CHAPTER TWELVE
AMERITOPIA
IT BEARS EMPHASIZING—THE UTOPIAN mastermind seeks control over the individual. The individual is to be governed, not represented. His personal interests are of no interest. They are dismissed as selfish, unjust, and destructive. Societal deconstruction and transformation are not possible if tens of millions of individuals are free to live their lives and pursue their interests without constant torment, coercion, and if necessary, repression. In America, breaking from the past means breaking the individual’s spirit. He must be made to bend to the demands of the masterminds. He must be reshaped to serve the greater good.
There are those who are hypnotized by the utopian message, which sounds much like Karl Marx’s false historicism of the material dialectic—that is, of the two-class society, where the rich bourgeois capitalists victimize the hardworking proletariat laborers, with the latter eventually destroying the former, thereby setting the stage for the end of human struggle. This kind of class warfare, pitting straw men against straw men, is now a routine and regular part of the American political dialogue. Yet, in practice, for the utopian it is better that all be poor than some be wealthy; that all suffocate from laws and regulations than some breathe free. But equality of this sort—of behavioral conformity and equivalent economic outcomes—is not the natural state of man. It is not America’s history. From the first settlers to today’s immigrants, America has rightly been considered exceptional—the land of individual opportunity, not the land of haves and have-nots. In America, the wealthy can fall and do, and the poor can rise and do. There is no bourgeois-versus-proletariat standoff but, instead, an immense prosperity born of an open society and economic market system that know no class structure. However, the false utopianism of radical egalitarianism incites jealousy among some if not many, divides and distracts the people, and furthers the prospects of mastermind control by changing the society’s psychology and national character.
There are also those who delusively if not enthusiastically surrender their liberty for the mastermind’s false promises of human and societal perfectibility. He hooks them with financial bribes in the form of “entitlements.” And he makes incredible claims about indefectible health, safety, educational, and environmental policies, the success of which is to be measured not in the here and now but in the distant future.
For these reasons and more, some become fanatics for the cause. They take to the streets and, ironically, demand their own demise as they protest against their own self-determination and for ever more autocracy and authoritarianism. When they vote, they vote to enchain not only their fellow citizens but, unwittingly, themselves. Paradoxically, as the utopia metastasizes and the society ossifies, elections become less relevant. More and more decisions are made by masterminds and their experts, who substitute their self-serving and dogmatic judgments—which are proclaimed righteous and compassionate—for the individual’s self-interests and best interests.
These masterminds—the politicians, judges, and bureaucrats—have become America’s version of Plato’s philosopher-kings and guardians, with obvious exceptions. As Plato wrote in the Republic, “Philosophers because of the love of Forms [a perfect thing or being], become lovers of proper order in the sensible world as well. They wish to imitate the harmony of the Forms, and so in their relations with others they are loath to do anything that violates the proper order among people” (404). Moreover, only they are able to know “the Good” (the ultimate truth). They are wise and learned beyond the capabilities of the people they rule.
But from where do the masterminds acquire their superhuman qualities? Are they born with them? Do they materialize upon election or appointment to high office? The truth is that no individual or assemblies of individuals are up to the task of managing society. They never have been and they never will be. They do not know what they do not know. As Friedrich Hayek explained, “Economics has from its origins been concerned with how an extended order of human interaction comes into existence through a process of variation, winnowing and sifting far surpassing our capacity to design.… In our economic activities we do not know the needs which we satisfy nor the sources of things which we get. Almost all of us serve people whom we do not know, and even of whose existence we are ignorant; and we in turn constantly live on the services of other people of whom we know nothing. All this is possible because we stand in a great framework of institutions and traditions—economic, legal, and moral—into which we fit ourselves by obeying certain rules of conduct that we never made, and which we have never understood in the sense which we understand how the things that we manufacture function.”1 There is symbiosis to the civil society in which individuals participate in an intricate system of infinite voluntary economic, social, and cultural interactions that are motivated by their needs and desires within the community.
Thus central planning is not about rationality and reason. It is not about knowledge and experience. It is about illegitimately exercising power over others. It is about the deceit of moral relativism and situationalism. It is about the coercive imposition of a hopelessly impossible utopian ideal—an ideal that is complex and ambiguous; fixed and elusive; comprehensive and piecemeal; and abrupt and gradual. However, its direction is certain, steady, and one-way—tyranny, in one form or another. It requires nonstop social engineering and intervention, in matters big and small, for it concedes no failures, acknowledges no bounds, and tolerates no deviation from dogma, which is said to be futuristic, paradisiacal, and preordained.
