Machan's Musings - Social Security: Abolition vs. Gradualism
by Tibor R. Machan
Human beings often want to improve matters, including how they solve problems. Some of their efforts could use drastic improvement. When a goodly portion of America tolerated slavery, this was something that needed drastic change—it had to be abolished somehow. The social security system isn’t so severely tyrannical, but it, too, needs to be gotten rid of. On a personal level, too, there can be demands for different degrees of change. If one is a thief or molester of children, this requires drastic change, no two ways about it; if one smokes or eats too much, the change to moderation is needed but not so urgently.
How does one go about changing these kinds of things in one’s life and society? Some believe that nothing but cold turkey will do, in any of these cases. I disagree.
In personal matters it is often best to go cold turkey, but that, too, can depend on one’s personality, temperament and even medical situation. When it is a matter of violating other people’s rights, cold turkey is a must—that is clear. When it is a matter of becoming more virtuous, conscientious in going about one’s life, a gradual approach is certainly not out of the question.
There are those who believe that in matters of political reform only the abolitionist approach will suffice. Thus, for example, they insist that be it slavery or social security, there is no room for gradualism—both must be instantly abolished. Well, sadly, this is a mere dream.
Unfortunately, institutional malfeasance brings about massive dependence. Slavery, once established, became entrenched and in order to rid the country of it, there needed to be a process of disengagement. Abolition was, of course, the right goal. But there was no way to simply halt it. Too many people had all sorts of rationalizations for hanging on to the practice and they needed to be dealt with without catastrophic measures. Indeed, many argue that the war was not the right way to handle it—the slave holders could have been bought out or some other policy of bringing about change might have been tried so as to save the thousands and thousands of lives lost in the war.
Once an institution gains a loyal constituency in a society, however evil it may be, it will require cumbersome disengagement and there is rarely some policy of pushing a button that can switch things from bad to good, from wrong to right. It’s a bit like going from sickness to health—convalescence, recovery, cure and the rest all require time.
Social security abolition is even more difficult to deal with because so many people sincerely believe it is OK to coerce people to put money away for their retirement. Never mind that the scheme is also fraught with fraud. The fact that millions of people accept it as legitimate and that hundreds of pundits and politicians rationalize it around the country—not to mention all those employed to administer and are thus economically wedded to it—makes instant reform impossible.
However, the gradual approach is also very risky and could amount to no change at all. Already, in the case of social security, we get word from President George W. Bush that severe restriction will accompany his meager privatization measures, should they go through. "You can’t take it [‘retirement nest eggs’] to the racetrack and hope to really increase the returns." He added, "It’s not there for the lottery ... . People are not going to be allowed to take their money for their retirement account and take it to Vegas and shoot dice."
Now this is outrageous by standards the American founders set out in the Declaration of Independence, where they spoke of our unalienable right to liberty. Who is President Bush to speak of "allowing" anyone to do this or that with his or her money? All this talk about an "ownership society" is evidently bunk. People will continue to be treated like children or invalids.
Sadly, this is standard fare these days—political thinkers around universities and the media accept that government is in charge of us. Yes, it is a kind of modern-day serfdom, one that denies our sovereignty. But because of its widespread acceptance, there is no way to put a stop to it suddenly.
So those who love liberty may just have to put up with the gradual, imperfect approach of semi-privatization—just as they need to put up with school vouchers—in order to make some headway toward the proper goal of ridding our society of the paternalism that the social security system represents.
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[Machan teaches business ethics at Chapman University, Orange, CA. He is research fellow at the Hoover Institution and advises Freedom Communications, Inc., on libertarian issues. His most recent book is 'Objectivity' (Ashgate, 2004).]
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