YT YouTube2Text

YouTube2Text → Transcripts → Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr.: Is There a Case for Private Property?

Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr.: Is There a Case for Private Property? — Transcript

by Hoover Institution Library & Archives · 8,563 words · 719 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

Open in transcriber Summarize with AI Download SRT/VTT

Full transcript

1:17To discuss the case for private property we have two guests.
1:21George Roche is the president of Hillsdale College in Michigan, a venerable, small, coeducational
1:27institute unabashedly devoted to the cultivation of the moral imagination and the presumption
1:34in favor of the private sector.
1:37Dr. Roche received his B.A. from Denver’s Regis College and his advanced degrees in
1:44history from the University of Colorado.
1:48He joined the staff of the Foundation for Economic Education where he wrote five books
1:55before joining Hillsdale College.
1:59Our second guest is the senior libertarian economist in the world, Nobel laureate Friedrich
2:08von Hayek.
2:10Professor Hayek, born in Vienna, became known in America after the publication of his triumphantly
2:17successful book, The Road to Serfdom, which – published toward the end of the second
2:24war – warned against the implications to human freedom of the statist course being
2:31set by Great Britain and other countries.
2:35But he had already performed the prodigies and technical economics that won the Nobel
2:42prize for him two years ago, and he left the London School of Economics to resume his studies
2:49at the University of Chicago where he wrote his classic The Constitution of Liberty.
2:55He returned to the University of Freiburg and continues to write definitive economic
3:00studies and essays for the technical journals at Hillsdale College.
3:04At a special meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society two years ago to celebrate his work, a book
3:15issued celebrating that event published by the New York University Press.
3:24It is called Essays on Hayek in which, as it happens, I have a chapter.
3:32Such is the notoriety of Mr. Hayek’s opposition to state centralism that they even compose
3:38limericks about him on college campuses.
3:42Last week at Berkeley I heard this one.
3:45There was a young man from Nyack Who slept with a girl on a kayak.
3:52To do this while tanning Requires central planning
3:56In spite of the writings of Hayek.
3:58I should like to begin by asking Professor Hayek what would he do if he prevailed in
4:09Congress in order to diminish unemployment?
4:12Well, we must be clear about what you call unemployment.
4:18There is a current view which is not completely wrong.
4:23That’s what makes it so dangerous.
4:26That all you have to do is to increase expenditures and that, of course, leads to the use of inflation
4:34to secure full employment.
4:36But that’s only a short-term relief which in the long term makes things worse because
4:43what it amounts to is to stimulate certain misdirections of labor.
4:48Particularly in this period where all they want is growth.
4:52It draws more and more people into producing capital goods.
4:55Now they can be kept employed there by continuing inflation – in fact, continuing inflation
5:01at an accelerating rate.
5:03So the dreadful position is that the politicians can always temporarily say, “Well, we’re
5:08going to reduce unemployment by spending more.”
5:11But in the long run they make these misdirections of labor only worse and we buy the short-term
5:17remedy at the price of greater unemployment later on.
5:20Now we have had the longest period of inflation behind us which this country’s ever experienced,
5:26and we must expect that a very large proportion of the labor force has been drawn into occupations
5:33where they cannot be permanently employed unless we have continuing and accelerating
5:39inflation.
5:40The consequence is that we must go through a very bitter period of unemployment in which
5:47people are induced to shift their occupation.
5:53Now in a normal market system that works fairly easily because the relative wages indicate
6:00where the chances of occupation are.
6:01But we have on top of inflation a system where the whole wage structure is almost entirely
6:07politically determined by trade unions, so this normal mechanism of relative wages which
6:14tells people where good employments are no longer works.
6:17But I think as a result of civic policy in the past, we are bound to go through a much
6:24longer period.
6:25Now note the mistake is not our present government policy that is wrong.
6:29It’s wrong in a sense – it’s their attempt to try again to stimulate it by a
6:33little more than inflation.
6:34The mistake is in the past and we have to pay for mistakes already made in the past.
6:40Well, what sort of shifts do you anticipate would take place if we had a totally mobile
6:48market responding to – Well, I think very largely a shift away from
6:52producing capital goods into producing consumers’ goods, but in detail that’s impossible to
6:57predict.
6:58You know the whole point of the market price system is that it tells us of an infinite
7:05number of particular facts and amounts which nobody knows.
7:09They can find out a stable situation only by letting the market work – using the signals
7:16which the prices constitute to draw people into which occupations which are really employed
7:23that would work if we had a tolerably free market.
7:27Well, is it a part of your position that unemployment compensation is enough of a disincentive to
7:36neutralize the force of the market place?
7:41I can’t speak about this country; that is, I don’t know enough about how important
7:46it really is.
7:47I mean the country which I know much better – England, of course – it’s a main factor,
7:50and there you have such a ridiculous situation where unemployment compensation is paid to
7:55the wife of people on strike.
7:57Even though the people go on strike to push up for higher wages, they don’t run any
8:04risk.
8:05The government has to look after their families.
8:07Now to a minor extent I think the same thing is probably operating here, but I can’t
8:13speak very definitely.
8:14I mean the American trade union is of course –
8:17Well, let me put the question to you generally.
8:22Is it a part of your position that the adjustments required to make up for past mistakes cannot
8:34take place alongside unemployment compensation, or is it only when unemployment compensation
8:42becomes too lucrative?
8:46The latter.
