

The idea that thought and speech are major obstacles to doing what is right isn’t new at all. As recently as the 1980s the one liberty that liberal statists could be counted on defending, at least in the United States of America, is the one spelled out in the First Amendment to the Constitution. Alas, this was challenged some time ago by Professor Catharine A. MacKinnon of the University of Michigan school of law, in her short but prominently published book, Only Words (Harvard University Press, 1983). In it the good professor argued that words do not deserve the legal protection afforded them by the Constitution since insults and put downs, including jokes, can injure people good and hard. And such injuries should not be protected. The victims would have to pay too high a price for the fact that the law treats such injuries as “only words.”

We have heard a good deal lately about how President Barack Obama is a pragmatists, how he eschews ideology. The most sensible rendition of this sound bite is that he refuses to be bound by principles and when it comes to something as vital as containing climate change, why not toss the First Amendment and censor those who show skepticism? Professor MacKinnon wasn’t recommending tossing the principle underlying the First Amendment, only suggesting that we should not be ideological about our embrace of it. Maybe the same should be expected from President Obama when it comes to a central elements of his political agenda, namely, to contain pollution.

This pragmatism isn’t across the board for Mr. Obama, of course. As with all loyal pragmatists he, too, is willing to stick to a select few principles and refuse to give them up even in times of emergency. Consider, for example, that according the Obama & Co. there is never any excuse for using torture! I will not speculate on why in that instance pragmatism is inadequate--various suggestions present themselves and some of them aren’t pretty at all. Suffice it to note that Mr. Obama seems to be perfectly willing to toss jettison the principles of the free market--the right to private property, the right to enter into binding contracts, the right to due process. And here we have evidence that like minded folks, too, appear not to be very worried about banning certain kinds of inconvenient conduct such as speaking out against the doctrine--the ideology?--of climate change.

We should be prepared, I believe, for some movement in this direction. Apathy toward climate change isn’t tolerable, nor is skepticism. Leaving the climate problem unacknowledged or unaddressed would also count as something we ought not to tolerate--so if I speak out against recycling, for example, maybe I ought to be muzzled since not doing so will “produce a feedback loop and reinforce the process of global warming.”

Just as Professor MacKinnon’s abandoning of the First Amendment seemed to her fully justified, given how that Amendment made it possible to insult and intimidate women, so it should come as no big surprise to anyone that laws will be passed that prohibit global warming skepticism. Such dangerous conduct on the part of citizens must be arrested, or so some of the climate change fanatics could well believe now, quite seriously.

“Tempered by Government?”

Tibor R. Machan

There must be some enormous carrot stimulating the proponents of a closely monitored and extensively regulated American economy. I reach this conclusion because day after day I run into essays, columns, commentaries on TV and radio, in which there is a constantly repeated and concerted effort to discredit free market capitalism.

The latest of these I have run across is a review in The New York Times Sunday Book Review, April 19, 2009, where one Louis Uchitelle states that the authors of the book he is reviewing, titled Animal Spirits, How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism (Princeton University Press, 2009) and written by George A. Akerlot and Robert J. Shiller, “challenge the reigning free-market ideology of the past 30 years or so....” He concludes the review--a gushing one for sure--by urging the authors of the book to “push hard” in the direction of “revamping economic theory to deal with a market system that, quite irrationally, failed to govern itself.”

Neither the reviewer nor the authors give any proof that we have all been under the spell of laissez-faire capitalism. They just assert this as taking even a miniscule peak around the country could easily confirm their idea. Yet, it’s just the opposite they could confirm.

As a rather quick refutation of this idea, that we have all been in the grips of free market fundamentalism--a claim made the famous Princeton Conomist, Paul Krugman in one of his columns for The New York Times--let us recall a point made by the late Milton Friedman at the 2002 Mt. Pelerin Society meetings in Chattanooga, Tennessee. In that talk Friedman reported that “In 1946, there were 9,000 pages in the federal register [which lists all the federal government regulations]. Today there are over 80,000 pages. The situation is the same in most western countries....” So why then go on repeating this myth of a supposed orthodoxy of a fully free market place in America, one that was in full force as the 2008-2009 economic fiasco transpired?

It’s not very difficult to ascertain that no free market system has been in place in America, ever, and that whatever elements of it did manage to find themselves part of the American system have by now been squashed good and hard. Oh, the legacy of FDR’s New Deal!

These authors and reviewers must be counting on their readers’ total ignorance of economic history. I suspect that promulgating the myth that it was a free marketplace that brought about the economic mess serve the purpose of disguising the real culprit, namely, the extensive forcible government intervention in peoples’ economic affairs in America and elsewhere. Among other things, if one can persuade people that it was “a market system that, quite irrationally, failed to govern itself,” whatever minor traces of capitalism can be found in the American economy will come under extensive government regimentation--or at least state nudging (a term used by New Deal enthusiast, Cass Sunstein, who used to be President Obama’s colleague at the University of Chicago School of Law and just recently moved to Harvard where he was picked to help President Obama to re-regulate the country).

For the umpteenth time, the free market didn’t do it. Moreover, it couldn’t have done it. That’s because there hasn’t ever been one in the country. And what elements of such a system could be found over the last 40 years, they have been pretty much abolished.

In plain terms, then, since there hasn’t been a free market in America over its entire history, it cannot be the case that such a market failed to “govern itself.” What America has been all during its economic history is a mixed system, with admittedly significant elements of capitalism, socialism, fascism and the like being tried by the statists in our capitols and promoted by their academic and journalistic cheerleaders, the likes of Paul Krugman, Louis Uchitelle and many, many others who probably sit and wait so as to get the nice government job of running other people’s economic lives!

In any case, book reviewer Uchitelle doesn’t by any means fail to disclose his agenda. He says outright that what we needs is to temper the market by the government. The fact that his involves coercing citizens all over the place, deploying prior restraint on all the agents in the marketplace under the benign-sounding rallying cry of “precaution,” does not make even a dent in the faith of these people in government’s purity of motives and their incredible conceit that they, instead of the millions of those in the market, can run things just fine!

Also, there’s no evidence that critics of laissez-faire have read public choice theorists who have shown that government regulators are every bit as tempted to misbehave as are those they are supposed to regulate--indeed more so.

We should heed the counsel of Oliver Cromwell, who wrote that "It will be found an unjust and unwise jealousy to deny a man the liberty he hath by nature upon a supposition that he may abuse it."

Democracy and Liberty

Tibor R. Machan

If you object to having your liberty and property taken by the majority, some political theorists object claiming that democracy is precisely for such a purpose. But that is not so.

In a free society the purpose of democracy amounts to authorizing some people who have majority support to help update the Constitution. The updating, in turn, is not for the sake of changing it, abolishing its principles and so forth. It is so as to extend constitutional principles to novel areas that could not be anticipated when the constitution was framed. There was no Internet, telephone, iPod, telegraph and so forth yet these are all capable of being used to commit crimes. Lawmakers, those elected to various local, county, state and federal offices, are supposed to figure out how the basic principles of the constitution--presumably a sound document stating how citizens ought to comport themselves toward one another without violating anyone's rights--can be applied to new technology, new science, and so forth.

