Freedom in One Lesson

92.

Thank God for the Mess We’re In

Signs of trouble are often ignored until the situation is bad enough that it becomes impossible to keep doing so (unless one is mightily determined not to see them). Leonard Read gives much thought to the damage public policy has caused Americans. In “Thank God for the Mess We’re In” (Read 1975c), from the March 1975 issue of The Freeman, he reflects on how the mess we’ve made is so great that we might finally start thinking about how to undo the causes.

There is a reason for our mess. We are now reaping the bitter harvest of the poisonous seed sowed intermittently during the past. We are experiencing bad effects whose causation can be traced to the employment of wrong means. We suffer the natural consequences of our folly. . . . As it is, we need only take our heads out of the sand to see clearly that interventionism not only has failed to provide the promised something for nothing but has led to all sorts of undesirable consequences.

. . . [Many] fail to get the message the mess is meant to convey. Indeed, many are just beginning to realize that we are moving toward disaster, even though we have been on a wrong heading for decades.

Why then do I thank God for the mess we’re in? Simply because the mess is sending up signals—messages loud and clear—that our past is filled with errors which inexorably produced their evil results. The consequences we suffer now were caused by past mistakes, and we need to know what wrong actions are responsible for these bad effects. The fact is, we are being graced with warnings which, when and if read aright, can lead to our salvation.

He then discusses how to “see” the blessings of liberty and how government violations of liberty have gotten us into the mess we’re in.

Our past is filled not only with moral but politico-economic errors, and our present likewise. How are we to identify these wrong actions and find the right ones, that is, how expose the fallacies of state interventionism and reveal the merits of human liberty as related to the interest and benefit of every one of us?

When liberty prevails, every individual . . . is free to bring persons and other scarce resources into complementary and workable combinations. . . . There are millions who can and do bring individuals and other resources into association that render a fantastic service of all sorts to King Consumer. And, when liberty prevails so does competition, a constructive force that assures that the efficient servants rise to serve all of us better.

. . . The aggregate of these energies—the bringing into combination of things and persons—is beyond the power of anyone to even imagine.

The problem is that government interventions that supposedly aim to advance the general welfare commonly do the opposite, undermining the liberty that is truly essential to our well-being.

Let us now observe what happens to these sources of creative energy when the state regulates and controls them. What are the consequences when organized physical force—government—controls our creativity, our varied and unique potentialities? To accurately observe and appraise these consequences is to discover the errors— moral and economic—which account for the mess we are in. And the task is to free ourselves from these malpractices. . . .

. . . We have [many] governments—federal, state, and local— . . . commanding millions of us as to what to produce, what and with whom to exchange, what our money is worth; they dictate hours of labor, wages, what our children must study; on and on and on. . . .

. . . They have frustrated, to a marked extent, the morals and the creativity of the citizenry.

As a result of this governmental intervention, the varied talents and the uniqueness of each citizen are more or less imprisoned. . . .

To repeat, when liberty prevails, all are free to bring things and people into workable combinations to the betterment of all. . . . But when the police and their subsidized minions regulate and control, a do-as-I-say-or-else action replaces, to a great extent, the bringing together actions of free and creative people, and to the detriment of all.

Read concludes with a call to finally heed the red flags that have been flying for so long. He also makes a reference to inflation that speaks to our situation today.

The signals are loud and clear—far too numerous to recount. The messages are that every one of these evils we now experience are but consequences of past and present errors. . . . We must work on the causes . . . if we would repair our ways!

Let me conclude by calling attention to but one signal, a warning that is fretting millions: . . . the rapid decline in the purchasing power of the dollar. The cause? Inflation! Its causes? Excessive governmental expenditures which in turn are caused by people from all walks of life running to government for every conceivable kind of succor—people feathering their own nests at the expense of others. The remedy? Remove the causes.

In any event, I thank God for the mess we’re in and its timely warning that we must change our course to avert disaster.

I have heard many people in recent years echo Read and recognize that we are in a real mess. Such recognition is an important and necessary first step but is far from sufficient to undo the mess. Read was thankful for the heightened potential messes offered for careful thinking followed by action to undo their causes. It is action that offers a payoff for society. Election campaigns don’t seem to deliver on Read’s hope but instead promise to double down on every policy ever conceived to violate citizens’ persons and property, give more power to government, and favor those whose votes are thought to be most effectively buyable. It is profoundly depressing that we keep creating bigger red flags and still continue to avert our eyes. Rather than a boy who cried wolf, we have many who cry that there is no wolf, even when we see it at the door.