Equal Rights or Equal Outcomes?

Some of the wisest and most beautiful words ever put to parchment are these:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” (Declaration of Independence)

Not far behind are these words:

“No one shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” (Fourteenth Amendment)

At its core, the Declaration of Independence was a statement rejecting the king of England’s governance of the American people and explaining the reasons for that rejection. The concept “all men are created equal” holds that government should treat each person equally and that everyone is entitled to equal protection and rights under the law. (This concept was also embodied by rights outlined in the U.S. Constitution and its amendments.) Of course, it took years of infighting and a civil war to end some of the worst violations of these rights. Still, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution planted the seeds that would eventually lead this country to recognize these rights more fully than any other nation ever. They propelled it to become the richest and most powerful nation ever.

It’s important to note that the rights and privileges protected by the Constitution offer no guarantee that anyone will achieve wealth or happiness. Apart from individuals’ inalienable rights, they have varying endowments that affect the extent to which they obtain life, liberty, and happiness. Governments are particularly unsuited to change citizens’ aptitudes, attitudes, desires, determination, perseverance, and trustworthiness, all of which are useful qualities for acquiring property and happiness. Consequently, a constitution could not—and the U.S. Constitution does not—try to equalize outcomes. Instead, it aims to ensure a fair game for citizens, and it’s up to society and individual players to determine what constitutes winning and who wins.

Some governments are founded to ensure the “right to an adequate standard of living” for everyone, or to pursue other lofty, results-oriented goals. Leftists in general, and especially Franklin D. Roosevelt (who espoused the “right to an adequate standard of living” as a worthy role for government), have tried to change the American government to reflect these ideals. Specifically, they have advocated for the government to ensure equal outcomes rather than equal rights. Propaganda supporting these ideas often asserts that income inequality is bad. (The reason most politicians advance this theory will be the subject of future blogs, though a hint is in this endnote.) To a large degree, however, ensuring equal outcomes is antithetical to ensuring equal rights.

“Collectivism” is a general name for the theory that the government’s role is to ensure equal outcomes. In theory, everyone contributes to the wealth of a group, such as a family, tribe, state, or nation, and all the group’s wealth belongs equally to everyone in it. Of course, the extent to which collectivism is implemented varies across governments. Results also vary among collectivist groups. Things which vary little, all other things being equal, are: 1) governments designed to enforce equal rights achieve better results for their citizens than governments designed to enforce equal outcomes, and 2) government officials of collectivist governments fare far better than those they govern.

The founders looked to history to assess whether collectivism would be an effective form of governance for the United States. For example, they evaluated the history of one of the first European colonies in America, Plymouth Colony. The colony was started in 1620 with a collectivist form of governance. While Karl Marx coined the phrase, “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs,” centuries later, that was the general idea the religious people who founded the colony believed would be the best way to do things. As such, everyone was entitled to take an equal share of the commonwealth produced by all the people in the colony. The colony owned the land, and the colonists worked the land. As is always the case, some people worked harder to add to the community’s common wealth than others, while others did next to nothing, or nothing at all. As is typical, less and less was added to the commonwealth as the productive people realized that they were exploited suckers. Competition to be the most exploited and most suckered has never been a game that people are motivated to play to the fullest. Before long, their governor, William Bradford, saw the colony failing, and decided to grant property rights to individuals and to allow the colonists to own what they produced. And they lived happily ever after (or at least as happy as humans could be in those days).

After considering past government structures and the recently minted theories of the Enlightenment, the founders rejected a government that would have enforced equal outcomes in favor of one that enforced equal rights.

Though collectivist ideals fly in the face of our founding principles, they are not wrong solely for this reason. If leftist (or progressive, “Liberal,” and socialist**) ideals would make the world or country a better place, they should be adopted. But do collectivist ideals make for better governance than the ideals set forth by America’s founders?

The history of collectivist societies is long, and the many attempts to make them work have varied. In general, however, when countries have tried to equalize standards of living, the majority of their citizens have become poorer, they have contributed less to innovation and development that benefits everyone, but their governors have fared far better than the governed (up to the point the economy and government collapses – which they inevitably do – at which point the heads of leaders generally roll). Collectivist countries have repeatedly failed the test of history, and it may even be impossible to disprove the saying, “Socialism fails every time it’s tried.” As deftly described by Hayek in The Road To Serfdom, collectivist societies also typically lead to tyranny. Recent examples of this truth are Venezuela, China, the U.S.S.R, Cuba, Greece, and Sweden (yes, Sweden!), among others. (Sweden, however, is also a heartening example that a country on the road to serfdom need not stay on that road. Such examples, however, are rare. Why it is so hard to get off that road is illustrated daily in news of the objections, marches, and riots which accompany efforts to take a less collectivist path in the U.S.)

