** Links ** ................................................................................................................................................................................................. 11
Link Social Services....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 11 Links Taxation................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 12 Link Helping the Poor.................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 13 Link Government Intervention ...................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 14 Link Social Justice ......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 16 Link Welfare Reforms / Make Welfare Better .........................................................................................................................................................................................17 Link We Demand the Government............................................................................................................................................................................................................ 20 AT Link Turn We Increase Choices ............................................................................................................................................................................................................. 21
** Impacts **............................................................................................................................................................................................. 22
Turns / Takes Out Case Generic.................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 22 Turns Case Poverty ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 23 Turns Case Public Health / Healthcare ......................................................................................................................................................................................................... 25 Impact Extension Value................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 26 Impacts Freedom ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 27 Impacts Government Control ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 30 Impact Morality .............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 31 Impact Discrimination.................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 33 AT The Free Market Is Not True Freedom...................................................................................................................................................................................................... 34 AT Market Isnt Freedom Workplace Constraints....................................................................................................................................................................................... 35 AT Market Is Not Just.................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 36
**Alternative ** ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 37
AT Permutation ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 38 AT Free Market Anarchy.............................................................................................................................................................................................................................41
Note: The shell as currently constructed is very long. You dont have to read all of these cards if you dont want too. A perfectly acceptable, though less thorough, version of the shell could be: A. The Plan is Coercive (this is called a link to most people.) B. Reject all instances of coercion.
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This will inevitably result in genocide every coercive policy moves the U.S. closer to the nightmares of Cambodia, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany
Browne Former Libertarian Party candidate for President and Director of Public Policy for the DownsizeDC.org 1995 (Harry, Why Government Doesnt Work, p.66-67) The reformers of the Cambodian revolution claimed to be building a better world. They forced people into reeducation programs to make them
better citizens. Then they used force to regulate every aspect of commercial life . Then they forced office workers and intellectuals to give up their jobs and harvest rice, to round out their education. When people resisted having their lives turned upside down, the reformers had to use more and more force.
By the time they were done, they had killed a third of the country's population, destroyed the lives of almost everyone still alive, and devastated a nation. It all began with using force for the best of intentions-to create a better world. The Soviet leaders used coercion to provide economic security and to build a "New Man" - a human being who would put his fellow man ahead of himself. At least 10 million people died to help build the New Man and the Workers' Paradise
. But human nature never changed-and the workers' lives were always Hell, not Paradise.
In the 1930s many Germans gladly traded civil liberties for the economic revival and national pride Adolf Hitler promised them. But like every other grand dream to improve society by force, it ended in a nightmare of devastation and death. Professor R. J. Rummel has calculated that 119 million people have been killed by their own governments in this century. Were these
people criminals? No, they were people who simply didn't fit into the New Order-people who preferred their own dreams to those of the reformers.
Every time you allow government to use force to make society better, you move another step closer to the nightmares of Cambodia, the Soviet Union, and Nazi Germany. We've already moved so far that our own government can perform with impunity the outrages described in the preceding chapters. These examples aren't cases of government gone wrong; they are examples of government-period. They are what governments do-just as chasing cats is what dogs do. They are the natural consequence of letting government use force to bring about a drug-free nation, to tax someone else to better your life, to guarantee your economic security, to assure that no one can mistreat you or hurt your feelings, and to cover up the damage of all the failed government programs that came before.
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The alternative solves by uncovering the flawed assumptions supporting the supremacy of coercive government policies paving the way for a smaller government and more effective non-governmental policies Browne Former Libertarian Party candidate for President and Director of Public Policy for the DownsizeDC.org 1995
(Harry, Why Government Doesnt Work, p.34-35) Changing Our Perspective Once we realize that government doesn't work, we will stop asking what government should do, and notice instead that government can't do the things we want: We may want government regulation to protect us from fraud, but the truth is that government doesn't protect us from fraud. The savings and loan crisis, every class-action law suit, and every financial scandal are testaments to the government's inability to shield us from fraud or incompetence. We may think crime control is a proper function of government, hut the truth is that government doesn't control crime. Our cities are war zones. At most, the government promises only to look for the person who robs, rapes, or murders you. We may like to think that government sets the rules of the marketplace and acts as the referee, but in reality the government's rules are arbitrary, ambiguous, and constantly changing. And the "referee" always seems to side with the team with the greatest political influence. Once we realize that government doesn't work, we will stop dreaming that this or that social problem can be solved by passing a law - or by creating a new government program - or by electing someone who will make Washington more efficient or costconcious. Once we realize that government doesn't work, we'll know that the only way to improve government is by reducing its size-by doing away with laws, by getting rid of programs, by making government spend and tax less, by reducing government as far as we can. And once we realize that government doesn't work, we will know which side of any political issue to cheer for: If the proposal would increase the size, the reach, or the importance of government, it would be a mistake to support it - no matter how honorable its stated purpose. If the proposal would reduce the size, the reach, or the importance of government, it would be an improvement no matter what its flaws - because it can't be worse than what it will replace. Reducing government and getting it out of our way means unleashing the elements of society that do work: The companies that increase our standard of living with their jobs, products, and services; The private charities that actually improve the lives of the needy, rather than turning them into permanent wards; and The most innovative and creative people in society - who make their living identifying what we want and helping us get it. How far we can reduce government is a question no one can answer today. But we know that the more we reduce it, the better. And we delay that improvement by trying to make government more efficient, more humane, more "user-friendly." Coercion isn't efficient, it isn't humane, and it certainly isn't friendly. Government doesn't work. That's the first lesson we must learn if we want to improve society.
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Hayek's order is composed of abstract relations-actually a rationalist construction-though it is the basis for concrete policy recommendations, and "cannot be defined in terms of any particular observable facts . . . .not something visible or otherwise perceptible but something which can only be mentally reconstructed." It does not have a purpose but allows individuals to seek their purposes within it. General rules, equally applied, encourage the formation and maintenance of this natural, spontaneous order, but it is impossible to work out its details or force its development. As the product of long-run evolution and adaptation, the spontaneous order may not be the best that can be conceived, but it is better than anything man can deliberately create. Such an order "may persist while all the particular elements they comprise, and even the number of such elements, changes." General rules-stripped of reference to existing societies but discoverable through their behavior and evolution-allow people to adjust one to another "through the confinement of the action of each" to those rules. Each person is not assigned but creates his or her own position within this order. Thus relations develop without reference to any known, definite individual. The concept of order represents a reality superior and antecedent to individuals who must conform to the rules and needs of this order. As with Burke, it compensates for individual ignorance, providing answers for both individual and shared dilemmas. The assumed fact of the order's evolution is of crucial importance in conditioning acceptance of economic relations as natural, conveying an air of inevitability and creating a naturalistic standard superior to human will by which to judge behavior. This belief in order, evolution of order, and existence of an order of reality structures the thinking of other conservative economists. To Friedman, the development of "complicated and sophisticated structure ... as an unintended consequence" of pursuit of individual self-interest explains not only the market but, as in Hayek, language, science, and social values. His monetarism cannot be understood apart from belief in underlying regularity and order. Friedman claims that an invisible hand promotes harmony in economics, while "scientific laws" guarantee failure when government interferes in economic affairs. Nothing can prevent it.51 Like Hayek, Buchanan claims that "discovery" of the spontaneous coordinating properties of the market in the eighteenth century provided concrete support for constitutional democracy, limited government, and economic analysis. This "untouchable" principle of classical political economy "combines freedom and order." Despite his interest in contractual creation of and limits on government, Buchanan rejects a constructivist position, claiming that the institutional structure and foundation of society are not consciously created, nor are outcomes "purposely directed." Order in the political economy evolves from the processes that generate it, primarily pursuit of individual economic interest. Order, a central element for each of these authors, has often developed in opposition to government.>
