The Scary Chaos of Everyday Life

A point that was made by Von Mises years ago has growing evidence today. The essential, unstated, simplest strategy of the opponents of freedom—whether ideological, opportunistic, or simply people fearful of new areas of freedom—is to find someone who may have something they're unhappy about, and then, no matter how inconsistent with one's previous criticisms, blame freedom.

Never mind that the whole point of freedom from a social perspective is it frees people to take actions to address these very diverse dissatisfactions.

Never mind the implicit and sinister subtext that because one person has a need that is not at this moment being met or is undergoing change, then the whole society—no, universe—must suddenly adjust to that desire.

Never mind the implication that if people have their own needs—or don't agree that someone else's changes, lack of planning, or different circumstances should be their own emergency— well, then they must be coerced to agree . . . along with the logical leap that the solution is coercive government.

Never mind that there's no consistency one day to the next. Never mind that all this ignores the possibility that proponents may be injecting their agendas, prejudices, or class subtexts into what are quite predictable processes of transition or else are beneficial events that are, however, outside yesterday's paradigm or provincial beliefs.

Thus—someone's unhappy? The market has failed! Freedom is chaos! Libertarianism is impractical!

Pundits find something only their insularity doesn't expect? Government must impose conformity! Freedom must be curtailed! Libertarianism must be stopped!

As von Mises and others noted, it's not only that the market—i.e. free choice—is blamed for things, but is blamed for contradictory things which gyrate from generation to generation and country to country. Indeed, freedom's even blamed for the contradictory policies of governments that government advocates oppose.

Blame Freedom

Prices seem high? Blame freedom. Prices seem low? Freedom is the culprit.

There is joblessness overseas? Blame Freedom. Jobs are going overseas? Blame Freedom!

Not enough shareholder or worker participation? It's proof we need bottom up socialism—Blame Freedom. Suddenly the workers and shareolders want to be more aware or involved in decisons? It will be chaos by the ignorant so we need top down socialism: Blame Freedom.

Patients blindly follow doctor's orders? Why, the market doesn't educate them and we need government programs: Blame Freedom. Patients self-medicate, use midwives and hypnotists, take vitamins and question professional licensing monopolies? They must be forced to let doctors make all decisions to save them from their market-driven elbow-jiggling—Blame Freedom

There're just a few providers? Blame Freedom—it's monopoly. There are millions of independents? Blame Freedom—it's dog-eat-dog competition.

There's a war on? Blame freedom—greedy capitalists are creating conflict . . . to sell products. Peace is universal? Blame Freedom—greedy capitalists are sapping our moral fiber . . . to sell products.

Wages are low or too high? Blame Freedom.

Not enough opportunities so people volunteer to work for free? Blame freedom. Too many jobs where people are paid little and asked to work almost for free? Blame Freedom.

Worker's jobs are exported or imported? Blame Freedom.

Too many doctors or not enough? Blame Freedom.

A meat eater moves next door and cooks food that offends his vegetarian neighbor's sensitivities? We need Zoning—Blame Freedom. A vegetarian landlord starts an all-vegetarian building and discrimnates against people who eat hamburger? We need anti-discrimination laws—Blame Freedom.

Land owned by no one is trashed? It's private property gone wild and the Tragedy of the Commons—government must fence it off and make everyone pay a tax: Blame Freedom. People claim the land, start a public trust so it's a refuge for the birds and thus block expansion plans for a supermarket? We need Eminent Domain for the public good: Blame Freedom.

Young people want to look at nude pictures and experiment sexually? It's child molestation and the end of tradition: Blame Freedom. Ignorant teens then get pregnant or become abusive sexual prudes? We need a government counseling program to guide them: Blame freedom.

Kids spend too much time on the computer and play video games —or don't have access to one and are computer illiterate? Either way . . . Blame Freedom.

A code word for freedom is always capitalism—sometimes 'middle class morality' or anti-leftism or 'greed' or 'the rich' or individualism— in these attacks. Now of course the capitalism that presently exists is a form of fascism, hopelessly entangled with crooks and government directives that create bizarre consequences for the simplest decisions. They prohibit or hinder many common-sense actions, often by the tax code simply making them too difficult, in ways most people are unaware. Thus: unhappy that hospitals don't give free health care to the poor, for example? People are taught to blame freedom, when it's actually illegal to act otherwise. (For example,. a doctor forgiving a co-payment portion to give the patient a break is committing a crime. His un-generosity is not greed but mandated by the government.) But you'll rarely see that kind of distinction brought front and center. It's the remaining free element that is denounced.

And Freedom is regularly blamed for government regulations that backfire: years ago airlines offered free seats where available to accompanied kids as an incentive to get people to travel again. Resentful adults paying full fare demanded the government pressure airlines to end this unfair market chaos brought by greed—Blame Freedom.

Now only tots ride free as a result of the regulations and pressure—if in the parent's lap without a seat belt, where they will die in a crash. The unaware public looks on and says look at those greedy airlines—and Blame Freedom.

An unanalyzed emotion that could come from anywhere such as greed isn't even a valid explanation in psychology, but it sure is an a priori, no-need-to-check-facts "explanation" in public policy and economics—as long as one can also . . . Blame Freedom.

