I Chose Liberty - Ludwig von Mises Institute

318 I Chose Liberty: Autobiographies of Contemporary Libertarians
tempted to conceive themselves as responsible for taking care of everyone in all walks of
life—the all-caring state—whereas their only legitimate purpose is to allow human lives
be lived by free people, themselves deciding what they should do with them and with their
own money.
I do not argue that there is no need for government. I do argue that, in the name of
high purpose, government as it actually functions can and often does undermine the actual
lives and wealth of its people. The government is not itself the common good, it is but a
means by which that good can be achieved by everyone with his own talents and wealth.
Both capitalism and socialism are rooted in the elimination of poverty. Capitalism does so
by making everyone richer, albeit at differing rates. Hence the problem of capitalism is
mainly envy, that is, chagrin that others legitimately have what we do not. Socialism begins
in equality. Hence it is content if everyone is poorer if they are equally poor. The problem
of socialism is generally greed, the wanting of what is unavailable.
Socialism suggests that the ideal answer to the human problem is that no one owns
anything. If this non-ownership were to be the case, many of the higher virtues could not
be practiced at all; e.g., charity. Nor could most people be adequately taken care of by their
own labors. In an important sense, socialism undermines any direct relationship that one
person can have with another as it implies that everything is due to everyone whether he
owns or does anything or not.
All motives of charity and generosity are thus communalized, reduced to distributive,
not commutative, justice—or better, equality is seen as the only object of distributive justice.
And if this commonality of property is in effect, then the very notion of “giving” something
to someone is subverted. The possibility of widespread individual virtue acquired in the
exercise of one’s own responsibilities over one’s own property is taken away from the majority
of the people.
Now, there are religious and philosophical origins to the idea that the less property we
have the better. These are not unworthy ideas. The rich young man in the Gospels was told
to sell what he had and give it to the poor. He was not told to open a business to put the
local unemployed to work. Greek philosophers sought to convince us that their personal
poverty was chosen, that they did not want to be distracted by material goods. They rightly
saw how riches could interfere with their pursuit of the higher things.
Both the Old and New Testaments manifest a special concern for the poor, who, we
are assured, will always be with us, but whose needs are especially to be looked after. This
poverty seems to be still rather widespread, even though there are economists who maintain
that the problem of poverty is, in principle, solved, as I think it is. This conclusion suggests
that the problem of poverty may not, at bottom, be a wholly economic one. If our neighbor
has more than we do, we can be relatively well-off and still feel comparatively poor, still
feel envious, even though our neighbor’s wealth is come by legitimately and we are by no
means in a dire condition, certainly not as a result of his efforts; indeed, we may well be
bettered by them.
This observation leads to the issue of relative wealth, of how little is “enough” or of
how much is “too” much? Most people, following Aristotle, recognize that we generally
need a certain amount of property or wealth to practice minimal virtue. Many also