"Stimulus" means you are in a cage

Stimulus is for lab rats, not economies of free people. Give us freedom. Man shall be neither free nor prosperous until the last politician is strangled with the entrails of the last bureaucrat.

What we need is for the government to quit causing the boom-bust cycle. Given a free economy, the resources we have will be allocated optimally for satisfying human wants and producing wealth, making us all better off.

Instead, we get items like the Federal Reserve, and "stimulus" packages when it goes wrong. Naked transfers of money and power; blatant infringements on liberty.

If I were free, I would be able to keep the dollars I earn and use them to bless this society in a way profitable for me and others. If I were free, I would be able to start a business of my choice with no permission or regulation from the government, and again I would thus be able to bless this society to my own profit and for the benefit of others.

If you won't do it for me, at least do it for my neighbors: give us freedom. Give people permission to get out of this mess! Give people permission to say "this government is no longer acting to secure my rights to life, liberty, and property, and I renounce my association with it and will establish another, with my neighbors, which shall have its foundation laid on such principles and be organized in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

Government cannot solve the problem. The United States government is the problem. If you do not like theft, murder, and infringement of liberty, then the biggest criminal in the world and the source of the vast majority of all of these things which you do not like is the United States government.

It's over. Let freedom ring.

Privatization

As a laissez-faire capitalist, I support the privatization of everything the government does. Everything.

Unfortunately, many governments at various levels (state, local, federal) have made trials of something that they have called "privatization" without trying real privatization. Since this pseudo-privatization is really not based on letting the market work, it doesn't work to efficiently meet needs, and often people are dissatisfied and become fearful of privatization. They become more convinced than ever that government is necessary to meet our needs and is somehow magically able to do so in ways that cannot be done by voluntary self-organization. Government becomes like a powerful drug addiction that people will not turn loose of. And unfortunately those of us who aren't addicted and would like to refuse to be a part of it have no choice but to deal with the consequences anyway.

For example: suppose a city decides to "privatize" its garbage pickup. True privatization would be this: the city stops collecting the taxes and fees used to support the garbage pickup service. It sells (possibly by auction) all of the buildings, equipments, dumps, etc. that have been used in providing its service. It discontinues the service entirely. After that, the city does nothing.

Now the people have an unmet need to have their garbage hauled away. Entrepreneurs realize that the people of this town have this need and get to action because there is money to be made. Some of them obtain land and turn it into private dumps. They may contract with citizens to give them a place to take their garbage to. But of course most people don't want to haul their own garbage. So more entrepreneurs, or possibly the same ones who start the dumps, obtain vehicles and start businesses hauling garbage away to the dumps. If they don't run the dumps themselves, they contract with the people who do. Anticipating these needs, some of these entrepreneurs probably arranged to buy some of the city resources at auction. Some of them might even be people who were formerly employed by the city for garbage pickup.

Some garbage services might offer daily pickup. Others offer twice weekly pickup for a lower cost. If the garbage pickup is late (as it often is in my neighborhood under the socialized garbage pickup system we have today), people switch to a competing service. If there is no competing service, then there is money to be made starting one, and some entrepreneur may do this, starting a more reliable service that will be able to charge higher rates, assuming that people care enough to pay for a more reliable service. Some entrepreneur realizes he can save money if he creates automated garbage pickup trucks, and this service is offered. Some entrepreneur realizes his pickup service can be available on call, any day of the week, so this service is offered. Some entrepreneur realizes he can make money offering an additional service where your garbage pickup men also clean up your yard. A dynamic market forms where people are constantly seeking to do a better job of picking up the garbage because doing so makes them money.

Unfortunately, cities don't do true privatization. Instead, here's what happens: the city scraps its own garbage pickup service and puts out a request for bids from private services. The city makes ONE choice of a private service for everybody. The city might pick the cheapest service. Or it might not. You might think it's better to pick a more expensive service that's more reliable. Or you might prefer to do it as cheap as possible. Either way, your individual preferences, and those of your neighbors, are not likely to be respected. The city might not even use price and quality of service to make its decision: the contract might go to the mayor's brother-in-law. Cronyism. (You'll note that such a situation can't occur under the true privatization scenario, where if somebody picks his brother-in-law he has to live with the consequences himself and can't impose them on other people.)

And of course the city signs a two year contract with the service provider. Lock in.

