ALBERTA’S TREATMENT OF ITS HUTTERITE COMMUNITIES GIVES the lie to any residual claim it may have as a bastion of free enterprise and fair play.
The Hutterites are the followers of non-conformist Protestant martyr Jacob Hutter. Since arriving in Alberta in 1918, they have founded 110 communal farm colonies throughout the province. The Hutterites live on an extended family or communal basis. They are quiet, law-abiding, and God-fearing citizens. They pay their taxes, don’t brawl in public, and don’t make pests of themselves to their neighbors. On the contrary, they keep to themselves.
Nevertheless, they have a history of persecution in Alberta. According to the 1944 Communal Property Act, their colonies were limited to 10 square miles in size. Now this may not sound like much of an interference to most city folk. It sounds like limiting the average middle class family to no more than 25 Mercedes-Benz limousines. But such a law has serious repercussions in Alberta, where the typical farm works on two-, three- and even four-square-mile sections. A cutoff point of 10 square miles thus severely limits the number of families who may join a given colony, at a level far below the size the Hutterite community would otherwise take.
The Communal Properties Act struck a responsive chord in the minds of those who fear “business concentration.” If large size is evil, it seems easy to nip it in the bud through legislation, But as the experience of the Hutterites shows, there is a strong connection between economic and political liberties. When government interferes with one thing a person has every right to do (grow, expand his business through completely legitimate practices, “concentrate”) it violates rights in other ways, too.
Happily, this evil law was repealed in 1973. But ever since then, complaints about Hutterite expansion have multiplied. Last year, Municipal Affairs Minister Julian Koziak received a letter from Willow Creek farmer Edward Menzies, asking for legislation banning any new land purchases by Hutterites.
This abomination, of course, was resisted. After all, Alberta has not quite descended to blatant government discrimination on religious grounds. But what happened instead was even worse. In a measure that reached new heights of hypocrisy, a group of political hacks have asked the province to pass legislation limiting any “person, family, cooperative, corporation, church, or affiliated communal living group” from owning or controlling more than 10 percent of the land in any municipality. Responsible for this quest, by a 24-21 vote, were local politicians representing the 10 counties and districts between Calgary and the U.S. border.
The “beauty” of this request is that it never mentions the Hutterites by name! But there is more than one way to skin a cat. It is never explicitly stated in typical zoning law that its purpose is to discriminate against the poor. But by requiring that each home, say, must be built on a half-acre plot, the poor are effectively precluded from entry. As shown in a Fraser Institute book Zoning: Its Cost & Relevance for the 1980s, this hypocritical law may be even more effective than “honest” discriminatory legislation, in that it is difficult to prove it in violation of our human rights guarantees.
Complaints are rife. These “communal-living groups” keep to themselves too much. They make their own clothing, grow most of the food they eat, don’t patronize local bars, restaurants, pool halls, and bowling alleys. They pay school taxes, but as they attend their own colony schools, the locality does not receive the per-pupil provincial grants to which it would otherwise be entitled.
Regarding the latter charge, it would be easy to alter the law. In any case, it is the Hutterites, not their neighbors, who are the real victims here. They are forced to pay double for education: once for their own schools, and a second time via school taxes for other people’s children.
As to the former, it is just hard cheese on the Alberta retailers. This, after all, is one of the risks of doing business. Passing discriminatory legislation against the Hutterites for this reason—or for any other—is unjustified. The sooner this blot on its record is erased, the sooner Alberta can reclaim its otherwise reasonably justified reputation as a land of freedom and free enterprise.
But, it will be objected, the Hutterites are a communal group not deserving of protection from free enterprise institutions. Stuff and nonsense. The Hutterites are a voluntary commune (similar to the monastery, the kibbutz in Israel, the food cooperative). No one is forced to join against his will. They may not live according to strict free market principles, but their underlying philosophy is entirely in keeping with that of laissez-faire capitalism. They live, after all, according to the principle that all social and economic action shall take place strictly on a voluntary basis.
The Hutterites do not seek special treatment. Nor do they deserve any. But simple and elemental justice requires that their private property rights be respected. That no law be passed which violates their right to buy and own property. Private property rights—the recent Canadian Constitution to the contrary notwithstanding—are the bulwark of all human rights and liberties.
The philosopher-economist Ludwig von Mises wrote of private property as follows:
Private ownership of the means of production is the fundamental institution of the market economy. It is the institution the presence of which characterizes the market economy as such. Where it is absent, there is no question of a market economy.
