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A Dim View of Libertarianism, Part VI – The Inevitability of Government

Part VI of a seven part series. Read Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV & Part V.

Copyright 2010 by Ernest Partridge. Published here with permission of the author.

I think you can spend your money more wisely than the federal government can. – George W. Bush

Those exertions of the natural liberty of a few individuals, which might endanger the security of the whole society, are, and ought to be, restrained by the laws of all governments. – Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations

Kill the Umpire!

Regressives do not like government – unless, of course, it serves their interests. When it does, progressive critics call this “corporate welfare,” or “socialism for the rich, free enterprise for the poor.”

At times, the regressive’s aversion for government can only be described as bizarre. Consider the following:

The members who spoke in this capital [Williamsburg, Virginia] said ‘no’ to taxes because they loved freedom. They argued, “why should the fruits of our labors go to the crown across the sea.” Well, in the same sense we ask today, “why should the fruits of our labors go to that capital across the [Potomac] river?” . . . . We, like the patriots of yesterday, are struggling to increase the measure of liberty enjoyed by our fellow citizens. We’re struggling, like them, for self-government — self-government for the family, self-government for the individual and the small business, and the corporation… What people earn is their money. Seventy-two years after its inception, what is our Federal tax system? It is a system that yields great amounts of revenue, even greater amounts of disorder, discontent and disobedience. [Tax cheating] is not considered bad behavior. After all, goes this thinking, what’s wrong with cheating a system that is itself a cheat? That isn’t a sin, it’s a duty!1

While it sounds like the ravings of some anarchist militia nut, it was in fact spoken by Ronald Reagan, fomenting rebellion against the very government over which he presided. This should not come as a surprise, after all this was the President who told us, in his first inaugural address, that “government is not the solution, government is the problem.” Why should we then be surprised to find him quoting our founding fathers: “taxation without representation is tyranny!” — conveniently dropping the second and third words of that war cry?

When the late Barry Goldwater said such things thirty years ago, they were considered beyond the pale of conventional political debate. Today’s conventional journalistic wisdom is telling us that Goldwater’s triumphant followers have long-since accomplished and moved beyond his platform. Throughout the right-wing media we are told, “anything government can do, the free market can do better.” The triumph of the anti-government message is so complete that it has retreated from public debate and has become a virtual presupposition of our public discourse, an article of faith so “obvious” that very few even bother to question it. Politicians who dare utter a word in behalf of government are in grave danger of losing their offices.

For example: We often hear on the air or in casual conversation, the remark “who can trust the government when it can’t even deliver the mail on time!” Surely that remark, which has become a cliché, deserves some exposure as a Grade-A bad rap! We hear it so often, that we don’t pause even to think about it. In point of fact, the US Postal Service is renowned the world over as one of the most reliable and well-functioning institutions under the sun. Now be honest: when is the last time that one of your letters was really “lost in the mail?” (Remember, this isn’t one of your creditors asking this). Frankly, I can not remember when this last happened to me. And when you mailed that package last December 21, convinced that it could not possibly be delivered by Christmas, weren’t you amazed to find out that it was? Don’t we all, in fact, simply take the reliability of the Postal Service for granted – and for good reason? And yet, when that “can’t deliver the mail on time” slander is made, rarely is it challenged.

Similarly, entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare are roundly criticized as wasteful and inefficient, compared with private insurance policies. Never mind that the operating costs of these government programs are approximately three per cent, compared with roughly thirty percent for private coverage. But the government entitlement programs do not need to pay exorbitant salaries to their managers, or pay out dividends to stockholders. These comparative costs of the public vs. private agencies are simple, verifiable facts. But once again, simple facts are not allowed to get in the way of political rhetoric.

And so, despite abundant and familiar refuting evidence, we now have the new conventional wisdom: “private initiative and market mechanisms will always come up with better solutions than the government!” Oh, really! “Often better,” to be sure. Perhaps even “usually better.” But “always better?” Who would you prefer to assure you that your food is uncontaminated and that your drugs are safe and effective? Private industry or the Food and Drug Administration? Who would you trust to keep the public airshed and water supply clean? Private industry or the EPA? Who would you rather have as the owners of Yosemite, Yellowstone, and the other national parks? Yourselves along with all your fellow citizens, or MCA and Disney Inc.? “Always better?” Even the most orthodox libertarians concede that there is a “public interest” in protecting the lives, liberties and property of individual citizens, and thus that, at the very least, the police, the military and the courts can not legitimately be privatized.

But by granting even this little, the libertarians give themselves away. If it is the legitimate function of government to protect the lives, liberties and property of its citizens, then it is clearly the function of government to regulate the activities of private individuals and corporations.

To be sure, to the corporations and the oligarches, “big government” is unquestionably a nuisance and a financial burden to wealthy and privileged individuals, as it goes about its appropriate business of acting in behalf of the rest of us.

But since “the rest of us” have been denied access to the airwaves (due to the demise of “The Fairness Doctrine”), and since, in A. J. Liebling’s words, “freedom of the press belongs to those who can afford to own a printing press,” and finally, since our Congress has been sold to the highest bidders (“cash is speech,” saith the Supremes in Buckley v. Valeo and the recent Citizens United v. FEC), the anti-government crowd has had the public podium pretty much to themselves, and thus even the plain beneficiaries of government protection have been persuaded to join the cry to “Kill the Umpire!”

Never mind that the moment the umpires leave the field, the game is over, and nobody wins! This is true with every organized team sport, and as history demonstrates conclusively, it is true of all human societies that have attained a civilized condition.

The greatest strength of the anti-government message lies in the fact that much of it is true. “Aren’t governments shot-through with waste, fraud, and abuse?” Of course they are! And so too is every human institution under the sun, including corporations. But the inference from imperfection to uselessness and even malignancy is, to say the least of it, a “stretch.” No Police Department can completely eliminate crime, and no Fire Department can completely eliminate fires. They are imperfect institutions. Do we then propose their abolition? Certainly not! Instead, we strive constantly to improve them.

So it is with governments. The founders of the American republic were well aware of the abuses of government, having successfully struggled to overthrow a foreign tyranny. And so they tried, with the Articles of Confederation, a minimalist government – which failed.

