20) War is good for the economy (December 15, 2008)

Will President Elect Barack Obama bring the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to an end following his inauguration as many of his enthusiastic supporters hope? Early indicators are not exactly encouraging. Justin Raimondo, editorial director of Antiwar.com, writes, "Hillary the hawk at State, Bush's warlord Robert Gates at Defense, and Gen. Jim Jones […] as national security adviser to the president. Yes, antiwar voters took a chance on Obama, reasoning that anything would be better than four more years of Bushian belligerence, yet now they discover to their chagrin that the dice are loaded." Peter Beinart, writing for Time, has a different take: "It's precisely because Obama intends to pursue a genuinely progressive foreign policy that he's surrounding himself with people who can guard his right flank at home. […] To give himself cover for a withdrawal from Iraq and a diplomatic push with Iran, he's surrounding himself with people like Gates, Clinton and Jones, who can't be lampooned as doves."

With the economy tanking, however, even if pulling out of Iraq and Afghanistan is indeed what Obama intends, it will be harder for him to do so, and not only because he will be distracted by ostensibly more pressing problems. It will also be harder for him to bring the troops home because of a perennially popular misconception: that war is good for the economy.
 

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs

It is undeniable that war provides employment for officers and enlisted men, for Pentagon scientists and weapons manufacturers, and for housing contractors and civil engineers who must rebuild whatever is destroyed. The contention that war is good for the economy as a whole, however, simply does not hold water. Whether used as a cynical justification by hawks or a cynical denunciation by doves, the notion that war is good for business in general is one of the more bizarre illiberal beliefs out there, so thoroughly is it demolished by a closer consideration of the facts. It is not for nothing that actual businesspeople overwhelmingly favour peace.

The first thing to notice is that money spent by government is money that is not spent or invested by consumers themselves. This applies to anything the government spends money on, and it gives lie to the notion that increased government spending of any kind can "stimulate" the economy. Money spent to build bridges to nowhere is money that is not spent by homeowners, say, to repair their roofs; or, alternately, invested to earn interest and thus spent by some other economic actor. Not only does government spending not stimulate the economy; it can be counted upon to be a drag on the economy, as government officials make their spending decisions in disregard of market constraints, and so tend to redirect capital and labour from more efficient to less efficient uses. Some spending, for instance to maintain or repair infrastructure (over which governments retain monopoly control, but that's another story), may be justified by the simple fact that said infrastructure is in need of maintenance. But the added incentive of stimulating the economy is a canard that should in no way influence the decision to spend or not to spend.

What is true for spending on infrastructure is equally true for military expenditures. Money spent to build fighter jets and aircraft carriers is money not spent by taxpayers themselves, on education or entertainment or any number of other goods or services, or again, invested and thus spent by someone else. As with infrastructure spending, some amount of defence spending may be justified by the actual need to defend against foreign aggression, but the supposed need to stimulate the economy is a ruse meant to fleece taxpayers of a greater percentage of their earnings and a greater share of their freedoms.
 

The Damage of War

Unnecessary war spending is actually worse for the economy than other kinds of government spending, however. For one thing, war disrupts trade. All of the benefits that normally accrue from countries specializing based on comparative advantages are diminished or lost when shipping and trade are threatened by the vagaries of war. Exporting industries are especially hard hit, but so are industries that import production inputs, and so are consumers as a whole who must pay higher prices or go entirely without.

In addition, war is characterized by the deadweight loss of widespread destruction. Buildings and bridges bombed during a war represent a pure loss to the economy. Yes, rebuilding them in the aftermath of war provides employment for labour and profits for capital, but this employment and these profits are not created out of thin air; they are merely diverted from other uses. Human needs and wants are limitless, so there will always be something for labour and capital to do as long as markets are allowed to function freely. In the absence of war, labour and capital would have been used for other purposes, and economic actors would have benefited from other goods and services in addition to the still-intact buildings and bridges that did not have to be rebuilt. In the aftermath of war and reconstruction, on the other hand, we must all forsake those other things in favour of rebuilding those buildings and bridges. The notion that war is good for the economy because of the rebuilding it requires is thus merely Frédéric Bastiat's famous Broken Window fallacy writ large.

