Many years ago, I was field service manager in a large metropolitan area for a major computer company. This was before PCs and their networks; a typical customer had a central computer and a dozen to several score terminals.
One day, a downtown building was hit by lightening, several times. The building contained several of my customers. The lightening destroyed the communications cards in a hundred or so terminals, making them inoperative, and thereby halting computer operations.
My local inventory held only a half-dozen or so of the necessary spares. Normally, this was enough.
When a spare was used in a repair, the defective board was sent to California to have the failed chip replaced and a replacement spare was sent to me, arriving about a week after the defective was sent in.
Fixing all the blown terminals would take months under normal operations. Something unplanned and out of the ordinary had to be done.
How a Wise Elites Might Deal with the Situation
How would this be dealt with under a system of central planning controlled by the most experienced and wisest people in the business?
I would have my engineers fix six of the terminals while I, going through channels, notified the central planning authority of the lightening damage and requested a re-allocation of inventory to my district.
Being a central planning organization, they would be evaluating requirements and changes of requirements, worldwide, for hundreds of computer parts in a hundred or so repair districts covering thousands of customers.
Terminal problems generally were a low priority. Unless I involved an executive (probably at great cost to my career, execs not appreciating 26-year-old junior manager bothering them) or screaming customers got in contact with an exec (ending my career) it might take several meetings for the planning authority to get around to my unusual requirements.
When the planners got to the problem, they might reallocate inventory to my district, notify other districts to send me their spares, tell central stores to purchase new boards for the repair pipeline, and order the terminal division to increase production of the interface cards to cover the demand. How long do you suppose this would take? Days? Weeks? Months, perhaps?
In the meantime, I’d get six new boards every week or so, to fix six more of the hundred busted terminals.
Decentralization and Individual Responsibility
However, ours was a system of decentralized planning and decision-making. I, and everyone else, operated under general and abstract rules within which we were at liberty to make our own decisions. We were to assess our individual situations, communicate among ourselves, and even make our own deals by trading favors. The general rules included conflicts: take care of customers and keep inventory low. This was intentional, to force local managers to make conscious trade-offs.
How did our little intra-company extended order handle this?
I immediately called all the other districts in my region (which included about one-fourth of the U.S.) and asked the people I knew, managers with whom I’d traded favors in the past, if they had any terminal boards they could send me. If so, please get them on the next commercial airplane going from their city to mine. I would pay the transportation costs which would easily exceed the cost of the boards themselves. Then I told my inventory manager to place an urgent hot-line next-day-delivery order for a hundred boards, ship-to-addresses to be provided by the end of the day. Also expensive for me.
Then I drove to the building. Service engineers with my pitiful six spares were already on site, fixing what they could. From several of the customer offices, I checked with my compatriots to find out how many boards they were sending and when they would arrive. Customers overheard that replacement boards were arriving on commercial flights within the next few hours and some of my engineers would meet the flights and bring the boards for the stricken terminals. By 8pm, roughly a third of the terminals were repaired. By the end of the following day, all the terminals were repaired and most of the field inventory had been replenished in the various districts.
As if by Magic
No executive was involved, not even any mid-level managers. After the fact, my boss had some questions and the situation was explained up the line, but no big deal. I’d done nothing heroic or out of the ordinary; my peers throughout the company, world wide, regularly did pretty much the same thing. I’d sent some of them parts from my inventory on various occasions.
No committees or heroes in mask-and-cape were involved. Just ordinary clerks and low-level managers.
The really interesting part is what happened behind the scenes as individuals with liberty to act within the guidelines (traditions) responded to each other.
The central parts depot shipped the hot-line order for spares. An inventory-control clerk saw the inventory of repair parts – terminal boards – depleted and immediately placed an order with the terminal factory for more boards, some for urgent delivery and some for normal delivery. I believe that clerk, seeing the sudden jump in demand, ordered more than the 100 replacement boards because he or she determined that inventory had been too low to respond to whatever had happened.
The clerk did not know about the lightening strike; he or she did not even know from what part or parts of the world the sudden demand came. She didn’t know if the drop in stores inventory was the result of some disaster or an ordinary statistical result of field inventory being too low.
Seeing the sudden, unexpected, and urgent demand from the spares depot, the production scheduler at the terminal factory immediately increased the planned production of that particular terminal board. Working with factory inventory control and the shipping scheduler, the production scheduler arranged to pull boards out of finished terminals to meet the urgent order from the spares depot. This delayed shipment of some terminals for a few days until new boards arrived.
Nobody at the terminal factory knew about the lightening strike. Nobody at the terminal factory knew anything but that demand for a certain board had gone up and somebody was willing to pay a “higher price” to get them. (Hot-line orders were expensive as the ordering entity paid for expedited shipping and rates of hot-line orders were monitored to see who might not be properly managing inventory. A certain level was expected, but too many could be costly (career-wise) for the manager. We all were cautious using hot-line orders, but unhappy customers were even more expensive.)