8:47You know I have no objection against a flat minimum – secure to everybody who cannot
8:53earn enough in the market – but the same for everybody on the condition that he cannot
8:59earn more in the market.
9:01That need not interfere with the price mechanism with the free play of market forces.
9:07But once, of course, you make it more attractive to pay unemployment compensation than to work,
9:14even young people who cannot expect to earn more than little when they begin, there's a
9:20temptation to remain unemployed and to earn unemployment compensation is really large.
9:25I’ve no idea, but I suspect that a comparatively large part of the unemployment, statistically,
9:33isn’t generally unemployment.
9:36It’s just a preference of people to draw unemployment compensation rather than to work.
9:41Is that your experience, Mr. Roche?
9:43We have almost a case study of this in the United States in miniature because here in
9:51this country, Professor Hayek, we have states like Michigan – where Hillsdale is located
9:57– that are major industrial states with major union pressures present.
10:03And in the case of Michigan we find that unemployment compensation and workmen’s compensation
10:09in general are on a rather higher level than they are in most other places.
10:13This has the effect of not only causing people to not wish to be employed as you pointed
10:18out, but has also had the effect of driving business out of Michigan over the state line
10:22into other places where these other very negative forces on business don’t prevail.
10:27So we have a situation where a major industrial state like Michigan – presumably a leader
10:31in industrial growth – is now forty-eighth out of fiftieth among the fifty states in rate of
10:36industrial growth as directly the result of pushing the very program that you decry.
10:43Well, how would you account for the almost unanimous opinion of liberal Democrats that
10:57in order to reduce unemployment it is necessary for the government to pursue vast spending
11:07projects?
11:11Since you speak of this as being almost manifestly ill-advised, the question arises why such
11:20superstitions should survive?
11:22Well, it’s almost entirely the work of one man – in a way a genius, Lord Keynes – who
11:29is much more concerned about influencing current policies than about advancing the rights or
11:37the theories, and he was operating then in a very peculiar situation.
11:41Now in Great Britain a successful attempt was made about World War I – which brought
11:47a good deal of inflation – to bring prices down to the pre-war level.
11:54Prices came down but wages did not, so you had in the 1920s a position in Great Britain
12:01where wages were internationally too high and Britain had become noncompetitive on the
12:08world market.
12:09The problem in Great Britain was to make Britain competitive again and it was clear that this
12:18required a reduction of real wages.
12:21Notice these real wages had been artificially increased by increasing the value of the pound.
12:27So because the pound was part of its former level, people receiving the same wartime wages,
12:37or inflated wages, could buy much more.
12:41Wages had not come down.
12:42Now his first argument was wages must come down.
12:45Then he found that was politically impossible, so we must find another way.
12:50Instead of getting money wages down, we must depreciate the pound so that given money wages
12:57should correspond to a lower level of real wages and then by a curious intellectual somersault,
13:05I would almost say, he led himself to believe that even bringing down money wages was not
13:12of any use.
13:13It involves a very complex economic argument and all he concluded was that – well, we
13:21must inflate, in short.
13:24Now notice several things.
13:26Keynes was a genius, but a genius will spend only a fraction of his time on economics – one
13:32of the busiest men I ever knew.
13:34But he knew very little economics except particularly the Cambridge tradition, and he was much more
13:40concerned to influence policy at a particular moment than develop a true theory.
13:46In fact the last time I talked to him was after the war.
13:49I knew him very well.
13:51When I asked him wasn’t he getting alarmed about what his pupils, who had swallowed all
13:57this theory, were doing after the war when the danger was clearly inflation, his answer
14:03was, “Oh, don’t mind.
14:05My theory was frightfully important in the 1930s.
14:11Then we needed an expansion to correct a situation.
14:16Do trust me.
14:18If this theory becomes dangerous, I’m going to turn public opinion around like this.”
14:24Six months later he was dead.
14:26And as usual what happened is that the very doctrine – pupils of this man did apply
14:33to a completely different situation a theory which was designed to influence policy in
14:39a particular situation.
14:40The only thing I blamed Keynes for is to making his theory more attractive than defective.
14:46He called it the general theory.
14:50In fact he knew precisely that it was not a general theory, but it was an argument to
14:54persuade government in the 1930s to do particular things.
14:57It was an ad hoc apparatus– It was entirely an ad hoc effect.
15:01He was one of the most fascinating men I knew, but the personal magnetism of this man not
15:10only persuaded the younger generation of economists.
15:13And if I had been a much younger man and a student, I probably would have been swept
15:17off my feet as were most of the people.
15:20Like Nixon.
15:22No, no.
15:24What did Nixon mean when he said he was a Keynesian in your understanding, Mr. Roche?
15:29Well, I hope that he meant only that these policies had become so widespread in our time
15:37that they had to be dealt with as a part of our considerations.
15:41I hope that he did not mean that he literally thought that spending more money somehow created
15:46more wealth.
15:48The thing that I would like to address myself to for just a moment is that the reason that
15:52the Keynesian policies were so successful and so all pervasive in Great Britain was
15:57essentially because of the ultimate political pressure that the organized labor forces brought
16:03to bear.
16:04The same thing’s been true to a lesser extent here in the United States.
16:06Things like minimum wage and the rest that have obvious effects of keeping people out
16:11of the labor market are all essentially labor oriented, and I think that may be changing.
16:17The practical politics that once caused the average working man to be aggressively oriented
16:23toward organized labor might not be working any longer.
