From Rothbard to Plato: The Search for a Just Society

I’ve always been intrigued by how the United States might have developed without government. I first encountered that possibility through the writings of Murray Rothbard, the Austrian School economist and political philosopher who developed the concept of a stateless society, most notably in Power and Market (1970) and For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto (1973). It challenged many of my assumptions and left me wondering what America, its economy, and its social institutions might look like if government had never entered the equation.

I’ve also long been interested in Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the vastly different opinions people hold about his presidency. I have friends who consider him a savior of America, crediting his interventions with rescuing the country from economic collapse and fundamentally changing the relationship between government and its citizens. Others believe his policies did more harm than good, prolonged the Depression, and expanded government far beyond its proper boundaries. Both sides have compelling arguments, but I won’t get into that debate today.

What I do want to discuss is the proper role of American government, particularly in response to some of my friends who believe government already does enough for the American people and that little, if anything, more needs to be done.

I understand the argument that government should not attempt to reverse what nature has produced or artificially level the playing field for people who, for whatever reason, lack the intellect, initiative, or talent to achieve the same degree of success as others. I also share some of the reservations about government embarking on social engineering experiments. Government has a long history of unintended consequences, inefficiency, and sometimes making matters considerably worse.

But I think the premise that government should remain neutral and let the natural order of things take its course has a fundamental flaw.

When has government ever been neutral? And more importantly, what about the occasions when government itself has helped create the very disadvantages people are then expected to overcome?

Consider the history of Black Americans. For generations, government policies actively restricted their opportunities. Slavery was followed by Jim Crow laws, legally enforced segregation, discriminatory housing policies, and federally supported redlining. Government helped determine where people could live, where they could obtain mortgages, what opportunities they could pursue, and whether they could accumulate wealth and pass it along to their children. These weren’t simply the consequences of nature, differences in talent, or a lack of initiative. They were the consequences of deliberate political decisions.

Is government supposed to remain neutral when its own policies have helped create those circumstances? Is correcting the consequences of government-sanctioned discrimination necessarily social engineering? I would argue that sometimes it is an attempt to correct the consequences of social engineering that has already taken place.

Then consider the military draft. During Vietnam, the burden of fighting a war in a foreign land fell disproportionately on young men from working-class, rural, and economically disadvantaged backgrounds. College deferments and other exemptions created opportunities for some to avoid military service that weren’t equally available to everyone. The young men with fewer resources and fewer connections often had fewer options. Government was hardly neutral in deciding whose sons would be sent to fight and whose sons had a better chance of staying home.

And what about 2008? We saw a financial system in which some of the wealthiest bankers and financial institutions took enormous risks, enjoyed the rewards when things went well, and then turned to government when those risks threatened to bring the entire system down. The government intervened with hundreds of billions of dollars in financial assistance. There were legitimate arguments about preventing a systemic collapse that would have hurt millions of ordinary Americans. Still, a glaring question of fairness remained: Why were institutions and executives whose decisions helped produce the crisis afforded extraordinary protection while homeowners, employees, and small businesses bore so much of the damage?

Apparently, government intervention is not always considered social engineering when the beneficiaries are wealthy and politically influential.

This brings me to my larger point. Government has never been an impartial referee standing outside the economic and social order. From the founding of this country, its policies have helped determine who benefits, who bears the costs, who gets opportunities, and who is left to fend for themselves. Government can favor one group through legislation, taxation, regulation, subsidies, military policy, or even by refusing to act. Inaction is a choice, too, and it has consequences.

I am not suggesting that government can or should make everyone equal. Nor do I believe that differences in ability, ambition, intelligence, or individual achievement should be ignored. A competitive society will always have winners and losers, and people should have room to reap the rewards of their hard work, ingenuity, and entrepreneurial spirit.

But there is a considerable difference between accepting unequal outcomes and accepting a system whose rules favor certain interests. A person’s circumstances do not always reflect their character or abilities. Opportunity matters. Access to education, capital, healthcare, and a reasonable chance to participate in the economy matters.

I also find considerable merit in Noam Chomsky’s interpretation of American economic history. He has described our history as a continuing struggle between wealthy industrial and business elites, the working people whose labor built those enterprises, and the ongoing contest over who would benefit from the wealth and productivity they created.

Go back to the origins of American industrialization. The people who established the great bedrock industries of this country accumulated enormous fortunes, while the men and women working in their mills, factories, mines, and railroads often labored under difficult and sometimes dangerous conditions. Workers organized, unions emerged, labor movements challenged concentrated economic power, and the relationship between capital and labor evolved through decades of conflict, negotiation, legislation, and compromise.

It was never simply a matter of allowing nature to take its course. The constant interaction between private wealth, political influence, organized labor, and government shaped the economic landscape. Chomsky’s point, as I understand it, is that this struggle has been a recurring feature of American history, not some recent invention of progressive politics.

And here is where I find the current political landscape particularly ironic.

