The Austrian School Of Thought

[Anonymouse]

The Silent Partner in Family Decline

By Per Henrik Hansen

[Posted June 8, 2004]

The traditional family has for many centuries and in most countries been the core unit of society. It has been the foundation and even the ultimate purpose in many people's lives. It has provided a stable framework to bring children into the world, to raise them, to teach them manners and how to become productive and happy human beings. It has been relied upon foremotional and financial support, and in many other regards.


All this is changing now.

Below are some statistical facts about the Danish family, a country with an advanced welfare state and advanced decline in family life. It is a useful study as an archetype of many developed countries.

*Fewer people are getting married and when they do marry it is later in life. 88 percent of 30-year old women were married in 1970. In 2002 the number was 47 percent.
*The average age of first marriage has risen for women from 22.8 years old in 1970 to 30.3 years old in 2002. For men it has risen from 25.1 years in 1970 to 32.8 years in 2002.
*More and more people live together without getting married, but more than a third of all adults are not married and do not live in any other kind of relationship. They live alone.
*More of the marriages end in divorce. In 1975, 18 percent of all the marriages from 1950 had ended in divorce. In 2000, 37 percent of all the marriages from 1975 had ended in divorce.
*Women are getting older before they become mothers. The average age of women giving birth in 2002 was 29.9 years, which had increased from 26.7 years in 1970. The average age of first time mothers was 23.7 years in 1970, in 1996 it was 27.7 years.
*Fewer women get to be mothers. The childlessness for 40 year old women has increased from 9 percent in 1985, to 13.3 percent in 2002.
*The fertility rate has fallen from 2.6 children in 1965 to 1.7 children in 2002.
*More children experience breaking families. In 1981 a little less than one in every five children did not live with both his parents. Today this number has increased to one in every four children that do not live with both his parents.
*The families with children where both parents have full time jobs have increased from 50 percent in 1980 to 83 percent in 1998. In families without any children the number has only increased from 68 percent to 75 percent.
*The share of children between 0–6 years of age, who were in day nursery, day care or kindergarten was 7.3 percent in 1965. In 2000 the share was 76.6 percent.
*More families with children receive welfare payments. In 1980, the families with children that received welfare benefits were 33 percent, today it is 38 percent (not counting child benefits of appx. USD 500 every three months per child, which all families receive, both rich and poor).
*94 percent of the families of 17 year olds (you are a child until you are 18 years old) have today received welfare payments at one point in time. Only 6 percent of the families had never received any welfare payments during the life of the child.
*On average the families with children only save 4.1 percent of their disposable income. Families without any children save in average 14.4 percent of their disposable income. More than three times as much.[1]

Some of the explanations that have been suggested to account for these important transformations are:

*society has become more affluent and people do not need to stay together out of necessity anymore;
*more people and especially more women are spending time in their twenties getting a higher education;
*more women today are participating in the workforce;
*people today have more opportunities that they wish to explore, which sometimes are not in harmony with the obligations that family life involves, i.e. the changes are a life style choice;
*along with the increased affluence people have become more individualistic and selfish;
*secularization and liberation from tradition have set people free to follow their own desires and not necessarily what society "dictates."

The changes probably have multiple causes but it would be an incomplete picture not to mention the ways that the welfare state directly and indirectly influences the family.

We can cite several channels through which the welfare state affects the family.

Generous welfare programs and benefits

The welfare programs and benefits imply that the family's role as a financial support unit has significantly decreased. A single parent will be provided well for by the government. Likewise people will be provided for by the government if they are sick, handicapped, on maternity, getting old, unemployed etc. These are all circumstances where the family previously played an important role.

Very high taxes

The high level of taxes in Denmark, which already have been discussed in a previous article: Denmark: Potemkin Village, have made it very difficult to provide for a family with only one household income. Very few people in Denmark can afford to have a house and one or two cars on only one household income. That means that both parents today normally have to work full time and even then there is still very little money left for most people when the fixed expenses are paid for. This is substantiated by the low average saving rate in families with children, and by the very high percentage of families with children where both parents work full time today. The tight economic situation put a lot of stress on the family. The family is also being stressed timewise with both parents working full-time jobs.

Nurseries, day care centers and kindergartens are subsidized by the government

The subsidies to these government institutions of course favor their use. Together with the almost impossibility of one-income families this can probably account for the spectacular increase there has been in the institutionalization of the caring of children.

Strong encouragement to use public instead of private transportation

For most families with children it is a great help in their daily lives to have a car. Unfortunately it is a specific goal of the Danish welfare state to encourage people to use public transportation in which the government has invested a lot of money. People are being encouraged in many ways. There are very high taxes on cars, gasoline and car insurance. Car prices in Denmark are approximately three times the level that they are in the USA and so are gasoline prices. These taxes are in themselves preventive for many young families.

At the same time public transportation is significantly subsidized. Other encouragements to shift to public transportation have been car traffic hampering devices such as extensive use of roundabouts, road bumps, narrowing of roads, closing down of second lanes to make more room for bicycles and pedestrians, not investing in new roads, electronic speed controls in many places, abolishment of parking spaces, huge increases in parking fees, huge increases in traffic violation fees, hiring of a lot of parking-ticket controllers and traffic police and lowering of the allowed level of alcohol in the blood when driving to practically nothing.

Not being able to have the convenience of a car when you have small children, or if you do have a car then to be financially severely burdened and also hampered in its use adds further stress to the modern Danish family, living in a world of specialization and the division of labor, where not all activities can be expected to take place in the close neighborhood.

The welfare state involves group antagonistic rhetoric

A welfare state is characterized by special interest groups fighting for government power in order to bestow political privileges on their own members. This subverts the harmony of interests that exists on the free market and often times lead to group hostility. One group's gain becomes another group's loss.

There are many special interests: Rich and poor, employers and employees, citizens and immigrants, young and old, and also men and women. You can very often hear stories in the Danish news about a new study that shows that women are not being equally treated in this or that industry, in academia, or in the government sector. You will be told that there are not as many women managers or professors as there are men, and if there are, then they are not being paid the same level of salary. No other explanatory factors are mentioned than discrimination.

All this is accompanied with demands for government intervention. Unfortunately this type of rhetoric and demand for special privilege cannot avoid creating resentment which in turn affects behavior: Why marry the enemy?

These are all channels through which it is not unreasonable to claim that the welfare state directly and indirectly plays an important role in the gradual disintegration of the Danish family. So when the welfare statists claim that they are providing safety, security and quality of life for the citizens, it seems obvious that this coerced public service is crowding out the voluntary private alternative.

