More specifically, the title to this article should be “An Open Letter To Libertarians Who Aren’t Anarcho-Capitalists… Yet.” I am writing this to you today not as an opponent but instead as a beacon of hope. I know what’s going on in your heads. I know your frustrations and your desires. I know your tactics and strategies and all of their shortcomings. I know these things because I used to live it. I’ve lived it since the time I was a little boy up until the recent past. And I am here to tell you there is another way.
There is nothing I can do or write in this short article that is going to teach you all of the ins and outs of anarcho-capitalism and why it is the way. My only hope is that after you finish reading this you will start to give it some serious consideration. If you do that much then I feel confident you will one day join our ranks.
Let us start off by considering the monumental task the non-anarchist libertarian is facing in order to achieve victory. In order to reach the goal of a libertarian government you are going to have to vote in enough liberty-minded individuals necessary to repeal the leviathan state. But in order to do that it first requires the conversion of a large segment of society to your way of thinking. And yes, I am aware that elections are determined by the half of the population that votes minus half that votes for one party minus half that votes in the primary election for a grand total of ten percent of the population. I used to swallow that pablum, too. But even if ten percent were all that would be needed to “restore the republic” you aren’t going to get that either. Let me explain.
Free-market economics, as simplistic and beautiful as it is, is still over the heads of the majority of the population. The truth is, one would be extremely hard pressed to find an individual with an I.Q. under one twenty reading the works published by the Mises or Independent Institutes. Terms like Praxeology, subjective value theory, division of labor, and capital formation, among others, immediately turn off people of unexceptional intelligence and even many bright ones as well. Since only ten percent of the population has an I.Q. of one twenty or greater the prospect for a highly enlightened society looks rather dim. No pun intended.
It is true, however, that one does not need an I.Q. of one twenty or to have read numerous books from the Mises Institute to vote for a guy that is running on a platform of freedom. The problem, though, is deciphering true freedom candidates from ones who pay lip service to freedom. If the voter does not have a solid understanding of free-market economics they will inevitably vote for someone who sounds like Ron Paul but governs like Ronald Reagan. The same can be said for the unintelligent leftists who really want the socialism of Ralph Nader but vote for the corporatism of Barack Obama.
But if the intelligence barrier weren’t enough to dishearten you, it gets worse. Even after narrowing down the population to ten percent we are still grossly overestimating our potential revolutionaries. This is because it takes a lot more than intelligence to be an ally of freedom. It takes morality, too. Sadly, I do not know how to define what the percentage is of moral people. While I do believe the vast majority of people act morally in an everyday manner, there are simply too many people who have been corrupted in some manner so as to vociferously propagate, benefit from and defend the welfare, warfare, and police state. Since we are in doubt, let us assume half of the population has the moral character to accept freedom over tyranny. We have now whittled our allies down to five percent of the population.
Yet, we are not finished. Even if we find an individual who is both intelligent enough to understand the philosophy of freedom, and moral enough to accept it over the alternative, this person is still potentially useless to the movement if they are unwilling to take action. Here is where we are dealt, perhaps, the harshest blow. In my life I have struggled the hardest to understand how a person that is intelligent and good-natured could sit idly by as totalitarianism threatens to destroy the lives of themselves and the ones they care about. But struggle as I may to motivate them, I am beating upon a dead horse. These people have been neutralized.
Taking this last archetype into account we are now down to roughly one percent of the population, or less, that is truly capable of molding a free society. And no matter how hard we try, we are never going to do it through the ballot box. Human nature is simply too unintelligent, too greedy, and too lazy to do it without there being some sort of externality that “forces,” or more palatably, incentivizes them to cooperate. One of the problems with the idea of limited government is that is presupposes an intelligent, moral, and vigilant society. This is something we’ve never had and never will and any system that does not take into account humanity’s true nature is erroneous.
So, where does that leave the passionate libertarian? Am I advocating defeat? The answer is, no. I am not asking the limited government libertarian to give up working towards a free society. I am merely saying that they will never get the free society they want if they continue to chase a false dream, or continue to execute a losing tactic. This is where anarchy comes in.
The truth is that the state is antithetical to freedom. I don’t expect anyone to take my word for it, only that they look into it themselves, as I have done. When operating under the paradigm of anarchism one sees that the majority of people need not necessarily be intelligent, moral or active. These people can and will work towards freedom even without the understanding, altruism, or energy that we have. We merely have to change our tactic. I guarantee that abolishing the state will be infinitely easier than reforming it. The only thing that currently prevents a limited government libertarian from reaching his or her true potential is their faith in the state.
I ask all non-anarchist libertarians to re-evaluate the morality and efficacy of government. I feel confident that those who make the effort to learn the case for anarcho-capitalism will feel a heavy burden lifted from their shoulders as they finally begin to dismantle the system they’ve been unintentionally helping to sustain for so long.