16:26For example, if you go into a bar in Hamtramck in our time and try and hear what UAW worker
16:32at General Motors is saying these days, he’s very concerned about inflationary wage increases
16:39which appear to give him more money but which only keep him about even in purchasing power.
16:44Meanwhile he’s being pushed up into a higher and higher tax bracket as a result of this,
16:48and on that balance he has considerably less purchasing power than has been the case previously.
16:52In other words the ability of organized labor to hold its troops together on these issues
16:56and put on the kind of pressure necessary to push for this may be coming to an end.
17:01You’re perfectly right, but I’d like to add one thing.
17:04You see, another political element was that, of course, politicians just lapped the argument
17:11and Keynes taught them if you outspend your income and run a deficit, you’re doing good
17:17to the people in general.
17:18The politicians didn’t want to hear anything more than that – to be told that irresponsible
17:24spending was a beneficial thing and that’s how the thing became to influential.
17:28Well, let me ask you this.
17:34Are you prepared to say that Keynes did not come out with a general theory of income and
17:42employment, or are prepared to say that nothing that he said is generally applicable?
17:51Concretely, is it or is it not correct that in a free society you will not have downward,
17:57mobile wage rates to help to adjust business cycles?
18:04Well, it depends very largely on policy and what is being told to you.
18:10I think Keynes’ claim to have provided general theories just wrong.
18:16There’s no question to me about this.
18:19In spite of his extreme intelligence he just made one or two fundamental mistakes.
18:27Largely you respect the information before you.
18:30He wasn’t mainly an economist.
18:33He was a great figure who was concerned about public affairs who had spent half of his university
18:40studies on economics and thought he was competent to advise on this thing, and in fact they
18:47didn’t construct one theory – the most characteristic thing of the man was he constructed
18:52theory after theory to justify the same policy he instinctively believed was the appropriate
18:57one, but he happened to be wrong.
19:00It was one of these that you challenged, as I remember, in the early Thirties.
19:04Well, I did challenge his first theory.
19:07I spent a lot of time to criticizing his treatise of money which came out before the general
19:14theory in two long journal articles, but when I published a second one, Keynes told me,
19:20“Oh, never mind.
19:21I no longer believe that.”
19:23So when he came out with his general theory, I thought I was not going to waste my time
19:28against criticizing, but that book was he one which became so frightfully important.
19:31I’ll regret it for the rest of my life that I did not return to the charge then.
19:37Well, Mr. Roche, how do you account for the cordite at Harvard University that was touched
19:51by the book when the labor union pressures were by no means as acute as they were in
20:00Great Britain?
20:02Why did the whole of the Harvard Economics Department – with one or two valiant exceptions
20:08– go up in flames with enthusiasm over this?
20:12What is the explanation?
20:13Is it psychological or intellectual?
20:17One of the really interesting situations of our time rests in the reaction of the liberal,
20:24intellectual community to various problems, and this is a perfectly good case in point.
20:28It’s something that I hope somewhere in the course of our time together Professor
20:33Hayek has a chance to discuss this because there’s an enormous change between 19th century liberalism
20:41– classical liberalism – and 20th century collectivist liberalism, and in that change
20:47I think we see just the methodology that you’re describing.
20:50There are some things that are so deeply believed that we’ve reached the point where you say,
20:55“Don’t confuse me with the facts.
20:56My mind is made up.”
20:58So whatever the political pressures or absence in that spectrum, there is a kind of intellectual
21:03in our time who is determined to see only one side of the issue until he is absolutely
21:07shaken from it.
21:08We may be seeing that now incidentally.
21:10The same changes that are recurring in organized labor seem to be occurring in the intellectual
21:14community as well, but wisdom takes time.
21:17Well, Mr. Hayek, you wrote a very famous essay on the intellectuals and socialism in which
21:24you attempted, I think quite successfully, to show why socialism is so nubile for the
21:32intellectuals.
21:34What is that thesis of yours, and do you still defend it?
21:40Oh, certainly, yes.
21:42Well, it's a very interesting story intellectually.
21:47Among the dominant ideas which have governed thinking since the 18th century is the idea we can
21:57make everything to our pleasure, that we can design social institutions in their working.
22:05Now, that is basically mistaken.
22:11Social institutions have never been designed and do much more than we know.
22:17They have grown up by a process of selection of the successful.
22:22Result - people frequently know why it was successful.
22:26That applies to the market.
22:29The market is - I was going to say most ingenious, but ingenious without having been designed
22:37- instrument which enables us to utilize knowledge which is distributed among hundreds of thousands
22:45of people.
22:46It's an adaptation to thousands of circumstances which nobody ever can know as a whole and
22:55where the prices formed on the market tell the individual what to do and what not to
23:00do in the social interests.
23:01And I know that you understand this.
23:03You have to know economics.
23:05The naive person who imagines all the distribution of income is determined by somebody deliberately
23:15- It seems that if this is the responsibility of a particular guy, it is evidently done
23:21very unjustly.
23:23The fact is it's not being done unjustly because we achieve all that we do achieve by having
23:31come to agree to play a sort of game in which the gamers of the market are likely to call
23:38it and which - because we are utilizing more information, more facts, than anybody knows
23:44- the outcome for a particular individual is necessarily unpredictable.
23:49Now an outcome which is unpredictable and undesigned by anybody cannot be just, just
23:56as little as the outcome of a game of chance can be a just game, but people resent this.
