Book:Achieving Freedom

Achieving Freedom is a book by Stefan Molyneux. It was preceded by Everyday Anarchy and Practical Anarchy. Only the first part of the book has been released so far.

How (Not) To Achieve Freedom

Before we start talking about how to achieve a stateless society, I think that it is important to spend some time talking about how not to achieve a stateless society.

For the past several hundred years – really since the late eighteenth century – intellectuals, priests, philosophers, academics, and activists of every stripe and hue have been striving with all their considerable intellectual and moral might to place theoretical and practical limits upon the power of the state.

The original American experiment was at least intellectually founded upon the ideal of creating a government by and for the people, with the express knowledge that the state was a dangerous servant and a terrible master.

It is hard to think of other examples in history where so many checks and balances were placed upon centralised political power – and it is also impossible to think of a more dangerous and powerful government than the modern American leviathan.

The abysmal failure of such a noble experiment should give all moralists pause.

If the smallest possible government has grown into the largest conceivable government – within a few hundred years – it is hard to imagine what kind of theoretical system could conceivably control state growth in the future.

Triple Treat

Traditionally, three approaches have been taken to reducing the power and size of the state. The first is political action, the second is academic education, the third is religious partnership.

Political Action

This approach takes as its fundamental axiom the idea that if the general citizens were educated enough, motivated enough, and insistent enough, then the natural democratic process would shrink the size and power of the state. Candidates such as Ron Paul would gain enough of a popular mandate to stride into Washington, wrestle the entrenched special interest groups, flush out the sewage of accumulated corruption, and take back the government for the people!

To this end, libertarians of all persuasions have either directly participated in or supported the pursuit of political action, usually from a grass-roots level. The political process is considered either to be a practical way of gaining – and thus diminishing – political power, or at the very least a “bully pulpit” from which to communicate to a wider audience the libertarian ideals of small government.

Academic Education

This second approach – often allied with the political approach – is based on the belief that if knowledge about the efficiency and virtue of the free market can be researched, peer-reviewed, published, and communicated clearly and widely enough, the general population will forsake their desire for statist solutions to complex social problems in favour of voluntary and free market solutions. In a similar manner to the political approach, the growth in state power is perceived to result from a deficiency in knowledge among the general population about the free market – just as the political approach assumes that state power increases as a result of a deficiency of political knowledge among the general population, such as a detailed understanding of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Federalist Papers, and so on.

Religious Partnership

At the true heart of the libertarian movement, however, sits a well-worn altar. Religious faith is the very bedrock of the anti-government movement – in particular, the anti-Federal movement. Ron Paul is a fundamentalist Christian who rejects evolution, the Mises Institute is specifically Catholic, Bob Barr is also a fundamentalist Christian...

It is not exactly that the libertarian movement is populated by fundamentalists, but rather that libertarianism can be considered an off-shoot of Christian fundamentalism.

Follow The...

What these three approaches have in common, of course, is money. Political activism raises tens of millions of dollars in an election cycle – while free-market academic economists take home an income in the six figures, along with tenure, months off in the summer, plenty of travel, and extended sabbatical leaves.

However, the real money in libertarian circles comes from religion. Religious organisations raise billions of dollars a year, and are happy to spend that money funding compatible causes. Americans gave an estimated ninety-three billion dollars to religious organisations in 2005. A large proportion of that money is dedicated to the pursuit of religious goals – one of which is the shrinking of the Federal government through libertarian activism.

The only way that this money can be gotten a hold of is through the perception – well reinforced by libertarians – that not only are these three approaches effective in reducing the power of the state, but they are in fact the most effective approaches.

The Track Record

It hardly seems premature to compare the goals of libertarianism to its actual achievements. This scarcely violates the basic principles of libertarianism, as it claims to be a logical and empirical approach to determining truth and value in the world.

One of the central libertarian arguments against statist solutions is that they promise endless benefits, but deliver endless disasters. “Look at the welfare state!” libertarians pontificate. “It promised to reduce poverty, but since it has been instituted, poverty has only gotten worse!”

Similarly, libertarians say, governments claim to protect their citizens, while in fact continually attacking their persons and property.

Thus libertarianism rejects theoretical proclamations in favour of tangible, real world empirical evidence.

To be sure, this is not the only criticism that libertarians level toward statism – what I call the argument from effect – they also use the argument from morality, rightly condemning the use of force by the state to achieve its ends.

However, since an enormous amount of libertarian literature exists criticising the “law of unintended consequences,” or the ill effects of state power – the ever-growing gap between what is promised and what is achieved – I think it is more than fair to take the criticisms that libertarianism applies so liberally to everything else and apply them to libertarianism itself.

Achieving Goals

Libertarianism does not present itself as a philosophy or activist approach that is designed to merely slow down the potential growth of the state. Libertarianism has as its stated goal the reduction of the size and power of the state.

The formal modern political libertarian movement was founded in the early 1970s – but we can go a lot further back in terms of anti-state activism. In the late eighteenth century Adam Smith argued strenuously against tariffs, the manipulation of currency, and the interference in trade that was a staple of the government programs of the day.

In the nineteenth century, we saw the rise of classical liberalism, which was even more assertive in its goal and expectation of reducing the size and power of the state.

Starting in the 1920s, Ludwig von Mises wrote powerful tracts against socialism, and was the first to detail the calculation problem, which is that socialist economies inevitably fail to optimise because the absence of the free market mechanism of price always results in disastrous errors in resource allocations.

