TGIF: Full versus Shrunken Liberalism

Language, like the old common law and other customs, is a decentralized, undesigned, spontaneous institution. It serves humanity well. Nothing is perfect, of course, but no alternative—if one were conceivable—could hold a candle to it.

One of the downsides is that people may change how they use handy expressions; more wordy phrases may be needed to replace a "corrupted" one. Here's one: classical liberal. Liberal, of course, originally related to individual liberty and its conditions and consequences: private property, constraints on government power, and free markets. It still means something like this outside of America. (A few pioneering liberals, such as Gustave de Molinari, thought the free market could produce security better than the state could.)

Then "progressives" hijacked the word liberal in America and England. Perhaps they didn't want to be associated with socialism. Now it meant advocating the welfare state and government intervention in the market for the sake of so-called "social justice." Private property was pushed to the back burner. The commitment to free speech and other civil liberties continued, but "modern liberalism" had little else in common with original liberalism even in the matter of war and peace.

Because of this change, the qualifier classical became necessary to distinguish original liberals from the welfare/warfare-state, or mixed-economy, advocates. Later, classical liberals started using libertarian to ensure no one was confused. That word has the same root as liberty, and even though socialists of various stripes had used it, the word has nothing to do intrinsically with socialism, that is, the abolition of private property in the means of production. Since socialism must extinguish liberty, the word libertarian is supremely inappropriate for that philosophy.

Like free people and free markets, language never stands still. Lately, classical liberalism has come to mean not advocacy of individual liberty across the board; rather, it signifies a "modern liberal" (an opponent of laissez faire) who continues to believe in free speech. Today we have the spectacle of nonclassical classical liberals. Go figure.

Why did this happen? It seems this came about because in this century, many welfare-state liberals, Democrats for the most part, gave up on free speech. Their former heroes, such as Supreme Court Justices Hugo Black and William O. Douglas, stopped being heroes. Just recently Barack Obama, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, and Democratic VP candidate Tim Walz have unambiguously opposed free speech and First Amendment protection on the internet and social media. Kerry summed up his side's case well: because all sorts of views and information are easy to come by these days, "it's really hard to govern today." Poor politicians. Meanwhile, Clinton, who favors repealing Section 230—which exempts social media companies from liability for what users post—says that if those companies do not monitor content as the government wishes, "We lose total control." Control of what? Us, you and me. Obama says government oversight is required, and Walz compared freedom of expression to shouting fire in a crowded theater. First Amendment? What's that? Pathetic, all of them.

These alleged liberals were delighted to see the government lay its heavy hand on social media to suppress information they did not like about COVID-19, Hunter Biden's laptop, and other matters. In some quarters, opposition to free speech combined with a rising interest in an anti-Western value system ("woke-ness") and cultural Marxism left over from the 1960s. Criticism of the Enlightenment grew more common.

Fortunately, this was too much for some "modern liberals." So those who remained committed to reason and free speech picked up the label classical liberal to distinguish themselves from their former colleagues.

The new classical liberals, of course, are not original classical liberals. They are modern welfare-state interventionist liberals, not advocates of individual liberty across the board, including the free market. I've heard some of these thinkers, whom I admire and have learned from, insist that they are still on the "left" and so are not "economic liberals." (I would not put original liberalism on the left-right spectrum, which is incoherent.)

Hence, I suggest we distinguish full liberalism from shrunken liberalism.

Shrunken liberalism espouses free speech, free press, abortion rights, and other civil liberties —but that is pretty much it. What's missing? Any direct reference to so-called economic liberty!

As I've explained before, I don't like the term economic liberty because full, original liberalism refused to carve the individual into personal and economic spheres. The a person is an integrated whole. Each pursues a variety of chosen ends, some involving money and some not, and adapts means best suited to his objectives. Economics is necessary for analyzing those pursuits and the social implications, but the ends are neither economic nor non-economic. They simply are personal ends. The marketplace for goods and services is a marketplace of ideas. The price system, which communicates information to us all, should be protected by the First Amendment.

That is why full liberals proudly did and do champion full-spectrum freedom: civil liberties, the free market, and peace, with its complementary opposition to imperialism and what Jefferson called "entangling alliances." It's as important today as it was in the time of Richard Cobden, John Bright, Lord Acton, Herbert Spencer, William Graham Sumner, and Ludwig von Mises.

It was Sumner who answered the charge of isolationism leveled against the opponents of the empire-building during the Spanish-American War (a charge made today against noninterventionists) with this:

When the others are all over ears in trouble, who would not be isolated in freedom from care? When the others are crushed under the burden of militarism, who would not be isolated in peace and industry? When the others are all struggling under debt and taxes, who would not be isolated in the enjoyment of his own earnings for the benefit of his own family? When the rest are all in a quiver of anxiety, lest at a day's notice they may be involved in a social cataclysm, who would not be isolated out of reach of the disaster? What we are doing is that we are abandoning this blessed isolation to run after a share in the trouble.

in his book 1927 book, Liberalism, laissez-faire advocate and intellectual destroyer of socialism Mises declared:

The liberal critique of the argument in favor of war is fundamentally different from that of the humanitarians [who sought a bloodless "moral equivalent of war"]. It starts from the premise that not war, but peace, is the father of all things. What alone enables mankind to advance and distinguishes man from the animals is social cooperation. It is labor alone that is productive: it creates wealth and therewith lays the outward foundations for the inward flowering of man. War only destroys; it cannot create. War, carnage, destruction, and devastation we have in common with the predatory beasts of the jungle; constructive labor is our distinctively human characteristic. The liberal abhors war, not, like the humanitarian, in spite of the fact that it has beneficial consequences, but because it has only harmful ones.

The list of full-liberal positions is not random. As Mises pointed out, war is antithetical to individual freedom, private property, the division of labor, and global free exchange, Altogether this constitutes social cooperation.

So we must point this out to the well-meaning shrunken liberals. Bravo on your continued commitment to free speech, other civil liberties, and reason! But don't stop there. Without full liberalism, we aren't fully free.

Interview on "Ideas Having Sex"

Chris Kaufman interviewed me about my book What Social Animals Owe to Each Other on his podcast Ideas Having Sex. Listen here or on your podcast platform.

My Latest Interviews

Michael Liebowitz, the host of The Rational Egoist, interviewed me about my life in the libertarian movement. Enjoy!

Also have a look at my interview covering my libertarian experience and the Israel-Palestine conflict on the Bob Murphy Show.

