I, Government

via: thefreemanonline.org

I am government-the institution known the world over to all who pay taxes, get subsidies, and face regulation.

Coercion is both my vocation and my avocation; it is in my very nature to compel others to do that which they otherwise would not do. My nature should then be of great concern to you as I impinge on your liberty. My nature affects your life profoundly. Indeed, there is little in your life that escapes my grasp. I am also a mystery to many. Some see me as benevolent, though I murdered 119 million people in the twentieth century.¹ Some see me as omniscient, though I face an insurmountable knowledge problem in trying to comprehend the society I seek to control.² Some see me as an absolute necessity, though people have lived in societies without me.³ But those whom I use seldom recognize any of this. These naïve convictions grant me an unwarranted place in society. These misconceptions have imposed great hardships on ordinary people, though they have served an elite of rulers well.

I, government, inspire wonder and awe in many. Some persist in this admiration even when confronted with my worst atrocities.⁴ It is in my interest that you never truly understand me, for if you did, you would see that, at the very best, I am merely the defender of your personal and property rights and, at worst, the most efficient violator of these rights. In fact, if all did come to know my true nature, they would view me with distrust rather than with wonder. If you all knew what I have done throughout history, you would look on me with contempt rather than with awe.

I benefit few at the expense of the many. Small groups organize easily, and large ones do not. Hence if I serve any interests other than those of actual rulers, I serve narrow interests.⁵ I grant monopoly privileges to influential industrialists and trade associations. I do this with tariffs and import restrictions that hobble foreign competitors. I do this with regulations that place burdens on new businesses. I do this with licensing laws that restrict access to professions. Of course, these interests pay me to get what they want. Sometimes they pay me simply to leave them alone.⁶

My form is difficult to comprehend as well. I am vast and complex. No one can fathom me in all my complexity. I comprise a gargantuan array of agencies, statutes and regulations, and discretionary policies. No one would have the time or the intellectual capacity to know me fully even if he were to try. There is little point in trying anyway. One person can do nothing to me. No significant election has ever turned on a single vote, so voters have no obvious incentive to learn about me.⁷

I waste resources. I employ labor in tasks that people do not want to pay for. My bureaucracies are rife with individuals who get paid to perform tasks that generate no value to others.⁸ Some of these tasks are even odious-things that people would pay to stop. I do supply some useful things, but at a high cost. My schools cost more than private ones (which get better results). My postal service loses billions each year and cannot compete with the private sector.⁹

I cause industrial depressions. My central banks disrupt commerce by distorting interest rates with inflated money supplies. This inflation causes unsustainable economic expansions that lead to crashes. I compound this problem with wage controls, wel-fare, and anti-firing laws that hinder labor markets.

I devastate the environment. Where I reign supreme, the earth is a commons that all want to use and none want to care for. In Eastern Europe I created some of the worst environmental disasters the world has seen.¹⁰ When I care for animal herds their numbers dwindle.¹¹

War and Bigotry

I wage wars. People express nationalistic and ethnic bigotry through me.¹² I use my power to tax and conscript to marshal resources for combat. This has caused immense hardship, destruction, and death throughout history.

I am responsible for all the worst unnatural tragedies and unnecessary burdens that mankind has endured. Yet it seems that no one knows how to stop me. How can this be? My true nature is not easy to discern.¹³ When tragedy strikes, I am called into action. If I raise taxes to fund the effort to deal with crises, all can see my costs clearly. If I instead expand my authority to conscript resources, I hide my true costs, thus causing many to overestimate the net benefit of my actions. This instills unduly favorable beliefs about me in many minds.

I have suffered setbacks. There have been successful efforts to restrain me for extended periods of time. There have been tax, currency, and regulatory reforms that have rendered me less effective in some places at some times. In such places, people have prospered.¹⁴ But I have often succeeded in making strong comebacks.¹⁵ Some seek to limit my power with constitutional rules.¹⁶ However, there are strong reasons to doubt the efficacy of these rules.¹⁷ Persons who have power to enforce constitutional rules also have the power to flout them.