Instead a great many people think that democracy has to do with imposing their will upon their fellows whether it is allowed or not. But that is just what having our individual rights prohibits. In a free country no one gets to violate rights, not even majorities. Those representing us at various centers of politics aren't there to perpetrate complex forms of larceny, theft, trespass, kidnapping and the like. No one gets to do such a think to free citizens, never mind how many get together claiming they may do so. Otherwise the country stops being a free one altogether.

Of course, countries can be more or less free and so far the United States of America has managed to earn the label "free" in comparison to most others. Yet, when our president shows friendship toward the likes of Hugo Chavez--and past presidents have shown admiration for the likes of Mussolini and Marcos and Pinochet and the like--the time has come to reaffirm our fundamental commitment to principles that flatly reject the political ideas of these sort of leaders. But sadly because the likes of Chavez, including Hitler, have gained majority support in their countries and could then say that the tyranny that they were perpetrating thus had political legitimacy, America too has slid into a kind of democratic despotism, with leaders who make no bones about using their power to conscript the labors and resources of the citizenry for purposes they claim have majority support.

All the funds being borrowed now and devoted to bailing out commercial enterprises that lack market support with funds that future citizens will have to repay--citizens whose vote no one knows and thus lack representation--amount to wrongful taking, plain and simple. And this isn't anything new, either. Funds used to contribute to countries abroad, funds used to subsidies struggling domestic businesses, funds used to support so called public projects that actually benefit only small special interests--all these are illegitimate takings in a genuine free society. And they are all being defended on the basis of democracy. But that is a completely misguided understanding of what democracy must mean for a free people.

The American founders seemed clearly to have in mind establishing a free country, not a democratic despotism. This is made very clear from the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights which identify the rights of individual citizens and do not authorize small or large majorities to carry out criminal deeds for which individuals would be prosecuted if they committed them. That is why the Founders were revolutionaries--they disbelieved in the superiority of the government. They viewed it, instead, as an agency that's instituted merely to secure individual rights not one, like a monarchy, that would rule those individuals, impose on them unwanted, unchosen burdens.

This is the idea that needs to be recovered in America. This is what held together those people who went on the "tea parties." This is why the cheerleaders of democratic despots, the likes of Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman of Princeton University and The New York Times, found them so objectionable!

Ancient Turkish-Armenian (and similar) Squabbles

Tibor R. Machan

If it isn't the Croats versus the Serbs, the Irish versus the British, the Hungarians versus the Russians, the Indians versus the Pakistanis, and so on and so forth endlessly, ethnic, national or other groups carping about each other based on ancient misconduct, ill feelings, and awful memories that have virtually nothing to do with people alive today, then it is their diplomatic allies that are being urged to keep the flames of the acrimony burning. Why? Because there are many political theorists who insist that "people belong to their communities"--their nations, ethnic groups, or tribes instead of each individual's life belonging to him or her, independently of the ghosts of their ancestors.

I have brought this up before--the Hungarians, of which I used to be one and may still be so regarded by some zealots, had their truly gruesome conflicts with the Turks many, many moons ago. And for reasons that have made absolutely no sense to me some of them still hold a grudge, as if they had been victims or aggressors despite not being alive anywhere near the time of these conflicts. No matter. For some these feelings of hostility--or friendship--must be kept alive.

Why? Well, I can only guess that it has to do with the ancient idea of tribal loyalty, as if those Hungarians and Turks--or substitute some other warring collectives many moons ago--imposed obligations on today's members to keep up the anger at each other.

I blame for all of this the widespread anti-individualism that has been promoted not only by politicians and others who feed off such warped loyalties but by numerous prominent political theorist--usually called communitarians in our day--who insist that everyone primarily amounts to some kind of eternal team member. That one's identity consists of being a member of some such collective. And, of course, the membership is completely accidental--I certainly didn't volunteer to be born in Hungary and might well have been born in Turkey instead! Or again, substitute some other relentlessly hostile groups.

This is why I consider identity politics such a curse. Who one is has very little to do with the group into which one was born. Sure, it has some meaning for most of us where we got our start in life, who were those near and dear to us back in those formative years. But it should amount to nothing of great significance, given that none of us had a choice in the matter.

Once this group membership is not just accepted as merely a trivial feature of our lives but made a great deal of by leaders and political thinkers, consider how impossible is to git rid of it. It isn't even like one's religion, which if one were to learn that it's insidious, one can abandon. No one can change the fact that he or she was born in Israel rather than in Palestine, in Ireland rather than in Britain, in Mexico rather than in California. These are incontrovertible facts and if one attaches to them obligations of loyalty and fealty, one is eternally stuck. No argument, no enlightenment can make a dent in these alignments. We are simply members of the groups and must bear the burden of their histories, be they nice or naughty or some combination.

President Obama swore during the recent presidential campaign that he would not let the Turks forget about what their ancestors did to Armenians and when he failed to bring up the issue during his recent visit to Turkey, a number of commentators, such as the erudite wordsmith Christopher Hitchens of Vanity Fair magazine, called him out on his breach of his campaign promise.

Well, I say that Obama should never have entered into this messy controversy about a widely contested genocide back in the early 1900s, never mind the emotions of unfortunately too many Turkish and Armenian Americans. Whatever bad deeds were committed were done by people long dead, so I say drop all this already. What matters, especially in America, is the kind of human individual you are, what you have chosen to believe and do in your life, not what your parents and grandparents, et al., believed and did. That is what justice requires!

What is Fascism?

Tibor R. Machan

Dictionaries aren't decisive about what the central meaning of terms are--they are mostly descriptions of common usage. For definitions of the meaning of important and controversial concepts--as some call them, "essentially contestable" ones--it is necessary to read books or encyclopedia entries. This is how I generally keep reasonably well informed and up to date.

So not long ago I penned a column in which I identified the economic policies of the Obama administration's so far as fascist! In it I said "Fascism is a political system in which a country is lead by a charismatic leader who has full power to order things about because he (or she) is taken to know best."

Among the many comments I received, mostly very complimentary, I also got some that disputed my description of our current trends in political economy. Some of my critics insisted, in fact, that the newspapers in which my columns run should dismiss me because fascism in fact has to do with a system that elevates the nation to an exclusive level of supremacy and not with what I said.

In fact, of course, that would be nationalism, while fascism is indeed mainly what I said it is. One popular on line dictionary states this about what is central to fascism, identifying it as "a governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism." So, while nationalism and racism can be elements of fascism, they are only sometimes emphasized in it. And when people use the term to criticize the police or local sheriff, this is just what they have in mind, namely, a strong and unconstrained head or officer of the state! When qualified by the term "economic," it means such a head of state whose power is focused mostly on planning a country's economy just as he or she sees fit.

