“No one should die because they cannot afford health care, and no one should go broke because they get sick.  If you agree, please post this as your status for the rest of the day.” 

Facebook users will no doubt recognize the above quote, which was recently posted as a “wave” by some supporters of socialized medicine.  Evidently they just wanted everyone to know how deeply they care about the plight of the less fortunate who, for whatever reason, cannot afford health insurance.  I have no doubt that all those who posted the aforementioned status update to their Facebook page also contacted their favorite health-related charity that very same day to make a sizable donation.  Otherwise the more cynical among us might have thought that their public display of concern for the downtrodden was really nothing but a shallow demand for the government to spend everyone else’s money.  

Granted, scanning my friends’ Facebook pages is not exactly a scientific survey, but it does at least offer an opportunity to see what some of the people in my network are thinking.  As health care seems to be the one and only issue being discussed in the media these days, it is naturally a hot topic on social networking sites as well.  In addition to the pro-government medicine wave, there are also various Facebook polls concerning health insurance, such as the one that asks, “Should health care be considered a basic human right?”  At the time of this writing, the results were 72% Yes, 28% No. 

As sad a commentary as those results are, the poll question itself reveals how poorly most people understand fundamental concepts.  Rights, in the classical liberal tradition upon which the US government was founded, derive from our nature as human beings.  The Facebook poll question, however, asks whether health care should be a right or not – the implication being that what is or is not a right is subject to change at any given time, like the menu down at the corner deli.  

As libertarians and a few others understand, however, something is either a right or it is not.  “Should” doesn’t enter into the equation.  In a recent episode of his online show “Freedom Watch,” Judge Andrew Napolitano stated (correctly) that “health care is not a right, it is a good.”  Many people (at least 72% of Facebook respondents, anyway) would obviously take issue with Judge Napolitano’s position, but I suspect the disagreement is primarily a semantic one.  Perhaps we should define our terms – especially fundamental terms like “rights” – before getting bogged down in the details of any particular proposal.  Only then will we be able to make some progress in the national health care debate.  

In the modern vernacular, the term “right” seems to mean “anything I might like to have.”  Health care is (or for those of you on Facebook, should be) a right because everyone wants it, or needs it, or thinks it’s really nifty.  The same goes for education, a minimum wage, a three-bedroom house with a view, or whatever else people want to throw on the government wish list at any given time. 

The fallacy underlying this popular definition of rights shouldn’t be too hard to disprove.  And when it comes to the issue of universal health care, it would behoove the liberty-minded individual to do so as quickly as possible.  If the popular definition goes unchallenged, the proponents of socialized medicine will inevitably claim that health care is a basic human right, and will consider that to be the end of the argument – their “get out of the debate free card,” if you will.  As the concept of rights in the traditional American sense is now so poorly understood, you may have to work a bit to educate those who haven’t been exposed to the foundational principles of our fair republic.  Nevertheless, it’s an important task that should help clarify the issues at stake.  What follows are a couple of strategies that may help illustrate the difference between the legitimate rights of the Lockean tradition and the illegitimate positive rights that seem to dominate the discussion these days.  No doubt the reader knows of other approaches that are equally effective. 

When confronted with the claim that X, Y, or Z is a “right,” the first question we should ask is, “Does everyone have the same rights, or do different people have different rights?”  If we can agree that all people have the same rights, then we can probably move forward with the discussion.  If our opponents claim that some people have more rights than others, then we should probably just back away slowly and not make any sudden moves until we have reached a minimum safe distance.  Life’s too short to argue with pinheads. 

Assuming we do agree that all people have the same rights, then it follows that rights must be universal.  That is, they must apply equally to all people, at all places, at all times.  This is merely a restatement of the already agreed-upon proposition.  One way to determine whether something meets the universality constraint is to use the “desert island” test. 

Let’s imagine that I’ve been shipwrecked on a desert island.  After I wash up on shore, do I have a right to my life?  Yes.  Do I have a right to whatever property I have with me, or am able to create using the resources available to me on the island?  Yes.  Would I have these rights no matter when I got stranded on the desert island, be it the year 1609, 2009, or 3709?  Yes.  Would I have these rights without regard to my race, color, national origin, religion or creed, gender, sexual orientation, age, or disability?  Yes.  So it seems that these rights – life and property – satisfy the universality constraint.  They apply equally to everyone, at all places, at all times. 

Now let’s continue the test.  If I’m stranded on a desert island, do I have a right to health care?  If no one is around to provide health care to me, then how can I have a right to it?  Would I have the right, as some claim, to health care regardless of when I wash up on shore?  Would I have the right, for example, to a CAT scan if I were shipwrecked in the year 1609?  Clearly, health care fails the universality criteria for basic human rights.  It cannot apply equally to all people, at all places, at all times. 

Another way to conceptualize the distinction is to describe a right as something for which one would be morally justified in using force to obtain.  I have the right to use force against someone who is trying to kill me because I have a right to my own life.  I do not have a right to anyone else’s life, and therefore I would not be morally justified in using force against those who do not attempt to harm me first.  Hopefully most people would agree to that proposition without the aid of any long, drawn-out logical proofs.  

Let’s imagine that Joe is trying to kill Frank for no other reason than the voices in his head told him to.  In this example, Frank would be justified in shooting Joe if need be because Frank has the right to his own life.  

Now let’s say that Joe is not trying to kill Frank.  Instead, Joe is sitting at home, minding his own business.  If Frank falls ill, would he be morally justified in shooting Joe if Joe doesn’t pay for Frank’s medical treatment?  Most sane people would say no.  Nevertheless, if the proponents of socialized medicine who claim that health care is a basic human right wish to be logically consistent, they would have to say that Frank would be within his rights to use force against Joe in this case.  To my knowledge, few proponents of Obamacare have been quite so forthright. 

There are many things in this life that are necessary for mankind to survive and flourish, and health care is certainly one of them – along with food and water, clothing, shelter, and countless other goods and services.  People have the right to desire whatever they want (an Aston Martin, cable TV, sunshine and puppy dogs), but this does not grant them a right to the thing itself, no matter how much they may want or even need it.  To suggest that we have a right to the goods and services that others must provide us is to claim that we can legitimately impose contractual obligations on those other people with or without their consent.  There’s a term for that kind of forced labor, and as far as I know, slavery is still considered très déclassé. 

