Or Else...; R. Madden

THEFREEMAN IDEAS ON LIBERTY Or Else ... by Russell Madden E xtortion has always been a favorite activity of governmental agencies. Or dinarily, threatening someone with harm unless he accedes to another's demands is rightfully a crime. Whether the perpetrator is a neighbor seeking to use your lawn mower or an organized-crime thug remind ing you to pay your monthly "protection fee," such behavior is condemned and pros ecuted rigorously. No normal person enjoys having his desires thwarted or his values seized against his wishes. Webster's dictionary says that to extort is "a) to wrest or wring (money, informa tion, etc.) from a person by violence, in timidation, or abuse of authority; obtain by force, torture, threat, or the like, b) to take illegally under color of office." What can a citizen do in the second instance, when the extortionist knocking at his door is someone whose job it is to protect him from that very crime? Unfortunately, in today's political reality, legal extortion is the guiding principle that authorities at all levels of government practice with enthusi asm. Few citizens realize precisely what is occurring when the state shakes them down.

Typically, a property owner or business owner is required to comply with govern ment demands in return for being permitted to engage in some activity. Compliance, in other words, is the payment for protection from state prohibition. This type of theft does them far more damage, results in a Russell Madden is a communications instructor at Mt. Mercy College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. much greater loss of wealth, and diminishes their freedom to a greater extent than all the criminals currently preying on honest citi zens. At a local level, such extortion manifests itself in myriad rules, regulations, taxes, permits, and demands for compliance. A person's property becomes not a resource to be used by him in furthering his personal goals and values, but an extension of "pub lic" property, to be controlled, limited, or expropriated according to the whims and preferences of whoever directs the agents of the state.

A Man's Home Is No Longer His Castle Building codes force a homeowner to construct or remodel his house-his prop erty-in alignment with the judgment of a government-certified "expert." Regardless of whether an individual prefers to add certain safety devices or use particular materials, the building inspector dictates what is acceptable or not. Where a property owner can site his home; whether he can have an office or run a business on his property; whether he can rent out a room to a boarder; where he may plant a tree or cut one down; how many cars (of a certain age) he may park in his own drive; whether he may build at all-the number of ways that government may require compliance from citizens is nearly limitless. And if a home owner has the misfortune of purchasing a property designated as "historical," esthet749 750 THE FREEMAN • DECEMBER 1997 ics alone (that is, the aesthetic choices of strangers who did nothing to help the indi vidual purchase his property) can force him to use a certain color paint, erect only certain styles of fencing, or alter the looks of the house according to narrowly delim ited standards. Whether one can afford such changes or even likes the results of these demands is irrelevant. The homeowner complies-or else....

Developers and entrepreneurs are like wise politely assaulted by those government officials who demand certain perks or ben efits. For every new house built, a munici pality may demand a small fee to be deliv ered into the city or county coffers. The officials may require that a certain portion of land be set aside for parks, trails, and playgrounds or placed into a land bank to "preserve the natural environment." If the builder resists or attempts to negotiate a more acceptable situation, the government agency may simply state, "Do it our way or we'll just take the property we want through eminent domain." (The government prefers the first course; a taking under eminent domain requires "just compensation," ac cording to the U.S. Constitution.) Other agencies may interfere with an entrepreneur in order to have him locate his business in an area with a particular racial make-up. For example, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing board re cently told Louisiana Energy Services (LES) that its license for a new uranium enrichment plant would require "further study." Why? The board feared the selec tion of the site may have been influenced by racial considerations and might result in "environmental injustice," that is, subject ing black residents to more pollution than white residents, even though the regulators had earlier declared the plant safe. Had LES chosen a predominantly white location, perhaps it would not have been threatened with the termination of its $855 million plans. Refusal to knuckle under to the intimidation may result in denial of permis sion to build. In other instances, business owners who violate "environmental" laws such as wetlands regulations face financial ruin and even imprisonment. The message is clear: "Do it our way-or else.... "

