I Want a Cost-Free Life! - By Butler Shaffer
(2012-10-17 at 12:06:15 )

I Want a Cost-Free Life! - by Butler Shaffer

It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is,
after all, a specialized discipline and one that most
people consider to be a "dismal science." But it is
totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous
opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this
state of ignorance. - Murray Rothbard

While driving on the freeway the other day, I saw a
sign on another car urging me to "demand free energy."

Why the driver failed to include "free food," "free
gasoline," "free designer clothes," "free cars,"
"free sex," "free luxury home," or any other whim was
not made clear.

This mans message expressed the whine heard from men
and women whose parents never helped them to learn
that the causal regularities of nature cannot be
suspended for their momentary convenience; that the
costs of the benefits we desire must be incurred by
someone. Such infantile thinking underlies all
political programs - the costs of which are forcibly
imposed upon others. The self-serving demands for
these programs are usually disguised more subtly as
"general welfare," "social responsibility," the
"public interest," or other seemingly selfless ends.

On occasion - as was the case with this driver - the
purposes are more patently expressed, albeit without
the foot-stomping tantrums attending such displays
in adolescent years. When I see or hear such demands,
I am reminded of the childhood lyrics "I want what
I want when I want it!"

This demand for "free energy" contained no reference
as to how, or by whom, this resource was to be
provided. I suspect that, had I been able to discuss
the matter with this man, his explanation would have
come around to the government (i.e., the taxpayers)
incurring the necessary costs. In my freshman year
in college, I saw an elaborate display - complete
with architectural models - of how a nuclear power
plant would operate. I was introduced to the lie that
"because the costs of metering the resulting
electricity would be greater than the costs of
producing it, electricity would be provided free of
charge to consumers."

While still in my teenage years, I remember asking
"who, then, would have an incentive to produce the
facilities necessary to generate the electricity?"
I was later able to figure out that such costs
would be borne by the state (i.e., the taxpayers);
that electricity, under this scheme, would be no
more "free" than were government schools, highways,
parks, or other such programs. Somewhere in my adult
years, I read the Jacques Ellul observation to the
effect "show me how electrical power is distributed
in a society, and I will show you how political power
is distributed."

To heap abuse upon my fellow motorist for his message
would be to overlook the broader question: where might
this man have picked up on the idea that his world
should be rendered cost-free for the pursuit of his
interests?

Even a small child may come to recognize, upon
reflection, that his or her lemonade stand has probably
been subsidized by the parents. If mommy and daddy can
be counted upon to supply all sorts of "freebies,"
might the kids grow up expecting a surrogate parent
(i.e., the state) to relieve them of the necessity of
investing their own resources in furtherance of
whatever ends they wish to accomplish?

I suspect that, upon having a discussion with this
motorized freeway lobbyist, I would have learned of a
seemingly endless list of other projects for which
others should be forced to pay: college tuition?
medical care? rental payments for housing? day-care
facilities for his children?

Once infected with the mindset of living in a world in
which the costs of ones preferences can be forced upon
others, extending the wish-list to other projects is a
simple matter. This, after all, gets us to the essence
of all forms of politics: given the power to forcibly
extract resources from others, politicians and
bureaucrats can produce all kinds of wondrous things
from pyramids to palaces to statuary to bridges and
highways, . . . each of which carries costs about
which it is considered impolite to ask questions.

Like the serial killer who "shocks" us with the same
behavior engaged in by the "troops" we are urged to
"honor," this freeway proselytizer was doing no more
than emulating what passes for the state-directed
economic policies that are helping to destroy
civilization itself. The higher one goes up the
corporate-state food chain, the less likely does one
witness business firms having to respond to market
place pressures such as competition from other firms,
the shifting preferences of customers, and the
continuing emergence of fundamentally new forms of
products or methods of distribution. Recent years
have made clear to us that the financial success or
failure of large corporate enterprises depends more
upon the political connections that assign positions
at the government trough, than it does upon the
informal processes of the marketplace.

The "steel fist" of the state long ago replaced the
"invisible hand."

In the disastrous Bushobama years, the American - dare
I say Western? - economic system has eroded into
little more than the corruption we now know as crony
-capitalism. If major corporations experience financial
losses, they know they will be rescued by a variety of
government programs that amount to nothing more than
bailouts. To the degree business firms are able to
rely upon the state to cover their losses, they become
like the Post Office, government schools, or any other
political entity. What incentives would they have to
maintain the competitive pressures that foster
organizational efficiency? Indeed, in the absence of
the discipline provided by the pricing system, how is
it possible to even speak of "efficiency"?

In an economic system divorced from the demands and
interests of private individuals, major businesses
become as indifferent to people as do the clerks at
the Department of Motor Vehicles. With the state as
the guarantor of their financial well-being, firms
become less interested in addressing customer demands;
the transaction costs that are central to any form of
voluntary contracting can be minimized. Above all
else, the business community has helped to
institutionalize the proposition that the costs of
doing business should be socialized, while profits
must remain privatized. If government bailouts,
tariffs, taxation, and other forms of transferring
to the general public the costs that would otherwise
have to be borne by business firms do not convince
you of the socialistic nature of the corporate-state,
consider the powers of eminent domain invoked to
benefit corporate interests.

It is a common practice for shopping center
developers, professional sports team owners, or
manufacturing firms, to turn to the state to use
its violent powers to take land from owners who do
not choose to sell and turn it over to the
politically-connected. How many sports stadiums have
been built through this process, wherein the taxpayers
are required to underwrite the costs of land
acquisition and construction - a form of socializing
the costs - so that the team owners may enjoy the
profits from their business? Some time ago, I read of
a city in the Midwest whose city council refused to
allow a developer to use the powers of eminent domain
to acquire the land for the building of a hotel. The
developer decided to withdraw his plans for the
building, saying that it would impose too great a cost
on him to have to negotiate with a number of landowners.

Politics is the most pervasive means for mobilizing
such anti-social forces as theft, coercion, killing,
deceit, parasitism, torture, lying, conflict, inter-
group hatred, wars, and insistence upon obedience to
authority enforced by violence. The states principal
purpose involves forcibly taking property from owners
and giving it to others, a practice that includes
imposing costs on those who have not chosen to bear
them. This system is inherently at war with the self
-directed nature of life itself: forcing people to act
as they do not choose to act, and forcibly
restraining them from pursuing ends they do value.

As history reminds us - and as we are discovering for
ourselves - such behavior destroys civilizations.
That these practices are so honored and the
institutions that engage in them are so revered by
otherwise intelligent people, is remarkable. That
those whose lives will be destroyed by such thinking
are eager to emblazon their support for its
underlying premises as they drive the freeways, is
all the more curious.

September 27, 2012
Butler Shaffer teaches at the Southwestern University
School of Law. He is the author of the newly-released
In Restraint of Trade: The Business Campaign Against
Competition, 1918–1938, Calculated Chaos: Institutional
Threats to Peace and Human Survival, and Boundaries of
Order. His latest book is The Wizards of Ozymandias.

Copyright © 2012 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to
reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted,
provided full credit is given.