There are two basic problems that all government programs face. The first is a problem of efficiency; the second is one of morality.
The problem of efficiency has to do with the fundamental problem of central planning. This was best described by Friedrich Hayek in his many works. In short, government programs are inherently worse than free-market solutions because of the nature of information in a complex society. No matter how many smart people happen to be grouped in a government agency, they will never be able to devise a central plan that is as efficient or successful as the solutions devised by the millions of interactions that occur spontaneously in the free market. This is simply due to the fact that the free market solution will naturally draw from the diffuse knowledge of needs, desires, and conditions that is held locally by all of the millions (or even billions) of people in the marketplace. No individual or small group will possibly be able to access the same information held by the entire free market as a whole. Much of this information is geared naturally toward local conditions, concerns, desires, needs, etc., which cannot possibly be known by a centralized agency, whether it be in Washington or Brussels.
Although many people will concede that government programs are often inefficient and fall short of their stated goals, they still cling to the belief that this issue can be corrected if they just elect the right people or try to tinker with the procedures a bit. Unfortunately, the system cannot deliver an efficient outcome because it is inherently inferior to the free market. No amount of fine-tuning will overcome this basic fact. While full-blown, Soviet-style central planning has fortunately been relegated to the dustbin of history, smaller-scale central planning is still alive and well in every country on the planet.
The second problem inherent in any government program is that it is based ultimately on the threat of violence. As that subversive rebel George Washington said, “Government is not reason. It is not eloquence. It is force.” The moral superiority of free-market solutions rests in its use of free association, rather than coercion to achieve complex ends. Government-imposed programs, on the other hand, force people to behave in certain ways that may or may not be in their best interests or in line with their own personal choices. It’s always a one-size-fits all solution, as opposed to the customer-is-always-right solution that occurs naturally in the free market.
Thinking about it now, I can’t believe I didn’t put all of this together on my own. I mean, I always knew that if I didn’t pay my taxes, I’d go to jail, but I never took it beyond that. I never considered the link between the police power and all government programs.The libertarian concept of non-aggression comes into play here, in contrast to coercion. The basic libertarian principle is that all human relationships should be voluntary, or that you should be free from aggression against your life, liberty, or property as long as you do not initiate violence against anyone else (live and let live, extended to absolutely everything). This is based on the natural rights philosophy espoused by John Locke (which itself formed the basis of our government through the ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution).
Natural rights are those rights that we have by virtue of our very humanity - the unalienable rights that we have in a state of nature (life, liberty, and property). We only form government because we find it more convenient to "outsource" the securing and protection of those rights, and in so doing we merely delegate to the government the authority to secure the rights we ourselves possess. Thus it is impossible to delegate to government a power that we do not possess as individuals.
Government-mandated wealth transfer programs, on the other hand, are all predicated on the concept of taking money (via government coercion) from one group of people to give to another group of people. This is illegitimate because we as individuals do not have the right to do the same in a state of nature. That is, I have no right to force you to give me money, either for myself or so that I can then turn around and give it to someone else. This is where "positive rights” come into the picture. A positive right is the right "to something," like education, a certain wage, medical care, etc. The problem is that positive rights impose a contractual obligation on others to provide you with something, regardless of whether they consent to it or not.
Now, keep this in mind the next time you hear someone advocating yet another government "solution" to some perceived problem – poverty, foreign aid, stem cell research, or anything else for that matter. The knee-jerk reaction is to say that there's nothing wrong in asking people to chip in to help others. And of course, that's true. The problem, though, is that the government doesn't ask. It forces through the threat of jail or worse. And there's a big difference in asking someone to do something and sticking a gun to their head and making them do it. By turning to the state to achieve a given end, all you’ve really done is outsource the gun.
Now, the typical response will be something along the lines of "we all voted for it" in some indirect way. However, that's a) not true - when was the last time you or I were asked to vote on whether or not we wanted to pay confiscatory taxes?, and b) irrelevant, because simply voting on something does not bestow legitimacy. For example, if two robbers break into a house to steal a television set, and the owner objects, they might put it to a vote - still wouldn't make it right to steal the TV. Same applies here - morality is not determined by majority.
Personally, I would be happy to pay taxes that were limited to support of “legitimate” government programs. For the sake of simplicity, let’s assume that “legitimate” refers to any of the limited powers outlined in the Constitution. The Constitution provides the federal government with enumerated powers. That is, the federal government is empowered to carry out only those functions specifically listed in the Constitution. All other powers are reserved to the states, or to the people. Therefore, some of the legitimate functions of the federal government would include maintaining the military, coining money, running the Patent Office, running the court system, and passing laws (plus a few others). Now here’s a question – what percentage of the 2.7 trillion dollar budget goes to fund these functions vs. other activities which the government has no right to do in the first place? Where in that list of enumerated, limited powers, is the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, US AID, Department of Education, Department of Housing and Urban Development, the FDA, or any of the thousands of government programs that have come to regulate just about every facet of American society?
Just about everyone has a complaint about government bureaucracy and inefficiency, but take it a step further. How are these programs funded? By taxpayer dollars. How does the government get taxpayer dollars? By the use of force alone. Would you give 40% of your income to the government if you weren’t required to by law? Of course not. But that’s the only way these programs can be funded. Through coercion. This point is crucial, because once you understand it fully, you will begin to see government overreach in an entirely new light.
Last year I read an article about how
Alec Baldwin led a group of actors to Capitol Hill to lobby for increased funding for the National Endowment of the Arts. Think about that in light of the coercive power of government. In essence, Alec Baldwin is lobbying Congress to take money by force from one group of citizens (taxpayers) and turn it over to another group of citizens ("artists"). That is, he's advocating the use of violence against his fellow citizens to force them to fund things like independent movies and off-Broadway plays. How can this possibly be justified? Would anyone really advocate putting a gun to someone else’s head and forcing that person to fund an off-Broadway version of
Hairspray? Alec would never put it in those words, of course, but that’s the net of it nevertheless.
Keep this in mind the next time someone (usually a leftie, but not always) tries to convince you that they’re morally superior or altruistic by proposing additional government programs (and higher taxes as a result) to address some perceived social injustice or to do some good deed. It is important to understand that only individuals can be altruistic. The government by definition cannot be altruistic, because it has no money of its own. The only money the government has is that which it takes from its citizens by use of the police power. Think about it this way: I donate my own money to charity, I’m altruistic. If, on the other hand, I steal money from you and then donate it to that same charity, I can hardly be considered altruistic, right?
Nothing about that changes just because a group of individuals known as “the government” are the ones doing the taking. Aside from the moral issues involved, you can bet that the very request for government funding means the project is a loser on its merits. If it weren’t then you wouldn’t need the government to force citizens to pay for it – they’d just buy it voluntarily in the free market.
At the end of the day, government as a concept is faced with a fundamental contradiction. People are either generally rotten or generally decent (with everything in between reflected in various individuals). If you believe that people are generally bad, then why would you want these bad people to be in positions of power within the organization that claims monopoly use of violence in a society? People who hold this view are basically saying they want a group of people who are generally evil to force us all into doing good things that we wouldn’t otherwise do. If, on the other hand, you believe people are fundamentally decent, then there is obviously little need to form a government to make people do good things – they will simply do them on their own.
From time to time I'm going to try to summarize a few of the many outrageous property rights violations and restrictions of freedom that appear in the news. It shouldn't be hard to find material. Up this week:
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