Free markets among groups

I have been the moderator or more than one Yahoo discussion group. When a member would complain about how I was running the group I would offer to help them start a group and offered to join their group. I think discussion groups are representative of the free market. I want to join the most interesting group. If someone can provide a better group, then let the free market reign.

I wish the same principal applied to leaving, joining or starting your own government. Imagine how a government would try to compete and offer us the best services if we could voluntarily leave one government, without selling our property and moving, and join another, or simply have some private business (Blackwater:-)), provide our government services. Should the Amish be allowed to leave our group and start their own, without moving out of the U.S.? I believe they should. How would members of a discussion group feel if in order to leave the group they had to; quit their job, sell their property, leave their family and friends, and move to another country?

Should Martin Luther have been allowed to split from the Catholic Church and form a new religion? Of course. The Catholic Church had no right to use force on someone else who wanted to form their own group. Why does the State have the right to prevent one group from leaving a State and forming another State? The State does not have that right. The State does have force, which it uses to keep one group from leaving, which would diminish the power of the previous State.

Most of human history involved man living in small groups. Leaving a group voluntarily or being expelled has happened since man started living in small groups. In these small groups, thinking towards a common goal was the key for the strength and survival of the group. Let's all pull in the same direction. If you dissented you were expelled or ostracized. Soon you started or joined another group that you had more commonality with. Groups that could not stand dissent languished. It was open groups with dissent that advanced.

Now we have large and diverse groups. We are a large group of strangers. We look for the State to give us common goals; defense, social security, Medicare, etc. Dissent is just a recent development in mankind's progress. There are many among us who still feel threatened by dissent. We think it will weaken the resolve of the group and make us vulnerable. Some primitive instincts never go away.

Dissent also makes us doubt our own views. Like the captain of an airliner under Crew Resource Management should listen to other crew members if he is on a dangerous path, I want to listen to dissent about my opinions.

Charles Tolleson
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Totalitarians Among Us by Thomas DiLorenzo

In his famous 1944 book, The Road to Serfdom, Nobel laureate economist Friedrich Hayek warned of how creeping totalitarianism could find its way into democratic societies. First, there must be the wish on the part of political "leaders" to "unite" the entire country behind some plan for "national greatness" or "national glory," such as the one the "National Greatness Conservatives" (a phrase coined by Bill Kristol) have in mind for us. As the great 19th century economist Frédéric Bastiat wrote in his masterpiece, The Law, democracy can be just as dictatorial as genuine dictatorship if it enforces laws that compel national uniformity to a sufficient degree.

Since there is never anything like unanimity of agreement over one plan for the entire society, the "leaders" must gather around them as large a group as possible that would have a uniformity of opinion and the political clout to impose that opinion on the rest of society by force. There are several necessary characteristics of such a group, Hayek wrote in his chapter entitled "Why the Worst Get on Top." First, "if we wish to find a high degree of uniformity and similarity of outlook, we have to descend to the regions of lower moral and intellectual standards where the more primitive and 'common' instincts and tastes prevail." The largest group of people whose values are similar "are the people with low standards," the "lowest common denominator," wrote Hayek.
Moreover, if a "numerous group" in a democracy is strong enough politically "to impose their views on the values of life on the rest, it will never be those with highly differentiated tastes - it will be those [who are] the least independent, who will be able to put the weight of their numbers behind their particular ideals."

The political leader will also have to recruit many others to "the same simple creed," whatever it is. He will succeed by being able "to obtain the support of all the docile and gullible, who have no strong convictions of their own but are prepared to accept a ready-made system of values if it is only drummed into their ears sufficiently loudly and frequently. It will be those whose vague and imperfectly formed ideas are easily swayed and whose passions and emotions are readily aroused who will thus sell the ranks of the totalitarian party."
Finally, the "skillful demagogue" will be able to "get people to agree on a negative program - on the hatred of an enemy . . . the common fight against those outside the group, seems to be an essential ingredient" in "the armory of a totalitarian leader." In Nazi Germany, for instance, the "enemy," wrote Hayek, was "the Jew" who "had come to be regarded as the representative of capitalism . . . German anti-Semitism and anti-capitalism sprang from the same root . . ."

It is not surprising that the self-described "godfather" of neoconservatism," Irving Kristol, has mocked and ridiculed what he called "the Hayekian notion that we are on the road to serfdom . . . . Neoconservatives do not feel that kind of alarm of anxiety about the growth of the state." (The Weekly Standard, August 25, 2005). As long as the neocons are in charge, and kept in power by the masses of Fredheads, Freepers, bloodthirsty "evangelicals" and other primitive and easily-swayed followers, they will continue to destroy what is left of America's constitutional republic.

September 22, 2007
Thomas J. DiLorenzo [send him mail] professor of economics at Loyola College in Maryland and the author of The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War, (Three Rivers Press/Random House). His latest book is Lincoln Unmasked: What You're Not Supposed To Know about Dishonest Abe (Crown Forum/Random House).