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Communicate, Engage And Serve Others: How Individuals Build Communities Like Forests

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It is sometimes a struggle to communicate that individualism is not atomistic, isolated and disconnected.

When individuals are not bossed around by authorities, they naturally form small collaborative communities, where collaboration can generate good solutions for multiple people with shared interests. The family is the first of these. The neighborhood might be the next one. The neighborhood might come together to form its own school district to educate their kids they way they all see fit, if they weren’t told by centralized government that they had to send their kids to designated schools in designated districts.

Villages and suburbs might form the next layer of community, then businesses that bring together people with shared commercial interests. And so on, starting small and local, at the family, and radiating out from there. Each individual chooses other individuals with whom to associate and collaborate, and those collaborative groups serve others in overlapping, nested networks.

How to illustrate these simple principles has always been a challenge in a world that is dominated by collectivist thinking. Where “society” is viewed as a real and singular entity to whose interests individuals must sacrifice their own. Where authority is viewed as the right for someone you didn’t choose to tell you what to do.

Here’s a novel idea to consider as a metaphor: individual trees in the forest. Maria Popova, at brainpickings.org, always brings delightful perspectives on considered literary topics, and she recently wrote beautifully about a book called The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate. Trees are individuals. They reach for light and air with their branches, and for nutrients with their roots. They seek to be big and strong and robust.

They also participate in community. “Neighboring trees, scientists found, help each other through their root systems — either directly, by intertwining their roots, or indirectly, by growing fungal networks around the roots that serve as a sort of extended nervous system connecting separate trees.”

Every tree is valuable to the community, and is protected and nourished by other trees. “Every tree is a member of this community, but there are different levels of membership. For example, most stumps rot away into humus and disappear within a couple of hundred years (which is not very long for a tree). Only a few individuals are kept alive over the centuries… What’s the difference? It is …. the degree of connection — or maybe even affection — that decides how helpful a tree’s colleagues will be.” Trees, like individuals, choose the others they associate with.

“….a pair of true friends is careful right from the outset not to grow overly thick branches in each other’s direction. The trees don’t want to take anything away from each other, and so they develop sturdy branches only at the outer edges of their crowns, that is to say, only in the direction of “non-friends.” Such partners are often so tightly connected at the roots that sometimes they even die together.”

Individual trees also exhibit a communication capability to warn the rest of the forest of predatory dangers. For example, trees in the African savannah can emit a warning gas (ethylene) when a herd of giraffe start munching. The gas signals to other trees in the community to defend themselves by loading up their leaves with toxins the giraffe herd will avoid. The giraffe move on and the community is saved.

On a broader scale, trees serve to enhance their entire ecosystem (their “society”) even though they don’t sacrifice their individual interests in doing so. When wolves left Yellowstone, “Elk herds in the park increased their numbers and began to make quite a meal of the aspens, willows, and cottonwoods that lined the streams. Vegetation declined and animals that depended on the trees left. The wolves were absent for seventy years. When they returned, the elks’ languorous browsing days were over. As the wolf packs kept the herds on the move, browsing diminished, and the trees sprang back. The roots of cottonwoods and willows once again stabilized stream banks and slowed the flow of water. This, in turn, created space for animals such as beavers to return. These industrious builders could now find the materials they needed to construct their lodges and raise their families. The animals that depended on the riparian meadows came back, as well. The wolves turned out to be better stewards of the land than people, creating conditions that allowed the trees to grow and exert their influence on the landscape.” Central planning of the forest is not required, and not helpful.

This interconnectedness of individual trees and animals, which nurtures the entire ecosystem, precisely reflects the nature of Individualism. Individualism is a system. Each individual extends branches and roots to become as strong as possible, and connects and communicates with others to make the forest strong, which is good for the forest and good for every tree.

The Fight Continues: Keynes and Hayek on Planned Economies

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As touched upon briefly in the first part of this series, 20th-century economists F.A. Hayek and John Maynard Keynes did not agree on much. And while a lot has happened since these two men were alive and actively writing and speaking about economic philosophy, the two men’s influence on the national economy can still be seen and felt today.

It cannot be denied that both men have been influential in the field of economics–whether for better or for worse depending on which philosophy you are more inclined to accept. But their disagreements with each other offer a fascinating comparison specifically between those who believe in government intervention in the economy, and those who do not.

Keynes and Intervention

In order for an economy to be planned, it must have some sort of central authority at its helm directing it in a given direction. And, as is always the case, this governing authority is placed in the hands of the state.

For John Maynard Keynes, the government’s involvement in the national economy was integral. Keynes is primarily responsible for the rise of macroeconomics, which treats the entire economy as one whole entity, rather than several individual moving parts. And of course, in order to control a creature as vast as the U.S. economy, you would have to control almost every aspect of it in order to reach your goals.

