Samizdata

Dominic Wellington see the hate filled collectivist attitude to private sector space flight as being the same attitude which feeds poverty in places where such sentiments actually control the political process

Rand Simberg points to this article in The Washington Dispatch. The author, Mark Whittington, writes about the sophomoric class-envy editorials on the X-Prize that have appeared recently in the UK press. Excerpt:

An editorial in The Scotsman on October 3rd [online here] seemed to set the tone. “Virtually every child does fantasise about space travel,” The Scotsman sneered. “But most then grow up. Branson reckons he will have no difficulty attracting customers for his space venture. Sadly, he’s probably right. Arrested development is a common trait among the super-rich, a fact which explains the market for Lotuses and Lamborghinis.”

Speaking as someone who would love a Lotus or a Lamborghini, and would kill for a ride into space on one of Mr Branson’s craft, I have no idea what the Scotsman editorial writer has been smoking. What is his problem?

Well, actually, I know perfectly well what his problem is – he thinks that nobody should be rich, and we should all live in dour council flats and drive Ladas and Trabants. I only have one response to that, and it’s not printable.

I do not have much time for those who inherit wealth and squander it, but self-made men or people who work with their inheritance and grow it command my full respect. This is one of the reasons why I like Berlusconi and his kids. He came from nowhere, and made some very clever deals. Nobody would have bet on private TV in Italy when he was buying stations up, but once it took off the howls of outrage from slower competitors and suddenly obsolete State broadcasters were deafening. The same sort of thing happened with many of his real-estate deals. His kids, with an inheritance the size of the national debt, are working their tails off in the family businesses.

Gerard DeGroot, the bitter ankle-biter of the Scotsman, is instead a professor of modern history at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Surprisingly, he approves of space travel per se – see for instance this Christian Science Monitor article from earlier this year – it is just private space travel that he dislikes. I wonder how he can combine the vitriol quoted above with positive sentiments such as the following:

Through history, every vibrant culture has pushed horizons outward. They’ve done so not simply because of the practical benefits of exploration, but also because discovery is a touchstone of cultural vigor.

I would argue that individuals doing things for their own reasons and benefit are much more of a “touchstone of cultural vigor” than massive State-run programs dropped onto the populace.

There is an expression in Italian: cattedrali nel deserto. Literally, it means ‘cathedrals in the desert’. It refers to the practice of building a shiny new factory, motorway, hospital or whatever in the economically backward South of Italy. The problem with this practice was – is – that the factory had no workers or transport links, or the motorway went from nowhere to nowhere, or there were no doctors to work in the hospital. These projects were as absurd as building a great cathedral in the desert, far from any worshippers. The ‘cathedrals’ bred only corruption, and many of them never even entered service. This is what State-run projects look like.

By contrast, the North of Italy, which has a GDP on a level with Switzerland and fearsome productivity, is driven entirely by small to medium businesses. Sure, there are a couple of Fiat-sized colossi, but mainly we’re talking little companies that you’ve never heard of, that are making their owners rich, that bring jobs to the area, and that supply such a level of diversity and resilience to the economy that it can drag the South along with it into Europe without being crippled or even slowed down too much.

The entrepreneurs driving this new space race and their prospective super-rich passengers are productive members of a vigorous culture. Gerard DeGroot and his intellectual compatriots, despite pretensions to the contrary, are most emphatically not.

It is not at all uncommon for libertarians to boast about not voting in political elections. The rationale behind not voting varies, from “it is pointless, my single vote cannot affect the outcome,” through “I don’t like any of the candidates on offer, so why should I vote for any of them,” to “voting only ratifies the cult of the state.” (I abbreviate for brevity’s sake, but not unfairly, I hope).

I disagree with those who do not vote, not because any of these arguments are wrong (indeed, they are each correct in their own relatively narrow sphere), but because elections and some degree of ‘democratic’ accountability are an essential part of any society that hopes to retain a sphere of personal liberty beyond the reach of the state. I say this based on a broad reading of current events – those nations that are the worst offenders against liberty lack democratic accountability, and those nations that maintain a sphere of liberty, however beleaguered, have some degree of democratic accountability.

Voting and democracy are, in a nutshell, a necessary but not sufficient condition of liberty. Those opposed to voting focus on the ‘not sufficient’ part of this formulation, and say that therefore it is worthless, or at least not worth doing. I freely admit that democracy is not sufficient to maintain liberty, and that a number of other conditions also have to obtain; to conclude, however, that what is not sufficient is also not necessary is to fall into a logical fallacy.

I think the broad correlation of functioning democratic institutions and personal liberty is solid, and the inverse correlation of lack of democracy and tyranny is absolutely undeniable. From this I draw the conclusion that, regardless of the value of your individual vote, the institution of voting is important. This institution is dependent on people actually voting, and so refusing to vote on principle amounts to undermining one of the pillars of personal liberty.

There is nothing to be gained from not voting, as there is no chance whatsoever that voter apathy or nonparticipation will ever spur any reform or change. However, there is something to be lost. Not voting concedes the field to a narrow class of political activists who uniformly want to turn the power of the state to their own ends rather than limit it (as illustrated by primary elections in the US, which have low turnout and all too often result in the nomination of party hacks). Not voting may also, over time, undermine the principle of democratic accountability altogether; is it just coincidence that, as voter participation has declined, state power has expanded at the behest of unelected judges and bureaucrats?

To my libertarian brethren and sistren I say, then, vote. Hold your nose if necessary, “throw your vote away” on the execrable Libertarians if you wish, but vote. Like so much in life, it may not be a panacea, but it sure beats the alternative.