TGIF: Milei at Davos

\Javier Milei, the newly elected president of Argentina, spoke the other day at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The WEF is essentially a group of people who want world affairs centrally planned by political authorities. They are hardly advocates of laissez-faire free enterprise and individual liberty. Milei, on the other hand, is. He describes himself as a libertarian, an unabashed advocate of the free market, and even a Rothbardian anarcho-capitalist. Milei's speech has to be unlike any speech given at a WEF meeting. It would shine bright even if today's political landscape were not as bleak as it is. As a public service, I present it below. (You can watch here.)

Good afternoon, thank you very much: today I am here to tell you that The West is in danger, it is in danger because those, who are supposed to defend the values of the West, find themselves co-opted by a vision of the world which – inexorably – leads to socialism, consequently to poverty.

TGIF: Tribalism and the Dark Art of the Package Deal

Tribalism not only lives; it rules -- even more than I thought! I've been reading Hyrum Lewis and Verlan Lewis's book The Myth of Left and Right: How the Political Spectrum Misleads and Harms America. It's certainly clarified my thinking.

The Lewis brothers are a historian and a political scientist. What they show is something that I and many others have only partly understood. But for me, that's changing now. (Here's an interview with them.)

Their thesis is that the terms left, right, liberal, progressive, conservative, Republican, and Democrat do not indicate opposing sides of a single basic ideological principle that would make their respective policy programs coherent. Instead, those labels identify two social/cultural tribes that are based on something other than ideology. The disparate components of their respective policy package deals change, depending on contingent events, but the tribes endure with few defections. Compare "right-wing" Republican leaders Robert Taft, Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, and Donald Trump. You can do the same with the "left."

What do those labels really mean? You can't say, for example, that the left is for big government and the right is for small government: too many shifts and inconsistencies have occurred. Think of their changing attitudes toward free speech, foreign intervention, surveillance and the intel apparatus, free trade, the rule of law, and even tax cuts.  Republicans have joined Democrats in opposing even future cuts to doomed Social Security and Medicare. Why don't the media report that the Republicans have moved to the left on entitlements? Anything they do is called a move to the right; anything the Democrats do is a move to the left. How can that be?

Have you heard the cliche "This isn't your father's Republican [or Democratic] Party?" Tribal change is not new. (That was lifted from an Oldsmobile advertising slogan.)

When you come right down to it, members of Team Red hate members of Team Blue because they wear the wrong color jersey and vice versa.

The Lewises' "social theory" explains the scene better than the prevailing "essentialist theory." If the two tribes had ideologically driven platforms, each side's members could coherently (but not necessarily correctly) say, "My team's positions are all good because of our underlying vision, and the opposing team's positions are therefore all bad. But if their lists of positions are grab bags determined by something other than a worldview, then the members can't reasonably say that.

The authors ask us to imagine that supermarkets offered just two pre-loaded shopping carts to choose from. You'd pick the one that had more things you liked than disliked. But you wouldn't say that every item in your basket manifests a consistent worldview and so is better than every item in the other one. But that's how most people think of their political tribes.

Libertarians have more or less known this since the modern movement arose after World War II. As young libertarians, my friends and I wondered how so-called conservatives and so-called liberals could be pro-freedom in some ways and anti-freedom in others. Why weren't they consistent?

We wondered how a political spectrum could make sense when it had totalitarian Josef Stalin at one extreme and totalitarian Adolf Hitler at the other. The authors ask a similar question: what use is a spectrum that puts Milton Friedman, a staunch advocate of individual liberty, the free market, and limited government, on the same side as Hitler, a staunch advocate of national socialism and the total state? Is a center-right person moderately pro-free market or moderately pro-Nazi? Is a center-left person moderately pro-welfare state or moderately pro-Bolshevik?

If the Lewises are correct, we should be wary about common phrases like moving further to the left/right or becoming more progressive/conservative. The reason is that there is no single-issue spectrum with fixed points to move along. The tribes define, not reflect, what it means to be rightwing, leftwing, conservative, and liberal/progressive.

If you have doubts about this, try stating the principles that unify the conservative and progressive programs or the party platforms. You can't do it. If you ask a conservative or progressive what principle unifies his program, his answer, write the Lewises, will be a post-hoc rationalization. The tribes could exchange positions (and have) and still rationalize their new programs in terms of their previous answers.

This phenomenon need not apply to every group. Libertarians are united on a central principle -- individual liberty -- and their policy positions show it. (They sometimes argue about how to derive or apply the principle, but that's a different matter.) Their policy preferences are predictable when we know that principle. Tribal policies are predictable because we know the color of the jerseys. What does support for abortion rights have to do with high taxes on the wealthy? What does opposition to abortion rights have to do with support for tariffs on Chinese goods?

How do people choose a tribe if not by principle? Lewis and Lewis say that a person's choice can have a variety of sources: parents, friends, a single heartfelt issue (abortion, say), or a charismatic leader. But once he's joined, his incentive is to embrace the whole package deal. Exceptions exist, but they are exceptions.

So enough with left and right, conservative and progressive (or liberal). Those labels obscure thought and fuel tribal antagonism. They are also harmful to libertarians who would benefit from public clarity. The only phrase I dislike more than conservatives and libertarians is libertarians and conservatives.

TGIF: Don't Blame Wokeism on the Unfinished Liberal Revolution

The National Conservatives are not only wrong about genuine liberalism -- that is, libertarianism -- they also apparently haven't bothered to read up on what they think they're attacking. Take Yoram Hazony, author of Conservatism: A Rediscovery, who recently appeared on the YouTube show Triggernometry. As Hazony makes clear, for him it's straw men all the way down.

Throughout the interview he uses the word liberalism for the philosophy he blames for saddling the West with wokeism. That's unfortunate because people use that term in many ways. What definition does he have in mind? I think we can infer that he means something like libertarianism (and not, say, Nancy Pelosi's "liberalism") since he faults the philosophy for its powerful commitment to free markets. Although he's not thoroughly opposed to free enterprise, he favors a government strong enough to step in when the "national interest" (ascertained by whom?) requires it. National conservatism without a commitment to government power to override the free market would be like a square circle.

Like other right-wing critics of libertarianism, Hazony believes that Western societies are in the woke soup because Enlightenment liberalism is intrinsically prostrate before its leftist adversaries. Why would that be? In his eyes, it's because liberalism's only message is this: do your own thing. He told Frances Foster and Konstantin Kisin:

If you [liberals, presumably] raise children and you tell them, "Look, do whatever you want. Do whatever feels good. Use your own reason, exercise your own thinking, and come to your own conclusions, and you don't give them anything else, a great many people, maybe the majority, end up stuck and unable to make the decisions among, you know, what exactly is it I'm supposed to do and what is it I'm supposed to believe.

