By Walter E. Williams
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
Dr. Thomas Sowell, a
distinguished economist and longtime friend and colleague, recently
wrote a series of columns under the title "A War of Words."
He pointed out that liberals succeed in duping the public because they
are so clever with words that they give the appearance of compassion.
Liberals talk about the need for "affordable" housing and
health care. They tarnish their enemies with terms such as
"price-gouging" and "corporate greed." Uninformed
and unthinking Americans fall easy prey to this demagoguery.
Politicians exploit
public demands that government ought to do something about this or
that problem by taking measures giving them greater control over our
lives. For the most part, whatever politicians do, whether it's rent
controls to produce "affordable" housing, or price controls
to eliminate "price-gouging," the result is a calamity worse
than the original problem. For example, two of the most costly housing
markets are the rent-controlled cities of San Francisco and New York.
If you're over 40, you'll remember the chaos produced by the gasoline
price controls of the 1970s. Socialist agendas have considerable
appeal, but they produce disaster, and the more socialist they are,
the greater the disaster.
Liberals often
denounce free markets as immoral. The reality is exactly the opposite.
Free markets, characterized by peaceable, voluntary exchange, with
respect for property rights and the rule of law, are more moral than
any other system of resource allocation. Let's examine just one reason
for the superior morality of free markets.
Say that I mow your
lawn and you pay me $30, which we might think of as certificates of
performance. Having mowed your lawn, I visit my grocer and demand that
my fellow men serve me by giving me 3 pounds of steak and a six-pack
of beer. In effect, the grocer asks, "Williams, you're demanding
that your fellow man, as ranchers and brewers, serve you; what did you
do to serve your fellow man?" I say, "I mowed his
lawn." The grocer says, "Prove it!" That's when I hand
over my certificates of performance -- the $30.
Look at the morality
of a resource allocation method that requires that I serve my fellow
man in order to have a claim on what he produces and contrast it with
government resource allocation. The government can say,
"Williams, you don't have to serve your fellow man; through our
tax code, we'll take what he produces and give it to you." Of
course, if I were to privately take what my fellow man produced, we'd
call it theft. The only difference is when the government does it,
that theft is legal but nonetheless theft -- the taking of one
person's rightful property to give to another.
Liberals love to talk
about this or that human right, such as a right to health care, food
or housing. That's a perverse usage of the term "right." A
right, such as a right to free speech, imposes no obligation on
another, except that of non-interference. The so-called right to
health care, food or housing, whether a person can afford it or not,
is something entirely different; it does impose an obligation on
another. If one person has a right to something he didn't produce,
simultaneously and of necessity it means that some other person does
not have right to something he did produce. That's because, since
there's no Santa Claus or Tooth Fairy, in order for government to give
one American a dollar, it must, through intimidation, threats and
coercion, confiscate that dollar from some other American. I'd like to
hear the moral argument for taking what belongs to one person to give
to another person.
There are people in
need of help. Charity is one of the nobler human motivations. The act
of reaching into one's own pockets to help a fellow man in need is
praiseworthy and laudable. Reaching into someone else's pocket is
despicable and worthy of condemnation.
noahhite
scribe's note: we do not believe that god is going to
change his mind about "thou shalt not steal."
Dr. Williams
serves on the faculty of George Mason University as John M. Olin
Distinguished Professor of Economics and is the author of More
Liberty Means Less Government: Our Founders Knew This Well.
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