Appendices

The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right. The spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the minds of other men and women. The spirit of liberty is the spirit which weighs their interests alongside its own without bias. The spirit of liberty remembers that not even a sparrow falls to earth unheeded. The spirit of liberty is the spirit of Him who, near 2,000 years ago, taught mankind that lesson it has never learned, but has never quite forgotten; that there may be a kingdom where the least shall be heard and considered side by side with the greatest.

JUDGE LEARNED HAND

APPENDIX I

FAITHS ABOUT THE NATURE AND DESTINY OF MAN

Before people can be persuaded to abandon one faith they must be given something else to grab hold of as a means of salvation. Men cannot live without faith in something.

JOHN RUSTGARD

THIS DISCUSSION of liberty is predicated on certain faiths regarding mankind.

However much it may be regretted that an analysis must be started on the “uncertain footing” of faiths, this is unavoidable. What we “know” is ever bounded on all sides by what we do not know. In the dimension of space, for instance, what can be viewed is bounded by what is unviewed; that which lies beyond must be dealt with in terms of theory or faith, as to its content and form. It is the same with all aspects other than space.

Despite man’s efforts to master ignorance and press back the boundaries of the unknown, there shall remain an unconquered and unknown portion until such a time as we may have gained an insight into everything between the primal mist and the end of eternity. Until then, faith will have to continue to bridge the unknown. The concepts which one holds have to be constructed within these faiths, and any analysis must rest on some working hypotheses.

Faiths are not debatable in terms of scientific reasoning. One faith, in that sense, stands equal to any other so far as “proof” is concerned. A faith may be based on “hunch,” or on “instinct,” or on the authority of someone admired and trusted in these respects. But whatever its origin, it is held with deep conviction until replaced by something accepted as more tenable. It is for these reasons that faiths serve well to illustrate the impropriety and unwisdom of authoritarianism.

The following are the faiths, or hypotheses on which this analysis of liberty is based. They relate to the nature and destiny of man.

1. There exists a Supernatural, which guides the affairs of the universe.

2. In the design of the universe, everything is subject to certain natural laws which rule without being subject to revocation by any human or any combination of humans; among them are “physical law” as well as “moral law”; these laws, and the events that occur under their ruling guidance, constitute what we call truth.

3. Humans intuitively act in harmony with these natural laws, both physically and morally; failure to do so is the result of ignorance rather than of inclination; thus it is concluded that man is basically “good,” and will do the right thing provided he is given the correct “facts” and is left free to follow his instincts without interference; if it were not so, it would be difficult to explain man’s survival and his capacity for progress.

4. Law, and other social guides to conduct, must be in harmony with natural law, if serious consequences are to be avoided; obedience to any other guides for conduct — guides that are in disharmony with natural law — must carry the penalty meted out by the court of Higher Justice which can be neither bought nor influenced by untruths.

5. Each person is a self-responsible, independent unit who is obligated to answer only to the Supernatural Authority, in any final sense; he must answer to the natural laws of the universe; no person or persons may rightfully intercede between him and his God, with any rights of unchecked power over the other person; there is no place for any “Divine Right of Kings,” by that or by any other name, in this order of things; whomever attempts to claim that right is attempting to forge the Supernatural and is therefore engaged in trespassing on the rights of another person or persons.

6. The individual has no bounden duty to serve some intangible “common good” or “society,” in violation of what seems to him to be the best thing to do; one’s obligation is to his conscience, and to the Supernatural Order as he interprets it, rather than to abdicate this responsibility and attempt to shift it to others in political office or to some abstraction in the form of some organization; no person, under guise of these conjured abstractions, has the right to obligate another person to something or to someone unknown specifically to him; and any person who attempts to do so is an impostor attempting somehow to gain power for himself in exchange for the promise that he can free another from unavoidable self-responsibilities.

