Posted on 06/06/2007 5:13:35 AM PDT by Kaslin
Dr. Thomas Sowell, a distinguished economist and longtime friend and colleague, recently wrote a series of columns under the title "A War of Words." He pointed out that liberals succeed in duping the public because they are so clever with words that they give the appearance of compassion. Liberals talk about the need for "affordable" housing and health care. They tarnish their enemies with terms such as "price-gouging" and "corporate greed." Uninformed and unthinking Americans fall easy prey to this demagoguery.
Politicians exploit public demands that government ought to do something about this or that problem by taking measures giving them greater control over our lives. For the most part, whatever politicians do, whether it's rent controls to produce "affordable" housing, or price controls to eliminate "price-gouging," the result is a calamity worse than the original problem. For example, two of the most costly housing markets are the rent-controlled cities of San Francisco and New York. If you're over 40, you'll remember the chaos produced by the gasoline price controls of the 1970s. Socialist agendas have considerable appeal, but they produce disaster, and the more socialist they are, the greater the disaster.
Liberals often denounce free markets as immoral. The reality is exactly the opposite. Free markets, characterized by peaceable, voluntary exchange, with respect for property rights and the rule of law, are more moral than any other system of resource allocation. Let's examine just one reason for the superior morality of free markets.
Say that I mow your lawn and you pay me $30, which we might think of as certificates of performance. Having mowed your lawn, I visit my grocer and demand that my fellow men serve me by giving me 3 pounds of steak and a six-pack of beer. In effect, the grocer asks, "Williams, you're demanding that your fellow man, as ranchers and brewers, serve you; what did you do to serve your fellow man?" I say, "I mowed his lawn." The grocer says, "Prove it!" That's when I hand over my certificates of performance -- the $30.
Look at the morality of a resource allocation method that requires that I serve my fellow man in order to have a claim on what he produces and contrast it with government resource allocation. The government can say, "Williams, you don't have to serve your fellow man; through our tax code, we'll take what he produces and give it to you." Of course, if I were to privately take what my fellow man produced, we'd call it theft. The only difference is when the government does it, that theft is legal but nonetheless theft -- the taking of one person's rightful property to give to another.
Liberals love to talk about this or that human right, such as a right to health care, food or housing. That's a perverse usage of the term "right." A right, such as a right to free speech, imposes no obligation on another, except that of non-interference. The so-called right to health care, food or housing, whether a person can afford it or not, is something entirely different; it does impose an obligation on another. If one person has a right to something he didn't produce, simultaneously and of necessity it means that some other person does not have right to something he did produce. That's because, since there's no Santa Claus or Tooth Fairy, in order for government to give one American a dollar, it must, through intimidation, threats and coercion, confiscate that dollar from some other American. I'd like to hear the moral argument for taking what belongs to one person to give to another person.
There are people in need of help. Charity is one of the nobler human motivations. The act of reaching into one's own pockets to help a fellow man in need is praiseworthy and laudable. Reaching into someone else's pocket is despicable and worthy of condemnation. Dr. Williams serves on the faculty of George Mason University as John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics and is the author of More Liberty Means Less Government: Our Founders Knew This Well.
” Socialist agendas have considerable appeal, but they produce disaster, and the more socialist they are, the greater the disaster.”
That is the legacy of liberalism...failure.
They pat themselves on the back for “caring”, and then walk away.
When their plans fail miserably - as they always do - they blame it on the right.
Using government printed, backed and taxed money is an example of a free market?
Bump of agreement ...
But how do we teach our young this ?
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
You wouldn’t think of going to your next door neighbor and demanding that he/she cough up the money necessary to send your kid to college or buy your kid a lunch at school. But you don’t have to - the government does that for you. What a deal.
How did you learn it?
“I’d like to hear the moral argument for taking what belongs to one person to give to another person.”
Just for the sake of argument, here is what the liberals will say...
“The working class is not being fairly compensated for their labor. Let’s say a factory worker produces 10 widgets in a day that can be sold for a NET profit of $100 (minus operating expenses of the factory, hence NET). By contrast, the factory worker only gets paid $80 for his labor. His labor produced $100 worth of profit, but $20 goes missing. This is the *evil* capitalist making money on the backs of others.”
Now, the truth is that the $20 goes to the owner of the business. Across hundreds of workers and millions of widgets, this amounts to millions of dollars. As capitalists, we recognize that this excess is the payment for the factory owner’s ingenuity and industry. If often serves as a return on investment, as well.
To the liberals...
“A new invention should serve mankind, not just one man. The factory owner is taking in excess of what he needs and is therefore a capitalist pig, living high on the hog.”
To conservatives...
We need an incentive to productivity. If you just give people exactly what they need, no one is motivated to be inventive.
And so on...
You’re on the right track. Unfortunately, in our government indoctrination camps (e.g. public schools), this is impossible for they are the very example of a socialist driven public policy with nice sounding platitudes. It’s up to the parents to teach this to the young ones, the real questions is, are we?
Wow, you rather scarily capture the essence of Leninism!
“The working class is not being fairly compensated for their labor. Let’s say a factory worker produces 10 widgets in a day that can be sold for a NET profit of $100 (minus operating expenses of the factory, hence NET). By contrast, the factory worker only gets paid $80 for his labor. His labor produced $100 worth of profit, but $20 goes missing. This is the *evil* capitalist making money on the backs of others.”
FEAR LIBERALISM!
That’s where I quit reading. /sarc
You are mixing apples and oranges. The money is not the market, it's just one of the things traded in the market.
Taxes pre-date money by a long time. The government does not need a monopoly on the means of exchange to tax things. It just makes it simpler for the tax agent to compute the tax if everything is always converted to or through one medium of exchange.
The primary reason for a government monopoly on printing money is so that they can inflate the money supply as they want without having folks run to a non-inflated medium of exchange. The stated reason for a government monopoly on the medium of exchange is to prevent that inflation from happening.
There's no legal reason you can't trade a stack of gold coins for a new car here in the USA, or euros or swiss francs. After all, you can trade a used car in on a new car, it's just a matter of putting a $ valuation on whatever is being traded in to be recorded for tax purposes.
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