Road to serfdom starts with good intentions


    I’ve taken some time lately to review both our last state legislative session as well as United States Congress in an effort to see the guiding philosophy behind the results.

    We have political parties that are intended to embody to some degree principles of what broad spectrums of individuals believe should be the purpose of civil government. We should belong to parties whose beliefs are similar to our own. We should not believe these things because we belong to that party.

    So it is a mistake of which we are all guilty to refer to initiatives and actions as Republican, Democrat, Socialist and so forth. When I look at the actions of our last legislative session and Congress, instead of a party label I see a disturbing tendency toward over-reliance on government and under-appreciation of the individual. That is a philosophical position. Its result is less attuned with what we think of as a Republican or Libertarian viewpoint than a Democratic or Socialist one.

    Over-intrusion and nannyism on the part of government will inevitably lead to a heavy-handed, bureaucratic and inefficient state. As benign as its intentions may be, the more we substitute the management of a government committee for individual choice, the more certain such an outcome.

    An example that always presents itself to me is the idea of feeding the poor, bearing in mind that we have had a “war on poverty” since 1965. We have been unable to achieve victory and have remained bogged down in various neighborhoods forever. If I follow the logic of some of the present leadership in Congress, we should withdraw from this war and set an immediate timetable for surrender.

    One portion of this war has been to feed the hungry. Early on the idea that we would have direct payment to the poor for food was proven to be unwise by those passing out funds because people receiving them would do things with the monies other than buy food; gamble, drugs, alcohol and the various list of deadly sins. To combat that, we instituted a substitute for money that could only be transacted for the purchase of food.

    This project has not gone particularly well either; as organized crime and others have penetrated the food stamp market they are routinely traded for cash, which is then spent on the aforementioned deadly sins. The food stamps are sometimes traded $2 for one dollar of cash, which is a good profit and fairly safe given the very limited oversight that law enforcement has in this area; as they are more concerned about drugs and violent crime.

    Whole gambling casinos have been found behind small stores where individuals were able to place bets with food stamps and receive cash for their winnings. This idea clearly has worn out its welcome.

    A next step will be to only allow food stamps to be transacted in government-owned stores, since the government-owned stores could not be fronts for criminal organizations with a food stamp license. Or issue “credit cards” that would allow the user to ensure that they received only the approved foods.

    It is only a matter of time before those receiving these goods take them into the street and sell them for cash to again fuel their appetite for our friends the deadly sins.
In order to cure that issue, the next solution is for individuals to be required to use their food stamps on the premises to receive food, to be consumed there and prepared by the government at a government-operated kitchen so that it can be certain that the money spent was used as intended.

    This is the road to serfdom. Every step taken with good intentions, based on the premise that the state’s responsibility is to know best and correct every poor choice made in life. You cannot help but end with a benignly autocratic government that may not remain benign for long. Some probably do not see this as a bad thing. They believe that people need supervision by those who know better. They are quite good at figuring out how to supervise, but they are not so skilled at coming up with a way a society can generate the necessary goods and services to provide for the supervision or the handouts.

    For many that follow this logic, it is simply a way to buy votes. People who know no other way to eat will always support those who have the keys to the pantry. It’s for similar reasons that the church in Europe fought for so many years against having the Bible translated from Latin into the vernacular languages; most did not read Latin, so the interpreters of salvation were those that could.

    There is little difference in motive or outcome by wishing to stand as a lifelong parent for a free society.

    A conservative believes that the tide rises and falls and those who would succeed will rise and fall with it by virtue of their talent and desire. It is perhaps not as benign, but in the end not nearly as damaging.

Rick Wagner