7. A person’s capacity to perceive the nature of these natural laws, which rule his being, is limited by his intelligence or powers of instinctive conduct; his beliefs, in this respect, are both his privilege and his responsibility; he is free to choose his sources of information as guides in his search for truth, and he is personally responsible for the wisdom of that choice and for the resulting conclusions; he will know that no person, not even himself, has any direct and certain line of communication with the sources of truth; all conclusions carry a corresponding uncertainty no matter who holds them; he knows that while he cannot avoid acting on the basis of some belief, these beliefs must ever be held subject to change as further evidence or new reasoning becomes available; but always he is obligated, by honesty, to believe and act in accordance with truth as he then sees it.

It is within this structure of faiths, as working hypotheses, that liberty is herein discussed.

APPENDIX II

PATTERNS OF VARIATION

VARIATION SEEMS to pervade the universe. Even where once it was believed not to exist, further study and refinement of measurement reveals its presence.

When one views the members of another race, with which he is unfamiliar, they all seem to be alike until on further acquaintance their differences come to be more and more evident to him; eventually he finds them to be as great as the differences among members of his own race. It is the same with other species of life, and with the unlive formations of nature.

Once it was believed that the physical unit, the atom, lacked variation but now physicists are said to believe that even atoms vary. Everywhere variation seems to exist, in everything.

The complexity of compounded variation surpasses our comprehension, A person’s fingerprint will distinguish him from every other person; or a toe print; or the hairs on his head; and so on through a long list of features, each of which exhibits differences. When these features are considered in their seemingly endless number of combinations, the differences between any two persons is found to be so great that one wonders how any similarity between any two persons is to be noticed. It should be clear that a knowledge of variation causes the “average man” to dissolve into an abstraction, not found modeled anywhere in actual life.

Variation, in its rough and crude expression of random occurences, seems to be disorderly and chaotic. When observed in this form, it seems to be the result of pure “chance,” and to deny any purpose; it seems to reveal nothing but the “carelessness of nature.” But we shall see that this interpretation is highly doubtful.

A little over a century ago the foundations were laid for a science of the phenomenon of variation by the French mathematician Laplace (1749-1827). He began the work of dealing with variations so as to reveal the similarities of their patterns.

The newly developing science of variation was applied to astronomy by Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855), the German mathematician and astronomer.

Adolphe Quetelet (1796-1855), the Belgian, deserves credit for the general principles of variation, reported in works published in 1835 and later. Though an astronomer, he extended his studies of variation to many other types of data such as temperature, the price of grain, and the heights and chest-measurements of men. Quetelet’s findings led to what later became known as the “normal curve” of variation.

The normal curve exhibits a symmetrical mathematical series. When graphed, it becomes a smoothly bell-shaped curve. About two-thirds of the total area of this curve lies within vertical lines placed at a distance of one standard deviation on each side of the vertical center, or the average of the series of data.

Quetelet found that all the data he studied fitted this style of curve fairly well.

The super-salesman of this new concept of order within the seeming chaos of variation, and of the predictable nature of variation, was Francis Galton. In 1899, in his classic book on Natural Inheritance, he had this to say:

It is difficult to understand why statisticians commonly limit their inquiries to Averages, and do not revel in more comprehensive views. Their souls seem as dull to the charm of variety as that of the native of one of our flat English counties, whose retrospect of Switzerland was that, if its mountains could be thrown into its lakes, two nuisances would be got rid of at once. An Average is but a solitary fact, whereas if a single other fact be added to it, an entire Normal Scheme, which nearly corresponds to the observed one, starts potentially into existence.

And:

It [the “normal curve” of variation] reigns with serenity and in complete self-effacement amidst the wildest confusion.… Whenever a large sample of chaotic elements are taken in hand and marshalled in the order of their magnitudes, an unsuspected and most beautiful form of regularity proves to have been latent all along.

Galton asserted that this knowledge of the nature of variation, had it been known in ancient Greece, would most certainly have been personified and deified. And so it might. Galton himself spoke of it as being of a cosmic order.

