The Gender Gap exiting 2015

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Some myths die hard. The myth of the gender wage gap is one that’s had particularly long legs. Right after winning an Academy Award, Patricia Arquette proclaimed that “It’s our time to have wage equality once and for all and equal rights for women in the United States of America” to thunderous applause. In her “11 Commandments of Progressivism,” Elizabeth Warren is so beside herself she writes “… I can’t believe I have to say this in 2014 — we believe in equal pay for equal work.” President Obama established an Equal Pay Task Force and one of his first acts was to pass the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.

It’s all but taken for granted. Women make 77 cents on the dollar compared to what a man makes for the same work. I’ve been taught this since grade school. Indeed, it would seem to be that the only people who disagree with this are actual economists who study the issue.

As many have noted, a question quickly comes up when discussing wage discrepancies between two groups; if employers care so much about money (which progressives seem to be convinced of), why would they ever hire a man when they can hire a women to do the same thing for three quarters the cost?

Jobs Are Not Homogeneous

But a second problem comes up after just briefly scratching the data; why isn’t this wage gap even remotely close to being consistent across industries? It’s not just models (who make 10 times as much as their male colleagues), but also a variety — albeit minority — of different fields. Forbes recently ran an article based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics titled “15 Jobs Where Women Earn More Than Men.” These jobs include bakers (104 percent), teacher assistants (105 percent), nutritionists (101 percent), and occupational therapists (102 percent). Do those hiring bakers just happen to be some of the few people in this country who aren’t sexist?

What about location? The Huffington Post ran a similar article based on census data titled “The 11 Cities Where Women Out-Earn Men By the Biggest Margin.” They include Atlanta (121 percent), New York (117 percent), and San Diego (115 percent).

And as Warren Farrell notes, the 2003 Census Bureau Current Population Survey showed that “When women and men work less than 40 hours a week, the women earn more than the men.”1 134 percent for between 25 to 34 hours and 107 percent for between 35 and 39 hours.

Add to this another interesting fact. A study by the American Association of University Women — a group that strongly believes in the wage gap — found that,

[o]verall, the regression analysis of earnings one year after graduation suggests that a 5 percent pay gap between women and men remains after accounting for all variables known to affect earnings.

Leave aside the fact that regression analyses cannot be taken as gospel. There’s simply no way to control for every variable (see here for a great discussion on this topic). Even so, 5 percent is a lot less than the supposed 23 percent wage gap. Why would employers discriminate more as women got older? So, the wage gap is not only inconsistent with employer’s best interests, it’s also inconsistent across industries, locations, hours worked, and ages. Yes, this doesn’t sound suspicious at all.

As I’ve discussed before, differences do not automatically equal discrimination. After all, Asian-Americans are paid more than Whites. And Japanese-Americans are paid more than Korean Americans. For crying out loud,lesbian women make more than straight women! One must dig a deeper before settling on discrimination as the end-all explanation.

Men and Women Often Have Different Career Goals

And once you dig a little deeper, it becomes abundantly clear that men and women do not treat work or life in the same way. By either culture, biology or a mix of the two, men place a higher value on income. For example, a survey of men’s and women’s reasons for obtaining an MBA found that,

Men acquiring an MBA aspire to become President or CEO of both public and private companies. … Women MBAs, however, ranked management consulting, executive level vice-President positions and non-profit executive management high among their career goals. … Men expect to hold the top leadership positions and for women, it is still the exception.

This would also explain why men are more likely to seek after dangerous jobs with hazard pay. Thus, men make up 93 percent of workplace fatalities. Professor James Bennett found 20 differences between what men and women do in the workplace that influence income that aren’t found in the raw numbers — which is all the “77 cents on the dollar” takes into account. These reasons include,

• Men go into technology and hard sciences more than women.
• Men tend to take more stressful jobs that are not "nine-to-five."
• Men are more likely to work longer hours, and the pay gap widens for every hour past 40 per week.
• Women are more likely to have "gaps" in their careers, primarily because of child rearing and child care. Less experience means lower pay.

The reason women are more likely to have a gap in their career is what economist Walter Block coined as Marriage Asymmetry Hypothesis in a study criticizing the wage gap back in 1981. Namely, when a man and woman get married, what typically happens is the man will take on the lion’s share of making money and the woman will take on the lion’s share of raising the children (a fact that has been demonstrated time and timeagain).

