Tibor R. Machan

Egalitarianism teaches that everyone deserves to be treated with equal consideration and respect. Mostly this is meant to stress how everyone should be provided (as a matter of public policy) with basic necessities like food, health care, schooling, etc. But that is too selective and excludes millions who would much rather gain equal provisions of different goods and services–say to exhibit one’s paintings in a famous museum and or to star in a movie. Or why not an equally plush home or car or vacation? Why not an equally meaningful occupation or career? Why not, indeed, an equally happy relationship or life?

Well, perhaps because such provisions cannot possibly be given to all, in equal quantity and quality. Yet, of course, that very same problem faces egalitarianism when it comes to the so called basic necessities. There is scarcity in food, education, health care (e.g., in the supply of professionals, equipment, and materials), etc., etc. At any given time only so much of these benefits is being produced. Perhaps they could be increased with some nudging or outright coercion but even that cannot make them available to all and usually backfires so shortages are the result. And any effort to ration is going to involve major unequal features, such as the blatantly unequal power to impose the rationing that some will have while others lack.

These flaws of egalitarianism ought to be evident to all, especially to those who are familiar with George Orwell’s little story, Animal Farm, or Kurt Vonnegut’s novella, Harrison Bergeron, both of which are excellent depictions of the dystopian nature of any egalitarian political-economic system. But if that isn’t enough or has escaped the attention of egalitarianism’s champions, there are the zillions of examples from real life.

Consider something as simple as the provision of a forum for public comment on policies being considered by governments. There simply is no time for everyone to chime in, nor space. Even as egalitarian a forum as The New York Times must limit the number of comments it can accept from readers in response to columns published in the newspaper. (Indeed, some columns accept no comments at all!)

Now this may not seem as vital as getting an equal share of so called basic goodies, in fact it is. One of the most erudite advocates of egalitarianism considers it vital for members of a just society to have the opportunity to chime in on public policies. Such democratic discourse is deemed to be essential to justice by the Nobel Laureate economist, Amartya Sen of Harvard University–to see, check his mammoth recent book, The Idea of Justice (Harvard, 2009)? Only if men and women are equally free to give input when public policies are discussed are they properly empowered. Indeed, the term “freedom” for Sen has this implication above all–we must all be free to chime in when public policies are being considered. As Sen has said, “participation in political decisions and social choice … have to be understood as constitutive parts of the ends of development in themselves,” development toward economic justice, that is.

But even if one were to regard such universal equality a good thing and worth the very risky cost of empowering government officials to implement it, it simply cannot be achieved since even mere participation in public debates involves costs. No country could afford it and, paradoxically, it would consume and thus diminish many of the resources that might be slated for equal distribution.

Take another case in point. People are always clamoring to be part of discussions, e.g., as they try to call talk shows or submit comments to the Op Ed pages of newspapers, yet there is scant room for them so only very few can succeed. Moreover, whatever goods and services are produced by people could not possibly be slated for equal distribution since there is no assurance that the producers will come up with the amount of these needed for such massive consumption. Just look at how few books get reviewed in The New York Times Book Review–something I am particularly aware of since it has never bothered to review any of my now more than 40 books. Where is the editors’ famous commitment to egalitarianism here?

Well, it is nowhere because it is an impossible commitment or if you will, ideal. (Only “ideal” assumes it is something good whereas that is just what is at issue–if it has so many inherent flaws, it is most probably a bad idea!) As it is often pointed out, the road to hell is paved with good intentions and while egalitarianism may be well intended by some of its proponents, both the process and the end result turn out to be teeming with disappointment.

Tibor R. Machan

Since some federal judges have ruled against the constitutionality of Obamacare, there has been a bit of panic in the ranks of defenders of American statism. Thus, for example, Harvard Law School’s Lawrence Tribe has chimed in, on the pages of The New York Times, with the predictable observation that “Since the New Deal, the court has consistently held that Congress has broad constitutional power to regulate interstate commerce. This includes authority over not just goods moving across state lines, but also the economic choices of individuals within states that have significant effects on interstate markets. By that standard, this law’s constitutionality is open and shut. Does anyone doubt that the multitrillion-dollar health insurance industry is an interstate market that Congress has the power to regulate?” Well, yes, those of us who champion individual rights as against collectivism do!

