TGIF: On Fairness

Fairness and its synonyms are among the most abused words in English. By that I mean they are commonly manipulated for ideological ends. Wokeness has aggravated a situation that has existed for some time. What better way to score points for a political position than to declare that fairness demands it? The tactic puts the unprepared opponent on the back foot.

For example, people say it is unfair that some people have more than others. There are "haves" and "have-nots," although the latter phrase is either grossly exaggerated or outright dishonest. By and large, Americans are the richest people who have ever lived, and extreme poverty worldwide has declined from 90 percent to less than 10 percent in a dramatically short time.

At any rate, this condition of inequality, regardless of its explanation, is routinely thought to be unfair. Inequality of any kind—not just before the law or something similar—is "just not right."

But is it so?

Not If we see society and its division of labor as a large-scale decentralized cooperative wealth-creating effort. That's the global marketplace. In this light, income and wealth wealth and income inequality are certainly not prima facie unfair. For any large group of people, the contributions to wealth creation will vary widely. People differ in all sorts of ways, from mental agility and energy to ambition and disposition. Why wouldn't the rewards vary widely as well? Recall that when the government does not try to manipulate people, incomes and wealth are determined, not by a central decision-maker, but through countless marginal voluntary transactions. The parties agreed to transact, preferring what they received to what they gave up. There is no distribution until government comes on the scene.

In Human Action, Mises wrote:

In the market society direct compulsion and coercion are practiced only for the sake of preventing acts detrimental to social cooperation. For the rest individuals are not molested by the police power. The law-abiding citizen is free from the interference of jailers and hangmen. What pressure is needed to impel an individual to contribute his share to the cooperative effort of production is exercised by the price structure of the market. This pressure is indirect. It puts on each individual’s contribution a premium graduated according to the value which the consumers attach to this contribution. In rewarding the individual’s effort according to its value, it leaves to everybody the choice between a more or less complete utilization of his own faculties and abilities. This method cannot, of course, eliminate the disadvantages of inherent personal inferiority. But it provides an incentive to everybody to exert his faculties and abilities to the utmost. [Emphasis added.]

That certainly is reasonable, but many people reject this perspective. They need to ask themselves what the alternative is (besides equal poverty). Those critics suffer the delusion that no connection exists between production and so-called distribution. John Stuart Mill unfortunately believed this. But that cannot be. If the state expropriates the wealth of producers in Period A, they can hardly be expected to remain vulnerable to expropriation in Period B and beyond. Even an increase in top income-tax rates prompt strategies (legal and illegal) to pay less tax. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

Does a fairer alternative to the market economy exist? Mises went on:

The only alternative to this [above-mentioned] financial pressure as exercised by the market is direct pressure and compulsion as exercised by the police power. The authorities must be entrusted with the task of determining the quantity and quality of work that each individual is bound to perform. As individuals are unequal with regard to their abilities, this requires an examination of their personalities on the part of the authorities. The individual becomes an inmate of a penitentiary, as it were, to whom a definite task is assigned. If he fails to achieve what the authorities have ordered him to do, he is liable to punishment.

In other words, everyone is potentially subject to physical force, not because he aggressed against persons or property, but because he failed to fulfill the social engineers' plans. This does not make for a decent society.

We have not fully reached that point yet in America because the market is still "allowed" to operate to a significant extent. But for many intellectuals and activists, America still has too much market freedom; they would quash what is left. They don't like that "impersonal market forces"—that is, persons who freely choose with whom to do business—determine wealth and income ultimately according to the producers' ability to please consumers. The anti-market parties would shut down the market economy if they could. Meanwhile, they'll settle for increasing political impediments to free action. Government control of nominal private property of the means of production is what Mussolini meant by fascism and corporatism.

The only choice is between price and police, Mises taught:

No system of the social division of labor can do without a method that makes individuals responsible for their contributions to the joint productive effort. If this responsibility is not brought about by the price structure of the market and the inequality of wealth and income it begets, it must be enforced by the methods of direct compulsion as practiced by the police.

The police? We shouldn't like the sound of that. As Mises, no anarchist, put it elsewhere in Human Action:

Government is in the last resort the employment of armed men, of policemen, gendarmes, soldiers, prison guards, and hangmen. The essential feature of government is the enforcement of its decrees by beating, killing, and imprisoning. Those who are asking for more government interference are asking ultimately for more compulsion and less freedom.

