13) Change is bad (April 15, 2008)

          Sometimes it seems like just about everybody thinks change is a bad thing. Not only conservatives, but modern liberals and environmentalists also want to slow, stop, and reverse many of the technological and cultural changes sweeping our lives. Dealing with these reactionary forces is an ongoing challenge for friends of liberty.

          Of course, we expect conservatives to, in the words of the recently departed William F. Buckley, “stand athwart history yelling Stop.” At its most basic level, being "conservative" means being resistant to change. But at their best, what conservatives resist is the encroachment of the State into our economic lives, fighting the over-regulation of the market and the nationalization of industries. In one sense, this is not really "conservative" at all, since free markets are rife with change. At their worst, though, conservatives only pay lip service to free market capitalism, instead doling out special favours and bailing out companies that should be allowed to fail. In this way, they tarnish the image of those of us who honestly believe in the enormous benefits of free markets.

          Conservatives also often resist and attempt to stop cultural changes. As the Cato Institute’s Brink Lindsey points out in his recent book, The Age of Abundance (see my review in QL), the cultural changes of the past several decades are the result of capitalism’s unprecedented success in creating material wealth, and thus liberating us to pursue a wider variety of experiences. Conservatives, though, tend to see these kinds of changes (evolving gender roles, sexual freedom, the normalization of homosexuality, drug experimentation, etc.) as threatening the stability of family, community, and even the capitalist system itself. Now, over-indulging in sex and drugs might make one less productive – even less satisfied with life overall – but as long as people bear the brunt of their own experiments in living, it is wrong to remove their freedom to choose. Concerned about wider cultural changes, conservatives tend to oppose such things as “day after” contraceptives, stem cell research, gay marriage, and ending the Drug War – opposition that causes far more harm than it prevents.

          Modern liberals do not necessarily fare any better – they just have a different focus. Whereas conservatives fear cultural change, modern liberals fear economic change. Like ersatz conservatives, they fear the upheaval entailed by layoffs, bankruptcies, and economic downturns. They short-sightedly attempt to prevent unemployment through business subsidies, when lowering the taxes that paid for those subsidies would be a more efficient solution. In bailing out poorly-managed businesses instead of allowing the better-managed to win in an open marketplace, they hamper the spread of innovation in products, services, and management techniques. In manipulating the money supply to ease economic downturns, they only forestall the inevitable correction and make it far more damaging than it would otherwise have been.

          There are some issues, like immigration, that confuse conservatives and modern liberals equally, with some people in both camps in favour of more open borders and some against. The only real difference is that once again, liberals are more likely to fear the economic impact of new arrivals, while conservatives are more likely to fear their impact on culture.

          But radical environmentalists are really the most "conservative" people of all. They resist development; they resist the use of natural resources; they oppose technologies like GMOs and DDT, which are enormously beneficial to humanity; and they fear manmade changes to the climate. They do not want us to adapt to climate change; they want to stop and reverse it. Radical greens are far more ambitious than conservatives. The latter hark back to a time a mere hundred years ago, when markets were freer and families were more stable. Enviros, on the other hand, look back longingly to a time many thousands of years ago. In their mythical version of the past, we lived in harmony with nature and all its creatures – and in their equally mythical vision of the future, we are on our way to destroying it all.

          In fact, human nature has always been about change, and about changing our environment. We harnessed fire, invented the wheel, tilled the land, discovered the benefits of trade and money, founded cities, invented the printing press, discovered how to harness the power of fossil fuels and electricity, learned how to fly, created computers and the Internet – all along improving our lot. Sure, we also fought wars and polluted the environment; but then we also made peace and fixed environmental problems, and we will continue to do so. In the real past, as opposed to the mythical one, human life was “nasty, brutish, and short,” to quote Thomas Hobbes. We have accomplished much in 10,000 years. In wanting to wish it all away, the misanthropes who have hijacked much of the environmentalist movement dishonour our heritage and discredit our ingenuity.