David Cole made his pitch in The New York Review of Books, claiming that these rulings were far too libertarian and thus not really consistent with the way the U. S. Constitution has been read of late. As he wrote, “The objections to health care reform are ultimately founded not on a genuine concern about preserving state prerogative, but on a libertarian opposition to compelling individuals to act for the collective good, no matter who imposes the obligation.” Indeed, and that’s all to the good! Who on earth wants to defend state prerogative other than some crypto-monarchists!

Both apologists for statism are correct, of course, but they are also beside the point. Just because justices have been appointed who have favored expansive powers for the federal government–and, indeed, for governments as such–doesn’t prove anything about whether that is how they ought to rule on, for instance, Obamacare’s constitutionality.

In earlier years the courts have interpreted the constitution as limiting the power of governments, including the power to regulate–let’s call it what it is, namely, to regiment–interstate commerce. They used to view Article I, Section 8, the interstate commerce clause, as authorizing Congress to regularize commerce, not to regulate it–that is to say, to establish uniform free market conditions for doing business within the borders of the country and across state lines. Prior to the formation of the union the states often behaved in highly protectionist ways but once united into one country this became a serious restriction on the exercise of individual property rights and an impediment to the free flow of commerce. Ergo, it had to be stopped, given the broad principles of community life laid out in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. It was a revolution, after all, not a minor putsch.

In later times, under the reactionary influence of the populists and other statists, the courts started to reintroduce the principles of government that had been in practice for many centuries, principles that rationalized the power of government over the citizenry in contrast to what the revolution aimed at, namely, the demotion of the state, placing sovereignty in the hands of citizens rather than governments. Of course it didn’t happen all at once, nor completely, radically, but more like changing the course of an aircraft carrier, gradually. The aim was revolutionary but the process was slow just as with the abolition of slavery.

Clearly some elements of the legal order of the new country needed major overhaul, such as the permission for the states to support slavery, a permission that contradicted the ideals of the revolution. To the extent that this required some temporary broad powers on the part of the federal government, it amounted to nothing more than carrying out the implementation of the ideals of the founding. State rights, while a good federalist idea in certain respects, also had the unfortunate side effect of standing in the way of a nationwide renunciation of slavery.

Because in this instance federal power was used for purposes of of expanding human liberty, those who champion statism jumped at the chance to argue that statism itself was consistent with the basic principles of the founders. Its like arguing that because it is permissible to deploy force against others in self-defense, it is perfectly OK to deploy it aggressively, too.

No doubt, some founders felt that way, such as maybe Alexander Hamilton. They were not all of one mind. But it is sheer sophistry to argue, as Tribe and Cole do, that the needed adjustments on America’s legal system were meant to reintroduce into the country broad powers for the federal government under the distorted, albeit prominent, reading of the interstate commerce clause.

Nonetheless, these eager statists are continuing what has amounted to a counterrevolutionary legal trend, one that reestablishes the government–the king, Congress, the state–as the sovereign in the country, making the citizenry once again subjects, people who could be ordered by other people to purchase health insurance on the grounds that the public interest demands this. No wonder people ask if forcing us to exercise or to eat broccoli will come next, as per the enlightened polices of the Third Reich.

Such is the nature of statism, sacrificing the rights of individuals for some alleged public good, one that reduces, in the end, to the private agendas of the statists and has nothing to do with the public at large.

Tibor R. Machan

One clear thing about the WikiLeaks affair is that outfits like The New York Times are showing their hypocrisy by failing to vigorously defend WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange’s actions. Wasn’t it The Times that published Daniel Ellsberg’s stolen Pentagon Papers and insisted that this was a valid exercise of its First Amendment Rights and that Ellsberg was a hero? And sure, there is a distinction between taking the papers and publishing them but it seems to me rather cowardly to hide behind that.

