Christian Economics: Teacher's Edition
Then this Daniel became distinguished above all the other high officials and satraps, because an excellent spirit was in him. And the king planned to set him over the whole kingdom. Then the high officials and the satraps sought to find a ground for complaint against Daniel with regard to the kingdom, but they could find no ground for complaint or any fault, because he was faithful, and no error or fault was found in him. Then these men said, “We shall not find any ground for complaint against this Daniel unless we find it in connection with the law of his God” Daniel 7:3–5).
Bureaucrats know how to advance their interests. They are experts at deceiving the government that supplies them with money and authority. They know the written rules. They know how to interpret these rules to their advantage. They place their careers before the interest of the politicians, let alone the interests of the people whose lives they administer. They offer free advice to rulers.
Then these high officials and satraps came by agreement to the king and said to him, “O King Darius, live forever! All the high officials of the kingdom, the prefects and the satraps, the counselors and the governors are agreed that the king should establish an ordinance and enforce an injunction, that whoever makes petition to any god or man for thirty days, except to you, O king, shall be cast into the den of lions. Now, O king, establish the injunction and sign the document, so that it cannot be changed, according to the law of the Medes and the Persians, which cannot be revoked.” Therefore King Darius signed the document and injunction (vv. 6–9).
Whenever autonomous bureaucrats are in charge of interpreting and administering the law, the righteous should expect trouble.
When the government they administer sees itself as messianic, the righteous should expect big trouble.
In Part 4, I have surveyed 14 examples of state intervention into the free market. In each case, the liberty of individuals to make voluntary exchanges is reduced. In each case, the free market’s supreme operational rule is violated: high bid wins. This is done in the name of economic justice, meaning greater fairness. The auction’s principle of high bid wins is rejected as inapplicable. A buyer is not allowed to make a purchase by offering the most money. A seller is not permitted to make a sale by offering the best deal for the buyer’s money. In each case, politicians veto in advance economic decisions that would otherwise be made by buyers and sellers. These transactions are classified as illegal. The state threatens to impose penalties on either the buyer or the seller.
These vetoes of market transactions transfer economic authority from buyers and sellers to state bureaucrats who enforce laws. Because of the rise of administrative law, these agencies have the power to try and convict accused people in a separate system of courts. The agencies have their own lawyers on the payroll: administrative law judges. These executive courts impose enormous costs on small business, which must hire expensive defense lawyers. If the administrative law judge decides that the defense lawyers are wrong, the judge imposes sanctions. Only then are guilty parties allowed to appeal to the independent court system. The legal expenses mount.
Bureaucrats possess their jobs for life unless they commit major legal or moral infractions. They are not affected by market forces relating to supply and demand. The victims of their decisions do face the economic pressures of supply and demand. They also face the threat of economic penalties imposed on them by tenured bureaucrats. The greater their fear of being prosecuted, the greater the economic authority of bureaucrats and the less the economic authority of customers and suppliers. Economic intervention shifts authority from buyers with money to spend to bureaucrats with penalties to impose.
Put differently, government economic intervention shifts power initially from money to votes. But the power of votes does not last long. As soon as a law is enacted, the power of enforcement is transferred to bureaucrats who define and then enforce selectively the law in question. Politicians lose interest after a legislative bill becomes law. They are too busy getting re-elected than to investigate exactly how specific bureaucrats in specific government offices enforce specific sections of laws that are 1,000 to 2,000 pages long.
The economic feedback of profit or loss from accounting systems loses authority when bureaucrats can impose major sanctions on sellers. Sanctions are more closely related to bureaucrats’ interpretations of laws than customers’ decisions to buy or not to buy. The auction process favors buyers because they own the most marketable commodity: money. The state’s system of economic regulation favors tenured bureaucrats.
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