by Jacob G. Hornberger
During its 25-year history, The Future of Freedom Foundation has
always refrained from endorsing any reform of the welfare-warfare state.
There are two reasons for this steadfast position.
First, no matter what reform is adopted, it inevitably makes the
situation worse than it was before. That’s because a welfare-warfare
state, being a combination of socialism, regulation, and imperialism, is
an inherently unstable system. That means that any attempt to address
the crises that it produces only makes the crises bigger.
Look at healthcare. Medicare and Medicaid are enacted and produce a
crisis of ever-increasing healthcare costs. That’s on the demand side.
On the supply side, you’ve got occupational licensure laws, which
artificially limit the supply of medical personnel and prevent people
from opting for many forms of alternative healthcare.
The result of Medicare, Medicaid, and occupational licensure, along
with thousands of healthcare regulations, not surprisingly, has been an
enormous healthcare crisis consisting of ever-increasing healthcare
costs.
What to do?
There are three options: (1) Repeal Medicare, Medicaid, medical
licensure, and healthcare regulations; (2) Do nothing and just deal with
the crisis; or (3) Enact a reform in the hopes of resolving the crisis.
Obviously, Option 1 is the way to go, but people won’t go that route.
They have too much invested in their system. Repeal would be admitting
that socialism and regulation don’t work. And that’s the last thing
statists want to do.
Option 2 is the second-best alternative. Just accept the crisis and
do nothing about it. Sure, it’s not an ideal state of affairs but at
least it’s better than something worse.
Option 3 is the worst choice because it will only produce a bigger
crisis down the road. That will then cause people to demand new reforms,
which will, once again, make the situation worse than before. Obamacare
is providing a good example of this phenomenon.
The same principles apply in all other aspects of the welfare-warfare
state. Education. The drug war. Immigration. Iraq. Afghanistan. Social
Security. The war on terrorism. Every time, there is a welfare-warfare
state crisis, the government responds with new reforms, regulations, or
interventions. And things only get worse. The entire welfare-warfare
state system becomes one great big perpetual crisis.
Second, and much more important, reform is not freedom. We libertarians are about freedom, not a better life as serfs.
Freedom entails the right to engage in economic enterprise without
governmental permission or interference, the right to enter into
mutually beneficial transactions with others anywhere in the world, and
the right to keep everything you earn and decide for yourself what to do
with it. It also entails the right to ingest any substance without fear
of being punished by the state for it. Indeed, freedom entails the
right to engage in any peaceful behavior without governmental
interference.
That obviously is not the society in which today’s Americans lives,
where charity is mandated through the IRS, income tax, and welfare
state, where government loots people through the Federal Reserve, where
Americans are sanctioned for trading with people in non-approved
countries, where Americans are jailed for long periods of time for
ingesting non-approved substances, and where even the most minute
aspects of economic activity are controlled, regulated, or manipulated
by politicians and bureaucrats.
It’s the same with the warfare state, where the president and the
national-security establishment wield omnipotent power to send the
entire nation into war, to incarcerate, torture, and assassinate anyone
they want, including Americans, and to meddle in the affairs of other
countries. That’s about as far from a free society that a person can
get.
Given that the welfare-warfare state system deprives people of their
freedom, what good does reform do? With respect to the concept of
freedom, it does no good because reform necessarily leaves the obstacles
to freedom in place.
In fact, if reform actually improved the situation rather than
worsened it, the prospects for freedom would actually be worse. That’s
because people would get so excited over the fact that statism had been
made to work that the last thing they would want would be to get rid of
it. Thus, for the advocate of liberty, reform is a loser’s game — it
makes the situation worse but, even if it didn’t, the prospects for
liberty would be made worse.
The plight of being a serf under a welfare-warfare state is no
different, in principle, from the plight of a slave on a plantation in
19th-century America. Slavery reformers could have worked to improve the
working conditions of the slaves with much-needed reforms, such as
shorter work weeks, better medical care, and higher-quality food. But no
matter what reform was enacted and no matter how much it improved the
life of the slave, the slave would continue to be a slave. He would not
be a free person.
It’s the same with reforms of the welfare-warfare state. Reforms
might improve the lives of the American people but most likely not. But
one thing is for sure: Any reform will leave the American people in
their position as serfs, not as free men and free women. Anyone wanting
to experience life as a free person has to forget reform and embrace
pure libertarian principles.
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