But the more serious and general issues is whether laws enacted in a kind of corrupted democracy such as the United States of America are actually morally binding on the citizenry. A good clue comes from the U. S. Supreme Court: “The very purpose of the Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials, and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the Courts. One’s right to life, liberty and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to a vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.” [U. S. Supreme Court in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943)]

Sadly, this purposes has since been completely abandoned by that same court, most recently when it basically abolished the Fifth Amendment’s protection of the right to private property in the July 2005 ruling in City of New London, CT v. Kelo. Once democracy has become so bloated in its reach that no principles are safe from the mob, why exactly should citizens follow so called laws made democratically? They aren’t really laws by then but merely rules laid down by those who have nearly unlimited power.

When as a 14 year old I lived in Budapest under the rule of the “democratic republic” of Hungary–which was but a ruse disguising sheer Soviet style power–my family repeatedly violated “the law,” which is to say we defied the rules the communist–in fact, fascist–regime tried to impose on us all. We hid fugitives from Hungarian prisons and helped them escape to the West. We smuggled merchandise into Hungary with the help of athletes who were permitted to travel abroad (so as to show off how great communist athletes are). And most importantly I myself joined a group of adults who chose to violate the “law” that made it criminal to leave the country for nearly anyone not part of or favored by the ruling elite.

We made it across the border, after an arduous trip from the capitol to the Western border where border guards had been paid off by American agents so they wouldn’t stand too firmly in the way of those trying to escape. All of this was “illegal.” And no one in our group had the slightest compunction about our “illegal” conduct but felt enormous relief and even pride upon completing our journey. So, yes, we violated so called laws which weren’t anything more than the rules of a tyrannical regime. And throughout human history and around the globe back then and even now, thousands are routinely engaged in this kind of illegal conduct. And they darned well have every basic right to do so and those championing obedience of the law in these kinds of cases are full of it.

But, you say, America is a democracy and its laws are indeed binding on all of its citizens. No, that is wrong, since this democracy is now way out of control; it has repeatedly overstepped the limitations of a valid constitution. America is now a vastly illiberal democracy, one in which the majority and those allegedly representing it are perpetrating innumerable tyrannical measures, imposing rules that have no business being part of a free country. Just consider the policies vis-a-vis the consumption of “illicit” drugs!

How dare these people impose their idea of “illicit” on anyone else? Who are they, anyway? And what about the innumerable petty tyrannies of government regulations–issuing completely unjustly from federal, state, county, to municipal rulers? All these are forms of prior restraint, imposing penalties, at times jail sentences, on people who have no committed any violations of any rights but merely are deemed by bureaucrats and their bosses, politicians, capable of doing so! How is that for justice–penalizing people because they might become criminals? That policy would have us all in prison.

No, I am not impressed at all by the claim that people are violating “the law” when that law happens to be grossly unjust, enacted in violation of the basic law of the land. Obedience, compliance, is only warranted because it will serve to avoid prosecution and incarceration.

No one is obliged to be suicidal in his or her comportment toward a government that is either out and out totalitarian or only a democratic, mostly petty, tyranny. With governments like that citizens are only obliged to be prudent and crafty, except when it comes to valid provisions of the criminal law.

Tibor R. Machan

My newspaper carried the AP headline the other day, “U.S. cuts access to files after leak embarrassment,” and the body of the article reports that Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks is now on a most wanted list in Europe.

I do not have the time or even the curiosity to figure out if the leaks contain anything that would be criminal to steal–such as genuine national or military secrets–but I am told they do not and I also recall that when Daniel Ellsberg sent similar materials to The New York Times many moons ago, which The Times then published, a great many people in the American media defended him despite the fact that those at the Pentagon who were responsible for the material were very upset with him and with The Times about revealing stuff to the world they would just as soon have kept secret. There was a big brouhaha about this back then and my recollection is that many people, especially on the political Left including liberals and critics of the administration, defended Ellsberg and The Times. “How dare anyone try to stop this good man from telling us what we all had a right to know?” was the mantra then.