As important as this semantic discussion of rights may be, I don’t imagine for a second that it will halt the drive toward universal health care in this country, even if we are successful in restoring the true meaning of the term.  Most people just want what they want, and they’re not going to let some egg-headed notions of rights and ethics stand in the way.  But at least it would help to strip away the false virtue that proponents of socialized health care have used to cloud the debate.  Perhaps then more people would see Obamacare for what it really is – gun-run medicine.  

If you agree, please post this as your status for the rest of the day… 

(Desert island photograph from here).

“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; Courage to change the things I can; And wisdom to know the difference.” 

Perhaps libertarianism would be more popular if it weren’t such a humbling philosophy.  One of the key insights of libertarian thought, particularly as it relates to economics, is that the collective wisdom of the market is always superior to the grand designs of a small group of people, no matter how competent or well-intentioned they may be.  Many free-market thinkers such as Leonard Read (I, Pencil) and Ludwig Von Mises (Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth) have expanded upon this concept, but F.A. Hayek (The Fatal Conceit) may have put it best when he said, “The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”   

None of these writers ever claimed that the market was perfect.  They did, however, show how the market’s price mechanism transmits vital information throughout the economy far more efficiently than any government planners ever could.  In addition, they demonstrated how the market’s system of profit and loss rewards desirable behavior and punishes undesirable behavior far more effectively than the comparatively weak feedback mechanism of voting that supposedly constrains representative governments. 

This concept, as important as it is, doesn’t seem to translate very well into the political arena.  Voters expect politicians to have a central plan to run every aspect of human existence, and politicians never fail to come up with one.  It’s a shame that so few people have read Hayek’s The Use of Knowledge in Society.  If more people understood the ramifications of his work, we wouldn’t have to suffer through agonizing speeches like the one President Obama gave before Congress last week.  

In a speech of about 5,600 words (none of which happened to be “Constitution”), President Obama attempted to make the case that, under his wise and benevolent rule, the federal government could provide health insurance more efficiently, more affordably, and more universally than the market can.  In addition, he claimed that the changes he has in store for the health insurance industry will have no ill effects whatsoever for the 90% of Americans who already have insurance. 

Not everyone in the audience was convinced.  At one point during the speech, Republican Joe Wilson of South Carolina shouted out, “You lie!”  I won’t go as far in this post as Representative Wilson did in maligning President Obama’s intentions (I already did that in a previous post).  For now, let’s simply accept at face value that the President’s deep and abiding faith in the inherent efficiency and virtue of the federal government truly leads him to believe his own propaganda about universal health care.  In that case he’s not technically lying – he’s just horribly, horribly wrong. 

Exhibiting the “fatal conceit” described by Hayek, President Obama made a number of statements that were meant to assuage the concerns some have about a federal takeover of health insurance.  In making these claims, Obama described the changes his plans would impose on the industry, but studiously avoided mentioning how the market would react to those changes. 

Let’s examine each of the elements highlighted by President Obama in his speech.  His first claim was that, “…if you are among the hundreds of millions of Americans who already have health insurance through your job, or Medicare, or Medicaid, or the VA, nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have.  Let me repeat this: nothing in our plan requires you to change what you have.” 

As I mentioned in an earlier post, President Obama is technically correct when he states that none of the various bills floating around Congress at the moment contain a requirement for Americans to change their existing coverage.  He is patently wrong, however, when he implies that this will not be the inevitable result of his policy.  The changes being proposed will drive up costs and crowd out private insurance.  Employers will respond to the increases in premiums and will soon drop health insurance from their benefit plans altogether, which will force most people into the government option just as surely as if the bill had required it from the start. 

Continuing, Obama claimed that “What this plan will do is make the insurance you have work better for you. Under this plan, it will be against the law for insurance companies to deny you coverage because of a pre-existing condition.” 

Insurance is a way to hedge against future uncertainty.  There is no way to hedge against a risk that has already occurred.  The effect of prohibiting insurance companies from denying coverage to those with pre-existing conditions will be to insulate people from the risks of not carrying insurance, which will incentivize them to eschew health insurance altogether until after they become sick.  Since insurance companies must receive more in premiums than they pay out in claims in order to stay in business, the pre-existing condition requirement will serve only to crowd out private insurers in favor of the government alternative.  The only way around this inevitable outcome is the individual mandate, which threatens “free” citizens with fines and imprisonment if they choose not to buy health insurance.  The individual mandate is part of the Obama plan as well.  The mandate may serve to minimize the damage caused by the plan’s pre-existing condition constraint, but it has no place in a free society. 

President Obama also stated that, “As soon as I sign this bill, it will be against the law for insurance companies to drop your coverage when you get sick or water it down when you need it the most.” 

I thought this was an odd selling point for a government-run plan.  According to the Lockean theory of natural rights upon which the US federal government was based, the purpose of government is to protect individuals from acts of aggression by other individuals.  Fraud is an act of aggression, and there are already plenty of laws on the books to deal with it.  If, as President Obama wishes us to believe, insurance companies are routinely violating the terms of their contracts as soon as their customers get sick, then surely the government is failing in its primary role as the enforcer of those agreements.  This leads one to wonder why the government, which is so demonstrably incompetent in fulfilling its primary mission, should be granted additional power to manage health insurance. 

The President then went on to assure us that, “They will no longer be able to place some arbitrary cap on the amount of coverage you can receive in a given year or in a lifetime.  We will place a limit on how much you can be charged for out-of- pocket expenses, because in the United States of America, no one should go broke because they get sick.” 

There are both ethical and pragmatic problems with this feature of Obamacare (and with all its other features as well).  Ethically, why shouldn’t people be allowed to negotiate the terms of a contract as they see fit?  If I promise to pay you X dollars – but not a penny more – in the event of illness or injury, and you accept the terms of that agreement, why should we be prevented from making that deal?  Pragmatically, how can I be expected to make a profit out of such an arrangement if the government imposes limitless liability on me for each and every one of my customers?   Obviously I cannot run a business this way, and will eventually be forced out of the industry altogether. 

One of the President’s last key points was, that “…insurance companies will be required to cover, with no extra charge, routine checkups and preventive care, like mammograms and colonoscopies.” 

