Wednesday, September 14, 2011 – by Tibor Machan
Dr. Tibor MachanDuring one of his campaigns for the presidency Bill Clinton was stomping one state with a talk parts of which were aired on National Public Radio, the radio network of record on what pleases the modern liberal establishment. The excerpts were typical. Mostly the Pres was taking his lines from that funny little movie, DAVE. In it the fictional president-stand-in, played by Kevin Kline, proclaims that first on his political agenda is to secure a job for everyone in the country.
It is one of these pitches coming from politicians that are truly sick. This is because if there is one promise on which politicians cannot possibly deliver it is the one about providing jobs or job security. No one can give another person job security, not unless someone else is placed into involuntary servitude. That is, to secure a demand for some productive activity in the market place, others must make the free choice to purchase its result. This means that there is no way to guarantee any job for anyone if potential customers are treated as sovereign, free agents. If, however, job security is promised to us, those who make such a promise must give up on treating customers as sovereign, free persons. They have to be treated as slaves to the products that have to be purchased in order to secure the jobs in question.
Consider my job. I was at one time a tenured university professor at a large state university. Only if I committed a crime could I be fired or laid off (unless the entire institution were abolished by the politicians in the state). (Which is to say that even politicians cannot force people to keep paying for something, as the Soviet Union found out.) The only way I could have had job security is by forcing the taxpayers of the state to give up their income for the goals I serve, teaching college level philosophy courses.
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