Tibor R. Machan

So Elizabeth Warren, Massachusetts candidate for the US Senate, says “there is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody.” And so she is said to reject that it is possible for Americans to become wealthy “in isolation.” (As if someone defended that silly idea!)

So she sounds off about this, with evident righteousness, as follows: “You built a factory out there? Good for you,… But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did.” And she goes on to declare, “Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea? God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”

First of all, nothing at all follows from any of this about how Ms. Warrant has any authority at all to rearrange the world her way. My nose and ears and kidneys and eyes weren’t created on my own but none of that implies for a second that Elizabeth Warren is entitled to start invading my body and decide how its parts ought to be used. Nor even that my parents actually own me!

Of course, property rights start simple enough and then become complex. But that is just why a free country has a law of property instead of Ms. Warren as a tyrant who orders us all to do as she wishes.

It is necessary to be careful about how property is properly allocated, with close attention to original and subsequent creation, with what has been voluntarily shared, given away, earned through work and exchange, etc. Why?

Well, from the time of Aristotle it has been clear to quite a few political theorists and economists that common ownership sucks. As the ancient Greek sage put the point:

“That all persons call the same thing mine in the sense in which each does so may be a fine thing, but it is impracticable; or if the words are taken in the other sense, such a unity in no way conduces to harmony. And there is another objection to the proposal. For that which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it. Every one thinks chiefly of his own, hardly at all of the common interest; and only when he is himself concerned as an individual. For besides other considerations, everybody is more inclined to neglect the duty which he expects another to fulfill; as in families many attendants are often less useful than a few.” (Politics, 1262a30-37).

Then there was Thucydides on the commons, noting that “[T]hey devote a very small fraction of the time to the consideration of any public object, most of it to the prosecution of their own objects. Meanwhile, each fancies that no harm will come to his neglect, that it is the business of somebody else to look after this or that for him; and so, by the same notion being entertained by all separately, the common cause imperceptibly decays.” (Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War, bk. I, sec. 141).

So John Locke came along who didn’t even deny that to start with property is commonly owned but that it is best to create a system of private property so that property will be taken good care off and because those who work hard to improve it are justified in benefiting from it and make use of it as they see fit.

So not only is Ms. Warren way off with her idea that the state gets to decide what happens to property and that there is some kind of unwritten–i.e., not consented to–social contract that obligates us all to give to the state. But it is a wasteful and bad idea, as the Soviets and other socialists who disallow private property in their realm, have found out to everyone’s despair.

But of course it is not going to be easy to get agreement to statist redistribution policies if all this is admitted. So Warren needs to attempt the impossible and show that she, not you and I, get to say what happens to what we own because how we obtained it involved other people! Again, it doesn’t follow!

Tibor R. Machan

I consider much of common sense to be correct about the world, not always muddled or, let alone, wrong. This is a position associated with the Scottish philosopher Thomas Reed and, also, with Aristotle. So I wish to briefly defend the view that time is real.

By “time” I mean, among other aspects of the world, what we record for departure and arrival of planes and trains, what we learn from our clocks and watches, etc., etc, what we aim to save as we go about doing our various tasks, what we complain that we have so little of while others have too much of it on hand. Time is measured in seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, centuries and millennia. And the motion of things in the world, including even the speed of light, is, in turn, measured in periods or spans of time.

Some, however, would have it that time is not real but it is unclear to me what this could mean. Others are “looking into the notion that time might flow backward, allowing the future to influence the past….” But that concept “might” is very slippery—it could mean nothing more than that there is no explicit formal, logical contradiction in thinking that time flows backward, which is very far from its being possible. Nor is it clear what “flow” means here, since what is supposed to be flowing isn’t at all like the water in a river, the paradigm flowing thing.

As to the idea that time is not real, this also poses puzzles and isn’t at all very clear. The claim being made is itself usually written down in a computer or on a piece of paper, either of which takes time or involves duration, starting at T1, proceeding to T2, and on to Tn. Then there is usually a deadline at the publication to which scientific or scholarly papers that advance these sorts of arguments are submitted, and that, too, involves very real time.

