During the past two weeks, Joseph Coletti and Daren Bakst contributed to a three-part discussion of the main problems linked to North Carolina state government. This week’s “Daily Journal” guest columnist is Dr. Roy Cordato, Vice President for Research and Resident Scholar at the John Locke Foundation. He offers the final installment in the series.
Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master.
– George Washington
There are two fundamentally opposed means whereby man…obtain[s] the necessary means for satisfying his desires. These are…one’s own labor and the forcible appropriation of the labor of others…I propose…to call one’s own labor and the equivalent exchange of one’s own labor for the labor of others, the “economic means” for the satisfaction of needs, while the unrequited appropriation of the labor of others will be called the “political means.”
– Franz Oppenheimer ( The State, 1908)
Libertarians and some conservatives are often accused of being against almost everything the government wants to accomplish. If we call for a reduction in spending on schools, we are accused of being against educating children; if we call for repeal of the endangered species act, we are said to be against protecting wildlife; if we call for the privatization of Social Security, we are said to be against the elderly; and when we call for cuts in social programs like Medicaid, we are quickly accused of being against helping the poor. People on the right often accuse libertarians of being libertines, suggesting that because we call for the repeal of laws prohibiting or restricting activities like gambling, drug use, smoking, etc., that we endorse these activities. This perspective is just as misguided.
Putting aside the issue of whether these programs actually accomplish their intended goals, the real reason why libertarians oppose most of what government does has little to do with the intentions of particular laws. It is not about the ends being sought but the means being used. Whether education is a good or bad thing, whether poor people should be helped, or whether fewer people should be smoking or gambling is not what the fundamental policy debate is about. For libertarians it is about a basic principle: the belief that it is immoral to initiate the use or threat of force in the pursuit of one’s goals, even if those goals are considered to be noble.
This principle is an outgrowth of the libertarian view of rights. While Thomas Jefferson’s famous declaration regarding human rights generally captures the libertarian view, the North Carolina Constitution endorses what might be labeled “the libertarian credo” even more explicitly than Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence. It opens by stating “all persons are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, the enjoyment of the fruits of their own labor, and the pursuit of happiness.” To use force in violation of these rights is therefore immoral and contrary to what might be considered “natural law.” (Unfortunately, this statement of principle was not taken seriously in many sections of the Constitution that followed and has been completely ignored in the writing of statutory law.)
The nature of government then presents a fundamental problem for libertarians. As George Washington points out “government is … force.” Violation of the rights outlined above is inherent in the way government does business, and it is the means by which governmental goals are pursued. This is why Franz Oppenheimer in his classic work on political theory, The State, refers to the “unrequited appropriation of the labor of others” as the “political means.”
The appropriateness of Oppenheimer’s characterization can be demonstrated by looking at the power to tax, which forms the basis of all other governmental powers and is the primary way of acquiring resources in the political realm. The collection of taxes is made possible by in most cases the threat, and in some cases the actual use, of force. While it is often claimed that the collection of taxes, especially income taxes, is based on “voluntary compliance,” everyone knows that this is a fraudulent claim. To volunteer is by implication to exercise a choice freely. If one were truly voluntarily complying with the tax code he could equally volunteer not to comply. Of course, this is not an option. To claim that the tax system is based on voluntary compliance is Orwellian. Clearly taxation violates people’s Creator-endowed rights to “the enjoyment of the fruits of their own labor” and therefore “the pursuit of happiness.”
This is true not only for taxation, but also for nearly all the methods used by government to get what it deems to be desirable. The Endangered Species Act is enforced by denying land owners the right to cut down trees, build homes, or sometimes even walk on their property, again denying their rights to the “enjoyment of the fruits of their labor” and “the pursuit of happiness.” The minimum wage law denies the right to be employed to people who cannot find someone willing to hire them for at least the mandated minimum wage, denying them the right to gain fruits from their labor. Clearly this list is a long one and gets longer with every legislative session and every meeting of every city council and every government regulatory body.
At the heart of what Oppenheimer calls “the economic means,” or “the exchange of one’s own labor for the labor of others” is true voluntarism. The economic means, i.e., giving someone what they want in order to obtain from them what you want, is at the heart of free market capitalism and a free and civil society more generally. While the political means places coercion at the center of interactions between governmental bodies and the private sector, the economic means, by definition, bans coercion from human relationships. This explains why libertarians always seek to use purely private institutions, whether market or charitable, both to generate economic prosperity and to accomplish social and moral goals. The use of immoral means to accomplish otherwise noble goals negates the nobility of the goals.
These are lofty and I would argue morally sound principles that give rise to a particular view of government. There have been volumes written about where the line between the consistent application of these principles and practical problem solving should be drawn. But it is safe to say that what defines modern day libertarians is the belief that, for the vast majority of public policy questions, we need to go a long way in the direction of liberty before that line is even approached.