Fascism, as I tell my students in my political philosophy classes, endorses absolute and arbitrary rule by a charismatic figure--Eva Peron comes to mind as the female of the species. And what these rulers promote differs, although quite a few capitalize on nationalist and racists sentiments so as to gather support from the local population.

The United States of America is what is best described a mixed system, with democratic, fascist, socialist and other elements--not surprisingly, considering the incredible diverse citizenry who send representatives of a great variety of viewpoints to centers of power. Just now the fascist element is strong in Washington, especially where government's relationship to economic affairs across the country is concerned. The signs are not difficult to spot. For the president to induce the firing of a CEO of a major auto company is one. Pouring money into the economy without any constraint is another. Capitalizing so much on personal appeal--so the White House is now constantly posting President Obama's appearances on YouTube and similar web sites in which there is no discussion but presidential propaganda, mainly, reminiscent of the much lengthier speeches of, say, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, and, earlier, Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini. These all rely very heavily on oratory and polemical speech, not on analysis or argument, and they include only minimal serious, unscripted discussions with members of the citizenry or a variety of professional economists.

It is interesting that so many Obama supporters are invoking the name of John Maynard Keynes as they promote the current official approach to dealing with the economy because of a little known fact about Keynes. He wrote an introduction to the German translation of his famous about, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, in which he said that his ideas were especially applicable to the way a dictatorship is supposed to be governed! As Keynes wrote there, "the theory of aggregated production, which is the point of the following book, nevertheless can be much easier adapted to the conditions of a totalitarian state [eines totalen Staates] than the theory of production and distribution of a given production put forth under conditions of free competition and a large degree of laissez-faire."

So when I say that here we have serious fascist elements to how the American government is handling the current economic fiasco, I have in mind mainly that the President and his team are acting unpredictably, wielding power and being very vague about why they are doing this rather than that, as well as that their economics teacher, Keynes, was in fact sympathetic to economic fascism.

Has Capitalism Been Invalidated?

Tibor R. Machan*

“...we need not choose between a chaotic and unforgiving capitalism and an oppressive government-run economy. That is a false choice that will not serve our people or any people....” Barack Obama (IHT, 3/24/09)

The French president Nicholas Sarkozy, whose parents include a Hungarian father and, given Hungary's tragic brush with Soviet style socialism, who ought to know better, recently made headlines by announcing that "Le laisser-faire, c'est fini," meaning that free market capitalism is finished.(1) Sarkozy isn't alone in voicing this opinion—such Americans as University of Texas political scientist James Galbraith and Princeton's Nobel Laureate economist Paul Krugman have also gone on record with it. Some indeed, have shown a good bit of glee about what they take to be laissez-faire's failure.(2) One bit of irony about Sarkozy's having said this is that the term "laisser-faire" refers to how one French feudal government official was answered, back in the 17th century, when asked what he could do for business. He was told to get out of the way!

Accordingly, laisser-faire came to refer to a system of economics, a version of which was also defended by Adam Smith and by much of the classical liberal and libertarian political economic tradition, in which the government plays the sole role the American Founders assigned to it, namely, "to secure [our] rights." Just as referees do at games, government has the important role of making sure the rules are followed and violators are punished. In the case of a society, including its economic system, the rules are that the rights to private property and freedom of contract are strictly respected and protected. In the criminal law this approach is characterized as deploying due process and avoiding any prior restraint. Not unless citizens are seriously suspected of rights violating crimes or have in fact been convicted of them may their liberty be curtailed.

This idea has never, ever been fully implemented in any country but here and there, especially in America, it has gained some inroad in public affairs. Certainly compared to the rest of human history and the rest of the globe, America’s economy has often been relatively free but clearly still quite heavily regulated by every level of government. But as with most democracies which may not ban the input of even the most undemocratic ideas, the best that has been achieved from the viewpoint of classical liberal, libertarian political economy is a mixed economy, one with official socialist, capitalist, fascist, theocratic, and even communist features. Thus a genuine, fully free market never existed anywhere, not even in the so called most capitalist country in human history, the United States of America.

Still, whenever some upheaval with economic implications does occur in America and other mixed economies, defenders of some variation of the ancient regime of mercantilism—which include champions of all kinds of statist economic systems such as socialism, fascism, etc.—quickly announce what Sarkozy said, namely, that free enterprise is now dead, proven to have failed. In the current financial fiasco this is all too evident. Day after day one encounters this opinion, in The New York Times, The New Republic, letters to various magazines and newspapers, and certainly on the more prestigious media, such as on PBS TV's The News Hour With Jim Lehrer. On one level this can be written off as nothing more than special pleading—government officials and those aspiring to social engineering, after all, naturally wish to rule the realm and a system that in principle deprives them of the power to rule the economy is likely to be resisted by them and their intellectual supporters. But this is to approach the issue more as a matter of human psychology than is appropriate for a discussion of political theory. In such a discussion it is the arguments for maintaining and even expanding state power over the economy that need to be considered. And while doing this would involve a very lengthy task, a few elements of those arguments can be considered even in a brief discussion such as this one.

A regular feature of the defense of state intervention, put forth often by those who have shown at most minimal sympathy for free enterprise, is to mention that people in the business world are often complicit in promoting state interventionism. But that’s no news at all, of course. Adam Smith already observed it back in the 18th century. As he warned:

"The proposal of any new law or regulation which comes from [businessmen], ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it." The Wealth of Nations, vol. 1, pt. xi, p.10 (at the conclusion of the chapter) (1776).

It should be mentioned here that Adam Smith himself was no consistent or radical libertarian and by his lights arguably many welfare provisions would be part of the legal system of a just human community. Although this might be a misinterpretation based on a primarily political reading of his A Theory of Moral Sentiments, written several years before The Wealth of Nations. Smith does stress the importance of such moral virtues as generosity and empathy but not necessarily by means of government. After all, governments really cannot be generous or exhibit empathy—they must, for example, conscript the citizenry or confiscate its property in order to provide aid to the poor.

A more serious theoretical problem is that in mixed economies it is often difficult to detect the precise source of economic problems such as a business cycle. Critics of the fully free market—many of whom would naturally prefer to regulate the world of commerce and finance since they tend to believe (following the lead of a certain reading of Plato) that only they are truly qualified to promote justice—too readily blame freedom, including free enterprise, probably in part because that is the main obstacle to their being in charge. Yet, I will argue here, following Oliver Cromwell, that "It will be found an unjust and unwise jealousy to deny a man the liberty he hath by nature upon a supposition that he may abuse it."(3) As Immanuel Kant pointed out, "ought implies can." So if people should help the needy, they must be free of coercion and choose to do so themselves, not be made by law to do so. So as far as moral obligations are concerned, the welfare state isn't a valid means to make room for them. It robs people of the requisite liberty to choose to help.

