On redistribution

June 29, 2006

Aside from the fact that it is nothing more than thinly-veiled theft, which fails the moral razor test (i.e., you would not permit that I redistribute some of your income towards my pockets…), the redistributionist claims that by taking away from some, the net benefit to others acheives some degree of efficiency; that there will be a “net benefit.” Rubbish, I say: My suffering will never be alleviated by your benefit. And shut it about the whole public goods argument.

But, they plead, (brought up over at Cafe Hayek by Spencer, at Jun 27, 2006 3:39:34 PM, sorry, no permalink)

“[T]he argument that I see here is that if the minimum wage causes one person to suffer or lose their job the costs are too high and the minimum wage is bad for minimum wage workers. If you agree with this argument you must also reject free trade because it causes harm to some individuals.”

This claim is specious at best - by distorting the incentives to work, to better oneself, to earn an income and raise a family, we can’t really be sure of how well a job it actually does at “benefitting” anyone. But I’ll take that argument as a given, for the time being. It’s been brought up on more than one occasion that people like me “Favor free-trade because it benefits many at the expense of a few,” and that therefore we ought to “favor redistributionism” for the same reasons.

I’m not even sure where I ought to begin slicing through this tortured logic: it’s intellectually dishonest, and logically flawed on more than one level. For starters, proponents of such an argument are substituting their opinion of free-traders’ beliefs for reality. The argument convolutes the reason people support free trade; it’s more than just a positive sum-game. The presumption that free-traders favor the idea “because it benefits many at the expense of a few” is a gross misrepresentation of reality. In fact, the reason we support free trade is because we support freedom, period. I’ll leave it at that, for now. Once it’s been established that the base of the redistributionist argument is non-existent, there remains no argument. Truly a stool sans legs.

On the contrary, the removal of a confiscatory regulation which benefits the thief can not properly be called a disadvantage to the thief - what had hitherto existed was in fact, a disadvantage, not to the thief, but to the law-abiding citizen, and such disadvantages are at best artificial constructs. Removing an artificially constructed disadvantage is not a “benefit.”

With great freedom, the saying goes, comes great responsibility. What is man’s natural position, and can we improve upon it within the constraints of the respect for life & property? Classical liberal ideology suggests that we can, but not without the restraints of responsibility. Free men, through free exchange with one another can further their mutual needs through cooperation and mutual trade. There is nothing wrong with man’s natural position of inequality amongst his peers, as there is nothing wrong with the fact that Oak trees from acorns grow. In the absence of restrictions and government manipulations, existence is what it is. Any suffering imposed by or otherwise caused by legislation is man made, arbitrarily caused suffering to some extent; this is not debatable. On the contrary, those who will argue that “free trade benefits many at the expense of a few,” what they’re really saying is that the thief does not want to give up the advantages he has gained through legislation.

A rose, by any other name…


Posted in: Potpourri

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