          In working for positive change, we need to reaffirm that human beings are not evil for wanting to create wealth, or for wanting to decide how to enjoy that wealth. And we need to reaffirm that using the resources we find in nature is not synonymous with despoiling nature. Nature is not some delicate, unchanging, perfectly balanced, pristine bauble. It is wild and robust and constantly changing – and it is in our nature to shape it as best we can.

12) You're either with us or against us (March 15, 2008)

          Falsehoods and politicians, sadly, often go hand in hand. Whereas Bush senior gave us "Read my lips: no new taxes," and Bill Clinton gave us "I did not have sexual relations with that woman," we have current US President George W. Bush to thank for, "You're either with us or against us in the fight against terror." The nature of these falsehoods varies from one to the next. Bush the father's statement is a promise about the future that was not kept. Clinton's statement is a declaration about the past that depended for its truthiness on a very unorthodox definition. Dubya's statement is false because it illegitimately excludes the middle.

          The law of excluded middle is a foundation of logic. If Bush had said, "You're either with us or you're not with us," his statement would have been logical. This, of course, is a far weaker statement than the one he made, because contained in the "not with us" camp are both antagonists and neutrals. In a hockey match, for instance, the statement "Everyone is either on my team or not on my team" makes perfect sense. It excludes no one, for everyone really must fall into one of those two categories. On the other hand, the statement "Everyone is either on my team or on the other team" is absurd. It leaves out the fans, the referees, the taxi driver who drove you to the game, your great aunt Doris who could not care less about hockey, the starving multitudes of Africa, and George W. Bush himself.

          The purpose of Bush's illogical declaration was clear: he wanted to intimidate his political opponents, and the American people as a whole, and bully as many other nations as possible into committing their armies to his war. Lest we misunderstand him to mean "with us in spirit," he also said, "Over time it's going to be important for nations to know they will be held accountable for inactivity." Inaction will not be tolerated. You must choose sides. If you think your interests legitimately lie elsewhere, or that other problems are more pressing, or that there are better ways of meeting the threat of terrorism, you must sacrifice your interests (and your judgment) to Bush's crusade.

          Other politicians have, of course, promoted sacrifice as a noble duty. Perhaps most famously, JFK chided his countrymen for being self-interested and told them they should start doing more for their country. GWB was merely continuing a long tradition when he told everyone to start doing more for the world. Or else. From each according to his ability, to the State according to its voracious warfare/welfare needs.

          Bush was also not the first political figure to try this particular trick with regard to the War on Terrorism. On September 13, 2001, in an interview with Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News, Senator Hillary Clinton said "Every nation has to either be with us, or against us." In her defense, maybe she did mean "in spirit." Or maybe she didn't. And historically, this trick dates back at least to Biblical times, when none other than The Son of God himself is said to have said, "He who is not with me is against me." Politicians never change. Five years into the Iraq War, maybe it's time we did.

11) The environment is steadily deteriorating (Jan. 28, 2007)

          There are plenty of potential sources of concern when it comes to the environment. We are polluting the air we breathe and the water we drink; we are depleting the oceans of fish; we are punching holes in the ozone layer; we are warming the climate to dangerous levels – and all of these problems, we are given to believe, are only getting worse.

          Taken together, these worries, along with the ones discussed in more detail above, make up what Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg referred to as The Litany in his controversial(1) 2001 book, The Skeptical Environmentalist. Lomborg plumbs the available data and the environmentalists’ arguments on each of these issues and discovers, to his surprise, that things are not as bad as they are made out to be. Like forest cover, air and water quality are generally improving in the developed world, and have been for decades. The ozone problem had a fairly simple and affordable solution which has been implemented. As for the climate issue, even setting aside the serious uncertainties contained in computer models, it will be much easier for us to adapt to future warming than to try, largely in vain, to prevent it. Our trillions of dollars, Lomborg emphasizes, would be far better spent dealing with more pressing problems like poverty in the developing world – and, he adds, helping the world’s poor climb out of poverty would have the additional benefit of allowing them the relative luxury of caring about and improving the state of their forests and the quality of their air.

