The Immorality of Big Government

Every one of us should take to heart what they believe and why they believe it and they should know how to defend what those beliefs are intelligently.

Whenever we are confronted by a particular philosophy or behavior or policy the morality of the position should be validated by comparison of the contents to the facts of reality. The first question you should ask yourself is does it have value in the real world? Using real world criteria is important because consequences, intended and unintended, are very real. Decisions based on emotionalism or on what one wishes as an outcome without deriving their conclusions based on facts, logic, and from antecedent knowledge are likely doomed scenarios. These scenarios often explode out of control when faced with independent reality and can come with costly unintended consequences.

In order to judge a moral philosophy from an immoral one, start by asking yourself is there value and why do I need it? A “value” is something that one acts to gain or keep. This value is both desirable and ethical and it is solely based on action. The process of obtaining the value is called virtue. In order for something to be valuable it must be virtuous meaning it takes rational action to gain it or keep it. It must advance the conditions needed for mans survival. Man’s survival isn’t just the perpetuation of the species but the perpetuation of man living a rational life as a sovereign being.

Let’s put this into context. Start with the simplest premise of man’s survival, which is freedom. In order to preserve freedom man must first define what it is and how it is implemented.

Freedom is best expressed as the freedom to think independently and act rationally on those thoughts. Freedom is implemented through property rights—property is the fruit of one’s labor, wealth is property. The cornerstone of freedom is laissez-faire ownership of the fruits of one’s own productive efforts. From this one can judge the morality of any philosophy whether altruistic in nature i.e. centralized government, socialized medicine, the welfare state, or any other philosophy big or small, liberal or conservative, authoritarian or anarchist.

Armed with this knowledge you can defend your beliefs from a position of moral superiority. From here it is just a matter of expanding your knowledge on the various subjects.

Freedom is delicate and many people don’t realize how many freedoms they have already lost, how many encroachments there have been upon their property rights. In order to maintain freedom government must be kept to its proper role.

The fundamental threat to freedom is the power to coerce. And the biggest threat comes from a concentration of centralized power. The immoralists dedicated to the proliferation of their immoral agenda would rather see power centralized in one location, for example, power at the state level rather than at the municipal level. They prefer to see centralized power at the federal level than at the state level. This allows them to control legislation that they deem necessary for the benefit of the public rather that be a transfer of money from the rich to the poor or from the private sector to the government. Concentrated power in one central location, in this case Washington, opposes a society dedicated to freedom.

I have already blogged on the proper role of government so I’ll only briefly describe the tenants of a moral government here which is to protect man from the coercion of other men. To do this government has a moral obligation to provide national defense against foreign enemies and to provide domestic law enforcement to protect men from criminals. They also have the moral obligation to protect the sanctity of contracts between men from unlawful breeches by force or fraud. To these ends does government protect man’s life and his sovereignty?

Freedom isn’t always safe because freedom cannot guarantee success it can only provide the opportunities and incentives. Freedom comes with risks, it doesn’t only provide the opportunities to succeed but it is also the freedom to fail. For this reason some people oppose freedom preferring safety afforded by a paternal government instead.

It is often necessary to change a definition of a term to make an immoral idea seem innocuous or even favorable to further the agenda. Be watchful for changes in nomenclature and catch phrases like “fairness”. Remember “fairness” implemented as an anti-discriminatory credit practice for low income borrowers was a major contributor to the housing crisis. Forcing lenders to put low income applicants with poor credit histories on the same level playing field as a high income earner with good credit in the name of equality had devastating consequences in the real world…Just one example (among many) of the unintended consequences of an irrational feel good idea.

Proponents of immoral authoritarian philosophies will also use subversive tactics to play upon one’s emotions, often using children or some other disadvantaged group to parley their message of why we need more government involvement—a concentration of power. In this example welfare and equality is the end that justifies any means necessary. Welfare and equality has become an alternative to freedom taking government out of the “moral” role of protecting people’s rights placing it into the aggressive role where the government partners with special interests to take things away form one group of people and give it to another.

When someone complains about this practice the immoralists use the argument by intimidation calling their opponents names such as “mean spirited” or “arrogant”, and other names to socially persecute and shame their detractors into silence. They use carefully crafted propaganda to promote their agenda and the legislative powers of government to force compliance.

Another deception is this misnomer that government can create wealth. The fact is government cannot create wealth. The government can give people jobs but those jobs are paid for by taxing people. These government created jobs destroy other jobs because if those people weren’t taxed, they would have spent or invested their money somewhere else. This spending and investing would help create new companies and help other companies to expand which would create new jobs and along with it wealth for a greater portion of society not just a few select people who receive government handouts at the expense of the tax payer. This is a prime example of how society is far better served by the private sector.