In the 1950s and 1960s, libertarianism received significant boosts on the academic, political, and artistic fronts through the rising popularity of several star economists such as Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek, politicians such as Barry Goldwater – as well as through the novels of Ayn Rand, which introduced millions of people to the philosophy of liberty.

On the fringes, Murray Rothbard published important academic works on the causes of the Great Depression, thundered powerfully against the irrationalities and predations of state power, experimented with various political alliances with leftists, and spearheaded the examination of how a modern society could function in the complete absence of the state.

The rise of the Chicago School of economics provided a significant academic boost to our theoretical understanding of how free markets work, and why they are so effective.

Tens of millions of people have devoted staggering amounts of time, money, and energy to the goal of reducing state power. This goal has been pursued for hundreds of years, has burned through hundreds of millions of dollars, and has received significant intellectual support from religious leaders, academics, and popular writers.

What has been the net result of centuries of strenuous effort to reduce the size and power of the state?

The largest and most powerful governments in the history of mankind.

Is it entirely unfair to take the charges that libertarians hurl at statist bureaucracies, and turn them against the effectiveness of libertarianism itself?

If a statist bureaucracy should be roundly and endlessly condemned for achieving the exact opposite of its stated goals – and refusing to change its approach despite that basic reality – can we not reasonably level that same charge at libertarianism as well?

The age of the modern welfare state can be measured in decades – the history of libertarianism goes back centuries – and yet libertarians condemn the welfare state for failing to achieve its goals, while creating endless excuses for their own failures.

Show Me The Money

Libertarians also condemn the state for using moral principles as a mere cover for base money-grubbing. “The government says that it wants to help the poor, but really it just wants to increase your taxes!” The use of ethical arguments to bamboozle money out of the gullible is considered a vile crime by libertarians – yet their consistent failure to achieve anything even remotely close to their stated objectives is not considered cause enough to rethink their three basic approaches.

As I will show in this book, rethinking our approach to achieving a stateless society will necessarily harm the direct financial and career interests of those who currently profit from the unholy trinity of libertarian addictions – politics, academics, and religion.

Free market economists constantly tell us that people respond to incentives. Whatever you subsidise increases – and whatever you tax decreases. Libertarians also tell us that statist bureaucracies will never solve the problems they are created to solve, because if the welfare state were to actually eliminate poverty, it would have to disband, throwing everyone within it out of work. It is to the advantage of the welfare state, libertarians and economists tell us, to actually increase the numbers of poor people, since that results in increased funding for anti-poverty programs.

It is interesting to note that these esteemed thinkers do not say that everyone except libertarians responds to incentives – thus we can reasonably assume that libertarian organisations are subject to the same economic principles as every other group. If the funding of libertarian groups increases as the size of the state increases, then we can reasonably assume that those who run libertarian groups are actually being paid to increase the size of the state – just as the heads of welfare agencies are paid to increase the numbers of the poor.

I understand and accept that these are not conscious motives – any more than some welfare czar wakes up every morning, rubs his well-oiled moustache, and giggles with glee at the reality that creating more poor people expands his political empire. It is not through the malevolence or bad intent of any particular individuals that such things come to pass, but rather it is an inevitable law of economics, since people respond to incentives.

I do not speak theoretically here – without a doubt, the largest political campaign in libertarian history was the Ron Paul candidacy, which raised over twenty million dollars, at a time when the growth of state power was considered the most dangerous. As the size and power of the state grows, so does the money and attention rolling into libertarianism.

Perhaps you feel that this charge is unreasonable, or even shocking?

Perhaps. However, there is a simple empirical test.

Libertarians would be able to easily destroy any charge of corruption by simply and honestly reviewing and examining their catastrophic failures over the past few decades – let alone the past few centuries. Sadly, however, not only is such self-criticism and self-examination not part of the movement – it is actively avoided and attacked if it ever dares to raise its head.

If libertarians genuinely believe that they themselves are immune to financial incentives, then they are saying that they are excluded from a founding principle of economics. If libertarians can pursue their primary goal in opposition to economic incentives, then surely this would be possible for statist bureaucracies as well. If those who inhabit statist bureaucracies always follow their economic incentives, then surely that same law must apply to libertarians as well.

When an organisation consistently achieves the exact opposite of its stated goals, refuses to examine or change its strategy, continually takes in more money the worse things get, and attacks anyone who questions its fundamental approaches, then by any reasonable standard that organisation has become irredeemably corrupt, and must be abandoned by the sane and rational – or at least those to whom the reduction of state power is a real goal, and not just a bait for income.

Reasonable Alternatives

I have always believed that it is not particularly productive to criticise without providing an alternative. I have never wanted to be an “armchair quarterback” who complains about the decisions and actions of others, and yet remains unwilling to rouse themselves to create a reasonable solution.

I have strong opinions about how we can truly begin to build a road to a better and freer future – but first I know that the political, academic, and religious addictions of libertarianism must be shed in order for us to begin down that road.

You have to clear the rubble before building anew.

Unreasonable Compromises

Libertarianism claims to be a true, rational, and empirical discipline. “We should oppose state power, and believe in the virtue and efficacy of the free market not as articles of faith,” sayeth the libertarians, “but because these tenets have been proven both theoretically and empirically.”

As an empirical discipline, libertarianism fully recognises the reality that theory must bow to evidence. Material facts trump theoretical perfection.