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How does this political market operate? Western political institutions "threaten to destroy the market economy" by allowing excessive public spending with "a bias toward deficits." Competitive democracy encourages incorrect popular expectations. Vote buying and lack of fiscal restraint create "inherent and fundamental biases" for intrusive intervention which undermines natural economic processes and stability. Because governments "are collectivities of utility maximizers," whose freedom from market control permits self-interest to become exploitive, there is an inherent "propensity to truck, barter and exchange" at the expense of public good. The result is a systematic bias favoring growth in public services at the expense of the natural economic order.73 This is inevitable, flowing from human nature,
universal suffrage, weak political parties, Keynesian economics, and immoral exploitation of the affluent minority by redistributive majorities. Why have governments allowed this? Given existing rules and institutions, nothing else is possible. Government as a collective noun does not exist. Government institutions are aggregations of uncontrolled, self-interested utility maximizers who do what is necessary to gain or retain power. Politics is an exchange system employed for private, not public, ends. Public policy serves selfish purposes. Universal suffrage requires responding to whatever satisfies temporary majorities of greedy voters. Politicians and voters act alike; neither sees their real interest. There are neither moral nor institutional restraints as politicians outbid each other by making more and more promises to voters. Electoral competition replaces competition to produce a better product. The political market is created by luring voters into spending their "political income"-votes (which would seem to be expenditure, not income to obtain coercive advantages). Self-interest ordains that politicians promise reduced taxes and increased expenditures, encouraging gullible and unthinking political consumers74 to follow their natural propensity to demand
Politicians literally buy their election-a universal tendency-with funds taxed from someone else. In Friedman's terms, there is a "policy of spend and spend, tax and tax [someone else], elect and elect." Frequent elections
something for nothing. ensure a short-term perspective, where particular and narrow interests dominate the general interest of cheap government and free markets.75
A special interest is any interest-demands for welfare, redistribution, social security, aid to education-that does not accept market outcomes but seeks gains outside the economic market. Any extramarket gain, such as welfare or minimum wages, is privilege. It does not matter if recipients are rich or destitute; they are privileged if part of their income comes from government programs. Whatever the market distributes cannot be privilege, no matter how much wealth is gained or inequality generated.76 Thus a welfare recipient or a person working for the minimum wage, if that is higher than wages in a competitive market, is privileged while a successful entrepreneur is not. Majorities are collections of small minorities. In a model reminiscent of John C. Calhoun, "The majority that rules is typically a coalition of special interests." Choosing a number determined more by the needs of the theory than by any empirical analysis, each
Special interests and group pursuit of privilege are the obvious problem. interest rarely represents more than "2 or 3 percent" of a constituency, but combined they form temporary majorities.77 Democratic theory,78 according to Hayek and Samuel Brittan, holds that whatever majorities wish is just, gives majorities unlimited power to satisfy every whim, and fails to distinguish between temporary and permanent majorities. Unlimited
modern democracy hardly differs from totalitarianism. In both cases, a selfish minority (or minorities, or temporary majorities of minorities) rules the (real) majority, producing government, in Hayek's mind, that is "[c]orrupt at the same time weak: unable to resist pressure from the component groups . . . however harmful to the rest such measures may be." The competitive market in votes, to Brittan, means "liberal democracy inhibits government from tackling coercive groups."79 There is no unity of purpose, except to plunder; no limit upon excesses, other than destruction of the economy; no morality, save self-interest; no moral order, only voters and politicians bidding for power in the political market: The result is that each government "must be expected to be generally engaged in operating against the long-term public interest by serving its short-term political advantage."80 Human nature produces the political market and determines that governments must fail when they attempt to satisfy popular demands for welfare, regulation, or intervention. This is inevitable. To Friedman, "[T]here is something innate in the political process that produces this result." Government must be inefficient; "scientific laws" ensure the bankruptcy of any market intervention. This is no accident but is mandated by the "use of bad means to achieve good objectives." Spending someone else's money guarantees it will be spent badly. Friedman's argument virtually duplicates William Graham Sumner's:81 "A person who intends
only to serve the public interest is led by an invisible hand to serve private interests which it was no part of his intention to serve." As with Adam Smith's invisible hand, this ghostly guide is self-interest.82
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Links Taxation
Taxes snowball without limits the government will continue to expand its hand into the private sphere Charlotte Twight is a Professor of Economics at Boise State University. Dependent on D.C. published 2002. Pg 87-8 Taxes define the power and reflect the soul of any politico-economic regime: constraints on a governments power to tax are constraints on its power to act. Absent clear and enforced limits, taxation predictably emerges as the "rough hand" of government described by Bastiat. So it has been in America. With constitutional constraints now removed, federal taxes known to be confiscatory and openly targeted at subsets of the population today are widely regarded as wholly legitimate. This chapter investigates how the federal government gained its present tax-hold on the nation and forever blocked
meaningful resistance.
Taxation is not benevolent the very act of taxation forces individuals to cede power to the government and creates a self fulfilling prophecy, teaching each of us as individuals that our property is not our own Charlotte Twight is a Professor of Economics at Boise State University. Dependent on D.C. published 2002. Pg 88-90 [From the federal government's perspective, the individual income tax serves vital though often unspoken purposes. Besides taking in prodigious sums of money, the income tax inculcates subservience. Its complexity pits neighbor against
neighbor in an endless quest to exploit obscure tax benefits, diverting would-be resistance. It accustoms the populace to unequal treatment at the hands of government. It instills fear of the government and its agents. It teaches that one's income is
not one's own, that property rights are uncertain, and that adroitly tacking one's economic sail to the changing winds of federal policy is the path to economic reward.
In the last fifty years the federal income tax has become a central tool of social engineering. & former presidential candidate Steve Forbes described the process, "If you do exactly what [Big Brother] wants you to do, how he wants you to do it and when he wants you to do it, then you might get a pathetic little break on your federal taxes."3 Today one primary federal method-and euphemism-for such social engineering is "tax expenditure," defined by the government as follows: Tax expenditures are revenue losses due to preferential provisions of the Federal tax laws, such as special exclusions, exemptions, deductions, credits, deferrals, or tax rates. They are alternatives to other policy instruments, such as spending or regulatory programs, as means of achieving Federal policy goals. Tax expenditures are created for a variety of reasons, including to encourage certain activities." So defined, "tax expenditure" implies both the primacy of the central government's claim over our incomes and government officials' explicit in tent to use our own money as bait to lure us into conformity with their objectives. Despite occasional acknowledgments buried in the fine print of federal documents, the misleading language of "tax expenditure" continues to distort debate, making politicians' statements about tax-related issues sometimes virtually incomprehensible to the uninitiated. These so-called expenditures are made for the explicit purpose of redirecting our activities to suit "Federal policy goals." It is no secret, as Henry Aaron and Joseph Pechman noted, that "Congress has used the tax laws aggressively to influence private behavior,"? In our time income tax regulations and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) have undermined, perhaps irreparably, the rule of law in the United States. For most Americans, tax law in its present form is simply unknowable. Its sheer magnitude is astonishing. The Internal Revenue Code 1999 comprised 3,435 pages, not counting a 635-page index. The following year's Code of Federal Regulations, Title 26, "Internal Revenue," by itself contained 19 volumes. Regulations in force as of January 1, 2001, printed in the set entitled Federal Tax Regulations 2001, spanned 9,150 obtusely worded pages, not including thousands of additional pages of relevant tax court rulings and administrative interpretations of the tax law and regulations. Economists Alvin Rabushka and Robert Hall reported that the relevant laws and regulations, tax court cases, and other materials essential to interpretation of the income tax laws occupied (in 1994) 336 feet of shelf space in the law library of Stanford University. 6 The 1997 "Taxpayer Relief Act," touted as a vehicle for tax simplification, added hundreds of additional pages to the tax mysteries facing Americans. Complicated phase-in and phase-out provisions and other rules governing the act's new education IRAs, Roth IRAs, fund rollovers, scholarship credits, lifetime learning credits, and the rest824 changes in all-caused many low- and middle-income taxpayers to require professional tax help for the first time. Law professor Elliot Manning noted that such phase-outs "make little tax sense," yet "as a cynical political approach, they are wonderful because they help hide real marginal rates."? A Newsweek article entitled "How to Do As You're Told" concluded that the new tax law would "put some cash in your khakis if you do what Washington says you're supposed to do," stating that" [it's behaviormodification legislation, so if you want to benefit, you've got to behave. l" To no one's surprise, the stocks of major tax preparation companies such as H&R Block soared in the days following passage of the 1997 tax bill. So vast, complex, and unclear are existing tax regulations that not, even experts can know what the law is. Key issues such as the allowability of certain deductions and the determination of independent contractor status are governed by tests so unclear in their application that it is , impossible for honest taxpayers or their tax accountants to know what they are supposed to do. Discretionary interpretation and selective application of unknowable rules have made everyone a potential criminal.]
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Harry Browne [Financial Advisor for CNN, Why Government Doesnt Work, December 1995. Pg 12-13.]