Whether this is right or wrong is irrelevant to the discussion at hand. The only thing that matters here is if the wage gap is due to discrimination. And the major differences between men and women in workplace behavior — primarily as a result of marriage — cast a lot of doubt on the discrimination hypothesis.

As Denise Venable points out in her analysis of the wage gap, “in general, married women would prefer part-time work at a rate of 5 to 1 over married men.” (This is probably why part-time women earn more than part-time men.) Furthermore, women over twenty-five years of age have held their current job for an average of 4.4 years vs. five years for men and pay raises come with seniority.

In addition, expectations and future plans play a big role in these decisions. As economist Thomas Sowellobserves,

Women tend not to go into occupations in which there’s a very high rate of obsolescence. If you’re a computer engineer and you take five years out to have a child and [raise him] until the age you can put him in daycare, well my gosh, the world has changed. You’d have to start way, way back. On the other hand, if you become a librarian, a teacher or other occupations like that, you can take your five years off and then come back pretty much where you left off.

Computer engineers generally make more money than librarians.

Never-Married Women Make More than Men

Indeed, when comparing never-married women with never married-men, the wage gap doesn’t just disappear, it flips. As far back as 1971, never-married women in their thirties have earned slightly more than similar men.2In 1982, never-married women on the whole earned 91 percent of what men do.3 Today, among men and women living along from the age twenty-one to thirty-five, there is no wage gap.4 And among unmarried college-educated men and women between forty and sixty-four, men earn an average of $40,000 a year and women earn an average of $47,000 a year!5

And when all of this is taken into account, the wage gap all but disappears, as many studies have found:

• A study by the CONSAD Research Corp. for the US Department of Labor found that once they controlled for the variables, there was “an adjusted gender wage gap that is between 4.8 percent and 7.1 percent.”6
• A study by June and Dave O’Neill for the National Bureau of Economic Research found that “… the gender gap largely stems from choices made by women and men concerning the amount of time and energy devoted to a career.”
• Warren Farrell conducted a thorough study reported in his book Why Men Earn More and found no evidence of a wage gap.
• A 1983 study by Walter E. Williams and the aforementioned 1981 study by Walter Block discredit the idea that the wage gap is caused by discrimination.
• Carrie Lukas notes that “In a 2010 study of single, childless urban workers between the ages of 22 and 30, the research firm Reach Advisors found that women earned an average of 8% more than their male counterparts.”

Even PolitFact rated the claim that “women are paid 77 cents on the dollar for doing the same work as men” as “Mostly False.”

It’s certainly possible that the small remaining gap in the CONSAD report is because of discrimination, although it’s just as likely to be other variables that weren’t accounted for since no study can have perfect controls. For example, how does one control for motivation and personal work/life goals? Regardless, most of the gap has to do with choices. There’s nothing wrong with women’s choices; indeed, there may be something wrong with men’s as seeking a work-life balance is probably a wiser decision. Still, it is these decisions that are the primary reason for the wage gap, not discrimination. This stubborn fact might explain why, despite all of their protests, the White House paid women only 88 cents on the dollar compared to men and even Hillary Clinton herself only paid women on her staff 72 cents compared to men. Reality just doesn’t seem to care much about rhetoric.

Image source: iStockphoto

• 1.Warren Farrell, Why Men Earn More, Amacom. Copyright 2005, p. 79.
• 2.“The Economic Role of Women,” The Economic Report of the President, 1973. Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1973, p. 103.
• 3.“Current Population Reports,” Series P-60, No. 132, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1982, p. 161.
• 4.Anita U. Hattiangadi and Amy M. Kahn, “Gender Differences in Pay,” Journal of Economic Perspective (Autumn 2000): 58.
• 5.Farrell, Why Men Earn More, pp. 16–17.
• 6.“An Analysis of Reasons for the Disparity in Wages Between Men and Women,” CONSAD Research Corp, January 12, 2009, p. 1.

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Bernie Sanders's Economics

The Economics of Bernie Sanders

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SEPTEMBER 1, 2015William L. Anderson

TAGS Big GovernmentTaxes and SpendingPolitical Theory

As the political campaign of Hillary Clinton continues to run aground, Democrats are flocking to the campaign of Bernie Sanders, the self-described “socialist” US senator from Vermont, who has been a fixture in that state for more than three decades. Not unlike the presidential campaign of Ron Paul, Sanders is drawing large, enthusiastic crowds who are very receptive to his message of increased state control of the US economy.

