The Secret Knowledge (26 page)

The Government can make work, in the main, only by appropriating those jobs already created by private enterprise, and doling them out less efficiently. A perfect example is the Civilian Conservation Corps of the New Deal, which, as Thomas Sowell has pointed out, was merely giving twenty thousand shovels out to do the work which could be accomplished by fifty bulldozers. Why not then, as he suggested, enlarge the paradigm, and replace the shovels with three million teaspoons? Government intervention in private enterprise is the death of private enterprise (cf. East versus West Germany; Havana versus Miami; Palestine versus Israel). Has the case not already been settled?

Government intervention is, in fact, a form of savage or precivi-lized thinking, as if a primitive tribe looked at the man who invented the wheel and reasoned that he was depriving an entire contingent of the tribe, the Bearers, of work, and so killed him and burnt his supposed improvement.

Let us note also that the ever-hungry politician, Socialist though he may be, when possessed by the urge for higher office, applies first and always to some combination of the Interests he will, with a wink toward them, eventually denounce. He
must
—for where is the money he runs on going to come from save from those who
made
it?

The stifling of free enterprise by Government, whether wholesale, in Communist Cuba, China, East Germany, Russia, et cetera, or piecemeal, under the New Deal, led at
best
to shortages.
⁸⁶
Under totalitarian regimes, it eventually led to famine and slavery, as governments insisted upon the continuation of the destructive and absurd failed systems, and instituted speech and thought control to stifle consideration, and to ban utterance of the most obvious conclusions.

These totalitarian states kept—and keep—their citizens enslaved, imprisoning those who oppose and shooting those who try to escape their Socialist utopias. These totalitarian states must eventually embark on war as the only way remaining to feed their starving masses—through the accession of the land and goods of the more productive. These states, in preparation for war, habitually indict the more productive as “enemies of the People,” “colonialists,” or “oppressors of the Weak.” See the UN's continual denunciation of Israel, the Arab bloc's insistence that Israel is an aggressor state; and the reiteration of peaceful Nazi Germany's simple pleas for “Lebensraum.”

But, unfettered, we human beings are capable of fulfilling each other's needs and of prospering thereby. Our prosperity will be in direct proportion to our ability to fulfill the needs of others. The Scare Words of the Left—Greed, Exploitation, Colonialism—are identical with those employed by totalitarian states to indict the more prosperous whose goods they covet and whose successes they must indict to divert attention from their own monstrous behavior.

How can one live on air?

One cannot. And the recurrent Liberal call for Government control, for Welfare, Government bailouts, reparations, and confiscatory taxes, is nothing other than this transparent, silly claim. All life needs to consume. And to consume we must produce. The Government cannot produce, it can merely confiscate, intrude, and allocate according to some plan pleasant to the capacity or cupidity of the current officeholders.

Just as in any totalitarian state, the Government can and will explain its depredations, and the inattentive may endorse these blunt and transparent efforts as “humanitarian,” until the appearance of actual shortages is sufficient to discommode even those sufficiently privileged to have thought themselves immune from the Good Works.

But for anyone to consider himself immune requires a studied ignorance of both history and human nature.

One may smuggle in the food, the problem is to explain the accumulation of the effluvia: shortages, unemployment, and inflation.

What is the one institution which will not suffer through confiscation and the abrogation of the rule of law? Government.

Bill Clinton out of office will wax fat upon the various charity schemes bearing his name, and President Obama, on retirement, will proceed to his own particular dukedom.

Marie Antoinette suggested that the starving populace Eat Cake. She was reviled. But at least she understood that they had to eat something.

What are the interests of the people? Not the interests of those who would betray them. Who is to judge of those interests? Not those who would suborn others to betray them. The government is instituted for the benefit of the governed, there can be little doubt; but the interest of the government (once it becomes absolute and independent of the people) must be at variance with those of the governed. The interests of the one are common and equal rights: of the other, exclusive and invidious privileges.

—William Hazlitt, “What Is the People?,” 1817

 

 

A privileged adolescent may see the street sweeper and wonder why he is paid less for his job than is the doctor. As the sweeper's job is both essential and disagreeable, perhaps, this young philosopher might muse, he should be paid as much, or perhaps even more.

This is Marx's vision: from each according to his ability, to each according to his need,
⁸⁷
taken through one permutation, and substituting
merit
for
needs.
For today we may view the notion of a Government determining “needs,” as naïve—who would not exaggerate his needs if simply to do so would gain him more governmental largess? Further, we may, in our enlightenment, see that everyone has
different
needs—one may wish more leisure, another more pay, et cetera. But “merit” is an equally subjective concept, and, like need, its acceptance as a tool for the determination of desert merely empowers the judge.

“But what about,” this adolescent wonders, trying out his new toy: “
merit.
Does not the street sweeper, as he also works and sweats,
merit
as much as the physician? Does not the performer of an unpleasant task
merit
as much as or more than one who works in comfort and with status? Must government not recognize the worth of this contribution, and do away with the inequality in the treatment of the lowly applicant?”

But the problem unrecognized by the privileged adolescent, the problem is not the term
,
but the equation; for the true horror of the equation is the tacit presumption of a
mechanism
to distribute services and goods. And what would that mechanism be, but the totalitarian state?

Acceptance of the notion that there exists an equation under which the State may fairly and honestly control human exchange leads the adolescent down the road of folly—increasing taxes to increase programs to increase happiness to allow equality—which ends in dictatorship.

For in the adolescent vision the street sweeper ceases to be a citizen and becomes an applicant, presenting himself to Government and demanding compensation based upon his “merit,” or “goodness,” as a member of society who contributes as much as the physician, but is treated, on payday, as less than equal.