So what is government? Very simply, it is an agency of coercion. Of course, there are other agencies of coercionsuch as the Mafia. So to be more precise, government is the agency of coercion that has flags in front of its offices. Or, to put it another way, government is society's dominant producer of coercion. The Mafia and independent bandits are merely fringe competitorsseeking to take advantage of the niches and nooks neglected by the government. Being able to force people to do what you want can be an attractive prospectespecially if you don't have to admit, even to yourself, how you're getting what you want. If you want to feed the homeless, you don't have to persuade hundreds of people to donate money. The government can force millions of people to contribute. If your business is losing customers, you don't have to try harder to match your competition. The government can establish licensing laws or impose tariffs that get the competition out of your hair. If you don't want people reading pornography or other "bad" literature, you don't have to persuade them to find something better. Just get the government to put the smut-peddlers out of business. Government, with its power to coerce, seems to be a magic wand that can make your dreams come true. It can seem able to summon up anything you want, do away with anything you don't like, and make everyone happyespecially you. Because of government's power, controlling it is the grand prizethe brass ring, the pot of gold, the genie of the lamp. It beckons as the shortcut to riches, to the perfect world you imagine, to imposing your personal tastes on everyone. With government at your disposal, it appears that you can bypass the tedious process of earning a living, spreading the gospel, or persuading others that you're right. Medicare provides a good example. It was created in 1965 to make it easier for the elderly to get health care. But by reducing the patient's out-of-pocket costs, it increased the demand for doctors and hospitals. And it reduced the supply of those services by requiring doctors and other medical personnel to use their time and attention handling paperwork and complying with regulationsand looking for ways to circumvent these things. So the price of medical care rose sharply as the demand soared and the supply diminished. As a result, the elderly now pay from their own pockets over twice as much for health care (after adjusting for inflation) than they did before Medicare began. And most older people now find it harder to get adequate medical service. Naturally, the government points to the higher costs and shortages as proof that the elderly would be lost without Medicareand that government should be even more deeply involved. When Medicare was set up in 1965, the politicians projected its cost in 1990 to be $3 billionwhich is equivalent to $12 billion when adjusted for inflation to 1990 dollars. The actual cost in 1990 was $98 billioneight times as much. So government gets bigger and bigger: 1. Because the failure of each program leads to demands for new programs; Because everyone wants the special privileges he sees others getting; and because "public servants" seize on every problem as an excuse to expand their powers. There's a fourth reason that government grows so effortlesslya reason we'll look at next. It has the power to breed a mass of welfare clients who will be completely dependent on government, and who will vote to make it grow. Any system that lets one person force his will on anotherby confiscating resources or by compelling obedience will inevitably break down, because everyone will want to use the coercion for his own ends. And so, sooner or later, government becomes a free-for-all to be won by those best able to deceive and manipulate. To maintain their tenure and power, politicians have to make deals with more and more interest groups until, eventually; most of the government's resources are consumed just buying votes and satisfying political backers. This leaves almost nothing for true crime control, education, or other functions you may think are government's proper business. So it's perfectly natural to reach the point we have now, where government fails utterly in its traditional functions while meddling in things once considered no business of governmenttaking over the health care system, trying to police the planet, laying down millions of rules for companies to follow, subsidizing everything from art to zoology. A government that tries to help those who can't help themselves will turn into a government that helps those with the most political power. A government we try to use as our servant inevitably will become our master. And a government formed to do for the people what they can't do so well for themselves will instead do to the people what they don't want done.
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This is Empirically Proven: Welfare reform by the government ends in disaster and increases government power
Harry Browne [Financial Advisor for CNN, Why Government Doesnt Work, December 1995. Pg 124.] Of course, in the 1990s both the Democrats and the Republicans have plans to reform welfare. We hear about "two years and out," block grants, "workfare," no-strings funding, and other supposedly innovative ways of making a bad system work well. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me 35 times, shame on me 34 times. Over and over during the past 30 years, the politicians have claimed they've learned how to fix the welfare system. We've seen one reform after another. We've been treated to recurring news stories of the success of federal programs complete with anecdotes of former welfare recipients whose lives were turned around when government job-training made them self-sufficient at last. But despite all the new programs, the good news, and the anecdotes, the numbers of welfare recipients don't seem to shrink and the epidemic of pregnancies, family breakups, and crime continues. A 1988 reform, implemented in 1990, was aimed particularly at reducing the number of people on the rolls of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). But over the next four years, the ranks of AFDC grew 29%to 14.2 million from 11.0 million. After the reporters have published their success stories and gone home, the cold hard truth is that new programs just make things worse. Government doesn't work. It is no more competent to administer charity than it is to deliver the mail. And the next welfare reform isn't going to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. I don't think we should bite on this hook again. The only answer is to get the federal government out of welfareand leave local governments to return to the "temporary expedient" view of welfare or turn it over to private charities.
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Welfare Links
WELFARE POLICIES SUBVERT THE MARKET, VIOLATING THE PRINCIPLE OF JUSTICE THEY MUST BE REJECTED Conrad Waligorski is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, 1990 [The Political Theory of Conservative Economists].
Progressive taxation and public policies to encourage consumer protection, equalization, or redistribution are also spurious. Speculation on non-market components of the good society is futile and perhaps dangerous. Justice considerations require direct, personal responsibility for outcomes, and the market absolves people of direct personal responsibility. If outcomes are unsatisfactory, people must accept them as natural and inevitable and even change their concept of justice to conform to necessity. Once again, politics is deflated and downgraded, as the customary political role in the creation and promotion of justice is taken over and reduced by the market. Though law enforcement remains, the state neither encompasses nor actively promotes justice. Emphasizing procedures, the conservatives avoid the possibility that even-handed application of rules may cause injustice. Beyond limited expansion of equal opportunity, they cannot imagine that seemingly acceptable procedures may lead to terrible outcomes, or that terrible outcomes require reevaluation of procedures and rules. Ostensibly having no substantive measure by which to judge the justice or morality of outcomes, their market supplies this standard. Because the market embodies justice, anything in conflict with the market must be unjust. Once again, their procedures are not simply neutral but lead inevitably to an overwhelming conclusion: The market embodies and promotes justice; justice requires the market; and there is no real justice beyond the possibilities and limitations contained in the market.
WELFARE POLICIES VIOLATE FREEDOM AND MUST BE REJECTED Conrad Waligorski is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, 1990 [The Political Theory of Conservative Economists].
Intervention, regulation, and welfare are distinct policy areas, but if government must fail, all are impossible. Welfare illustrates this argument. Welfare is a broad concept for the conservative economists. It extends beyond aid to families with dependent children or income support to include unemployment compensation, social security programs, all transfer payments, education subsidies, farm price-supports, and any program where people-"special interests"receive aid or services outside a market framework. Limited provision for those who fail or are incompetent is acceptable, but welfare must be kept to a minimum. Why? Because any transfer payment violates freedom and individualism. Self-interest and natural economic relations do not allow extensive aid. Political and economic freedom and equality are not enhanced by welfare, which is viewed as morally,13 politically, and economically destructive.
WELFARE POLICIES VIOLATE FREEDOM AND SUBVERT THE PROPER FUNCTION OF GOVERNMENT THEY MUST BE REJECTED Conrad Waligorski is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, 1990 [The Political Theory of Conservative Economists].