It seems that a growing segment of the American working class has inverted its traditional understanding of who its natural allies and adversaries might be. People whose livelihoods depend on wages, benefits, working conditions, and access to economic opportunity increasingly identify with some of the wealthiest individuals and corporations in the country, while expressing hostility toward those advocating policies meant to improve working people’s circumstances.

Consider the contrasting public images of Elon Musk, Bernie Sanders, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Musk represents extraordinary private wealth and the power of an enormously successful business empire. Sanders and AOC advocate, in different ways, greater economic protections, a stronger social safety net, and a more active government role in addressing economic inequality. Their specific proposals deserve scrutiny, and disagreement with them is legitimate. But it is interesting how readily the latter two can be dismissed as socialists or communists, while the concentration of wealth and economic power represented by the former is sometimes defended as an unquestionable expression of individual achievement.

I am not suggesting that wealthy people are automatically the enemy, that entrepreneurs should be demonized, or that government should punish success—quite the contrary. Entrepreneurs, investors, and business owners are essential to a productive economy. But neither should we assume that everything that benefits wealthy individuals necessarily benefits the people who work for them.

The question should not be whether someone is wealthy or poor, conservative or progressive. It should be whether the policies being advocated serve society’s broader interests or disproportionately benefit those who already hold economic and political power.

Ultimately, I don’t believe government should attempt to manufacture equality of outcome. But neither should it pretend that the playing field has always been level, that the existing distribution of opportunity is entirely the product of merit, or that government has not played an enormous role in shaping it.

There is a difference between rewarding achievement and protecting privilege. There is a difference between allowing people to succeed and allowing powerful interests to write the rules in their own favor.

But perhaps an even deeper problem transcends the debate over the size and scope of government. I’ve increasingly come to believe that our imperfect human nature undermines even the most valiant attempts to organize society according to some ideal. We can devise elaborate economic systems, write constitutions, establish institutions, and pass legislation intended to produce a more just society. Yet all of these arrangements ultimately depend on the people entrusted with making them work. And people bring their ambitions, prejudices, insecurities, self-interest, and desire for power.

This brings me back to Plato, whose philosophy has influenced my thinking considerably. One of his central concerns was that a just society could not exist without individuals who had cultivated the virtues necessary to govern themselves and others. Wisdom, courage, moderation, and justice were not merely desirable personal qualities; they were essential to the health of the political community. Plato understood that laws and institutions alone could never compensate for the absence of virtue in the people who inhabit them.

In The Republic, Plato went even further. He recognized the danger of allowing those entrusted with governing to become preoccupied with their own material interests. His philosopher-rulers and guardian class were therefore prohibited from accumulating private wealth. They were to live communally, without private estates, gold, or silver, and were not permitted to turn their positions of authority into opportunities for personal enrichment. The underlying idea was that those entrusted with society’s welfare should not be motivated by wealth accumulation or the pursuit of privileges unavailable to the people they governed.

I find that particularly interesting when considering the history of government, regardless of the political or economic system, the century, or the country in question. One recurring feature of virtually every attempt to organize and administer society has been the emergence of a class of people who exercise authority over everyone else. Whether they were elected officials, appointed bureaucrats, party functionaries, or individuals who seized power by force, those entrusted with administering the system have frequently found ways to take a little more for themselves than the people who depend on them.

More money, more privileges, more influence, more protection, and often more power. It’s almost as though, somewhere along the way, they came to believe they deserved it. The original purpose of their positions becomes secondary to preserving the positions themselves and the advantages that accompany them.

And I don’t think the United States is exempt from this observation. We have our own political and bureaucratic class, with its privileges, connections, revolving doors between government and private industry, and extraordinary ability to protect its own interests. We can debate the size of government, but we should also ask who benefits from its expansion, who benefits from its inefficiencies, and why those entrusted with serving the public so often seem more concerned with serving themselves.

Perhaps that is where we have fallen short. We spend an enormous amount of time debating capitalism versus socialism, limited government versus expansive government, and the proper distribution of wealth and opportunity. We argue about who should have power and how that power should be exercised. Yet we devote far less attention to developing the character and virtues needed to exercise that power responsibly.

We want government to protect us from others’ excesses, but we are often unwilling to examine our own. We condemn corruption when it benefits our opponents but rationalize it when it benefits our side. We demand accountability from those in power while frequently excusing the very behavior we criticize when it comes from someone we support.

And perhaps this is the most uncomfortable conclusion of all: In the final analysis, we have the government we wanted. Not necessarily the government we say we want, or the government we imagine would best serve our fellow citizens, but the government that reflects our collective priorities, tolerances, ambitions, prejudices, and willingness to hold those in power accountable.

It didn’t happen by accident. Government is, after all, a reflection of the society that produces it. Until we care more about cultivating virtue than securing advantages for ourselves and our particular political tribes, I suspect we will keep being disappointed by whatever system we choose to embrace.

We keep looking for a better way to organize society. Perhaps we should spend more time considering how to make better human beings.