Posted on 06/05/2002 12:10:14 AM PDT by JohnHuang2
Institutions – established law, custom and practices – matter and should not be ignored. How is it that Western Europe and the United States managed to amass unprecedented wealth while countries of the former Soviet Union, China, Africa, South America and the Middle East haven't?
The answer has little to do with the people of those countries. After all, people who migrate to Western Europe or the United States often wind up doing quite well.
The reason why the West has been able to amass great wealth is that rule of law is embedded in Western values. Where there's rule of law, human initiative flourishes. Rule of law refers to freedom of contract and enforcement of contracts, protection of private property, stability of laws, a requirement that all persons, private individuals and government officials are subject to the same laws and, most importantly, limitation of the authority of government.
For more than a half-century, various elements of the rule of law have been under ruthless attack in America. Private property means the person deemed as the owner makes decisions on its uses, and that applies to the most valuable property we own – ourselves. Sanctions are taken against persons who use their property in ways that violate the property rights of others. However, when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service bans an owner from using part of his property because some animal has chosen it for a habitat, that's a private-property-rights violation, resulting in losses to the owner.
Government attacks on private property have become routine in today's America. John Adams warned, "The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence."
Freedom of contract has come to be viewed with contempt. Suppose you offer to pay me for $3 an hour and I agree; suppose I live in Virginia and want to purchase liquor in Washington, D.C.; suppose in rent-controlled New York and San Francisco a landlord and tenant mutually agree to pay a higher rent; suppose I'm a California navel orange grower who wants to sell his entire crop; and suppose you want to provide taxi services in New York but don't have $170,000 for a license. There are literally thousands of restrictions like these on freedom of contract.
You might say, "Williams, there are good reasons for restricting the freedoms of others." You're right, and every tyrant who has ever existed has had what he considered a good reason.
Another part of rule of law is simply the stability of laws. For most of our nation's history, people could make plans. For the most part, they could expect today's laws to be tomorrow's laws; hence, they could plan for the future. Today, that's not true. A businessman making investment decisions doesn't know what Congress is going to do a year or two down the line making today's investment decisions worthless. As such, it produces the quick-buck mentality – get in and get out.
Another increasingly prevalent violation of the rule of law is seen in companies using government to overturn lost competitive advantages in the market. The Microsoft case is an example where its competitors, not customers, employed the heavy hand of government to accomplish what they couldn't accomplish in the market. It's increasingly paying companies to invest more resources, currying favor with government officials rather than investing those resources in real productivity.
We're such a rich nation that the immediate effects of attacks on rule of law aren't readily apparent. But enough pinpricks, even into an elephant, will eventually kill.
This is very true. The return on investment in a Congressman or Senator is upward of 100,000% to a business. This is why McStain/Fienscold will never work. You can’t over come that kind of incentive.
Its just like trying to stop drug trafficking, the lure of huge profits is just to great. The money will find a way to the politician.
You might say, "Williams, there are good reasons for restricting the freedoms of others." You're right, and every tyrant who has ever existed has had what he considered a good reason.
I've been saying this for about a week now on FreeRepublic:
"Each year politicians and bureaucrats pass and implement about 3,000 new laws and regulations. On average, the number of new laws increases each year. They tell us that these are must have laws and regulations that people and society must have. Question: how have people and society survived and even prospered for years and decades prior to the plethora of new, must have laws?
"The only people that need 3,000 new laws and regulations each year are the politicians and bureaucrats."
Why do politicians and bureaucrats need that many new laws each year?
I'll demonstrate by way of example. Civil rights laws are unnecessary and often destructive. But they do make for great look-busy work of parasitical-elite politicians and bureaucrats as they proclaim they're compassionately using government to help minorities and the little guy. Thus, that's supposed to justify their unearned paychecks and unearned power -- usurped livlihoods. Far more often than not they are hindering minorities and the little guy from prosperity creation and accumulation. Prosperity creation, creating and producing values is the legitimate route to earned paychecks and real power. They solve real problems whereas politicians and bureaucrats create problems where the need not exist.
How to protect the little guy:
The individual is the smallest minority. Protect individual-proprerty rights and all larger than one minorities are protected, as is the majority. IMO, civil rights laws are the brain-child of collectivists.
