Flock to the capitol in washington dc, attracted only by Political Action committees for able hang the letters that power has accumulated here the past 50 years at the seat of government, the most powerful nation on earth right. Bill henrickson there. How do you do . Glad to meet you. See you. All right. What are you talking about . Guns to. Hello, this is Warren Richardson . Oh, mary. Yes . Whats on your mind . Warren richardson makes his living by knowing who has powe. Trade the word. Ill be here for you. Hes a lobbyist thanks a lot by the official admin position on this bill. However, that its consideration would be at this time. In view of the president , he trades with people like these members of the House Committee on agriculture. They make some of the laws and regulations and among other things, control the food we eat. They are elected officials who the power to spend billions of dollars of our tax money know we always took them out just to and takes all the page it it takes all of page three naturally lots of people would like to get their hands on that money the kind of stuff that never go into the stack of books and. I think anybody who is practicing the Justice Court knows it the other way you get common sense administration is by having common sense administration and common you like. Theres more common sense operation in agriculture access is all important and how you gain access. So it used to be that there only maybe a few hundred lobbyists in this town. Now we record up to 15,000 and lobbyists plus ancillary personnel of secretaries, receptionist and and the the researchers that goki with it. Theyre calling upon all the law firms imaginable. So theres a Tremendous Base out there for the lobbying effort. You dont have walk these corridors very long before begin to realize that the concentration of power in the hands of a few people, however wellintentioned, is a real threat to the freedom the individual. Oh, of course. Warrenay over the years, hes successfully lobbied for special Interest Groups in energy environment, wages and prices point of hes the case for anotr special interest. The National Action committee, labor law reform, hoping to swing influence his way. Hell go overboard in terms of warren much much far legislation theres a time when the corridors of Congressional Office buildings are not peppered, people waiting for their chance to see and influence the elected man at, the center of power within that legislation for funds for communities 50,000 and under the goals of the existing law and certain statutes three k requirements are often very unrealistic for smaller the deals here affect all of us and in ways we dont like. But dont blame the people making the deals. Theyre just pursuing their own selfinterest, which may be as narrow as making a buck orbroade world. We, the citizens, are to blame because weve handed over much of our lives, our personal Decision Making to government and we now find that what government does severely limits our freedom. The leather and wood paneled its mecca of those who try for the scenes influence. I think they need knowledge, but weaving his way between special Interest Groups can be tough for a politician to stay in office. He needs votes to get votes. He often has to make deals. The chances of our party regaining the white house for if the president es that republicans can support. Its frequently a frustrating. So when you have people are coming in not for purposes of debate and and discussion on something but merely they demand their special or their single concern. Thats where it becomes difficult because there might be an equal number on the opposite side of the coin. Every time i come to washington. Im impressed. All again, with how much city. But we must understand the character of that power. It is not monolithic in a few hands the it is in countries like the soviet or red china. It is fragmented into lots little bits and pieces with every specia group the country trying to get its on whatever bits and pieces can. The result is that hardly an issue in which you wont find government on both sides. For example in one of these massive buildings spread scattered all through this town, filled to the bursting with government employees, some of them are sitting around trying to figure out how to spend our money to discourage us from smoking. Cigarets in another of the massive building, maybe far away from the first, some employees equally dedicated, equally hard working or sitting around figuring how to spend our money to subsidize farmers to grow more tobacco in building. Theyre figuring out how to hold down prices in another building, theyve got schemes for raising the prices farmers receive or import prices are keeping out cheap foreign goods. We set up an enormous department of energy with 20,000 employees to encourage us save energy. We set up an enormous department of Environmental Protection to figure out ways to get cleaner air involving are using more energy now. Many of these effects cancel but that doesnt mean that these programs dont do a great deal of harm and that there are some very bad things about it. One thing you can be sure of the costs dont cancel out. They add together each of these programs money taken from our pockets thatgoods services to mr separate needs. All of these programs use variable very skilled people who could be doing productive. They all of them grind out rules, regulations, red tape forms to fill in. I doubt that theres a person in this country who doesnt violate one or another of those or la every not because he wants to or intends to, but simply because impossible for anybody to know what they all are. Those are the bad things. But theres something good about this fragmentation of power to and that is that it enables us to do something about it. If power were really concentrated and monolithic in a few hands, itd be hopeless to reform the but because its fragmented because its split up, we can