A. Microeconomics Chapter 7 Market vs. State: It Is the Overriding Distinction in Economics and Politics

Just as an important difference in everyday life is that between a bathroom and a kitchen, so, too, does a crucial distinction in political-economic philosophy exist between government and private contractual arrangements. But here is where the analogy breaks down. There are other, even more important insights to be garnered in ordinary living than that between these two rooms (e.g., don’t eat poison, feed yourself, take care of babies); there is simply no more important delineation in libertarian theory than that which exists between coercion (the government) and voluntary cooperation (the market).

Yet, such is the parlous nature of our discipline that there are even people parading themselves around as libertarians who are unaware of this distinction. Worse, there are those who write articles in professional journals, and even books, which are dedicated in their entirety to the obliteration of the difference between the state and private market interaction.

They are not without an argument, paltry as it is. Exhibit “A” in their arsenal is the condominium agreement. These “libertarians” wax eloquent about the severity and comprehensiveness of such housing developments. For example, they typically require that all exteriors be painted in the same color; that fences be identical (e.g., everyone must have, say, a picket fence); that there be no window air conditioning units. Some even go so far as to stipulate the color of curtains that can be seen from outside, and either compel, or prohibit, such things as floor rugs, Venetian blinds, screen doors, types of foot mats and whether automobiles must, or cannot be, parked in garages. Some prohibit children entirely; others specify minimum ages for residents (e.g., 60 years old for retirement communities). And legion are the rules and regulations concerning noise at which hours, parties, where tricycles can be stored, etc. Compared even to some villages and small towns, the mandates of these private communities can be intrusive, comprehensive, and oft-times arbitrary.

Then, too, there is the fact that both kinds of organizations are typically run on fully democratic principles. And not only that: there is a sense in which, in both cases, it can truly be said that people agree to take part in the elections in the first place.

In the case of cooperative housing, this is easy to see. All members of the development sign a purchase contract, indicating willingness to be bound by the condo constitution and by a formula (majority, super majority, whatever) for altering its terms.

For towns, no one, of course, signs the constitution. (If you don’t believe this, go back and read Spooner’s No Treason.) However, argue these “libertarians,” by moving into a village the newcomer knows full well the rules of the political entity, or can easily learn them: no spitting on the street, the zoning specifications, speed limits, etc. And, in virtually all cases, town regulations are far less all encompassing than those of condominiums. True, concludes this argument, the city government garners “taxes” while the condo collects membership “fees,” but this is a distinction without a difference.

The first chink in this seemingly airtight case can be seen when we examine the position not of the new arrival in town, but rather that of a landowner who was located there before the town was incorporated; or, alternatively, when we look at the plight of the homeowner living just outside the village limits, when it expands to take into its jurisdiction people such as himself living in contiguous but previously unincorporated areas. (We consider the second of these cases not the first, since there are now far more individuals alive who have experienced the latter, not the former.)

So the mayor comes to this homeowner and says to him, “I’ve got good news for you, Zeke. You’re now part of the town. We’ll collect your garbage for you, we’ll provide city water and sewage services, policing, fire protection, membership in the library; heck, we’ve even got a municipal swimming pool. You’ll have to pay for welfare for the poor, too, of course, but you’ve always helped your down at their luck neighbors before, so that shouldn’t be any burden on you.”

Replies Zeke: “That really sounds wonderful. We’re really getting modern around her, aren’t we, Clem? But I tell you what. I’m going to take a pass on this wonderful opportunity. I see no reason for change. Thanks, but no thanks.”

Whereupon responds Mayor Clem: “I don’t think I’ve fully made my position clear. This really isn’t your choice. We took a vote on this, and your side lost. You’re in, whether you like it or not.”

At this point states Zeke: “Hitler came to power through an election. So don’t tell me about the ballot box. However, I’ll give you one thing, Clem. At least you don’t add insult to injury. At least you don’t compound naked aggression with outright lying, Clem, like those so called ‘libertarians’ who see no difference between being amalgamated into a town against their will, and buying into a residential community. Your demand for my tax money was refreshingly honest, albeit a bit brutal, for a person I used to think of as a good neighbor.”