Obviously, when a person running a campaign based upon socialist principles is drawing attention and big crowds, we might ask just what does Sanders mean by “socialist,” and what would he do if he were elected president of the United States? To better answer that question, I am taking a closer look at what we would call the “economics” of Bernie Sanders.

What Do We Mean by “Socialism”?

Before looking at Sanders’s platform, however, I believe it is important to note that when socialists speak of “victories” in the economy, they are not talking about actual results, but rather political achievements in the forms of laws being passed that mandate certain policies. Whether or not these policies actually achieve what socialists claim will be accomplished is another story altogether, but results are irrelevant to socialists.

This should surprise no one because, after all, socialism is based upon political control of the economy. True (or at least original) socialists believe that state agents via the “magic” of their authority should allocate all resources to where there is the greatest need for them. Political representatives, not surprisingly, determine what constitutes the greatest need. The state would take ownership of all factors of production and then wisely determine the needs and how production of goods would fulfill them.

Ludwig von Mises in 1920 in his short work, Socialism (three years later expanded into a book), exploded the socialist myth by pointing out that in a world of scarce resources, economies needed private ownership, prices, profits and losses to determine where resources should be directed. The early years of the “experiment” of the Soviet Union proved Mises correct, and socialists then sought to redefine what socialism actually meant.

In the USSR, and later in China and North Korea, the state took ownership of factors of production, but tried to create a parallel economy by using shadow prices and production functions via the mechanisms championed by Polish communist Oskar Lange, who admitted that Mises had pointed out serious flaws in the original plans of socialists. We also know how that “experiment” turned out, which is why there no longer is a USSR, China has abandoned much of the economics of Mao, and North Korea is a failed state where most people live in grinding poverty.

But people like Bernie Sanders, while maybe not rejecting the old socialism spiritually, nonetheless have embraced a “socialism” in which government takes ownership of large portions of what has been produced by private enterprise and transfers wealth from one group of people to another. A look at the Sanders website spells out his brand of “socialism” that he says is based upon what Nordic countries like Sweden, Denmark, and Norway have done, levying high taxes with governments using that funding for social programs like medical care and other public welfare initiatives.

Secondary Socialism

A number of people have pointed out that the Sanders “program” is not socialism per se, but rather is something based upon socializing the results of private enterprise, or what one might call secondary socialism. The Bernie Sanders regime would take control of some of the produce of private enterprise, as opposed to taking outright control of factors of production, which would remain in private hands. If this reminds one of the fascism of the 1930s, that is because Sanders is promoting a version of the governing models of Germany under Adolph Hitler and Italy under Benito Mussolini.

Of the two, Sanders certainly is closer to Mussolini. Like Sanders, Mussolini called himself a socialist and was a leader in the Italian Socialist Party. Like Sanders, Mussolini decried “profiteers” and the wealthy, and spoke out against political corruption. Like Sanders, Mussolini spoke of a larger “national purpose” and sought to harness nationalism as a political force. Like Sanders, Mussolini sought to impose more and more controls on Italian businesses in order to direct production in a way to satisfy political purposes. Like Sanders, Mussolini built political power by appealing to Italian voters by saying that other Italians were well-off because they had gained their wealth on the backs of the poor.

Having similar economic proposals to Hitler and Mussolini does not make Sanders either of those two men and it is important to emphasize that while Sanders regularly employs the powerful political tool of appealing to voter resentment of others, he is not advocating the kind of genocide that ultimately helped to characterize the fascism of Central Europe in the 1930s and 40s. Bernie Sanders is an economic nationalist, and economic nationalism was at the heart of European fascism, but we do not want to make unwarranted accusations against Sanders, either.