Leftists in America have tried and have largely succeeded in tilting the playing field to benefit certain groups over others. As a consequence, the government’s role has shifted from what it was founded to be. That intended role was similar to that of a league organizer/rulemaker, whose goal was to ensure equal rights and who provided unbiased referees to oversee the game. The government has now become a combination league organizer/rule-maker, player, and referee provider, whose bias is to produce equal outcomes. (Everyone gets a trophy, too.) To enable this new role, the public has had to cede power to the government, which was denied in the founding documents. The founding documents, approved by We the People, did not grant the federal government the power to take wealth from some people and give it to the needy. Granting such power to the federal government inevitably leads to the need to cede even more power to the government.

No form of government can deliver universal happiness to the governed. As discussed in my blog on wealth, no matter the form of government, or the absolute standard of living of the poor, the poor will be among us, i.e., no government can eliminate poverty, no matter how hard a war on poverty is fought. Collectivist governments, however, promise to deliver on that impossible dream. People who do not know better are fine with the government taking a little fat away from the rich to provide lean to the poor. Following every additional grant of power to the government, needed to slice an additional layer from the rich, the presence of the poor persists. The power needed to redistribute wealth increases as the government slices into the rich’s wealth. All the while, the motivation to produce wealth declines as the rich gradually feel the effects of being society’s exploited suckers. (Those motivational effects are present whether or not a taxed person realizes such effects.) To satisfy the poor’s ever-growing desire for more, the government must cut even deeper. Consequently, no matter how much wealth is redistributed from the rich to the poor, the poor do not go away until everyone is equally poor. Hence, the book’s title is The Road to Serfdom.

As if the presence of tyrannical rulers were not bad enough, governments whose goal is to achieve equal outcomes have devastating impacts on the people they purport to help. Of course, providing food to people who are starving helps them in the short term. But humans have not figured out a way to have the government provide immediate relief to people without simultaneously trapping many of them in situations with terrible schools, broken families, danger, disgruntlement, hopelessness, drugs, and self-destructive attitudes. I recognize that I may be wrong and that the following ideas do not apply to everyone on welfare, but I think that able-bodied, sane people*** have a deep-seated understanding that they should “do their part.” Everyone understands the clear logic of “I’ll bring home the game, and you will cook it.” Everyone also understands it is wrong for a 19-year-old to sit around the house all day playing video games while other members of the household earn the money to pay the bills, go to the grocery store, prepare meals, etc. Worse, the inner voice of the able-bodied, sane person who does not do her part to provide for herself tells her she needs to either get to work or find an excuse for her freeloading – lest she live a life of guilt for not being a decent human being. This human trait is a major driver of the adoption of self-destructive attitudes and beliefs.

To salve their conscience, people who are given things they have not earned glom onto all kinds of theories to justify (at least in their own minds) why it is okay that other people must work to support and feed them. In short, since it is okay to receive from others that which you deserve, it becomes the job of welfare recipients to dream up theories or accept the theories of others as to why they deserve money from the government.

For example, a welfare recipient might view herself as entitled to welfare because her ancestors were treated terribly. (The underlying theory is something like: Justice is served if descendants of evildoers pay the price for what their ancestors did.) A variation on that theme would be a welfare recipient who views herself as merely collecting a debt owed to her ancestors, i.e., the debt accrued because the labor of her ancestors was exploited by the ancestors of today’s taxpayers. (A typically unattended detail of this theory is how a tax system could be designed to exclude taxation of current taxpayers whose ancestors came to America after slavery was abolished, and tax only that portion of a taxpayer’s heritage that came from slaveholders.)

A popular theory is that because other people are luckier than I am, the lucky ones should share their luck with me. I have never seen a logical argument for how this theory carries any water, but it is clear that the general principle makes no sense and is not a justification for first-world welfare recipients to draw on the supposed pool of universal luck. For example, by the luck of having been born in the U.S., most U.S. welfare recipients are wealthier than the average human on planet Earth. So, if luck is something that should be shared equally by all, U.S. welfare recipients would have to pay into the pool of universal luck in order to equalize luck. Neither does it properly account for the fact that people often make their own luck. It would be a tremendous stroke of luck for a computer programmer if a cushy, high-paying computer programming job opened up in my town. It would not be lucky for me because I did not study and train to be eligible to take advantage of that luck. Exactly what would the person who landed that job owe me because of her luck in getting that job? What would I owe her for my luck in getting the job I have?

Another popular theory goes something like this: “If the government can spend $X billion on X, e.g., fighting unnecessary wars, then it can afford to give money to Y people, e.g., welfare recipients.” The logic as to why spending money on one thing justifies spending money on another escapes me – spending money on one bad thing has no bearing on whether spending on another thing is good. More importantly, the fact that the government has spent $X billion on (you name it) necessarily means it has $X billion less to spend on other things, i.e., it is less able to afford them.