This type of central economic planning usually comes in the form of policies that restrict almost all aspects of a given sector. From setting prices and wages to controlling which companies are allocated scarce resources and even barring entrance into employment sectors, the Keynesian model seeks full and complete regulation from the state.

And while it may be difficult for many to understand why so many Americans eagerly subscribed to Keynesian economics even though totalitarianism had just destroyed Europe, it is important to understand one of Keynes’ main focuses: full employment.

For military members returning home from war, transitioning back into the workforce was of the utmost importance. And while “full employment” was easy to obtain while many of your countrymen are drafted and forced into war, finding places for all these men in the post-war economy was not so simple. It is for this reason that so many fell victim to the belief that the government should be in control of the economy and especially the workforce.

But viewing the economy as something that can be tamed and mastered does not take into account all the individual factors that make the marketplace so great in the first place.

Hayek and Planned Economies

Hayek believed that planned economies are the greatest enemy of free market competition. After all, when the government is responsible for controlling what the market can and cannot do, the market ceases to be “free” at all. And since free markets were comprised of individual efforts, inhibiting market innovation is a direct threat to the individual. And above all, Hayek’s economic philosophies are centered around the importance of individualism.

One of the biggest problems with Keynesian macroeconomics is its utter and complete lack of recognition of the importance of the individual. In fact, since the individual usually serves as an obstacle for governments seeking complete control over the economy, the individual is the only real threat to planned economies.

For Keynes to achieve his economic goals, including full employment, the government would have to commandeer the entire economy, trampling on individuals along the way. While some may not see this as being as terrifying as it truly is, Hayek reminds us in The Road to Serfdom that without economic freedom there can be no freedom at all. And in Keynes’s ideal world, the government would be running the entire show, leaving very little room for individual dissent.

As Hayek so passionately expresses throughout his classic Road to Serfdom, this failure to understand the individual’s role in the economy is one of the major shortcomings of Keynesian economics. As soon as economists stop viewing the economy in terms of individual entities and instead view it only as a collective unit, innovation is stifled and the individual suffers.

When the government controls wages, for example, the individual loses out on the opportunity to negotiate the terms of payment based on his or her own set of skills. Instead, these types of policies treat all members of the workforce the same.

Additionally, when the government determines which companies are worthy of certain resources, it demeans the innovation process by not allowing individuals to experiment with burgeoning ideas that may come with a risk.

Overall these differences between the two men come down to the individual versus the collective, and for Hayek, the individual should always be protected and placed above the desire for a planned economy riddled with government oversight.

Teach Your Children about Free Markets with These Great Books

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Our modern world is unfortunately riddled with collectivist rhetoric. So powerful is the sentiment behind these beliefs, that many children’s books are actually catered to fit these ends. Unfortunately for those leaning towards individualism and in turn, the study of free market economics, finding books that focus on liberty can be difficult.

But thanks to the free market, there have never been more resources available to parents who would like to begin teaching their children the precepts of individualism and free market economics.

The following is a list of books that are useful in delivering these principles in a way that can be beneficial to children of different age groups.

An Island Called Liberty

An Island Called Liberty is an essential when teaching younger children about liberty. On Liberty Island, the individual residents are left to their own devices and manage to operate in a happy, helpful, functioning society.

But when arbitrary rules get introduced and the ability to produce widgets is inhibited the citizens start realizing just how important liberty truly is.

Three Lads and the Lizard King

Robert Murphy steps out of his usual role of Austrian economist to writes a delightful book that is both entertaining and educational for young readers. With loveable characters and a fun plot, Three Lads and the Lizard King teaches readers basic economic principles with ease.

Murphy explores the nature of value, money, and trade basics in this story without taking the focus away from the plot. This book is an excellent introduction to the foundations of free market economics.

Little House on the Prairie

Little House on the Prairie is the tale of a pioneer family who demonstrates hard work and self-sufficiency. Aside from being filled with valuable life lessons that will teach your children how to be more self-reliant, the series was written by Laura Ingalls Wilder with the help of her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane.

Lane herself was a lover of liberty and avid supporter of free market economics. Her love of liberty shines through in these classic books.

Tuttle Twins

The Tuttle Twins is a series of books written to explain liberty to a young audience. Since economic liberty is among the most important principles necessary for all other forms of liberty, the Tuttle Twins have several books devoted to the understanding of such.

The Miraculous Pencil explains the beauty of spontaneous order to a younger audience. By taking Leonard Read’s famous I, Pencil essay, the book tells the story of all the different people and resources involved in the making of one single product as seemingly simple as a pencil.

The Road to Surfdom is a play on the F.A. Hayek’s economic classic, The Road to Serfdom. The book simplifies the complexities of a Hayek’s work in a manner that is digestible to a younger audience. By incorporating a fun plot and characters that the readers can relate to, the Tuttle Twins are a great way to build a foundation of economic principles with your children.

Whatever Happened to Penny Candy?