The adolescent, in his imagination, stands at the side of the street sweeper, reminding him of his “equality,” and urging on him the courage to press his claim.

Justice is corrupted by consideration, not of whether or not the accused committed the crime, but of supposedly mitigating factors of his childhood, race, or environment. If weight is given, in extenuation, to his supposed goodness to animals or to his mother, he is then liable to leniency based not upon the needs of the citizenry (protection), but upon the criminal's ability to dramatize his plight. If he may entertain, and play upon the emotions of the judge and jury, if he and his defenders may flatter the ability to “be compassionate,” and call it courage, society is weakened. Laws, then, decided upon in tranquility, without reference to the individual, and based upon behaviors, are cast aside or vitiated by reference to merit, fairness, or compassion, all of which are inchoate, subjective, and nonquantifiable.

It is not the Government's job to determine what is “fair,” but to determine what is just—the only tools granted to it derive from a clear set of guidelines, the Law, designed first and last,
to limit the power of government
.

Possessing such a set of laws, the individual may have a reasonable expectation of freedom from Government intervention. As long as he abides by these laws, which under our Constitution apply not to classes of
people
but to classes of
actions,
he may plan and act in peace.

It is not the Government's job to determine merit. Even if it were, upon what criteria? For we are not all-wise; Thalidomide was hailed as a wonder drug, the airplane and automobile scorned as toys.

We may say of the Framers that they did not account for the fact that some may have had an affluent childhood, or that it is more onerous to sweep streets than to manage hedge funds. That this is an oversight on the part of the Framers is clear to privileged adolescents. Unclear to them is the plight of anyone unskilled and desperate for a job, and the monstrous capacity of Government for destruction when indulging in “feelings” (see not only Affirmative Action, but the Japanese Internment, the
Dred Scott
decision, the idea of “hate crimes”).

The adolescent, the Marxist, and the Liberal Left dream of “fairness,” which can be brought about by the State, forgetting that, in order to pay the street sweeper and the physician the same, one must raise the wages of one or lower the wages of the other.

How can Government raise the wages of the street sweeper? Only by taxing its citizenry, which is to say only by overriding the
societal
decision that the skilled worker is entitled to higher pay than the unskilled.

This decision was never pronounced by Authority, nor blessed by any authority other than the free market. It was arrived at through interaction of human beings perfectly capable of ordering their own affairs; and this group decided, through innumerable interactions known as the Free Market, that some jobs should be better paid. Why? Because of the job holder's education, because of his skill,
or for no defensible reason whatsoever
(for example, the shape of their chins).
⁸⁸
Is this folly? Would it be greater folly to allow the Government to decide the criteria by which newscasters were appointed?

In the newscaster we see the operation of the free market. Is it “fair” to pay him tens of millions of dollars because he has a square jaw? Who is to say?

Phrenologists were once considered scientists for disseminating the hogwash that a person's character may be determined by the shape of his head. The fad passed, but in a top-down, Government-controlled economy, where the citizenry gave to the Government the opportunity to rule its actions upon an inchoate and subjective determination (fairness), our tax dollars might still be paying phrenologists.
⁸⁹
For a government will not and cannot admit mistakes. Its members thrive through taxation and by ever widening their spheres of influence, selling influence to the highest bidder. We are still paying oil and wheat subsidies, and it is mere luck that the phrenologists of that day did not have sufficiently skilled lobbyists to ensure their own eternal subvention. You might say it is absurd to claim to determine a person's deserts on the basis of the shape of his head. It is equally absurd to make the claim on the basis of the color of his skin.

Government cannot correct itself—which is why we periodically hold elections. But society, convened as the free market, can and does correct itself, and that quickly, for to tarry is to risk impoverishment. We have paid the big-chinned newscasters fortunes over the decades, and have enjoyed their solemn ability to correctly read a sheet of paper before a camera. But now the Internet has grown, and the day of the newscaster is passing, and another generation will shake its head in wonder at our “trust” of those with well-shaped chins.

Is it a sin, or is it unfair, that the street sweeper is paid less than the surgeon?
⁹⁰
The Left, the Socialist, the privileged adolescent may say “yes,” but their prescription is “
You
(the taxpayer) pay him more . . .”

This, which has been called the essence of Marxism, person A getting person B to do something for person C. Is
this
fair? That the surgeon be taxed because some good-willed other would thereby feel momentarily better about himself and his society; that the citizenry be taxed so that the good-willed might implement their vision of a perfect world (sweepers and surgeons paid alike)?

The Leftist would enjoy feeling that his vision brought about some good, but, finally, what is it but the enjoyment of a fantasy? Environmentalists insist on the inviolability of Yellowstone Park, but how many Liberals are actually going to
use
Yellowstone Park? Yet they want to ban their fellows who
do use
it from using snowmobiles.

Why? The snowmobile offends the Liberals' fantasy of the pristine nature preserve. So be it. We are all entitled to our fantasies, but are we entitled to impose their costs upon others? The Liberal is free to pay to achieve his fantasy. What stops him from digging in his own pocket and correcting the pay differential in the two jobs, from actually giving actual money to the street sweeper?

This, in fact, is part of the actual unfairness of those confiscatory taxes which are the inevitable companion of big Government—that the individual is prohibited from disposing of his income in the way he sees fit. If the Leftist were actually more interested in a more “fair” redistribution of income—which is to say, a distribution more in line with his own worldview—let him vote to lower taxes, and distribute his now larger share of his wealth, to the street sweeper.