Today, however, I hear nothing much other than, gasp, on Fox TV, in defense of Julian Assange despite the fact that most of what he has put out there for us to check if we’d like to is by all reports quite innocuous and, in any case, ought to be available for us to find out about in this new era of government transparency. Indeed, all the materials WikiLeaks revealed seem to be no more than simply embarrassing and probably have no business being secret. Transparency, I was made to understand when the Obama administration took office, would be the order of the day, not secrecy. Yet didn’t the president go on record condemning the WikiLeaks revelations? Curious.

I am not sure just what makes something an “important diplomatic message” but the number of individuals, the AP article reported, who are permitted to read them will soon be “significantly reduced.” Is this really right? Unless it is shown that people are put in harm’s way it seems to me nothing coming out of the government of a free country should be kept hidden. How can the citizenry judge the conduct and ideas of members of the administration, the president and his team and all those in Congress who support them, without having access to their work? Must I trust these folks just for the asking? Are people in governments all that trustworthy?

My strong impression is that free men and women must never trust those in government very much, given that such folks have immense power and unless they and their works are watched carefully they are likely to abuse it–to quote the famous English political theorist Lord Acton, “Power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

So there is good reason to applaud WikiLeaks’ efforts to inform us about how the governments of the world go about their business. The excuse that such knowledge may be embarrassing seems to me quite irrelevant since governments simply ought not to engage in conduct that embarrasses them. It is no fault of a news reporter that the transparency that he or she achieves has that effect. If the citizens have the right to know, to avoid embarrassment requires acting decently in the course of doing government’s work. If other countries rely on secrecy to do business with the American government maybe it is high time this stops and they, too, confront the reality that the people they supposedly represent in diplomatic negotiations have the right to know.

Had WikiLeaks stolen a bunch of private information, say from banks or doctors’ offices and computers, the charge that it was acting criminally would be credible. But since the information it is letting everyone have bears on public affairs, I do not see that any breach of privacy is involved. Embarrassing just doesn’t matter here.

Tibor R. Machan

Nearly every day I check out The New York Times on line and there is no doubt in my mind that the paper is firmly partisan in favor of egalitarian and other mostly Leftist causes, as well as, of course, the politicians who promote them. The paper just the other day editorialized about how fair and balanced are NPR and PBS. Poppycock!

I do not follow NPR–National Public Radio–except when I am on the road driving a rented car, which happens to be quite often. (I call these my masochistic hours because, well, NPR irritates me to no end.) First of all, the fact that it gets money from the government, money extorted from me and millions of other citizens, is an unforgivable vice of the outfit (as it is of any other that takes part in such a policy, such as PPS, various corporations and individuals on the dole, etc.). I would have no interest in any broadcasters using “public” funds to support what they do even if their reporting and other programming were impeccable other then for purposes of keeping my fingers on the pulse of the nation. (Some of the music on NPR stations is, actually, excellent!) But in addition to using extorted funds to support its programming, NPR’s various news and reportorial programs are about as partisan as The New York Times if not more so–say like what is found in The Nation.

Take their “Fresh Air” segment in which one of their highly polished interviewers finds a favored author or other public intellectual to toss softballs to–reminding me of the saying “throwing Christians to Christians” or something. Hardly any scrutiny is shown of those who champion yet another government program promoting some Left of Center or Left Wing program. The books “reviewed” are always friends to statism and on the few occasions that a book is examined with a free market theme, it is confronted with searching questions mostly about how awful it is that freedom makes it possible to neglect the poor and needy and noble causes like the greening of the globe.

NPR’s staff has absolutely no concern about the heavy hand of government except in cases where it is deployed against terrorist suspects or their defenders. NPR’s minimum support for individual liberty focuses mainly on the press, although given its own reliance on government subsidies it understandably doesn’t address the matter in great depth.