A way out of this quandary is to maintain that people do not really own their own labor, work, or property, the state does. This is implicit in some old and new arguments for extensive state intervention for the sake of wealth redistribution.(4) A very clear statement of this position is offered by 18th century French thinker, Auguste Comte:

"Everything we have belongs then to Humanity…Positivism never admits anything but duties, of all to all. For its social point of view cannot tolerate the notion of right, constantly based on individualism. We are born loaded with obligations of every kind, to our predecessors, to our successors, to our contemporaries. Later they only grow or accumulate before we can return any service. On what human foundation then could rest the idea of right, which in reason should imply some previous efficiency? Whatever may be our efforts, the longest life well employed will never enable us to pay back but an imperceptible part of what we have received. And yet it would only be after a complete return that we should be justly authorized to require reciprocity for the new services. All human rights then are as absurd as they are immoral. This ["to live for others"], the definitive formula of human morality, gives a direct sanction exclusively to our instincts of benevolence, the common source of happiness and duty. [Man must serve] Humanity, whose we are entirely."(5)

This collectivist way of thinking is contrary to the plain enough fact that those of past generations produced when they thought it worthwhile to do so, on whatever terms they believed were just at the time, except when they were being coerced to produce as serfs and slaves had been. The current generation may be delighted with what it inherited from earlier ones but there is no involuntary servitude they are responsible to submit to so as to "repay" what they have inherited. Normally we do not work so as to bequeath to others apart from our children, perhaps, and sometimes out of charity.(6)

The governmental habit is terribly well entrenched in most societies, including in America. Consider that erudite liberal, Leon Wieseltier of The New Republic who just recently told us that "contrary to what [Americans] have been taught for many years, government is a jewel of human association and an heirloom of human reason; that government, though it may do ill, does good; that a lot of the good that government does only it can do; that the size of government must be fitted to the size of its tasks, and so, for a polity such as ours, big government is the only government...etc." (7)

My simple plea is for people not to accept this facile view. Government--that is, using force against people--is only of value in small, defensive and retaliatory measures, for a limited scope of our social life, just like the cop on the beat, otherwise we promote the police state. The size of government should be fitted to its proper task which is, contrary to what modern but not classical liberals believe, a very limited one, namely, to keep the peace.

Wieseltier is clever and keeps talking of an open society, not a free one. For good reason—openness is a loose idea; a door can be open to a great variety of degrees. But a free society isn't so flexible. You are free if you are the master of your life, if you own it, if you have your right to it fully respected and protected. Otherwise you aren't free and the society in which you live isn't a free one. Ask any former slave whether freedom means not having others intrude on one’s life or whether it means that others intrude only, say, 40 percent.

The current—as all human produced—economic fiasco is mostly the fault of statists who routinely distort the natural ways of an economy. (In this case it had to do with massive amounts of easy money doled out in the name of helping the poor, minorities, and so forth and then, of course, what this policy engendered in the financial markets where the actors are all alert to any opportunity to earn good returns on even the strangest of investments.) As usual, such interference results in disaster. Without official malfeasance, such as governments leaving their post and entering the playing field they are meant to shield from coercive interference, free markets can, of course, experience misconduct but these tend to be self-correcting since in the long run free men and women do better if they are also virtuous than if they routinely misbehave.

Unfortunately those who are responsible for official malpractice have no intention to confessing their guilt in making a fiasco such as that experienced in the world just now and one effective way to hide that fact is to point the finger at the innocent party, human liberty. Freedom isn’t much trusted by those who see themselves as needed to keep others on a righteous path, be they from the Left or the Right. Their influence is considerable.

When President Obama stated that “we need not choose between a chaotic and unforgiving capitalism and an oppressive government-run economy,” he was giving clear indication of his agreement with the views of his former colleague and friend, Professor Cass R. Sunstein, now at Harvard University’s School of Law, who has been a champion of a radical restatement of America’s principles of individual rights. Instead of viewing these rights as they are laid out in the Declaration of Independence, following the philosophy of John Locke and the libertarian tradition which takes such rights to be negative--that is to say, prohibitions of intrusions on individuals--Obama and Sunstein see rights as demands on the lives and properties of individuals to support various projects they deem worthwhile.(8)

There is no need for a Second Bill of Rights, however. Such a doctrine assumes that people are helpless without the use of force against their fellows, without invoking government’s coercive powers so as to secure the necessities and amenities of life in a free society. As the American Founders stated, in their sketch of their truly radical and anti-paternalist political philosophy, what governments are for is to keep the peace, to protect the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Once the freedom such protection makes possible, citizens will be able and mostly willing to pursue the benefits that Sunstein, Obama & Co. want to secure through a policy for involuntary servitude for all.

Endnotes:
(1) Wikipedia states that “the exact origins of the term ‘laissez-faire’ as a slogan of economic liberalism are uncertain. The first recorded use of the 'laissez faire' maxim was by French minister René de Voyer, Marquis d'Argenson, another champion of free trade, in his famous outburst:
Laissez faire, telle devrait être la devise de toute puissance publique, depuis que le monde est civilisé.... Détestable principe que celui de ne vouloir grandir que par l'abaissement de nos voisins! Il n'y a que la méchanceté et la malignité du coeur de satisfaites dans ce principe, et l’intérêt y est opposé. Laissez faire, morbleu! Laissez faire!! (In English this would be “Leave them be, that should be the motto of every public authority, according to which the world is civilized..... A detestable principle that which would not wish us to grow except by lowering our neighbors! There is nothing but mischief and malignity of heart in those satisfied with that principle, and interest is opposed to it. Leave them be, damn it! Leave them be!”)
According to historical folklore, the phrase stems from a meeting c. 1680 between the powerful French finance minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert and a group of French businessmen led by a certain M. Le Gendre. When the eager mercantilist minister asked how the French state could be of service to the merchants, Le Gendre replied simply "Laissez-nous faire" ('Leave us be,' lit. 'Let us do').
(2) When Professor Galbraith gave a lecture at Chapman University in late 2008 he began his talk referring to having just walked past a sculpture of Milton Friedman in the Chapman University Quad. Galbraith quipped "it was a bust, and how appropriate," clearly suggesting that Milton Friedman's laissez-faire economic philosophy has proven to be a bust! Some others, including Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen, are more cautious and propose only that capitalism be re-conceived along lines of FDR's "second bill of rights," with numerous positive or welfare rights given protection equal to those laid out in the Bill of Rights or the Declaration of Independence or the criminal law. See his "Capitalism Beyond the Crisis," The New York Review of Books, March 26, 2009: 27-30.
(3) Oliver Cromwell, from THE WEEK, February 21, 2009, p. 19.
(4) See Liam Murphy and Thomas Nagel , The Myth of Ownership (Oxford University Press, 2004) and Stephen Holmes and Cass Sunstein, The Cost of Rights: Why Liberty Depends on Taxes (W. W. Norton & Co., 1999).
(5) Auguste Comte, The Catechism of Positive Religion (Clifton, NJ: Augustus M. Kelley Publ., 1973), pp. 212-30.
(6) I develop an extensive defense of an individualist conception of morality in my Classical Individualism (Routledge, 1998).
(7) Leon Wieseltier, "Love Me I'm a Liberal," The New Republic, March 4, 2009, p. 48.
(8) Cass R. Sunstein, The Second Bill of Rights: FDR'S Unfinished Revolution and Why We Need It More than Ever (New York: Basic Books, 2004). For President Obama’s position on this, see Mark Whittington, “Barack Obama and ‘The Second Bill of Rights’,” AP, October 28, 2008.