There’s a reason that oil changes and tire rotations are not covered under your auto insurance.  These are foreseeable costs of car ownership, and including them under insurance plans would not only run counter to the purpose of insurance, but would also drive up the cost of that insurance.  Covering routine check-ups under a health insurance plan will likelwise drive up the costs associated with that plan as individuals are encouraged to over-consume those services.  Preventing insurance companies from offsetting those increased costs through higher premiums will simply push marginal players from the market, reducing the supply of private health insurance and further reinforcing the crowding-out effect of public investment in the industry. 

None of these obvious and predictable consequences will in any way dissuade those in Washington from continuing down the destructive path they’re on.  And why should they?  Although President Obama stated on “60 Minutes” that he has “every reason to get [health care] right,” nothing could be further from the truth.  The number of Americans who can identify the impacts of allegedly unintended consequences of government policy on market functions amounts to little more than a rounding error.  Barack Obama will be out of office long before the disastrous effects of his policies are felt in the health care field.  And when they are, the American people will lay the blame for their dissatisfaction not with President Obama and the political class that foisted this monstrosity upon us, but rather on the so-called “free market” that has been so handcuffed by government regulation that it can no longer function at all.  When that happens, yet another opportunistic politician will step in with some grand plan to fix the problems caused by all the other opportunistic politicians who came before him.  At no point will he advocate that the government step aside and simply allow the market to function.  That would require a Hayekian understanding of one’s own limitations, which is something very few politicians seem to possess.  

It’s hard to be humble, after all.

Last week’s episode of The Philosopher’s Zone was titled, “The Epistemology of Blogging.”  Alan Saunders discussed blogging’s impact on the development and dissemination of knowledge in society with two speakers, Rutgers University’s Alvin Goldman and the University of Tasmania’s David Cody.

Professor Goldman argued that, to the degree to which blogging hastens the demise of the traditional media, investigative journalism will suffer.  In addition, the blogosphere lacks the traditional media’s gatekeepers, who work tirelessly to ensure that the information we get from outlets such as The New York Times, Time Magazine, CNN, and Fox News is only of the highest quality.  Professor Goldman is concerned that blogging enables consumers to self-select unfiltered information that merely confirms their biases.  This could lead to less informed voters, which could end up harming the democratic process. 

Professor Goldman obviously has a much higher opinion of the traditional media and of the democratic process than I do.

David Cody, on the other hand, took the glass-half-full perspective on blogging, suggesting that the democratic process doesn’t need gatekeepers in the first place, and that blogs offer some healthy competition to the world of news and information.  He drew a parallel between modern arguments against blogging to the arguments made against the printing press in the 15^th century.  It seems that Johannes Gutenberg took some flak from the established information gatekeepers of his day, too. 

Obviously Mr. Cody’s viewpoint more closely reflects my own. 

As I listened to the podcast, though, I was struck by Professor Goldman’s implication that the traditional media actually provide the range of perspectives that he believes is so important to the body politic.  As a libertarian, the idea that consuming information provided by the major news outlets would lead to a more informed, unbiased populace is laughable.  I can probably count on one hand the number of times that a pro-liberty perspective has ever been presented by the mainstream media.  Instead, all we ever get is a comparison and contrast of two marginally different big-government approaches to any given issue, and at no point is a serious critique of the role of government ever allowed to enter into the conversation.  If it weren’t for the advent of blogs and other non-traditional media outlets, these more fundamental questions might never be considered at all.  

This idea stayed with me all week as I listened to and read the traditional news media.  For example, The Dallas Morning News ran a story about how parents are left to decide when their children are old enough to stay at home alone.  To quote the article, “Laws govern when children can drive, vote, drink, even quit school. But in Texas, there’s no limit on the age when a child can stay home alone.”  What primitives we Texans must be!  How can we possibly be expected to handle the pressures of parenthood if the state government doesn’t even tell us when our children are old enough to be left alone?  I suppose next we’ll be expected to make our own decisions about what our kids can eat or what clothes they can wear.  When, oh when, will the madness stop?

Not to be outdone, NPR threw its hat into the ring this week to compete for the honor of the most idiotic piece of journalism with a story on how the poor American dairy farmer is suffering from the low prices paid for milk these days.  At no point in an almost thirteen-minute piece covering the price of dairy products did the reporter, John Burnett, manage to mention the myriad government subsidies and price supports that have controlled the dairy industry since 1937.  Instead, all we heard was whining about the “free market” and (of course) “too little government oversight.”  I understand that journalists can’t know everything about everything, but how is it possible to know nothing about anything?

And then there’s health “reform.”  As far as I can tell, all of the traditional media outlets – no matter what their supposed political biases may be – use the term “reform” when covering President Obama’s efforts to nationalize the health care and insurance industries.  Of course, the word “reform” means “to improve through alteration.”  This is a normative statement that begs the question, and it has no business being mentioned by allegedly objective journalists in their discussion of the issue.

With stories like these shot through the traditional media outlets, it’s hard to take Professor Goldman’s concerns too seriously.  If this is the kind of service that the traditional media’s vaunted “gatekeepers” provide, we’re probably all better off just reading unfiltered blogs (like this one).

President Obama met with Pope Benedict XVI last week at the Vatican.  During the meeting, the Pope provided the president with a copy of his new encyclical letter, Caritas In Veritate.  Most of the press coverage has focused on the pro-life elements of the treatise and the obvious disagreements between the Church and President Obama over issues such as abortion and embryonic stem-cell research.  But it should be noted that the Pope’s encyclical dedicates as much (if not more) time to the issues of globalization and the current economic crisis, and in this respect the Pope and the President are like two peas in a pod.  Both demonstrate the same profound ignorance of basic economics, and both prescribe bigger, more powerful government as the cure for what ails us. 

Caritas In Veritate (Charity in Truth) is Pope Benedict’s 2009 sequel to Pope Paul VI’s Populorum Progressio, written in 1967.  Ayn Rand shredded the 1967 original in her essay, “Requiem for Man.”  (This post won’t be nearly as insightful as Rand’s review of Populorum Progressio, but it’s interesting to note that after more than forty years the Church still doesn’t understand the ethical superiority of the free market relative to the political sphere’s command-and-control model).  

