The Love of Power vs. The Power of Love

Larry Reed, president of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Midland, MI had a fantastic op-ed published in the Christian Science Monitor entitled "The Love of Power vs. The Power of Love". It is a wonderful introduction to the freedom philosophy and the principles supported on this blog.

This quote from the article articulates the meaning of free-exchange vs. coercion and control especially well:

“When real love is the motivator, people deal with each other peacefully. We use force only in self-defense. We respect one another's rights and differences. Tolerance and cooperation govern our interactions.

“Suppose we want to influence or change the behavior of another adult, or want to give him something we think he should have. This person has done us no harm and is in full command of his faculties. Love requires that we reason with him, entice him with an attractive offer, or otherwise engage him on a totally voluntary basis. He is free to accept or reject our overtures. If we don't get our way, we don't hire somebody to use force against him. ‘Live and let live,’ as Americans used to say with more frequency than they do today.”

Follow the link below to read the whole article:

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0828/p09s01-coop.html?

Rules of the Game

Last Tuesday I attended a Lansing “Lugnuts” baseball game with Michigan Students for a Free Economy. We met to honor Milton Friedman’s life work and free market ideas on what would have been his 95th birthday. The theme of the event was competition and how it brings about improvements in both markets and baseball.

Market friendly economists often stress the role competition plays in giving people the incentives to work harder and the inspiration to do better. Too often, however, they neglect the role competition plays in informing the participants about their performance and in discovering who, which teams, or which methods are the best.

The purpose of competition in baseball, for instance, is not merely to incentivize the players to try to be better at the game. Rather, and more fundamentally, we play or watch competitive-baseball in order to see who will win. If we knew who would win before a game and how they would do it, there would be no point to the game and it would't be worth watching. This shows that part of the purpose is discovering what will happen play by play.

Competition is a process of discovery, experimentation and imitation. Different teams try out their own ideas about the best strategies and techniques. The most successful ones will tend to out-perform others, forcing the competition to imitate the successful strategies or discover new innovations which will put them in the lead and raise the bar again.

Interestingly, it was this very process of experimentation and imitation that resulted in the desegregation of baseball and other professional sports in America. When the Brooklyn Dodgers came up with the “innovation” of hiring Jackie Robinson, the first black player in the major leagues, they were breaking with tradition. But Jackie Robinson’s talent raised the bar of competition. It became clear that those who were willing to sign the best players around, regardless of race, would have the competitive edge. Teams had to make the choice between discriminating based on skin color on the one hand and winning on the other. Slowly but surely, other teams started to sign talented black players. Competition tends to select for the best ideas and people regardless of entrenched interests and prejudices.





Analogously, economic competition among certain groups discovers who can do the job best when it counts. Competitors continue to find ways of raising the bar for their competition who must then adapt to meet it or make way for someone else. Just look at the statistics of professional athletes now compared to 100 years ago. The same improvements of quality (and prices) occur over time in a free, competitive industry.

Some might argue that such experimentation could theoretically be carried out within a single “cooperative” body, an all encompassing mega-team, without actual rivalry and the drive and incentive to win. But it is only experimentation checked by the actual striving efforts between rival parties that delivers the results. For instance, would the various teams in the National League have admitted black players as early as they did had there not been a real incentive to compete against one another and win?

But even though players on opposing teams compete against one another, it is an interesting paradigm shift to realize that they are also cooperating with one another. They are implicitly agreeing to play by the same rules—together. Such cooperation is often taken for granted. Although players may try to argue with umpires, they eventually agree to abide by their calls. When they are judged to be “out,” they do not obstinately stay on the base, unwilling to move, or break out into a brawl. And if they ever do, that’s the point at which the baseball-competition has broken down.

Underlying peaceful competition is peaceful cooperation.

The cooperation at a baseball game is not confined to players on the field. In fact, everyone in the stadium is cooperating in order to come together to have a peaceful baseball experience. When you’re there, look down at all of the people sitting peacefully together. It’s orderly, even if it’s a messy order. They are not orderly because the seats are all set in rows, but because all the members of the audience are tacitly agreeing to abide by rules, too. It is awe inspiring to try to think of all the rules that they must follow for the event to be as orderly and coordinated as it is. Have you ever watched a hotdog being passed down a row of strangers to get from the vendor in the aisle to the guy that just bought it? The cooperation is amazing. Like the market, a baseball game is a layer cake of competition and cooperation.

Likewise, underlying the competition in society is a more fundamental system of cooperation without which the competition could not function. Economic competition, within the rules of respect for private property and individual choice, is actually a process of peaceful cooperation among the members of society that facilitates discovery about how they can best provide for one anther's needs through the market.

Freedom's Sound

In this Mackinac Center interview, Cuban expatriate and jazz musician Arturo Sandoval discusses his views on artistic expression, censorship, and freedom in Cuba and America:

http://www.mackinac.org/media/audio/2007/sandoval.mp3

The interview was conducted and produced by Bruce Edward Walker of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Midland, Michigan. It was published on the Mackinac Center website www.mackinac.org on June 29th entitled "Sounding Off".

Nobody Knows Who Can Cook

"Using hindsight, we discover that the individuals who have been leaders came from strange and odd beginnings. No one of them could have been predicted ahead of time." — Leonard E. Read.

"Ratatouille," the new animated film by Disney/Pixar, is remarkably favorable to the free-market perspective. It praises human creativity, entrepreneurial spirit and property rights while taking a few well-aimed shots at welfare and government health inspectors. More than this, "Ratatouille" puts forth the idea that people must have the humility to learn from unexpected sources.