Within 2 days all the terminals were fixed and all the customers happy, within 2 weeks the entire situation with its jump in demand had smoothed out with inventory returning to the normal (but slightly higher) level. No planning commission, no executives involved, not even many people knowing exactly what had happened – just individuals signaling each other by increased demand and a temporary willingness to pay a higher price (the hot-line “premium”) for a particular spare part. People who didn’t know exactly what was going on, who didn’t even know each other (and certainly didn’t know me or my customers) responded to each other’s actions by exercising their individual judgment using the liberty they had within the abstract and conflicting guidelines they were given.
And they weren’t doing this just for my customers: this happened every so often as the world-wide business grew and the organization learned how to respond to emergencies.
No central planning group, with its limited access to information and its limited brainpower (the effective intelligence of human groups acting in lock-step (committees) tends to decline as membership increases) could possibly have accomplished as much as quickly. And this was within just one sector (customer service) of one company; it happens all the time in the thousands of companies in the free market. Companies that don’t respond to customers lose business and go bankrupt. Companies that do a better-than-average job thrive and gain market share.
That’s how the extended order computes requirements and meets customer needs, automatically and without central control.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Some Clarifications
Social Democracy is Socialism Lite. Some central control, some taking from one person and giving to another (slavery), some liberty, and a general sense that people exist for the good of each other and the State makes people do things for each other.
Being enslaved by majority vote is still enslavement. Having something taken by force, for the benefit of another, even if the decision to do so is made by the majority, is still theft.
Government is necessary for liberty; some limitations and some coercion is necessary for liberty. Support of government must be the responsibility of all citizens, so taxation to support expenditures for the common good (to support the minimal functions of government) is necessary. Income transfers, subsidies, welfare, forced savings, and goodies given to individuals and companies are not expenditures for the common good. They are theft by majority rule.
This blog is about Liberty. It advocates the maximum possible human liberty. It happens that, when individuals have liberty an extended order of voluntary human interaction spontaneously emerges and self-organizes. This extended order creates the wealth that reduces and gradually eliminates poverty, and enables our vast population to survive. The greater the liberty, the greater the wealth creation.
Central control is necessary for socialism. Despite the fantasies of Marx. The extended order is too complex and too dynamic to be understood, let alone planned and controlled. Thus, to implement the planning and control socialists believe is necessary, socialism eliminates the liberty that sustains the wealth-creating extended order. Despite the fantasies of socialists. Look at the data, examine history, consider results rather than intentions. A little bit of socialism eliminates a little bit of liberty and destroys a little bit of the wealth creation.
So, by advocating liberty I oppose socialism and advocate the only thing that has ever worked to reduce poverty.
Countries are poor because their governments - whether colonial or indigenous - have not given their people the liberty to create wealth.
I care deeply about my fellow man, so I advocate the liberty that will make my fellows better off. I encourage people to use their liberty to freely help others, but government-mandated charity is theft, not helping the poor.
‘You can’t get rid of poverty by giving people money’
– P. J. O’Rourke
Being enslaved by majority vote is still enslavement. Having something taken by force, for the benefit of another, even if the decision to do so is made by the majority, is still theft.
Government is necessary for liberty; some limitations and some coercion is necessary for liberty. Support of government must be the responsibility of all citizens, so taxation to support expenditures for the common good (to support the minimal functions of government) is necessary. Income transfers, subsidies, welfare, forced savings, and goodies given to individuals and companies are not expenditures for the common good. They are theft by majority rule.
This blog is about Liberty. It advocates the maximum possible human liberty. It happens that, when individuals have liberty an extended order of voluntary human interaction spontaneously emerges and self-organizes. This extended order creates the wealth that reduces and gradually eliminates poverty, and enables our vast population to survive. The greater the liberty, the greater the wealth creation.
Central control is necessary for socialism. Despite the fantasies of Marx. The extended order is too complex and too dynamic to be understood, let alone planned and controlled. Thus, to implement the planning and control socialists believe is necessary, socialism eliminates the liberty that sustains the wealth-creating extended order. Despite the fantasies of socialists. Look at the data, examine history, consider results rather than intentions. A little bit of socialism eliminates a little bit of liberty and destroys a little bit of the wealth creation.
So, by advocating liberty I oppose socialism and advocate the only thing that has ever worked to reduce poverty.
Countries are poor because their governments - whether colonial or indigenous - have not given their people the liberty to create wealth.
I care deeply about my fellow man, so I advocate the liberty that will make my fellows better off. I encourage people to use their liberty to freely help others, but government-mandated charity is theft, not helping the poor.
‘You can’t get rid of poverty by giving people money’
– P. J. O’Rourke
The Power of Action
The beauty of "doing something" to fix a problem is you can claim that the situation would have been worse had you not "done something" and no one will be able to prove you wrong.
