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ESSAYS ON LIBERTY VOLUME XI THE FOUNDATION FOR ECONOMIC EDUCATION, INC. IRVINGTON-ON-HUDSON, NEW YORK 1964 EDITOR'S NOTE The study of freedo'm and presentation of 'the findiilgs in a m,anner helpful to anyone who is interested is the objective of the staff and the friends of the Foundation for Economic Education. The studies are distributed, as completed,. in .the form of separate re­ leases and as articles in' The Free,man, a monthly study journal. This is the eleventh yolume o( Essays on Liberty, all of the selections in it having previously appeared in The Freeman or other Foundation publications be­ tween April, 1963 and April, 1964. The first ten vol­ umes of Essays O1i Libefty,covering earlier Foundation releases, are still available. Some of the shorter Freeman articles of the past year, though omitted from this book, are available in the bound volume of Cliches Of Socialis,m'. Also avail­ able separately are The Fateful Turn and The Ameri­ can Tradition, comprised of the Freeman articles in series by Dr. Clarence B. Carson. Permission is hereby granted to reprint these essays in whole or in part, except the following: Nobody Has a Right To Live But Me by John Chamberlain What Is IiEmploy,m'ent"? by Oscar W. Cooley Laissez Faire by Garet Garrett The Eternal Search for Truth by Henry Margenau The Nature of Government by Ayn Rand Riding a Rocking Horse from 'The Wall Street Journal Published October 1964 Copyright 1964 by The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc. PRINTED IN U.S.A. CONTENTS Page The Case for Economic Freedom Benjamin A. Rogge ........... 9 Big Wars from Little Errors Grow E. W. Dykes .......... 25 What Shall Be Prohibited? Leonard E. Read. ........... 29 Nobody Has a Right To Live But Me John Chamberlain ........... 41 Right and Wrong-Not Right and Left Clarence Manion. ........... 45 The Greatest Waste Paul L. Poirot. ............ 58 Hail to Automation! John C. Sparks ............ 66 Government Relief Rae C. Heiple~ II ........... 79 Kakistocracy Leonard E. Read . 83 The Lure of a Lost Cause Edmund A. Opitz ......... 97 The Nature of Government Ayn Rand .............. 102 The Economic Role of Saving and Capital Goods Ludwig von M ises ........... 116 Economic Growth Dean Russell ............. 125 CONTENTS Page The Beetle and the Centipede William A. Paton . 143 What Is "Employment"? Oscar lV. Cooley. ".......... 148 Who Are the Unemployed? Paul L. Poirot. ... 162 The Failures of Private Enterprise Alelvin D. Barger. ........... 169 Pull That Veil Away! Leonard E. Read. ........... 178 Mercantilism: A Lesson for Our Times? Murray N. Rothbard ...... 182 How To Attract Capital Walter B. Wriston ........... 201 Profits Benjamin A. Rogge .204 Riding a Rocking 'Horse The Wall Street Journal ......... 215 Play Store Economics Dean Russell ............. 218 Social Justice Francis E. MahaDY .239 The Businessman's Morals Fred DeArmond ............ 247 The Apples of Finniss Creek Stanley Yankus ............ 257 The Perceptual ,Basis of Liberty Harold B. Elsom. ........... 260 The Eternal Search for Truth Henry Margenau. ........... 280 CONTENTS Page Is Economic Freedom Possible? Benjamin A. Rogge. ... 282 Jobs Require Capital T¥. M. Curtiss . 297 Laissez Faire Garet Garrett ............. 299 You Cannot Pick a Dandelion Arthur Moor ............. 312 The Market Is a Computer Leonard E. Read. ........... 316 The World's Largest Lottery Paul L. Poirot. ............ 330 aUf Unique Economic System Bradfor-d B. Smith 337 Aggression Is Always Wrong Craig Howell ............. 364 Ghost Towns John C. Sparks 369 On Breeding Prosperity F. A. Harper ... 378 Man's Destiny: Forced or Free? lVilliam Henry Chamberlin. ....... 386 Painting Government into a Corner Edlnund A. Opitz ........... 396 ... But Not Yet Gordon Conklin ............ 417 The Government IS in Business Paul L. Poirot. .. .420 Keep Freedom a Secret? Leonard E. Read. .......... 431 THE CASE FOR ECONOMIC FREEDOM My ECONOMIC philosophy is here offered with full knowl­ edge that it is not generally accepted as the right one. On the contrary, my brand of economics has now become Brand X~ the one that is never selected as the whitest by the housewife, the one that is said to be slow acting, the one that contains no miracle ingredient. It loses nine times out of ten in the popUlarity polls run on Election Day, and, in most elections, it doesn't even present a candidate. I shall identify my brand of economics as that of eco­ nomic freedom, and I shall define economic freedom as that set of economic arrangements that would exist in a society in which the government's only function would be to prevent one man from using force or fraud against another-including within this, of course, the task of na­ tional defense. So that there can be no misunderstanding here, let me say that this is pure, uncompromising laissez faire economics. It is not the mixed economy; it is the unmixed economy. Dr. Rogge is Dean and Professor of Economics at Wabash College, Crawfordsville, Indiana. 