Agrigulture and the Survival of Private Enterprise; E. Grady

Ed Grady Agriculture and the Survival of Private Enterprise ONE of the most compelling prob lems we face, as a nation and as a people, is embodied in the question, ~~Can private enterprise survive in America?" And my answer to that question is a qualified one: ~~Yes, private enter prise can, and shall, survive in America ... providing": • providing that as Americans we quit taking it for granted • providing we understand what makes our system tick • providing we learn how to make both an emotional and intellec tual sale in behalf of freedom • providing we care enough to make the good fight. Mr. Grady, now manager of the Information division of the Minnesota Farm Bureau Federation. has for more than 30 years been professionally telling the story of freedom. 480 And what is agriculture's role in the survival of free enterprise in America? Simply put, it is to demon strate our ability, and our willing ness, to measure up to the test pro vided by each of these provisos. This we are determined, and dedicated, to do.

If we demonstrate as much integ rity in organizing support for free dom as its opponents have demon strated in attacking it, then no ques tion but that we shall win the battle. If there is one lesson that history tells us again and again it is that concentration of power and author ity in ~~big government" is, eventually and certainly, followed by the loss of personal freedom. And let us never forget that no man's future is safe in the hands of a political phi losophy that is willing to buy today's popularity with tomorrow's agony.

AGRICULTURE AND THE SURVIVAL OF PRIVATE ENTERPRISE 481 Economic freedom is the founda tion of political freedom. The two are inseparable. Make no mistake about it; every time we transfer reponsibility and power to a central government, we transfer responsibility and power away from the people. All of us-the businessman on Main Street and the businessman on the farm included.....;..needa basic un derstanding of what it is that makes private competitive enterprise go. The mainsprings ofthe system are four in number: (a) Most property privately owned; (b) Most property privately man aged; (c) Most property operated for a profit, not necessarily at a profit; and . (d) All this under circumstances in which competition prevails. All production-all civilization, in fact-rests on a recognition of and respect for property rights. A pri vate enterprise system is impossible without security of property; it is possible only within a framework of law and order and morality.

When a man's property rights are protected, he is able to retain and enjoy in peace the fruits of his labor. This security is his main incentive, if not his only incentive, to labor creatively. If anyone were free to confiscate what the farmer had sown, fertilized, cultivated· and raised, he would no longer have any incentive to sow or to reap. Profit is the life blood of a free economy. The opportunity to make a profit (or the opposite, the discipline of possible loss) is the invisible hand, as it were, that guides produc tion and distribution. And in guid ing the economy to the satisfaction of society's needs, the profit system does what no central authority is capable of doing as well-even granting that the authority might be staffed by the most brilliant planners and the best able manag ers among us. It is said at times that many are willing to trade freedom for security. Even if they were to receive that for which they traded, it would be a bad bargain. But the sad and frighten ing fact is that when a people seek to obtain sec uri ty by turning over power and responsibility to govern ment, they lose both freedom and security.

What we must recognize, of course, is that there simply is no real security in any form of soci ety that rests upon centralized polit ical and economic control. Life in such societies is grim and drab and desperate. The opportu nity of the individual to better him self is hamstrung by restrictions and frustrations and limitations which stifle initiative and suffocate prog ress. The individual in this kind of situation becomes a mere cog in a 482 THE FREEMAN August rusty, creaking, poorly-functioning machine. Our form of society is being bat tered today by the most subtle and most dangerous threat possible-the destruction of the competitive mar ket system. It is most subtle and most dangerous because it always is done with the avowed purpose of benefiting or protecting some seg ment of our population. A Flexible Price System In our economy, it is a flexible price system that serves as the ba lance wheel for the whole structure.

The price system determines how much of any product we should pro duce; it adjusts consumption to use what is produced; and it guides the flow of investment to insure the pro duction of what is needed. Now, if we don't permit the price system to perform these functions, we strike deep into the very lifeline, at the very heart, of our competitive economic system. And if the capac ity of the price system to perform its function is destroyed, there remains only one alternative: assign the au thority to fix prices to government or, put another way, to political management. Political management of our price system is inevitably inefficient, cumbersome, backward-looking and costly. Even though the appointed fixers were all-intelligent super men, it would be impossible for them to operate effectively in a situation in which every decision is affected by political considerations and polit ical pressures. Personal ambitions and bureaucratic policies become major factors influencing every de cision.

