“Equal people are not free, the second half of my first principle, really gets down to brass tacks. Show me a people anywhere on the planet who are indeed equal economically, and I’ll show you a very unfree people. Why?
The only way in which you could have even the remotest chance of equalizing income and wealth across society is to put a gun to everyone’s head. You would literally have to employ force to make people equal. You would have to give orders, backed up by the guillotine, the hangman’s noose, the bullet or the electric chair. Orders that would go like this: Don’t excel. Don’t work harder or smarter than the next guy. Don’t save more wisely than anyone else. Don’t be there first with a new product. Don’t provide a good or service that people might want more than anything your competitor is offering.
Believe me, you wouldn’t want a society where these were the orders. Cambodia under the communist Khmer Rouge in the late 1970s came close to it, and the result was that upwards of 2 million out of 8 million people died in less than four years. Except for the elite at the top who wielded power, the people of that sad land who survived that period lived at something not much above the Stone Age.”
My Comment:
The Reed quote shouldn’t be misconstrued.
Reed isn’t advocating violence against the government...he is making the commonplace observation that, ultimately, government authority is backed up by force…and he then gives examples of that force…from the guillotine (revolutionary government of France)..to the bullet (modern standing army, police officers etc.).
Now, is every one who resists paying tax, for example, going to be eliminated? Obviously not. Much more likely, they’re in for a long, tedious court battle, endless letters, petitions and hearings…culminating in a fine/penalty, confiscation of their property, possibly a jail sentence.
But let’s not get sentimental. Should you resist court orders and flee, you can be shot. Should you resist a warrant or arrest physically, it’s almost a certainty you will be shot. This isn’t the violence of the citizen. This is the violence behind Leviathan.
Pointing it out doesn’t make me an advocate of violence. It makes me realistic.
It’s why I don’t advocate physical resistance. It would be very stupid today, against the kind of arsenal the federal government has at its command. Nor do I advocate tax evasion.
Legal tax avoidance I heartily recommend, as does the IRS itself. However, I don’t see why I should regard anyone at the receiving end of state justice to be necessarily guilty of some great moral sin.
There’s legitimate authority (the cop who comes to a victim’s defense) and there’s corrupt authority (tax laws or criminal penalties applied differentially to the powerful and the powerless).They are two different things.
There are crimes that involve injustice to another human being (murder, fraud) and there are legal infractions that are based simply on dissidence from the prevailing views on economic freedom and justice (many so-called tax “crimes”). Those are two different things…
The jump from “equal people” to “equal economically” is a really BIG jump, they are two quite different things, aren’t they?
Equal before government.
Equal bewteen one another with respect to rights.
Equal shot against nature trying to beat death and injury in an attempt to live as long as… wanted?
That last Equal is where people really get hung up, a root of socialism and why people might claim to want “equal economically” forced on everyone? Can’t do that without the ends justifying the means… and… like a tangled web.
By the way, a bit of moderation on your quotes would be of good caution. Quotes like the following can lead to violence, don’t they?
“…to put a gun to everyone’s head. You would literally have to employ force … You would have to give orders, backed up by the guillotine, the hangman’s noose, the bullet or the electric chair…”
This blog is turning very violent, and the internet is the most public thing in the world: no one knows who is watching…
Hi Clark –
Oh, maybe I should put that part of Reed’s quote in as well…he does explain that equal before the law, or equal as people, isn’t the same as equal economically.
I think that’s a fairly common place libertarian truism
Lila
“…to put a gun to everyone’s head. You would literally have to employ force … You would have to give orders, backed up by the guillotine, the hangman’s noose, the bullet or the electric chair…”
VTBS, you haven’t purused much libertarian literature, have you? Or perhaps you’re insinuating that Libertarianism will soon be declared seditious?
Yes, it’s a libertarian common place.
Odd how resistance is thought to be necessarily violent, Need not be. Recall, the soviet empire collapsed due to passive resistance of sorts–the pretend to pay us and we pretend to work. As sheeplike as americans may be there is a gloom and realisation that hard work, enterprise and dillegence no longer pay off. Its a shame as much talent and some genius will be wasted. Still, as people do less the empire grows weaker. The increasing moves of the state is a sign of its weakness–its dying and needs more power and resources and is desperate….No need to shoot or to burn, but don’t go out of your way to give your best……
Yes…a very good thought.
I recall all sorts of jokes from the soviet satellite nations about communism.
I think you can have a revolution of derisive laughter
Maybe that’s the only kind
I’m glad the Khmer Rouge was used as an example. They were perhaps the most egalitarian government in history. And by that virtue, the deadliest.
No one likes to remember that era because it was directly after we left Vietnam. Like the next day. We couldn’t very well say, ‘hey we have to intervene . . . because the communists are taking over.’ We had just done that next door.
And so we don’t like to talk about the consequences of that action/inaction.
Yes..I want to blog more on Cambodia..just to learn something more about what went on there.
It’s amazing how little we know about the world and yet we want to be able to run it..