In reading Walter Williams‘ latest essay collection, Liberty Versus the Tyranny of Socialism, I came across a great piece about one of the least-publicized virtues of small government.
In September 2004, Williams wrote:
Different Americans have different and intensive preferences for cars, food, clothing and entertainment. For example, some Americans love opera and hate rock and roll. Others have opposite preferences, loving rock and roll and hating opera. When’s the last time you heard of rock and roll lovers in conflict with opera lovers? It seldom if ever happens. Why? Those who love operas get what they want and those who love rock and roll get what they want and both can live in peach with one another.
Suppose that instead of freedom in the music market, decisions on what kind of music people could listen to were made in the political arena. It would be either opera or rock and roll. Rock and rollers would be lined up against opera lovers. Why? It’s simple. If the opera lovers win, rock and rollers would lose and the reverse if rock and rollers won. Conflict would emerge solely because the decision was made in the political arena.
The prime feature of political decisionmamking is that it’s a zero-sum game. One person or group’s gain is of necessity another person or group’s loss. As such political allocation of resources is conflict enhancing while market allocation is conflic reducing. The greater the number of decisions made in the political arena the greater is the potential for conflict.
Think about those words the next time you hear about the virtue of government action to “do something” about this or that problem.