The patient has a high fever. The doctor must do something. The doctor withdraws a pint of blood from the patient. The patient dies (from loss of blood - as happened to George Washington and Lord Byron) and the doctor confidently declares that death would have happened sooner without his (the doctor's) ministrations.
The patient has a high fever. The doctor must do something. The doctor withdraws a pint of blood from the patient. The patient dies (from loss of blood - as happened to George Washington and Lord Byron) and the doctor confidently declares that death would have happened sooner without his (the doctor's) ministrations.
Religion and the Conflict of Moralities
Where does God fit in this conflict between the instinctive morality of the micro-cosmos (the family or small group of intimates) and the evolved traditional morality of the macro-cosmos (the extended order of human interactions world wide)? What is the role of Religion?
I am pitching neither a religion nor religion in general. However, we hear politicians as well as private individuals speaking about government doing God's or Christ's work, so the argument can be examined from their point of view - the point of view of those defending their policies with religious allusions.
I know the most about Christianity, so that is what I will address: the role of Liberty, as I am using the term, in relation to Christian teaching. I leave to others the examination of how other religions and their teachings relate to individual liberty.
Jesus preached individual responsibility and a communitarian ethic that seem contradictory but, in my opinion, are not.
A Different Kind of Relationship with the Divine
In Jesus’ time, Judaism was a collective religion: the entire Tribe of Israel would suffer or be saved together, as a tribe, based on how well all Jews followed God’s law. Other Mediterranean religions were mostly national in nature – the gods would favor the nation or punish the nation. The sins of one person harmed everyone’s relationship with the divine.
Christianity is different: individual salvation and individual responsibility, not group or tribe or national salvation with collective responsibility for the salvation of all. Individual blessings and punishments were elements of other religions, but Christianity broke completely from collectivism. Christianity teaches that divine blessings are granted or withheld, divine punishments suffered or escaped depending on how one lived his life, not what another or a group lived.
Of course, a proper Christian life depends on how one treats others. Because this injunction applies to all members of a Christian community the community, as a whole, would act in a Christian way, but it is the individuals who are commanded, not the community as a separate entity.
Jesus told each of us to be kind. He did not say to force others to be kind. Jesus said nothing about coercing others be chaste or heterosexual or tolerant of homosexuality. He said nothing about forcing others to help the poor; He told us individually to do that.
No Command to Coerce Others
Though He laid a heavy burden on His followers, the burden was individual. In the temporal world, Christianity told its followers what they SHOULD do, but not what they MUST do, that is, not what worldly laws should force them to do. Divine law set requirements for salvation, but no worldly requirement that people should be coerced into being saved. Yes, followers must do this and must not do that to be saved, but this “must” is akin to “you must put the key in the lock if you want to open the door”. The Christian “must” is a law of God (or nature, if you will), not intended to be a worldly “must” as in “you must stop at a red light.”
Temporal or worldly musts and must-nots limit human liberty; Christian musts and must-nots do not limit liberty as they are not to be enforced by mortals in this world but by God in the afterlife.
Nowhere in the Gospels, that I can find, does Jesus tell his disciples to force people to visit the sick or to gang together to force the reluctant (under threat of violence) to give to the poor.
Christianity is not Coercive
Therefore, I assert that forcing someone to give to the poor, or taking from someone under threat of violence and using the proceeds to give to the poor (or to give to anyone else) is counter to Christ’s teaching. Christians are expected to obey temporal laws serving worldly purposes but Christians are not commanded to enact temporal laws to serve divine purposes.
Yet politicians calling themselves “Christian” brag about doing Christ’s work as they encourage us to, by majority vote, tax people who don’t want to be taxed to give the money to someone else; or, by majority vote, prohibiting someone from buying liquor on Sunday, or jailing someone for having a lover of the same sex. Nowhere can I find a Christian mandate to restrict the liberty of any human being, yet right-wing and left-wing Christians pride themselves on restricting liberties to prevent others from offending Jesus.
Evident Conflict
Confusion can arise because Jesus told his followers to form a community and, essentially, for that community to operate on the micro-morality of the isolated band or troop: love of others, sharing without regard to ownership, communal action, self-surrender and self-sacrifice for the good of others.
How can Christianity be so strongly communitarian (as has long been recognized) and at the same time so fiercely individualistic, as I claim?
Jesus told his followers, individually, to join the community. He never said that the community should force anyone to join or to live by the community’s internal morality. The community is open to all, but each has the liberty to join, not join, or leave as he or she wishes. The community coerces no one inside or outside the community.
Jesus was a radical proponent of individual liberty. He also was quite clear about the consequences, to the individual, of misusing that liberty – consequences after death, not before.
Don’t Abandon the Micro-Morality
Christianity emphasizes the morality of the micro-order. Besides the religious sense of it, Christianity reminds us not to let the macro-morality crush the micro orders and emphasizes the importance of treating all individuals by the micro-morality whenever possible, and of not losing ourselves in the macro-morality.