In spite of the above line of reasoning, many continue to believe that war is good for the economy because of the alleged fact that World War II pulled the United States out of The Great Depression. In reality, WWII did no such thing. David R. Henderson, research fellow with the Hoover Institution and associate professor of economics in the Graduate School of Business and Public Policy at the Naval Postgraduate School, addresses this issue in his article "The Myth of US Prosperity During World War II." Henderson writes that US unemployment did indeed fall dramatically throughout the war, from 9.9% in 1941 to a low of 1.2% by 1944. This reduction, however, of around 7 million (given a labour force of approximately 55 million) was achieved entirely through conscription. In fact, "Of the 16 million people who were in uniform at some time during World War II, fully 10 million were conscripted." As Henderson points out, "One can hardly judge people to be better off, based on their having jobs, if they were forced into these jobs." In addition, "Despite various policies of Franklin Roosevelt that extended the Great Depression, the economy was coming out of the Depression in the prewar years." When you factor in the reality that all of the increased "production" of the war years was actually used for purposes of destruction, it is easy to understand how hard times continued right on through to the end of the war. As Henderson concludes, "Whatever the value of U. S. participation in the war, for Americans' standard of living, World War II was a bust."

And what of the human casualties of war, the dead and wounded? Those killed in battle clearly do not benefit from war-and neither does the general economy benefit from the overall shrinkage of the population of workers and consumers. Wounded war veterans, for their part, require medical attention, which does provide work for doctors and nurses, yes, but again, work paid for with dollars that would have bought other things and thereby provided work for other workers in the absence of war. (Maybe we could call this the Broken Leg Fallacy?) The wounded themselves, in addition, may be unable to work for the rest of their lives, consigned to lives of dependence as reward for their service. The psychological suffering of soldiers and the pain shared by their families only further strengthens the case against seeking employment through war.
 

The Fallacy Lives On

And still, even people who should know better continue to embrace the fallacy that war is good for the economy. As Martin Masse pointed out in Le Blogue du QL this past February, one of those people is Paul Krugman, who has since been awarded the Nobel Prize in economics. Krugman wrote, in a blog of his own in January, 2008, "The fact is that war is, in general, expansionary for the economy, at least in the short run. World War II, remember, ended the Great Depression."

As Mr. Masse noted in his blog, Lew Rockwell, president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, in an excellent interview with Scott Horton at Antiwar.com Radio, put Krugman's statements in the proper perspective: "Paul Krugman is a Keynesian who believes in all the Keynesian myths, one of which is that mass murder and destruction of property and transfer of wealth from working people to the merchants of death in the military industrial complex is good for 'the economy.' Well, of course, it's not good for the economy; it's good for the government, it's good for the special interests that are getting the dough, but it's tremendously destructive. Destruction is not economically helpful." As for the notion that WWII got us out of the Depression, Rockwell says, "We did not get out of the Depression until after the war, until the magnificent year of 1946 when the Federal budget fell by two thirds and Keynesians warned at the time that there was going to be a much deeper depression because all of the soldiers would be coming back into the economy and there were no jobs for them." But the US economy boomed, growing by 30% in the year 1946 alone. "That was because of the shrinking of the government."

Recounting a comment by 1982 New York gubernatorial candidate Lew Lehrman, who must have been channelling Bastiat himself at the time, Rockwell says that if war is good for the economy, we could get the same good results by having peacetime agreements with, say, the Japanese to meet at regular intervals in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, each with a fleet of the most modern battleships, and carefully evacuate those ships before sinking them all to the bottom of the sea. "Therefore we can have the economic benefits of war without hurting anybody. Well it only takes a minute to realize, 'Wait a minute… This is not… How can this be helpful economically?'"

A final argument for the economic benefit of war is the scientific advances encouraged by the urgency of warfare, advances which often have peacetime applications. It cannot be denied that this does happen-the development of air travel and nuclear power are two examples that spring to mind-but the same qualification must be reiterated here too: money spent by the government in research and development is money not spent by someone else on some other research or purchase or investment. What might have been developed instead of, or in addition to, air travel and nuclear power if private economic actors had kept all of that money? A cure for cancer? The eradication of malaria? It is simply impossible to say.