          We need not choose between improving the environment and alleviating world poverty, for the two categories of problems stem from the same kinds of causes. It is inadequately secure property rights and protectionist trade policies that keep the world’s poor from improving their lot; it is the absence of adequate property rights that threatens the ocean’s fisheries; it is irrational government policies that give polluters the right to pollute and forbid those whose property is polluted from seeking damages; it is government subsidies that lead to the wasteful use of water and other resources. We don’t often hear it in the media, but the solution to global poverty and to the environmental problems that do exist is one and the same: greater economic freedom.
 

10) Resources are limited (Jan. 28, 2007)

          Are we in imminent danger of running out of precious resources? We all know of places where clean drinking water is in short supply and others where forests are being cleared to make way for cattle. Hitting closer to home, the surge in oil prices in recent years seems to signal that our supply of black gold is no longer sufficient to meet demand. Should we be worried?

          Of these three resources – water, trees, and oil – that often top the lists of concerned conservationists, running out of water would be the most disastrous for humanity. Fortunately, we will never even come close to doing so. Not only is water a renewable resource, we have way more of it than we could ever use. Now, most of it is in the world’s oceans, and this water is not drinkable, but we have the technology to make it so: it’s called desalination. The main reason we do not desalinate more of the ocean’s water is because we don’t need to; by and large, supplies of fresh water are sufficient. It’s true that some people do not have enough clean drinking water, but this is either due to wasteful water use (subsidized by irrational government policies) or to the fact that they are too poor to desalinate or import water. Poverty itself also being largely a direct effect of irrational government policies, the solution to any local water woes is better government – and as a wise man once observed, “that government is best which governs least.”(1)

          Trees are also a renewable resource, and contrary to popular belief, we are not running out of forest cover. It is decreasing in some developing countries, which may be cause for some concern, but it is also increasing in the developed world. Overall, if we were starting to run out of trees, the market (to the extent that it is allowed to function freely) would signal us to start planting more by making wood more expensive, and therefore more profitable to grow.

          Much the same is true for oil, even though this resource is not renewable – at least not in a human time frame. Price signals nonetheless have the effect of encouraging (or not) the further exploration and development of oil fields. We still have decades of proven resources, and whenever our supplies tighten, for whatever reason, we go out and find more. There is obviously a limit to how long we can do this, but will we hit that limit in 30 years or 30 decades? We won’t know until we do, but even if we begin to approach that limit sooner rather than later, or if current political instability in oil-producing countries persists for too long, the sustained rise in prices will make other forms of energy relatively more affordable, and will also spur technological development that will make them more affordable still. We have more energy than we could ever possibly use, in the form of other fossil fuels like coal and ultimately in the form of sunlight. As with sea water, the main reason we don’t use more of it is because we don’t yet need to.
 

9) It’s a small world (Jan. 28, 2007)

          We have only one planet, it’s true, and there are ever more of us crowding onto its surface. With six billion humans and counting, surely we must be running out of land – if not on which to live, then on which to grow the enormous amounts of food required to feed us all. As evidence, we are reminded of the large swaths of the planet mired in poverty, a tragedy that is used to justify any number of illiberal policies, from Maoist one-child population control laws to Stalinist food rationing meant to stretch out our meagre and dwindling resources.

          Thankfully, these fears are unjustified. The advent and improvement of air travel and modern communications technologies have certainly made the planet seem smaller – we can zip to the Far East in a matter of hours, or send electronic documents anywhere in the world in a matter of seconds – but it’s still the same gigantic ball of rock it has always been. The Earth is really staggeringly large; too large, in fact, to grasp intuitively. Of course, six billion is also too large a number to grasp intuitively. Only mathematics can help us understand if we are truly running out of space.

