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The larger the role of government, the greater the divide among us

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  • The larger the role of government, the greater the divide among us

    The larger the role of government, the greater the divide among us
    By Walter Williams

    SunHerald.com, MS
    Nov 10 2004

    Recent elections pointed to deepening divisions among American people,
    but has anyone given serious thought to just why? I have part of the
    answer, which starts off with a simple example.

    Different Americans have different and intensive preferences for
    cars, food, clothing and entertainment. For example, some Americans
    love opera and hate rock and roll. Others have opposite preferences,
    loving rock and roll and hating opera. When's the last time you heard
    of rock-and-roll lovers in conflict with opera lovers? It seldom,
    if ever, happens. Why? Those who love operas get what they want,
    and those who love rock and roll get what they want, and both can
    live in peace with one another.

    Suppose that instead of freedom in the music market, decisions on
    what kind of music people could listen to were made in the political
    arena. It would be either opera or rock and roll. Rock and rollers
    would be lined up against opera lovers. Why? It's simple. If the
    opera lovers win, rock and rollers would lose, and the reverse would
    happen if rock and rollers won. Conflict would emerge solely because
    the decision was made in the political arena.

    The prime feature of political decision-making is that it's a zero-sum
    game. One person or group's gain is of necessity another person or
    group's loss. As such, political allocation of resources is conflict
    enhancing while market allocation is conflict reducing. The greater
    the number of decisions made in the political arena, the greater is
    the potential for conflict.

    There are other implications of political decision-making. Throughout
    most of our history, we've lived in relative harmony. That's
    remarkable because just about every religion, racial and ethnic
    group in the world is represented in our country. These are the very
    racial/ethnic/religious groups that have for centuries been trying to
    slaughter one another in their home countries, among them: Turks and
    Armenians, Protestant and Catholic, Muslim and Jew, Croats and Serbs.
    While we haven't been a perfect nation, there have been no cases
    of the mass genocide and religious wars that have plagued the globe
    elsewhere. The closest we've come was the American Indian/European
    conflict, which pales by comparison.

    The reason we've been able to live in relative harmony is that for
    most of our history government was small. There wasn't much pie to
    distribute politically.

    When it's the political arena that determines who gets what goodies,
    the most effective coalitions are those with a proven record of
    being the most divisive - those based on race, ethnicity, religion
    and region. As a matter of fact, our most costly conflict involved
    a coalition based upon region - namely the War of 1861.

    Many of the issues that divide us, aside from the Iraq war, are
    those best described as a zero-sum game, where one group's gain
    is of necessity another's loss. Examples are: racial preferences,
    Social Security, tax policy, trade restrictions, welfare and a host
    of other government policies that benefit one American at the expense
    of another American.

    You might be tempted to think that the brutal domestic conflict seen
    in other countries at other times can't happen here.

    That's nonsense.

    Americans are not super-humans; we possess the same frailties of other
    people in other places. If there were a severe economic calamity,
    I can imagine a political hustler exploiting those frailties here,
    just as Adolf Hitler did in Germany, blaming it on the Jews, the
    blacks, the East Coast, Catholics or free trade.

    The best thing the president and Congress can do to heal our country
    is to reduce the impact of government on our lives. Doing so will not
    only produce a less divided country and greater economic efficiency
    but bear greater faith and allegiance to the vision of America held
    by our founders - a country of limited government.

    Dr. Walter E. Williams is professor of economics at George Mason
    University in Fairfax, Va. You may write to him at Creators Syndicate,
    5777 W. Century Blvd., Suite 700, Los Angeles, CA 90045.
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