I have no idea why Hazony thinks that liberalism teaches people to do whatever feels good, or that, as he says elsewhere, that freedom is "all they need." One of the first things liberal parents would teach their children is to respect other people's rights: specifically, don't hit other kids and don't take their stuff without asking.

By the way, "do whatever feels good" is hardly the same as "use your own reason, exercise your own thinking, and come to your own conclusions." How does Hazony not see that?

Further, using your own reason does not mean: don't read history, don't learn from others' experiences, don't absorb the moral and political lessons of those who came before. Liberalism is not about the individual's starting from scratch and reinventing the wheel. Rather, it means that you shouldn't blindly accept what others tell you. Use your head. We have much to learn from other people and other ages. So what's Hazony's real beef with liberalism?

As this makes clear, he clearly doesn't know what liberalism is, but he's certain he knows what it has wrought:

Liberalism is what brought woke neo-Marxism. Every single institution that the woke neo-Marxists are running now was a liberal institution 15 years ago. So if liberalism had the antibodies, if it was enough to say let's just be free, if that was strong enough to be able to defeat woke neo-Marxism we wouldn't be where we are today....

Liberalism brought Marxism.

Have you noticed how everything the woke left favors these days -- to be sure, genuinely abhorrent stuff -- is reflexively condemned by the right as "neo-Marxist" -- even when the idea in question has nothing to do with the material forces of history and economic classes? You'd think Marxism was the only evil in the world. Actually, It's not.

Sometimes, when Hazony thinks he's scored points on liberalism, he sounds a bit like a liberal, such as when he reminds us that each individual is born into a culture, which ought not to be automatically rejected. The reason he doesn't realize that liberals can agree with this is that he thinks -- wrongly -- that liberals are Jacobins, who aspire to wipe the social slate clean and start over. Some liberals have occasionally sounded like they're saying something like that, but to suggest that Jacobinism or utopianism is intrinsic to liberalism is to do a disservice to an honorable and valuable -- yes -- heritage.

While Hazony concedes that it might be okay to reject some inherited traditions, he seems uncomfortable with that prospect. As he puts it, your forebears "hand[ed] down things [and] you have a responsibility to fight for those things." Why? Because they were handed down?

I prefer Thomas Sowell's take: another culture may well have features that are better than one's own -- superior at dealing with an aspect of life.

The entire history of the human race, the rise of man from the caves, has been marked by transfers of cultural advances from one group to another and from one civilization to another....

Cultures exist to serve the vital practical requirements of human life -- to structure a society so as to perpetuate the species, to pass on the hard-earned knowledge and experience of generations past and centuries past to the young and inexperienced, in order to spare the next generation the costly and dangerous process of learning everything all over again from scratch through trial and error -- including fatal errors.

Cultures exist so that people can know how to get food and put a roof over their head, how to cure the sick, how to cope with the death of loved ones, and how to get along with the living. Cultures are not bumper stickers. They are living, changing ways of doing all the things that have to be done in life. [Emphasis added.]

Every culture discards over time the things which no longer do the job or which don’t do the job as well as things borrowed from other cultures. Each individual does this, consciously or not, on a day-to-day basis. [Watch the video; read the text.]

Problems with change occur not when people are free to adopt "the stranger's ways" (the supposedly scary phrase is from Fiddler on the Roof); they occur when those who favor change have access to state power -- especially when government controls or strongly influences education, the media, and other commanding heights. Then some people, however well-meaning, can potentially impose their preferences on the rest.

Without access to power, people are free to adopt changes for themselves and try to persuade others, but then they would have to wait to see if the new ways catch on. Change, under those circumstances, tends to happen at the margin, although exceptions can't be ruled out. (Social contagion is possible.) But even then, free people would have peaceful consensual ways to protect themselves and their children from unwanted change. This is where freedom of association kicks in.

In general it seems reasonable for individuals to provisionally defer to tried-and-true ways because they have apparently passed the cultural natural selection test. Yet one also ought to remain open to demonstrations of better alternatives. Liberalism delivers the best of both: stability without stagnation and dynamism without chaos. But individual rights must be respected.

As a national conservative, Hazony of course favors nationalism. If all he means is that a world of many nation-states is preferable to a global empire, then libertarians stand with him. If we can't get rid of power, at least let's disperse it among small competitive jurisdictions. But he means much more than that since he and his fellow National Conservatives favor trade restrictions and other forms of welfare-state industrial policy. And I presume he would oppose secession, at least from nation-states he approves of. (He is an Israeli.)

Hazony commits a major blunder when he says that liberalism is inherently imperialist and that nationalism is inherently anti-imperialist. How does he figure that? Since liberals believe they have identified universal principles, he says, it is committed to imposing those principles on everyone. If you fail to see his logic, I imagine you're not alone.

Contrary to Hazony, liberalism doesn't says it has the one true way for everyone to live. Rather, it says all people ought to be free to decide how to live. Liberalism, which seeks to limit state power, doesn't entail imperialism because that would expand state aggression both domestically and abroad. Thus "liberal imperialism" is a contradiction in terms. Nationalist imperialism, however, is not.

While I wouldn't expect Hazony to be persuaded by what I'm about to say, I will point out that the alarming and long-standing decline of liberalism can be plausibly explained by its initial incompleteness politically, economically, legally, and even morally. Twentieth-century liberal writers, scholarly and popular, pointed this out repeatedly and tried to do something about it. That's why they wrote so much. These included Ludwig von Mises, F. A. Hayek, Murray Rothbard, Leonard Read, Henry Hazlitt, Milton Friedman, and most fundamentally, Ayn Rand, who argued persuasively (to me at least) that as long as a secular or religious ethics of self-sacrifice predominated in a culture, the political-economic-legal system rooted in individualism and private property would never be whole-heartedly embraced because it would be tainted by the alleged sin of "selfishness."

Even the doctrine of limited government kept liberalism from fully blossoming because, as we've learned so often the hard way, limited governments don't stay limited. (See my article "Anthony de Jasay on Limiting Power.")

Thus liberalism didn't yield because it was inherently weak. It yielded because it was fatally compromised from the start. That's my answer to Hazony's question of why wokeism has succeeded. We don't need illiberal national conservatism to win back our freedom.

What Kind of Liberal?

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I am a Locke-Smith liberal.

