Gentlemen (Dear Commissioners, August 22, 2013) | Eastern North Carolina Now

Gentlemen,

    The lines below from Adam Smith would argue in favor of getting artificial barriers to business out of the way of entrepreneurs. Rather than directing the economy, as was so poorly done under the last self serving, interwoven regime of Thompson, EDC and C100, economic development would better serve our county by removing regulation and tax impediments to economic progress: faster business approvals, less licensing, smaller government budgets, attracting state grants funded by state taxes paid to Raleigh, avoiding matching grants.

    Using state grants to repatriate local money already grabbed by Raleigh is a logical tactic, but locally funded matching grants are nothing more than an added tax on all of us for the special benefit the very few and very favored special interests. Matching grants are an ill conceived subsidy and need to be stopped. By leaving money in the pockets of local residents we would allow them to privately direct their own money into spending that they individually understand to be in their own best interest.

    Few if any residents of Beaufort County would voluntarily chose to spend their earnings on the products of the earlier favorites of the county commissioner's largess, but by funding matching grants the money we could have used to change our oil or make home repairs is forcibly transferred to the managements of these politically connected businesses....and given with only a casual glance at the financial background documents of the recipients. "Off hand" does not begin to describe the lack of thought commissioners give to closed session subsidy discussions or funding industrial parks.

    Meanwhile, county businesses that we would have willingly paid for dinners, movies, groceries, plumbing repairs, haircuts, perscriptions are not given the benefit our consumer dollars because taxes took our money under duress and placed it with companies that county commissioners predict will be better served by dollops of our money.

    We are literally diverting spending from the local businesses that local residents want to patronize in order to force spending onto businesses local customers have no desire to do business with...if we did want to patronize these subsidy hogging businesses, then we can buy their products with the taxes left in our pockets when the matching grant subsidy programs are cut out.

    The history of centrally planned subsidy and industrial park spending in this county is tragic. More than $10,000,000 in local taxpayer resources have been exported to Craven County or locked up in idle real estate over the last ten years. If we assume that there are 10,000 residents paying property taxes out of our 49,000 population, then taxes have actually withdrawn $1,000 of spending from the hands of 10,000 potential customers of local businesses.

    Nicely done. Big help.

    Regards,

   Warren Smith
     Beaufort County, NC

    "As Adam Smith explained more than 235 years ago, in The Wealth of Nations, in a system of division of labor with voluntary exchange, the only way in which an individual can earn a profit that provides him with the financial wherewithal to buy those things he desires is to devote his skills, resources, and energies to producing what others will willingly take in trade. Thus, in his own self-interest each in the market system must focus his productive activities to serving the market demands of others. Thus, though it may be no part of his conscious intention, each individual ends up serving the "common good," through actions that tend to improve the conditions of others as well as his own well being.

    In an open, competitive market, as Hayek explained, individuals are not "rewarded" on the basis of "merit" - that is, by some ethical standard on the basis of which each receives what they "deserve" - but on the basis of "service." That is, how successfully they have supplied others with the goods and services they want, and at better terms and with better qualities than others also competing for the same consumer business. For the government to redistribute wealth on the basis of "merit" or "deservedness" would require the political authorities to claim knowledge and wisdom to know what each person "really" deserves. This is a knowledge and wisdom that no man, or group of men can claim to possess - which is why Hayek said redistributive or "social justice" is a "mirage." It also gives to government a power over the distribution of wealth in society that is easily abused by those in political authority to serve their own narrow purposes."

    "Adam Smith was highly pessimistic about the chances for winning the war of ideas and establishing a regime of free trade. In The Wealth of Nations he despaired of the "prejudices of the public" and the "power of the interests." By the prejudices of the public, he meant the difficulty of getting people to understand the seemingly counter-intuitive argument that when men pursue their own self-interest in a competitive economy the outcome in terms of both freedom and prosperity is far greater than when governments attempt to guide and command the productions of society. By the power of the interests, Smith meant the influence of special interest groups to gain monopolies, trade protections, subsidies and other benefits from the government at the expense of the general consuming public, and their determination to fight "tooth-and-claw" to prevent losing these political privileges." - Richard Ebeling