----------

Per Henrik Hansen teaches economics at the Copenhagen Business School

[1] All these data are taken from official Danish statistical publications i.e. Statistisk Tiaarsoversigt 2003; Statistisk Aarbog 2003; and 50-Aars Oversigten (2001).

[Anonymouse]

I Am the State, Thy God

by Dmitry Chernikov

I intend to argue that the reason for the present dominance of the nation-state is the continual and shameful deification of the state. What do I mean by that? In traditional theism God is thought to possess certain divine "great-making" properties, such as omniscience. The state, in its attempts to secure its influence, tries to imitate those properties yet fails so completely in doing so that it tends to acquire literally the negations of God's attributes. Let us now try to compare God's "great-making" properties with the state's attempts at greatness. The first property we will consider is God's necessity.

Without the state, so the argument goes, who will provide security? The public goods? Great public projects? Make sure that "no child is left behind"? Make us humble and make us good? The state is uncaused and without any potentiality not to exist. Yet all of these things can be provided privately. The supposed indispensability of the state is a fiction; not even national defense needs to be supplied by it. On the contrary, as Martin van Creveld puts it, "the states, having discovered the forces of nationalism..., transformed themselves from instruments for imposing law and order into secular gods; and... having increased their strength out of all proportion by invading their citizens' minds and systematically picking their pockets, they used that strength to fight each other (1914–45) on such a scale and with such murderous intensity, as almost to put an end to themselves."

Let us now go through the other properties of God.

Aseity. Aseity means divine self-existence. God has always been; in fact, he exists independently of every created being. He is perfectly self-subsisting; indeed "Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made" (Jn 1:3). The state, on the contrary, merely pretends to exist on its own, when, in fact, it is parasitic on the private economy and is wholly dependent on it. The state feeds on the free society and thereby possesses the opposite of aseity. It would cease to exist if it were to drain the economy of its vitality.

Incorporeality. God is not a body but a spirit: an unembodied Mind existing transcendentally outside the universe yet also immanently as the universe's Creator and Sustainer. God acts causally in the world almost like the soul acts on a body, which is likely to be directly and immediately. The state, too, pretends that its decrees affect the private sphere instantaneously and without the latter's resisting. In reality, government orders only affect government employees by directing them to change the incentives for private individuals. To say that A is against the law is to say that government functionaries seek to punish one for doing A.

Further, the "unintended consequences" is a well-known phenomenon that causes the government schemes, from price controls to inflation, to produce effects opposite to those that the government wants to achieve. It appears that the state, such as it is, is most certainly not an incorporeal being, its abstract nature notwithstanding.

Omnipresence. "Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?" asks the Psalmist. God is not merely everywhere but is wholly present in all points of space at once. So, too, the ambitions of the state require no less. Yet this all-pervasiveness is an illusion. The state only wants the public to believe that it is everywhere. For instance, as was recently admitted, the law that permitted the government to spy on library patrons was never used but was put in effect in order to scare off potential terrorists. The NSA is mired in political correctness so bad that it interferes with the agency's operations. They only want the public to think that the Big Brother is watching.

Now it is true that the state can make the citizens spy on one another thereby gaining an army of informants. But such a state of affairs once again signals a breakdown of society so complete as to require a revolution to restore it.

Eternity. God exists either timelessly, transcending not only space but time, such that the billions of years of Creation are for him one single event, or, as some philosophers hold, he is timeless without creation and temporal logically after creation. The states would like nothing more than to possess this attribute. Yet they do not last. One look at history shows the rise and fall of empires that imagined themselves to be eternal. All of them were swept away. The current states, believing joyously that business as usual will continue indefinitely, will be gone soon enough.

As a matter of fact, there are many private companies and institutions that have lasted for hundreds and even thousands of years, far longer than many modern states.

Omniscience. The entire doctrine of socialism was predicated on the idea that the state is omniscient. Yet in order for it to work the central planners would need to be able not merely to know the present status of some huge number of factors of production but to see, i.e. not merely fully to know the present, but also to foresee the future enormously better than the shrewdest entrepreneur – to be able, in their mind's eye, to see the economy in its entirety with what amounts to supercomprehension, as though they were God.

Needless to say, such a thing is impossible, and the result is chaos, a complete inability to tell success from failure. What a contrast to the rationality of the market!

Simplicity and Unity. Just as white light contains within itself the entire spectrum simply, so God possesses a unique internal unity. He is One, a perfectly simple substance that does not enter into composition with anything. The state, too, wants to project the image of monolithic unity. This image is false, for the state is composed of a multitude of semi-autonomous and often rival agencies. Turf wars are a staple of government bureaucracies, and competition between the separated powers, both "horizontally," viz. the executive, legislative, and judicial and "vertically," viz. local, state, and federal is a powerful tool to keep the state in check.

The total state of socialism is a fiction; e.g., Soviet politics and internal party infighting was surely at least as Byzantine as American politics is.

Infinity. God, who is infinite, though he comprehends himself, cannot be comprehended by finite human beings. In other words, he is infinitely complex. The state, seemingly vast and complex also, is in fact, a mere property-thing representing the hegemonic bond in which orders are given and are obeyed. The great variety of private life is eschewed in place of strict obedience to the superior bureaucrat. Thus the state, far from mimicking the complex web of market and personal relationships, is a simple machine-like hierarchy.

Immutability. One of the most important rationales in favor of the state is that is provides "stability." Yet every year thousands of new laws and regulations are put into effect. Further, there are all sorts of fully functional private institutions and ways of solving problems supposedly beloved by conservatives that the state continuously undermines. The result is a chaotic and present-oriented economic and personal life. How far from God's changeless perfection!

Omnipotence. Oh the destructive might of the world's greatest empire! But destroying is easy. Creating is hard. What does the state know about creating freedom and prosperity? On the contrary, it possesses the opposite of God's creative power; it is entirely impotent to build a civilization. The best it can do is to stay away.

Goodness. God is pure actuality; he possesses his full being all at once. God is perfect and perfectly good and is the fountain of all goodness of every kind. He is furthermore the law unto itself, though he cannot deny his own nature of love, justice, and so forth. Now the state, too, wants to appropriate for itself the mantle of moral, aesthetic, spiritual, etc. superiority. But a closer look at it suggests that it is, as Lew Rockwell puts it, "the locus of all earthly evil."

Let us all therefore send the state to hell where it belongs.