Galton, as one of the pioneers in the discovery and interpretation of variation, may be excused for what now appears to be over-simplification. It now appears that the “normal curve” type of pattern in variation is not the only one. More accurately, as we now believe, Galton might well have waxed eloquent about the laws of variation in possible designs where more than a single pattern is allowed to unfold itself. These variations, in more than the single pattern of which Galton spoke, all have within them an orderliness which is concealed by their usually shuffled arrangement. Variation in each instance seems to fit into one or another mathematical function of the variable.

One formation of variables, more pertinent than the “normal curve” to many of the matters with which the social scientists deal, is that found in income variations and wealth variations. It is the “harmonic series” of magnitudes, wherein, if we represent the largest as 1, the second largest will be found to be ½, the third largest , the fourth largest ¼.…

The presence of this curve is revealed in its pattern from the largest end of the array, where large size and low frequency is found, to the other end where small size and high frequency is found. A tolerance must be allowed for the latter end of the array, in essentially all instances of data that has been derived from observed events. This is because wherever the law of limitation applies — which is universal except in things like distance or time, where observations are of unlimited magnitude — the harmonic series runs out and the frequency falls off unavoidably; the result is, under these conditions, the appearance of a “skewed curve.”

The pattern of variability of the harmonic type appears over a wide range of phenomenon. Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923) found it to prevail among income data. In addition to income and wealth, it appears in the demand for any product or service, in the size of cities and towns in any settled national unit, in the frequency in the use of various words by one person, to mention a few that have been studied. We may even suspect to find that the harmonic series describes the variation of human abilities, as will be revealed only when an over-all measurement of ability has been developed.

One further point should be mentioned about variation. The fact that variation seems to fit into certain definite patterns as to type (the “normal curve,” the harmonic series, etc.) does not mean that the intensity of variation is the same wherever the pattern is the same. On the contrary, the intensity of variation differs widely. The size of one species of animal varies more intensely than another; the weight of one species of life varies more intensely than another; the color of one species of flower varies more intensely than another. … It is found, for instance, that the seedlings of the apple are highly variable in their commonly-observed characteristics, whereas the seeds of some other plants yield much more similar offspring.

APPENDIX III

VARIATION AND CHANGE

THE PATTERNS found to exist in variation suggest that their presence has a purpose.

Without changes in the weather and other things, physical and chemical changes could not occur in the world. Except for variation among the chromosomes, offspring would all be identical with their parents and the form of life would remain unchanged over the ages.

The principle of change may be stated this way: There is no way to win a race without differences; there would, in fact, be no purpose in having a race in the first place except for the presence of differences to be tested.

Variation gives rise to change, in two ways:

1. Selection and discard

2. Combining

The process of selection can be illustrated by the stone-age man’s selection of a stone best suited, by size and other qualities, to the making of a weapon; or by the selection of stone for a building; or by the selection of a candidate for a job. An unselected item falls into discard, for that particular purpose. The wisdom of the selection affects the outcome. Without variation, change by selection and discard would be impossible.

The other method by which variation results in change is combination. Reproduction among living things, both sexual and asexual, is of this type. Combining non-living things by mixture or by compounding, as with chemicals, is another type. In any of these forms, variation in the “parentage” gives rise to change in the “offspring.” Without variation these changes could not occur.

Changes might further be classified as to whether or not choice, or the exercise of preference, guided by either instinct or intelligence, is involved. Variation in the weather, for instance, lacking anything like human choice as its cause, has given rise to events of transcendent importance like the glaciers and the seasons, erosion and typhoons. But the selection of a mate is quite a different matter, so far as the exercise of choice is concerned. Some of the biological processes seem to be in the pale between these two types, because we know so little about them.

Changes may be rapid or slow, dependent on many things. The more ruthless the process of discard under selection, the more rapid the change — either for better or worse.¹ And likewise, the more divergent the items that are mixed or crossed by combination, the more rapid will be the expected change.