It is strange – and generally seems almost inevitable – that empirical disciplines, particularly in the social sciences, seem to be virulently opposed to their own standards. Libertarians say that socialism is illogical in theory, and disastrous in practice – and also preach that anything which is disastrous in practice must by definition be illogical in theory as well. In other words, it is equally valid to predict disastrous consequences by proving that a theory is illogical – as well as to derive the illogic of a theory by starting with its disastrous consequences.

It is not unreasonable to apply the term “disastrous consequences” to a movement that has not only failed to achieve its stated goals over several centuries, but has watched the exact opposite of its stated goals come to pass, despite a titanic expenditure of labour, money, and time. If the illogic of socialism can at least in part be proven by the disasters of its application, then surely we must admit the possibility that there might be something wrong with libertarian tactics – the approaches of politics, academics, and religiosity.

Politics

As any entrepreneur knows, the great temptation when wooing potential investors is the desire to over-promise results. In my own business career, I was constantly fighting to ensure that the information that we presented to potential investors was a reasonable appraisal of our capacities and prospects, while other executives sometimes seemed more prone to the temptation of inflating expectations.

Entrepreneurs who over-promise almost always end up under-delivering relative to the expectations of investors. The sleazy fall-back position when this inevitably occurs is to mumble something about “market positioning,” and say that the money was spent not in the generation of immediate profit, but rather in the general “education” of the potential market about the value of the product and/or the company. However, when investors press the entrepreneurs to provide evidence of this “market education,” only vague generalities and baseless assumptions can be heard.

In the recent Ron Paul campaign, two general arguments were used to get as much money as possible out of potential donators, which followed the same sleazy pattern described above.

Success!

When potential donators were contacted, it was with the promise that their donations would pave the way to potential electoral success. Various scenarios were put forward as to how Ron Paul could gain the presidency.

Market Positioning!

When the practical impossibility of this was pointed out, the fall-back position was that the Ron Paul candidacy was effective because of its opportunity to educate the general public. There is no podium like a presidential race, it was said, and no better way to get libertarian messages across in the general media.

No Testing!

Libertarians constantly criticise state agencies for failing to create predictable tests for success, to track progress, and to produce measurable results. If the goal of the Ron Paul candidacy was to get him elected to the White House, then that goal utterly failed. Short of spontaneous combustion, a worse failure could not be imagined.

If, however, the goal was to educate people to a greater understanding and appreciation of libertarian ideas and ideals, then we have absolutely no way of knowing whether or not this goal was achieved, because no “before and after” surveys were conducted.

It would be relatively easy – and inexpensive – to set up phone interviews with randomly-selected American voters before and after the campaign, to figure out how their general perception of libertarian ideals changed as a result of the Ron Paul candidacy.

This was never done – by a group that endlessly attacks the government for its “lack of accountability.”

Of course, endless anecdotal “evidence” is trotted out to “prove” that the candidacy resulted in an increase in the number of libertarian devotees, but that means about as much to a sceptic as a government commercial “proving” the virtue of the welfare state by talking to some people who have benefited from its largesse, and interviewing a department head.

Libertarians – particularly those enamoured by free-market economics – constantly talk about the need to keep our focus on the “hidden costs” rather than the “visible benefits.” If the government promotes a job creation program by showing a number of happy workers talking about how they got jobs through this program, the first thing that the libertarian will do is loudly proclaim that we should really focus on the many jobs that were lost as a result of increased taxation, rather than the few jobs that were created by the government program!

In exactly the same situation, when the silly anecdotes about Ron Paul “converts” are trotted out, and a reasonable person mentions that we should also think about the number of people who were turned off libertarianism by Ron Paul – by his religious fundamentalism, his opposition to evolution, his hostility towards and desire to deport “illegal immigrants” – well, suddenly the entire principle is reversed, and no, we must focus entirely on the positive anecdotes, not the negative possibilities!

It is truly, truly sad – but also inevitable, when dogmatic assertions are substituted for reason and evidence.

It is also inevitably the case that when people are afraid that they have failed, they tend to resist testing. Libertarians constantly rail against the fact that public schools refuse to submit to objective measures of success – and then, when someone suggests that they should measure the objective success that is claimed for the educational power of the Ron Paul candidacy, well, that is absolutely wrong, and a waste of resources, and not to be allowed!

Academia

Truly the strangest beast in the libertarian landscape is the free-market academic – the person who endlessly praises the ethics and quality of the free market, while themselves staying as far as humanly possible away from it!

Such a creature will always tell you that they have joined academia – despite its entirely statist and unionised nature – because they want to help the world achieve freedom by preaching free-market economics to impressionable students.

“Someone has to teach these kids about economics, and it is better for an Austrian economist to hold the position rather than some hideous statist or Keynesian. At least when I am up on the podium, these kids get exposed to some free-market ideas, which they can then further study, discuss, and understand on their own for the rest of their lives. Also, some of the kids that I teach will end up going on to become economics professors themselves, which will further spread free-market ideas to other impressionable youngsters. And so, the world will become freer over time...”

This compelling fairytale is exactly the kind of self-serving propaganda that you would expect coming out of the head of any government agency.

Why is this position so ludicrous?

This argument rests on the belief that great good can be achieved from within the bowels of corrupt privilege. The position of “professor” can only be obtained by joining a state-sanctioned and state-protected union, an enforced monopoly with high and violent barriers to entry. The university system itself is highly subsidised by the state – a less free-market environment can scarcely be conceived outside of pure communism.

If a free-market economist can achieve great virtue and do wonderfully good deeds despite being embedded in a violent and corrupt environment, then surely the same can occur in any government agency, or any state-enforced or state-subsidised monopoly. Violence and corruption can lead to great good, if only the right people can be put in place – is that not the fundamental delusion of statism?