Time then appears ubiquitous in our lives, at least at the level at which one considers it in a discussion such as ours. The very length of writing or one’s entire life is measured in time. Then again the idea that “time might flow backward, allowing the future to influence the past,” to quote Discover magazine writer Zeeya Merali, seems to suppose that time is some kind of object or entity instead, as more naturally supposed, a kind of measurement of the duration of something.

Paradoxically, even in the act of denying the reality of time that same reality is clearly manifest—it takes a bit of time to deny that time exists, whatever time is exactly. It doesn’t seem to be unreal or fictional—that appears to be evident all over. Why some think time isn’t real has to do with how often theorists will fail to appreciate the different contexts within which their theories hold or apply. It’s possible that at the subatomic or astrophysical levels what time is ordinarily—on the earth human beings need to deal with—is not recognizable because the context is so different. But this doesn’t support the denial of the reality of time.

Take as an analogy the claim that the earth’s entire surface is curved, so “plane surfaces aren’t real”. And then consider the tables on which the games of pool and billiards are played which, to all rational appearances, are flat. Does the former claim contradict the latter? Not necessarily since the contexts are markedly different. Yes, the earth is mostly curved but, also, the pool table is normally flat. No contradiction here, only a change of context.

The same holds with denials of time: in certain spheres of inquiry or observation time is real but in some circumstances, say at the subatomic or, going in the opposite direction the cosmic level, perhaps time, in the sense in which it is familiar to us and very real indeed in our daily lives, is entirely absent. The view that because in some contexts time could be dispensed with it can be dispensed with entirely in all contexts seems to be false.

Tibor R. Machan*

Some critics of individualism propose an alternative social philosophy and defend it so it is then possible to compare their case to the individualist position. But more often than not what critics do is caricature individualism, suggesting that individualist believe that people are autonomous, meaning, exist all on their own with no need for anyone else. Or they claim individualism means that no one has any moral responsibilities toward anyone else. Or that everyone is basically self-sufficient or should be.

Now clearly very young people have to have the support of their parents, at least, and their intimates so as to get on in life. As they grow up the support they enjoy can gradually be made optional–some support will be rejected by them, as when they refuse to follow their parents’ religious or political guidance. Yet, how would one acquire something as important as one’s language and other skills if there were no teachers about to lend a hand?

Our obvious connections to many, many other people certainly cannot reasonably be denied; so by alleging that individualism requires one to believe in people’s radical independence the critics have their victory via distortion, without actually having to make out a better case. Moreover they leave the impression that their preferred alternative, whereby we all belong to society and owe everything to it, is the only one and is trouble free.

But the kind of individualism that sensible individualists champion isn’t some ridiculous notion that people can grow up and live as hermits. Even if in some very rare cases this were possible, it is surely not the sort of individualism that is promoted in social political philosophy (e.g., by the likes of John Locke, Murray Rothbard and Ayn Rand). Such individualism focuses on the moral and intellectual sovereignty of people; they need to make choices, and be free to do so, about how to act in much of their lives which they are normally equipped to do. And they need to be able to assess ideas propounded to them by others, make sure these are sound ones and not have them shoved down their throats as is done in more or less Draconian tyrannies.

This is the kind of individualism that’s advanced by reasonable individualists and if it is a good idea, it implies that a decent human community, a just one, needs to be so conceived that people can indeed enjoy sovereignty, that when they join others in various endeavors they do this of their own free will, voluntarily and not be treated like military conscripts (or termites or ants whose identity consists entirely of being tied to others of their species).

A very important point to keep in mind is that individualism isn’t at all the same as forswearing the company of others. What individualism implies is that everyone needs to be free to select those with whom one will associate, be this in adult family life, in friendship, in professional life, in sports and in recreation. Unlike the associations typical of a place like North Korea–and the military of many Western countries–as the individualist sees it adult human beings ought to exercise discretion when they join up with others. Some of this, of course, can misfire–e.g., when one let’s oneself be guided by irrational prejudices such as race or national background (although at times these are mere easy options for some folks, with no malice involved). Or when one chooses to join criminal gangs.

