Freedom in One Lesson

85.

Obeying Read’s Law

Leonard Read has definite ideas about the legitimate role of laws—that they should do no more than restrain harm to individuals and their rights because going further would violate the rights of some citizens. In “Read’s Law” (Read 1969c), an article from the October 1969 issue of The Freeman, he creates an eponymous law about fidelity to that principle.

It is becoming more and more fashionable for probers into political economy to concoct a “law” and tack their name onto it. Doubtless, this fad stems from such famous instances as Gresham’s Law: “Bad money drives out good money.” Or, Say’s Law of Markets: “Production generates its own purchasing power.”

This tendency among our contemporaries is a humorous way of presenting a serious idea. . . .

[One of ] the best known . . . is Parkinson’s Law: “Expenses rise to meet income.”

A book entitled The Peter Principle currently heads the bestseller list: “In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.”

Brozen’s Law reads: “Most obviously true economic policy propositions are false.”

Rogge’s Rule tickles my fancy: “ Whenever the government passes a law for your protection, take to the hills— because you are about to be had!”

The subject here, however, is Read’s Law: “No politician can fly higher in office than he flew while getting there.”

. . . The height to which I aspire is freedom; that is, no restraint against any creative action. In other words, freedom is my idea of high; socialism, statism—call it what you will—is my idea of low.

. . . My “law” [could] be stated something like this: “No politician, after getting into office, can remove any more restraints against freedom than he promised to remove in his campaign speeches.”

. . . Over the years, I have known numerous aspirants for high office who, in private, endorse the freedom philosophy all the way. . . . Later, as I hear or read his campaign speeches, I find nary a word about the socialism he intends to repeal if elected. . . . Then, friends of mine hopefully ask “ What achievements for freedom are you looking forward to from so-and-so?” I respond by repeating Read’s Law. . . . My questioners chuckle, reflect on the campaign speeches, and draw their own conclusions. . . .

Bear in mind that my claim has to do only with an inability to fly higher, not lower. An officeholder’s “ceiling” is set by his campaign speeches; he can descend to any level. . . .

Let me explain how I discovered Read’s Law. The campaign manager of a candidate was my close personal friend. Because his man’s speeches were socialistic, I was critical. “ Why, he believes the same as you and I do,” came the reply. “He has to say what he’s saying to get elected. Once in office, he will practice what we believe.” The contention was that his candidate would fly higher in office than he flew while getting there. But no one was able to prove that untenable thesis. . . .

This experience led me to three important conclusions. The first is that no officeholder can ever overthrow any socialistic practice unless there is an enormous consensus that it be done away with; otherwise, the practice is too tightly woven into the social fabric to be cast out by some political trick. Ridding our society of TVA or Social Security, for instance, is utterly impossible unless there be a general agreement for repeal. The candidates who never mention repeal in their campaign speeches make no contribution whatsoever to a new consensus. So, they have mustered no support for it, whatever their private views may be. . . . They are impotent. On the other hand, if they had been elected because of their advocacy of repeals, they would then have a popular mandate to so perform.

Second, the candidates who pretend privately to believe in freedom principles and who run for office on other than a clear-cut freedom platform, do not understand these principles. . . . The reason that so many of us are deceived in our private talks with these men is that we cannot see into their minds as to whether or not they really apprehend the ideas behind their words. We can only know for sure what they believe when we see them in action—in their campaigns. Candidates who thoroughly apprehend freedom principles would not—indeed, could not—do other than uphold them. . . .

Finally, let politicians who privately say they are for freedom, but who publicly espouse socialism in order to get elected, be faithful to their public pronouncements. Freedom will fare better this way. Exposing the fallacies of socialism and explaining the principles of freedom cannot possibly be achieved except through fidelity. Truth can never be found by those or among those who practice dissimulation.

Devotees of freedom have everything to gain and nothing to lose when campaign promises, regardless of how socialistic, are faithfully kept.

Read’s law expresses how campaign rhetoric imposes an upper limit on what a candidate professing the principles of liberty might achieve toward advancing freedom if elected to office. That is a valuable insight, but it also points to another truth that lovers of liberty need to remember: “The advancement of freedom is not a matter of who wields political power over creative actions; rather, it depends upon the disassembling of such power.” Politicians are not the answer, so pinning one’s hopes on them is a recipe for disappointment. But those who “fly higher” have the potential to advance freedom. They can only do so, however, by articulating a consistent case for liberty beforehand; otherwise, in the face of a political flood tide against them, they will be unable to disassemble their own and others’ power over us when they are in office.