Free-market economists dislike statist monopolies because they are immune from market forces, which they claim results in poor quality, shoddy service, endless inefficiencies, and the wholesale destruction of physical and intellectual capital. Also, because such a monopoly does not rely on its customers for its income, but rather upon its political connections, economists recognise that its real “customers” are not the end consumers of its products or services, but rather the political masters who control its fate.

Since free-market economists do not gain their salaries from their students, but rather from the approval of other academics, bureaucrats and politicians, we can assume that the universal principles that they apply to other statist monopolies also apply to their own. In accordance with their own free-market principles, an academic economist dooms themselves to a life of pitiful quality, shoddy service, endless inefficiencies, and the wholesale destruction of intellectual capital – in this case, the tender and trusting minds of their students.

If this rule does not apply to themselves – if they can provide quality and do good despite their coercive monopoly – then they have no right to criticise other coercive monopolies, but rather should abandon such principled objections, and say that such systems can work beautifully, if only they can be populated by the “right” people. In other words, it is not the system itself that they are criticising, but rather the inhabitants of that system – thus falling prey to the endless delusion that some people are immune to the economic absolute of responding to incentives, and so it is those people who can productively use the power of the state to benefit the world.

Actions Versus Words

It has been my strong and direct experience that people do not in fact judge what you say, but rather what you do. Ninety percent of communication is non-verbal.

What is your average uninformed student to make of their free-market economist professor? Let us call this tender student “Bob,” and his professor “Doug.”

When Doug endlessly expounds upon the evils and inefficiencies of statist monopolies, what is Bob to think? Is Doug saying that he, Doug, is both evil and inefficient? If Doug is not evil and inefficient, then statist monopolies cannot by definition be evil and inefficient, since Doug belongs to one.

What about when Doug talks about the loss of quality that arises from artificial and violent barriers to competition in trade and services? Does not Doug’s state-protected union at least imply an artificial and coercive barrier to competition? Does that mean that Doug’s teaching is of a pitiful quality, as a result of these barriers to competition?

When Doug praises the efficiencies and virtues of the free-market, what is Bob to make of these assertions? Would he not feel similar to how he would feel if one of his professors endlessly praised the virtues of tolerance and multiculturalism, and then withdrew in the evening to a gated community where minorities were not allowed?

Even more fundamentally – and importantly – what does Bob really think will happen if he brings these perfectly valid and sensible questions to the attention of Professor Doug? If the criticisms that our friend the free-market academic brings to bear on others can be even more directly applied to himself – since he claims to possess such great knowledge about these matters – what will happen if Bob persists in applying the same criticisms to Professor Doug?

All students who are not functionally retarded understand exactly what will happen if this matter is pressed. The pettiness and vitriol of these foolish professors will erupt like a vicious and acidic geyser. Professors are widely considered to be touchy, superior, evasive – and emotionally volatile, as are all fundamental hypocrites.

Academic Voluntarism

Free-market academics will often say that they did not invent the system they are forced to inhabit in order to teach economics. This is true, of course, but it is hard to see the relevance of this obvious fact. First of all, the same argument could be made for every single other special interest group that free-market academics oppose.

Secondly, the whole point of a peaceful revolution of ideas is to teach people to voluntarily forgo the evil material advantages of state power. Academics have all the power that they need to overturn their own unjust privileges – they merely have to get together and decide to voluntarily cancel all of their own statist contracts with the universities.

If this turns out to be impossible, or impractical, then all that these free-market voluntarists have to do is go on strike until the universities cancel those contracts for them.

If we see those who most love and understand the free market recoil from giving up their unjust government privileges, then we can at last understand that education alone breeds neither virtue nor integrity – but, almost inevitably, stimulates only the corrosive spectacle of pompous hypocrisy.

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

When a someone screams at their child, “Never scream at others!” they are in fact giving good advice, but are utterly discrediting that advice through their own actions.

When libertarian academics say that they are largely driven by the motive to teach the principles of freedom to their students, it is reasonable to ask two questions:

• Are they in fact communicating the value of freedom?
• What is the evidence that decades or centuries of using statist institutions to teach people about the free market has increased society’s respect as a whole for the free market?

There is no more subtle and powerful way to discredit an idea than to teach its value in theory while rejecting it in practice. This “credibility gap” is easy to see in politicians, who sometimes rail against homosexuality while cruising for gay sex in airport bathrooms. Can you imagine receiving a lecture on the evils of gay marriage from a married gay couple? Would this not be a form of absurdity rather than education?

Even if we consider it somehow reasonable for pro-market academics to teach the virtues and efficiencies of open competition while hiding behind the black walls of state privilege, should this not be a topic that they openly address up front? If a gay married couple lectures you about the evils of gay marriage without even mentioning the completely obvious fact that they are both gay and married – would this not be baffling and annoying beyond words?

You may have heard the old saying, “I cannot hear what you are saying over what you are doing” – and it is hard to imagine a situation it applies to more than state-protected academics teaching students about the evils of state protection, and the endless moral and practical values of the voluntary free-market.

The Price Of Academics

Economics is all about empirical measurement and rational theorising – primarily, it is about the empirical measurement of price, as reflected in voluntary transactions.

Since free-market economists base the value of their field on the primacy of empirical measurement, it is hard to understand why studies of students who have taken economics courses regularly show that they actually do worse on economics questions a year after their course than people who have never taken a course on economics.