[Anonymouse]

Hail the Great Leader!

by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

Imagine a group of distinguished citizens from Canada, the US, and Mexico, getting together and drawing up a constitution for North America, which included a powerful president for whom we would all vote to lead us into the future for the sake of our liberty and security. All Hail the Chief.

Such an idea would receive a huge raspberry from left, right, and center. It seems crazy and ridiculous. But on what grounds? One person couldn't possible represent the interests of so many. A government ranging over such a huge territory would be unworkable. A president of North America might easily become a despot. Mainly, the very idea of such an institution seems to violate subsidiarity (better to decentralize than centralize) and Occam's razor (we've already got a president).

Actually, most of us would see plainly what was taking place: some wacky people, well intended or not, were attempting to seize power. It would be absurd for us to just obey some guy because he claims, like Yertle the Turtle, to be "the ruler of all that I see." If he managed to take power, we certainly would not hook our emotions to his words. He would not be able to "lift our spirits," make us feel "malaise," inspire us to dream or dread, or anything else. He would just be a guy with lots of power – way too much power.

When he died, we would be sad perhaps, if we liked him, or not sad, perhaps, if we didn't. In any case, the implausibility of a headline that read "A Continent Mourns!" would be obvious enough. A continent cannot mourn; only individuals can. And those who would mourn the most would be those who had a direct interest in promoting the power and office that he held, and who otherwise stood to gain from manipulating his legacy to their own benefit. If the dead continental president were praised in godlike terms, we would similarly see through the insanity and ulterior motive.

It really should be no different with the president of the United States. Before the constitutional coup of 1787, we had no president, and the country managed just fine. Our "leaders" were the clergy, property owners, merchants, moms and dads. For those who loved politics, there were governors, and there were the Articles of Confederation that claimed to be perpetual but which everyone knew was nothing other than a nonbinding treaty among sovereign units.

A group of people who had personal, financial, and ideological interests got together a decade after the colonies seceded from Britain to create a new central government supposedly restrained by a constitution. The president, we were told, would be under suspicion, constantly watched and harassed by other statesmen and the people. So it should be concerning all men with power: they must rule in fear or they will rule in despotism.

The idea of a president worried those who believed in the ideals of the revolution. They were assured that he could not be a despot. He would be under the impeachment threat. He couldn't do a thing without the Senate's advice and consent. The Senate in turn was to be appointed by the state legislatures, which were the fundamental governing units in America. For that matter, if the states didn't like something about the way the union was working out, they could always leave the union.

So went the original idea.

All these years later, we wake to the cultural equivalent of Mao's China or Lenin's Russia, in which the people are supposedly mourning the loss of the Great Leader who

"had faith, not just in his own gifts and his own future, but in the possibilities of every life. The cheerful spirit that carried him forward was more than a disposition; it was the optimism of a faithful soul, who trusted in God's purposes, and knew those purposes to be right and true."

Not only that:

"He was a providential man, who came along just when our nation and the world most needed him. And believing as he did that there is a plan at work in each life, he accepted not only the great duties that came to him, but also the great trials that came near the end."

Those quotes happen to be from Cheney, but they might as well be from 1,000 other bubbleheads who are trying to outdo each other in their worshipful statements about this man. The level of piety goes way beyond what one normally accords the dead. No, this is not just an affectionate goodbye. This is a coronation in Heaven – an apotheosis – not so much to honor Ronald Reagan as a person, but to elevate the presidency as an institution and power as a means. So it is a legitimate time to discuss his legacy, which requires genuine objectivity.

If, for example, Reagan doubled the federal budget, he can't be considered as a man who cut government. If he resisted every peace overture from the Russian leader for years before finally coming around (though not fully) at Reykjavik, he shouldn't be called a man who ended the Cold War but a man who extended it by many years before it was no longer plausible to do so.

As for the spiritual cult surrounding Reagan, it is no different from that which surrounded Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Napoleon, or any forgotten Egyptian pharaoh.

Before you get too angry, notice what I wrote: the cult stems from the same origin (which is different from saying that Reagan is Mao). What is that origin? The Stockholm syndrome? Mass psychology? False consciousness? Ideological error? Probably some combination of the above.

No doubt the sentences above invite loads of protest email. Consider before you click whether you are really disputing a point of fact or whether you are trying to upbraid a heretic against the religion of our day, which is the worship of the state and its godhead, the democratically elected president.

June 11, 2004

[Anonymouse]

Mises and the Foundation of Austrian Economics (lecture 1 of 34)
David J. Heinrich


This lecture was given by Prof. Huelsmann.

Why isn't Austrian economics taught?

• State interventionism.
• The State hiring economists:
o Biased towards the government.
o At least don't interfere with the government.
• It is not justeconomics, but every field where the government displaces those it doesn't favor for those it does.

Essence of Austrian economics
• Realism distinguishes it from all other schools of thought.
• Realist philosophy.
• The mainstream economists accept a dichotomy in economics:
o Theory: Make sense out of reality existing separately, with nothing to do with reality.
o Reality.
• But Austrians do not accept the dichotomy
• Mainstream "heresies":
o Positivism (test, never confirm/disprove)
o Mathmatica/econometrics
• Austrianism: realistic, immediately descriptive.
• Immediately describe something that is relevant.

