A Comment on 'Power Centers'

By Robert Wenzel

I see there is some confusion about the way I use the term 'power centers.'

At the post, The Solution to the Public School Shootings Problem, where I offer suggestions as to various ways private sector schools could protect against the Parkland, FL-type shooting, one commenter writes:

 Perhaps I misunderstand your use of the term "power centers." By allowing teachers and/or students to be armed you have increased the number of power centers. Each armed person becomes a power center. This seems at odds with your call to reduce the number of power centers in previous comments.

I use the term "power centers" exclusively in relation to government, where rules and regulations are made that all must follow. These are the types of dictates that we can't escape.  Because these rules and regulations apply to everyone, whether, we like it or not, there is very powerful incentive for many to seek to gain control of power centers so they can set the rules and regulations.

There are no comparable power centers in the private sector. For example, government may make it illegal to take heroin. This would rule would apply to all of us everywhere. That's a power center. If rules are made in a Private Property Society, they are made only on given private property and are not applicable to everyone everywhere. The rules are thus limited to a specific area, not an entire country, We could, in a PPS, get our own property and make our own rules. There is no power center that we have to gain control of to make the rules in our favor that would also apply to everyone, everywhere.

Robert Wenzel is Editor & Publisher of  EconomicPolicyJournal.com and Target Liberty. He also writes EPJ Daily Alert and is author of The Fed Flunks: My Speech at the New York Federal Reserve Bank. Follow him on twitter:@wenzeleconomics and on LinkedIn. His youtube series is here: Robert Wenzel Talks Economics. The Robert Wenzel podcast is on  iphone and stitcher.