The Uncle Eric series by Richard Maybury is one that is essential for all young adults. But what is most surprising, is how much adults can gain from them as well. Written from the perspective of a wise uncle writing to his curious nephew, the Uncle Eric series explains commonly misunderstood historical events and economics principles.

In this installment of the series, Maybury breaks down basic economics lessons from the Austrian perspective, including inflation when he answers the question:“Whatever Happened to Penny Candy?”

Perhaps Liberty Is No Longer The Right Word

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Liberty is one of our unalienable rights, enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. Yet there doesn’t seem to be much demand for it these days.

In politics, the Libertarian Party, which supposedly stands for more liberty and less government, gets very few votes. Virtually all of the votes go to the two wings of the Ever-Bigger Government Party, the Democrats and Republicans.

In Economics – the essence of civilization and of man’s human existence, according to Ludwig von Mises – we also seem to reject liberty. There is a well-established science of the role of free markets in raising the quality of everyone’s lives, and of the role of creative and ethical entrepreneurship in promoting justice and well-being. Yet we hamper free markets and shackle our entrepreneurs in regulations and legislative interference.

Where Are The Heroes Of Liberty?

It’s hard for most people to identify heroes of liberty today. Ron Paul made a strong splash but now ploughs a lone furrow. Inspiring individuals like Tom Woods have a following, but it’s small compared to mainstream media and late-night comedians. There are magnificent institutions like Mises Institute and the Foundation For Economic Education; they do great work for liberty and free markets and individual freedom, but they are hardly prominent in the grand scheme of Americans’ awareness.

If we look at this situation through a marketing lens, we would conclude that the product, liberty, lacks demand. It’s not persuasive. It doesn’t meet a compelling need on the part of target consumers.

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Let’s Use Language That Reflects What People Want.

So what do these target consumers want? A 2013 Pew Research Center report told us (among other things) that “Polls show they just want a better chance of achieving success themselves – they do not want redistributive government policies, they want ones that give everyone a fair shot at success, reflecting bedrock American belief in the individual’s ability to succeed through hard work.”

This is a highly revealing and encouraging insight from one of America’s truly non-partisan think tanks. It is highly consistent with our Hayekian bent at Center For Individualism, favoring rules of just conduct that provide inducements for all to try to identify their chance at success and work, through trial and error and long term effort, to seize the opportunity they are able to identify. There are no guaranteed outcomes, but there is the assurance that everyone has an equal likelihood to benefit from their own hard work. Skill and luck also play a part, and so there is no sense in calling the outcome either just or unjust. It’s the equal opportunity to try. The fact that Americans embrace this idea, making it a “bedrock belief”, is what makes America great.

What Americans are able to achieve via this bedrock belief is a spontaneous order that delivers the best result to the most people via the fairest shot at success, as opposed to the destructive and vindictive central planning wars that politicians promote. Should we place the word “liberty” on this system of social order? It might have had that meaning in 1776, when linked to the pursuit of happiness, but the word seems to have lost its attraction for people.

Our Word Is Individualism.

We prefer the term Individualism – “Individualism True” as Hayek wrote – to capture the idea of the individual’s ability to succeed through hard work. You can check out our manifesto for Individualism here. We hope you will join us.

The Entrepreneurial Individual’s Checklist

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The entrepreneurial individual is the one best equipped to navigate a pathway through the changing world of work, revenue streams and economic opportunities. Follow these guideposts.

Check your dependency

Are you relying on an employer or an industry for your career? Are you dependent on the hierarchy for the chance to climb up some kind of ladder? Do you feel dependent on any other person, company or institution? Are your opinions your own? Are you your own editor amidst the flood of propaganda? Take a personal audit to make sure none of these dependencies apply. Any that you find, discard them. Authenticity starts with self-efficacy

Who Am I?

Ask yourself the question, “Who Am I?” It’s not an HR question about strengths and weaknesses. Those are concepts manufactured to keep you in your place on the ladder. The important question is a self-assessment of your values. Entrepreneurship is a moral activity – understanding others’ needs and serving them. Valuing others is what will guide your behavior, sustain your drive, and underpin your achievements.

What do I know?

Every one of us has a unique set of knowledge, sharpened by our individual experience and perspective. That’s a starting point. Then think of knowledge not as a fixed stock, but as an activity. Knowledge is acquirable, a renewable resource. Augment yourself with new knowledge every day, and be aware of its unique value. The economics of individual entrepreneurship are based on the value of individual knowledge.

Who Do I Know?

In the old economic world, your history, where you went to school, and which companies were on your resume were the raw materials for an assessment of you by others. Today, all that is irrelevant. Your network is the most important asset. Like knowledge, networking is an activity, and connections can be acquired. The term social networking implies a two-way relationship: you must give in order to receive, and maintain that exchange over time to keep a network relationship. Once you are in that two-way mode of behavior, there are few, if any, network relationships that are closed to you. Be an active networker.

