It's Not Fair!

Equality of Outcomes is Un-American.  It would require enforced unfairness and a violation of our personal liberties...

Equality before the law and material equality are therefore not only different, but are in conflict with one another; and we can achieve one or the other, but not both at the same time. (F.A Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty, pg 150)

We are all different people, with different goals and behaviors.  Enforcing an equality of outcomes would require a tyrannical government imposing its vision on us all and treating each of us very unequally under the law.

Thomas Sowell echoes Friedrich Hayek as he punctures the chimerical argument of forced equality:

The latest example of this hoax is the joint crusade of the Department of Education and the Department of Justice against schools that discipline black males more often than other students. According to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, this disparity in punishment violates the "promise" of "equity."

Just who made this promise remains unclear, and why equity should mean equal outcomes despite differences in behavior is even more unclear. (Sowell – The Big Hoax)

Sowell goes on to explain that it would be wrong to unfairly single out a particular group, but there is no evidence of that in the case of school punishment.  But why let facts get in the way of a feel good crusade?

Inequality really bugs some people:

It is not fair that LeBron James has a 40-inch vertical leap, and we have a 4-inch vertical leap (combined). It is not fair that some have high IQs, and others are below average. It is not fair that Christie Brinkley is beautiful, that some people are born with photographic memories, that one person gets cancer and the next one doesn't.

We Americans were born in a land of opportunity and wealth, while billions around the world are born into poverty and squalor. We won the ultimate lottery of life just by being born in this great and rich country. Where is the justice in that? (The Poverty of Equality)

What is the definition of "Fair Share?"

As for fairness, the wealthy already pay more than a fair share (the top 1 percent of income earners make 16 percent of income but pay nearly 40 percent of federal income taxes) ... (Let's hope that Obama doesn't start getting technical about "fairness," because the plutocrats would be in for a huge tax break.) (Harsanyi - Obama's "Fairness" Fiction)

Misguided do-gooders among us claim that if we could just make the "haves" of this world pay their "fair share," we could achieve "social justice." The OWS agitators claim that everyone should receive a wage regardless of whether they work or not, and it would presumably be funded by doubling the tax on "the rich."

 They talk of "equitably distributing the wealth," as if it were in a big community pot that belonged to all of us, or the government, depending on the propaganda narrative.

"THIS IS WHY it is wrong to even speak of the "distribution" of income and wealth. Income and wealth are not distributed. Income and wealth are created, and in a fair society they come into the world attached to the rightful owner that produced them." (The Poverty of Equality)

A quick lesson from the real world:

During the era of communism in the 1940s, '50s, and '60s, when all land was cultivated for the "common good" and food was evenly distributed to all, regardless of how much one worked, China produced way too little food, and many millions of people, including children, starved to death.

But then, starting in the 1980s, agricultural reforms began to emerge that allowed farmers to take a small plot of land and keep the food they grew. An amazing thing happened. Production of food on these very small tracts surged multiples higher than the output on the communal lands. The Chinese farmers saw output double and even triple from the previous arrangement where all food was put in a communal pot. Private ownership of the farms led to a green revolution, and China quickly became a food exporter. (The Poverty of Equality)

It's axiomatic. Free-market meritocracies work; spread-the-wealth autocracies do not. Capitalism has lifted over a half-billion Chinese out of poverty since 1981. But like water and electricity, human beings will take the path of least resistance. Envy, "that most anti-social and odious of all passions," is now easier to traffic in here in America than legitimate economic free-enterprise that has proven time and again to elevate one's station and to enrich societies.

What we're wanting in America is not some nebulous "fairness," "fair shares," "social justice," or, heaven forbid, equality of outcomes.  We are wanting economic liberty, equality before the law, and a permanent wall of separation between government and the rent-seekers of all stripes, corporate or otherwise.  Given a level playing field, mom and pop could compete with Walmart.

For a short and surprisingly snarky take on economic equality in America, read former FDIC chairman Shiela Bair's modest proposal to fix income inequality.

See also Winning the Fight on Fairness

Hayek’s Revenge

The European ruling elites are struggling to hold the whole project together...

But the real problems emerge from the technocratic mind-set, from the arrogant gray men who believe they can engineer society, oblivious to history, language, culture, values and place. (NY Times - Brooks)

Nobody has all the answers. And no single person or body needs all the answers. That’s the fallacy: That government must be omnipotent and omniscient. It is neither, and vesting it with power and control as if it were is crazy.

The more concentrated power and decision-making becomes, the more information is needed to feed into the power center. Free markets make decisions and evolve solutions organically; static control centers cannot.

One Size Does Not Fit All

Also, as you make one-size-fits-all decisions for larger and larger groups of people, discontent can only grow among those you are trying to help.  We argue over everything because government has pushed everything in to the collective, making your rights negotiable and subject to snotty bickering.

For example, imagine a Friday night alone. You’re going to settle in for a night of movie watching and you decide to order pizza. Easy. Now imagine you’re snuggled in with your loved one. The decision on movie-night fare is now a shared one. Take it a step further and imagine a houseful of people. They cannot decide on the toppings, or even which takeout place to order from. Worse, some are on a gluten-free diet and want BBQ, while other clamor for Chinese food. The bigger the crowd, the harder it is to reach a decision.

So we are better off making our individual decisions for ourselves and allowing the spontaneous economy to bloom. It works. Don’t believe me? There are literally billions of people in this world who know nothing of growing crops or killing animals, yet they do not want for food.