The text of Caritas In Veritate is long and rambling, and in many cases self-contradictory.  Often it’s a one-step-forward-two-steps-back affair.  At times the Pope makes some good points about some social ill or other, but then he offers statist solutions that would only aggravate the problem he seeks to remedy.  And throughout the encyclical he overlooks the coercion upon which all state action is based – a troubling oversight from someone who supposedly spends every waking hour wrestling with issues of ethics and morality. 

As the title suggests, the theme of the Pope’s letter is charity.  In the letter, he claims that modern society lacks an overarching sense of charity that would encourage people to think of more than just themselves.  This sense of charity should infuse not only individuals, but also their economic and political institutions.  Pope Benedict sets out his premise in the introduction to the encyclical, which states (in part), 

“Charity in truth, to which Jesus Christ bore witness by his earthly life and especially by his death and resurrection, is the principal driving force behind the authentic development of every person and of all humanity. Love — caritas — is an extraordinary force which leads people to opt for courageous and generous engagement in the field of justice and peace…. 

… Charity is at the heart of the Church’s social doctrine. Every responsibility and every commitment spelt out by that doctrine is derived from charity which, according to the teaching of Jesus, is the synthesis of the entire Law (cf. Mt 22:36- 40). It gives real substance to the personal relationship with God and with neighbour; it is the principle not only of micro-relationships (with friends, with family members or within small groups) but also of macro-relationships (social, economic and political ones). 

I am aware of the ways in which charity has been and continues to be misconstrued and emptied of meaning, with the consequent risk of being misinterpreted, detached from ethical living and, in any event, undervalued. In the social, juridical, cultural, political and economic fields — the contexts, in other words, that are most exposed to this danger — it is easily dismissed as irrelevant for interpreting and giving direction to moral responsibility.” 

And here is where the letter starts to get off track (the introduction).  The Pope is trying to shoehorn the virtue of charity into the sphere of government and politics.  One of the necessary components of charity (and of morality itself) is that it be freely chosen.  One of the necessary components of government action, on the other hand, is coercion.  These two elements – charity and government – are therefore mutually exclusive.  The moral element the Pope wishes to inculcate in society is sacrificed the moment the state is used as the means to that end.  One of the most basic elements of morality is free will.  Once the individual’s ability to choose is removed, as it must be whenever the state is involved, that person’s ability to act as a moral agent is also eliminated.  Once charity is forced upon someone, it can no longer be described as charity.  Even if the state uses the taxes it collects for otherwise noble purposes, such as feeding the poor or clothing the naked, it ceases to be charity and becomes instead wealth redistribution.  Redistribution of wealth is not the same as charity.  The moral dimension that would quality an act as charitable if undertaken voluntarily is destroyed by the use of force. 

At times Caritas In Veritate does pay lip service to the notion of freedom as an essential characteristic of charity.  For example, in the following quote the Pope makes reference to individual rights, saying: 

“Charity is love received and given…Charity goes beyond justice, because to love is to give, to offer what is ‘mine’ to the other; but it never lacks justice, which prompts us to give the other what is ‘his’, what is due to him by reason of his being or his acting.  I cannot ‘give’ what is mine to the other, without first giving him what pertains to him in justice.  If we love others with charity, then first of all we are just towards them.  Not only is justice not extraneous to charity, not only is it not an alternative or parallel path to charity: justice is inseparable from charity, and intrinsic to it.  Justice is the primary way of charity or, in Paul VI’s words, ‘the minimum measure’ of it, an integral part of the love ‘in deed and in truth’ (1 Jn 3:18), to which Saint John exhorts us. On the one hand, charity demands justice: recognition and respect for the legitimate rights of individuals and peoples. It strives to build the earthly city according to law and justice. On the other hand, charity transcends justice and completes it in the logic of giving and forgiving.” 

So far, so good, but again the Pope immediately places this notion of charity that respects individual rights and justice in a political context: 

“Another important consideration is the common good. To love someone is to desire that person’s good and to take effective steps to secure it. Besides the good of the individual, there is a good that is linked to living in society: the common good. It is the good of ‘all of us’, made up of individuals, families and intermediate groups who together constitute society. It is a good that is sought not for its own sake, but for the people who belong to the social community and who can only really and effectively pursue their good within it. To desire the common good and strive towards it is a requirement of justice and charity. To take a stand for the common good is on the one hand to be solicitous for, and on the other hand to avail oneself of, that complex of institutions that give structure to the life of society, juridically, civilly, politically and culturally, making it the pólis, or ‘city’. The more we strive to secure a common good corresponding to the real needs of our neighbours, the more effectively we love them. Every Christian is called to practise this charity, in a manner corresponding to his vocation and according to the degree of influence he wields in the pólis. This is the institutional path — we might also call it the political path — of charity, no less excellent and effective than the kind of charity which encounters the neighbour directly, outside the institutional mediation of the pólis. When animated by charity, commitment to the common good has greater worth than a merely secular and political stand would have.” 

Again, the Pope’s encyclical glosses over the means to the end.  The political path of charity is indeed less excellent and effective than the kind of charity which encounters the neighbor directly outside the institutional mediation of the polis.  From an ethical perspective, the use of force that underlies the political process is far less desirable than voluntary free-market interactions.  From a practical perspective, the state’s insulation from market-driven feedback mechanisms ensures that it will be far less effective in reducing poverty than voluntary, grassroots organizations. 

The encyclical continues with an analysis of the current global financial meltdown that reads as if it had been written by the reporters at NPR: 

“Today, as we take to heart the lessons of the current economic crisis, which sees the State’s public authorities directly involved in correcting errors and malfunctions, it seems more realistic to re-evaluate their role and their powers, which need to be prudently reviewed and remodeled so as to enable them, perhaps through new forms of engagement, to address the challenges of today’s world.” 

“Through the combination of social and economic change, trade union organizations experience greater difficulty in carrying out their task of representing the interests of workers, party because Governments, for reasons of economic utility, often limit the freedom or the negotiating capacity of labour unions.” 

“The right to food, like the right to water, has an important place within the pursuit of other rights, beginning with the fundamental right to life.  It is therefore necessary to cultivate a public conscience that considers food and access to water as universal rights of all human beings, without distinction or discrimination.” 

