Excuse Me, Professor: Challenging the Myths of Progressivism Read online

  Note that the progressive and the Jeffersonian views of rights are not only different, they are incompatible. Any time a right claimed by anyone imposes a duty on another to undertake positive action, the alleged right cannot possibly be exercised by both simultaneously without logical contradiction.

  The progressive view of rights is often called the positivist view because such rights necessarily impose duties to undertake positive actions on others. It is part of a larger philosophy called legal positivism which asserts that rights are whatever government says they are.

  The Jeffersonian view of rights is often called the negative view because the only duty imposed on others by such rights is a duty to refrain from undertaking a particular action. It is a duty to refrain from interfering with others. Moreover, in this view, government itself is bound by the rights justly claimed by all individuals.

  The next time you say, “I have a right,” ask: “Who has the duty?” If there is anyone who has a duty to do anything except refrain from interfering with you, ask: “On what grounds do I claim a right to subordinate that person’s will to mine?”

  (Editor’s Note: This essay appeared as the first chapter in FEE’s 1994 anthology, Clichés of Politics.)

  SUMMARY

  •Genuine rights are prior to government; they are part of your nature as an individual human

  •The desire to have something doesn’t automatically mean you have a right to it

  •If your alleged “right” to something cannot be achieved without forcing another person to provide it for you, then it wasn’t a “right” to begin with

  •You have a right to read a book but no right to compel someone else to give you one

  #11

  “RICH PEOPLE HAVE AN OBLIGATION TO GIVE BACK”

  BY LAWRENCE W. REED

  FOR A SOCIETY THAT HAS FED, CLOTHED, HOUSED, CARED FOR, INFORMED, ENTERTAINED, and otherwise enriched more people at higher levels than any in the history of the planet, there sure is a lot of groundless guilt in America.

  Manifestations of that guilt abound. The example that peeves me the most is the one we often hear from well-meaning philanthropists who adorn their charitable giving with this little chestnut: “I want to give something back.” It always sounds as though they’re apologizing for having been successful.

  Translated, that statement means something like this: “I’ve accumulated some wealth over the years. Never mind how I did it, I just feel guilty for having done it. There’s something wrong with my having more than somebody else, but don’t ask me to explain how or why because it’s just a fuzzy, uneasy feeling on my part. Because I have something, I feel obligated to have less of it. It makes me feel good to give it away because doing so expunges me of the sin of having it in the first place. Now I’m a good guy, am I not?”

  It was apparent to me how deeply ingrained this mindset has become when I visited the gravesite of John D. Rockefeller at Lakeview Cemetery in Cleveland a few years ago. The wording on a nearby plaque commemorating the life of this remarkable entrepreneur implied that giving much of his fortune away was as worthy an achievement as building the great international enterprise, Standard Oil, that produced it in the first place. The history books most kids learn from these days go a step further. They routinely criticize people like Rockefeller for the wealth they created and for the profit motive, or self-interest, that played a part in their creating it, while lauding them for relieving themselves of the money.

  More than once, philanthropists have bestowed contributions on my organization and explained they were “giving something back.” They meant that by giving to us, they were paying some debt to society at large. It turns out that, with few exceptions, these philanthropists really had not done anything wrong.

  They made money in their lives, to be sure, but they didn’t steal it. They took risks they didn’t have to. They invested their own funds, or what they first borrowed and later paid back with interest. They created jobs, paid market wages to willing workers, and thereby generated livelihoods for thousands of families. They invented things that didn’t exist before, some of which saved lives and made us healthier. They manufactured products and provided services, for which they asked and received market prices.

  They had willing and eager customers who came back for more again and again. They had stockholders to whom they had to offer favorable returns. They also had competitors, and had to stay on top of things or lose out to them. They didn’t use force to get where they got; they relied on free exchange and voluntary contract. They paid their bills and debts in full. And every year they donated some of their profits to lots of community charities no law required them to support. Not a one of them that I know ever did any jail time for anything.

  So how is it that anybody can add all that up and still feel guilty? I suspect that if they are genuinely guilty of anything, it’s allowing themselves to be intimidated by the losers and the envious of the world—the people who are in the redistribution business either because they don’t know how to create anything or they simply choose the easy way out. They just take what they want, or hire politicians to take it for them.

  Or like a few in the clergy who think that wealth is not made but simply “collected,” the redistributionists lay a guilt trip on people until they disgorge their lucre—notwithstanding the Tenth Commandment against coveting. Certainly, people of faith have an obligation to support their church, mosque, or synagogue, but that’s another matter and not at issue here.

  A person who breaches a contract owes something, but it’s to the specific party on the other side of the deal. Steal someone else’s property and you owe it to the person you stole it from, not society, to give it back. Those obligations are real and they stem from a voluntary agreement in the first instance or from an immoral act of theft in the second. This business of “giving something back” simply because you earned it amounts to manufacturing mystical obligations where none exist in reality. It turns the whole concept of “debt” on its head. To give it “back” means it wasn’t yours in the first place, but the creation of wealth through private initiative and voluntary exchange does not involve the expropriation of anyone’s rightful property.

