Falling on Deaf Ears; J. C. Sparks

At that point, one of the ladies spoke up: "I watched an official of India being interviewed 00 TV the other evening. He told of the grievous need of so many Indians who suffer from malnu trition to the point of actual star vation. The interviewer asked if Mr. Sparks is an executive of an Ohio manu facturing company and a frequent contributor to THE FREEMAN. 284 the Indian government had tried to persuade its people that fewer births might help relieve the prob lem. No, replied the official, they hadn't, because 'we love children and we would not want to decrease their number.' The point of the program was to make me feel guilty that I had plenty to eat while so many others were starv ing. At first, I really felt guilty. Then I began to feel angry! Nei ther the program writers nor the Indian official recognized that the responsibility was on shoulders other than mine." This particular television pro gram was not an isolated instance designed to prick the conscience of American .viewers. The gen eral thrust of such programs is to blame those who have accepted re sponsibility to meet their own needs - and are doing so success1975 FALLING ON DEAF EARS 285 fully - for those who are not. This is not an organized assault, in my opinion. It simply happens after years of Iiving with a philosophy that condones "rights to. have things" without the parallel self responsibility to provide them.

Politicians thrive on it. What voter is not attracted to the·poli tical campaigner who promises to have a law passed that will give people things they have not pro duced? There has been no more successful political formula (for the short run, at least) than to promise unearned benefits to a maximum number of voters. The pragmatic politician thinks, "For get the real economic world. For get the dire negative incentive effects of transferring goods (or dollars) from producers to non producers. Forget the insidious device of inflation to cover up the terrible cost. This, too, can be blamed on the producers; and not many voters seem perceptive enough to see through my decep tion." Of course, he is not likely to publicize his thoughts in those words. But he knows full well the formula - and he uses it for all it's worth, falsely in the guise of com passion. The acceptance of this philos ophy goes beyond the political wor ld. It now pervades virtually all areas of human action. The lady in the discussion group related how such thinking has almost become gospel in the medium of television. Much of the mission work of American church organ izations is focused on nations with low levels of living - countries of southern Asia, Africa, South and Central America. With funds and personnel that are never enough, the church beseeches its American members to give more - not just more, but to give enough dollars to eliminate the hardship and suf fering of the poor people of these countries. The usual tactic is .to prick the conscience by implying guilt on the part of those who are well-fed and well-clothed in a world in which many are not.

Dividing the Do"ar~ Reliance on voluntary charity or on government grants to reduce substantially the hunger of the world's poor, is a futile effort. There is not sufficient wealth in America, if given as charity, to reduce measurably their plight. Suppose that the rich man in the story of Jesus had joined with all other rich men of the then known world, and had given all they owned to the poor. Would the people of the world today have been noticeably better off as a re sult of such giving two thousand years ago? Suppose a similar ac tion had occurred five hundred years ago? or ten years ago? It 286 THE FREEMAN May is difficult to imagine anything but negative answers. Poverty can be alleviated in one way only, by increased productiv ity. And productivity is increased only as we have more and better tools and equipment· per worker. Wealth not immediately consumed but set aside as capital (machin ery, factories, research labora tories) makes for a productive economy and a rise in general prosperity affecting everyone. But periodically divide up the wealth and we'll all stay poor! As one dis'cerning economist put it rather astutely, "If we turn wealth into food and fred the world's poor, what happens after lunch next Thursday, and both the food and the wealth to produce it has been eaten 1"

What the poor need is a special means to end poverty, not the temporary respite afforded by gifts soon to be consumed. Before I am misunderstood, let me say that I favor charitable works, that there are little enough funds and personal effort to support true needs, that to the extent such works do administer moral and physical help, we should all be very thankful. Some people are physically beyond self-help, no matter what the opportunity. They are the poor, permanently disabled in body or mind, who will always require the help of others. But there are others, also poor and despairing, who exist in such condition because someone is caus ing that condition. They may be of sound minds and bodies but have no opportunities to achieve self reliance due to customs, beliefs, or laws that prohibit their self sufficiency. The erasure of such prohibitions against human prog ress is the real cure, and it needs to be learned, taught and devel oped. Anything short of it is noth ing but band-aids and aspirin.