Why then do I ever fail? This is a tough question. There must be an answer, because I do sometimes falter. But it must be a difficult matter because my failures are relatively uncommon. As difficult as the issues here are, they are vitally important-to you-because the continued success of free societies hinges on them. What is more important to you than that?

D.W. MacKenzie is a doctoral candidate and a Walter Williams Fellow at George Mason University.

Notes

1. R.J. Rummel, Death by Government (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1995), p. 9.
2. F.A. Hayek demonstrated that central planners could never comprehend the society that they intend to plan. See “The Use of Knowledge in Society” in Individualism and Economic Order (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996 [1948]).
3. See David Friedman, The Machinery of Freedom (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court Publishing, 1989), chapter 44, for his discussion of anarchism in Iceland. Also, recent events in Somalia have left it with neither government nor a war of all against all.
4. Paul Hollander discusses the delusions that many notable Westerners had regarding twentieth-century socialist dictatorships they traveled to. See Political Pilgrims (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).
5. Mancur Olson discusses the importance of concentrated interests in The Logic of Collective Action (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965).
6. Fred McChesney distinguishes between rent-seeking, where individuals use the government to extract rents from other private citizens, and rent-extraction, where the government refrains from harming private interests in exchange for protection money. See his “High Plains Drifters: Politicians’ Lucrative Protection Racket,” The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty, January 1998.
7. “Rational ignorance” occurs when the private costs of information exceed their private benefits. See Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper and Row, 1957), p. 259.
8. For discussions of bureaucratic inefficiencies see Ludwig von Mises, Bureaucracy (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1970 [1944]), Gordon Tullock, Politics of Bureaucracy (Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs Press, 1964), and William Niskanen, Bureaucracy and Public Economics (Brookfield, Vt.: Edward Elgar, 1994).
9. Scott Esposito, “Time for the Mail Monopoly to Go,” Ideas on Liberty, February 2002.
10. See Murray Feshbach, Ecological Disaster: Cleaning Up the Hidden Legacy of the Soviet Regime (New York: Twentieth Century Fund Press, 1995), and Alfons Georges Buekens and Vasily Victorovich Dragalov, eds., “Environmentally Devastated Areas in River Basins in Eastern Europe,” NATO ASI Series, Partnership Sub-Series 2, Environment, vol. 45, January 1999.
11. Tyler Cowen compares commercial versus public care for elephants. See “Public Goods and Externalities” in David R. Henderson, ed., The Fortune Encyclopedia of Economics (New York: Warner Books, 1993), p. 76.
12. See Geoffrey Brennan and Loren Lomasky, Democracy and Decision: The Pure Theory of Electoral Preference (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 50-51, for a discussion of the belligerent nature of political expression
13. Robert Higgs, Crisis and Leviathan (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), argues that government expands because of errors in perceiving the true net benefits of government actions during crises.
14. See James Gwartney and Robert Lawson, Economic Freedom of the World: 2001 Annual Report (Vancouver, B.C.: Fraser Institute, 2001).
15. Mancur Olson, Rise and Decline of Nations (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1982), describes how distributional coalitions arise following waves of prosperity.
16. James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, The Calculus of Consent (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, 1962), and James Buchanan and Geoffrey Brennan, The Limits of Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), argue in favor of constitutional limits on governmental powers.
17. Anthony de Jasay, The State (New York: Blackwell Publishers, 1985), argues that constitutional rules offer no real limits on governmental powers.

Bernanke Wins Reappointment

Talk about a case of bad timing. The economic outlook is anything but certain and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s term was just about to expire. A growing number of senators were less than thrilled with Bernanke’s handling of the economy over the last two years and threatened to deny him confirmation for another term. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said that Bernanke “must be held accountable for many of the decisions that contributed to our financial meltdown.”