Despite what some will continue to argue, while war may on rare occasions be necessary to repel foreign invasion, it is always on the whole bad for the economy. A few well-connected businesses may thrive in the short term, but in the long term, war produces no winners and many losers. If we could consign this fallacy to a watery grave, we would do humanity a great service.
 

19) We don't care enough (November 15, 2008)

We all like to think we are good, caring people. Of course, we all want to be happy ourselves, but I think most of us genuinely want others to be happy, too. We want to help others rather than harm them. We want to make the world a better, not a worse, place. But the question we really need to ask ourselves as a society is, "Do we care enough?" With U.S. President-elect Barack Obama set to require (he has since expunged this word) community service from secondary and post-secondary students, clearly he feels we need to care more.

In fact, though, the evidence is mixed, for we do care quite a lot. We care enough to help people who are suffering, often without requiring anything of them in return. We are compassionate enough to take a small fraction of our great wealth (say, one half?) to provide a safety net for people in their times of need. We care enough to save people from the consequences of their own foolish actions, even if it means they (and others) will learn no lessons and be even more foolish in the future.

Actually, "we" are so compassionate that we often make other people's decisions for them, saving them from being foolish in the first place. We are "compassionate" enough to force our more reluctant fellows to help each other, and moreover, to force them to help our way, according to our plan, regardless of the fact that our way and our plan have been shown to destroy wealth and create misery time and time again. Yes, we are generous enough of spirit to impose our plan through force of law when we prove unable to convince everyone to adopt it voluntarily.

Do we care enough to provide education for every child (even if that education is substandard and infected with thinly-veiled government propaganda)? Yes, we do. Are we compassionate enough to make sure every child attends school (even when teachers' unions prevent focusing on quality and innovation as revenge for having to educate the unwilling and disruptive)? Yes, we are. Can we find it in our hearts to draft our fellow men and women into paying for the educational system (even when they don't want to use it because it values socialization more than learning and doesn't teach kids how to think)? Yes, we can.

We, as a society, care so much that we are willing to force taxpayers to foot the bill for certain people to do work that is not required, and to do it inefficiently, instead of letting them find useful work at a price the market will bear. We, as a society, are so compassionate that we guarantee some people a minimum wage, or a rent-controlled apartment, even though it means others will not find work and the supply of apartments will dry up.

We "care enough" to take profits from successful businesses to give it to the less successful as a reward for their failures. We are generous enough to take from the less-entrenched to give to the firmly-established and well-connected. We have the kindness of heart to support our farmers, paying them not to grow food and taxing their foreign competitors out of the market, even if this means we all pay more for food and those foreign competitors starve or become dependent on foreign aid or switch to cultivating poppies and coca leaves.

Clearly, we are at least concerned enough to siphon off the profits of those big, bad pharmaceutical companies, even if it means hampering their ability to innovate. But do we care enough to regulate and litigate against them to such an extent that it is no longer worth their while to produce vaccines in sufficient quantities? Are we compassionate enough to tell them what they can charge for the products of their efforts, even to the point where we destroy their incentives to take on the risk of researching and developing new drugs and the whole industry grinds to a halt? Are we concerned enough to militate for a complete government takeover of the industry, given that governments have such stellar track records when it comes to choosing which new technologies to invest in? Only time will tell.

Do we care enough about the fate of every single species and subspecies of plant and animal to exchange growth for habitat protection—and force everyone else to make the same choice, regardless of how poor they remain? Do we feel enough concern for our children and our children's children to want them to live in a world containing every subspecies of insect that exists today, even if it means children somewhere else will die in childhood from diseases the wealthy needn't worry about? This will be a real test of our compassion in the 21st century.

Truly, we all like to think we are good, caring people—which is why the rhetoric of caring is so powerful. But "we don't care enough" is too often merely a tool for clouding thought on important issues. People are twisted into knots by the requirements of altruism, which are never fulfilled. When you believe in your heart that you belong to everyone but yourself, no amount of caring is ever enough.