An economist bases his professional credibility on avoiding arbitrary claims, and building his theories from empirical evidence.

When free-market economists constantly trumpet their own wonderful abilities to teach students about the value and virtue of the free-market, it is hard to understand why studies prove the exact opposite. I do not have a problem with people making baseless claims, as long as they are willing to at least look for the evidence to support those claims – even after the fact. Economists have been saying for decades that they enter into academia in order to teach students the value of the free-market. However, I have never seen one study – credible or otherwise – which even remotely supports this claim.

Once again, we see arbitrary, self-congratulatory assertions combined with a relentless avoidance of proof. Priests will tell you that prayer works, but will endlessly evade and reject scientific proof to the contrary. Libertarians will endlessly tell you that political action works, but will endlessly evade and reject empirical proof to the contrary.

Free-market academics will tirelessly repeat the mantra that they effectively teach students about the virtue and value of the free-market – yet no libertarian academic study has ever been performed to discover whether this is, or is not, the case.

Free-market economists will study the most arcane and ridiculous subjects – yet mysteriously avoid testing the efficacy of the claims they make about their own profession. They rail against politicians who make wild claims that are unsupported by empirical tests – and then, they tell us that they effectively teach the virtue and value of the free-market, and study every conceivable topic under the sun except the validity of that claim.

Empirically, free-market economists do not effectively teach people about the free-market – in fact, empirically, quite the opposite is true. They actually teach people that free-market values are irrelevant, because they do not live what they preach.

All free-market economists fundamentally teach students is that only hypocrites are drawn to promoting the free-market. Like the gay married couple who tour the country railing against gay marriage, all they do is confuse, frustrate, and alienate those with the misfortune to hear their speeches.

Kiss The Ring

Libertarians – and free-market economists – roundly condemn politicians for handing out gifts that are not theirs to give. When a politician “grants” a subsidy to a corporation, these lovers of the free-market are very quick to point out that the money is not the politician’s to “give,” since it has been taken from the taxpayer through the threat of violence. We all fully recognise the degree to which those who flock around politicians with the hope of gaining some illicit goodies flatter the vanity and pomposity of those politicians in order to gain their favour.

Ahhh, but how things change when the free-market economist is the one with the gifts to give!

People generally go beyond introductory courses on economics because they want to become professional economists – and many of them want to become professors.

If Bob wants to become an academic professor, he knows the degree to which people have to flatter, bow, and scrape before Professor Doug – since without a “mentor,” he will be unable to make his way up through the ranks toward the Holy Grail of tenure. Bob will have to get research assignments, good grades, recommendations, TA positions – all of the goodies that professors can bestow upon “worthwhile” students.

Someone who is given an unjust privilege very quickly begins to mistake that privilege for their own virtue. Politicians, kings, and bureaucrats are all surrounded by flatterers, toadies, and hangers on – all clamouring to grab a wet meal from the bloody buffet of state power.

And what a tasty meal academia is! Six figure salaries, no shortage of time off, a dozen or so hours of classes a week is considered overtime, it is almost impossible to get fired – it is a wonderfully sweet deal for those who can get a hold of it, assuming that they do not mind selling their souls for the privilege of feeding their bodies.

The reason that professors have any power over their students is because those professors hold the key to a golden door – a key that is not given to them voluntarily, based upon the quality of their teaching as judged by their students, but rather because they have weaselled and toadied their own way up the slick rope of unjust privilege.

Free-market academics hold this unjust and bloody privilege in their hands, and dole it out to the meek, eager, and compliant – spurning and rejecting the strong, the sceptical, and the critical. They thunder their criticisms at politicians for handing out their unjust privileges to a grasping and greedy crowd – and then turn and lord it over their own students, imagining that it is they themselves who are so valuable, rather than the unjust privileges that they can bestow upon those who suitably abase themselves.

For free-market economists, you see – just like everybody else – the trials, stresses, and joys of the free market are always and forever for others – not for those who praise the free market while hiding in the statist monopolies of their ivory towers – but for everyone else, who really should use the productivity of the free market to generate the wealth that can be unjustly “appropriated” by free-market economists.

Freedomain Radio

It could be argued that becoming an elite educator was at least to some degree very hard to achieve prior to the Internet. Free market economists could not teach in high schools, since there were few if any classes on economics – and it would be very hard to set up a school of economics and try to get paid by offering voluntary lessons to those who were interested.

Free-market economists like to think that people sign up for their classes and submit to their evaluations, because those people love economics, knowledge, and their way of teaching – rather than because they are hoping to use them to gain their way up another rung on the ladder to the riches of tenure. Since these free-market economists love to preach that entrepreneurs should submit their goods and services to the iron discipline of the free market – that value cannot be ascertained in the absence of price, and price cannot be ascertained in the presence of a coercive monopoly – then surely these economists should be eager to learn their true value in the free market.

Since professorial tenure is the unjust privilege of a statist monopoly, it cannot fundamentally be a potential value that an economics professor brings to their students – if this is the case, we must call politicians brilliant entrepreneurs for having so much money to “invest” in businesses.

An economist who truly believes that they are worth their six figure income, short work week, and months off in the summer should be eager to submit their theory to the free market – especially since they insist that everyone else should do just that! When a state monopoly is facing privatisation and open competition in the free market, they applaud such a transition, because it will bring efficiency and reduce coercion – and will thus create much greater value. They tell people who tremble before such a precipice that they should be eager to leap off it to a better, more productive, and more efficient environment. “You will be happier!” they cry. “These transitions are difficult, but they are the inevitable progress of the free-market, the creative destruction inherent to capitalism – and you should be eager and happy despite your fears!”