Officially Reviled Businesses If a businessman creates products that are under official censure or that suffer from public distaste, the extortion rises to new levels. Tobacco companies are threatened with ruinous Medicaid litigation and poten tial prohibition of their product though they have violated no laws. Various draconian demands are made on them. The extortion attempt is eagerly joined by nearly every state and supported by the federal govern ment. Then the extortion is compounded by the demand for billions of dollars in return for immunity from litigation. Beer and liquor manufacturers are heavily taxed and regulated. Where and what hours they can sell their products, what information they can place on their labels, and how much alcohol they can put in their products are all determined by those who have no financial stake in the success or failure of the business. Perhaps not too far down the line those who produce "junk"

food, dairy or meat products, or even "gas guzzling" sports vehicles will be required to pay protection money as well. They'll quickly learn that if they refuse "protec tion," there will be no product to sell at all. Cities, counties, states, and the federal government save their boldest attempts at extortion for the realm of income taxation. Adding insult to injury, they have the au dacity to label their actions with an Or wellian usage of the term voluntary. Because the men with the guns rarely come directly to your door, the politicians and their minions pretend that no violence, intimida tion, or threats are involved in getting you to surrender your property. Every year more than a trillion of dollars are quietly extorted from those who have earned that money. Each of those dollars represents time stolen from the owners, a partial enslavement, another retreat from the freedom each citizen has as his right. Of course, in addi tion to the income tax, there are sales taxes, property taxes (used primarily to support schools whether you have children or not), estate taxes, luxury taxes, employment taxes (Social Security, Medicare, unemploy 'ment), and excise taxes on gasoline, ciga rettes, and alcohol. Indeed, almost no hu man activity is exempt from such extortion.

An individual may voluntarily "choose" not to pay certain taxes, but the "or else" in these cases does not pay even lip service to due process. Without a court order or a trial, the Internal Revenue Service can seize a person's bank account, padlock his busi ness, garnishee his wages, or sell his prop erty to satisfy a tax debt. The implicit threat: pay the IRS whatever it claims you owe it-or else .... These examples of officially sanctioned extortion could be extended indefinitely. Every behavior a citizen engages in only under the threat of punishment, every peaceful action he avoids due to official intimidation, every bit of property or time surrendered at the literal or figurative point of the government's guns represents an abuse of his freedom and rights, a denial of OR ELSE. .. 751, his moral autonomy, an initiation of vi0 lence that proclaims that neither his life not his property are truly his.' Every citizen who seeks to cash in on that booty, every person who demands that his neighbor conform to his. wishes,every individual who clamors for what he did not earn contributes to an atmosphere that permits, condones, and even encourages expanding legal extortion.

An honest person does not seek to enrich himself at the expense of his fellows. A moral person does not claim that his desires or his needs establish a claim on the time; wealth, or property of a neighbor. A person of integrity does not abhor extortion ollan individual level while encouraging it on, a social plane. As a culture and most especially as indi .... viduals, we need to recognize extortion, whatever its guise, and categorically re ject it. The consequences of failing to root out and eliminate such attitudes are too grave to ignore. We either increase free .. dom and respect for property rights-or else. . . . 0 Now available in a Leather Edition! The Monumental Masterwork of "THE GRAND OLD MAN OF ECONOMICS"* Considered by many to.be the counterweight of Marx's Das Kapital, H.UMANAcTION is the magnum opus of a genius. /IMises is thefirst to work out economicson afirm foundationon the principleof individualaction....

This is the economicbiblefor the civilizedman." -MurrayN. Rothbard." LUDWIG VON MISES is now universallyacknowl edged as one of the fountainheads of the world~ wide movement toward individual liberty: Here is the classic defense of capitalism, whose impact and influence continue to grow. *Libraty}ounud Elegant dark ..blue leather edition, featuring a gold-stamped design on cover and spine, edge-gilded, with bound-in gold bookmark. 928 pages, ISBN 1-57246-021-0 Special holiday pricing $78.00 Sale ends January 151 1998 Published by The Foundation for Economic' Education, Inc., (800) 452-3518 Economics on Trial Best Textbooks for a Free-Market University by,Mark Skousen "I don't care who writes a nation's laws ... if I can write its economics textbooks." -Paul A. Samuelson W hen I majored in economics in the late 1960s and early 1970s, there were precious few textbooks with a strong free market bent. My introductory course re quired Paul A. Samuelson's Economics, a strictly Keynesian work favoring heavy state intervention. My class in the history of economic thought relied on The Worldly Philosophers, by Robert Heilbroner, a so cialist who said that Karl Marx was a good family man. My economic history book was History of the American Economy, by Ross M. Robertson, who wrote that high federal deficit spending got us out of the Great Depression. And this was at Brigham Young University, a conservative institu tion.