CHAPTER XI THE PROMOTIVE EFFECTS OF A GOOD GOVERNMENT

A distinguished economist recently said, “Unemployment can be absorbed only with a reviving industry. Will not industry revive and expand better under good government than under bad government?” The term “good government” opened a realm for speculation as to just what it would be like, what it would do and not do, and what its relationships would be to the citizens in their several classifications. Examination has disclosed a logical definition that gives such a government a most direct and influential bearing on lower costs—more goods and more services for more people.

The Significance of the New Relationships with Government

We are inclined to raise disdainful eyebrows when hearing of India’s Sacred Cow. This attitude on our part may be a little inappropriate for it is not so certain that we haven’t a Sacred Cow of our own. Recent events in the political elections and the behavior following the landslide of votes seem to suggest our Sacred Cow to be, “The people have spoken.”

Not admitting or denying that the successful candidate for President believes in or intends to practice what the return of ballots implied, it is no variation of the facts to assert that the landslide was an undeniable evidence of the people’s willingness, yes, demand, that government take over more of the responsibilities of individuals, that it do for the people what they have become reluctant to do for themselves.

The fact that a large majority of the people, on this particular occasion, entered such a decision at the polls in no manner stamps the decision as right—for example—Alberta’s social dividend fiasco. A mass decision may be, and quite often is, subject to greater error than individual decision. “The people can do no wrong” has no more validity than its older equivalent, “The King can do no wrong.”[1] When strong currents of unwisdom are on the rampage, and history is filled with classic examples, it hardly becomes those competent to counsel wisely, to forsake their posts of opposition and silently steal away to the ephemeral cloisters of comfortable acquiescence. Yet, “the people have spoken” has had precisely such an effect.

Thus, there has been added to the sins of political indulgence and to the frailties of a “will-powerless” race, the dignities of a “has been” leadership, crushed to impotency and brought “into line” by the mushy motives of a shallowly concocted socialmindedness and, incidentally, by the urge, “let’s make some money where and when the making is good.” While professing a thorough disagreement with their theories and methods, no indictment is intended of those who are socialists, of those who aspire to the order of the Totalitarian State, who believe such an order better serves society, socially and economically. Perhaps they are entitled to their opinions. At least their mere vigorous pursuit of them does not merit condemnation. As Voltaire wrote in his letter to Helvetius: “I do not agree with a word that you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

But little less than contempt can be awarded those who turn traitor to their convictions, who run at the sign of a fight, who forego the exposition of an order they believe superior, merely for the sake of momentary expediency. Our form of government cannot endure in the face of complete acquiescence to majorities. That the literary mercenaries have provided our modern “turn-coats” with phrases and sophistries to cushion their erstwhile thinking and with which to rationalize this bigamist wedding to the alleged new love, known as the “new order,” does little more than make ridiculous a position already untenable. “If you can’t lick ’em, jine ’em!!”

So the case for a good government, as presently defined, can be of little more than academic interest. Its remaining supporters are few in number and write a grammar at once uncompelling and unappealing, certainly unmarketable. They have nothing to offer that is new or untried except a new degree of economic virtue, of personal abstinence, individual self-control and political morality. While their motives are as fine and their objectives as high as they think the potentialities of nature itself will permit, these motives and these objectives appear drab and colorless when competing with the promised millenniums conceived in the minds of very ordinary men, “Little things in trousers slightly jagged.” That all the Totalitarian States of all history have never delivered even a miniature millennium adds not one whit of support to the last defenders of the true liberalism and to the faith of our American fathers.

Responsibility is moving swiftly, surely, in currents at the moment unstoppable and unswervable, from the individual to the State. The American is shifting his position from master of the State to its servant. A few will remain behind, avoiding these currents, to mark the spot whence we departed so that, should we return, there may be a record of our earlier mistakes and suggestions as to the route wherein a greater achievement lies.

The Kinship of Government and Economics

William Graham Sumner, in his classic of individualism, “What Social Classes Owe to Each Other,”[2] made this observation:

“Unquestionably capital accumulates with a rapidity which follows in some high series the security, good Government, peaceful order of the State in which it is employed; . . .”