Post-constitutional America bears the resemblance and qualities of a utopian enterprise. Its exact form and nature elude definitional precision, but its outlines are familiar enough. It shares ambitions, albeit inexactly, not only with the hierarchical caste system in Plato’s Republic, where the politicians and judges behave increasingly as philosopher-kings, federal bureaucrats serve as guardian enforcers, and “the masses” exist to serve the greater good of the state, but also with the artificial humanism of Thomas More’s Utopia, where labor is managed, conformity imposed, and no one goes without; the omnipresence of Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan, where the individual must obey the commands of the omnipotent sovereign; and the Marx-Engels class-based radical egalitarianism and its pursuit of the inevitable workers’ paradise. Over the course of the last hundred years or so, the counterrevolution has achieved significant success. There is no denying that America has become more utopian in character and less republican. In fact, it is more accurate to describe modern America not as a constitutional republic, although it retains certain constitutional and republican traits, but a utopia—an Ameritopia. To the extent this continues, and whether or where it ends, I cannot say, for I do not know.
The Founders would be appalled at the nature of the federal government’s transmutation and the squandering of the American legacy. The federal government has become the nation’s largest creditor, debtor, lender, employer, consumer, contractor, grantor, property owner, tenant, insurer, health-care provider, and pension guarantor. Its size and reach are vast. Its interventions are illimitable. As I am constrained by time, space, and the human condition, it is not possible to set out an all-inclusive examination of the state of things. However, certain examples, both general in nature and common to daily life, should help prove the point to those who remain open to reason and keen on liberty. If further evidence is desired, it abounds everywhere and permeates everyday existence. One need only make the effort to observe it.
FEDERAL TAXING, SPENDING, AND DEBT
Among the ten tenets in The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels include “[a] heavy progressive or graduated income tax” (42). In America, the federal government imposes a staggering burden on a small fraction of taxpayers, as reflected in data released by the Internal Revenue Service for 2008. The top 1 percent of income earners paid 38 percent of personal income taxes while earning 20 percent of pretax income. The top 5 percent of income earners paid 58.7 percent of personal income taxes while earning 34.7 pe
rcent of pretax income. Meanwhile, the bottom 50 percent of income earners paid only 2.7 percent of the total tax burden while earning 12.75 percent of the total pretax income. In other words, the top 5 percent of income earners paid the majority of the total tax burden and the bottom half of income earners paid almost nothing.2
Gross domestic product (GDP) represents the total value of all goods and services produced in the United States in a given year. In 1930, the federal government spent 3.4 percent of GDP. In 1937 and 1939, in the midst of the Great Depression, federal expenditures consumed 8.6 percent and 10.3 percent of the GDP, respectively. During 1943 and 1944, in the midst of World War II, expenditures were 43.5 percent and 43.6 percent, respectively. In 1948, after the war, the percentage dropped to 11.5 percent. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, federal expenditures as a percentage of GDP hovered between 15 percent and 17 percent. During the 1970s and 1980s, these numbers ranged between 17 percent and 19 percent. In the 1990s, the percentage varied between 15 percent and 19 percent. By 2000 and 2001, there was a small drop to 14.8 percent in both years. Starting in 2009, the percentage reached 21.1 percent—the highest percentage of federal spending since 1946.3 And in 2010, federal expenditures jumped to 24 percent of GDP.4
Moreover, at the end of 2008, the federal debt as a percentage of GDP was at 40 percent.5 In 2010, it jumped to over 60 percent.6 For 2011, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects the federal debt will reach about 70 percent of GDP, the highest level since right after World War II, and it will exceed 100 percent of GDP by 2012. Shortly thereafter, “the growing imbalance between revenues and spending, combined with spiraling interest payments, would swiftly push debt to higher and higher levels.…”7
Furthermore, the most recent estimate of total unfunded obligations in dollar terms—for which no resources are currently available and will never be available—is $61.6 trillion, or $528,000 per household.8 This includes $25 trillion in unfunded obligations for Medicare, $21.4 trillion for Social Security, and $9.4 trillion for servicing the debt.9
REGULATIONS AND THE ADMINISTRATIVE STATE
Congress has established a massive administrative state that serves as an unconstitutional fourth governmental branch and exercises legislative, executive, and judicial powers. It employs an army of more than two million bureaucrats who work for an untold number of departments, agencies, bureaus, divisions, boards, etc. They are highly compensated, with average salary and benefits more than double what employees in the private sector earn.10 Yet the administrative state operates mostly on autopilot, with minimal oversight by the constitutionally established branches of government. It monitors daily life and attempts to mechanically extinguish risk, dissimilarity, and choice, as well as that which has become routine and acceptable, in pursuit of societal perfection.
