I received some requests to elaborate on certain points made during a speech this past weekend at the Mises Institute’s event in Houston. The talk contrasted the emergent alt-Right with the resurgent socialist Left, and how libertarians might tap into the populism embodied in both movements.
A few thoughts:
- Libertarians should celebrate the death of the myth of democratic consensus. As Hoppe makes clear, democracy is the great enemy of liberty, both in theory and practice. The sooner we impress upon the public that politics cannot and will not solve the economic, cultural, and social problems of our day, the sooner people may start to understand that those problems can be solved faster, more fairly, and with far less friction via markets and civil society. To paraphrase Gary North, we are not necessarily winning ideologically; we are winning institutionally and administratively. Everything run by the state-- education, medicine, entitlements, foreign policy--doesn’t work. Our job is to convince people to make the leap from “government isn’t working” to “government can’t work.”
- The “adults in the room” slur, used by the David Brooks and the Jennifer Rubins and the Chuck Todds, has run its course. Political elites will not be able to dictate what “everyone knows” forever. All one has to do it look around to understand there is increasingly less political common ground in society, a trend made worse both by growing ethnic/cultural/religious/linguistic diversity and the intense balkanization of social groups in the digital age. Americans are moving farther away from the mythical political consensus every day, not closer, and the political apologists have only themselves to blame. They purposely created a divided country, i.e. a political country, and now they have to live in it.
- The internet and social media have made us dramatically more aware of what others really think. While there have always been huge political divisions in the United States, those divisions are made infinitely more raw in a world where even the loftiest officials and intellectuals are savaged in the comments sections of online articles. No need to venture into sites the mainstream media would sneer at as fever swamps-- just look at the comments below Washington Post or New York Times articles. You’ll quickly get the unmistakable feeling that ours is a country where people don’t much like each other.
The impulsive nature of online comments and social media posts, particularly when made anonymously, encourages displays of anger and dissatisfaction. Politics attempts to hide or smooth over unpleasant truths, but the digital age makes it much more difficult to create the illusion of a unified country. This is healthy. The state is a cancer, politics is poison—people should be angry and dissatisfied. - Libertarianism is not an intellectual exercise, but rather an intensely practical approach to organizing society. Private actors achieve results, state actors don’t. In fact, it is precisely the bureaucratic approaches promoted by the supposed moderates that have failed us so disastrously. In a world of comically incompetent states and failing central banks, only libertarian ideas-- real capital markets, political decentralization, noninterventionism, private property rights, and commodity money, offer real alternatives. Our job is to make these ideas more tangible to the public.
Uber makes taxis obsolete. Private space travel makes NASA obsolete. Toll roads make government contractors obsolete. Fast food kiosks make minimum wage laws irrelevant. Medical tourism, concierge medicine, and cash clinics make Obamacare irrelevant. Private arbitration already works far better than government courts. Private police agencies already are providing quick responses and real customer service in cities like New Orleans. Private currencies could make the Fed unnecessary tomorrow. And so on. It’s not easy, but we can’t be afraid to make the practical case for liberty and demonstrate how market actors can improve conditions immediately. - Libertarian populism is both possible and desirable. We need to overcome the popular perception that libertarians are eggheads living in a DC bubble, or minds disconnected from bodies. We especially need to overcome the perception that we are merely hyper-individual economic actors, with no allegiance to anything larger than our own immediate interests. We need to promote a bourgeoisie form of libertarianism, one separated from and disdainful of the Beltway, while populated by successful business people, families, and civic leaders. Society without the state does not mean society without family, community, nation, culture, God, or some sense of something larger. Real or perceived libertarian antipathy toward religion, culture, and family life has been a tactical disaster.
- We’ve heard it a million times: “Hating the state is not enough.” Maybe not, but it’s an excellent start. We should celebrate the public’s rejection of elites, its disdain for endless Bushes and Clintons. We should celebrate populist trends and the failure of the political class to achieve democratic consensus. We should celebrate the decline of politics in America. After all, a libertarian society is one where the economic, social, and cultural questions of the day are not decided by political means. To the extent the rise of populism represents the decline of politics, libertarians should embrace it wholeheartedly.
