From the Founder: Seeing is Believing from Bob Chitester

Seeing is believing. 

Scenes of polar bears on melting ice floes. Beggars on the street--a church’s soup kitchen closed because of government regulations. An interior designer is put out of business for lack of a state-issued license. She has few options left to her. 

For most people these slice-of-life vignettes are more persuasive than mounds of data. Image and story are more likely to change beliefs and prompt individuals to act. 

And when you get down to it, it’s the individual who acts: Why do we think as we do? Why do we do what we do? 

Notice I did not ask about our education, our genetic makeup, our social environment, our ethnic or religious affiliations, our psychological makeup, or our philosophical starting points. Doing so may advance scholarship, but asking these questions will not directly engage the millions of citizens whose votes shape our collective destiny, for better or worse. 

That is not to say only a few of us are smart enough to understand why limiting government is desirable. It’s just too few citizens think it’s worth the effort. 

Give people the freedom--to make their own decisions, to decide what makes them happy and to take action toward that goal and they don’t much care whether Caesar Augustus or Cicero and the Senate rule the land. But whoever rules, there will be only a smidgen of difference in outcome unless a majority of citizens keep the autocrat or the legislature in check by somehow limiting the size and scope of government as necessary for human freedom to prevail. 

Why we do what we do - is to improve our well-being and achieve the satisfaction of taking care of ourselves. We want to be happy. Charles Murray and Arthur Brooks have been prominent among those testing the thesis of what Arthur describes as "earned success." Both are contributing to one our upcoming video projects, Work and Happiness: The Human Cost of Welfare, which parallels a soon-to-be released book by Phil Harvey and Lisa Conyers. A public TV program and teaching units will be available in the Spring of 2016.

Our instincts and observations of others lead to the conclusion people would rather work for a living, but if things go bad, the majority expect Augustus or Cicero and the Senate to bail them out. And once bailed out, they want the government to get out of the way so they can give it another try own their own. And we should all accept the sincerity of that notion.

Cicero and the Senate and Augustus were practitioners of public choice theory, give the folks what they want and we can continue to enjoy the trappings of power. But failure to support Senators who resisted the centralization of power led to Augustus' empire and centuries of worsening imperial repression of personal and economic freedom.

Sound familiar? The burden is on those of us who do think it is worth the effort, to understand the acceptable limits of government and to communicate the winning ideas of freedom in the manner the average person can easily grasp and remember when making a decision regarding the extend of Caesar's role in their lives.

From the Founder: Between the Ideal and the Possible

The ultimate goal of our efforts can be started simply: reduce the role of government in order to increase individual freedom. The tough part is agreeing on the specifics. What's the size and scope of government that's desirable? By what means do we get there? What is the right balance between accepting the need for incremental change and advocating for core principles?

First we must establish a vision of limited government, but we have to do so recognizing the electorate will ultimately decide to what extent they'll accept that vision.

Therefore we must devise messages that are convincing to the majority of citizens and find distribution channels that reach millions. The millions on which we focus are students who are still forming their vision of a just world. 

The second challenge relates to the first. People are naturally "conservative" in their behavior; once they've formed an opinion they are resistant to change. Bring them a radically new insight and they are likely to refuse to give it any consideration. But with young people, this isn't always the case.

Consider two aspects of Milton Friedman's thought: his definition of the limited role of government and his advocacy of school choice. He thought government had only three functions: 

"The basic functions can be listed very simply. They are, first of all, to prevent one man from coercing another- the internal police function. They are, second, providing for external defense. These two are really part of the same: to prevent coercion- to prevent coercion from within, to prevent coercion from without, and beyond this to promote voluntary cooperation among people by defining the terms under which we are going to cooperate together and by adjudicating disputes." 

Providing education was not included, yet Friedman did not join Marshall Fritz's effort to abolish compulsory state-funded education. He agreed with Marshall in principle and applauded him for outlining the arguments in favor of taking education out of the hands of government, but he thought to push for immediate repeal of tax-supported education was a push too far.

Instead Friedman conceived the concept of school choice, leaving compulsory education in place. He felt that it was unrealistic to expect to counter 150 years of entrenched government control of education in one stroke. So he devised an approach that would lead to competition between private and government schools, resulting in improved outcomes- thus setting the stage for future repeal of tax based school funding.

We grapple with this kind of decision every day. Whether developing material for our prime audience of 6 -26 year olds or public TV viewers, we must decide how far we can take them on the path to awareness of the power of free markets, the effectiveness of market-based solutions to public policy problems, and the increased well-being from reducing government's role in our lives.

I am saddened when I hear someone accuse Friedman of being a statist because he put forth ideas for incremental change. We need to constrain our tendency to demonize those who opt for less than complete and immediate realization of ideal. We need both; those who set forth a vision of the ideal society and those who can formulate the steps that can get us closer to it.

What Would Milton Say?

A major source of objection to a free economy is it gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Freidman, Capitalism & Freedom, p.15