American Labor, Sensible, not Docile?

Tibor R. Machan

Some are comparing American workers to European ones quite unfavorably because in the face of the marked economic downturn many workers in Europe are throwing a major fit, while American workers, on the whole, remain calm and try to solver their problems like adults.

This counts as “docility” on the part of the Americans, at least for Steven Greenhouse of The New York Times. He reports, in his essay in the Week in Review section of The Sunday Times titled “In America, Labor Has An Unusually Long Fuse” (4/5/09, p. 3) that “in the United States, where G.M. plans its biggest layoffs, union members have seemed passive in comparison [to workers in France and elsewhere in Europe]…” How is this to be explained?

Mr. Greenhouse’s proposes that “American workers have increasingly steered clear of such militancy,” the kind shown earlier by “Mother Jones, John L. Lewis and Walther Reuther...for reasons that range from fear of having their jobs shipped overseas to their self-image as full-fledged members of the middle class, with all its trappings and aspirations.” According to David Kennedy “taken together, guilt, shame and individualism undercut any impulse to collective action....”

Well, maybe. But perhaps the good sense of most American workers explains it all much better. Perhaps most American workers know well and good not to look for some scapegoat and rail against it in the street. Maybe they realize that while some people surely bear responsibility for what has transpired in the American economy that has left them jobless for now, this wasn’t a conspiracy by their employers. Maybe they even suspect that the responsible party was America’s federal government, what with all its artificial methods of making everyone a homeowner, even those unable to afford a home, and the ensuing fiasco in the financial markets. Or they may even adopt the principle that one should find the actual culprit, if there is one, before one goes on a rampage breaking windows, burning cars, and risking death and destruction just to vent.

Ah, but that would fail to be misanthropic for the likes of Mr. Greenhouse and Professor Kennedy. Nor would it portray American workers as a bunch of helpless pawns being pushed around by forces they are unable to cope with. While there may be some such workers, my experience indicates that many do not fit this caricature. For example, back in 1957 American experienced a recession, if memory serves me right. I was a young man working as a draftsman at Carrier Air Conditioning Corporation in Cleveland, Ohio, and got laid off. The “demand” for my work disappeared very suddenly because the company got fewer and fewer contracts for its services. I knew well and good that it wasn’t some ill will on the part of my boss that brought this about so it didn’t even occur to me to throw a fit, to go after the firm with some kind of hostile action, to gather with others who were let go and perpetrate some form of revenge.

Instead I decided to take a few weeks of unemployment benefits and prepare to move someplace where I could find work. This happened to be a small town in Pennsylvania where friends of mine informed me that work was available. No, it wouldn’t be drafting but something less interesting yet sufficiently income generating for me—namely, working at an Army Depot unloading boxes from freight trains—so as to justify making the move. I had to leave my girlfriend behind, as well as friends and some family, but I need to earn a living and collecting unemployment payments rubbed me the wrong way even back then. And there were others in my situation who dispersed around the country so as to find new work. The idea of getting bailed out, as it were, just didn’t occur to most of those I knew who faced what I did, namely, need for new work.

I am willing to bet that many workers in America meet the challenge of needing a new job, line or work, even career, without thinking immediately of resorting either to protest marches or to docility. No, they are probably doing the sensible thing of looking for some alternative to the familiar and preferred work they can no longer count on by which to earned their living.

But it looks like the prominent commentators and analysts, of how people are supposed to cope with economic adversity, are oblivious to the approach taken by all those who make the requisite changes in their lives instead of venting their frustration and disappointment on the streets. That would be to give other than our politicians credit for doing something, anything, about the economic downturn we are experiencing. Maybe not everyone in dire straits is looking to be bailed out by President Obama & Co.

The Closest to Royalty

Tibor R. Machan

With my regular exercise going full force, mostly so as to manage my pretty awful sciatica, I get to watch the news for about a hour each day now, while I sweat away on my treadmill. During the half our or forty five minutes when I proceed with this to me quite undesirable exercise, I pick and choose from a variety of news sources--CNN Headline, MSNBC, Fox-TV, NBC-TV, CBS-TV or ABC-TV (if it's the right time for the latter's newscasts).

These days what there is a good deal of on most of these outlets is idolatry, the treatment of something or someone as a God, a false God to be sure. Or, as one of the NBC-TV morning news reporters from Washington, DC, put it, "what comes the closest to royalty" in America, the first couple, Michelle and Barack Obama.

And, yes, the couple strikes a good pose and has done pretty well at impressing Europeans many of whom are, after all, still living under royal rule--in Great Britain, Holland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Spain, albeit royalty with but a smattering of political clout. Still, somehow the Europeans hang on to the image, at least, of being governed by some god-sent person, someone one can well near worship.

What is puzzling to me, an emigrant from a country that up until the second world war was a royal protectorate or something--with Admiral Horthy as the regent--is why Americans, especially ones who end up being entrusted with news reporting, think so highly of royalty. Why is it any kind of plus for the president and first lady to amount to "what comes closest to royalty," when the birth of the nation involved overthrowing royalty and establishing the nemesis of it, namely, a republic? I consider this a backsliding in our culture, nothing less. Not that we need to be diplomatically ornery toward royalty abroad--diplomacy requires hard swallowing sometimes--but gushing should be out of the question.

But there is something even more amiss with the reception the Obama couple is getting from the Washington press corps. This is that they are so very enchanted with their good looks, their elegance, their beautiful people status. Mind you, I am actually very much in favor of beauty, including on the part of the figureheads of a nation (for in a free society they aren't leaders, only presiding officers). But the mainstream commentators and observers in our culture are supposed to be disdainful toward beauty, including in women. It was the prominent liberal commentator Noami Wolf who wrote the book, The Beauty Myth, which was to be the last liberal, egalitarian word on the role of beauty in a just society--namely, it should have no role, quite the opposite. It is to be scoffed at as irrelevant in human relationships, something one tends to be born with and therefore does not deserve! Yes, that is the official line.

So then why are these folks falling over themselves about the Obama couple's aesthetic and even sex appeal? Isn't that inappropriate? Kind of like hiring people in your university or company on the basis of, among other things, how good looking they are! Sadly it calls to mind just how easily the modern liberals, egalitarians, gave Bill Clinton a pass when he, Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States of America, was taking advantage of a young--admittedly willing--intern at the White House. No feminist outcry, nada!