Another example of abuse of the term unfairness is that market competition is often thought to be unfair to the inferior competitors who lose out to superior competitors. Again, a key point is missed. An economy does not exist for competitors. People spontaneously generate the economic process because they want a variety of consumer goods in a world of scarcity and uncertainty—where choices must be made among alternative uses of resources and labor. It would be nice if all people could have everything at no expense, but we can't. Yet compare the modern world to previous eras.

Here's Mises on competition:

Catallactic [marketplace] competition must not be confused with prize fights and beauty contests. The purpose of such fights and contests is to discover who is the best boxer or the prettiest girl. The social function of catallactic competition is, to be sure, not to establish who is the smartest boy and to reward the winner by a title and medals. Its function is to safeguard the best satisfaction of the consumers attainable under the given state of the economic data.

Equality of opportunity is a factor neither in prize fights and beauty contests nor in any other field of competition, whether biological or social. The immense majority of people are by the physiological structure of their bodies deprived of a chance to attain the honors of a boxing champion or a beauty queen. Only very few people can compete on the labor market as opera singers and movie stars. The most favorable opportunity to compete in the field of scientific achievement is provided to the university professors. Yet, thousands and thousands of professors pass away without leaving any trace in the history of ideas and scientific progress, while many of the handicapped outsiders win glory through marvelous contributions.

Isn't that unfair? Equal opportunity, except in the sense of the abolition of legal impediments, is not an option. Under no circumstances could everyone have the same shot at a given position. But again, it's not producers but consumers who are center stage.

It is usual to find fault with the fact that catallactic competition is not open to everybody in the same way. The start is much more difficult for a poor boy than for the son of a wealthy man. But the consumers are not concerned about the problem of whether or not the men who shall serve them start their careers under equal conditions. Their only interest is to secure the best possible satisfaction of their needs.... They look at the matter from the point of view of social expediency and social welfare, not from the point of view of an alleged, imaginary, and unrealizable “natural” right of every individual to compete with equal opportunity. The realization of such a right would require placing at a disadvantage those born with better intelligence and greater will power than the average man. It is obvious that this would be absurd. [Emphasis added.]

Frédéric Bastiat said the same thing in the 19th century in demolishing the case for tariffs. Protectionists often defend their position by calling for a "level playing field" for all competitors, foreign and domestic. Yet in "Equalizing the Conditions of Production," a chapter in his Economic Sophisms, Bastiat set the record straight:

Here as elsewhere we find the advocates of protectionism taking the point of view of the producers; whereas we defend the cause of the unfortunate consumers, whom they absolutely refuse to take into consideration. The protectionists compare the field of industry to a race track. But at the race track, the race is at once
means and end. The public takes no interest in the contest aside from the contest itself. When you spur your horses on with the single end of learning which is the fastest runner, I agree that you should equalize their weights. But if your
end were getting an important and urgent piece of news to the winning post, would it be consistent for you to put obstacles in the way of the horse that had the best chance of getting there first? Yet that is what you protectionists do with respect to industry. You forget its desired result, which is man’s well-being; by dint of begging the question, you disregard this result and even go so far as to sacrifice it.

A key to the economic and pro-freedom way of thinking is to never take your eye off the consumer.

 

Economics and Everyday Life, 2

"[E]conomic relations constitute a machinery by which men devote their energies to the immediate accomplishment of each other's purposes in order to secure the ultimate accomplishment of their own, irrespective of what those purposes of their own may be, and therefore irrespective of the egoistic or altruistic nature of the motives which dictate them and which stimulate efforts to accomplish them. And the things and doings with which economic investigation is concerned will therefore be found to include everything which enters into the circle of exchange—that is to say, everything with which men can supply each other, or which men can do for each other, in what we may call an impersonal capacity; or, in other words, the things a man can give to or do for another independently of any personal and individualised sympathy with him or with his motives or reasons."