Ownership means full control of the services that can be derived from a good. This catallactic notion of ownership and property rights is not to be confused with the legal definition of ownership and property nights as stated in the laws of various countries. It was the idea of legislators and courts to define the legal concept of property in such a way as to give to the proprietor full protection by the governmental apparatus of coercion and compulsion to prevent anybody from encroaching upon his rights.
However, nowadays, there are tendencies to abolish the institution of private property by a change in the laws determining the scope of the actions which the proprietor is entitled to undertake with regard to the things which are his property. While retaining the term private property, these reforms aim at the substitution of public ownership for private ownership. Private ownership means that the proprietors determine the employment of the factors of production, while public ownership means that the government controls their employment.
Private property is a human device. It is not sacred. It came into existence in early ages of history, when people with their own power and by their own authority appropriated to themselves what had previously not been anybody’s property. Again and again proprietors were robbed of their property by expropriation.
The history of private property can be traced back to a point at which it originated out of acts which are certainly not legal. Virtually every owner is the direct or indirect legal successor of people who acquired ownership either by arbitrary appropriation of ownerless things or by violent spoilation of their predecessor.
However, the fact that legal formalism can trace back every title either to arbitrary appropriation or to violent expropriation has no significance whatever for the conditions of a market society. Ownership in the market economy is no longer linked up with the remote origin of private property.
These events in a far-distant past, hidden in the darkness of primitive mankind’s history, are no longer of any concern for our day. For in an unhampered market society the consumers daily decide anew who should own and how much he should own. The consumers allot control of the means of production to those who know how to use them best for the satisfaction of the most urgent wants of the consumers. Only in a legal and formalistic sense can the owners be considered the successors of appropriators and expropriators. In fact, they are mandataries of the consumers, bound by the operation of the market to serve the consumers best. Under capitalism private property is the consummation of the self-determination of the consumers.
The meaning of the private property in the market society is radically different from what it is under a system of each household’s autarky. Where each household is economically self-sufficient, the privately owned means of production exclusively serve the proprietor. He alone reaps all the benefits derived from their employment.
In the market society the proprietors of capital and land can enjoy their property only by employing it for the satisfaction of other people’s wants. They must serve the consumers in order to have any advantage from what is their own. The very fact that they own means of production, forces them to submit to the wishes of the public. Ownership is an asset only for those who know how to employ it in the best possible way for the benefit of the consumers. It is a social function.1
A number of letters and commentaries have been published in the last several issues regarding my columns in Grainews. I have not answered them, preferring to finish a series on the economics and morality of the Christian Farmers Federation of Ontario, without interruption. But now that my analysis of the CFFO has been completed, it is time for a reply to all these letters.2
I begin with a letter from Alice Green of Mossleigh, Alberta in the November Grainews, entitled “Block Knows Little of Hutterites.” As a matter of fact, this title is quite accurate. I do know very little of the actual day-to-day lives of the Hutterite Brethren. I have never been to one of their farms, I have never met one in person, I have never even spoken to any Hutterite for any length of time. Actually, except for one brief phone conversation with a member of the Brethren who thanked me for my articles in Grainews, I have no relationship with the Hutterites whatsoever.
But I do know something of injustice. And I know that the personal habits, mores, folkways of a people are completely irrelevant to questions of justice. I did not know, personally, a single solitary Jew out of all the millions who were slaughtered in the Nazi concentration camps, nor one Ibo of all the millions killed in Biafra, nor any kulak of the millions murdered by Stalin, nor any of the millions of Chinese who perished during the Cultural Revolution in China. I do not know if these people locked their doors, or even if they had doors in the first place. All this is entirely irrelevant to the question of justice.
Moreover, it might well be the case that, were I to be introduced to these Jews, Ibos, Russians, or Chinese, I might actually have hated them. I might find their personal habits disgusting, their appearance unsavory, their smell repugnant, their intelligence non-existent, their personalities unappealing. And this, of course, applies to the Hutterites, to Alice Green, to the other citizens of Mossleigh, Alberta and, for good measure, to the entire staff of Grainews.
But this is all so irrelevant. If the personal or property rights of any of these people were violated, I would defend them. The lover of justice need not love, admire, or even like those victimized by injustice. He may know absolutely nothing of their personal lives; or, knowing them, may detest them. It is all beside the point. The only question is, have the rights of a people been violated? And if so, a moral analysis requires a critique of the injustice.