Root of the Austrian School

• Austrian economics is representative of a tradition that reaches back much earlier than Menger, to the 14th century Orestne, who was against inflation, and wrote a treatise on the topic. There was an economics branch among the Scholastics.
• Austrian economics is an ouflow of Realist philosophy:
o Aristotle
o Scholastics
 Economics branch.
 Austrian school is the only survivor.
 influenced a century of economists.
o St. Thomas Aquinas
o First feeble attempts at economics: applying Realist philosophy to the polito-economy.
o Branches of Realism in Italy, France, Germany; e.g., School of Salamanda, Jurists. Influenced Carl Menger. (Jurists were trained in law.)
o Relation between law and economics -- logical, rigorous, logical.
• Jewish element:
o Austria obtained a part of Poland with many Jewish people; actually, there were many Jewish people throughout Poland, as the Jews were not persecuted in Poland.
o Anti-semitic laws were overturned.
o Jewish people integrated.
o Jews brought Liberalism to Austria (also Socialism).
o Influence on Constitution of Austria.
• Mises: came out of a Classical Liberal Jewish family.
o Mises family was not religious, so no emphasis was placed on ethics; insead, emphasis was placed on Utilitarian considerations.
o Mises is still in line with the Rationalist tradition, however.
o Addopted from Rousseau, blend with Austrian topics.
• Menger:
o Very unique "brand" of economics.
o Principalia of Economics.
o Difficulty getting published.
o Published himself, was widely bought; was made a Professor at the University of Vienna.
o Study fundamental economic phenomena, and explain the properties of those phenomena, isolating them and showing how they are inter-related.
o Trace back to most basic elements:
 Knowledge
 Ownership
 Information
 Error
o "Empirical method", similar to the natural sciences.
o Price not most fundamental, but result of economic realities.
o Trade of goods is a complex phonomena, not just the show numerical relations.
o Greatest contribution: Methodology.
o No such thing as mathematical research in Austrian economic; explain economic phenomena, not just show numerical realtions.
o Merit: success in isolaing elements that correspond to reality and explain it.
o Error, even if use superior mathematics, if rely on arbitrary facts/aggregates.
o Must explain complex phenomena, not just assume them as given.
o Menger's theory of concrete prices: stress partial needs in relation to other partial needs. Value individual quantities of goods, not the whole class of goods over other goods.
o Marginal Value -- explains prices
o Main contribution -- empirical methodology, Realist Philosophy
o How did Menger end up as the founder of the Austrian school?
o Much opposition to Menger in academia
o But Menger was picked as tutor for the future King
o Became close friends with the future King.
o Suddenly, Menger very important.
o Used position of power to found Austrian School and appointed his best students to the chairs; e.g., Boehm Bawerk.
o Thus, Austrians played key role Austrian.
• Austrian Subdivisions
o Main Line: Boehm Bawerk -- most important student of Mises.
o Wieser -- Wieserian line
 Influenced by:
 Jevons
 Walras
 Menger
 Not Menger's number one student
o Mises was Bawerk's most important student.
o Rothard was Mises' most important student.
o All of today's main line of Austrians are from the Mises-Rothbard/Menger-Bawerk line.
o Wieser's students
 Meyer, continued Wieserian line
 Hayek, a studnet of Mises/Wieser. Hayek was Wiesarian in his analytical approach; reasearched things that don't make sense from the Realist perspective. Tried to develop all theories to show how the free market zooms in on equilibrium.
 Hayek's most important studnets were Kirzner and Garrison.
o Mises considers equilibrium as only a tool to explain interest vs. profit.
o Schumpteter: side-line of the Austrian schol. Creative destruction. Tried to bridge Mises and Walras. Equilibrium is changeless, only interesting in disequilibrium.
• Boehm-Bawerk:
o Four-time head of Ministry of Finance.
o His works were translated very quickly.
o Main representative of Austrian economics outside of Austria.
o Teacher of Mises.
o Attracted not only Austrians, but also Socialists.
o Three Contributions: (Capital and Interest: I & II)
1. Time-preference to explain interest rates. Root cause.
 Time Preference Theory of Interest.
 Criticized Marxist "theory" of interest. Marxist theory of interest has certain parts the are plainly contrary to fact. They used "expoitation" of the working class to explain interest: predicts interest rates would be different in different industries; but in reality, there is only one interest rate.
 Marx responds that it was really just aggregate.
2. Bawerk responds that Marx hasn't explained anything.
3. "Power and Economic Law." E.g., can labor unions or governments raise wage-rates at will? Political forces, however strong, never act against economic laws, but through economic laws. For example, what happens is that unions cause jobs to be shifted; if universal, they create mass unemployment.
• Mises
o Influenced/taught by Bawerk.
o Interest in history.
o Initially, in tradition of Historical School.
o Then encountered Menger's Principles of Economics, which changes his views, and demonstrated to him that there was a Realist Theory.
o Mises was in the Realist tradition.
o No economist with as many contributions as Mises:
0. Theory of money.
 Money plays very important impact on real economy.
 Effects not spectacular, like Keynesians, though.
 Changes in money supply causes changes in distribution of wealthy: early-ons benefit at expense of late-commers, who are harmed by increased prices.
 Value of money determined by same laws that affect anything else.
 Business Cycle: Changes in money suply alter entrepreneurial investments. Lower interest rates. Entrepreneurs think real time-preferences are lower, thus invest in higher order goods, with longer time-frames. Eventually, errors are revealed as they realize that the funds to complete the investments don't exist, the products don't sell, or a halt in the inflation reveals real time-preferences through the natural rate of interest.
1. Calculation Critique of Socialism:
 Rational calculation of capital is determined by profits, which are determined by money-prices. Money prices are necessary for any rational decision-making of how to distribute resources.
 Socialism destroys money-prices. Money-prices require two owners: one of money, the other of the resource.
 Because in a socialist "economy", "society" owns everything, there are no money prices. No way to decide which lines are the most profitable and efficient relative to other lines.
 Socialism -- no common basis of calculation.
2. Epistemology of economics. Economics is a sub-division of the science of Praxeology, the study of human action. Axioms are apodictic and can be shown to be absolutely true.
 Choice. Absolutely true that we make choices. To argue against htat is contradictory because you're making a choice.
 Our knowledge of choice is from reflection. Can't be proven or disproven by observations.
 Few economists think of epistemology. Positivism and empiricism is essentially a "bad religion".
 No mainstream economists can intelligently discuss a priorisim. E.g., Friedman said that the only way to resolve "differences" between praxeologists is to "shoot it out". Empirically false -- no shootings here.
 All good economics is Realist; there is no useful positivist economics.
 Today, modern theories of money are mostly like magic. e.g., printing out money can do "great things".
 Commodity money can be money without being legal tender, but fiat paper money must be legal tender.

[Anonymouse]

The Anti–Wal-Mart Jihad

by Butler Shaffer[

"Hain’t we got all the fools in town on our side? And ain’t that a big enough majority in any town?"

~ Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Many Americans would find it difficult to make a choice between an all-out victory by American forces in Iraq, and the extinction of Wal-Mart. In some parts of the country, neo-Luddites have descended upon city halls to demand that zoning laws, or other restrictions on property ownership, be employed to prevent Wal-Mart from building stores. The frenzied, irrational dimensions of this campaign were encapsulated by a relative of mine – himself a successful businessman – who said: "Wal-Mart shouldn’t be allowed here because nobody wants them!" His remark was reminiscent of Yogi Berra’s comment that nobody went to a particular restaurant anymore "because it’s too crowded."

If it were true that "nobody wants Wal-Mart" in their community, corporate officials should either be condemned for making a decision that will prove unprofitable to the company, or praised for being able to become a very successful retailer in spite of no one wanting to be their customers! The anti–Wal-Mart campaign reflects the kind of economic illiteracy one finds in a Michael Moore film. I am surprised he hasn’t joined in this anti-capitalistic jihad, perhaps with a movie to be titled Bowling for Low Prices!