24:03And the people who imagine, oh, it should be possible to design all this, to arrange
24:09this, expect the government to do this in a manner in which the distribution is just.
24:16That is literally impossible because it would require that all this widely dispersed information
24:25about particular facts and particular circumstances and particular gifts can be used and controlled
24:31by a central authority.
24:34Why couldn't the role of the justicemaker come at the end of a process by taking from
24:45someone who has more than he needs for the purpose of satisfying somebody who has less
24:51than he needs?
24:52Because if he knows that part of his income is going to be taken from him, there's no
24:55inducement for him to do that particular thing.
24:58If I know that if I do a thing which would fetch a very high price, two-thirds of it are being
25:03taken from me and I can do something much more pleasant for a third of the income without
25:07paying any income tax, I'm going to do that and I'm not going to do what's most beneficial
25:12to society.
25:13Well, but in point of fact a great many people who are taxed at the two-thirds rate continue
25:19to be very productive.
25:20Well, I doubt whether they are as productive as they could be.
25:24All right.
25:25But let's say they are less productive than they could be, but how do you answer the question
25:30that the demands of justice are perhaps approached after you have permitted a natural distribution
25:40of the proceeds (through the market mechanism)?
25:42There are no possible rules of a just distribution in a system where the distribution is not
25:48deliberately the result of people bringing it about.
25:53I mean justice is an attribute of individual action.
25:58I can be just or unjust towards my fellow man, but the conception of a social justice
26:04- to expect from an impersonal process which nobody can control to bring about a just result
26:12- is not only a meaningless conception, it's completely impossible.
26:17See, everybody talks about social justice, but if you press people to explain to you
26:22what they mean by social justice, also what they accept as justice, nobody knows.
26:27I'm telling you because I've been trying for the past 20 years, asking people, "What really
26:33are your principles of social justice?"
26:35Well, the fact that people may disagree as to the definition of social justice does not
26:41in and of itself argue against the right of a society to attempt to extract a consensus
26:53– I have been trying to do this, but I haven’t
26:57got anything like a consensus – Well, in all democratic societies there is
27:01an operative consensus because of the codification of the redistribution laws.
27:06There is a consensus of entrusting a particular authority with redistribution.
27:11Yah.
27:12But then you ask how it’s being done.
27:15It’s being done not by agreeing with any principles but being bias as a part of particular
27:21little groups.
27:22The people who get more are not determined by an agreement of the majority – the people
27:27who by withholding their particular group might endanger the governing party.
27:32There’s nothing like agreement of a just distribution.
27:37The distribution which government effects is the price it pays, or rather the concessions
27:44it makes to the extortions of particular little groups who say we will not support you if
27:49you don’t give us an extra benefit.
27:51Well, what if you were to remark a correspondence between the flow of philanthropy and the flow
28:00of redistributionist money, would that just be a coincidence?
28:05It would be a coincidence.
28:07Suppose 50 percent of Mr. Roche’s college fund were supplied by individuals and 50 percent
28:15of it was supplied by government.
28:17Would you say that there was a natural correspondence between the ideas of justice as screened through
28:24the distillery of free minds and as screened through the representative government?
28:31Our possibility of being charitable is limited by the extent of our knowledge of particular
28:37people and particular needs.
28:40The benefactors of your college will do so for an institution they know, for a group
28:46of people they know.
28:47But, see, the great the problem is that we have developed what’s called a greater open
28:53society which deals with an infinitely much larger number of people than anybody can know.
28:59Nobody can form an idea – what a steel worker in Indiana compared with a cotton worker in
29:04South America – in the Southern states – deserves it in a sense.
29:11We have no instinctive feeling about this.
29:14When we believe that we have this sense of social justice, that’s an inherited trait
29:22which we have developed from the life in the small group in which man can live for a million
29:27years before it develops to an open society.
29:29Of course in a little hunting band of 50 people or so it was essential that you assigned an
29:36appropriate share to each member.
29:38But this native instinct which we had to overcome in order to form a large society is suddenly
29:45coming up again when the great majority of people operate in large organizations no longer
29:52understand the market, and so we are reverting to very primitive instincts, the instincts
29:58which we have overcome when we emerged from the little group into the open society.
30:04Well, are you saying that a state the size of Bermuda can make intelligent exercises
30:10of charitable redistribution?
30:12Whether it would be intelligent, it could be principled and could pursue clear aims.
30:22I don’t know what’s the population of Bermuda.
30:24It’s probably already too big for the purpose, but a state consisting -
30:28I think it’s about 50 thousand.
30:29- of 10 or 20 thousand people could probably do it.
30:31There you still have visible, conceivable needs of known people whom you can ascertain.
30:41But the whole advance of society is that we have created an order in something very much
30:47bigger than any single mind can conceive, can survey, and we’ve created some sort
30:53of order and created conditions in productivity by applying to their individual actions universal
31:01rules and then letting them play what I call this game which is partly a game of skill
31:07and partly a game of chance and that the outcome of this game is the other rewards – the prices
31:16– which tell people what they ought to do both in their own and in the general interests.
31:21Prices, after all, tell people what they ought to do in order to make the greatest contribution
31:26to the social product.
31:28Well, Mr. Roche, let me ask you this.
31:30Is it your notion that a society ought not to undertake redistribution because it cannot
31:38define justice or because it has no legitimate authority to engage in the act of redistribution?
