From good intentions to corruption

Wish I'd said that!

[Reprinted from Issues & Views December 31, 2001]

Following are excerpts from an address by Professor Walter Williams on "The Legitimate Role of Government in a Free Society," delivered at Hillsdale College, March 2000:

Government was not long in the business of doing good before Americans found they could use government to live at the expense of other Americans, both through the tax code and through "privilege granting," a government activity that dates back to medieval times in Europe, where guilds and mercantile associations controlled trade in their particular areas. With a payment to the king or a reigning lord they were granted monopoly privileges. In modern times, we have the equivalent; we just call them political contributions.

Almost every group in the nation has come to feel that the government owes it a special privilege or favor. Manufacturers feel that the government owes them protective tariffs. Farmers feel that the government owes them crop subsidies. Unions feel that the government should keep their jobs protected from non-union competition. Residents of coastal areas feel that the government should give them funds for rivers and harbors. Intellectuals feel that the government should give them funds for research. The unemployed and the unemployable feel that the government owes them a living. Big business feels that the government should protect them from the rigors of market competition.

Members of almost every occupation, profession, or trade feel that the government should use licensing requirements and other forms of regulation to protect their incomes from competition that would be caused by others entering the trade.

Conservatives are by no means exempt from this practice. They rail against food stamps, legal aid, and Aid to Families with Dependent Children, but they come out in favor of aid to dependent farmers, aid to dependent banks, and aid to dependent motorcycle companies. They don't have a moral leg to stand on. They merely prove to the nation that it is just a matter of whose ox is being gored.

Conservatives as well as liberals validate H. L. Mencken's definition of an election: " . . . government is a broker in pillage, and every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods." To the extent he was right, we must acknowledge that we, not the politicians, are the problem.

-- Walter Williams is a syndicated columnist and Professor of Economics at George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia.

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