The Secret Knowledge (27 page)

Giving the money to the Government, even that Government which proclaims an agenda with which the Liberal agrees, is folly. For a simple perusal of history will reveal that the money the Government strips from the surgeon to pay the street sweeper, far from ending in the sweeper's pocket, will most likely arrive somewhere else altogether. It will be diverted by Government into “costs of administration,” or “a general fund”—or it will—like Social Security—merely vanish.
⁹¹

Called to task, the only way the Government can appear to make good its claim of Fairness to the Sweeper is to print more money, which is to say, impose a new tax. And the best that can be said of this destructive force of inflation is that, at least, it is a tax which is demonstrably “fair,” for it impoverishes everyone.

In addition to actually giving more money of his own to the street sweeper, the Inspired Leftist may, today, without let or hindrance, give more money to the cabdriver, the dry cleaner, the restaurateur, and to all others whose services he employs. He is free to give them more money than they request, and so feel good about himself. But I doubt he will do so. For he does not want to pay what is here visible as essentially an “entertainment tax.” “Here, let me tip you, as I am a Big Spender.”

No, he refrains from paying above the stated price for goods and services. To do so would reveal to him the idiocy of his position.

In his day-to-day life, the Leftist, like everyone else, wants the dry cleaners, the restaurants, the car dealerships, the gas stations to
compete,
for he knows that only then does he stand a chance of getting a fair (which is to say happy) price.

The Leftist, in his own dealings, likewise strives to compete, in order to gain an advantage over his competitors. He burns to compete. For if he cannot improve the quality or lower the price of his goods and services, potential customers will take their business from him. He
must
compete,
unless he has access to the power of government
. (This is how lobbyists grow rich, through promise or reality of their ability to subvert the free market through government intervention. What else did anyone
think
they were doing?)

If the Government determines that the street sweeper be paid as much as the surgeon, must it not, further, insist that the
bad
street sweeper be paid as much as the good? The bad surgeon paid as much as the superior?
⁹²

The Left might say that this is folly, and, of course, it is, and it is practiced every day in affirmative action, and set-asides, in preferences, where the Government, we see, has
already
determined that accomplishment and performance may, and in some cases
must,
be put outside consideration. (See also Union rules, for example in the teachers union, in their intractable opposition to merit pay. They claim to educate our children, but insist the bad teacher be paid as much as the good. What lesson, then, are they teaching?)
⁹³

This folly will be further elaborated by a single-payer national health system, wherein the bad surgeon
will
be paid as much as the good, and the patient left with no recourse other than application to Government. And which of us, applying to Government for redress, from the smallest traffic complaint to the largest issues of life, has ever come away happy?

If we may not enjoy the benefits of competition we suffer. As we will under Government Health Care. As we will in the Government takeover of the auto industry. The businessman must consider the desires of consumers or fail. It is not his job to determine their “rationality”—what is rational about tail fins? It is his job to make cars people want to buy. But the Government is now in the auto business—will it not impose upon all other manufacturers the same restrictions it imposes upon its
own
cars? It
must,
for, like any other business it will want to drive out competition. And, in so doing, it will kill the remnants of the American auto industry, which will be forced to make cars the American people aren't clamoring for. It will be forced to make cars based upon the Good Intention of Government. But what if these cars are “better”? Better for whom? Ralph Nader killed the Corvair, an innovative, rear-engine, high-mileage, small, low-priced car. Had the Government let the Corvair alone, the auto industry might have seen, thirty years sooner than it occurred to them, that the small, fuel-efficient, rear-engine car was the wave of the future, and we would have been shipping a lot less of our money to Japan.

The Government by the Left is intent on taking from the consumer the freedom to choose between competing enterprises, and what is Freedom but the freedom to choose?

The individual who is a street sweeper and would like to be a surgeon may choose to pursue that course of studies which might lead to that end.

But, you say, he may not have the ability. Then let him work at that for which he does have the ability, or choose another line of employment which might lead him to a life closer to his vision of his deserts and to his needs. Or let him continue at his job in the hope of advancement, doing his job superlatively while looking for and studying for another more congenial position.

But, this is monstrous, you say; some people are
unfitted
to do so. Unfitted by what? Race? I deny it. It is antithetical to the teachings of Religion, to the Constitution, and to experience.