Well, fortunately, I myself have proven that you can stimulate people’s interest in higher education without holding aloft the false and unjust prizes of marks, reference letters, and tenure!

I have gotten tens of thousands of people interested in philosophy, economics, art, religion, and psychology – and I cannot offer them any career advancement (or even tax receipts)! I cannot offer them a degree, or tenure, or anything else of that sort! In fact, some of the ideas that I talk about can be actively uncomfortable for people, since I aim to take philosophy out of the ivory tower and put it into action in people’s lives, which can be enormously difficult.

So – free-market economists who believe that voluntarism is a virtue, and monopoly is an evil – I invite you to join me on the Wild West of the Internet, the ultimate capitalist frontier! Take your theories out of the tower and let them loose in the streets! Preach from home, preach to your computer, speak your truths to a hungry and waiting world – light up people’s minds with your passion, your knowledge, your wisdom, and your virtue!

It is a simple thing to accomplish. All you have to do is resign from your unjust privilege, and submit the quality of your teaching to the test of the free market you so admire and praise! It costs only a few dollars a month to set up a website and charge people for your lessons. Without the ability to hand out stolen goodies, you will finally see the true value of what it is that you are doing – in the free market, which you say is the sole final arbiter of real value!

You can charge students what they are paying you now – maybe thirty dollars or so for a forty-five minute lesson. It is cheap to set up a payment scheme over the Internet – I will help you for free, all you have to do is contact me through my website. Instead of reaching a few dozen students, over the Internet you can reach thousands, tens of thousands – or more! If you really want to spread the word of the free market to others, and if you are genuinely worth six figures a year for teaching a few dozen students, then imagine how many millions of dollars you can make by teaching tens of thousands of students! Furthermore – now, your lectures evaporate into thin air like water in a desert – with the Internet, your lectures can exist in perpetuity, and people can pay you for lectures that you did last week, last month, or last year!

You can reach tens of thousands of listeners (I have had millions of pod-casts and videos downloaded in a little over two years). Thousands of listeners interested in philosophy talk to each other on the Freedomain Radio board and live chat window. I started the website with virtually nothing, and it cost me maybe fifty dollars a month to begin with – if you charge thirty dollars a lecture, which is what you are charging now, you will be able to make back those monthly costs with less than two students in one class!

When you talk to other people who are nervous about the free market, you always tell them that although the transitions can be difficult, great happiness and productivity lie on the other side of privatisation. When the Soviet Union was going through its wrenching free-market transition, many academic economists went over there, or wrote articles, proclaiming the virtue in struggling through this transition in order to achieve the efficiency and productivity of the free market on the other side.

Academics – free-market academics – surely you understand that it is now time to take your own advice. Surely you have the integrity to live by the standards that you inflict on others. Surely you have not preached a false doctrine for your entire career. Surely you have not “pooh-poohed” other people’s fears of submitting themselves to the discipline of the free-market – only to surrender to your own fears of submitting yourself, your value, to the free market. Surely you have not trumpeted so loudly from the top of your ivory tower that the transition to freedom and voluntarism is a noble goal, and then when such noble action is offered to you, slither down to hide in the bosom of state monopoly protection.

So – this is my encouragement, if, as you say, you really care about transmitting the virtue and value of the free market to impressionable youngsters. You do not want to be the foolish spectacle of the man who says, in matters of extreme importance, “Do as I say, not as I do!” We all recognise that such inveterate hypocrites have been the scourge of society since its inception. You do not want to practice the opposite of the virtues you preach. We have all seen such big-haired monstrosities on the pre-dawn television evangelical hour – you do not want to inhabit such polyester hypocrisy.

No, although it is frightening, as you have constantly pointed out to others, it is a great virtue and a great service to step out of statist protection and submit your goods and services to the discipline of the free-market.

I have paved the way for you, at least. I left a successful entrepreneurial career, and a salary of one hundred sixty thousand dollars a year, to build Freedomain Radio, which was at the time making less than thirty-five thousand a year. And I can tell you that you are completely right – the transition to an even freer market, while difficult, is entirely rewarding.

I listened to your advice.

Will you do the same?

If you genuinely believe that you are worth twenty or thirty dollars an hour per student, then you should leap at the chance to garner your wages from a far wider audience – because people respond to incentives, as you have constantly told us.

If, however, you reject the free market in practice, in your life, and cling to your unjust statist privileges, your oh-so-light work week, your months off in the summer, your paid travel to exotic conferences, your pension, your job security, your unjust prestige – if you tremble to take the medicine you prescribe to others, though you suffer from exactly the same disease, then by all means, sit where you are, enshrined and entombed in your ivory tower – but can you do the rest of us, those of us who are actually trying to educate people in the free market you praise – can you do the rest of us a small favour? Please – shut up about the free market.

You are an embarrassment.

The Contradiction Of Academia

The academic approach to libertarianism is founded on the premise that if people know enough about the free market, they will reject statist solutions and pursue free market solutions.

The very existence of free-market academics utterly destroys this premise. We can assume that such academics know the most about the free market – and yet they explicitly reject free market solutions to the problem of higher education!

If someone who has spent most of their life studying the free market wants no part of it when it comes to their own career, then the argument that increased knowledge leads to a desire for more freedom is proven false.