So much for the first chink in the armor, the case where the property owner is forcibly incorporated into the town. There is indeed a relevant difference between being compelled to be part of the village, and voluntarily joining the condo.

But what about the stronger case for the “libertarian” side of this argument, the one where a new arrival moves into town, buys a house, etc., knowing full well what rules and taxes he will be bound by? Is it not true that at least in this case, the municipal government is indistinguishable from the strata council that runs the condominium?

Not at all. Consider the following case. I buy a home in a dangerous neighborhood, say, the South Bronx. I know full well that the crime rate there is high, and that I will be especially targeted, given the color of my skin. Perhaps I make this economic decision because of the cheaper real estate, or because I want to be closer to “the people,” the better to study their situation and help eradicate poverty. In any case, as soon as I move in, I am confronted by a street thug with a knife who says to me:

“Give me your wallet, you white mother f-----, or I’ll cut you, man.”

Whereupon I pull out my gun and say to the criminal: “My good man, you are overmatched, firepower wise. Cease and desist from your evil ways, and go about your legitimate business, if you have any.”

This street person, who, unbeknownst to me, is actually a bit of a philosopher, expounds as follows: “You don’t seem to understand. I’m one of those ‘libertarians’ who maintain that since you moved to the South Bronx with the full knowledge you would very likely be subjected to muggings of the sort I’m now pulling (or at least trying pull; I’ve never met a less cooperative victim than you; what’s this world coming to?), you in effect have agreed to be mugged by robbers like me. So, get with the program, man.

The point is, as we can readily see, the ability to foresee an event is not at all equivalent to agreeing to it. Yes, I can full well predict that if I move to the South Bronx, I’ll likely be victimized by street crime. But this is not at all the same thing as acquiescing in such nefarious activities. Yet, according to the “libertarian” argument we are considering, the two are indistinguishable.

Similarly, the individual who locates in a city with taxes, zoning, etc., can be expected to know he will be subjected to these depredations, just like everyone else there. But this is more than a country mile away from his having agreed to be coerced by these evil doers. The new arrival in town no more gives permission for the tax collector to mulct funds from him than does the newcomer to the South Bronx give permission to the mugger to violate his rights.

In very stark contrast indeed, the purchaser of a unit in a housing development not only foresees he will be subjected to a monthly membership payment, and to a welter of restrictions as to what he can do with his property, but actually consents to pay the former and be bound by the latter. The proof of this is that he signs a bill of sale, stipulating all of the above. In the town-citizen case, there is no such written contract.

It is no exaggeration to say that the most important distinction in all of libertarian theory is that between coercion and non-coercion. Obliterate this divergence and there is nothing left to libertarianism at all. This is so important, it bears repeating: libertarianism consists of nothing more than the implications of this one single solitary distinction. Without it, there is absolutely no theory.

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Published July 19, 2002.

Chapter 8

What Do Boxing and Business Schools Have in Common?: The Problem of Ratings

It is one thing for pinkos, commies, demopublicans, republicrats, lefties, neo-cons, etc., to denigrate this distinction. That is, indeed, entirely fitting and proper. If they didn’t do this, they could hardly be characterized as I have just done. However, it is quite another thing for “libertarians” to make this mistake. They ought to give up this pernicious doctrine, or at least have the decency to stop characterizing themselves as libertarians. Everyone knows that the rating of pugilists by the various boxing authorities is, how shall we say this, highly problematic.

There are four main boxing associations: the International Boxing Federation (IBF), the World Boxing Association (WBA), the World Boxing Council (WBC) and the World Boxing Organization (WBO). This, alone, seemingly, would be bad enough; the fact that there are numerous other institutional ratings agencies — the International Boxing Association, the International Boxing Council, the International Boxing Organization, the International Boxing Union, the World Boxing Federation, the World Boxing Union, and FightNews — renders matters utterly chaotic.