Wal-Mart has been successful because people want to shop in their stores. If this were not the case, it would take no zoning ordinance to keep them out: customers would either lose interest – or not patronize Wal-Mart in the first place – and the company would fail. For the same reason that drive-in movie theaters, circuses, and barnstorming air shows are no longer the attractions they once were, the failure of a business to adapt to the changing preferences of its customers is a formula for failure.

The Wal-Mart people have remembered an axiom lost on many recent college graduates: remaining in business is dependent upon the long-term profitability of the firm which, in turn, depends upon satisfying customers with an acceptable mix of high quality and low prices. Example: my wife was visiting relatives in a town in the Midwest. She needed to purchase an item and, preferring to deal with small businesses, she went to three or four locally-owned stores looking for it. None of them carried the item. She then drove to the local Wal-Mart store where she was not only able to purchase what she needed, but had a choice in brands of the product. Contrary to popular thinking, Wal-Mart does not drive other retailers out of business: customers do by choosing to patronize a store that does a better job of supplying their wants than do their established competitors.

For purposes of full disclosure, I must tell you that, when I was in law practice, Wal-Mart was one of the firm’s major clients. I met Sam Walton, an entrepreneur who took a small-town variety store and turned it into a national success story. He was a modern-day Horatio Alger, one of those people who we like to imagine the "American way of life" is destined to encourage. But having achieved success, the "American way of envy" began to course through the veins of those whose accomplishments were more prosaic.

But resentment at the success of others does not explain the core of the frenzied attacks against Wal-Mart. Explanations for this well-orchestrated campaign are to be found in the economic self-interest motivations of labor unions and Wal-Mart’s retail competitors. Wal-Mart has managed to succeed without too much interference from labor unions. Like political systems – which, in America, provide government certified unions with coercive, monopoly status over the workforce – labor unions depend upon creating conflict between "employees" and "employers." To the degree they are successful, unions also generate conflict between "union" and "non-union" workers. By maintaining employment practices that minimize management/employee conflict, Wal-Mart has made it difficult for unions to solicit their employees for membership.

The campaign against Wal-Mart also has roots in the ancient resentment that arises among business competitors. One can see the continuing efforts of business interests to curtail the advantages enjoyed by a more profitable competitor. Nowhere has this tendency been more apparent than in retailing. In my book In Restraint of Trade: The Business Campaign Against Competition, 1918–1938, I devoted much attention to the attempts by retailers to keep competitive practices within parameters that would not pose significant threats to other firms. When voluntary, trade association efforts to create a "cooperative competition" failed, major business interests turned to the state for the coercive enforcement that the marketplace would not provide.

Because of the relative ease and low cost of entry, retailing has long been a highly competitive trade. The cost of a horse, wagon, and merchandise was the only price one had to incur to become a traveling salesman, whose door-to-door competition with established retailers made him the object of restrictive legislation as well as the butt of jokes. Local businessmen were quick to get city councils to enact so-called "Green River ordinances," making it a misdemeanor for a merchant to peddle his goods in residential neighborhoods unless he had first registered with the local police and secured prior approval of the homeowners. In the words of Godfrey Lebhar, writing in 1963, "[t]he history of retailing reveals that every innovation in distribution methods has been opposed by those fearful of its impact on the existing order. Department stores, mail-order houses, house-to-house sellers and, most recently, the supermarkets, each in turn ran into more or less organized opposition."

Undoubtedly the most blatant attempt by local retailers to use state power to destroy competition was found in a 1938 congressional bill, introduced by Congressman Wright Patman. Popularly known as the chain store "death sentence" bill, the proposed legislation made use of John Marshall’s classic observation that "[t]he power to tax involves the power to destroy." The bill would have used Congress’ taxing powers to legally confiscate chain stores. The tax would have cost a chain $50 per store for a chain of ten stores, to $1,000 per store for chains with over five hundred stores. Such taxes would then have been multiplied by the number of states in which such chains operated! Had the measure become law, the A & P chain, which had earnings of just over $9 million in 1938, would have paid a federal tax of over $471 million! J.C. Penney, with 1938 earnings of over $13 million, would have paid over $63 million under this taxing measure. Woolworth’s with over $28 million in earnings, would have paid a tax of $81 million. The combined impact of this tax would have meant that the twenty-four largest chains would have accounted for almost 13% of the federal budget for 1938 while, at the same time, driving most of them out of business!

Trade associations representing independent retailers eagerly lined up to support this measure. Sunday closing laws, fair-trade laws, and anti–price-discrimination laws have also been endorsed by many retailers anxious to use state power to rid themselves of more efficient competitors. Legislation was also proposed, in 1922, by the National Association of Retail Grocers, to limit the number of chain stores that could do business in any community.

As retailing has evolved from downtown business districts to direct selling by manufacturers, then into suburban shopping malls, free-standing stores, mail-order businesses, and now Internet retailing; various retailing interests have endeavored to deprive upstart firms of their competitive advantages not by innovating new methods that would lower prices or increase the quality of their products or services, but by resorting to the powers of the state. One of the keenest observers of the incestuous relationship of business and government, John T. Flynn, stated, in 1928, that "most of the laws that control or hamper business have been passed – surprising as it may seem to those who clamor for ‘less government in business’ – at the demand of business itself." A Kansas farmer was more succinct in commenting upon the role business organizations have played in fostering government regulation: "I have heard more socialism preached at meetings of commercial bodies than in socialistic gatherings."

There are others who, having no direct economic interests at stake, still enlist in the crusade against Wal-Mart. I suspect that many of these people have business friends who are unable to maintain the competitive pace and are easily persuaded that Wal-Mart represents an unwholesome threat. I recall, as a youngster, my father lamenting the occasional "gas wars" among service stations, arguing that they were harmful to the public. When I asked him how people – such as himself – were harmed by being able to buy gasoline at lower prices, he dismissed my question with the "you’ll understand when you grow up" response for which parents are well known. Upon later reflection, I recalled that one of his close friends owned a service station, and I suspect that he was echoing his friend’s complaints.

There is a common ignorance in the world with which those of us who favor free market economic systems must continually contend. It is a point of view that cannot distinguish between legally unrestrained economic behavior in which people voluntarily choose to trade (or not) with one another, and a system in which economic life is regulated, licensed, taxed, or prohibited by the state. Such ignorance finds expression in the unfocused sentiment that "competition" for legally-defined business favors and restraints is just another manifestation of the "marketplace."