And the cold, hard fact about caring is that if it is not accompanied by thinking, it can easily do more harm than good. Anybody can have good intentions, but good intentions lead just as surely to hell as to heaven. The wealth we all want to spread around so magnanimously must first be produced before it can be shared, which makes of productiveness a more important virtue than charity. It is long-term, enlightened self-interest, operating within the context of a free market where property rights are strictly enforced, that has lifted huge swaths of mankind up from abject poverty, and that continues to do so insofar as it is allowed to function. To be effective in promoting the happiness and wellbeing of others, one must not merely profess to want to help them; one must care enough to find out how they might truly be helped.
 

18) Capitalism caused the Great Depression (October 15, 2008)

It is becoming increasingly common for commentators to allude to the Great Depression when writing about the current economic crisis in the United States and around the world. For all of our sakes, I sincerely hope that the allusion is hyperbolic, but there is a sense in which it could not be more apt: Then, as now, the failures of intrusive government policies were blamed on allegedly free, unregulated markets; and then, as now, those government failures were used to argue for ever more intrusive policies. While it is true that some deregulation has taken place in recent decades, critics of capitalism exaggerate these salutary changes. In truth, the market today is in many ways more heavily regulated than ever before.

It remains imperative for current defenders of liberty to challenge the all too common misconception that unfettered, free-market capitalism caused the Great Depression. The first step in debunking this myth is to shine a light on the role of the Federal Reserve in inflating the money supply in the 1920's, fuelling the creation of the bubble that finally burst when the stock market collapsed in 1929. It was (and still is) argued that government control of the money supply is a way to ease the severity of business cycles, but the Federal Reserve did just the opposite in the 1920s, exacerbating first the boom and then the bust. No depression in the entire history of capitalism prior to the Fed's creation in 1913 had been anywhere near as severe, prolonged, and widespread as the Great Depression.

Another step in eradicating this myth is to re-examine the role of Herbert Hoover, President of the United States from 1929 to 1933. The common misconception has it that Hoover's hands-off, laissez-faire response made the Depression worse than it had to be. There is no question Hoover did make the Depression worse, but was it really by keeping his hands off of the economy? As Lawrence W. Reed writes in "Great Myths of the Great Depression," FDR sure didn't think so: "During the [1932] campaign, Roosevelt blasted Hoover for spending and taxing too much, boosting the national debt, choking off trade, and putting millions on the dole."

And Roosevelt was right. The Hoover administration's Smoot Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, which Reed calls "the most protectionist legislation in U.S. history," sharply raised tariffs on just about everything, leading foreign governments to retaliate with tariffs of their own. With governments around the world clamouring to shoot themselves in the foot, imports and exports plummeted, making everyone worse off. According to Reed, "The shrinkage in world trade brought on by the tariff wars helped set the stage for World War II a few years later."

Hoover also pressured business leaders into keeping wages high despite falling profits and prices, which predictably resulted in high unemployment; he dramatically boosted federal government spending; and he doubled the federal income tax. With friends like these, the free market doesn't need any enemies.

But it got one anyway, in the person of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who succeeded Hoover as President in 1933. After having campaigned against Hoover's big-spending, big-taxing, protectionist ways, FDR did a complete about-face. His New Deal policies represented not a change in direction, as is commonly believed, but a continuation and an extension of Hoover's failed strategy. After promising to reduce federal government spending by 25 percent, FDR oversaw an 83 percent increase from 1933 to 1936. Comprehensive minimum wage laws pleased some workers, but at the cost of making unemployment worse. Meanwhile, the government raised taxes on agriculture and then "used the revenue to supervise the wholesale destruction of valuable crops and cattle," hurting millions of consumers in the name of raising prices to help farmers. Under FDR, top income tax rates hit 90 percent and business was hogtied six ways till Sunday.

Predictably, the Depression dragged on. In fact, it is hard to imagine how FDR, Hoover, and the Fed could have screwed up the economy any worse than they did. As Reed writes, "Those who can survey the events of the 1920s and 1930s and blame free-market capitalism for the economic calamity have their eyes, ears, and minds firmly closed to the facts." Defenders of liberty must teach others the facts many have never learned. The Great Depression was not caused by the free market; it was caused by "political bungling on a grand scale." The sad part is that if not enough of us learn our lesson properly, we will surely all be held back and made to repeat it.
 

