Recently by Becky Akers: When Liars Murder a Dead Man
“The United States may have run up a huge debt, but it is not a poor country…,” the Washington Post announced on Monday as Our Rulers hit their credit-limit. “The federal government owns roughly 650 million acres of land, close to a third of the nation’s total land mass. Plus a million buildings. Plus electrical utilities like the Tennessee Valley Authority. And an interstate highway system.” Ergo, “economists of a conservative or libertarian bent” advocate liquidating some of those assets. “Why … should the federal government be in the electricity business?” the Post asks even as it chuckles that of course, “no one advocates selling Yellowstone”; goodness, even libertarians aren’t that crazy!
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Actually, plenty of libertarians and anarchists are indeed that principled. Selling Yellowstone and everything else government “owns” (does a thief truly own what he buys with his victims’ plunder?) makes sense on all levels, practically, constitutionally, morally. Statism relies on many preposterous presumptions. Chief among these is citizens’ imbecility. We are too stupid and wicked to breathe: but for government’s benevolently restraining hand, we’d kill one another or ourselves. And thanks to our blind greed for profits, we amplify our evil foolishness when we band together to produce goods or services.
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Here and there, enlightened folks save themselves by ascending to governmental office. Whether elected or appointed doesn’t matter; when Mr. Former Citizen seeks salvation from the State, he automatically becomes Einstein to our Forrest Gump. Governing imbues him with such superiority that he can ruin – sorry, run our lives for us. It follows that only politicians and bureaucrats boast the smarts to manage such treasures as Mammoth Cave or the Everglades. Indeed, statists often incredulously demand, “If we didn’t have government, who would run the national parks? You can’t turn those over to private parties – they’d build a mall in the Grand Canyon or condos overlooking Niagara Falls!” Right. And millionaires never grab a hammer when they notice a nail working itself loose on the yacht: they just pound it back in place with their diamond ring. Silly, isn’t it? And yet statists believe this is how the world operates, that only politicians and bureaucrats recognize the best use for a resource. We mere mortals squander it on a lesser utility. Of course, that means we forgo some of the profits – just as our millionaire may drive a nail home with his jewel, though with a heck of a lot more time and frustration than if he’d relied on a hammer. Statists steeped in Marxism or Keynes’ nonsense ignore this inherent contradiction: the entrepreneurs they accuse of overwhelming avarice will preserve rather than develop the Grand Canyon precisely because the former makes more money.
May 19, 2011
