Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative demands that we act only on principles that could hold as universal law. Apply that test to free-riding, and the conclusion is immediate. If everyone refused to produce and simply claimed a share of what others created, there would be nothing left to claim. Therefore, the maxim “I may consume without contributing” cannot be universalized. It collapses the moment it is generalized. In a free society, the rule must run the other way: no one may ride for free.
The practical expression of that rule is visible in the people who still do the foundational work. The farmer grows the food. The lineman keeps the power flowing. The construction worker raises the buildings that shelter us. Their output is the surplus on which every other claim rests. When large numbers of people live as permanent claimants — supported by taxes, inflated costs, and administrative transfers — the productive minority is forced to carry them. The arrangement violates the Kantian test. It can continue only so long as enough people refuse to act on the same maxim that the riders follow.
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The scale of the extraction is no longer theoretical. Means-tested transfers and related programs now move well over a trillion and a half dollars a year, and closer to 2 trillion when state spending is counted. These dollars do not materialize from goodwill. They are taken from the output of the people who grow grain, string wire, and pour concrete, and from the consumers who must pay the higher prices that result.
Education offers a smaller but telling illustration: a classroom of 22 students can cost more than $300,000 annually, yet only a fraction reaches the teacher. The rest is absorbed by overhead, facilities, and administration. The same pattern repeats across the larger transfer system. Layers of middlemen process claims, write rules, and expand their own budgets. They produce neither food nor power nor shelter; they manage the claims on those who do.
A free society can accommodate temporary help for genuine misfortune. Charity and limited safety nets are compatible with liberty when they remain exceptional. They cease to be compatible when they become a standing expectation and a growing class of people never enter the productive ranks at all. Teenagers once learned the connection between effort and reward by working on farms and in entry-level jobs. That pipeline has narrowed. Skills, habits, and expectations form later, if at all.
The labor that could have expanded real output is instead absorbed into the nonproductive superstructure or left idle. Redirect even a portion of that pool into actual production and the gains in measured output would be large. Leave the incentives inverted and the productive base continues to thin.
Generational wealth is the long-term casualty. Families that improve land, master trades, and build businesses create capital that can be passed on. Heavy extraction shrinks the margin available for saving and investment. The transfer system, by design, rarely converts recipients into owners. It converts surplus into consumption. Over time, the stock of real assets grows more slowly while the number of claims upon it grows. That is the opposite of a free society’s logic.
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Socialism has never escaped this trap because it institutionalizes the maxim Kant ruled out. It multiplies claimants and treats the productive as a resource to be managed rather than as free agents whose consent and effort are required. The political response to the shortfall is usually further extraction, which further erodes the incentive to produce. The cycle is predictable and has repeated wherever the experiment has been tried at scale.
The arithmetic does not negotiate. Everyone cannot ride for free. Therefore, in any society that intends to remain free and solvent, no one should. The farmer, the lineman, and the construction worker are not an inexhaustible fund. They are the foundation. A society that forgets that fact eventually discovers it the hard way — when the surplus is gone and the claims remain.
Michael Breeden is a retired Air Force chief master sergeant with 29 years of service as a combat controller in special operations. He writes on sovereignty, culture, and institutional accountability.