The history of government regulation of economic activity is replete with evidence of various interests – be they businesses, labor unions, or consumer groups – resorting to the coercive power of the state to obtain what they cannot obtain through the voluntary choices of others. The anti–Wal-Mart jihad is just the latest chapter in this sordid effort to convert the marketplace into a public utility. That the costs of such endeavors are to be paid by customers who will be "protected" by getting to shop at higher-priced stores, or by employees whose jobs might be eliminated by the demands of higher-priced workers, is of little import to the practitioners of neo-mercantilism.

The self-interest motivations of those who use state power to restrict the free choices of others – and the response rational minds ought to make to these sanctimonious campaigns – was well-illustrated in a report, many years ago, of a traveling photographer who was prosecuted, at the behest of local photographers, for violating a Wisconsin city’s "Green River" ordinance. As the local photographers sat in the courtroom to watch justice meted out to this interloper, the judge declared to them: "Here is a man with ambition enough to go out and try to get business. You ask me to fine him for it. You want the law to protect you while you sit around waiting for business to come your way. If I had the power, I would fine every one of you instead."

Now that’s a judicial opinion that would be worth reading!

[Anonymouse]

Capitalism, Happiness, and Beauty

by Ludwig von Mises

Posted June 18, 2004

[This article is an excerpt from The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, Mises's socio-psychological study of anti-market bias published by D. Van Nostrand Co (Princeton, NJ), 1956, with the British edition appearing the same year under London's Macmillan imprint. The book is available in text (click here) and in PDF (click here) at no charge, and in hard copy from the Mises Institute for $8 plus shipping. The entire text is made available here only through a leasing arrangement with Libertarian Press that is renewed on an annual basis at a fee. The Mises Institute provides it at no charge as part of its educational mission. To support the continued availability of this text and others at no charge, please contribute to the Mises Institute's work.]

Critics level two charges against capitalism: First, they say, that the possession of a motor car, a television set, and a refrigeraxtor does not make a man happy. Secondly, they add that there are still people who own none of these gadgxets. Both propositions are correct, but they do not cast blame upon the capitalistic system of social cooperation.

People do not toil and trouble in order to attain perfect hapxpiness, but in order to remove as much as possible some felt unxeasiness and thus to become happier than they were before. A man who buys a television set thereby gives evixdence to the efxfect that he thinks that the possession of this contrivance will inxcrease his well‑being and make him more content than he was without it. If it were otherwise, he would not have bought it. The task of the doctor is not to make the patient happy, but to remove his pain and to put him in better shape for the pursuit of the main concern of every living being, the fight against all facxtors pernicious to his life and ease.

It may be true that there are among Buddhist mendicants, living on alms in dirt and penury, some who feel perfectly happy and do not envy any nabob. However, it is a fact that for the immense majority of people such a life would appear unbearable. To them the impulse toward ceaselessly aiming at the improvexment of the external conditions of existence is inwrought. Who would presume to set an Asiatic beggar as an example to the avxerage American? One of the most rexmarkable achievements of capitalism is the drop in infant mortality. Who wants to deny that this phenomenon has at least removed one of the causes of many people’s unhappixness ?

No less absurd is the second reproach thrown upon capitalxism—namely, that technological and therapeutical innovaxtions do not benefit all people. Changes in human conditions are brought about by the pioneering of the cleverest and most enxergetic men. They take the lead and the rest of manxkind follows them little by little. The innovation is first a luxury of only a few people, until by degrees it comes into the reach of the many. It is not a sensible objection to the use of shoes or of forks that they spread only slowly and that even today millions do without them. The dainty ladies and gentlemen who first began to use soap were the harxbingers of the big‑scale production of soap for the common man. If those who have today the means to buy a telexvision set were to abstain from the purchase because some peoxple cannot afford it, they would not further, but hinder, the popuxlarization of this contrivance.*

Again there are grumblers who blame capitalism for what they call its mean materialism. They cannot help admitting that capitalism has the tendency to improve the material conxditions of mankind. But, they say, it has diverted men from the higher and nobler pursuits. It feeds the bodies, but it starves the souls and the minds. It has brought about a decay of the arts. Gone are the days of the great poets, painters, sculptors and architects. Our age produces merely trash.

The judgment about the merits of a work of art is entirely subjective. Some people praise what others disdain. There is no yardstick to measure the aesthetic worth of a poem or of a building. Those who are delighted by the cathedral of Chartres and the Meninas of Velasquez may think that those who remain unaffected by these marvels are boors. Many students are bored to death when the school forces them to read Hamlet. Only people who are endowed with a spark of the artistic mentality are fit to appreciate and to enjoy the work of an artist.

Among those who make pretense to the appellation of eduxcated men there is much hypocrisy. They put on an air of conxnoisseurship and feign enthusiasm for the art of the past and artists passed away long ago. They show no similar sympathy for the contemporary artist who still fights for recognition. Disxsembled adoration for the Old Masters is with them a means to disparage and ridicule the new ones who deviate from traditional canons and create their own.

John Ruskin will be remembered—together with Carlyle, the Webbs, Bernard Shaw and some others—as one of the gravedigxgers of British freedom, civilization and prosperity. A wretched character in his private no less than in his public life, he glorified war and bloodshed and fanatically slanxdered the teachings of political economy which he did not understand. He was a bigxoted detractor of the market econxomy and a romantic eulogist of the guilds. He paid homage to the arts of earlier centuries. But when he faced the work of a great living artist, Whistler, he disxpraised it in such foul and objurgatory language that he was sued for libel and found guilty by the jury. It was the writings of Ruskin that popularized the prejudice that capitalism, apart from being a bad economic system, has substituted ugliness for beauty, pettiness for grandeur, trash for art.

As people widely disagree in the appreciation of artistic achievements, it is not possible to explode the talk about the artistic inferiority of the age of capitalism in the same apoxdictic way in which one may refute errors in logical reasonxing or in the establishment of facts of experience. Yet no sane man would be insolent enough as to belittle the granxdeur of the artistic exxploits of the age of capitalism.

The preeminent art of this age of "mean materialism and money‑making" was music. Wagner and Verdi, Berlioz and Bizet, Brahms and Bruckner, Hugo Wolf and Mahler, Pucxcini and Richard Strauss, what an illustrious cavalcade! What an era in which such masters as Schumann and Donizetti were overxshadowed by still superior genius!

Then there were the great novels of Balzac, Flaubert, Mauxpassant, Jens Jacobsen, Proust, and the poems of Victor Hugo, Walt Whitman, Rilke, Yeats. How poor our lives would be if we had to miss the work of these giants and of many other no less sublime authors.