The garbage pickup company now has a lucrative government-granted monopoly. They'll pick up the garbage. But if they are late once in a while, their customers can't fire them. If they were in a free market, their customers would vacate them one by one at their own pace. But a city government cannot possibly react that fast, and may be locked in by a contract any way. The garbage pickup company has no incentive to come up with new services, or make its existing service better to customers. They just have to make sure they do the worst and cheapest job possible without making enough people angry enough to call the city council that the city council actually reacts strongly enough to affect their bottom line.

As more and more cities "privatize," such companies grow fatter, bigger, and less responsive. There's no market for little, agile, companies to spring up and meet needs with a fresher more energetic approach, because nobody has the money to consider switching to an alternative to the city monopoly service.

This, my friends, is what your government calls "privatization." But the truth is that it is socialism. You are meeting your needs as a collective, not individually. The city gets to brand the failures of a system that is collectivism, socialism, communism as if it were the failures of privatization, the free market, capitalism.

Over and over governments use this technique to brainwash you into fearing the free market. They make you and your neighbors fearful of what would happen if you didn't have the government to take care of your needs. You might sometimes notice that the government doesn't do a very good job of meeting some needs, but you'll be too afraid that without the government doing the job (complete with compulsory funding and compulsory participation) things would be worse to consider that there might be an alternative. And they'll try to work hard to meet enough needs that nobody gets too unhappy, as governments have since the first conquerer rode into the first conquered peaceful community and proclaimed himself "king." Like those kings, the governments will use its successes and what few services it does provide as propaganda to show people how benevolent their government is and how it helps them in ways that could never be done by ordinary people working together on their own accord.

By the way, you'll see the same thing with "deregulation." Deregulation means getting rid of the regulations. Governments never do this. But they will eliminate a couple of rules, possibly making others, and they'll take the opportunity to make a lot of noise about how great they are for trying "deregulation," just before the new system fails. Perhaps dramatically, as in the case of the California energy crisis, spawned by "deregulation." Of course, when you look at such failures, you never actually see a market without regulations. You see a situation where companies where regulated to the hilt and then suddenly allowed to set their own prices, or you see a situation where a government granted monopoly was suddenly forced to produce and sell its services at a forced price, possibly below cost, to new competitors. Of course these systems fail, but they don't represent a failure of freedom.

Sins in the market, conclusion

How do you reconcile your belief in unregulated free-market capitalism as a divine protection against tyranny, with the fact that so many of the most profitable commodities in a capitalist market are the ones that appeal to our very basest and most disordered desires (drugs, p&rn, etc.)?

It is true that there is a lot of money to be made in the market by catering to people's sinful desires. Christians are, of course, forbidden to be the ones to make this money.

But remember that many items are multi-purpose. A gun may be used to murder, or it may be used to hunt for food to provide for one's family. A pencil may be used to draw a pornographic drawing, or to write an evangelistic sermon. Radio may be used to play music advocating violence, or to preach the Gospel. The Internet ... well, you already know about the Internet.

People all the time use good things that God has created for evil purposes. The free market is one of them. Evil people may prosper in this world, but in the end, the pleasures of sin are only for a season. None of this is an argument for getting rid of the free market, especially since God commanded it.

How much do you trust God?

It's just that I think our families share some other things in common - things we aren't used to sharing with other people, LOL - that I was curious about why we came down differently on the free market. I look forward to being given something interesting to think about.

Christians disagree about a variety of things. One reason for this is that none of us perfectly understands the will of God, yet. No matter how long we keep studying and living the Christian life, we will always be learning. Hopefully we will always be willing to accept correction from the word of God, and willing to repent when we discover that we've been in error.

With that said, I want to reiterate that the free market is taught by and required by the word of God. When God said "Thou shalt not steal" -- that's a free market. That completely prohibits taxation as something Christians can engage in. (Note: I'm talking about requiring taxes of our neighbor, not talking about paying taxes.) As Walter Williams says, "He didn't say thou shalt not steal unless you got a majority vote in Congress.."

"Thou shalt not steal" means we practice charity, not socialism.

God said about property that while a man owns it, it remains his own, and if sold, the money remains under his control (Acts 5:4). Nowhere did He authorize us to make decisions for everybody's property, as a whole, rather than as individuals. Not even within the church, as evidenced by this passage.