—Philip H. Wicksteed, The Commonsense of Political Economy, 1910

Economics and Everyday Life

"[T]he general principles which regulate our conduct in business are identical with those which regulate our deliberations, our selections between alternatives, and our decisions, in all other branches of life. And this is why we not only may, but must, take our ordinary experiences as the starting point for approaching economic problems. We must regard industrial and commercial life, not as a separate and detached region of activity, but as an organic part of our whole personal and social life; and we shall find the clue to the conduct of men in their commercial relations, not in the first instance amongst those characteristics wherein our pursuit of industrial objects differs from our pursuit of pleasure or of learning, or our efforts for some political and social ideal, but rather amongst those underlying principles of conduct and selection wherein they all resemble each other; for only so can we find the organic place of industry in our conception of life as a whole."

—Philip H. Wicksteed, The Commonsense of Political Economy, 1910

TGIF: "You Didn't Build That"

Remember Barack Obama's profound 2012 campaign speech about success? Here's part of what he said:

There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me -- because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t -- look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something -- there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed [!] you to thrive.  Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business—you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.

So we say to ourselves, ever since the founding of this country, you know what, there are some things we do better together.... We rise or fall together as one nation and as one people, and that’s the reason I’m running for President—because I still believe in that idea. You’re not on your own, we’re in this together.

Obama was no outlier. Plenty of people would be willing to give that speech today, maybe even Donald Trump.

Where to start? Obama said that he knows wealthy people who want to "give something back." Why? Presumably because of their wealth and success. That makes no sense. If these people made their wealth by producing attractive goods for consumers (which is how most wealthy people get wealthy), then what's to give back? We consumers did not give them money as a favor. We engaged in voluntary exchange. We gave up $X to get product Y because we prefer what we got to what we gave up. They benefitted and we benefitted. Double profit, double "thank you," as John Stossel says. That's how trade works when it's uncoerced. No debt; nothing to give back. End of.

Second, superstar entrepreneurs likely are smarter and more perceptive about the future state of the market than most other people. I doubt they go around bragging about it or minimizing the role of "good breaks." They surely know that things other than sheer intelligence figure into success. But let's not be unrealistically egalitarian about it. Some people are better suited to be entrepreneurs than others. Many of the outside factors that Obama named were also available to others. Why didn't those others succeed?

Next, what's this buncombe about all of us rising or falling together? When a business fails to satisfy us, it falls. Its owners, managers, and employees have to find other work. Its investors lose out. But the rest of us have not fallen. The failed businesses's material factors are now available to produce things we want. The discharged employees are now available to make other things we want. Where's the general failure? Obama spoke collectivist nonsense. Something does—or should—unite people, but it's not what Obama had in mind. They have a stake in a free society, that is, a society in which the government does not try to manage their lives and market relations.

The rest of the passage is Obama's elaboration of this thesis: "If you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own." Was he so ignorant of the case for laissez faire that he thought this was news for defenders of the unmolested market economy? Was he having a laugh? Ludwig von Mises, one of the 20th century's premier champions of individual freedom considered calling his economic treatise "Social Cooperation." That is the second most common phrase in Human Action, right behind "division of labor," which Mises sometimes called the "social division of labor."

So Obama was tackling the scrawniest of strawmen. He was being a demagogue. No market advocate ever suggested that lucrative businesses were built in isolated shacks in rural Montana. Businesses were always described as embedded in the complex network we call the market economy.

I modestly suggest that Obama and every one of his ilk read I, Pencil. That's Leonard E. Read's 1958 essay explaining why no one person can make something as commonplace as a pencil. On the contrary, it takes incredibly complex worldwide cooperation, and it happens without a central authority. The price system, rooted in private property in the factors of production and in trade, directs the myriad self-interested activities that entrepreneurs, under no one's orders, combine to produce the pencil. No kidding. I. Pencil was written three years before Obama was born. Read, founder of the Foundation for Economic Education, had a different lesson in mind from Obama's ignorant message. The former president had a collectivist, interventionist message. Read's was an individualist, free-market message. Read for the win.

Obama named particular things, such as the internet, which got started or built under government auspices. But, as usual, he overlooks what is not seen. (Also see "I, Website.") Obama thinks that if the government does not do something, it does not get done. But if the government did not build roads, bridges, airports, ports, schools, and the internet, would those things never have come into being? That's beggars belief. We know it's not true. People privately built public infrastructure before the government did. It didn't happen "on its own." Profit-seeking individuals and their free associations made it happen.