Welfare supposedly promotes the behavior it attempts to eliminate -dependence-because it is in the self-interest of recipients to not work, of politicians to buy votes by providing welfare, and of bureaucrats to expand the welfare budget. The conservatives believe that in a free market, most welfare measures, especially income support such as unemployment compensation, would be unnecessary. Moreover, Friedman asserts that welfare programs undermine the ability of the United States to finance defense and that "[t]he traditional functions of government have been starved by the rapacious appetite of the welfare state." He sees the Soviet Union as a lesser threat to the United States; "[t]he real threat is the welfare state." Friedman and Hayek agree (though Buchanan disagrees) that welfare spending is another guise for collectivism and socialism, destroys initiative, and forces people into identical molds. It causes "loss of self-government and freedom. . . . financial crisis leads to a loss of self-government."14
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WELFARE POLICIES DONT PROMOTE EQUALITY THE SUBVERT THE NATURAL CORRECTIVE MECHANISM OF THE MARKET AND MAKE CONDITIONS WORSE Conrad Waligorski is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, 1990 [The Political Theory of Conservative Economists]. A major conservative economic attack on welfare, if it can be separated from the political emphasis on freedom, is that social welfare programs are obstacles to equality because they sabotage efficient labor markets and freeze people into inferior status by discouraging initiative. The argument is true by definition. If economic self-interest motivates people, welfare payments discourage work. In a market free of minimum wages and income support, everyone could find a job; there could be no involuntary unemployment. Poverty is caused by personal Mure-unwillingness to work and compete-that is compounded by welfare. As with the nineteenth-century liberal Malthus, the greatest kindness is to force people to work, not to give them aid. That is why Gilder attacks the welfare system and argues that "the current poor . . . are refusing to work hard." If they did work hard-and to overcome their poverty, they must work harder than other groups-they would not be poor.15 "The actual outcome of almost all programs that are sold in the name of helping the poor . . . is to make the poor worse off."16 Thus intervention creates conditions that cause more demands for welfare. WELFARE POLICIES ARE INHERENTLY COERCIVE AND MUST BE REJECTED Conrad Waligorski is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, 1990 [The Political Theory of Conservative Economists]. In proclaiming one law for all and no special categories of people, the conservatives state that public policy should treat everyone alike and ignore individual differences. Individualism and equal treatment by the law preclude welfare. What can be done? A minimum income floor is acceptable, but charity is superior because it is private, voluntary, local, and discriminatory and reduces the need for coercive public involvement.17 (By definition, anything that is voluntary is free and does not involve coercion.) To claim that welfare is a right subordinates individuals to the group, but the group is simply the sum of individuals, each pursuing his or her own interest. Welfare thus subordinates individuals to the purposes of other individuals. People have very different preferences, and community membership creates no obligation to maintain the poor. Therefore, no one can have an obligation to another unless it is freely accepted.18
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The harmlessness of the mission performed by law and lawful defense is self-evident; the usefulness is obvious; and the legitimacy cannot be disputed. As a friend of mine once remarked, this negative concept of law is so true that the statement, the purpose of the law is to cause justice to reign, is not a rigorously accurate statement. It ought to be stated that the purpose of the law is to prevent injustice from reigning. In fact, it is injustice, instead of justice, that has an existence of its own. Justice is achieved only when injustice is absent. But when the law, by means of its necessary agent, force, imposes upon men a regulation of labor, a method or a subject of education, a religious faith or creed -- then the law is no longer negative; it acts positively upon people. It substitutes the will of the legislator for their own wills; the initiative of the legislator for their own initiatives. When this happens, the people no longer need to discuss, to compare, to plan ahead; the law does all this for them. Intelligence becomes a useless prop for the people; they cease to be men; they lose their personality, their liberty, their property. This means our critique also solves your affirmative anything truly in the interest of the public will naturally be solved for by private investment and choice. Conrad Waligorski is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. The Political Theory of Conservative Economists published 1990. Pg. 148 Under a free market, however, private interest creates the public interest. Buchanan asserts that the market "allows the transformation of private interest into 'public interest.'" The search for a distinct public interest, however, is equivalent to a belief in the general will, an "organic conception of society." For Hayek, social ends are the "coincidence of individual ends" and do not exist apart from them. Appeal to a common interest indicates lack of agreement. According to Buchanan, "Expansion of government's role under the folly that some national interest exists" has undermined the moral order of markets. Only self-interested allegiance to market rules and the political system that polices them unites people. For Friedman, a "country is the collection of individuals who compose it." There are no national goals except the sum of "goals that the citizens severally serve"; no national purposes except "the consensus of the purposes for which the citizens severally strive." Given self-interested human nature, public purposes are reducible to private self-interest in the market. Public interest and the
common good do not and cannot exist apart from the individual purposes of which they are composed. Common good is nothing more than widely sought ends. These theorists accept the logic of Kenneth Arrow's limits on interpersonal utility comparisons. Starting with strong individualist assumptions, when a group of people choose by rank ordering their preferences it may be impossible to arrive at a consensus or a majority. Indeed, it is probably impossible to reach a common preference because no collective decision can satisfy everyone's preference order. For the conservative economists, individual valuation, pursuit of self-interest, and lack of common interest create incommensurable individual valuations and preferences. Social values cannot be constructed from these elements. Thus
government has no role in meeting or fulfilling such fictitious collective preferences, or individual preferences that may clash with the marketthe real preference-satisfying mechanism. Given this situation, the ideal polity must work
toward achieving unanimity. Happily, the market already functions to create unanimous agreement. It is not quite accurate, however, to say that no common good, common interest, or national interest exist. Rather, they exist in a special way-in con junction with and in the market. This argument incorporates a hidden picture of real private good, weakening the claim that individuals are the source of value. Private good does not mean doing anything that will advance one's self, if that implies hostility to the market. Private, and therefore public, good is contained in and must be advanced through the
market. To the extent that there is a common good, it is satisfied the procedures' pursuit of individual interest. Common good requires maintaining property and the conservative market system, regardless of harm to particular individuals or groups. This world view eliminates higher purposes, moral ends, and the moral cement holding society together. Morality
and justice do not set goals and boundaries for proper conduct but are defined and limited by self-interested human nature. Indeed, there is nothing to check selfinterest except others' pursuit of self-interest in a virtual war of each against all.
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Impacts Freedom
INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM IS THE PARAMOUNT GOAL THE MARKET IS THE BEST MECHANISM FOR SOCIAL REGULATION AND GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION IS ALWAYS COERCIVE Conrad Waligorski, Professor of Political Science at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, 1990 [The Political Theory of Conservative Economists] Freedom is a process and condition summarized by the absence of coercion, especially government intervention in one's affairs. The primary meaning of freedom is economic, negative, and individualistic: being allowed to attempt to use one's resources as one wills, in competition with others. It is an economic concept in the narrow sense of exchange relations in a market, not in a wider meaning of maximizing output or minimizing potential resource waste. Any political or social connotation is derivative and legitimate only if it supports the principle economic meaning. The market is, therefore, the absolutely essential arena for the exercise of freedom. Moreover, the requirements for freedom determine the role of government and the obligations citizens owe to one another. Freedom in the market allows people to promote self-interest, but giving equal (same) freedom to everyone prevents concentration or exercise of power. Thus market freedom is the best expression of human freedom and simultaneously limits the potential for abuse of freedom. For Friedman, freedom means allowing each "individual to pursue his own interests so long as he does not interfere with the freedom of others to do likewise." This involves seeking one's ends, giving the "opportunity for the ordinary man to use his resources as effectively as possible." It has nothing to do with maximizing opportunities or being successful. Though Friedman believes that freedom is indivisible, with each component contributing to the others, he is most concerned with economic freedom-allowing the individual to pursue his or her economic interest.12 To Hayek freedom is the opposite of slavery. It means "a state in which each can use his knowledge for his purposes." Freedom exists when people may act on the basis of their "own knowledge and in the service of their own ends," though this applies mainly in the market. Each of the conservative economists agrees with the argument that freedom involves the elimination of "coercion by the arbitrary will of another." The key word is "arbitrary." Coercion does not exist in the market. Only government can arbitrarily coerce people, making government the major threat to freedom. Thus, to Buchanan, "[A]n individual is at liberty or free to carry on an activity if he or she is not coerced from so doing." Freedom for Hayek does not guarantee "any particular opportunities, but leaves it to us to decide what use we shall make of the circumstances in which we find ourselves." Freedom does not include agency;13 means or power to satisfy wishes; extensive choices; collective efforts to change circumstances; or any guarantees beyond protection from physical force and being allowed to attempt to do what one wishes. Freedom is not affected by the conditions under which one operates, the results of unsuccessful competition, perceptions, or the inadequacy of means to operationalize one's freedom.14
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Impacts Freedom
MARKET IS PREREQUISITE FOR FREEDOM AND BASIS OF DEMOCRACY Conrad Waligorski, Professor of Political Science at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, 1990 [The Political Theory of Conservative Economists] Given these notions of freedom, how is the market related to freedom? The conservative position is clear. Freedom depends upon and is generated by the market. The market is the primary area of freedom, an absolutely essential means of protecting freedom, and a necessary support for freedom. Without a free market, political freedom and democracy could not long survive. Even if it does not operate perfectly, the market encourages freedom, especially in the long run. The conservative claim focuses on being allowed to act rather than broadly conceived conditions for the exercise of freedom.15 To the extent that these authors relate freedom to selfdevelopment or self-realization, it is exclusively economic self-realization-pursuing one's ends-through a competitive market. Though Hayek is less inclined than Friedman to claim that the market always defends freedom, he believes that it usually does and that it is absolutely essential to freedom. The preexisting spontaneous order is the basis for freedom; freedom grew as the spontaneous order developed. Thus, discovery of natural order in human relations "provided the foundation for a systematic argument for individual liberty."115 As the spontaneous order is primarily economic, a market order is a functional, logical, and sequential prerequisite for the development of all freedom. ECONOMIC FREEDOM IS A NECESSARY PRECONDITION FOR FREEDOM INTERVENTION IS ALWAYS INIMICAL TO FREEDOM Conrad Waligorski, Professor of Political Science at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, 1990 [The Political Theory of Conservative Economists] For Friedman, economic freedom "is itself a component of freedom broadly understood ... an end in itself.... [and] an indispensable means toward the achievement of political freedom." Economic freedom means being allowed to choose "how to use our income" and "to use the resources we possess in accordance with our own values." There is no difference in freedom for those with large or small income, property, or resources. Regardless of contrasts in wealth-I have one dollar, you have one million- everyone is equally free as long as no one coerces another in the use of his or her resources. This freedom includes owning and using property; entering any chosen business or profession, without limits or licensing requirements; and voluntarily buying and selling in any market.17 It means that freedom cannot be enhanced by acquisition of new resources through government redistribution or protection. The conservatives equate free with voluntary. In another example of either/ or thinking, voluntary behavior is the opposite of being coerced. All behavior that is not coerced is free, voluntary, and self-chosen. Though the market is not the only arena of voluntary behavior, only voluntary behavior occurs in the market; only the market guarantees voluntary behavior. Equal formal access to the market, therefore, is the essence of freedom. Pursuit of self-interest ensures that voluntary relations are neither coercive nor uniformly one-sided. Voluntary, for these theorists, is a very, broad concept, including situations where a person has little choice and may face substantial constraint. This image of voluntariness transforms the market into the realm of consent, and consensual, noncoercive relations. Because market relations are voluntary, they are entered freely and deliberately: "[B]oth parties must benefit ... so long as the exchange is voluntary and there is no force . . . both people are better off." Even if it is not a sufficient condition, "voluntary exchange is a necessary condition for both prosperity and freedom." Though in Capitalism and Freedom Friedman notes that "[e]xchange is truly voluntary only when nearly equivalent alternatives exist," this qualifier disappears from his later work. Because, by definition, force cannot take place in the voluntary market and in the absence of force freedom is preserved, government should not intervene in economic relations.18 Any intervention must diminish freedom.