Nor did God authorize us to govern other people. We may hold people accountable within the church, but if they choose to reject that accountability, the maximum judgment we are allowed against them is to put them out of the church, to "abandon them to Satan," and for those outside of the church, we can do nothing other than repeat the call of God (I Corinthians 5). And as I've said previously, the most effective power against sin is that call, not things we could do by taking away freedom.

Faith means "trust." The very word, pisteuo in Greek, is Greek for "trust." May I please encourage you to trust in God, to step out in faith and believe in His commands, even if you don't yet fully see how it could work? It worked for Abraham, who believed he would receive a multitude of descendants, even as he offered his only son on the altar (Hebrews 11:17-19).

Does the free market protect against tyranny?

How do you reconcile your belief in unregulated free-market capitalism as a divine protection against tyranny, with the fact that so many of the most profitable commodities in a capitalist market are the ones that appeal to our very basest and most disordered desires (drugs, p&rn, etc.)?

I wanted to comment on a misperception that I saw in this question. I don't believe in the free market as a divine protection against tyranny. It's more of a definition thing: tyranny is what you get when somebody takes away freedom. So the free market is what you get when there is no tyranny, at the moment. Freedom and tyranny are opposites.

I do believe the free market is divinely inspired, because God is the author of private property (Exodus 20). And I do believe that this free market has spectacular benefits in a lot of areas, chiefly that it satisfies the greatest value of human wants (including needs) possible in a world of scarcity. It is the only way to achieve the benefits of division of labor.

And it is the only moral way. Not having a free market means people exercising ownership rights over things that are not theirs, either by taking what is not theirs, or by telling them what they can and cannot do with it. It is to the Lord's glory that the only moral way to arrange human affairs is also the economically best way. It is to man's shame that we have so little trust in the Lord that we entertain the idea that other ways might actually outperform this one, and might therefore be worth trying. (If we have enough faith in the Lord, we will choose His way even when it looks to us like it doesn't work best, trusting that we are not seeing what He sees (I Corinthians 2)).

I have referred to a few of our institutions as protections against tyranny, but they are only partial protections. For example, democracy protects against tyranny by preventing the governing authority from taking some, but not all, actions which are offensive to the populace. Of course, democracy still allows plenty of tyranny. The people can vote to outlaw Jews, for example, or to educate each other's children. Separation of powers also helps to function as a check on tyranny, because an action is required to pass multiple checkpoints before it is put in force. However, one of the main reasons we have these imperfect safeguards is that rulers of centuries past learned that if they did not give the people some of what they were asking, the people would revolt. The rulers found they could take away much liberty, then give some back and claim that they were the source and guarantee of the rights and liberty, rather than its main oppressors. They found that they could take away much of the wealth of the people, then use it to provide some services and goods, claiming that the market would never provide these things and therefore presenting themselves as the "benefactors" of the people (Luke 22:25). As long as they gave the people enough to keep them happy, the vast majority of people would never entertain the idea that they might be better off without the rulers, and revolt would be staved off.

Since the free market makes it possible to provide for all kinds of services, it does make it possible to provide for protection against tyranny, like any other service. Just as you can today hire a security guard, even though the state tries to provide some security for you, under a truly, 100% free market, you could contract with a service to provide your security. These services would look a little bit like our governments, in that they are organizations formed to secure our rights (this is what Thomas Jefferson said was the purpose of government, in the Declaration of Independence). But unlike our governments, they would be prohibited from just assuming control over everybody in a region, potentially taking away their rights, by virtue of the fact that competing services would exist, and those services would be out securing the rights of their "citizens" against any other group that started encroaching. One of the real problems of government is that rather than allowing this need to be met on the free market, where all needs are best met (most economically), we've instead socialized this process. We know socialism is a horrible way to provide food. It's also a horrible way to provide security. Or anything else.

Freedom also helps perpetuate itself because a taste of freedom makes people discontent with tyranny. This is one reason the United States revolted against Great Britain: a century of "salutary neglect" got the colonists used to enjoying the benefits of their liberty, and they got upset when moves were made to take it away.

But the important thing is not that the free market provides some protection against tyranny. It's that if you don't have a free market, you have tyranny.

