[MRM]

The key is "enlightened self interest". This really is a uniquely American mindset and was a big factor in the Founding Fathers' thinking. It comes from reading a lot of Locke and Hobbes and Adam Smith and the rest.

Enlightened self interest is a recognition that we all get better off when one of us improves his situation. The significance of this is two-fold: First, it means that our society recognizes that gain is not a zero sum game. When the we do better as individuals we make the pie bigger so we all have bigger slices of the pie. The pre-American mindset was that there was a finite amount of resources so if someone got better off it had to be done at the expense of someone else. The American way is to improve our society's situation by improving our individual lives. This is much more efficient because we are best able to tell how we can improve our situation, and it speaks of personal freedom and individual liberty to make our own decisions. This is the link between efficient markets and personal freedom. It's no coincidence that the most prosperous nations are the most free.

Second, it recognizes that freedom, and the right to self determination in the pursuit of improving the public and private situation, comes when we do not hurt others or take advantage of them. Enron was not an example of enlightened self interest. That was just plain theft on the lines of a Ponzi scheme. There is a tension between my freedom and yours, but the balance is that as long as I don't do anything that hurts you or is unfair to you (like create a monopoly, adulturate food,steal trade secrets, dump sewage in the river) I should be allowed great personal freedom in deciding my personal and economic life.

The government can do a lot to enhance freedom and foster public/private good. Roads and bridges that get crops to market give us a secure food supply at prices that the world envies. Land grant universities, student loans, the GI bill created an educated middle class. You can give other examples of ways the government has intruded on our lives in a way that has improved our personal lives and society at large. I may not harvest maple syrup in Mane, but I can buy it in Minnesota because some flannel clad lumberjack does and is able to get his product to the market before it spoils. Does maple syrup spoil? Milk does, and I'm from Wisconsin, so we can use that analogy.

In my opinion there is a role for government to play, and it always gets back to enlightened self interest and public/private benefits. Will this road make the citizens of the state better off or is it a boondoggle for contractors and the unions? Will this anti-poverty program feed and educate kids who would have otherwise gone hungry and not had a chance at life or is a waste of resources? Is the EEOC making sure that people have a fair chance at all available jobs, regardless of their skin color or are they forcing a new form of discrimination through quotas?

I remeber the national dialog in the 80s to be along these lines. Maybe I was just younger and more naive then. But I really don't see thenational debate as anything more that two factions fighting over who's turn it is at the trough. And that's sad. The Founding Fathers got it right. They created a government that had a moral foundation that was supported by the economic reality that free men are more prosperous than serfs or slaves. We need to remember that.