For a physician, the least profit able patient is a dead one. The next least profitable is the well one. The gold mine is the patient who con tinues sick, or continues to think himself sick. The nobility of the medical profession is the fact that few of us have ever had an en counter with doctors who exploit this obvious truth. But not always so with politicians. Many of them parade as physicians to doctor the economic ills of their constituents. Our need for protec tion from exploitation in this in stance is less obvious-but far more necessary. Government farm policy dating back some 40 years has been so long on promises and so lean on perfor mance because it is borrowed from the strategy and tactics of the coer cive society and its centrally directed and centrally-controlled economy. It serves well neither pro ducers nor consumers. Thus the all-consuming impor tance of choices, and how it is that one of our continuing challenges is to discover in advance the eventual consequences of the choices we are called upon to make. This is an abso1979 AGRICULTURE AND THE SURVIVAL OF PRIVATE ENTERPRISE 483 lute prerequisite not only of success ful self-government but essential also to the survival of private enter prise.

The discussion over the years with regard to compensatory payments (target prices, in the current gov ernment farm program. glossary) il lustrates well what it is one or another choice involves. Basically, what is wrong with the payment approach? It is not, as advocates even today claim, a device to control production; it is a scheme to control farmers. Nor is it, as some contend, a plan to establish a free market; it is a pro posal to wreck markets. Simply put, it provides an engraved invitation for politically-determined limita tions on the farm incomes of indi vidual producers-and it's ideally suited to implement the concept of rationing the right to earn on the basis of the politics of equal shares. Instead of easing the cost-price squeeze which plagues fanners in Minnesota and throughout the country, it makes matters worse. Some years ago, the late Aneurin Bevan and his British Labor Party colleagues published in a pamphlet the basic tenets of their political philosophy. If there is one phrase more than any other that appears time and again in this document, it is the term ««fair shares."

Reduced to its most common de nominator, fair shares is nothing more and nothing less than a politi cal device for leveling and putting a ceiling on opportunity. This is not the American way; this is the other way! A moment's reflection on the fair-shares doctrine should make us aware that it is time for individual citizens to reaffirm their faith in capitalism, American style. Curbing the Intervention Authoritarian liberals delude themselves into believing they are champions of liberty while favoring creeping coercion as long as they can be authors of the coercion. While they are trying to cure injustice by piling on more government, they lose sight of the fact that all the great struggles for freedom have been directed against the overblown force of government. There isn't a one of us-in town or in the country-who isn't a target of the propaganda campaign being waged by what I call the ««cultof the positive." The conviction of people who make up this breed is that you don't have a npositive" program for solving problems unless you have a program that calls for government intervention, or government in volvement-preferably national and the more widespread the better.

These economic meddlers and polit ical peddlers are determined to be positive-even if it means being positively wrong.

484 THE FREEMAN All of which causes me to suggest that if you really know what you're for you won't hesitate to be against anything that is inconsistent with it. If you're for good, solid, juicy crunchy apples, you just have to be against worms. The chaos and con fusion arises when people don't know what they're for. So if you're for the private com petitive enterprise system, it won't disturb you to oppose proposals that would wreck the market system. If you're for the voluntary method of solving problems, you'll not hesitate to fight efforts to substitute compul sion or coercion. And if you're for individual responsibility, freedom and opportunity, you'll forthrightly and vigorously oppose anything in consistent with this fundamental concept. That's the logic, and the rationale, of liberty. Dr. Norman Vincent Peale didn't allow himself to be pressed into serving the positive cult. He says that he is a firm believer in affirma tive attitudes and is convinced that they are ttsupremely important in James Mussatti successful living." But he is quick to add: ttAffirmatives alone are not enough. This world is full of hope and joy, but it is also beset by evil, immorality and sin. You can't say tYes' to these things, or even tMaybe.' You have to say tNo!' and you have to make it stick."

Happily, most farmers-and most rural Americans-haven't suc cumbed to the myth that there is a magical way by which governments can create prosperity and high stan dards of living by either ignoring or flouting economic laws. Instead of embarking on a politi cal safari in search of the pot of gold that is supposed to be found at the end of the socialist rainbow, we favor building a greater nation, a more appreciative and productive people, and a more responsive com munity on the rock-ribbed founda tion of unparalleled success thus far. And we do so with an abiding faith that God didn't intend the light of human freedom, nor the private enterprise system so much a part of it, to perish from the earth. , IDEAS ON UBERTY OUR most formidable fortress of defense in time of stress still remains the Constitution of the United States. But it is only as good as our understanding and defense of the purpose for which it was drafted.

Eternal vigilance and personal responsibility are still the price of human liberty.