The administrative state issues thousands of regulations and rulings every year, which have the force of law. The Competitive Enterprise Institute reported that the 2010 Federal Register, the official compendium of federal rules, totaled 81,405 pages, a record high. Since 2001, 38,700 final regulations have been promulgated. In 2010 alone, 3,573 rules were enacted by federal agencies.11 An evaluation by economists Nicole V. Crain and W. Mark Crain determined that private sector regulatory compliance costs amounted to $1.752 trillion in 2008, absorbing 11.9 percent of the total gross domestic product of the nation.12 Moreover, The Heritage Foundation found that the number of criminal offenses in the United States Code increased from 3,000 in the early 1980s to 4,000 by 2000, to over 4,450 by 2008. But the total number of criminal offenses is actually unknown even to the federal government, which establishes them. “Scores of federal departments and agencies have created so many criminal offenses that the Congressional Research Service (CRS) [the research arm of Congress] … admitted that it was unable to even count all of the offenses. The Service’s best estimate? ‘Tens of thousands.’ … Congress’s own experts do not have a clear understanding of the size and scope of federal criminalization.”13
However, even an abridged examination of the federal regulatory regime reveals the extent of its tentacles. For example, when constructing a home, federal rules set standards for insulation, gypsum board, treated lumber, windows, pipes, ventilation ducts, flooring, paint, etc. Homebuilders must comply with the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, the Toxic Substances Control Act, and the National Historic Preservation Act.14 If water on the property meets the Clean Water Act definition of wetland, a permit must be secured by the property owner from the Army Corps of Engineers before the wet area can be filled with dirt. The definition of wetland is broad enough to include land that is not actually a wetland, such as “those areas that are inundated or saturated by surface or groundwater at a frequency and duration sufficient to support, and that under normal circumstances do support, a prevalence of vegetation typically adapted for life in saturated soil conditions.”15
Inside the home, the federal government regulates washing machines, dryers, dishwashers, dishwasher detergents, microwave ovens, toilets, showerheads, heating and cooling systems, refrigerators, freezers, furnace fans and boilers, ceiling fans, dehumidifiers, lightbulbs, certain renovations, fitness equipment, clothing, baby cribs, pacifiers, rattles and toys, marbles, latex balloons, matchbooks, bunk beds, mattresses, mattress pads, televisions, radios, cell phones, iPods and other digital media devices, computer components, video recording devices, speakers, batteries, battery chargers, power supplies, stereo equipment, garage door openers, lawn mowers, lawn darts, pool slides, etc. The federal government also regulates toothpaste, deodorant, dentures, and most things in and around the medicine cabinet.16
Like the home, so much of the automobile is regulated by the federal government. The Heartland Institute reported that federal mandates set standards for “automobiles’ engines, bumpers, headrests, seat belts, door latches, brakes, fuel systems, and windshields” as well as side-door guard beams and energy-absorbing steering columns.17 Add to this airbags, a centered/rear brake light, and electronic stability control system. Moreover, the Cato Institute reported that Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards require new car fleets to average 35.5 mpg by 2016. For an automobile manufacturer, it means for every 15-mpg model, five models will have to average 50 mpg.18 The federal government is requiring that by 2025, automobile car fleets average 54.5 mpg.19 Not only will the cost of these new standards be enormous,20 but CAFE standards have resulted in tens of thousands more deaths and injuries, since they require vehicles to be lighter.21
For years the federal government mandated that automobiles be sold only with labels on their windows that displayed their fuel efficiency levels. Beginning in 2013, all new passenger cars and trucks will be required to have more extensive window labels describing: emissions of smog-forming pollution and carbon dioxide, as well as a 1–10 rating showing how a model’s emission levels compared to other new vehicles; projected annual fuel costs for each vehicle; each vehicle’s fuel costs over a five-year period compared to other new vehicles; projected city, highway, and combined miles-per-gallon fuel efficiency performance; a separate estimate of how many gallons will be required to fuel a vehicle for one hundred miles of travel; and labels for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and electric vehicles, comparing pollution levels with gasoline-powered vehicles.22 The federal government requires that the labels be “useful” and “easy-to-read.”23
The federal government has instituted overlapping review processes and regulations, involving multiple agencies, discouraging the development of the fuel that powers the automobile.24 Once discovered and processed, the producers or importers of gasoline, diesel fuels, or fuel additives must register their products with the federal government before introducing them into the market.25 They must ensure that their gasoline is blended with the requisite percentages of specific types of biofuels. They are required to produce seasonal and regional variants. For renewable fuels, they must generate specific ident
ification numbers to track their production and ensure compliance with mandated quotas.26
In addition to the scores of federal regulations respecting the transportation of fuel, the retail gasoline station that dispenses the fuel to the consumer is also regulated by the federal government. The “National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants: Gasoline Dispensing Facilities” imposes requirements for seals and vapor locks and regulates underground storage tanks.27 The retailer must also post the automotive fuel rating of all automotive fuel sold to customers. One label must be placed on each face of each dispenser through which automotive fuel is sold. If the retailer does not blend the gasoline with other gasoline, he must post the octane rating of the gasoline consistent with the octane rating certified to him by the dealer. If the gasoline is blended with other gasoline, he must post the rating consistent with his determination of the average, weighted by volume, of the octane ratings certified to him for each gasoline in the blend, or consistent with the lowest octane rating certified to him for any gasoline in the blend. In cases involving gasoline, the octane rating must be shown as a whole or half number equal to or less than the number certified to the retailer or determined by him. If he does not blend alternative liquid automotive fuels, he must post consistent with the automotive fuel rating certified to him. If he blended alternative liquid automotive fuels, he must possess a reasonable basis, consisting of competent and reliable evidence, for the automotive fuel rating he posts for the blend.28