Me against them: A decisive settling of accounts: The perils of oversized governmental interference (part one)

Abstract

The first part of the title is borrowed from a famous book of the great (then) Yugoslav writer from Croatia Miroslav Krleža. He forcefully raised his voice against the strongly exercised so called social tendency in literature and arts, persistently having been imposed during the interwar period on the left oriented writers and energetically having been endorsed by the Communist Party. The Party was powerful on the literary left and some of the best artists found it extremely difficult to resist. The vigorous revolt against the tendency proved to be one of the spectacular fights for freedom of artistic creation and here it is taken much broader as a metaphor for raising freedom to the platform of the most important, unquestionably dominant social value. This so called Struggle on the literary left is taken as a convenient metaphor for pointing out the significance of freedom in all walks of social life, particularly in the economy. The introductory part is devoted to clarifying the difference between the liberal thought (L) and the antiliberal orientation (AL) in contemporary economic science in Serbia. It turns out that, contrary to popular views, the L is not against the government and exclusively for the market and that, with obvious changes of qualifying words, the same goes for the AL. Being oriented towards the market as a matter of principle, the L is aware of the corresponding institutional support which can only be provided by an efficient government. It follows then that the L is a doctrine of strong government. The AL, on the contrary, opting for the strong government as a matter of principle, insists on the governmental interference on a broad front, which, in view of the limited governmental capacity, implies that government is destined to be weak in performing of its proper functions. The usual view of who is determined for what type of government is turned upside down: the L contains the concept of strong government and the AL in fact opts for a weak government. Due to the vast interference in other fields, those not covered by the proper governmental functions, governments may amass huge quantities of power and be exceedingly strong in relation to the rest of the society, but that is not a desirable way of arriving at a strong government. Another area of controversy is the (non)recognition of the institutional and political constraints on the economy and its growth. The L recognizes these constraints and studies them with careful scrutiny, while the AL believes that these constraints, to the extent that they exist at all, can be quickly and easily removed. The L's accepting these constraints as a serious obstacle to economic growth and social modernization is interpreted by the AL as an opportunistic siding with government providing an excuse for its mistakes that could under no conditions be excused. The next part of the study is devoted to the complex of values as a determinant of general social orientation and overall evolution. Freedom, equality, solidarity, truth and justice are analyzed and it is shown that, due to the fact that values can be not only complementary but also substitutable, that individuals and collectivities are frequently in a situation to sacrifice some values for a more complete realization of others. Two theorems, considered to be basic, are proved. The first one is about freedom as the supreme and absolutely dominant value: without freedom humans cannot make any choices and none of their values can be manifested or realized. The second theorem is about logical impossibility of equality as thought of in the general public ad as visualized by some adherents of the AL: there are multiple levels et which equality may be postulated and they are simply inconsistent - equality at one level implies inequality at another(s). The most important special case is the impossibility of having equal conditions of earning income (or achieving anything else) and obtaining equal results.