17) Democracy is a cure-all (September 15, 2008)

I know it is sacrilege, but that is all the more reason to say it, and say it loud: Democracy is not the be-all, end-all, Holy Grail of politics that many imagine it to be. It is one, but only one, of the ingredients that make for good societies, and it is far from the most important one. Why point this out? If democracy is a good thing, why stir controversy by questioning just how good? Because the widespread, quasi-religious devotion to democracy in evidence today has some very nasty consequences.

Democracy means "rule by the people." The people usually rule by electing representatives, a process which is called, simply enough, representative democracy. Sometimes, as in the case of a referendum on a specific question, the people rule more directly, and this is known as direct democracy. Actually, though, "rule by the people" is a bit misleading, since "the people" are never unanimous on any given question, and neither are their chosen representatives. In practice, democracy is rule by majority (i.e., 50% + 1), or even mere plurality (i.e., more than any one other candidate but less than half) when three or more candidates compete.

Long before any nation had experienced anything even approaching universal suffrage, people concerned with human liberty—thinkers like Alexis de Tocqueville and John Stuart Mill—expressed concerns that the fading tyranny of kings might merely be replaced by a "tyranny of the majority." They worried that majorities might vote away minorities' hard-won rights to property, freedom of religion, freedom of expression, and freedom of movement. Majorities with a hate on for certain minorities might even vote away their very right to life.

History has given these worries ample justification. Democracy by itself is no guarantee of peace and freedom. Adolf Hitler's victory in democratic 1930s Germany is only the most glaring example of popular support for an illiberal, anti-human regime. The people of Latin America have a long and hallowed tradition of rallying behind populist strongmen who repay their fealty by grinding them (or sometimes their neighbours) beneath their boot heels, all the while running their economies into the ground. Their counterparts in post-colonial Africa and certain parts of Asia have shown similarly stellar political acumen.

As writers like Fareed Zakaria (The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad) point out, in those parts of the world that have successfully achieved a respectable degree of freedom and prosperity (basically Europe, the Anglosphere, and Japan and the Asian Tigers), sheer democracy has been supplemented—and preceded—by institutions like the rule of law, including an independent judiciary; secure property rights; the separation of church and state; freedom of the press; and an educated middle class. Indeed, instead of supplementing democracy, it is more accurate to say that these institutions limit the things over which the people can rule. It is enshrined in law and tradition that neither the people nor their representatives shall be above the law, violate the lives or property of others, impose their religious beliefs on others, or censor the freedom of the press. These checks on the power of the people have created, in the most successful parts of the world, not just democracies but liberal democracies.

According to Zakaria, societies that democratize before having built up these liberal institutions and the prosperity they engender are practically doomed to see their situations deteriorate instead of improve, often to the detriment of neighbouring countries, too. Liberty is simply more important than democracy, and must come first. We who are fortunate enough to live in liberal democracies would do well to remember this when judging other nations, like China, and urging them to democratize faster.

We would do well to remember it when thinking about our own societies, too. Thinkers like economist Bryan Caplan, author of The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies, argue that even in the most liberal countries, democracy often works against liberty. Economists have been saying for a few decades now that political ignorance is an intractable problem that undermines the beneficial effects of democracy. The argument is that since a single vote has practically no chance of affecting the outcome of an election (or a referendum), the average voter has no incentive to become informed. Defenders of democracy have replied that ignorance doesn't matter, since the ignorant essentially vote randomly, and random ignorant votes in one direction will be cancelled out by random ignorant votes in the opposite direction, leaving the well-informed in the driver's seat.

Caplan agrees that if average voters were merely ignorant, their votes would cancel each other out, and the well-informed would be in charge and make good decisions. His central insight, though, is that voters are not merely ignorant, but irrational to boot. Voters have systematically biased beliefs, to which they are deeply attached, and those biases do not cancel each other out. Specifically, the average voter underestimates how well markets work; underestimates the benefits of dealing with foreigners; focuses on the short-term pain of job losses instead of the long-term gain of productivity increases; and tends at any given time to be overly pessimistic about the economy. These biases lead voters to support candidates and policies that undermine their own best interests.