Christians tend to reject (at least theoretically) the extended order and its macro-morality, asserting that the whole world and all human interactions should abide by the morality of the micro-cosmos.
But the extended order, the free-market, is what creates the wealth which has gradually reduced poverty, the wealth that enables over six billion of us to live here. How many people would Jesus want us to starve to death when we destroy the macro-order with its non-Christian morality, stopping the wealth-creation that feeds billions?
I am pitching neither a religion nor religion in general. However, we hear politicians as well as private individuals speaking about government doing God's or Christ's work, so the argument can be examined from their point of view - the point of view of those defending their policies with religious allusions.
I know the most about Christianity, so that is what I will address: the role of Liberty, as I am using the term, in relation to Christian teaching. I leave to others the examination of how other religions and their teachings relate to individual liberty.
Jesus preached individual responsibility and a communitarian ethic that seem contradictory but, in my opinion, are not.
A Different Kind of Relationship with the Divine
In Jesus’ time, Judaism was a collective religion: the entire Tribe of Israel would suffer or be saved together, as a tribe, based on how well all Jews followed God’s law. Other Mediterranean religions were mostly national in nature – the gods would favor the nation or punish the nation. The sins of one person harmed everyone’s relationship with the divine.
Christianity is different: individual salvation and individual responsibility, not group or tribe or national salvation with collective responsibility for the salvation of all. Individual blessings and punishments were elements of other religions, but Christianity broke completely from collectivism. Christianity teaches that divine blessings are granted or withheld, divine punishments suffered or escaped depending on how one lived his life, not what another or a group lived.
Of course, a proper Christian life depends on how one treats others. Because this injunction applies to all members of a Christian community the community, as a whole, would act in a Christian way, but it is the individuals who are commanded, not the community as a separate entity.
Jesus told each of us to be kind. He did not say to force others to be kind. Jesus said nothing about coercing others be chaste or heterosexual or tolerant of homosexuality. He said nothing about forcing others to help the poor; He told us individually to do that.
No Command to Coerce Others
Though He laid a heavy burden on His followers, the burden was individual. In the temporal world, Christianity told its followers what they SHOULD do, but not what they MUST do, that is, not what worldly laws should force them to do. Divine law set requirements for salvation, but no worldly requirement that people should be coerced into being saved. Yes, followers must do this and must not do that to be saved, but this “must” is akin to “you must put the key in the lock if you want to open the door”. The Christian “must” is a law of God (or nature, if you will), not intended to be a worldly “must” as in “you must stop at a red light.”
Temporal or worldly musts and must-nots limit human liberty; Christian musts and must-nots do not limit liberty as they are not to be enforced by mortals in this world but by God in the afterlife.
Nowhere in the Gospels, that I can find, does Jesus tell his disciples to force people to visit the sick or to gang together to force the reluctant (under threat of violence) to give to the poor.
Christianity is not Coercive
Therefore, I assert that forcing someone to give to the poor, or taking from someone under threat of violence and using the proceeds to give to the poor (or to give to anyone else) is counter to Christ’s teaching. Christians are expected to obey temporal laws serving worldly purposes but Christians are not commanded to enact temporal laws to serve divine purposes.
Yet politicians calling themselves “Christian” brag about doing Christ’s work as they encourage us to, by majority vote, tax people who don’t want to be taxed to give the money to someone else; or, by majority vote, prohibiting someone from buying liquor on Sunday, or jailing someone for having a lover of the same sex. Nowhere can I find a Christian mandate to restrict the liberty of any human being, yet right-wing and left-wing Christians pride themselves on restricting liberties to prevent others from offending Jesus.
Evident Conflict
Confusion can arise because Jesus told his followers to form a community and, essentially, for that community to operate on the micro-morality of the isolated band or troop: love of others, sharing without regard to ownership, communal action, self-surrender and self-sacrifice for the good of others.
How can Christianity be so strongly communitarian (as has long been recognized) and at the same time so fiercely individualistic, as I claim?
Jesus told his followers, individually, to join the community. He never said that the community should force anyone to join or to live by the community’s internal morality. The community is open to all, but each has the liberty to join, not join, or leave as he or she wishes. The community coerces no one inside or outside the community.
Jesus was a radical proponent of individual liberty. He also was quite clear about the consequences, to the individual, of misusing that liberty – consequences after death, not before.
Don’t Abandon the Micro-Morality
Christianity emphasizes the morality of the micro-order. Besides the religious sense of it, Christianity reminds us not to let the macro-morality crush the micro orders and emphasizes the importance of treating all individuals by the micro-morality whenever possible, and of not losing ourselves in the macro-morality.
Christians tend to reject (at least theoretically) the extended order and its macro-morality, asserting that the whole world and all human interactions should abide by the morality of the micro-cosmos.