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Impact Freedom
ECONOMIC FREEDOM PRECEDES POLITICAL FREEDOM THE UNRESTRAINED MARKET IS THE ONLY WAY TO ESCAPE THE COERCIVE POLITICS OF THE STATE Conrad Waligorski, Professor of Political Science at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, 1990 [The Political Theory of Conservative Economists] Friedman exemplifies the conservative position. "Economic freedom is an essential requisite for political freedom." "Restrictions on economic freedom inevitably affect freedom in general, even such areas as freedom of speech and press." The market limits government and reduces "greatly the range of issues that must be decided through political means," and anything that limits or diffuses government power increases freedom. Thus the market prevents concentration of political and economic power, which is the only alternative to free markets, thereby serving "as a check and a counter to political power." It does this by providing a wide variety of services, removing an important area of life from government, creating a polycentric system as opposed to a concentration of power in politics, and providing an economic base from which people who are not acceptable to the government may be able to advocate dissident ideas.22 Friedman makes no effort to explain to whom holders of economic power are responsible if they have the ability to check government power. The word "responsible" literally has no meaning in the market, as he and the other conservatives deny that there is any private, economic power because it dissolves in the market. Efforts to enforce "responsibility" must always be destructive. Market power is a positive contribution to political freedom for two reasons. First, one can always find another buyer, seller, employer, or employee; therefore, no single buyer, seller, and so forth can have any coercive control. Second, since coercion is the only danger to freedom, politics is coercive, and since the market is an impersonal mechanism that can never be coercive-a point upon which Hayek repeatedly insiststhe market protects freedom. It provides "a system of checks and balances" which "enables economic strength to be a check to political power rather than a reinforcement."23 Thus its limitations on government, even on popular majorities, always promotes freedom. Economic freedom has virtually created political freedom. According to Friedman, political freedom in ancient Greece and Rome, as well as in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, "clearly came along with the free market and the development of capitalist institutions." By creating polycentrism, the market encourages diversity of opinion and reduces the areas of life where politics is dominant.24 Hayek agrees: "Economic freedom is thus an indispensable condition of all other freedom," necessary to and resulting from personal freedom. It is "the prerequisite of any other freedom." He links planning and government intervention in economic affairs with "the disappearance of all personal freedom [including "spiritual freedom"] and the end of justice." Individual and political freedom have never existed and cannot now exist except under his version of economic freedom.25 Buchanan also links economic to individual and political freedom, claiming that markets are less arbitrary and more likely to support freedom, justice, and equality than is politics or government. Markets "tend to maximize freedom of persons from political control," and it is in systems with free markets that freedom in general is best protected.26 The conservatives' causal link between economic freedom and overall freedom is a deductive necessity rather than a hypothesis offered for evaluation. The conservative economists' choices are simple: unrestrained economic freedom, essentially laissez-faire capitalism, which is the only system promoting freedom; or centralized control, something close to the Soviet model. A stable mean does not exist.
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Impact Morality
INDIVIDUALISM AND THE MARKET ARE KEY TO MORALITY DEMANDS FOR WELFARE ARE INHERENTLY IMMORAL AND MUST BE REJECTED Conrad Waligorski is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, 1990 [The Political Theory of Conservative Economists]. <This eliminates the nation as the focus of morality or loyalty, and cultural evolution can never make it such. Moral feelings and behavior can never apply to a large unit which is sustainable only with minimal rules for conductagain, primarily those of the market or those convenient for supporting the market. The market becomes the primary example and embodiment of moral relations. It exists independent of human will, and behavior should conform to it. Attributing a higher stage of moral development to the market helps account for the vehemence of attacks upon those who disagree with the conservative world view: they are outside the pale. Demands for extensive welfare, economic justice, redistributive taxation, women's liberation, or corporate responsibility are virtually moral outrages violating a natural order. These authors do not always specify the justification that would allow equating economic recommendations with morality. Hayek identifies "our moral obligations" with "benefiting from an order which rests on certain rules," but it is difficult to imagine anything that this could not justify. Normative criteria enter through claims that people's real interest entails accepting market order rules. A partial answer to why people should obey or accept market rules is found in the conservatives' sometimes contradictory pictures of die source of morality. Discussing die hypothetical source and nature of morality, Hayek rejects all rationalist, supernatural, and transcendent explanations. He claims that morality is a product of the gradual evolution of individual behavior in a market like process, with superior morality being that behavior which has survived. There is no criterion for moral rules other than their survival, yet Hayek opposes changes in these rules. Given human nature, morality cannot evolve beyond market behavior. He asserts that his evolutionary position is anti-rationalist, not based on any construction of morality but rather on acceptance of the process by which people gradually learned to adjust to one another. This order individualism is the key to moralityhere is neither "inside nor outside, of individual responsibility- but individuals conform to rules they have not made. These rules have developed gradually from individual confrontation with problems and "have proved more successful than those of competing individuals or groups." Morality, law, political and social institutions, intelligence, language, writing, and the market all result from a similar evolutionary process, propelled in each case by self-interest.49 In rejecting the possibility of either deliberate change or spontaneous growth beyond these rules, Hayek ignores the role of cooperation and force in the development of rules and the expansion of groups. Buchanan also argues that "abstract rules . . . have evolved unconsciously," and while they cannot be restored when abandoned, it is possible to create functional equivalents in formal, "rationally chosen constraints" on immoral behavior, such as a balanced-budget requirement. Morality therefore grows and evolves and is not grounded in or justified by higher standards.
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Impact Morality
THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE MARKET ARE THE ONLY SOURCE OF MORALITY ALL OTHER AFF CLAIMS ARE NONSENSICAL Conrad Waligorski is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, 1990 [The Political Theory of Conservative Economists]. <Thus these theorists draw no radical conclusions from seeing the individual as die source of value. Individual valuation is a variation on negative freedom. Although individuals may be the source of value, this involves neither conscience nor valuing individual purposes outside market competition. An individual is the source of value when functioning in the market in conformity to valuations and the behavior of others in the market. Morality is what rationally self-interested people do, or agree to have imposed upon them, and nothing more can be said. Individuals are not, however, the source of justification. That lies in the market, because once again the market is the standard beyond individuals which defines and embodies morality and acceptable rational selfinterest. What does economic morality include? It is largely rules that allow market competition without fraud or deception and negative freedom-staying out of one another's way. There are no positive duties, no obligations to groups, and no higher justification than avoiding jail and following long-term interest in maintaining the rules of the game.