The alternative to democracy, Caplan emphasizes, is not dictatorship, but markets. The market is not perfect, but it works a lot better than politics, because in my daily life as a producer and a consumer, I have an obvious incentive to be rational: my pocketbook. This incentive is lacking when it comes time to go to the polls, because of the aforementioned near impossibility that my vote will determine the outcome. Given this asymmetry, we should favour markets over politics whenever possible. For those things that must be decided collectively, democracy may be the best we can do, but we should strive to decide as many things as possible privately, resorting to politics only when no other option is feasible. In other words, we should recapture the wisdom of the American Founding Fathers, rediscover the genius of constitutionally limited democracy, and reclaim some of the liberty previous generations fought so valiantly to secure. If we don't, it might not be too much longer, in the grand scheme of things, before the Western world ceases to be a model worth emulating.
 

16) Self-sacrifice is good (August 15, 2008)

In advocating rational self-interest (see Illiberal Belief #15, below), I certainly do not mean to imply that helping others is a bad thing. There are many good, rationally selfish reasons to help others, from fostering good will to making the world a better place. In addition, it actually feels good to help others. We quite naturally feel connected to others, especially to our close friends and family, but also to a lesser degree to all human beings and even to all living things. Other people can be of great value to us on many levels, and at least until they prove otherwise—for instance by cheating, robbing, or aggressing us or other innocents—it makes perfect sense to treat them with respect, benevolence, and generosity.

Most religions and many moralists go one step further, however, and promote self-sacrifice as the ultimate good. They argue, in effect, that while helping others is commendable, it is only really good when the helper does not benefit, or when the overall cost to the helper outweighs his overall benefit. Only then is the moralist assured that the good deed is done for the sake of the other person. This other-directedness is seen as the very criterion of moral goodness.

In sharp contrast with traditional morality, an ethics of rational self-interest implies that helping others, while commendable in many cases, actually becomes a bad thing when it becomes self-sacrificial. Strictly speaking, to sacrifice is to give up a higher value for a lower value. Giving up something I value less for something I value more hardly qualifies as a sacrifice; it is more properly called an investment if the benefit is projected into the future, and otherwise it is simply a common sense trade-off. However, when my overall cost in helping someone, all things considered, is greater than my overall benefit, then doing so will decrease my overall happiness. It is in such cases that the right thing to do, from a rationally selfish point of view, is to exercise one's right to say no.

At first glance, this may seem like a strange conclusion to those of us steeped in a religious tradition. In fact, though, many of us act this way a lot of the time; we just feel vaguely guilty about it when we do, and we try not to think about it too much. From a rationally self-interested point of view, it is clear that we should be more consistent in pursuing our own happiness, and jettison those feelings of guilt.

A simple thought experiment should help ease the apparent strangeness of fully embracing the moral rightness of rational self-interest. Imagine a close, beloved friend faced with an important decision: Should she pursue a career that would provide obvious service to others, or pursue the career she really wants? Should he marry the girl who will please his parents, or marry the one he truly loves? Should she donate her limited funds to a charity for the homeless, or travel the world as she has always longed to do?

How would you advise your friend or loved one? Would you tell someone you care about to sacrifice his or her own happiness in order to serve others? I think many people would advise a loved one to act in a way that furthers his or her long term happiness. Simply put, we want our loved ones to be happy. That is a big part of what it means to love them.

In light of this, why, then, do we feel that we ourselves must serve others, and that we are somehow morally deficient if we do not? Why do we feel we must put others' needs before our own? Why do we not accord ourselves the same consideration we accord our loved ones? In short: why do we not love ourselves better?

The answer is that we have been taught that such self-love is evil—the root of all evil, even. But do we really believe this? It is easy to extend the thought experiment and ask: do we not want our friends to love themselves? Does their happiness not depend on a healthy self-regard? Then why, again, are we not better friends to ourselves? Only religious indoctrination can explain this unhealthy state of affairs, which remains pervasive despite growing secularism. Old habits die hard, but this is one habit that really deserves to be broken, for all our sakes.
 

15) Everyone is selfish—and that's bad (June 15, 2008)

Is it true, as cynics believe, with some backup from certain schools of economics, that everybody is selfish? Well, no. But even if it were true, is being selfish really such a bad thing anyway? The answer to this question depends on what you mean by "selfish."