At the same time, I do not want to let Sanders off the hook. He promotes economic nationalism and has built his campaign upon resentment, the kind of which Henry Hazlitt wrote in 1966 in his famous, “Marxism in One Minute.” Hazlitt wrote:

The whole gospel of Karl Marx can be summed up in a single sentence: Hate the man who is better off than you are. Never under any circumstances admit that his success may be due to his own efforts, to the productive contribution he has made to the whole community. Always attribute his success to the exploitation, the cheating, the more or less open robbery of others. (Emphasis mine)

As one moves through the website for the Sanders campaign, there is plenty of resentment for others. First, there is the ubiquitous “One-Percent” that is the main focus of the typical Sanders stump speech:

This campaign is sending a message to the billionaire class: “you can’t have it all.” You can’t get huge tax breaks while children in this country go hungry. You can’t continue sending our jobs to China while millions are looking for work. You can’t hide your profits in the Cayman Islands and other tax havens, while there are massive unmet needs on every corner of this nation. Your greed has got to end. You cannot take advantage of all the benefits of America, if you refuse to accept your responsibilities as Americans.

While I would agree wholeheartedly that the US economy is in serious trouble, it is not because of the “greed” of billionaires. It is because the US government, through the Federal Reserve System, has created what David Stockman has called the “casino economy” that has substituted trading of sovereign debt and monetary manipulation for a real economy with interest rates that reflect actual economic fundamentals. Like the Bush and Clinton administrations before it, the Obama administration has promoted political entrepreneurship and demonized market entrepreneurship.

Sanders’s List of Recycled Twentieth-Century “Solutions”

Americans are not jobless because some people are not paying “their fair share” of taxes; they are jobless because the US government insists on directing resources from higher-valued uses to lower-valued uses, as determined by consumer choice. They are jobless because Washington insists on remaking the economy in its own image, and there is nothing in the entire Sanders campaign that would change any of the things that vex the US economy the most.

So, what does Sanders propose to “revitalize” the US economy? Here are some things listed on his website:

• Raise taxes on US corporations (ironically, corporate tax rates in the Nordic countries are substantially lower than current corporate taxes in the USA, something that has escaped Sanders’s notice);
• Raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour;
• Expand the reach of labor unions and vastly expand their membership;
• Make it illegal for US corporations to manufacture goods abroad, and then sell those goods in the USA;
• Impose new taxes on financial transactions;
• Spend at least a trillion dollars on building and repairing roads, bridges, and utilities;
• Create a “youth jobs program” in which unemployed young people are given government-sponsored jobs (Sanders sees no connection between high minimum wages and youth unemployment);
• Enact “equity pay” that will “guarantee” that women are paid the same as men for comparable work;
• Break up banks and financial institutions;
• Enact a Canada-style single-payer healthcare system;
• Provide free tuition for all public colleges and universities;
• Expand Social Security benefits;
• Require businesses to provide 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave, at least 10 days of paid vacation a year, and seven days per year of paid guaranteed sick leave.

Notice that there is nothing in the Sanders platform that calls for “nationalization” of the means of production, nor does he propose to do away with the price system. In other words, Sanders’s vision of socialism is not what Mao or Trotsky or Lenin proposed, yet there is not one thing in the entire platform that would reverse the dangerous economic trends of the past decade.

Instead, Sanders proposes to direct huge amounts of resources in the direction of constructing something akin to a European welfare state. To put it another way, Sanders wishes to “turn back the clock” to create or promote social and economic structures that already have been undermined by the modern “sharing” economy.

If one reads Sanders’s platform from another perspective, it would be the New Deal. Indeed, there is nothing Sanders has written or said from the stump that would not be reminiscent of a New Deal rally (with the possible exception in appealing to black Americans, which was not part of the Democratic Party agenda in the 1930s, as well as Sanders’s appeal to furthering the Sexual Revolution). Bernie Sanders pushes an economic agenda that is frozen in time.

The problem, economically speaking, is that Bernie Sanders proposes nothing that actually would enable entrepreneurs to help bring about a true economic recovery. In Sanders’s world, entrepreneurs are parasites and employers are oppressors who seek to harm their employees, and wealth is defined by how much governments have in their treasuries.

If I could put the economics of Bernie Sanders into a nutshell, it would be this: Burden private enterprise with one directive after another, and then demonize it when it ultimately falls down under the awful weight of taxes, higher costs, and mandates. While many people believe that instituting the Sanders economic agenda would help turn the USA into another Sweden or Denmark, the more likely outcome would be turning this country into another Venezuela.

Politically Correct is about Control, Not Etiquette

To begin, we need to understand that political correctness is not about being nice. It’s not simply a social issue, or a subset of the culture wars.

It’s not about politeness, or inclusiveness, or good manners. It’s not about being respectful toward your fellow humans, and it’s not about being sensitive or caring or avoiding hurt feelings and unpleasant slurs.

