Personal Responsibility & The Constitution

Well, I had a bunch of stories I was going to write about, but I let the kids play on the computer and that was the end of that. So instead, I'll look at another subject I've been wanting to touch on: personal responsibility and how it relates to the Constitution.

I'm one of those people who hates it when someone around me refuses to take responsibility for something they do. Honesty and integrity are important concepts to me and I view an ignorance or willful disregard of personal responsibility to be tantamount to lying. In my opinion, it simply unacceptable - it is one of my pet peeves (and I'll be the first to admit that I don't always live up to my own expectations in this regard - but there is a difference between an occasional slip and a generalized pattern).

So I found it interesting when I sat down the other night and began to read Securing Constitutional Government: The Perpetual Challenge by Suri Ratnapala (The Independent Review, Volume VIII, Number 1, Summer 2003 - sorry no link available). Dr. Ratnapala is a law professor in Australia, but many of the concepts discussed are consistent and relevant regardless of the nation or form of government.

Ignorance of personal responsibility is one of the greatest threats facing Constitutionally based governments today. Too often an individual or group of people will deny responsibility for their actions - or they will claim victimhood status - which will force the costs of their irresponsibility on to those of us who are responsible. Drug abusers who willfully refuse to reform and welfare abusers who survive by manipulating and exploiting the system are but two examples of groups that cost us more by denying any and all personal responsibility for their own health or well being.

But the denial of personal responsibility isn't restricted just to the drug and welfare abusers. It can also be found in the middle class, in businesses and in government.

Look at the current rise in personal bankruptcies. Why have people gotten themselves into these bankruptcy situations? Some have been laid off, sure. Some have had unforeseen medical issues. But what is almost always listed as the primary impetus for having declared personal bankruptcy? Excessive amounts of consumer debt - i.e.: credit cards, home equity loans, car loans, etc. I don't have statistics in front of me, but I'm guessing that less than 25% of all personal bankruptcies are as a result of medical bills.

Let's face it, in the middle classes, people have abdicated their personal financial responsibility. Look at this article from the Chicago Tribune (requires registration) in which a homeowner acknowledges that he took on too much housing debt. Yes, you can put blame on the lender for making money so readily available without having adequate lending criteria, but ultimately, it was the consumer that signed on the dotted line and took the money. No one held a gun to his head. He did it of his own free will. Personal responsibility.

There was a time in my life where I made about double what I do now. I was able to easily pay all my bills, save something for retirement, and have spending money. During that time, I took on two car payments and other debts that totaled up to about 25% of my gross annual salary. I could have gone further into debt, but I chose not to. Why? Because of the fear of what might happen if I lost my job, which I did in April of 2002. Because of my savings (and unemployment) I was able to survive until I found another job nearly 6 months later. But it only paid half of what I had been making when I took on the debts. I eventually ended up in a situation where I was having a great deal of trouble in making ends meet. Bankruptcy was one option, but so was working though a credit counseling service. Bankruptcy probably would have been cheaper for me in the end, but making good on the debts I had taken on was more important. In the end, it was the idea that I was responsible for my actions (including the conscious decision late in 2001 to not take on any more debt) that made my decision very easy for me.

But as the example of the homeowner in the Tribune article shows, businesses oftentimes fail to take responsibility for their actions. Now there is a degree of reciprocal causation going on here: the loan company extended the offer to the consumer who accepted the offer. The loan company then denies any responsibility claiming the debtor failed to repay and the debtor will deny responsibility claiming the company should have never made the offer knowing that the debtor was overextended. And they're both right in their assertation that the other is wrong. But in the end, who ends up paying? The consumer who now has to pay an extra 25 basis points on their mortgage - but who pays every payment on time. The cost of the failure on the part of the loan company and the debtor is passed off to the responsible debtor because he is the only one who is willing to pay.

The increased number of Chapter 11 bankruptcy filings is also symptomatic of the decline of "personal" responsibility in the corporate world. When companies go Chapter 11, they almost always claim that it is necessary to "respond to rapidly changing market conditions," "to restore competitiveness," or "to restore rationality to our labor costs." They never talk about how they failed to respond to data showing the market was changing from buggy whips to internal combustion, or that they're uncompetitive because they make an inferior product and try to charge too much money for it, or that their labor costs are out of line because of labor agreements that the company agreed to. Companies never go into Chapter 11 saying, "We screwed up and are going to try to reorganize to make the most of our second (or third or fourth) chance." No, they nearly always go into Chapter 11 because of some uncontrollable outside influence. No "personal" responsibility for the failure (I believe that this is part of the reason why there are so many companies that go into Chapter 11 multiple times - they never acknowledge that they're doing anything wrong).