Religious Affiliations

If you want to sail from a city on one continent to a city on another continent, and your course is initially off by only one or two degrees, you may end up not just in the wrong city, but on the wrong continent!

The grand ethics, great strategies, and life arcs of any organisation – or any individual, for that matter – are all determined by the little decisions made at the very beginning of things. It is possible to break free of the fate of prior decisions, but it is a hellish and humbling process.

Modern political libertarianism is almost exclusively a US phenomenon, and the reason is that since its inception, it has been tightly wed to – and dependent upon – the financial support of fundamentalist Christian religious organisations. The United States is the most religious Western democracy – and since libertarianism is an offshoot of fundamentalist Christianity, it is only in the United States that libertarianism has gained any prominence at all.

This was neither innate nor inevitable to libertarianism. Some of the greatest “libertarians” in history have been agnostics, Deists, or outright atheists. Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, Thomas Paine, George Washington – most of the Founding Fathers were scarcely even Christian, let alone “born again” or fundamentalists. Ayn Rand – the writer who brought millions of people to libertarianism – was a strong atheist, as was Murray Rothbard.

However, the great challenge of activism is money. New ideas in particular have trouble gaining financial traction, for the obvious reason that they do not serve anyone’s existing agenda.

People give money to intellectual activists because they agree with the goals of those activists. When libertarianism began, who was it going to get its money from? It did not have the income of an Ayn Rand, or the inheritance of a Rockefeller, and a group of professors do not have the capital to found a sizable political movement.

Fundamentalist Christians believe that the government should be limited because there is no authority but God – the synergy between Christianity and libertarianism in this regard was a terrible temptation, because Christians have a lot of money, which is exactly what libertarianism needed to get its start.

Fellow Travellers

The temptation to join together with groups whose philosophy is oppositional, but whose goals are similar, is an idiotic pit that philosophical movements seem forever willing to pitch themselves into. In other sciences, we can easily see the foolishness of this approach. A scientific agricultural expert would scarcely benefit from “joining forces” with a Native American rain dancer, although both claim to have the goal of producing better crops. Would we counsel an oncologist to join up with a witch doctor, since both have the “goal” of healing people?

Such advice seems ridiculous, of course, but what if the witch doctors have all the money?

If you have a new idea, you can either attempt to merge it with existing ideas – thus compromising it, but gaining easy momentum – or you can attempt to carve out a new market for your idea. Those who are impatient for “results” will always choose the former; those who are dedicated to the truth at all costs will always choose the latter.

Libertarians were enormously impatient – and we can all surely understand this impatience – and so did not want to take the long, slow, and hard road of carving out a new market for a rational philosophy, but rather took the easy “catapult off a cliff” by joining together with the superstitious irrationality – and deep purse – of Christianity. In so doing, they subverted the movement completely, turning it into just another special interest group.

Premises And Conclusions

People are emotionally drawn to conclusions, but intellectual integrity must draw us toward reasoning from first principles. Everyone is drawn to the moral conclusion that “murder is wrong,” because we feel so instinctively that it must be the case. Intellectual integrity demands, however, that we attempt to derive this ethical conclusion from first principles and rational arguments. To take an extreme example, if the wind blows some sand dunes into the shape of the equation “e=mc2,” we do not grant it a degree in physics. If we imagine an athlete who plays for a team called the “Atoms,” who is asked what matter is composed of – but who mishears the question as “what team do you play for?” – he will reply with the correct syllables, but in no way will have the correct answer.

Libertarians – and other thinkers of course – rightly deride the public-school practice of “teaching the test,” because the regurgitation of rote answers is worse than mere ignorance, since it provides the illusion of knowledge which does not in fact exist. If a teacher instructs her students to write the symbol “4” to the right of the symbols “2+2=” we would not perceive her as having taught the children any knowledge or principles at all.

In the same way, the statement “a smaller state is better” does not indicate any particular knowledge at all, since it is a mere conclusion, rather than an argument from first principles.

In general, if you can teach a parrot to say it, it cannot be considered knowledge.

Coming to the conclusion that matter is composed of atoms as a result of rigorous scientific experiments represents the acquisition of valid knowledge about reality. Blankly stating that matter is composed of atoms because God says so only represents bigoted superstition, and is worse than professing genuine ignorance, since the illusion of an answer almost inevitably prevents further exploration of the question. When a new, fledgling movement is struggling to gain momentum the temptation to merge with an enormous, well-funded, and well-established movement can be overwhelming. The desire to make a “big splash” and quickly add to one’s numbers and income seems like a perfectly sensible strategy at the time. In a similar manner, a man with a toothache may well think that heroin is the answer – and in a way, with regards to his immediate pain, it certainly is! Unfortunately, the heroin only masks his discomfort, while allowing the rot in his body to fester. Sadly, by the time he realises that his drug addiction – while it masked his symptoms in the short run – has only added to the disease he was originally trying to combat, he is very likely in “too deep” to stop his compulsive behaviour.

For any cause, money – and its attendant power – can be just such a drug.

Libertarianism claims to be an empirical and rational discipline – the metaphysical and epistemological opposite of any religion, and in particular of fundamentalist Christianity. The fact that both cliques want smaller government has about as much relevance as the fact that both Adolf Hitler and my Indian neighbour like dogs – and gives them about as much in common.

When a supposedly rational movement merges with its opposite based on a shallow similarity of goals, it undermines its own rationality. When the oncologist joins forces with the witch doctor, no one imagines that the witch doctor has suddenly become a scientist – everyone understands that the oncologist has simply become irrational. When the oncologist who has joined up with the witch doctor lectures everyone about the necessity for rationality and empiricism, every sane human being in his audience feels the mad contradiction down to his very toes.