Another common ploy used by proponents of immoral philosophies against the free market is to decry the deplorable working conditions in the factories during the early stages of the industrial revolution as a critique against capitalism and an argument for regulation. Of course what isn’t mentioned is the higher standards of living made possible by those jobs. Why else would people abandon their meager living scratching at the dirt on rural farms and move to the cities to work in the factories? No one forced these folks to leave their farms and rural communities to seek work in the factories it was voluntary and they did so to improve their personal conditions. Still, compared to today’s standards those conditions were certainly poor, but the people who worked in those jobs were happy to have them and the conditions they worked under were certainly a step up from what they had previously.

Does capitalism support better working conditions? Free unfettered competition certainly does. As companies compete for the best and brightest and most productive workers salaries increase, bonuses and benefits increase and so do improvements in working conditions.

An example of this can bee seen today in underdeveloped countries where there is little regulation yet free trade has brought improvements to the standards of living for many people who profit form these factories moving to their shores. An immoralist might complain that the wage is too small putting a terrible burden on the worker ignoring that that same worker may have been jobless before or only made half of what he makes now. These higher wages have allowed parents to afford to send their kids to school which has effectually decreased child labor and increased the standards of living. In fact it has led to less human rights violations, not more, as the immoralists have argued.

Another deception is that laissez-faire capitalism is the cause of monopolies. It is government through anti-trust laws and subsidies that create monopolies, mediocrity, and higher costs for many goods and services. For example, the central pillar of our health care system, the “tax-subsidized, employer-based health care” where choice has all but been eliminated. Regulations by an over-centralized bureaucracy wrought with widespread inefficiency continue to destroy incentive, quality, innovation, and market power which limit the options available to the consumer and strips consumers of their power to negotiate individual plans or a la carte at lower prices.

What it really boils down too is that when government subsidizes an industry—or a group of people—besides creating a special interest, it completely disrupts the normal free market relationships between buyers and sellers of services. When that happens, accountability to the consumer is lost, quality suffers, and prices spin out of control.

The fundamental edict underlying every argument for governmental controls over what would otherwise be the free market is the lack of belief in freedom. Movement towards centralized control of economic activity is the road to becoming kept citizens because the free market acts as a buffer between political power and economic freedom. All these factors combine to chip away at the public’s confidence in the free markets opening the door even further to allow in political and economic totalitarianism.

Consider another false argument which is it’s the government’s responsibility to protect the poor from the rich.

I ask you, can Donald Trump come to your home and take your car? Can he force you to stay at one of his hotels? Can he confiscate a portion of your income against your will?

If you want Mr. Trump to provide you a service you have to pay him, and if he wants a service from you, he must pay you. He has no more power to take from you as you have to take from him without a mutual agreement. The same can be said about any rich businessman or industrialist.

Many of these tiresome arguments against capitalism and assaults on the wealthy are emotional arguments steeped in fear rather than on the facts of reality. As for pitting one group against another group such as the poor against the rich the constitution does not favor one over the other. Both the rich and the poor have the same constitutional protections. In other words a rich person has every right to his large estate as a poor person has a right to his small estate.

All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.
~~ Thomas Jefferson ~~ (1743–1826)

Today many in our society assume that, in a democracy, the party that wins the majority can vote themselves what ever they want, for example, free health care. Does the majority have the right to confiscate the incomes of the wealthy (or middle class for that matter) to give themselves relief? This is a perfect example of the majority oppressing the minority. Our constitutional government was set up precisely so this doesn’t happen. To advance the immoral philosophy of wealth redistribution is to destroy the very essence of property rights and stands in utter opposition to our constitutional republic fulfilling the words of Benjamin Franklin when he was asked after the constitutional convention in Philadelphia, “What form of government did you give us?” “A republic if you can keep it.”

Let me interject just one more thought: If you think the rich greedy capitalists prey upon the poor, what about the government? Excise taxes are disproportionately paid by the poor.

The bottom line in all this is there are only two means of human interaction, reason (moral) and force (immoral). Immoral power comes from compelling someone, through the use of force, to act against their will. If someone forces you to do something against your will it is a violation of your rights and is punishable by law. However, the immoralists have collectively banded together to get around the law by centralizing power and electing politicians who promise to force others (often targeting select groups of people) against their will to provide prosperity to the rest.

Government is the only authorized institution that can use force to make people act against their will. That is why the immoralists rely so much on government. The corollary is the more reliant people become on government the bigger and more powerful, more immoral, and forceful government becomes which inevitably leads to the destruction of the conditions necessary for mans survival as a rational sovereign being.

I guess you really can’t have your cake and eat it to. You can’t have concentrated central planning controlling everything from the financial markets to massive spending on a plethora of social programs and have freedom too. Throughout the history of the world these two concepts have proven to be incapable.

So the next time you hear someone advocating for bigger government or favoring more government spending, more government regulation, nationalizing banks, socializing medicine, or anytime you see government employing coercion against one person or group to provide something for another person or group (wealth redistribution) you can confidently identify these fallacious principles as immoral and call it what it is.