We live today in a culture that holds a high regard for people and institutions that claim that they have little or no self-interest, for people and institutions who claim to place the value of the interests of others ahead of their own. The leading institution vying for this supposed exalted position is government, which is believed to be inherently and intrinsically virtuous. A considerable portion of the population holds that for the most part government is a positive force in the lives of individuals and is a helpful and benevolent force in society. Every politician campaigns on promises of how they will spend billions of dollars doing good deeds, deeds that are deemed to be either more virtuous or will produce better results than otherwise would exist.
Citizens may disagree about the nuances of how these billions or trillions of dollars are spent, but very few disagree that government taxation and spending of this money is ethically virtuous because it creates greater good for greater numbers than would otherwise be the case if individuals were left free to function in the peaceful pursuit of their own self-interested ends. The response of voters, as indicated by their insatiable demands for ever more government spending and intervention in economic affairs, seems to support the inference that there is a strong positive correlation between government spending and government virtue. It is not surprising, then, that many people with a desire to focus their work in the pursuit of virtuous ends see virtue in pursuing careers in government and related social institutions that receive government funds.
By implication, many such people value government work above profit-oriented private sector work because they perceive such "social" work as morally superior. Not all government and social sector workers hold this viewpoint. A vast majority of these workers are likely looking to use their skills in well-paying jobs with good benefits, whether they be in the private or public sector.
Still, there is a large segment of the population that has an ideological preference for government work; who value being on a government payroll above other private sector employment alternatives; who sincerely believe that government work is noble, patriotic, self-fulfilling, giving. Many believe that government work, by definition, is not tainted with the unsavory scent of pursuit of profit and thus not exploitative and self-serving; that government serves a higher cause than does business. It is common these days to run across experienced executives that retire or lose their private sector jobs and then seek senior government roles as a way to 'give back' to society. The language they use is interesting because 'giving back' implies that they have taken something or have benefitted in some way that entailed the commitment of unjust acts; that penance is being paid for years spent pursuing profits through productive wealth creation in the service of consumers; that government employment is 'good' work and can cleanse the guilt of years spent doing 'bad' work; that government work to serve citizens is morally superior to private sector productive work that serves the well-being of those same citizens.
There are fundamental differences between private sector 'for-profit' and government 'for-loss' activities.
Private sector exchange is necessarily voluntary, and in voluntary exchange, both parties to the trade perceive net benefits from the exchange. Private sector production requires the creation of wealth in that goods or services are created from economic inputs, exchanged, and the proceeds are reinvested in further productivity. This cycle of production and exchange is the process of wealth creation, from which all members of society benefit.
Government, on the other hand, doesn't create wealth. In a free-market society, the government is not in the business of economic production. In fact, the existence of government is parasitical on the wealth created in the private sector. Where the private sector engages in the production of wealth, government engages in the consumption of wealth. Governments have two ways to obtain the wealth it needs to operate. It can convince citizens that they should voluntarily provide support to government in exchange for those services that it is proper for governments to provide, such as the protection of individual rights and property rights through the provision of police, courts and armies. Alternatively, those individuals who are elected and work as representatives of the elected can actively repudiate the moral requirement for upholding individual rights by initiating the use of force to confiscate the wealth of others in the form of taxes or duties in support of those activities they believe they have the moral authority to carry out. Such individuals in government (or the institution of government itself) assert legal authority as an extension of their purported moral authority.
Those in favour of government's initiation of force hold as a premise that it is ethical in principle to initiate the use of force as a means to confiscate the wealth of others to serve ends to which those who are forced to pay for them have not granted their voluntary consent. They are opposed as a matter of principle to the idea that voluntary exchange between consenting individuals is a fundamental requirement of civilized society. They hold that civilization requires human sacrifice, set out to define who and how much gets sacrificed by some to benefit others, and then set out to enforce the command mechanisms they put in place.
Most people don't think about the differences between the private sector and the government in these terms because they divorce ethics from politics. There are many people who truly want to do good for others and believe that they are doing so when they enter into government work. They see government as a multiplication mechanism for their good deeds by forcing people to contribute en mass and on a grand scale, that is, by making the "unenlightened" multitudes do good against their will "for their own good and the good of others." Because the government is the only institution with the legal right to initiate the use of force, government becomes a magnet for those who believe that the initiation of force is a virtue. In ethics, such people are known as altruists, and proclaim that virtue consists in doing good for others through personal sacrifice.
Philosopher Immanuel Kant, for example, in defending the ethics of Christianity, argued that only actions undertaken as a pure duty to a higher cause than man, in which the actor was precluded from any psychological or materialistic benefit whatsoever, could count as being moral. From this comes the widely accepted modern ideal that ethical action precludes any personal gain, or self-interest, or pursuit of valued or desired ends or results, and therefore requires personal sacrifice. As demonstrated by Ayn Rand in her essay "Causality Versus Duty" in Philosophy: Who Needs It, this altruistic concept of ethics is at root anti-man and anti-life. To survive and prosper, individuals must identify and pursue values that promote the pursuit of the values that life requires of man qua man, not identify those value and then require that ethics demands their sacrifice. Such a sacrifice of life-promoting values is demonstrably irrational and life-destroying. Altruism sets man against himself by requiring the destruction of the very values that life requires in the name of being moral. Ethical altruism is, in fact, an inversion of morality.