“Lowering the level of protection accorded to the rights of workers, or abandoning mechanisms of wealth redistribution in order to increase the country’s international competitiveness, hinder the achievement of lasting development.” 

“…It must be borne in mind that grave imbalances are produced when economic action, conceived merely as an engine for wealth creation, is detached from political action, conceived as a means for pursuing justice through redistribution.” 

You get the point.  Read Caritas In Veritate in its entirety if you’re interested in more, or if you’re concerned that these quotes are taken out of context.  I think they give a reasonable encapsulation of the Pope’s viewpoint on economic affairs.  But don’t get me wrong – I don’t want to give the reader the impression that the Pope is just sitting on the sidelines carping about the economy without offering any solutions.  Far from it.  He goes on to provide some practical policy advice as well: 

“In the face of the unrelenting growth of global interdependence, there is a strongly felt need, even in the midst of a global recession, for a reform of the United Nations Organization, and likewise of economic institutions and international finance, so that the concept of the family of nations can acquire real teeth. One also senses the urgent need to find innovative ways of implementing the principle of the responsibility to protect and of giving poorer nations an effective voice in shared decision-making. This seems necessary in order to arrive at a political, juridical and economic order which can increase and give direction to international cooperation for the development of all peoples in solidarity. To manage the global economy; to revive economies hit by the crisis; to avoid any deterioration of the present crisis and the greater imbalances that would result; to bring about integral and timely disarmament, food security and peace; to guarantee the protection of the environment and to regulate migration: for all this, there is urgent need of a true world political authority, as my predecessor Blessed John XXIII indicated some years ago. Such an authority would need to be regulated by law, to observe consistently the principles of subsidiarity and solidarity, to seek to establish the common good, and to make a commitment to securing authentic integral human development inspired by the values of charity in truth. Furthermore, such an authority would need to be universally recognized and to be vested with the effective power to ensure security for all, regard for justice, and respect for rights. Obviously it would have to have the authority to ensure compliance with its decisions from all parties, and also with the coordinated measures adopted in various international forums. Without this, despite the great progress accomplished in various sectors, international law would risk being conditioned by the balance of power among the strongest nations. The integral development of peoples and international cooperation require the establishment of a greater degree of international ordering, marked by subsidiarity, for the management of globalization. They also require the construction of a social order that at last conforms to the moral order, to the interconnection between moral and social spheres, and to the link between politics and the economic and civil spheres, as envisaged by the Charter of the United Nations.” 

That’s right.  The Pope believes that society’s lack of charity can be solved by giving the UN more coercive power.  Even though the world’s largest governments have routinely failed to deliver their citizens from poverty or to instill a sense of charity in the polis, an even larger government will succeed.  This new, larger, more powerful government will, of course, avoid all of the moral failings that have plagued all other governments since time immemorial (somehow).  The same UN responsible for Oil for Food and peacekeeping missions in the Congo will, in some unspecified manner, straighten up and fly right, thus becoming a paragon of virtue. 

For some reason I’m skeptical that a bunch of corrupt, unelected, and unaccountable UN bureaucrats will use their guns, money, and power to make everyone in the world more charitable.  I rather suspect that they would only use them for their own personal gain.  So instead of imposing further UN-sponsored misery on the world, perhaps we should take a different approach.  Although he seems to be completely unaware of it, Pope Benedict XVI himself alludes to this alternate approach in Caritas In Veritate:

“In Populorum Progressio, Paul VI taught that progress, in its origin and essence, is first and foremost a vocation: ‘in the design of God, every man is called upon to develop and fulfil himself, for every life is a vocation’…A vocation is a call that requires a free and responsible answer. Integral human development presupposes the responsible freedom of the individual and of peoples: no structure can guarantee this development over and above human responsibility. The ‘types of messianism which give promises but create illusions’ always build their case on a denial of the transcendent dimension of development, in the conviction that it lies entirely at their disposal. This false security becomes a weakness, because it involves reducing man to subservience, to a mere means for development, while the humility of those who accept a vocation is transformed into true autonomy, because it sets them free. Paul VI was in no doubt that obstacles and forms of conditioning hold up development, but he was also certain that ‘each one remains, whatever be these influences affecting him, the principal agent of his own success or failure.’ This freedom concerns the type of development we are considering, but it also affects situations of underdevelopment which are not due to chance or historical necessity, but are attributable to human responsibility. This is why ‘the peoples in hunger are making a dramatic appeal to the peoples blessed with abundance’. This too is a vocation, a call addressed by free subjects to other free subjects in favour of an assumption of shared responsibility. Paul VI had a keen sense of the importance of economic structures and institutions, but he had an equally clear sense of their nature as instruments of human freedom. Only when it is free can development be integrally human; only in a climate of responsible freedom can it grow in a satisfactory manner.”

In this passage, the Pope inadvertently provides a very good explanation as to why state involvement is antithetical to real charity, progress, and human development.  State control denies the individual the freedom needed to pursue his or her vocation.  Government maintains the illusion that it is the source of prosperity, which in turn creates a false sense of security that ultimately reduces man to subservience.  In contrast, true charity can only exist within a sphere of freedom.  And it is only through greater freedom that individuals can make the moral choices necessary to deliver real human progress.

Go in peace.

One of the podcasts I listen to regularly is the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Philosopher’s Zone.  I have no idea why I do this, as they rarely talk about anything interesting.  I’ve wasted untold hours listening to topics such as “Hypatia of Alexandria” or “The Unhappy Family of Ludwig Wittgenstein.”  On those rare occasions they manage to touch on something I’m interested in, like “The Ethics of Economic Rationalism” or “Philosophers Advising Government,” they usually make a hash of the whole thing. 

I shouldn’t be surprised by this.  After all, the Austrialian Broadcasting Corporation is just NPR Down Under.  The host of The Philosopher’s Zone, Alan Saunders, is certainly a talented interviewer and is obviously very well schooled in philosophy, but he never strays too far from the standard big-government welfare statism that one would expect from a taxpayer-funded media outlet.  He does, however, bring a certain air of sophistication to the tired center-left policies he and the majority of his guests obviously support.  

