A Thanksgiving Lesson in Political Philosophy

Possibly you've read the story of how the Jamestown pilgrims nearly starved their first two years in America, and what saved them. In 1620, half the population of the Plymouth Colony died during its first harsh winter. The second half was close do doing so but...

the fall of 1623 marked the end of Plymouth’s debilitating food shortages.

For the last two planting seasons, the Pilgrims had grown crops communally – the approach first used at Jamestown and other English settlements. But as the disastrous harvest of the previous fall had shown, something drastic needed to be done to increase the annual yield.

In April, [William] Bradford [leader of the Plymouth colony] had decided that each household should be assigned its own plot to cultivate, with the understanding that each family kept whatever it grew. The change in attitude was stunning. Families were now willing to work much harder than they had ever worked before.

In previous years, the men had tended the fields while the women tended the children at home. “The women now went willingly into the field,” Bradford wrote, “and took their little ones with them to set corn.” The Pilgrims had stumbled on the power of capitalism. Although the fortunes of the colony still teetered precariously in the years ahead, the inhabitants never again starved.

It's only one data point, but a characteristic one. The pattern has been repeated countless times in dozens of countries over centuries now. Yet, almost 400 years later, we're still debating Progressives about the practicality of Capitalism vs [Communism/Socialism/Social Democracy/You-name-it-ism].

Clearly, economic facts alone are not going to decide the issue. Progressives are immune. Time to ramp up the moral crusade. Time to declare that even if, contrary to all history, Paul Poorguy winds up much poorer than Peter Privileged, it's still wrong to force Peter to support Paul.

When we start to make progress on that front, I'll be truly thankful.

[Hat tip: Daniel Griswold of Cato for the selection from "Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War by Nathanial Philbrick."]

AIG Executive Shrugs

I've written many times that the majority of business executives are not the sort of person one would invite to dinner, more Taggart than Rearden. So it was with an indescribable pleasure, and much sadness, that I read this resignation letter from Jack Santis of AIG to the CEO, Edward Liddy. He states his reasons eloquently and in detail. He doesn't whine, but neither does he shy from claiming the righteousness of his position. Here is a small portion:

I think your initial decision to honor the contracts was both ethical and financially astute, but it seems to have been politically unwise. It’s now apparent that you either misunderstood the agreements that you had made — tacit or otherwise — with the Federal Reserve, the Treasury, various members of Congress and Attorney General Andrew Cuomo of New York, or were not strong enough to withstand the shifting political winds.

You’ve now asked the current employees of A.I.G.-F.P. to repay these earnings. As you can imagine, there has been a tremendous amount of serious thought and heated discussion about how we should respond to this breach of trust.

As most of us have done nothing wrong, guilt is not a motivation to surrender our earnings. We have worked 12 long months under these contracts and now deserve to be paid as promised. None of us should be cheated of our payments any more than a plumber should be cheated after he has fixed the pipes but a careless electrician causes a fire that burns down the house.

The pleasure came from seeing that rare sight: an executive with a conscience, and a very healthy and proper one at that, full of the pride he has earned. The sadness, of course, comes from his grotesque betrayal -- by his CEO, the Congress, and worst of all, far too great a percentage of the American people.

Jack Santis, you are a true hero. And may the Taggarts of the world burn on Earth for failing to come to your defense when it mattered.

Ayn Rand's Birthday

Late to the party (she was born Feb 2, 1905), but here is one of my favorite quotes from Atlas Shrugged, spoken by Hank Rearden, one of the greatest heroes in literature, defending himself in court:

“I work for nothing but my own profit—which I make by selling a product they need to men who are willing and able to buy it. I do not produce it for their benefit at the expense of mine, and they do not buy it for my benefit at the expense of theirs; I do not sacrifice my interests to them nor do they sacrifice theirs to me; we deal as equals by mutual consent to mutual advantage.”

That one, simple — and unquestionably valid — paragraph, if understood and accepted, would alone wipe out 90% of the evils currently inflicted on us by the Federal and State governments, along with the underlying causes of them: the invalid moral views of most educators and the pundits in the chattering class.

Egalitarianism and The Rich

Larry Summers, Obama's pick for head of the National Economic Council, floated a proposal to tax the top 1% of taxpayers to the tune of $800,000. The money would be used to write a check for 10 grand to each household in the bottom 80%, those making less than $120,000 per annum.

You know what? I don't want the money. Apart from being a crazy idea from a practical perspective (as Dr. Reisman points out, imagine if you made $388,807 and suddenly found yourself over $411,000 in the red), it's grossly immoral even to suggest it.

It's important to remind everyone how immoral it is because when these ideas are criticized only from a practical angle they get tinkered with until they don't sound so crazy anymore. But they remain dead wrong.

