{"id":9749,"date":"2011-01-31T00:00:43","date_gmt":"2011-01-30T23:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=9749"},"modified":"2011-01-27T14:40:02","modified_gmt":"2011-01-27T13:40:02","slug":"freedom-is-not-compatible-with-government%e2%80%99s-initiation-of-force-against-innocent-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2011\/01\/freedom-is-not-compatible-with-government%e2%80%99s-initiation-of-force-against-innocent-people\/","title":{"rendered":"Freedom Is Not Compatible with Government\u2019s Initiation of Force against Innocent People"},"content":{"rendered":"

In yesterday\u2019s [25 Jan 2011] New York Times<\/em> appears an op-ed article<\/a> by Edward L. Glaeser, a professor of economics at Harvard. Glaeser\u2019s article is remarkable because arguments in favor of freedom, insisting that economic analysis implicitly rests on a moral presumption that individual freedom has fundamental value, do not appear every day\u2014or every month\u2014in \u201cthe newspaper of record.\u201d So, I am glad to give two cheers to Glaeser, one for his theme and another for his courage in placing the argument in such a hostile outlet.<\/p>\n

I cannot give Glaeser a third cheer, however, because toward the end of the article he inserts a concession that I find wholly inconsistent with the rest of the argument. He writes:<\/p>\n

Economists\u2019 fondness for freedom rarely implies any particular policy program. A fondness for freedom is perfectly compatible with favoring redistribution, which can be seen as increasing one person\u2019s choices at the expense of the choices of another, or with Keynesianism and its emphasis on anticyclical public spending.<\/p>\n

Many regulations can even be seen as force for freedom, like financial rules that help give all investors the freedom to invest in stocks by trying to level the playing field.<\/p>\n

To be sure, many mainstream economists\u00a0do think about policy just as Glaeser says they do. But in doing so, they are mistaken. I find it difficult to believe that a man of Glaeser\u2019s intelligence has really given much thought to what he is saying in these passages.<\/p>\n

In fact, a presumption in favor of freedom rules out virtually everything that modern governments do, certainly nearly everything they do in interfering in economic affairs. Redistribution of income, for example, requires that the government rob Peter in order to benefit Paul (and its own functionaries, who serve as middlemen in this transfer). This action is not freedom; it is a crime against Peter, a raw violation of his right to his own legitimate property. Keynesian countercyclical spending requires the government to spend borrowed\u00a0money whose acquisition is\u00a0premised on future taxation (that is, robbery) of taxpayers in order to service the debt and repay the principal. Again, innocent persons have their rights violated. How can anyone fail to see that robbery is incompatible with freedom? Finally, the financial rules that Glaeser finds compatible with freedom entail threats of violence against financial transactors who do not follow arbitrary government rules\u2014often extremely foolish and even destructive rules\u2014in making their transactions, notwithstanding the fact that the parties to the transaction may be perfectly willing to proceed without such regulatory compliance. Such regulation is the very opposite of freedom; it is instead the sheer imposition of outside force, intruding on willing transactors, and thereby discouraging them to some extent, if not entirely, with consequent loss of the wealth that such transactions would have created, in addition to the loss of liberty.<\/p>\n

Perhaps it is unseemly for someone such as I to make a recommendation to a Harvard professor, yet I cannot resist the urge to suggest that Glaeser read, say, Murray Rothbard\u2019s Power and Market<\/em><\/a>. Expositions of that sort would help him to gain a clearer vision of the distinction between\u00a0individual\u00a0freedom and state domination in economic affairs. Glaeser quotes Milton Friedman to good effect in his article, but Friedman\u2019s writings\u00a0ought to be the beginning, rather than the end of wisdom in this area. In regard to freedom, Friedman\u2019s arguments were good as far as\u00a0they went, but\u00a0they did not go nearly far enough. Like Glaser, Friedman was prepared to make many concessions to state power, and his focus on utilitarian arguments, as opposed to moral principles,\u00a0diminished the intellectual force of\u00a0his laudable efforts to enlarge the scope of liberty in economic affairs.<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

Robert Higgs is senior fellow in political economy at the Independent Institute<\/a> and editor of <\/em>The Independent Review<\/a>. He is also a columnist for LewRockwell.com. His most recent book is <\/em>Neither Liberty Nor Safety: Fear, Ideology, and the Growth of Government<\/a>. He is also the author of <\/em>Depression, War, and Cold War: Studies in Political Economy<\/a>, <\/em>Resurgence of the Warfare State: The Crisis Since 9\/11 <\/a>and <\/em>Against Leviathan: Government Power and a Free Society<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 independent.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In yesterday\u2019s [25 Jan 2011] New York Times appears an op-ed article by Edward L. Glaeser, a professor of economics at Harvard. Glaeser\u2019s article is remarkable because arguments in favor of freedom, insisting that economic analysis implicitly rests on a moral presumption that individual freedom has fundamental value, do not appear every day\u2014or every month\u2014in \u201cthe newspaper of record.\u201d So, I am glad to give two cheers to Glaeser, one for his theme and another for his courage in placing the argument in such a hostile outlet.
\nI cannot give Glaeser a third cheer, however, because toward the end of the article he inserts a concession that I find wholly inconsistent with the rest of the argument.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[146],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9749\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}