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Townhall…
Why We're a Divided
Nation
By Walter E. Williams
Some Americans have strong, sometimes unyielding preferences for Mac
computers, while most others have similarly strong preferences for PCs
and wouldn't be caught dead using a Mac. Some Americans love classical
music and hate rock and roll. Others have opposite preferences, loving
rock and roll and consider classical music as hoity-toity junk. Then
there are those among us who love football and Western movies, and find
golf and cooking shows to be less than manly.
Despite these, and many other strong preferences, there's little or no
conflict. When's the last time you heard of rock and roll lovers in
conflict with classical music lovers, or Mac lovers in conflict with PC
lovers, or football lovers in conflict with golf lovers? It seldom if
ever happens. When there's market allocation of resources and
peaceable, voluntary exchange, people have their preferences satisfied
and are able to live in peace with one another.
Think what might be the case if it were a political decision of whether
there'd be football or golf watched on TV, whether we used Macs or PCs
and whether we listened to classical music or rock and roll. Everyone
had to comply with the politically made decision or suffer the pain of
fines or imprisonment. Football lovers would be lined up against golf
lovers, Mac lovers against PC lovers and rock and rollers against
classical music lovers. People who previously lived in peace with one
another would now be in conflict.
Why? If, for example, classical music lovers got what they wanted, rock
and rollers wouldn't. Conflict would emerge solely because the decision
was made in the political arena.
The lesson here is that the prime feature of political decision-making
is that it's a zero-sum game. One person's gain is of necessity another
person's loss. As such, political allocation of resources is
conflict-enhancing, while market allocation is conflict-reducing. The
greater the number of decisions made in the political arena, the
greater the potential for conflict. It would not be unreasonable to
predict that if Mac lovers won, and only Macs could be legally used,
there would be considerable PC-lover hate toward Mac lovers.
Most of the issues that divide our nation, and give rise to conflict,
are those best described as a zero-sum game where one person's or
group's gain is of necessity another's loss. Examples are: racial
preferences, school prayers, trade restrictions, welfare, Obamacare and
a host of other government policies that benefit one American at the
expense of another American. That's why political action committees,
private donors and companies spend billions of dollars lobbying. Their
goal is to get politicians and government officials to use the coercive
power of their offices to take what belongs to one American and give it
to another or create a favor or special privilege for one American that
comes at the expense of some other American.
You might be tempted to think that the brutal domestic conflict seen in
other countries can't happen here. That's nonsense. Americans are not
super-humans; we possess the same frailties of other people. If there
were a catastrophic economic calamity, I can imagine a political
hustler exploiting those frailties, as have other tyrants, blaming it
on the Jews, the blacks, the conservatives, the liberals, the Catholics
or free trade.
The best thing the president and Congress can do to reduce the
potential for conflict and violence is reduce the impact of government
on our lives. Doing so will not only produce a less-divided country and
greater economic efficiency, but bear greater faith and allegiance to
the vision of America held by our founders -- a country of limited
government. Our founders, in the words of Thomas Paine, recognized
that, "Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in
its worst state, an intolerable one."
Townhall
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