The Courage to be Utopian

In a recent post on their Facebook Page the Ludwig von Mises Institute (see also http://mises.org/) has expressed my political outlook in words more eloquent than I ever could envision.  Please read this article my friends and you may begin to understand why I take time out of my day to write blog articles and to post to Facebook and Twitter.

http://mises.org/daily/6469/The-Courage-to-be-Utopian

There are so many important issues discussed in this article that I am hesitant to list the highlights, but if you do not read the entire article please at least read the following:

In “The Intellectuals and Socialism,” (published in 1949) Nobel laureate F.A Hayek shows how ideas gain acceptance in modern society. More importantly, he shows how to win the battle of ideas against supporters of big government.

Over the long run, public intellectuals—Hayek called them “professional secondhand dealers in ideas”—wield an “all-pervasive” influence on public policy and politics by shaping public opinion.

 Such intellectuals include journalists, teachers, ministers, lecturers, publicists; radio, television, and online commentators; writers of fiction, cartoonists, artists, actors, and even scientists and doctors who speak outside their fields of expertise. “It is the intellectuals in this sense who decide what views and opinions are to reach us,” Hayek wrote, “which facts are important enough to be told to us, and in what form and from what angle they are to be presented. Whether we shall ever learn of the results of the work of the expert and the original thinker depends mainly on their decision.”

“It is no exaggeration to say that, once the more active part of the intellectuals has been converted to a set of beliefs, the process by which these become generally accepted is almost automatic and irresistible. . . . It is their convictions and opinions which operate as the sieve through which all new conceptions must pass before they can reach the masses.”

Since a public intellectual tends not to be an expert on a particular issue, they judge new ideas “by the readiness with which they fit into his general conceptions, into the picture of the world which he regards as modern or advanced.” In today’s politics and public policy, the preconception that guides intellectuals is that central planning and central control is always better than decentralized, individualized approaches. To the modern intellectual: “Deliberate control or conscious organization is in social affairs always superior to the results of spontaneous processes which are not directed by a human mind; or that any order based on a plan laid down beforehand must be better than one formed by the balancing of opposing forces.”

“The intellectual, by his whole disposition, is uninterested in technical details or practical difficulties. What appeals to him are the broad visions, the spacious comprehension of the social order as a whole which a planned system promises.” Thus liberty lovers must play into this visionary character and have the “courage to indulge in Utopian thought.”

Rather than focusing exclusively on piecemeal improvement of current legislation, liberty lovers must offer grand reconstructions and abstractions that will appeal to the imagination and ingenuity of intellectuals. They must provide a clear picture of future society at which they are aiming without overstatement or extravagance, but which inspires the imagination of intellectuals.

To change the views of intellectuals, one must demonstrate the limits of government planning and control and why it becomes positively harmful if extended beyond these limits, so harmful that it undermines the very ideals that intellectuals hold dear. The key is to focus on ideals because ideals arouse the imagination of intellectuals. For example, “freedom of opportunity” is an ideal. “Relaxation of controls on opportunity” is a political compromise and best left to politicians. “Equality under the law” is an ideal. “An important step toward equality” is a political compromise.

We can all become “dealers in ideas”.  I encourage you to speak up.  My greatest regret is that I have discouraged political discussion.  I have always been the first person to stop a political discussion at a social gathering by saying “please, no politics”.  I will remain silent no longer.  I will share my vision for a future of individual liberty, unfettered free markets, and peace.

F. A. Hayek

May 8, 2013 marks the 114th anniversary of the birth of F. A. Hayek.  Please take some time today to study his life’s work and his message.  A good place to start is at Libertarianism.org and this link to F. A. Hayek’s biography:

http://www.libertarianism.org/people/f-a-hayek

These are some of the highlights:

F. A. Hayek, the 1974 Nobel Memorial Prize winner in Economic Sciences, was an economist and philosopher best known for his defense of classical liberalism and free-market capitalism against socialist and collectivist thought.

Socialism appealed to the idealism of intellectuals, yet it brought the most hideous tyrannies. Just from the standpoint of human liberty, socialism was a catastrophe everywhere.

More than anyone else, Nobel Laureate Friedrich Hayek showed why socialism undermines human liberty and, if pursued far enough, must result in tyranny. He told why thugs dominate so many socialist regimes. He explained how institutions of a free society develop without central planning.

In 1936, Hayek gave a talk, “Economics and Knowledge,” at the London Economic Club, and Economica reprinted it. He explained that prosperity depends on tapping vast amounts of information about what people want and how best to supply it. The information is dispersed among millions of people and constantly changing, which dooms central planning to failure.

He noted there is general agreement about a few functions of government such as providing national defense and punishing violent criminals, but as government expands beyond the realm of general agreement, it must enforce conformity. Central economic planning, Hayek explained, means more and more coercion as officials gain power to decide what work people must do, which kinds of cars, pens, apples and everything else must be produced—and who should get them. He observed that power attracts those who don’t have scruples about imprisoning or even executing people. That’s why “the worst get on top.”