And so, having learned from this failure, the Founding Fathers adopted a Constitution for a government of laws, with checks and balances, and with a Bill of Rights explicitly stating the limits of that government (“Congress shall make no law…”). However, even before the Bill of Rights and the body of the Constitution itself, we find the Preamble, which clearly recognizes that government has a function: namely, “… to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity…” Nowhere in that document, did the founders say or suggest that all this could be accomplished entirely through the unregulated activity of self-serving “economic persons” in the market place. Least of all did they indicate any endorsement of Margaret Thatcher’s infamous observation that “there is no such thing as society, there are individual men and women, and there are families.”

True to the spirit of Thatcher’s social atomism, we are now casually dismantling a civic and political order that is the envy of world, the sort of civil society that the Russians and the former Soviet republics are desperately attempting to achieve.

If the regressives succeed in drowning government in Grover Norquist’s “bathtub,” will they be content? Assuredly not, as the following parable might indicate.

Mr. Boehner Goes to Washington

This was an important day in the life of Congressman John Boehner (R, Ohio), the House Minority Leader. He had to catch an early flight to Washington, in time to lead the fight in Congress to protect us all against the further encroachments of “Big Government” in our personal lives.

And so, upon awaking to his clock-radio, he learned from the US Weather Service that the flying weather was ideal, but that later in the week a storm was likely to hit the Midwest. So he made a note to have the storm windows put up. He then enjoyed a hearty breakfast of ham and eggs, certified Grade A by the US Department of Agriculture, and dutifully took his daily prescriptions, pronounced safe and effective by the Food and Drug Administration. While at the table, he checked the stock quotes in the morning paper, assured by the Securities and Exchange Commission that he had not been swindled. On the way to the airport, he stopped at the bank to take out some pocket money, and was not at all surprised to find that his account was intact, as guaranteed by The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

His flight took off on time and without incident, after the aircraft had been certified as safe, and his flight cleared for take-off, by personnel of the Federal Aviation Agency.

Three hours later, John Boehner arrived at Reagan National Airport in Washington, DC, safe, healthy and financially secure, thanks to all the above “big government bureaucracies” and still others too numerous to mention.

Firm in his conviction that his fellow taxpayers were “better qualified than the government to spend their own money,” Boehner then led the continuing GOP fight to restore the Bush tax cuts, thus redirecting over a trillion dollars of federal revenue to “the people” – or more specifically, to the two percent of “the people” earning more than a quarter million dollars a year.

“I think you can spend your money more wisely than the federal government can.” This remark by George Bush, during the second presidential debate of 2000 came to mind recently, as I was watching the movie, “The Perfect Storm.” Because the Captain chose to ignore the warnings of the National Weather Service, the “Andrea Gail” went down with the loss of all hands. Other crews, less dismissive of “big government bureaucracy” paid heed and survived. And when a sailboat, caught in the storm, was about to sink, the Coast Guard, answering their distress call, rescued the helpless crew. It is doubtful that, at that moment, any of those rescued sailors felt that this big government agency was less qualified than they to deal with the emergency.

And so we are led to ask: are we as individuals, or the government, better qualified to

  • deliver the mail
  • predict the weather
  • ensure that our food is safe to eat
  • protect the lives and property of the citizens
  • determine the safety and efficacy of our medicines
  • monitor and respond to epidemics
  • identify and mitigate environmental pollution
  • support “economically useless” basic scientific research

Speaking for myself, I am not prepared to devote the time and expense, or to gain the expertise, to set up a laboratory in my basement to determine if my food and drugs are safe and effective. Nor can I run off to Wall Street and carry out a private investigation to find out if my investments are safe from violations of the securities laws, nor am I qualified to check the innards of a passenger jet to see if it is flight-worthy, and I have no idea how to direct air traffic.

In all these cases, and countless more, I will readily concede that I am less qualified than the appropriate government agencies to “spend my tax money.”

Neither are these proper functions for “the private sector,” for in each case, these are regulatory activities – the enforcement of laws and regulations upon self-interested parties in behalf of the general public. It makes no more sense to “privatize” government regulation and services, than it would be to have the referees of a pro-football game in the employ of one of the teams, or to have the police force under the control of organized crime. (Alas, not unheard of).

A case in point: in 1962, the pharmaceutical industry put pressure on the Food and Drug Administration to release the sedative drug, thalidomide, for general distribution. That pressure was steadfastly resisted by an FDA “bureaucrat,” Dr. Francis Kelsey, who thus spared thousand of infants from birth defects. Unfortunately, similar “government interference” was not in place to restrain Pfizer from marketing Vioxx and Celebrex.

Another case: in 1934, the federal government established the Federal Communications Commission, in order to regulate “traffic” in the broadcast spectrum. Significantly, the FCC was enacted at the insistence of the broadcast industry, which finally came to realize that without a neutral agency to assign and enforce frequencies, electronic chaos and cacophony would result.

With all these manifest services afforded to all United States citizens by the federal government, why do regressives and libertarians regard that same government as an oppressor?

Consider the case of ex-congressman Tom DeLay, John Boehner’s predecessor as GOP leader in the House of Representatives. Before he ran for public office, Tom DeLay was in the pesticide business. In that business, he came face-to-face with “big government interference,” when the Environmental Protection Agency told him that he could no longer sell or use such pesticides as DDT. This regulation, the result of many years and millions of dollars of government sponsored scientific research, benefitted song birds, birds of prey, and oh yes, young children and other vulnerable critters. At the same time, this “big government decree” was a damned nuisance to the chemical industry and to pest controllers such as DeLay, who came to refer to the EPA as a “Gestapo."

What business is it of “big government” to tell Tom DeLay that he can’t poison his neighbors and the ecosystem, as he goes about his business of eliminating “pests”?

The answer is as close as the founding documents of our Republic. “To secure these rights” of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, states the Declaration of Independence, “governments are instituted among men.” And in the Preamble to the Constitution, we find that the government is established, among other things, to “promote the general welfare.”