A favorite, go-to theory to justify freeloading is that the people who provide the manna are demons, i.e., they deserve to be punished for their evil ways. That is why it is not sufficient to just soak the rich. On the contrary, CEOs, trust fund babies, everyone on or in Wall Street, Big Oil, Walmart, or simply “The Rich” must be demonized to boot. Otherwise, the soaking cannot be justified. Given the importance of justifying the taking, any ol’ presumption of evil will do, e.g., see my blog post on Greed. The rationales for why the revenue from the extra taxes should go to the poor rather than to other objectives (e.g., education or the environment) are usually weak or nonexistent (this is not to suggest they are not plentiful).

While there is some logic in some of the theories used to justify “you work, I eat,” they do not justify people who could add to the community’s wealth (if only to work for their own sustenance) but choose to let others do the work for them. Embracing these theories leads to greater disgruntlement, not greater happiness. Counting one’s misgivings is self-destructive. Subcultures that adopt these theories tend to eschew life-enriching habits such as applying oneself to becoming educated. Rather than encourage the uplifting pursuit of education, these subcultures instill the belief that pursuing education is selling out the subculture by putting a lie to the theories upon which they rely to freeload. In short, the pursuit of equal outcomes is not a recipe for human flourishing. On the contrary, the pursuit of equal outcomes is a recipe for ever greater unhealthy grievances. To the extent that redistributing income rewards envy, such redistribution increases evil in the process.

Government programs intended to help the poor also hurt the poor. The Great Society programs of the 1960s are a good case in point. Before those initiatives to help black people, the percentage of two-parent households was higher among black parents than among white parents, and black Americans were making greater strides up the ladder of success than they are now. The Great Society initiatives stopped that progress for more than ten years**** and rapidly began tearing families apart, which had a disparate impact on black families because a higher percentage of black people were recipients of this “help” than were other people. According to this report, non-Hispanic white single-parent households made up 25 percent of all families with children under 18 in 2015, while 66 percent of single-parent households with children under the age of 18 were made up of black individuals. The Great Society programs’ devastation of so many black families is both heartbreaking and hurtful to the people the programs were intended to help.

People often claim that the government is simply not giving enough to the poor. This may be true, but I’ve never seen evidence that more government handouts can feed empty stomachs without also feeding grievances. Moreover, more money is not always the right answer. It makes no difference how much money is pumped into schools in disadvantaged neighborhoods if doing so increases the need to foster the sentiment that applying oneself is a betrayal of one’s subculture. In short, to a large degree, pouring more money into the flawed welfare system makes matters worse for society and its participants.

Finally, consider what affirmative action has done to the credentials of its recipients. America is blessed with colleges that are suitable for the most intelligent and prepared students in the world, colleges suitable for the least intelligent and prepared students, and colleges for everyone in between. As Malcolm Gladwell so astutely observed in David and Goliath, students who are fully capable of excelling in a school appropriate for their gifts and preparation could live a happy and productive life in the discipline about which they are passionate, but they will flunk out or give up on their passion if they go to a college where they are outmatched. The highest cost of affirmative action is that it propels disadvantaged students into colleges where their peers are better prepared and suited for the coursework. As a result, disadvantaged students are often disheartened and drop out to pursue less challenging disciplines, i.e., those about which they are less passionate. Additionally, employers are often more skeptical of the credentials of individuals promoted through affirmative action, as they assume professors were more lenient in grading minority students. This fact is certainly unfair to the students (of which there are many) who earned their credentials, but there is no way for an employer to determine with confidence which applicants deserved their grades or promotions on the basis of scholastic merit or skin hue. No law can undo this unavoidable downside of affirmative action.

I could present many more examples of ways redistribution does more harm than good. Hopefully, however, this blog has already led you to reconsider any beliefs that go against the ideals established by the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

Additionally, income inequality is not just a bug of the system; it is also an essential feature of it. But that is the subject of a future blog.

VIDEO RESOURCES

Free Or Equal

Free To Choose

The War On Work

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

The Progress of American Blacks

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iThe politicians elected in such collectivist societies are those who are most skilled at convincing poorer factions of the electorate (and voters who are sympathetic to their plight) that they will take from and control the rich for the benefit of that particular faction. All the while, most of those politicians are primarily serving themselves and doing favors for the people who can help them the most. The favors sought by those who pay politicians (e.g., by contributing to their campaign fund) usually implement policies that will hurt the people who elected the favor-selling politicians.

**When it comes to issues that have direct economic effects, “liberal” ideals are almost the opposite of the liberal ideals of the Enlightenment, i.e., the ideals that propelled the modern world.

***This discussion of “able-bodied, sane people” obviously does not apply to people who do not fit this description. Everyone, able and disabled alike, understands that people who are physically or mentally incapacitated are exempt from doing what is expected of a decent person who is not incapacitated.

**** “The poverty rate among black families fell from 87 percent in 1940 to 47 percent in 1960, during an era of virtually no major civil rights legislation or anti-poverty programs. It dropped another 17 percentage points during the decade of the 1960s and one percentage point during the 1970s. . .” Thomas Sowell.