Tara Smith, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas, summarizes the concept of altruism amongst today's contemporary philosophers in her recent book Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist. She writes:
Altruism calls for the sacrifice to others. This has been the standard conception since [Auguste] Compte coined the term – which literally means "other-ism" – in the mid-nineteenth century. E.J. Bond characterizes altruism as the policy of "always denying oneself for the sake of others." Burton Porter presents altruism as "the position that one should always act for the welfare of others. While recognizing that the term can be used more and less strictly, Lawrence Blum observes that in its most prevalent usage, altruism refers to placing the interests of others ahead of one's own. This is clearly how Rand understood altruism. She describes it as the thesis that self-sacrifice is a person's highest moral duty. [Leonard] Peikoff stresses that altruism is not a synonym for kindness, generosity, or good will, but the "doctrine that man should place others above self as the fundamental rule of life." A sacrifice must not be confused with an investment, in which a person forgoes a nearer reward in expectation of a greater one later. A sacrifice is the surrender of a greater value for a lesser one or for something that one does not want at all. (P.p. 38-39).
When extended into the realm of politics, altruism moves beyond an edict of the virtue of self-sacrifice to proclaim the virtue of the sacrifice of others! Most Westerners understand at least somewhat the logic of reciprocity of the enlightened concept of individual rights, upon which modern Western civilization was founded and upon which the United States was created. Reciprocity requires that we leave other persons free from the initiation of force and fraud to pursue their own ends in return for the reciprocal right. Rights are a mechanism to prevent the injustice of allowing some persons to go around taking things that don't belong to them away from others, things that they have no moral entitlement (right) to.
When it comes to the government, its primary purpose is to use force in defense of individual rights by ensuring that the rights of its citizens are protected. What differentiates government in kind from non-government institutions is that it maintains a legal monopoly through the police and army to use force. Ethical principles are principles derived from reality and are applicable to all people. There isn't one set of ethical principles for people who earn their living in the private sector and one for those who earn their living working for government. It is equally unethical for all people to initiate the use of force against others, whether they are employed in the private sector and paid by the owners of the means of production, or whether they are employed by governments and paid by taxes taken from the governed. Proper laws founded on moral principles and consistent with the virtue of justice would require governments and their representatives to operate in ways that take individual rights seriously by ensuring that they do not engage in actions that require, condone, or encourage the initiation of the use of force.
When armed with the ethics of altruism (where duty and sacrifice form the foundations for virtue), men and women that pursue and assume the role of governing (be they elected politicians or government employees), too often relish the fact that because they are now part of the governing clique, they are anointed with the moral authority to initiate the use of force against others. If they ascribe in any way to the altruist code of ethics they will self-righteously insist that they have an ethical duty to enforce the sacrifice of others to create virtue. In this way, modern government does not perceive its proper role as it should be, namely as a protector of individual rights and freedoms. Rather, it sees itself as, and therefore becomes, an altruistic force for "virtue" by requiring the sacrifice of the values of its citizens in order to create a so-called greater moral good. When the pursuit of self-interest is deemed to be intrinsically unethical or evil, then the suppression or punishment of self-interest – the imposition of duty – is deemed to be intrinsically virtuous and good.
From the altruist's twisted view of morality, what could be more important work than ensuring that individuals behave in ways that best serve "society." Therefore, what we see all around us, including by the elected representatives of the U.S. Congress and Senate, who are expressly prohibited by the Constitution from depriving any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law, is the rush to impose the force of government to demonize and destroy the last fading remnants of a marketplace free of government controls. From an ethical perspective, what we are witnessing today is a full and willful frontal assault against individuals who try to act on the basis of the conclusions reached by their own minds in pursuit of the values they have determined their life and happiness requires. This plays out politically in the government's increasingly explicit political rejection of individual rights and freedom, the very things that governments have a moral obligation to protect and that defines their moral purpose.
What we are witnessing playing out today is an altruistic crusade in favour of "sacrificial duty" led by the President of the United States, while throngs of the altruist-educated masses are cheering him on and unwittingly clearing the road toward civilization's destruction. The President believes that he possesses the cognitive intelligence to lead the United States and world to prosperity; that he and those who work for him in government know what's best for each of us and will therefore assume control of finance and industry, or land, labour and capital.
In his first 100 days, the President has assumed control of a vast proportion of private property via its takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. He has initiated government control of a vast proportion of the banking sector. He has wrested away private control of most of the U.S. auto sector in order to give it to others. He has overstepped the bounds of moral and legal propriety to force his will upon leaders of business and industry, while leaving the whims of fellow politicians and bureaucrats largely unchallenged and unrestrained. Through unprecedented spending, he leads the borrowing and consumption of the wealth of future generations of Americans. F.A. Hayek, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1974, called such thinking a "fatal conceit" and warned that the pursuit of such a centrally controlled society would inevitably lead us along the "road to serfdom."