Had the profound Sumner been thinking in the exact terms of this thesis, he no doubt would have said something to this effect:

“Unquestionably the free play of forces which compels an exercise of the ability to lower costs, thereby promoting production and insuring a distribution thereof, is released and given a fertile soil in which it can thrive (follows in some high series), when government is good, stable and peaceful, and impartial and impersonal in its attitude.”

Some pages back, the “X” factor was defined as including “first, the ability to lower costs and, third, the free play of forces that compel an exercise of that ability.” It can readily be seen then that there is here the contention that the type of government has a direct relationship with the “X” factor, in other words, a direct relationship with more goods and services for more people, a direct relationship with the problem of impoverishment. That is precisely what is meant. The type of government does have a profound effect on the release or restraint of forces which must compel or repel an exercise of the ability to reduce costs.

To comprehend fully this major point, one should consider the nature and definition of economics. Economics is not an exact science like mathematics, physics, astronomy or chemistry. In exactness, economics is somewhat akin to medicine. Much is known—very much remains to be known. The physical laws of economics, such as diminishing returns, supply and demand and the like are well known and precisely definable, but the science of economics includes the reaction of human beings to these physical laws and it is in this field of human behavior that much remains for study. In this latter phase, economics can be said to be an exact science only to the extent that human behavior is constant. That makes it rather inexact. While human behavior has a constancy about it, much of which is already recorded, there are no known means of anticipating its unrecorded actions and reactions. Past experience is the only basis on which any human behavior can be anticipated. Anything beyond that is conjecture, pure and simple. And conjecture in this field has been conspicuously inaccurate and therefore costly, not only materially, but costly in human suffering. No one could be an economist on whom a dependency for untried plans should be reposed except one who has a complete mastery of mass psychology. And who will boast of any such attainment?

Here is a thought-provoking paragraph along this line, written by Herbert Spencer in his “Man Versus the State”:[3]

“Alike to the citizen and to the legislator, home-experiences daily supply proofs that the conduct of human beings baulks calculation. He has given up the thought of managing his wife and lets her manage him. Children on whom he has tried now reprimand, now punishment, now suasion, now reward, do not respond satisfactorily to any method; and no expostulation prevents their mother from treating them in ways he thinks mischievous. So, too, his dealings with his servants, whether by reasoning or by scolding, rarely succeed for long: the falling short of attention, or punctuality, or cleanliness, or sobriety, leads to constant changes. Yet, difficult as he finds it to deal with humanity in detail, he is confident of his ability to deal with embodied humanity. Citizens, not one-thousandth of whom he knows, not one-hundredth of whom he ever saw, and the great mass of whom belong to classes having habits and modes of thought of which he has but dim notions, he feels sure will act in certain ways he foresees, and fulfil ends he wishes. Is there not a marvellous incongruity between premises and conclusion?”

The orthodox economist is one who has recorded human behavior in relation to a variety of conditions and bases his recommendations on the good results—his objections on the bad ones. He confines his experiments to the laboratory of speculative thinking and insists that the testing of new and untried ideas be confined to small and immunized operations.

The heterodox economist is one who discards and disregards the work sheets of experience and proposes to use a whole people as his laboratory. He thinks his proposals meritorious simply because his objectives are idealistically high. He, quite radically, fails to see any inhumanity in the not remote possibility that his brain-children won’t deliver to the level of his romantic expectations.

Economics, like psychology, is a study of human behavior in relation to a variety of given conditioning factors. A study of these conditioning factors is necessary. They embrace government as well as geography. Economics can grow as a science only as it is lived and meticulously observed and recorded. Changes in economic practice should be by the process of evolution, of necessity slow but, more important, orderly. The revolutionary process based, as it must be, on sheer speculation is dangerously destructive, therefore inhuman and anti-social.

Human behavior is profoundly influenced by the nature and type of government. Therefore, any consideration of the economic problem, “Impoverishment,” should include some observations as to the type of government under which economic results are most felicitous. The “X” factor finds its greatest possibilities for promotion under a good government, for subversion under its opposite.

