The Secret Knowledge (9 page)

One or two nights a week we would drive to Cicero, and I would watch her doing one of her jobs. She had a ring of keys which let her into the various clubs in which her people were interested. She'd let us in to the deserted clubs, at 4 A.M., and she'd go to the vending machines, open them with the keys on the ring, count and then
replace
the money, lock the machine again, and we would leave.

Her boyfriend followed us, now and then, in his car. She told me he had vowed to kill me, but I'd seen him, and I didn't believe the threat. I don't think this was particularly courageous on my part; he just didn't look the type.

We conceive the world not through indoctrination, but through osmosis: a culture is the amalgam and the sum of the unwritten laws: “This is how we do things here.” And I believe that, in Chicago, I had a very interesting youth. This is how we did things there: one spiffed the mechanic at the cab garage if one wanted to get a working cab to drive; one paid off the cop who pulled you over, as it was much cheaper than going down to 11th and State and paying the fine; the politicians were corrupt—why else would they be politicians? (the absence of this understanding in the minds of the young baffles me); the Governors, regularly, went to jail, how about that?

And through it all one had to make a living, which meant, and means, learning how to navigate in the wider world—learning to take care of yourself.

For the Government was going to take care of you
at best
to the extent that you took care of
it
: if you wanted X you did Y, if you did not do Y, why in the world would any rational entity give you X?

You wanted to work for the Park District, you kicked back your two weeks' pay; you wanted your kid on the Fire Department, you got out the vote.

The politicians have not changed, but it seems that the electorate cannot locate its ass with a guide dog.

There was, in Chicago, no such thing as Social Justice, there was the Law, and the Law was both made and administered by imperfect human beings, like ourselves; and the operations of the Law
itself
could be and were corrupted. There was such a thing as “the underdog,” but anyone
demanding
that status was merely picking up a convenient club to use in the fight. (cf. Saul Alinsky on being a “neighborhood organizer”: “The third rule is, ‘wherever possible go outside of the experience of the enemy.' Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.”
Rules for Radicals
, 1971.)

The White Neighborhoods got better snow removal? Of
course
they did—it was a segregated city and the councilmen were white. And cries for Justice, the blacks knew, would be less effective than getting a dog in the fight, and getting people on the City Council and into City Hall, and letting the
Whites
gape slack-jawed at the
other
fellow being unfair.
³⁴

Was it a terrible thing to be a Black in Chicago in those days? Probably. My people came over from Poland to escape the Pogroms, which is to say, fleeing murderers. Did we, the Jews, feel bad for the Blacks? Yes. What did we do about it? We joined the NAACP. Was this effective, appropriate, insulting, paternalistic? How would
I
know?

Did they do it because they felt “guilty”? The suggestion would have been greeted as psychotic. What did my parents' generation have to feel guilty about? They came here with nothing, sixty years after slavery's abolition, fleeing their state in Europe as slaves or semislaves, and scant years ahead of Hitler's assassins. They supported the NAACP out of a sense of
tzedakah
, which is to say “righteousness.” Was their response insufficient, or misplaced? No doubt. But it was not risible. And the South Shore Country Club, eight blocks from my house, and Restricted, allowing No Jews, was eventually bought by Elijah Muhammad, restricting
all
whites, and life goes on.

But I believe I benefited from the absence of sanctimony.

Each party alleges, and its enthusiasts agree, that it has never done anything wrong, and its opponent has never done anything right. Any failures, catastrophes, or absurdities during its tenure are blamed on late-appearing aftereffects of its predecessor's enormities.

Most officeholders and candidates are both politicians and lawyers, and so labor under the
double
anecdotal taint of—I will not say, “mendacity,” but “looking on the bright side.” The bright side is, of course, that which favors their particular interests and aspirations. If bread, it may be identified by the presence of butter.

Let us assume that in all close elections
each
side will endeavor to steal it (a safe assumption, as it is the case); for what unpatriotic soul would not in the service of National Interest wish to lessen the vagaries of chance?

Let us assume, then, that each party partakes equally of the human capacity for good and bad, for corruption, for misguided compassion, and of overweening cupidity; and that each will suffer failures of projects both good-willed and merely monstrously self-serving.

The question, as posed by Milton Friedman, was not “What are the decisions?”—any human or conglomeration is capable of decisions both good and bad—but “
Who makes
the decisions?” Shall it be the Government, that is, the State, or shall it be the Individual?

In some cases it
must
be the Government, which is, in these, the only organ capable of serving and protecting individual liberty and freedom: notably, in defense, the administration of justice, and maintenance of and oversight of Federal Infrastructure, e.g., Roads, Interstate Travel, Waterways, Parks, and so on. But what in the world is the Government doing meddling in Education, Health Care, Automobile Production, and the promotion of dubious, arguable, or absurd programs designed to bring about “equality”? Should these decisions not be left to the Individual, or to a Free Market, in which forces compete, to serve the Individual who will be the arbiter of their success?