The central point is that individualism prizes more than other social philosophies the personal, private input of all those who take part in adult human associations. These must all be voluntary, in large part because they amount to vital moral decisions on everyone’s part which one would be deprived of making if one were herded into groups one hasn’t chosen to join. True, there will always be some gray areas, as when one is “pressured” by one’s peers or family to be part of some assembly of people one would ideally wish to be free of. There must be an exit option for free men and women but it may take some doing to make use of it.

As with most matters in human life, we aren’t dealing here with geometrical exactitude, just as Aristotle observed over 2500 years ago. But all in all the individualist alternative is far more accommodating of human nature and social life than are the collectivist alternatives that get a lot of support from social philosophers–communitarians, socialists, or social democrats–these days.

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*Machan is the author of Classical Individualism (Routledge, 1998). He teaches at Chapman University, Orange, CA. He blogs at http://szatyor2693.wordpress.com/

Tibor R. Machan

President Barrack Obama asserted in a recent speech dealing with the country’s enormous debt that what the country needs is to live by an ancient principle, namely, “the principle of shared responsibility.” He invoked this in his defense of his championing of the increased extortion of the resources of the wealthy, those who earn $250K or more per year. Why this “principle” should be invoked he didn’t say–he seemed to think it’s obvious.

Frankly the details are not what’s important her–what is is that extortion from rich and poor alike is evil and destructive of the country’s economy. In addition, the idea of unassumed share responsibility for economic mismanagement (either by individuals who ought to care for their household finances or by public officials who ought to care for the country’s economic affairs) is a very harmful one. Shared responsibility applies only where those who are to share have freely volunteered to do so. I am not morally and should not be legally authorized to conscript my neighbors to share the household debts I have assumed for myself in, say, my repeated refinancing of my mortgage.

It is interesting that a good many policy wonks complain when companies dump their waste into the public sphere–the air mass, rivers, lakes, or oceans. And they are right–such dumping is intrusive, a violation of the property rights of those whose sphere has been used without their consent. The idea of sharing the responsibilities assumed by various public officials in the name of the citizenry is no different. Some, very few, public expenses are, of course, the responsibility of all citizens–national defense, maintaining the legal infrastructure of the country, etc. But when public officials spend resources on what they deem to be important projects, such as a bridge in their district or a dam or a school, these are no shared responsibilities by any stretch of the imagination. These are the responsibilities of those individuals who elected to assume them. The rest of us, who have assumed different responsibilities, are not to be imposed upon by making us all share the burdens of fulfilling such responsibilities.

There is an ancient principle that President Obama ought to consider before he imposes responsibilities on those who didn’t consent to assuming them. It is “the tragedy of the commons.” Perhaps the best statement of this principles comes from the ancient Greek philosopher, Aristotle, who pointed out that

“[T]hat which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it. Every one thinks chiefly of his own, hardly at all of the common interest; and only when he is himself concerned as an individual. For besides other considerations, everybody is more inclined to neglect the duty which he expects another to fulfill; as in families many attendants are often less useful than a few.” (Politics, 1262a30-37)

This principle is widely embraced by environmentalists who realize that when spheres are commonly owned, they fall into neglect. The same holds for shared responsibilities–people tend to assume that others will fulfill them and they do not need to worry. Even more importantly, it is nearly impossible to determine for a huge population in a country such as the USA just what is to be shared and what is not. Is one to share the responsibility for another citizen’s crimes, debts, children, etc.? Why, if you decided not to have any children, must you shoulder the responsibility of supporting them? Why share the debt that others have assumed unless you are a close friend or associate?

No, the idea President Obama floated in his discussion of how to handle the enormous national debt is a nonstarter. And the idea of coercing those making $250K or more to shoulder most of it is obscene. No one is going to pay attention to balancing his or her budget if others will be forced to pay one’s debts. It is also a terrible practice to support by the leader of a supposedly free country in which citizens may not be punished unless they have been shown to have committed a crime.