If, as the libertarians insist, it is the legitimate function of government to protect the lives, liberties and property of its citizens, then it is clearly the function of government to regulate the activities of private individuals and corporations that threaten these lives, liberties and property. As history testifies, entrepreneurs like Tom DeLay do not like to be told that the internal organs of unconsenting citizens are inappropriate catchments of their chemical residues. Meat packers don’t like to have government inspectors around while they are making sausages. Drug companies do not like to be told that they can’t put opium in their cough medicine, and that they cannot put a drug on the market before it has been proven both safe and effective. Mine owners have fewer qualms than government inspectors about putting their workers’ lives in peril. Broadcasters don’t like to be told that the public airwaves that they are freely given must contain some “public service” content, or that opinions other than their own deserve a fair hearing.

And most conspicuously, Wall Street bankers do not want “gummint bureaucrats” looking over their shoulders as they gather up junk bonds and sell them as over-priced “derivatives.”

When the Enron Corporation found federal regulation to be intolerable, it arranged to disarm the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission by persuading a friendly administration to appoint lackeys to these agencies, while investing millions in “gifts” to pundits and in “contributions” to members of Congress. Then, when the scheme collapsed, the senior corporate officers “took the money and ran,” leaving thousands of their employees and investors without their life savings.

Make no mistake: if we abandon federal regulation and oversight (called by libertarians “government control of our lives”), this does not mean that “control” will necessarily devolve to each of us ordinary citizens. As isolated private individuals, we are all too often ill-equipped to protect our interests against the assaults of impersonal corporate power. The history of the late nineteenth century bears out this observation. Absent the protections of “big government,” our food will once again be tainted, and our drugs again unsafe and ineffective. Pest controllers like Tom DeLay will once again spread poison on to the land, heedless of the “side-effects” once the primary objective of “zapping the bugs” has been achieved. The free and diverse press which Jefferson regarded as essential to democracy and as (take note!) an indispensable constraint upon the abuses of governmental power, will be replaced by the monotone voice of media conglomerates in the service of wealth and power.

Two Cheers for Government

When, during a baseball game, a referee makes a call against the home team, the fans are often heard to shout: “Kill the Umpire!” – forgetting, for that moment, that without umpires, the game could not continue.

Similarly, “abolish government” is another cry that issues from frustration. Without a doubt, governments can be damned nuisances. They require us to pay taxes, often for services that do not benefit us or for benefits which we take for granted. Governments tell us that we can’t build homes and factories on public lands, that we can’t throw junk into the air and rivers, that we can’t disregard traffic lights and drive at any speed we wish, and that we can’t sell medicines without first testing their safety and efficacy. All this curtails the freedom and the wealth of some. But at the same time, such “government interference” promotes the welfare of the others: of consumers, travelers, ordinary citizens and, yes, even property owners. Interestingly, among the liberal democracies, the constraints of “big government” tend to burden the wealthy and powerful, while those same constraints protect the poor and the weak, all of whom, in a just political order, are equal citizens before the law.

Taxes, wrote Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, are the price we pay for civilization. There is much to complain about the tax system in the United States today. They are used to pay for unjust wars and for the maintenance of a bloated military-industrial complex. And they are regressive; so much so that the mega-rich pay a smaller percentage of their enormous incomes than the middle class and the poor. Even so, taxes also support essential social and government services such as public education, infrastructure, public safety (police and fire protection), the courts, and the regulation of commerce, upon all of which, the wealth of the super-rich depends.. The tax structure is in urgent need of reform. But calls for the total abolition of taxes amount to advocacy of the total elimination of government. And no civilized society on earth has ever existed without a government.

Spontaneous Order

To be fair, libertarians do not advocate the total elimination of all government. Instead, they propose a “minimalist government,” devoted exclusively to the protection of the fundamental natural rights of life, liberty and property. Hence the legitimacy of police, the military and the courts.

All other social institutions, the libertarian assures us, will arise “spontaneously,” without government initiative or regulation, out of voluntary human interaction. As the libertarian, David Boaz writes:

… order in society arises spontaneously, out of the actions of thousands or millions of individuals who coordinate their actions with those of others in order to achieve their purposes… The most important institutions in human society – language, law, money and markets – all developed spontaneously, without central direction.2

While “spontaneous order” may be true of natural languages, Boaz’s claim that law, money and markets arise “spontaneously” and thrive without deliberate governance, is resoundingly refuted by both history and practical experience. In fact, few if any complex human activities can take place without rules and the active enforcement thereof. For example, all team sports require referees. Even markets operate under sets of rules, and sanctions against those who violate these rules. And we are now, to our profound regret, discovering what happens when markets are allowed to function “spontaneously” without regulation.

Furthermore:

The need for law may, as Thomas Hobbes argued, arise “spontaneously.” But most assuredly, the content of the law does not. The body of law is formulated and enacted in legislatures, and is then enforced by courts and the police – government agencies, all.

Money has no value unless it is underwritten by the “full faith and credit” of a central institution, namely government. There is a simple word for the production and distribution of money solely by the enterprising individual: it is called “counterfeiting.”

It is true that natural languages arise spontaneously, and how this happens is one of the most profound mysteries of human existence.  Even so, in specialized activities such as medicine, the law, the science, and academic disciplines, the technical vocabulary is deliberately and scrupulously explicated, as it must be if these activities and disciplines are to function well.

Clarity of language is essential to the formulation and enforcement of the body of law, and this clarity is accomplished, not “spontaneously,” but through careful deliberation. And the non-spontaneous institution of the court system, let us recall, is the libertarians’ alternative to government regulatory agencies.

And why won’t the courts, and their threat of sanctions, suffice to restrain the abuses of free markets? That question requires a careful answer, to which we now turn.

The Torts and Courts Solution.

Martin Anderson, a former Reagan administration official writes that “just as one does not have the right to drop a bag of garbage on his neighbor’s lawn, so does one not have the right to place any garbage in the air or the water or the earth, if it in any way violates the property rights of others.”3  Accordingly, the libertarians contend, “all” problems of environmental pollution can be interpreted as assaults upon another private individual’s person or property, and thus can be controlled through the injured citizens’ recourse to the courts. Unfortunately, there is overwhelming evidence that this remedy, however appealing in theory, will not succeed in practice. Experience has shown, time and again, that the unfortunate victims of the negligence of other persons or of corporations are simply unable to make their case, however just, for the following reasons:

Contributory Assault: My home and primary work place is in the San Bernardino mountains, east of Los Angeles. While the air quality here is much better than most other places in Southern California, the westerly winds regularly bring Los Angeles air through my property and into my lungs. (Until the state and federal governments enforced regulations, the air quality in Los Angeles was the worst in the United States). Another autobiographical fact is relevant to this discussion: thirty-five years ago I threw out my pipes and tobacco, and never smoked again.

