I Chose Liberty - Ludwig von Mises Institute

266 I Chose Liberty: Autobiographies of Contemporary Libertarians
is a lot of trust in it. If people decided that there is something seriously wrong and panicked,
they would dump our dollars. That would give us a huge inflation and no matter how much
we taxed, we would never keep up with taking care of all of the people on welfare, Social
Security, Medicare and Medicaid and subsidies. There is no way that just printing money
would save us if the confidence in our dollar is lost. Now we are moving into a new era.
Our homeland has been attacked and that means that we are more vulnerable. If our dollar
gets attacked there will be major changes. I would not be surprised if those changes come
in the next ten years.
Individuals have to live within their means. You and I are limited by the market, and
limited much faster. For example, banks stop loaning to us or we lose our job or something
like that. The government doesn’t live within its means because it has two tools we don’t
have. They can print money and they have guns to collect money. If we did either of those
we would go to jail. The government gets away with running huge deficits for a lot longer
but the economic principles are the same. When it finally hurts and there is a correction
they cause a lot more harm. What you do to yourself is only hurting yourself. When governments
mess up and suddenly it doesn’t work, that is really dangerous. We have people
dependent and conditioned to think they are entitled to the benefits from the government.
When the government can no longer take care of everyone getting benefits, many are really
hurt. They will demand it and there will be riots, screaming and gnashing of teeth because
the politicians have not taken care of them.
In an effort to curb welfare dependence, they are trying to link more job placement
and marriage requirements to the welfare system. You might be able to find people here
and there that claim these measures are effective. I think they are dangerous because that
is social engineering by giving and withholding. You are saying, “Do as we say and then
we give it to you.” When our government comes in and has these conditions, they are
saying that welfare is there if you believe and act in a certain way. That is bad because it
shows that they can give or withhold depending on what you do. Even if I agree with the
ideas like employment and marriage, this is all based on the person doing what they tell
him to do. You should never be tempted because the conditions being set up sound so
nice. Sure it sounds good that people should go to church every week and maybe they
would be better people. It might later become some evil monster that might make the
conditions something that I really detest. That is even more mischief than before. Force
is not the way to change people.
Recently, I heard a government ad on radio. A young man comes in an office and wants
a job. They ask him if he has registered for the draft. When he says he has not, they close
the door on him. Next he goes to a bank to ask for a loan and they tell him, no, you haven’t
registered for the draft. This is the notion that if you do what we tell you, then you can get
ahead in the world and you will be taken care of. This reminded me of a story told to me
by someone who came from the Soviet system. I assumed that if you spoke out or had an
unapproved meeting that you immediately would go to prison. He said that is not the way
it worked. Certainly, at one time there were purges and prisons. In these later years everyone
was controlled through economics. If you challenged the government, they would not come