A Good Government Defined

What is a good government? For one thing, it is a servant of all the people. It takes no sides. It can have no “teacher’s pets.” It cannot be a government that divides the population into classes of business, labor, agriculture, bankers, veterans, the North, the South, etc., and then take the side of one group or the other, which at the moment appears to be the politically expedient thing. Insofar as a good government should have any economic interests, those interests should be directed to the people as consumers. For the only common denominator in a population, economically speaking, is the consumer. The object of a good government’s economic affections should be the consumers and not groups and classes. In no other way can a government remain good. To shower its affection on a group or a class it must evidence a greater devotion to a group or a class than to the remaining groups or classes. In so doing, distinctions are created and the government becomes relatively unfriendly to those groups to which the overflowing cup of friendship is not extended.

A good government is one whose administrators must think of themselves only as representatives, as servants of the people, administering just laws, impartially and impersonally. They must never assume the notion that election or appointment to office places them in positions from where an undelegated, arbitrary attitude is permissible. They must never think, the minute they are in office, that they are the members of a new class, a different interest, that they must fortify their new positions by intrigues and favors to assure their permanency. Needless to relate, it has been because of a violation of these political ethics, that contempt has developed toward “politicians” and, in turn, that “politicians” have assumed a vested interest attitude toward their offices and have felt compelled to use every device to perpetuate themselves. What else but this politician-versus-people attitude could account for the applause by intelligent people given a recent book entitled, “Our Enemy, the State”? A government cannot be good when its officers and administrators feel that their interests are different from those of the people, any of the people, they represent.

A good government recognizes that the best interests of the people are served when government keeps itself to the very minimum compatible with actual necessities. Such a government will keep a vigilant lookout for any possible excesses in its growth and cost.

A good government will scrupulously observe a disinterested attitude in the behavior and conduct between its citizens and will interfere only to assure fair play among them. It will assume the rôle of umpire and realize that that is as far as its function goes in this respect.

A good government will maintain order, suppress crime and racketeering, assure justice, conduct international relationships, do a minimum of necessary duties beyond the powers of private enterprise to perform, regulate certain monopolistic businesses in the public interest and maintain a minimum national defense compatible with national safety. It will not engage in competition with its citizens (isn’t the State only All-of-us?) in affairs the citizens can possibly conduct themselves.

A good government will refrain from entering an activity, even if the government’s conduct of it can be proved superior, if, in so doing, a precedent is established or an initiation is given to a trend that eventually will prove dangerous.

In fiscal matters, a good government will set the example in economy, in controllable indebtedness and in the virtues of assets over liabilities. It will serve as a model in the high regard for sanctity of contracts. Government’s obligations must be kept inviolable. Its taxing system will be as fair and as equitable as highly endowed and disinterested individuals can make it. The taxing power will be used for securing revenues only, not used to achieve a partisan-conceived social reform nor ever used to punish groups in political disfavor. It will issue the currency and coin the money and its only interest in this respect will be to effect a stable medium of exchange, permitting long-range business transactions, and to insure a repository of value in which confidence can be reposed through succeeding generations.

A good government will resist to the utmost the efforts of any groups to use the government as a vehicle to their own ends. It will close the gate to the political means as an avenue for man to satisfy his wants. A good government will leave man only the economic means through which to seek his material satisfactions, but will so perfect every instrument of government that success through the economic means will be facilitated and made easier for everyone.

A good government will be a government of laws and not of men. A people must never be subjected to a “Do this. Do that” order, insured in a government of men, impossible in a government of laws.

There is one point transcending them all in any definition of a good government. It has to do with the government’s economic responsibility to the individual citizen. A good government will set itself in such order that its citizens can best find an expression of their abilities and their virtues. The arena for citizen activity will be kept in good playing order, decently policed and fairly umpired. But the government, as government, will not have a concern as to who wins or who loses so long as the play has been fair and the rules of the game properly interpreted.

A notion contrary to this has been and is responsible for much of our trouble. People failing to win in the game of life, have turned to the umpire demanding favoritism in the interpretations of the rules and are now asking the umpire to carry the ball for their side. In the first instance this idea may seem all right, but a precedent is established and as play, first here and next there, becomes unbalanced, the umpire finds himself hopping all over the field trying to help all sides to win. The dignity of the umpire becomes destroyed. He is a friend only when he is carrying our ball, an enemy when carrying the other fellow’s. The contempt for the umpire must soon become general and then there will be no ordered arena in which the citizenry can operate.

