Principles of Freedom

These essays first appeared as part of a month-long celebration of Founders Day of Freedom Communications Inc. founder R.C. Hoiles in November 2007.

Our company’s founder, and the descendants who continue to lead Freedom Communications Inc., come at the world with an idea: to advance human liberty. For libertarian R.C. Hoiles, who bought the Santa Ana Register in 1935, that meant limited government, respect for the individual, free markets, free trade and progress through voluntary relationships.

How would R.C., whose birthday we mark later this month, grapple with today’s seemingly intractable problems? In the short essays below and on page 5, we make proposals with little or no consideration for political feasibility. We suggest policy goals consistent with concern for personal liberty as the ultimate political good. We believe that “freedom works” because it is the natural state of human beings. Social arrangements that corrupt this state, that force individuals to behave against their own best instincts, cannot work in the long run.

We acknowledge that Utopia is not an option in an imperfect world filled with imperfect people, a world of trade-offs, where every policy has costs as well as benefits. Nonetheless, to think boldly about freedom in human affairs is not just a talking point or discussion-starter to us (although it serves that purpose as well). In the end, even small steps toward freedom are worth working toward, because human beings are meant to be free and because … freedom works.

Natural disasters 

Even before the Southern California fires were contained, the usual suspects began decrying the supposed lack of resources that taxpayers have provided to the government. The calls went out for more government help to fight fires the next time. Of course, taxpayers have in no way shortchanged the county fire authority, which gets a healthy chunk of property taxes, has spent $59 million on a luxurious administrative facility and pays generous salaries. The problem is not a lack of sufficient resources but the improper management of resources – something that always occurs when government, with its perverse incentives, manages anything.

The goal in dealing with natural disasters should not be the constant shaking-down of taxpayers, but the privatization of more functions. For instance, most of the land that burned in California was owned by government. Governments manage land poorly, based mostly on political considerations. If more land in our region were privately owned, those owners would have more incentive to maintain it so that it doesn’t burn. Private insurance would put restrictions on land use, and landowners would be responsible for what happens on their property. Private firefighting agencies would have more incentive to focus on prevention.

Natural disasters are a part of life, although more-affluent nations with better-protected property rights develop in a way that minimizes damage from such tragic events. In extreme circumstances, there might be a role for the National Guard or other government agency that can mobilize massive equipment quickly, but as a rule the best way to protect ourselves is to expand, not constrict, the private sector.

– Steven Greenhut

Traffic 

Everyone who lives in Southern California will agree that traffic congestion is indeed a serious problem. Commute times keep getting longer. We all experience the misery while inching along on the I-405, 57 or 91 freeways. Yet transportation planners have decided, to a large degree, that we can’t build our way out of congestion. They have embraced trendy philosophies that push mass-transit systems over the traditional course of road-building. Mass transit makes sense in dense urban cores such as Manhattan, and some systems, such as Metrolink, have a valid supplemental role in suburban communities. But the traffic problem is driven by a loss of will to build and improve roads, and a preference by what some call the “congestion coalition” to stop road building to force Americans into “sustainable” transportation, such as light rail. Americans don’t like to be socially engineered, so the result is worsened traffic congestion.

The market needs to be brought to bear on infrastructure, through toll roads, congestion pricing and privatization. Even when the will to build the roads exists, that anti-growth coalition makes it awfully tough to succeed. Orange County’s Transportation Corridor Agencies has been working 10 years to extend the quasiprivate 241 toll road to Interstate 5. Despite its efforts, the project has been a lightning rod for opposition, including from the Coastal Commission staff. The governor, despite his stated desire to expand infrastructure statewide, has hindered the project. Many opponents have embraced the 1970s Jerry Brown-era philosophy that if you build it, “they” will come. But “they” – i.e., more Californians – are coming, anyway, and if we don’t build the transportation needed to keep up with growth, then we will all look back on these traffic-clogged days as the heyday of open mobility!

–Steven Greenhut

Crime

In the developed world, America is known for high rates of both crime and incarceration. In one respect, this makes sense; the greater the number of people breaking the law, the greater the number of people facing the consequences. But if incarceration is meant to be a solution to crime, rather than a function of it, then those statistics are a sign that the solution isn’t working. Here’s how we can fix it:

First, the definition of crime should be narrowed to those acts that harm others. The solutions to victimless “crimes” like missing bureaucratic paperwork or private drug use are sentencing reform and decriminalization. Reducing the number of so-called crimes and the severity of corresponding punishments will reduce the strain on our overcrowded prisons – whose 2 million-plus population includes hundreds of thousands of nonviolent drug offenders – and allow “criminal justice” to focus on criminals who actually threaten public safety.

Second, that justice system needs to focus on rehabilitation, not just retribution. The good done by taking criminals off the streets is offset when they are released still more violent and maladjusted, as is attested by the two-thirds of California’s parolees who end up back behind bars. The $60 billion spent on prisons should be shifted away from paying salaries of union employees guarding human warehouses and to funding transparent, competitive facilities for rehabilitation and work reentry – in fact, in line with some of the reforms under way in California today.

Being tough on crime shouldn’t mean more of the same; it should mean fixing the vicious cycle of crime and incarceration by redefining both.