The “higher” the form of life or of non-life composition, the more complex its variation and the more rapid the expected change that follows from crossing two of them. As the complexity increases, the “offspring” become less and less predictable. In chemistry, for instance, combinations of the ninety-odd different basic elements can result in innumerable compounds; possible mixtures of different possible compounds, in turn, magnifies beyond our capacity for comprehension the number of possible results. It is similar for the complex living organisms, like persons, where differences combine in the biological process into innumerable and wide differences. That is why persons differ so widely in their capacity to do different things, to comprehend different things, or to contribute to progress.

Out of this change comes “progress.” And the greater the variation, the more rapid the progress can be. It makes no difference, so far as the opportunity for progress is concerned, whether the change is induced by the Unseen Hand of evolution, or by conscious choice as in the selection of a mate, or by learning from someone who is more informed, or by simply patterning one’s acts after those who know better how to do a thing.

The process of selection from among variation, by design and intelligent choice of persons, is an old and well-known source of progress. It is in this manner that better varieties of plants and animals have been selected to replace those less adapted, less resistant to disease and less efficient.

More recently variation has been induced by “cross breeding” and “induced mutation,” in order that more rarely outstanding new strains may be discovered and propagated. Most mutations are short-lived, self-destructive failures; but the rare and outstanding success becomes the parent of great improvement. The prize winning steer at the Livestock Show usually is the result of breeding for increased variation, in which manner a winner is more likely to be produced. Thus it is possible to speed up the process of change, compared with the “natural processes” and the “normal processes” of selection, but there is a correspondingly great danger in it.

¹ Matter is not, of course, destructible; it only changes form. But it is the question of form about which we are speaking here — a certain species of form.

APPENDIX IV

PROGRESS

WE SPEAK GLIBLY of progress. This term can usually be used, in casual conversation, without challenge or without any need to analyze its meaning. Each person thinks of illustrations of what are, to him, instances of progress that give meaning to the term “progress.”

This discussion of liberty is of such a nature, however, that it might be advisable to focus its meaning a little closer. What is progress?

Most everyone accepts a discovery in medicine, like the germ theory of disease and the development of vaccines, as illustrating progress. Not so clearly acceptable as progress is some discovery in a controversial area. Some persons, for instance, hold the faith that if God had intended man to fly, He would have provided him with natural wings; they do not accept the development of the airplane as being progress. Some persons do not accept the automobile as being progress, for various reasons. And some even question whether a medical discovery is progress.

In Appendix I has been given certain concepts essential to this discussion of what is and what is not progress. The faiths defined therein are pertinent to these conclusions.

The first step is to concede that the right of judgment as to what is progress rests with each individual. No one person is deemed qualified to pass judgment for all of us. No one person can, in fact, appraise the matter for any other person (Appendix I, #7).

It might seem from this that there would be no way to label anything as “progress,” because of conflicting views and appraisals. What some accept as progress will be rejected by others, and differences of opinion precludes unanimity in every instance.

A further difficulty is due to the fact that these appraisals are subjective matters. It cannot be known with certainty what any one person thinks about whether or not something deserves the label of “progress.” How, then, could an objective label of “progress” ever be attached to anything?

Despite all these difficulties, it seems possible to speak of progress with an important meaning relevant to this discussion of liberty and its effects on progress.

The first step is to recognize that a person’s acts under liberty offer some objective evidence about his subjective motivations, in the same manner as a mirror or periscope may be used to reflect an object which is not accessible to direct view. Whereas this type of reflection is not of the nature of certain proof, it serves as a basis for useful evidence where nothing better is available.

The free market, in like manner, offers evidence as to what a consumer wants, even thought this too is purely subjective. It serves as a guide to producers — the only available guide, and one that works quite well, it seems. The entire business world, in a liberal economy, rests on this form of evidence as its guide to production.

If these judgments are to be depended upon, however, there must be liberty so that persons may freely express their subjective appraisals. Lacking liberty, reflections will become diluted with an unknown form and amount of misrepresentation. So the first requisite in judging the nature of progress is that there be liberty, so that individuals can express their appraisals freely. It may be assumed that under liberty persons will increasingly accept and approve what, in the universal order of things, may fairly be called progress. The importance of liberty in the test of progress is so close as to suggest that liberty is essentially the same as progress.