As to the Hutterites, they have been “stabbed in the back” by the Alberta officials, as I claimed in my column (Grainews, October 1983), and nothing regarding “the actual workings of the Hutterite Brethren,” or whether or not they lock their doors, can change that fact by one iota.
Likewise, the Reverend Peter K. Hofer of Raymond, Alberta, writing in the January 13 Grainews also seeks to set Alice Green along the straight and narrow path. A Hutterite himself, the Reverend Hofer denied the charge of communism, and then went on to explain why his community does lock their doors.
I find this letter to be positively dripping in kindness, concern, humanity, and good sense. I, too, share Reverend Hofer’s dismay that Alice Green should know so little of her neighbors, and empathize with them even less.
However, and perhaps Reverend Hofer can correct me if I am wrong, from what little I know of the Hutterites, I must disagree with his denial on the communism description. That is, as far as I am concerned, the Hutterites do practice a form of communism. On this question, I agree with Alice Green.
But there is nothing at all wrong with the form of communism practiced by the Hutterites! As a long-time advocate of the free market system, I hasten to explain this, lest misunderstanding arise.
As I view the long, broad scope of political economy, the main danger to innocent people comes from those individuals who seek to achieve their ends by force, or by the threat of force, violence, and aggression. Certainly, coercive communism, as practiced in Russia, mainland China, Cuba, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere behind the Iron Curtain are all examples of this. In these societies, people are forced to give their be-all and end-all to the state apparatus. Virtually all property has been seized by the government, and the people are little better than slaves to their masters.
But force, coercion, and institutionalized violence are by no means limited to communist countries. Western democracies (such as Canada) and right-wing dictatorships also utilize such measures, albeit to a lesser degree. Legislation underlying tariffs, Crown corporations, unions, rent control, marketing boards, business subsidies and bailouts, minimum wages, socialized medicine, and agricultural land reserves are just as much violation of person and property—even if to a lesser degree—as the government exploitation which occurs behind the Iron Curtain.
In stark contrast to coercive systems—whether of the left or the right—are voluntary ones. Here, all, or at least virtually all, interactions between adults take place on a strictly voluntary basis, with no violation of person or property. One such is the institution of free enterprise, where the scope of government is severely restrained and all capitalist “acts between consenting adults” are allowed. Although we human beings have never on this earth fully reached so exalted a state, present reasonably close examples might be Hong Kong and several other free trade zones; in the past, the United States and Great Britain during much of the 19th century.
Another such system is that of voluntary communism. Examples include the monastery, the kibbutz in Israel, the average Canadian family, various “utopias” and “communes” in the past, and, I am convinced, the present day Hutterites. In each of these cases is practiced the communist dictum “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” There is nothing, repeat nothing, reprehensible about this dictum—provided it is done on a strictly voluntary basis. Take the typical family as a case in point. The working father may earn all the income, but certainly does not use it all up himself. The 2-year-old child, in contrast, earns no income at all; nevertheless it eats in accordance with its needs.
Voluntary communism, together with laissez-faire capitalism, has nothing to be ashamed of on moral and economic grounds. They can each hold up their heads, high. Far from enemies, they are merely opposite sides of the same voluntaristic coin. Together, they must battle state coercion, whether called State Capitalism or State Socialism. The point is, “left” vs. “right” is a red herring. The reddest and perhaps most misleading red herring in all political-economic theory.
The true debate is not between left and right. It is, rather, between voluntarism (whether of left or right) and coercivism (whether of left or right). The sooner this lesson is learned, the sooner can we make sense of our otherwise paradoxical political debates.
I next take up a lengthy, unsigned letter written by someone purporting to be of the “Society for the Preservation of the Family Farm” (December, 1983 Grainews). But before answering in detail, I wish to recognize the eminent good sense of Al Nickel of Winnipeg, who wrote in Grainews, January 13, 1984, of the “strangeness” that this “society” has no officers willing to accept responsibility for the letter. Well, I suppose we live in strange times.
SPFF starts off by separating the ducks and geese: no one really complains that the Hutterites don’t patronize local businesses. This claim, actually, is quite false. And for evidence, all we need do is turn to the pages of Grainews itself. For example, see letters by F.F. Wark and Ronald F. Bender (January 1983). The problem, in the view portrayed here, is not the Hutterites themselves, but their concentration. (Can’t you hear the local bigot saying, “It’s not individual Jews—or Catholics, blacks, Indians, French—that are the problem, it’s that there are just so darn many of them around.”) This is the “true” issue, the one which I have “skirted,” according to SPFF.