Sins in the market

How do you reconcile your belief in unregulated free-market capitalism as a divine protection against tyranny, with the fact that so many of the most profitable commodities in a capitalist market are the ones that appeal to our very basest and most disordered desires (drugs, p&rn, etc.)?

As long as this world lasts we are going to be struggling with the problem of sin. And the solution to sin is always going to be Jesus Christ. "There is no other name under heaven that has been given among men, by which we must be saved." (Acts 4:12) Jesus is the sacrifice for sin, "the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world." (John 1:29) Moreover, those who receive Jesus will have God, the Father, and the Holy Spirit living within them (John 14:23), which is how they will begin to have the power to resist sin, by virtue of the fact that over time they will become more and more like Jesus Christ (Romans 8:29).

God's word has been sent out into this world with this purpose, and it will not fail (Isaiah 55:11). God's power to save is the Gospel, a message -- not force (Romans 1:16).

Any other proposed solution to the sin problem will be substandard. God's word is more powerful than all the other solutions we can imagine. It is more effective to preach God's word to a sinner than it is to force that sinner to stop his sin. We can change a man's outward behavior, but it is God's word that reaches the heart. Moreover, a sinner who stops sinning is still not saved. His guilt will only be taken away by Jesus. Until then, "all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment" (Isaiah 64:6). His garments are dirty, and ceasing to apply more dirt will not make them cleaner. He needs to be cleaned.

Government is not the solution to the sin problem. It will not work because it can only affect outward behavior. It will not work because it cannot reach the heart. It will not work because it cannot atone for sin. And it will not work because it cannot accomplish a transformation of a person's character into the image of Jesus Christ.

But even more specifically, this avenue is forbidden to us. I Corinthians 5:10-13 prohibits us from executing judgment against those outside the church. We're not allowed to interfere with the behavior of those people. We're required to allow them to go on their way, abandoning them Satan, with the hopes that the destruction of this world will inspire them to seek salvation in Christ. More on this later this week, I hope.

But the free-market is not the solution to this either. The free market is simply the way God has mandated for us to handle property. He mandated this when He commanded "Thou shalt not steal," and He confirmed it when He taught through the apostle Peter that property belongs to its owner, to be done with as the owner (not the electorate) wills (Acts 5:4).

That does not mean the free market solves all our problems. It just means that it's the best way we can live in this fallen world. The free market will not eliminate scarcity, but it has been proved to achieve the best allocation of our scarce resources in order to meet the most wants. Thankfully the free market allows us to use our time, property, and other resources to bring about true change through the preaching of the Gospel, using the power of Jesus Christ to transform people's wants. When the market is not free, the interference constitutes economic waste. That's waste that could be put to better use. And without freedom, people have the right to vote on whether or not we can share the Gospel, how we can share it, and what portions of it we can share.

For whatever reason, God gave us liberty to sin. And He does not empower us in any passage of Scripture that I am aware of to take that liberty away from anyone else.

Free exchange: why capitalism works

Most people have the idea that when you buy something, you pay (or should pay) an amount of "money" that is "worth" the same as the value of the item purchased. Actually, this is not true.

When somebody buys something, they are giving an amount of money that is, to them, worth less than the item they are buying. However, from the seller's viewpoint, the situation is reversed: he is accepting an amount of money that is worth more (to him) than the item sold.

If this were not true, nobody would ever sell anything. People sell things to earn wealth. Therefore, people sell things for prices that are higher than the worth, to them, of the product they are selling.

Value is actually a subjective thing. An evening watching Monday night football with the guys might be worth a lot to most American fathers and husbands, but it's worth zilch to me because I hate football. (Actually, if there were wings and pizza involved, it wouldn't be worth zilch to me, but it would still be worth less than an evening watching Star Wars with my wife and kids. Or my in-laws, for that matter. With pizza.) The worth of a particular item, service, or experience to you is a very unique thing, because God made you a unique individual. It's not worth the same to you as it is to anyone else in the world, although with prices we get an idea of the average worth of something to society. Tickets to that said Monday night football game might be pretty expensive, because it is worth a lot to most people, even though it is worth nothing to me.

