I would say, "Freedom Is Not Compatible with Government."
On 1/27/2011 10:21 AM, MJ wrote:
*Freedom Is Not Compatible with Government’s Initiation of Force
against Innocent People
*By Robert Higgs <http://www.independent.org/blog/?author=5>
Wednesday January 26, 2011 at 8:53:41 AM PST
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In yesterday’s /New York Times/ appears an op-ed article
<http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/25/the-moral-heart-of-economics/>
by Edward L. Glaeser, a professor of economics at Harvard. Glaeser’s
article is remarkable because arguments in favor of freedom, insisting
that economic analysis implicitly rests on a moral presumption that
individual freedom has fundamental value, do not appear every dayor
every monthin “the newspaper of record.” So, I am glad to give two
cheers to Glaeser, one for his theme and another for his courage in
placing the argument in such a hostile outlet.
I cannot give Glaeser a third cheer, however, because toward the end
of the article he inserts a concession that I find wholly inconsistent
with the rest of the argument. He writes:
Economists’ fondness for freedom rarely implies any particular
policy program. A fondness for freedom is perfectly compatible
with favoring redistribution, which can be seen as increasing one
person’s choices at the expense of the choices of another, or with
Keynesianism and its emphasis on anticyclical public spending.
Many regulations can even be seen as force for freedom, like
financial rules that help give all investors the freedom to invest
in stocks by trying to level the playing field.
To be sure, many mainstream economists do think about policy just as
Glaeser says they do. But in doing so, they are mistaken. I find it
difficult to believe that a man of Glaeser’s intelligence has really
given much thought to what he is saying in these passages.
In fact, a presumption in favor of freedom rules out virtually
everything that modern governments do, certainly nearly everything
they do in interfering in economic affairs. Redistribution of income,
for example, requires that the government rob Peter in order to
benefit Paul (and its own functionaries, who serve as middlemen in
this transfer). This action is not freedom; it is a crime against
Peter, a raw violation of his right to his own legitimate property.
Keynesian countercyclical spending requires the government to spend
borrowed money whose acquisition is premised on future taxation (that
is, robbery) of taxpayers in order to service the debt and repay the
principal. Again, innocent persons have their rights violated. How can
anyone fail to see that robbery is incompatible with freedom? Finally,
the financial rules that Glaeser finds compatible with freedom entail
threats of violence against financial transactors who do not follow
arbitrary government rulesoften extremely foolish and even
destructive rulesin making their transactions, notwithstanding the
fact that the parties to the transaction may be perfectly willing to
proceed without such regulatory compliance. Such regulation is the
very opposite of freedom; it is instead the sheer imposition of
outside force, intruding on willing transactors, and thereby
discouraging them to some extent, if not entirely, with consequent
loss of the wealth that such transactions would have created, in
addition to the loss of liberty.
Perhaps it is unseemly for someone such as I to make a recommendation
to a Harvard professor, yet I cannot resist the urge to suggest that
Glaeser read, say, Murray Rothbard’s Power and Market
<http://mises.org/resources/196/Power-and-Market-Government-and-the-Economy>.
Expositions of that sort would help him to gain a clearer vision of
the distinction between individual freedom and state domination in
economic affairs. Glaeser quotes Milton Friedman to good effect in his
article, but Friedman’s writings ought to be the beginning, rather
than the end of wisdom in this area. In regard to freedom, Friedman’s
arguments were good as far as they went, but they did not go nearly
far enough. Like Glaser, Friedman was prepared to make many
concessions to state power, and his focus on utilitarian arguments, as
opposed to moral principles, diminished the intellectual force of his
laudable efforts to enlarge the scope of liberty in economic affairs.
http://www.independent.org/blog/index.php?p=9204 --
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