How Freedom Enriches Us

Free people are better at decision-making than central planners

In 1989, Soviet Parliament member Boris Yeltsin visited the United States. Thinking that his American hosts were ‘scripting’ his visit, (like North Korea) Yeltsin declared he wanted to make an unscheduled stop at Randalls supermarket in Clear Lake, Texas. Though the fall of the Berlin Wall was still a couple months away, many think that Yeltsin’s unscheduled trip to the grocery store was the beginning (or maybe the middle) of the end for the Soviet Union.

Imagine the earth-shattering revelations that Yeltsin must have been feeling! Everything that he had been told about communism, capitalism, and government in general was completely destroyed — by a normal trip to the supermarket.

I’m betting that Yeltsin went through exactly the same things that many of us have experienced in the last couple years as the ‘leaders’ have burned all traces of credibility and trust with provably false statements. After all, the ‘leaders’ in Russia told him that communism was not only ‘fair’, but more efficient as well! But in that visit, Yeltsin saw the truth. Nearly every American had far more choice than even the leader of Russia! This is what Yeltsin was used to seeing in 1989:

Why was there such a huge disparity in standard of living between the two superpowers of the world? It’s simple: freedom. In the United States, individualism is (or was, at least) celebrated and rewarded. In Russia and many other forms of government, the State divvies up all the stuff and decides how it will be used. (You better not kill one of the King’s deer in the King’s forest, or we’ll haul you up the King’s Road for a date with the King’s Executioner!)

As has been discussed before, central planning inevitably fails because the planners don’t have the knowledge (nor, typically, the desire) to make the best decision for millions of people. Delegate those decisions down to the people themselves, who actually have intimate knowledge of their situations and abilities, and creativity and innovation explode. There’s a reason that new stuff is STILL invented in the USA instead of China — central planners very very rarely innovate because there’s no incentive to do so. (They just steal our ideas and sell them back to us!)

In a world of State-run ‘companies’, nobody (save the well-connected, as always) has access to resources because the State claims dominion over all things. In a free market society, access to resources is price-based. This means that the part-time carpenter (who values raw timber higher than a baker) can head down to the lumber-equivalent version of Randalls and purchase whatever they like. Eventually, the raw wood is turned into a chair (or many chairs) - improving the lives of everybody involved. Maybe this part-time gig is so successful that it turns into a full-time job, perhaps one that requires additional employees — once again improving the lives of everybody involved.

Of course, a single part-time carpenter doesn’t account for the vast difference in standard of living between the two styles of governance. But let’s zoom out just a little bit further. The woman who loves to bake values cooking ingredients higher than the carpenter does and makes the most of those ingredients, exactly how the man who loves to garden values gardening tools higher than others. Every time our resources are ‘optimized’ in this way, society gets just a little bit richer. Compound these small differences over millions of people and hundreds of years, and eventually you’re faced with Randalls supermarket versus the bare and depressing Russian-run version.

As an added bonus, the citizens of a free society are also HAPPIER than communists, specifically because of the freedom to pursue their hopes and dreams. No central planning required. Just free people making their own decisions about how to spend their time and resources.

We don’t have to look decades back into the past to see this dichotomy at work. Simply look at the recent WEF-style of governance. These central planners ALWAYS claim ‘X is limited, therefore we must limit your X.’ They aren’t thinking about increasing production or getting the most out of the resources that they have — they simply demand that you use less.

You’ll note the complete lack of concern about your well-being. They say that it’s more efficient to share your stuff — so they will force you to share your stuff. This is exactly the same as the rolling blackouts that were common in communist countries and are now making their way to communist states. (These rolling blackouts also impact society in an extremely negative way, affecting normal businesses and the economy)

Germany and Spain have already announced forced cutbacks to ‘save power’ as they make the ill-fated transition to ‘green’ energy.

Unless we want to share the fate of these countries, we need to once again unleash the power of human creativity and problem-solving and allow freedom to once again enrich all of us.