But you’ve heard this argument, I’m sure. PC is about simple respect and inclusiveness, they tell us. As though we need progressives, the cultural enforcers, to help us understand that we shouldn’t call someone retarded, or use the “N” word, make hurtful comments about someone’s appearance, or tolerate bullies.

If PC truly was about kindness and respect, it wouldn’t need to be imposed on us. After all, we already have a mechanism for the social cohesion PC is said to represent: it’s called manners. And we already have specific individuals charged with insuring that good manners are instilled and upheld: they’re called parents.

Political Correctness Defined

But what exactly is PC? Let me take a stab at defining it: Political correctness is the conscious, designed manipulation of language intended to change the way people speak, write, think, feel, and act, in furtherance of an agenda.

PC is best understood as propaganda, which is how I suggest we approach it. But unlike propaganda, which historically has been used by governments to win favor for a particular campaign or effort, PC is all-encompassing. It seeks nothing less than to mold us into modern versions of Marx’s un-alienated society man, freed of all his bourgeois pretensions and humdrum social conventions.

Like all propaganda, PC fundamentally is a lie. It is about refusing to deal with the underlying nature of reality, in fact attempting to alter that reality by legislative and social fiat. A is no longer A.

To quote Hans-Hermann Hoppe:

[T]he masters … stipulate that aggression, invasion, murder and war are actually self-defense, whereas self-defense is aggression, invasion, murder and war. Freedom is coercion, and coercion is freedom. … Taxes are voluntary payments, and voluntarily paid prices are exploitative taxes. In a PC world, metaphysics is diverted and rerouted. Truth becomes malleable, to serve a bigger purpose determined by our superiors.
But where did all this come from? Surely PC, in all its various forms, is nothing new under the sun. I think we can safely assume that feudal chiefs, kings, emperors, and politicians have ever and always attempted to control the language, thoughts, and thus the actions of their subjects. Thought police have always existed.

To understand the origins of political correctness, we might look to the aforementioned Marx, and later the Frankfurt school. We might consider the work of Leo Strauss for its impact on the war-hungry think tank world. We might study the deceptive sloganeering of Saul Alinsky. We might mention the French philosopher Foucault, who used the term “political correctness” in the 1960s as a criticism of unscientific dogma.

But if you really want to understand the black art of PC propaganda, let me suggest reading one of its foremost practitioners, Edward Bernays.

Bernays was a remarkable man, someone who literally wrote the book on propaganda and its softer guise of public relations. He is little discussed in the West today, despite being the godfather of modern spin.

He was the nephew of Sigmund Freud, and like Mises was born in Austria in the late nineteenth century. Unlike Mises, however, he fortuitously came to New York City as an infant and then proceeded to live an astonishing 103 years.

One of his first jobs was as a press agent for President Woodrow Wilson’s Committee on Public Information, an agency designed to gin up popular support for US entry into WW1 (German Americans and Irish Americans especially were opposed). It was Bernays who coined the infamous phrase “Make the World Safe for Democracy” used by the committee.

After the war, he asked himself whether one could “apply a similar technique to the problems of peace.” And by “problems,” Bernays meant selling stuff. He directed very successful campaigns promoting Ivory Soap, for bacon and eggs as a healthy breakfast, and ballet. He directed several very successful advertising campaigns, most notably for Lucky Strike in its efforts to make smoking socially acceptable for women.

The Role of “Herd Psychology”

Bernays was quite open and even proud of engaging in the “manufacturing of consent,” a term used by British surgeon and psychologist Wilfred Trotter in his seminal Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War published in 1919.

Bernays took the concept of herd psychology to heart. The herd instinct entails the deep seated psychological need to win approval of one’s social group. The herd overwhelms any other influence; as social humans, our need to fit in is paramount.

But however ingrained, in Bernays’s view the herd instinct cannot be trusted. The herd is irrational and dangerous, and must be steered by wiser men in a thousand imperceptible ways — and this is key. They must not know they are being steered.

The techniques Bernays employed are still very much being used to shape political correctness today.

First, he understood how all-powerful the herd mind and herd instinct really is. We are not the special snowflakes we imagine, according to Bernays. Instead we are timorous and malleable creatures who desperately want to fit in and win acceptance of the group.