And of course the welfare state government does nothing to help the situation either. Not only has it set up a system that almost encourages evasion of responsibility (welfare, social security, the tax code, etc.), but it actively works at assisting people of certain demographics in evade personal responsibility for personal gain.

The same issue of The Independent Review has another article Shame of the Cities: Setting Aside Justice for the "Disadvantaged" by Jonathan J. Bean which looks at the Small Business Administration’s Section 8(a) program which is supposed to help "disadvantaged minorities" by requiring set asides to compensate for their supposed inability to compete in the marketplace for racial or socio-economic reasons. The author proceeds to point out, detail by detail, how the SBA actively works against the concept of personal responsibility in their administration of the Section 8(a) program. The goal of Section 8(a) company is not to be able to actually perform the work or to be able to compete, rather the effective goal is to be able to rake in as much 8(a) money as possible, while contracting the actual work out to normally run, competitive businesses that actually complete the work. The owner of a Section 8(a) company has no real incentive to make his company competitive, only to keep the governmental gravy train running by perpetually claiming victimhood status and declaring that their inability to truly compete is not because they have never tried to run a business, but instead because they are being oppressed by some force.

The government also indirectly encourages the shirking of personal responsibility through the effects of unintended consequences. The welfare state and social security are two of the best examples of this in action. Neither was set up to be a retirement system or a sole means of support. They were both intended to be safety nets, there for times when people really needed them while they got back on their feet or for those times when someone might fall through the cracks of private charity. But of course there were some unscrupulous people who decided to exploit the loopholes in the system and the politicians, sensing opportunity to build a constituency, gladly helped to create more loopholes and more instances of laws designed to create a particular outcome.

Which brings us back 'round to Dr. Ratnapala's argument that one of the gravest threats facing Constitutional government is the move from classical law, which is characterized by being general and impersonal to positive law, which is specific, engineered towards creating a specific result and more importantly is made on a case by case basis. Dr. Ratnapala puts it very succulently:

The rule of law as classically understood requires (1) that all public and private actions are, in general, subject to law conceived as general and impersonal norms that are end independent in the sense that they are not directed to the achievement of specific outcomes; and (2) that citizens, in general, are not compelled to obey any dictate that does not take the form of a general, impersonal, and end-independent norm in the preceding sense.

These two elements are fundamentally linked; one cannot exist without the other. A great conceptual error in constitutional theory resulted from the belief that the first element could be maintained while the second was abrogated. An official who has the power to coerce a citizen by arbitrary command cannot at the same time be subject to a general law with respect to the province of that power. The power of arbitrary command can be generated only by the displacement of a general law. An official who fixes the price of goods does so without the guidance of an impersonal norm, and his determinations displace the norm that contracts freely concluded must be observed. The official who prohibits trade by denial of a license displaces the freedom of contract that not so long ago was a common-law doctrine. Derogations from the second element are automatically derogations from the first element because the officials who have power of arbitrary command are placed above the law. It is wrong to say that such officials act under the law. They make law for the individual case in derogation of general law. It is not sufficient for the rule of law that officials always act under the authority of the legislature. It is necessary that the legislature be constrained from authorizing arbitrary action. (pgs. 11-12)

So how do we overcome the threats that face us?

It's simple in theory, but difficult in practice. People, individuals, make up every step of the problem chain here. People need to start accepting personal responsibility for their actions, whether they be at home, at work, or in the voting booth. If someone can't pay their bills, they need to accept responsibility for it. If a company is uncompetitive or makes bad lending decisions, it needs to stand up and take responsibility for its failings. And the people who make up our government, whether they be Congressmen or bureaucrats; the President or the Judicial Branch, all need to stand up and accept responsibility for their actions - including those which have helped to reduce the perceived importance of personal responsibility in our society.

Only when the concept of personal responsibility is once again generally accepted will we see our government starting to move in the right direction - towards smaller, less restrictive, and less invasive government.