A Passion for Liberty
Tibor R. Machan @ Rational Review
Posts tagged Aristotle
Column on Are Government Regulators Incorruptible?
Apr 28th
Are Regulators Incorruptible?
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?
Column on Is The U.S. Self-Interested?
Mar 18th
Is the U. S. Self-Interested?
Tibor R. Machan
It baffles me why so many people are apologetic about the U. S. having a self-interested foreign policy. When President Obama recently declared that the U. S. “is not a self-interested empire,” the part about being self-interested, pace Obama, sounded just right to me. (It is the “empire” portion that would be disturbing since an empire is a country that aims needlessly to lord it over other countries.) Being self-interested could mean no more than being vigilant in the defense of one’s country, making sure it is safe from invasion or attack.
Who can dispute that self-defense is self-interested? Of course, with the prominence of altruism among intellectuals and public figures, it is probably no great surprise that Mr. Obama would reject characterizing American foreign policy as self-interested. “Selfish” has this bad odor about it and has had that since when philosophers, theologians and psychologists have decided that the human self is something malign.
At one time, of course, it used to be a good thing for one to be self-interested. I am thinking of ancient Greece where both Socrates, as presented by his pupil Plato, and later Aristotle defended self-interest and self-love, respectively. That’s because the ancient Greeks tended to view human nature favorably, not as innately tending toward evil, something that became more in vogue later in the history of Western thought. Both religious and secular thinking veered off in this misanthropic direction in part through the doctrine of original sin and then with Thomas Hobbes’ idea that everyone is basically motivated by a fierce passion for power, including, especially, power over other persons. If that is indeed what the human self aims for, then no wonder it doesn’t have a sterling reputation and selfishness or being self-interested no longer amounts to something honorable as Socrates thought it was.
Yet even in our time something of the ancient Greek attitude remains in play. Just notice how often people say “You take care now” or “Take care of yourself” as their parting words to each other. I have been noticing this for many years and just a few days ago it was in evidence again as I watched some saying farewell. No hesitation at all: Go and make sure you do well for yourself! So self-interest, prudence, taking care of oneself cannot be taken to be all that bad by most of us, even though the sentiment isn’t given much support among those who write on morality and public policy, including American foreign affairs.
For some it is just a matter of cynical realism to accept that a country’s foreign policy will be dictated by its international interests. But is this something one must apologize for or even deny, as Mr. Obama apparently feels necessary to do?
Only if self-interested conduct, including in matters of diplomacy and military policy, must be reckless. But must it be? Does one’s country really benefit from a reckless, loose cannon foreign or military policy? No. Properly conceived and undertaken self-interested foreign and military policy, just as personal conduct, needs to be decent, guided by virtues or moral principles. Indeed, as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and others have maintained–but recently with only a few such as Ayn Rand and quite a few psychotherapists joining them–the virtues are necessary to advance one’s proper self-interest. Morality for these thinkers is about making it possible to succeed in one’s human life, doing well at living as a human individual. It includes the virtues of prudence, honesty, moderation, temperance, courage, and such but also generosity, compassion, and even charity when it is needed. Only with these virtues in full display in one’s life will someone accomplish that most vital task in of being morally good, being a good person.
The same, it can be argued, applies to foreign and, especially, military affairs. A country’s foreign policy must not aim for martyrdom, for self-sacrifice. Thus, putting this into practice, General George C. Patton Jr. is supposed to have told his troop, “The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other guy die for his.
Column on Tiger Woods Dishonored Himself
Feb 19th
Tiger Woods Dishonored Himself
Tibor R. Machan
So Tiger Woods apologized for his “selfish behavior.” Of course, what he did was to dishonor himself, his human self that is, not benefit it at all. Indeed, this allegedly selfish conduct of Mr. Woods has produced a few hours of sensual pleasure at the expense of his very own happiness at home, millions of dollars, a stellar reputation, etc., and so froth. Nothing really selfish about it, if you think it over responsibly.
Dr. Nathaniel Branden, the well known psychologist and reported father of the self-esteem movement in his discipline–he wrote The Psychology of Self-Esteem back in 1969 (Nash Publishing)–wrote a wonderful book in which this stuff about the alleged selfishness of cads like Woods is ably cleared up once and for all. The very apt title of this work is Honoring the Self (Bantam 1985). It discusses extensively and brilliantly just how the concept of the human self became debased in modern intellectual history.
Consider, for example, what the world famous ancient Greek philosopher Socrates told his pupil Crito (in his dialogue Phadeo) about the way his students could best please him–meaning live up to his ethical expectations–namely: “follow my old recipe, my friend: do yourselves concern yourselves with your own true self-interest; then you will oblige me, and mine and yourself too.” The reason Socrates believed that following one’s self-interest is morally proper is that he held a view of the human self that included honorable attributes, traits the development of which would make for someone who is practicing the highest virtues. Human nature, for Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and many early thinkers–some of them those detested “dead white males”–amounted to having the potential for excellence, even greatness. While this did include generosity and liberality as praiseworthy ways to be, it was, first and foremost, a matter of being rational, of thinking about one’s life and acting by the guidance of that thinking rather than haphazardly, recklessly. That’s the way to living a successful human life!