Some individuals are unfitted to be surgeons by lack of individual intelligence? Of course. Human ability is distributed randomly, and must be so, or civilization would not have advanced. But it is not distributed according to race (an assumption which wiped out two-thirds of my people, the Jews, within human memory), nor upon previous condition of servitude (the “Legacy of Slavery”)—the Fifteenth Amendment makes it illegal to withhold the right to vote, to discriminate against anyone on the basis of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. If this is illegal in consideration of the first, most basic right of the citizen, surely it is illegal (as it is ridiculous) to discriminate in
favor
of an individual on such a basis. Might one not take cognizance of such an individual? An individual may, but the Government, correctly, announces here that it refuses to indulge in such obscenity.

To call attention to various supposed defects of
classes
of people, and then to call for “fairness” is the folly of the adolescent, and the trick of the demagogue.

If the street sweeper is paid the same as the surgeon, why should he aspire to better his lot? He
may,
but why should he? J. S. Mill, in
On Liberty,
writes that any man who is rewarded equally for doing a good job or a bad job, would be a fool to put energy into its accomplishment. He will naturally withhold it, and put it elsewhere, where it might improve his status or income.

You or I would withdraw that effort, expenditure of which could not improve our lot (cf. the government employee). Milton Fried-man suggested that we all recognize as a joke the notion that someone might say to a Government employee, “Slow
down,
you're
killing
yourself . . . ”

That it remains, to the sentimental Leftist, a “shame” that the street sweeper is “underpaid” is itself a shame. But it does nothing whatever to ameliorate the street sweeper's supposed lot. The Leftist may do so by digging in his pocket, but he will not. He wants the Government to do it, and yet he will not ask the Government where it intends to get the money, nor hold the Government accountable for the treasure it has wasted and the chaos its involvement has caused in the past. That the Liberal will not do so is not only a shame, but an inexcusable failure of intellect.
^94
95

“From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” may be rendered:

Let us empower the State to take
x
(money, time, possessions, status) from Class A of people; and distribute them to Class B of people.

This, with the underlying nature of the exhortation exposed, is a parsing of Marx's doctrine. Operationally, it seeks to give all powers to the State. Now, why would the adolescent want to substitute
merit
for
need
? (It is an equally destructive, and, finally, absurd construction.) Because he is less concerned with the magical terms than with the unstated postulate of the formula—the hidden exhortation to empower the State. Why is he less concerned? Because he imagines
himself,
his like, or his representatives as the State. His position, though it presents itself as a defense of “humanity” is a fantasy of power.

Absent in the contemporary Liberal worldview is the understanding that things go wrong.

Corporations grow, and (like any agglomeration—a business, a family, an industry), make choices which can prove good or bad. That which is productive today may, if persisted in, prove destructive tomorrow (for example, the New Economy, tail fins on cars, tobacco cultivation, busing, the new math). We, neither as individuals, nor as groups, are perfect. The business which makes terrible decisions will correct itself or will and must be allowed to fail. The current government and (marginally) popular sentiment to support failing enterprises are both examples of a creeping Statism—which is the surrender of individual choice to the State—Constitutionally barred by law from abrogating the rights of the individual—chief among them the
right to fail
.
⁹⁶

The Left might say of a failed corporation “tear it down, throw the so-and-so's out, they are corrupt and incompetent and waste our money”; but this is the system which already operates under the title “free enterprise.” The next step, that which leads toward Statism and dictatorship is “and give the operation of the thing over to the Government.”

This might seem defensible on the grounds of “compassion,” as folks will be thrown out of work. But it neglects the fact that the Government is just another organization, liable to the same misjudgments, corruptions, and incompetencies of any others.
With this addition:
it has the power to legislate or otherwise enforce its continued existence, a power that is, ultimately, backed up by people with guns. Replacing free enterprise with state control does not do away with failure and mismanagement, but merely removes from it the possibility of self-correction.

Why are taxes high? To fund programs proved failures decades ago, and to spawn new programs to correct the errors their predecessors proved incapable of addressing. But the fault was not the nature of those previous programs but their systemic inability not only to affect, but to
name
affectable goals.
⁹⁷

Government is only a business.
Past
the roads, defense, and sewers, it sells excitement and self-satisfaction to the masses, and charges them an entertainment tax, exacted in wealth and misery. It cannot make cars, or develop medicines. How can it “abolish poverty” (at home or abroad), or Bring About an End to Greed or Exploitation? It can only sell the illusion, and put itself in a position where it is free from judgment of its efforts. It does this, first of all, by stating inchoate goals, “change, hope, fairness, peace,” and then indicting those who question them as traitors or ogres; finally, it explains its lack of success by reference to persistent if magical forces put in play by its predecessors and yet uneradicated because of insufficient funding.