see how much waste there is, can see how inefficient it is, how the left hand seldom knows what right hand is doing. It wasnt always like this. Like the armies, bureaucrats administering our lives, making our decisions, spending our money, all supposedly for our good. And. Our nation. Founded with something fundamentally different. Mind. Remarkable of men gathered in this room to write a constitution, the new nation that they had helped to create a few years earlier. They were a wise and Learned Group of people. They had learned the lesson of hist great danger to freedom is a concentration of power, especially in the hands of a government. They were the new United States of america from that danger, and they crafted their constitution. With that in mind, that constitution has served us well. It has enabled us to preserve our freedom for close to 200 years. But in the past 50 years we have been forgetting the lesson that the wise of knew so well from regarding government as a threat to our we have come in more and more to regard government as benefactor from which all good things flow. We have a signed tasks of great importance to government. We have turned over government a larger and larger fraction of income to be spent on our behalf and results are plain for all to see. They are disappointing. The great aspect have not been achieved and our freedoms have suffered. The process. We where did it all go wrong wrong. The government began to take an increasing part in our personal affairs nearly 50 years ago. It was 1933, at the lowest of the worst depression in history. The idea failed and that that failure was responsible for the human and economic tragedy. In the early thirties, Franklin Delano roosevelt and his advisers met here to devise programs to meet the problems of the depression. Their answer was to give Central Government more power out of that■ beginning todays welfare state. This Empire State Plaza in albany, new york, is a fine example of the difference between public political power and private economic power. It was constructed while rockefeller was governor of the state. New york. The Rockefeller Family has spent millions of its private money on good causes. It endowed universities like my own at the university of chicago finance, medical research, reconstruct and williamsburg. Yet not all the private money of anything like. R■f the amount of power the Nelson Rockefeller was able to have as governor of the state of new york, he constcted monuments like this all over the state, using expedient he could think of to finance them. When he left office. Taxes per person in new york were higher than in any other state in the country, excepting only alaska. And there was a monumental debt. So much so his successor, who had the reputation as a democratic congressman of being a big spender, had to use his inaugural to preach the virtues of, austerity and to say the time of wine and roses is over. Look at this skyline. It and i think its very beautiful. Much of it is less than 20 years old. Those Tall Buildings were built by private for use by private, not by government for use by government bureaucrats. These are productive monuments, a burden on the taxpayer, a burden that is almost bankrupted. New york city. The irony is that for the part, it was good intentions that led us to where we are today. A nation governed by bureaucratic empires empires. I wonder whether w they realized that it was going to come out looking like a fortress for a modest beginnings. In 1953, the department health, education and welfare has grown into a veritable empire of only a small part of its total is housed in this Headquarters Building a mere 2000. The bureaucrats. Its budget is a Third Largest budget in the whole world, exceeded only■z by entire budget of the United States and of the soviet union. It employs directly. 150,000 full time people and. The empire in rules employs another. More than one out of every hundred people in the United States works in the empire. As we have seen in this series, theh, education and is spending increasing amounts of our money each year on health. One effect is fees and prices fl and Hospital Services without a corresponding improvement in the quality of medical care we receive. It is controlling and more of the food and drugs we buy in the process. Discuss the development and prxy■lenting the marketing of nw drugs that could be saving tens of thousands of lives a year in the field of education, the sums being spent are skyrocketing, yet by common consent, the quality education is declining. More and more money is being and increasingly rigid controls imposed to promote racial integration. Yet our society is becoming more fragmented in e field. Welfare billions of dollars are being spent each yet at a time when the standard of life of the average american is higher than it has ever been in history the number of people on welfare rolls is growing. Social security. The budget is colossal yet it is in deep financial trouble. The young complain and with considerable about the high taxes they must pay and those taxes are needed to finance the benefits are going to the old, yet justice that it is difficult for them to maintain the standard of life they were led to expect a system that was enacted to sure that the old never became of Charity Season number of our older folk on the lf rolls by its accounting agw in one year abuse and wastet of money that would have built well over a hundred thousand houses,■ ■y costing 50,000 a p. Little wonder that those initials are increasingly to stand for how to encourage waste. The event in some cities upwards 20 to 25 of all the people currently receiving welfare are either totally ineligible for welfare or receiving more than they should be receiving. And it appears and looking into this that the main reason for this is not the laws themselves but the way they theyre administrative in a very lax and loose manner. One of the most famous cases