June 06, 2005

Seven Principles of Public Policy

Tonight, I attended a gathering sponsored by the Tennessee Center for Policy Research which featured Larry Reed, President of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy out of Michigan.

Mr. Reed gave an excellent talk centered around Mackinac's "Seven Principles of Sound Public Policy." On the Mackinac website, I found an article that covers these seven principles along with several similar points that Mr. Reed put forward in his discussion. You should definitely read it.

However, for those with less time (and smaller attention spans), I will post the "Seven Principles" here:

-Free people are not equal, and equal people are not free.
(*ed. note: equality not in the sense of justice - which is necessary - but in the governmental forced equalization of people in the socio-economic sense)

-What belongs to you, you tend to take care of; what belongs to no one or everyone tends to fall into disrepair.

-Sound policy requires that we consider long-run effects and all people, not simply short-run effects and a few people.

-If you encourage something, you get more of it; if you discourage something, you get less of it.

-Nobody spends somebody else's money as carefully as he spends his own.

-Government has nothing to give anybody except what it first takes from somebody, and a government that's big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you've got.

-Liberty makes all the difference in the world.

All are sound principles for a society that is free and wants to remain free. When governments seek to violate these principles, they do so at a cost. Government would have to grow in order to force compliance (force is where governmental power lies)...thus, liberty ends up being lost. This idea actually ties in well with what I wrote last week about healthcare not being a right.

To get the full impact of these principles (and understand what they really mean), you really should read the entire article from Mackinac.

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