          Our planet has a surface area of approximately 510 million square kilometres, of which just under 30% (149 million sq. km) is land area. How many people can the Earth support? According to Scientific American, “With current farming techniques, a little less than half an acre can grow enough food to feed one person.” One square kilometre contains roughly 247 acres, and so can feed approximately 500 people. If all of the land on Earth were suitable for food production, our planet could therefore support a population of some 73.5 billion people (149 million times 500). Of course, not all land is suitable for agriculture, but thankfully we don’t need it to be. Our current population of six billion could be fed on just 12 million square kilometres of agricultural land, an area slightly larger than the United States. Even at nine billion people (the downwardly-revised population peak we are set to hit by 2050)(1), we would only need 18 million square kilometres, representing just 12% of the land on Earth, or an area about the size of Russia. Furthermore, this figure assumes unrealistically that no further improvements in farming techniques will be invented over the next five decades.
 

8) Morality must be enforced (Dec. 3, 2006)

          Between social conservatives on the right and tobacco prohibitionists on the left, it sometimes seems as if everyone wants to impose his or her version of morality on everyone else. After all, if it makes sense to protect us from things like murder, assault, and theft, why shouldn't our representatives in government also protect us from other sinful or harmful activities like pornography and smoking? These self-righteous souls have a clear vision of the good life, and they want you and me to share that life, whether we like it or not. I don't know whether they have good intentions or not – whether they are motivated by a desire to help others or merely by a desire to control them, or by some combination of these and other impulses – and I don't much care. What matters is whether what they are saying makes sense, and whether the results of their actions are actually good. It doesn't, and they aren't.

          Why doesn't it make sense to treat pornography and smoking the same way we treat murder, assault, and theft? Because these latter acts are clear instances of aggression by one party causing real, unquestionable harm to another's person or property. As actual crimes, they merit retaliation in kind, and the use of defensive force against the aggressor is justified. Pornography and smoking, however, are just as clearly not instances of one party initiating the use of force against another. As long as those who participate in these activities do so voluntarily, no retaliation by the government or anyone else is justified, period. (Of course, to the extent that it happens, forcing someone to participate in the production of pornography is a crime, just as it would be a crime to force someone to work in the tobacco fields.)

          The worst that can be said of things like porn and cigarettes is that they are vices. Vices can harm those who partake of them, but they must also be pleasurable or else no one would ever freely choose them. Those who would impose their version of the good life on others think they know for certain that the harms outweigh the benefits, not just for them but for everyone else as well. They also assume that those harms and benefits will net out the same for everyone, ignoring the simple fact that people are different. (At the extreme, anti-vice crusaders may believe that pleasure itself is actually bad, but I must admit I am stumped about how to address such a twisted notion! It's probably best just to reason with those who are less damaged.) What are the negative results of prohibiting vices? It a) empowers actual criminals by allowing them to profit from the black market in prohibited wares, b) exposes non-criminals to added risks, and c) wastes resources that could be used to fight actual crimes, or for some other purpose entirely. In trying to convince those who worry about vice to allow other individuals to weigh personal harms and benefits for themselves, we should try to redirect their attention to these very real harms stemming from prohibition itself.

7) The truth is obvious (Dec. 3, 2006)

          Reality, especially social reality, is complex. Some people think the truth is obvious or self-evident, but it is no easy task to judge whether or not what someone is saying makes sense, and whether or not the results of their actions are actually good. Indeed, it can be difficult even to know what the results of a particular action are.

          In challenging the belief that the truth is obvious, it is useful to leave the charged world of political philosophy for a moment and begin by enumerating some of the many ways in which physical reality is counter-intuitively complex. We all share the expectation, for instance, that a heavier object will fall faster than a lighter one, and we are all shocked when we learn, as children, that this is not the case. The reality is not as simple as it appears, because complicating factors like air resistance vary according to an object's shape and density.

          Well, no less an authority than Einstein said that "Politics is more difficult than physics."(1) Social reality has its share of complicating factors too, perhaps even more so than physical reality. In addition, social reality cannot be experimented upon as readily as physical reality. The social world does not fit as easily into a laboratory, and ethical concerns prevent social scientists from manipulating people the way physical scientists manipulate inanimate matter. Given the added difficulties of examining and trying to understand social reality, is it any wonder, for instance, that many people fail to appreciate (or refuse to accept) that raising the minimum wage increases unemployment? When people come to realize that the truth is not so easy, they will be more willing to keep an open mind, to listen to what others have to say, and to check their premises against reality as best they can.

