Free The Secret Knowledge by David Mamet Page A

subsidies, aid to Africa, busing, urban renewal, etc.) On the other hand, in a Free Market, every man, woman, and child is scheming to find a better way to make a product or a service which will make a fortune. The garage mechanic, the housewife, the tinkerer, the scientist, the artist, and their kids— everyone is always looking for a better way. (Compare the Government employee sitting at his desk. Why is he not looking for a better way to do his job? Why should he? A more efficient way might possibly eliminate his job, or that of the superior to whom he owes allegiance.)
    Nothing is free. All human interactions are tradeoffs. One may figure out a way to (theoretically) offer cheap health insurance to the twenty million supposedly uninsured members of our society. But at what cost—the dismantling of the health care system of the remaining three-hundred-million-plus? What of the inevitable reduction, shortages, abuses, delay and injustice caused by all State rationing?
    There’s a cost for everything. And the ultimate payer of every cost imposed by government is not only the individual member of the mass of taxpayers who does not benefit from the scheme; but likely, also, its intended beneficiaries (cf., welfare, busing, affirmative action, urban planning).
    Well, you will say, it’s not Either/Or. And, of course it is not. All civilizations need, and all civilizations get Government. Many have inherited, had forced upon them, or in fact demanded a real or obviously potential dictatorship (Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy)—these, and their like, began as Welfare States, dedicated, supposedly, to distributing the abundant good things of the Land to all. But they, and all the Communist States, and Socialist States, operated at a cost, for everything has a cost. The cost of these benevolent dictatorships was shortage, famine, murder, and the eventual dissolution of the State. Hayek calls this utopian vision The Road to Serfdom. And we see it in operation here, as we are in the process of choosing, as a society, between Liberty—the freedom from the State to pursue happiness, and a supposed but impossible Equality, which, as it could only be brought about by a State capable and empowered to function in all facets of life, means totalitarianism and eventual dictatorship.
    Is the State to decide for the individual, or is the individual to insist upon a reduction of State powers to that point at which this power is reserved only for application in those cases, as specified in law, where one individual or group abridges the liberty of another?
    The latter is the revolutionary understanding of government spelled out in that Constitution elected officials swear to defend. They are elected as public servants, the public granting them only that freedom of action necessary to fulfill that oath. Is it not time for a return to that revolutionary understanding?

11
    WHAT IS “DIVERSITY”?
    It is a commodity. Parents purchase it for their children; for as much as they might pay to achieve and brag about their children’s membership in a “wonderfully diverse” setting, they all eat in restaurants whose clientele looks just like themselves. As do we all. This is “Pediatric Diversity,” or diversity-by-proxy.
    Once, in my younger days, I was asked to help out at some fund-raising event for some good cause. The event was to raise funds to alleviate hunger. All the attendees bought a ticket, but the tickets were numbered one, two, or three. Those getting number one were entitled to all they could eat; the twos, to a meal consisting of five hundred calories (the supposed caloric intake, for the evening meal, in the area to which the funds were supposed to be sent); the threes got nothing at all. I was passing out tickets at the head of the line. I collected the money from a fellow there with his young son. He leaned in toward me and asked me to give them both a three.
    I went home after the event