One of the ideas that struck me early on when I started studying Objectivism was the position Ayn Rand took in regards to the “public interest,” a concept she found to be invalid. She saw that there is no such entity as “the public,” there are only individuals. To claim that there is some public interest which we must consider ahead of an individual’s interest is to say that some individuals have a right to sacrifice the interests of others to their own. I find that this idea now springs to mind whenever I hear a politician or pundit claim that some regulation or legislation is in “the public good.” When I hear those or equivalent words I begin to look for who is sacrificed to whom.
The other day while I was driving my car and listening to Peter Schwartz’s “How to Disuade an Altruist Lecture,” a passage towards the end of the main talk (around the 54 minute mark) really grabbed my attention and clarified what the essential difference is between self-interest and public interest and why the concept of public interest is evil.
On the standard of self-interest, each person pays for what he uses because he pays for what he values. All parties benefit and noone is sacrificed. The users of a given product judge that it warrants the cost while those who disagree spend their money elsewhere on something they value more.
But under a public interest standard non-users pay, they are compelled to pay for what is not a value to them on the premise that they have a duty to provide for the public. The link between payer and beneficiary is severed. Instead there are only sacrificers and sacrificees as non-users pay without benefiting and users benefit without paying. This is the hallmark and the central purpose of a public interest activity.
It doesn’t take a lot of effort to see that a significant amount of the rules and regulations coming from government at all levels these days are coming from the public interest side of the coin. Obamacare, and health insurance in its current state in general, is a prime example – the young and healthy must pay higher than market premiums in order to offset the lower than market premiums of the older and sicker, sacrificing the young to the old. Another example, this time from the state level, would be mandates and subsidies for green energy which result in higher energy costs for those who cannot take advantage of the subsidies. A final example from the local level would be the special appropriations tacked on to town budgets for various community groups, sacrificing those who do not patronize the groups in favor of those who do.
We would all be better off if the government were at the very least to adopt more of a self-interest standard. In such a world, people would pay for what they use because they value it and not pay for what they do not value. Individuals would buy the insurance they actually need, not what a bureaucrat tells them they need. Utilities would provide their willing customers with energy from the most reliable sources at the best price, not what some government official commands them to sell. People would be left free to support those organizations they found of value rather than being forced to support every organization that is able to garner the votes of a majority of the people who happen to show up for town meeting day.