People and nations can capitalize on specialization, making things that others want, while not worrying about making necessities they know they can buy from others.  And governments' involvement is limited to providing some infrastructure and mediating trade agreements.

How We Got Here

Every emergency has been used by the federal government as an opportunity to take another bite out of our liberties, with expediency as the excuse.  As Hayek predicted, "our freedom" has been "destroyed by piecemeal encroachments."

Hayek was a big proponent of governing from broad principles where possible rather than from narrow, specific laws.

"The argument for liberty, in the last resort, is indeed an argument for principles and against expediency in collective action..."

He foresaw the "fatal weakness" of government leaving free people alone with their liberties:  Uncertain outcomes and glaring inequalities would scare us off our freedoms and into the arms of big daddy government.  Liberty cannot compare to concrete promises and "definite gifts offered to particular individuals" in exchange for some "curtailment of freedom."

That is the fatal seduction.  Not treating freedom as the "supreme principle..."

"...would inevitably prove a fatal weakness and lead to its slow erosion." 

Meanwhile, here in America, where Obama ignored the rule of law and saved GM from a richly-deserved bankruptcy...

The Treasury Department yesterday revised its loss estimate for the Government Motors bailout from $14.33 billion to $23.6 billion, thanks to the company’s sinking stock price.

 Add in the special tax breaks, and...

This means that the total hit to taxpayers, who still own about a quarter of the company, could add up to $38.6 billion. (Reason)

Europe is playing a shell game, and they're running out of suckers.  Here in the US, we're rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

The elites have stolen our freedoms in the name of expediency and progress, but their promises of equality and prosperity are just chaff in the wind.  They've led us to the brink of collapse.  As Peter, Paul and Mary used to sing, "When will they ever learn?  When will they ever learn?"

Or, to Paraphrase Ben Franklin, "Those who trade liberty for security end up with neither."

Quotes Taken from Hayek's "The Constitution of Liberty," pp 129-130.

America's Last Stand

The 2012 elections are the last stand.  For progressives as well as small government conservatives and libertarians.  It is America's Last Stand

The economy will not improve

The situation of ordinary citizens will become even more parlous, and government will be forced to "DO SOMETHING!"

That something depends upon which party is in power.  Liberals see the mess we're in and blame free market capitalism, ignoring the fact that we haven't seen that rare bird in a hundred years.

Yeah, we had some variants and hybrid strains, but it's not been a free market, but rather a very locked-down and expensive one.  Just ask entrepreneurial outsiders trying to pole vault in over the regulatory walls governments have erected at the behest of the insiders.  Progressive "solutions" will only make it worse.

Welcome to The Crisis

We are in a crisis, and the progressives see it has their last, best hope.  Hence the desperate cry, "The revolution is here!"   No, it's not, but progressives will keep asserting it, telling the big lie long enough until it becomes the truth.  The Obama campaign, flush with Wall Street Cash and it's own fat cat bankers and plutocrats (Daley, Immelt, etc), will demagogue the Occupy Wall Street protests to its own political advantage

This sums up the Occupy Wall Street agenda pretty well:

But the dominant feature is a fierce hatred of anything capitalistic-individualistic profit seeking, large scale enterprise, banks, joint-stock companies, department stores, "international finance and loan capital," the system of "interest slavery" in general; the abolition of these is described as the "basis of the programme, around which everything else turns."

[...] it is not a proletarian but middle class socialism, and that it is, in consequence, inclined to favour the small artisan and shop keeper and to set the limit up to which it recognizes private property somewhat higher than does communism.

[...] In the case of the wealthier capitalists, state control and restriction of income will leave little more than the name of property, even while the intention of correcting the undue accumulation of wealth in the hands of individuals has not yet been carried out.

That was written by Friedrich Hayek in 1933, and he wrote it about Hitler's socialist party.

They aim for modern-day Germany, but their agenda is from National Socialist Germany

It's scary enough that they aim for present-day Germany as their model, where government takes over half of what you make and spreads it around, and puts a lot more rules on you like no gun ownership and mandatory recycling.  Imagine paying $6 for a gallon of gas and living in half the space you live in now.

Only our government is not efficient like Germany's, so we will end up performing a sclerotic slide reminiscent of post WWII Great Britain, only without the sharp musical mockery of a Pink Floyd or the cultural parody of Monty Python...

... And we'll continue sliding all the way back to 1933...

Public-private partnerships, with governmental panels drawing up business plans and picking winners and losers will be the norm.  Free-market capitalists, libertarians, Christians and other free thinkers will not be marched off to gas chambers; we will instead be either broken to the will of the state or branded enemies of the Brave New Society, unable to find work or participate in the government-controlled marketplace.

Laugh if you want to, but that is where collectivism always leads, without exception.  Again, Hayek explains:

The inherent logic of collectivism makes it impossible to confine it to a limited sphere. 

Beyond certain limits, collective action in the interest of all can only be made possible if all can be coerced into accepting as their common interest what those in power take it to be.

At that point, coercion must extend to the individuals' ultimate aims and ideas, and must attempt to bring everyone's Weltanschauung into line with the ideas of the rulers.  (Hayek - Nazism is Socialism)

* - Hat tip to Fuzzy Slippers for sparking this post.  I am a Hayek fan but had forgotten his short essay on why Nazism is socialism.  Please go read her blog post on this subject here:  Fuzzy Slippers - Everything Old is New Again