John Singleton with Bob Howard, Rip Van Australia (Stanmore: Cassell Australia, 1977), pp. 121-24, under the heading “Human Nature”.

It is often said of the ideas that we are presenting in this book that they are far too idealistic. People, we are informed, are basically evil, so our ideas can never work.

Nothing could be further from the truth. It is precisely because human nature is basically good that our ideas will work, and totalitarian, or voluntary socialist or communist ideas will never work.

A fundamental law of human behaviour is that people act on the basis of incentive. The form of the incentive varies from person to person, but it is always there. Some are motivated by a desire for money or material things, others by service to others, or by a desire to lie in the sun. When they are faced with a choice, they act on the basis of the largest incentive. This may involve a choice between satisfying the demands of one’s conscience or gaining material advantage, or a choice between immediate versus later pleasure, or whatever.

A further implication of this is that the greater the incentive is, the greater is the amount of effort expended to achieve it. Again, the effort could be physical, mental, or in the form of risk or material investment.

Whether we like it or not, that’s the way people are. No matter how our society is structured, politically and economically, this fundamental rule of human behaviour will apply. It applies today in Soviet Russia, as well as in the U.S.A. and Australia.

However, people acting on their various personal incentives does not always result in maximum progress, cultural or material. It will only do so if the incentives are sufficient to encourage people to expend the effort necessary to bring about progress. For example, if all people receive the same reward for work, regardless of productivity, then there will obviously be a tendency for those capable of higher productivity not to extend themselves to the limits of their capacities (that is, to bludge). Why bother, if they get nothing in return?

Socialists and communists, of course, believe that this type of attitude is an aberration, and can be changed. We don’t believe it can. There has to be some sort of payoff. While it need not necessarily be material, it usually is for most people.

We believe that only a free society, in which people choose their own form of life — either as free market traders, or voluntary socialists, or social welfare workers with private organisations, or whatever they choose — offers the opportunity for all people to maximise their well-being. Any attempt to enforce equality in areas other than before the law, will either fail, or plunge the country into a totalitarian state. This will happen precisely because other people are as they are.

If we have a society in which everyone gets the same income and standard of living regardless of who they are or what they contribute, a number of things will certainly happen:

  1. Some people will either stop work completely or do less than is sufficient to keep themselves, and thus will become a burden on others.
  2. Those with greater abilities than average will have no incentive to produce more than average — and so a majority of them will contribute far less than their capacity.
  3. And many will leave and go elsewhere, where there is more incentive and reward. As more and more people become dependent on others, and as those others either bought one-way tickets to the U.S.A. or worked less and less, the standard of living of all of us would drop and the economy decline. If the government of the day refused to change its policies, it eventually would be forced to prevent those who wanted to leave from leaving; and force those who no longer work voluntarily to work. In other words, such a society would degenerate into a totalitarian State. In other words, the Rip Van Australia 1977 Express.

A free market, on the other hand, works on the opposite principle to enforcement. It rewards those who work in direct proportion to their contribution. Many factors, apart from effort expended, enter into this equation — success at calculating the needs of the market, for example. A person may do very little work, but hit upon an idea which leads to a product or service that is in great demand. Thus, for little physical effort, he or she reaps a large reward. It is this possibility that provides the incentive for others to use their minds to constantly improve, experiment and strive for better things. Provided the government stays out of the market and doesn’t dispense privileges to a favoured few, resources are allocated most efficiently, and rewards flow where they are most deserved.

It is no accident that those periods in human history where human freedom has been greatest have also been the periods of greatest economic and scientific advancement — namely, during and following the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain, and from independence in the U.S.A. (1776) up to about 1900. This is not to say these were periods of complete freedom and perfection. They were far from it, but they were closer to it than had been the case up to then or has been the case since.

Another thing that can be said about human nature is that when people are left alone, they are fundamentally good. We have no reason to be otherwise; just as animals who have had no contact with human cruelty or destructiveness are often quite trusting and almost tame. People become “bad” as a reaction. Unfortunately, it is probably true to say that a modern welfare state like Australia is more destructive of human values than an outright dictatorship. At least under a dictator, an oppressed people are united against a clear and common enemy and human values survive and even prosper. But under a welfare State, where everyone competes at the public trough for “benefits”, person is pitted against person, group against group, industry against industry. Under these conditions, envy, greed, jealousy, bitterness, hate and fear prosper. There is no united front, no camaraderie, no common struggle. There is only pressure group warfare, and bitter divisiveness.

People do not begrudge others rewards that they’ve earned, but we all begrudge people “their” privileges which we all have to pay for.

There is inside people — not all of them, but enough — a fundamental desire to be free, that will not and cannot be eliminated. It may be suppressed for generations, but it always lives on and needs only the right opportunity to reassert itself. There never has been a dictatorship that has lasted indefinitely.

Free people are capable of organising themselves to solve problems of welfare, education, housing, food production. They are not only capable of it, but can do it in every regard far better than any bureaucratic State will ever be able to. That is because freedom is the only state fully compatible with human nature. Recognition of that fact is not only idealistic — it is most profoundly realistic.