Organization Can Be Harmful

Singular, too, is the fact that the persons who harbor and give voice to this notion, tend to be those who are 33 not advanced in their understanding of liberty and who are inexpert when confronted with the doctrine of co ercive collectivism.An instance recently noted, and alarm ingly typical, was a meeting of the Board of Directors of one of America's largest business associations where the resolutions, every one of them, were socialistic, dependent for their application on the principle of violence: 1. A new transportation system for their community to be financed by federal, state, and local governments; 2. A federal subsidy to American shipping that it might successfully compete with foreign bottoms in de livering Marshall Plan aid to the beneficiaries of our largesse; 3. A subsidy to the community's most promising in dustry. And most of these Board members think of themselves as "already converted"!

This notion that it is always someone else rather than one's self who is in need of improvement is based on sev eral false assumptions. It denies any extension of under standing to the one person on earth on whom one has the greatest influence - himself. It stamps the speaker as thinking of himself as a finished intellectual product, as all-wise. And, finally, it ignores the idea of truth as an object of infinite pursuit. * This notion asserts a type of egotism in the presence of which learning cannot take place. It is death to the spirit of inquiry. *It is an interesting fact that those who propose statist programs start with the same assumption: The answers are all known! 34 On Selectinga LogicalSource The advertising page is the way some demands for action find expression. But does this "action" contribute anything at all to the understanding and preservation of liberty? It is true that people turn to different sources in their attempts to satisfy different desires. Many of them go to the Bible or to church to seek spiritual enlightenment; none go to the hardware store for this purpose. They go to the school to learn about geometry; rarely do they go to their clergyman for this purpose. Many books and magazines provide them with literary entertainment, but they do not rely on these entertainment sources for intel lectualleadership. Nor are they accustomed to thinking of the advertising page as a source of intellectual sus tenance! They turn to advertisements, and with good rea son, to see what the seller has to sell, what he has to say about his product, and to find out how much it costs.