What resources are available?

The entrepreneur asks, “What are my resources?” before asking, “What can I do?” The great difference between the old economic world and the new is that resources are connections rather than high-cost fixed assets. You can download computing power from the cloud, you can engage and manage programming experts anywhere on the globe, you can buy highly specialized services on global exchange platforms, and you can engage experts on global talent portals. Financing can come from private peer-to-peer lending platforms, and office space from incubators or shared work centers. The great skill is to be a super-connector – to be exceptionally good at making, keeping and managing these connections.

How can I contribute?

We live and operate in a service economy. Service means filling a need felt by another, solving a problem encountered by another, or addressing a dissatisfaction that is bothering another. Service is both the creativity and morality of the entrepreneur. You make others’ lives better by filling the need, solving the problem and addressing the satisfaction in a new way that is better than anything previously available. The operative word is “new”. Find your target audience that feels the need, develop the understanding and empathy required to meet it, and establish your niche as the unique provider of a better solution.

How do I fit in?

Ecosystems already exist. Your new solution is never a standalone solution. It needs to be compatible with delivery systems and channels. It may need to meet regulations. It must be easy to understand. It cannot require a huge change in behavior, but rather a better experience resulting from behaviors that consumers have already exhibited.. Your skill at connecting must also include interconnecting to those parts of the ecosystem that will sustain your new solution.

Your goals will emerge.

It may seem odd to you to place goals so low on this list. Isn’t the idea to set goals and then devise the means to accomplish them? In the new world of entrepreneurship, it is OK for initial objectives to be ambiguous. First you understand your own values, then you assess your knowledge, network and resources, and identify where you can contribute and how to fit in. You have become an entrepreneur, which is a lifestyle choice. Don’t worry if the goals, in terms of numbers and time and metrics, are unclear at the outset. You want to work within your resources. You want to find partners. You want to find customers and to please them. Your goals will emerge from this process; don’t stress too much about them at the outset.

Be the happy bearer of uncertainty.

The future is unpredictable. The entrepreneur lives in the future, looking forward to better things based on entrepreneurial sacrifice today. You work without salary, or with borrowed money. Your time preference is long term: your economic reward lies in the uncertain future. If it weren’t for entrepreneurs who feel this way and work this way, we’d have no progress, and we’d experience no improvements. Take joy in the role.

Take charge of your life

The ultimate reward lies in self-reliance. It’s important to recognize what you can and can’t control. You can’t control the economy or interest rates or social change or your competition. But you can control your own entrepreneurial execution, your team selection, your technology choices, and your business model. You can ensure that you operate on the basis of your own values and, if you are building a firm, ensure that those values become the culture of the organization. You can control all of the relationships you have established, at least on your side (and abandon those where the partner does not live up to your standards). There is great reward in controlling the things you can, and ceasing to worry about those you can’t.

Individualism Is Win-Win. All The Other Theories Are Zero Sum.

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Professor Deirdre McCloskey is a distinctive voice for common sense. She trashes all the prevailing theories of her colleagues in the economics professoriat, as well as the practices of the social engineers in government and think tanks. In an essay on her website titled Populism Is Zero Sum Under Majority Rule, she succinctly summarizes her case (which she has made most unsccinctly yet supremely engagingly in her Bourgeois Trilogy series of three 600-page books: The Bourgeois Virtues, Bourgeois Dignity and Bourgeois Equality).

Here, we present a 10-point summary of the case the good professor makes in the paper. We’ve substituted the term individualism (which she does not use) for terms like classical liberalism (which she does use) because we look through the individualist lens and we think that’s a good modern expression for what the professor means. Please do judge for yourself by reading the original.

Individualism is a win-win proposition. Populism, liberal democracy, socialism and all the other theories of social order are zero sum.

The principle of zero sum is clearly expressed in redistributionist policies such as progressive taxation. One group can be made richer only if another is made poorer. Tax those who are successful and redistribute the loot to the poor.

Zero sum is default thinking for humans. It’s deeply natural: the herd mentality. Everyone should be equal.

Unfortunately, if the herd rules, it will do so violently, by forcefully seizing the wealth of those who succeed more than others.

The herd’s forceful readjustment is after-the-fact. Equality is imposed as an end-state.

After individuals have exerted their efforts to serve their fellows well, have increased economic growth and created prosperity, the redistributionist police intervene to confiscate the fruits of individuals’ labors. They punish some (those who have created the prosperity) and reward others.

Individualism, on the other hand, promotes the beneficent process, not the egalitarian end-state.

Individualism wants everyone to be free and equally equipped at the beginning, in order to try their best, each in their own way. The market – the voluntary decisions of individuals to exchange goods and services in a win-win exchange – delivers a verdict on which efforts are worthy of reward by customer acceptance. Professor McCloskey calls the outcome of the process “trade-tested betterment”. Trade means voluntary exchange. Tested means the market decides and the consumer is judge. Betterment means win-win for all participants.