  How can it possibly be otherwise? By what rational measure does a successful person in a free market, who has made good on all his debts and obligations in the traditional sense, owe something further to a nebulous entity called society? If Entrepreneur X earns a billion dollars and Entrepreneur Y earns two billion, would it make sense to say that Y should “give back” twice as much as X? And if so, who should decide to whom he owes it? Clearly, the whole notion of “giving something back” just because you have it is built on intellectual quicksand.

  Successful people who earn their wealth through free and peaceful exchange may choose to give some of it away, but they’d be no less moral and no less debt-free if they gave away nothing. It cheapens the powerful charitable impulse that all but a few people possess to suggest that charity is equivalent to debt service or that it should be motivated by any degree of guilt or self-flagellation.

  A partial list of those who honestly do have an obligation to give something back would include bank robbers, shoplifters, scam artists, deadbeats, and politicians who “bring home the bacon.” They have good reason to feel guilt, because they’re guilty.

  But if you are an exemplar of the free and entrepreneurial society, one who has truly earned and husbanded what you have and have done nothing to injure the lives, property, or rights of others, you are a different breed altogether. When you give, you should do so because of the personal satisfaction you derive from supporting worthy causes, not because you need to salve a guilty conscience.

  (Editor’s Note: Versions of this essay have previously appeared in FEE’s magazine, The Freeman, under the title, “Who Owes What To Whom?”)

  SUMMARY

  •The innocent-sounding phrase, “I want to give back,” far too often implies guilt for having been productive or succes
sful

  •If you earned it through wealth-creation followed by free and voluntary exchange, don’t let others get away with making you feel guilty just because you have it

  •The people who really should “give it back” are those to whom it doesn’t belong, or who took it from others in the first place

  #12

  “I PREFER SECURITY TO FREEDOM”

  BY LEONARD E. READ

  MANY PEOPLE WANDER UNWITTINGLY INTO SOCIALISM, GULLED BY ASSUMPTIONS they have not tested. One popular but misleading assumption is that security and freedom are mutually exclusive alternatives—that to choose one is to forego the other.

  In the United States during the past century, more people achieved greater material security than their ancestors had ever known in any previous society. Large numbers of people in this country accumulated a comfortable nest egg, so that “come hell or high water”—depressions, old age, sickness or whatever—they could rely on the saved fruits of their own labor (and/or that of family members, friends or parishioners) to carry them through any storm or temporary setback. By reason of unprecedented freedom of choice, unparalleled opportunities, provident living, and the right to the fruits of their own labor—private property—they were able to meet the many exigencies which arise in the course of a lifetime.

  We think of these enviable, personal achievements as security. But this type of security is not an alternative to freedom; rather, it is an outgrowth of freedom. This traditional security stems from freedom as the oak from an acorn. It is not a case of either/or; one without the other is impossible. Freedom sets the stage for all the security available in this uncertain world.

  Security in its traditional sense, however, is not what the progressives are talking about when they ask, “Wouldn’t you rather have security than freedom?” They have in mind what Maxwell Anderson called “the guaranteed life,” or the arrangement described by Karl Marx, “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” Under this dispensation, the political apparatus, having nothing at its disposal except the police force, uses this force to take the property of the more well-to-do in order to dispense the loot among the less well-to-do. In theory, at least, that’s all there is to it—a leveling procedure!

  Admittedly, this procedure appears to attract millions of our fellow citizens. It relieves them, they assume, of the necessity of looking after themselves; Uncle Sam is standing by with bags of forcibly collected largess.

  To the unwary, this looks like a choice between security and freedom. But, in fact, it is the choice between the self-responsibility of a free man or the slave-like security of a ward of the government. Thus, if a person were to say, “I prefer being a ward of the government to exercising the personal practice of freedom,” he would at least be stating the alternatives in correct terms.

  One need not be a profound sociologist to realize that the ward-of-the-government type of “security” does preclude freedom for all three parties involved. Those from whom property is taken obviously are denied the freedom to use what they’ve earned from their labor. Secondly, people to whom the property is given—who get something for nothing—are forfeiting the most important reason for living: the freedom to be responsible for self. The third party in this setup—the authoritarian who does the taking and the giving—also loses his freedom.

  One need not be a skilled economist to understand how the guaranteed life leads to general insecurity. Whenever government assumes responsibility for the security, welfare, and prosperity of citizens, the costs of government rise beyond the point where it is politically expedient to cover them by direct tax levies. At this point—usually 20-25 percent of the people’s earned income—the government resorts to deficit financing and inflation. Inflation—increasing the volume of the money supply to cover deficits—means a dilution of the money’s purchasing power. Unless arrested by a change in thinking and in policy, this process leads to all “guarantees” becoming worthless, and a general insecurity follows.