Now my exposure to NPR is not continuous, so I am not able to swear to it that the outfit is uniformly partisan in favor of more government, of statism. But my sample is a pretty good one, especially when you add to my exposure to NPR during my pre-iPod years–when, as I have already noted, I liked the classical music, jazz, and blues many of the stations offered, especially when their home was some university or college campus. This, by the way, is another insidious aspect of NPR, its intimate relationship with university and college radio programming where it is beaming propaganda to young people as if it were scientifically established truth.

In America’s mixed political economy NPR is no big surprise and if it were not a matter of corrupting news reporting and commentary, it would not amount to something especially hazardous to the country. After all, so many other institutions–think of virtually all public education, from elementary to post graduate varieties–are infected with the statist point of view! (Arguably the first item on the agenda to turn the country toward greater loyalty to its initial classical liberal politics and culture would be to eliminate its virtually fully socialized educational system.)

Yet contrary to the recent editorial lie in The New York Times, NPR is really quite a corrosive feature of the country. Not only is its nearly one-sided viewpoint statist to the core–more so that Fox TV news is right wing but which notably has plenty of competitors out there; there is also its annoying snootiness. Has anyone ever encountered someone with a Southern accent on an NPR station (apart from some special guest, a novelist or poet from a place such as New Orleans)? I certainly haven’t.

If I am not mistaken much of European journalism is unabashedly partisan and this futile effort to uphold the standard of neutrality in America’s media just makes little sense. People are always involved in taking sides on various topics and to attempt to purge the news medial of this is hopeless.

The one sound way to address the matter of balance is via competition and that is just what NPR opposes from its ideological stance but also has no way of practicing, what with its special advantage of receiving extorted funds from the government!

Tibor R. Machan

In a surprisingly sensible essay in The New York Times, on Sunday October 17, 2010, David Segal gives a pretty good explanation of why macroeconomics is so unsuccessful. It’s human nature, stupid. People just aren’t predictable–will they do this or that when provided with easy money from the government? Is soaking the rich really a good idea–suppose they would do much more good with their money than would government? Do the poor really deserve a break in tax policy or are some quite irresponsible and thus not good candidates for giving them tax breaks?

As Segal concludes his piece, “But the economy is a hugely complex problem. So we either simplify the problem and offer a solution, or embrace the complexity and do nothing.” Yes indeed, and it is the second alternative that makes the best sense. Why?

Because while “we”–which is to say, governments–may do nothing, that is by no means the end of the story. While governments do nothing, the rest of us may very well do a great deal. Indeed, it is probably in large measure because the government does nothing that most of us do something, something with the funds the government does not extort from us. If we can keep those funds, they will not usually be put under our mattresses but spent on various projects that we want to get done and which then will create jobs that are actually achieving something that is wanted by people instead of the allegedly “shovel ready” jobs no one needs and government merely invents (like all that road work in my neighborhood that involves repairing what does not by any reasonable assessment require being repaired).

One thing that Mr. Segal’s essay brings to light is just how unprincipled is much of macroeconomic theory, the type that fancies itself capable of managing a country’s economy. In one of his passages Segal relates Harvard econ professor N. Gregory Mankiw’s thought experiment from his book Principles of Economics (Thomson/South-Western, 2004), in which “a town must maintain a well. Peter, who earns $100,000, is taxed $10,000, or 10 percent of his income, while Paula, who earns $20,000, hands over $4,000, or 20 per cent of her income.” Never mind that being taxed isn’t exactly “handing over” a portion of one’s income (although such language does show just how thoughtless is a lot of macroeconomic thinking). Notice, instead, that in the thought experiment, which is, all in all, a pretty realistic one, it is taken as given that the town must maintain a well.

But towns are not people. They are not even corporations–they are populated by people, some of whom may not want or need a well at all, some of whom do, and some of whom may find a well useful up to a point, after which they might elect to pay for water brought in from somewhere else. The kind of thinking that treats the people of the town as some kind of beehive or ant colony is way off.

