Introduction
The article portrays how freedom has been eliminated in the countryside by the state agriculture department. The issues discussed in this article are further enhanced by the book “The Constitution of Liberty,” which was written some years ago. This book has discussed the organization of labor, socializing, the spectrum of politics, and state welfare in the USA. Chapter 1 of the book provides an analysis of the issues of economic freedom and the worth of the competitive market in the USA. Chapter 2 supports the issues discussed in the article by analyzing the state’s role in liberty preservation.
The article entitled “Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal” has recounted that all the USA farms are reserved for farming only, and anything else practiced in them rather than farming is illegal. It has explained the Acres Eco-Agriculture practices and the involved restrictions by the example of one farmer who wanted to practice various farming activities on his farm but had no legal right to do that.
This paper will discuss whether the farmer has a moral right to do his farming practices or not. It will also analyze how the restriction of his farming practices affects community development and whether there is anybody else who is concerned about these restrictions.
Analysis
Basically, the book “Constitution of Liberty” has demonstrated the political philosophy in the US. It has given the USA an overview of human liberation, the administration, and the economy. In chapter 1 the author, Hayek, stated his theory as “The worth of the freedom” where he has strived to search for the ideal nature of liberty and has explained why the ideal is valuable when pursued. According to Hayek (1978), the nature of freedom is in the absence of pressure on individual from another individual or a group of people. He has defined liberty or freedom as “thatcondition of men in which coercion of some by others is reduced as much as is possible in society” (Hayek, 1978, p. 11). His argument was that, when giving the widest scope of the actions of an individual, community will gain the advantage in unforeseeable way where every person will be given a chance to develop his/her capabilities.
The main aim of freedom is enlarging the capabilities of the individual, where a man exceeds his descendants and every generation must endeavor to make its contribution to future development. This share involves the development of knowledge and gradual advancement of ethical and aesthetics views, where superiors should not be allowed to control individuals’ views on what is good or right.
Chapter 1 of the book has focused on the economic freedom issues and the worth of the competing market. Chapter 2 has provided the overview of the state role in liberty preservation (Hayek, 1978). Therein, there is a development of law viewing, which has depicted the worth of promoting the individual liberation exercise. As demonstrated by James Madison, Hayek has presented a serious discussion on common law development and American Constitutionalism with a lot of sympathy (Krahl, 2009).
The farmer complained that everything he wanted to do was illegal in relation to the USA farm restrictions. Any letter from the state agriculture department worried the farmer so much (Salatin, 2003). The government restrictions included, bureaucratic regulations on Agriculture, Zoning laws, taxation conducted by the government agencies and food inspection. In these Acres farm, Hayek statement of “the worth of the freedom” lacked sense as no farmer was allowed to practice anything else on their land except farming. The farmer wanted to gain profit from selling meet of his pork and beef , he wanted to build a slaughterhouse on his farm, where he had raised the cows and pigs but zoning laws prohibited building of slaughterhouses on the farming land.
He complained that the government considered abattoirs building having a Tyson or a ConAgra and dressing two animals at the backyard as the same thing which were not. As Portrayed in the Hayek’s book, common law should be developed to allow individual liberation in the US. The article has demonstrated how corruption was practiced when one wanted to sell his/her meat steaks. One had to wrap it including some dollars for the meat to be sold. Hayek has narrated in his book ways of eliminating corruption in the competitive market.
The farmer argument was that, if he could be allowed as quoted by Hayek “freedom for liberation” he could have managed to sell his steak meat more efficiently without the corrupt government assistance. This would allow him to control his farm in a humane way, being responsible, efficiently and in a friendly environment as compared to the administration agents who have no liberty since they walk around with many regulations attached to them. Certainly, the farmer has an honest right to conduct all the farm practices that he want to be allowed by the government, since he could build a slaughtering house in his farm rather than travelling all the way to the legal abattoirs for meat dressing and processing.
We discover that the Acre restrictions turned out to be contradicting. this can be seen in the situation when farmer took his animals to a legal abattoir for dressing and later returned home to sell his delicious packages. However, he found that the government agents enforcing the zoning laws said that the packages were to be re imported according to one of the Wal-Mart category of farming restrictions (Salatin, 2003). The zoning law enforcers argued that storing the delicious packages in a farm store was illegal.
Restrictions to the farmer have really affected the development of the community to the extend that there was food shortage in the community. Food industrialization systems have been affected by making all the parts of the community to be disconnected from the rest. The community was also affected by the dirty and smelly farms which were supposed to be away from the people.
The article argues that Farms should not have places for learning and enjoyment as farms are only for agriculture activities. Farm visiting is considered as illegal even flies and sparrows are viewed as threating diseases to animals and plants. Indeed, every person living in these Acres should be concerned about these government restrictions.They are causing various problems to the community such as farms becoming dirty and smelly, as one is not allowed to eliminate the wastes from the farm because this is considered to be illegal. This could lead to spread of many diseases such as cholera. These restrictions hinder the development of a competitive market which made Hayek advocate greatly for ways of making the USA market competitive. They are affecting the Acres peoples’ social life as one is not supposed to encourage visitors in their farms since they believe that visitors can spread the germs, thus threatening their welfare and health.
Some restrictions really discourage trading, as there are many people producing quality products which can be stocked in farms retail outlets, butare considered to be illegal. These restrictions are unfair since they do not allow people to do their rural purchasing at different farms of their choice. They are normally restricted to do their rural purchasing in one’s home. The government should allow freedom for liberation as campaigned by Hayed such that every farmer will do his/her farming practices on his own including selling and marketing his products without involving any other party. The USA administration should allow market flexibility so that every farmer would be able to sell his/her products on his own to every part of the world. They should remove all the market limitations as Hayek advocated. The USA government is very strict regarding children, especially under 18 years, thus they are never considered for internship.
Conclusion
Generally, in his book Hayek has really analyzed the freedom for liberation, socialization, competition of the market and politics. He has advocated for individual liberty which is like a dream to the farmer in the Acres where the government enforces a lot of restrictions in the agricultural farms. The government has maintained that the US lands are meant for farming practices only and anything else practiced on them is illegal. Zoning law has restricted development in the countryside. The US administration should allow farmers to do their own things and sell their products on their own way to allow invention, market flexibility, and growth as advocated by Hayek.
References
Hayek, F. (1978). The Constitution of Liberty. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Krahl, S. (2009). Acres USA- A Voice for Eco-Agriculture Review.SOULFULL CREATURES.
Salatin, J. (2003). Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal. ACRES, 33(9), 1-4.