So, if you purchase a pencil for, say, 10 cents, it may be that the pencil is actually worth 12 cents to you, while it's worth only, say, 5 cents to the seller. (He doesn't need a pencil as badly as you. He has plenty.) The price of that pencil is going to be set by supply and demand, which is the accumulation of literally millions of buying and selling decisions across society. If a pencil is worth 12 cents to you, but is worth 50 cents to the seller (suppose it costs 40 cents to make and he needs to make 10 cents per pencil sold or else he could be making more money flipping burgers, in which case he'll give up his pencil selling career and go flip burgers) then no sale of the pencil will take place, to you. (Of course, if the rest of society feels that pencils are worth 90 cents, they are going to flock to this guy and he is going to sell a lot of pencils. This is how football teams continue to earn money despite the extreme drawback that I am not interested in football.)

But in the situation where you and the seller agreed on the price of 10 cents, something wondrous has occurred: you have parted with 10 cents, and gained something worth 12 cents. Your wealth has just gone up by two cents. (Yes, that's not very significant, but it might be if we were talking about beachfront property in Florida instead of pencils.) Meanwhile, the seller has parted with something worth 5 cents, and gained 10 cents. Therefore, his wealth has just gone up by 5 cents. Together, the two of you have 7 cents more of wealth to use. And use it you will. You're going to use that pencil to write something that has some value to you (maybe a grocery list, or maybe a bestseller novel). The seller's going to use those cents to buy something of value to him (maybe groceries). The fact is that, as a result of what the two of you just did, society on the whole has gained seven cents of wealth.

Every time people voluntarily exchange goods, services, and/or money, it is because both of them are gaining in wealth (value). And therefore, every time such free exchanges happen, society gains in total wealth. Civilization advances. When such free exchanges are going on at a rapid pace, we are all blessed. We have what we describe as a "healthy economy."

But suppose a gangster comes through and threatens to shoot anybody who sells pencils for more than 5 cents. Hopefully that doesn't happen in your neighborhood, so let's use a more realistic example: suppose people realize that pencils are worth only 5 cents to the seller, and they get mad about the seller who is "exploiting" people by selling his pencils for "jacked up" prices. They vote and pass a law that pencils may not be sold for more than 5 cents, on the principle that a higher price is "unfair."

Interestingly enough, though the motivations are completely different, the economic effects are the same: if the seller can't get more than 5 cents for his pencils, he has no point in selling them. He has to support his family (or even just himself), so he quits selling pencils and starts doing something else like flipping burgers or painting houses. Suddenly there are less sellers of pencils and less pencils available. This maximum price has caused a shortage. In fact, maximum prices always cause a shortage. This is true whether or not the people who imposed the maximum price are gangsters, kings, or voters with pure motives. (There's really not much of a difference, and all three are disobeying God, and society suffers because of their disobedience.)

Suppose people get mad about the shortage and pass a law that pencil sellers may not go out of business. Now the pencil seller has become a slave of society (which is wrong) because he has lost his freedom. Moreover, every time he sells a pencil, he is taking a loss. Why? Because in selling that pencil, he's not just giving up the 5 cent pencil, he's also spending time, money, and effort to sell it. That time, money, and effort has a value, which means he's giving up more than 5 cents of value with every sale. Instead of gaining wealth, he is losing wealth. And instead of gaining wealth, society is now losing it, and instead of advancing, civilization is now running backward. Thanks to the helpful king who imposed the minimum price. Or the voters who think that voting entitles them to do anything a king could, and still call it freedom.

Free exchange results in wealth creation and advancement for all of society. Forced exchange, exchange that has been interfered with in some way, whether through making somebody buy or sell something at gunpoint, or through setting maximum or minimum prices, or anything else that interferes with private property rights, results in a loss to one or both parties in the exchange, as well as society.

(This has interesting consequences if you think about labor as a service and wages as the price paid for that service and think through what happens when people set maximum or minimum prices for it. Remember, people may have good intentions but still cause bad consequences.)

God said "thou shalt not steal." That means other people own their property, and it's not yours. You don't have a say in it. You're not even supposed to covet it. If God told you not to steal, why are you ever telling people what they can and cannot do with their property (including what they can and cannot sell it for) as if you owned it? God dictated this about ownership: "While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was [the purchase price] not under your control?" (Acts 5:4)

God commanded "You shall do no wrong in judgment, in measurement of weight, or capacity. You shall have just balances, just weights, a just ephah, and a just hin: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out from the land of Egypt. You shall thus observe all My statutes, and all My ordinances, and do them: I am the Lord." (Leviticus 19:35-37) When we let the free market function (which God ordained by instituting private property), we all collectively function as a giant distributed supercomputer, which computes appropriate prices to maximize society's wealth. When people start setting rules for other people about what prices they can and cannot set for their property, however, this computation is frustrated. The measurement cannot occur. We set the balances off. And amazingly, God has so written His Law into the fabric of the universe that, if we try to do this as a society, we as a society suffer. How just of the Just One!