If government can do our job for us better than we can, then the case for socialism is complete. Why not admit it, all join the government and perform all duties through government? Why not stop right now and organize and plan the best possible kind of socialism? Why drift aimlessly on, attempting the merging of irreconcilable philosophies, toward that order, which at best, can be nothing more than a bastard socialism?

If socialism is not the answer, and we will frankly admit it, then government has no business taking any sides of any group or class against any other group or class. The point is, conceding we have an arena permitting equal opportunity, if we can’t do a thing for ourselves we had better consider it can’t or shouldn’t be done. To invite government interference in our behalf is to justify it in another’s behalf, which, sooner or later, must command national disaster. That will kill the possibility of success for any one, for all of us. A good government does not meddle in the legitimate affairs of any or all of its citizens. It merely keeps the arena in good shape for playing the game.

Certainly, no good government, as thus defined, would usurp any powers or prerogatives not specifically delegated to it by its citizens. As a matter of fact, it would frown on any delegation of powers, except in extreme emergencies, that was not done after long and careful deliberation, and then only sparingly. One searches the pages of history in vain for examples of delegated power later relinquished—short of revolution. A good government would be the first to avoid this destructive trend.

Is a good government as here defined a mere dream? Very likely. Too few are willing to sacrifice their present unsupportable positions (little recognized as unsupportable) to contribute the effort necessary for its fulfilment. Too many prefer filching the magnificent edifice of our national being to a life of personal contributions that made the edifice possible.

Is such a government merely idealistically high, impossible of attainment, practically not to be expected? Realism dictates the answers be somewhat in the affirmative. Nevertheless, a working, wealth-producing civilization, a personally satisfying body of aggregated humanity must have a contribution of virtues approaching the ideal. There cannot be a high order of civilization unless there is a substantial accompanying manifestation of these idealistic attributes. The law of the universe denies the bountiful blessings assured a perfected society to a people who refuse to rise above the level of paleolithic behavior. This law says: “You will learn and adopt civilized conduct or you won’t reap civilized results.”

Is a good government complicated? No, it is simplicity itself. “Shoemaker, stick to your last,” that’s all.

Is it reactionary? Yes, in the sense that it calls for a restoration of the virtues, ideals and realities characterizing some of our earlier nationals. Yet, in another sense, the idea is extremely radical. Our government, and most of the other governments of the world, are headed in the other direction so fast they are afraid to stop. Somewhat comparable to the drunkard who fears to stop drinking lest the shock kill him. Perhaps it would. But in stopping there is hope—in going on there is nothing ahead but the new name we will give an old order, all of the essential characteristics of which are found alike in Communism, Fascism and Nazism. It is radical to demand the overthrow of a present trend.

Promotion By Anti-Subversion

In appraising what would happen under a good government, we first discover that certain promotive effects are developed by the automatic elimination of several subversions previously discussed. For purposes of example only:

a. Government over-expansion with its economically enervating costs would cease. Expansion would go on in some sensible ratio to the growth of wealth and population.

b. Government mis-direction would no longer exist because a good government would not think in terms of groups and classes, and would play no favorites anyway.

c. Government intervention into the fields of private enterprise would not be so much as entertained.

d. Consumer Cooperatives, for instance, couldn’t employ the political means to gain a competitive advantage; neither could any other group.

e. Inflation, arising from mismanaged fiscal affairs, would be impossible.

f. Business could not get another “NRA” nor labor a “thirty-hour week,” nor any other group its pet competition-destroying Chinese Wall.

Now even these subversions to the “X” factor are not exactly inconsiderable. Patience would assure the listing of many more. No doubt, the elimination of merely these few would so favorably affect the economy that what we now call impoverishment would cease to be a leading national problem. But all of this is promotion by anti-subversion. Nevertheless, in many respects, is not a rectified evil equivalent to an achieved good?

Direct Promotions Responsive to Good Government

Now then, what is there actually promotive to be expected from a good government? For one thing, everyone (there could be no exceptions) would be forced to the use of the economic means to supply needs and to satisfy desires. There could be no other way, for the political means would be closed. Everyone would have to engage, in some manner, in the production and distribution of goods and services. These being the only elements of wealth, everyone would be engaged in producing and distributing wealth. Under a good government even the politicians would be included in wealth production, since a good government is essential to an ordered society, without which wealth production and distribution is impossible. Politicians, servants of the public interest, would be a very realistic part of the process.