Suppose, in another five years, I am diagnosed with lung cancer. The doctors then tell me that after thirty-five years without a draw on my pipe or a drag on a cigarette, my former smoking habit is an unlikely cause. More likely, I have been victimized by southern California air – in particular, the exhaust fumes from some twenty-million automobiles.

According to the libertarians, my property and person have been illegally assaulted, and I am entitled to compensation for my injury. Moreover, they assure us, comparable rights of compensation of all citizens, combined with a system of civil courts, will suffice to put an end to all environmental pollution.

If the courts are to be my remedy, then which one of the twenty million automobile owners am I to sue for the damage to my health from air pollution? Which molecule from which car was “the last straw” that mutated the fatal cell? Finally, how can we be sure “beyond a reasonable doubt” that my pipe smoking (a “pre-existing condition”) was not the cause? Because these questions are unanswerable, it appears that there is no hope that I will be compensated.

Perhaps I should sue all the drivers – after all, my compensation award divided by twenty million will not amount to a hardship to any of these drivers. But I am not the only victim, so that assessment will have to be multiplied by the number of authenticated “plaintiffs.”

So here’s a suggestion: require each driver to pay an “insurance premium” with his driver’s license, the proceeds of which will be used to treat and compensate victims of air pollution, just as mandatory auto insurance is used to compensate vehicle accident victims. Unfortunately, unlike accident victims, those who are injured by air pollution can not assign cause to any particular defendants. Accordingly, the “premiums” will have to be collected and the payments disbursed by an independent and impartial agency – the government, of course. Finally, a small semantic correction: call those “premiums” by their right name – “taxes.” Voila! The liberal/progressive solution, disparaged by libertarians and “conservatives” as “socialized medicine!”

It gets worse. In 2003 I lost eight of the ponderosa pine trees on my property, due to an infestation of bark beetles that killed up to a million ponderosas in the San Bernardino mountains. The probable cause, according to most (government supported) scientific research, was a prolonged drought in the region. The cause of the drought is less certain, though many climatologists attribute it to anthropogenic climate change (“global warming”). Who am I to sue for compensation for the loss of those trees? The fossil fuel companies that extracted the coal, oil and natural gas that was consumed to produce the greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide? The municipalities that purchased the fuel to feed the power plants? The individual automobile and truck owners? While there is a scientific consensus that the climate is changing, due to a significant degree to increased atmospheric carbon dioxide, the cause of this particular drought in this particular region, and its responsibility for the loss of the ponderosa pines in the San Bernardino mountains, does not meet the legal probability threshold sufficient to justify compensation. So once again, the libertarian solution of “courts and torts” fails.

The Statistical Casualty: In the 1950s and early 1960s, the US Atomic Energy Commission conducted atmospheric atomic tests in the western state of Nevada, resulting in significant radioactive fallout in the southern part of the adjacent state of Utah. Two decades later, there was an alarming increase in lung and thyroid cancers among the residents of southern Utah – primarily ranchers and farmers, whose Mormon religion forbids the use of tobacco.

Repeated suits against the United States government failed, due to the following problem of “the statistical casualty.” While epidemiological studies determined beyond reasonable doubt that there was a known percentage rise in the incidence of cancer, and thus a known number of excess cases, no particular cancer patient could be known to be a victim of the fallout. Even non-smokers contract lung cancer, albeit rarely, from natural background radiation and other sources. Thus, while it was virtually certain that there were hundreds of victims of the fallout, no particular individual victim could be identified. And that degree of doubt sufficed to free the government of liability. As we shall see, the same legal strategy has prevented all citizen-plaintiffs from winning a single compensation suit against the tobacco industry, though the US government has estimated that up to a half million individuals die each year from smoking related diseases.

The Burden of Proof: Because of these considerations and others (e.g., synergisms, threshold effects, time-lag effects, etc.), painfully real injuries, diseases, and premature deaths are routinely generated by causes, the evidence for which falls far short of the legal burden of proof. Nor can this problem be remedied simply by lowering the threshold of the burden of proof, for this would open the floodgates of frivolous and meritless suits, undermining, among other rights, the libertarians’ cherished right of property.

The history of the tobacco industry in the United States offers an instructive lesson as to the efficacy of libertarians’ private lawsuit (“torts”) response to a public health menace.

In 1962, the US Surgeon General, Dr. Luther Terry, released the first report from his office on smoking and health. In the intervening decades, as an enormous body of evidence has accumulated, there has been little doubt among the scientific community about the validity of warnings of Dr. Terry and of all his successors. Millions of American citizens have had their lives cut short by tobacco-induced diseases, while the industry, exercising its free market privileges, has invested millions more in advertising and promotion to successfully lure still more victims.

During these decades, hundreds of victims of the tobacco industry have sued for compensation. And as we have noted, not a single individual plaintiff has won a case against the industry. Finally, after more than three decades of complete failure, the libertarian individual tort remedy was discarded and the problem of the statistical casualty sidestepped, as a consortium of state Attorneys General, led by Mississippi’s Michael Moore, achieved a multi-billion dollar settlement from the tobacco companies. The plaintiffs in these cases were not individual smokers, but rather the states which had to pay increased medical costs to the “class” of smokers.

Similarly, the air that I breathe at my southern California mountain home is significantly cleaner now than it was a generation ago, and not because of successful law suits by citizens and property owners against the polluters. Instead, the liberal’s remedy has been applied as air quality has been improved through the laws and regulations issuing from the state of California’s Air Quality Management District, and the federal Environmental Protection Agency: in short, through Garrett Hardin’s “mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon.” Aside from a few uncompromising libertarians of my acquaintance, I know of no fellow Californians who would have it any other way.

An unequal and hence unfair apportionment of risks. A risk that might be acceptable to an entrepreneur can put an innocent and unconsenting public at unacceptable and unjust risk.

