The
size of government is shrinking, but never quick enough for my
liking. I am a Jeffersonian at heart and entirely endorse the
principle that “that government governs best which governs least”.
The administrative state of elites, that
permanent bureaucracy of busybodies who are not elected but
nevertheless wield enormous power over every aspect of our lives, who
think they know better than the rest of us, is being routed, little
by little, but it won't be enough for me until there is a glut of
empty houses in the plush bedroom communities of DelMarVa surrounding
the Capitol.
We now
have an administration in place that strongly believes in fruits of
capitalism and a streamlined, downsized government of fewer
regulations and less oversight. For much too long we have been under
destructive, naive, and irresponsible leadership that believed that
more government was the answer to managing the evolution of modern
culture, steering our democratic republic ever closer to a socialist
state. The self-righteous intelligentsia has increasingly held sway
in the court of ideas with Benito Mussolini's belief that as a
society becomes more complicated, individual freedoms need to be
increasingly restricted.
Even
though history demonstrates time and again that this kind of thinking
has never been successfully implemented – never – the dream of a
perfect collective world blooms afresh with each new generation. What
is it about intellectualism that makes socialism so appealing?
From
idealization to disillusionment we can trace the history of the
various socialist experiments through an endless string of failed
utopias – the Soviet Union, Cuba, China, Yugoslavia, Vietnam,
Tanzania, and Nicaragua. It should work, it is reasoned, but it
never has. Therein lies the fault of this fatal conceit. There is
always a tiny elite in every emerging generation who believe without
question that just by imposing their reason the desired outcome of a
society that is at once prosperous and equitable as well as orderly
and conducive to political liberty should result. The addiction to
this conceit, however, has never been more than wishful thinking
removed from reality.
One
would think that in the wake of the very successful Reagan and
Thatcher economic revolutions, capitalism would be embraced. Instead
the revitalized capitalist polices of the Trump administration are
viewed as maverick and threatening. The history of central planning
demonstrates that it is the nursery for the growth of totalitarian
policies. What begins as a conviction that for planning to be
efficient it must be taken out of the realm of politics and placed in
the hands of experts, ultimately ends with the failure of politics
and the embrace of tyranny. Socialism always leaches personal
initiative by denying personal liberty, very often deceptively
disguising its efforts as humanitarian benefits.
Socialism
is a version of sentimentality. The socialist, the sentimentalist,
cannot understand why, if people have been able to generate some
system of rules coordinating their efforts, they cannot also
consciously design an even better and more gratifying system. The
sentimentalist cannot understand why we shouldn’t favor cooperation
(a nice-sounding arrangement) over competition (much harsher), since
in any competition there are losers, which is bad, and winners, which
may be even worse in their view. It is at this juncture that
advocates of a planned economy introduce the word “fairness” into
the discussion: Wouldn’t it be fairer if we took money from person
A who has more than he needs and give it to person B who doesn't have
enough?
Friedrich Hayek (The
Road to Serfdom)
called free market economics (capitalism) “the extended order of
cooperation.” The seeming paradox of the free market, according to
Adam Smith (The Wealth of
Nations), is that the
more individuals are given the freedom to follow their own dreams and
means, the more their activities are “led by an invisible hand to
promote” means that ultimately aid the common good. In other words,
private pursuits advance public benefit. That is the beneficent
alchemy of the free market. Hayek’s fundamental insight, enlarging
Smith’s thought, is that the spontaneous order created and
maintained by competitive market forces leads to greater prosperity
than a planned economy - always.
The
spontaneous order generated by market forces is beneficial to
humanity in unexpected ways; it has greatly extended our lives and
produced wealth so staggering that, only a few generations ago, it
was unimaginable. The poor are still with us, and probably always
will be. Not every social problem can be solved. Capitalism is
working, however. Not perfect, but it is working. If there is a
better way, I would love to see it. But it is not socialism. Been
there, tried that.
Even
a sound democracy that is thriving under free markets will suffer
shortcomings. When these become most apparent citizens must be most
wary of the sentimental appeal to trash the whole system in favor of
intelligent central planning and rationalistic hubris. Hitler took
advantage of the decay of democracy in Germany and at the critical
moment obtained the support of a large enough contingent in society
to roll to power supplanting an otherwise workable state with an
ideological nightmare.
The
urgency with which Hayek condemns socialism is a function of the
importance of the stakes involved. As he puts it in “The
Fatal Conceit,”
the “dispute between the market order and socialism is no less than
a matter of survival” because “to follow socialist morality would
destroy much of present humankind and impoverish much of the rest.”
We get a foretaste of what Hayek means whenever the forces of
socialism triumph. There follows, as the night the day, an increase
in poverty and a diminution of individual freedom.
The
curious thing is that this fact has had little to no effect on the
attitudes of the intelligentsia. No obvious empirical development,
even repeated innumerable times, seems to spoil the pleasures of
socialist sentimentality. This unworldliness is tied to another
common trait of intellectuals: their contempt for money and the world
of commerce. The socialist intellectual eschews the “profit motive”
and recommends increased government control of the economy. He feels,
Hayek notes, that “to employ a hundred people is . . . exploitation
but to command the same number [is] honorable.”
The
Marxist theorist and Soviet politician Leon Trotsky got it right when
it comes to summing up the impact of socialism upon any society,
observing that when the state is the sole employer the old adage “he
who does not work does not eat” is replaced by “he who does not
obey does not eat.” As the old Soviet Union struggled desperately
to make socialism work there was less and less work and more and more
worthless pay. “They pretend to pay us,” one worker said, “and
we pretend to work.” The only equality Vladimir Lenin and his heirs
achieved was an equality of misery and impoverishment for all but the
elite central planners.
The
American experiment of the last 242 years is like a boat that is
always taking on water. It doesn't want to go down no matter how bad
the storm, as other boats around it come and go with the crashing
waves. But it sits high enough on the water that no matter how
insurmountable its problems appear to be, the passengers know they
are going to get there. “She is a good old boat and she'll stay
afloat through the toughest gale and keep smiling.” If the
sentimentalists all go to one side of the boat in an attempt to upset
the balance, we need to send them below decks to the engine room to
shovel coal until they come to their senses.