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NOTE 4. Libertarian Applications to Current Problems: The Problems

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Part 2. Libertarian Applications to Current Problems

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Chapter 4. The Problems

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Let us take a brief look at the major problem areas of our society and see if we can detect any red thread that runs through all of them.

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High Taxes

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High and rising taxes have crippled almost everyone and are hampering productivity, incentives and thrift, as well as the free energies of the people.

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On the federal level there is a rising rebellion against the burden of income taxes, and there is a flourishing tax rebel movement with its own organizations and magazines which refuses to pay a tax which it regards as predatory and unconstitutional.

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On the state and local levels, there is a rising tide of sentiment against oppressive property taxes.

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Thus, a record 1.2 million California voters signed the petition for the Jarvis-Gann Initiative on the 1978 ballot,

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a proposal which would drastically and permanently lower property taxes by two-thirds to one percent

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and place ceilings upon the assessed value of the property.

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Furthermore, the Jarvis-Gann Initiative enforces the freeze by requiring the approval of two-thirds

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of all registered voters in the state of California to raise property taxes beyond the 1% ceiling.

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And to make sure that the state doesn't simply substitute some other tax, the initiative

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also requires a two-thirds vote by the state legislature to increase any other tax in the

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state.

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Furthermore, in the fall of 1977, scores of thousands of homeowners in Cook County, Illinois engaged in a tax strike against the property tax, which had increased dramatically due to higher assessments.

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It need hardly be emphasized that taxation, of income, property or whatever, is the exclusive monopoly of government.

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Government, Urban Fiscal Crisis, New York City has already

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Vietnam and Other Foreign Interventions

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The war in Vietnam was a total disaster for American foreign policy.

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After countless people were murdered and the land devastated, and at an enormous cost in

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resources, the American-supported government finally collapsed in early 1975.

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The disaster of the Vietnam War has properly called the rest of America's interventionist

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foreign policy into severe question, and was partly responsible for Congress's putting

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A Break on U.S. Military Intervention in the Angolan Fiasco.

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Foreign policy, of course, is also an exclusive monopoly of the federal government.

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The war was waged by our armed forces, which, again, are a compulsory monopoly of the same

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federal government.

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So the government is wholly responsible for the entire war and foreign policy problem,

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as a whole and in all of its aspects.

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Crime in the Streets Consider, the crime in question is being committed

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by definition on the streets.

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The streets are owned almost universally by government, which thereby has a virtual monopoly

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of street ownership.

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The police, who are supposed to guard us against this crime, are a compulsory monopoly of the

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and the courts, which are in the business of convicting and punishing criminals, are also a coercive monopoly of the government.

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So, government has been in charge of every single aspect of the crime in the streets problem.

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The failure here, just as the failure in Vietnam, must be chalked up solely to government.

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Traffic congestion.

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Once again, this occurs solely on government-owned streets and roads.

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The Military-Industrial Complex.

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This complex is entirely a creature of the federal government.

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It is the government that decides to spend countless billions on overkill weaponry.

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It is the government that hands out contracts, the government that subsidizes inefficiency

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through cost plus guarantees, the government that builds plants and leases or gives them

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outright to contractors.

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Of course, the businesses involved lobby for these privileges, but it is only through government

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that the mechanism for this privilege and this wasteful misallocation of resources can

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possibly exist.

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Transportation The crisis of transportation involves not only

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Airlines are cartelized through regulation by the Civil Aeronautics Board and subsidized

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through such regulation, mail contracts and virtually free airports.

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Airports for commercial lines are all owned by branches of the government, largely local.

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The New York City subways have been government-owned for decades.

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River Pollution The rivers are, in effect, unowned.

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That is, they have been kept as public domain, owned by government.

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Furthermore, by far the biggest culprits in water pollution are the municipally owned

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sewage disposal systems.

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Again, government is at the same time the largest polluter as well as the careless owner

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of the resource.

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Water Shortages Water shortages are chronic in some areas of

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of the country, and intermittent in others, such as New York City.

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Yet the government, one, via its ownership of the public domain, owns the rivers from

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which much of the water comes.

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And two, as virtually the only commercial supplier of water, the government owns the

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reservoirs and water conduits.

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Air pollution.

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Again, the government, as owner of the public domain, owns the air.

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Furthermore, it has been the courts, owned solely by the government, which, as an act

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of deliberate policy, have for generations failed to protect our property rights in our

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bodies and orchards from the pollution generated by industry.

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Moreover, much of the direct pollution comes from government-owned plants.

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Power Shortages and Blackouts Throughout the land, state and local governments

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Governments have created compulsory monopolies of gas and electric power and have granted

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these monopoly privileges to private utility companies, which are then regulated and have

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their rates set by government agencies to ensure a permanent and fixed profit.

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Again, government has been the source of the monopoly and the regulation.

