Document em1jo4GYYRo22nz1EovdjZBg

31 psychology, in history, in computer sciences --but not generally covered by the gray title of "economist.'' Another Nobel Laureate. Milton Fried man. is certifiably an economist--indeed, known as "the economist s economist." He has said. "Only those countries in which capitalism has prevailed over long periods have experienced both freedom and prosperity." And that leads me to the central point of this essay. The means to political power lie in eco nomic manipulation. A reoel may raise an in surrectionist army, a demagogue may sway the masses by force of rhetoric, but lor a sure takeover of control, nothing beats the appropriation unto oneself of the wealth for which others labor. Here on campus. I have seen many of our starry-eyed youngsters swept off into cults of various form ana appeal. What those cults have in common is that, first off. they require their followers to surrender much or all of their worldly possessions and to turn over much or all of their continuing earnings. A man or woman with a steady pay check and money in the bank is not a good candi date for an ant colony. (No self-respecting ant would put up with all that scrabbling, hand-to-mandible existence if its parents had thought to set up a trust fund for it.) Our government. I must admit, does nothing quite so blatant. James Madison, soeaking to the Virginia Convention in 1788. said, "i believe there are more instances of the abriogment of me freedom of the people oy graduai and silent encroachments of those m cower than by violent and sudden usurDalions." Take, for instance, the tax laws apolied to industry, and oarticularly the depreciation allowance, wmch fails 10 account lor inflation and thereby leads to a subtle expropriation df industry's assets. In the case of the steel industry, I see three possible developments over the course of the next five years, it will start to use plants built by insurance compa nies. It will borrow money from the govern ment to keep its head above water. Or--and this is a likely consequence of the first two developments--it will be taken over by the government. I talked a short while ago with Raymond 0. Gastil. of Freedom House in New York, who conducts the annual survey that measures the degree of freedom around the world. He says, "A critical problem for all societies seeking justice is to control the powerful, and specifically to control their ten dency to expropriate economic surplus." Dr. Gastil is editor and principal author of me recently published "Freedom in the World: 1978." In that work, he says: "it appears to oe much easier to nation alize an industry tnan to denationalize it.... if the drift continues, a oeople may not know when it arrives at a socialist state, but it will arrive, it will have arrived wnen there is no longer concern to respect on principle the rights of private property, when the presumption is in favor of government ownership and the exception is private ownership." Unfortunately, we are not likely to see many protest rallies on oehalf of the corpora tion. perhaps because "Save Our American Private Enterprise System" is too much to fit onto a portable poster. What may arouse our "double-tithing" peopie is the recognition-- already implicit in what has become known as the Prooosition : 3 mentality--that our tax laws do more than give government the power to take money from some and give it to others. Witn that power comes control over individual lives, and therefore a loss of individual liberties. > am sensitive to the fact that, many years ago. when I first committed myself to the folly of pedagogy, it was con sidered unthinkaoie that Washington would have anything to say about what happens in the universities. Today, we spend as much time in filling oul government forms as we do m reading student papers. We have con sented to accept the money Ihe bureaucrats take from others and dole out to us. and the price has been high. Consider the nature of freedom. It con sists as much m the belligerent "no. I won t" as in the positive "yes. i will." i don't delude myself that we have the kind of society m which a person can work at any |Ob he wants to or live m any place that pleases him. We do retain tne right of refusal as to occuoanon ana resicence. That right has never existed in scc.eties where government owns the means ol production Meanwnile. sncr; of outright expropria tion. our government pees quite nicely at nibbling upon our private lives. The colum nist George Will has written: "Public ownership is largely irrelevant to the goal of permeating economic life with public policy. That goal can be achieved by the regulatory instruments of the activist, in terventionist state." Today, regulation: tomorrow, control. What we nave is a sort of revolution m re verse-government rising up to seize power from the peoole. And this it accomplishes by increasing cairn neon the people's wealth. Whom the goes would destroy, they first make insolvent. When last we met. I quoted to you something Walter Lippmann set aown in 1929. Now. one year later and coming near the 50th anniversary of those words, they are worth repeating: 'Most men. alter a little '.ve are no: .eiy ;o see -any c'c:es: `a- es . oenaif of ire zz-zzraucr. freedom, have preferred authority with the consoling assurances and the economy ol effort which it brings." Understand. I don't say that these gloomy pronouncements mean the end of the world. We may yet prevail, as Faulkner insisted, but we shall certainly have lost some of our freedoms m doing so. This is particularly true if we think of our freedoms in terms of the many options we now enioy, more numerous and more varied than any society has ever known before. Sorry to be so pedantic. Perhaps I should have stuck to news of kith and km Qepnn:s pi ;ms essay are avaiiace <v.' v Chairman. :> eccers Company, me . noocers Sotictr.g. rtnsoergn. .-a. "c."