Nonetheless, on Thursday, the Senate voted 70-30 to reappoint Bernanke for a second four-year term. The Senate has never rejected a Fed chairman nominee, though Bernanke received a record-low vote total. Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) said, “To vote against confirmation could unnerve investors and exacerbate economic uncertainty in the marketplace, which is exactly what we do not need at this time.” He was probably correct, though we also think McCain has a point. It was Bernanke and former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who, along with Democrats in Congress, were largely responsible for steering the economy into a ditch. Yet sacking Bernanke likely would have destabilized the market — much like Barack Obama’s populist posturing about bank punishment did last week.

Furthermore, if it’s not Bernanke, then who? There’s little chance Obama would have chosen someone satisfactory to succeed him. The one name that surfaced was former Clinton Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers. In the end, the Senate simply went with the known quantity.

Republicans

The political landscape indeed favors Republicans, which also means tight races at the primary level. The contest for Florida’s Senate seat has turned into a statistical dead heat between Gov. Charlie Crist and former state House Speaker Marco Rubio. The moderate Crist’s comfortable lead has faded away in recent weeks, as he continues to take heat for Florida’s economic difficulties. The state has double-digit unemployment and was the hardest hit by the housing collapse. Crist’s popularity is dropping and Rubio, a solid conservative, is now closing the gap in the polls and in the cash department. Both candidates are comfortably ahead of Democrat Kendrick Meek.

In Arizona, erstwhile presidential candidate John McCain is facing a challenge for his Senate seat. Former Congressman J.D. Hayworth announced his candidacy, claiming he was motivated to take on McCain because the latter was an “enabler” of Obama’s fiscal policies. McCain certainly is not as conservative as he or the Leftmedia fancy. To name but a few examples, he co-sponsored the McCain-Feingold campaign finance debacle that the Supreme Court partly struck down last week; the McCain-Edwards-Kennedy Patient’s Bill of Rights imposing a new set of onerous mandates on the insurance industry; the McCain-Lieberman Climate Stewardship cap-and-trade bill; and the McCain-Kennedy Amnesty and Open Borders Act legalizing dozens of millions of illegal aliens. And that’s not to mention his opposition to the Bush tax cuts; his vicious attacks and vendettas against South Carolina Christians in the 2000 presidential primary, as well as the Swift Boat Veterans and Club for Growth; and his vote (one of six Republicans) against drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Of course, Hayworth’s voting record in Congress is nothing worth bragging about, either. He voted for the hefty farm and highway spending bills and also had a penchant for earmarks before he was ousted in 2006. Barry Goldwater, call your office.

Democrats

Democrats have experienced a nearly unprecedented reversal of fortune lately, and the bad news just keeps on coming. Arkansas Representative Marion Berry became the sixth Democrat to announce his retirement, and his district is expected to go Republican in November. He told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that he urged the White House not to repeat the mistakes of 1994, when congressional Democrats were defeated resoundingly at the polls. He said Obama fired back, “Well, the big difference here and in ‘94 was, you’ve got me.”

The arrogance necessary to make that kind of comment suggests that Obama has been tapping the keg of his own Kool-Aid. Given the disastrous results of his efforts on behalf of gubernatorial candidates in Virginia and New Jersey, and on behalf of Ted Kennedy’s senatorial heir apparent in deep-blue Massachusetts, he’s vastly overestimating his marquee value. His much-vaunted health care plan is all but dead, and now House and Senate Democrat leaders will be lucky to keep more members from retiring early. So maybe the “big difference” Obama was referring to is the loss of even more than 54 seats in the House.

Even Vice President Joe Biden’s son Beau has seen the writing on the wall. He announced this week that he would not run for the Senate seat vacated when his father became VP. Beau, who is Delaware’s Attorney General, indicated that he’s just too busy with a controversial child abuse case to focus on a statewide race. Yeah, right. If the Democrats in Massachusetts can’t keep the “Kennedy Senate seat” that they held for half a century, what chance does the vice president’s son have in Delaware? Republican candidate Mike Castle, a popular congressman and former governor, raised almost $2 million in campaign cash and has run virtually unopposed while Biden was still making up his mind about whether to run.