TGIF: Who's the Aggressor? Who's the Victim

When a libertarian says that the most basic individual right is the right not to be aggressed against, a clever interlocutor may accuse the libertarian of begging the question, of stuffing the rabbit into the hat. The trick, the critic will say, is in the word aggress: libertarians allegedly rig the game by restricting the category of aggression to only the actions they disapprove of, thereby institutionalizing many corrupt activities.

For example, If Jones tells Smith to get off land to which Jones has legal title, is it really clear that Smith is in the wrong and Jones is in the right? The critic will offer a counter-narrative: it's considered Jones's land because the political system arbitrarily defines property rights in a certain way. It might have defined rights differently so that Smith could walk on the land as wishes. So why not see Jones as the aggressor against Smith?

If the libertarian responded that Jones transformed the hitherto unowned parcel by mixing his labor with it, perhaps by clearing and fencing it, the critic might respond that Jones's act constituted aggression because, unlike yesterday and the day before, no one now may step on the land without Jones's permission. Jones, in other words, restricts everyone else's freedom. Who's right and who's wrong would depend on one's point of view.

This case against libertarian property rights implies that land has never been unowned because it has always been owned by humanity in common. Such a position was taken most famously by Henry George. While George did not oppose individuals' use of parcels of land, he said that users ought to have to pay land rent to the community, the true owners. This was George's "single tax." Murray Rothbard rebutted George's case in both its moral and economic dimensions. (See also Rothbard's Power and Market.)

If the point of rights theory is to enable human beings to flourish as they live side by side peacefully and cooperatively in society, then any theory that regards land and other scarce resources as jointly owned by all of humanity is in for problems. The moral is the practical. So imagine the impracticality of determining how a piece of land is to be used if everyone is to have a say in the matter. Yet if human beings are to prosper, decisions about how to use scarce resources are crucial. No one is infallible or has a monopoly of wisdom about the "best" use of resources, but we have the next best thing: the market and its price system. The market provides indispensable signals about ever-changing supplies and consumer preferences. Ludwig von Mises and F. A. Hayek made their marks as great economists by, among other things, showing that market prices are the only things we have to relieve, insofar as possible, our ignorance about how scarce resources can be used best to serve everyone's welfare. Private property and free markets expand rather than contract the public's access to resources.

The critic of libertarianism may listen and nod but continue to insist that we have no objective way to tell who is the aggressor: Smith or Jones. But maybe we do.

Life is not an abstraction. Individual people are beings who live day to day through the pursuit of projects, which usually involve the cooperation of others. Since we are physical beings, that pursuit requires control over things, including land, and therefore noninterference by other people. How could we live and plan long term if our activities could be interfered with and the fruits of our efforts could be appropriated by others? I take for granted that each person is a self-owner because denial of this principle collapses in absurdity. Lincoln wrote that "if slavery isn't wrong, nothing is wrong." Abolitionists called slave owners "man-stealers." If self-ownership isn't right, then nothing is right.

The principle of nonaggression is universal: you may not interfere with me, and I may not interfere with you. Liberty for all means no one is aggressed against. Society should be based on consent and cooperation.

In the story above, if we assume Jones acquired the land justly through homesteading, purchase, or gift, then the land is part of his project, and Smith's trespass constitutes interference with Jones's life. (Of course, trespass can be trivial, and methods of prevention or redress would have to be proportional to the offense. Put bluntly, Jones can't shoot Smith merely for setting foot on his land.)

Yes, in a physical sense, Jones's ownership "interferes" with Smith's freedom, although not his ability to live as a human being (except perhaps in an emergency). But human action is never merely physical. Justice is relevant. The same physical act can be just or unjust depending on the circumstances.

I think this demonstrates that the libertarian case does not pack its conclusions into its definition of aggression. Hard cases of course can arise, but generally we can determine who is the rightful owner and who is wrongfully interfering.

Finally, I have not tried to sort out the case of ownership clouded by historical injustice, namely, theft. What to do about this is a complicated matter, in part because of the variety of cases, on which I claim no particular wisdom. Those who wish to delve into the problem can begin by looking at what Rothbard had to say in The Ethics of Liberty.

TGIF: Should Libertarians Join Organizations?

A few weeks ago YouTube suggested that I watch a 1988 episode of William F. Buckley's PBS TV show, "Firing Line," featuring Ron Paul, who at the time was the Libertarian Party candidate for president. I had to chuckle right at the top when Buckley introduced Rep. Paul by striking an ironic pose: while "libertarians specialize in non-organization...," Buckley said, "to run for president of the United States, which Dr. Paul is doing on the Libertarian ticket, does require organization, to be sure uncoerced." (Emphasis added.) Buckley flashed his trademark impish smile while his guest remained silent looking bemused.

This wouldn't be worth mentioning except that I've heard people make similar comments over the years. I have no doubt that Buckley was trying to be funny. The tip-off is in his final words, "to be sure uncoerced." Buckley was too smart and too knowledgeable not to know that libertarians--and this includes free-market anarchists--have no principled objection to organizations per se. Uncoerced is indeed the key point.

Amazingly, not everyone seems to know this. Many times I've heard people wonder how libertarians could have a political party or any other organization for that matter. It is one thing to wonder about a libertarian party, but quite another to wonder about all organizations. Maybe some of the questioners were trying to score a cheap debating point, but I suspect that for others, sheer misunderstanding was at work, as if libertarians favored self-sufficiency and social isolation. (They don't.) At the least, it is a sign of insufficient thought.

Why did Buckley say, "libertarians specialize in non-organization"? Specialize? Please! One of thing that libertarians do specialize in is enthusiasm for markets as an essential part of a free society. Markets are filled with organizations, if by that term we mean purposeful associations. (With respect to F. A. Hayek, we can distinguish organizations from institutions, the word he reserved for spontaneous, bottom-up social and economic regularity with accompanying expectations.) The overall market order, which is highly complex, is such an emergent institution rather than a designed organization. It was not constructed with a single conscious purpose, but within it are countless organizations that one or more people created for specific purposes. That's what a firm, a co-op, and many other kinds of groups are. The unplanned order of the market, which is an arena for purposeful conduct that has no end explicit in itself, is full of planned associations. What libertarian would reject them in principle? We'd be a lot poorer and certainly no freer without them. Again, the standard is consent. Organizations can be good, and so individuals ought to be free to choose with whom they will associate and for what purposes.