Then this person launches into a description of a 1972 Alberta study on communal property, recommended “by nine prominent MLAs” who shall—surprise, surprise—remain nameless. What has this untitled “study” to say for itself? There are five “guidelines”:
1. Contiguous Lands
Hutterites should buy land contiguously, not spread out all amongst normal people’s holdings. “This guideline would prevent neighboring farms from experiencing inconvenience from being surrounded on three or four sides by Hutterite lands.”
How nice. But why shouldn’t the non-Hutterites be “guided” to plan their land purchases so as to conform to this contiguity principle? That is, why shouldn’t non-Hutterites refrain from surrounding Hutterites on “three or four sides?” This contiguity idea sounds like nothing but the Nazi plan for ghettoizing Jews in pre-World War II Germany. With the Jews all conveniently tucked away out of sight of the Aryans this reduced the “experience” of “inconvenience” on the part of the Germanic peoples.
2. Distance from Colonies
More of the same bigotry here. Hutterite colonies shouldn’t be located too close to each other, lest this isolate small family farms, and thereby give them offense.
There is a problem here, even apart from the bigotry. Guidelines No. 1 and No. 2 are inconsistent with each other! No. 1 says, in effect, “Hutterites, locate all together, don’t go spreading all around, now.” But according to No. 2, these people should not locate next to each other. Rather, when possible, they should stay at least “15 miles” away from each other.
What kind of racists have we got here, anyway? Illogical ones, that’s what. Even the South African government doesn’t pass downright self-contradictory legislation.
As well, guideline No. 2, a real gem, this, states that “too many colonies located in a small area would mean that there would be a good deal of intercolony competition for market, a situation which the colonies themselves would prefer to avoid.”
There are two difficulties here. First, try as I might, I just can’t make sense of this gobbledygook. I am simply unable to understand what “competition for market” is. And even if it actually meant something, I cannot fathom, for the life of me, why Hutterites would provide more such “competition” to each other than would non-Hutterite farmers.
Second, if the “colonies themselves would prefer to avoid” this situation (whatever the devil it is) why, pray tell, do we need a guideline to tell them to do what is, in any case, in their best interest?
Small is beautiful, seems to be the message here. The Hutterite holdings shouldn’t get too large. Eight sections seems to be about right, according to the Hutterites themselves (the Lehrerleut and Dariusleut sects).
Fiddlesticks. Why should any group of people consent to size limits of their land holdings? Suppose we were to construct guidelines along similar lines pertaining not to Hutterites, but to Anglicans, Catholics, members of the United Church, people who like hockey, bowling, or curling. Is there any doubt that were such guidelines offered, those responsible would be run out of Canada on a rail of the type they so richly deserve?
4. Activities of Land Agents
Real estate land agents should consult with “the liaison officer before purchasing land in the name of the Hutterites.” Another legal violation of the rights of a downtrodden minority. Is there to be no privacy for these people? On what ground are they singled out for special violations of their rights? On the ground that they annoy other people? Which of us is willing to throw the first stone on that particular issue?
5. Local Consultation
Before setting up a new colony, the Hutterite Brethren should “consult” with the local municipal authorities. Not that the “Select Committee” would interfere with the property rights of the Hutterites. Oh, no! Perish the thought! Pay it no mind! Of course not! However would we have supposed that to be the case? It’s just that many of the “problems encountered” in such circumstances could be avoided. Come, let us all sit down and reason together, the lion and the lamb, the fox and the chicken…
There is a saying: “The lion and the lamb may lie down together peacefully, but the lamb won’t get too much rest.” True. Too true. Sit down and consult, indeed. Why don’t we pass a law saying that Progressive Conservatives or Liberals or NDPers have to sit down and “consult” with municipal authorities before buying land? Because such legislation would be a violation of their civil liberties, that’s why!
To answer the SPFF’s initial question: No, sir, I have not taken the time to read this 1972 study on communal property in Alberta. But if you, or any other Grainews reader, would send me a copy of this bilge, I would certainly read it (no matter how distasteful) and then, perhaps, devote a future “Understanding Free Enterprise Economics” column to eviscerating it. I’m far more than passing curious about this document. I would dearly love to learn how much taxpayer money was spent on creating it, among other things.
