by
Joe Siano
Joe Siano
Labor, along with Land, Capital and Entrepreneurship, is but
one of the factors of economic production. However, it is the only one to get its own
holiday.
Labor is the voluntary sacrifice of one’s time, effort and
energy in exchange for things that an individual believes will improve his condition.
Slavery is forced work performed for other’s benefit under
threat of punishment.
For 2019 Government expenditures account for about 36% of
U.S. GDP. That’s 36% of work earnings forcibly extracted from Labor goods and
services of dubious value. Thus the typical
American worker can be said to be two-thirds free man and one third slave as he
cannot legally earn a dollar without 36 cents taken from him.
I’d call that slavery.
Investopedia defines GDP as “the total monetary or market
value of all the finished goods and services produced within a country's
borders in a specific time period” as measured by consumer spending.
Murray Rothbard
objects that:
“Spending only
measures value of output in the private economy because that spending is
voluntary for services rendered. In government, the situation is entirely different
... its spending has no necessary relation to the services that it might be
providing to the private sector. There is no way, in fact, to gauge these
services.”
In the same article Christopher Casey at Mises elaborates:
“The absence of
voluntary action renders prices impotent, and without true price discovery,
benefits cannot be ascertained. This does not mean all goods and services
provided by government would cease to exist; rather, some production (e.g.,
hospitals, schools, roads, etc.) would revert to the private sector.”
Casey is being generous.
In The State,
Franz Oppenheimer delineates the difference between free market exchange and
government appropriation and redistribution:
There are two fundamentally opposed means whereby man…is
impelled to obtain the necessary means for satisfying his desires. These are
work and robbery, one’s own labor and the forcible appropriation of the labor
of others…I propose…to call one’s own labor and the equivalent exchange of
one’s own labor for the labor of others, the “economic means”…while the
unrequited appropriation of the labor of others will be called the “political
means.”
We understand that government expropriated dollars are used
employ workers in innumerable unproductive, counterproductive and destructive
ventures that we would never voluntarily assent to. But even when spent on useful items such as the
above mentioned schools, hospitals and roads, Public
Choice analysis demonstrates that government officials bureaucrats allocate resources with
an eye on what best serves their interest – not the taxpayers.
This Labor Day, imagine if you will, how better life would
be if 36% of your earnings were restored to you to invest and spend as you see
best. How much better would life be If
the fruits of you labor were not frittered away on useless wars, citizen
surveillance, cumbersome regulations, make work projects and political
giveaways?
Freeing ourselves from the snares of state enslavement will not be easy, Like Milo Minderbinder’s
M&M Enterprises in Catch-22, “everyone has a share”. Milo was a fictional World War II mess
officer who bought from and sold to everyone, including the enemy, for the
benefit of all while he grew rich. As
with government spending, each of us gets his or her little slice of the pie and
in unwilling to let go his or her little bit while others get theirs.
However, there may be a silver lining in the storm clouds
that lie ahead.
Lately, we hear much about how a new day of economic
reckoning is at hand. Never forget that
a crisis is a terrible thing to waste and that the principle of creative
destruction applies to whole economies as well as businesses and industries.
Perhaps a phoenix of freedom can rise from the ashes of the coming train
wreck. It is our job as liberty warriors
to help lead the way.
Related Articles:
"Half
the people are stoned and the other half are waiting for the next election.
Half the people are drowned and the other half are swimming in the wrong direction."
- Paul Simon
Half the people are drowned and the other half are swimming in the wrong direction."
- Paul Simon