I would have nothing much against welcoming good looks on the part of professionals provided it doesn't overshadow competence and other relevant qualifications. Why not prefer the attractive to the not so? Of course. But that's a right we have in choosing friends and associates that egalitarians and liberals tend to want to abolish, demean, or at least a right the exercise of which they find offensive.

So why, when one of their own turns out to be beautiful, don't they remind us of just how irrelevant that's supposed to be and how much more significant it is whether Mr. Obama's policies are doing any good at all in the quest to return the country to economic normalcy? Where is Noami Wolf now?

Some Sense about Advertising, etc.

Tibor R. Machan

John Kenneth Galbraith was a member of Harvard University's economics department as well as ambassador to India for JFK and a outspoken socialist. His debates with his close friend, the late William F. Buckley, Jr., were famous--and he lost all of them!

In his book The Affluent Society (1969?) he included a chapter, "The Dependence Effect," on advertising which has been reprinted all over the places, especially business ethics collections. He argued that corporations create desires in us all for their wares and services and we become hooked to them and thus corporations keep getting prosperous on and on and on. The even more famous Nobel Laureate economist F. A. Hayek wrote a rebuttal to Galbraith's piece, "The non-sequitur of 'The Dependence Effect'." He argued that Galbraith misunderstood desires, thinking them to be decisive in leading to human action. Hayek pointed out that desires can be governed, controlled, ordered, suppressed even. The two essays are featured in a great many books on business ethics and nearly all discussions of advertising.

I believe Hayek was right all along but if one needs proof, I believe our current economic mess provides it in spades. Consider how readily people, bent on tightening their belts, manage to resist ads everywhere. It is so bad that the government is making desperate efforts to bolster consumption, trying to generate, artificially, demands for goods and services that advertisements don't succeed in getting sold. Now, if corporations had all that power by way of advertising, that Galbraith had ascribed to them, how is it that they aren't bringing in customers? How is it that customers all over the country and elsewhere are these days refusing to spend their resources in the market? Advertising may have moved from newspapers to the Internet but there is plenty of it around, yet customers are no budging.

The likely truth of the matter is that the majority of people are quite capable of ordering their desires, of saying "no" to this ad or that, while "yes" to some others. And they do this mostly with an understanding of their economic situation, so that just now most of them, seeing that money is hard to come by, tend to be reticent, hesitant about spending. (Whether the efforts by governments, following certain parts of John Maynard Keynes' economic theory, to beef up demand works is an interesting and very much open question; books abound disputing the idea as well as supporting it, by reference, especially, to historical epochs such as the Great Depression and the ensuing New Deal.)


This also suggests something important about human choice. When people are said to have free will, it is often mistaken to imply that they act helter-skelter, without anyone able to predict anything they will or won't do. But that's not free will but randomness. Free will means one can set oneself on various courses of action, some short range and some quite long--just think of the commitment made when a the bride and groom utter "I do." Surely we can make some predictions as a result of that yet admit that they were free to choose whether to marry.

One reason the Obama administration's stimulus policy may not work out so well is that people aren't forced to respond to stimuli--they can turn away, refuting the underlying assumptions of what it takes to get them out there to buy stuff! Governments tend to wish we were malleable but we aren't, really. This is just one of many reasons governments ought not to be counted on to direct an economic system. The people of that system might not want to comply with The Plan they hatch there in Washington. They may well have other ideas in mind. In a genuine free market--not to shabby facsimile we have had in place for decades on end--the interacting individuals would figure out what is best for them and follow their judgments thus informed. And that would, like Adam Smith suggested, lead to the optimum overall economic benefit of all!

Equality is not big deal

Tibor R. Machan

In the fields of political philosophy, theory, and economy much debate occurs about just what is most important for a human community—that is, what, as a community guided by a legal system, should the citizenry be aiming for. The issue comes up, of course, outside of academic disputation, as well. For example, in his inaugural address President Obama stressed that America ought to have some large objective, a grand vision, and he promised that the country will pursue just such a vision. Others, like the American founders, don't stress any such overall objective and focus more on making it possible for citizens to pursue their own diverse visions, their happiness as they understand it. In many countries what is taken to be the overall goal is set by the Bible or the Koran or some other religious text. There are also countries, and have always been, in which the issues is left entirely up to some charismatic leader—he or she is to set the goals to be pursued by all.

In our time one favorite choice of political theorists is equality, especially economic equality. Many of these theorists, working at very prestigious academic institutions, think tanks, or writing for journals, established publishing houses and newspaper, contend that what a country needs to work toward is making all equally well off or, at least, reducing drastic differences in the population’s economic well being. This is evident in America, too, although again, initially, the only kind of equality the country was supposed to strive for is the equal protection of everyone’s basic rights, those laid out in the Declaration of Independence, for example, or the Bill of Rights. Sadly even this limited equality was badly violated with slavery.

Later matters changed, under the influence of prominent thinkers and various political movements, so that by the time of the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt the leading political figures endorsed not only the goal of the equal protection of individual rights to life, liberty and property—rights, which if conscientiously protected would make economic inequality pretty much the norm—but massive wealth redistribution so as to make people equally well off by political or legal means.

As an immigrant to America my expectations were based on the earlier idea—I thought that here most of the citizens would be at liberty to seek goals of their own which might or might not lead to economic equality. When I was in college I came across a spirited defense of egalitarianism in one newspaper and responded with a similarly spirited criticism of the idea. I noted that while to some people economic welfare may be a priority, to others it may well be something else—having artistic talents, traveling a good deal, or even gaining the favors of outstanding romantic mates. Certainly to quite a lot of us what is most important, at least at a certain stage of our lives, is to be preferred by potential mates whom we find really appealing. Quite a lot of people lament the fact that they are left behind while others are way ahead in the struggle to find appealing partners!

So perhaps what politicians and bureaucrats should set out to do is to secure equal opportunity or even equal results where these important matters to so many people are concerned. Money—economics—may be of considerable importance but money cannot buy happiness, at least not romantic happiness, for most of us. We would, to speak plainly about this, have to have been born and developed to become aesthetically quite appealing but, alas, there is a widespread unequal distribution of such qualities among the population. (I am willing to bet that if people expressed themselves honestly about this, they would agree that to them finding an appealing mate is more important than being as well of economically as the next person.)

Fact is, about some matters there is just no way to get things arranged politically no matter how hard it is tried. Most efforts to establish economic equality lead to some people having much greater political power than others, power that easily leads to abuse. Moreover, even if for a bit of time economic equality is established, by way of taxation and governmental wealth redistribution, in just a short time the pattern is upset by people making all kinds of different decisions about how they will used their resources.

Instead of aiming for economic equality the task of law and politics should be to make sure that in the quest to achieve whatever goals people have, they do not violate one another’s rights, they do not engage in violence but carry on peacefully, kind of like runners in a marathon race do, knowing well and good that at the end they will not be at the finish line all together.

This is Economic Fascism

Tibor R. Machan

Fascism is a political system in which a country is lead by a charismatic leader who has full power to order things about because he (or she) is taken to know best. Obviously this is a mythical sort of regime, with most of its essential features impossible to come by. No such leader exists, period, but there are many who pretend that they are fully qualified.

