There is a story attributed to Stephen Covey. A ship in foggy dark conditions observes a light, and the signalman, upon making radio contact, warns: ‘We advise you change course twenty degrees.’ Just to be met by the reply. ‘Advise YOU change course twenty degrees.’ This ritual is repeated several times, until the commander, thoroughly enraged, orders: ‘Send a message: I am a warship! Change your course 20 degrees.’ Back comes the reply: ‘I am a lighthouse.’ The ship changed course.
Albert Einstein said: ‘Learning is experience. Everything else is just information.’
Remember the ‘Aha-Erlebnis’ of Archimedes who, having discovered the principle of buoyancy while taking a bath, ran naked into the street in a state of elation, shouting ‘Eureka!’?
Psychologists talk of a paradigm shift. That experience of ‘Oh, now I see …!’
Any science teacher will tell you: No text book holds a candle to a graphic laboratory experiment done by the students themselves.
This is what my new book, Help Yourself, hopes to do, to short-circuit the reform process. By creating a paradigm shift through experience.
Voting public
We live in a parliamentary democracy where the message has been that we must vote for the politicians who best represent the public interest.
The problem is that the voting public out there have been captured by the politicians. They are being held hostage. 18 million dependent supplicants get hand-outs in the form of grants. Millions have free houses. BEE and employment equity beneficiaries get jobs on the basis of their skin colour. Thousands of public servants get salaries that outstrip those of their private-sector counterparts. All from the magnanimous hand of the government. They do not see why they should change course.
The premise of politics is that politicians must be persuaded to act in our interests. But what if the majority of voters believe that politicians do act in their interests? Or worse, what if voters do not know what the politicians should do differently from what they are doing? What should they vote for?
The evidence for decentralisation and free markets as solutions to the multiple problems of humanity – poverty, unemployment, homelessness, crime, corruption, disease, and social strife – is overwhelming. So then surely, one would think, voters would choose decentralisation and free markets?
No, they won’t and they don’t. Because, frankly, they do not understand.
Voter education
At the danger of sounding preposterously condescending, our problem is one of education. Not schools, but voter education. It is not that voters are not clever enough to know what is good for them. But people do not think in terms of abstract principles. They think in terms of experience. Any educator knows: If you really want to get a message across, you must show, and not tell. There is no teacher like experience.
So how do we do this? In 1980 Deng Xiaoping, the leader of China from 1978 to 1989, put in place Special Economic Zones – in effect free-market zones to test free-market ideas, a move he strikingly described as ‘crossing the river, feeling the stones one at a time’. That changed the minds of people. Shanghai, one of the first Special Economic Zones – never looked back and is today rich beyond the dreams of ordinary Chinese of the time, and became an object of envy. Everybody wanted free markets. Argument over.
How do we create a laboratory experiment – or better, experiments – to show, rather than tell – the benefits of market freedom?
Government will not do it for us.
But imagine we could create a ‘free market zone’ by voluntary agreement, a pilot project that shows, rather than tells, the huge benefits of market freedom?
If we could, we just know two things will happen:
- That part of the economy that is so liberated will perform vastly better than the surrounding economy;
- Secondly, it will become a living, breathing example of the benefits of a partly free market, that will – properly publicised – inspire groundswell support for more of the same.
The idea is timely, because a number of factors have come together.
More than ever, SA government officials are not persuaded by rational argument. They are persuaded by experience. And in South Africa government is a great gig. Tenderpreneurship, nepotism, taking for yourself money meant for projects, massive salaries, millions of rands spent on meals, drinks, junkets, shindigs and overseas trips. Whoever or whatever best feathers that nest enjoys priority in decision-making. Only one factor will change that, namely fear of being kicked out of government becoming greater than greed for the goodies from the goose that lays the golden eggs.
Secondly, more than ever the world is full of examples of people persuaded by experience to change their minds: Migrants who cross the dangerous sea between Cuba and Miami to join their fortunate cousins on the other side; millions of immigrants in Hong Kong, Singapore, Switzerland, and New Zealand keen to savour the generous business and employment opportunities of these free markets; so-called gig workers in the US – Uber and Lyft drivers, freelance journalists, and home care workers – all of whom, by concluding the right agreements, have managed to escape the job-killing machine that is labour law.
Thirdly, in a system where law is the problem, there is an opportunity for lawyers. They can in some cases on behalf of clients launch constitutional or similar court attacks on stifling laws; or they can draft contracts that enable participants to work around laws by voluntary agreement.
Voluntary deregulation
That is what the book is all about. It sets out the various legal avenues to voluntary deregulation of employment, education, black empowerment, litigation, money, housing, manufacturing, electricity, agriculture and healthcare.
There are two primary objectives here. The first is to empower ourselves – employers, employees, entrepreneurs and the unemployed – to get the goods and services we need for a decent life, despite the best efforts of the centralised state to control us. In the post-pandemic era, this has become a more urgent object than ever before. The aim is to survive and prosper, but to be free from government to the greatest extent possible. That means free from government-controlled money, labour rules, housing, education, health care, courts, and energy.
The second aim is to demonstrate that freedom is good – for its own sake, but also for the sake of the benefits that it produces. The advantages of freedom experienced by ordinary people will speak louder than any number of rational arguments.
Voters will for the first time really understand. And so will politicians.
They will all say: Oh, now I see!
Only that will force the hand of government.
Frans Rautenbach’s new book is now available and can be ordered online here. For more information you can also email david@footprintpress.co.za
[Image: Shaun Meintjes on Unsplash]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR
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