Yes, friends, it is once again Bastiat Week here at the PDF blog. I can't help it. If I had read Bastiat as a youth, I would have become an outlaw economist.
In Frederic Bastiat:
A Man Alone, p. 83, Roche quotes the following written by Bastiat as he
looked upon the aftermath of the February 1848 revolution that deposed Louis
Philippe:
… once men consider themselves as sentient, but passive, incapable of improving themselves morally or materially by their own intelligence and energy, and reduced to expecting everything from the law; in a word, when they admit that their relation to the state is that of a flock of sheep to the shepherd, it is clear that the responsibility of the government is immense. Good and evil, virtue and vice, equality and inequality, wealth and poverty, all proceed from it. It is entrusted with everything, it undertakes everything, it does everything; hence, it is responsible for everything. If we are happy, it has every right to claim our gratitude; but if we are wretched, it alone is to blame …
The socialists that took control of the French government
during Spring 1848 thought to make government, as one of the leaders Louis
Blanc said, “[t]he motive force of society…”.
This is exactly the kind of attitude that abounds in Washington
today. People cannot be trusted to be
virtuous or honest, charitable or productive.
Government must protect us from our own immoral behavior, our laziness
and gluttony, even from our own impure thoughts.
When New York City’s Mayor Bloomberg tells the people living
in, working in, and visiting his city that they are limited to sixteen ounces
of their favorite soft drink in any given container, he is merely making
visible that pervasive and protective attitude.
The logic is that since government – actually the taxpayers – are
funding the cost of medical care for many people, the government can intervene
to prevent health problems caused by excess consumption of sugar or fat or
sodium or whatever it is that the government deems detrimental at any point in
time.
It is vitally important for us, if we are going resist an
intrusive government, that we see how it must be limited and bound right from the start -- as is done in the Constitution. Once we have said that we
would like this or that benefit from the state, we open ourselves to that
entity’s control and the imposition of its requirements, which, according to
the central power, are always for our best interests, for our good health, to
save us money, to make us better, etc.
Bloomberg’s ban has received substantial support as “sensible”
and “reasonable”, and it is, if we are willing to accept the premise that
government is the “motive force”. Most
of the educated elite believe this is true.
The bureaucrats, politicians, and regulators either believe it or support it as means to power and control. I
do not believe or accept the premise and neither did Bastiat. The funny thing is that the fallacy of this
approach has been demonstrated time and again in history. We routinely see it fail before our own eyes
here in this country and around the world.
The very global economic crisis we face today is rooted in this idea
that central planners in government and finance can create and control wealth
better than a free market. The illusion
dissolves before us, yet millions cling to it.
Mock the soda ban all you like, but understand the insidious and destructive
lie at the heart of it.
It is a convenient paradox for those who favor democracy that the masses are wise enough to elect their demagogues yet too stupid to act privately in their own best interests.
Good posts Mush.
ReplyDeleteIt's been several years since I read "The Law" by Bastiat. A thin book, gets right to the truth. The thing about truth, you don't learn it as much as you recognize it. But I digress.
Anyhow, this post reminds me of an argument I had with my sister (Yale, Econ) many years ago about helmet laws. I said a man should have the right to crack open his head if he wants and she replied that since we are paying his medical bills that we need to tell him to wear a helmet. She lives in Manhattan and is now subjected to the tyranny of the 16 oz cup. TAKE THAT, SISTER! HA!
Exactly. Down in Oklahoma and Texas, helmets are not required. I would not ride out on the highway without a helmet at gunpoint, but I don't like being forced to wear one.
ReplyDeleteEven the Medicaid argument is kind of fallacious. If you are wearing a helmet, I think you stand a better chance of surviving a lot of more severe crashes, but possibly with a longer hospitalization and more rehab. Not wearing a brain-bucket, in a lot of crashes, the rider is DRT or DOA. I would guess the medical cost factor is a wash. Yes, occasionally you will have a brain-injured rider who was not wearing a helmet, and then you will have a brain-injured helmet-wearer that you could have cremated for $500 if he had been unprotected.
My cousin split his helmet when he T-boned a pickup. If he hadn't been wearing it, he would have been dead. He then spent months recovering -- on private insurance and his dad's bank account. He would have been much cheaper to bury. But he's one of the good guys -- I'm glad he survived.
It the rider's head; it should be his decision.