But but but, some will interject, “Look at the abuses.” Well, some abuses fall afoul of the laws, in which case the provision has been made for their correction which, if not forthcoming, is in the right of the public to demand. Others fall afoul of custom, and will or can be corrected by censure, withdrawal of custom, or attempts at criminalization. Some must be borne, as they would under
any
system of government, business, or administration: someone eventually, inevitably, makes what someone else might characterize as “an error.”

But which system, Free Enterprise, or the State, is better able to correct itself?

For this is the essence of the difference between the Free Market (constrained) and the Liberal (unconstrained) view of the world—to use Friedrich Hayek's terms. It is not a difference of preference for plans or programs—in which either side may not only differ but, equally,
be
wrong. It is a difference in appreciation of structure.

The constrained view is that neither human beings, nor any conglomeration into which they may form themselves, are omnipotent, nor omniscient, nor omnibenevolent. We are incapable even of knowing, let alone of implementing, engines to alleviate the true causes of, and indeed of understanding the true nature of, many of the problems besetting us. This is, as Hayek says, the Tragic View. We are not only wrong, but most
often
wrong. The treasured values of one generation (slavery, phrenology, lobotomy, physical discipline of children, women as property, et cetera) are seen now not only as vile but as absurd. As, eventually, will many of the cherished ideas of today. This is tragic, but inevitable.

The question is which of two systems is better able to discard the failed and experiment to find the new; and the answer is the Free Market. It is not perfect; it is
better
than State Control; for the Free Market, to a greater extent, must respond quickly and effectively to dissatisfaction and to demand—if a product or service does not please, to continue in its manufacture in the Free Market is pointless. (Compare Government persistence and expansion of programs proved to have failed decades ago—farm subsidies, aid to Africa, busing, urban renewal, etc.) On the other hand, in a Free Market, every man, woman, and child is scheming to find a better way to make a product or a service which will make a fortune. The garage mechanic, the housewife, the tinkerer, the scientist, the artist, and their kids—
everyone
is always looking for a better way. (Compare the Government employee sitting at his desk. Why is he not looking for a better way to do his job? Why should he? A more efficient way might possibly
eliminate
his job, or that of the superior to whom he owes allegiance.)

Nothing is free. All human interactions are tradeoffs. One may figure out a way to (theoretically) offer cheap health insurance to the twenty million supposedly uninsured members of our society. But at what cost—the dismantling of the health care system of the remaining three-hundred-million-plus? What of the inevitable reduction, shortages, abuses, delay and injustice caused by all State rationing?

There's a cost for everything. And the ultimate payer of every cost imposed by government is not only the individual member of the mass of taxpayers who does not benefit from the scheme; but likely,
also, its intended beneficiaries
(cf., welfare, busing, affirmative action, urban planning).

Well, you will say, it's not Either/Or. And, of course it is not. All civilizations need, and all civilizations
get
Government. Many have inherited, had forced upon them, or in fact
demanded
a real or obviously potential dictatorship (Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy)—these, and their like, began as Welfare States, dedicated, supposedly, to distributing the abundant good things of the Land to all. But they, and all the Communist States, and Socialist States, operated at a cost, for everything has a cost. The cost of these benevolent dictatorships was shortage, famine, murder, and the eventual dissolution of the State. Hayek calls this utopian vision
The Road to Serfdom.
And we see it in operation here, as we are in the process of choosing, as a society, between Liberty—the freedom
from the State
to
pursue
happiness, and a supposed but impossible Equality, which, as it could only be brought about by a State capable and empowered to function in all facets of life, means totalitarianism and eventual dictatorship.

Is the State to decide for the individual, or is the individual to insist upon a reduction of State powers
to that point
at which this power is reserved only for application in those cases, as specified in law, where one individual or group abridges the liberty of another?

The latter is the revolutionary understanding of government spelled out in that Constitution elected officials swear to defend. They are elected as public servants, the public granting them
only
that freedom of action necessary to fulfill that oath. Is it not time for a return to that revolutionary understanding?

It is a commodity. Parents purchase it for their children; for as much as they might pay to achieve and brag about their children's membership in a “wonderfully diverse” setting, they all eat in restaurants whose clientele looks just like themselves. As do we all. This is “Pediatric Diversity,” or diversity-by-proxy.

Once, in my younger days, I was asked to help out at some fund-raising event for some good cause. The event was to raise funds to alleviate hunger. All the attendees bought a ticket, but the tickets were numbered one, two, or three. Those getting number one were entitled to all they could eat; the twos, to a meal consisting of five hundred calories (the supposed caloric intake, for the evening meal, in the area to which the funds were supposed to be sent); the threes got nothing at all. I was passing out tickets at the head of the line. I collected the money from a fellow there with his young son. He leaned in toward me and asked me to give them both a three.