Second, he understood the critical importance of using third party authorities to promote causes or products. Celebrities, athletes, models, politicians, and wealthy elites are the people from whom the herd takes its cues, whether they’re endorsing transgender awareness or selling luxury cars. So when George Clooney or Kim Kardashian endorses Hillary Clinton, it resonates with the herd.

Third, he understood the role that emotions play in our tastes and preferences. It’s not a particular candidate or cigarette or a watch or a handbag we really want, it’s the emotional component of the ad that affects us, however subconsciously.

What We Can Do About It

So the question we might ask ourselves is this: how do we fight back against PC? What can we do, as individuals with finite amounts of time and resources, with serious obligations to our families, loved ones, and careers, to reverse the growing tide of darkness?

First, we must understand that we’re in a fight. PC represents a war for our very hearts, minds, and souls. The other side understands this, and so should you. The fight is taking place on multiple fronts: the state-linguistic complex operates not only within government, but also academia, media, the business world, churches and synagogues, nonprofits, and NGOs. So understand the forces aligned against you.

Understand that the PC enforcers are not asking you, they’re not debating you, and they don’t care about your vote. They don’t care whether they can win at the ballot box, or whether they use extralegal means. There are millions of progressives in the US who absolutely would criminalize speech that does not comport with their sense of social justice.

One poll suggests 51 percent of Democrats and 1/3 of all Americans would do just that.

The other side is fighting deliberately and tactically. So realize you’re in a fight, and fight back. Culturally, this really is a matter of life and death.

We Still Have Freedom to Act

As bad as PC contamination may be at this point, we are not like Mises, fleeing a few days ahead of the Nazis. We have tremendous resources at our disposal in a digital age. We can still communicate globally and create communities of outspoken, anti-PC voices. We can still read and share anti-state books and articles. We can still read real history and the great un-PC literary classics. We can still homeschool our kids. We can still hold events like this one today.

This is not to say that bucking PC can’t hurt you: the possible loss of one’s job, reputation, friends, and even family is very serious. But defeatism is never called for, and it makes us unworthy of our ancestors.

Use humor to ridicule PC. PC is absurd, and most people sense it. And its practitioners suffer from a comical lack of self-awareness and irony. Use every tool at your disposal to mock, ridicule, and expose PC for what it is.

Never forget that society can change very rapidly in the wake of certain precipitating events. We certainly all hope that no great calamity strikes America, in the form of an economic collapse, a currency collapse, an inability to provide entitlements and welfare, energy shortages, food and water shortages, natural disasters, or civil unrest. But we can’t discount the possibility of these things happening.

And if they do, I suggest that PC language and PC thinking will be the first ornament of the state to go. Only rich, modern, societies can afford the luxury of a mindset that does not comport with reality, and that mindset will be swiftly swept aside as the “rich” part of America frays.

Men and women might start to rediscover that they need and complement each other if the welfare state breaks down. Endless hours spent on social media might give way to rebuilding social connections that really matter when the chips are down.

More traditional family structures might suddenly seem less oppressive in the face of great economic uncertainty. Schools and universities might rediscover the value of teaching practical skills, instead of whitewashed history and grievance studies. One’s sexual preferences might not loom as large in the scheme of things, certainly not as a source of rights. The rule of law might become something more than an abstraction to be discarded in order to further social justice and deny privilege.

Play the Long Game

I’m afraid it might not be popular to say so, but we have to be prepared for a long and hard campaign. Let’s leave the empty promises of quick fixes to the politicians. Progressives play the long game masterfully. They’ve taken 100 years to ransack our institutions inch by inch. I’m not suggesting incrementalism to reclaim those foregone institutions, which are by all account too far gone — but to create our own.

PC enforcers seek to divide and atomize us, by class, race, sex, and sexuality. So let’s take them up on it. Let’s bypass the institutions controlled by them in favor of our own. Who says we can’t create our own schools, our own churches, our own media, our own literature, and our own civic and social organizations? Starting from scratch certainly is less daunting than fighting PC on its own turf.

Conclusion

PC is a virus that puts us — liberty loving people — on our heels. When we allow progressives to frame the debate and control the narrative, we lose power over our lives. If we don’t address what the state and its agents are doing to control us, we might honestly wonder how much longer organizations like the Mises Institute are going to be free to hold events like this one today.

Is it really that unimaginable that you might wake up one day and find sites with anti-state and anti-egalitarian content blocked — sites like mises.org and lewrockwell.com?

