Questioning your “compassionate” politics

My <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brian-t-schwartz/questioning-your-compassi_b_574030.html”>first article/post for the Huffington Post appeared today. It begins:

“You oppose Medicaid and government-run schools? You’re heartless and lack compassion.”  If you have ever made this accusation, even tacitly, I invite you to reconsider the government policies you support.

Why does being compassionate mean supporting government-run schools and health plans? This makes little sense if you view these programs as government-run charities. Would you agree to perpetually donate a portion of your monthly income to the same charity -  regardless of its effectiveness?  If the charity is doing a lousy job, wouldn’t you want the freedom to find a better one?

Read the whole article: <a id="title_permalink" title="Permalink" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brian-t-schwartz/questioning-your-compassi_b_574030.html”>Questioning Your “Compassionate” Politics. (Update, the Denver Daily News also published the article.)

Thanks to Ari Armstrong, Paul Hsieh, Dave Kopel, and my wife for their comments. Thanks to Jessica Corry for putting me in touch with HuffPo.  I acknowledge many others in links within the article.  One person I did not link was Michael Cloud, whose book Secrets of Libertarian Persuasion was quite helpful, especially for this sentence, which is basically his:

If you support mandatory charity, what do you authorize government to do to those who peacefully refuse to cooperate?

I also recommend Cloud’s CDs on this topic. Great material, and not much overlap with the book.

Peter Saint Andre also inspired some of my ideas for this article. Many years ago I read his essay, On the Road to Voluntary Government Financing.

Value freedom? Watch The Singing Revolution

The documentary’s trailer:

Interview with one of the directors giving background and summary:

[reason 254]

For a couple more videos and background, see Reason.tv’s page on Estonia and the Singing Revolution and the documentary’s website.

Obama: your parent, guidance counselor, principal, etc., etc.

Gene Healy of the Cato Institute says it quite well:

The president isn’t a benevolent father-protector, charged with the welfare of all creatures great and small — and educators do kids a great disservice if they help promote such a childish notion. Still less was he supposed to be the educator in chief, presiding over a centralized education bureaucracy, handing out Title X grants (with strings attached) and falsely promising that no child will be left behind. The framers thought of the president as a mere constitutional officer, whose main job is taking care that the laws are faithfully executed. Students — and presidents — could stand to learn a lot more about how far we’ve drifted from that ideal.

Read his whole op-ed, Hey, Mr. President, Leave Those Kids Alone, and check out more criticism side-by-side with Obama’s speech to kids in school.

Come “together,” right now, it’s the law

As published in today’s Daily Camera:

Do you want politicians to put you “in it together” with others, or would you prefer to reserve that choice for yourself?

Last Tuesday guest editor Clay Evans wrote that one of President-elect Obama’s “great challenges” will be to “bring us together.” While defending Social Security, Obama himself has written that we “need to reclaim the idea that in this country, we’re all in it together. That is America’s very promise…”

When a charismatic speaker says this, it can make you feel hope, that you’re part of a community, or inspire you to voluntarily cooperate with others to achieve great things. Or such talk could make you suspicious and skeptical, as you might react to a snake-oil salesman or an aspiring cult leader. In either case, you can choose either to participate or walk away.

But you cannot walk away from an elected politicians who claim “we’re all in it together.” Politicians “bring people together” with legislation. If you peacefully refuse to cooperate with such legislated “togetherness,” you’re a criminal and can end up in prison. For example, if you think Social Security <a title="nice political cartoon” href=”http://www.john-goodman-blog.com/medicare-explained/”>resembles investing with Bernie Madoff, try opting out. When politicians legislate how “we’re all in it together,” law enforcement can punish us for not cooperating with their wishes.

Instead, politicians should promote policies that respect individual rights. That is, our right to associate with, or be “together” with, others on a peaceful and voluntary basis. Respect for individual rights: this should be America’s promise.

[pdf as published in print edition]

Capitalism and Socialism: Who Owns You?