But one does not have to resort to these others to show the depths of depravity to which ratings have sunk. The “Big Four” will do fine in this regard, thank you very much.

Consider the following (as of September 5, 2001):

• Mike Tyson is rated first contender by the WBC, 5th by the IBF, 6th by the WBA, and not at all by the WBO.

• Hasim Rahman is the WBC and IBF champ, but does not appear in the top ten of the WBA and WBO.

• The only heavyweights listed as elite in all four rankings are Vitali Klitschko, Lennox Lewis, and David Tua.

• As far as the WBC, WBA, and IBF are concerned, Roy Jones is the best light heavyweight; he is not included in the WBO top ten.

• Bernard Hopkins (WBC, IBF) and Felix Trinidad (WBA) are middleweight champions; but neither is listed even as an also ran by the WBO.

• Only Hector Camacho and Oktay Urkal make the top ten cut for all four Super Lightweights.

• Floyd Mayweather (WBC), Joel Casamayor (WBA), Steve Forbes (IBF), and Acelino Freitas (WBO) all have super featherweight championship belts; but none is so much as mentioned by any of the other three.

• Only Naseem Hamed is a top ten featherweight for all four boxing organizations; Julio Chacon (WBO), Frankie Toledo (IBF), Derrick Gainer (WBA) and Erik Morales (WBC) are champs, but none are included as contenders by any of the other big four.

Ok. So the fight game has always been not just a little bit unsavory. But what are we to make of a similar situation with regard to, of all things, graduate schools of business?

There are three widely respected periodicals which rate business schools by ranking them in terms of quality. They are the Wall Street Journal, Business Week magazine, and U.S. News & World Report. Despite the undoubted prestige of these three, sharp criticisms have been leveled at their treatment of the leading colleges of business.

For example, while Dartmouth College was ranked number one by the Wall Street Journal, it garnered only eleventh place as far as U.S. News & World Report was concerned, and slipped to sixteenth position in Business Week’s compilation.

If these widely disparate ranks for one institution of higher learning were not enough to cast doubt upon the veracity of the ratings, consider the following: the business schools of only Harvard, Chicago, Northwestern, and Michigan made top ten on the hit parade of all three magazines. None of the other preeminent places, not Stanford, not Yale, not the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, were posted in this category by all three sets of journalists.

Worse, not a one of these supposedly objective newspapers placed my own school, the Joseph A. Butt, S.J., College of Business at Loyola University New Orleans, in any of their top ten places.

However, something deeper than mere sleaze would appear to account for these obvious errors. The rankings disparity, as can be seen, is by no means limited to the “sweet science.” Further, Consumer Reports does not always agree with Good Housekeeping, and the two of them are often out of step with yet other ratings agencies.

The reason for all the diversity stems, ultimately, from the fact that ranking services are a private, for-profit industry. There is competition between firms, and differences of opinion almost necessarily arise in such contexts.

Some people call for the government to intervene in such circumstances, to rationalize matters, to bring order out of the chaos.

But this would be a step in precisely the wrong direction.

Competition always brings a better product than public sector socialism. Yes, things can get messy there, but that is the continually churning market for you. Governments, too, make mistakes (think thalidomide!). We get more and better information from a myriad of sources, than from one monopoly state enterprise.

If you think we should have only one boxing organization under state control, do you think there should be only one governmental magazine rating MBA programs? Such periodicals disagree with one another not just on business college prestige, but with regard to many other things as well. If mere divergence of opinion warranted public sector control, the road to socialism would be greased even the more.

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Published September 27, 2001.

Chapter 9

The Motor Vehicle Bureau; Confronting It

Newly arrived in New Orleans from Arkansas, one of the first things I did after settling in was to attempt to register my automobile and get a Louisiana license plate (I can’t pass for a native with an out of town vehicle.)

I say “attempt” advisedly, because this quest, as it turned out, was quite a struggle.

On my first try, I went out to the Louisiana Motor Vehicle Bureau in Kenner, a 25-minute trip from my university. I saw a line of about 35 people, and took my place at the end of it. After 20 minutes, only two people had been served. This implied a wait of 330 minutes, or five and a half hours. Not having brought any work to do with me, I scurried back to my office, tail between my legs.

