The restrictions on ‘natural liberty’ surely constitute ‘public bads’, from which it follows that their removal would be equivalent to the production of ‘public goods’. And surely these ‘public goods’ would increase the utility of persons in the community more than the sometimes piddling adjustments that are suggested for correcting minor market distortions. Smith would quickly discern that, now as then, markets ‘fail’ largely because they are not allowed to work because of overt political-governmental restrictions. It follows from this that the first steps toward making markets work more efficiently involve removing restrictions.
-James Buchanan ( The Market and the State: Essays in Honour of Adam Smith )
All we hear from the Left is that everything they do or want are “Public Goods”. In fact, in their rush to bankrupt America, EVERY dollar being spent, including this latest $3.5 Trillion “Infrastructure” bill that redefines “voting rights” as infrastructure, is a Public Good. They’re bastardizing our language to cover for their Agenda. Yet in each and every thing they propose, Natural Liberty is defined as being selfish and unnatural to the “common good”. Collectivism, by definition, is antithetical to Individual Liberty which IS a “common good” and therefore, a Public Good.
Buchanan is correct as certainly as Smith was. Public Good DEPENDS on Natural Liberty – the idea that we all have certain inalienable Rights that those in Government should not be diminishing as they are today. Indeed, the Left’s entire action is to redefine what we believe America to be. As Buchanan points out, however, is that even the Left’s claim that Government must be uppermost in all things suffers from the problem that Government isn’t omniscient because those same people aren’t omniscient.
And it is done simply for political reasons and not because they make sense. The Left’s entire vision is centered around control – control of things, control of the Law, and control of us. This is a Public Bad and should be called out as such – using the form of the Left’s twisting of the language and culture and turning it back onto them. Public Bad – I like the ring of this.
After all, Socialism and Communism and Progressivism are simply three manifestations of the same thing – the extreme desire of the Left to act like the Enlightenment never exist and to return to the days of The Rule of Strong Man. Not is so many words and not in the same form as The Divine Right of Kings – they’d never use that language again. But, the intent is the same – a small group of people, not GOVERNING but RULING over anyone else.
They want to be in the same position as “State Chairman” Xi has or “President” Putin are now – effectively Kings by other names. Neither accepts the idea or philosophy of sovereign citizens in their outlook.
Neither does today’s American Leftists. They ARE a Public Bad – and if we allow them to intrude on our Natural Rights, we will surely find out what REAL Public Bad is all about and it will go far beyond Smith’s idea of Marketplace political philosophy.
(H/T: Cafe Hayek)