9 10 BENJAMIN A. ROGGE I readily admit that I do not expect to see such an econ­ omy in nlY lifetime or in anyone's lifetime in the infinity of years ahead of us. I present it rather as the ideal we should strive for and should be disappointed in never fully attaining. Human society is not destroyed by men who have ideals but find that they cannot, in their im­ perfection, always attain them; rather it is destroyed by men who have no ideals, by men who have no bench marks against which to nleasure their own performances. The tragedy of the classical socialist is that he has false ideals; the threat to society of the modern liberal is that so often he has no ideals, no guides to conduct, other than political expediency and a spurious realism. The man who insists that he will walk the middle of the road has his path determined for him by those who define the ditches, and never then takes a step of his own real choosing. To put it another way: I am not frustrated by the fact that politicians often pass laws that do violence to the free market. I am frustrated by the fact that so many peo­ ple do not know that violence has been done, that so few feel any sense of uneasiness at the departure from the ideal. I am convinced that we continue to move away froln the free market because few of the leaders of opinion even know or understand the ideal of the free market, be­ cause the ideal itself is no longer accepted as a basic guide to action. We drift toward socialism, not because we con­ sciouslywish to go there, but because we no longer know or care where our own home is. THE CASE FOR ECONOMIC FREEDOM II How has this come about? Who has done us in? The fact is, of course, that we have done ourselves in. We have not been betrayed by subversives. We have been be­ trayed by our own indolence, by our preoccupation with profiting individually from the government inter­ ventions we deplore, by our failure to prepare and present the case for economic freedom as powerfully and persuasively as possible. The cure must start within each of us individually and not with programs to reform everyone else. Where do we find the most powerful and persuasive case for economic freedom? I don't know; probably it hasn't been prepared yet, and each concerned person should work at it himself. Certainly it is unlikely that the case I present is the definitive one. However, it is the one that is persuasive with me, that leads me to my own deep commitment to the free market. I present it as grist for your own mill and not as the divinely inspired last word on the subject. The Moral Case for Econ01nic Freedom You will note as I develop my case that I attach· rela­ tively little importance to the demonstrated efficiency of the free market system in promoting economic growth, in raising levels of living. In fact, my central thesis is that the most important part of the case for economic freedom is not its vaunted efficiency as a system for organizing resources~ not its dramatic success in promoting economic growth~ but rather its consistency with certain funda­ mental moral principles of life itself. 12 BENJAMIN A. ROGGE I say, "the most important part of the case" for two reasons. First, the significance I attach to those moral principles would lead me to prefer the free enterprise sys­ tem even if it were demonstrably less efficient than al­ ternative systems, even if it were to produce a slower rate of economic growth than systems of central direction and control. Second, the great mass of the people of any coun­ try is never really going to understand the purely eco­ nomic workings of any economic system, be it free enter­ prise or socialism. Hence, most people are going to judge an economic system by its consistency with their moral principles rather than by its purely scientific operating characteristics. If economic freedom survives in the years ahead, it will be only because a majority of the people accept its basic morality. The success of the system in bringing ever higher levels of living will be no more per­ suasive in the future than it has been in the past. Let me illustrate: The doctrine of man held in general in nineteenth century America argued that each man was ultimately responsible for what happened to him, for his own salvation, both in the here and now and in the here­ after. Thus, whether a man prospered or failed in eco­ nomic life was each man's individual responsibility: each man had a right to the rewards for success and, in the same sense, deserved the punishment that came with failure.

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