Failure of Politics; G. Hagedorn

In less than two generations, "the land of the free and the brave" has become the limbo of the co erced and the fearful; the land of opportunity, the limbo of despair; the land of the beautiful, the lim bo of the ugly. Taper, McWilliams, and their fellow anticapitalists, while point ing at the Millers and Carnegies of our past and shouting "robber," have themselves engaged in the most frightening robbery of all: first, robbing great men of repu tations fairly won and the grati tude that we owe them; and secFailure of Politics GEORGE HAGEDORN Mr. Hagedorn is Economist and Vice-Presi dent of the National Association of Manu facturers. This article is from his column in NAM Reports, June 24, 1968. ond, in doing so, robbing us of a rich heritage. It is important that what has been taken from us by deception be taken back by force of fact and demonstration. The country's great past and its great men - the Fords, Rockefel lers, Vanderbilts, Astors, Millers, Jim Hills - have been buried un der a mountain of muckraking in nuendo, misrepresentation, and outright libel. Our future lies bur ied under this same mountain of collecti vist refuse. One of the ma j or tasks of the libertarian schol ar - perhaps the first of his tasks - is to remove this kitchen midden of hatred and envy that obscures the past greatness of America and so retrieve the visible foundations of a right civilization and right philosophy. ~ PROSPERITY is another name for abundance. A nation can have an abundance of goods and services only if it produces an abundance of goods and services. It can pro duce an abundance of goods and services only if it is organized in such a way as to release the ener gies, initiative, and skills of such of its citizens as possess those qualities.

Unfortunately energy, initia tive, and skill are not distributed 1968 FAILURE OF POLITICS 525 evenly among all the groups in any society. They are not evenly distributed among the nations of the world. It is likely that the dif ferences are not so much genetic as they are cultural. But in any case the disparities exist and they are wide. This gives rise to a feeling - it is a world-wide phenomenon that where abundance is lacking it is hecause the group affected is (or has been) exploited by some one else. The road to prosperity for all is to suppress the exploiters by political action, rather than to provide goods and services by pro ductive action. This is the prevailing sentiment in most of the undeveloped nations of the world. It is the chief bar rier to their development into prosperous members of the family of nations. It is a rising senti ment in many of the industrial na tions and is the chief threat to their continued prosperity.

Case histories are abundant. In Bolivia a revolutionary govern ment nationalizes the tin mines. What had been the chief national asset under private ownership be comes, under government control, an inefficient and wasteful opera tion. An enormous influx of for eign aid from the U.S. is thrown down the drain in subsidizing so cialistic government enterprises or corrupt government officials. The story is much the same in other parts of Latin America, in Indonesia, and in many of the new nations of Africa. For reasons which should, but don't, embarrass the governmental leaders, the de parture of the "exploiters" pro duced more widespread poverty rather than the promised univer sal prosperity. There is a small number of nations which illustrate the oppo site side of the coin. Hong Kong and Malaysia have encouraged private enterprise. Their prosper ity and productivity shine out from an otherwise dismal picture in the less developed world.

At the same time we see some of the advanced nations going the other way. In France a large seg ment of the working population, animated by revolutionary fervor, has decided to give itself pay raises of 10 per cent to 15 per cent, together with longer vaca tions. It is truly astonishing to see the illusion, in an intelligent and sophisticated nation, that everybody's welfare will be im proved by higher pay for less wor]c. In the U. S. the belief that pov erty is the result of robbery by an exploiting class has not yet be come the dominant mode of think ing. But it is making progress. In certain circles the middle class is more likely to be despised for 526 THE FREEMAN September its "affluence" rather than ad mired for the productivity which made that affluence possible. Henceforth, it is urged, we must work to eliminate poverty through redistributive political action rath er than through productive action in the mill and market place. At least this is what many of the programs advocated to eliminate poverty - a higher level of gov ernment social action supported by higher taxation, or a negative income tax - seem to come down to.

The spirit of enterprise among Americans - that willingness to invest one's own sweat and re sources in opportunities one finds for oneself - is a tough bird and will be hard to kill. But it can be seriously crippled both by verbal abuse and by higher levels of taxation. Worse, it can be mis directed, by government interv~n tion, into unproductive or counter productive channels. And those who don't share the spirit of en terprise will suffer along with those who do. Individuals who are resource ful by nature will usually make out in any kind of society. In a free enterprise society, persons who combine native resourceful ness with high ability will often rise to the top, by activities which benefit everyone else. In a society where economic decisions are made by a political power struggle, the natively resourceful (whether gen uinely able or not) will take prom inent parts in that struggle. But their efforts are unlikely to con tribute anything positive to the welfare of their fellow citizens.

A society which rewards its participants in proportion to their contribution to the production of goods and services other people want is, on the record, the most effective in reducing the preva lence of poverty. All this is ele mentary in principle and abun dantly illustrated in practice. We can only express astonishment that it has become the fashion in intellectual circles to ignore it. It is as though we were to agree that, since the fact that grass is green is an old and trite truth rather than a fresh new one, we will henceforth believe that grass is red. Raising taxes on the productiv€ groups in society in order to ex pand antipoverty programs isn'1 essentially different from expro priating the owners of tin mine~ in order to make the Boliviar populace richer. And it isn't likel3 to be any more successful. ~ Life Begins at SEVENTY LEONARD E. READ POPULAR EXPRESSION has it that "life begins at forty," thirty years ahead of my suggested figure. But life really begins each moment one grows in awareness, perception, consciousness; that is, the budding process is a continuous beginning.