Hayek’s book titled The Road to Serfdom—after Alexis de Tocqueville’s phrase “the road to servitude”— was published in England on March 10, 1944.  The University of Chicago Law Review (Spring 1949) published Hayek’s essay “The Intellectuals and Socialism.” He wrote, “The main lesson which the true liberal must learn from the success of the socialists,” he wrote, “is that it was their courage to be Utopian which gained them the support of the intellectuals and therefore an influence on public opinion which is daily making possible what only recently seemed utterly remote.”

Hayek’s writings inspired Ronald Reagan in the United States and Margaret Thatcher in Great Britain. Hayek was revered by people who suffered from socialist tyranny in Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union and China. Hayek’s last work was The Fatal Conceit, the Errors of Socialism (1988).

Hayek had lived just long enough to see the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics disappear from the map. He had insisted, as Ludwig von Mises did before him, that socialism would impoverish multitudes—and he was vindicated. He correctly warned that socialism ultimately means oppression, slavery and mass murder. He did perhaps more than anyone else to show that free people, not government planners, are the key to a flourishing civilization.

As John Cassidy wrote in the February 7, 2000 New Yorker, “If there are two things most people can agree on these days, they are that free-market capitalism is the only practical way to organize a modern society and that the key to economic growth is ‘knowledge.’ So prevalent are these beliefs that their origins are rarely examined, which is somewhat surprising, since both statements can be traced back, in large part, to one man, Friedrich August von Hayek.” His moral courage and dazzling insights made clear that ideas shape our destiny.

The despotism of public opinion

The following article is written by Daniel James Sanchez editor of Mises.org and director of the Mises Academy:

The 99 and the 1

The concept of the bottom 99% of society versus the top 1% has been promoted for the last year by the "Occupy Wall Street" movement.  The above article dissects this topic and puts it into historical perspective.

Here is the historical analysis:

Whatever one thinks of the current plight of the 99%, throughout almost all of history, things were much worse for the vast majority of the population. In precapitalist ages, the average member of the economic 99%, if lucky enough to survive infancy, was consigned to a life of back-breaking work and poverty, constantly on the verge of famine, disease, and death.
The only individuals who did not have such a wretched life were the "1%" of old. This economic 1% was virtually identical with the state. It was made up of the French kings, the English lords, the Roman senators, the Egyptian viziers, and the Sumerian temple priests. The members of this elite lived in Olympian splendor: servants at their beck and call, as much food as they could possibly want, spacious homes, an abundance of jewelry, and a tremendous amount of leisure time.
Everything the Occupy Wall Street protesters say today about the 99% and the 1% was completely accurate then.
Why did the 99% of old put up with the 1% lording it over them? Why did they not rise up, and overthrow their masters? Were they simply cowed by the mailed fists and the flashing sabers?
No; as David Hume pointed out, since "those who are ruled" always vastly outnumber "those who rule," a regime's power can never be about brute strength alone. The ruled many must believe that the power of the ruling few is somehow good for them.
Perhaps the temple priests have convinced the people that the gods would be angry if the rulers were disobeyed: that the rains won't come, and the crops won't grow. Or maybe the populace believes that the rulers are responsible for the peace and order in society.
Not only do the 99% put up with the ruling 1%; they put them up on their lofty pedestals. The 99% give the 1% their power.
As Ludwig von Mises made clear, real power, what he called "ideological might," always lies in the support of public opinion. If public opinion were ever to turn on any regime, its days would be numbered.
Mises went even further to argue that public opinion not only determines who is in charge but the general character of the legal order, or as he put it, "whether there is freedom or bondage."
Ultimately the only kind of tyranny that can last is a tyrannical public opinion.
The struggle for freedom is ultimately not resistance to autocrats or oligarchs but resistance to the despotism of public opinion.
...throughout most of the history of civilization, the ruling 1% took for itself a huge portion of what the 99% produced. And if any private person ever accumulated enough wealth for it to be noticeable, some potentate would snatch that too.
With such rampant government confiscation, there was never enough incentive for large-scale capital accumulation. Without large-scale capital accumulation, there can be no mass production. And without mass production, there can be no great improvements in the lives of the masses.
And that is basically why the 99% had such shabby lives for almost all of history.
Then in the 18th and 19th centuries, something revolutionary happened......"Laissez faire et laissez passer," the economists said. Let people control as much of their property as completely as possible, and everybody will be more prosperous.
Through this process, public opinion shifted toward the belief that government should be as limited as possible, and property rights as sacrosanct as possible.
Again, the way society is organized ultimately depends on public opinion. So, since public opinion changed, policy changed too. Private capital became more secure. Trade restrictions were lifted. Business barriers were abolished. Private property reigned supreme as never before.
And the results were miraculous. As never before in history, the productive energies of humanity were unleashed. Items that were once reserved for the elite 1% were soon mass produced for the 99%. Amenities that did not even exist before were developed, first for small markets, but ultimately for the mass market.
In the new order there was still a 99% and a 1%. But the 99% of this period lived better than the 1% of times past. And the chief way to ascend to the 1% was to become a successful capitalist-entrepreneur: to strive to serve the 99% (the masses of consumers) better than one's competitors.
In the old order, most would-be one-percenters, in order to get ahead in life, would have had to apply their smarts and ambition to become conquerors, rulers, and government administrators, and in those roles to exploit the masses. In the new order, under what Mises called the "consumer sovereignty" of the market, their capabilities were turned toward providing for the masses of sovereign consumers.
The masters became servants: wealthy servants, but servants nonetheless.
Now, the 99%, under the thrall of unsound ideas, are once again oppressing themselves. Thanks to the calamitous state of public opinion, the ranks of the 1% are once again increasingly being filled, not by capitalist-entrepreneurs serving the 99%, but by the state and its cronies exploiting and impoverishing the 99%. And the redistributionist remedies that the self-styled 99% clamor for would only accelerate this trend.

