My letter to the Philadelphia Inquirer re: the crude oil export ban

Re: Debate swirls over lifting crude-oil export ban

Dear Sirs:

The answer to your headline question on the front of Sunday's business section is self-evident. The crude oil export ban cannot be justified on any economic or moral basis. It is an economic myth that there can be rational economic calculation under socialism and that private property may be violated to achieve a more important common good. First the economic calculation myth. Over one hundred years ago in Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth, Ludwig von Mises proved that private property is required for rational economic decision-making. Only owners of private property can hold rational preferences of how best to manage resources. One hardly needs to point out that appointed bureaucrats and elected officials are NOT owners of the property that they presumptuously deign to control for some more altruist purpose. Without true preferences derived from ownership, the titular managers of resources would  not know what to produce, how much to produce, what quality to produce, or what factors to use in the production process. As for the moral basis, in section 27 of his Second Treatise of Civil Government, John Locke explained that property accrues legally to "he who hath mixed his labor with, and joined to it something that is his own, and therefore makes it his property." Austrian economists have labelled this the homesteading principle. Thereafter homesteaded property may be transferred only via social cooperation under the free market. All else is theft.

The owners, workers, and paid lobbyists of those American refineries who wish to maintain the crude oil export ban seek to employ the police power of the state to prevent consumers from improving their standard of living by purchasing similar goods from foreigners at lower prices. The weakness and vapidity of their argument is evident in their admission that American oil can be transported to foreign refineries, repatriated in the form of refined products, and still sold at lower prices on the US  market. Why must Americans be held hostage to inefficient, high cost domestic producers?