Freedom in One Lesson

76.

Know-It-All-ness

When people hold differing positions on issues, they should debate using logic and evidence. But many people who attack defenders of liberty try to dismiss their libertarian challenges. They often do so by characterizing libertarians as wild-eyed, antigovernment extremists, whose biases supposedly put them so far from mainstream American life that their arguments can be ignored because they reflect animus rather than reasoned belief.

Leonard Read certainly fits the libertarian mold, but he rebuts the claim that libertarian positions represent antigovernment bias. He makes the point clearly in “The Enemy: A Psychosis,” from his 1965 book The Free Market and Its Enemy (Read 1965b). We would benefit from Read’s insightful distinction between government, which has a valid purpose in furthering liberty, and out-of-bounds government, which has been taken over by mistaken know-it-alls.

The achievements of this free market are arrogated to an “I” in dangerous proportions . . . a false and an unwarranted egotism. It is an estimation of self so remote from reality that it must be described as a psychosis. . . .

The real enemy of the free market is this very know-it-all-ness!

Contrary to what many antisocialists claim, the enemy of the free market is not the state, that is, if “state” be used interchangeably with government. This formal agency of society, when organized to keep the peace, to invoke a common justice under law, and to inhibit and penalize fraud, violence, misrepresentation, and predation is a necessary and soundly principled ally of the free market. . . .

To settle and exclusively dwell on overextended government as the enemy is to let the real culprit go unnoticed. . . . We blame distorted government while giving no attention to the psychosis which is responsible for the distortion. . . .

. . . The real foe is the ignorance of being ignorant . . . know-it-alls . . . because they are authoritarian in spirit. . . .

. . . Ignorant of their ignorance, it is their ignorance which they must inflict on the rest of us if they can find the means to do so. But there is no way for them to realize their ambition without employing compulsion. The know-it-alls, by themselves, do not possess enough compulsive force to inflict their ignorance on the rest of us. What to do? They seek and often obtain positions in society’s agency of organized force: government. . . .

Government, per se, is not the enemy of the free market; it is not the root of the authoritarianism that is plaguing us. Rather, it is the psychotics—the little Napoleons—who have taken roost in government. . . . [Do not] downgrade society’s agency for keeping the peace because unpeaceful know-it-alls have taken over. Government, per se, is not our problem. Instead, we have a widespread, pervasive psychosis on our hands. . . .

This psychosis is a detachment from reality. It is a self-assessment that has no basis in fact. I refer to the victims as “little Napoleons” because . . . while he couldn’t run the affairs of his home life, he entertained no doubt about his ability to manage the world. . . .

Bear in mind that Hitler was only an indifferent paper hanger; he was competent at nothing except leading millions to believe that the world would be better off were he in charge. . . .

. . . Whenever any individual loses account of how little he knows and believes that his guidance might supplant that of the free market to universal advantage . . . he has contracted this mental illness. . . .

Now, constrict the market. Let persons who are ignorant of their own ignorance capture positions which put compulsive power at their disposal. Their, not “Thy,” will be done! These people will—and do on an enormous scale— coercively take the fruits of the labor of all citizens for the purpose of reconstructing the economy along lines which they (in their ignorance) think best. An economy founded on common consent—the free market—is abandoned in favor of an economy founded on unilateral consent— theirs! . . .

. . . No good end is possible which is achieved by a bad means, for the end pre-exists in the means. . . . Any means is bad that rests on coercion of peaceful persons. . . . If we grasp the point that these coercive projects stem from ignorance, we ought to suspect that they might be destructive.

What can be the remedy for this dangerous psychosis? . . . Awareness: the miraculousness of the free market, on the one hand, and what “I” don’t know, on the other. . . .

To possess and to exert coercive power over the creative actions of others makes overassessment of self inevitable. The very acceptance of this form of power cancels any ability to apprehend its evil. . . . Thus, not only is the offender corrupted but, as well, all of those beholden to his inflicted ignorance.

Leonard Read clearly demonstrates the fallacies underlying the almost uncountable ways government displaces liberty. The root of the problem is not government in general but know-it-alls who impose their misguided “wisdom” through the coercive apparatus of government. In contrast, the only weapon libertarians have is voluntary persuasion. Until the mindset that supports coercion can finally be dissolved, progress against government abuses of liberty will remain infrequent and tenuous.