Here lies the real challenge to the American people - politicians, news media, educational institu tions, and church organizations in world mission work. The Need to Be free To be more specific, the poor of the world need to be free persons. They need to be free from taboos, customs, totalitarian regimes,and paternalistic socialist laws. Block ages of freedom will never allow the poor to climb from the misery and sickness of poverty. And not even the richest of peoples can do more than temporarily and par tially relieve the suffering while such anti-freedom conditions per sist. Among well-intentioned politi cians, professional c'hurchmen, and many others is a deplorable lack of comprehension of the goodness of self-responsibility and freedom 1975 FALLING ON DEAF EARS 287 to exercise such qualities. Lip service favoring freedom of indi vidual decision making is general, but seldom specific. Let's look at some of the ways of missing the real point.

It is said, probably with reason able accuracy, that over one-half of the world's people are mal nourished, and up to one-fifth are frequently at the borderline of starvation. The non-sleeping hours of people in underdeveloped na tions are almost entirely consumed in their attempts to satisfy their hunger, often not very success fully. The foregoing descriptions are relevant in that they describe results of serious problems. But the causes usually are incorrectly identified. The mistaken reasons include: • Rising affluence among the world's well-to-do means less food for the poor. • An American consumes many times "his share" of the world's output of agricultural and in dustrial products; thus he and other Americans deprive the poor of their proper share. • Americans squander their means on such luxuries as homes with too many bathrooms, swim ming pools, too many energy using heating and air-condition ing units.

• Fertilizer used to treatA'meri can lawns and golf courses would be better used to raise food for the poor. One could go on and on prepar ing similar statements about the affluence of some, allegedly at the expense of others less fortunate. The single thread running through these allegations is the assign ment of guilt to those who have been successful in finding the way to provide themselves not only the necessities but also some pleasures of life. I am not praising extrava gance or conspicuous consumption. The point is that Americans enjoy more of the world's goods because they produce more of them. If they were prevented from enjoying them' they would stop producing them. If There Were No USA . .. There is little logic in suggest ing that people in geographic lo cations remote to the United States cannot exist comfortably unless the citizens of U.S.A. pro vide those comforts~ Would there be no hope for improvement of the level of life among the poor (of India, or Africa, for examp1e) if there were no United States of America located in the northern half of the western hemisphere?

There is no magic of geographic location that brings self-sufficiency . to people. No superhuman force showers gifts of food and clothing on .Americans simply because they 288 THE FREEMAN May happen to be here. No, none of these. But there has been some thing better than magic "going for" Americans. Each one has had more personal freedom and less restriction than his less fortunate world brothers. Consequently, each American has had the opportunity to make the most of his abilities, and enough have done so to make this a land of plenty. Freedom for an individual means freedom from others who would The Aim of Education use authoritarian government, ta boos, false gods, or other coercive powers to diminish the opportun ity for self-fulfillment. Serious ef forts of Americans to relieve the world's poor will include a course of action designed to teach those poor and suffering persons how to become self-reliant and free rather than dependent on welfare. The poor of the world can ill afford the luxury of American misdirec tion. , JDEASON LIBERTY THE TASK OF THE educator is primal.'ily that of liberation. The individual needs to be freed from his limitations in order to de velop his potentialities and become a better man than he would otherwise have been. This is the most radical presumption of all.

If we assume that the individual can develop his unique potenti alities only in freedom, implicit in that assumption is that different people have different capacities and varying rates of progress. Thus, genuine education implies discrimination and difference as distinguished from the dead level of equality. Once this individual quality of education is understood, it be comes apparent that "social utility" is not an appropriate mea sure of the student's achievement. Respect for the individual re quires that his education be measured in terms of his growth, his becoming. The object and the measure of genuine education re mains the individual. Development of individual personality, not social conformity, should be education's concern. Education is the process by which the. individual gains possession of his soul and becomes a human being fully responsive to his capacities. GEORGE c. ROCHE III, Education in America Religion and the Free Economy EDMUND A. OPITZ IMAGINE YOURSELF in conversation with a new acquaintance. The ex change of ideas goes well for a time, and then the talk drifts around to economics. This brings forth a series of denunciations from your companion, who declares tha t economics belongs in the same category as voodoo and witchcraft.