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But, as Cleveland aptly
points out, even when government uses its funds to assist
innocent and potentially productive victims, a possibly
worthy purpose, the government inevitably fails. Private
individuals have flexibility in the disposal of their funds,
and can allocate them to some individuals and not others,
depending fully on the donors' evaluation of the recipients'
worthiness. The economist Milton Friedman would term this
phenomenon "Category II spending," an individual spending
his money on somebody else. Because an individual has
limited resources to spend, he will necessarily be concerned
with furnishing the most effective solution at the smallest
cost, thus being prudent with the allocation of relief,
ensuring that the aid serves only those who truly cannot
survive without it and those who, once they receive it, will
resume their autonomous, productive lives. Government
spending, on the other hand, is "Category IV spending," or
an entity spending someone else's money on someone
else, with the government having no direct incentive to
ensure the most cost-efficient and consequentially effective
allocation of resources. After all, whether or not the
government relief program accomplishes its stated purpose,
the government will continue to receive an indefinite supply
of funds through the taxpayers.
Moreover, this
inexhaustible supply of funds implies that, unlike private
individuals, who will supply aid for a limited time with the
expectation of the recipients' resumption of an autonomous
condition not requiring aid, the government can, under
pretexts of compassion, afford to give this aid to so-called
"victims" indefinitely, thus creating a myriad of money
drains like today's farm subsidies (a direct violation of
Cleveland's policy of no federal aid to farmers), welfare
programs, rehabilitation programs that do not rehabilitate,
and Medicaid for drug addicts. Thus, the former expectation
of the victims recovering from their conditions transforms
into the expectation of the victims continuing to rely on
the perpetual magic fount of assistance, fueled, of course,
by money unjustly taken from good, productive citizens.
Thereby does government, through furnishing this manner of
assistance, become the "paternal" entity Cleveland warned us
of and discourage otherwise generous and charitable people
from helping the new class of perpetually dependent grown-up
infants the government has created. After all, a prudent
private citizen would not invest his funds into a building
that will never be completed or a product that will never be
marketed. Nor should he be expected to invest in a person
who will never improve as a result of the investment.
Furthermore, government
assistance to the tsunami victims will deprive those forced
to assist under such circumstances of the ability to
practice the moral virtues of benevolence and generosity
that private aid entails. According to philosopher Ayn Rand,
"The moral is the chosen." The very reason why the concept
of morality has any value to an individual is that the
individual has the free will to choose to act morally in
the face of an alternative. An action that an individual
is forced to perform by someone else, be it a government or
a private agent (whose use of force would classify him as a
criminal), adds nothing to an individual's moral integrity,
because, even if he would have done this action
independently, he cannot be credited as its initiator, for
he had no choice in the matter. Somebody else made the
decision for him and enforced it, be it through direct
compulsion or the threat of force. In Rand's words,
"Morality ends where a gun begins." Indeed, the government's
deprivation of another $350 million from already heavily
burdened taxpayers is tantamount to putting a gun to the
taxpayers' heads and telling them, "Your money, or your
life." The taxpayer has but to try not cooperating
with this aid allocation to verify the truth of such an
assertion. Almost everyone reading this has at some time
been a benefactor, host, or patron of some individual or
organization, in at least as minor a way as inviting the
beneficiary over for tea. Is this the way he would wish to
be treated by his beneficiary, or by any intermediaries that
might exist between them? And is there much difference
between biting the hand that feeds one, and threatening to
bite it if it does not?
Lastly, our Founding
Fathers established the United States under the premise that
"that government is best which governs least." Indeed, the
sole function of government is to enforce individuals'
natural rights to life, liberty, and property, formulated by
John Locke as prerogatives to action and the ability to
keep what one already has, rather than the reception of
positive goods from somebody else. In other words, rights
are negative obligations, not positive ones, and the proper
role of government does not extend to natural disasters. It
only extends to people and the barring of people from
inflicting harm upon others. Natural disasters are
unfortunate and, indeed, devastating, but nobody's rights
are violated in them, for individuals maintain the ability
to act in full accordance with their free will in the
aftermath of the disaster. The only manner in which rights
can be violated is when a man is forced by another to
perform a course of action he would not have himself chosen.
Thus, the only legitimate function of government is to
protect man from other men, and from the government itself,
which, in its modern Leviathan scope, is the chief violator
of individual rights. Nobody can have a right to
disaster relief, however undeserved the calamity afflicting
him might have been, for a right to positive goods implies
an obligation on the part of somebody else to provide them.
This means that the provider's life, liberty, and interests
must be made subordinate, for a time at least, to the needs
of the victim, thus creating a hierarchy of value that
rewards need at the expense of ability, a purely
Marxist notion antithetical to the founding principles of
America. If government rewards need and penalizes ability in
this manner, need, or pretend need, will eventually become
more profitable than ability, and more people shall be
inclined to enter a state of need or fabricate their need so
as to receive government handouts, hence the sorry spectacle
of welfare fraud in modern America on a colossal scale, or
the phenomenon of farm lobbies trying to maintain and
increase subsidies for some of the most financially
successful farmers in the world, cases that could easily
repeat themselves in the realm of disaster relief.
As horrified as I may be
by the damage inflicted in this unforeseen tragedy, I am
more horrified when the sanctity of the most fundamental
principles of justice, reason, morality, and natural law is
utterly transgressed by the United States government, which
currently seems oblivious to the examples set for the
correct application of original American values by such men
as the Founding Fathers and Grover Cleveland. Disasters,
however terrible, are temporary and can be recovered from.
The consequences of a loss of fidelity to principles, on the
other hand, cannot be undone, for principles are permanent
and universal, and, without their guidance in proper
decision making, there can exist nothing but perpetual
suffering for individuals, both the givers and the
receivers. Acting with the alleged intention of alleviating
suffering, the government, through its involvement in
tsunami relief, will only serve to perpetuate this suffering
on a scale that only a welfare state is capable of.
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