Or that social media outlets like Facebook might simply eliminate opinions not deemed acceptable in the new America?

In fact, head Facebook Mark Zuckerberg recently was overheard at a UN summit telling Angela Merkel that he would get to work on suppressing Facebook comments by Germans who have the audacity to object to the government’s handling of migrants.

Here’s the Facebook statement:

We are committed to working closely with the German government on this important issue. We think the best solutions to dealing with people who make racist and xenophobic comments can be found when service providers, government, and civil society all work together to address this common challenge.

Is "Academic Freedom" a Special Kind of Freedom?

More phony-white-liberal crocodile tears have been shed over the issue of academic freedom than perhaps over any other. More academics have waxed more eloquent over it than over perhaps any other topic receiving their tender attention. In the eyes of some, it has been equated with the very basis of Western civilization. In the eyes of others, judging by their anguish, it has been equated with the Second Coming!

There is not a day that goes by that does not see the American Civil Liberties Union in a virtual state of apoplexy over some real or imagined violation of academic freedom. And all this seems pale in comparison with the gnashing of teeth and frothing at the mouth by labor unions of professional academics and teachers in this fair land of ours.

From the name itself, academic freedom would seem to be innocuous enough. All it would seem to mean would be that academics, like anyone else, should have freedom. Freedom of speech, freedom to come and go, and freedom to quit a job. The usual freedoms that everyone has.

Such is not the case, however. "Academic freedom" has a very special meaning: the freedom to teach the subject matter in whatever way the academic in question wishes the subject taught, despite any wishes to the contrary that his employer may harbor. In other words, the employer may not fire the academic as long as he teaches the subject matter in any manner that the academic, not the employer, wishes.

Now this is a very special, not to say spectacular, doctrine indeed! This point may easily be proven by applying the doctrine of academic freedom to almost any other occupation. Let us consider "plumbers' freedom," for instance.

What would plumbers' freedom consist of? The right to place pipes and plumbing equipment in the position his experience had taught him was best. But suppose a customer wanted his plumbing in a place that differed from the plumber's professional, artistic, aesthetic, and other judgments as to where the plumbing should be.

The plumber is of course free not to take a job if his sensibilities are outraged. (We do not yet have forced labor in this "land of the free," except, of course, when some old men decide to force some young men to fight in a jungle 10,000 miles away and call it a draft).

But suppose he demands not simply the right to refuse the job, but the right to take the job and to do it his way. If there were any "plumbers' freedom" analogous to the way "academic freedom" is run, he would have just that right! He would have the right to say that when his professional competence is at odds with the desires of the customer, his views should prevail. The customer is not always right, it would seem.

It will be objected by the academic-freedom lovers that there are great differences between plumbers' freedom and academic freedom and that therefore only the latter is justified. There are several differences. Let us, however, examine them to see if they amount to much.

One alleged difference between plumbers and academics is that plumbers usually rent their services directly to the customer, while the academician rents his services to the customer (students, or parents of students) through an intermediary — the university. But the problem with this objection is that it is by no means or immediately obvious why this should make a difference, or is indeed relevant at all.

Secondly, although they are perhaps in a minority, there are many plumbers who do not work directly for the customer, but rather work through an intermediary plumbing firm; and there are likewise many academics who work directly for customers as tutors. In any case, we can consider these two cases and see if "vocational freedom" makes any more sense here than in the usual cases.

Plumbers' freedom makes no more sense in the case of an employed plumber than in the case of a self-employed one. Plumbers' freedom would mean that the employee of a plumbing firm would be free of any job requirements placed upon him by either the owner of the plumbing firm or by the customer. Since the firm serves as an agent of the customer, the employee's plumbing "professionalism" would prevail over the desires of the customers. Any employee could refuse to work on a big construction job if the plumbing specifications were not to his "professional" liking. And of course he could not be fired, for such a firing would violate his "plumbers' freedom."

Likewise, academic freedom makes no more sense in the case of an academic tutor working directly for the customer than it does in the case of an academic serving the consumer indirectly through the intermediation of a university. Such "academic freedom" would mean that the tutor would be entirely in charge of determining the way the lesson would be taught, and that as long as the tutor stuck to the subject matter for which he was hired, he could not be fired by the student.