Businesses that relied on the infrastructure paid for its services. "Take what you want, said God, and pay for it," the Spanish proverb says. That's the market; no need for coercion. Why the mystery? Obama ignored all of the amazing things that free and private enterprise has created over the centuries, not without any assistance, but without government assistance. If he knows better, he's a demagogue.

Here's how Ludwig von Mises addressed the issue in Human Action in 1949, long before Obama  was born (but the year I was born):

The interventionists and the socialists contend that all commodities are turned out by a social process of production. When this process comes to an end and its fruits ripen, a second social process, that of distribution of the yield, follows and allots a share to each. The characteristic feature of the capitalist order is that the shares allotted are unequal. Some people—the entrepreneurs, the capitalists, and the landowners—appropriate to themselves more than they should. Accordingly, the portions of other people are curtailed. Government should by rights expropriate the surplus of the privileged and distribute it among the underprivileged.

Now in the market economy this alleged dualism of two independent processes, that of production and that of distribution, does not exist. There is only one process going on. Goods are not first produced and then distributed. There is no such thing as an appropriation of portions out of a stock of ownerless goods. The products come into existence as somebody’s property. If one wants to distribute them, one must first confiscate them. It is certainly very easy for the governmental apparatus of compulsion and coercion to embark upon confiscation and expropriation. But this does not prove that a durable system of economic affairs can be built upon such confiscation and expropriation.

Before the interventionists dispense more advice, they might learn some economics.

 

Taking It for Granted

"Capitalism, says Marx, unthinkingly repeating the fables of the eulogists of the Middle Ages, has an inevitable tendency to impoverish the workers more and more. The truth is that capitalism has poured a horn of plenty upon the masses of wage earners who frequently did all they could to sabotage the adoption of those innovations which render their life more agreeable. How uneasy an American worker would be if he were forced to live in the style of a medieval lord and to miss the plumbing facilities and the other gadgets he simply takes for granted!" —Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

The Miracle of Mass Production

"The fact that my fellow man wants to acquire shoes as I do, does not make it harder for me to get shoes, but easier." —Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Shame on You, Socialists

American socialists not only pit workers against entrepreneurs; they also pit rich American workers against the poor workers of the rest of the world. Shame on you, socialists!

The Value of Selfishness

"The welfare school pretends not only to stand for the interests of the whole of society as against the selfish interests of profit-seeking business; it contends moreover that it takes into account the lasting secular interests of the nation as against the short-term concerns of speculators, promoters, and capitalists who are exclusively committed to profiteering and do not bother about the future of the whole of society. This second claim is, of course, irreconcilable with the emphasis laid by the school upon short-run policies as against long-run concerns. However, consistency is not one of the virtues of the welfare doctrinaires. Let us for the sake of argument disregard this contradiction in their statements and examine them without reference to their inconsistency.

"Saving, capital accumulation, and investment withhold the amount concerned from current consumption and dedicate it to the improvement of future conditions. The saver foregoes the increase in present satisfaction in order to improve his own well-being and that of his family in the more distant future. His intentions are certainly selfish in the popular connotation of the term. But the effects of his selfish conduct are beneficial to the lasting secular interests of the whole of society as well as of all its members. His conduct produces all those phenomena to which even the most bigoted welfare propagandist attributes the epithets economic improvement and progress....

"The welfare propagandist, it is true, raises two objections. First, that the individual’s motive is selfishness, while the government is imbued with good intentions. Let us admit for the sake of argument that individuals are devilish and rulers angelic. But what counts in life and reality is—in spite of what Kant said to the contrary—not good intentions, but accomplishments. What makes the existence and the evolution of society possible is precisely the fact that peaceful cooperation under the social division of labor in the long run best serves the selfish concerns of all individuals. The eminence of the market society is that its whole functioning and operation is the consummation of this principle."

—Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Mises on Equality and Inequality

"The liberal champions of equality under the law were fully aware of the fact that men are born unequal and that it is precisely their inequality that generates social cooperation and civilization. Equality under the law was in their opinion not designed to correct the inexorable facts of the universe and to make natural inequality disappear. It was, on the contrary, the device to secure for the whole of mankind the maximum of benefits it can derive from it. Henceforth no man-made institutions should prevent a man from attaining that station in which he can best serve his fellow citizens."

—Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

TGIF: Police-State Progressives

Progressives see themselves as, well, progressive. But they aren't. Even at their best, in opposing the national security state, they support massive government power in other realms of life. At heart they are social engineers. They seek a "moral equivalent of war," that is, regimentation without bloodshed. They are even anti-democratic when it suits them.

We can see all of this through the eyes of Ludwig von Mises. This is from his book Planned Chaos (1947; free audiobook here). Mises, of course, championed the unhampered market economy, or laissez-faire capitalism. He wrote:

In the market economy the consumers are supreme. Their buying and their abstention from buying ultimately determine what the entrepreneurs produce and in what quantity and quality. It determines directly the prices of the consumers' goods and indirectly the prices of all producers' goods, viz., labour and material factors of production. It determines the emergence of profits and losses and the formation of the rate of interest. It determines every individual's income. The focal point of the market economy is the market, i.e., the process of the formation of commodity prices, wage rates and interest rates and their derivatives, profits and losses. It makes all men in their capacity as producers responsible to the consumers. This dependence is direct with entrepreneurs, capitalists, farmers and professional men, and indirect with people working for salaries and wages. The market adjusts the efforts of all those engaged in supplying the needs of the consumers to the wishes of those for whom they produce, the consumers. It subjects production to consumption.

The Worker as Free Person

"In the market economy the worker sells his services as other people sell their commodities. The employer is not the employee’s lord. He is simply the buyer of services which he must purchase at their market price. Of course, like every other buyer an employer too can take liberties. But if he resorts to arbitrariness in hiring or discharging workers, he must foot the bill. An employer or an employee entrusted with the management of a department of an enterprise is free to discriminate in hiring workers, to fire them arbitrarily, or to cut down their wages below the market rate. But in indulging in such arbitrary acts he jeopardizes the profitability of his enterprise or his department and thereby impairs his own income and his position in the economic system. In the market economy such whims bring their own punishment. The only real and effective protection of the wage earner in the market economy is provided by the play of the factors determining the formation of prices. The market makes the worker independent of arbitrary discretion on the part of the employer and his aides. The workers are subject only to the supremacy of the consumers as their employers are too. In determining, by buying or abstention from buying, the prices of products and the employment of factors of production, consumers assign to each kind of labor its market price.

"What makes the worker a free man is precisely the fact that the employer, under the pressure of the market’s price structure, considers labor a commodity, an instrument of earning profits. The employee is in the eyes of the employer merely a man who for a consideration in money helps him to make money. The employer pays for services rendered and the employee performs in order to earn wages. There is in this relation between employer and employee no question of favor or disfavor. The hired man does not owe the employer gratitude; he owes him a definite quantity of work of a definite kind and quality."

--Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Labor as Commodity

For the individual actor, "as for everyone, other people’s labor as offered for sale on the market is nothing but a factor of production. Man deals with other people’s labor in the same way that he deals with all scarce material factors of production. He appraises it according to the principles he applies in the appraisal of all other goods. The height of wage rates is determined on the market in the same way in which the prices of all commodities are determined. In this sense we may say that labor is a commodity. The emotional associations which people, under the influence of Marxism, attach to this term do not matter. It suffices to observe incidentally that the employers deal with labor as they do with commodities because the conduct of the consumers forces them to proceed in this way."

--Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Some Things Never Change

"The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt.”

--John Philpot Curran, Irish statesman, 1790

TGIF: That Was the Election that Was

One can be overjoyed by the repudiation of a candidate without being pleased with the opposing candidate's victory. This election is an occasion for that reaction. An American (or anyone actually) is perfectly justified in taking pleasure in Kamala Harris's humiliating defeat while anguishing over the intemperate Donald Trump's impressive win. As I like to say, every election has good and bad news: the losers lost but the winners won. That's where I am today if anyone cares to know.

I rejoice at the defeat of Harris and virtually all that she stands for, while also realizing that some of the grounds for that defeat are themselves to be repudiated. Most Trump voters seemed to have had "the economy" uppermost in mind, with immigration a distant second. That's sort of good news, except that most people think tariffs are a big solution for our economic woes. (In fact, there's no "economy." There are only cooperative interacting individuals deploying material factors and human effort to improve their conditions.)