After regaling us with these five guidelines, SPFF plaintively calls for “a little voluntary cooperation,” and for reducing “tensions.” But there is an iron fist in this velvet glove: a law limiting a person or group to owning 10 percent of the land in any municipality. Let’s give one Ted Menzies credit for this abomination; it “applies fairly and equally to all.”
Well, I’ve got another bright idea which “applies fairly and equally to all.” Let’s string up the members of all organizations with initials SPFF based in Drumheller, Alberta. What could be fairer? It applies to all such groups. It doesn’t single out any one group. Nonsense. One need not mention proper names in order to single out certain persons or groups. There are always “objective specifications” which apply to only those one wishes to control.
Yes, indeed, I’m a do-gooder, “wanting to protect a minority’s rights.” Of course, the majority has rights as well. But not, repeat, not, to legislatively prohibit or interfere with a minority group member’s right to purchase land from willing sellers at mutually agreeable prices.
Nor can I accept the view that, in order to talk sense about problems arising in Alberta, one must live there. Truth is truth, regardless of who states it or where he happens to live. If my analysis is correct, this is a matter of evidence, of logic, of intellectual rigor—not a matter of geography.
What of SPFF’s parting shot: that, “at this rate of expansion,” the communal groups will soon own the majority of improved land in Alberta? If this is, indeed, the pattern and it continues in full force (both highly doubtful statements), well, then, so be it. If non-communal Alberta farmers are willing to sell their holdings to the Brethren, it only means that they value the sale price more than their land. Under such circumstances (the only circumstances in which the proportion of communal land can rise), a prohibition of these purchases would not only harm the Hutterites, it would hurt the family farmers as well.
Mr. Wark of Mossleigh, Alberta (January 13 Grainews) takes great delight in reminding us that the Hutterites are pacifists—that they refuse, on religious grounds, to participate in wars. Would he contend that all such people be penalized by not being allowed to own land in Alberta, that bastion of free enterprise, private property rights and freedom? If so, why not lock them up and be done with it? If not, what is the relevance of their pacifist beliefs to the land question, except to use as an underhanded smear against them?
Taking the stance of spokesman for Vulcan County, Mr. Wark declares that the seven colonies now located there (and rumors of two more) “should be more than our share.” “Our” share? Indeed. Mr. Wark speaks as if he, himself, personally owns all the land in Vulcan County. As if the land for the existing seven colonies were given to the Hutterites, free of charge, out of the goodness of Mr. Wark’s blessed heart.
And now those ungrateful Hutterite wretches, what do they do? Why, greedy pigs that they are, they demand even more largesse of the poor, put-upon Mr. Wark. But this worthy, although exceedingly generous man, even charitable to a fault, as it were, has had enough. “No,” he declares, seven colonies is quite enough, thank you. If these welfare cases, these bums, want more free land, let them go and beg elsewhere.
The facts, of course, are quite different. As we all know well and good, even city slickers from Vancouver know this, the Hutterites do not beg, whimper, and cry for their land. Rather, they go and purchase it, at prices the owners find acceptable. Nor do Mr. Wark and his ilk own all the land. True, some of the land is sold to the Brethren by absentee owners. But do people lose their legitimate land titles in free enterprise Alberta merely by moving away? Or by never venturing forth there in the first place?
It is time that Mr. Wark came down off his high horse and stopped posturing as the benefactor of all mankind. He, of course, is free to refuse to sell to the Brethren ’til the Heavens fall. But if his neighbors, the ‘‘traitors,’’ decide to sell, that is none of his business. It is entirely up to them.
Next to take up the cudgels in search of Hutterite blood is Mr. Ronald Bender of Hilda, Alberta (January 13 Grainews).
Mr. Bender’s point has to do with “money-hungry” real estate agents, and their “smooth-talking, two-faced” supporters, who don’t have the decency to go around asking if anyone else would like to buy land bid on by Hutterites.
First of all, we are all “money-hungry” here. On this side of the Garden of Eden, that is. Does Mr. Bender himself seek the lowest prices available for his farm produce? And when he goes shopping for a bag of feed, a new tractor or some chicken wire, does he seek to pay the highest price for an item of standard quality? He, too, then, is ‘‘money-hungry.’’
Second, why should a real estate agent go around asking for other bids on land to undercut his own client? An agent who did that would soon lose all his clients! And why do this only for Hutterites? Why not, as well, for Anglicans, Catholics, or members of the United Church, who are would-be land purchasers?
