Thinking Right or Wrong, Not Left or Right: Making the Moral Case for Separating State and the Economy (Part 3 - Conclusion)

Reversing the current authoritarian trends.

 

In part 1, I contrasted the differing views of the separation of state and church, where most Americans subscribe to a “laissez-faire” approach, with the separation of state and the economy, where they don’t.

In part 2, I explained why the dominant morality of selflessness and sacrifice is the reason Americans have accepted the immoral government intrusion into every aspect of our economic lives. In the 3rd and final part, I make the case for (long-term) optimism about reversing the current trends. 

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“When I say “capitalism”, I mean a full, pure, uncontrolled, unregulated laissez-faire capitalism—with a separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church. 

(Ayn Rand, from the essay “What Is Capitalism?” in “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal”) 

So how do we get to a point where a morality of rational self-interest becomes more widely accepted? Where respecting our individual rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness gains more followers? And where championing capitalism—with total separation of state and the economy—as the only moral social system is embraced by more people? How do we create the moral groundswell for change?

A recurring theme throughout history is that people who are predominantly committed to reason and rationality—and there are a lot of them—tend to adjust their views as new scientific and other facts are discovered. History is full of examples of this process at work, with old faith-based “facts” and new reality-based facts initially clashing but eventually being reconciled. I’m hopeful the same development will eventually take place in the view of the role of government in our economic lives. When government intrusion reaches a certain pain point, I predict we’ll start to see more and more people currently committed to a moral ideal of selflessness and sacrifice examining and questioning their current moral code and adjusting it in favor of a morality of rational self-interest. It will not happen tomorrow or next year or even in a decade or two (or three). One's moral beliefs, whether faith based or not, are deeply personal. Each of us has to find a way of reconciling the new facts with our current beliefs and allow the time it takes to process the information. But if history is a guide, men and women with a commitment to reason and rationality will gradually gravitate towards the fact that only a morality of rational self-interest provides the necessary foundation for defending individual rights and for a limited government with total separation of state and the economy. 

(I acknowledge that reaching certain pain points of government intrusion could trigger opposite reactions paradoxically clamoring for more, not less, government involvement. For example, a societal pain point in the form of high inflation, which is always caused by an expansion of the government money supply, is often blamed on businesses raising prices, resulting in calls for further government intrusion in the form of price controls, rationing, and other measures. This is obviously tantamount to fighting fire with fire and will only increase the pain.)

One powerful force for good in this regard is that many intellectually honest people don’t like to live with unresolved contradictions. For such people, contradictions tend to serve as intellectual stimuli and calls to action. Imagine living in the time of Galileo, believing that the earth is the center of the solar system because that’s what you’ve been taught, most likely at church. Then, imagine being exposed to Galileo’s discovery of heliocentrism, the irrefutable fact that the sun, not the earth, is the center of the solar system. Now you’re faced with a serious contradiction between your religiously based views and Galileo’s discovery. You may try to push the unresolved contradiction aside for a while, you may try to evade it or explain it away—the all too common “don’t want to go there” approach. But being intellectually honest and of an independent mind, sooner or later you’d probably take the bull by the horns and resolve the contradiction, coming out in favor of Galileo and the facts and finding a way to reconcile them with your now revised faith. 

The same applies to being exposed to the moral case for championing capitalism as the only moral social system with complete separation of state and the economy. The irrefutable facts are that as humans we have individual rights, and that only a morality of rational self-interest provides the proper ethical foundation for respecting those rights; only a morality of rational selfishness respects our right to be in control of every aspect of our lives. Politically this requires a capitalist social system with total separation of state and the economy, limiting government responsibility to national defense, the police and the judiciary. The only alternative is a statist system where we endemically violate each other’s rights through taxation and regulation with the government as enforcer. Just look around you. In the name of providing the elderly with retirement security, we force every working adult to give up control of their retirement planning to pay for Social Security and Medicare. In the name of ensuring healthcare and food on the table for the poor, we force everybody to give up control of their healthcare in order to finance Medicaid and other welfare programs with their income taxes. In order to protect us from “exploitation” by businesses, we force everybody to abide by innumerable government regulations. 

Let’s say you find the idea of separating state and the economy attractive but that you currently subscribe to some form of morality preaching selflessness and sacrifice on religious or secular grounds. Now you’re facing a contradiction between, on the one hand,

• the morality of rational self-interest that is inseparable from championing capitalism (with total separation of state and the economy) as the only moral social system in politics,

and on the other,

• your current morality which has some form of statism as its logical, inescapable, political corollary (as I mentioned in part 2, if it’s moral to sacrifice, then it makes sense for the state—the government—to help you along on the path to selfless moral perfection). 

I’m hopeful that over time, you’ll find a way of reconciling the irrefutable facts underlying the moral case for separating state and the economy with your beliefs, probably with some revisions of the latter. Because living with unresolved contradictions is darn uncomfortable as they tend to fester like untreated infections. 

There was a time when moral crusaders preaching selflessness and sacrifice may have been excused for their mistaken beliefs. A time before the disastrous political experiments of the 20th century—Nazi Germany, and the communist Soviet Union, China and Cambodia —and the current slow break down of Western Europe and the United States under the yoke of welfare statism. But today, the facts are available to everyone willing to see them: statism in all its forms does not only not work in practice but is immoral. (Ironically, holding on to statist beliefs in the face of the facts has developed into a religion; today you have to have faith in statism, because all the facts are against it, morally and practically) 

In the end, championing capitalism as the only moral social system, with separation of state and the economy as its corollary, is a fight of facts over (religious or secular) faith. It is a battle for the minds of intellectually honest, independently minded men and women who don’t like to live with contradictions between their moral and political worldviews. It’s a battle for the minds of men and women who have reverence for the facts, however uncomfortable those facts initially may be. These individuals—and I hope you’re one of them—tend to emerge as the intellectual leaders affecting long-term change for the better. When the battle is won, rational self-interest will have taken its righteous place as the foundation of morality, and the complete separation of state and the economy will be considered as morally right and self-evident as the separation of state and church. And the morality of sacrifice and selflessness will have been relegated to the trash-heap of history.