31:48Both, as a matter of fact, but before I answer – Please don’t leave the impression in
31:54anyone’s mind, Bill, that half of our money at Hillsdale comes from the federal government
31:57because, as you are already perfectly aware, none of our money comes from the federal government
32:01or the state government.
32:02You disdain it.
32:05In any event as to the question of justice it occurs to me that such a thing as social
32:13justice becomes almost a contradiction of terms because if you examine the philosophic
32:17roots that produce the modern egalitarian ideal, those roots contain all sorts of departures
32:26from the idea that it is possible to establish a difference between right and wrong.
32:31They deny the operation of a moral framework and ultimately come to the utilitarian goal
32:37that all ideas and all values are to be considered essentially on their own merits, and the same
32:43people who have said that and are busy then undercutting the more traditional values in
32:48Western civilization are the same people who then go on and parade about social justice
32:53as though somehow the assignment of numbers of quantification will tell us something about
33:00justice, and, in fact, it will not.
33:02So I don’t think that you can define social justice.
33:05You can define social injustice.
33:07You can produce a socially unjust situation.
33:09But to do so, what you’ve really done is undercut individual morality and the opportunity
33:16to make those choices that have a genuine moral content.
33:19Well, why is it inconsistent for a logical positivist to say on the one hand, “I decline
33:30to accept as just that which the majority ordains, but I agree to back that which it
33:42does because this is an attempt – a conscious attempt – at the workings of justice by
33:53people who are as instructed as any society can hope to be at a given moment?”
34:00Well, I don’t think that this definition of social justice carries that kind of validity.
34:08When people begin to talk about justice or of a certain kind of definition of right and
34:12wrong, it’s always a fair question to ask the source of their ideas, and that same man
34:19who is so determined to provide this egalitarian wave of the future that’s planned for how
34:23other people should conduct their affairs has denied the idea that there can be a source,
34:29and for him simply to say that the majority constitutes that source or that he has a degree
34:34of enlightenment denied the rest of us is arrogance.
34:37That’s not proof.
34:38Well, let me ask you a concrete example and perhaps you and Dr. Hayek can address yourselves
34:44to it.
34:45Suppose you have a state in which extreme conditions exist.
34:53In one area of the state 50 dollars a year is spent towards the education of a child.
35:00In the other end of the state a thousand dollars per year is spent towards the education of
35:05the child.
35:09Is the concept of justice invocable in the society that says, “We must do what we can
35:22to diminish that antipodes.
35:26We must pay more for the education of the child down in the Southern region even if
35:34it means diminishing the grant to the child in the upper region.”
35:41Is this as thus far described, a rough attempt at (quote) “justice”?
35:48No, because justice after all still, as we heard earlier, is essentially an individual
35:54idea.
35:56Morality is the difference between right and wrong in concrete, specific decisions and
36:00transactions between and among individuals.
36:02When this is elevated to a social plain, it ceases to have any particular recognizable
36:08content as justice.
36:11But is that terminologically subjective if an individual decides to give succor to a
36:20hungry person?
36:24Why is that different from ten individuals giving succor to ten hungry people?
36:31Oh, privately to the individual?
36:32No, no.
36:33Even if they use the instrumentality of the tribe.
36:37Because at that point I become the succor for them because it’s my taxes that accompany
36:41theirs.
36:42It’s fine for you to decide to be charitable.
36:44It is not fine for you to be charitable with my resources as opposed to yours.
36:48In fact there’s no charity connected with them.
36:52Well, this really depends on the rules of society, doesn’t it?
36:55Let’s raise the question what is the society?
36:59I’m acquainted with your essay that says that no such thing exists.
37:02I mean is the fact that people of Oklahoma and the people of New York find it convenient
37:09to have a common system of law and of rules that justification of the people of Oklahoma
37:15can demand that the people of New York, out of their pocket, assist the people of Oklahoma?
37:21It’s a question which once you ask it will agree there’s nothing like a moral agreement
37:27which creates such a right.
37:29It’s really the fact where there is the power and once we have a common state that
37:34is the power, it is accepted as legitimate that this power takes out of the pockets of
37:41the rich – Now does it mean that if we have a world government, we can tax our Americans
37:48to 80 percent of their incomes in order to maintain the Chinese?
37:53I mean that same principle applied once you have an international government – that
37:58is an international power – then we have to claim that it is perfectly legitimate if
38:03the international government decides to tax all Americans of 80 percent of their income,
38:08hand it over to the Chinese, and feed the Chinese.
38:12Whatever we may think about desirable future rules of morals, there’s no doubt that the
38:19existing rules of morals do not justify this.
38:23And I would maintain that in fact when today when the parts of the United States are heavily
38:31taxed in favor of the poorer parts this is not the result of any moral agreement of the
38:39majority of the American people, but surely they think that whatever party is in power
38:45needs the rules of Oklahoma and pays for the rules of Oklahoma.
38:49It’s the costs of the people of the welfare parts.
38:52Nothing else.
38:53Well, but the motivations of the people who pass those laws are not necessarily the motivations
39:04of people who are propelled by demagogic pressure, are they?
39:11You’re not denying disinterested generosity exercised in the legislature, are you?
39:17It’s an entirely different matter as disinterested generosity determines voluntary action.
39:22But to claim that there is a consensus of the American people which authorizes the legislature
39:30to bring about a certain redistribution of income is in fact not true.