What's said about the market is also true of society in general. Obviously, people form associations for all kinds of reasons, not just to make money through production and trade. Tocqueville noticed this on his visit to the young United States and reported on it in Democracy in America. Americans, he said, formed organizations whenever they wanted to accomplish things they couldn't do individually. To hear him tell it, Americans were organization-happy. In those days, keep in mind, they were in large measure radically and classically liberal in temperament, yet that did not stop them from doing things together whenever it suited. They understood that organizing per se infringed neither their liberty nor their integrity. No surprise there: human beings are social animals.

I don't mean to say that organizations pose no risk to people. Risks and temptations lurk everywhere. Leonard E. Read, founding president of the Foundation for Economic Education, wrote a remarkable essay long ago titled "On that Day Began Lies," in which he pointed out that the danger of even private organizations lies in the temptation of individual members to believe that are not responsible for the acts of the group they participate in them--as though they could merge into a mass without personal accountability. Think of a mob, which is not typically thought of an organization but whose members act in concert toward a particular end. One can see how those members might distance themselves from their own actions by regarding the mob as an agent.

Read headed the essay with a quote from Leo Tolstoy:

From the day when the first members of councils placed exterior authority higher than interior, that is to say, recognized the decisions of men united in councils as more important and more sacred than reason and conscience; on that day began lies that caused the loss of millions of human beings and which continue their unhappy work to the present day.

Read then asked: "Is it possible that there is something of a wholly destructive nature which has its source in councilmanic, or in group, or in committee-type action? Can this sort of thing generate lies that actually cause the loss of 'millions of human beings'?"

He noted that personal integrity and honesty are key to avoiding trouble and suggested that this will determine the moral quality of any group. He asked:

What makes persons in a mob behave as they do? What accounts for the distinction between these persons acting as responsible individuals and acting in association?

Perhaps it is this: These persons, when in mob association, and maybe at the instigation of a demented leader, remove the self-disciplines which guide them in individual action; thus the evil that is in each person is released, for there is some evil in all of us. In this situation, no one of the mobsters consciously assumes the personal guilt for what is thought to be a collective act but, instead, puts the onus of it on an abstraction which, without persons, is what the mob is.

The organization certainly seems to provide the temptation for members to distance themselves from "its" actions, even though the mob cannot act if no member acts. Mobs are not alone in this phenomenon. Read went on:

Persons advocate proposals in association that they would in no circumstance practice in individual action. Honest men, by any of the common standards of honesty, will, in a board or a committee, sponsor, for instance, legal thievery—that is, they will urge the use of the political means to exact the fruits of the labor of others for the purpose of benefiting themselves, their group, or their community.

As we can see, Read didn't mean political associations only. Private associations also can challenge less-than-conscientious members' integrity. In this connection, he had much to say about how majority rule and the call for group consensus can tempt people to shift personal responsibility to the disembodied group.

In sum, Read wrote:

It ought to be obvious that we as individuals stand responsible for our actions regardless of any wishes to the contrary, or irrespective of the devices we try to arrange to avoid personal responsibility....

How to stop lies? It is simply a matter of personal determination and a resolve to act and speak in strict accordance with one’s inner, personal dictate of what is right. And for each of us to see to it that no other man or set of men is given permission to represent us otherwise.

In other words, do not associate with a group that does or advocates things you as an individual would not do or advocate. Being outvoted does not get you off the hook.

Read touched on a related theme in "Conscience on the Battlefield," in which he argued that even soldiers are responsible for the actions they are commanded to perform, including killing.

The upshot is that people of character can avoid the dangers of association without avoiding associations entirely. A separate question is whether a libertarian political party is good idea, but that's not my concern here. My message is that nothing about the freedom philosophy rules out voluntary participation in a wide variety of organizations.

Appearance on "Don't Tread on Anyone"

 Keith Knight interviewed me for his video/podcast "Don't Treat Anyone." Enjoy!

On the Tom Woods Show

Tom Woods and I discuss libertarian fundamentals as presented in What Social Animals Owe to Each Other on his internet program. Listen here.

Unpleasant Times

If Ludwig von Mises were alive today he would be viewing our current predicament with alarm but not surprise. He lived through something similar about a century ago.

In response to inexcusable police brutality, some outraged people who've taken to the streets have crossed the sacred line between peaceful protest and violence. Recent months have brought vandalism, arson, and injury in Kenosha, WI, and Portland, OR, and now intimidation of innocent bystanders in Portland and Washington, D.C. Now comes the ominous response.

This escalation by people who pose as friends of social justice (I don't doubt the sincerity of the nonviolent others in the streets) is both immoral and dangerous, both in its own right and also because it feeds those, like Trump, who might like nothing better than to bash a few heads before election day. Those among the protesters who perpetrate street violence are playing with fire, and they well know it, hoping that the state's reaction will serve their cause. But they are wrong. Whatever their cause, unless it's violence for its own sake, the result will be a strengthening of the worst aspects of the state--with the support of most people in the country.

Mises would have recognized what is going on because he'd seen it before. Have a look at chapter 10 of his book Liberalism, "The Argument of Fascism," for his observations in 1927 on what had taken place in Italy from about 1919 to 1922, when Mussolini took power and established a one-party dictatorship. That something even remotely similar to those events is now happening in America would have horrified and saddened him.

In that chapter Mises discussed the extended violent confrontation between communists/socialists and fascists in the streets of Italy. As the foremost champion of peace, freedom, and social cooperation (including economic exchange) of his day, Mises was horrified by the events. He noted that previously the antiliberal Italian right-wing nevertheless had reluctantly paid some slight homage to liberalism and its restraints on power, which it despised, because it was so central to Western civilization. But when the Italian Socialist Party began to achieve political success and make Bolshevik-type demands for fundamental social change, and when communists and socialist--emboldened by the state terror and mass murder in Russia--violently clashed in the streets with the right-wing "black shirts," Mussolini's budding fascist movement found their excuse to do what they had wanted to do all along: abandon token deference to liberalism, which it condemned as pacifist and weak, and embrace the so-called glory of violence without restraint. Mises wrote:

One must not fail to recognize that the conversion of the Rightist parties to the tactics of Fascism shows that the battle against liberalism has resulted in successes that, only a short time ago, would have been considered completely unthinkable. Many people approve of the methods of Fascism, even though its economic program is altogether antiliberal and its policy completely interventionist, because it is far from practicing the senseless and unrestrained destructionism that has stamped the Communists as the arch-enemies of civilization. Still others, in full knowledge of the evil that Fascist economic policy brings with it, view Fascism, in comparison with Bolshevism and Sovietism, as at least the lesser evil. [Emphasis added.]