          Let us not be fooled into thinking that this belief is any less prevalent within the freedom movement than it is among other people. Believing that our ideas are self-evidently true will prevent us from discovering our own errors, just as it can prevent others from discovering theirs. Furthermore, it will prevent us from communicating our ideas effectively if we cannot understand or appreciate what leads others to their different beliefs. We may end up going so far as to ascribe evil motives to those with whom we disagree if we are unable even to imagine that someone could in good faith fail to see what is so obvious. Needless to say, calling people evil is not the best way to foster fruitful debate, or to convince others of the soundness of our ideas. We must remember that the negative consequences of illiberal policies, which may seem obvious to us, are not in fact self-evident.
 

6) Good intentions are enough (Dec. 3, 2006)

          There is a tendency among some people to focus almost exclusively on intentions. They may not explicitly believe that motives are all that matter, but they speak and argue as though that were the case. They spend a lot of time praising people they think have good intentions, who they imagine will act in ways that are beneficial to others, while condemning those they think have bad intentions, who they imagine will act in ways that are beneficial to themselves (either disregarding others or knowingly injuring them).

          There are several reasons why being overly concerned with people's intentions in this way is misguided. First, it is simply not possible to be sure what another person's motives are in any given instance. We are not mind readers, so when we infer someone's intentions from his or her actions and declarations, we do so with a greater or lesser amount of uncertainty. To claim to have knowledge of another person's mind is simply arrogant. It is sometimes not even possible in certain cases to be sure about our own motivations, much less someone else's. This is because intentions are complex. We likely have several reasons motivating any given action, some of which even push us in opposite directions.

          A second problem with obsessing about intentions is that actions which benefit oneself often benefit others as well. If I work in order to make money, those who voluntarily purchase the product of my labour also benefit, and this is equally true of any voluntary market transaction. This kind of self-interest should be praised as the motor that drives the world to become ever more prosperous, with condemnation reserved for that sub-category of self-interested actions which actually do harm the interests of others.

          Finally, it has been said before, but it bears repeating: the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Good intentions alone – even redefined to include benign self-interested intentions, and even setting aside the very real knowledge problems involved – are simply not enough. What's the use in wanting to help the poor, for instance, if the manner in which I choose to do so succeeds only in perpetuating their plight? If one wants to do good, one must actually learn how to do good, or one may very well inadvertently end up making things worse. Instead of wasting time judging people based on what we imagine their intentions to be, we should focus on whether what they are saying makes sense, and on whether the results of their actions are actually good.

5) Charity must be enforced (Nov. 12, 2006)

          Some people feel that charity must be enforced and administered through government welfare programs because private charity would not suffice to meet the needs of the destitute and desperate. If people are not forced to give up half of their salaries to ensure a caring society, then they won't do it and we will be left with a dog-eat-dog world in which the needy are left to suffer and die in the streets.

          It is undoubtedly true that very few people would give up anywhere in the neighbourhood of half of their earnings if they were not forced to do so. What is not true is that society as we know it would crumble as a result. Instead, it would flourish. Allowing people to keep more (dare we dream: all?) of their earnings would be a great incentive for people to work harder, because the extra effort would be fully rewarded. On the flipside, knowing that they will not be automatically taken care of is a great incentive for the unemployed who are able but unwilling to work to get off their butts already. As for those recipients of welfare programs who are truly unable to care for themselves, they would be able to rely on the voluntary charity of a society that will be even wealthier than the one we have right now and whose productive members will not feel that they "already gave at the office" to the tune of half of their earnings. There is simply no grounds for believing that the bulk of humanity is so uncaring as to let the truly needy suffer and die when helping them is readily within their reach.

4) We are our brothers' keepers (Nov. 12, 2006)

          There is a widespread belief that we have a duty to help others, and more, a duty to place the interests of others before our own interests. This is not to be confused with the idea that it is good to help others in times of need, when we are able to do so. It is the notion that we should do absolutely everything in our power to help others, that we should renounce our own selfish interests and devote our very lives to helping others, and that it is morally wrong to do otherwise. This kind of thinking leads to the now widely accepted idea that we should be forced to help others, through the expedient of involuntary taxation (see above).