From time to time, though, I do hear things on the show that I haven’t heard before.  For example, the May 30^th episode was entitled “The Happiness Machine,” featuring Caroline West.  Ms. West is Senior Lecturer in the University of Sydney’s Philosophy Department, and her main point was that the term “happiness” has several meanings and that we need to be very specific if we expect to make any progress.  In short, it seemed like one of those topics, good for little more than background iPod noise while I mowed the lawn.  But then Ms. West made a few claims that made me stop and pay attention. 

The first claim was evidently empirical.  According to Ms. West, multiple studies have shown that people without children report greater happiness throughout their lives than parents do.  As a father of two I find this extremely hard to believe, but then again I’ve got the greatest kids in the world.  (I know, all parents think their kids are the best, but in my case it’s actually true – they won the J.D. Power and Associates award for initial quality).  Be that as it may, I’m not really trying to refute Ms. West’s point here.  I suspect that these studies come with a lot of qualifying statements, but I have no doubt she’s got the data to back up the claim.  

The second point Ms. West made involved the effect that money has on self-reported happiness.  Although her core claim also had some sort of empirical data behind it, she continued far beyond what any data points could possibly prove.  From the show’s transcript: 

“Multiple studies find that over a certain surprisingly low threshold, about USD $40,000 or equivalent, every extra dollar you earn makes very little, if any, difference to your happiness. But there’s an interesting difference in the finding. One cluster of studies shows a steep increase in happiness from zero dollars to around about $27,000 a year, and a still increasing, but less steeply increasing rise between $27,000 and $40,000 a year, and a complete leveling off in happiness levels after $40,000 a year, until you get to $125-million a year, and you’re on the Forbes Rich List where there’s another sharp jump. So people on the Forbes Rich List, they don’t just look happy, they probably genuinely are. 

OK so that’s one finding, which has a leveling off, almost complete leveling off in increases in happiness earning over $40,000 a year. There’s a flat line. I mean the surprising finding is, it makes absolutely no difference to your happiness, whether you earn $40,000, $70,000, $150,000 or $3-million a year. I mean when you think of all the things that people give up in order to earn more money … 

But another cluster of studies, quite a number of them, show something different. There’s a slight but nonetheless overall significant increase in happiness after $40,000. A less steep but still very steady increase in happiness all the way up until $125-million and then you’re very happy. 

…[T]here are some really interesting and difficult questions for policymakers around these sorts of issues, because some people think that the findings about income and wealth, in particular the fact that after $40,000 happiness sort of levels off, notwithstanding quite significant increases in income. I think this is a sort of strong argument for aggressive redistribution of income from people who earn over $40,000, to people who earn between zero and $27,000, because if it’s true as the studies suggest, that every dollar over $40,000 that you earn makes very little difference to your happiness, but every dollar that someone gets if they’re between zero and $27,000 makes an enormous difference to their happiness, and you want to do what makes most people happy, then there seems to be an argument for redistribution, taking from those who have more than $40,000 and giving to those who have between zero and $27,000.” 

Although I wasn’t terribly interested in the topic overall, I found this bit to be absolutely fascinating.  I mean, I’ve heard all sorts of rationalizations for income redistribution before – everything from “it’s the social contract” to “public goods” to “it’s not really stealing if most voters say it’s okay” – but I had never heard anyone defend theft on the basis of how happy it makes the thief!  Kudos to Ms. West for blazing new frontiers in statist thinking.  

As I listened to this “strong argument for aggressive redistribution of income,” I wondered how this would all play out in practice.  If we assume for a second that the government has a) the ability to calculate Person X’s happiness relative to Person Y’s happiness, and b) a mandate to maximize or equalize said happiness, then I suppose the first step would be to change the income tax structure.  Perhaps the IRS could give an exemption on any income below $27,000 a year and then impose a 90% rate on any income over $40,000.  Since happiness (according to the studies cited by Ms. West) stays rock steady for any income between $40,000 and $125 million, it would probably make sense to impose a 100% rate over that level just to ensure that we don’t suffer from any widening happiness gaps in our society. 

I wonder what else could be justified by a federal happiness initiative.  I suppose the administration would name a Happiness Czar to the cabinet.  Perhaps this person would impose a one- or no-child policy à la Communist China, complete with forced abortions.  After all, the research clearly shows that fewer children mean happier couples, right?  And I suppose some redistribution of existing children may also be needed to ensure maximal happiness, although I’m not sure how the math would work.  They’d probably have to get the Census Bureau involved somehow. 

This is hyperbolic, of course, and nothing in the podcast would indicate that Ms. West would go so far as all that (although I suspect she may be sympathetic to the taxation argument). But my point is this – far from being a “strong argument,” believing that some people can quantify subjective values for others and then determine the relative merits of those values is a very dangerous concept, particularly where government is concerned.  This is probably one of the reasons why I have always found the natural rights approach so appealing.  It helps draw bright lines around interpersonal interactions and places limits on what even the majority of people within a society may legitimately do.  This seems far more prudent than giving the government intellectual cover to decide something as fundamental and yet as nebulous as the happiness of hundreds of millions of complete strangers.  And it’s not much of a leap from rationalizing government policy on the basis of “maximizing happiness” to rationalizing it on the basis of “the greater good.”  The history of 20^th century should be enough to demonstrate that governments may have very different ideas about what these terms mean than your average run-of-the-mill lefty philosophy professor.

We libertarians often focus on the top-down restrictions on our liberty, like the Patriot Act or the bailout. But I think we often overlook the fact that much of the loss of freedom in this country is not dictated by the federal government against our will. In many cases, individuals at the grassroots level actively clamor for the curtailment of liberty. Far from lamenting the loss of their (and our) freedom, these individuals often go on to demand that government curtail it even further.

Smoking bans are a great example of this. Although most anti-smoking campaigns have financial backing from national groups like the American Cancer Society, they also enjoy a tremendous amount of popular support. The voices of anti-smoking zealots routinely drown out those who argue in favor of property rights, personal responsibility, and freedom at any city hall meeting where the issue is under review. (For an example of this, click here for a Dallas Morning News article on the lead-up to the recent expansion of that city’s ban – pay close attention to the comments section). Ben Franklin once quipped that those who are willing to trade liberty for security deserve neither. What would he say about modern Americans who are willing to trade their liberty just to avoid the slightest whiff of second-hand smoke?