Let us not forget the French painters and sculptors who taught us new ways of looking at the world and enjoying light and color.

Nobody ever contested that this age has encouraged all branches of scientific activities. But, say the grumblers, this was mainly the work of specialists while "synthesis" was lacking. One can hardly misconstrue in a more absurd way the teachings of modern mathematics, physics and biology. And what about the books of philosophers like Croce, Bergxson, Husserl and Whitehead?

Each epoch has its own character in its artistic exploits. Imitation of masterworks of the past is not art; it is routine. What gives value to a work is those features in which it differs from other works. This is what is called the style of a period.

In one respect the eulogists of the past seem to be justified. The last generations did not bequeath to the future such monuxments as the pyramids, the Greek temples, the Gothic cathedrals and the churches and palaces of the Renaissance and the Baroque. In the last hundred years many churches and even cathexdrals were built and many more government palaces, schools and libraries. But they do not show any original conception; they rexflect old styles or hybridize divers old styles. Only in apartment houses, office buildings and private homes have we seen somexthing develop that may be qualified as an architectural style of our age. Although it would be mere pedantry not to appreciate the peculiar granxdeur of such sights as the New York skyline, it can be adxmitted that modern architecture has not attained the distinction of that of past centuries.

The reasons are various. As far as religious buildings are concerned, the accentuated conservatism of the churches shuns any innovation. With the passing of dynasties and aristocracies, the impulse to construct new palaces disapxpeared. The wealth of entrepreneurs and capitalists is, whatxever the anticapitalistic demagogues may fable, so much inferior to that of kings and princes that they cannot indulge in such luxurious construction. No one is today rich enough to plan such palaces as that of Verxsailles or the Escorial. The orders for the construction of govxernment buildings do no longer emanate from despots who were free, in defiance of public opinion, to choose a master whom they themselves held in esteem and to sponsor a project that scandalized the dull majority. Committees and councils are not likely to adopt the ideas of bold pioneers. They prefer to range themxselves on the safe side.

There has never been an era in which the many were prexpared to do justice to contemporary art. Reverence to the great authors and artists has always been limited to small groups. What characterizes capitalism is not the bad taste of the crowds, but the fact that these crowds, made prosperxous by capitalism, became "consumers" of literature—of course, of trashy literaxture. The book market is flooded by a downpour of trivial ficxtion for the semibarbarians. But this does not prevent great auxthors from creating imperishable works.

The critics shed tears on the alleged decay of the indusxtrial arts. They contrast, e.g., old furniture as preserved in the castles of European aristocratic families and in the collections of the museums with the cheap things turned out by big‑scale producxtion. They fail to see that these collectors’ items were made exxclusively for the well-to-do. The carved chests and the intarsia tables could not be found in the misxerable huts of the poorer strata. Those caviling about the inexpensive furniture of the American wage earner should cross the Rio Grande del Norte and inspect the abodes of the Mexican peons which are devoid of any furniture. When modern industry began to provide the masses with the paraxphernalia of a better life, their main conxcern was to produce as cheaply as possible without any regard to aesthetic values. Later, when the progress of capitalism had raised the masses’ standard of living, they turned step by step to the fabrication of things which do not lack refinement and beauty. Only romantic prepossession can induce an observer to ignore the fact that more and more citizens of the capitalistic countries live in an environment which cannot be simply disxmissed as ugly.

http://www.mises.org/fullstory.asp?control=1535

[Anonymouse]

What Is the Free Market, and Who Cares?

by Butler Shaffer

If we tried to manage our biological functions by the same logic we insist upon for governing our social lives, each of us would be dead within a matter of minutes. Our respiratory, circulatory, digestive, intellectual, immune systems, and various other bodily activities interact, spontaneously, to maintain our physical existence. What if we were dumb enough to want to take this on as a conscious, regulatory process, with our mind having to intentionally inhale and exhale, pump blood, remove waste byproducts, digest food, and perform other functions that are accomplished by a body unencumbered by intellectual hubris? Such conscious decision-making would be an endless process, without any breaks for sleep, pleasure, or any other act save trying to stay alive. Anyone who tried to live in such a manner might survive for three or four minutes, but I doubt if it would be much longer.

Though all of us can see both the pointlessness and the danger of such an undertaking, most of us fail to see the dysfunctional nature of applying this same premise to our social conduct. We recognize that our conscious mind would quickly destroy us if it endeavored to override the spontaneous order that our heart and lungs exhibit in supplying us with oxygen, but most of us still imagine that we require the conscious direction of political regulators to make our social lives function well.

Nowhere is this confusion more evident than in our awareness – or lack thereof – of how we provide for our economic needs. While experience may be enough to demonstrate that our body’s physical needs can best be realized by respecting the spontaneous order of our biological system, most of us fail to see how our material needs for goods and services can be satisfied without the conscious direction of some authority.

Considering that we are innately self-interest motivated people who, at base, define such interests in material terms; and further considering that our material well-being is dependent upon an understanding of economic systems, one would expect us to have a fierce insistence on a clarity of thinking in such matters. Political systems, schools, business organizations, and many intellectuals – each pursuing their special interests - have helped condition us to think that our economic well-being is dependent on the political supervision of the marketplace. So inbred is this idea that, for most people, economic behavior is the interplay of business and government forces, with the state existing to protect the interests of consumers, workers, and other so-called "little guys."

When it comes to understanding the nature of economic systems, most of us are like bumpkins at the state fair midway who have been swindled out of our egg money by sharpies peddling tin watches as solid gold. We have bought into a lot of unexamined nonsense about a system whose workings are central to our living well. What we fail to understand is that our inability to distinguish between market-driven and politically-driven economic systems can be as detrimental to our well-being as the failure to distinguish between the breathing in of oxygen and chlorine gas.

Just how far-reaching is the failure to make such distinctions was brought home to me in a two-day period. My previous article – critical of the holy crusade many have launched against Wal-Mart stores – evoked a great deal of unfocused, irrational anger from people whose reactions unwittingly confirmed the very point I was making. A few perceptive readers correctly pointed out that many businesses make use of government coercion (e.g., powers of eminent domain, government bond measures, free governmental services for which others must pay, etc.), and that such practices are inconsistent with a free market. I could not agree more and, perhaps, I too quickly assumed that LRC readers would not have to be reminded of this distinction.