As a rule man has produced his best when he has lived in a society where assurances have been given that he will be permitted to keep that which he has acquired, in a society where he has been guaranteed the fruits of his own labor. History demonstrates that man has been subjected to the predatory practices of government as well as by other men or criminals. A good government is a promotive factor because it engages in no practices that either unjustly absorb or take away from the citizen that which he has earned for himself. Thus, because of the behavior of a good government, man’s energies are released to the extent he possesses energies.

There is one other basic characteristic to a highly civilized economy that can only be preserved under a good government and that characteristic is economic voluntarism. Our American system, as we have known it, has been given a variety of titles: the competitive system, the system of laissez faire, private property, capitalism, the market economy and the profit system.

Professor T.N. Carver in his report on the problem, “What Must We do to Save Our Economic System?” has this to say:

“Our economic system is essentially a voluntary system under which men work together on the basis of voluntary agreement, or contract, rather than on the basis of coercion, or the authority of the few and the obedience of the many.

“It is not essentially a system of competition, though competition will exist under any voluntary system; of laissez faire, though within the field of useful work, men are let alone; of private property, though private property will exist in any voluntary system; of capitalism, though capitalism will exist in the absence of coercion; of markets, though markets will exist wherever men are free to buy and sell; of profits, though profits will exist wherever men are free to work for themselves.

“Voluntarism is more fundamental than any of the above-named characteristics of our system, since they all depend for their existence upon freedom from violence, freedom to work together by voluntary agreement, freedom to own, to buy and sell, and to enjoy what one has produced or purchased.”

It ought to be obvious to anyone who will ponder the problem that economic voluntarism, under which so many other factors absolutely essential to economic welfare are nestled, can exist at its fullest only under a good government. It cannot exist at all under the opposite of a good government—the Totalitarian State. There are many gradations between these two types of government. Voluntarism diminishes, it fades, and with it the possibilities for material welfare, as governments approach Totalitarianism.

The United States, today, is the wealthiest nation all history has ever known, not because government created the wealth but because, during the past three centuries, several hundred millions of individuals, working competitively and cooperatively, have made contributions to a startling aggregate of wealth. They have left as their heritage to succeeding generations an amazing array of productive farms, efficient factories, unrivaled transportation and communication facilities, homes, office buildings and other essential instruments to future welfare.

While, during these three hundred years, we probably have never had a 100% good government, we have had a government better than any other people have been able to devise. It has not been perfect nor can it ever be, but it has been nearer a neutral government and has interfered less than have the others. As a consequence, the spirit of the individual was unshackled. His energies were released. Initiative, resourcefulness, courage, inventiveness, confidence, specialized knowledge and individual objectivity fairly blossomed in this atmosphere of assured reward for demonstrated merit, all going to compose highly endowed individuals. They created the wealth. They gave society more than they used. These free spirits, protected against the ravages of criminal individuals and predacious governments, built our national edifice. The total of their contributions made our national wealth.

We talk a lot about programs. “If you’re opposed to this plan of government, what plan have you to offer in its stead?” is a common question. The inference is, “What alternate form of governmental planned economy have you to propose?” The answer is, “We do not want nor can the people prosper under any form of governmental planned economy.” About all we want in the way of a plan is a plan that will get the people to understand what their relations to government should be, what the functions of government should be, and how this relationship can be adjusted to release to the fullest the potential productive capacities, the energies, the enterprising attributes, the virtues and the genius of the individual.

As in a delicately made watch, the several mechanisms of which are all-important and essential but none of which can produce the desired result alone, so it is in this problem of more goods and more services for more people. Many factors, nicely balanced and smoothly running, are all-important and essential. None of them, however, can achieve the desired result by themselves. A really good government is the “mainspring” to progress. It is a first requisite to any promotion of the “X” factor.

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[1] No doubt this phrase had its origin from “The King can do no wrong under the English Constitution.” See Blackstone—“Commentaries On the English Common Law.”

[2] Yale University Press.

[3] Williams and Norgate, London, England.