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Impact Discrimination
THE MARKET IS THE BEST SOLUTION FOR DISCRIMINATION Conrad Waligorski, Professor of Political Science at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, 1990 [The Political Theory of Conservative Economists] The lack of a stable alternative between complete market freedom and a totalitarian system helps explain the conservative reluctance to support active measures to curb racial discrimination. Freedom to buy and sell in the market, as well as freedom to exit undesirable market situations, replaces the need and desirability for political action. In Capitalism and Freedom, Friedman argues that only coercion should be subject to public policy because discrimination is simply the refusal to trade with someone; efforts to address that kind of' "harm"' always "reduces freedom and limits voluntary co-operation." Antidiscrimination policy means arbitrary use of government power. Though discrimination can be an obstacle to freedom, Friedman argues that the market provides the only climate within which minorities can be free and that minority progress can be attributed to free, capitalist markets. Impersonal markets prevent arbitrary exercise of power, financially hurt those who discriminate, and provide a safe haven for minorities. Conversely, if the market does not eliminate what appears to be sex or race discrimination, this means they are in some sense natural. For Friedman, the market "protects men from being discriminated against in their economic activities for reasons that are irrelevant to their productivity." To Hutt, "the free market is colour blind." Profit incentives ensure the best worker will be hired, regardless of race. Assuming rationality and profit maximization as the primary goal, people would not discriminate if governments would only end minimum-wage laws and similar artificial supports for market imperfections. George Gilder sees racism as a myth and believes that minorities must work harder than they did in the past and that antidiscrimination policy has become the great enemy to minority progress.27 In the long run, the market eliminates discrimination despite past inequalities and discrimination.
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**Alternative **
A battle is underway and the technological economy is now competing with the state to provide social benefits to the masses
Irving Louis Horowitz, Professor of Sociology @ Rutgers, 1999 [Behemoth: Main Currents in the History and Theory of Political Sociology] Beyond the economy is the cultural transformation underway. Corporate systems now vie with state systems for creating the conditions for an equitable America. The new-business literature, often following the pioneering works Peter Drucker, emphasize the notion of service rather than profit, support of the family as well as individual employees, making work pleasurable, treating people as customers not members of an amorphous group, sharing decisionmaking, and even expanding empowerment to employees. All of this is an effort by the technological economy and its advocates not just to compete with the state, but to usurp the conventional role of the benevolent society.19 THE NEW RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CAPITALISM AND THE STATE CREATES ROOM FOR POLITICAL MANEUVERABILITY AND OPENS BOTTOM-UP PATHS TO SOCIAL CHANGE. Irving Louis Horowitz, Professor of Sociology @ Rutgers, 1999 [Behemoth: Main Currents in the History and Theory of Political Sociology] As we enter the twenty-first century, the intimate structure no less than broad outlines of the new global condition begins to take shape. A communication and transportation system that makes great distances less relevant than ever cements the multinational corporation. The split screen can play out messages of domestic impeachment and global intervention by the state at the same instance. The capital of the new global economy is neatly tucked away in cyberspace rather than located in the counting houses of New York, Tokyo, London, Paris, Frankfurt, and now Moscow and Beijing. The level of economic rationalization exceeds anything envisioned by Weber less than a century ago. Whether such a congregation of economic forces can conjure up images of a manipulating elite is another matter. That players in the game of international commerce know each other is obviously true. That they are thus able to collude toward ends apart from the general welfare is far less obvious. In the meanwhile, at the other end, the power of the state has scarcely diminished. Rather, the new cone era is the super-state. In this, the European Union is a portent of things to come. The fusion of banking and business, and in new "capital" located in Brussels (but hardly responsive to the parochial whims of Belgium) gives the state in the new century an unparalleled force to set standards in wages, prices in goods, and rules for criminal prosecution. This development of the super-state also permits it to struggle on a level playing field with the impulse of huge capital formations to maximize profits and integrate products. It might be argued that this sets up a Manichean future of the state versus commerce. I would not wish to conclude on such a sour note. Indeed, one might argue that competition between the multinationals and the super-state might actually be more beneficial to the imaginary "ordinary person" than would their collusion or cooperation. The size of the competition herein envisioned, while taking place on a global canvas, does at least provide maneuverability for new forces that come into existence to challenge either the multinational corporation or the supernational-state. Nor would I imply an H.G. Wells type "war of the worlds." What is taking place is well within this world. And if centrifugal forces are clearly at work in an overt and manifest form, so too are countervailing tendencies toward diminution and even dissolution of large structures. For example, the rise of secessionist and nationalist movements within the bowels of the new empires of state and commerce cannot be ignored, and must be reckoned with. Still, as we kick into a new millennium, the situation in political sociology has been radically altered by larger scale and often external forces that reveal a scale substantially beyond anything envisioned by Weber or Durkheim, much less Montesquieu or Tocqueville. If doomsday scenarios are entirely premature, so too are visions of a democratic future free of dictatorship or destitution. The human race will continue to muddle along in search of a more perfect political regime and social organization, but it will do so on scales hitherto unimagined and with consequences of error correspondingly enlarged.
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AT Permutation
Permutation Doesnt Solve our arguments 1. Mutual exclusivity: The free market and politics are mutually exclusive enterprises. The political action of the 1AC empowers social service recipients at the expense of their providers resulting in abuses of power and tyranny
Conrad Waligorski, Professor of Political Science at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, 1990 [The Political Theory of Conservative Economists] The conservative economists insist on dividing political and social phenomena into mutually exclusive alternatives with no stable resting place in between. This dualism is apparent in the contrast between the political and economic markets. In an extreme restatement of the classical liberal distinction between society and state, there are only two ways to organize people: voluntary cooperation through markets or coercion through politics. These alternatives are irreconcilable,71 at opposite ends of the spectrum. Though ideal types, these two markets form the basis for conservative policy prescriptions. The political market is the reverse image of the economic market, revealing the essentials of politics. For Buchanan, "[T]he political relationship is not commonly encountered in its pure firm, that of abject slavery. . . . the economic or exchange relationship is, at least conceptually, visualized in its pure form and, in certain instances, the relationship actually exists."72 Human nature explains the "success" of the economic market and the "failure" of the political market. Motivation self-interest and the process of exchange are the same in both the economic and political markets, but they produce distinct results because behavior constraints are radically different. The orderly economic market is the result of spontaneous growth where many individuals over long periods of time separately make decisions; politics is the area of constructivist, deliberate, conscious decisions by the few for the many. The economic market controls self-interest; the coercive political market allows it to operate unchecked. Free individuals dominate economic markets; coercive groups make up temporary, exploitive majorities that dominate the political market. The evolved economic market is supposedly competitive, decentralized, noncoercive, and responsive to individuals and promotes diversity. Unless they have formed contracts, individuals may enter or leave at any time, such movement being the essence of freedom. People act rationally in pursuit of self-interest, each checking the ambitions of others while producing spontaneous order and benefits to others. Relations are always voluntary and expanding sum because people enter a relation only if it is beneficial. These conditions are absent from politics. In the political market there is coercion and limited choice. Rational pursuit of self-interest is detrimental because groups, not individuals, compete, which opens the way to potential abuses of power. Unlike the economic market which supposedly harmonizes egoistic individuals, politics provides no systematic spontaneous checks on self-interest. There is neither free exit, as in the economic market, nor noncoercive competition. The object is to gain power to force others to comply with one's will. The invisible hand of self-interest leads to dominance and conformity. Coercive groupsusually labor unions and welfare claimantsorganize and compete to control decision making, forcing redistributive demands on productive individuals.
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AT Permutation
2. Effectiveness: The market is a natural condition of operation that needs independence government intervention ruins this interaction and ensures the dominance of one over another
Conrad Waligorski, Professor of Political Science at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, 1990 [The Political Theory of Conservative Economists] While many spontaneous orders can exist, the quintessential one is economic, and conservative economists claim they have demonstrated its existence.56 It is embodied in the market. The market is the single most important social interaction-a model for proper conduct and a goal of public policy. When free of government intervention, the market is orderly and order producing, distributing goods and services in direct proportion to each person's contribution to the self-determined welfare of others. With the exception of rare and necessarily transitory monopolies, no one exercises control. Each participant is equally subject to the same impersonal forces. Outcomes are not the result of any one person's or group's actions or will. The market is fair, just, spontaneous, and voluntary and coordinates self-interested individuals without coercion. It compensates for human nature by channeling self-interested impulses and correcting for limited knowledge and ability. This makes it much more efficient than any other possible means of organizing people. If the market is not working as it should, something external to the market, such as coercive labor unions or intrusive government, must be interfering to benefit some at the expense of others. To Hayek, the market ensures "spontaneous collaboration" and order. If left free, the market operates at maximum efficiency, making more "available than could be done by any other known means." It assures "each will get for the share he wins ... as large a real equivalent as can be secured." Since distribution is independent of "anyone's designs or intentions, it is meaningless to describe the manner in which the market distributed the good things of this world among particular individuals as just or unjust."57 Given a "stable monetary framework," Friedman's "market system is inherently stable," more so than any other system. It is characterized by equilibrium. Prices organize activity, provide incentives, and "determine who gets how much of the production-the distribution of income"-through operation of "an invisible hand." Pursuit of self-interest creates a "finely ordered and effectively tuned system, yet it is not deliberately created by men." It operates only when people voluntarily agree to trade, exchange, or interact. Everyone is free to enter. Competition peacefully coordinates behavior, prevents abuses, and distributes rewards. Distribution is fair because "market imperfections are not very significant," and there are fewer imperfections than in any alternative system. In the long run, despite any apparent difficulties, the market must be left to its own self-correcting, autonomous forces, because intervention ruins its intrinsic order. Past instability has "been produced by erratic and unwise government intervention rather than any inherent instability in the system itself."58 The market reconciles "autonomy . . . with coordination and continuity," or "spontaneous coordination." "The market is the classic example" of order produced by "decentralized processes."59 It creates voluntary cooperation through competitive pursuit of self-interest without coercive imposition of common values. Friedman claims it "permits unanimity without conformity" and allows peaceful collaboration while each person "goes about his own business." Emphasizing each separate, distinct exchange, rather than the exchange framework and those who may be affected by that exchange, everyone involved benefits from a transaction, or else it would not occur because each person is allowed to choose with whom he or she will exchange.60 In the absence of government intervention, market relations are "the institutional embodiment of the voluntary exchange process."61