Trump's defects have been widely discussed here and elsewhere. No need to rehearse them now. (As Yogi Berra said pre-internet, "You could look it up.")

One of Harris's problems was that while there was no there there, she was likely surrounded by the condescending woke set whom she would have wanted to please. This held the potential for outright violations of freedom and impediments to advancing prosperity. It may well have aggravated tensions between people of different skin tones and ethnicities—something no advocate of social cooperation through the market economy should take lightly. We must be wary of those who seek to undermine domestic peace, especially when the cause is not justice, but trivial natal characteristics (like where your parents were born). (For an account of the dangers of a Harris administration, see Gene Healy's "Fear and Loathing at the Ballot Box.")

Trump was called Hitler, a Nazi, and a fascist, which was not only ill-defined and absurd but malicious. The people who trafficked in such charges, including the top of the Democratic ticket, deserved to lose just for using such tactics. Warnings that he would establish a dictatorship were hollow and not really believed by many who issued the warnings. Remember that a partly Democratically controlled Congress reauthorized horrendous surveillance powers for this "worse than Hitler" figure during his first term. How are we to explain that? Politics, that's how.

We have to discount much of Trump's flamboyant rhetoric because we know that he loves to play to his core audience, which in turn loves to see the woke progressives sent into rage on MSNBC, CNN, etc. His core audience called on candidate Trump in 2016 to "lock her up," meaning his rival, Hillary Clinton. Did his Justice Department bring a case against her? No, it didn't. He didn't try to lock her up.

When Trump partisan Sean Hannity asked him during the latest campaign if he would abuse his power to retaliate against his enemies, he smiled and said he would, but only on day one. What would he do? "Seal the border" and "drill, baby, drill" for oil. When Hannity said, "That's not retribution," Trump ignored him and kept talking. That did not keep his opponents from "reporting" that he said he would be a dictator on day one and beyond and would punish his opponents. The Democrats' implicit message all season seemed to be this: "He's really not so bad, so we have to make up stuff."

I'm not defending his "seal the border" promise or his promise to round up and deport millions of people for lacking government permission papers. Those would be terribly unjust policies. Tragically, however, a president probably has decades-old congressionally delegated powers to do such things. So technically Trump wouldn't be acting like a dictator. The same is true for oil drilling. We don't know exactly what he means, but if he intends to free producers to bring more oil and gas to market, then yay! If he intends to direct an effort to create energy independence, then boo. We'll have to wait and see. The point is that any president would probably already have congressionally authorized powers to loosen restraints on oil producers. His promise does not imply dictatorship.

But let's consider the possibility further. Would there be no checks on his power if Trump tried to be a dictator? Would the military obey orders to arrest, say, Supreme Court justices or recalcitrant members of Congress? Would the courts support him? Unlikely. How would he enforce orders no one obeyed? He'll have no guns.

America still has a legacy of liberalism in the best sense, which includes deep-seated attitudes about government power, as well as an independent judiciary and a Constitution-bound military. This limits what even a dictatorial-minded president could get away with in America. In a sense, it really can't happen here. At least it's highly unlikely compared to other places without our traditions.

My old friend the historian Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, who has thought much about the role of ideology in society, used to say that if a Soviet ruler had magically appeared as the president of the United States, he could not have ruled in the Soviet style. Likewise, if a libertarian had magically become the head of the Soviet government, he could not have governed like Ron Paul would have. History and tradition—ideology—would have prevented it. The result is a sturdy, albeit not indestructible set of taboos.

Even Trump is probably not blind to what is unique about the American liberal legacy (including freedom of enterprise) and what makes for legitimacy. Ideas, not force, rule the world, Hummel says. "Ideas ultimately determine in which direction [people] wield their weapons or whether they wield them at all," he writes.

This does not mean we will be able to sleep soundly from Jan. 20, 2025, through 2028. Guarantees are not to be found in such things. But we need not run around like our hair is on fire. I question the claim that Trump will be a dangerous freer agent in his second term. As self-centered as Trump is, he will surely have an eye on the mid-terms; he won't want to lose the House or Senate in 2026. Moreover, he won't want to hamper J. D. Vance or another would-be successor for 2028. He won't be free to offend those who still are connected to America's pro-freedom legacy.