Next, Mr. Bender launches into a vitriolic attack on the Hutterites for keeping pigs, chickens, ducks, geese, dairy cows, and feeder cattle on their farms, right next to and upwind of his own, thereby “ruining his life.”
Now this is a curious charge, indeed, for one farmer to make against another. Whatever else does one keep on a farm but these barnyard animals? Would Mr. Bender wish them to get rid of their present livestock and, instead, maintain crocodiles, hippopotamuses, elephants, kangaroos and brontosauruses?
Mr. Bender’s forefathers may have homesteaded Canada, but they subsequently sold parts of their land holdings to newcomers. In any case, if length of tenure in this country is any criteria for legitimacy (and it is not!), then Mr. Bender and his ilk should be the ones to consider going elsewhere. For there were people here long before the first white settlers arrived from Europe and elsewhere.
The remainder of Mr. Bender’s letter is so venomous, mean, petty, and nasty that an appropriate answer has no place in Grainews, a decent, respectable family newspaper.
It is, indeed, a pleasure to comment on the letter written by Mary Gilbertson of Hughenden, Alberta (February 28 Grainews). She, too, is a neighbor of the Hutterites. But, unlike Mr. Bender, she, it would appear, believes in a good-neighbor policy.
Moreover, she makes an insightful point on farmland prices and the family farm; one, I confess, which I failed to note. She points out that, what with high farm prices and interest rates, the children of many farming families are being forced to seek work in the cities. The Hutterites, however, are an exception! There, thanks to help from parent colonies, the young people can remain on the farm.
Now, as is clear from numerous of my “Understanding Free Market Economics” columns, I hold no particular brief for family farming. In my view, it should sink or swim in fair and unbridled competition with all other institutional arrangements. However, it is good to note that the Hutterites are successfully contending with commercial farming, holding their own and even expanding, in scrupulously fair competition.
Her views on education are exactly my own. Public education, in many cases, is a sham and a disgrace. Why should the busy, productive, happy, and skilled Hutterites be forced to waste their time on it? More to the point, why are they now forced to pay for it, when they don’t use it?
It is the same with communism. In the same way that I sought to distinguish between the different types of communism on theoretical grounds, Gilbertson does so on practical grounds. As she so eloquently tells it, just as she and her family fled Romania to escape communism, so did the communalistic Hutterites flee, “to start out in a land they felt offered them peace.”
Nor does Gilbertson shrink from taking on the pacifism issue, showing that, even though they refuse to bear arms, the Hutterites can still serve this country. And what, she asks, of the American draft dodgers?
Altogether, it was a pleasure to read this letter and an honor for me to be associated with the views of this woman.
Mr. Paul E. Gauthier of Lorette, Manitoba weighs in with a letter (Feb. 9 Grainews) not, however, related to the Hutterites. Instead, he is unhappy with some of my other columns. He begins his critique with the assertion that a free market never has existed—except in the minds of some economists, such as myself. This, insofar as it goes, is perfectly correct. A pure, free, pristine free market has never existed throughout all of human history, and probably never will.
Mr. Gauthier, moreover, is right on target in pointing out, as impediments to free enterprise, government grants of monopolistic privileges, such as the British India Tea Company, government financing of “private” companies, guild-like trade associations, and labor unions. These are all incompatible with free enterprise.3
But so what? Mr. Gauthier wants to derive from the undisputed fact that the marketplace has never fully existed, the highly dubious conclusion that this is an undesirable goal. But this does not follow logically at all. Just because something, call it X, has never existed, does not mean that X is undesirable!
Perfect good health, immense riches for everyone, perfect marriages, perfect golf games (a score of 18, for an 18-hole golf course) have never existed either. Does this mean that people should stop striving for them? No, of course not.
Similarly, the fact that a system of full free enterprise has not so far come into existence should not make us scorn this state of affairs. Rather, we should double, and redouble again, our efforts to bring it about. For by ridding our economic system of government interferences (tariffs, marketing boards, bureaucratic red tape, monopoly privileges) we can enhance freedom per se, as well as increase the chances of attaining our other goals (such as better health and more prosperity).
Mr. Gauthier then attempts to justify subsidies to agriculture, on the ground that they are in support of renewable resources. In this way, we can keep our non-renewables (such as iron, coal, gas, and oil) safely to ourselves.