A town–and, of course, a country like the USA which the government macro-economists embark upon managing–is made up of a lot of very different individuals, with very different goals, abilities, virtues and vices, and so forth, and to lump them together is utterly misguided and must produce bad policies. And once the economic issues are treated not as those faced by towns but by various individual human beings in the various groupings of their own choice, the situation presents itself quite differently. For one, ethics enters the picture. And in nearly any ethical code human beings have identified as guidelines to how they ought to conduct themselves, it is unacceptable to confiscate funds from Peter and use it to support Paula unless the two of them reach an agreement to enter some such arrangement. It is not to be dictated from above, as is macroeconomic policy, with no regard for the niceties of ethics or morality. (Which is what’s so bad about centrally planned economies.)

One reason the human race has come up with certain general ethical principles–contained in, for example, Aristotle’s list of virtues, the Ten Commandments, Kant’s categorical imperative, or the various school of morality–is that these are thought to be sound clues to what kind of actions people may take and what they ought to avoid taking. Not everyone will follow the advice but it is no surprise that if they do not, mayhem is produced.

And that is just what happens in interventionist macroeconomic policy. So not doing anything–given the real complexity of human affairs and the broad ethical guidelines that actually prohibit doing what macro-economists propose doing–is a good alternative to simplistic meddling.

Tibor R. Machan

In the Sunday, April 18, 2010 New York Times article “Doing Fine, but Angry Nonetheless,” the author, Kate Zernike, discusses a poll done by The Times and CBS News on Tea Party members. The gist of the findings is that the members are reasonably well off folks, with a higher than average level of education.

The piece has the usual tone when The Times discusses those whose views it despises–snooty, derisive, and uninterested in substance, as if what these people believed was some kind of disease, not worth serious consideration. The piece went into the history of Tea Party members, associating them with 60s conservatism. Like those sociological studies that aim to explain away people’s thinking, treating it as an affliction rather than a product of considered judgment, the study put Tea Party members under a microscope.

This is fairly typical of those like the writers at The Times. It reminds me of a movie by Woody Allen, in which a boy fell on his head and temporarily became a conservative, subscribing to National Review and such. It took another fall by the boy to get rid of this problem. No argument, no examination of the merits of the ideas. Instead it is like some kind of virus one catches, not a set of ideas one might actually find intellectually compelling.

Zernike also quotes one Mr. Perlstein, associated with the survey, saying, “It is entirely predictable.” He was referring to what the Tea Party folks are thinking, doing, etc. Here is condescension for you! These Tea Party people are like robots, unable to think independently, freely, but instead are perfectly predictable, kind of like the weather and certainly not like we are, here at The Times, who have independent minds and think stuff through. Such people all reach the same conclusions, don’t you know, as those at The Times. But the Tea Party people, well they are dumb and cannot.

This is ironic, actually, considering that every time one reads a column by, say, Bob Herbert or Paul Krugman or Frank Rich, one can pretty much predict that the authors are going to be cheerleaders of every Leftist policy, foreign or domestic. The Left just cannot do anything wrong for these columnists. And Obama & Co. are uniformly brilliant except when they fail to spend enough of the taxpayers’ money on, for example, Keynesian policies such as stimulus packages. If it amounts to using other people’s resources for projects other people cannot have any say about, the team of columnists at The Times will mostly likely endorse it. No, but they are independent thinkers and not at all entirely predictable like members of the Tea Party.

The Times might want to stop this snooty elitism. Ms. Zernike and Mr. Perlstein might consider having a bit more respect for the people whose activities they cover and comment on. Maybe they will stop being so insulting. But it isn’t very likely. For the thinking at The Times, such as it is, seems to go this way: Those who disagree with the editors and columnists of The Times have to be wrong, couldn’t have anything of merit to contribute to public discourse. So there’s no need to argue with them, for example, or test their views for cogency, credibility and truth. No, that would accord those opponents of The Times’ views some measure of respect which, of course, we cannot have. (By the way, had The Times found Tea Party members uneducated and poor, you can be sure they would have been dismissed as pedestrian fools whose views again are not worthy of consideration.)