Suppose, for example, that a developer correctly calculated that by building a dam, he had a 95% chance of becoming enormously wealthy – so long as the dam did not fail. However, there was a 5% chance that the dam would fail, which would provoke law suits that would surely bankrupt him, and possibly earn him a prison sentence. Many venturesome capitalists would find this to be a quite acceptable risk. However, that same venture would put the lives and property of thousands of downstream citizens in peril, with no appreciable advantage accruing to them if the dam were built. Clearly, it would be unjust for the developer to proceed with his project. But what is to prevent him from doing so? The threat of suit? As we have seen, he has already considered this and found it to be an insufficient deterrent. In the libertarian state, with government regulation abolished, there remains no further deterrent to this threat against the innocent and unconsenting citizens.

The case is more than hypothetical, for it precisely describes innumerable historic cases. Lifeboats for the full ship’s complement of the Titanic were regarded by the White Star line as an unwarranted expense, given the unlikelihood that ship would sink. The result of this disproportion of risk to investors and to passengers is known to all. Prior to the crash of 1929, the risk of bank failure to the stockholders was not proportional to the risk of the depositors. So too the risks to sellers and to buyers, of selling tainted food and untested drugs. Once again, the progressive brings forth a proven remedy for these disproportionate risks – a remedy detested by the regressives: inspection and regulation by a disinterested third party, namely the government, backed up by the force of law and the prospect of fine and imprisonment.

A Reactive rather than a Proactive strategy. The disproportionate burdens of risk, just discussed, have led to the establishment of pure food and drug laws, of traffic safety regulations, of inspection and regulation by bank and insurance commissions, of building and constructions codes. All these and innumerable additional examples of “big government interference” exemplify yet another essential advantage of the progressive program of government regulation over the libertarian alternative of private suits for damages: the private libertarian solution is reactive, while the progressive public approach is proactive. Private interests lack both the resources and the inclination to anticipate disasters and hazards before they occur. Again, the case of the tobacco industry is instructive. Federal investigations of company documents leaked by “whistleblowers” have confirmed what critics have long suspected: tobacco industry “research” has acted more to hide and obscure than to reveal the health consequences of smoking.

As children, we have all been taught that “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” Even so, it is difficult to assess the value of proactive policies, since it is difficult to acquire statistics on accidents that do not happen, and persons not killed or injured, due to effective preventive policies. Difficult, but not impossible. The contrast in public health and safety, and in environmental quality, before and after the introduction of government regulation further validates the progressive agenda, while it offers strong refutation to the libertarian’s assurance that “the free market” and enforcement of property rights are the best means of protecting the public and the natural environment.

The enforcement of the “torts approach” would require the “big government” endorsed by the progressives and detested by the Libertarians. In place of “government” (which libertarian philosopher John Hospers describes as “the most dangerous institution known to man”4), the libertarians would delegate the task of protecting property rights to the courts. But is this a distinction with a difference? Aren’t “the courts” an arm of the government? And what assurance do we have that courts of law won’t be a tyrannical as “the government” that is so distrusted by libertarians?

Whether more or less tyrannical, these courts are not likely to be significantly less extensive, intrusive and bureaucratic than the government agencies that they will presumably replace. To illustrate this point, consider again my home in the California mountains.

Suppose a noxious cloud passes through my property, killing the trees in my back yard? How am I to find the culprit responsible, so that I may be compensated for these damages? Presumably, I must hire a forest botanist and a chemist and numerous additional experts to validate my claim. And if some upwind industry becomes the prime suspect, it will, no doubt, collect a committee of its own “experts.” (My financial resources and those of the firm will be hopelessly mismatched – but let that pass). How is this clash of experts to be adjudicated, unless some agency has previously set up independent standards that can be applied to this court case, and others like it?

Similarly, suppose that I have decided to heat my house with a wood stove. How am I to know beforehand that I will be safe from a pollution suit by my neighbors, since, by hypothesis, our libertarian government has abolished all those “dictatorial” clean air standards? Clearly “the courts” will have to define, in detail, acceptable and non-acceptable effluent standards, based on extensive scientific research. And all this will all have to be done in advance of any suit against me. Otherwise, the suit would be ex post facto, and thus legally invalid. Similar questions arise with claims of damages due to food poisoning, unsafe drugs, vehicle malfunction, etc.

The implication is clear: the libertarian reformers, having disbanded the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, and other “big government” regulatory and research agencies, will have to re-establish them if the courts are to function under the enormously expanded burden of responsibility handed to them by the libertarians. In point of fact, the libertarian scheme of “pollution control through the tort laws” does not eliminate government, since it requires a reliable government to codify and defend personal and property rights.

Absolute rights against property invasion would shut down industrial civilization. The libertarian remedy for environmental pollution, however attractive in the abstract, would accomplish too much if put into practice. Consider, for example, Tibor Machan’s statement of this remedy: “if operations of [private] firms would be impossible without pollution [beyond their boundaries] – that is, without causing emissions that are harmful to others who have not consented to suffer such harm – the operations would have to be shut down.”5  Can anyone doubt that the clear implication of this rule must be the abolition of the internal combustion engine? Thus these champions of individual liberty, in order to spare our property and our selves from the assault of pollution, would deprive us all of the freedom of movement afforded by our automobiles. And there is worse ahead: “non-point” water pollution comes from agricultural run-off. Must we abolish the use of chemical fertilizers and fossil fuels in agriculture? Radical environmentalists have urged as much. But now that horse pastures have long-since been converted into shopping malls and subdivisions, the clear consequence of the de-mechanization of agriculture must be mass starvation.  And finally, air pollution also comes from electric power plants. Do we shut off the electricity? What then of the loss of freedom to communicate? In fact, the air that I exhale contains carbon dioxide, an air pollutant. And try as I might, I can’t seem to keep it all contained on my property. The implication, as Jeffrey Friedman spells it out, is as clear as it is absurd:

Libertarianism seeks to make every human being the ruler of his or her own domain, as delimited by his or her property rights… Since the atmosphere cannot be divided into parcels of private property as land can, strict libertarianism would require that each person possess his or her own atmosphere, unpolluted by the activities of anyone else. The libertarian ideal is in short, so sensitive to environmental externalities that it is incompatible with human coexistence. Short of the ultimate in atomistic individualism – a planet for every person – any pollution, and hence any human activity, is, in the libertarian view, a crime.6

In Conclusion:

No known civilized society has ever existed without some form of government, some oppressive and others democratic and just. Few municipalities are prepared to abolish fire and police departments, merely because these civic institutions are less than perfect. If, as Ronald Reagan complained, “government is not the solution, government is the problem,” then the rational remedy is not necessarily less government (albeit such remedies are occasionally in order). That remedy might be found in improved government.

