Most of my Notable Quotes come from Cafe Haye where Prof Don Boudreaux is the main writer. A libertarian economist, he certainly favors people making their own decisions uncoerced from others – especially by Government.
He continuously points out that while organizations should plan their futures and activities, too many people (especially in Government) treat Citizens as “their organization” to schedule, harangue, order, and RULE us at their whim.
And always with the rubrics of “we have your best interests at heart,” “we know what’s best for you,” and “trust us! We’re the EXPERTS!”
None of which can be proved true. After all, they are human just as the rest of us are and to a larger degree, are in government because they are greedy for power over others in one way or another. They are unable to just leave us alone.
So, the Professor has a great post on the differences in the titles. To be perfectly blunt, I agree that we citizens could run our lives OUR way without the bureaucrats and Politicians’ “gentle Hand upon us”. Why?
Our reasons for our lives are not theirs. In fact, ours are unknowable to them. There are just too many of us and too few of them (even if they had the intellectual horsepower) to “plan out our lives and our economies” for us. They have no constant and consistent data on what I want, what you want, and the person down the street NEEDS. It is an impossible task – Socialism and Communism societies that rose and then failed on this point alone.
The Great Mind Fallacy runs strong within them. But it seem they are incapable of understanding that point – or really don’t care (listening, Fauci???). Reformatted, emphasis mine:
But the distinguishing feature of an organization is not found in the kinds of goals (such as profit) that it is consciously established to pursue. Rather, the distinguishing feature of an organization is simply that it is consciously designed and established to pursue some particular goal or goals, whatever it or these might be. And so the actions of every person in an organization can and will be judged by how well those actions contribute to the achievement of the organization’s goals.
Spontaneous Orders
Spontaneous orders differ categorically from organizations. Spontaneous orders, like organizations, are highly useful to individuals. But unlike organizations, spontaneous orders are not designed and created. They emerge as unintended consequences of the actions of persons, each of whom is pursuing his or her own individual goals with no awareness that those actions will give rise to a larger order. While a spontaneous order assists each individual in the pursuit of his or her goals, such an order, unlike an organization, itself has no goal towards which it aims. And because a spontaneous order as such has no goals, the actions of the individuals whose choices give rise to the spontaneous order cannot be judged by how well or poorly they promote the goal of the spontaneous order – for, again, the spontaneous order has no goals.The most obvious example of a useful spontaneous order is language. Language is clearly (to use a phrase much-favored by Hayek) the result of human action but not of human design.
Unless, as Orwell pointed out in 1984 and what the Progressives are doing now, conscious efforts ARE being made to plan our language to achieve THEIR goal of controlling both what people will say, will debate, and will think – all in support of THEIR agenda if we let them.
Languages emerged from human beings attempting to communicate with each other. Yet no one consciously decided what specific words and sounds refer to, or mean, in any language.
So you think I’m kidding? Where did “intersectionality”, “Social Justice”, “Cisgender”, “heteronormative”, “transgender”and all of the rest of the Left’s word salad comes from? Simple – a greed for Power over others”.
The word “chair” emerged over time to mean the particular thing that it today means to those who speak English.
Being undesigned, it follows that language was not designed to serve any purpose or to achieve some particular goal. It would be silly to talk about the goal of the English language or of the Korean language. And yet language does indeed enable each of us as individuals to better pursue our own goals. The shopper uses language to explain to the store clerk just what items he wishes to buy, and the store clerk, at the end of her work day, uses language to inform the cab driver of her destination. But the shopper and the store clerk, by using the same language, are not together acting to achieve some higher goal. Further, it would be mistaken to describe language as having among its goals the service of the shopper and of the store clerk.
But the Left is intent on co-opting Language so as to serve THEM.
Another example of a spontaneous order is the global market. No one designed today’s division of labor – with some of us working as plumbers, others of us as web designers, yet others of us as butchers, brewers, bakers, or baseball players. And no one designed the indescribably complex pattern of exchange relationships that enables each of us to enjoy the fabulous prosperity that each of us enjoys. And yet these phenomena are real. They are the result of human action but not of human design. The market, like language, provides enormous assistance to each of us as we each pursue our own individual goals. But the market, also like language, has no overarching goal toward which it aims.
No, I am not an anarchist – that is a form of governance that is as abhorrent as Socialism and Communism. A LIMITED Government, as what was set out by our Founders, makes the right balance between order (not ORDERING, but well functioning) and Liberty.
However, just like Language, the Socialists within the US are trying hard to re-make the market to serve goals – theirs, not ours. They wish to change it to be a Collective environment instead of the Individualistic one we now have.
And again, they dumb down our Education and sense of history for us to forget how well (not) their grand intentions have worked out in other countries of history.
Just look at what their planning is doing now to the shelves of your grocery stores and the price at the gas pump. But there will never be an admission or an apology.
Just PLEASE, leave us alone!
(H/T: Cafe Hayek)