Zero sum thinking assumes no growth.

Your gain will be my pain. That’s the assumption, which includes the conviction that there will be no economic growth or it will be so slow as to be negligible. In these circumstances, riches can be accumulated only by evil means. Entrepreneurs are to be viewed with suspicion, if not outright hatred.

Such feelings may have been appropriate for the middle ages, when there really was no growth. Now they are reasserted because of the slow growth theories that are popular in the professoriat again today. Same idea, same feeling, same suspicion.

The truth is that there has been tremendous economic growth over the last 200 years and it has benefited everyone.

Professor McCloskey puts numbers on the economic growth of the last 200 years: a 3000% percent – equivalent to 30X – improvement. She calls it the Great Enrichment. The improvement has gone to the workers. Their real wage is 20-30 times what it was. And this doesn’t include the hard-to-measure improvements in quality, from better health care to air conditioning to big screen TV’s. The return on capital had stayed pretty much static, while the return on work has soared.

Exchange-tested betterment made poor people rich.

It is true that poor people were once very poor. They struggled with a low quality of life. Subsistence farming labor was the lot of most people before the Great Enrichment. There were famines and starvation. The new truth is that this low quality of life is largely eliminated.

Economists get this all wrong. Why is that?

Professor McCloskey  cites two main reasons why economists don’t understand the win-win of individualism. First, economists don’t understand economic growth. Their theories don’t predict it, so the empirical evidence can’t be accepted.

Second, they don’t understand the efforts of individuals to seek their own distinctive way of serving others, in order to create value for their customers which they can exchange in markets. Economists invented an idea they call “perfect competition”, which means that no-one should have any advantage over anyone else. If they do, the redistribution police will intervene.

But in reality, the whole point of economics is that each of us tries to find our own individual advantage, the thing that we do best that is unique to us. We exchange that on the market with others who have found exactly the same advantage for themselves, except in a different field, or in offering a different service, or in making a different product. There’s even an economists’ term for this: comparative advantage. But it’s been discarded.

The right is as bad as the left in opposing individualism.

The left wants to confiscate and redistribute. The right wants to maintain hierarchy. Someone has to be the boss, to tell others what to do. Hierarchy is just another form of suppression of individualism. It results in intervention, and forceful imposition of the status quo.

We need a positive theory of “no bosses”.

Economists and social engineers believe that social order requires bosses. It is achieved only by “the continuous attention of authority”. We’ve written elsewhere that the opposite is true.

Order is the result of the spontaneous dynamics of adjustment. Each of us is free to do our best, and our ideas are tested in the marketplace. Some are accepted, some are not. Each of us makes adjustments accordingly. We may not be able to predict exactly how these adjustments are going to play out in the future. We simply continue to generate new ideas and new knowledge and make new exchanges.

It is necessary for us to be free to do so. We should not have to ask permission in advance from any authority or expert or boss.

Hayek Warned against One-Size-Fits-All Health Care Policies

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What would Hayek say if he was around to see the ongoing fiasco that is Obamacare? Well, for one thing, he probably wouldn’t be surprised, but he would be deeply saddened. And while he could never know the specifics of our country’s progressive strides towards universal health care, he managed to predict the overall situation quite perfectly in the fifth chapter of The Road to Serfdom.

It is impossible to plan for an entire national economy comprised of individual beings. Each has different goals and desires, making one-size-fits-all economic policies unfeasible, to say the least. It’s also an expensive endeavor to attempt.

Yet, the Affordable Care Act sought to do just that. Economics and logic went out the window in favor of the supposed “general welfare” of the American public. So long as the end result was increased–if not universal– health coverage, then the means were rationalized.

And while it was fought by many who had read Hayek and heeded his warnings, Obamacare was approved by both chambers of Congress and was eventually upheld as constitutional by the SCOTUS.

Advocates championed this as a democratic victory. The American people had finally taken control of their health care back from the greedy, capitalist health care sector.

But just as many free market economists had predicted, Obamacare was a complete disaster both economically and democratically. And while many have been shocked by the implications of giving the government so much power over an entire market sector, Hayek warned of these dangers long before Obamacare’s conception.  

The Individual Gets Left Behind

Among other things, Obamacare claimed to know the health care priorities of every single American. From dictating what coverage must be provided by employers to fining individuals for not choosing to buy health insurance, Obamacare took away the ability to choose and replaced it with coercion.

But even worse, it cost the taxpayer $42.6 billion in the fiscal year 2017 alone. So not only did this lead to increased government control over health care, it was also a financial black hole. And it completely neglected the individual consumer by assuming that a small body of experts was better suited to make these intimate decisions in their stead.

But how could they be? Each of these alleged health care experts is incapable of knowing the wants and needs of every single American.