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Telephone Service Increasingly failing telephone service comes,

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Postal Service

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Postal Service

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Suffering from heavy deficits throughout its existence, the Postal Service, in stark contrast

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to the goods and services produced by private industry on the free market, has become steadily

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higher in price and lower in quality.

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The mass of the public, using first-class mail, has been forced to subsidize businesses

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using second- and third-class services.

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Again, the post office has been, since the late 19th century, a compulsory monopoly of government.

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Whenever private firms have been allowed to compete, even illegally, in delivery of mail, they have invariably provided better service at a lower price.

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Television. Television consists of bland programs and distorted news.

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News, Radio and Television Channels have been nationalized for half a century by the Federal

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Government, which grants channels as a gift to privileged licensees, and can and does

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withdraw these gifts when a station displeases the government's Federal Communications Commission.

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How can any genuine freedom of speech or of the press exist under such conditions?

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Welfare, of course, is exclusively the province of government, largely state and local.

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Urban Housing

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Along with traffic, one of our most conspicuous urban failures, yet there are few other industries

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that have been so closely intertwined with government.

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Urban planning has controlled and regulated the cities.

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Housing laws have ringed housing and land use with innumerable restrictions.

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Property taxes have crippled urban development and forced abandonment of houses.

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Building codes have restricted housing construction and made it more costly.

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Urban renewal has provided massive subsidies to real estate developers, forced the bulldozing

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of apartments and rental stores, lowered the supply of housing and intensified racial discrimination.

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Extensive government loans have generated overbuilding in the suburbs.

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Rent controls have created apartment shortages and reduced the supply of residential housing.

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Union Strikes and Restrictions Unions have become a nuisance with power to

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cripple the economy, but only as a result of numerous special privileges afforded by

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Education

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Once as revered and sacrosanct in American opinion as motherhood or the flag, the public

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Public school in recent years has come under widespread attack from all parts of the political

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spectrum.

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Even its supporters would not presume to maintain that the public schools actually teach much

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of anything.

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And we have recently seen extreme cases in which the actions of the public schools have

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motivated a violent reaction in such widely different areas as South Boston and Kanawha

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County, West Virginia.

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The public schools, of course, are totally owned and operated by state and local government,

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with considerable assist and coordination from the federal level.

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The public schools are backed up by compulsory attendance laws, which force all children

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through high school age to attend school, either public or private schools certified

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by governmental authorities.

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Fair education, too, has become closely intertwined with government in recent decades.

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Many universities are government-owned, and the others are systematic receivers of grants,

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subsidies and contracts.

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Inflation and Stagflation

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The United States, as well as the rest of the world, has been suffering for many years

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from chronic and accelerating inflation, an inflation accompanied by high unemployment

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and persisting through severe as well as mild recessions, stagflation.

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An explanation of these unwelcome phenomena will be presented below.

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Here let it be said that the root cause is in a continuing expansion of the money supply,

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a compulsory monopoly of the federal government.

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Anyone who presumes to compete with the government's issuing of money goes to jail for counterfeiting.

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A vital part of the nation's money supply is issued as checkbook money by the banking

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system, which in turn is under total control by the Federal Government and its Federal

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Reserve System.

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Watergate Finally, and not least, is the entire traumatic

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syndrome suffered by Americans known as Watergate.

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What Watergate has meant is a total desanctifying of the President and of such previously sacrosanctified

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and of a widespread and well-justified lack of trust in all politicians and all government officials.

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The establishment has often bemoaned this new pervasive lack of trust, but has not been able to restore the naive public faith of pre-Watergate days.

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The liberal historian Cecilia Kenyon once chastised the anti-Federalists, the defenders of the Articles of Confederation and opponents of the Constitution, as being men of little faith in the institutions of government.

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One suspects that she would not be quite so naive if she were writing that article in the post-Watergate era.

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Watergate, of course, is purely and totally a governmental phenomenon.

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The president is the chief executive of the federal government.

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The plumbers were his instrument, and the FBI and the CIA are governmental agencies as well.

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And it is, quite understandably, faith and trust in government that was shattered by Watergate.

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If we look around, then, at the crucial problem areas of our society, the areas of crisis and failure,

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we find in each and every case a red thread marking and uniting them all, the thread of government.

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In every one of these cases, government either has totally run or heavily influenced the activity.

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John Kenneth Galbraith, in his best-selling The Affluent Society, recognized that the government sector was the focus of our social failure,

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but drew instead the odd lesson that therefore still more funds and resources must be diverted from the private to the public sector.

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He thereby ignored the fact that the role of government in America, federal, state and local, has expanded enormously, both absolutely and proportionately in this century and especially in recent decades.

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Unfortunately, Galbraith never once raised the question, is there something inherent in government operation and activity, something which creates the very failures which we see abounding?

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We shall investigate some of the major problems of government and of liberty in this country,

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see where the failures come from, and propound the solutions of the new libertarianism.