          As Ayn Rand pointed out over and over again, if we have a duty to help others, then they have a claim on our lives. This makes us all either masters or slaves, with those of us who are most able to "master" our own lives enslaved to help those who cannot or will not take the trouble to master theirs. Those who believe this kind of talk to be hyperbolic should not be allowed to lose sight of how conditional our freedom really is. The demonstration of this is that steadfastly refusing to pay one's taxes will result in armed representatives of the government showing up at one's door, followed by a lengthy stint in prison. Benevolence and generosity do have an important place in human affairs, but involuntary servitude is a perversion of that, and an affront to the dignity of those thrust into the roles of masters and slaves.

3) Theft can be justified (Nov. 12, 2006)

          Many – okay, most – people believe that governments have the moral right to steal from their citizens. They believe this theft, which they disguise by the name "taxation," can be justified in any number of ways. It can be justified because it is for a good cause, like healthcare for all, or the support of higher culture, or the financing of a new football stadium. It can be justified by simple appeal to the will of the majority, as though democratic polling itself could make a thing right or wrong. It can be justified as a way of correcting for negative externalities or market failures in which some are harmed or merely poorly served by certain players in the market. Or again, it can be justified on the basis that since "property is theft," redistributing the spoils can hardly be a crime.

          Thankfully, in their private lives most people do not behave like hooligans. Most people recognize the simple truth that theft is an act of aggression, and as such must be banned from civilized human relations. This basic decency is the thin edge of the wedge upon which lovers of freedom must capitalize. It is only through the sleight of hand of government taxation that people are able to convince themselves that theft is justified. We must challenge these justifications by pointing out that people would not accept it if a petty burglar stole from them even if they were told it was for a good cause (with which they might or might not agree) or that the rest of the burglars voted on it first. We must also show that externalities are usually the results of earlier government interventions, and that market failures can be seen as entrepreneurial opportunities rather than as problems to be dealt with by the blunt instruments of heavy-handed dictates. As for the idea that property is theft, this definition is circular: property cannot be theft since theft is the forced removal of property. That some property is acquired by theft is indisputable, but justice demands that these cases be investigated and prosecuted separately, and that the vast majority of us not be treated like criminals.

2) Order comes from above (Nov. 12, 2006)

          Many people do not fully appreciate how order can arise spontaneously. This same basic error explains both why the religious right believes the orderly universe had to be consciously designed by some entity (God) and also why the "progressive" left believes the orderly market has to be consciously designed and maintained by some group of entities (the Government). It seems humanity is predisposed to worship some idol or other, whether we have to make Him up out of whole cloth or merely endow Them with preternatural wisdom and benevolence.

          It doesn't have to be this way. Explaining how spontaneous order arises and describing examples of it is the way to go here. Wikipedia, Linux, and the internet itself are good examples of the complex order that can arise with only a few simple rules in place. Of course, two of the best examples are evolutionary theory, which shows how life arose spontaneously from the primordial soup, and economic theory, which shows how human beings can spontaneously order their lives with only the most basic rules in place and virtually no guidance from above.

1) Government is good (Nov. 12, 2006)

          Many people are under the mistaken assumption that government is good: good at what it does and morally good. Although they might think that a particular government is either inefficient or unethical, they still believe at least that government can be good, if only the right people would grab hold of the reins. Indeed, while they may hold a quite low opinion of people in general, they are likely to believe that the people in power are a cut above, or at least that those people who are a cut above could, in theory, grab hold of the reins and make everything better.

          In reality, the people in power are no better and no worse (well, maybe a little worse) than the populace at large. Pointing out all of the historical and ongoing examples of inefficiency and unethical behaviour in governments of every stripe is a necessary part of spreading the ethos of freedom to an expanding section of society. It is an inevitable structural problem that whatever human activity the government controls is invariably beset by shortages, shoddy quality, high prices, or some combination of these failings.