In fact, all this sharing of responsibility amounts to letting off the hook all those who acted irresponsibly in their finances, private or public.

Tibor R. Machan

It is customary, sadly, for critics of a viewpoint to distort it, caricature it, besmirch it and the like–or at least to mention only aspects of it that could turn out to be untoward some human interests. So, of course, with libertarianism which is the most radical, novel political idea around–in contrast to the relentlessly statist ideas and practices that have dominated human political history. So you will hear that libertarians are crass individualist, mindless egotists, anti-social, atomistic, and the like. And while one can find one or two such people among those calling themselves libertarian, the charge is largely bogus. Every viewpoint has its least palatable versions and some will go the distance of affirming it, if only out of frustration and spite. (Professor Walter Block, an economist at Loyola University of New Orleans, did this with his book Defending the Undefendable [1976]) in which, for example, he championed littering on public roads as a kind of civil disobedience!)

The charge that libertarianism is anti-social, etc., is palpably false. The thing about that irks many people is that social relations within a prospective libertarian country would all have to be voluntary, never coerced. (One famous scholar who finds this very annoying is Professor Michael J. Sandel, so much so that his recently published, Justice, What is the Right Thing to do? [Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009], based on his very popular PBS TV and Harvard University lectures by that same term, begins with a frontal attack on libertarianism [a la the late Robert Nozick].) Sandel’s central complaint is that libertarianism doesn’t acknowledge that everyone has unchosen obligations to society. The famous American and classical liberal idea that government must be consented to by the governed is tossed aside for this reactionary idea that when you are born you are already legally ensnared in innumerable duties to others which, of course, government is authorized to extract from you. The idea, most forcefully defended by the French father of sociology, Auguste Comte, is a ruse and used mostly to make people into serfs, subject them to involuntary servitude, however noble sounding the sentiments behind it.

In any case, I just have a small example to present in which the claim that libertarians are anti-social, un-neighborly is shown to be false. I have a deck on which I spend a good deal of time. My neighbor’s roof is nearly even with it so that when his fireplace is used, the smoke is often sent to where I sit. And it can get a bit annoying even while there is that nice rustic smell to it which I actually like. (Who knows what it is doing to my lungs!)

If I were terribly sensitive to the smoke, I would just go to my neighbor and request that the smoke be redirected or contained. (Economists call it a negative externality if it does indeed cause damage and sometimes worry that such externalities may not always be internalizable, contained, in other words.) My other neighbor has done exactly this when he found my stereo blasting too loudly in the middle of the night–gave me a call and asked me to turn it down, which I did, of course. Similar mini-altercations occur across my neighborhood and, of course, throughout the world and once it is clear who is in charge of the realms being affected, they are managed with no fuss in I would assume 90% cases. Only small minded folks fail to cope with them, or ignorant ones or ones who have a gripe against a neighbor to start with.

If, however, one experiences such minor incursions on public places, the situation changes. The old tragedy of the commons arises for no one knows who is in charge and whose desires should be honored. Some head honcho needs to be selected and the hope will spread that this individual or committee will make a fair determination of just how much annoyance everyone must accept for the sake of the community (it is always said). And no end of grumbling comes from this arrangement. No one tends to like the outcome since everyone thinks his or her share of burdens is too great and benefits too little. As Aristotle noted some 3000 years ago:

“That all persons call the same thing mine in the sense in which each does so may be a fine thing, but it is impracticable; or if the words are taken in the other sense, such a unity in no way conduces to harmony. And there is another objection to the proposal. For that which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it. Every one thinks chiefly of his own, hardly at all of the common interest; and only when he is himself concerned as an individual. For besides other considerations, everybody is more inclined to neglect the duty which he expects another to fulfill; as in families many attendants are often less useful than a few.” (Politics, 1262a30-37)

So stop it already about how anti-social the free society would be. Quite the contrary is true.

