It is now, as the spring semester draws to a close and final exams lie graded on my desk, that I face the fruits of my long labors in Fundamentals of Economics. Despite my extensive dwelling on the basically cooperative nature of the market and the signal characteristic of government as being the legitimated possession and use of coercive power, the majority of my two sections of Fundamentals answered INCORRECTLY the question “How does the text distinguish between government and the market?” Their most preferred answer was “The government is based on cooperation; the market is based on competition.” And we wonder why corporate managers go to jail for “obstruction of justice” while war criminals govern this nation.
Source link: http://blog.mises.org/1982/a-cry-in-the-wilderness/
A Cry in the Wilderness
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Don’t lose hope. No one goes to college to learn anyway. That’s what real life is for.
The government is based on cooperation, just like our income tax is “voluntary.”
The answer is unsurprising, given that U.S. officials (especially those in charge of antitrust) make that exact statement all the time.
Of course, I don’t know what textbook is referred to, but I do see that:
a) The market IS competitive. You and I may be the respective owners of two shoestores which are across the street from each other. It may be that as businesspersons we both cooperate in providing the public with shoes of whatever kind they want at the lowest possible price. However, we probably will not be looking at things that way. We will probably think of ourselves as COMPETING with each other.
b) The government IS based upon cooperation. ANY government is based upon cooperation. One man, or one small group, cannot govern many other persons if that larger group of other persons will not cooperate.
Perhaps it will be of some comfort to you to know that I–although I certainly am a libertarian and an advocate of free markets–can agree with your students. One can be a free-market advocate and still agree with your students, so maybe your students are free-market advocates.
“The government IS based upon cooperation. ANY government is based upon cooperation. One man, or one small group, cannot govern many other persons if that larger group of other persons will not cooperate.”
I find that fascinating. Does it mean that the people dying of hunger in famines and being herded into concentration camps in North Korea are cooperating? What about the prisoners of conscience in Fidel Castro’s gulag? Or the victims of Stalin’s famines and purges? Are all people who live under the boot of oppressive governments “cooperating”?
Well, of course the government is based on cooperation. Haven’t you ever heard the expression, for example, “Mr. Buttle has been requested to assist the Ministry of Information with certain inquiries….”
Yes, LisaMarie, they are cooperating. If there are 500 of “me” and only five in the government, and if the government orders all 500 of “us” to go and live in a gulag, and if we do it, then the unmistakable conclusion is that we are cooperating with the government edict.
It is true that we may all have been too terrified to do other than submit. (In that case, we were psychologically intimidated into cooperation). Or it may be that we felt we had less to lose by our cooperation than by resistance. (In that case, our cooperation is extorted). Perhaps we are telling ourselves that an august entity such as a government, which may have been endorsed by God, just couldn’t be in the wrong. (Then, we are cooperating because we are psychologically in a state of shock and/or are in a state of illusion or delusion). Perhaps we all know that whoever is the FIRST to resist or to be identifiable as a resistor will be killed, even as the rest are guaranted to triumph, so that no ONE person will resist. (In that case we cooperate because our will to resistance is too disorganized). There are other possibilities as well.
I certainly do not say that the subjects have had a good chance, or any chance, to act as free people or that what the government has done is in any way justifiable. I just say that it has evinced cooperation from its subjects.
Sometimes you can get cooperation from people by treating them in unfair and unacceptable ways. That is what government has done in the cases you mention, and that is what governments have done more often than not. That is what governments are good at.
Dear Mary,
I disagree with your view that government is based on cooperation. It appears to stem from a basic difference in our views of what government is for.
I agree with the founders of this country: Legitimate governments exist to enforce the rights of the populace. Nothing else. The basic tool of government is coercion, not cooperation. A legitimate government uses coercion against those who initiate coercion against others. The other things that government does these days are illegitimate, meaning that their political philosophical justification does not lie in any argument concerning human rights and their protection.
Instead, most of what government does these days finds its justification in the view that the purpose of government is to improve the lives of the populace in some direct way–taxing some to benefit others; producing and providing goods and services; regulating people’s activities “for their own good”; and waging aggressive wars against whomever those who “govern” wish to conquer.
It is that sense that one can speak, as you do, of one man or a small group “governing” other persons. Your sense of “govern” appears to be “to rule.” That is the view that pre-dated the founding of this country. My sense of the term “govern” is “to enforce” rules of nonaggression.
On the “cooperation” in business question. Competitors do not cooperate with each other, they compete. Suppliers cooperate with demanders in that they supply what demanders want. Since we are all suppliers and demanders in transactions with other people, we all cooperate with each other in such a way that each of us is more able to achieve his or her goals than if each of us was an isolated Robinson Crusoe. The market system is the grandest, most complex scheme of voluntary cooperation that ever existed. All trading relations require the voluntary consent of every trader. This exists in contrast to government, where the mailed fist is always inside the velvet glove. If you doubt this, try non-cooperation with the IRS’s demand that you voluntarily submit a tax return next year. Citibank can send you a credit card application and request that you fill it out and return it in order to get one of their cards–and you can shred it. Try shredding your tax return.
Sam Bostaph
I think Mary’s point is valid in certain areas, such as regulation. The government and special interests cooperate with each other to restrict competition. Collusion is a form of cooperation, is it not?
Mary, that is in my opinion a novel definition of cooperation.
In the sense you use it, slaves could be said to be “cooperating” with their masters.
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