×

An Edifice Producing Beggars

Martin Luther King Jr. was an influential personality in American politics. He was a man on a mission to elevate the status of blacks in this country. Jim Crow laws from the late 1800s onward institutionalized and required discrimination against blacks in many states until they were abolished in 1965. King was a leader in that battle.

Those laws were an abomination, a direct violation of the rights of millions of blacks, but also of non-blacks who were prevented from benefiting from positive, voluntary relationships with them. King’s efforts helped eliminate them. King, however, was definitely not a promoter of economic freedom and equal rights under the law. His vision was massive redistribution of society’s wealth to blacks, whose parents and grandparents had suffered oppression in America, both under slavery, and later, under government decrees that were egregious violations of individual rights.

While his views are understandable and actually quite widely held, there is another side of reality that his good intentions ignored or dismissed. Redistribution schemes have consequences. A dramatic illustration is Robert Mugabe’s redistribution of land in Zimbabwe. However valid were the claims of colonial repression and aboriginal claims to the land, the fact at the time was that Zimbabwe was the breadbasket of Africa, a highly productive economy that had enough food to export to other countries. After taking the land and redistributing it to black owners, agricultural production plunged to one tenth of what it had been. It is not that the new owners weren’t smart enough, it was that property rights were destroyed and large, efficient farming operations were broken up, yielding less efficient, often communal areas, based on more traditional, subsistence-type farming.

King’s views, especially as he got older, leaned heavily socialist. He believed that there was something wrong with capitalism. He said “You begin to question the capitalistic society … But one day, we must come to see that an edifice that produces beggars needs restructuring.” He saw beggars, and he didn’t like it. That was good as far as it went. What he was ignoring was that throughout the vast expanse of history, in every region, in every time, in every political system, including socialist societies, poverty was the norm for most of the people.

Widespread prosperity is a relatively new phenomenon on a historical scale. Every country that enjoyed a relatively high standard of living for the masses embraced, to some level, markets, economic freedom and private property ownership by ordinary people. That is pretty much what capitalism is: the private ownership or property, the means of production. Socialism, at its core, is the violation of that right to own property, since making decisions about the use of property is the overriding hallmark of ownership.

However good one may view King’s intentions, the redistribution and the violations of individual rights of the Civil Rights Act have not brought about the results he dreamed of. King had the fixed-pie mentality, where the benefit of one person necessarily comes at the expense of another. In a free society, however, where relationships are voluntary rather than coerced by politics, everyone has the incentive to cooperate with others so that his or her tomorrow is better than today. Maximum freedom means more opportunity to find satisfying and productive relationships. If one party does not cooperate, there will be many others willing to enter productive relationships. King’s redistributive vision has failed miserably in that regard. Trillions of dollars of redistribution later, a large portion of the population is still unskilled and poor. Redistribution does not build skills, responsibility or prosperity.

King conflated cronyism and official government oppression with capitalism. Rather than producing beggars, however, freedom and markets maximize opportunity and improve conditions, even for the poor.

Visit daniel-mclaughlin.com for more commentary, for links to other resources, or to leave a message.

Newsletter

Today's breaking news and more in your inbox

I'm interested in (please check all that apply)
Are you a paying subscriber to the newspaper? *
   

Starting at $4.62/week.

Subscribe Today