In the chapter fifth chapter of The Road to Serfdom, “Planning and Democracy” Hayek writes:

The point which is so important is the basic fact that it is impossible for any man to survey more than a limited field, to be aware of the urgency of more than a limited number of needs. Whether his interests center round his own physical needs, or whether he takes a warm interest in the welfare of every human being he knows, the ends about which he can be concerned will always be only an infinitesimal fraction of the needs of all men.

And sure enough, health care consumers were mad because they were not getting what they wanted or needed. President Obama’s infamous line, “If you like your plan you can keep your plan,” turned out to be nothing more than rhetoric. In fact many Americans lost their plans altogether, or couldn’t afford to pay the increased premium costs.

Many advocates of state-run health care excused this blunder by suggesting that perhaps this was in the people’s best interest. Maybe their original insurance premiums were insufficient, at least according to the new government standards. Perhaps Obamacare was doing these health care consumers a favor by stripping them of their prior coverage.

But even though the facts were staring every single American in the face, many still believed these “insignificant,” shall we say setbacks, were worth the result of increased national coverage.

And to be fair, there was increased national coverage. Fining or “taxing” citizens for not purchasing health care works as a powerful incentive. But it stifled individualism.

Anyone who dared to speak out against the state’s intervention in the health care industry was quickly made to feel selfish. Clearly, if you weren’t in favor of government interference in health care, you were unconcerned with what happens to those who can’t afford coverage.

Consequences be damned, if the desired end result of increased coverage was eventually obtained, that was all that really mattered.

But opponents of Obamacare are hardly selfish. They just understand that planning for an entire nation is an impossible task. The individual always loses.

As Hayek wrote:

This is the fundamental fact on which the whole philosophy of individualism is based. It does not assume, as is often asserted, that man is egoistic or selfish or ought to be. It merely starts from the indisputable fact that the limits of our powers of imagination make it impossible to include in our scale of values more than a sector of the needs of the whole society, and that, since, strictly speaking, scales of value can exist only in individual minds, nothing but partial scales of values exist – scales which are inevitably different and often inconsistent with each other. It is this recognition of the individual as the ultimate judge of his ends, the belief that as far as possible his own views ought to govern his actions, that forms the essence of the individualist position.

The Problem with Democracy

It is odd that proponents of Obamacare often use the “greater social good” as their excuse since the implementation of a government controlled health care system necessarily leads to a breakdown of social order, or rather, a crackdown on individual liberty.

Hayek understood this far too well. But acknowledging this point was almost unavoidable in Hayek’s time since the world watched in horror as European empires sacrificed the individual in the name of nationalism.

But if it was difficult for Hayek to get this point across to others in his day, even as WWII was unfolding, it is not hard to understand how those in 2017 could easily forget and dismiss these historical lessons. Though this hardly makes it less frustrating.

When opponents of universal health care policies voice concerns over the power Obamacare gives a very small group of people, they are dismissed as hyperbolic and irrational. Clearly, this is what the people wanted, and needed! Those with hesitations should consider the great strides Obamacare has given people. If not for this intervention, the breakdown of the health care system would have resulted in chaos to the consumer. This is the only policy suited to meet the needs of the greatest number of people!

Of course, Hayek spoke to these fallacies too:

The fashionable concentration on democracy as the main value threatened is not without danger. It is largely responsible for the misleading and unfounded belief that, so long as the ultimate source of power is the will of the majority, the power cannot be arbitrary the contrast suggested by this statement is altogether false: it is not the source but the limitation of power which prevents it from being arbitrary.

But this power is absolutely arbitrary and untamable. Obamacare ushered in a new era of increased state control and brokedown constitutional “limitations” by increasing the scope, and thus the role of the federal government in healthcare. The rule of law was demolished, or at least broadened.

Not to mention, procedural rules were broken or bent in order to ensure its passage. “We have to pass it to see what’s in it,” Nancy Pelosi famously said when many members of Congress were enraged to have been given an absurdly long bill and only a short time to actually attempt to read its contents.

But again, Hayek predicted all this too:

And to make it quite clear that a socialist government must not allow itself to be too much fettered by democratic procedure.

And make no mistake, a socialist government is essentially what a post-Obamacare America is. And while Trump has made some rollbacks, the government will continue to encroach on the health care sector, which is precisely why constant vigilance is of the utmost importance. It’s also why everyone should read Hayek.

“The cry for an economic dictator is a characteristic stage in the movement toward planning,” Hayek astutely says. Whenever the people, or perhaps just the congressional leaders who claim to speak on their behalf, assert that economic or social chaos is coming, they often relinquish their sovereignty or do not even realize it has been taken from them until it is already gone.

In theory, democracies are supposed to safeguard the will of the people. And to be sure, democracy on its own is not necessarily negative, or at least it doesn’t have to be according to Hayek.