From the ‘Non Compos Mentis’ File (mentally incapable of managing one’s own affairs; of unsound mind)

“You know, I was trying to think about who [Barack Obama] was tonight, and it’s interesting: He is post-racial by all appearances. You know, I forgot he was black tonight for an hour.” –MSNBC host Chris “thrill up my leg” Matthews, with a slobbering sycophantic (and genuinely racist) analysis of the SOTU

The Spending Train

This Week’s ‘Braying Jenny’ Award

“In [the president's] budget, which we passed 100 days after his swearing-in, he had a blueprint for how we go into the future, create jobs, stabilize the economy [and] do so as we reduce the deficit — [it's] very central to everything we do — reduce the deficit.” –House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who contributed to nearly quadrupling the deficit in Obama’s first year

It’s the Deficit, Stupid

“Look how much spending I froze!”

Barack Obama apparently suffers from his own brand of ADD — Addiction-to-Deficit Disorder — as demonstrated by his recently unveiled proposal to freeze one tiny portion of government spending at current levels for three years, which by the way wouldn’t begin until 2011. He highlighted the proposal again Wednesday night in his State of the Union address.

At first blush, the idea sounds like something conservatives would cheer. In fact, other than Democrats, who isn’t for stopping the spending juggernaut? But as a spokesman for House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) quipped, “Given Washington Democrats’ unprecedented spending binge, this is like announcing you’re going on a diet after winning a pie-eating contest.”

A closer look at this diet reveals that the freeze would apply to a budget that enjoyed a 20 percent increase in 2009, courtesy of the Democrats’ largesse. Under the guise of “tacking to the center” in the wake of his trip to the woodshed in the Massachusetts election, the president’s proposal would actually lock in a sizable spending increase during those years, as opposed to a real freeze. (No wonder Republicans burst out laughing during the SOTU.)

Furthermore, while the plan claims savings of roughly $250 billion over the next decade, the freeze applies only to non-defense-related discretionary spending, or roughly 17 percent of the total federal budget. Even at that, however, the cap is by no means across the board. Education and job creation initiatives would receive increases, because everyone knows government creates jobs, and education … well, as long as we keep throwing more money at it, it’ll get better, right?

Other items exempted from the proposal are even more revealing. This includes entitlement programs (about two-thirds of the federal budget), virtually all legislation — past or future — with the term “stimulus” in it, including the unspent cash from the latest stimulus legislation, and the yet-another-stimulus-package proposal from The Chosen One’s SOTU. Health care spending would also get a pass.

Naturally, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, Lala-land) rushed to offer up defense spending as a sacrificial lamb to further the cause (so much for the “non-defense-related” caveat). Pelosi’s suggestion was immediately lauded by Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong-Il and a host of other despots.

For perspective, we would add that these hypothetical savings pale in comparison to the $1.4 trillion actual deficit in 2009 alone, and that the Congressional Budget Office — a virtual shill for Democrats, no less — forecast just this week that the deficit for 2010 likely will be at least as large. All told, in fact, the government will hit its current $12.4 trillion authorized debt ceiling by the end of February.

So given the president’s call for fiscal “responsibility,” one might assume Democrats would jump on the bandwagon. Not so. Every Senate Democrat — every Democrat — voted Thursday to raise the debt ceiling to $14.3 trillion. That’s $45,000 of debt for every American man, woman and child. But as Obama so succinctly (and ridiculously) put it in the SOTU, “That’s how budgeting works.”

(On a related note, Democrats needed 60 votes to pass this increase and Sen. Paul Kirk (D-MA) provided one of those votes, despite Senate rules and Massachusetts law saying his term expired last Tuesday. So why did he vote?)