The idea is based at bottom on one of the most evil philosophies ever devised: egalitarianism, the view that all people are or should be made equal. One middle-of-the-road version complains about "income inequality."

It sounds attractive to some ears at first blush because they conflate equal rights and equality under the law with equal results, which can only be attempted by government force. But even deeper than the evil of introducing the strong-arm of government into the picture, that idea has a still more scurrilous aspect. It treats superior ability as something to be ashamed of and in need of correction.

I've got news for Larry Summers. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates have no reason to apologize for being smarter than him. Now, from what I hear (through reliable personal acquaintance, not just newspaper reports), those guys are real jerks. I don't care. They earned what they have and they're entitled to keep it, every penny.

I've known a great many well-to-do people in business and almost all of them have been real jerks. Almost without exception, they were appallingly vain and much more interested in increasing their authority than solving business problems creatively. Political correctness runs rampant among that crowd. But you know what? I hope they all get even richer. Much, much richer. Because, jerks or not, their increase in income helps me in numerous ways.

Poor people rarely give others jobs. The higher income of the rich is a major source of the demand for labor, and the higher the demand (other things equal) the higher its price. I'm always happier when my labor costs them more.

Beyond that practical and economically elementary principle, there is the much more important moral one. Provided no one introduces coercion, I'm free to work for them or not and they're free to hire me or not. That freedom is worth more than all the 'social justice' in the world.

Whether or not rich guys deserve all they have, a system of voluntary exchange protected by the rule of law undergirding individual rights is our best chance of material well being. It's also a major contributor to our spiritual well being, in virtue of the freedom it provides and protects. No slave was ever serene. Above all, it's an outgrowth of inalienable rights recognized by the Constitution.

That system is worth defending and should be restored, post haste.

The idea that all injustice is a fit subject for government policy is bad enough. Acting on it necessarily leads to all sorts of increased injustices. But the underlying moral belief that drives it — that no one should have much more than another whether in wealth, responsibility, or even opportunity is vicious.

That last item in particular will raise some eyebrows. It shouldn't. No one starts out with equal opportunity in every respect.

Those raised in more well-to-do families have one type of advantage of opportunity. So be it. Provided their parents didn't defraud anyone, they have a derived right to the advantage. In a free society, it will quickly come to naught in the face of competition from a smart, ambitious kid from the poor side of the tracks. History is replete with examples.

Those who have inherently superior ability have different advantages in opportunity denied to others by nature. So be it. To ask for it to be otherwise is either to engage in fantasy or to dally with dictatorship, both of which are dangerous. Whether blessed with high intelligence, rapid muscle-twitch fibers, or just an extraordinary creativity, no one can justly complain that nature's gifts are not distributed equally.

The only equality we all have a right to require is that provided by freedom, protected by a system ever-vigilant against encroaches upon it. Clearly, that's not what Larry Summers has in mind.

Why Bailouts Are Immoral

The Big Three American automakers have their hands out. Way out. $25 billion plus. Several commentators have already pointed out the total impracticality of giving them another dime, much less many billions.

Not least of their points are such facts as that Ford alone is $160 billion in debt. If that much private credit couldn't help them reverse their fortunes, another few billion from taxpayers isn't going to magically fix their underlying problems.

Having the Feds attach strings to the money, such as limiting CEO pay or arm-twisting executives to change their corporate decisions, is a laughable idea. If Barney Frank could run a business he wouldn't be in Congress. He'd be in business getting paid much more to create havoc and do nothing useful.

But among all the the excellent reasons not to give those lining up a single taxpayer penny one stands out: the money Congress is proposing is more than enough to buy all three companies outright at their current market capitalizations. If politicians had the courage of their convictions, let them nationalize the damn companies outright and simply bark orders at their newly enslaved underlings. In other words, let them not be cowardly Fascists but openly honest Marxists.

But there's no need to look at the practical pros and cons of each bailout proposal separately. One need only establish the moral principle that all government bailouts are immoral and it will become clear that it's something that shouldn't be done at all. Shouldn't, that is, if one believes one should not do something immoral. Given that we're talking about Congress here, that can't be assumed. But let's limit the discussion to decent, rational people for now.

As it happens, proving that assertion about bailouts isn't hard and nothing I say on the subject is going to be original. Then, as Constitutional scholar Randy Barnett said (paraphrasing Chesterton, I think), sometimes it's less important to be original than to remind people of what's true that they already know.


A government bailout always requires the money to come from somewhere. That somewhere, ultimately, is a group other than the firm being bailed out: the taxpayers. As private individuals, they chose not to buy that firm's product or service at the price it was offered in sufficient quantity to keep the company profitable.