No one can doubt that many governments have proven to be “dangerous” and tyrannical. But libertarians would have us believe that all governments, per se, are not to be trusted: that government is “the most dangerous institution known to man” (John Hospers), and “that government is best which governs least” (Thoreau) These claims require an argument. American history teaches us that because the founders of our government were very suspicious of the powers and abuses of the state, they first attempted, under the Articles of Confederation, the sort of minimalist government that the libertarians might endorse – a government that failed. Following that they tried again, this time with a system of “checks and balances” that separated the powers of government, and then they completed their task with a “Bill of Rights” that explicitly stated limits on the powers of the government over its citizens. Ultimately, the sovereignty over that government resides in the voting public (or at least did so until Bush v. Gore on December 12, 2000). If we don’t like the way we are being governed, we can replace our leaders at the ballot box. Unfortunately, if we don’t like the way the telephone company or the public utilities treat us, we can not vote their management out of office – unless, of course, we are wealthy enough to own significant amounts of stock in these companies. Yet these private interests control our lives, without restraint – unless, of course, in accord with progressive policy and contrary to the advice of the libertarians, we have been wise and fortunate enough to enable our collective surrogate, the government, to regulate these private interests in our behalf.

Clearly, all governments, being institutions designed by imperfect human beings, are imperfect to some degree. But no one has effectively demonstrated that anarchy is to be preferred. All organized activity, for example, team games, require rules and referees to enforce them. This includes so-called “free markets.” Every civilized human being lives under some system of government, for better or worse. Perhaps there is some compelling reason for this.

So we come at last to an unspectacular conclusion: markets, private property and corporations are good things, but it is possible to have too much of a good thing. For these worthy and indispensable servants of the body politic can become cruel and insufferable masters, to prevent which, we establish laws and regulations – i.e., government.

With the rise of libertarianism and the enactment of its doctrines into law, we now have way too much of these “good things,” as they now threaten to undermine and destroy the institutions, the economic foundations, and the political structures that sustain us all, including the corporations.

The solution is also compellingly obvious: let’s return to the system of regulated capitalism, of checks and balances, of the rule of law, and of a government of, by, and for the people, that has served us so well for over two-hundred years.

In the previous administrations, under such regimes, the American economy enjoyed unparalleled prosperity, the country was at peace, and the United States of America and its political traditions were respected throughout the world.

Let’s bring back that which was proven to work in the past.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Stay tuned for Part VII…

Notes and References:

  1. This quotation is totally accurate. It was transcribed from Reagan’s voice, broadcast over National Public Radio, May 30, 1985.
  2. David Boaz, Libertarianism: A Primer, New York: Free Press, 1997, p. 16.
  3. Anderson, Martin, from an untitled Christian Science Monitor article, January 4, 1989. Quoted by Walter E. Block, ed., Economics and the Environment: A Reconciliation, (Vancouver, Fraser Institute, 1990).
  4. Hospers, John. (1974). “What Libertarianism Is,” The Libertarian Alternative, (ed.) Tibor R. Machan, New York: Nelson Hall
  5. Machan, Tibor, "Pollution an Political Theory," Regan (ed.), Earthbound: New Introductory Essays in Environmental Ethics, (New York: Random House), p. 97.
  6. Friedman, Jeffrey, "Politics or Scholarship?", Critical Review, Vol. 6, No. 2-3, 1993. Pp 429-45. (The Martin Anderson citation is from this paper).

 

14 Comments

  1. While interesting intellectual exercises, where do these partisan tracts, which argue for one dogma over another, ultimately leave us? Do they unite people ecumenically across differences or encourage further fragmentation?

    One big lesson I learned moving out into a rural area: if I wanted to build a working, trustful relationship with my neighbors, which almost all have very different worldviews than myself, I could not hold their views against them or even argue with them, but had to quickly find similarities and build a relationship off that. Political dogmas quickly become irrelevant in face to face community building.

  2. Hi Rob – the only reason I’m running this series is because a couple of our readers keep pushing their libertarian philosophy in comments and this can confuse readers. I’m trying to ensure readers realise, when they keep hearing the simplistic cry to ‘remove government’, that the root of this libertarian philosophy is based in individualism and competition – not community or cooperation. As I’ve said in comments on another post, not all ideologies are benign. Despite repeated calls for these people to clearly outline their strategy for transition, they only continue to make brief simplistic ‘silver bullet’ statements that can lead unwary readers to believe that permaculture is libertarian in nature – which I don’t believe it is.

    Rather than dismantle society, and watch the biggest dogs fight over the scraps, I think we need to overhaul society, and find ways to incentivise transition. We can’t afford to get this wrong – that is, rapid but careful transition – as we’re running out of time. In this sense, I think being aware of the foundational principles at stake here is important. We only get one shot at this (some would say we’ve already missed it).

    This is not an attempt to be antagonistic, but an attempt to give readers a moment of pause and consideration.

    The comparison with this site and your rural neighbours is not really relevant. I agree with the need to find areas of agreement in such a scenario. This site, however, is an open forum for permaculturists where important issues can be discussed.

  3. “As I’ve said in comments on another post, not all ideologies are benign.”

    I’m sure you are true! But I think ideologies in its basic nature are static, not organic, like permaculture is.

  4. I have to disagree with you on this one Oyvind. Ideologies (definition: “a body of ideas”, or a “way of thinking”) shape people’s lives and actions. Individual ideologies within respective people add up to shape society. Ideologies create ‘culture’ (either a positive or negative culture). As such, ideologies are not static.

  5. Hm… I thought ideologies were derivated from Descartes’ mechanistically world view, and hence attempts to create static, machinelike pictures of the world. A way of simplifying reality, to be able to put it in a box.

