“In the animal kingdom,” said psychiatrist Thomas Szasz, “the rule is, eat or be eaten; in the human kingdom, define or be defined.” It is important to use words carefully, to use words that have as exact a meaning as you can achieve. Those who manage to persuade others to use the words they wish used have enormous power; they define the debate. They can almost determine the outcome of a discussion before it begins. This is fine, as long as the words are used exactly and honestly. But often people use this power to smuggle in meanings and thus stack the debating deck.<\/p>\n
Take the word “generous.” When I think of someone being generous, I think of the dictionary definition: magnanimous, kindly. But the term is often used to describe government programs that forcibly take money from some people and give it to others. Where is the generosity? Certainly not in the government’s treatment of those whose wealth it takes. Perhaps, then, the government is being generous in the size of these forcible transfers. But that’s not really generosity either. How can a government official be magnanimous with money that’s not his own?<\/p>\n
Consider a debate between a proponent of forced transfers and an opponent. If the proponent can define the issue as one of whether the government should be generous to people, the opponent will likely lose before the debate begins. But if the opponent insists that the issue be stated without words that bias the discussion, as one of whether the government should forcibly transfer wealth from some to others, the opponent has a fighting chance. One reason I have hope for rolling back the massive power of government is that the proponents of power seem to use misleading terms at key points in their argument. If they were so confident of preserving that power, they would not need to.<\/p>\n
Another term that is often abused in discussion is the term “serve” and its derivative “service.” There are some straightforward uses. For example, you go to a restaurant and a waitress asks if she can serve you. In that context, the term means the same thing to both of you. But I take issue with another use, which has become common: “government service.” The use of this term has corrupted and confused much of the discussion of what government does, in both domestic and foreign policy.<\/p>\n
Often when someone introduces me to an audience, he will say I served as a senior economist with Ronald Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers. But how does he know I served? All he knows is that I worked in the Reagan administration. I think I served. On almost a daily basis I tried to fight off bad ideas for further restricting Americans’ freedom and reducing their wealth. Most of these ideas came from other people within the executive branch, but occasionally I had time to fight off bad ideas from Congress. Like McGruff the crime dog, I tried to take a bite out of government. But the reason I don’t say that I served in the Reagan administration is that I don’t want to promote the idea that simply by working for the government, one serves the people.<\/p>\n
In fact, the typical case is the opposite. The majority of government workers serve themselves and, unlike in the free market, there is no Adam Smithian invisible hand that causes them, by doing so, to serve others. Incentives in the political system are typically distorted, so that by serving themselves, most government officials work against the interests of those they claim to serve.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
And there’s the problem, of course. How can we construct a system where the incentives are for people to behave as we hope? We lionize people who resist incentives to “serve us badly”, and do the right thing instead; and so we should. Or, maybe I should say that sometimes we lionize them, if they have not been successfully demonized by their opponents.<\/p>\n
Still, whenever we use the word “tax”, I wish we had to say, “forcible confiscation of property”.\u00a0 (Democrats like to say “contribution” instead of “tax”.)\u00a0 When we use the word “abortion” I wish we had to say, “kill a small human being with a beating heart and brain waves”.\u00a0 And so on.\u00a0 The degree of success of Left leaning politicians seems often to be the direct inverse of their clarity of speech.<\/p>\n