No one (yet) would argue that company executives going to their customers' doors with guns and grabbing a wad of cash out of their wallets would be ethical. Filtering it through the government's hands changes nothing, morally speaking. Those same individuals, now in their role as taxpayers, don't become any less a victim just because the actions are done under the aegis of law by guys wearing cheaper suits. It just cheapens the law.

Another obvious ethical problem with giving failing firms more money is that it deflects the consequences of their failure.

Most business failures are a combination of bad luck, bad government policy, and — last, but far from least — bad judgment. There's nothing anyone can do about bad luck (except work to overcome its effects). Bad government policies punish everyone (though not always equally). Still, throwing more government money at firms only deflects the failure of those policies, so it falls under the same principle. Bad judgment is incurable, at least by anyone but those who display it and then rarely.

A bailout only lessens the logical results of those bad judgments. If there were any better way to corrupt an executive's thinking processes — his attention (or lack thereof) to market conditions and the whole way he goes about making decisions — than by removing market signals by a bailout, it's hard to think what it might be. That corrupting process does no one any favors, least of all the business executive.

That deflection of consequences can't help but encourage irresponsibility. Even if the business failure occurred through no fault of anyone in charge — a rare circumstance, since inventing the light bulb only puts (some) candlemakers out of business once a century and then slowly — shoring up a failing business doesn't encourage anyone to change their behavior.

Rather, it entrenches the status quo. Morally, that's unhealthy. Human flourishing requires a constant struggle to create the new in order to achieve the values that increase it. The status quo is only fit for animals who live in a neverending repetitious cycle, not an upwardly moving line as do healthy humans.

Worst of all, it's simply a deflection of justice. You fail, you fail. That result is morally more valuable to all concerned than any billions used to keep producing unwanted cars or insurance products, or artificially propping up high home prices. The reason is simple. Any deflection of justice away from one man always shifts it to another who had no part in the affair.

Creating situations of this sort is known in some economic circles as "moral hazard," a silly term, though a sound idea. Responsible parents help their children see early on that shielding them from the consequences of their choices only encourages irrationally risky behavior. The value of that policy doesn't vanish when people mature.

Time for the beggars to grow up.

The Two Candidates, From a Moral Perspective: John McCain

I'm convinced that John McCain loves America. Apart from his having said so every week for a year on the campaign trail, he fought hard to push the surge in Iraq, which saved us untold grief. Unfortunately, he loves America like a man loves his invalid wife. He would do anything to cure her illness, while having no clue how to do so.

Maybe he's getting a lot of mixed advice, and doesn't know which doctor to believe. Maybe his physicians studied at European universities during the Middle Ages and all they know is more leeches and blood letting. It's hard to tell because his prescriptions have been all over the map.

Mostly, it consists of railing against the "greed on Wall Street" with the occasional recognition that somehow our economic woes had something to do with Fannie and Freddie running amok. Here and there he sometimes still talks about Afghanistan and the need to fight the jihadis. Not a word about Iran for months. Once in a while, he throws in some scary jabber about the need to "deal with climate change."

Underlying all this is... nothing. No stable plan, no basic principles, no understanding of how this connects to that. And that is the essential problem with John McCain, from a moral perspective. He certainly does cling to a certain view of life. Everyone has one. But as for intellectual self-guidance, and therefore any consistent recommendations for guiding the country, nada.

Still, defying all expectations, a ray of sunshine sometimes peeks out through his fog. Recognizing, however vaguely, that "spreading the wealth" is no way to make anyone wealthy is a good thing. Having the perspicacity to look into the eyes of Vlad the Impaler Putin and seeing "K-G-B" is also good. Displaying the courage to sing "Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran," is outstanding... if only he had the courage and perspicacity to be singing it now when we really need it.

But Obama is right about one thing (and only one thing, so far as I've ever heard), McCain is erratic. Yet even on that one thing Obama isn't right in the way he thinks he is. For, he was referring to McCain's policies and the Republican's main randomness lies deeper down. He's ethically erratic.

Sometimes he recognizes (though he can't formulate it this way) that, indeed, greed is good. When a man wants to invest to achieve a better material standard of living, he is driven by greed, and thank god for that. Without greed, life would be stagnant.

Sadly, McCain can't distinguish between that type of greed and the sort that makes a man willing to put his wife into a wheelchair, in order to impress himself in the boardroom. I have known many such men personally and McCain is right, they are revolting because they lack any sense of honor.

Once in a rare while, he rises to the level displayed at the third Presidential debate. On that occasion he came very close to declaring that freedom is moral. He argued for school vouchers, a weak but good step in the direction of obsoleting the public school system, not just to improve education but because choice is good. He advocated lowering taxes, not merely as a practical fix for the current economic mess, but because people have a right to their income. He said the country needs less government, not more, because people should be free.