President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela is an excellent current case in point. So was Mussolini and Hitler and Stalin and so are Cuba's Fidel Castro and North Korea's Kim Jong-il. Fascism in those countries was and is total, not selective. (In contrast, when Chile was ruled by Pinochet, he left much of the economy to run by itself and exercised fascistic powers elsewhere.)

At least the auto manufacturing sector of the American economy has come under fascistic rule. President Obama and his team have assumed such powers pretty much on their own, without a referendum--indeed polls seem to show that most American disapprove of what they are doing, such as firing the head of GM. (One should ask, who are these people to assume such powers? By what right or authority do they do what no citizen of a free country could do with impunity?)

Is this move on the part of Obama & Co. justified? No. GM ought to suffer the consequences of its bad management, its loss of costumers, and the influence of the union leadership to which most of the workers belong. Big or small, there is no justification for a company to stay in business when it has lost most of its customer base and has become credit unworthy. Indeed, one of the best features of a genuine free economy is that such companies go out of business.

When critics of corporate America, such as Ralph Nader and his associates and co-authors, complain about corporate power, their beef is that the corporations are immune to market forces. They are all wrong, of course, and history has shown just how wrong they are, with companies going bust all over the place and at most periods of time. But when government confiscates the resources of its citizens and makes promises in behalf of millions who have no say in the matter, then such companies can be given a lease on their lives. Maybe the scam will work and some such companies will recover--Chrysler did so about half a century ago. But it is still wrong.

Only a country the economy of which is ruled by a fascist economic tsar has the power to subvert justice and good sense this way. Most genuine democracies would not comply with their leaders, although some have given them the power to become arbitrary rulers. (Hitler came to power democratically, as did Chavez!)

I must say it is very scary to me that this is going on in a country that once had every right to claim to be the leader of the free world. But no fascist system can make such a claim since it stands in direct opposition to liberty. But none of these should be very surprising to Americans. They have seen their federal and state governments act in fascistic fashion, for example, via the war on drugs, the Iraqi war, all kinds of intrusive ordinances throughout the country, and other features that are clear marks of a command economy. Now the chicken are coming home to roost and America is becoming something that would really upset its founders, a monarchy with a monarch who is laying claim to near absolute powers.

Unlike Venezuela, which is now pretty much stuck with Hugo Chavez for an indeterminate period of time and the citizens of which are mostly powerless to change the leadership, America still has periodic elections. Obama can be ousted the next time around if the Republicans can come up with a halfway decent candidate--which, sadly, is unlikely even if possible.

Or Americans can take off their rose colored glasses and begin to see President Obama and his team clearly, as a bunch of power hungry politicians and bureaucrats who have no other answer to the country's troubles than to increase their intrusions in the economy and, who knows, may be other parts as well. (I can easily imagine that if I were more widely read and they became aware of my column, they might go to the lengths of trying to silence me, just as Hugo Chavez has done with his opponents.)

Brazil's President Lula, Venzuela, and the U.S.A.

Tibor R. Machan

The president of Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva--President Lula for short--was recently interviewed by Fareed Zakaria on the latter's Sunday CNN program, GPS (Global Public Square). In this interview much was discussed in rather vague, geo-political terms, with banalities being the norm rather than the exception. For example, President Lula insisted that in the international community all the different cultural and national political practices and histories must be accorded equal respect, a notion, like multiculturalism, that is at best a gesture, more likely an impossibility and certainly something without much practical prospects.

At one point in the interview, however, President Lula discussed Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez and proposed that Chavez and Barack Obama reach some kind of rapprochement. And one particular proposal he gave voice to is that President Obama "show generosity toward Venezuela," especially now that oil prices are falling and the country's president no longer can afford to persist in its obstreperous ways. President Lula wasn't oblivious to America's own current economic difficulties. Yet he compared Venezuela to a looser in a boxing match, with America being the winner, so that by all the terms of good sportsmanship it is America's role to reach out and embrace Venezuela.

Of course, much of this is quite offensive to anyone who knows well and good that America and president Obama do not literally have the capacity to be generous. Generosity is a moral virtue of individuals who can, if they choose, dip into their own resources--which can include goods and services one may be able to produce--and give those to others whom they deem deserving. Countries can only be generous through the generosity of their citizens--so that, for example, when one calls America a generous country one must mean that the people of America practice the virtue of generosity in their own lives. Or they can have organizations, such as Rotary or the Salvation Army, with voluntarily generous members. But no president of a country can be generous except in his or her personal life. To confiscated resources from the citizens of the country of which one is the president and then give those resources to someone simply isn't being generous. Sure, people often talk that way but it is a mistake and produces a lot of confusion.

There may be various ways in which the president of the United States of America can facilitate better relations with another country--although when that other country's president calls the US "Satan" and is by all reasonable assessment a fascist dictator (see for this Enrique Krauze, "The Shah of Venezuela," The New Republic, April 1, 2009, pp. 29-38)--but generosity simply isn't one of them. Perhaps President Obama should push for foreign aid and similar wealth-redistibutory measures toward Venezuela, although these would have their own moral problems.

More likely, what Obama could do is promote the elimination to all restraints on trade with Venezuela. Yet, again, with Hugo Chavez it is difficult to fathom whatever would induce in him anything but hatred for America. He despises liberal democracies, for example, and he aspires to be the supreme ruler of the Americas. That seems to me difficult to reconcile with the principles of even a relatively free country like the USA.

President Lula seems like a man of good will but he, like so many others who head up governments around the world, seems to be totally oblivious to the idea that it is not he but the citizens of Brazil who are sovereign and that he is a civil servant, period. And of course Hugo Chavez is not just oblivious to what he really is in Venezuela but insists on claiming for himself virtual monarchical powers, as if these were a genuine possibility rather than a fiction from the past.

Sadly, as some have pointed out, America's own civil servants appear to be under the illusion that they are saviours, that their judgments in economic and other spheres must be superior to those of American citizens. (Obama's whole team appears to operate like the owners and managers of a huge corporation, which completely repudiates the idea of a genuine free society!) Maybe America will move toward the European model of social democracy, given that not much movement is actually needed any longer.

Still it is worthwhile to observe and critique the collectivist ideas that are in ascendancy these days, including the notion that President Obama and his administration could by any stretch of the imagination engage in generous conduct toward, say, Venezuela.

For Liberty, 100%

Tibor R. Machan

Over the years as I have learned more and more about how vital liberty is to a good, just human community, I have encountered sizable not just opposition and skepticism but out and out ridicule for holding this position. Of course, there are those, like Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, who are unabashed fascists and make no pretense of any devotion to human freedom. Those like Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and North Korea's Kim Jong-il make no bones about supporting anything but a regime of individual liberty for all its citizens. But within countries like the United States of America there are few political players who do not in some measure claim to be advocates of human freedom, including economic freedom.