This is a strange view, indeed. First of all, these so-called non-renewables are only in fixed supply in the sense that no more of them are being created. Additional sources, however, are continually being discovered. And it may well be, who knows, that before present stocks are exhausted, some of these may become obsolete, perhaps due to alternatives such as nuclear energy. Even if not, it is economically unjustified to insist on no utilization whatsoever of non-renewable resources.
Does it make any sense, in this regard, to urge Mr. Gauthier’s advice on the Arabs, as a means of improving their economic condition? Hardly. And if it makes sense to the Arabs to export their non-renewable (but continually increasing, due to new explorations) oil reserves, why is this calamity for Canada?
But let’s forget all about new discoveries and possible obsolescence before depletion. These are only minor points.
The major issue is, even if a resource is in strictly fixed supply and will always be needed, it still can make sense to export it. The only question is price. If we can get enough money for this irreplaceable and precious item, nay, more than enough, then surely it pays to sell it, and to buy the other goods and services more valuable to us which these funds alone make possible. If not, no one would sell it anyway, and we wouldn’t need government regulations to deter us.
So the question related by Mr. Gauthier is one of price, not one of principle.
This reminds one of a story told by George Bernard Shaw. A man approached a woman and asked her if she would go to bed with him for $1,000,000. After mulling over this offer, in all its ramifications, she accepted. Whereupon the man asked the woman, would she go to bed with him for $2? At this point the woman drew herself up haughtily, refused, and said, “What kind of woman do you take me for?” And the man’s reply? “We have already established that, madame, we were merely haggling about price.”
Just like the woman in the story, Mr. Gauthier’s objection to exporting non-renewable resources is merely a dispute about price. His objection in principle to such exports vanishes upon the scrutiny of economic analysis.
Nothing daunted, however, Mr. Gauthier presses onward. Next, he treats us to a quote on speculation from Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt, a disciple of the great Ludwig von Mises. For this, we can only thank him. Surely, the world is a better place when it contains more of Hazlitt’s economic analysis.
But then, Mr. Gauthier turns on us. He declares, in effect, that Hazlitt is wrong in stating the speculator, on average, loses money and thus, in effect, although not by intention, ends up subsidizing the consumer. Anyone who believes this swill has had a few bricks knocked off his otherwise full load, perhaps by West Coast air currents and inversions, says Mr. Gauthier.
The point is, it is not impossible for the average speculator, on net balance, to make financial losses. “Hope springs eternal,” “there is a sucker born every day” are statements which have withstood the test of time. The speculator class is composed of professionals, who rarely lose money, and amateurs, who do, eventually, more often than not. (If they don’t, they usually become professionals.) Surely, there should be no mystery about the professionals continually making profits, while the amateurs lose. This is an everyday occurrence. And where would the amateurs get their money from? Rich parents? Possibly, but not necessarily.
The point is, this category is composed of a continually changing number of people. They earn their money elsewhere, wherever, lose it in speculation, retire, and make way for new losers who conform to the same pattern. There is nothing incongruous about this. Indeed, the evidence suggests that it is so.
A word or two about the economics and ethics of bigotry may not be amiss in this rejoinder. As must be clear from the foregoing, I find bigotry personally repugnant. Nevertheless, bigots, too, have rights. It might be very nice if we all treated each other with respect, cordiality and kindness. Unfortunately, we do not. Bigots, it would appear, “we shall always have with us.”
But it is important, vitally important, to distinguish between two types of bigotry. According to one type, call it coercive bigotry, anything goes. The bigot will resort to lynching, torture, kidnapping, fire bombing, rape, what have you.
In less-extreme cases, the coercive bigot will launch less serious physical attacks upon persons (and their property) in the despised group: assault and battery, theft, relatively minor depredations, such as slashing their tires and burning crosses. But what qualifies a person of either category as a coercive bigot is his willingness to use force, or the threat of force, against his victims.
I do not for a moment believe that any letter writer to Grainews falls into either of these above defined categories of coercive bigotry. However, there is a third type of coercive bigot, which, sad to say, does encompass several letter writers. This is the person who advocates that government use its force and might to violate the rights of despised minorities.
For example, laws which prohibit (and interfere with) the Hutterites from buying land. Whether or not the Hutterites are ever mentioned by name in such legislation is completely beside the point. These bigots operate once removed from their victims. They do not, themselves, visit the power of the state apparatus against their victims. But they are coercive bigots for all that, because they are the instruments by which unjustified force is used upon their victims.
