Standing on an impressive viewpoint overlooking the Grand Canyon this past week raised a philosophical query for me: Who’s the higher archetype or model of being human, John Muir or John Galt?
Yes, comparing a real-world historical figure to a fictional character is a stretch, but bear with me. For one thing, each may be said to represent separate, highly influential visions of America.
Muir was a naturalist whose love for our nation’s west led him to a key role in establishing our national park system.
Galt, a fictional character in Ayn Rand’s 1957 novel “Atlas Shrugged,” is an individualistic, enterprising “maker” (in Mitt Romney terms) fairly than a “taker.” Galt has initiative and takes risks to make things occur, and ultimately, within the novel’s denouement, leads a strike of comparable individuals representing a productive minority to retreat from society and restore individual freedom — leaving a corrupt, collectivist “taking” majority, who continue to exist the worth created by the enterprising minority, to rot.
A condensation of Rand’s political beliefs has develop into a remarkably common belief amongst some today that government creates nothing of value for society — it just takes money from some and offers it to others.
For an economist, there are key questions on this political view in regards to the value of products and services produced by government. Does the product have value? In that case, wouldn’t it not be produced by private free markets without the motion of presidency? Could the product be produced without coercive taxation?
Because from the libertarian viewpoint, taxation is the last word tool of the “takers.”
Now consider the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Yosemite or the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. Are these creations of presidency of value to American people? Clearly yes. Would a private-sector driven libertarian society envisioned by Galt or Rand have produced our national parks? I feel not. Could these assets have been produced without money raised by taxing the American people? Clearly no. Does the worth to Americans of getting national parks exceed the worth of the cash taxed from households to construct and operate them? I feel yes, though some may disagree.
Parks are an amenity. Their purpose is to present people the intangible satisfaction of interacting with nature. But what about tangible things produced with money taxed from people?
Would the economic development of the American west have proceeded as quickly if the federal government had not subsidized railroad construction? Prior to the 1850s, early railroads just like the Baltimore and Ohio (B&O in your Monopoly board) had largely been constructed with private capital, but lines in Illinois, Alabama and Mississippi all got federal and state grants prior to the Civil War. Would the enormously expensive lines from the Mississippi River to the west coast have been built without land grants? How would the worth of U.S. output have grown if rail transport investment got here exclusively from private financial markets?
What in regards to the productivity of U.S. agriculture without the state and federally-funded land grant colleges, experiment stations and ag extension service? What in regards to the productivity of the U.S. steel sector without locks along the Great Lakes or on the Ohio River? How long wouldn’t it have taken for investor-owned utilities to get electricity to U.S. farms? Would we’ve the air travel we do if traffic control and navigation aids had been left to non-public sector development?
On essentially the most basic level, how productive would our workforce be if government didn’t use its coercive powers to each tax households for college funding and force students to attend school?
What if cities and townships had not had the ability of taxation for streets and roads or if states had not used tax money to construct highways? What in regards to the U.S. interstate highway system with no federal role and funding?
Would the world have had semiconductors without U.S. defense spending? Would we’ve had physical infrastructure for the web without federal outlays to construct AUTOVON and AUTODIN, the Nineteen Fifties-initiated worldwide voice and date communication systems for military control.
Would we’ve titanium airplane components or eyeglass rims if not for presidency funded metallurgy research? Software and hardware without DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency? Recombinant DNA or CRISPR gene splicing without funding of basic science research?
One could go on and on and on. “Makers” clearly made this stuff that we now “take” without any consideration; but would the initial need even have been defined had it not been for the actions of the collective?
In a society that never utilizes coercive taxation of people for infrastructure and research, the heroic John Galts in libertarian delusions would produce little — because our economy wouldn’t have the needed “public goods” of knowledge and infrastructure needed for productivity.
And what about John Muir? Would he not even be a hero of Rand — a motivated, forward-looking energetic individual with a dream to which he devoted his life? Well, yes, but accomplishing this dream was only possible by harnessing the ability of presidency — including its powers to tax and, eventually, to take private property for public use. Muir had a vision, but his success in convincing President Theodore Roosevelt, an elected official, to make use of government to realize that vision is the first reason we’ve national parks, monuments, sites, commemorative battlefields and canoe areas.
Accepted modern economic theory shows that there are specific goods that a free market is not going to produce in economically optimal quantities without the motion of presidency. These include goods which can be “non-rival” and “non-excludable,” in other words, equally useful to all. My hearing the tornado warning siren doesn’t reduce your hearing it and I cannot keep you from hearing it. Ditto for the U.S. Navy maintaining the flow of containerships and tankers through the Red Sea.
There are other goods and services that don’t meet these criteria that nevertheless need government motion for optimal production. A student at one desk signifies that desk will not be available to a different student. And a student may be excluded from some instruction in the event that they don’t pay. Yet there are such a lot of “spillover advantages” to society as an entire, not least when it comes to economic productivity, that we’re clever to fund education and require attendance.
Similarly, there are spillover advantages to society as an entire from childhood nutrition and medical care, from child take care of working parents and from vaccinations and treatment of infectious diseases. Societies that use tax funds for such efforts are more productive than ones that don’t.
This argument not only stems from the target of economic efficiency, it also encompasses economic equity or justice. To Ayn Rand, by all accounts an boastful and essentially cruel person, the paramount injustice is a society limiting the autonomy of people to do what they need, in all regards, to satisfy their very own needs and desires. It’s a philosophy based on rights without responsibility. Essentially infantile, and fundamentally destructive to far more people than it advantages.
Followers of Rand cite pioneering economist Adam Smith’s insight that free markets with none government motion often allocate resources very efficiently. Yes, private markets do work. That is from his 1776 book, “The Wealth of Nations.” But they selectively ignore his earlier 1759 book, “The Theory of Moral Sentiments,” during which he examines non-monetary elements of how we treat and take care of one another and the cultural and sociological dynamics that increase our individual and collective well-being. Ignoring that and the aspects that drive cooperation in addition to competition result in a cardboard caricature society that’s each unjust and unproductive.
St. Paul economist and author Edward Lotterman may be reached at stpaul@edlotterman.com.