MISGUIDED FREEDOM

 

This article started life as a Facebook post, but after starting it I realized I had too much to say so I’m making it a standalone blog article. Some of you may know that for the last several years Larry Downs Jr., the owner of a local plumbing company (and lover of freedom) and I have debated/argued about a number of issues on Facebook. Larry takes the view that there should be virtually no taxes or government, basically just the bare minimum to pave the roads and have police. No parks, libraries, public schools, building codes, professional licenses and of course no food stamps or any other government assistance. Larry is convinced I’m communist and an advocate for the nanny state. In reality, although I’m a Democrat, I also have a libertarian streak and many of the big government issues Larry rails against are, in fact, the positions of the Christian-right, not liberals. So, I’m going to take this opportunity to address some of the positions Larry has taken, while also laying out my vision for the proper role of government and how we should strike a balance between individual liberty and protecting the interest of society at large. 

I have always stood for personal freedoms, often a lot more than many conservatives. It’s the right, especially the Christian right, who is always calling for morality laws. Restricting alcohol sales, preventing gambling, strip club registration, controlling women’s bodies, banning drug use, calling for longer prison terms, eminent domain seizures (often for corporate interest), and weaponization of code enforcement on personal property, these are all crap and tend to be conservative issues although both parties have been guilty at times of government overreach. At the same time, when you live in a society with other people, sometimes you must accept limitations on your freedoms. I think 18-year-olds should be able to drink, but you should not be able to drink and drive. I assume Larry is against DUI laws as an infringement of our personal freedoms. After all, if a drunk rams into your car and causes you to become a quadriplegic you can always sue, that fixes the problem, right? 

To be fair, I don’t know Larry’s position on DUI laws but when advocating for repealing all the laws and regulations he sees as an infringement of liberty, lawsuits are often Larry’s answer to dealing with the inevitable abuses that would result. If a manufacturing plant is dumping toxic waste into a river, you don’t need regulations against it, you just need to sue for damages and the system will correct itself without the need for burdensome regulations. Larry’s fantasy utopia of a world without regulations is detached from reality. To successfully sue a corporation for damages from pollution you must prove that you suffered actual damages and that the damages were a result of the negligence of the defendant. Trying to prove the source of your cancer is nearly impossible and corporations can spend virtually unlimited amounts on experts that will testify that some other source is responsible for the pollution or that the pollution didn’t cause the damage. Without environmental regulations in place, it would be even harder to prove damages in a lawsuit because the corporation could legitimately say they weren’t doing anything wrong and were unaware of the negative effects of their actions. 

It can take years and a fortune to successfully sue a corporation and even if you win, the appeals can take decades to play out. Remember the local lawsuit against RJR over damage caused by cigarettes that was filed in 2008 and resulted in over a $23 billion award in 2014. To date no money has been paid and it’s unlikely it ever will. Even when corporations do lose and actually have to pay damages it’s usually only a fraction of the profits that were made by the activity in question. In the extremely rare instance that a corporation is fully held responsible for their actions and made to forfeit the entirety of the ill-gotten-gains they’re likely to file bankruptcy and the defendants often receive pennies on the dollar that mostly go to the lawyers. Lawsuits have their place, but they don’t take the place of regulations, and frankly I don’t hear too many people saying what’s wrong with America is we just don’t have enough lawsuits. 

The government, through our elected representatives, plays an important role in preserving personal freedoms while also promoting the common good through the legislative process. Where to draw the line between individual freedoms and limitation on those freedoms is always going to be a source of conflict. Maybe my heavy metal band wants to practice in the garage at 3 a.m. on a Tuesday, but my neighbors want to get some sleep so they can get up and go to work the next morning. The government is probably going to tell me I need to find a different time to practice because I’m disturbing the peace. How about if it’s 3 p.m. but I’m a day sleeper? Not as clear-cut, maybe I can practice but I need to turn it down a bit, these are the compromises that need to be made for civilizations to function. 

I believe we should start from a position that an activity or item should be legal until it’s shown to represent a significant danger to society. I think the Massachusetts’ ban on the sale of all e-cigarette sales because of a potential ill-defined risk went too far, however, now that they have strong evidence that the Vitamin E acetate additive in a few products was causing most of the problem it makes sense for the government to ban that. I agree with Larry that we’re often too quick to institute new regulations to address a perceived risk based more on headlines more than the facts. When I buy a mower, usually the first thing I do is disable the mechanism that automatically shuts it off when you let go of the handle. Regulations like that one which attempt to save people from themselves tend to make products more complicated, less reliable and cost more.

Larry also makes some good points about professional licensing requirements that often serve to limit access to the market for new businesses or protect established businesses from competition more than mitigate any legitimate risk to the public. However, Larry takes it too far. Elimination of building codes and all professional licensing requirements for everything from doctors to plumbers would result in substandard work that poses an unacceptable risk to the public. He seems to have forgotten that there was a time before these regulations and the people demanded the government take action so that when you buy a house you can have some reasonable expectation that it was built to a certain standard. That doesn’t relieve the buyer from taking due diligence and having the property inspected, but it can prevent the city-wide catastrophe caused by substandard building practices. 

Abraham Lincoln put it well in the Gettysburg Address when he described the government in America as, “that government of the people, by the people, for the people.” We have a government whose purpose is to serve the needs of the people, and we ensure its continuation with free and open elections so the voters can elect people to represent them. We the people need to demand that the government continue to serve the needs of the people and not corporations and special interests. When we had buildings collapse due to poor construction, we demanded buildings be built to certain standards. When we had thousands dying each year from tainted food the people demanded laws protecting the safety of the food supply. When we had people starving due to poverty, they demanded the government provide assistance. Workplace safety laws, minimum wage, product safety laws, unemployment insurance, child labor laws and scores of other laws and regulations didn’t appear from out of nowhere, they were a response to demands from the people.

These rules can go too far and should be reviewed and adjusted from time to time. Unfortunately, it’s often easier to pass a law than repeal one that’s no longer needed or didn’t work the way it was intended. However, if Larry got his vision for America and all these laws and regulations were repealed it wouldn’t take long before voters would demand new laws and regulations be passed to replace them. Any objective comparison between America of 2019 and the America of the mid-1800s, before most of these regulations existed, will reveal that the laws that American voters have demanded have objectively made the lives of the American people better, not worse. 

To fully delve into every issue Larry Downs Jr. likes to rail about would take a manifesto ten times longer than this, and this post is already running on the long side. But suffice to say, these additional issues would follow a similar theme of Larry’s simplistic vision of the future without questioning why things are the way they are, or what the realistic ramifications of his proposals would be. If he wants to buy a 1000-acre property and live in a cabin in the middle of it, maybe he can have the freedom he longs for. But if Larry wants to live in a society with other people he’s going to have to live with certain limitations on his personal freedoms.