Acceptance of truth and an increase in the practices that are harmonious with truth will not, of course, be unanimous or instantaneous once a discovery has been made, for reasons discussed in Appendix I. But it must be assumed that there will be an increasing acceptance of truth under liberty, and so the test of progress is to be found in this degree of acceptance. That is why, based on the faiths expressed in Appendix I, it seems possible to speak of progress with meaning and for an important purpose, as follows:

Progress is any change in belief or in concept, or in their applications into “devices,” which stands up under the tests of time and experience so as to have increasing acceptance among free people. In a word, it is an expression of truth or of applied truth, as tested by the only means at our disposal.

It is not necessary that there be unanimity of opinion before a thing can be termed progress. If it were, there could never be any “progress” at all. It is to be tested, instead, through a sort of continuous vote wherein each person’s opinion is tested, and respected along with that of each other person. The “wisdom” of the egotist is given no more weight than that of any other person.

This concept of progress is one that allows dissenters. A single person may reject what others accept as progress, as his right under liberty. But he is not thereby empowered to cast a vote for another, either.

So when the discoverer peers into the unknown and finds something previously obscure — some new gadget, some new picture, some new symphony, some new idea or concept — the test of acceptance over time by a free people becomes the only available test of its worthiness and acceptibility in terms of human destiny and harmony with natural law and purpose. Thus a decisive change under liberty is what is meant herein by the term “progress.”

APPENDIX V

LIMITATIONS OF THE MEASURE OF LIBERTY

THE MEASURE OF LIBERTY given in Part Two of this book has deficiencies. It both overstates and understates the presumed correct figure, for various reasons and by unknown amounts.

Every error in the data on which this measure has been based carries over, of course, into the derived figure.

In all probability the net effect is to err on the low side, so that it understates the loss of liberty in the United States or in any other country where it might be applied. Some of the causes of error will be given so that other persons may make their own guesses as to what might be the figure after correction for these errors.

As has been discussed previously, this measure relates to economic liberty. This is not the only form of liberty and therefore this measure may either overstate or understate the loss of liberty as a whole, depending on the comparative degree of loss of liberty in other realms. But economic liberty pervades the entire problem and is an absolute requisite to liberty in general.

This measure of liberty is one that tests what happens to productive income, according to the concept in the national income from which it is derived. The presence or absence of liberty is, then, weighed according to each person’s contribution to the production of goods and services as represented in the national income. Complete liberty in the spending of money that one may receive as a gift from the government, such as relief grants, is not allowed to affect the level of liberty according to this measure; the test of liberty is made at the point of its payment for something having been produced, and it is a question of whether or not the person who produced the income was allowed liberty in its use. Any other course would result in a test of liberty that would class one as fully free if he had liberty in the use of money received as a result of violated liberty. A dollar of income, once enslaved, was treated as a slavery dollar from there on.

FOR LIBERTY TO BE at a maximum there must be some government, or otherwise have the same functions performed by some other means. Whatever the amount of its necessary costs, that amount should not be considered as a violation of liberalism in society.

How much of the 29 cent part of the dollar, taken for governmental costs in the United States in 1947, would be allowable under liberalism? That question must remain unanswered until much more work has been done to analyze liberty in relation to the many activities of present-day government. Certain functions of government are invaluable to liberty, but these should not be highly expensive to operate; a Supreme Court, for instance, is not very costly and is a small part of the budget of a nation these days. A guess is that only a small part of the 29 cents, perhaps even less than 5 cents of it, would qualify under liberalism, if we ignore the costs of existing contracts which originated in illiberal acts.