While all of this is a question of politics, it is more fundamentally a question of ethics and philosophy. Those who still believe in the validity of ethical relativism and that economics is value-free, and therefore anything goes, should be checking their premises. All the while smiling, I fear that the President of the United States is leading the civilized world rapidly towards the eve of destruction as he adopts fascist tactics to achieve his fanciful whims. There is a clear and frightful trend of governmental delusion and psychosis afoot.
Consider just these two recent stories as representative of many more in recent weeks that indicate a complete disregard by politicians and government employees for both the rights of individuals and for the law.
From The Wall Street Journal, May 7, 2009: "U.S. to Condemn Land for Flight 93 Memorial." The National Park Service has announced that it will "begin taking land" from seven property owners so that a 2,200 acre park can be build as a memorial to the victims of Flight 93 in time for the 10th anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks. To obtain the land, the government will declare it condemned, thereby setting the stage for its confiscation against the will of the current owners.
From the Washington Post, April 30, "Obama Blames Lenders for Pushing Chrysler Into Bankruptcy." Apparently, the Obama administration tried to muscle secured lenders from enacting their legal rights under the law. As a result of secured lenders trying to abide by the rule of law rather than give in to government coercion to forgo their legal rights, the administration indicated their disapproval and disappointment, expressing that the secured creditors had failed to do the right thing by failing to act "in the national interest." President Obama stated, "I don't stand with those who held out while others made sacrifices." It is clear from the structuring of the bankruptcy that the government will maintain control over the board of the new Chrysler along with the UAW. "Upon successful completion of the alliance, a board of directors for Chrysler will be appointed by the U.S. government and Fiat," Chrysler CEO Robert Nardelli wrote to his employees. "The majority of the directors will be independent (not employees of Chrysler or Fiat)."
If you are worried about the current state of the world and perceive the impending decline of Western civilization in current social trends (including this one), the best source for understanding from a philosophic perspective is Ayn Rand's monumental 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged. Read it, discuss it, learn from it. Even her detractors are now calling her work prophetic, and are unable to provide a valid counter-argument. For an excellent synopsis of Atlas Shrugged and Rand's argument for the virtue of ethical egoism and the vice of ethical altruism, see Craig Biddle's essay "Atlas Shrugged and Ayn Rand's Morality of Egoism" in The Objective Standard.
Economist extraordinaire George Reisman has written an excellent article in two parts that he published on his blog explaining the current causes of and solutions to the economic crisis: "Economic Recovery Requires Capital Accumulation Not Government 'Stimulus Packages'".While the root of our current crisis is philosophical and ethical, a basic understanding of economic principles is crucial to understanding why the government's response is irrational and only making matters worse. You owe it to yourself to take the time to carefully read this article, and all of his writings.
A recent article by Peter Foster in Canada's The Financial Post, "Trading Honesty for 'social responsibility'" touches on the connection between ethics, economics and politics.
If you want to read an excellent book that explains the economic and political factors driving the current economic crises, Thomas E. Woods Jr.'s New York Times Bestselling book "Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse" is easy and important reading.
Also, download the lecture "Why Was Anyone Surprise by the Crash?" by investor and authorPeter Schiff and laugh until you cry at how America's politicians are willfully and self-righteously pursuing their altruistic premises and thereby destroying the lives of hundreds of millions of people, and lying to themselves and everyone else about who's at fault. Schiff speaks about the current economic situation in economic terms, not moral terms. The key virtue of Schiff is his ability to present the key economic concepts discussed by each of the authors above in an easy-to-understand and entertaining manner. He ought to be a little more outraged at the blatant injustice being perpetrated on innocent victims by our Lords of Looting and Kings of (Wealth) Consumption, i.e., our politicians and their bureaucratic cronies, in my opinion.
Finally, the economic arguments that Schiff brings to the independent inquiring mind on TV and his webcasts are not new. If you want to go to the source, discover and read the works of the 20th Century's greatest economist, Ludwig von Mises. For a concise summary of his explanation of the 1930's crisis, written in 1931 but still valid for today, read his essay "The Causes of the Economic Crisis" available from the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama.
It is important to make the time to hear and heed the analysis of the above authors and to prepare yourself for the coming consequences. Ideas have consequences and mistaken ideas, or worse, evil ideas, are assured to produce value-destroying consequences. These value-destroying consequences are being unleashed on us in cascading waves day-after-day, and we will continue to suffer the assault, whether we like it or not, whether we approve of it or not. It will continue until the conceited altruists relinquish the notion that values can be gained through force, and forgo the absurd idea that there is intrinsic virtue in the unleashing of government sanctioned coercion in a moral crusade to clip the wings of freedom and overthrow the self-interest of individuals and inalienable individual rights.
The ultimate answer is not a better understanding of economics, although this is desperately needed today. It is more fundamental: a better understanding of proper philosophy.