What's wrong with this picture?
Read the Fourth Amendment. Sheesh, we can't even trust our "employees" -- government officials -- to let them into our homes and businesses without a search warrant. But somehow a business is supposed to trust a total stranger with an open door policy. A person/business owner can refuse to allow a government employee access to his property but not a total stranger! And get this, it is the government that can't be trusted without a search warrant that is telling property owners that they must trust total strangers.
Discrimination laws are unjust.
Go WW!
Thus all the accounting troubles of today. Government creates the maze and when it is successfully navigated, the rules are changed to punish those who were too clever. That is not to defend any of the real crooks that will be uncovered, but there will be a lot that did no worse than game the system well to do thier jobs to maximize profits. The line is now being redrawn where the 'drawers' (politicians who want to be reelected) think it now has to be to keep thier jobs.
Here is the real meat of Walter's oped:
Another increasingly prevalent violation of the rule of law is seen in companies using government to overturn lost competitive advantages in the market. The Microsoft case is an example where its competitors, not customers, employed the heavy hand of government to accomplish what they couldn't accomplish in the market. It's increasingly paying companies to invest more resources, currying favor with government officials rather than investing those resources in real productivity.
Whenever a corporation like Whoreacle decides to buy/bribe the business like they did in Kali with Herr Davis, two things happen:
That company decides to invest in politicians instead of research or providing a better product/service with better people. The moment that happens, the corporation's corporate culture changes from good company to sleaze company from top to the bottom.
When a company like Whoreacle is rewarded or a company like Microsoft is punished, a clear message goes out to the CEO's/boards of other companies. That message is: To do business for example in Kali, you have to bribe Davis and his fellow rats. The Rat AG in Kali is still trying to sue and harrass MicroSoft and has done nothing re Whoreacle and the company that is revealed each day to have bribed Davis and his fellow rats including the Kali AG.
Once again, if you follow it back you find FDR's New Deal Commerce Clause at the root. We need to return to the original intent of the Commerce Clause, and disband every federal agency that has been authorized under the "blank check" interpretation of that clause, and then re-authorize them by amendment, specifying the scope and range of their mission and the limits of their authority, provided we want them back at all.
Political influence is the 'gold standard' of the American socialist economy.
Oops! We can't call it 'socialist'; call it 'progressive'.
I hate to say it, but ever since the Clintons, and the degradation of the term, "rule of law," I still shudder when I see those words.
But as The Scripture says, the letter of the law kills. The Spirit brings liberty.
The law can be used to be brutal, even merciless. And, as we saw with BILLDO AND SHRILLERY, used very manipulatively by clever people. Human systems are human flaws amplified.
Nazi Germany also had rule of law--perhaps even more religiously followed than our own grand land.
NO! The answer lies in another area as some of our best known founders knew full well and stated very candidly.
Freedom and democracy can only be secure and functional when a people are governed INTERNALLY, INTRINSICALLY--as modern research has discovered and difined it, INDIVIDUALLY in the dark alone as well as in the the bright light of a Sunday afternoon church picnic--Freedom and democracy can only be secure and functional when a people are governed by a higher law of right and wrong which derrives from a relationship with Almighty God who knows all, sees all and insures that we reap what we sow.
There will never be enough policemen, courts, free press organs of balance and integrity . . . and watchers of such; and watchers of the watchers--to insure a functional, free society apart from a mostly virtuous populace.
As the Judeo-Christian substrate/foundation has been wholesale dilluted, fractured--lawlessness has increased; neighbor and neighborhood has arisen against neighbor and neighborhood; race against race; interest group against interest group. . . .
But it is not overly logical to be otherwise. If the "American Way"--in and of itself in terms of law--was utopia, we wouldn't need God. The reality is all of the universe from sub-atomic to galactic needs the sustaining active Power and Glory of God to continue in existence from moment to moment. Some are deluded otherwise. Our era will end with vivid demonstrations of the truth of His sustaining as the light gets lighter and the dark gets darker . . . as He illustrates with more overt sustaining and more overt withdrawal of sustaining HIS VERY ACTIVE PART in the affairs of man.
Thankfully, HE IS ALSO ALTOGETHER GOOD; ALTOGETHER LOVE AND HIS MERCY TRIUMPHS OVER HIS JUDGMENT.
