Get Your Hands Off Me - Government

Get Your Hands Off Me - Government*
In pursuit of the truth - cinops be gone - Thursday, Sept. 6, 2012

Dedicated to Presidents Obama and Clinton.

“President Obama mistakenly equated society with government. That society contributes to success does not imply the successful owe more taxes to government, because as the libertarian writer and social critic Albert Jay Nock noted, frequently: “the interests of the state and the interests of society … are directly opposed.”

“Very few of government’s actions improve our ability to voluntarily cooperate, thereby advancing our general welfare. At most, those functions could justify low, commonly borne taxes, not highly disproportionate taxes on a small minority, while expanding the number exempted.”

“Further; much government activity has simply coercively replaced voluntary market arrangements. For example, teachers certainly contribute to many successes. But they do it voluntarily and have already been “paid in full.” While they deserve gratitude, the government, which has commandeered control of the education system, does not.”

“Government’s constantly demonstrated inefficiencies also vastly overcharge citizens for its services. For example, roads and bridges come with pork-barrel legislative earmarks, prevailing-wage rules, union restrictions, project labor agreement and environmental extortion. That it overcharges us to do what we could do far more cheaply without its restrictions justifies a rebate to compensate for government “price gouging” not higher taxes.”

“Much of government also directly inhibits voluntary arrangements. An alphabet soup of regulatory agencies, such as EPA, fits this category, as do price controls (e.g. minimum- wage laws) many labor and zoning laws, occupational licensing requirements, ad infinitum. Agencies that create roadblocks to voluntary arrangements do not justify higher taxes to create still more.”

“Every dollar government spends, it first takes. In its self-congratulation whenever it provides any benefits to anybody, it ignores the wonders free people create when their resources are not taken away.”

"President Obama seems to believe that success of what he called our “unbelievable American system” come from government and expands with government. But that success is actually due to centuries of voluntary arrangements, made possible not by growth of government, but by limitations on it. Our previously unimaginable success came because we more stringently limited government than ever before (e.g., the Constitution’s ban on internal trade barriers, crating the world’s largest free-tread zone, and the Bill of Rights’ restrictions on government).”

“President Obama needs to recognize, with Tom Paine, that “Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil.” Otherwise, he figures to illustrate Nock’s “curious anomaly”: “State power has an unbroken record of inability to do anything efficiently, economically, disinterestedly or honesty; yet when the slightest dissatisfaction arises over any exercise of social power; the aid of the agent least-qualified to give aid is immediately called for.”

“What should we conclude from the fact that Americans didn’t build their successes without the cooperation from other? Not the president’s conclusion - pay more and expand government. Rather, we should expand the system that enabled those successes by expanding areas of voluntary individual choices, i.e., expanding freedom.”

George H. Kubeck - *Thank you writer Gary M Galles, Pepperdine University Economics Professor, for the above article that appeared under The Orange Grove in the Orange County Register, Orange County, California, in August, 2012.