Scrooge: a great example for government
News, Political, Media ·Saturday December 26, 2009 @ 09:25 EST (link)
Indeed—I can't even watch Scrooge without political thoughts! We watched the the 1951 classic with Alastair Sim (colorized) yesterday, Christmas Day, as is tradition. My wife was clearly thinking along the same lines (I have corrupted her terribly), since she asked if I thought Dickens' thesis, which she saw as "people should help each other" is correct, especially since I'm such an ardent libertarian (objectivist). And of course neither I nor any libertarian would see any conflict with people helping each other as they choose, freely. Objectivists might object to the perceived altruism—I'll address that in a minute.
But I was a step ahead and my thesis about the movie is that Scrooge before his conversion is how government should be; Scrooge after his conversion is how a man should be. Before conversion Scrooge shared these characteristics with good government:
- No respecter of persons—no favoritism.
- No charity (government shouldn't be giving money away).
- Free market supporter; he did nothing by coercion.
- Kept precise records and punctual hours.
- Parsimonious with his resources (no waste or unnecessary expenditures).
- Referred people to existing services rather than clamoring for creation of new ones (this is not to say that these services were meritorious in their own right).
- Asserted his right to be left alone, and left others alone.
- No "entangling alliances" with colleagues.
Afterward, as a man his good characteristics were these:
- Gave voluntarily of his personal increase.
- Assisted those he knew (Cratchit family) and knew to be hard-working and otherwise worthy people.
- Assisted his own neighborhood: places and people he knew personally, and could judge the good his aid could do, as opposed to faraway people whose quality and use to which his money would be put he could not judge.
- The above assistance was in his interest, as it improved his own happiness, and his own neighborhood (objectivists rejoice).
- Kind to his employees and family, and presumably friendly to colleagues.
- Kept good records and was punctual—always a virtue!
Government must be cold and objective. People should be warm. But they should never be compelled to be so; and indeed, the natural variation among people—some more outgoing than others; people contributing their time and money to different causes in their own way, etc.—is a positive. Government should be thrifty, never coerce unless responding to coercion, be utterly objective, and never interfere in voluntary transactions unless asked to resolve a dispute.
Books finished: The Libertarian Reader, The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality.
