The Secret Knowledge

by David Mamet

  It is not the Government’s job to determine what is “fair,” but to determine what is just—the only tools granted to it derive from a clear set of guidelines, the Law, designed first and last, to limit the power of government.

  Possessing such a set of laws, the individual may have a reasonable expectation of freedom from Government intervention. As long as he abides by these laws, which under our Constitution apply not to classes of people but to classes of actions, he may plan and act in peace.

  It is not the Government’s job to determine merit. Even if it were, upon what criteria? For we are not all-wise; Thalidomide was hailed as a wonder drug, the airplane and automobile scorned as toys.

  We may say of the Framers that they did not account for the fact that some may have had an affluent childhood, or that it is more onerous to sweep streets than to manage hedge funds. That this is an oversight on the part of the Framers is clear to privileged adolescents. Unclear to them is the plight of anyone unskilled and desperate for a job, and the monstrous capacity of Government for destruction when indulging in “feelings” (see not only Affirmative Action, but the Japanese Internment, the Dred Scott decision, the idea of “hate crimes”).

  The adolescent, the Marxist, and the Liberal Left dream of “fairness,” which can be brought about by the State, forgetting that, in order to pay the street sweeper and the physician the same, one must raise the wages of one or lower the wages of the other.

  How can Government raise the wages of the street sweeper? Only by taxing its citizenry, which is to say only by overriding the societal decision that the skilled worker is entitled to higher pay than the unskilled.

  This decision was never pronounced by Authority, nor blessed by any authority other than the free market. It was arrived at through interaction of human beings perfectly capable of ordering their own affairs; and this group decided, through innumerable interactions known as the Free Market, that some jobs should be better paid. Why? Because of the job holder’s education, because of his skill, or for no defensible reason whatsoever (for example, the shape of their chins).88 Is this folly? Would it be greater folly to allow the Government to decide the criteria by which newscasters were appointed?

  In the newscaster we see the operation of the free market. Is it “fair” to pay him tens of millions of dollars because he has a square jaw? Who is to say?

  Phrenologists were once considered scientists for disseminating the hogwash that a person’s character may be determined by the shape of his head. The fad passed, but in a top-down, Government-controlled economy, where the citizenry gave to the Government the opportunity to rule its actions upon an inchoate and subjective determination (fairness), our tax dollars might still be paying phrenologists. 89 For a government will not and cannot admit mistakes. Its members thrive through taxation and by ever widening their spheres of influence, selling influence to the highest bidder. We are still paying oil and wheat subsidies, and it is mere luck that the phrenologists of that day did not have sufficiently skilled lobbyists to ensure their own eternal subvention. You might say it is absurd to claim to determine a person’s deserts on the basis of the shape of his head. It is equally absurd to make the claim on the basis of the color of his skin.

  Government cannot correct itself—which is why we periodically hold elections. But society, convened as the free market, can and does correct itself, and that quickly, for to tarry is to risk impoverishment. We have paid the big-chinned newscasters fortunes over the decades, and have enjoyed their solemn ability to correctly read a sheet of paper before a camera. But now the Internet has grown, and the day of the newscaster is passing, and another generation will shake its head in wonder at our “trust” of those with well-shaped chins.

  Is it a sin, or is it unfair, that the street sweeper is paid less than the surgeon?90 The Left, the Socialist, the privileged adolescent may say “yes,” but their prescription is “You (the taxpayer) pay him more . . .”

  This, which has been called the essence of Marxism, person A getting person B to do something for person C. Is this fair? That the surgeon be taxed because some good-willed other would thereby feel momentarily better about himself and his society; that the citizenry be taxed so that the good-willed might implement their vision of a perfect world (sweepers and surgeons paid alike)?

  The Leftist would enjoy feeling that his vision brought about some good, but, finally, what is it but the enjoyment of a fantasy? Environmentalists insist on the inviolability of Yellowstone Park, but how many Liberals are actually going to use Yellowstone Park? Yet they want to ban their fellows who do use it from using snowmobiles.

  Why? The snowmobile offends the Liberals’ fantasy of the pristine nature preserve. So be it. We are all entitled to our fantasies, but are we entitled to impose their costs upon others? The Liberal is free to pay to achieve his fantasy. What stops him from digging in his own pocket and correcting the pay differential in the two jobs, from actually giving actual money to the street sweeper?

  This, in fact, is part of the actual unfairness of those confiscatory taxes which are the inevitable companion of big Government—that the individual is prohibited from disposing of his income in the way he sees fit. If the Leftist were actually more interested in a more “fair” redistribution of income—which is to say, a distribution more in line with his own worldview—let him vote to lower taxes, and distribute his now larger share of his wealth, to the street sweeper.