    I must think more about this. Still I think ideologies are a kind of reductionistic thinking, but maybe I’m wrong?

  6. THE BIOLOGY OF OUR FUTURE WORLD:

    “People used to say that just as the 20th century had been the century of physics, the 21st century would be the century of biology. The origin of this thought was that while the process of physics that dominated our 20th-century technology were fascinating and unusual, they were often one-dimensional, linear, monochromatic, involving fairly small numbers of variables. The creation of life, on the other hand, is a highly complex process, involving thousands or millions of variables, working in subtle cooperation. It was felt that, as understanding of biology increased, so our mental world, and our ability to understand and control biological process by subtle means, would increase, so that we would gradually move into a world whose prevailing paradigm was one of complexity, and whose techniques sought the co-adapted harmony of hundreds, or thousands of variables. This would, inevitably, involve new technique, new vision, new models of thought, and new models of action.

    I believe that such a transformation is starting to occur. I also believe the repeated application of the fundamental process to the built world will inevitably have to be part of such a transformative society. In saying this, I must underline my belief that living processes belong to the future, not to the past. Although 20th-century social processes were so different from what I contemplate, and did not yet contain the wherewithal to create living structure (except for the small islands of exception I have cited) – there is now a natural swell in people’s minds, a sea-change, and a change of intention, so that the turn towards generation of living process is, perhaps, one of the signal marks of the turn of the millennium, of people’s changed awareness, or their hope.

    Our future, as we begin to see it now, contains a vision of an entirely new kind of human process: A process, like the process of biology, which is attuned to human nature, makes more sense of human feeling and human common sense. In this process – and it applies to every step that is taken in society, whatever people are doing – you move forward in small, tiny steps. Each step accomplishes something concrete and good – one center at a time. Each step is taken forward, judged, by the impact it has on the whole. We are continuously evaluating the whole for its deep feeling, for its usefulness, for the support it gives to human experience.

    This process, then, is potentially remarkable. As versions of such processes are worked out for different situations in society, they may, ultimately, replace bureaucracy and the machinelike organization of large corporations and government. It is a process in which individuals do what is necessary, and what they can do, moving everything forward one satisfying step at a time.

    You may wish to say that this is dreaming, even impossible. But then, I think, would only be the echo of the dying 20th century that talks, still, in our heads. It is possible. A few examples I have given in this book begin to make that clear. Other more extensive examples in book 3 make it far more clear, and show how this process can, indeed, generate an entire living world.

    Above all, we know that it must be possible on theoretical grounds. We know it because this is the process by which the biological world of plants and animals has already been created. Late 20th-century research on complex systems by Holland, Kaufmann, and others, showed how very complex systems with enormously rich and complex state-space have been built up, repeatedly, throughout biological history, by the process of unfolding, and by small structure-preserving processes, which go step by step, yet reach astounding results in the whole.

    I believe that structure-preserving processes of the general type I have defined will be extended far beyond the bounds of architecture. Other preliminary demonstrations in the sphere of complex systems lead to the same conclusion. What I’m pointing to makes sense as a way forward in the complex world of computer-programming and software development, where the intricacy and internal architecture of systems has been shown to develop best under these kinds of impetus. It works in the world of biology. It works in the work of technology. And it will work in the world of architecture itself.

    A world made this way is truly a new kind of world. I do not know, for sure, that traditional society reached its goals by these means. What I do know, and am certain of, is that the society of the future, the long future of men and women on our planet, will – must – inevitably be carried forward by this kind of process which allows the nourishment of the individual to happen at the same time that vast, and highly technical developments occur.

    The small, step-by-step process is not only the best way to build the architecture of a complex system, from the point of view of adaption. It is also the most satisfying, the most nourishing – because it creates, at each step, something that makes us – the makers – feel more wholesome, something that makes us feel alive while we are doing it. It is nourishing, it is fun, it is productive, it is efficient. And, of course – best of all – a similar healing effect also takes place in the whole. Since it is the whole we are always looking to at each step, the whole which is transformed and made to have a deeper feeling, a lovely feeling consistent with everyday longings – then the whole, the great architecture of the whole, will in the end serve us, give us a kind of world (born of just such a process) which is the world in which we want to live.

    It is the vision of a future living Earth, which draws me on. Inspired by a thoroughly new view of structure, fueled by a view which sees living process as the origin of all life, this allows us to contemplate, for the first time, the idea that one day such living process will cover and completely generate, in biological fashion, the natural and human-made and built environment that we ultimately learn to call our living Earth.”

    The Process of Creating Life, by Christopher Alexander, page 569-570.

    I really don’t want to return to the static world view of the twentieth century! I want our future world to be organic and not static, patterned and not fragmented, morphogenetic and not bureaucratic! I have no nostalgia at all for the twentieth century. Sorry!

  7. “Living process is by nature morphogenetic. That means a living process acts, in every facet, as a whole, and in all its aspects, is aimed at creating POSITIV SPACE, is aimed at making form coherent. A living process is oriented in its entirety, towards the creation of wholes.

    The present-day piecemeal and fragmented processes of our society, are not oriented towards creating wholes. They are highly organized, yes. But they are not oriented, in their substance, towards the creation of living wholes. They are oriented coherently, but towards making money, or creating power – other matters entirely.

    How then can this too-rigidly coherent machine gradually be changed? Is it possible for a merely piecemeal process, grafted into the existing fragmented system, to change it gradually towards a morphogenetic process, much more like the idealized living process I have defined earlier? If that is so, then we may face even more difficult hurdles, before we can succeed.

    Once again, we are led to the realization that a piecemeal modification of society, along with the simple lines envisaged in chapter 18, will not be powerful enough to work. It will not work because the force and integration of present life-destroying process is so massive, and so thoroughly organized. What we became used to in the 20th century as the process of development, prevented people from acting according to their feelings, still to this day prevents people from acting according to their feelings, still to this day prevents people from shaping the environment in a way that is appropriate according to the global nature of the whole and prevents the successful evolution, as unfolding would suggest, of buildings and landscape.