Tibor R. Machan

Those who have paid a bit of attention to my writings on public policy probably know that I have always been an opponent of preemptive petty tyrannies of government regulations, the sort that force people to follow certain standards of professional conduct, including manufacture, regardless of whether or not they have deserved to be coerced.

In the criminal law such prior restraint is seriously frowned upon but in administrative law it is not, mainly because of two legal notions. These are the police power–a feudal relic if there ever was one–and the arguably distorted provision of the U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 8, the interstate commerce clause.

The former made sense only when the monarch had been thought to be in charge of us all, when government ruled the lives of all the subjects as if they were children, invalids or inferiors. The latter appeared at first to mean only that Congress is authorized to regularize commerce among the several states so that these states do not behave as economically warring or protectionist political bodies. No duties may be imposed between New York and Pennsylvania (etc.) was the idea, no tariffs, nada.

OK, now instead of tossing this police power feudal notion and being faithful to the rational meaning of the interstate commerce clause, both developed as weapons in the arsenals of government planners and interventionists despite the classical liberal revolution. This despite the fact that neither legal measure has a leg to stand on in the court of justice.

But perhaps practically they are unexceptionable, no? Why would that be? Because, just as now and then a bit of violence among people can be useful, so can government intervention or regulation bear some valuable fruit.

Consider what Elizabeth Kolbert wrote some time ago for the New Yorker Web site concerning President Obama’s choice for energy secretary, Steven Chu, and his enthusiastic defense of government intervention:

“In the mid-1970s, California–the state Chu lived in–set about establishing the country’s first refrigerator-efficiency standards. Refrigerator manufacturers, of course, fought them. The standards couldn’t be met, they said, at anything like a price consumers could afford. California imposed the standards anyway, and then what happened, as Chu observed, is that ‘the manufacturers had to assign the job to the engineers, instead of to the lobbyists.’ The following decade, standards were imposed for refrigerators nationwide. Since then, the size of the average American refrigerator has increased by more than 10 percent, while the price, in inflation-adjusted dollars, has been cut in half. Meanwhile, energy use has dropped by two-thirds.”

Let’s give Chu credit for at least making the effort to defend government regulation–post bureaucrats treat it as their God given authority. But I am also tempted to mention here how Benito Mussolini was able to make the trains run on time back in the days he ruled Italy as a fascist dictator. Thus it is important here to recall a wise saying by the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, namely, that “One swallow does not make a summer, nor does one day; and so too one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed and happy” (NE I.1098a18). And again, true enough, now and then smacking someone who is acting hysterically could calm him down, yet it would be folly to adopt smacking people around as a general policy by which to help them cope.

Or again, a bit more technically, the imposition of the refrigeration manufacturing standards in California is used by Mr. Chu as an explanation of both the increase in the efficiency of refrigerators nationwide and the cut in half of their price since the imposition was made. But there is a famous fallacy of informal logic that’s in evidence in Mr. Chu’s reasoning, namely, post hoc, ergo propter hoc (after this, therefore on account of this). No one could tell at the time the California government imposed these standards that only by doing so will the desired efficiency and price drop be produced. Indeed, in many cases in which government intrudes by establishing, by law, standards like this the market has already begun to do it, albeit peacefully, without the use of coercive force and the heavy cost of bureaucracy (like ho cigarette smoking began to subside way before government waged its war on smokers).

I am convinced that government regulation is an improper way to run people’s lives, even if now and then it may appear or even prove to be a bit helpful. Would be good thing of Mr Chu & Co. would agree with this.

Tibor R. Machan

In a news report on October 2nd, 2010, titled “Movement of the Moment Looks to Long-Ago Texts,” New York Times reporter Kate Zernike tells us that books like Frederick Bastiat’s The Law, from 1850, and F. A Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom from 1944, are selling like hotcakes among Tea Party members. OMG! How awful. Next we will be told that some people are studying Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Hobbes, Hume, Smith, Locke, Marx and other authors of “long-ago” texts in order to learn about political economy, ethics, social philosophy and such.

