I live in the City of New York, where Left-leaning politics still rule, even after 9/11. The Republican mayor is a "Big Government Liberal", (he was a Democrat till he decided to run for office). I'm a member of 2 bicycle clubs, and I'm a graphic artist. In my circle of friends many consider themselves "Leftists".
I don't understand why they pick that label. None of them would want to live under real Leftists like Stalin, Mao, Kim Jong Il, or Castro. When I point this out, they roll their eyes and shake their heads and tell me that I just don't understand.
Mostly, it seems that they identify with the Left because they don't identify with the Right. They are rabidly anti-Bush, and they're scared of Ashcroft. Some seem to think we need "Big Government" to protect us from "Big Corporations". They don't seem to see that any government that can spank Microsoft can crush you or me like a bug. They don't see that there is a choice other than "Left" or "Right." For those of you who would like to see where you belong in the political cosmos, check out "The World's Smallest Political Quiz."
I get into political e-mail debates with one of my "Leftist" friends from time to time. I hope to turn her to into a Libertarian one day.
I tried to give her an example of "unintended consequences" of government interference and point out why less government would be better. It went something like this:
During WWII, the government instituted a wage freeze, since there was a labor shortage due to the large number of able-bodied men being diverted to the military. The government was afraid that wage increases would lead to inflation. To keep and attract the available workers, employers, (unable to increase wages), started offering perks like medical insurance. These perks cost at least as much as the raises they would have given. The freeze did not avert inflation, however the seeds of our current health care crisis were sown.
Prior to this, most people paid their doctor out of pocket. They didn't go broke because doctors only charged what the market would bear. Soon, people began to think of medical coverage as free. Doctors felt free to raise their fees because their patients did not complain as long as their insurance company was paying the bill.
Along the way, a perverse tort system added the burden of rising malpractice insurance to the cost of health care. Still, as long as employers could buy insurance for their employees, no one complained too much. Since people bore no direct expense for their own health care, they tended to run to the doctor for every little ache and pain.
With more procedures being performed, there were more instances where the outcome was less than perfect. Since it cost plaintiffs nothing to sue for malpractice, more people sued their doctors. The tort lawyers got rich. After a while, medical insurance became too expensive for some employers to offer to all employees. Now we have uninsured people who can't go to a doctor without going broke. This was not the intended consequence of the wage freeze or our tort law system.
Before our health care system went to hell, WWII ended and the GI's came home. They had lost time to make up for. There was a marriage boom followed by a baby boom. These new families put great demands on the housing markets in our cities. Many cities instituted rent control to "keep housing affordable." As a result, landlords lost their incentive to build new units in the cities. In many cases landlords abandoned current housing stock, unable to heat and maintain it on the artificially low rents they were forced to charge. They left it to squatters.
Outside the city limits there was land that did not fall under rent control. Money that would have gone into building and maintaining housing in the cities went into building suburban developments. The inner city declined and the suburbs sprawled.
Cities did not start to make a comeback till apartment buildings started going co-op, as a way of getting around rent control restrictions. Also, new housing that is built in rent controlled areas tends to be luxury co-ops or condos which bring in more profit for the builders and management companies, effectively making city living too expensive for the average middle-class family. This also was not the intention of rent control.
The only people left in the city were the rich and those who were too poor to leave. In the decaying inner cities life was miserable. Welfare was the governments answer. Welfare made it easier for unmarried teenage girls to raise children without the help of a husband. The government paid for them to keep having more kids.
When poorly educated teens have children, they don't usually have the experience and resources necessary to raise studious children. Their children tend to do poorly in school, and they repeat the cycle, no matter how much money you throw at the schools.
The "war on drugs" made things worse. Many men are in prison for non-violent drug offenses. They can't support or help to raise their children while behind bars. When they get out, they have criminal records. Gainful legal employment is not likely upon release. Easy money from the illegal drug trade is very attractive compared to what they'd make working at a fast food chain.
Today in New York the government has put an additional tax on cigarettes that is so high that it has started a new black market. Some drug dealers have left the drug trade to sell cigarettes; (they get fines for selling cigarettes instead of long mandatory prison sentences for repeat drug offenses).
These cigarette dealers engage in turf wars with each other. There have already been murders of black market cigarette dealers in New York City who undercut their competition's prices. Black market dealers can't go to the police for protection since they would arrest them for being dealers and seize their stock. You don't see pharmacists or liquor store owners getting in turf wars and shooting each other.
Let's take a look at what the government has given us:
In a futile attempt to avert inflation, they gave us a health care crisis. They gave us a housing shortage instead of low rents. They chased the middle-class out of the cities, created a welfare-dependant class and increased single teen parenthood. They created a black market for drugs, which criminalized a large segment of our society. Our prisons are overflowing. Murderers and rapists get out of prison early to make room for non-violent drug offenders who get mandatory sentences.
The war on drugs didn't stop anyone from getting drugs who wanted them- they just made them more expensive, which means that to feed their habits, junkies have to steal more from those of us who work.
In New York they're creating a new black market for cigarettes by putting high taxes on cigarettes in an attempt to make people quit smoking.
If people do quit smoking, the government will complain that they've lost so much revenue from cigarette taxes that they have to start taxing something else. Maybe fast food. I can see it now: 13 year old shot in black market burger buy gone bad- film at 11:00!
In addition to the above explanation I sent her to this web page.
My friend's response was: "So what's your answer? Get rid of government?"
Of course I don't think we should get rid of government. But let's reduce it- not expand it. Let's keep it to its constitutional limits.
I know it's not "scientifically provable", but let's try to imagine what would have happened if the government had not intervened in the cases I've sited:
No wage freeze during WWII- Wages would have gone up, (low supply of labor = higher wages), but wages effectively went up due to employers offering medical insurance in lieu of cash any way. With everyone paying for health care out-of-pocket in a market economy, the cost of care would have been held to what the market could reasonably bear. Our current health care crisis would not have happened.
No rent control- Rents would have gone up until real estate investors could build more housing to capitalize on the demand for it. Once enough housing was built, the rents would stabilize and come down as demand was met. The cities may not have declined and the suburbs might not have grown as big.
No easy welfare- Handing out free money to poor teen mothers just encouraged them to have even more children. If it had been clear from the start that no subsequent children would be covered by welfare, birth control or self-control would have been the norm. When this was finally done under modern welfare reform, births dropped and abortion did not go up. It's either birth control or self-control that's doing it. It's working today and it would have worked in the past. Our society would be stronger for it.
No war on drugs- Desperate people would still take drugs to escape whatever it is they're trying to escape by taking drugs. I doubt we would have significantly more addicts, unless it's because fewer died from overdoses and HIV. I've never heard of anybody who avoids drugs because they are illegal. Rebelliousness, curiosity and desperation influence people more than the law does.
Police could spend their time tracking down violent criminals and thieves. We could keep them locked up for their full sentences instead of letting them out early to make room for drug merchants. There would be less police corruption without the black market drug money to bribe them with.
We would not be trying to eradicate coca crops in Colombia, only to have them spring up in Bolivia. Colombian farmers would not hate us for destroying their land with our defoliants.
Terrorists get much of their funding from black market drugs. If drugs were legal, legitimate corporations would be profiting instead. Some may find this morally objectionable, but we've learned to live with the profits from beer and liquor when we realized that prohibition was worse.
The government seems to think: "Whatever we change will change only in the way and to the degree by which we intended it to change." They never anticipate the perverse unintended consequences- and we pay the price.
It seems to me that we'd be much better off with less government.
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