If we would have faith enough to follow God's law instead of trusting our own poor judgment, we wouldn't try to exert this kind of power of other people, and we would all be blessed.

Governor Rick Perry: in charge

Governor Rick Perry has issued an order to all sixth grade Texan girls to receive the Gardasil HPV vaccine. Funny, the last I checked, state governors commanded the state militias (analagous to the way the President is commander-in-chief of the military), but there was nothing about commanding schoolgirls.

Also, last time I checked, Presidents are governors not kings, and law was to be made by the legislatures. Of course, it would still be wrong, immoral, and detrimental for the legislature to issue such a law, but this principle of separation of powers should function as at least a possible check against such tyranny. Since Governor Rick Perry doesn't really possess the legal authority under our system to make law, every single argument in favor of him issuing this decree because it is "the right thing to do" and because it "needs to be done" also authorizes me to issue such a decree. I've got just as much authority to do this as he does.

Democracy, republicanism, constitutionalism, separation of powers -- none of these are liberty, but all of them came about as ways to protect liberty. Unfortunately nobody knows what liberty is anymore. Here's a hint: if you have the power to make somebody do something (other than making them leave you and yours alone), that person doesn't have liberty. When you vote, you're asserting that your society doesn't have liberty, but is instead responsible for doing whatever the vote says, tyrannical or not.

Here's another hint: if a vaccine or any other health care option is a good idea, then you won't need to issue a law (or "executive order," which is a fancy way for saying "a law issued by the king, rather than the legislature") to make people do it. They will do it on their own. The free market is infinitely more capable of making this decision than Governor Rick Perry, or any other single human being or centralized group.

Thought for the day: Romans 13:3-4 says, "For rulers are not a cause of fear for good behavior, but for evil. ... it does not bear the sword for nothing; for it is a minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath on the one who practices evil." Where in here do rulers get to define what is evil and what is not? Rulers are empowered to be a terror against evil. Evil is breaking God's law. When rulers ("us", in a democracy) make law, they are deciding what is and is not evil.

Is not vaccinating your little girl for promiscuity evil?

Prices

In an earlier post, I explained how God commands us to respect the principle of private property and forbids us to make laws that take away from some people to give to other people. In short, God commands us not to covet. Covetousness, however, is now all the rage in trying to set policy and judge disputes. Considering that God condemned this as far back as the Old Testament (Exodus 23:2-3), it seems to have been all the rage for a very long time.

When we respect private property and free trade, we human beings in the free market function as a gigantic distributed supercomputer which calculates the relative worth of items to society as a whole. When the free market is interfered with, this calculation cannot be performed, and no central authority can calculate it on their own. This is why socialism/communism can never work. (Contrary to myth, socialism does not work on paper. Ludwig von Mises proved in the early twentieth century that socialism simply cannot compute.)

Thus, if we respect God's free market, this marvelous creation, prices will be automatically set where they are most needed. But some people complain that the free market results in some people making unfair profits. They paint these people as wicked and greedy "profiteers." What they are really doing is appealing to covetousness, but they would never admit that. Since we Christians are supposed to be eradicating covetousness in our flesh (Colossians 3:5), we should be less and less susceptible to this kind of manipulation.

In a free market, profits are made by serving felt needs. The better you serve the needs of society, the better your profits will be. Capitalism is the only system that rewards man proportionately for serving his fellow man -- and this should not surprise us, since it is God's system. (Of course, if you have somebody stealing or competing unfairly, you do not have a free market. But 99% of the time, people accomplish this stealing or unfair competition through collusion with the government. For example, American sugar producers are competing unfairly against international sugar producers by colluding with the government, which cooperates by passing an import tariff on sugar. As a result, I can't buy a Dr Pepper made from cane sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup without paying through the nose. Meanwhile, the sugar producers and the corn syrup producers are both reaping the great profits that come from having mafia-like protection of their business and "territory." When you have this going on in a market, the proper name is "mercantilism," but unfortunately many people think that this cooperation between government and business is what is meant by "capitalism," leading to a bad name for capitalism.)