I suppose the hip thing to do would be to burn all these long-ago texts and focus only on the blogs, especially from the Left, in our efforts to gain an understanding of how the world works. Zernike writes as if most of our university curricula ought to be dismissed as useless, irrelevant, even destructive of human knowledge because, after all, in many courses one is advised to read other than the latest texts.

This is truly ignorant. Where does she think the Obamas and Krugmans and other champions of vast government powers gain their approach to political economy and public policy? How about Thomas Hobbes? Or Rousseau? Or Hegel or Marx or Keynes? All of these and their fellow statists produced works way back when.

It was in fact Keynes who made the observation that might have helped Ms. Zernike to get a grip on how ideas function in this world. As he wrote in 1936, “The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.” (The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money [Harcourt, Brace, 1936], p. 383.)

And it is, after all, Keynes’ views on the modern economy that’s pretty much guiding the thinking and policies of the Obama administration and the columns of Krugman (who makes no secret of this fact as he pushes for more and more government stimuli to solve our problems). Who thought up the idea of top down management of a country’s economy? It was the long ago champions of mercantilism whom Adam Smith criticized so severely for constantly meddling in the economy. And before that it was Thomas Hobbes who promoted absolute statism which clearly implied just the sort of policies that today’s Leftists favor and which pretty much guide their thinking today.

It is actually refreshing that Tea Party members are studying classic texts in the fields of economics and social philosophy to offset the mostly statist political education they have very likely received in their own contemporary education, an education surely biased in favor of government control of nearly everything in our lives given how that education itself is nearly uniformly government funded and administered. This certainly could use some balance from some of these long-ago thinkers the Tea Party is dipping into for some advice.

Instead of attempting to belittle Tea Party folks because they read some classic works critical of the huge scope of government–the Leviathan Hobbes was advocating –Zernike might have reported on some of the arguments they are absorbing from these thinkers and what replies might be offered them in defense of those other long-ago authors who loved government and are today influencing most politicians and bureaucrats with their statist teachings.

Tea Party folks may or may not be reading the best books to gain their grasp of the right way to approach today’s American political economy but for certain the task they face isn’t impeded at all by a bit of reading of the long-ago texts of their choice. Maybe when they end up on the Jaywalking segment of NBC-TV’s The Tonight Show with Mr. Leno, they will actually demonstrate a bit of education instead of the blatant ignorance that most of those being featured exhibit.

Tibor R. Machan

Is this stuff with Greece and, soon, with Portugal, Spain and Italy, and the rest of us all that surprising? Has it not been clear for ages that when people draw their support from a common pool, the resources will soon vanish?

Aristotle already noted this phenomenon when he said, “For that which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it. Every one thinks chiefly of his own, hardly at all of the common interest; and only when he is himself concerned as an individual. For besides other considerations, everybody is more inclined to neglect the duty which he expects another to fulfill; as in families many attendants are often less useful than a few.” (Politics, 1262a30-37) Biologist Garrett Hardin reaffirmed the point in an influential essay, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” for the magazine Science, on December 13, 1968.

The gist of the tragedy is that commonly held (important) resources will be depleted and will not be replenished. And this doesn’t apply only to how the wilds are being ruined by being held in common but also to national treasuries which everyone in a country believes is there for him or her to dip into indiscriminately. And then, with international communities, the tragedy isn’t contained by national borders.

One of the largest commons these days is the European Union. Everyone in Europe is fighting to take from its common pool of stuff–mostly funds through such outfits as the IMF, the World Bank, etc.–but few are eager to replace what they have taken. And this applies to the citizenry, clearly, not only the politicians who want to please them. (The IMF draws a lot of its funds now from the USA! How long can that go on?)

And the same is happening in the USA, of course, what with common pools such as the so called Social Security fund slowly being drained. What are all those lobbyists doing in Washington? Looking to dip into the common treasury as deeply as they can. Getting stuff from the government is always enthusiastically pursued while refilling its coffers is not–who really volunteers to pay taxes, let alone more than one must fork over? That is just what the tragedy of the commons amounts to, get as much out as you can, and put as little back as possible.