    Thus the 20th-century process interrupts the process of paying attention to wholeness, the unfolding of wholeness, and the process of shaping the surface of the Earth correctly. At the same time it also robs people from the simple joy of acting appropriately, in a way that is fulfilling.

    The connection between the two the rise of developers and the loss of feeling is not accidental. It may seem ridiculous to say that the world will be improved in its organization if people are able to act, at every scale, according to their feeling. But it is the WHOLE that is being damaged by the loss of feeling. By not allowing people to act according to the global feeling of the situation, that means that each of the prevailing processes whether they have to do with development, or land purchase, or transportation planning, or banking, or speculation, or construction-contract administration they all, in their present form, have the capacity to damage feeling and therefore to fly in the face of the interests of the global whole.

    Worst of all, perhaps, is the fact that the process which exist which we now take for granted in many cases virtually outlaw living process, make living process fundamentally and practically impossible, impossible even to imagine, since the ground rules of the processes we know today have driven them out so far.”

    The Process of Creating Life, by Christopher Alexander, page 524-525.

    Libertarianism has certainly failed, but so has modernism too. We have to develop systems that pay attention to the whole. We need a vision for an entirely new kind of world!

    A NEW KIND OF WORLD

    * A world in which we experience, daily, our unity with the universe.

    * A world which is made like nature – and in which we are daily making nature.

    * A world in which the daily process of making, adapting, and deepening is a vital part of our lives.

    * A world in which there is something to believe in – not a religious thing – but a believable vision of God as the unity behind all things which guides us and impels us to act in certain ways. God not conceived of as a construct of any organized religion, but as a fact of nature and its wholeness.

    * A social and political world which contains (and explicitly provides) the freedom for us to act in this way – something we rarely have today.

    * A world in which we feel the cultural trace of human beings before us who made and loved every part.

    * A world in which we value ourselves according to the beauty of the places we have carved out, and modified, and taken care of, and in which we have woven our lives together with that of other people, animals, and plants.

    * A world in which buildings are shaped according to these principles, and laws governing the shaping of buildings in this way, are the laws most precious to us, and those to which we give most weight.

    * A world in which we have an entirely new understanding of what it means for the world to be sustainable: not a technical matter, but a matter in which respect for the whole governs.

    * Above all, there is a world in which meaning exists. The deadly and frightening state in which we do not know why we are here, is replaced by a world in which there is a natural and accurate and truthful picture — an answer to the question ‘why am I here’ – one that is not made up, but that stems from and accords with the true nature of things.

    Christopher Alexander

  8. Libertarianism is the idea that you own your life, have a natural right to it, and others must not deal with you other than by mutual consent. Now that seems to really upset some folks, probably because they are bent on using other people to their heart’s content. I, for one, will spend the rest of my life resisting their villainy!

  9. You can only own your life, if it’s lost. Just like with a building, derived from the whole, and hence invisible. Only when a building is lost into the whole, it’s whole. The same thing with a life, you cannot own your life if it’s not integrated into the whole, to become one with life.

    “This strange conclusion corresponds, also, to the thoughts which have been expressed by mystics throughout history. In another form, this is the teaching of the Tao, which tells us to be like water. It is the teaching of Hua Yen Buddhism, one of the antecedents of Zen, which tells us to that everything is empty. It is the teaching of the Sufis who dance to become one with nothing.”

    -Christopher Alexander

    If you act according to the Way (Tao),
    You become one with the Way.

    If you act according to the Virtue (Te)
    You will become one with Virtue.

    If you lose either the Way or the Virtue,
    You will lose both.

    -Lao Tzu

  10. Yes, suddenly we are getting blatently political debates in the Institutes forum. Time to get back to the better news of no dig gardening using the pages of the daily newspapers.

  11. The rhetoric here is sadly typical: one person’s “dogma” is another’s principled viewpoint. Fact: most folks who advance a defense of their position aren’t presenting a dogma. They could well be wrong but that’s something else. Dogma implies thoughtlessness and charging that is an ad hominem, not a refutation.

  12. Neither ethics nor political economy is the same as geometry, with categories neatly separated. There are always going to be borderline issues, whether we are dealing with libertarianism or democratic socialism (as the author does above). A system of property rights is as good as it gets. If trespass and anti-dumping laws don’t give us Platonically perfect solutions, they are close enough and people can use common sense to navigate the difficulties (which is one reason the common law is invoked). It is clear that leaving matters in the hands of bureaucrats and politicians leads to corruption (public choice theory shows that much). And if all else fails, there is still the criminal law that forbids assault and battery by means of pollution.

  13. Man it is easy to bash something if you define what it is in advance with no intention of actually defining it accurately.

    When someone is opposed to libertarian ideas what they are in favor of is stateism. One one puts faith in the state one will bend any reality to make sure the state is the only solution. Such was what this series (thankfully which ended early) was, bending truth to prove a falsehood.

    Anyone want to tell me who said,

    “Permaculture is anti-political. There is no room for politicians or administrators or priests. And there are no laws either. The only ethics we obey are: care of the earth, care of people, and reinvestment in those ends.”

    The answer is Bill Mollison. That sounds about a libertarian as you can get except that it is actually anarchist.

    Funny that anyone in Permaculture things the state is the solution. All the talk of community in action is more prevalent in anarchist and libertarian groups than in any other IF THOSE THAT WANT CHANGE ACTUALLY ARE DOING THE WORK.

    What do we most need from government in Permaculture? Get out of our way. Is it libertarians that are tearing out front yard gardens? Are libertarians making certain breeds of livestock illegal? Is it libertarians that are trying to institute NAIS in the US? Is it libertarians using legal code to prevent the construction of Earthships and other alternative housing options?

    My god if you look honestly at anything we really are trying to fix in permaculture you will find two problems. The first will be money, you need money to do things. But most people that really want to get something done can and do solve that problem. What will be your next problem, GOVERNMENT.

    It is government preventing the full on resurgence of urban farming, it is government not libertarians who prevent urban dwellers from having a dagon flock of chickens in a back yard!

    Permaculture is more held back by GOVERNMENT then any other force and it isn’t just conservative of liberal government. There are just as many yuppia aholes that complain about untidy yards that vote for people like Obama as for people like Romney.

    Seriously how anyone who is actually DOING things in permaculture can support government as our solution is maddening.

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