Hayek ends this chapter by arguing that a democracy, adequately limited in scope can serve as a safeguard to the individual. But unlimited democracies will always be the enemy of individualism. And unfortunately, our real-world experiences with democratic societies have proven to have more of a tendency towards the latter.

As Hayek says:

Democratic control may prevent power from becoming arbitrary, but it does not do so by its mere existence. If democracy resolves on a task which necessarily involves the use of power which cannot be guided by fixed rules, it must become arbitrary.

“Digital Leninism” Is The High Tech Threat To Individual Freedom.

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Here at https//:centerforindividualism.org, we certainly believe that the emerging technologies of cloud computing, global exchange platforms, artificial intelligence and blockchain can augment individual capabilities and release us from collectivism and dependent relationships on governments and corporations. However, we also recognize that, in the hands of bad actors, there are modern technologies that can be employed for the opposite purpose: the subjection of individuals.

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Collectivism Will Always Be a Threat to the Individual

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Collectivism is a poison. I have been appalled to see so many of my friends, both on the left and the right, indulging in it.

Over the last several months, I have seen acquaintances and even friends defend tiki torch yielding and self-proclaimed white nationalists. On the other extreme, I have seen friends advocate violence against those who do not agree with them. “We should be punching Nazis,” social media posts have read, without a hint of irony. But the problem with both of these lines of thinking is the dangerous hint of tribalism underlying both.

The second chapter of Hayek’s Road to Serfdom is painfully relevant to our modern day.

But whether you advocate some form of socialism or express nationalist sympathies, both are contrary to the spirit of individualism. Both claim to advance freedom but inevitably lead down the road to serfdom.

The Great Utopia

The second chapter of Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom is painfully relevant to our modern day. While reading, I couldn’t help but wonder what Hayek would have thought about the Charlottesville debacle and all that has unfolded since. This issue of Civil War monuments is almost completely irrelevant here, as I believe the unabashed display of unbridled collectivism would shock Hayek most of all.

“The Great Utopia,” as the chapter is called, refers to the belief that true happiness and equality can only be obtained in a society that sacrifices individual will in favor of “protecting” the collective. For socialists, equality means no one should need to worry about providing life’s necessities. The state provides for all equally and everyone lives happily ever after.

For nationalists or fascists, the same line of thinking occurs, but it is justified by this allegiance and connections to one’s homeland or class or race of people. In order to “secure” the future of your homeland or whatever group you are in support of, you must give your power over to an authority who will ensure lasting security.

And while in 2017 we are still arguing over which flavor of collectivism is better suited for the country, Hayek had in 1944 already laid out the information needed to conclude that neither is compatible with individual liberty.

Collectivism in any form can never represent the interest of the individual.  

The Meaning of Freedom

No political or philosophical camp claims to be against freedom. It would be a poor marketing campaign to do so. Instead, each has its own definition of freedom and tailors its context towards that end. But neither represents the interest of the individual.

At the time of writing this book, the threat of nationalism, especially in the form of Nazism, was still very fresh in the minds of the people. Hitler and Mussolini were the perfect caricatures of what “bad guys” were supposed to be. It was for this reason, I believe, that Hayek chose to focus his arguments against collectivism primarily on the socialist agenda.

Everyone at that time recognized that fascism was terrifying; they had been fighting a world war against it. But many found comfort in the false promise of collectivism.

What is so epic, both in Hayek’s day and now, is his ability to call out both groups for being birds of a feather. Since the people already knew what Nazism could reap, it was vital to take this dangerous ideology and compare it with socialism, which was not viewed in quite as negatively a light as nationalism.

“It is rarely remembered now that socialism in its beginnings was frankly authoritarianism,” Hayek points out to a populace that had come to view incremental socialism as a precautionary measure against the authoritarianism of fascism.

Two Roads; One Destination

The historical context in chapter two and its application to today’s political climate seemed to scream and jump out from the page’s of Hayek’s work. How, after all these years, are we still fighting the same fight and participating in the same arguments? Why are we arguing over which brand of collectivism we should choose when the answer seems so apparent?

As Hayek brilliantly sums up in regards to both the socialist and the fascist distortions of the definition of freedom, “Freedom in this sense is, of course, merely another name for power…” So long as either exists, the individual is at risk.

Even those who, at the time, believed socialism could be the answer to fascism were eventually convinced otherwise.

British writer, F.A. Voigt spent years in Europe as a foreign correspondent. After his years of observation, he was forced to conclude that:

Marxism has led to fascism and National Socialism, because, in all essentials, it is Fascism and National Socialism.”

Making a similar point, German writer Peter Drucker wrote:

The complete collapse of the belief in the attainability of freedom and equality through Marxism has forced Russia to travel the same road toward a totalitarian, purely negative, non-economic society unfreedom and inequality which Germany has been following. Not that communism and fascism are essentially the same. Fascism is the stage reached after communism has proved an illusion, and it has proved as much an illusion in Stalinist Russia as in pre-Hitler Germany.