A recent letter to The Fort Worth Star-Telegram provides another illustration of the degree to which Americans have become inured to government power and the inevitable overreach that accompanies it. The letter’s author is a mother who took her kindergarten-age daughters to Disneyworld. She notified the school ahead of time that her children would be absent, and asked for whatever assignments would need to be completed during the family trip. Once they returned from Orlando she received a letter from the school district summoning her to a public scolding, and threatening her with legal action if she didn’t attend. That’s right – threats of jail time for taking her kids out of kindergarten for three days! This, of course, is exactly what is meant when someone uses the rather clinical term “compulsory attendance” in relation to public schools. If your kids are absent more than the state likes, you go to jail. That’s bad enough, but it is far from being the saddest part of this particular episode. The responses to this woman’s letter submitted by readers of the newspaper are overwhelmingly in support of the school district in this case. When the average American believes that it is right and proper to throw parents in jail over something like this, we may well be defeated.

Many people often claim that the Founding Fathers would be appalled by the size and power of government these days. I tend to disagree. The Founders understood perfectly well that the nature of government was to grow. As Thomas Jefferson said, “It is the natural order of things for government to grow and liberty to yield.” They expected government to behave like government, and took steps to prevent its growth through the system of checks and balances. The three branches quickly learned, however, that there was more power and money in it for them if they colluded to expand the scope of each branch, so we quickly moved from a limited government to an omnipotent one. One might say that the system of checks and balances was one of the founding errors of the Republic.

A more fundamental founding error, though, may have been the Founders’ belief that average Americans would value the liberty guaranteed them by the Constitution enough to defend it once it was inevitably threatened by government. Sadly, we have proven utterly unworthy of the great faith they placed in us. Nowadays if we don’t like something, we just turn to the government to criminalize it. We do not consider the larger ethical issues involved with using government as the means to a given end. No thought is given to the detrimental effects on private property rights. The few people who do bring up these abstract and esoteric issues are usually met with blank, uncomprehending stares at best, or ridiculed and marginalized at worst. We simply do not engage issues at that level anymore in this country. It’s something that just isn’t done in polite society.

Maybe freedom is just too hard. Maybe it requires us to be better than we are. Maybe most of us will always recoil from the notion of organizing society along ethical lines. Maybe we actually like the constant conflict that results from trying to force others to live according to our dictates.

Or perhaps the train wreck that is the national economy will cause more people to reconsider the value of the individual liberty that has fallen out of fashion as of late. Perhaps the War on Terror or the War on Drugs will become so oppressive to even the average non-terrorist, non-drug using American that he will reconsider the wisdom of the Founders (their founding errors notwithstanding). If that’s the case, then there may yet be time for a libertarian renaissance. We shall soon see…

The Revolution: A Manifesto: If Ron Paul had been as eloquent on the campaign trail as he is in his writing, the GOP race might have turned out very differently. The Revolution illustrates the difference between Ron Paul and virtually every other modern political figure. Dr. Paul has a coherent political philosophy. Everyone else just has a laundry list of bad ideas.

Gold: The Once and Future Money: Nathan Lewis provides an excellent analysis of the gold standard – its mechanics, its history, and the reasons why sound money is so important. Gold is written from a non-ideological (i.e., non-Austrian) viewpoint that could even appeal to non-libertarians.

The Cult of the Presidency: America’s Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power: Gene Healy’s overview of how the American president went from bit player to global demigod in just over 200 years.

(Special thanks to Against the Grain’s Gardner Goldsmith for discussing this story on his show).  

Two years ago, Paula Taylor of Roxbury, Massachusetts, secured a subprime loan from Countrywide.  Nine months ago, she stopped paying her mortgage and is now being asked to vacate the property.  This, of course, is a great injustice, and Ms. Taylor is fighting her eviction.  And she’s not alone in her fight.  She has plenty of supporters who feel that Ms. Taylor has a right to remain in her house, since she is clearly the victim of those predatory lenders we’ve heard so much about. 

And just to be fair, I suppose it is possible that two years ago Countrywide’s crack team of ninja accountants burst into Ms. Taylor’s apartment in the dead of night, strapped her to a chair and, ignoring her pleas for mercy, forced her to accept a check for $259,000.  That would be dastardly, indeed, but the Boston Globe article makes no mention of such a heinous crime, so I will presume instead that she approached Countrywide of her own volition, asked them for a loan, and agreed to pay them back according to the terms offered.  That Bank of America, which now owns Countrywide, wants Ms. Taylor to live up to her side of the agreement and vacate the house they paid for is unconscionable, according to Steve Meacham of City Life/Vida Urbana.  Mr. Meacham goes even further, stating, 

 “Today we are witnessing a courageous woman taking a stand based on principle.” 

The article doesn’t elaborate upon which principle this courageous woman is standing, but it seems to involve the virtue of walking away from one’s agreement while keeping the house someone else paid for.  This may seem like an odd notion to those readers brought up to believe that stealing is wrong, but apparently it is enough to inspire Ms. Taylor’s supporters to sing “We Shall Not Be Moved” as they cheer Mr. Meacham’s calls to “put people before profits.”  

Mr. Meacham is quoted in the article as saying, “The eviction [protest] brings a lot of publicity and attention to the inherent contradiction of this situation.  It raises the issue of who’s getting bailed out and who’s getting stiffed.”  He continues, saying that “while taxpayers are being asked to rescue Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, evicted homeowners have little recourse.”  

Of course the taxpayers are not really being “asked” to rescue Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, they are being forced to pay for a bailout package whether they agree with it or not.  And as Ms. Taylor says, “I don’t understand how the government can bail out the banks – the big people – and not come and service those who are in the community who were shafted by the bigger people.” 

So now we start to close in on the crux of the issue.  The “victim” of this little melodrama and her City Life supporters don’t object to bailouts per se – they just want the taxpayers’ money funneled to them, rather than to the banks.  

And this encapsulates what passes for public debate on this issue.  The two options under consideration by the chattering classes are:

• Option A:  take money from the taxpayer and funnel it to corporations that are deemed “too big to fail” by politicians, or
• Option B:  take money from the taxpayer and funnel it to the poor schlubs who entered into mortgages they couldn’t afford so that they don’t lose “their” houses. 

There is, however, a secret “Option C” that is studiously avoided by media pundits and politicians, and here it is:  Don’t take money from the taxpayer for either borrowers or lenders.  