39:36The American people have never asked the principles that ought to be applied in this.
39:42All they ask – all they are told – is that in fact the Republican Party or Democratic
39:49Party who promises you such and such will be in power only if it buys the support of
39:54the people in Oklahoma.
39:55And since you know that you will get from the Democratic Party only what you expect
40:00from it - you would from it and you take into account the necessity that only the Democratic
40:06Party gets into power, it has to pay special benefits to the people in Oklahoma.
40:10That’s what it comes to.
40:11Judges by the results, this idea of disinterested generosities is the one thing that we cannot
40:17expect from the public sector.
40:19Pick your legislature and you’ll see a series of special interest groups operating in a
40:24variety of ways contending essentially for power and, I think, proving the very point
40:29that it’s impossible to be generous with other people’s resources even if it were
40:33morally possible, which it is not.
40:35Well, it seems to me that Aristotle tackled that problem where there was no question of
40:42a democratic base, and he simply talked about doing the right thing, and he was talking
40:48about a class of people who exercised power.
40:50But he also said that a democracy in a state of more than 10 thousand people is impossible.
40:55That’s right.
40:57And his numbers were probably high at that.
41:00No, no, no.
41:01I know, I’m aware of that, but Aristotle was also talking about the obligations of
41:07those in power and assuming that the obligations of those in power gave them authority over
41:14people other than themselves and defined – or attempted to – the right thing to do and
41:21the wrong thing to do.
41:22How do the lines go?
41:24Power into will, will into appetite, and appetite and universal wolves so doubly seconded with
41:30will and power must make per force a universal prey and last eat up himself.
41:36You know an equally great philosopher, Immanuel Kant, has once said, “Welfare has no principle
41:45and therefore we cannot involve welfare of different people because there are no known
41:51rules by which we can do it.”
41:53When we do this, aren’t we making a wrong expectation?
41:55Let me give you a working example.
41:58I was raised in the mountains of Colorado in a very rural community and attended an
42:04eight-grades-in-one-room rural schoolhouse.
42:06The public school was publicly financed, but the people supporting the school were the
42:11ranch families living there who simply felt that their youngsters, myself included, had
42:15to have an education, so the teacher brought in and local taxes collected, but this was
42:21the clearest kind of extension of the responsibility of the parent to do something for the education
42:27of his own children.
42:30And eventually of course what happened in Colorado, what happened all over the country,
42:34occurred.
42:35Consolidation – it was called there – came along, and the little local school gave way
42:38to the bussing of children many miles away to larger schools, presumably at the time
42:43because of all the benefits that were going to be derived to the children – the benefits
42:47in the form of chemistry laboratories and swimming pools and the things simply not available
42:52in this little country school.
42:54The actuality of that was of course while the taxes went up four or five hundred percent
43:01in intervening years and the local communities were caused to pay a higher and higher price,
43:07the quality of the education the youngsters were receiving in the larger and larger schools
43:11actually became more inferior, the reason being that it was moved further away from
43:15the basic responsibility of the individual parent and with variations something like
43:19that could be said about virtually every aspect of our lives – the responsibilities that
43:23we have as individuals which are presumably exercised and discharged collectively but
43:29in fact never are and I think never can be.
43:31Well, are you saying that the Bronx High School of Science has an inferior record to the local
43:37school in New York?
43:39Of course not, no.
43:40There are obvious special cases.
43:43It’s possible to subsidize the Vienna Opera House, too, but that is not – Well, I think
43:53the exception almost proves the rule.
43:57Well, may I comment on this.
43:59Although I am by birth an Austrian and I love the Vienna Opera, whether it is really justifiable
44:05to tax 7 million people or to give half a million the chance to have a first class opera
44:11I’m very doubtful indeed.
44:14Our examiner today is Mr. Jeff Greenfield, familiar to viewers of this program.
44:19Mr. Greenfield is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin where he was the editor of the
44:26student paper.
44:27He’s a graduate of the law school at Yale University.
44:30He was a speech writer for Senator Robert Kennedy and for Mayor John Lindsay before
44:41belatedly retiring to become a freelance writer.
44:45Also an alumnus of the Bronx High School of Science, I might add.
44:48I know.
44:49My first question is why are you all wearing the same tie?
44:51Is this some cabal, some collectivist plot –
44:54I won’t talk.
44:56Okay.
44:57Then on to more trivial concerns.
44:59First let’s start with this concept of social justice.
45:03If a state within a federal republic such as ours were to deny, as they did, citizens
45:09the right to vote because of the color of their skins, I would assume you would regard
45:14that as an example of injustice.
45:17Yes, right.
45:18Permitting federal intervention, even though it perhaps overwhelmed local traditions.
45:23Now, it seems to me that there is an easy case where one can define an example of social
45:30injustice and to define social injustice requires a norm from which there is a departure.
45:37Hence, one aspect of social justice we could all agree on is skin color is not a legitimate
45:42basis on which not to vote.
45:43So my question to you, and I suppose also to Professor Hayek is – is your skepticism
45:50about social justice confined to the sphere of economics or are you skeptical about any
45:57ability to define it?
45:58Well, I’m highly skeptical when government extends its authority into areas where it
46:06simply is not properly qualified to judge and where there is no basic definition of
46:11how it should be performing.
46:12Your example, of course, refers to the political process.
46:17Obviously for the state to determine the conditions under which people should vote is an area
46:23where the state must make the rules.