It all changed with the very influential English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, not to mention the Italian Niccolo Machiavelli. For these thinkers people were mostly potentially bad, power-seeking, driving by untamed passions like brutal animals in the wilds. Even the influence of Christianity enhanced a lowly view of the human self, what with the stress on original sin, on how once Adam and Eve tasted the apple of the tree of knowledge, they became sinners and we have all inherited their sin and need to be purged of it (e.g., by being baptized).
Then came, a bit later, Sigmund Freud, the notorious father of psychoanalysis for whom deep down we are all driven by a death wish and by other unsavory motives. No wonder the human self acquired a lousy reputation. How could something so constituted act for oneself and exhibit any virtues at all? By such a conception of the human self Tiger Woods and members of the Mafia and all the other vicious people are indeed selfish. They are servicing, after all, something loathsome. This modern idea breads one of the most prominent views in our time, namely, rank misanthrope, hatred for humanity, including oneself.
But is this idea right? Are people by their basic nature evil and loathsome? No. They have to become either good or evil but have no predilection toward either to start with although at first they are mostly innocent, gentle and lovable–just recall most any baby you have met! And if they are taught to acquire pleasant attributes rather than detestable ones, these babies are very likely to grow up pretty nice, if not out and out admirable.
Sadly, the dogma of the mean and nasty human self is widespread. Among other things, it aids and abets those among us who are eager to rule others, who spread the lie that it is only with their intervention that people can be made likable. (Politicians and the clergy love this idea!) In fact, however, Tiger Woods was anything but properly selfish. He caused himself immense harm, as well as those who loved or even just liked him. Shame on him.
Column on America’s Pravda & Izvestia
Feb 14th
PBS & NPR, America’s Pravda and Izvestia
Tibor R. Machan
It is a feature of American culture that’s most upsetting though hardly anyone makes much of it at all. Indeed, I know several avid defenders of the free society who make regularly and eager appearances on National Public Radio and I have to confess that I myself have appeared on one or two Public Broadcast Service programs when allowed to make a pitch for a society that would have no such things, partly government funded TV or radio network.
When I first left Hungary, in 1953, and came to live in the West, I settled for a while in Munich where my father and stepmother worked for Radio Free Europe. This outfit was partly American government–CIA–funded, beaming programs into Eastern European, Soviet bloc countries and supposedly countering communists propaganda. But at heart the idea of the American government doing this turned out to be a paradox since what is wrong with communist countries is precisely that they place everything in society under state control, including broadcasting the news, educating the young, doing science, entertainment or athletics. That is just what is supposed to be so different between communism and capitalism; yet here was RFE doing just what the communists were doing, entrusting government with broadcasting. (I recall how eager I was at one point shortly after I came West to have the American government give massive funding to Olympic hopefuls so they would defeat Soviet athletes and show how much better American athletes can be than Soviet ones, not realizing for a good while how paradoxical this was–sports should not be the purview of government in a genuine free country.)
Yet, what we have had in America and many Western countries for decades on end is, you guessed it, virtually the same thing as they had in the Soviet Union and its colonies, namely, government run radio and TV, just like the two government published and managed “newspapers” in the USSR, Pravda and Izvestia, not to mention all their other media. Instead of showing a confidence in the institutions that emerge spontaneously in a free country, from the initiative of free men and women, Americans abandoned the principles of their system to mount a counter-offensive. Let’s defeat communism by becoming, well, partly communist! What a self-defeating policy that is.
These days a good example is PBS’s broadcast of Professor Michael Sandel’s lectures on justice from Harvard University. Sandel is smart and erudite but at heart a propagandist for a planned society, only in degrees different from what the most earnest of the Soviets had hoped for (but, of course, couldn’t bring off because of how it contradicts human nature). There is, of course, nothing objectionable about Harvard broadcasting Sandel’s lectures at its own expense but there is decidedly something wrong with Sandel getting even partial government funding for his partisan lectures. He is not a teacher who gives an fair and accurate representation of different ideas of justice but someone who subtly nudges his students and audience in a particular ideological direction.
Am I exaggerating in considering Sandel a propagandist, albeit a subtle one? Well, here is how he handled Aristotle’s political philosophy.
The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle defended a fairly intrusive type of political system in which the government or state–although some dispute this interpretation–aimed at making people good. OK, this is a pretty standard rendition of Aristotle but in laying it out one needs to make note of the fact that it may well miss something vital about justice. This is that very likely no one can really make people good–that task needs to be everyone’s own (other than those crucial impeded). Human goodness is arguably something every individual has to bring about for himself or herself. Otherwise it is nothing but regimentation and what we get is perhaps good behavior but clearly not morally virtuous conduct. Aristotle, probably somewhat influenced by the experience of the extreme tyranny of the city state of Sparta, accepted the idea that people can be forced to be good. This is what the classical liberal ethos has corrected about ancient political philosophy–human beings need to choose and cannot be forced to be good!