Unlike most films in which the hero is a talking animal, "Ratatouille" has a very strong pro-human and pro-entrepreneurial message. In this instance, the animal is Remy, a rat who becomes a great chef in Paris.

Early in the film, Remy is displaced from the French countryside to the big city. This would usually serve as the pretext for the screenwriters to make underhanded quips about the horrors of free enterprise and how urban life is destroying the environment. But Remy is actually a great admirer of the city and what it represents. He is sick and tired of being a rat, by which he means a freeloader, thieving or digging through garbage for food. He doesn’t want to live off the leftovers of others’ creativity. Instead, he longs to be more like humans, who "don’t just survive," but "discover and create." He often stops and stands in awe of the Parisian cityscape. He understands it is a living symbol of human creativity and achievement.

Remy’s admiration for the city and his surroundings inspires the viewer to be in awe of human creativity as well. The film is visually stunning. From the brass rails to the white soufflé bowls, everything in the movie is beautiful — each the product of thousands of acts of human creativity. While the action is going on, however, it is often too easy to take the spectacular surroundings for granted. It is worth taking the advice of Remy’s spirit guide, Gusteau: "Excellence is all around. You need only be aware to stop and savor it!"

Gusteau is a recently departed chef whose book and motto "Anyone Can Cook" is Remy’s inspiration. Throughout the movie, Gusteau appears as Remy’s invisible companion and conscience, encouraging Remy to take the risks necessary to be a successful creator and entrepreneur. In several instances, Gusteau helps Remy stand firm where others would turn tail and run. In fact, the whole story revolves around the main characters’ attempts to make their restaurant a successful enterprise and express their personal talents through the running of their business.

The movie’s high energy chase scene revolves around the issue of property rights. Remy discovers that the head chef and arch villain Skinner has been hiding evidence that the garbage boy, Luigi, is actually the rightful owner of the restaurant. Remy takes the evidence to give to Luigi, but Skinner doesn’t give up without a chase. Skinner is not a villain because he is a "ruthless entrepreneur," as some might believe, but because he is an outright thief.

Finally, although Remy’s own work and creative abilities quickly enable him to live without freeloading, he remains tempted to steal food from the kitchen to feed his comrade rats higher quality fare than they’re used to. As he gives out free goods at other people’s expense, the welfare rolls predictably grow longer as more rats come to take advantage of his false philanthropy. In the end, however, the success of Remy’s enterprise — and his integrity — leads to the improved lot of his entire family by successfully serving others, not by stealing from them.

All these elements would do supporters of freedom proud. There is another theme, however, that will not strike most as particularly "libertarian," but which is the most libertarian element of the movie. This is the theme of learning from unexpected sources.

Gusteau’s motto, "Anyone can cook," is explored throughout the film and is finally illuminated by a soliloquy at the end of the movie. It is discovered that the motto does not mean "everyone can be a great cook, but that a great cook can come from anywhere." The stress is placed on the word "anyone," which is to say, we don’t know who it will be. It could be anyone. Of course, in the movie this is illustrated by a rat who turns out to be a great cook.

Gusteau’s motto is essentially F.A. Hayek’s argument for individual freedom and capitalism. Hayek argued that society cannot be centrally planned because planners could not possibly learn all the relevant information needed to direct and coordinate peoples' actions successfully.

Hayek’s argument for freedom rests on the idea that a free society is the one that maximizes learning from unexpected sources. He explained that "nobody can know who knows best and that the only way by which we can find out is through a social process in which everybody is allowed to try and see what he can do."

A central agency could never know or come to know everything that individuals know about their own situations or capacities. Take Albert Einstein for example. He produced two of the most important papers in physics ever written when he was working in a patent office! Imagine being a director of the central planning agency in 1904: Could you ever have guessed to look among the clerks in a particular patent office to find the individual who would revolutionize our knowledge of time and space?

(You might argue that you could have found Einstein by looking at who did best in school. But Einstein was not a good student and he was terrible at math. No one would ever have known what Einstein had to offer if he hadn’t been allowed to try in the context of free institutions.)

In a society of free enterprise, in which everyone is free to try to see what he or she can do, the forces of competition tend to find out who can do what the best. Remy the cook, just like Einstein, is an utterly unexpected source of knowledge. When he is free to compete and offer his services to others, the world can discover his capabilities and talent.

On paper, the story of a rat who is a great cook may seem to take this principle to absurd levels, but its unbelievable aspects dissolve in celluloid and the principle is brought to life by the suspension of disbelief. In fact, the development of the characters, though in some respects a little flat, is in other respects strikingly touching.

Finally, Hayek’s principle that no one of us knows completely what is known to others or what capacities they possess (and thus that none of us “is qualified to pass final judgment on the capacities which another possesses or is to be able to exercise”) implies that we must be humble in our dealings with all people. We never know what potential each person has to revolutionize the world for the better and therefore we must be respectful and loving to all individuals, even those who seem antagonistic or egotistical.

The idea that meeting antagonism with humility can unleash hidden potential is movingly illustrated in the film when one character with a very large ego is met with a simple gesture of humility.

The freedom philosophy is a philosophy of humility that inspires respect for each individual because it reminds us that we never know what we have to learn from others, and because we never know who has the capacity to be a great advocate or even a great leader of our cause. Even the name of the movie, taken from a humble peasant’s dish, represents humility.

"Ratatouille" successfully reproduces the inspiring message of the power of humility that lies at the heart of the libertarian tradition.

(note: this post was adapted from a review published on the website of the Mackinac Center for Public Polity in Midland, MI mackinac.org 20/7/07)