In foreign affairs, if Trump means to get and keep out of other people's conflicts, then good. But he gives us no reason for confidence. Look at his first term. Look at his unwavering support for Israel's violence against the Palestinians. (No defense of the brutal Hamas is hereby implied.) Look at his belligerence toward Iran. Look at his acceptance of the expansion of NATO. To state the obvious, Donald Trump is no Richard Cobden, even if we ignore the tariffs, which we cannot do.

So I'm not optimistic about foreign policy, though Harris would have been worse. (Did she push her boss to reinstate the nuclear deal with Iran that Trump canceled? We have no evidence of that.)

None of this is amenable to mathematical or scientific proof. How could it be? We're talking about the always-uncertain future and individuals who have free will. On this day, however, this is how I see it. It seems reasonable

Then again, what the hell do I know?

Right Diagnosis, Wrong Prescription

The populist Sanders-left (which is actually broader because it includes Tucker Carlson and others called rightists) is partly correct and partly incorrect about what happened to the Democrats last Tuesday.

They say correctly that the Democrats failed because they have taken non-elites for granted, patronizing and subsidizing some (minorities, for example) and disparaging and penalizing others (regular bourgeois working Americans of both sexes and all skin tones and ethnicities). This is usually stated as "The Democrats have betrayed the working class."

This is good as far as it goes, but it goes not far enough. The elites have taken some Americans for granted. Meanwhile, a large swath of Americans, especially those between the coasts, have been treated like outhouse-using country bumpkins if not outright racists and patriarchists. Remember Obama's sneering reference to people who in troubled times seek refuge in their guns and bibles?

It was only a matter of time before an officer-seeker would voice the concerns of the disparaged. It happened in 2016 and again this week. Enough of those people struck back on Tuesday, benefitting Trump and humiliating Harris. People will take only so much abuse or condescension before shouting, "Cut it out!"

Where the Sandersnistas go wrong is in prescribing a warmed-up Marxism. Not full-out nationalization of the means of production, mind you, but heavy government interference with everyone's market relations: a minimum wage, rent control, price ceilings, usury laws, tariffs, product regulation, immigration barriers, etc. They think this is what the "working class" needs. (Ironically, government control of nominally private enterprise is an essential feature of fascism.)

But no, intervention is not the answer, though class bigotry blinds the Sandersnistas to that fact. The same could be said for the MAGA architects. These measures have long harmed people, especially the intended beneficiaries, and they will do so in the future. But you have to know something about economics to understand that. They don't.

The first thing the "working class" needs to do is reject the Marxian notion of an inherent class conflict between business and employees. The market economy—the profit-and-loss system void of government regulation and subsidy—is good for all because, as Ludwig Mises spent his life teaching, we all have a deep harmony of interest in freedom, social cooperation, and rising living standards. Surface disputes are insignificant compared to that deeper compatibility.

The industrious "class"—all contributors to the creation of wealth (which excludes politicians and bureaucrats)—should reject the "left" and the "right."

The Morning After

The fear of dictatorship is absurd.

The Dems Are What They Claim to Hate

As I said in 2016 (or was it 2015?), I despise Trump and I despise most of the people who despise Trump. I will never forgive the Democrats for making it necessary for me to defend him against their lies.

TGIF: Election Reflections

The history of the human race is one long story of attempts by certain persons and classes to obtain control of the power of the State, so as to win earthly gratifications at the expense of others.

--William Graham Sumner, 1883

For advocates of individual liberty, this has got to be the most depressing election in many years. (Well, at least since 2020, the most depressing election since 2016.) Full, true, laissez-faire liberalism is far from public discussion. Kamala Harris ("I'm smart and I care"), the mush-mouthed empty suit, and Donald Trump ("I'm Trump!"), the narcissistic, militantly nationalist demagogic windbag, both threaten what remains of Americans' liberty.

No one can confidently say which is the bigger threat. Their styles differ, but that cannot camouflage the danger each represents. This may be availability bias speaking, but I am not so sure. There has been no joy for liberalism this season.

The palpable lesson of nearly everything we see in politics is that freedom and prosperity are at risk when the government can do almost anything a majority or an influential minority wants—when the idea of constitutional constraint is treated as old-fashioned. It matters little whether those who get their hands on such power come from the "left" or the "right," ideologically incoherent terms signifying little but tribal membership.