I wish so deeply that my own generation would realize the similarities between the two instead of choosing to unite with one side or the other. History repeats itself. This we know. One of the most beautiful and applicable statues in Washington DC sits outside of the National Archives and reads: “What is past is prologue.” We should understand that this will almost always be the case.

Whether you support one form of tribalism or the next, both undoubtedly end in the same result: a loss of power for the individual.

Hayek’s Road to Serfdom Is More Applicable Now Than Ever

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I have never actually completed F.A. Hayek’s, The Road to Serfdom. I am completely comfortable admitting that. Still, like many who are intrigued with Hayek’s ideas but lack the willpower to read the entire book, I alway list The Road to Serfdom as one of my most influential readings.

To be sure, I had read the few chapters that were assigned to me by my school’s token libertarian political science professor. I assumed I had accurately interpreted its message. The three chapters I read were full of highlights and great quotes about the importance of the individual. But with all the other books out there in the world, why was finishing this one book so important?

It was not until my current mentor called me out on my inability to follow through on one of the most economically relevant books of all time, that I realized that I had robbed myself of an education by not finishing Hayek’s important work.

As a matter of millennial pride and also wanting to reclaim the knowledge I foolishly pushed aside as an undergrad student, I decided to dedicate the next sixteen days to both reading and liveblogging The Road to Serfdom.

The Individual Built the Modern World

Proponents of laissez faire capitalism and libertarian thinkers alike constantly throw around the phrase,” the road to serfdom.” And while most understand its general negativity towards socialism, the phrase is so ingrained in liberty speak that few often take the time to really explore what Hayek was trying to tell us.

In the book’s opening chapter, “The Abandoned Road,” Hayek makes it clear that this path refers to society’s “progressive” rejection of individualism. More importantly, he goes on to describe how this rejection of the sanctity of the individual has, and will continue to have, negative impacts on the society.

For a period of time, the western world had flourished under the 19th-century ideals of free market capitalism. For the first time in history, an individual was allowed to follow his own desired path without the status of his birth holding him back. All he needed was an idea and the ambition needed to make that idea a reality.

As a result, we saw a revolution in thought and an industrial revolution incomparable to anything the world had ever experienced. In fact, even with the advent of the internet, the world has still never progressed quite as dramatically as it did during this laissez faire revolution.

And while this period brought the world the wisdom of Adam Smith and the rebellion of the American Revolution, it did not maintain its momentum of popularity as the 20th century approached.

As Hayek points out:

“We still believe that until quite recently we were governed by what are vaguely called nineteenth-century ideas or the principle of laissez faire…But although until 1931 England and America had followed only slowly on the path which others had led, even by then they had moved so far that only those whose memory goes back to the years before the last war know what a liberal world has been like.”

If in 1944, Hayek thought the world had already forsaken and forgotten true liberalism, I can scarcely imagine what he might say today. And it’s true that he was writing about a period of wartime economic planning both in the US and the UK. Prices and wages were controlled. Censorship was in place. Rationing and quotas governed the production and distribution of all essential goods and services. But even given all this, government consumed a far smaller degree of overall national production than today.

So far removed are we in 2017, that the individual is not even a consideration when contemplating economic policy. In fact, the “greedy” “selfish” individual is often the villain in modern economics, as he seems to always operate contrary to the whims of the collective. Now, terms like “individual mandates” are used to convey each person’s “social responsibility” to care for the collective.

As common as this anti-individualist sentiment has become, it wasn’t always this way. As Hayek reminds us in this opening chapter, the most tremendous strides towards human and economic progress were taken during a time when the individual was allowed to innovate and create without worrying about interference from the state on the grounds of protecting the greater good. But even though the positive implications of a pro-individualist society were proven by the innovations created during that time, society had still been steadily moving away from it.

“We are rapidly abandoning not the views merely of Cobden and Bright, of Adam Smith and Hume, or even of Locke and Milton, but one of the salient characteristics of Western civilizations…Not merely the nineteenth- and eighteenth- century liberalism, but the basic individualism inherited by us from Erasmus and Montaigne, from Cicero and Tacitus, Pericles and Thucydides, is progressively relinquished.”

Again, I have to wonder what Hayek might say if he were alive today and around to see how groupthink and collectivism have shaped our modern policies.

This chapter, then, sets the stage. He names liberalism as the system that gave birth to the greatest of human achievements ever seen in history. It was individualism that caused the most spectacular effect. If you understand that–and vast numbers today do not understand this–you are prepared to see how the abandonment of this system and idea leads to not only the unraveling of liberty but even what we call civilization.

So, yes, this book is a warning, not just against one party but all ideological positions that reject individualism for one or another version of the planning state.

Now onward to chapter two!

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