Freedom

None love freedom heartily, but good men; others love not freedom, but license.
- John Milton

I am certain that nothing has done so much to destroy the judicial safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after his mirage of social justice.
- Frederich Hayek

I'm a big believer in Freedom.  What is freedom?  Many things, but first, it must be the absence of oppression.  I was brought up with democratic values, and learned to assume that democracy was neccessary for freedom.  It has taken a lot of reading and thinking to unlearn that.  Totalitarianism may be a way of oppressing everyone, but democracy is a way of oppressing the minority.  By that token, it's a definite lesser of those two evils, but an evil nonetheless.  Politically, I'm a liberal in the European sense.  By the LP's Quick Quiz I'm a libertarian leaning towards left liberalism, but I do not meet Nolan's 5-points criteria for being libertarian, and I am certainly not an objectivist.  For those reasons, I do not call myself libertarian.  However, if I were to engage myself politically in the USA, I would support the libertarian party, since it is closer to my political views by far than any of the other established parties. 

Democracy might not be so bad if it wasn't for the inadequacies of government.  Governments today have an uncanny ability to foul up everything.  Whenever I interact with government employees, it's consistently a negative experience.  They seem to push you around as much as they can:  "Move your car", "stop your car", "we need a copy of this", "we need to see that", "your letter was late", "send it again", "come down to the office", "take a seat and wait".  I can't remember ever having seen a government employee smiling while speaking with me.  All these unpleasant little experiences have built up to a healthy resentment over the years.  In fact, after my last visit to the county office, I thought to myself:  "Who could possibly want there to be any more of these dweebs?"

The ailments that governments impose on society are numerous and well documented.  In the 20th century alone, governments have been responsible for the deaths of almost 200 million people - over 100 million even if you don't count wars.  Add to this millions of people that have been tortured, imprisoned, forcefully relocated, or oppressed in various other ways.  Furthermore, whenever governments implement sanctions on the economy of one kind or another, be it through tariffs, taxes, regulations, or any restrictions on capital, labor, or goods, whenever governments do these things it hurts the economy of the vicitim country.  It isn't difficult to reach the conclusion that "the government governs best that governs least".

All this is compounded by the fact that governments have a strong tendency --  I would call it a compulsion --  to grow and become bloated.  This may seem like a ludicrous claim, but consider this.  Imagine a county official who is responsible for protecting the streams and creeks of the county.  People have a natural tendency to want to do as good a job as they can, even in government.  This means that this official will not only use all resources to his disposal, but also work to increase those resources at any opportunity.  If he can grow his budget from $200k to $250k, he will do so.  If he can get another staff member, he will do so.  If there is a proposal for a regulation passed that will help him control potential polluters, he will support it.  That may not seem so bad, until you consider hundreds of thousands, in the case of USA millions of these people, all working to increase the scope of their control just a little bit here, a notch there.  Not to mention the politicians with campaign promises to fulfill and donors to appease.  If you then also consider that historically, except for after revolutions, governments never decrease in size, the picture should be clear.  Taxes always go up, never down; the number of public employees always grow, never shrink; and the fraction of the economy that is controlled by the government only expands -- in the USA, from less than 10% at the beginning of the century to about 35% in 1998.

Inscription: "Proclaim Liberty throughout the Land unto all the inhabitants thereof" (Leviticus 25:10)

Why don't responsible politicians recognize and work to contain this unfortunate trend?  Some would say that "responsible politician" is an oxymoron, but there is another, deeper explanation.  The problem is that politicians are swayed by special interests, who donate to their election campaigns and lobby in the halls of congress.  The various lobbying organizations do not offset each other, on the contrary, they compound the damage they do to the economy.  Neither are politicians impervious to their influences.  Don't get me wrong:  I'm not arguing against the lobbying activity itself, since limiting lobbyists would in a sense be a limit on the freedom of speech.  Also, there is nothing inherently wrong about a group of people to pool their resources in order to get as far as a congressman's ear - something that is extremely difficult for individuals.  The problem with special interests is that far too often, they gather enough influence to get their way in the forming of public policy in ways that are harmful to the overall economy, even though it may benefit a certain group.  When farmers lobby for subsidies, they have a very strong incentive to work actively for their case, whereas the rest of the country have only a minor, hardly measurable stake in the outcome.  The politician(s) can gain a lot of credit with one group without unduly upsetting others.  When the next group asks for subsidies or special regulation, the trick is repeated.  After enough iterations, the whole country is swamped with taxes and regulations to protect various groups, but it all bogs down the market.  It seems that some policies help people for practically no cost, but whenever a tax is levied or a regulation passed, it hurts the economy, jobs are lost and businesses are hampered.  Nothing comes for free, and all this does is transferring money or jobs from one area of the economy to another, with a resulting loss in effeciency due to overhead and the prevention of natural market forces.  After enough time passes by, the ballast grows from being a nuisance to becoming a severe impediment.

Political Definitions: Liberal: A person that wants to make his or her issue everybody else's problem Conservative: A liberal that don't want to pay taxes

So what to do?  I would like to make these modest suggestions, which may not be that original, but which I wish would be debated more, along with the above mentioned issues. 

1: The constitution must be followed.  This may seem like a no-brainer, but during the last few decades, the USA at least has seen an erosion of the rights as provided in the BoR.  Perhaps it all started with FDR's "new deal", perhaps even earlier when they amended the constitution to allow for income taxes.  Nowadays, the biggest enemy to our rights is the war on drugs and environmental regulations, which have caused an escalation in the confiscation of property and general violations of the 5th amendment so as to be scary.  Whatever happened to "due process of law" and "just compensation"?  The constitution doesn't mention environmental concerns or drug law enforcement, but when it comes to these areas, at least, the 5th amendment appear suspended.

2: The government should be required to balance its budget.  This endless borrowing and issuing bonds to pass spending on to the next generation must be stopped.  It's simply a way for politicians to spend more money than what is politically acceptable.  I suppose various more sophisticated safeguards could be put in place, but the safest way to protect future taxpayers is to just say no. 

3: A supramajority should be required to pass any new expenditure and regulations.  The supra majority may be 2/3 or 3/4, could depend on the level of goverment (the higher up and thus more removed from citizens a government is, the higher a fraction should be required) and the kind of legislation.  Requiring even just 2/3 majority would make it a lot harder for special interest groups to milk the economy through politicians so-called 'good will'.

4: More decentralization of power.  Executive and legislative power should be transferred from the President to congress, from congress to state legislatures, from states to counties and even cities.  This way, people will be closer to the taxes they pay, and also, there will be more options for people in terms of choosing a policy under which to live.  It seems prudent to excercise the demonstrated powers of the free market on the politicians and legislatures by having them compete against each other, and decentralizing powers is one way to do that.

Your one-stop link to freemarket resources on the net is Free-Market.net.  Other interesting sites are Cato, The Fraser Institute and the Ludwig von Mises institute. Some good online magazines include Worldnet Daily and Reason magazine.