Some accused Wal-Mart of making use of such political tools. I do not know whether this accusation is true but, if it is, the company is to be criticized for that, not for having the gall to come into a community and daring to compete with established retailing interests. It is the war on the marketplace - and upon an unrestricted freedom of entry by competitors that disciplines the market – that underlies the anti-Wal-Mart jihad. When I read newspaper articles telling of distraught townsfolk descending upon city hall to demand an end to the powers of eminent domain and political subsidies, I will reconsider my critique of the Wal-Mart bashers.

The best evidence for the productive superiority of the marketplace is that it has provided a lot of foolish people with spare time to condemn the very system that has created this luxury. Environmentalists, socialists, labor unionists, animal rights advocates, and others can always be counted upon to attack a self-interest-driven spontaneous system that produces goods and services none of us could have accomplished on our own. Our material well-being far exceeds that of our hunting-and-gathering ancestors because we learned to freely cooperate and exchange with one another. I do suspect that, along the way, there were some primordial tribesmen of socialistic persuasion condemning those who were more adept at picking beetles off trees or digging grub-worms from the ground! The descendants of such pre-Luddites can be found in city halls across America, urging state violence against Wal-Mart and other businesses of which they disapprove.

In the interest of historical accuracy, it must be noted that small, independently-owned businesses have come and gone without any prodding from chain stores. I recall a number of successful, family-owned firms in the city in which I was raised that were sold, upon the deaths of their founders, by the children (or grandchildren) who were not interested in continuing their operation. The families sold these businesses to larger chain operations in order to invest in other endeavors. They were not forced out of business by some imagined "predatory" practices!

After my Wal-Mart article appeared, I received an e-mail from an independent retailer in the rural Midwest. He and his wife own and operate two women’s clothing stores, and rank in the top three percent in the nation in annual sales for their line of retailing. They have done this even in the presence of a Wal-Mart Supercenter, whose five year existence, he informs me, has not led to the closure of a single pharmacy, grocery, or small retailing business in that town. According to this man, stores have closed in nearby towns, even in the absence of Wal-Mart. Such closings have always been part of the history of retailing for reasons unrelated to the presence of chain-stores. Wal-Mart and other chains have also closed down in various communities. As a board member of his state’s retailers association, this merchant has publicly chided his colleagues who seek to punish Wal-Mart through legislative means. "Wal-Mart is a great company," he told his fellow retailers, and "I’m willing to earn my living by competing with it, not by whining or crying foul." There is hope for the future of American commerce and industry if attitudes such as this can become more prominent.

continued...

http://www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer76.html

[Anonymouse]

The Rules By Which We Live

by Tibor R. Machan

[Posted October 18, 2004]

Classical liberals and libertarians, especially those who admire the works of the famous legal theorists and economist F.A. Hayek, are fond of pointing out that a free society requires the rule of law.

Others, critical of this political tradition, note, however, that laws rule most societies, many of them quite tyrannical, so the rule of law has no bearing on a society’s being free. Mises quipped in 1929: "No wonder that all who have had something new to offer humanity have had nothing good to say of the state or its laws."

What might be the source of the close relationship alleged between free societies and the rule of law is that the only laws that can be applied uniformly and universally in society are the very few that aim to keep us free. Other so called laws are really just edicts from rulers, not bona fide laws, since they apply selectively, not equally to us all.

This goes back, in part, to natural law theory which is itself related to the role of laws in the natural world. Laws regulate everything of a certain kind, not just some such things. The laws of motion apply to all things movable; the laws of photosynthesis to all things that can undergo that organic chemical process. And so on and so forth.

The difference is that with natural laws as applied to human beings, laws do not automatically apply but serve as guidelines to choose successful actions and institutions. That is because we humans possess free will and can attempt to circumvent the laws that we ought to follow so as to succeed and live right as human beings. But otherwise these are still laws, only moral, ethical or political laws, not biological, chemical or physiological ones.

Apart from this aspect of laws that guide human conduct, namely, that they regulate voluntary action, such laws, too, need to be universal, applicable to all humans. Only those qualify as bona fide laws that apply universally, to all humans, not just to some based on certain peculiarities of the law maker(s) or those intended to be ruled by the edict(s).

But there are very few laws that really apply to us all—they are the ones mainly concerned with protecting our basic rights. The rule of law is then evident where very few such laws are upheld, where government is, therefore, limited to upholding them. That is what connects the rule of law so closely with the free society.

For example, no one ought to murder, rob, kidnap, or assault another person. These are universal principles of human conduct. They are, to use Kant’s terminology, categorically true for guiding human interaction, anytime, anywhere. However, that seatbelts ought to be worn is not universally true—there can be plenty of circumstances in which that is false. Or again, that 40% of one’s earnings ought to be paid to the legal authorities—that, too, lacks universality by a long shot, if it is ever true at all.

So, when such edicts are made into laws, despite the appearance that’s based on pomp and circumstance—being "signed into law," "entered into law books," etc.—they fail to amount to bona fide laws. They are bogus laws and will be widely resisted by those who realize this, who know that the edicts do not apply to them. These edicts will, thus, violate the principle of the rule of law.

Moreover, many, or most, of the "laws" we follow day to day are not enforced by government at all so making similar ones a province of government is really quite pointless. These are the rules that govern our workplaces, the bylaws of our clubs and associations and subdivisions, the standards enforced by the places we shop and the places we eat, etc. Well, as I’ve already noted, these are not even laws proper but rules that any manager of private realms would set down—that of, say, a tennis court or a swimming pool.

Many of the governmental edicts, in any case, are pseudo laws, rules that are annoying mainly because government has accrued to itself the sole, monopolistic authority to impose them on us—e.g., that first class mail must in all cases cost the same no matter where it goes, next door, or 3000 miles away.

Of course many perfectly good "laws"—actually rules—do not come from government. Many of the "laws" we follow are not really laws but rules, say, of the road, of using beaches, of attending schools. The only reason government is involved is that it has usurped its role by taking over these spheres in a rightly ordered universe.

As a result of the proliferation of pseudo laws, all bonafide laws, those that really ought to be obeyed by everyone, tend to lose their credibility. When the legal order treats drug or alcohol prohibition, or affirmative action mandates, along the same lines it treats the prohibition against murder and rape—when it equivocates between these two categories of edicts by calling both of them laws—it is natural for people to begin to see them both as merely conventional, just something those in power happen to wish to prohibit or mandate, not as something that ought to be obeyed.

One virtue of the classical liberal, libertarian idea of law is that it preserves the coherent, even reverent meaning of the concept "law" and does not water it down, thereby weakening its reputation and undermining its binding force.

[loseyourname]

Wow, you actually brought back one of your own threads.

[Anonymouse]

Yes, it is quite an intellectual thread.