The next day I arrived with sandwiches and a book to read. There were only 20 people ahead of me. Hot diggity, I thought, this would take “only” 200 minutes at yesterday’s pace, or a little over 3 hours.

Happily, we were queued up in “snake” formation, instead of the more usual system — popular for public sector “services” — of a group of people waiting, separately, for each clerk. At least I didn’t have to worry about being at the slowest moving wicket.

But, did you ever stand around, trying to read a book, cheek by jowl with almost two dozen people, confined, sardine-like, to a space of about 10 feet by 10 feet? It was no picnic for me, and I’m a relatively young pup of only six decades; there were also some really old people on that line. This was cruel and unusual punishment for them.

Why couldn’t they give us numbers in order of arrival, and let us sit while we waited? For that matter, why does serving each “customer” take so long? And, if it really does, why not hire a few more clerks, or more efficient ones? Better yet, why not simplify the process? Are the opportunity costs of time of New Orleanians really that close to zero? Are we cattle? If they treated prisoners as badly as that, they would riot.

But the real problem is not with any of these considerations. It is, rather, that there is simply no competition for the provision of licensing and registry services. If there were an alternative (or two) available, I and at least several of my queue-mates would have patronized a competitor with alacrity.

The difficulty is, we have embraced the old Soviet system of economics in our so-called “public” sector. In the bad old U.S.S.R., there were long waiting lines for just about everything. In the land of the free and the home of the brave, we have sovietized such things as the motor vehicle bureau, the post office, and a myriad of other government bureaucracies.

It is time, it is long past time, to privatize these last vestiges of socialism, and allow the winds of free enterprise to blow away these cob-webs of inefficiency. The reason we have reasonably good pizza, toilet paper, and shoes, etc., — and don’t have to wait hours for them — is because there is competition in these industries. Those entrepreneurs who cannot cut it are forced to change the error of their ways through our marvelous profit and loss system. If they cannot, they are forced into bankruptcy, and others, more able, are eager to take their places. Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” assures quality service wherever competition reigns.

In the event, my second wait took only an hour and 45 minutes. The queue moved faster than I had thought it would. I was “lucky.” (Furious, I wrote this op-ed while waiting in line.) I am now the proud owner of a spanking new Louisiana license plate.

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Published September 12, 2001.

Chapter 10

Want To Help the Poor and Oppressed? Encourage Laissez-Faire Capitalism, You Bleeding-Heart Liberal, You

Open Letter to the International Justice Mission

Dear Mr. Haugen:

I attended your speech at Regent College in Vancouver, Canada; I wanted to comment at that time, but the Q&A period was too limited. So I thought I would share my thoughts with you in this format.

If I had to summarize your speech, it was that callous acts are taking place on a massive scale all throughout the world at present, and it is the duty of Christians to try to stop these outrages. In order to do so, religious people should give up their self-centeredness, and increase their rate of charitable donations (both in terms of money and time) toward these ends.

According to Adam Smith, “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves not to their humanity but to their self love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.”

What I get from this is not that benevolence does not exist within the human breast. Rather, that it is in very scarce supply. Which means that rational men will want to economize on this rare and precious flower, instead of advocating that it be used promiscuously; realizing it will always be in short supply, instead of thinking it can be radically expanded.

And, there are good and sufficient sociobiological reasons why this should be so. Why we as a species are “hard wired” in this direction. If there were a tribe of cave men who were not primarily interested in number one, virtually to the exclusion of everyone else, they would have long ago died off. Better yet, if this theoretical tribe focused their limited benevolence widely, instead of narrowly, to their family members, friends, and neighbors, they would have gone extinct. We are descended from folk like those; that is why we are the way we are, in the main. Yes, there are some very few exceptions, but they only prove the general rule. We are focused on our narrow little lives, because this was required by our ancestors, as a matter of survival.