Columnist Charles Krauthammer wryly captured the true significance of the disingenuous spending freeze subterfuge, noting that it’s “a $15 billion reduction in a year, 2011, in which the CBO has just announced we are going to have a deficit of $1.35 trillion — it’s a rounding error. … It’s not a hatchet. It’s not a scalpel. It’s a Q-tip. It’s a fraud.” As is any claim of fiscal responsibility originating near the Potomac.

Village Idiots

Sometimes Hollywood gets it right:

“This isn’t the Democratic party of our fathers and grandfathers. This is the party of Woodstock hippies. I was at Woodstock — I built the stage. And when everything fell apart, and people were fighting for peanut-butter sandwiches, it was the National Guard who came in and saved the same people who were protesting them. So when Hillary Clinton a few years ago wanted to build a Woodstock memorial, I said it should be a statue of a National Guardsman feeding a crying hippie.” –actor John Ratzenberger

Most of the time, though, they don’t:

“I went to the White House and was star-struck by our president and first lady. … I think it is thrilling to have someone who is thoughtful and can articulate with a certain amount of passion and dispassion, the necessary choices that we have in the world.” –actress Meryl Streep, admiring the actor in the White House

From the global village:

“What is happening in Haiti seriously concerns me as U.S. troops have already taken control of the airport.” –Nicaragua’s Commie-Red “President” Daniel Ortega

“I read that 3,000 soldiers are arriving, Marines armed as if they were going to war. There is not a shortage of guns there, my God. Doctors, medicine, fuel, field hospitals, that’s what the United States should send. They are occupying Haiti undercover.” –Venezuela’s Commie-Red strongman Hugo Chavez

“This is about helping Haiti, not about occupying Haiti.” –French International Cooperation Minister Alain Joyandet (Of course, the moment the French see foreign troops, they have to assume it’s an occupation.)

Dezinformatsia

Black Tuesday?

“If you are looking for an analogy for a Republican victory in Massachusetts, the best one for Democrats may well be the stock market crash of 1929. … [Y]ou could have Democrats jumping out windows and off roofs.” –Roll Call’s Stu Rothenberg

Unhinged:

“It’s that rare election where voters know exactly what they’re voting on. If they’re with Democrat Martha Coakley they get health care reform. If they go for Republican Scott Brown it’s deliberate, premeditated murder for health care!” –MSNBC’s Chris Matthews

Despicable:

“I wanted to apologize for calling Senator-elect Scott Brown an ‘irresponsible, homophobic, racist, reactionary, ex-nude model, tea bagging, supporter of violence against women and against politicians with whom he disagrees.’ I’m sorry, I left out the word ’sexist.’” –MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann

Predictions:

“[I]’s just going to get a lot uglier in Washington.” –CBS News political analyst John Dickerson

Blame game:

“[W]hile Coakley is a solid Democrat, she had never really worked directly with Kennedy on anything, according to a former Kennedy aide, so she didn’t have the appellation of ‘a Kennedy person,’ which would have opened the door to a lot more resources earlier in the race.” –Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift with a strange explanation on Tuesday’s election

Cheat to win:

“I tell you what, if I lived in Massachusetts, I’d try to vote 10 times. I don’t know if they’d let me or not, but I’d try to. Yeah, that’s right, I’d cheat to keep these bastards out. I would. ‘Cause that’s exactly what they are.” –MSNBC’s radio talk-show host Ed Schultz

Time to worry:

“You have top Democrats like Barney Frank of Massachusetts who said flatly if Martha Coakley, the Democrat, loses, health care is dead. So what kind of planning is the White House doing right now for backup? What’s their Plan B?” –ABC’s George Stephanopoulos

Nothing tragic about that:

“[It would be] a tragedy of Greek proportions if Ted Kennedy’s successor … is the one who was responsible for the death of health care.” –PBS’s Judy Woodruff

Blame Bush more:

“The stimulus was too small; policy toward the banks wasn’t tough enough; and Mr. Obama didn’t do what Ronald Reagan, who also faced a poor economy early in his administration, did — namely, shelter himself from criticism with a narrative that placed the blame on previous administrations.” –New York Times columnist Paul Krugman