Then Mises added, just so there would be no mistaking his meaning: "For the majority of its public and secret supporters and admirers, however, [Fascism's] appeal consists precisely in the violence of its methods." Fascism was antiliberal in every respect, Mises noted, including its nationalist and militarist foreign policy, which "cannot fail to give rise to an endless series of wars that must destroy all of modern civilization."

Mises pointed out that liberalism was not opposed to the use of violence when it was necessary to thwart violence. But again, to make sure he was understood, he quickly added:

What distinguishes liberal from Fascist political tactics is not a difference of opinion in regard to the necessity of using armed force to resist armed attackers, but a difference in the fundamental estimation of the role of violence in a struggle for power. The great danger threatening domestic policy from the side of Fascism lies in its complete faith in the decisive power of violence.

For Mises, the use of violence for the propagation of ideas was both wrong and counterproductive. Stifling the ideas of opponents gives them a credibility they might not otherwise earn: "Resort to naked force—that is, without justification in terms of intellectual arguments accepted by public opinion—merely gains new friends for those whom one is thereby trying to combat. In a battle between force and an idea, the latter always prevails."

He continued:

Fascism can triumph today because universal indignation at the infamies committed by the socialists and communists has obtained for it the sympathies of wide circles. But when the fresh impression of the crimes of the Bolsheviks has paled, the socialist program will once again exercise its power of attraction on the masses. For Fascism does nothing to combat it except to suppress socialist ideas and to persecute the people who spread them. If it wanted really to combat socialism, it would have to oppose it with ideas. There is, however, only one idea that can be effectively opposed to socialism, viz., that of liberalism.

I will next reproduce the controversial conclusion to Mises's chapter; if I don't, someone else will:

It cannot be denied that Fascism and similar movements aiming at the establishment of dictatorships are full of the best intentions and that their intervention has, for the moment, saved European civilization. The merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history. But though its policy has brought salvation for the moment, it is not of the kind which could promise continued success. Fascism was an emergency makeshift. To view it as something more would be a fatal error.

No liberal--libertarian, that is to say--can read this with joy, but it would be unfair to interpret Mises, as some have tried, as harboring even a speck of illiberal sentiment. (See his 1944 book Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War for his view of, among others, Nazi Germany. Mises, whose heritage was Jewish, had to flee Austria and then Europe altogether because of Hitler.) Look at things from Mises's vantage point: he saw horrendous violent clashes in the streets and the looming threat of a Bolshevik state in western Europe draped in the garb of universalism and egalitarianism. (In contrast, militant Italian nationalism hardly had universal appeal.) Liberalism, unfortunately, was not on the agenda. So he had to decide which was the greater threat to Western civilization--which side if triumphant would have a smaller chance of surviving beyond the short run. Let's not forget who was on the socialist side: people who were inspired by Lenin and Trotsky, architects of the 20th century's first one-party terror state. So who can say Mises was wrong? I can't.

Of course we're not living in analogous circumstances. Notwithstanding increasing hyperbole from both wings of the establishment, we don't face a choice between Bolshevism and fascism, although I am aware of Trump's authoritarian disposition and Biden's devotion to the all-service state. Still, it's too close for comfort. We now are now seeing violent street confrontations--and the potential for bystander casualties--between two sides each with a predilection for violence, even if neither one has a fleshed-out program. (Apparently, the clashes are an all-white affair.) If things get further out of hand, the public will likely and reasonably demand a restoration of order, and many in power will be only too happy to comply--and then some. What will come next?

I don't want to exaggerate--the worst incidents have been confined to a few cities--but I fear for the future.

An Approach to Collective Problems

Libertarian political philosophy, as a practical matter, does not offer a prefabricated set of solutions to collective problems. Rather, it's a liberty-based approach to ameliorating collective problems that begins by acknowledging (among other things) the dispersion, incompleteness, and tacit dimension of relevant knowledge. Thus, the approach favors decentralization, competition (in ideas and services), and choice about what trade-offs to make and with whom to cooperate. Perhaps ironically, to succeed, individualism requires and produces the collective intelligence that only markets embody.

TGIF: Libertarianism in Emergencies

Libertarians have always acknowledged that emergencies -- severe extraordinary conditions of limited duration -- can justify actions that would be unacceptable under normal circumstances. This doesn't mean that all the rights-based rules disappear, only that some measures are deemed permissible that otherwise would be beyond the pale. Danger, however, lurks in this principle, requiring eternal vigilance.

For example, if someone collapses unconscious in the street, you may do things intended to help him without his consent. This does not justify a general policy of paternalism. Another common hypothetical is that of the person caught in a life-threatening blizzard in the wilderness who happens on a cabin (which, let us say for simplicity's sake, is unoccupied at the time). To save his life, the stranger breaks in, builds a fire, and eats the food. No reasonable person would fault him for not first seeking permission of the owner. What happens after the emergency passes is an interesting topic for discussion -- should he offer compensation? should the property owner demand and accept it? -- but let's not get into that now. (Yes, the hypothetical could be made far more complicated than mine, but that's also for another time.) Yet this cannot justify the abolition of property rights.

We might call those situations micro emergencies. They affect one individual or a few, while other people may experience nothing extraordinary at all. So what about a macro -- society-wide or global -- emergency -- a widespread epidemic, let's say? I can't see why the principle of emergencies would not hold. The aim of ethics (politics being a subset) is human flourishing, not blind slavishness to duty.

Unfortunately this might mean that in today's world -- where a dangerous communicable disease threatens to overwhelm the medical system -- governments would reasonably have freer rein to do things than they have in normal times. Most people would expect that to be the case and, moreover, would want it that way. I say unfortunately not only for reasons obvious to libertarians but also because the existence of the state has over a long period impeded and even forbidden the gradual spontaneous emergence of alternative, protean, voluntary public-health and mutual-aid institutions that would be better suited to responding to pandemics (and other disasters) than the centralized collection of politicians and bureaucrats we call the state. To see the point, you need only meditate on the leading government public-health agencies' prolonged botching of the matter of coronavirus testing. (Although it's been stretched nearly beyond recognition for obvious public-choice reasons, public health is a legitimate concept in light of the existence of serious communicable diseases.)

That we must regretfully do without those alternative institutions in the present emergency (although not entirely) should teach everyone a lesson for the future. But what can we do now? A libertarian who says he would "push the button" and at once abolish the state (or in the case of a limited-government libertarian, merely eliminate the welfare state) has little of value to say today. Does he think that alternative voluntary institutions would spring into existence? Institutions -- and the constellation of customs and expectations they embody -- need time to grow. I'm not saying that people working together consensually wouldn't do much good on their own in the meantime -- they are doing so now -- but the limits in the short term would be significant.

