Some Americans have strong, unyielding preferences for Mac computers, while others have strong preferences for PCs and wouldn't be caught dead using a Mac.
Some Americans love classical music and hate rock 'n' roll. Others love rock 'n' roll and consider classical music hoity-toity junk.
Then there are those who love football and Western movies, and find golf and cooking shows to be less than manly.
Despite these and many other strong preferences, there's little or no conflict. When's the last time you heard of rock 'n' roll lovers in conflict with classical music lovers, or Mac lovers in conflict with PC lovers, or football lovers in conflict with golf lovers⢠It seldom if ever happens.
When there's market allocation of resources and voluntary exchange, people have their preferences satisfied and are able to live in peace with one another.
Think what might be the case if it were a political decision of whether football or golf would be watched on TV, whether we used Macs or PCs, and whether we listened to classical music or rock 'n' roll, and if everyone had to comply or suffer fines or imprisonment. Football lovers would be lined up against golf lovers, Mac lovers against PC lovers and rock 'n' rollers against classical music lovers. People who previously lived in peace with one another would now be in conflict.
Why⢠If classical music lovers got what they wanted, rock 'n' rollers wouldn't. Conflict would emerge solely because the decision was made in the political arena. The lesson here is that the prime feature of political decision-making is that it's a zero-sum game — one person's gain is of necessity another person's loss.
As such, political allocation of resources is conflict-enhancing while market allocation is conflict-reducing. The greater the number of decisions made in the political arena, the greater the potential for conflict.
Most of the issues that divide our nation and give rise to conflict are those best described as a zero-sum game, where one person's or group's gain is of necessity another's loss. Examples: racial preferences, school prayers, trade restrictions, welfare, ObamaCare.
That's why political action committees, private donors and companies spend billions of dollars lobbying. Their goal is to get politicians and government officials to use the coercive power of their offices to take what belongs to one American and give it to another or create a favor or special privilege for one American that comes at the expense of another.
You might think that the brutal domestic conflict seen in other countries can't happen here. That's nonsense. Americans possess the same frailties as other people. If there were an economic calamity, I can imagine a political hustler exploiting those frailties, as have other tyrants, blaming it on Jews, blacks, conservatives, liberals, Catholics or free trade.
The best thing the president and Congress can do to reduce the potential for conflict and violence is to reduce the impact of government on our lives. Doing so will not only produce a less-divided country and greater economic efficiency, but bear greater faith and allegiance to the vision of America held by our Founders — a country of limited government.
Our Founders, in the words of Thomas Paine, recognized that "government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one."
Walter Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University.