This is such an unexpected conclusion that it bears repeating, even though it follows directly from the logic of how academic freedom works in the university context: If a tutor working for a customer-student has what in the university context passes for "academic freedom," he could not be fired from that position for merely exercising his "professionalism" in a way that displeases his student-employer. The only grounds that exist for firing someone with complete rights of "academic freedom" would be gross violations of the law or professional incompetence. He could not be fired by the student over a "mere" disagreement over a substantive issue concerning the subject matter.

Another alleged difference between plumbers and academics (alleged, let me hasten to add, by academics, not plumbers) is that the academic vocation, but not the nonacademic ones, require free inquiry, untrammeled rights of expression, and the right to pursue their thoughts wherever their intellects shall lead them.

What can one say of this arrant nonsense, except that it is probably more indicative of maniacal, religious elitism than anything else? Perhaps the plumbers could reply with the old aphorism that "Those who can, do, while those who cannot, teach."

This reply would be just as relevant to the question at hand. For we are not dealing with the question of how onerous or intellectual the various vocational pursuits are. We are dealing with the propriety of "vocational freedom" in protecting the supposed right to a job as long as certain formalistic job requirements are fulfilled regardless of the wishes and desires of customers and employers.

Even if we accept this elitist allegation on the part of the academics on its own grounds, it still opens up a can of worms for academic-freedom lovers. For if we accept the view that intellectual professions should have the protection of "vocational freedom" we still have to deal with "doctors' freedom," "lawyers' freedom," "chemists freedom," "musicians' freedom," "artists' freedom" and so on, in mind-boggling array.

Would "doctors' freedom" give the doctors the "freedom" to prohibit us from smoking cigarettes, for instance, without giving us the right to fire them for such temerity? Would "artists' or musicians' freedom" give artists and musicians the right to charge us for music and art we did not appreciate?

Considering the way "academic freedom" operates, one would be hard-pressed to deny these conclusions. One shudders to contemplate what "chemists' and lawyers freedom" would entail. To say nothing of "politicians' freedom."

And if we reject this academic elitism, the panorama is vastly widened. It now would include "taxi drivers' freedom," where the taxi drivers go where they want to go and you pay for it; "baby-sitters' freedom" where the baby sitter decides when baby goes to sleep. And so on.

If we reject intellectual elitism, we find it harder to see just why plumbers, carpenters, tradesmen, etc., should not also have "vocational freedom." Why after all, should "vocational freedom" be reserved to only the teachers of these disciplines? If the vocation is so deserving that the teachers of it must be protected by "freedom," then surely the practitioners must be likewise protected. And if the practitioners are not deserving of the "freedom" not to be fired, then how can the teachers merit such treatment?

What we are dealing with here under the question of "academic freedom" is nothing less than a disguised attack on the very right of individuals to freely contract with one another. It is a denial of the sanctity of contract. It is a denial of the rights of individuals to make contracts with one another that do not include clauses stipulating "rights" of "academic freedom." In its effects it resembles nothing so much as the medieval guild system, in its restrictions, protectionism, and fostering of a caste system.

There is one ground upon which "academic freedom" can be supported, although it is a ground upon which precious few of its adherents would wish to support it.

"Academic freedom" may be defended on the ground that it is perhaps the only device by which control over the educational system in this country may be wrested away, at least in part, from the ruling class, or power elite which now controls it. To substantiate this claim would take us too far afield. (The interested reader is referred to The Higher Circles by G. William Dornhoff.)

Supposing it to be true for the sake of argument, however, we can see that it constitutes a defense of "academic freedom." For if the ruling-class analysis is true, then it is not the innocent student-consumer who is being defrauded by "academic freedom." It is not the innocent student-consumer who is being forced to maintain in employment an academic whose services he no longer desires. It is the non innocent ruling class that is being so forced.

If the ruling-class theory is correct, academicians with views favorable to the ruling class have nothing to gain from "academic freedom." They will be retained in any case. It is the academic with views that are not amenable to the ruling class, and he alone, that can benefit from an "academic freedom" that prevents ruling-class employers from firing him on ideological or other nonformalistic grounds.

But this is no reason to continue to obfuscate the issue of academic freedom. Academic freedom, as such, is fraud and theft, because it denies individuals the right of free and voluntary contracts.

That it can also be used for good ends should occasion no surprise. Throwing rocks at people is also an illegitimate activity. Yet David could hardly have slain Goliath by eschewing this practice.