Legitimate Role of Government.

Dear Friends,

It seems to me that redistribution of wealth is not a legitimate role of government.

It presupposes government has the right to the property of individuals. When government can legally take your property and mine it is no different than enslaving us. Property represents labor. That is how the vast majority of us get the money to buy our other property. When government has taken up the legal right to seize at their discretion, our property, they have in fact seized the time from our lives we gave in labor to purchase that property. So Taking property from a working person is tantamount to enslaving him or her for the time he or she put into acquiring said property.

The premise of redistribution is undermined by the nature of government. Money will not flow from those that have too much to those that have too little it will flow from those that are politically weak to those that are politically strong. That is undeniably the nature of government. As Bastiat said in his treatise on Law, people see government as a means to plunder the wealth of others and to protect their wealth. That is why politics are so factious.

Government is controlled by the politically strong and is only constrained by a constitution. The power of the Elite, that make up the politically strong , is inversely proportional to the power of the constitution that restrains them. If the constitution allows for the redistribution of wealth it gives the Elite, not only the power to tangentially enslave the nation but it will give them, a tool for the wielding of the masses to unambiguously nefarious ends.

In the past, when government acted the Robin Hood, it has always ended badly. Julius Caesar used the masses as a tool to destroy the Republic. He gave freely to the poor to buy their loyalty. As Machiavelli said, when faced with the choice of having the people or the aristocracy on his side the wise prince chooses the people to be on his side. The aristocracy are few and can be bribed the people are many and can fall like a scythe on the few. Many other times the ability to redistribute wealth has been used, by the would be tyrant to gain the trust of the people… before enslaving them.

The true role of government is to protect individual property. Why else have government? If not to protect our property from those would be Thrasymachus’s (unjust politically powerful people) that would seize our property. Which includes protecting us from foreign thieves of our property.

It is by this means that government promotes prosperity. When people are given the just use of property they have acquired by their own labor the lot of man is bettered. When people are comfortable in their possessions all people seek to acquire possessions. We put more energy into making than in protecting. Thus society is bettered. More and more is available for people to have better lives.

When we fear for that which we have got from our labor, the opposite is true, we put more energy into protecting our property than in building. The lot of man is lowered. Less is available to people to better their lives. Less and less is produced. The standard of living is reduced and reduced. It is all about incentives. Redistribution is nothing but perverse incentives. Incentives that put too much power in the hands of government.

Even a cursory look at history shows the folly of too much power in the hands of government. But the sirens keep up their song and the masses listen. Nation after nation is swept against the shoals of redistribution… I wonder if that last crunch was our economic keel snapping?

Maybe someday, people will have matured to the point they will simply laugh when the Elite are crying for redistribution, and will see them for who they are. When that happens, and it will happen, prosperity will be rampant. Until then we might have to swim for it!