Pastor Mensah Otabil, the African bastiat

The general overseer of the international central gospel church (ICGC), Pastor Mensah Otabil has expressed the need for the state (government), leaving the citizenry to operate freely to amass wealth. He stated that, ‘’the state must make way for Ghanaian citizens to build the nation themselves; the state must get out of the way of the citizens’’. This excerpt from the piece denotes the relevance and promulgation of the Free Market Economy. The state is in perpetual readiness to plunder what any citizen has strived to produce. The powers of government are like an ensnaring spider web and are used in preventing domestic and foreign trading opportunities of innocent Ghanaians. The Free Market Economy is what the clergyman is preaching, the truth and the most indispensable theory to liberalize the economy, allowing prosperity to flourish.

Frederic Bastiat a French economist in the 18th century proposed that ‘’see if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them and give it to other persons whom it does not belong, see if the law benefits one citizen at expense of another by doing what the other citizen himself cannot do without crime’’. With such an errorless chronicle that cannot be repudiated in our contemporary politics, government activities are full of restriction on the part of the individual from going about to find his daily bread. The laws of the state benefit a small group of people and indirectly embargoing the mass of the citizenry thereby asking them to beg for assistance. Incomprehensive Regulations, protectionism and tax spurt the outraged cry of the innocent Ghanaian hoping for things to change.

It is the primary responsibility---if such a role exists--- of the state to insure the individual citizen’s pursuit of life, liberty and protection of private property. The most common role for the state in today’s world is in the provision of security from violence, to maintain peace, law and order. Sadly, this gives a monopoly to the state over violence and over time leads to lower quality of services, higher prices and less quantity of the service. This is the inevitable result of any monopoly whether private or public. However, Pastor Otabil stated it clearer relative to Ghana by trumpeting; the state must only ensure that, appropriate rules are set and observed ‘’ ...just set out the rules, enforce the rules, and leave us alone, we know how we can run our lives and our businesses’’. To epitomize this, the Bastiat Institute of Liberty and Entrepreneurship (BILE-Ghana), a non-profit policy Think Tank based in Tema is calling for a minimal government intervention ensuring peaceful voluntary exchange and free association. Every government is striving to centrally manage and control the economy as if this will meet the needs of its people; this is a mistaken model as it destroys creativity and entrepreneurship. The absence of free market ideologies and policies unfavourable for practical entrepreneurial approaches as well as paving the way for a free and practical trading systems, we would continually reform policies to no avail.

Our economy in Ghana is all about call and responds just like the ‘kantanka’ television set.

The law by Frederic Bastiat denotes that, ‘’we hold from God the gift which includes all others. This gift is life-physical, intellectual and moral life. But life cannot maintain itself alone. The creator of life has entrusted us with the natural responsibility of preserving, developing, and perfecting it. To accomplish this, He has provided us with a collection of marvellous faculties and has put us in the midst of varieties of natural resources. By the application of our faculties to these natural resources, we convert them into products and use them. This process is necessary in order that life may run its appointed course. Life, faculties, production or in other words, individuality, liberty, property-this is man........’’.

These innate gifts the individual has, has not been put into its perfect use due to government regulations restricting individuals from exhibiting their prowess. God gave energy to individuals and not to groups or man-made governments. Prosperity comes from individuals, voluntary associations, but government espoused taxation and regulation that favour one group over another. Any such action is but a variation of Marx’s most famous quote “To each according to their ability, to each according to their needs. “ This has created more poverty and less prosperity wherever and whenever tried.

Ghana is a small country with abundant natural resources, needed to be tapped with our faculties and convert them into production. But our capricious policies and politically ‘multi-partyism’ are making the youths dormant in creativity. Natural law creates a serene business environment to exchange goods and services. The individual is capable of managing his own natural affairs, thereby enhancing mutual improvement in man’s conditions. Everybody is a producer and a consumer.

Protect properties, maintain rule of law and not rule by men and leave the citizens to play their own business cards as to which colour they would like to choose from. Each person has the right to live his life in any way he chooses so long as he respects the equal rights of the other. People must be permitted to run their own lives as they wish than to be conditioned by laws. Where there is freedom, there is harmony but our state laws and policies have acted opposite in achieving its own intents.

The Clergyman’s concern has been labelled political. Our democratic propaganda politics tags individuals and organizations championing a good course as an antagonist. Free markets, individual liberty and minimal government are not only ethical, but moral under the eyes of God and allow for optimum prosperity within and among the people versus favouritism to special interest groups including government itself.

We look forward to seeing a political party in Ghana that would promise less power to the state than promising unfeasible promises. If government is strictly limited to protecting men’s rights, then peace prevails, and men can go about working to improve their lives, associated with their neighbours in a division of labour and exchange, no one would criticize government and the pressure from the citizens asking for improvement in their economic lives would be out from their lips. Work and happiness are what we need. Channel policies to meet individual liberty and promote free trade. Allow the youths in the decision making processes when and where they have value, not by law, but by action, not by privilege, but from merit.

BISMARK PETER K. KWOFIE

PRESIDENT

BASTIAT INSTITUTE OF LIBERTY AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP (BILE-GHANA)

TEMA-GHANA