Making Economic Sense
Making
Economic Sense
by Murray Rothbard
(Contents
by Publication Date)
Chapter 17
Rioting For Rage, Fun, And Profit
The little word "but" is the great weasel word of
our time, enabling one to subscribe to
standard pieties while getting one's real
contrary message across. "Of course, I deplore
communism, but . . ."; "Of course, I approve of the free market, but .
. ." have been all too
familiar refrains in recent decades. The standard reaction of our
pundits, and across the entire
respectable political spectrum, to the great Los Angeles et al. riots
of April 29-May 2 went: "Of
course, I can't condone violence, but . . . ." In every instance, the
first clause is slid over rapidly
and ritualistically, to get to the real diametrically opposed message
after the "but" is disposed of.
The point, of course, is precisely to condone
violence, by rushing to get to the alleged
"real structural causes" of riots and the violence. While the "causes"
of any human action are
imprecise and complex, none of that is attended to, for everyone knows
what the "solution" is
supposed to be: to tax the American people, including the victims of
the massive looting,
burning, beating, killing
rampage, to "assuage the rage of the inner cities" by paying off
the rampaging "community" so handsomely that they supposedly won't do
it again.
Before we rush past the riots themselves, the whole
point of government, of an institution
with a monopoly, or preponderance, of violence, is to use it to defend
persons and property
against violent assault. That role is not as obvious as it may seem,
since the Los Angeles, state,
and federal forces most conspicuously did not
perform that function. Sending in police and
troops late and depriving them of bullets, cannot do the job.
There is only one way to fulfill the vital police
function, the only way that works: the
public announcement--backed by willingness to enforce it--made by the
late Mayor Richard
Daley in the Chicago riots of the 1960s--ordering the police to shoot
to kill any looters, rioters,
arsonists, or muggers they might find. That very announcement was
enough to induce the rioters
to pocket their "rage" and go back to their peaceful pursuits.
Who knows the hearts of men? Who knows all the
causes, the motivations, of action? But
one thing is clear: regardless of the murky "causes," would-be looters
and muggers would get
such a message loud and clear.
But the federal government, and most state and
local governments, decided to deal with
the great riots of Watts and other inner cities of the 1960s in a very
different way: the now
accepted practice of a massive buyout, a vast system of bribes in the
form of welfare, set-asides,
affirmative action, etc. The amount spent on such purposes by federal,
state, and local
governments since the Great Society of the 1960s totals the staggering
sum of $7 trillion.
And what is the result? The plight of the inner
cities is clearly worse than ever: more
welfare, more crime, more dysfunction, more fatherless families, fewer
kids being "educated" in
any sense, more despair and degradation. And now, bigger riots than
ever before. It should be
clear, in the starkest terms, that throwing taxpayer money and
privileges at the inner cities is
starkly coun terproductive. And yet: this is the only "solution" that
liberals can ever come up
with, and without any argument--as if this "solution" were
self-evident. How long is this
nonsense supposed to go on?
If that is the absurd liberal solution,
conservatives are not much better. Even liberals are
praising--always a bad sign--Jack Kemp for being a "good" conservative
who cares, and who is
coming up with innovative solutions trumpeted by Kemp himself and his
neoconservative
fuglemen. These are supposed to be "non-welfare" solutions, but welfare
is precisely what they
are: "public housing "owned" by tenants, but only under massive subsidy
and strict
regulation--with no diminution of the public housing stock; "enterprise
zones" which are not
free enterprise zones at all, but simply zones for more welfare subsidy
and privileges to the inner
city.
Various left-libertarians focus on removal of
minimum wage laws and licensing
requirements as the cure for the disaster of the inner cities. Well,
repeal of minimum wages
would certainly be helpful, but they are largely irrelevant to the
riots: after all, minimum wage
laws exist all across the country, in areas just as poor as the inner
cities--such as Appalachia.
How come there are no riots in Appalachia? The abolition of licensing
laws would also be
welcome, but just as irrelevant.
Some claim the underlying cause is racial
discrimination. And yet, the problem seems
worse, rather than better, after three decades of aggressive civil
rights measures. Moreover, the
Koreans are undoubtedly at least equal victims of racial
discrimination--and they also have the
problem of English being their second, and often a distant second,
language. So how is that
Korean-Americans never riot, indeed that they were the major single
group of victims of the Los
Angeles riot?
The Moynihan thesis of the cause of the problem is
closer to the mark: the famous insight
of three decades ago that the black family was increasingly fatherless,
and that therefore such
values as respect for person and property were in danger of
disappearing. Three decades later, the
black family is in far worse shape, and the white family isn't doing
too well, either. But even if
the Moynihan thesis is part of the problem, what can be done about it?
Families cannot be forced
together.
A greater part of the cause of the rot is the moral
and esthetic nihilism created by many
decades of cultural liberalism. But what can be done about it? Surely,
at best it would take many
decades to
take back the culture from liberalism and to instill sound doctrine, if
it can be
done at all. The rot cannot be stopped, or even slowed down, by such
excruciatingly slow and
problematic measures.
Before we can set about curing a disease we must
have some idea of what that disease is.
Are we really sure that "rage" is the operative problem? For the most
part, the young rioters
caught on television mostly did not look angry at all. One memorable
exchange took place as the
TV camera caught a happy, grinning young lad hauling off a TV set from
a looted store and
putting it in his car. Asked the dimwit reporter: "Why are you taking
that TV set?" The
memorable answer: "Because it's free!" It is no accident, too, that the
arsonists took care to loot
thoroughly the 10,000 stores before they burned them to the ground.
The crucial point is that whether the motivation or
the goal is rage, kicks, or loot, the
rioters, with a devotion to present gratification as against future
concerns, engaged in the joys of
beating, robbing, and burning, and of massive theft, because they saw
they could get away with
it. Devotion to the sanctity of person and property is not part of
their value-system. That's why,
in the short term, all we can do is shoot the looters and incarcerate
the rioters.
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