By: George Noga – May 24, 2014
James Madison in Federalist 51 famously wrote: “In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” More recently Milton Friedman put it thusly: “How can we keep the government we created (primarily to protect our freedom) from becoming a Frankenstein that will destroy the very freedom we established it to protect?” Very few realize how rare, delicate and fragile are liberty and freedom in the entire history of human experience. Of the estimated 110 billion humans who have ever lived, fewer than 1% have enjoyed liberty.
“Over 99% of humanity has lived only in tyranny and repression.”
The first step in protecting liberty is awareness of just how venal are all forms of power even the lowest. Let’s begin by looking at fraternities, homeowners associations and country clubs. In my college fraternity, elections for officers were corrupted; once elected few voluntarily relinquished power; elections for fraternity sweetheart were fixed; and those in power stole money – all this from a group of brothers.
Homeowners associations are a microcosm of government. Generally, the wrong people run for office and, once elected, abuse their power and transmogrify into power-hungry wannabe dictators. Even a small group of neighbors in the same socio-economic group cannot govern collegially. I once belonged to a club that had a committee for selecting the wines to be served in its restaurants. The committee became as permanent as the Soviet Politburo; new members were precluded from joining; and they instituted frequent parties for themselves to taste new wines. They, of course, needed food to go along with the wine tasting and they expected all this extravagance to be paid by the club. Bottom line: all power corrupts; it is endemic in all organizations beginning with the most basic. It is endemic because it is an inextricable and immutable part of the human condition.
“A government’s maleficence increases exponentially with its size and power.”
The bigger a government, the more corrupt. Local governments in my area have raised corruption to an art form. They find myriad ways to benefit from the public weal, albeit likely without technically violating the law. The schools are abysmal and dominated by (also corrupt) public employee unions. My state government is incapable of fixing a long running property insurance fiasco that threatens to bankrupt it. Our federal government (Amtrak) sells hamburgers for $9.50 to a captive audience and incredibly loses $6.50 each. Not to worry: they will make it up in volume. As to be expected, international organizations are the worst. The UN engages in child rape in Africa and the Nobel Committee admittedly awarded peace prizes solely for vindictiveness to punish Reagan and Bush.
Four Keys to Better Government
Some level of government has proven to be necessary to protect us from outside threats, domestic violence and to enforce contracts and property rights. We face the same dilemma as Madison and Friedman: how do we cede government a legal monoply on the use of force while simultaneously controlling it and making sure it protects (rather than destroys) our liberty? Following are universal truths constant throughout time and space and applicable to all governments:
- The first step is understanding and internalizing the truth that power corrupts. Understand that government is inherently evil and requires eternal vigilance to keep it inside its constitutional box.
- Because the evil in government is inherent (embedded in human nature), it can’t be eliminated or reformed. Part of the evil manifests itself in widespread waste, fraud and abuse – which also never can be exterminated.
- Government maleficence cannot be eliminated, but it can be reduced. The only way is to shrink government, ipso facto creating less evil along with less of its miscegenistic stepchildren: waste, fraud and abuse.
- The only way to make government smaller is to take away its money; the less money it has, the less harm it can perpetrate. Nothing else will ever work.
Upon accepting the Nobel Prize in economics, Friedrich Hayek said: “To act on the belief that we possess the knowledge and the power to shape the processes of society to our liking is likely to make us do much harm. . . The recognition of the insuperable limits of (man’s) knowledge ought indeed teach the student of society a lesson of humility which should guard him against becoming an accomplice in men’s fatal striving to control society – a striving which makes him not only a tyrant over his fellows, but which may well make him the destroyer of a civilization. “