From last week’s Daily Camera Editorial Advisory Board:

The question: “Recent debate on economics and politics has been framing recent events in terms of socialism and capitalism. Is this warranted or a sign of hyperbolic rhetoric?”  My response:

Debating political issues in terms of socialism and capitalism helps address a fundamental question: Who owns you? Who has a claim on your time and the products of your physical and mental efforts?

Under capitalism, you do. Consenting adults have the right to voluntarily associate with each other — in personal relationships or for-profit and non-profit ventures. Others have no right to interfere by mandating or prohibiting such relationships. The purpose of government is to protect our individual rights to freely cooperate and pursue our values.

Under socialism, everyone else owns a piece of you. They use the political process to stake a claim on your time, life, and property, whether or not you consent. In this sense, Socialism is anti-social. Under socialism, you are a means to other people’s ends.

Obama: “We’re all in it together”!!

Senator Obama’s op-ed on Social Security begins:

In this country, we have always believed that a lifetime of hard work and honest living should be rewarded with a secure and dignified retirement — and Social Security is the cornerstone of that social compact. Last week, as we celebrated its anniversary, we reaffirmed our commitment to ensuring that Social Security is a safety net that today’s seniors and future generations of Americans can count on.

Reward by whom?  What social compact?  If Senator Obama want to set up some kind of reward program, then he should go out and do it.  Find people like him, find donors, customers, etc.  Set up a charity of some sort that “rewards” people for their years of hard work.  Don’t continue to force everyone into the Ponzi Scheme that is Social Security.  That’s just robbery.

If you work hard for a lifetime, and save some of your paycheck, you’ll have quite a nice savings when you’re done.  How much?  Let’s call is 12.4%, which is the sum of the employer and employee contribution of the FICA tax.  (Yes, your employer passes on his share of the tax to you, so your wages are lower.)   Put that percentage into a compound interest calculator and see how much you’d have after a lifetime of hard work.  It’s quite a bit.

Even a paternalistic forced-savings program (like a mandatory 401(k) or 403(b)) would be a huge improvement over Social Security.  At least then you’re forced to save for your own retirement, and you’d be able to bequeath it those you choose.

Obama also speaks of “mutual responsibility,” rather than personal responsibility.  Nothing new here, but it’s still disturbing.

Obama’s op-ed ends:

We need to reclaim the idea that in this country, we’re all in it together. That is America’s very promise — and Social Security’s very guarantee.

Oh. My. God.  Did he really say that “we’re all in it together”?  Yes, he did.  In what?  Holy Collectivism, Batman!

In terms of social security, I guess this means that people in power (Obama and his pals) can determine how to “reward” people by spending other people’s money.

“We’re all in it together.”  America’s promise?  Is this guy for real?  What about “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”  On liberty, Jefferson wrote:

Of liberty I would say that, in the whole plenitude of its extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will. But rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law,’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual. –Thomas Jefferson to Isaac H. Tiffany, 1819.

In this context, Social Security is the tyrant’s will.  It obstructs our right to save or spend our money as we see fit, and instead forces us to spend it on what the authorities want.

(Ht, <a href="http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2008/08/questioning_a_t.html”>Arnold Kling)

McCain & Obama: live for the State!

David Boaz of the Cato Institute points out that neither candidate for Life Coach of the United States (or is it Daddy, High Priest, or Santa Claus) has much respect for individualism. Rather the derive meaning from our own personal life goals and priorities, we can do so only with service to something, anything, so long as it is not ourselves, as we were ants living for the sake of an ant colony. He concludes:

The real issue is that Messrs. Obama and McCain are telling us Americans that our normal lives are not good enough, that pursuing our own happiness is “self-indulgence,” that building a business is “chasing after our money culture,” that working to provide a better life for our families is a “narrow concern.”

They’re wrong. Every human life counts. Your life counts. You have a right to live it as you choose, to follow your bliss. You have a right to seek satisfaction in accomplishment. And if you chase after the almighty dollar, you just might find that you are led, as if by an invisible hand, to do things that improve the lives of others.

The article is here.