I entirely agree with your goals: to reduce or better yet eliminate the massive viciousness that now plagues us, such as the mass murder, slavery, etc., you mentioned so eloquently. But your means toward this end, increasing the level of benevolence in society, and widening its focus, I think are doomed to failure based on these considerations.

You may not have noticed, but all the countries you mentioned as examples of brutality were underdeveloped or retrogressing ones (you called them “developing countries” but that is just a bit of misleading political correctitude you might consider jettisoning). This leads to an alternative means toward eradicating the cruelty: economic development. Happily, Adam Smith again rides to the rescue. The full title of his most famous book is An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. His recipe for economic development was, in a nutshell, with some slight reservations: laissez faire capitalism. Murray N. Rothbard, my own mentor, goes much further, and criticizes Adam Smith himself for deviating too widely from this proper goal of full economic freedom in The Logic of Action: Applications and Criticism from the Austrian School.

The idea was that government which governs least governs best. Some of my research empirically supports the contention that economic freedom leads to prosperity and appears in Economic Freedom of the World, 1975–1995 (with James Gwartney and Robert Lawson). Given that greater wealth reduces man’s inhumanity to man, this is a course of action that should not be overlooked by you and your organization.

It is my contention that if your claim is true that to be a good Christian one must make an effort to stop the massive evils you mentioned, then it is no less true that it is also incumbent upon you to learn why some nations are rich while others are desperately poor. An aphorism might come in handy, here: “Don’t fight the alligators, drain the swamp.” You are fighting alligators; attempting to rescue little Marie or David or Jose. This is all well and good. I salute you for this. Someone has got to do this, as these injustices cry out to the heavens for redress. And, there is such a thing as specialization and the division of labor. But I think you should recognize that there is another and, yes, a better and more all-encompassing means toward this end: economic development based on free enterprise.

I emphasize this not so much because of what you said in your formal lecture, which ignored the points I am making, but based on your answer to the very last question asked of you. It was posed by a young lad who I took to be a Regent College seminary student, since his remarks were based on the usual Marxist claptrap taught in such establishments of higher learning. He asked if you were not concerned with systemic problems such as the “economic violence” based on unequal income distribution. (I don’t remember this verbatim, but this was the essence of his stance.) His implication was that western countries ought to increase their level of foreign aid to underdeveloped nations. But this is economic illiteracy of the highest order, as the work of Peter Bauer has stressed over and over again. Instead of verbally slapping down this young man as he richly deserved, you bought into his basic premises, but excused yourself from acting on his principles, properly I thought, on the grounds of the need for specialization and the division of labor. But his socialist premises were wrong, and if implemented, will increase not decrease, the level of brutality in these poor countries.

Now, I admit that there are also good and sufficient sociobiological reasons why free markets are not now the order of the day. If free markets were the normal, we would all be living in a laissez faire paradise. (It is my contention that in the caveman days, we became altogether too hard wired into following the orders of the tribal chief. Also, since we lived in very small communities compared to the present day, only direct cooperation seeped into the genetic pool. Cooperating indirectly, through gigantic markets, has come far too late in the history of our species to have been incorporated into our genes.) But this is no reason for intellectuals such as yourself to accept the siren song of socialism.

The rich western countries do not really need capitalism that much; this system in the past has set up the capital, and the legal system, to ensure relative wealth, and thus little internal mass murder. It is the poor nations in Africa and elsewhere that are in the greatest need of free enterprise. Thanks to their enjoyment of relative economic freedom for many years, the capitalist west can now afford a modicum of pernicious socialism. In contrast, free enterprise being virtually unknown in the third world, socialist egalitarianism is the death knell of their economy.

In closing, one last criticism of your presentation: lose that film clip showing a child buyer being tied up by the police. You may not have noticed it, but it also showed a television set in the background. This implies electricity, and a certain minimal level of prosperity — all totally incompatible with your story of people selling their kids motivated by dire poverty.

I hope you take these remarks in the spirit I mean them: as an attempt to help you with your very good works.

Mr. Gary Haugen did not see fit to respond to this open letter.

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Published July 21, 2004.