Many who advocate the welfare state or some other half way system, in which government has a substantial role managing, regimenting human--especially economic--affairs claim that they are concerned with individual liberty. They often assert that their system is in fact more free than what defenders of the fully, libertarian political idea promote. They will maintain, with a straight face and one must assume very sincerely, that when they promote innumerable forms of government intervention, such as vast economic regulations and wealth redistribution, sometimes even curtailment of the right to free expression such as what is normally associated with the First Amendment to the federal constitution, they are the true defenders of freedom while those advocating a full, uncompromising free society are, in fact, making human liberty vulnerable to abrogation. Thus, as an example, it is sometimes argued that regulating business isn't an intervention in human liberty but a way of support it, to defend it from, for example, big corporations. The same with taxing people's resources!

But then there are those who say without hesitation that an unbridled free system isn't really one that's best for us. They will use terms like "market fundamentalism" by which to indicate that they find the idea of a fully free market system anathema to justice, that freedom is really not right, not if it is the basic standard for justice for all. Such folks sometimes call themselves democratic liberals, or even social democrats, indicating that they have no objection to the curtailment of an individual's right to liberty if that curtailment came about democratically. Market socialists, too, will give support to some measure of freedom of enterprise but will insist that it is best not to take that too far and to promote a regime that keeps society partially socialized. Often such people reserve some area of human social life as in need of total freedom, such as art or religion, but certainly in the area of economics they are eager supporters of extensive government intrusion in people's lives. Now and then you will hear that someone claims to be a libertarian even while championing limiting individual liberty along such lines.

If one is found to be advocating a fully free system, with no compromise on the principle of individual liberty--not in economics, not in the professions, not in education, not in farming, nada--then one is deemed to be an extremist by the self-described levelheaded, moderate folks who supposedly know better than to promote anything as crazy as full freedom for citizens of a just society. No, that would be going too far. (Some even say that full freedom implies defending the right of some to provide for themselves by taking the resources of others, so they are, in fact, the true defenders of liberty.) We need, after all, some governmental interference in how people conduct themselves in their commercial or economic lives, or some other sphere where such people regard it as only civilized and proper that some people will be in charge of how others carry on in their lives. We need some government regulation, don't we? Otherwise chaos will break out, the weak will go unprotected against the powerful, etc., etc., and so forth.

Not all of this can be addressed in a brief discussion but I believe keeping a certain point in mind will at least suggest that there is a fallacy in such partial support for individual liberty, for the denial that the right to liberty requires 100 % protection, with no exceptions, not at any rate as a feature of a just legal order. (We all know that some extremely rare cases can justify limiting liberty, as when you prevent someone you are walking with from stepping into an open whole or drinking a glass of liquid that you happen to know contains poison. But as the saying goes, "hard cases make bad law," so acknowledging some exceptional cases like these does not justify including violations of human liberty on a systematic basis! That is, by the way, what the fuss about government's use of torture is all about--it must not be government's official policy.)

Now, if one were to discuss human slavery, including that which was part of the United States of America not all that long ago, it is generally appreciated that none of it is tolerable in a just legal system. All the ink that columnist Nicholas D. Kristof of The New York Times spills on locating even the tiniest elements of human slavery around the globe and working to abolish it are taken by most people who love justice to be fully justified. Few would dare suggest that Kristof is a freedom fundamentalist, an extremist, for insisting that no slavery at all be tolerated, anywhere, for any reason anyone might cook up. When slaves are set free, finally, the suggestion that they be kept under supervision by local authorities, that their conduct be regulated or regimented since full freedom leads to chaos--all such stuff is clearly off the table and mostly seen as morally obscene.

Well, it is exactly in that spirit that it is obscene to limit economic liberty for anyone. Human beings have a right to liberty and that includes any sphere of, for example their economic, conduct. If they haven't violated another's liberty, if they haven't been shown via due process of law to deserve to have their liberty curtailed or limited, there is no justification for it. And all those who defend the total liberation of people from government interference in their peaceful conduct can say, with no apologies at all, that yes they are free market fundamentalist. I certainly am such a one.

Can't They See the Contradiction?

Tibor R. Machan

In the March 28, 2009, issue of Science News there is a story on physically shrinking fish. Presumably because fishing often involves keeping large fish but throwing back small ones, there is evidence from close observation that development is headed toward smaller sized fish. The story also suggests that those doing the fishing could act differently from how they do, namely, change their practice of throwing back only small fish. Since they fail to do so, a slow reversal of the effects of such fishing may need to be induced.

The puzzle here is that on the one hand we have evolutionary forces in play but on the other we do not. So fisheries biologists can--and may need to--counter evolutionary forces. And that suggests that evolutionary forces aren't ubiquitous but operate selectively. How can that be? And if it can happen vis-a-vis fish, where else might it happen?

In addition to this puzzle there is another one, specific to the editorial stance of Science News itself. Some issues back Tom Siegfried, Science News's editor, wrote an essay in which he said that free will is an illusion (albeit one with some kind of evolutionary function). That is to say that while human beings do not have free will, they cannot make basic choices as to how they will conduct themselves, evolution has produced for them the conviction that they do. Never mind that this impugns the effectiveness of evolutionary forces since evidently Mr. Sigfried was able to go against the belief that evolution supposedly created. He, after all, by his own testimony does not believe in free will! Neither do thousands of others, especially in the community of biologists (though there are some exceptions, especially among evolutionary biologists). Quite apart from that puzzle, there is also the one about how one can implore those doing the fishing to do better at what they are doing, namely, preserving fish populations while they are also said to be incapable of choosing their conduct, including how they do their fishing.

The famous 18th century German philosopher Immanuel Kant, along with some others, spelled out the preconditions of intelligibly ascribing moral and other responsibilities to someone. He coined the motto, "'ought' implies 'can'," which means that if someone ought to or should do something or refrain from doing it, it must be the case that he or she is free to choose whether to do it. Saying that A ought to do x makes no sense if A has no choice about doing x.

Science News appears to have fallen prey to the contradiction of both claiming people lack free will and that they ought to act differently from how they do. This is not only so when it comes to some of the practices of those doing fishing. It also applies to when Science News chides a given government administration for failing to be friendly to the sciences or praises another for being friendly to them. To spell it out, if all politicians and their constituents are incapable of making choices about their conduct, including what public policies they will support and enact, then holding them responsible for failing to be friendly to the sciences is entirely moot. If free will is, as Science News editor Siegfried argued, an illusions, then the idea that fishing might be done differently from how it is being done or that people should be giving better support to the sciences just makes no sense.

Maybe this all a problem of hubris. Maybe Mr. Siegfried and Co., just cannot fathom that they need to reflect on matters a bit more deeply then they do, that they may need to see if their position on some issues can be reconciled with those on others. If you are going to engage in moral criticism or praise, then it is best not to sound off against the very preconditions of such criticism or praise. Either it is all qué será, será or people can indeed make better choices about their conduct than what Science News disapproves of.