Professor Milton Friedman of the
What is the libertarian to think when Friedman says, for example, that the union shop is justified by the principle of freedom of contract? Or when he says that the automatic gold standard would, if re-adopted today, prove a great disappointment, if not wholly disastrous? Or that government, instead of giving aid directly to schools, should subsidize people for the education of their children by giving them vouchers cashable in any school they may happen to select? Or that we would have better medicine if there were no licensing of physicians in accordance with prescribed standards of training? Or that we might, to alleviate poverty, employ "negative" income taxation—i.e., make grants of money to individuals who earn less than a taxable amount of income in any given year? Or that government should expand the currency supply to take care of a stipulated annual rate of growth—say between 3 and 5 per cent?
Encountering propositions of this sort, the libertarian may well wonder just where Professor Friedman does stand in this business of relying on government to keep people from making mistakes. But Friedman is ready for those who might charge him with inconsistency or willingness to compromise.
The "Neighborhood Effect"
Professor Friedman bases his whole program on the ancient liberal (or modern conservative) principle that one man’s freedom to use his fist is necessarily limited by the proximity of another man’s chin. But in the Friedman interpretation of the principle, the neighbor’s "chin" must be made symbolically to stand for what Frederick Hayek has called the "neighborhood effect." It is an obviously unjustified "neighborhood effect" if you contaminate a downstream reservoir by pouring a poison into your own small upstream pond. But there are other ways of "poisoning" the neighborhood than by dumping one’s wastes in a place that hurts the property next door.
Thus "ignorance" can have a "neighborhood effect" by creating an unstable society. Simply to save the literate from the stupidities of the illiterate, Professor Friedman thinks the state is justified in requiring that everybody have a certain minimum of schooling. But his own principle of freedom requires that this schooling should be provided by institutions freely selected by the parents of tomorrow’s citizens. Hence Professor Friedman’s championship of his voucher system, which would allow the private school to compete with the public school on equal terms. It would, incidentally, let southerners make their own individual decisions on "integration."
Monetary Measures
Professor Friedman’s case for gearing the money supply to an agreed-upon rate of economic expansion follows from his concern with the "neighborhood effects" of depression. The gold standard, he thinks, is deficient because it soon becomes a myth in an economic society that relies primarily on credit and fiduciary money of one kind or another. One trouble with gold is that there isn’t enough of it to support a world system; if it works well for one country, it will, by that very token, work badly for another. Professor Friedman doesn’t even like a "gold-backed" currency, with "fractional reserves." He would let the price of gold be set in the open market, and let anybody own it. Meanwhile, he would have Congress legislate a rule instructing the Federal Reserve System to expand the currency at a specified monthly rate.
If such a system had been in operation in 1931 and 1932, so Professor Friedman thinks, the 1929 depression would have had a relatively short duration. Following Arthur Burns, he argues that the Federal Reserve, acting on the wrong principles, did little or nothing to provide a staggering banking system with needed liquidity. Indeed, the "Fed" proved to be a much less reliable bulwark than J. P. Morgan’s consortium of private bankers had been in the depression of the nineties or in the crisis of 1907.
Professor Friedman thinks his idea of alleviating poverty by distributing funds through "negative" income taxation would enable the government to do away with a whole batch of expensive welfare activities. The poor farmer, getting a quarterly grant whenever his estimated income fell below a taxable point, would not need crop controls or support prices for his wheat or peanuts. The 70-year-old who lacks a private pension would get his living allowance without having to depend on a costly and bureaucratic system of social security. And the worker, guaranteed a certain amount of income through the workings of "negative" taxation, would not feel the need of minimum wage laws or of special pro-union legislation.
The libertarian, faced with coming to a decision on the Friedman program, must admit that it would have astounding virtues. It would automatically result in the closing of scores of
Whose Neighborhood?
The only trouble with the whole tissue of Friedman propositions is that it depends on establishing a prior consensus. But with every pressure group in the nation fighting to get it’s own particular definition of "neighborhood effects" accepted, where would it all end? Many farmers think the "neighborhood effects" of below-parity wheat prices are pernicious. Egalitarians think the presence of rich people spoils the tone of society—which is another way of implying that the "neighborhood effects" of flat-rate taxation of incomes is bad. Professor Friedman no doubt thinks it monstrous that the federal government uses the "general welfare" clause of the Constitution to justify many of the things it now does. But would it improve matters if the power to levy taxes to overcome bad "neighborhood effects" were to be substituted for the power to tax for the general welfare?
I put this in the form of a question, for I myself accept the proposition that the freedom of my fist is limited by the proximity of the other man’s chin. Dazzled by Friedman, I am not at all certain at the moment where "chin" ceases to be a negotiable symbol for "neighborhood." Tomorrow, when the mists produced by the charming Friedman rhetoric have cleared from my brain, I will probably have things under control. But for the moment I have been staggered by the most provocative book on the current intellectual horizon. Read it and be all shook up.
Man’s Presumptuous Brain by A. T. W. Simeons, M.D. (New York: Dutton, 1961, $5.75 cloth, $1.45 paper)
Reviewed by Edmund A. Opitz
This brilliant essay in the field of psychosomatic medicine has a misleading title. It is the frontal lobe of the brain, the cortex, whose "presumption"—the author, a medical specialist, argues—is at the root of many mental as well as physical disorders in modern man. As evolutionary time goes, this part of the brain is new; as a recent arrival, it tends to scorn its primitive cousin, the diencephalon—the most important part of the brain stem. The cortex can use the body to frame a syllogism, work out a philosophical system, or invent the wheel; but it cannot grow a fingernail, repair a wound, or digest a fragment of bread. Only the body under diencephalic control can do such things. These two portions of the brain got along together pretty well until inventive man multiplied his artifacts to the point where one day he discovered he was civilized.
Civilization, this "new artificial environment which man began to build for himself at the dawn of culture, made many of his animal reflexes useless." The structures of civilization are largely a projection of the cortex, but they are out of phase with older portions of the brain. Civilized man ceased to be on good terms with his body, and the diencephalon takes out its frustrations in the form of harmful physiological activities. Result? Ulcers, high blood pressure, obesity, one form of diabetes, rheumatism, and other diseases.
This book makes a valuable contribution toward self-understanding, but its thesis also speaks to us on political philosophy. We have given political power to the Man with The Plan, and he is responsible for much of the ruin wrought upon the modern world. His rationalistic schemes and blueprints for running society from the top down are products of the presumptuous cortex which perforce ignores the deliverances of the other parts of the brain. There’d be personal harmony if we were on better terms with the diencephalon, and this would be reflected in a social order which takes all facets of human nature into account.
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Ideas on
Who Will Refuse?
We need new recognition of the power which lies within us. We need to know that the life of God is within us in far greater measure than we now believe. We turn despairingly to the state, which is the vainest of hopes, because we do not believe enough in either God or man. Let us lift up our hearts. For which one of us is it that will refuse his help in a case of real human need? You? I? Or is the finger to be pointed again at that nebulous scapegoat "someone else"?
I write as a minister, and I want to attest that through an experience of thirty years I have never seen a church member fail to respond to an authentic case of human need. And from those who could and did help when I have described such a case, I have invariably received expressions of gratitude that the opportunity was presented.
It is that faith which we need restored today.
RUSSELL J. CLINCHY, Charity: Biblical and Political