46:25Now, I want to elaborate on that and ask Dr. Hayek one because now I’m going to get into
46:29economics here.
46:30I’m afraid I have a lot to say on this subject if you start me on it.
46:34And the point we must start from is that the classical demand is that the state ought to
46:40treat all people equally in spite of the fact that they are very unequal.
46:47You can’t deduce from this the rule that because people are unequal you ought to treat
46:53them unequally in order to make them equal and that’s what social justice amounts to.
46:58It’s a demand that the state should treat the different people differently in order
47:03to place them in the same position.
47:06The rule of equal treatment applies only to things the state has to do in any case.
47:13But, to make, making people equal, a goal of governmental policy would force government
47:20to treat people very unequally indeed.
47:22Let me, though, pursue an area where we get into the field of economics.
47:26In the field of politics, once again, people with access to a great deal of money are frequently
47:35said to have a tremendous advantage over people without money when competing for public office,
47:41given the demands.
47:42Now, if the state taxes us or indeed as they have done in current federal income tax gives
47:48us the opportunity to check off on our income tax forms that we wish some of our money – 5
47:54dollars or 2 dollars – diverted to public financing which is then distributed to candidates
47:58who meet equivalent standards for qualifying, so that they can be brought up to a level
48:03of equality, does this offend your sense of –
48:06How are they being brought up to a level of equality?
48:08They are being - Let me limit it.
48:10They are being brought up to a level of equality in the resources they may commit to the goal
48:14of getting elected.
48:16It diminishes the inequality between rich and poor people to buy advertising time, print
48:20speeches, attend rallies, the panoply of politics.
48:24This bother - Does this offend your sense of what the government ought to be doing?
48:28Yes.
48:29You see what you are discussing is a case where government ought to make people observe
48:35the same rules, and I’m all in favor of that.
48:40But if the different people observe the same rules the result for them will be very different.
48:45What you are suggesting – the whole theory of social justice is suggesting – is the
48:50government ought to treat the people very differently in order to put them in the same
48:54material position.
48:56That has nothing to do with your original claim for equality of the rules which government
49:02forces all people to apply.
49:05This idea has only been imperfectly achieved I admit, and let’s push on in the direction
49:12that government must force all people to obey the same rules.
49:16Well, it seems to me that in the absence of redistribution in at least this area you are
49:22left with the Anatole France observation about the rich and poor equally being forbidden
49:26to sleep under bridges and beg in the park.
49:29Yes, but is that wrong?
49:33I think the fact that it is right in some perverse sense indicates how wrong it is.
49:38I think in the field of politics if access to political power depends on who has the
49:45greater amount of welfare, something’s indeed wrong with that.
49:47Yes, but I mean the government prohibits a great many people from a great many things
49:51which only young and strong people can do and which I can no longer do.
49:55If the government prevents me from climbing some difficult peak – 50 years ago I would
50:01love to do it – it doesn’t affect me because I no longer try – it's equally a discriminating
50:06rule as a general rule.
50:08Equally?
50:09If we’re looking for social justice, let’s not keep looking in political places.
50:13Let’s look in social places and see some examples of governmental policy directly applied
50:18there, in which case we get a very different kind of a set of answers.
50:22I’d like to ask Mr. Buckley, in fact, just that kind of question.
50:26At least I think it’s that kind of question.
50:28I’m sure he’ll let me know if it’s not.
50:31The abortion controversy – If we assume that the Supreme Court decision will stand
50:36– that is to say that the state may not limit abortions in the first three months
50:40– then does it offend your sense of justice – social or individual or otherwise – that
50:49we are now going to say that public money will not be available for this particular
50:55medical procedure which has been legitimated at least by the Supreme Court such that wealthy
51:00person or a middle-class person might terminate a pregnancy and a poor person may not?
51:08Not in the least because it is in no way to be distinguished from other rights protected
51:13by the Supreme Court which are enjoyed uniquely by those who have the resources to enjoy them.
51:22The Supreme Court 15 years ago denied to the State Department the right to withhold a passport.
51:29This was a meaningless gesture as far as millions of Americans were concerned who simply didn’t
51:35have the resources to use a passport to go to the Vienna Opera House.
51:39But nevertheless, the finding of the Supreme Court may or may not have been defensible.
51:49The notion that the discovery of a right by the Supreme Court is tantamount to bequeathing
51:57of the means is, I think, a mistake that is often made by you types.
52:02After what you just said, I would think there would be a sense the right to travel or publish
52:11a newspaper or to eat caviar and drink wine or whatever resource is functionally equivalent
52:17to the right not to be compelled to carry a fetus to term against a woman’s will?
52:21Is this the precept?
52:22Is this what you have just said?
52:24Well, it is, everything is subject to caricature.
52:31Who is the artist in this case?
52:33Well, Mr. Bertrand de Jouvenel in his book “The Ethics of Redistribution” said that
52:39it is the height of arrogance – and I agree with him – for anybody to presume to know
52:47what deprivations mean to individual people.
52:52For an individual who loses his Mona Lisa, let us say, we are simply not in a position
53:00to say that he is less anguished than the person who has to sleep under a bridge at
53:07night.
53:08And I think it’s very important for you to meditate that.
53:11In fact, if you want to take a few minutes off, you may.
53:13No, no.
53:14I must say I think that statement ought to go absolutely unchallenged.
53:18Let it just sit there for a moment for what it is.