  Giving the money to the Government, even that Government which proclaims an agenda with which the Liberal agrees, is folly. For a simple perusal of history will reveal that the money the Government strips from the surgeon to pay the street sweeper, far from ending in the sweeper’s pocket, will most likely arrive somewhere else altogether. It will be diverted by Government into “costs of administration,” or “a general fund”—or it will—like Social Security—merely vanish.91

  Called to task, the only way the Government can appear to make good its claim of Fairness to the Sweeper is to print more money, which is to say, impose a new tax. And the best that can be said of this destructive force of inflation is that, at least, it is a tax which is demonstrably “fair,” for it impoverishes everyone.

  In addition to actually giving more money of his own to the street sweeper, the Inspired Leftist may, today, without let or hindrance, give more money to the cabdriver, the dry cleaner, the restaurateur, and to all others whose services he employs. He is free to give them more money than they request, and so feel good about himself. But I doubt he will do so. For he does not want to pay what is here visible as essentially an “entertainment tax.” “Here, let me tip you, as I am a Big Spender.”

  No, he refrains from paying above the stated price for goods and services. To do so would reveal to him the idiocy of his position.

  In his day-to-day life, the Leftist, like everyone else, wants the dry cleaners, the restaurants, the car dealerships, the gas stations to compete, for he knows that only then does he stand a chance of getting a fair (which is to say happy) price.

  The Leftist, in his own dealings, likewise strives to compete, in order to gain an advantage over his competitors. He burns to compete. For if he cannot improve the quality or lower the price of his goods and services, potential customers will take their business from him. He must compete, unless he has access to the power of government. (This is how lobbyists grow rich, through promise or reality of their ability to subvert the free market through government intervention. What else did anyone think they were doing?)

  If the Government determines that the street sweeper be paid as much as the surgeon, must it not, further, insist that the bad street sweeper be paid as much as the good? The bad surgeon paid as much as the superior?92

  The Left might say that this is folly, and, of course, it is, and it is practiced every day in affirmative action, and set-asides, in preferences, where the Government, we see, has already determined that accomplishment and performance may, and in some cases must, be put outside
consideration. (See also Union rules, for example in the teachers union, in their intractable opposition to merit pay. They claim to educate our children, but insist the bad teacher be paid as much as the good. What lesson, then, are they teaching?)93

  This folly will be further elaborated by a single-payer national health system, wherein the bad surgeon will be paid as much as the good, and the patient left with no recourse other than application to Government. And which of us, applying to Government for redress, from the smallest traffic complaint to the largest issues of life, has ever come away happy?

  If we may not enjoy the benefits of competition we suffer. As we will under Government Health Care. As we will in the Government takeover of the auto industry. The businessman must consider the desires of consumers or fail. It is not his job to determine their “rationality”—what is rational about tail fins? It is his job to make cars people want to buy. But the Government is now in the auto business—will it not impose upon all other manufacturers the same restrictions it imposes upon its own cars? It must, for, like any other business it will want to drive out competition. And, in so doing, it will kill the remnants of the American auto industry, which will be forced to make cars the American people aren’t clamoring for. It will be forced to make cars based upon the Good Intention of Government. But what if these cars are “better”? Better for whom? Ralph Nader killed the Corvair, an innovative, rear-engine, high-mileage, small, low-priced car. Had the Government let the Corvair alone, the auto industry might have seen, thirty years sooner than it occurred to them, that the small, fuel-efficient, rear-engine car was the wave of the future, and we would have been shipping a lot less of our money to Japan.

  The Government by the Left is intent on taking from the consumer the freedom to choose between competing enterprises, and what is Freedom but the freedom to choose?

  The individual who is a street sweeper and would like to be a surgeon may choose to pursue that course of studies which might lead to that end.

  But, you say, he may not have the ability. Then let him work at that for which he does have the ability, or choose another line of employment which might lead him to a life closer to his vision of his deserts and to his needs. Or let him continue at his job in the hope of advancement, doing his job superlatively while looking for and studying for another more congenial position.

  But, this is monstrous, you say; some people are unfitted to do so. Unfitted by what? Race? I deny it. It is antithetical to the teachings of Religion, to the Constitution, and to experience.

  Some individuals are unfitted to be surgeons by lack of individual intelligence? Of course. Human ability is distributed randomly, and must be so, or civilization would not have advanced. But it is not distributed according to race (an assumption which wiped out two-thirds of my people, the Jews, within human memory), nor upon previous condition of servitude (the “Legacy of Slavery”)—the Fifteenth Amendment makes it illegal to withhold the right to vote, to discriminate against anyone on the basis of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. If this is illegal in consideration of the first, most basic right of the citizen, surely it is illegal (as it is ridiculous) to discriminate in favor of an individual on such a basis. Might one not take cognizance of such an individual? An individual may, but the Government, correctly, announces here that it refuses to indulge in such obscenity.

  To call attention to various supposed defects of classes of people, and then to call for “fairness” is the folly of the adolescent, and the trick of the demagogue.