How far this can go is seen from Krushchev's famous attack on Stalin as too individualistic. I doubt, given his reforms, Krushchev believed the problem with Stalinism was too much freedom—but that was the only way to formulate criticism the system could accept. Are we headed there?

Judge for yourself. Take any argument against freedom, whether from left, center or right. Look about, and you will also find an argument that is the opposite. It is quite astonishing once you see it.

Once the blame-freedom habit is established, the only issue becomes whether we want total coercion or partial. At the same time, when I have pointed out this phenomenon to budding Libertarians who still 'have issues' with Libertarian positions, they often say it is like waking up from a dream or even hypnosis.

Remember: once you name what is happening, its hold on you disappears.

Beware: Freedom Fattens the Poor

Perhaps the most incredible example of the 'blame freedom' technique—and how disconnected from reality has become public acquiescence—is a recent trend to somehow conflate fatness with evil freedom.

Once freedom was equated by critics with starving millions.

The rich man walking on the bridge and the poor man starving under it are equally free, they accused.

Note, because one is poor does not mean one is starving, or that starvation has anything to do with normal free choices—a major cause of starvation has been government programs such as created the notorious Irish potato and Ethiopian famines, not to mention food-line malnutrition in Communist regimes used for decades as a tool for political manipulation.

Never mind. From learned philosophical attacks on the protein rich and fat-friendly, and tasty, Atkins diet to calls for a fat tax and forced vegetarianism, the public has begun to accept the strange proposition that freedom's now evil because vast amounts of the population eat well in no danger of starving.

Oh? Let me put it this way: If an asteroid—not to mention a government program—hit Earth disrupting food production for a year, the fat and well fed would survive, the neurotically thin perish.

Those of the government elite using perfumed toilet paper in deracinated cities—where if there is a problem, why government will just confiscate or prohibit something and there you are—and who have never worked so much as their own garden seem to forget such facts of basic survival.

Jefferson recommended that people first successfully run their own farms before attempting to become voters and run other's lives for a reason.

Now witness this article from a National Post series saying that in recent years, not only has the phenomenon of lower income people all over the world becoming fat increased, but a study claims this is so even on the same diet for rich and poor.

Note, in the US and Canada poverty lines are defined by one department but used in other programs to classify the same people as rich—e.g. over $25,000 income has been used to define the 'rich' not to mention the latest innovation, the living wage. (I recently discovered that I am, because I have several children, and local agencies assume I must be spending vast sums of money on an apartment, legally poor. So, please, send me money.)

Note that studies asking people what they ate are notoriously inexact. And don't forget that, the way fat is defined by scientists using the BMI index, Arnold Schwarzenegger's fatter than Santa.

Note how the poor-thin transmuting to fat-poor is accepted without remark.

But let's accept the study nonetheless.

What is evident is that here the poor, however defined, aren't starving: they're eating like Roman Emperors. One has only to go to a local grocery store and watch the people on food stamps buying ice cream, mounds of pasta and T-bone steaks to conclude they're not getting fat from humble soup of corn oil and bacon rinds. Good!—but since in these programs often some 80% of the money goes for the bureaucracy, should scientists not next compare the diets of government workers to that of their charges?

Or do the scientists and policy makers note that, gee, for all these years we've been blaming freedom for starving the poor and now it seems this isn't the case?

Do they underline that, wow, rich and poor eat the same diet? Conclude that it's time for better voluntary programs on diet management?

Do they even suggest investigating obvious avenues of research: that some working people are more muscular and the BMI counts are off? Or that people aren't keeping the records too well? Or that as social status improves and some people exert themselves less, making diet adjustments are not high on their priorities and they understandably get more yummy delicacies as they exercise less? That government-mandated high carbohydrate diets, religiously followed in public schools, are driving an epidemic of obesity? The study says stress stores fat. So? Do they research the largest stressful cost to the low-income: indirect taxes, humiliating bureaucracies, regulations keeping income down?

Or study who cares anyway, since, when one adjusts for various factors, many experts now note it is actually being too thin that's a greater danger, just as grandma said—and now causing insurance companies to quietly adjust 'healthy weight tables' upwards?

No. Why do science . . . when you can expand state power? What they conclude is people are being stressed out by the challenges of freedom—and that's why they are fat Thus something must be done, namely taxing the rich to give to the poor so . . . what? They get fatter still?

The highlight of the article is where it tut-tuts that since the end of the good old days of the Berlin Wall, East Germans have gone from matchsticks to fatter than their West German brothers—therefore, Freedom must be stopped.

Scientists find Fat Berliners. Where will it end?

Make no mistake.

If they launch another dingbat government crusade based on this line of study so the poor get thin and the rich get fat, all that will have changed is that the government and no one else will be fatter than ever, to piously denounce the new situation through academic stooges and to blame the pre-approved culprit:

Freedom.

Michael Gilson De Lemos co-founded the Libertarian International Organization (www.libertarian.uni.cc) and is on the National Committeee of the US Libertarian Party. For more of his contrarian and informative commentary see his site, www.gilson.uni.cc