was, frankly, just happened last week, arrested a woman in southern. Where they referred to as the welfare queen. And over the past six or seven years, she. Received 300,000 in welfare payments, which, of course, is on an after tax basis. So if put her on a before tax basis might be equivalen to over 1,000,000. And before tax income. And she and her husband were living in a nice 170,000 home and nice cars. And she used a very simple she just use aliases use false names and signed up. I get countless different agencies departments and then drove around and collected her checks. Be done about this scandalous of affairs what better decision than to set up a special department crammed computers and Civil Servants all dedicated to tracking down using taxpayers money, of course in the process to seven and a half Million Dollars in the first year, as adam smith wrote over 200 years ago in the economic market, people who intend to serve only own private interests are led by an invisible hand to serve interests that it was no part of their intention to promote. In the political market, theres an invisible operating as well, but unfortunate it operates in the opposite. People who intend only to serve the Public Interest are led by an invisible hand to Serve Private interests. That it wa no part of their intention to promote the reason as simple as we have seen in case after case the general interest is diffused among millions and millions of people the special interest is concentrated in one. Reformers get a measure through. They go on to their next crusade, leaving no one behind to protect the Public Interest. But they do leave behind some money and some power and the special interests that can benefit from that money and from that power are quick to gain it at the expense of most of the rest of us by now, after 50 years of experience, it is clear that it doesnt really who lives in that government continue to grow so long. The rest of us believe that the way to solve our problems is to turn them over to government. Yet there are many people who want to solve their own, who want to use their own and energy and resources. We found such a person here in Southern California california. John mccomb, a fireman, was planning his retirement. He decided to fulfill his lifes ambition. Hed built his own house with his own hands. He bought a site with a magnificent cleared the ground and realized that he was the first man who ever cultivated this land. It made him feel good. He pulled a trailer onto the edge of his plot and moved in with his wife live there while they worked on the house. He mad. He planted avocado trees, learned about carpentry and plumbing. It was going well when one day a local official arrived with a warning it was all right to build a house, he said but it was against regulations to live in the trailer any longer. The mccombs thought that the rules bureaucratic and foolish, an resented them they decided to leave the trailer exactly where it was and defy the pat. Brennan became something of a celebrity in 1978 because she was delivering mellencamp petition with the United StatesPostal Office with her husband. She set up business in a basement. Rochester, new york. S thriving. They charged less than the post office and they guaranteed delivery the same day of parcels and letters in downtown rochester. There is no doubt now that they were breaking the law as it stood the post office took them to court. The case against them was simply that they should not be handling letters. The brennans decided to fight and local businessmen provided the financial backing. I think theres going to be a quiet revolt and perhaps were the beginning of that. You see people bucking the bureaucrats were years ago you wouldnt dream of doing that because be squelched now with tax revolts with what were doing people are deciding that their fates are their own. Not up to somebody in washington who has no interest in them whatsoever. So its not a question of anarchy, but its a question of people rethinking the power of the bureaucrats and rejecting it i really very good. The customers were clear about one thing after all the brennan service was cheaper than the regular mail. Were not sure that they have done anything illegal. And id like to know more about this. And i hope that this gets further into the courts than it has already. And someone will listen to their because when we use the brennans we know for a fact that that same day delivery is going to be happening day after day after day, whereas with the other guy youre not sure and youre not sure kind of shape its going to get there and so i am behind the brennan 100 and anything i can do to help them i will. Well the question freedom comes up in any kind of a business whether you have the right to pursue it, the right to decide what youre going to. There is also the question of the freedom of the consumers to utilize a service that they find is inexpensive and far government and, the body of laws called the private express statutes, i dont have the freedom to start a business. The consumer does not have the freedom to use it, which seems very strange in a country like this, that the entire context of the country is based on freedom and free enterprise. The post office, the case and went all the way to the state Supreme Court and the brennans closed down put out of business of delivering mail. What weve been looking at is a natural human reaction to the attempt by other people to control your life. When youhi its of their business, the first reaction is resentment. The second is to attempt, get around it. And finally, there comes a decline in respect law in general, theres especially american about this. It happens all over the world whenever some people try to control other people, for example, take look at whats happening to the british ambassador. For most of the persons britain was known throughout theld for the respect which its citizens gave to the law, but no longer.