 Daniel James Sanchez delves beyond a historical discussion of the "Occupy Wall Street" movement.  He suggests actions to combat the assault on society by the proponents of redistribution and state control.

These economic philosophers, people like Richard Cantillon, Adam Smith, and J.B. Say, were theorists. They wrote brilliant, if sometimes turgid, books that changed the minds of communicators: individuals whom F.A. Hayek called "secondhand dealers of ideas."
These included professional communicators: writers, like Richard Cobden, and speakers, like John Bright. These writers and speakers wrote pamphlets and gave speeches that changed the minds of many thoughtful, if less eloquent, individuals, who might be called amateur communicators. And this thoughtful stratum, in turn, led their nonthoughtful fellows (who, in modern parlance might be called "sheeple") to change their positions on public affairs.
If our civilization is to be rescued — if the tide of public opinion is ever to turn again — it will be thanks to the sound ideas formulated by theorists like Mises and the scholars who work in his tradition. But that can only happen if those ideas are effectively disseminated by a new generation of communicators.

And so dear reader it is time to decide if you will become an active participant in the struggle for freedom.  As Daniel James Sanchez so eloquently reminds us this struggle is ultimately not resistance to autocrats or oligarchs but resistance to the despotism of public opinion. To join this struggle you must become a "secondhand dealers of ideas".  You do not need to write books, author blogs or host radio shows.  You need only to be an "amateur communicator".  Speak openly, honestly, and without fear about your belief in limited government, property rights, the rule of law, free markets, and personal freedom.

Zero Tolerance

Your federal government is here to help you once again. Recently the United States Department of Health and Human Services has begun a campaign to stamp out a threat to our society, free speech. The following letter was mailed by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to the executive director of America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), (the national association of health insurers):

http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2010pres/09/20100909a.html

Some of these statements are hard to believe but here is what her letter says:

It has come to my attention that several health insurer carriers are sending letters to their enrollees falsely blaming premium increases for 2011 on the patient protections in the Affordable Care Act. I urge you to inform your members that there will be zero tolerance for this type of misinformation and unjustified rate increases.

This is nothing more than a threat by a government agency to suppress criticism of the Obama administration’s programs.

According to our analysis and those of some industry and academic experts, any potential premium impact from the new consumer protections and increased quality provisions under the Affordable Care Act will be minimal.

What about the analysis of other experts? Are we now only allowed to view favorable studies?

Moreover, I want AHIP’s members to be put on notice: the Administration, in partnership with states, will not tolerate unjustified rate hikes in the name of consumer protections…… Later this fall, we will issue a regulation that will require state or federal review of all potentially unreasonable rate increases filed by health insurers, with the justification for increases posted publicly for consumers and employers. We will also keep track of insurers with a record of unjustified rate increases: those plans may be excluded from health insurance Exchanges in 2014.

I knew that this day would come but I am surprised at how quickly it arrived. The Federal Government is in the process of drafting a regulation that will effectively control the rate increases of private insurers. Over time the Government will force the private insurers out of business by preventing adequate rate increases and presto the United States Government will be the “insurer of last resort”. You will then be in a single payer government controlled health care system.

If you doubt the effectiveness of this process I suggest you study the history of public transportation. Street cars and buses were once owned and operated by private enterprise. Over time government regulation dictated what the private operators could charge their customers. By keeping the rate increases below the cost inflation of the service provided the government put the private operators out of business. Government then placed itself in charge of public transportation.

The following quotation is from Friedrich Hayek in his book The Road to Serfdom:

When the state has the final say on the economy, the political opposition needs the permission of the state to act, speak, and write. Economic control becomes political control.

Why the Worst Get on Top

The following two paragraphs are from Nobel prize winning economist F. A. Hayek's essay “The Road to Serfdom”:

There are strong reasons for believing that what to us appear the worst features of the existing totalitarian systems are not accidental by-products but phenomena which totalitarianism is certain sooner or later to produce.

Just as the democratic statesman who sets out to plan economic life will soon be confronted with the alternative of either assuming dictatorial powers or abandoning his plans, so the totalitarian dictator would soon have to choose between disregard of ordinary morals and failure. It is for this reason that the unscrupulous and uninhibited are likely to be more successful in a society tending toward totalitarianism.