The traditional view of selfishness, promoted by religion but maintained by many secular thinkers as well, is that it is bad. According to this view, a selfish person thinks only of his own interests, disregarding the interests of others. Such a person might steal from, lie to, betray, or at the extreme even go so far as to murder others in order to get his way.

But is this really a selfish way of acting? It's a petty, criminal, malevolent way of acting, to be sure—but does a person really serve his own interests by stealing, lying, betraying, or murdering? It might serve one's immediate interests to have more money, avoid responsibility for something, or do away with someone who stands in one's way, but what about the longer term consequences? Embracing a life of crime, aside from eating away at your soul, for lack of a better word, will very likely come back to bite you in the ass, landing you in jail or in an early grave. It's not a great way to make friends, either.

A person who is selfish and rational takes the longer term consequences of his actions into account when deciding how to act, what kind of life to lead, what kind of person to be. A rationally selfish person doesn't cheat or steal, but instead works hard, learns about the world, respects the rights of others, and builds lasting, fulfilling relationships—the kinds of things that are actually in a person's best long-term interests. This is the kind of view taken by philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand, who titled one of her collections of essays The Virtue of Selfishness. This kind of rational self-interest is not something to be lamented, but something to be celebrated, leading to greater wealth and happiness for all.

Those who moan that everyone is selfish have the first kind of selfishness in mind, the bad kind, but clearly not everyone is a thug or a cheat. True criminals are a tiny minority in any civilization. Most people follow some kind of moral code, however mixed up and unexamined it may be. They feel the need, not only to enjoy lives full of rewards, but also to deserve those rewards. They want not merely to have good lives, but to be good people. This simple, basic truth flies in the face of what the cynics out there would have us believe.

The economists who inadvertently lend some support to the cynics have the other kind of selfishness in mind, the good kind. Economists since at least Adam Smith have been unable to deny the beneficial side-effects of lawful self-interested action—though they have not, as a rule, been as unapologetically enthusiastic about it as Rand.

In an article entitled "The Denial of Virtue" published in the January/February edition of Society, sociology professor Amitai Etzioni takes on economists and other social scientists who are quick to explain away charitable behaviour as a way to get tax deductions, volunteer work as a way to meet other singles, or heroic acts as the result of "hard-wiring." Etzioni tells us about experiments suggesting that many people do not "free ride" even when they think they can get away with it. He also points out that many people vote, even though they know the chances that their vote will make a difference are close to nil. In these and other cases, people plausibly report that their actions are motivated not by self-interest but by what they think is right, by what they think they ought to do.

I think Etzioni is correct, as far as this goes. The claims of economists and social scientists that all actions are self-interested—that whatever people choose to do necessarily reflects their calculations of costs and benefits for themselves—is belied by clear cases of people acting out of a sense of duty, either to god or society or their parents.

Where I part company with Etzioni is in believing that this sense of duty is a good thing. Etzioni can point to people doing good out of a sense of duty, but I can point to people disowning their natural desires for pleasure out of a sense of religious duty; sacrificing their rights out of a sense of national duty; abandoning a career or a mate out of a sense of duty to their parents. I do believe in virtue, but I believe that duty is its enemy. Duty ethics ask you to adhere to a set of rules, whereas virtue ethics ask you to live up to an ideal, which is a very different focus.

It is a good thing people are not all selfish in the narrow, petty way the cynics imagine them to be, but it is actually unfortunate that people are not all rationally self-interested in the way social scientists suppose. This kind of rational self-interest not only has beneficial spill-over effects, but is in fact a virtue—it leads people to act virtuously, to live fulfilling lives, and to be good people. As Dr. Nathaniel Branden wrote in "Isn't Everyone Selfish?" published in the Rand book mentioned above, this rhetorical question, though intended as a cynical jab, actually "pays mankind a compliment it does not deserve." Hopefully, more and more of mankind will deserve it as they increasingly embrace the virtue of rational self-interest and reject not only petty, narrow selfishness but also the heavy hand of duty.

14) Free markets are utopian (May 15, 2008)

In defending the ideal of a free society with a minimal state, free market enthusiasts are sometimes accused of being utopian, of presenting an impossibly perfect vision of what such a society would be like. We are accused of having blind faith that the market will somehow magically solve all of our problems. In fact, while economic and personal liberty is an ideal—and one that deserves to be depicted in all its glory—a free market society is emphatically not utopian for two important reasons. First, free markets are not perfect; they are merely better than any of the alternatives. Second, free markets do not need to wish away all human weaknesses in order to function.