Besides, no such button exists, so why would we even talk about it? A radical scaling back of the state at this time would not find widespread support, so even if it could be pulled off, it would quickly be reversed because, like it or not, most people regard the (welfare) state as legitimate, even if they have objections to various parts of it.

So we're stuck with the state as it is in this emergency. Where does that leave us? Some restrictions on normal activities will be regarded as reasonable, targeted quarantines, for example. That doesn't mean we should suspend judgment and accept every restriction the politicians or bureaucrats come up with. (What's with the curfew? Where's the necessary connection with banning gatherings?) An emergency is no time to abandon one's critical faculties. Nevertheless, things that would and should be condemned in normal times will reasonably be deemed acceptable -- with regrets -- even by libertarians for the duration of the emergency. Exactly what all those things might be I'm in no position to say with any confidence. A reasonable restriction could certainly be pushed too far. How far is too far? It's not always clear, although we'll often know it when we see it. We will be in an improvisational mode for some time to come -- which is why decentralization, competition, and openness to information from far and wide should be the rule of the day. (See this.)

Of course, libertarians have a critical public role at this time. First, we should never cease to point out that much of what the government has done to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic has been in the nature of suspending restrictions on private conduct essential to responding in this emergency. The loosening of restrictions regarding trade, medical practice (including testing and tele-medicine), vaccine development, occupational licensing, and more demonstrates how routine and commonly accepted government activity has dangerously hampered the private sector's ability to anticipate and react to the pandemic. (Unfortunately restrictions on the price system, specifically, anti-price-gouging laws, are still in force. Trump has reinforced this.) When this is all over we must not let society forget how government stood in the way. What grounds could possibly exist for reinstating those restrictions that threatened our lives during the pandemic? They and others should be permanently repealed.

Second, we ought to be showing people that markets work in emergencies and that we need them more than ever. When hand sanitizer (which was not in common use a few decades ago) ran short, distilleries started making it. Hanes turned from making underwear to making masks. I'm sure other examples could be found. What if the whiskey and underwear industries had been shut down as nonessential? No bureaucrat can know all of the "nonessential" production required to support "essential" production. F. A. Hayek's insights about the market solution to the ubiquitous "knowledge problem" are more important than ever.

Our very lives depend on entrepreneurship, which is alertness to overlooked opportunities to improve people's well-being by transforming scarce resources from a less-valued to a more-valued form. Profit is not the only thing that motivates entrepreneurship, particularly in emergencies, but we must not discount its vital role. Thus "people before profits" is a false dichotomy that has devastating consequences, especially for the most vulnerable. (Profits from rent-seeking, that is, government favoritism, is what we should condemn.) When markets are free, serving others is profitable. Thus Trump should not use the Defense Production Act to command manufacturing. The price system is a faithful guide to action that helps others. Let it work. A corollary: globalization, the kind that is unguided by governments, is good and is saving lives now. The welfare-enhancing division of labor is limited by the extent of the market, Adam Smith wrote.

Besides suppression of the coronavirus we need the production of wealth, but only savings and investment through markets can produce new wealth for everyone (as opposed to special interests only). Government produces only the illusion of wealth by conjuring up apparent purchasing power through money creation -- raising the price of what's already been produced -- and moving existing resources around -- inevitably creating fertile ground for cronyism, pork-barrelism, and electioneering -- while consuming a large share in the process. Everyone will pay a huge price for the government's promiscuous fiscal and monetary "stimulus" -- which could conceivably be far worse than the coronavirus.

To state the obvious, we must find the best balance of mitigation of the spread of the virus and economic activity, which itself is required to conquer the disease. We have no grounds for confidence that politicians and bureaucrats can find this balance. Decentralization, with many information-generating centers, is indispensable. And let's not forget that "the vulnerable" include not only the medically vulnerable but also the economically vulnerable. (Also see this.)

Unfortunately, American governments have shut down much market activity. (Strangely, "socialist" Sweden has not shuttered businesses and prohibited gatherings.) So what can we do now? I'm persuaded that mass testing would pave the way for the resumption of more or less normal market activities, for it would identify those who have the virus antibodies and thus constitute no danger to others. (See this and this.)

Third, advocates of liberty and respect for people should demand that the U.S. government end all economic sanctions against other countries. In normal times, economic warfare is crueler than cruel since it deprives blameless people -- not rulers -- of food, medicines, and other necessities. Can you imagine what sanctions are doing now?

Fourth, libertarians should demand that any government emergency spending ought to come first from the so-called national-security budget, which, if you count everything, comes to over a trillion dollars a year. Liquidating the empire should be the order of the day. It's always been bad for Americans' and other people's health.

Fifth, we libertarians must teach our fellow men and women about what Robert Higgs has named the "ratchet effect." This is the well-documented phenomenon that extraordinary, intrusive government measures adopted during a crisis do not go away entirely once the crisis ends. (For details, see Higgs's classic, Crisis and Leviathan: Critic Episodes in the Growth of American Government.) We can't let the extraordinary become ordinary.

Sixth and related, libertarians must help people to understand that measures adopted during a bona fide emergency are unacceptable in other circumstances. Politicians and bureaucrats might enjoy their expanded powers in a crisis and so might try to invoke them under more typical conditions -- but we cannot let the bar be lowered.

We must not let our society come to see restrictions on individual liberty as the new normal. This is an emergency, and we must not forget it.

TGIF: Might You Be a Libertarian?

If you're like most people, you don't go around killing or assaulting others. You probably would never think of torturing, raping, kidnapping, or confining your fellow men and women. I doubt if you'd think that stealing or vandalizing their belongings would be a good thing. And I'm sure you'd never dream of stopping people from pursuing their chosen occupations.
Taking this a step further, I'll also assume you wouldn't think these actions would be fine as long as you had the endorsement of a bunch of other people, specifically, if more people expressed approval of such an actions than disapproval.

Now if all that is true, guess what: you are on your way to being a libertarian. Don't retreat from it. No, embrace your inner libertarian. It's a good thing to be. We often hear about the need to respect, tolerate, and even love humanity. That's nice but abstract. Humanity consists of individual human beings. So when you begin to make the admonition about loving humanity concrete, you can't help but start with: 1) don't murder individuals; 2) don't hit or otherwise abuse individuals, and 3) don't touch individuals' stuff without asking. You may want to go beyond those rules -- we have much to gain from peaceful cooperation, importantly including trade of all kinds -- but that is the starting point, the bare minimum. Don't tell me you love humankind if you can't endorse those rock-bottom don'ts.