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AT Permutation
3. Perm fails: Any government involvement means total control. Must reject in all instances.
Harry Browne [Financial Advisor for CNN, Why Government Doesnt Work, December 1995. Pg 172-173.] As we've seen in earlier chapters, all the federal intrusions into education, health care, crime control, welfare, and other areas have done nothing to improve the country. On the contrary, they have degraded education, health care, and crime control, and institutionalized a welfare program that breeds criminals. The degradation comes from two intrinsic elements of federal programs: 1. The federal government extracts huge taxes from you and your neighbors, takes a healthy cut for itself, and then sends what's left back to your area to perform its intended function. The money would achieve far more if it never left your state: 2. Federal funding means federal rules. It means that 535 politicians in Washington will set rules for your local police department, your board of education, your local hospital, your family doctor, your streets, your town's welfare system. These 535 know-it-alls can't balance the federal checkbook, and they don't have time to read any of the bills they pass, but they claim to know more about running your city than you or any of your neighbors-and they claim to know better than you how to manage your life. No wonder federal programs are such disasters. The Founding Fathers had good reason to limit the federal government to a few simple functions. They knew that government is coercion-and that coercion is a dangerous weapon. They believed that whatever coercion seemed necessary should be administered very close to home, where citizens could keep it from getting out of control. We have to get the federal government out of the dozens of areas where it has no business.
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It is widely but mistakenly assumed that support for free markets equals hostility toward government. who advocate dismantling or reforming failed collectivist policies are routinely characterized by their opponents as spoiling for anarchy. Even someone as generally sympathetic to markets as Thomas Friedman succumbs
Economic liberals to this confusion. Although an enthusiastic champion of globalization, Friedman retains his allegiance to certain aspects of the collectivist legacynotably top-down social welfare programs in the domestic sphere and International Monetary Fund bailouts internationally. In The Lexus and the Olive Tree, he heaps contempt upon anyone who would question his particular sacred cows. "I heard mean-spirited voices," he writes, "voices uninterested in any compromise, voices for whom the American government was some kind of evil enemy." In particular, he lampoons the freshman congressional Republicans who swept their party to legislative power in the elections of 1994: I said to myself, "Well, my freshman Republican friends, come to Africait's a freshman Republican's paradise." Yes sir, nobody in Liberia pays taxes. There's no gun control in Angola. There's no welfare as we know it in Burundi and no big government to interfere in the market in Rwanda. But a lot of their people sure wish-there were.8 Friedman is thrashing a straw man. Economic liberals"free-market ideologues" or "market fundamentalists" as they are called by those who disagree with them on any particular pointare hostile only to the collectivist hypertrophy of government, not government itself. As I addressed in Chapter 3, economic liberals recognize that strong and effective government is essential to the vitality and proper functioning of markets. Specifically, the ongoing development of a healthy market order entails the articulation of an increasingly complex division of laborone that unites large numbers of people, the vast majority of whom don't know each other and, indeed, are only dimly aware of each other, in cooperative projects that may take many years to bear fruit. That level of social cooperation is possible only within a
framework of clear and reliable rules for acquiring, holding, and transferring property. The great public good of market competition depends in turn upon the public good of a well-constructed legal infrastructurewhose
construction and maintenance require the agencies of government. But due in no small part to the Industrial Counterrevolution, most people in the world live under governments that fail to provide the necessary legal infrastructure. The persistent
influence of the dead hand can thus be seen in the fact that contemporary governments are doing too little as well as too much. The present-day program of economic liberalism, especially in developing and transition economies, calls for
greater government activism in addition to greater restraint. The existence of large informal sectors is only one symptom of a broader institutional failure. It is not just that legal systems exclude large areas of economic life; they also fail to serve well those areas they do cover. The formal sectors of poorer countries are plagued by inadequate and unreliable legal infrastructure. Unclear or conflicting definitions of rights, unreasonable costs and delays in obtaining legal relief, inadequate enforcement of legal rulings, and endemic corruption all hamper and distort economic development.
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Just as business enterprises operate within the larger economic order of the market, so the market system itself is situated within a larger political order. It is a crude mistake to equate free markets with the mere absence of government. On the contrary, markets only function properly by virtue of institutions created and maintained by government. Most fundamentally, markets rely on the elaboration and enforcement of basic property and contract rights. When property titles are insecure, and contracts are not reliably enforceable, the large-scale, long-term investments on which so much of wealth creation in modern society depends are discouraged and underdeveloped. Also, specialized rules for sophisticated commercial dealings must be structured properly if the wealth-creating power of competition is to fulfill its potential. Poorly designed rules on such matters as intellectual property, corporate governance, and bankruptcy can exert a significant drag on market performance. A sound legal framework for the market order includes a considerable amount of regulatory activity typically associated with "activist" government. Thus, safeguarding persons and property from harm is sometimes better accomplished by preventive health and safety regulation than by waiting for harm to occur and then assigning liability. Also, in areas where property rights are inherently difficult to define clearly (for example, with respect to. air quality), enforcement of standards by regulatory agencies can be the best or even the only practicable approach. In the commercial sphere, requirements to disclose financial information can prevent fraud and boost investor confidence. And restrictions on collusion and monopoly can help to preserve competitive vitality. The smooth functioning of the competitive market system thus requires the vigorous exercise of government powers. But securing this great public good does not necessarily exhaust the efforts of government in a liberal polity. Government may promote other public goods as well'for example, care for the needy, education, conservation of the natural and cultural heritage, promotion of scientific research, and the construction of "safety nets" to ease dislocations caused by economic fluctuations and structural change. In a free society, a vibrant independent sectorneither profit-oriented nor governmentalwill arise to provide these and other public goods. But because the independent sector provides social benefits regardless of the beneficiaries' ability or willingness to pay for them, it can encounter significant free-rider problems. Accordingly, it is possible for government, through its taxing and regulatory powers, to support and supplement private efforts and thereby ensure that public goods are provided more comprehensively and systematically
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3. The alternative does not solve their impact: a completely free market does not create freedom Conrad Waligorski, [Professor of Political Science at University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. 1990 The Political Theory of Conservative
Economists Pg. 64] <Power is not the only problem. Liberal freedom is more than not being coerced, and government is not the only danger to freedom. Liberal economists agree with Knight and Mill that conditions affect both freedom and its effective exercise. Unlike the conservatives, unintended consequences are not the equivalent of natural forces, nor is the market the result of the same kind of evolutionary processes that produced language or common law. The unregulated market does not guarantee freedom because freedom includes some ability to act, meaning that unintended consequences of market behavior can be as much of a limitation on freedom as are monopoly and intentional obstructions. For the liberals, freedom can be compromised even if there are no specific or identifiable actors or beneficiaries. Lack of material resources and inability to act are obstructions to freedom, therefore, maximization of freedom, consistent with other values, requires removal of as many obstacles for as many people as possible. Compulsion, vulnerability, discrimination, severely restricted opportunities, large inequalities, and what Galbraith called the "nerve-wracking problem of insecurity"63 are all relevant to freedom.>
4. The negatives argument is out of context: All of their evidence is Waligorskis unbiased examination of what Hayek, Buchanan and Freidman believed were true. However, Waligorskis personal opinion was that government intervention is actually necessary to relieve the social inequalities they claim free market solves for. Therefore, prefer Waligorskis opinion over his synopsis of other peoples views. 5. Alternative doesnt solve the affirmative a) alt doesnt solve for the harms identified by the 1ac, the free market that exists in the status quo has resulted in the current equalities which we are trying to solve for. b) extend our inherency cards, without making a structural change to our current economic system corruption will continue and will probably be exacerbated. Our reforms are the first step towards deregulation, a true free-market must be without biases. c) Conservative economic theory ignores the importance of social justice which justifies the plan.
