Responsibility and Freedom --
Losing Them Both

Friedrich Hayek in his 1960 book, The Constitution of Liberty,
wrote that a free society depends more than any other that people be
guided by a sense of responsibility. He writes: “A free society will
not function or maintain itself unless its members regard it as right
that each individual occupy the position that results from his action
and accept it as due to his own action.” Today, it would be unheard of
for someone running for office to say that we are responsible for our
own actions.
Imagine a politician running for Congress who said that we should be responsible for taking care of our own retirement. Wouldn’t you be stunned? Isn’t every Congressional hopeful going to say that we must protect Social Security? Can you imagine a candidate for office saying that we should be responsible for our health care? Won’t they say that the government has to do something about runaway health care costs? Those 40 million people who haven’t purchased health insurance surely can’t be responsible for their health care. Did you hear any politician saying that people who have lost their job need to be responsible for their actions and reduce their standard of living while they retrain in a dynamic economy? Of course not. What we hear is that unemployment benefits must be extended for the unemployed as they are not responsible for losing their job or for finding a new one. Don’t we expect the government to rescue those people who have mortgages that are greater than the value of their house? Surely they cannot be held responsible for their signing mortgages that required payments that could only be made in the best of circumstances.
This is not to say that we should or should not have government programs for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, mortgage bailouts, etc.. This is just to say that we cannot have a free society and these things. As Hayek wrote a half century ago: “This belief in individual responsibility, which has always been strong when people firmly believed in individual freedom, has markedly declined, together with the esteem for freedom.” The health care debate is really a debate about removing the responsibility of providing health care from thirty million more Americans and adding to the millions that already rely on the federal government for their income and health care. Maybe one day we will return to a belief in freedom and individual responsibility.
Imagine a politician running for Congress who said that we should be responsible for taking care of our own retirement. Wouldn’t you be stunned? Isn’t every Congressional hopeful going to say that we must protect Social Security? Can you imagine a candidate for office saying that we should be responsible for our health care? Won’t they say that the government has to do something about runaway health care costs? Those 40 million people who haven’t purchased health insurance surely can’t be responsible for their health care. Did you hear any politician saying that people who have lost their job need to be responsible for their actions and reduce their standard of living while they retrain in a dynamic economy? Of course not. What we hear is that unemployment benefits must be extended for the unemployed as they are not responsible for losing their job or for finding a new one. Don’t we expect the government to rescue those people who have mortgages that are greater than the value of their house? Surely they cannot be held responsible for their signing mortgages that required payments that could only be made in the best of circumstances.
This is not to say that we should or should not have government programs for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, mortgage bailouts, etc.. This is just to say that we cannot have a free society and these things. As Hayek wrote a half century ago: “This belief in individual responsibility, which has always been strong when people firmly believed in individual freedom, has markedly declined, together with the esteem for freedom.” The health care debate is really a debate about removing the responsibility of providing health care from thirty million more Americans and adding to the millions that already rely on the federal government for their income and health care. Maybe one day we will return to a belief in freedom and individual responsibility.
This article originally appeared on the Hillsdale-econ.com blog, a new forum for the expression of economic ideas by professors Charles Steele and Gary Wolfram of Hillsdale College.
Gary Wolfram is William E. Simon Professor of Economics and Public Policy at Hillsdale College, President of Hillsdale Policy Group, a consulting firm specializing in taxation and policy analysis, and Chairman of the Michigan Alliance for Competitive Energy. He was a member and former Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Lake Superior State University, served as a member of Michigan's State Board of Education from 1993 to 1999, was Chairman of the Headlee Amendment Blue Ribbon Commission and has been a member of the Michigan Enterprise Zone Authority, the Michigan Strategic Fund Board, and the Michigan State Housing Development Authority Board. Dr. Wolfram's public policy experience includes serving as Congressman Nick Smith's Chief of Staff, Michigan’s Deputy State Treasurer for Taxation and Economic Policy under Governor John Engler, and Senior Economist to the Republican Senate in Michigan. Professor Wolfram graduated summa cum laude from the University of California at Santa Barbara. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley and has taught at several colleges and universities, including Mount Holyoke College, The University of Michigan, and Washington State University. He is a regular contributor to Human Events and The Detroit News. His publications include Towards a Free Society: An Introduction to Markets and the Political System, and several works on public policy issues. He was named Hillsdale College’s Professor of the Year for 2004. Michigan Runner Magazine also named him one of the top 25 runners in Michigan of the past 25 years.
Gary Wolfram is William E. Simon Professor of Economics and Public Policy at Hillsdale College, President of Hillsdale Policy Group, a consulting firm specializing in taxation and policy analysis, and Chairman of the Michigan Alliance for Competitive Energy. He was a member and former Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Lake Superior State University, served as a member of Michigan's State Board of Education from 1993 to 1999, was Chairman of the Headlee Amendment Blue Ribbon Commission and has been a member of the Michigan Enterprise Zone Authority, the Michigan Strategic Fund Board, and the Michigan State Housing Development Authority Board. Dr. Wolfram's public policy experience includes serving as Congressman Nick Smith's Chief of Staff, Michigan’s Deputy State Treasurer for Taxation and Economic Policy under Governor John Engler, and Senior Economist to the Republican Senate in Michigan. Professor Wolfram graduated summa cum laude from the University of California at Santa Barbara. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley and has taught at several colleges and universities, including Mount Holyoke College, The University of Michigan, and Washington State University. He is a regular contributor to Human Events and The Detroit News. His publications include Towards a Free Society: An Introduction to Markets and the Political System, and several works on public policy issues. He was named Hillsdale College’s Professor of the Year for 2004. Michigan Runner Magazine also named him one of the top 25 runners in Michigan of the past 25 years.
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