In a free market, if a seller tries to set prices too high (which means beyond what the product or service is worth), the market will reject the prices. The seller will punish only himself; there will be no need to pass a law against him or fine him. Consumers will go elsewhere: to a competing seller of the product or service, or to a substitute for the product or service. If there is no other seller, and the market is actually willing to pay the high price asked, the "outrageous" profits available in this one industry will function as an economic signal that results in additional entrepreneurs being attracted to the industry. Additional sellers in an industry mean the prices will quickly fall to where the free market actually values them. In this way, the free market and entrepreneurs serve all of us, and the entrepreneurs are rewarded for detecting and fixing an instance of overpricing. Of course, the biggest barrier to new entrepreneurs entering a market is government.

In times of emergencies, it is imperative that prices rise. Certain items are going to suddenly be in very, very high demand. If prices rise, the market will allocate these items accordingly. If somebody tries to hold the prices down, however, shortages will always result. The market correctly calculates that in an emergency, gasoline, first-aid kits, and generators are suddenly much much more valuable, while speedboats, video games, and Christmas trees are worth relatively less than they were before. God set it up this way. If we try to interfere with it, we will cause problems.

Many people were angry at "price gougers" selling gasoline at "unfair prices" after disasters such as the September 11 attacks and the Katrina hurricane. At root, this is covetousness: wanting something which is not yours and being mad that the owner will not give it to you for less than it is worth. It should be condemned from the pulpit as such. Economically, these people are gravely mistaken, because in these disasters the value of gasoline momentarily rose sky high. It is simply not possible that a gas station can provide all the gasoline people want in an emergency. The rising prices result in people rationing their gasoline: rather than buying enough to travel to their preferred destination, they travel to a closer evacuation point instead and leave some gasoline for everybody else to escape as well. This means less gasoline is wasted and more people are saved in the emergency. No government rationing scheme can come close to the performance of the God-ordained free market in this regard. As Walter Williams says, "Rising prices get people to voluntarily economize on goods and services rendered scarcer by the disaster." And "not allowing the market mechanism to allocate suddenly scarce resources produces the inferior outcome." (Please go read those two articles. They are spectacular.)

Rising prices in this kind of a situation also function as an economic signal to entrepreneurs and investors to bring more of the item affected by the shortage into the market as soon as possible (and definitely faster than your government will do it). By interfering with such rising prices, we kill the potential reward that exists for the people who might be able to do something about the shortages.

And again, in such a situation, if a seller overprices, he will punish only himself, because people will buy elsewhere. As it is, if the market is free (not interfered with by the criminal activity of violating private property, which may be performed by government or others), the seller will be rewarded for doing the best thing to serve the people: raising his prices. And this is good, because if the seller is a Godly man, he needs to be obeying commands of God like "if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith, and is worse than an unbeliever" (I Timothy 5:8). In a disaster, the gas station owner may not know when he will next receive a shipment of gasoline, and therefore he may not know how he is going to provide for his family tomorrow. He has an obligation laid upon him by the Lord God to do the best he can on that presumed last day of gasoline to earn as much as he can in order to provide for his family. Don't covet his gasoline, and don't begrudge him doing the right thing for all of us.

Funding controversial causes

Is it right to take tax money and use it to fund abortions? Of course not. Of course, we know that the abortions are wrong, but unfortunately about half of society disagrees. But thankfully we can sometimes come to the agreement (though not often enough) that it is wrong to take "other people's tax money" and use it to fund causes that they find reprehensible and immoral.

In our society, a significant number of people oppose the war in Iraq. Is it right to take the money of these people and use it to fund the war? I submit that it is not. These people are being forced to fund an act that they find immoral and reprehensible. Sadly, people of faith are often at the forefront of justifying this coercive funding, which I demonstrated to be stealing in an earlier post.