53:21Let me ask Dr. Hayek another question which I think gets back to something Mr. Buckley
53:26was asking you in his more lucid discussion.
53:29“The Road to Serfdom”, the book that most of us know you for, was particularly eloquent
53:36about the dangers or the folly of massive and particular intervention in an administrative
53:43sense, at least that’s what I recall.
53:46What Mr. Buckley, I think, was asking you, and what I’d like to pursue is, would a
53:49simple redistributive policy on the part of government offend you or make you as concerned
53:59as the warnings you raised about a state that was intervening specifically all throughout
54:05our lives?
54:06In other words, a simple statement – make your money how you see fit.
54:08We will take X percent of it to heal the wounds of the poor.
54:13Is this dangerous of policy?
54:15The answer is very definitely yes.
54:18Any redistributive policy requires a discriminating treatment of different people.
54:25You cannot so long as you treat all the people according to the same formal rules – forcing
54:33them to act only to observe the same rule – bring about any distribution of incomes.
54:40Once you decide that government is entitled to take from some people in order to give
54:47it to others, this is automatically discrimination of a kind for which there can be no general
54:53rule.
54:54They are purely arbitrary.
54:56Why isn’t the general rule all those in Class A – 20 to 30 thousand dollars a year
55:01– pay X, all those in Class B pay Y, all those in Class C receive X?
55:07Why is it not a general rule as opposed to the general rule –
55:11Because X doesn’t equal Y.
55:12A very difficult question, how to define a general rule.
55:16I mean after a long discussion in jurisprudence it has come out that the essential point about
55:23a general rule is that you cannot predict who will profit from it and who will suffer
55:28from it.
55:29Any rule where you know before that who will be the gainers and who will be the sufferers
55:33is in that sense not a general rule.
55:35But, now, does this fact that it is not a general rule make it nonetheless inadvisable?
55:42Inadvisable because once you authorize government to act arbitrarily there’s no limit to it.
55:47Now, I think we, – I want to make sure I understand this.
55:50The word arbitrary all of a sudden came in there.
55:53Why is it arbitrary – Not acting according to rule is arbitrary.
55:56I'm sorry?
55:57Not acting according to a general rule is arbitrary.
56:00That’s the only way in which you can define arbitrary.
56:02I don’t see why if one understands exactly the premises on which one is making distinctions.
56:06Why is it arbitrary?
56:07I distinguish between rich and poor when I tax them because rich people have more discretionary
56:11income.
56:12Well, you distinguish between the people whom you want to have more and the people whom
56:17you want to have less.
56:19But why is it arbitrary?
56:20I’ve given you what I think at least is a plausible and defensible reason for distinguishing
56:23among them.
56:24Well, the distinction is between – I can only say between a general rule which applies
56:29equally to all and rule which distinguishes between different groups.
56:33Arbitrary does not necessarily mean thoughtless.
56:36I understand that part, but it seems to me that one is moving from a descriptive to a
56:41normative judgment in an effort to set forth rules which will make it impossible for government
56:47to treat different people differently.
56:49Let me come up with perhaps a suitable example.
56:52If you went back to an earlier time in American history, the goal – always imperfectly realized
56:58– was that the blindfolded Goddess of Justice stood before us all dispensing her favors
57:03equally to all who came before her.
57:06If you take various governmental programs – arbitrarily conceived as Professor Hayek
57:12is using the word – take affirmative action in our time.
57:15Now we have a law which says come before the blindfolded Goddess of Justice, but now she’s
57:20encouraged to peek.
57:21And she says first tell me your color, tell me our sex, and then I will tell you how we
57:25are going to treat you.
57:26Well, now there are Lithuanian minorities as well as black or whatever.
57:32The only majority in this country that I know of, of course, are women.
57:37There are more women than men.
57:38But every other grouping – ethnic or otherwise – into which we can break ourselves turns
57:43out to be a series of minority relationships, but it is highly arbitrary to select some
57:47of those to say these are the people whom we single out for special treatment and these
57:51are the people whom we penalize.
57:52There’s only been one minority in American history that I know of that was legally enslaved.
57:56Yes, and it was a legal process which made that possible.
57:59Yeah.
58:00Enslavement came as a direct result of the state determining the affairs of men.
58:03It was arbitrary.
58:04Yes.
58:05But would you accept that arbitrary – I’m terribly sorry, Dr. Hayek, but we have
58:10to say good night.
58:11Thank you very much and thank you, Mr. Roche, and thank you very much, Mr. Greenfield, and
58:16thank you, ladies from the Sacred Heart at Yonkers.

About this transcript

This page contains the full transcript of Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr.: Is There a Case for Private Property? by Hoover Institution Library & Archives, generated from the public captions YouTube serves with the video. The transcript has 8,563 words across 719 segments, with the original timestamps preserved so you can click any line to jump to that moment in the embedded player.

What you can do with it

Use the transcript to take notes, quote the speaker, build a study guide, generate a summary with ChatGPT or Claude via the YouTube Summary tool, or export it as a timed subtitle file with YouTube to SRT. You can also re-open it in the transcriber to choose a caption track available on the video.

Free YouTube transcript tool

YouTube2Text is a free YouTube transcript generator — no signup, no daily limit. Paste any YouTube link and get the full transcript instantly, with timestamps, click-to-jump, caption language selection, AI prompts for ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, and exports to TXT, SRT, VTT, or Markdown.