Tragically, he didn't say any of this as clearly as I just have. But, even so, his basic theme was clear, however sporadically. For once. If he did, consistently, he would be 10 points ahead. But then, inconsistency — the hallmark of the pragmatist — is the root problem in McCain's case.

If in the coming days leading up to the election he can continue to hammer that theme, he might just have a chance to win. The odds are still about 50-50 in all the key states and I remain convinced that most voters in Colorado, Ohio, etc. currently embracing socialism are doing so without understanding what they will really get. If they did, Obama wouldn't merely lose, he'd be run out of the country.

Whether the Senator from Arizona can attain, even for two weeks, the moral clarity to do so remains to be seen. Which is pretty much what one always is forced to say about John McCain.

The Two Candidates, From a Moral Perspective: Barack Obama

One of the most telling aspects of Barack Obama hasn't yet been mentioned: his moral authoritarianism.

If anyone had any doubts that he is as 'liberal' as he pretends not to be, consider his moral view of other people. Like all of his kind, (since this is one good way to actually distinguish them), he is convinced that he (a) unerringly knows better than individuals themselves what is good for them and "society as a whole", (b) is perfectly willing to initiate force to achieve the ends he prescribes.

This was brought out clearly in his now-famous conversation with Joe the Plumber and the discussion about it that followed at the Presidential debate. He blithely offered that Joe's money actually belonged, though he didn't say it this way, to 'society', free for Barack Obama as future Emperor of the Federal Government to spread as he thought best, Joe's wishes aside. This is how a moral authoritarian acts.

There are people on all points of the political compass. But far from some of the common criteria for delineating "the Left" from "the Right" — such as being pro-choice or anti-abortion, embracing religion or inclining to atheism, or preferring a latte to a Budweiser — the two points listed above are enough to capture the essence of the moral authoritarian, at least as it concerns his view of the proper role of government.

There are, after all, plenty of genuine liberals who believe in judging a person by his individual values and actions, rather than his inclusion in a certain group. There are sincere conservatives who support the public school system. There are religious Democrats and secular Republicans. There are conservatives who believe in government-sponsored charity and so-called liberals who support U.S. war efforts in the Middle East. None of these positions is definitive.

In some cases, these apparent paradoxes result from lack of consistency. But, in the main, a person's fundamental philosophy drives them to adopt a whole range of views that cluster together. It's no accident that faux liberals who support social welfare programs are also strong believers in environmentalism, though the two subjects would seem to have little in common. It's not a coincidence that pro-war conservatives are anti-'make it up as you go along to accord with your moral outlook, the Constitution be damned'- judges.

These two (moral dogmatism and, hence, government intrusion) are some of the fundamental criteria for deciding what constitutes a person's 'political essence'. It is an outgrowth of his overall view of the proper relationship of individuals in society, and therefore what is the proper purpose of governments, what actions it ought or ought not to take.

By these criteria it's easy to see how some 'conservatives' opposed to genetics research are essentially similar to rabid environmentalists, however much they may differ on some issues. Both are happy to initiate force to get others to comply with their ethical choices, even in the absence of violations of anyone's rights, simply because their dogmatic moral outlook demands it.

From this perspective, it's easy to identify and classify Barack Obama, no matter how many mirrors he holds up against the sun to blind those observing him. Quite simply, he believes a socialist government should control personal decisions because he sincerely believes, as sincerely as he can hold any belief, that it knows best and is justified in using political power to achieve those ends because it has that knowledge.

But, since government in the real world is not a disembodied entity, this necessarily evolves at once to King Obama and his parliament deciding for everyone else, or so he hopes. Scratch a moral authoritarian's thin skin and you will at once draw the diseased blood of a totalitarian.

It is no surprise, then, that he can with all sincerity and no sense of shame whatever tell a plumber from Ohio that "things work best when the wealth is spread around."

Never mind that wealth is not a collective object, owned by society as a whole, but the property of some individual. Never mind, therefore, that it is inappropriate for Federal representatives to confiscate it and decide how it will be dispensed. Never mind that the only way for that all-knowing body to carry out its decisions, though it is willing to compromise (for a while) and submit to democratic elections, is by initiating force against innocent victims. Never mind the irrevocable laws of economics that teach us that removing wealth from the wealthy will necessarily soon impoverish everyone.

If money has to be taken from some and given to others by the government acting as intermediary, that's alright — because (in Obama's view) this is what justice demands. More, he knows this beyond a doubt and is fine using the government's power to effect the ends he sees as just.

It's this all-fired certainty without any basis in fact, indeed contrary to it, this smugness in their infallible moral powers that conservatives are groping to identify when they call such people elitist. But there is nothing elite about wanting to dictate the choices of other people. It is, rather, the lowest form of being.

That describes to a T the 2008 Democratic candidate for President, the moral authoritarian, Barack Obama.

[Next time: John McCain.]