But the extended order, the free-market, is what creates the wealth which has gradually reduced poverty, the wealth that enables over six billion of us to live here. How many people would Jesus want us to starve to death when we destroy the macro-order with its non-Christian morality, stopping the wealth-creation that feeds billions?
...and Liberty for All
To have liberty, one must respect the liberty of others.
One who obtains property, position, or power by violating the liberty of other men has, by his depredations, renounced liberty, even his own. In liberty’s place he has put power, stealth, or whatever he used.
By sanctioning conquest, the conquer admits people, including himself, are legitimately subject to conquest. While gaining wealth and power, the conquer cannot enjoy liberty for he must devote much of his efforts to averting being conquered himself. Rather than being at liberty to do whatever he wishes within his own personal sphere, he must remain vigilant and prepared for defense. By his conquest, he has denied the legitimacy of any personal sphere of activity, even his own.
Similarly the thief, cheat, or fraud.
Only by recognizing the liberty of others, and being willing to help others defend their liberty (which includes their rights to own and control their property), can a man expect liberty for himself.
I wrote earlier that all men are islands, contrary to the drippy romanticism of John Donne (or rather, the drippy romanticism of how Donne is popularly interpreted). When the bell tolls, it tolls for somebody but, if I can hear the bell, not for me. I am born, live, die, saved or damned alone, never in communion with the inner life of any other human. But none of us live on an island: others surround us. Others just as primarily alone as are we, yet liberty is, fundamentally, a characteristic of how we interact with others. Liberty cannot be solitary.
One who obtains property, position, or power by violating the liberty of other men has, by his depredations, renounced liberty, even his own. In liberty’s place he has put power, stealth, or whatever he used.
By sanctioning conquest, the conquer admits people, including himself, are legitimately subject to conquest. While gaining wealth and power, the conquer cannot enjoy liberty for he must devote much of his efforts to averting being conquered himself. Rather than being at liberty to do whatever he wishes within his own personal sphere, he must remain vigilant and prepared for defense. By his conquest, he has denied the legitimacy of any personal sphere of activity, even his own.
Similarly the thief, cheat, or fraud.
Only by recognizing the liberty of others, and being willing to help others defend their liberty (which includes their rights to own and control their property), can a man expect liberty for himself.
I wrote earlier that all men are islands, contrary to the drippy romanticism of John Donne (or rather, the drippy romanticism of how Donne is popularly interpreted). When the bell tolls, it tolls for somebody but, if I can hear the bell, not for me. I am born, live, die, saved or damned alone, never in communion with the inner life of any other human. But none of us live on an island: others surround us. Others just as primarily alone as are we, yet liberty is, fundamentally, a characteristic of how we interact with others. Liberty cannot be solitary.
Positive and Negative Liberty
I’ve been using the term promiscuously, so what is ‘liberty’?
Many writers and thinkers have defined it. Some of them use the term ‘liberty’, some use ‘freedom’, and a few speak in terms of rights. Here are some definitions.
One Kind of Liberty
‘This is what the modern concept of freedom means. Every adult is free to fashion his life according to its own plans. … What restricts the individual’s freedom is not other people’s violence or threat of violence, but the physiological structure of his body and the inescapable nature-given scarcity of the factors of production.’
– Ludwig von Mises, The Anti-Capitalist Mentality p. 3
‘…a free Government interferes with nothing except what it must. A despotic Government tries to make everybody do what it wishes, a Liberal Government tries, so far as the safety of society will permit, to allow everybody to do what he wishes.’
- Sir William Harcourt [Harcourt wrote in the 19th Century, using ‘Liberal’ in the classical sense, not in the modern sense]
“[Freedom] meant always the possibility of a person's acting according to his own decisions and plans, in contrast to the position of one who was irrevocably subject to the will of another, who by arbitrary decision could coerce him to act or not to act in specific ways. The time-honoured phrase by which this freedom has often been described is therefore 'independence of the arbitrary will of another'.”
– F.A. Hayek, Constitution of Liberty
‘Right (or justice) is the sum total of the conditions which are necessary for everybody’s free choice to co-exist with that of everybody else, in accordance with a general law of liberty’
– Kant Theory of Right
To these men, liberty or freedom meant not being coerced by others – individuals or governments. A person with liberty makes choices for himself without being subject to the threat of man-imposed violence or suffering any harm but natural consequences of “the physiological structure of his body and the inescapable nature-given scarcity of the factors of production”.
Another Kind of Liberty
‘[Liberty is the] absence of obstacles to the realization of our desires’
– Bertrand Russell
[Human rights include t]he right to a useful and remunerative job… The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation; The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living; The right of every businessman… to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies…; The right of every family to a decent home; The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health; The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment; The right to a good education.
