Dr. Russell recently has re-joined the staff of the Foundation for Economic Education. This article first appeared in the Sunday edition of the Rockford (Illinois) Morning Star, January 7, 1962.
Freedom Disappears When Economy Is Controlled
In one of his fables Aesop said: “A horse and a stag, feeding together in a rich meadow, began fighting over which should have the best grass. The stag with his sharp horns got the better of the horse. So the horse asked the help of man. And man agreed, but suggested that his help might be more effective if he were permitted to ride the horse and guide him as he thought best. So the horse permitted man to put a saddle on his back and a bridle on his head. Thus they drove the stag from the meadow. But when the horse asked man to remove the bridle and saddle and set him free, man answered, ‘I never before knew what a useful drudge you are. And now that I have found what you are good for, you may rest assured that I will keep you to it.”
The Roman philosopher and poet, Horace, said of this fable: “This is the case of him, who, dreading poverty, parts with that invaluable jewel, Liberty; like a wretch as he is, he will be always subject to a tyrant of some sort or other, and be a slave forever; because his avaricious spirit knew not how to be contented with that moderate competency, which he might have possessed independent of all the world.”
Ever since man learned to write, one of his favorite subjects has been freedom and liberty. And almost always, it has been his own government that he most feared as the destroyer of his liberty. Further, various economic issues—primarily, the ownership of property and the control of one’s time and labor—have always been listed prominently among the measurements of liberty.
Justice Sutherland of our Supreme Court clearly saw this connection when he said, “The individual has three rights, equally sacred from arbitrary interference [from government]: the right to his life, the right to his liberty, the right to his property. These three rights are so bound together as to be essentially one right. To give a man his life, but to deny him his liberty, is to take from him all that makes his life worth living. To give him his liberty, but to take from him the property which is the fruit and badge of his liberty, is to still leave him a slave.”
Frederic Bastiat, the French political economist of the last century, phrased the same idea another way: “Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.”
A primary lesson of history is that liberty generally flourishes when goods are privately owned and distributed. I can find no example of real freedom for the people over a significant period of time when the means of production were mostly owned by the government, or by a restricted and self-perpetuating group who controlled the powers of government.
In addition, material prosperity for the people in general has surged forward whenever the production and distribution of goods and services have been determined by the automatic processes of competition in a free market. And prosperity has faltered (and often failed completely) whenever governmental controls over the economic activities of the people have grown onerous.
The particular form of government under which the people lived doesn’t appear to have made much difference, one way or the other. Liberty and prosperity have flourished under democracies—and have disappeared under democracies.
Liberty and prosperity have flourished under kings and emperors—and have disappeared under kings and emperors.
Over the long haul, the extent of liberty and prosperity has always hinged on the degree of private ownership and competition in a free market, and not on how many people voted or didn’t vote at a particular time.
As Aesop and Horace so clearly pointed out in their pungent comments on this subject, liberty is generally surrendered by the people themselves to their own government—in an effort to get more of the material things of life. It has never worked for long.