This is actually a ploy employed by hard core leftists since the time of Karl Marx. For Marx his opponents had nothing worthwhile to say because they were caught in a trap of class consciousness. The bourgeoisie just couldn’t help supporting capitalism, especially the right to private property, because it was in its economic interest which held it completely captive. So the way to cope was to liquidate these people, with their regressive, reactionary opinions. No need to make the effort to demonstrate that they were wrong about anything. They just couldn’t help themselves.

I do not think that many of those championing President Obama’s policies can imagine themselves being mistaken about anything and so listening to other than their pals and apologists is a waste of time. It is a historical necessity that the Obama viewpoint will triumph, not a matter of argument and analysis. What opponents say is, well, all entirely predictable.

Tibor R. Machan

In the American legal tradition the press may not be regulated, nor may religion. No one would maintain, though, that these are flawless institutions, not by a long shot. At The New York Times, for example, scandals over the years prove the point and there is no end to how badly some of the clergy can behave.

Yet few would insist, especially among the editors and columnists at The Times, that to handle these malpractices what is needed is some kind of government regulatory remedy. I certainly have never read anything in The Times recommending such supervision or oversight. Instead, what The Times does is exactly what it dismisses as useless when it comes to remedying problems in markets; it uses its public editor to propose self-regulation; he is an ombudsman, in-house at the paper, who writes reprimands and suggests various corrective measures that then, hopefully, help the paper stay on the right side of the various aspects of journalism.

But of course such self-knowledge isn’t what The Times likes to invoke as it scolds everybody in the market place, no. When it comes to other professionals in society, The Times doesn’t hesitate to advocate the equivalent of censorship, namely, government regulation. Indeed, its editors and columnists constantly fail to see that what they take for granted, namely, an unregulated arena of journalistic operations, is not something others in the society may enjoy. Those at The Times–as well as at many, many other newspapers–evidently believe they are mature and disciplined enough to engage in self-regulation but others, outside their media operations are too inept, too childlike, to enjoy the same rights.

And such blatant inconsistency is not unusual at The Times. In a recent column of his (“Free to Lose,” November 13, 2009), Krugman wrote that policies to promote “job sharing” are “worthy of consideration” in order to remedy the country’s unemployment problems. To this absurd idea Professor Don Boudreaux of George Mason University responded with characteristically impeccable logic:

“Let’s start at the New York Times. I know several PhD economists currently without jobs (and certainly without regular newspaper columns). I propose that Times Co. chairman Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr. reduce Mr. Krugman’s presence on the page to, say, one column per year. The remaining hundred or so columns that Mr. Krugman would otherwise have written for the NYT can be written by unemployed economists.”

Do you believe there is any chance at all that The Times and Professor Krugman will bite the bullet and take Professor Boudreaux’s suggestion to heart? Do you think the editors who give Professor Krugman his space in The Times will heed the advice to remedy employment problems in the press by having the good Princeton Professor, who is already holding down several different jobs, to participate in job sharing? If you do, I have this bridge in New York I would like to sell you.

Government regulation is nothing but a version of prior restraint, an imposition of burdens on market agents that they have done nothing to deserve, something that in the criminal law is forbidden by due process! Moreover, government regulation simply places some citizens in power over others, something that is clearly prohibited by the 14th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution that mandates treating all citizens as equal under the law.

To have a bunch of bureaucrats look over the shoulders of various professionals, all of them U. S. citizens, and order them to do this and that without their having been proven guilty of any criminal conduct, is plain unjust. And the folks at The New York Times would never stand for it in their work. But they routinely advocate more and more government regulation professionals outside of journalism and the clergy. They appear to be totally blind to just how inconsistent this is and how, indeed, the U. S. Constitution is itself inconsistent by permitting government regulation of nearly every other profession not protected by the First Amendment.

It would be interesting if this subject would be broached on the pages of The Times, say in an Op Ed column. But please do not hold your breath.