– FDR
To Russell and FDR ‘liberty’ entails possession of something (or several things). Liberty and Rights are meaningless unless one has the material ability to exercise them.
Positive and Negative
Evidently the first is called ‘negative liberty’ as it involves not having things done to you. Negative liberty is the exemption from coercion.
The second is called ‘positive liberty’ because having it depends on possessing certain things; being left alone is insufficient as something positive must happen to give a person positive liberty.
These are very different things, with very different consequences for society. When someone speaks or writes of “liberty” or “freedom” we must identify what sort of liberty is being addressed.
An important characteristic of negative liberty is that state action increasing it for one person need not decrease it for any another. In fact, social policies that increase negative liberty for one person or group are very likely to increase negative liberty for everyone else as one person’s liberty actually depends on others also being at liberty. (See the post “…and Liberty for All”)
Liberty as defined by Bertrand Russell (in the above quote) is impossible. I desire to be able to fly like a bird. Physical reality imposes an irremovable obstacle to the realization of my desire so, according to Russell, the reality of physics in our universe makes liberty impossible.
FDR refers to the idea, common among progressives, that rights and liberty are meaningless without enough wealth to do something with that liberty. Freedom of speech is meaningless to a starving man. To those born to great wealth, like FDR, or even middle-class affluence like most campus leftists, the idea of being able to do what one wants to do without having substantial material wealth (by their standards) is foreign.
Consequences
The social consequences of positive liberty are chilling: it is not possible for the state to increase one persons positive liberty without reducing the liberty, both positive and negative, of other people. Since the state has no wealth of its own, it can give wealth to one person only by taking property from others, decreasing their both their positive and negative liberty by the coercive taking.
Of course an individual can use his liberty to help another, but that is voluntary and does not involve the state. Christianity expects adherents to use their liberty thusly, as do other religions.
The most effective means of increasing positive liberty for people in general is the market system, the wealth-creating system of voluntary human interaction sometimes called the extended system. People are poor because something has prevented them from contributing to and deriving benefits from the extended system – usually that ‘something’ is their own government.
When I speak of ‘liberty’ I mean negative liberty. The idea of positive liberty is an invention of those who wish to coerce others into doing “what is right”.
Many writers and thinkers have defined it. Some of them use the term ‘liberty’, some use ‘freedom’, and a few speak in terms of rights. Here are some definitions.
One Kind of Liberty
‘This is what the modern concept of freedom means. Every adult is free to fashion his life according to its own plans. … What restricts the individual’s freedom is not other people’s violence or threat of violence, but the physiological structure of his body and the inescapable nature-given scarcity of the factors of production.’
– Ludwig von Mises, The Anti-Capitalist Mentality p. 3
‘…a free Government interferes with nothing except what it must. A despotic Government tries to make everybody do what it wishes, a Liberal Government tries, so far as the safety of society will permit, to allow everybody to do what he wishes.’
- Sir William Harcourt [Harcourt wrote in the 19th Century, using ‘Liberal’ in the classical sense, not in the modern sense]
“[Freedom] meant always the possibility of a person's acting according to his own decisions and plans, in contrast to the position of one who was irrevocably subject to the will of another, who by arbitrary decision could coerce him to act or not to act in specific ways. The time-honoured phrase by which this freedom has often been described is therefore 'independence of the arbitrary will of another'.”
– F.A. Hayek, Constitution of Liberty
‘Right (or justice) is the sum total of the conditions which are necessary for everybody’s free choice to co-exist with that of everybody else, in accordance with a general law of liberty’
– Kant Theory of Right
To these men, liberty or freedom meant not being coerced by others – individuals or governments. A person with liberty makes choices for himself without being subject to the threat of man-imposed violence or suffering any harm but natural consequences of “the physiological structure of his body and the inescapable nature-given scarcity of the factors of production”.
Another Kind of Liberty
‘[Liberty is the] absence of obstacles to the realization of our desires’
– Bertrand Russell
[Human rights include t]he right to a useful and remunerative job… The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation; The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living; The right of every businessman… to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies…; The right of every family to a decent home; The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health; The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment; The right to a good education.
– FDR
To Russell and FDR ‘liberty’ entails possession of something (or several things). Liberty and Rights are meaningless unless one has the material ability to exercise them.
Positive and Negative
Evidently the first is called ‘negative liberty’ as it involves not having things done to you. Negative liberty is the exemption from coercion.
The second is called ‘positive liberty’ because having it depends on possessing certain things; being left alone is insufficient as something positive must happen to give a person positive liberty.
These are very different things, with very different consequences for society. When someone speaks or writes of “liberty” or “freedom” we must identify what sort of liberty is being addressed.
An important characteristic of negative liberty is that state action increasing it for one person need not decrease it for any another. In fact, social policies that increase negative liberty for one person or group are very likely to increase negative liberty for everyone else as one person’s liberty actually depends on others also being at liberty. (See the post “…and Liberty for All”)
Liberty as defined by Bertrand Russell (in the above quote) is impossible. I desire to be able to fly like a bird. Physical reality imposes an irremovable obstacle to the realization of my desire so, according to Russell, the reality of physics in our universe makes liberty impossible.