Why do most of us live by those prohibitions? Most likely it's because we have a sense that this is simply the right way to be. We realize that other people are essentially like ourselves, and so we should let live because we want to live. We can take different paths to this conclusion, but most of us get there. It's not difficult to figure out. Kids do it, even if they occasionally need guidance.
Unfortunately, when the matter of the government arises, suddenly a disconnect occurs -- which is strange because the government is just a group of people. It's not an entity but an institution, a group of people who relate to one another and to a larger population in an ongoing and more-or-less formally defined way.

But if a government is just people, we ought to expect the don'ts set out above to apply, no? Many people, alas, don't see this. (Government education is largely to blame.) They exempt from those rules anyone thought to be acting in an "official capacity." But why? And shouldn't the burden of proof be on those who advocate a double standard of morality, one for the ruled and another for the rulers?

Don't reply that democracy makes it all right. We've already seen that you and I wouldn't abuse someone else if we could muster the support of a lot of people. Why would the situation differ if people formally voted?

You may be thinking that "officials" can do things to other people that you and I may not do because government exists to protect us. Fair enough. Let's talk about defense, self and otherwise.
You may properly use proportional force against someone if necessary to protect yourself or other innocents against aggression. Not only that: you may hire others to protect you or band together with others for mutual defense and aid of other kinds. Nothing wrong with that.

But note: those whom you engage for such a purpose are still subject to the rules the rest of us follow. They may not, under the rubric of defense, commit offenses against innocent people. If they do, they ought to be treated as any of the rest of us would and should be.

Obviously, the individuals who comprise the government are not held to this standard. They routinely use force against people without even the pretense of protection of innocents. Take taxation. If you, having threatened or hurt no one, don't surrender the money the people who comprise the government demand, they will not take no for an answer. If you decline, they will send armed agents to seize your belongings and maybe even lock you up in a cage. Should you resist those armed agents, they may kill you with impunity for "resisting a lawful arrest."

You and I can't treat other people that way. Wherefore the double standard? Needless to say, the power to tax is the root of all other government power, which some people then grab to gain wealth that would be impossible to obtain through voluntary exchange.

Once you explicitly grasp the implicit rules you already live by, you are a long way toward being a libertarian. All that's left is for you to realize that those rules apply to everyone, even those who shroud themselves in the mantle and mystique of the state.

TGIF -- The Goal Is Freedom -- appears occasionally on Fridays.

TGIF: Spinoza – A Man for Our Troubled Times

In these interesting times, we all need someone to admire. I have found such a one in Benedict de Spinoza (1632-1677), the 17th-century rationalist liberal philosopher who advocated freedom of thought and expression, toleration, and simple kindness.

Read TGIF at The Libertarian Institute.

TGIF (The Goal Is Freedom) appears on Fridays. Sheldon Richman, author of America's Counter-Revolution: The Constitution Revisited, keeps the blog Free Association and is executive editor of The Libertarian Institute. He is also a senior fellow and chair of the trustees of the Center for a Stateless Society and a contributing editor at Antiwar.com.

Become a Free Association patron today!

TGIF: Trump and No Silver Lining

I confess I was indulging in wishful thinking when I thought I detected a silver lining to Donald Trump's election as president. That's what comes of being an optimist and a libertarian romantic. Beware apparent silver linings; they may be fool's gold instead.

Read TGIF at The Libertarian Institute.

TGIF (The Goal Is Freedom) appears on Fridays. Sheldon Richman, author of America's Counter-Revolution: The Constitution Revisited, keeps the blog Free Association and is executive editor of The Libertarian Institute. He is also a senior fellow and chair of the trustees of the Center for a Stateless Society and a contributing editor at Antiwar.com. Become a Free Association patron today!

TGIF: Liberty, Democracy, and the Right

I am mystified by the claim that the long-standing libertarian critique of democracy furnishes aid and comfort to conservatives who display a taste for populist authoritarianism. Let me say at the outset that the libertarian critique has nothing to offer those who would impose legal or social disabilities on racial, ethnic, religious, and other minorities. If white supremacists see something helpful here, they are mere opportunists who would find something helpful to their cause in anything they looked at.

Read TGIF at The Libertarian Institute.

TGIF (The Goal Is Freedom) appears on Fridays. Sheldon Richman, author of America's Counter-Revolution: The Constitution Revisited, keeps the blog Free Association and is executive editor of The Libertarian Institute. He is also a senior fellow and chair of the trustees of the Center for a Stateless Society and a contributing editor at Antiwar.com. Become a Free Association patron today!

TGIF: The Liberal Spirit and Its Opposite, Alt-Rightism

How ridiculous it is for Matt Lewis of The Daily Beast to write, “It seems observably true that libertarianism is disproportionately a gateway drug to the alt-right.”

To say the libertarian movement is a “gateway drug” is to say more than that some prominent members of the alt-right once called themselves libertarians. It’s also to say that alt-rightism provides a purer form of what those members had found in libertarianism (aka original liberalism, or simply liberalism).

Read TGIF at The Libertarian Institute.

TGIF (The Goal Is Freedom) appears on Fridays. Sheldon Richman, author of America's Counter-Revolution: The Constitution Revisited, keeps the blog Free Association and is executive editor of The Libertarian Institute. He is also a senior fellow and chair of the trustees of the Center for a Stateless Society and a contributing editor at Antiwar.com. Become a Free Association patron today!

TGIF: We Are the Economy They Want to Regulate

Critics of the libertarian philosophy think they can score points by calling libertarians “market fundamentalists.” It’s supposed to conjure images of dogmatic religious fundamentalists, just like the term global warming denier is supposed to conjure images of Holocaust deniers. It’s a smear, of course, and if you think the tactic discredits those who employ it, I agree.

The fact is that libertarians cannot be market fundamentalists. Why not? Because in the libertarian worldview, the market is not fundamental. What’s fundamental is every person’s right to be free from aggressive force. So fine, I’m a freedom fundamentalist. Guilty.

Read TGIF at The Libertarian Institute.

TGIF (The Goal Is Freedom) appears on Fridays. Sheldon Richman, author of America's Counter-Revolution: The Constitution Revisited, keeps the blog Free Association and is executive editor of The Libertarian Institute. He is also a senior fellow and chair of the trustees of the Center for a Stateless Society and a contributing editor at Antiwar.com. Become a Free Association patron today!