Free For All - The Free Liberal Blog: A failure to communicate

July 2008

Sun

Mon

Tue

Wed

Thu

Fri

Sat

Freeman editor and hardcore libertarian Sheldon Richman sounds a lot like a Free Liberal in his piece on the continued public support for the minimum wage despite all the ink that has been spilled by free-market economists demonstrating the folly of government-set wages. Sheldon blames the failure of our message to get through on libertarians failure to emphasize how the free society benefits low-income workers:

"It is essential that principled opponents of the minimum wage not appear insensitive to the plight of low-income workers. Some people of course are responsible for their economic plight, but many others are put at a disadvantage by the mercantilist, mixed economy we live in. (Let's not forget, it's not laissez faire out there.) In opposing the minimum wage we should champion the disadvantaged by emphasizing that:

Any regulation, tax, and trade restriction that stifles the formation of new businesses, and thus competition, reduces the bargaining power and self-employment options of workers -- low-income workers most of all. Less bargaining power equals lower wages.

Every intervention that raises the price of housing, clothing, food, and medicine harms low-income people most of all.

Every land-use rule and all government landholding keeps the price of real estate and rents artificially high, harming low-income people most of all.

The actions of the central bank devalue people's money, harming low-income (and fixed-income) people most of all.

A rotten education system harms the children of low-income people most of all.

Simply put, every interference with free people in the free market is first and foremost an attack on the poorest, most vulnerable in society. But notice that each intervention has its beneficiaries; together they constitute the privileged class. The chief enemy of the vulnerable is the corporate state, the system of mercantilist privilege for the politically connected that constrains the creation and diffusion of wealth. In this light the welfare state (the minimum wage and such) is revealed as a way to keep the vulnerable from catching on and rocking the boat. The Manchester liberals Richard Cobden and John Bright put these considerations at the heart of their nineteenth-century peace-and-free-trade movement.

People of good will never stop voting for the minimum wage until they realize, first, that economic laws are implacable; second, that pretending the laws don't exist hurts those they wish to help; and third, that the best way to help is to sweep away all government privilege. Genuine liberals must rededicate themselves to making their movement a people's movement."

On the same lines, I recently came across this great Ron Paul quote from a 1998 Firing Line interview:

"I happen to be a libertarian because of the compassionate nature of the results. I happen to believe that the most prosperous society comes from a libertarian society where people are free to produce at the maximum amount. And you will have the least amount of poverty and the greatest amount of charity...If we are compassionate, I think anybody who cares about the poor has to really start thinking about the libertarian message, because that is where the greatest amount of prosperity is going to come."

A failure to communicate

Comments