The 16th century book by Sir Thomas More whose title gave us the word "Utopia" is actually two very different books. In the first book, we are treated to a lively dialogue brilliantly ridiculing all the power-grubbing machinations of government officials and arguing about the best way to effect positive change. It wisely warns that societies will never be perfect because human beings are not perfect, but recommends that we should still try our best to resist negative changes and promote positive ones. In the second book, however, we are shown a vision of a radical, socialist society. On the island of Utopia, money does not exist, and a whole slew of positive effects (and no negative ones) is simply assumed to follow from this: everyone happily works for the good of all, there is plenty to go around, and government officials perform their duties with integrity and intelligence.

One is left to wonder what happened to the wise counsel of the first book, which cautioned that human beings would not work without the incentive of personal gain. One also wonders how this Utopia would deal with coordination problems in the absence of market prices, and what happened to government corruption, which is not primarily about money but about power. In stark contrast to the warning of the first book, human beings in the state of Utopia are angelic: they are willing to work hard without proper incentives; they are able to produce everything that is needed without proper information; and they are able to resist the lure of power far better than the members of any society in the real world ever has. There is no plausible explanation of how human beings are supposed to act in ways so contrary to their nature, or of how, in the absence of price signals, producers are to know what and how much to produce given unavoidably limited inputs.

As was made devastatingly clear from the tragic socialist experiments of the 20th century, socialists were wrong to assume that money and property are the sources of conflict, and that by doing away with these, conflict would disappear. They were wrong to assume that it is possible for humans to strive without the incentive of personal reward. They were wrong to imagine that production could be efficiently organized from the top down without market price information. And they were wrong to think that government corruption would disappear with the removal of money from the equation. In practice, societies that have tried to impose egalitarian visions have displayed more, not less, corruption, as power was the only thing left to compete for; they have had insurmountable knowledge problems in the absence of market prices; and, having ruled out the use of "carrots" to motivate people, they have had to resort to the most brutal of "sticks," imprisoning, enslaving, and murdering millions of their own citizens. The solution to the problems that beset humanity is clearly not just to share everything—especially when that sharing takes place at the point of a bayonet.

Societies cannot be perfect because human beings are not perfect. Far from denying this, free market enthusiasts accept this and argue that the best kind of society for us imperfect humans is a free one, precisely because it allows for the easiest and least painful course corrections. Competition allows for and in fact encourages the discovery of better ways of doing things. Free societies harness the personal reward incentive and channel it toward the good of all. The only way to get ahead in a free market is to serve others, to provide them with goods and services they actually want to buy.

Free markets are not perfect, but no one is claiming that they are. We enthusiasts simply believe that the so-called "failures" of markets are in fact just the shortcomings of imperfect human action itself, and hence are not unique to free markets at all, but something that all systems must deal with. The difference is in how well free markets deal with problems compared to all other systems. The closest approximations of egalitarian, socialist societies have brought increased misery through the use of brutal "sticks" and inefficient production. The closest approximations of free market societies have brought decreases in suffering through the use of "carrots" and ever greater, smarter productivity.

A free market society supported by a minimal government that only uses force in retaliation against thieves and thugs is not a utopian fantasy; it is the best realistic way to organize a society for the good of all. But is it perhaps unrealistic to hope that bloated, corrupt governments can be pared down to more reasonable proportions? How do we rein in the undue influence of certain unscrupulous large corporations that extract special privileges for themselves at the expense of their competitors, thereby undermining the benefits of true competition? The solution is simple to state, though admittedly more difficult to implement: if governments have fewer goodies to dispense, large corporations will have less reason to corrupt the political process. What is needed for this to happen is a sea change in the way people perceive governments, and the abandonment of the notion that we should try to address our problems with coercive, top-down, one-size-fits-all solutions that solve nothing. Changing people's ideas is not easy, but it is possible, whereas trying to eliminate the competitive, self-improving nature of human beings as egalitarians would have us do—if such a thing were even desirable—really is utopian.

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.