The Germans who voted for the Nazis are also coercive bigots of this third category, although their guilt is perhaps of a lower order than those who actually perpetrated the killing of the Jews and other non-Aryans. The legislators who enacted the laws forbidding and interfering with Hutterite land purchases are coercive bigots—although, of course, guilty of far less serious a crime than the Nazis—because they unleashed the force of law upon innocent victims.
With regard to coercive bigots, as defined, there is no ethical argument in their behalf, whatever. And this applies to all three types of coercive bigots: the murderer, the petty thief, and he who calls upon government regulations to do his dirty deeds.
But there is another type of bigot as well. Call him, for purposes of identification, the non-coercive bigot. This is a far more complex and subtle case than the ones treated above. The non-coercive bigot may hate and revile the members of the minority group as much as, or even more than, the coercive bigot. But of one thing he is determined: Never, not in any manner, shape or form, shall he either himself launch physical force against the object of his wrath, nor shall he call upon government to do this for him.
What, then, may the non-coercive bigot do? Well, in the case of the Nazi, he may goosestep. He may carry Nazi insignia on his person, he may sing Nazi songs (but not so loudly as to constitute a threat, or even an annoyance, to his victims. For example, he could do all these things in the privacy of his own home). In short, he may do anything and everything to express his hatred and indignation—except for launching attacks of physical aggression, or asking the government to do so, against the objects of his hatred.
In the case of the Hutterites, the non-coercive bigot could boycott them. He could refuse to sell land (or anything else) to Hutterites. He could refuse to buy from them. He could discriminate against them in various and sundry ways. When he saw them on the street, he could “cut them dead.”
He could even enter into restrictive covenants with other like-minded people, agreeing never to sell land to Hutterites—offering similarly (non-coercively) bigoted neighbors and friends first rights of refusal on any land he might ever be tempted to sell to a Hutterite.
Now, what are we to make of this non-coercive bigot? From a moral standpoint, hateful as he is, he must at least be distinguished from the coercive bigot. For he refuses, at all cost, to use force on his victim. More, he will not even petition that others do so.
As well, any ethical analysis of the non-coercive bigot must also reckon with the fact that the Hutterites, or other such people, simply have no right to demand of the bigot that he cease his hatred and befriend them.
The Hutterite, of course, has a moral right to ask this but, if the non-coercive bigot refuses, it would be improper to put him in jail for the “offense” of merely “hating.” (In other words, it would indeed be the highest form of justice to incarcerate the coercive bigot. But not for his thoughts. For his invasive actions.)
What of the economic analysis? Here, too, we insist that a distinction be made between the two different types of bigotry. In the case of the coercive bigot, the economic case is clear. The coercive bigot is no less than a disaster for the downtrodden. Not only is there a direct threat to his property, as important as that is, but his very person is in danger as well.
But the (economic) case of the non-coercive bigot is far from clear. In a Fraser Institute book entitled Discrimination, Affirmative Action, and Equal Opportunity, the full economic analysis is laid out. It shows definitively and authoritatively that the haters, the non-coercive bigots, are virtually powerless to reduce the economic fortunes of their intended victims. As well, two prominent contributors to that volume, professors Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams, have shown this to be the case in a series of other publications.
It is for this reason that our Canadian human rights industry has been so far off base. They have been deathly silent regarding the outrageous examples of coercive bigotry practiced upon the Hutterites, as exemplified by the Alberta legislation interfering with their rights to purchase land. Indeed, they have concentrated on prosecuting non-coercive bigots—those who supposedly “discriminate” in hiring.
But, such non-coercive bigots are unable to effectively harm their intended victims—in the free enterprise system, or even in the private sector of a mixed economy.
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Compiled from a series that was published in Grainews (Winnipeg, Manitoba): “Stabbing the Hutterites in the Back,” October, 1983; “Part 1, The Hutterite Question,” February 28, 1984; “Part 2, The Hutterite Question,” March 19, 1984; and “Is This Really a ‘Free Market?’,” March 31, 1984.
1 Ludwig von Mises, Human Action, 3rd ed. (Chicago: Regnery, 1963), pp. 82–84.
2 Grainews (Winnipeg, Manitoba), November 1983 to February 9, 1984.
3 There is one exception, however. The fact that many companies have government charters does not necessarily make them illegitimate. For an amplification of this view, see Robert Hesson, In Defense of the Corporation (San Francisco, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, 1980.)