Now Sandel gave no mention of this problem with Aristotle. He made it appear (by failing to discuss the point) that whereas Aristotle had a noble concern with human goodness, the more recent tendency in (especially American libertarian) political philosophy to restrict the power of government and leave citizens to their own resources when it comes to living a morally good life was inferior to it. But it isn’t. Classical liberals pay plenty of attention to human goodness but they realize it cannot be engineered! Communitarians and welfare state liberals to the contrary notwithstanding, people cannot be forced to be good! It is a distinctive element of human life that people’s goodness must be their own doing not that of behavior modifiers, brain-washers or the bureaucrats.
To make it appear that this approach to politics fails to promote human goodness is a distortion. That is why I call Sandel’s lectures propaganda. If they were fair-minded, by presenting this kind of critique of Aristotle and others who want to force us to be good, it would be educational. And by being put on PBS, a partly government funded TV network, the lectures come very close to resembling what the citizens of the Soviet Union and its colonies received from Pravda and Izvestia.
Column on The Face of Envy
Feb 1st
The Face of Envy
Tibor R. Machan
In THE WEEK, January 16, 2010, the item “The last word” is given to someone whose attitudes and ideas have always put me off. I am speaking of Barbara Ehrenreich, a prolific author whose major theme tends to be that the world needs to make equality its primary public purpose and until that comes about, let everyone be miserable.
Her latest book appears to reinforce this impression. Her Smile or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World (Granta, 2010) is a relentless, over the top rant against a group of authors and advocates who have produced much print aiming to ease the agony of those who are suffering from cancer. Ehrenreich herself had recently survived a bout with breast cancer and as most good writer-entrepreneurs are wont to do, made this experience the basis of a book which expresses her exquisitely sour outlook on life by dissing all those who would wish to inject some measure of relief into the lives of those who have been hit with the often fatal malady. No doubt there is much hokum in these books, which essentially follow the doctrine promoted most prominently by Norman Vincent Peale’s 1952 The Power of Positive Thinking. Many of them have a desperate tone, especially the one by Anne McNervey titled The Gift of Cancer: A Call to Awakening.
Yet who could begrudge the effort, albeit at times inept and desperate, of authors and readers alike to find some solace in the midst of fear and pain? Who would make a fuss, spend precious time writing an entire book debunking those who try to manage and even flourish in the midst of their calamity?
It would be Barbara Ehrenreich, of course, the quintessential sourpuss of American popular culture. In THE WEEK article, which is excerpted from her book, she is actually depicted in a photograph from the UK newspaper, The Guardian, frowning out at the reader holding, you may not believe this, a happy face balloon! Talk about making a concerted effort to rain on other people’s parade!
Yet this is no surprise, not at least to those who have followed Ehrenreich’s paper trail, the numerous books she has penned which attack bourgeois society for even caring about the enjoyment of life! And no one can accuse Ehrenreich with false advertising–one of her books of essays is called The Snarling Citizen, a very apt description of her indeed. Yet despite this admittedly accurate self-assessment, Ehrenreich lacks a crucial quality of a sound cultural commentator, especially one whose focus is America. This is the realization that one size does not fit all. Perhaps for some folks the dour attitude of a Barbara Ehrenreich makes sense but it certainly does not make sense for everyone struck by misfortune. And since many, many folks will shake off a negative disposition even while undergoing hardship and distress, Ehrenreich appears to want to make them all feel bad, just as she prefers to feel. It seems to her to be even a sign of astuteness and erudition to reject a pleasant state of mind, or so at least would her writings suggest. But why?
I am not personally privy to the details of Ehrenreich’s personality and so I do not want to guess at what in her life may have supported her morose outlook. But I do suggest that whatever reason she has for apparently feeling so down all of the time, as a matter of intellectual discipline she ought to resist trying to recruit everyone to share the feeling. Because recruiting is just what she is after, especially with this latest book of hers. And that suggests a profound sense of envy toward all those who, unlike her, manage to have a fairly bright outlook on their lives even while in trouble. I suggest the more power to them and the less to Ehrenreich.
Fortunately my reaction to Ehrenreich’s efforts to spread her attitude of doom and gloom is shared by some who have access to prominent publications. Thus Amy Bloom provides a nice antithesis to Ehrenreich’s preaching, in her essay “The Rap on Happiness” (The New York Times Book Review, January 31, 2010). Bloom is not endorsing the peddling of false hope, not by any means. But she recognizes that Ehrenreich’s pitch is shrill and not needed at all. As she concludes, “I don’t see how even the most high-minded, cynical or curmudgeonly person could argue with” the reasonable understanding of human happiness Bloom presents in her short missive, one that identifies five components of such a state, namely, having basic necessities, getting enough sleep, having relationships that matter (i.e., not spreading oneself thin), extending generosity to others just as prudence to oneself, and going to work on stuff one is interested in. Not a bad list, me thinks–reminiscent, in fact, of Aristotle.