Chapter 11

Want To Cure Poverty? Get the Government Out of the Market

Louisiana Governor Blanco is now holding hearings on the problem of poverty. Since she is a mainstream politician, she will likely arrive at the wrong answers for its cause and adopt fascistic solutions for its cure. Worse, this initiative will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars or more and thus exacerbate the very poverty she is supposedly fighting.

In 1776 Adam Smith wrote An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. The governor might do worse than cancel her meetings and read this book instead. Smith said that those countries that rely mainly on the free enterprise system of private property rights and the rule of law prosper, while those that do not are consigned to a life of grinding poverty.

Smith, who was not as free enterprise-oriented as his reputation implies, hedged on this basic insight with too many exceptions and too many concessions to government, but the general rule he articulated was as true in the eighteenth century as it is in our own and applies as much to countries as to states and cities.

Why do markets work to alleviate poverty and governments fail?

The main reason is the profit and loss system, the automatic feedback loop mechanism of free enterprise. If an entrepreneur does a bad job, people avoid his firm. If he does not mend the error of his ways, bankruptcy is the inevitable and usually swift result. In sharp contrast, if a politician makes mistakes in satisfying a constituency, he can stay in office for up to four years; a bureaucrat, practically forever.

The situation regarding pizza, pens, and pickles is pretty satisfactory; those who could not provide these goods at a competitive quality and price went broke. But what of the post office and the motor vehicle bureau? Poor service for decades, and nothing we consumers can do about it.

Why do free markets tend toward income equality? The only legitimate way to earn vast sums of money under free enterprise is by enriching others. Yes, Bill Gates, Sam Walton, Henry Ford and Ray Kroc make billions, but they do so by economically uplifting all those they deal with. If people did not benefit from dealing with Microsoft, Wal-Mart, Ford, and McDonalds, they would not continue to do so.

In contrast, in politics, vast fortunes are made not by attracting customers but by raising taxes and siphoning off the lion’s share of them. The wealth of the politician rises, and that of everyone else falls.

But do governments not give money to the poor in the form of welfare? Doesn’t that help the poor? First, only the crumbs go to the poor. The rich, after all, run the government. It would take quite a bit more benevolence than they have for them to orchestrate things against their own interests.

Second, what little money does go to the poor impoverishes them; it does not lift them out of poverty. The key to understanding the direction of causation in this paradoxical situation is the family: Anything that supports this vital institution reduces poverty; anything that undermines it increases poverty.

Family breakdown is causally related to all sorts of poverty indices besides lack of money: imprisonment, lack of educational attainment, unemployment, lower savings, illegitimacy, etc.

And what is the effect of welfare on the family? To ask this is to answer it. As Charles Murray has shown in his insightful book Losing Ground, the social worker makes a financial offer to the pregnant girl that the father of her baby cannot even come close to matching. But they do so on the condition that this young man be out of the picture. A recipe for family disaster if ever there was one.

Slavery was not able to ruin the black family (poverty is disproportionately a black problem), but insidious welfare had that very effect. The black family was just about as strong as the white in the years following the War of Northern Aggression, but fell apart after Johnson’s War on Poverty.

Similarly, social security weakens intergenerational family ties. Public housing, with its income cutoff points, evicts intact families. The remaining female heads of families are no match for gangs of teenage boys lacking adult male role models.

The government is also a direct source of poverty. Its minimum wage and union legislation makes it difficult if not impossible for poor youth to get jobs. Its rent control makes cheap housing scarce. Its tariffs make all basic necessities more expensive, and its subsidies to business have the same effect.

Want to cure poverty, Governor Blanco? Reduce government interference with the free enterprise system.

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Published February 23, 2005.

Chapter 12

Airport Insecurity

Last week, I took an airplane from Vancouver to Atlanta, to give some lectures at the Mises Institute. I took a cab to the airport, since I would be away from my summer home for over two weeks, and this would be cheaper than parking the car at the airport for all that time. I had in my possession a letter, with a Canadian stamp on it, that I really wanted to get out into the socialist mail system. I had intended to mail it the day before, but in the rush of traveling, I had forgotten all about it, until I arrived at the airport.