Conrad Waligorski is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, 1990 [The Political Theory of Conservative Economists].
The deductive, definitional nature of conservative theory is illustrated by its claims about the market and justice. It exonerates the economy from responsibility for such unfortunate circumstances as low wages, poverty, unemployment, and related problems. Given the idealized, always competitive market, each party benefits, or thinks it benefits, or else neither would enter into ah exchange; therefore, it does not matter if benefits from a voluntary exchange are unequal. Thus the market epitomizes justice. Market distribution becomes an ethical precept and a statement of what people deserve. As a natural system, a scientific principle, and an ethical norm, the market cannot be questioned. Non-market standards endanger self-interest-driven free exchange, making nonmarket standards inapplicable to economic relations. At the same time, because the market-generated concept of justice
reflects fundamental human nature, it legitimately judges politics and government. The Catholic bishops, some traditional conservatives, and many liberals argue instead for social justice. Social justice implies an exogenous distributive
standard by which to judge both the procedures and results of economic exchange. Liberal economists assert that it is possible and necessary to combine efficiency and non-market equity concerns. The idea of social justice
permeated Keynes's work. He was deeply concerned with the economic causes of political and social upheaval and believed that stability required creation of a widespread sense of social justice within which people would be assured of jobs and minimum standards. A notion of social justice is required to maintain free institutions and the broadly based spending
power, cooperation, and sense of fairness necessary for economic efficiencyas well as to alleviate the destructive impact of single-minded pursuit of self-interest.26
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6. Unsustainability: Market equilibrium is a myth- unfettered capitalism produces misery and is unsustainableintervention is inevitable
Lindsay, Brink, CATOs vice president of research, 2002 [Against The Dead Hand: The uncertain Struggle For Global Capitalism, Page 191] Over the past three chapters I have endeavored to show that the supposedly worldwide ascendancy of market forces, claimed with equal vigor by both friends and foes of globalization, is nothing more than wild hyperbole. State-owned enterprises, the classic instrumentalities of the command economy, loom large in the economic lives of most of the world's population. Price controls are rampant in dozens of countries. Around the planet, particular sectorsenergy, transportation, agriculture, and telecommunicationsbear the heavy imprint of centralization and monopoly. Trade barriers seriously impede the flow of goods in developing countries and in important sectors of the advanced nations. At the heart of economic life, top-down controls and an absence of well-developed markets hideously distort the core function of capital allocation in most of the world. And, outside a relatively few rich countries, the basic underpinnings of the market economy-the legal infrastructure of property and contract rulesare pitifully underdeveloped after decades of malign neglect. This gloomy picture, though
accurate so far as it goes, is nonetheless incomplete. While the dead hand of collectivism remains a major force in economic affairs, the past couple of decades have witnessed dramatic changes. The Soviet Empire has fallen and its economic system has been wiped irretrievably from the face of the earth. China is now communist in name only. India, which for decades followed Soviet-style central planning, has turned to the path of liberal reform. The populist corporatism of Latin America was dealt a crashing blow by the debt crises of the 1980s. Privatization has swept the mixed economies of Western Europe. And economic deregulation in the United States has blown open a host of key industries that were previously encased in restrictive controls. What then is a fair characterization of the world's present situation? Not the triumph of markets, to be sure, but it is fair to say that we are experiencing the collapse of collectivismthe demise of the Industrial Counterrevolution. On the wreckage of this collapse we may one day succeed in building a truly liberal international economic order. That happy outcome is imaginable today in a way that it most assuredly was not just a few years ago. But imagining and achieving are two different things, and the latter remains on the distant horizon. The current situation then is at best a transitional phasea twilight era juxtaposed between the statist past and a liberal future. In this in-between time, elements of past and future jostle uneasily alongside each other. And thus far, coexistence has proved anything but peaceful. During the past several years the tensions between market and anti-market forces have erupted repeatedly in spectacular upheavals in what had been called, somewhat precipitously in some cases, "emerging markets." These economic temblorsfirst in Mexico in December 1994, followed by East Asia over the course of 199798, and then in Russia in August 1998 produced shock waves that were felt around the world. Other, lesser disturbances have occurred more recently in Brazil, Ecuador, Argentina, and Turkey, and future shakeups, great and small, are virtually a certainty. The critics of globalization have seized upon these episodes as proof of the perils of unregulated markets. Financier George Soros makes that case in The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Financial markets are
inherently unstable and there are social needs that cannot be met by giving market forces free rein. Unfortunately these defects are not recognized. Instead there is a widespread belief that markets are selfcorrecting and a global economy can flourish without any need for a global society. This idea was called laissez faire in the nineteenth century but I have found a better name for it: market fundamentalism. The ideology of market fundamentalism' is profoundly and irredeemably flawed. To put the matter simply, market forces, if they are given complete authority even in the purely economic and financial arenas, produce chaos and could ultimately lead to the downfall of the global capitalist system.1 Anthony Giddens, director of the London School of Economics
arid widely acclaimed guru of the "third way" movement in Great Britain and elsewhere, echoes Soros' chargeto the point of using the same locution to ' disparage free markets. "Market fundamentalism has been forced into retreat in domestic politics because of its limited and contradictory nature," he writes. "Yet it still continues to reign at a global level, in spite of the fact that the same problems appear there as more locally." The results of this state of affairs, he contends, can be seen in the recent financial turmoil in Mexico and East Asia: "Crises, erratic
fluctuations, the sudden rush of capital into and out of particular countries and regionsthese are not marginal but core features of untamed markets."2 Such thinking has seeped deeply into the conventional wisdom. Consider, for example, a November 2000 cover story in Business Week entitled "Global Capitalism: Can it be made to work better?" "The downside of global capitalism," its authors state, "is the disruption of whole societies, from financial meltdowns to practices by multinationals that would never be tolerated in the West. . . . [T]he global economy is pretty much still in the robber-baronage."3
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7. Academic Bankruptcy: The concept of human nature underlying the objectivists claim is non sensical. They based their argument on circular, meritless logic.
Conrad Waligorski is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, 1990 [The Political Theory of Conservative Economists]. Conservative economists claim that individuals bear the consequences and rewards of their actions-as in Malthus's classic argument, even in an over-populated society, "[h]e who performs his duty faithfully will reap the full fruits of it"39-but that they have no power to constructively change the system. The individual may be the focus of analysis, but individualism, like freedom, equality, democracy, and justice, is procedural only. PmcedumlindMttaMsm is not concerned with success or outcomes, only with the existence of procedures that allow individuals to attempt to compete. It is not a substantive concept and has nothing to do with self-development, self-expression, successful achievement of goals, or the valuing of individual differences, all of which open the possibility of legitimate public intervention to help people achieve their goals. As such, it is a system-mamteining concept, because individual fate does not matter as long as the system that allows for interaction is maintained.40 Individualism means behavior in the pursuit of self-interest that is never outside the rules of the market. It is satisfied by the assumption that people choose and act based on their own purposes and by allowing them to seek their interests in the free market. Individual valuation is acceptable only if expressed in conformity with the market. Otherwise, pursuit of individual self-interest is destructive and must be limited by constitutional restraints. This individualism is neither the result of empirical analysis nor a proposition offered for testing, but is the irreducible starting point for analysis. The conservatives may be correct about self-interest and individualism, but they are excruciatingly vague about the content and meaning of self-interest. Self-interest is the conservatives' Ptolemaic earth: Everything circles around it and all counter evidence is made to fit within the system. The concept cannot be refuted or falsified. If self-interest means measurable financial interest, then the self-interest axiom is clearly false,41 since that ignores other things of value as well as role playing, conditioned responses, noninstrumental behavior, and accepting group norms. If it refers to esteem, reputation, or psychic income, then we enter realms of higher metaphysics, where every action is of necessity self-interested because that is how conservative economists have defined human nature. Humans act only in self-interest; therefore whatever a person does, even if it costs a great deal of money, peace of mind, or status, is in his or her self-interest. In this context, only the individual is admitted as judge. By studiously avoiding specification of the meaning of self-interest, conservatives can employ the concept to defend any policy or outcome, such as inequality, which results from market relations, and to attack any welfare, tax, or redistribution policy. Such policies can serve no public interest but instead cloak the self-interest of tax eaterswelfare recipients, majorities, and bureaucrats.
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health and sanitation programs, and income support, may expand freedom91 and the range and number of choices, making people more satisfied with the economic and political system. These are not
important considerations to the conservatives. Whether freedom actually exists or not is secondary to maintaining the necessary condition for freedom-limitation of government coercion.
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