MD: We here at Money Delusions have strong opinions on government (it is an admission of failure of principles and cooperation). The responsibility for a thing called Monetary Policy is immediately claimed by governments once they are instituted by the money changers to have just that power … to manipulate money and thus control trade … to enable their farming operation which they call the “business cycle”.
As a tactic, governments have on-going propaganda campaigns. They are like religions in that respect. They just last as long as religions … and are more numerous. Part of that propaganda campaign is to elevate their operatives to super-human status. This is almost always done posthumously. And we see the technique on a daily basis at Cafe Hayek as these Mises Monks try to protect the sainthood of their operatives. Boudreaux is in the process currently of securing sainthood for an operative named Jim Baldwin (whose confusions Boudreaux shares and wants to have immortalized).
Let’s review this article to see if they can see the delusions involved … and what the principle should be.
Jeff Miron on Statues
by Don Boudreaux on August 19, 2017
in Current Affairs
I post in full – and I agree in full:
Why should a city, state, or federal government put statues in public parks?
MD: Consider the principle of “all” government. Government is the last resort for dealing with issues that no level of cooperation above it can deal with itself … at the top being the individual. Government is stark evidence of cooperation’s failure to deal with the issue … i.e. problem still looking for a proper solution.
Take something as simple as recording of deeds and other legal documents. This is the role of the county clerk. With their green eye shades they maintain the books of indexes into boxes on top of boxes full of contract documents retained for public inspection. It is the process they have for facilitating “transparency” to protect claims. The principle here is that if everyone can see the claim at any time … and for all time, then that in and of itself with defend the claim. And this is largely true. Unfortunately government has been an inept way of addressing this need. Countless such records have predictably been destroyed with the inevitable fire and water destruction of courthouses.
The government solution has failed from the get-go. In the particular case of “real property”, a private solution is found in the invention of “title insurance”. Here, a private industry has relegated the role of the county clerk as the first step (a public step) in a private process (title company real property record search). And in that process, the “transparency” principle is not even obtained. The title company’s records are not open to the public. It’s not a very cooperative solution is it!
When you see a government solution addressing any issue, you know implicitly that the issue is still not being addressed properly. On inspection you will find that “all” government involvement can be eliminated by resorting to principles rather than laws. Laws are just an attempt to nail down the jello of misunderstood issues that are easily handled with principles and transparency … the most obvious one being the golden rule. As a thought experiment, think of the number of laws you need to nail down the principle of the golden rule. Hint: Infinite … and with 40,000+ new laws every year, they are crowding that the estimate … and that is a trait of all valid principles … the number of laws required to nail them down approaches infinity.
So back to the question: “Why should a city, state, or federal government put statues in public parks? “.
What’s the principle? First comes “what is it a statue of?”. If it’s of a duck or an elk, it’s no big deal. But in most cases it is of a person. And the purpose of that statue is for the memory of that person to live after their death. And it almost never works. In less than a generation, the significance of the person depicted in the statue is forgotten totally … all that is left, as a crutch, is the plaque.
The “real” purpose is give credibility to the people who share that person’s belief. It is to get people working for (or members of the same club as) the statue builder to think that if they behave, work for less than they’re worth, exhibit blind loyalty, etc., they too will be immortalized in marble or bronze. It is an attempt by the organization building the statue to gain “stature” for that organization. It’s just that simple. It’s a tactic.
Most statues are of government workers. Most government buildings are named after government workers. Many streets are named after government workers. And who are the least capable workers among us … and make the biggest messes of the biggest things? Right … government workers. So go figure.
Doing so addresses no plausible market failure, while using taxpayers funds and, as demonstrated tragically over the past few weeks, generates controversy, polarization, and violence. Thus governments should take down all statues, regardless of their political implications.
MD: First, most of these statues are not constructed with taxpayers funds. But they are placed on “so-called” public property. Now that we know the principle involved … giving recognition to one to garner loyalty and discipline of many, we see that the statues should never have gone up as a public symbol at all … and they are just one form of recognition and sainthood that is unprincipled … it is a tactic of a faction.
But taking them down makes a larger public statement than the statues themselves. That statement is that in an instant of time, one cooperative collection of people can disassemble what another cooperative collection of people constructed years, decades, even centuries before. For sure, they shouldn’t be able to do that more capriciously than the original initiative was done.
And what do you do when the statue was constructed privately on private property and then given over to the public? A principle should be adopted going forward that self recognition has no place in government and should not be tolerated moving forward. Of course, not tolerating government at all going forward nips that issue in the bud doesn’t it.
This is not “erasing” history but instead leaving it where it belongs, in the hands of private actors and mechanisms.
MD: Putting up statues is the first step in “distorting” history. It is a tactic … just like writing a biography … or worse, an auto-biography. The principle is that such self-aggrandizement requires no public support and should not get public support.
Historians, textbook authors, universities, learned societies, the History Channel, and many other individuals and organizations can all present their own views of history and battle for the hearts and minds of the public.
MD: All those sources just enumerated are instances of “historic revision”. It is an expected principle and by the golden rule should not be inhibited … but it should not be publicly purveyed either! In most cases it is a symbol of one government prevailing over another government … when neither government should have been allowed to exist in the first place.
Government statues are government putting its thumb on the scale, which is one step down the slippery slope of thought control.
MD: It is a tactic … and one that should be eschewed … as should be government. Look for another solution when government is proposed to deal with a cooperative issue. Such proposals should be viewed as “dead on arrival”
Brilliant, and wise.
MD: Obvious!