Freedom, its Fabulous!

We complain all the time that we need more leadership, stronger leadership, and more and better regulations. We realize that while we have the ability to make perfectly sound and rational decisions not everyone else does. We preach about how “present company excluded” there are some evil people out there looking to do harm to everyone if the government lets up just an ounce. We need to take a lesson from Henry Hazlitt, the lesson happens to be about economics.

Austrian Economics, or truly free market economics, is economics based on praxeology. Praxeology is the logic of human action and is best explained in Human Action by Ludwig von Mises. Following the Aristotelian tradition of logic and rules of thought, Ludwig von Mises created a masterpiece using deductive logic to show that freely acting individuals always choose the best uses for the resources they posses. When we move from free interaction amongst individuals to a class system, government and the governed, we get a glimpse into what Henry Hazlitt and his one lesson tries to state.

Henry Hazlitt sums up his lesson in one sentence “The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer affects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups” (p 17). Throughout the rest of the book Hazlitt goes on to show that the best economic policies are always the ones in which government does the very least. Many free market capitalists think that the government exists in order to protect private property and carry out judicial duties (sorry for being repetitive), but Hazlitt has shown that when government does the least it does it the best.

When government tries to protect property rights all that happens is institutionalized and legitimized (in the minds of many) property theft. Hazlitt knew what he was talking about; people’s self interests are sometimes at odds with each other. When we give up our arms or our right to use force to a third party, and that third party monopolizes that right what we receive is worse than what we wanted to be protected from. Is that third party, the government, beyond the average individual emotional set up, beyond the longing to act in their own self interest? No! In a democracy elected officials epitomizes its constituents and once elected is very prone to self interested acts. They are simply demagogues apt to the same longing for a better life that everyone else does, but they have all the guns.

When people call for stronger leadership they are calling for more institutionalized theft. When people want more regulations they call also for their own deaths (except when they call for regulating the government which is beyond the point I am making). My advice to anyone who reads this young blog is to live life, don’t let some Plato create for you a republic.

--George Edwards