Pyramids All Over the Place; L.E. Read

But, aside from configuration, what, really, is a pyramid? Read ing on, I find that "each monarch built his own pyramid, in which the mummified body might be preserved for eternity from hu man view and sacrilege and into whose construction went years of time and measureless amounts of material and labor." Here we have our functional cue as to the nature of a pyramid. A pyramid is a monument to man's pride built by the coerced 714 labor of others. As with the Egyp tian models, the materials and labor must be assembled by extor tion if a project is to qualify as a pyramid. The rich man's mansion or mausoleum, if built at his own expense,· is not a pyramid. Nor do Disneyland and Fisherman's Wharf qualify as pyramids, fi nanced as they are by consumer choice in a free and open market. The Taj Mahal - "It is deemed one of the most beautiful build ings in the world" - is, by func tional definition, a pyramid. And it is beautiful only in the sense that beauty may be skin deep. For back of that pretentious fa~ade of marble and jewels is ugliness: slave labor, thousands upon thou sands of slaves for many years. It 1969 PYRAMIDS ALL OVER THE PLACE 715 is a pyramid, a monument to the pride of the Mogul Emperor, Shah Jehan.

The impulse to memorialize one self - a monument to pride - runs strong in many people; but this is of no special concern to others, insofar as it can be satisfied with one's own resources. That's the business of the individual and of no one else. But give these indi viduals power to command the re sources of others, and the impulse runs wild, often swelling into boundless activities and assuming all sorts of forms, even to the monumentalizing of silly ideas in which the originators take pride. And this does, indeed, become everybody's business! It is easy enough to see that Brasilia, hewed out of wasteland far from where people live and labor, is nota city built in re sponse to the demands of Bra zilians in a free and unfettered market. It is no more a response to their aspirations than the Taj Mahal represented a gratification of the slaves who erected it. Bra silia is a pyramid, pure and sim ple, a monument to the pride of a man who had coercive power over the resources of others - J uscelino Kubitschek.

It is also easy to see that Vene zuela's steel mill is a pyramid. This is a monument to an idea quite as silly as the notion that we in the U.S.A. should grow our own cof fee. Were that mill abandoned to the jungle and the steel imported instead, with each worker given severance pay at the rate of his present wage - for the rest of his life, Venezuelans would be money ahead! Some Home-Grown Examples Should we not be able to identi fy just as easily our own pyra mids, such as the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, the Fresno Mall, and a thousand and one other more or less conspicuous structures? Most of the towns and cities in America today can boast of similar monu ments to pride! For .instance, every Federal "urban renewal" project is a pyra mid. Not one of these "develop ments" is a response to free and willing exchange. The people who are now forced to pay for these monuments to ideological pride have tended to desert the down town centers for suburban shop ping centers. These "renewals"

have been made possible by the power on the part of some to command the resources of others; American citizens have no more volunteered their own income or capital for such projects than the people of Egypt volunteered their resources for one of their pyra mids. Every high-rise apartment in 716 THE FREEMAN December the Federal "slum clearance" pro gram is a pyramid. There are now so many other examples in every city -even in towns - that a local resident would find it difficult to name them all. Ideas that Enslave But not every pyramid is made of rock, brick, mortar, steel. Us ing our functional definition, so cial security, Medicare, the Fed eral full-employment program, and countless other ideological inno vations are as much pyramids as Brasilia: monuments to man's pride made possible by the coerced labor of others - the originator's pride in his ideas! I repeat, the impulse on the part of so many people to memorialize self - one's ideas or accomplish ments or whatever else - is be nign so long as the gratification is achieved solely with one's own resources. It is harmless, and it is none of anybody else's business.

The harmless memorializing im pulse becomes the destructive pyramidic impulse when and only when coercive power over the in come and capital - resources - of others is permitted. Grant this power to one and there is no prin ciple by which it can be denied to everyone - as we are now wit nessing. How about granting this co ercive power to no one, that is, no special privilege for anyone? That would be fair to everyone. Our pyramids? Why not simply aban don them now as grotesque, un finished testimonials to the harsh tyranny of the authoritarian way? Let each man build and do as he chooses with his own resources, so long as it's peaceful, and the result will be as high as any civilization can possibly rise. I Inflationism as PoliticalPolicy J. H. PETERS The greatest mistake that can be made in economic investigation is to fix attention on mere appearances, and so to fail to perceive the fundamental difference between things whose externals alone are similar, or to discriminate between fundamentally similar things whose externals alone are different.