The best way to deal with the tragedy of the commons is privatization! But of course that would help put an end to this constant promise of a free ride. Moreover, once people get used to getting a free ride, at least for a while, they regard it as a God given right for them to continue. And there you have Greece today and the rest of the welfare states of the globe tomorrow. (Actually, most of them are merely postponing their comeuppance.)

Privatization–making the stuff of the world private property instead of held in common–solves the problem because it imposes discipline. Everyone must cope with the limited stuff he or she has, can produce, can obtain through peaceful trade, nothing more. No one may dump his or her waste on the neighbor! No one may rip off the neighbor once out of private resources. Maybe in a few drastic emergencies such transgressions will be tolerated but not as a rule, which is how it goes now. Such discipline as privatization brings about would also handle most environmental problems. Even a fiasco such as the oil mess in the Gulf of Mexico would be more likely to be contained if the oceans itself were privately owned–without very serious assurance of safety, drilling would not be possible because private parties would be vigilant about protecting their rightful interests!

On numerous fronts, then, we see that the problems that keep showing up in the daily news are the result of reliance upon the commons. Hardin himself thought that a strict administration of the commons might solve the problem but he didn’t take public choice theory into consideration–people “in charge” have their own agendas and will not really guard the ever elusive public interest.

One way to deal with all this is to come up with a sound constitution for a country! Constitutional economists, like James Buchanan, have been advocating this for years but the public and the political class knows that it would mean the end of their free ride. Never mind that such a free ride will end anyway. But folks do think they can continue eating their cake and having it, too. Not a promising picture!

Tibor R. Machan

Hardly anyone will dispute that most folks who chime in about ethics consider selfishness wrong. There have been exceptions in history and some of the most prominent ethical philosophers, such as Socrates and Aristotle, can even be said to have been ethical egoists or at least ones who championed the moral virtue of prudence as a vital one for living a good human life. But after some significant changes in how human nature began to be understood, being selfish or self-interested–or even prudent–started to be scoffed at, treated as a moral liability, not worthy of praise but of blame.

Of course, even after this, using one’s common sense showed that being selfish is what most of us are, normally, routinely, and quite benignly. When folks awake in the morning they proceed to begin to take good care of themselves before reaching out to help others, for example. (Just as that announcement would have it on air planes, first help yourself and then others in case there’s loss of oxygen.) But apart from such common sense support, selfishness gets little respect (other than perhaps from psychotherapists who usually don’t advise their clients not to care about themselves!).

So while selfishness is widely opposed by such official moralists as priests, ministers, politicians, and pundits, most people will choose to be selfish instead of selfless. And by this they do not intend to be mean toward others, only to put themselves first on the list of their priorities. And in that spirit, even if in opposition to the moralizers, I want to give support to the virtue of prudence or even selfishness (something only Ayn Rand had the courage to affirm in her book by that title). I am not interested here in developing a full blown morality or ethics only to point out that in times of virtually daily disaster stories from all corners of the globe near or far, it is a very good idea to keep being focused on what will benefit one’s life, how one can stay well and happy rather than distressed and frightened.

For one thing, “follow my old recipe”–to quote Socrates in a similar discussion–when it comes to checking out the daily news. Once having gotten through the half hour or hour long newscasts–via TV, radio or some other source–and having perused the newspapers and magazines, all of which have a pretty predictable tendency to be filled with reports of horror and misery, one should spend maybe at least a half hour checking out TV’s best offering, namely, the Travel Channel. I do.

The Travel Channel, you see, reliably reports and depicts only good things happening everywhere. Be it Iceland or Greece, from which only bad news has emanated lately, or California, Louisiana or New York City, when the people from the Travel Channel go there they will unfailingly bring their viewers good news. This would be news of wonderful beaches, great hotels, opportunities for quirky adventure, the best cuisine, outstanding shopping, health and fitness options and similar positive things everyone can use, or at least use to learn about, when the official news reports from every mainstream source give us virtually nothing but heartache.