Everything which government does in excess of this proper sphere involves a loss of liberty. All this excess drains from the citizen some of the product of their labor — “the sweat of the brow of the working man” — by force or by threat of force. It may be used to finance the costs of further loss of liberty, having a double effect in the destruction of liberty because of both the taking and its use. It may be used to operate governmental monopoly, so that citizens are not allowed to compete on an equal basis. But the fact remains that, with few or no exceptions, the excess taken by government represents a loss of liberty to the citizens of the country.

The excess that the government takes is no longer available for the citizen to spend as he wishes, as required under liberty. It may be said that the people want these services and would buy them anyhow if they were performed by private business instead of by government. But the slave who is given some turnips by his master cannot be called free economically because of the fact that he might have wanted to buy some turnips with some of his wages as a free man, had he been free. The citizen, likewise, is not judged to be free because of the fact that he might have bought, in a free market, services similar to those offered by the governmental monopoly where users and non-users alike are forced to pay the costs in their tax bills.

Acquiescence of the citizens to that part of their taxes in excess of what is necessary to preserve liberty is no evidence that liberty has not been lost thereby. Loss of liberty is not to be measured by the extent of refusal to pay taxes any more than slavery is to be measured by the degree of rebellion of the slaves. Slaves are none the less slaves because they are not always attached to their masters by a chain!

THE LOSSES OF LIBERTY not included in the measure herein explained probably exceed the overstatements.

A prisoner who is allowed 20 cents a day for working in the prison laundry, and who is free to spend all his income as he likes for candy or cigarettes, can hardly be called economically free. He might be able to earn $8 a day if he were free to compete in the economic world outside the prison walls.

A full measure of liberty, if it were available, would also take into account the income that is lost because of a lack of liberty. The income thus lost should be included with that part of a person’s income that is taken away from him by force, in measuring the loss of economic liberty. In one part he is unfree because the income has been taken away from him in violation of liberty, whereas in the other part he is unfree, without liberty, because he never received the income in the first place; there is no difference between the two, so far as a measure of lost liberty is concerned.

The lost opportunities for additional income may result from the monopolies of government. A person is liable, for instance, to a fine of $500 or six months in jail for competing with the government and carrying a message for hire if it comes under the government’s definition of first class mail.

Lost opportunities for income may result from monopolies of private business. Or they may result from the activities of certain trade organizations, or labor unions, or by some other agencies or persons. All of these, however, are possible only because the government fails to perform its proper function of preserving a climate wherein liberty can prevail and where full opportunity exists for the citizens under economic liberty, as previously defined.

Restrictions on free competition include all monopolies and all restrictions of free internal and international trade. All of these violate economic liberty by reducing income.

The administrative costs of handling a certain control operated by the government greatly understates the total loss of liberty which it entails, in most instances. The cost aspect is like that of a slaveholder who may spend no more than the equivalent of one-tenth of what the slave produces as the cost of hiring an overseer to hold the slaves under the yoke of complete slavery; it is not necessary to spend all that the slave produces as the cost of depriving him of his liberty.

The calculated cost of government includes nothing for the free radio time that is allowed to one or another branch of government, used to “explain” something and to advocate that which it advocates. The cost this free time, even at the lowest commercial rates charged to a private citizen, would total to a fantastic amount each year. Not alone that, but the viewpoints of governmental officials are given audience without charge; counter viewpoints, which the citizens may hold, can be aired only by paying the high costs of radio time in most instances.

Stalin has been able to maintain the Russian people in near-complete economic slavery by the use of far less than all of their incomes. We have noted that only 29 cents out of each dollar of income produced was being taken by the Russian government in 1929-1930, yet this amount was sufficient to administer and maintain almost complete slavery of the Russian people.

Is it not possible for a government at a very small cost to enact all the legislation necessary to illegalize essentially all economic liberty? Over-all wage and price controls would do it —even “standby controls,” which is like a standby overseer of a group of prisoners or slaves. The costs of administering and enforcing these edicts, when added to the costs of enacting the laws, far understates the loss of liberty that is involved. All that is necessary is to frighten the subjects into submission, by the cheapest and most “efficient” means available. A horse thoroughly broken to harness seldom feels the whip.