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VISION 2025 Article by Lynn Atherton

The Seen and the Unseen.  Your Own Vision, Your Way!

Many years ago, a very astute writer identified an extremely important precept that is still applicable. Frederic Bastiat, a Frenchman, (1801-1850) went against the then prevailing trend. He explained many economic actions have immediate "seen" results, but it is important to be aware that they may have later "unseen" consequences. 

An excellent example of this phenomenon was later expounded upon by the American economic writer, Henry Hazlitt. He applied it to government attempts to plan economic decisions. Governments often propose to collect tax money and spend it on projects that they have chosen as "important." When these tax funded projects are completed, they are then "seen" easily by everyone. The politicians have done something clearly visible. 

It does not matter to them, at the moment of success for their particular vision, that historically, government schemes are foolish and unprofitable and have ultimate undesirable consequences. The reason for this is quite simple: the incentives do not exist for profitability, the signals of profit and loss, which are guidelines for private business, are missing, the need to please customers is absent and there are no actual investors to whom they are accountable. The "well" of tax money rarely runs dry, unlike a privately funded enterprise. 

Important to politicians is that all can see their magnificent creations. People are told, falsely, that had the tax money never been collected and the governmental authority not pushed for the project to be undertaken, that nothing of value would have been accomplished. 

What is the truth? What is invisible and "not seen" is the multitude of things that are not accomplished. With each penny of tax money collected by force, a decision to spend, invest or save is not made. The new hire, the added goods bought, the money saved for something each person had decided was important to them, their own individual vision of the future, does not take place. Every day in every village or city, thousands, even millions, of voluntary economic decision take place but because they are so diffused they are practically invisible. That does not mean, however, that they are not important and even better than the one large decision made by government. Quite the contrary! Most people give the use of their money careful thought and if it is the wrong decision, the person who makes it is the one that is responsible for his own bad judgment, not all the taxpayers. 

It is the many, almost invisible, voluntary economic decisions that people make that form a solid foundation for economic growth and prosperity. We now have years of economic history and have added more since Bastiat lived, that can compare the top- down government planned economy to the voluntary bottom-up economy. It should be obvious, the involuntary system, has failed miserably. Recent experience should remind us that worse than the deprivation that those societies suffered were the totalitarian aspects that came to permeate the culture far beyond just the economic decisions dictated by the planners. 

Where greater economic freedom prevails the benefits are enormous for all, contrary to what the planner/politicians would have us believe. 

Please remember this the next time you are asked to vote for a tax to support the politicians schemes. Yes there may be a large building for all to see, but there will also be countless unseen things that did not happen as a result of that money not being available for each to spend as they choose, on their own private vision for their own life.