Perhaps Option C is too complicated to explain within the time constraints of the typical news program, but by allowing businesses to succeed or fail according to market conditions and the decisions they make, and by letting individuals assume responsibility for their own actions, the rest of society would be free to go about its daily business.  Under secret Option C, if Countrywide fails, only Countrywide and its investors take the hit.  Similarly, when individual borrowers get in over their heads, the consequences of their bad decisions are borne only by those particular individuals.  

Note also that, under secret Option C, no one is prevented from helping those companies or individuals in need.  If you think that a mortgage lender is too important to fail, you would be well within your rights to cut them a check.  If your neighbor is in danger of losing his home, you’re free to pass the plate and raise funds voluntarily to ensure that he is able to stay in his house.  

The downside of secret Option C for statists, of course, is that they don’t get to take other people’s money by force.  Perhaps many of those who object to this alternative owe much of their understanding of free market economics to the old vaudeville routine “You Must Pay the Rent!” (made famous by Snidely Whiplash of The Dudley Do-Right Show).  These days, however, the play comes with a sad new twist: 

Bank of America:  “You must pay the rent!”

Paula Taylor:  “I can’t pay the rent!”

Bank of America:  “You must pay the rent!”

Paula Taylor:  “But I can’t pay the rent!”

Steve Meacham:  “Never fear, I’ll get the taxpayer to pay the rent!”

Paula Taylor/Boston Globe:  “My hero!”

Individual Liberty in America:  “Curses! Foiled again!”

“Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.”
-George Bernard Shaw

From an early age, we’re told that America is the land of the free. The phrase has a catchy ring to it, and it may even be true as long as we’re grading on a global curve. But more and more I hear from people who believe that it is right and proper for government to make our decisions for us, managing ever-smaller aspects of our lives. Although we often think that the most egregious violations of our rights are imposed upon us from the top down by a massive federal bureaucracy, in many cases the push for less freedom is actually a grassroots movement. With alarming frequency, individual citizens make a concerted effort to demand that our government make us all less free. This leads me to the depressing conclusion that for modern Americans, freedom’s just another word for nothing much at all.

This phenomenon was driven home recently by a conversation that took place on the May 16th episode of Against the Grain. The topic of the hour was seat belt laws, and sure enough, a caller named Chris chimed in to express his support. Now I realize that next to issues such as the war or the economy, seat belt laws seem downright quaint by comparison. But the caller’s defense of such a blatant nanny-state issue was distressing, and it led me to wonder whether Americans really want to be free.

The same sad state of affairs has been on display here in Texas recently. The town of Richardson is considering a near-total smoking ban. Unlike the previous push to ban smoking here in Fort Worth, the Richardson prohibition appears to be sponsored by local resident Hank Mulvihill. Hank and the other supporters of the smoking ban approach it from much the same perspective as Chris approaches seat belt laws – it’s just a commonsense proposal designed to keep us safe and healthy.

It seems hard to argue the point. After all, wearing a seat belt is safer than not wearing a seat belt. Smoking is bad for you. I happen to agree with both points, but unlike Chris and Hank, I am willing to accept that other people will make different decisions and live with the consequences (or not, as the case may be). That’s freedom – allowing others to make choices with which you may personally disagree, as long as those choices do not harm others.

To borrow a phrase from Gardner Goldsmith, however, freedom is not necessarily in vogue. And neither is a healthy outrage at being told what to do by a growing nanny-state. Although it is often difficult to recognize the danger inherent in these petty tyrannies, it is still vitally important to do so, in part because acceptance of the smaller rights violations conditions us to accept the larger ones.

But perhaps I’m way off base here. Maybe Chris and Hank are right, and seat belt laws and smoking bans are just good policy. If that’s the case, though, then where does one logically draw the line? I happen to think that proper diet and exercise are also simply matters of common sense. Does that mean that the government should arrest people who are overweight? Should we have Health Police serve warrants and break down doors to verify that we’re doing Tae-Bo and eating our vegetables every day? And what would be the appropriate punishment for the scofflaw who stubbornly refuses to take his recommended daily allowance of riboflavin?

No doubt even the likes of Chris and Hank would agree that my diet and exercise proposal is unreasonable. But therein lies the problem – when it comes to these nanny-state proposals, we all envision ourselves as the ones deciding what is reasonable and what is not. Unfortunately, it never works out that way in practice. Neither Chris, nor Hank, nor I, nor you will be the ones to make that call – it will be the state. And the state’s definition of reasonable can only expand, because once we accept the idea that the government should involve itself in the first place, there is no logically consistent way to limit the degree of that involvement.

Is this what Americans want? Or do we still value liberty in this country? If freedom still matters here, it is high time we understand that the nanny state is completely incompatible with a free society. Sadly, I fear that those who demand less freedom are far more numerous than those of us who seek to preserve it.

Perhaps the great irony and fatal flaw of libertarianism is that for a political philosophy extolling the virtues of the free market and individual choice, very few individuals actually want the product. I imagine there are a number of reasons as to why this may be the case. To start with, I think it’s safe to say that the overwhelming majority of people will never have the intellectual curiosity to question the status quo or to explore new ideas that challenge the existing paradigm. Most of us just move through our daily routine, never giving a thought to larger questions of political philosophy. Then again, there are those who will reject libertarianism simply because they don’t view coercion as a problem (as long as they’re the ones doing the coercing – or at least think that they are). For these individuals, the ends justify the means, and a more ethical system of social organization is simply irrelevant. Still others reject a freer society because they benefit from the current situation and believe that they would be worse off if, God forbid, real liberty were to break out. Policies like mercantilism and wealth redistribution may be economically backward and deeply unethical, but there’s no doubt that they do favor certain privileged groups. Those who benefit from the status quo have a powerful incentive to ensure that it continues. And then there’s the ever-present ghost of Marx that seems to be impervious to exorcism, despite communism’s collapse. You’d be amazed at how much Marxist prejudice against capitalism remains imbedded in most peoples’ minds – even those who think of themselves as free market conservatives.

So until we can overcome these minor philosophical and practical problems, I guess you’ll just have to buckle up, put out that cigarette, and be sure to get your riboflavin each day. If you don’t, people like Chris and Hank might just have you thrown in jail.