I have for a long time assumed that the practice of official news outfits of any sort is to try to scare us to death, to make us pay attention by telling us that we are all doomed, no matter what, no matter who one is. The politicians, of course, love this because they can then proceed to offer their magic to have it all fixed for us in a jiffy, never mind that it is mostly lies and more lies.

So there is, as I see it, a severely negative bias in the news. Just consider, as a test, that even if there is a horrible plane crash someplace or a bomb scare, thousands of other places are safe and millions and millions of people get to where they wanted to go without a hitch. But this is never mentioned on “the news,” perhaps understandably. But it does produce major distortions in reports of how the world is doing.

So as a corrective, one needs the discipline and personal initiative to seek out some good news, some antidote to all the reports of crises. A little of this is achieve when one encounters advertisements, of course, since ads also focus on what is good about life, hoping that this will stimulate some interest in the products and services being offered for sale. The bottom line, though, is simple. Make sure that you know of good stuff, that as much as possible you make room for it in your life.

This is my pitch for rational selfishness today, even while I know that it is not the full story. But I recommend that it be a significant portion of it for everyone.

Tibor R. Machan

Enthusiast for increasing government regulations of people in business, including those in the financial markets, never bother to answer the one basic question that any rational person would need to have answered before joining them as champions of their proposed remedies of our economic wows. This question is, “Why would those in governments regulating those in markets manage to be incorruptible?” For incorruptibility is a presumption of the policy that these enthusiasts are committed to. Otherwise what’s the point? Where is the remedy?

You see, if those in government are not incorruptible, their regulation of business cannot be of any help. They would just as easily game the system as those whom they intend to regulate, indeed, more easily because of their legal power. Are there ways to stop them doing this? Would they be regulated by some other regulators who would make sure they aren’t corrupt? And then how would those regulators manage to be invulnerable to corruption? More regulators, ad infinitum?

It is plain common sense and historically fully validated that people in government easily fall prey to the temptation of corruption. Since the time of Aristotle and before it has been noted over and over again that people with power over other people tend toward corruption. Aristotle argued that despite the fact that the idea of an ideal leader of society sounds appealing, it is a trap because once in power, such “ideal” leaders tend to become despotic. Which is exactly true about government regulators, sometimes quite unintentionally (when the system goes bad).

As Lord Acton is often quoted to have said, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” And this is no mere cheap slogan. Those in government have a great many ways to dodge any charge of corruption. A prominent legal device is sovereign immunity–since government officials, including regulators, are agents of the citizenry, they cannot be sued by us. It would be like suing ourselves! So the only way to cope with malpractice by such folks is to implore their bosses to fire them or to vote against those who hired them. Only if they are out and out thieves or embezzlers can they be touched. Favoring their pals as they make decisions, for example, isn’t something for which they can be convicted. And one of the big charges against government regulators is precisely that they favor those like them in the market place–former colleagues, past employers, etc.

The economic school of thought called “public choice theory” has developed this idea so well that some of its pioneers have received the Nobel Prize (Professor James Buchanan, for example). Others have shown that regulators don’t manage to anticipate problems early enough and by the time they go after some company about some possible malpractice, it’s too late. Also, regulators tend to worry about easily detected problems and leave those that are difficult to detect untreated. What is seen gets their attention but what is hidden does not.

Aside from these pitfalls government regulators face there is also the plain fact of their having agendas of their own; and there is the problem, as well, that they often have no clue what exactly is the public interest they are supposed to promote since the public interest is, in fact, a multitude of private interests pursued by millions of different market agents.

So, the bottom line is that government regulation is mired in confusion and the probability of ineptitude and malpractice, probably much more so than faced by market agents who are supposed to be regulated. So this faith in government regulation repeatedly voiced by Obama & Co. simply isn’t well founded. Indeed, it is most often misdirected. Sure, now and then regulators can do something right but even a broken clock shows time correctly twice a day. This is no reason to have confidence in such clocks any more than in government regulation.

Anytime I am told not to worry about things because the government will regulate something and we will be saved from the problems of reckless, anarchic free markets, I cringe about the naivete of those who believe such things. When will they learn?