FDR refers to the idea, common among progressives, that rights and liberty are meaningless without enough wealth to do something with that liberty. Freedom of speech is meaningless to a starving man. To those born to great wealth, like FDR, or even middle-class affluence like most campus leftists, the idea of being able to do what one wants to do without having substantial material wealth (by their standards) is foreign.
Consequences
The social consequences of positive liberty are chilling: it is not possible for the state to increase one persons positive liberty without reducing the liberty, both positive and negative, of other people. Since the state has no wealth of its own, it can give wealth to one person only by taking property from others, decreasing their both their positive and negative liberty by the coercive taking.
Of course an individual can use his liberty to help another, but that is voluntary and does not involve the state. Christianity expects adherents to use their liberty thusly, as do other religions.
The most effective means of increasing positive liberty for people in general is the market system, the wealth-creating system of voluntary human interaction sometimes called the extended system. People are poor because something has prevented them from contributing to and deriving benefits from the extended system – usually that ‘something’ is their own government.
When I speak of ‘liberty’ I mean negative liberty. The idea of positive liberty is an invention of those who wish to coerce others into doing “what is right”.
A Salute to Barney Frank, D-Mass.
The Frank Principle
‘I would let people gamble on the Internet, I would let adults smoke marijuana; I would let adults do a lot of things, if they choose. But allowing them total freedom to take on economic obligations that spill over into the broader society? The individual is not the only one impacted here, when bad decisions get made in the economic sphere, it causes problems.’
– U.S. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass) Apr 23, 2009 interview with CBSNews.com
Three cheers for Rep. Barney Frank… for being honest. He doesn’t want you to have the liberty to take on economic obligations (like mortgages, agreements to buy and pay for something, establish a savings account, lend or borrow money, etc.) because, if you made a mistake, others would be affected. Since ‘take on economic obligations’ pretty much means the same as ‘make economic decisions’, Rep. Frank is saying he wants to deny American economic liberty.
Just about everything we do has effects that spill over into the broader society. That's what it means to live among others.
We don't live on separate islands
If I check out a library book, nobody else can check it out until I return it, and the interest in the book might induce the library to buy another copy. If I buy something, my action tends to encourage the raising of the price of that thing. If I put something up for sale, that tends to lower the market price of that thing. If I grow my own corn it adds, in a tiny amount, to the world supply of corn and, because I'm not buying corn, pushes the price down, ever-so-slightly. (During the New Deal, the FDR administration declared that growing your own food is not a private activity and is subject to government regulation. I kid you not.)
All human economic activity affects all other humans participating in the extended order of voluntary human exchange – the free market – and that is exactly why the extended order works to create wealth and improve human living conditions.
Leave aside the question of who is going to supervise you in taking on economic obligations, and ignore the fact that government meddling in economic decisions caused the 1929 crash, created and sustained the subsequent Great Depression, caused the recent Housing Bubble, and brought about the crash of 2008; forget that Rep. Frank’s record of making economic decisions for the rest of us is beyond abysmal… think about the principle he is advocating: you will have liberty except when making economic decisions or taking economic actions.
(BTW: Gambling on the internet involves the taking on of economic obligations: if you lose, you've gotta pay up.)
Maybe the government won’t exert the full control the Frank Principle theoretically grants. After all, he was talking about the big financial institutions that made poor decisions, not about ordinary people. Maybe the federal income tax will never go above 5%. Maybe Social Security taxes will never be higher than 2% of earnings. Maybe taxes will never be withheld from your paycheck. All those things would never happen, according to those advocating the specified federal interventions.
Maybe the Civil Rights Act of 1964 specifically prohibits racial set-aside, quotas, and affirmative action, as Senator Hubert Humphrey loudly declared on the Senate floor. (Sen. Humphrey said he would "eat his hat" if anything in the Act permitted those things. It took less than 10 years for the federal government to decide the Act permitted them.)
So, what’s the big deal – you give up a little economic freedom but you have liberty in everything else? OK.
Think about your week. How much do you do that doesn’t involve working for pay, buying something, consuming something you have already purchased, deciding not to buy something, deciding not to consume something, or paying a kid to mow your lawn? All those actions are economic activity and, according to the Frank Principle, in theory subject to government direction and control. What car do you buy? Do you drive the car to work? How quickly do you accelerate up to the legal speed? What do you eat for lunch? What present do you buy for a family member? What shoes to buy (that is, what shoes you wear)?
Rep. Frank would let you smoke marijuana, but he would have the government regulate prices, quantities, packaging, and quality – because these involve economic obligations – so you would be free to smoke marijuana but no at liberty to buy it or sell it without abiding by government rules.