  The true and realistic alternatives are insecurity or security. Insecurity must follow the transfer of responsibility from self to others, particularly when transferred to arbitrary and capricious government. Genuine security is a matter of self-responsibility, based on the right to the fruits of one’s own labor and the freedom to trade.

  (Editor’s Note: This essay, minus some slight edits for updating, was originally published in 1962 in FEE’s book, Clichés of Socialism.)

  SUMMARY

  •True security is an outgrowth of freedom, not an alternative to it

  •Being dependent, instead of being independent, is a move away from true security

  •Mr. Read’s observation more than half a century ago that increasing reliance on a welfare state for security would produce financial problems seems positively prescient today. Consider our $17.5 trillion national debt as evidence

  •The real choice is not between freedom and security but between security and insecurity

  #13

  “COOPERATION, NOT COMPETITION!”

  BY LAWRENCE W. REED

  “GYM NOW STRESSES COOPERATION, NOT COMPETITION,” BLARED A HEADLINE IN the New York Times a decade ago. The story was about an elementary school where “confrontational” games, team sports, and elimination rounds were changed or scrapped so that differences between students’ athletic abilities would be minimized.

  Perhaps this is fine for grade-school gym class, but it would make for rather boring Olympic Games. Were it imposed on production and trade, it would condemn millions to poverty and early death. Let’s review some fundamental principles.

  In economics, competition is not the antithesis of cooperation; rather, it is one of its highest and most beneficial forms. That may seem counterintuitive. Doesn’t competition necessitate rivalrous or even “dog-eat-dog” behavior? Don’t some competitors lose?

  In my view, competition in the marketplace means nothing less than striving for excellence in the service of others for self-benefit. In other words, sellers cooperate with consumers by catering to their needs and preferences.

  Many people think that competition is directly related to the number of sellers in a market: The more sellers there are, or the smaller the share of the market any one of them has, the more competitive the market. But competition can be just as fierce between two or three rivals as it can be among 10 or 20.

  Moreover, market share is a slippery notion. Almost any market can be defined narrowly enough to make someone look like a monopolist instead of a competitor. I have a 100 percent share of the market for articles by Lawrence Reed, for example. I have a far smaller share of the market for articles generally.

  Not so long ago, XM and Sirius were the only two satellite-radio providers in the United States. For a year and a half the federal government prevented the two from merging, fearing that a harmful monopoly would result. Economists argued that XM and Sirius were competing not only with each other but as two of many companies in a huge media marketplace that includes free radio, iPods and other MP3 players, Internet radio stations, cable radio services, and even cell phones—all of which, along with likely new technologies, would continue to compete even after the merger. Ultimately, economic reasoning prevailed and the merger was allowed.

  Governments don’t have to decree competition; all they have to do is prevent and punish force, violence, deception, and breach of contract. Enterprising individuals will compete because it is in their financial interest to do so, even if they’d prefer not to.

  Competition spurs creativity and innovation and encourages producers to cut costs. You wouldn’t think of stopping the Kentucky Derby in the middle of the race and complain that one of the horses was ahead. The same should be true of free markets, where the race never ends and competitors enter and leave continuously.

  Theoretically, there are two kinds of monopoly: coercive and efficiency. A coercive monopoly results from a government grant of exclusive privilege. Government, in effect, must take
sides in the market to give birth to a coercive monopoly. It must make it difficult, costly, or impossible for anyone but the favored firm to do business. The U.S. Postal Service is an example. By law no one else can deliver first-class mail.

  In other cases the government may not ban competition outright but simply bestow privileges, immunities, or subsidies on one or more firms while imposing costly requirements on all others. Regardless of the method, a firm that enjoys a coercive monopoly is in a position to harm consumers and get away with it.

  An efficiency monopoly, by contrast, earns a high share of a market because it does the best job. It receives no special favors from the law. Others are free to compete and, if consumers so will it, to grow as big as the “monopoly.” Indeed, an efficiency monopoly is not much of a monopoly at all in the traditional sense. It doesn’t restrict output, raise prices, and stifle innovation; it actually sells more and more by pleasing customers and attracting new ones while improving both product and service.

  An efficiency monopoly has no legal power to compel people to deal with it or to protect itself from the consequences of its unethical practices. An efficiency monopoly that turns its back on the very performance which produced its success would be, in effect, posting a sign that reads, “COMPETITORS WANTED.”

  Where does antitrust law come into all this? From its very inception in 1890, antitrust has been plagued by vagaries, false premises, and a stagnant conception of dynamic markets.

  The Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 put the government on record as officially favoring competition and opposing monopoly without ever coming close to any solid definition of either term. It simply made it a criminal offense to “monopolize” or “attempt to monopolize” a market without ever saying what kind of actions qualified.