It is a widespread fallacy that skillful advertising can talk the consumers into buying everything that the advertiser wants them to buy. The consumer is, according to this legend, simply defenseless against high-pressure advertising. If this were true, success or failure in business would depend on the mode of advertising only.
The philosophy of protectionism is a philosophy of war.
Government cannot make man richer, but it can make him poorer.
If any come to my house to be instructed in the ways of God what rule have I to put them away? Do you think it not lawful for me to teach women and why do you call me to teach the court?
There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge… observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination.
No man has received from nature the right to give orders to others. Freedom is a gift from heaven, and every individual of the same species has the right to enjoy it as soon as he is in enjoyment of his reason.
Men living together according to reason, without a common superior on earth, with authority to judge between them, is properly the state of nature. But force, or a declared design of force, upon the person of another, where there is no common superior on earth to appeal to for relief, is the state of war: and it is the want of such an appeal gives a man the right of war even against an aggressor, tho’ he be in society and a fellow subject. Thus a thief, whom I cannot harm, but by appeal to the law, for having stolen all that I am worth, I may kill, when he sets on me to rob me but of my horse or coat; because the law, which was made for my preservation, where it cannot interpose to secure my life from present force, which, if lost, is capable of no reparation, permits me my own defence, and the right of war, a liberty to kill the aggressor, because the aggressor allows not time to appeal to our common judge, nor the decision of the law, for remedy in a case where the mischief may be irreparable. Want of a common judge with authority, puts all men in a state of nature: force without right, upon a man’s person, makes a state of war, both where there is, and is not, a common judge.
John Locke, from the Second Treatise on Civil Government (Thomas Hollis Edition. [London: A. Millar et. al.] 1764), Chapter Three: “Of the State of War.”
Individuals, separately and in groups, make decisions concerning the use of economic resources. They do so in at least two capacities: first, as purchasers (sellers) of goods and services in organized markets, and, secondly, as “purchasers” (“sellers”) of goods and services through organized political processes. Economic theory has been developed largely to explain the workings of organized markets, and the trained economist understands how decentralized decisions are mutually co-ordinated so as to produce allocative results that are internally consistent. Economists, especially English and American, have devoted little time and effort to an explanation of individual behavior in the second decision process.
The approach must be democratic, which in this sense is merely a variant of the definitional norm for individualism. Each man counts for one, and that is that. Once this basic premise is fully acknowledged, an escape route from cynicism seems to be offered. A criterion for “betterness” is suggested. A situation is judged “good” to the extent that it allows individuals to get what they want to get, whatsoever this might be, limited only by the principle of mutual agreement. Individual freedom becomes the overriding objective for social policy, not as an instrumental element in attaining economic or cultural bliss, and not as some metaphysically superior value, but much more simply as a necessary consequence of an individualist-democratic methodology. In some personal and private baring of my soul, I may not “like” the observed results of a regime that allows other men to be free, and, further, I may not even place a high subjective value on my own freedom from the coercion of others. Such possible subjective rankings may exist, but the point to be emphasized is that the dominant role of individual liberty is imposed by an acceptance of the methodology of individualism and not by the subjective valuations of this or that social philosopher.
Why is it, I wonder, that when one speaks of the mass-man, one is always taken to mean the poor man or the workingman? I am glad to see that Ortega y Gasset goes out of his way to puncture this error. If one wished to cite a perfect specimen of the mass-man, one would cite Henry Ford, Hoover, John D. Rockefeller.