If it happens outside you head, it's economic
How much of your life would be your own, within your personal zone of autonomy and independent of government coercion, under the Frank Principle? You could walk to the park and sit on a bench. You could walk to the public library and read a book. You wouldn’t be able to grow your own marijuana because that is an economic activity that effects others (you are depressing the price of marijuana by adding to the supply).
Rep. Frank and his political allies may not want to run your life for you, but do you want to surrender your liberty? Are you worth so little as a human being?
The Frank Principle is not new; it's almost 200 years old. The Frank Principle was a key element of Bolshevism, Fascism, Maoism, and all the totalitarian movements of the 20th century. They all started as benign as what Rep. Frank proposed. All of them.
‘I would let people gamble on the Internet, I would let adults smoke marijuana; I would let adults do a lot of things, if they choose. But allowing them total freedom to take on economic obligations that spill over into the broader society? The individual is not the only one impacted here, when bad decisions get made in the economic sphere, it causes problems.’
– U.S. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass) Apr 23, 2009 interview with CBSNews.com
Three cheers for Rep. Barney Frank… for being honest. He doesn’t want you to have the liberty to take on economic obligations (like mortgages, agreements to buy and pay for something, establish a savings account, lend or borrow money, etc.) because, if you made a mistake, others would be affected. Since ‘take on economic obligations’ pretty much means the same as ‘make economic decisions’, Rep. Frank is saying he wants to deny American economic liberty.
Just about everything we do has effects that spill over into the broader society. That's what it means to live among others.
We don't live on separate islands
If I check out a library book, nobody else can check it out until I return it, and the interest in the book might induce the library to buy another copy. If I buy something, my action tends to encourage the raising of the price of that thing. If I put something up for sale, that tends to lower the market price of that thing. If I grow my own corn it adds, in a tiny amount, to the world supply of corn and, because I'm not buying corn, pushes the price down, ever-so-slightly. (During the New Deal, the FDR administration declared that growing your own food is not a private activity and is subject to government regulation. I kid you not.)
All human economic activity affects all other humans participating in the extended order of voluntary human exchange – the free market – and that is exactly why the extended order works to create wealth and improve human living conditions.
Leave aside the question of who is going to supervise you in taking on economic obligations, and ignore the fact that government meddling in economic decisions caused the 1929 crash, created and sustained the subsequent Great Depression, caused the recent Housing Bubble, and brought about the crash of 2008; forget that Rep. Frank’s record of making economic decisions for the rest of us is beyond abysmal… think about the principle he is advocating: you will have liberty except when making economic decisions or taking economic actions.
(BTW: Gambling on the internet involves the taking on of economic obligations: if you lose, you've gotta pay up.)
Maybe the government won’t exert the full control the Frank Principle theoretically grants. After all, he was talking about the big financial institutions that made poor decisions, not about ordinary people. Maybe the federal income tax will never go above 5%. Maybe Social Security taxes will never be higher than 2% of earnings. Maybe taxes will never be withheld from your paycheck. All those things would never happen, according to those advocating the specified federal interventions.
Maybe the Civil Rights Act of 1964 specifically prohibits racial set-aside, quotas, and affirmative action, as Senator Hubert Humphrey loudly declared on the Senate floor. (Sen. Humphrey said he would "eat his hat" if anything in the Act permitted those things. It took less than 10 years for the federal government to decide the Act permitted them.)
So, what’s the big deal – you give up a little economic freedom but you have liberty in everything else? OK.
Think about your week. How much do you do that doesn’t involve working for pay, buying something, consuming something you have already purchased, deciding not to buy something, deciding not to consume something, or paying a kid to mow your lawn? All those actions are economic activity and, according to the Frank Principle, in theory subject to government direction and control. What car do you buy? Do you drive the car to work? How quickly do you accelerate up to the legal speed? What do you eat for lunch? What present do you buy for a family member? What shoes to buy (that is, what shoes you wear)?
Rep. Frank would let you smoke marijuana, but he would have the government regulate prices, quantities, packaging, and quality – because these involve economic obligations – so you would be free to smoke marijuana but no at liberty to buy it or sell it without abiding by government rules.
If it happens outside you head, it's economic
How much of your life would be your own, within your personal zone of autonomy and independent of government coercion, under the Frank Principle? You could walk to the park and sit on a bench. You could walk to the public library and read a book. You wouldn’t be able to grow your own marijuana because that is an economic activity that effects others (you are depressing the price of marijuana by adding to the supply).
Rep. Frank and his political allies may not want to run your life for you, but do you want to surrender your liberty? Are you worth so little as a human being?
The Frank Principle is not new; it's almost 200 years old. The Frank Principle was a key element of Bolshevism, Fascism, Maoism, and all the totalitarian movements of the 20th century. They all started as benign as what Rep. Frank proposed. All of them.
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