Now I'm not saying everybody ought to agree with the opinion of the war protestors. I am personally a Christian pacifist, but I have to confess that a) the war against Iraq sounded pretty rational to me, as long as you accept the idea that we may use force to defend ourselves, which most people accept, and b) the people trying to make a case against the Iraq war honestly have yet to make a case that sounds rational to me. (And I've honestly tried to look. I even checked to see what Pat Buchanan said, because I assumed an honored Republican who opposed the war had to have some good reasons. But he couldn't get away from the same "Bush lied" nonsense I hear from complete non-thinkers. I was disappointed.)

But what I am saying is that we do not have the right to force our opinions on other people. Not in any way, and certainly not through forcing people to fund our causes. It would be wrong to forcibly take the money of other people to teach Christianity, to teach evolution, to fund abortions, to fund charities, to fund peace activists, or to fund wars, assuming the victims -- I mean taxpayers -- didn't agree with the cause and/or were not willing for their money to be spent in this way.

Here's a little fact that seems to be a big surprise to many on the Left and the Right: embryonic stem-cell research is not illegal in America. What is prohibited by George W. Bush's decision of 2001 is the use of federal funds for this research. The main reason is the justification I'm using in this essay: it is wrong to take money from people to use it for something that they are not sure is right, or are certain is not right. Private (and even state) funding of this research is still allowed.

So sometimes we recognize this principle. But violations occur all the time. The public school system might be the biggest example: we take money from "all of society" in order to educate "all of society" the way "all of society" wants. This means that our democratic institutions get to vote as to exactly what shall be taught: we can vote to teach evolution, or creationism; we can vote to teach homosexuality as abomination, or as alternate lifestyle. We can vote to teach history as leading inexorably toward liberty, toward democracy, or toward Marxism. We can vote to teach sexual abstinence and chastity, or fund contraceptives for children. Possibly every single identifiable group in society has their money stolen from them and used against them in our school system.

Want a more principled way to accomplish your goals? Do it with your own money. Honor what God said: "Thou shalt not steal." If you want something to succeed, donate your own time, money, and resources, and attempt to persuade others to do the same. If you do not have the resources to accomplish it, perhaps God does not want it done, or wants you working on something else. Concerned about underprivileged, uneducated children? Start a charitable work to help. Concerned about the lack some people have of health care? Start a charitable work to help. Concerned that some children who are existing with inadequate supervision (basically emancipated by default, which turns them into adults in my mind) don't have birth control and need it? Use your own money to provide it, not mine. (And stay away from my kids, while you're at it. They are not grown up yet, and I'm not turning them loose until they are.)

In so doing, you'll manage to accomplish whatever God wants to permit you to accomplish without committing the sin of stealing. You'll have a society where nobody is forced to fund something that they object to on principle. Moreover, you'll also eliminate the economic waste that taxation and socialism accomplishes: when we socialize an aspect of our existence, when we fund it collectively and coercively, we find that we always, always misallocate resources: some issues are overaddressed (meaning we spent too much to accomplish something that could've been accomplished for less), while other issues are underaddressed (meaning something we want done doesn't get funded). A collective, centralized system where decisions are made for everybody as a whole (rather than individually, as decentralized individuals pursuing the ends we believe in, independently) cannot possibly accurately calculate the relative worth of the needs that need to be addressed. But when we allow ourselves to function as God's ordained free market, we function as a gigantic distributed supercomputer that can and does do so, that outperforms any collectivists wildest utopian fantasy.

Are you worried that this won't work? Then let me ask you to do something: please support banning and terminating these annoying Susan Komen breast cancer marathons. Obviously private funding to cure cancer will never work, and these things are a major annoyance and inconvenience to me.

Obviously the Susan Komen foundation believes that something worthwhile can be achieved through voluntary funding. And since God commanded that we not steal, commanded that we respect private property even if we think we might be able to use it to do good like helping the poor (Acts 5:4), and promised to make sure that we always had an abundance (not that we could always obtain an abundance by taking what doesn't belong to us) in order to be able to perform every good deed He wants us to do (II Corinthians 9:6-12), God obviously believes this as well. Christians should never support funding "good works" of any sort through taxation.

But didn't God command us to pay our taxes? Of course He did. Pay them. Just don't tax other people. And once the money is taken, recognize it as Caesar's, not yours. Caesar was not one of God's people, and he certainly didn't use the money that he took from God's people for God's purposes. In fact, he used it to oppress God's people and fund immorality such as drunken orgies and idol worship. If somebody wants to take what is yours, do not resist them. But never pretend that God has authorized you to do the same.