Happily, there was a post office box right there at the airport, and I dropped the letter into it. But, then a thought occurred to me: this facility was one of those where you pull down a little door like contraption, put the letter in, close the door to make sure the letter was indeed posted, and then close it one last time. Although I only place in it a thin letter the opening was wide enough to mail off a package of a size sufficient to hold 3–4 hard cover books, or maybe a half dozen paper backs. Whereupon it suddenly hit me, far more disquieting: the opening was sufficient, more than sufficient, for a terrorist to place a bomb, a reasonably big one, into that container. He would not have even had to commit suicide to do so. A weight of explosives small enough to fit into that opening could have done a powerful lot of damage, murdering dozens if not scores of people in a crowded airport. Timed to explode ten minutes later, the perpetrator could have gotten off scot free.

Then, I noticed something else. Although I had to ask directions for the location of the post office box, the same was not true for trash cans. They were literally all over the place, in plain sight, dozens of them placed every 20 yards or so, as far as the eye could see. Each of them, in this particular airport, had a circular hole at the top, measuring more than my hand span (about 8 inches). These were in effect an open invitation to our friends from the terrorist community.

I thought about sharing this information with any one of the myriad of guards, busy bodies, uniformed gropers, policemen, checkers, x-ray people, who infest a modern airport. I did not do so for several reasons. One, although I had plenty of time before my scheduled departure (one of the “conveniences” of modern air travel is that you have to waste an inordinate amount of time arriving early), I anticipated the reaction of any of these worthies to whom I might confide my apprehension about post office boxes and waste receptacles, along the following lines: “Come with us, please.” Whereupon I would have been detained for hours at best, and days in jail at worst, for intensive questioning. “What business are you in?” “Have you ever published or said anything critical of the government?” (“Me? Certainly not,” might not have been able to withstand even the most cursory of scrutiny in such circumstances.) “Why are you so concerned about bombing?” “Are you a terrorist?” “Do you know anyone from Iraq?” “Do you profess the Muslim faith?”

As I say, speaking up in this public-spirited way would have made me miss the plane, or worse. Instead, I started writing up this column in the airport, while awaiting my departure. Paranoid that I am, I am now keeping my eyes peeled for shifty looking characters putting packages in waste cans (there being no post office boxes in sight, I’m not worried about them). I’m also worried about minions of the state. I am also busily looking over my shoulder as I write, making sure no one is looking at what I write, attempting to decipher my handwriting (I write by hand in airports and later type up what I have written).

But here I’m relatively safe. I can barely read my own handwriting. Then, too, there is something off-putting to me about aiding and abetting these inept airport guardians of ours. They are agents of an institution Spooner has called “a band of murderers and thieves.”

While I have no doubt that were I to see one of them drowning I would toss him a life raft (heck, I am an excellent swimmer with life guard training, I would probably jump in to save him even at some risk to my own life), I would do so only out of appreciation of our common humanity. I would do so despite his role as an agent of the state apparatus. Here, did I but make any suggestion to the police about postal boxes and trash cans being an invitation to terrorists, I would have been helping them in precisely this role. As I say, off-putting.

Why are these morons so stupid? Why do our “protectors” pat us down and search for, of all things, nail clippers? Why do they adopt the identical procedures at every airport? Do they not realize that this makes it easier for the bad guys? Why do they act so as to make it prudent for us to get to the airport two hours before a flight, wasting zillions of man-hours? Why don’t they focus their attention on young men of Arabic appearance, who have been responsible for a very high proportion of all such incidents?

This is surely due to a combination of political correctness run amuck, and to monopoly operation. As to the former, I once in a beknighted mood thought it would disappear under the pressure of life and death situations. Not so, not so. The evil Red Cross accepted blood donations from homosexuals without testing them for fear of offending them, and thereby infected with the AIDS virus hundreds of hapless and trusting hemophiliacs. And now, the forces of political correctness would rather see innocents blown to smithereens rather than engage in eminently justified racial (sexual, and age) profiling.