Libertarianism did not make Christianity rational – Christianity simply made libertarianism irrelevant. Libertarianism did not turn Christianity into an empirical science; Christianity turned libertarianism into an irrational superstition.

The Tragedy Of Compromise

The true tragedy of compromise is that it only benefits the least rational – always at the expense of that which is higher, more logical, more noble, more honourable, and more true.

A noble woman who marries a corrupt and vicious man does not elevate him; she only debases herself – or rather, reveals her own unconscious corruption.

“Compromise” is a standard that is held aloft by the base, as a way of snagging that which is superior and dragging it down.

Impressively rational thinkers like Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard would laugh out loud at a student who handed in a paper on economics which derived its “proofs” from the Holy Bible, ending with the flourish, “...and so we know that my argument is proven because God says so!” I am sure they would be hard pressed to know even what to say about such a mad submission.

Can we imagine either of these two esteemed thinkers – to take mere examples – clamouring to add their name to such a paper, to be sure that they could share the credit?

Of course not – they would move heaven and earth to avoid association with such madness!

However, when the thesis is “small government is better” – and when millions of dollars are in play – why then, religious bigotry suddenly achieves the holy glow of sublime intellectualism! Suddenly, scholars like Murray Rothbard spend time rooting around the bowels of Christian madness, scrabbling to find superstitious support for free market ideas – as if those ideas are so pitiful and unsupportable that we need to canvas ghosts and goblins for supporting quotes! “My thesis is true because my invisible unicorn Pam has snorted twice in my head!”

This kind of pitiful, money-grubbing desperation is truly stomach-turning, and lies at the real foundation of why libertarianism has had so little effect, and why it stands idly by, communing with ghosts and counting its money, while the world slides towards slavery.

The Goal - And Soul - Of An Organisation

Libertarians fully understand, when looking at statist organisations, the difference between stated goals and actual motives.

For instance, when looking at the war on drugs, libertarians are comfortable saying that although the stated goal is to get rid of drugs, the actual motive is quite the opposite, since actually getting rid of drugs – were this even possible – would end the careers of everyone involved. No man works tirelessly to destroy his own income – and no organisation is populated by careerists endlessly dedicated to ending their own careers.

When an organisation continues to do that which “does not work,” it is a fairly simple intellectual exercise to understand that no organisation ever consistently does “that which does not work.” If an organisation seems to be continually failing to achieve its stated mission – but refuses to alter its actions – then clearly it is simply achieving another, non-stated mission.

When examining the “evil uncle” of libertarianism – the Federal Reserve – free-market theorists are both gleeful and scathing in puncturing the illusion that it has any interest in actually achieving its stated goal. The stated mission of the Federal Reserve is to create stability both in currency and in the economy as a whole – yet, since the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913, the US dollar has lost over ninety-five percent of its value, and the United States has been wracked by recessions, depressions, and artificial booms. The political complicity of the Federal Reserve has been proven time and again, as it performs a variety of essential services for its political masters, such as pumping up the money supply before elections and so on.

Libertarians repeatedly point out that although the Federal Reserve's stated goal is to stabilise the currency and the economy, it continues to do neither without changing any of its actions – and therefore its stated goal must simply be a “cover” for its actual goal.

Exactly the same criticism can be more than reasonably levelled at libertarianism itself.

What is the goal of modern libertarianism? Clearly it cannot be to win elections, since it consistently fails at that, and has not changed its strategy. It also cannot be to educate the general public, since it has never measured – to my knowledge – the effectiveness of any of its educational campaigns. Any “goal” which has never once been measured in over forty years cannot be considered a “goal” at all.

Is the goal of modern libertarianism to communicate the rational value of empiricism and working from first principles? That is impossible, because it allies with Christianity, which is based on the exact opposite of such philosophical principles.

When examining the true goal of any organisation, all we have to do is look at what has been consistently achieved, rather than what is proclaimed as a purpose. We all understand this in the case of the Federal Reserve – the reality is that the Federal Reserve allows the politically-connected to gain massive wealth and power through the manipulation of currency.

The one goal that has been consistently achieved by modern libertarianism, of course, is a money grab, largely from Christians.

If the goal of libertarianism is to grab Christian money with both hands, then that goal has been consistently achieved. Since that goal is the true goal of the movement, and since it has been consistently achieved, then there is no reason to change strategies.

What is the goal of free market academics? Is it to teach people about the value and power of the free market? Of course not! They could reach far more people by abandoning their tenured positions and teaching over the Internet, or in some other manner. They would also be far more effective as supporters of the free market if they actually deigned to dip their toes into the market system itself, and submitted their value to the arbitration of voluntary price, as they lecture everyone else to do.

No, the goal of such academics is to increase their incomes and live comfortable and secure lives by avoiding the free market as much as possible.

By their actions shall ye know them.

Unfortunately, the enormous corruptions of middle age are bred from the petty compromises of youth – just as the mortal tumours of later life are bred from little cigarettes.

At present, libertarianism has created an income and infrastructure that is utterly dependent upon fundamentalist Christian largesse. Like a corrupt cop with a summer home and a yacht, they have formed their entire lifestyles around a predictable amount of income that flows in from the bulging coffers of the superstitious. This income is a drug that they dare not question, let alone stop taking...

The cracks in the thinking have become the crack in the veins.

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