  If the street sweeper is paid the same as the surgeon, why should he aspire to better his lot? He may, but why should he? J. S. Mill, in On Liberty, writes that any man who is rewarded equally for doing a good job or a bad job, would be a fool to put energy into its accomplishment. He will naturally withhold it, and put it elsewhere, where it might improve his status or income.

  You or I would withdraw that effort, expenditure of which could not improve our lot (cf. the government employee). Milton Fried-man suggested that we all recognize as a joke the notion that someone might say to a Government employee, “Slow down, you’re killing yourself . . . ”

  That it remains, to the sentimental Leftist, a “shame” that the street sweeper is “underpaid” is itself a shame. But it does nothing whatever to ameliorate the street sweeper’s supposed lot. The Leftist may do so by digging in his pocket, but he will not. He wants the Government to do it, and yet he will not ask the Government where it intends to get the money, nor hold the Government accountable for the treasure it has wasted and the chaos its involvement has caused in the past. That the Liberal will not do so is not only a shame, but an inexcusable failure of intellect.94 95

  “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” may be rendered:

  Let us empower the State to take x (money, time, possessions, status) from Class A of people; and distribute them to Class B of people.

  This, with the underlying nature of the exhortation exposed, is a parsing of Marx’s doctrine. Operationally, it seeks to give all powers to the State. Now, why would the adolescent want to substitute merit for need? (It is an equally destructive, and, finally, absurd construction.) Because he is less concerned with the magical terms than with the unstated postulate of the formula—the hidden exhortation to empower the State. Why is he less concerned? Because he imagines himself, his like, or his representatives as the State. His position, though it presents itself as a defense of “humanity” is a fantasy of power.

  Absent in the contemporary Liberal worldview is the understanding that things go wrong.

  Corporations grow, and (like any agglomeration—a business, a family, an industry), make choices which can prove good or bad. That which is productive today may, if persisted in, prove destructive tomorrow (for example, the New Economy, tail fins on cars, tobacco cultivation, busing, the new math). We, neither as individuals, nor as groups, are perfect. The business which makes terrible decisions will correct itself or will and must be allowed to fail. The current government and (marginally) popular sentiment to support failing enterprises are both examples of a creeping Statism—which is the surrender of individual choice to the State—Constitutionally barred by law from abrogating the rights of the individual—chief among them the right to fail.96

  The Left might say of a failed corporation “tear it down, throw the so-and-so’s out, they are corrupt and incompetent and waste our money”; but this is the system which already operates under the title “free enterprise.” The next step, that which leads toward Statism and dictatorship is “and give the operation of the thing over to the Government.”

  This might seem defensible on the grounds of “compassion,” as folks will be thrown out of work. But it neglects the fact that the Government is just another organization, liable to the same misjudgments, corruptions, and incompetencies of any others. With this addition: it has the power to legislate or otherwise enforce its continued existence, a power that is, ultimately, backed up by people with guns. Replacing free enterprise with state control does not do away with failure and mismanagement, but merely removes from it the possibility of self-correction.

  Why are taxes high? To fund programs proved failures decades ago, and to spawn new programs to correct the errors their predecessors proved incapable of addressing. But the fault was not the nature of those previous programs but their systemic inability not only to affect, but to name affectable goals.97

  Government is only a business. Past the roads, defense, and sewers, it sells excitement and self-satisfaction to the masses, and charges them an entertainment tax, exacted in wealth and misery. It cannot make cars, or develop medicines. How can it “abolish poverty” (at home or abroad), or Bring About an End to Greed or Exploitation? It can only sell the illusion, and put itself in a position where it is free from judgment of its efforts. It does this, first of all, by stating inchoate goals, “change, hope, fairness, peace,” and then indicting those who question them as traitors or ogres; fina
lly, it explains its lack of success by reference to persistent if magical forces put in play by its predecessors and yet uneradicated because of insufficient funding.

  Should the government support an opera singer whose performances no one attends? (Government funding of the Arts.) Allowing nature to take its course would cause his handlers, manager, coaches, and assistants to seek other employment. One might extend to them compassion, as would any of us (the majority) who have ever been out of work; but do those incommoded by the lack of success on the part of their opera singer have a claim on our tax dollars? Then why do the members of the auto industry or those who have made bad or unlucky judgments financially?

  Brief consideration would suggest that the state cannot deal equally with all claims for support, that it must choose. On what basis, other than “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”? That handy slogan which, in its attractive lack of specificity, led to the death and enslavement of hundreds of millions under Communism.

  Further thought would reveal that once government is the only business, the final opportunities for failure to be corrected will disappear—whatever party is in power. If the state has assumed all power to distribute funds, its apparatchiks become the one Party, which will never allow itself to be cleansed and corrected by failure. Funds will, finally, be allocated, whatever slogan is used to obscure the process, according to the need and desires of the politicians. How could it be otherwise?98

  Successful politicians look forward to their retirement plan, which healthy plan is their transmigration into the favorite daughters and sons of those businesses they may have pretended to regulate during their years in office, the most flagrant Socialist then becoming, magically, a fan of capital.