Walter Williams encourages support for individual liberty

0 Comments | Insight on the News, August 11, 1997 | by Stephen Goode

Personal Bio

Walter E. Williams, before becoming an economist and syndicated columnist.

Born: March 31, 1936, Philadelphia. Married, 1960. One daughter.

Education: bachelor's degree, economics, California State University, Los Angeles; master's degree and doctorate, economics, University of California, Los Angeles.

Position: Department chairman and professor of economics, George Mason University, Fairfax, Va.

Book: America: A Minority Viewpoint; All It Takes Is Guts; and Do the Right Thing: The People s Economist Speaks, among others.

Entertainment: "I like wine and cigars. One of my hobbies, when the weather's right, is to go biking. I've had a bike custom-made, and it's the first time I've had one that fits me!"

Favorite Economist: "Actually it is a little-known French economist and philosopher, Claude-Frederic Bastiat, that's the main guy I go back to a lot of the time. He's been very influential with those who share the values of limited government and individual liberty."

The conservative economist and author says Americans pay lip service to the concept of liberty, but turn a blind eye toward the redistribution of wealth and property perpetrated by the government.

One summer, when he was in mid-career as an undergraduate at California State University at Los Angeles, Walter E. Williams changed his major from sociology to economics. "I decided sociology was a bunch of nonsense," Williams tells

Insight. That meant he had to drop his junior standing and once again become a sophomore, but Williams was pretty certain about his fascination with economics. The rest, as they say, is history.

Williams now is John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University in Virginia, a widely read syndicated columnist and a prolific author No one today argues more cogently for freedom and against collectivism than Williams. A Civil War buff, Williams suggests that the widespread interest in that war today may come from the fact "we're facing many of the problems that led to the Civil War," one being states' rights. "The ongoing tragic result of the Civil War is that once it's decided the states cannot secede, then the central government can run roughshod over the states."

Insight: Imagine you're made dictator of America. What policies would you initiate immediately?

Walter E. Williams: There are a host of problems! The major economic problem, I think, is Social Security. It is not whether that system is going to collapse, it's a question about when. It's going to cause a lot of economic chaos. The window is still open a little bit to change it, and it would have to come through some privatizing of the system.

The larger issue is the generalized contempt that Americans have for the principle of individual liberty. We give a lot of lip service to liberty, but the average American thinks the government should be in the business of taking the property of one American and giving it to another American to whom it does not belong.

Whether you talk about crop subsidies, bailouts or disaster relief, the list can just go on and on. If I take $20 from you by force and help somebody downtown who is sleeping on a grate, if I do this privately, I go to jail and most Americans agree that I should go to jail. But when an agent of Congress comes up and takes your $20 and helps somebody downtown, they applaud that. Both acts are taking what belongs to one American and giving it to another American to whom it does not belong. That is as reprehensible if one person does it or if 1 million people vote to do it. It is wrong.

Insight: But if "all men are created equal," shouldn't the government be in the business of making certain we are equal?

WEW: No. The job of government is to ensure a just and a fair process. It is not the job of government to enforce a just or fair outcome.

Here's what I have in mind: I can see three people, A, B and C. They frequently play poker. Individual A wins 75 percent of the time. Individual B wins 15 percent of the time, and individual C wins 10 percent of the time.

You can ask, Is that fair? Has there been poker justice? You cannot look at the outcome or the results, however, to determine if there has been poker justice. Individual A's 75 percent winning could be the result either of his astuteness as a player or the fact that he's a clever cheater.

So to determine if there has been poker justice, one has to look at the process. Were the cards dealt fairly? Were Hoyle's rules obeyed? If the process was fair or just, well, then any result is okay.

It's like when people look at income. Let's say me and Bill Gates. Is it fair that Bill Gates should have all that money? To ask that question, you have to look at process. In a free society, people get income by pleasing their fellows, making their fellows happy.

Bill Gates has done a far better job at pleasing his fellow man than I have. I mean, people have voluntarily gone out of their houses and plunked down $400 for him and bought Windows and his Microsoft stuff. Now when a politician comes away and says it's unfair for him to have $5 billion or whatever he has, what they're actually saying is: We disagree with decisions made by millions and millions of decisionmakers around the world when they decided voluntarily to give Bill Gates their money in exchange for his goods.