–Stan Alcorn

Terrorism 

The most effective way to neutralize terrorism against the United States is to pull the military back from all its overseas outposts and institute a foreign policy of nonintervention abroad and defense strength at home. Terrorists may “hate us for our freedom,” but they are able to recruit people to attack us because we are in “their” countries, trying to run them. Most Americans don’t have the desire, knowledge or patience to run a global empire, and doing so produces more resentment than appreciation. We don’t need military forces in oil-producing countries; they need to sell oil more than we need to buy it, and they will, whether they like us or not.

It would take a while for the world to believe we are sincere in such a policy, and even then people will have grievances, real or imagined, so this policy wouldn’t mean nobody would seek to do us harm. So small-scale, special forces-type actions against whatever active terrorist cells remain after instituting such a policy might be necessary. We should have learned by now that large-scale military action is more likely to provoke terrorism than to wipe it out.

Effective anti-terrorist policies, as the British learned in Northern Ireland, will look more like police work than battle – we may need spies and informants and a strong defense when necessary, but if we are a beacon of liberty, scrupulous about due process and respectful of the rights of all rather than a world enforcer, they will flock to us.

–Alan W. Bock

Education

R.C. Hoiles was famous – or infamous – for his objection to the very premise of schools run by the government. America would be better off, he believed, if private institutions arose, funded by various sources, to meet the incredibly varied learning needs and aptitudes of individuals.

Education, of course, as Hoiles knew, is fundamental for society’s prosperity, a culture’s perseverance and individual achievement. We’re never more than one generation from eviscerating either, or both.

Ever-expanding government control coupled with relentless “progressive” teaching theories have transformed education into something far short of advancing self-responsibility, voluntary associations, free enterprise and life independent of government.

The problem is public education, Hoiles wrote. Government schools don’t dare teach liberty or independence because at essence, they operate by denying both.

“They dare not teach the spirit of the Constitution as set forth in the ... Declaration of Independence,” Hoiles wrote, “because it says that all men, not just the majority, are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.”

Government schools, at best, reflect majority rule, and, inevitably, elitist policymakers’ dictates. As Hoiles observed: “They dare not teach their pupils to believe that if it is wicked and a violation of the Golden Rule for one man to do a thing, it is still wicked and a violation of the Golden Rule if 49 percent or 99 percent of the people do the same thing.”

Majority rule endows government-run education. It obligates “compulsory education” and forcibly assigns costs even to those who’d rather not pay. It’s understandable the product is wanting.

–Mark Landsbaum

Health care 

Personal responsibility may be undermined more in health care than in any other aspect of life. When people are responsible for the cost of their unhealthy lifestyles, they’re more likely to avoid doing what brings on costly consequences. But when others assume the cost, people are inclined to engage in riskier behavior. Consequently, many take better care of their cars than their health.

Also, when someone else pays, people buy more than if they had to pay the bill themselves. Auto insurance companies don’t pay for gasoline, maintenance and overhauls. If they did, people would buy more gas, get tune-ups more often and demand overhauls when less costly maintenance would suffice. Insurance companies aren’t that foolish.

Health care, however, took a wrong turn during World War II when personal responsibility was replaced on a large scale by corporations, which were prevented by the government from giving raises and instead received tax credits if they provided employees health insurance. Third-party payments have accelerated to the point now that we find, unsurprisingly, they are reaching their limit paying for what others demand.

Despite this arrangement so egregiously undermining market constraints, there’s a growing insistence that the government, the ultimate third-party payer, must take over. Rather than douse the fire, some want to throw gasoline on it.

Were only calamities covered, this might work better. But third-party paying has conditioned people to think that health insurance should cover routine checkups as well as major surgery. No reasonable person would apply such a catastrophic solution to automobile care.

–Mark Landsbaum

Global warming 

It’s important to accurately identify problems. The conventional wisdom says global warming is a definite devastating problem, definitely caused by manmade CO2 emissions. If true, that would dictate severe remedies. But, even then, we could debate whether government’s heavy hand is needed, or whether private action is enough.

However, the conventional wisdom – we would call it propaganda – is untrue, given a careful reading of first sources. That changes everything. It means that if something should be done, it should be done by voluntary private acts, and government force as a last resort is unnecessary.

Mounting scientific evidence refutes claims of soaring future temperatures from global warming. Other studies show meager temperature increases to date have little to do with manmade CO2. More and more scientists buck the global warming lobby’s erroneous claims and self-serving half-truths.

The situation isn’t dire, which means extreme government remedies are unnecessary. The private sector is capable of recognizing the benefits of conservation and advances in clean technology, especially as world demand for energy accelerates. But when government micromanages, unintended consequences abound. Market forces are perverted.

Look no further than the Kyoto Protocol’s failure to meet targeted CO2 reductions while simultaneously exempting China and India from its economy-stifling mandates. Alarmists say without Draconian mandates, economies will suffer. But a recent Wake Forest University survey of 210 economists found 59 percent believe global warming would improve the U.S. economy.

Alarmists seek control, and opportunists seek to profit from global warming scare stories. Those goals can be achieved only with government’s power.

– Mark Landsbaum