As it happens, however, looking askance at young male Arabs in airports and other such sensitive places is no such thing. It is, rather, criminal profiling. It would only be racial profiling if inspectors subjected to heightened security, say, Arab grandmothers, who have not at all been linked to terrorist acts. Why do airport security guards target young attractive women? (Okay, okay, we all know the answer to that one.)

The other element is lack of competition. Why is this so important? Well, there are imbeciles, also, in the private sector of the economy. Grocers who don’t wash their floors. Filling stations located on cul-de-sacs. Restaurants whose chefs can’t cook their way out of a paper bag. But what happens with such ineptitude? The market’s system of profit and loss, or weeding-out firms that cannot cut the mustard, is the difference between the two very, very different sectors of the economy.

Idiocy in the private sector exists, but it is continually being pared away. No such fail-safe mechanism underlies and supports government enterprise. Imagine if safety protection at airports were run under the free market sector, and one firm, the ACME agency, paid great attention to nail clippers and black grandmothers, but ignored garbage cans and Arab males of a certain age. There is a name for such companies, and the name is “bankrupt.” They would be eliminated, forthwith, through the competitive process.

It does not matter that our homeland security people wear uniforms. Or must pass civil service types of exams, where they answer theoretical questions theoretically. Or are forced to attend training sessions, where they see films of past events. There is simply no automatic mechanism that continuously improves quality, as occurs every day in the market place. We do not owe our reasonably good pizzas, shoes, and bicycles to geniuses. Rather, to this weeding-out system.

The people supposedly protecting us from terrorists at airports are cut from the same cloth as those who run the motor vehicle bureaus, the post office, and the alphabet soup regulatory agencies. Try reasoning with the denizens of these organizations.

I do not say that nothing will ever be done about potential dangers posed by the receptacles at airports. Even without a market system, common sense may yet prevail. But don’t hold your breath.

Maybe I should shut up about this entire topic. Maybe I should not be raising this particular safety issue, lest the terrorists add this new technique to their repertoire. After all, I am a member of the air-traveling public, and I have many loved ones who are, too. I thought about that. But, I believe that the terrorists are smarter than the air safety bureaucrats. If I publicize this potential danger in the manner I am now doing, maybe this threat will become officially recognized, anticipated, and dealt with: no receptacles of this type in airports any more. Or, maybe fully transparent ones.

On the other hand, if I keep silent about it, the murderers of innocents will undoubtedly adopt it. But in publicizing the matter, am I not violating my own principles, or, at least, my revulsion at supporting the government? No, I am not. There is all the world of difference between public speaking, or writing in a format such as the present one, knowing full well that agents of the state can access such information and analysis, on the one hand, and, on the other, helping them directly, for example by mentioning this concern to one of their ilk at an airport, or directly consulting with them on such a matter, whether for pay or not.

Take an analogy. In the next year or so, a book of mine on privatizing highways will be published. In it I state that a competitive system for roadways would likely engage in peak load pricing that would radically decrease traffic congestion, and would institute a number of safety devices which would greatly reduce highway fatalities. Will the authorities read this book and implement some of these suggestions? Possibly. This will not stop me from publication. But was I actually to consult with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, as does an otherwise libertarian Reason Foundation, then I would, in my own opinion, be acting inconsistently with this philosophy.

I take that back. Did my “consulting” with them consist of no more than telling them to disband, and privatize all roads, streets, highways, etc., then that would be entirely compatible with the libertarian philosophy.

The other day I received a telephone phone call from the State Department of the U.S. They wanted to consult with me about how best to improve the Iraqi economy. I mentioned a consulting fee of $400 per hour, and not an eyelash was batted. Then, I said that I would consult with them only on the topic of the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. personnel from that country, since I opposed their incursion. The spokesman’s response was to politely hang up. But suppose he had persisted. Would I have acted improperly as a consultant? I think not, as long as I advocated nothing incompatible with libertarianism.

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Published April 1, 2005.