Others are possible.
Members of congress could write and pass orders of magnitude fewer laws and individuals and society would be served far better than it is now. The general public doesn't judge a congressperson by how many laws they write. Rather, they judge by the quality of laws they write. As it is now, 99+ percent of people don't know what new laws are passed anyways. Members of congress would get paid the same salary if they write a tiny fraction of laws. Say, for example, thirty new laws a year instead of the current three thousand new laws congress creates each year.
Since it's not their set salaries that influences their decision to write so many laws, what does? Are they getting kick backs from lobbyists? Consider this, lobbyists and special interest groups give hard-money donations that goes into just that politicians campaign-reelection fund, and/or they give soft-money donations that goes into the much larger, political party's campaign fund.
That's the main reason State and federal politicians create so many laws. They are doing special favors for the lobbyists and special interest groups that give them money. Often those new laws give the donor an unfair competitive advantage in the marketplace. Other times the laws expand a market for the donor's business to move into. The EPA and environmental laws and regulations written by congresspersons and implemented by bureaucrats have virtual created an entire industry.
Back in the 1970s congresspersons and their respective political parties received huge donations based on the faulty premise that global cooling was a major threat to life as we know it on planet Earth. Since that time they've been receiving huge donations based on the faulty premise that global warming was a major threat to life as we know it on planet Earth. However, man's minimal impact on Earth's environment, yes, minimal impact, is off-set by advances in technology that increasingly lessens the impact. For example, the use of natural gas used to heat homes has a tiny fraction of the impact on the environment than if wood was still used to heat the majority of homes.
The primary reason congresspersons create so many new laws each year is to get big money from donors for their re-election campaigns.
Why do members of congress want to be re-elected? To keep getting nice, fat paychecks and the many perks that come with the job. The biggest perk being prestige. Prestige based on the premise that they are compassionate and sensitive to the little guys' needs. Thus they supposedly use government to help the little guy. But it's usurped prestige that they gain and are un-entitled to receive.
Yet the little guy isn't aware of 99+ percent of the laws that are created. Even if 1% of each years' new laws actually benefit the little guy -- which is questionable -- what about the other 99% of laws? Who do they benefit? The big money donors -- lobbyists, special interest groups and the companies they lobby for.
Let's change focus onto how business competition benefits the little guy, and all people. Businesses compete to serve customer wants and needs. The businesses that create the most satisfaction for the most customers grow stronger and thus increase their ability to serve the customer market ever better. Seldom will a person find a business that harms their customers, and even then the business is quick to make right whatever it is they did wrong. For if they don't correct their error/problem they'll very quickly be out competed by a business that caters to the customers' need to be satisfied. The more and better a business serves the customers' needs the more jobs the business can create to serve an expanding customer base.
For a business, there is every reason to satisfy customers and no reason to abuse them. Yet, according to politicians, bureaucrats, media elite and academia elite, the little guy needs 3,000 new laws each year and government to look out for the little guy by keeping businesses in check so they don't harm the little guy.
It is job creating businesses that cater to satisfying customer needs that have earned, deserve and are entitled to prestige -- not politicians, bureaucrats, media or academia elite. Yet we seldom hear business owners or CEO's crowing about how compassionate and sensitive they are to the little guys needs. No. They have a businesses to run and besides, their customers know via experience that the business is looking out for them. Parasitical elite usurping unearned livelihoods are often seen and heard crowing about their zest and compassion to help the little guy.
Juxtaposition businesses and parasitical elites. Watch what they do, not what they say.
What about Enron? 1) Enron donated large amounts of money to both major political parties' soft-money campaign funds and donations to specific politicians -hard-money campaign funds -- can you say government collusion? 2) In a free market free of government collusion, transparency in accounting practices necessary to compete would have precluded Anderson and Anderson form deceptive accounting practices.
By usurping power and prestige that is rightfully earned by the businesses, the little guy is harmed by government collusion in the market place.
And don't even get me started on the tremendous benefits gained by a don't-pay-if-you-don't-want sales tax replacing the must-pay-by-threat-of-force graduated income tax that would quickly boom the economy. I'll save that discussion for another time.
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