The Most Libertarian Thing You Can Do

Miscellaneous General
1

I’m sure others have thought of and/or expressed this idea before. But I wanted to do so formally here. This is more or less an off-shoot of what I wrote over here: Why is Africa Poor? - #64 by Fephisto

Quite possibly the most libertarian thing one can do is to start and run a business. It stays true to the voluntary principles of libertarianism, and most if not all societal problems can be solved in such a way. It doesn’t require everyone completely understand and accept your viewpoint (thus not stagnating your opinion to the libertarian community, or this may help with the reverse problem (libertarians, in my opinion, tend to be a stubborn bunch. As the old saying goes, “It’s like herding cats.”)).

When one recognizes this idea, the conceptions of any wide-ranging problem change dramatically. Large systemic problems either become opportunity rather than a source of pessimism and despair, or allow one to recognize what really is the root cause when in the stage of creating a business plan (and then, with some ingenuity, once the root cause is identified, a new business plan would be created).

As an example, a while back I visited Argentina to see my family. While touring around I noted the vast disparity in prices (compared to the U.S.) between high-end consumer goods (T.V.s, computers, cars, etc.) versus low-end consumer goods (food, clothing, etc.). If someone was stuck in a more statist or pessimistic mindset, the blame could be mal-attributed to a number of things. However, my immediate thought on the matter was, “This is great! I can just ship stuff between the U.S. and Argentina and make loads of money!” And upon 5 minutes of searching on the internet, I realized that there was the particular invention of tariffs that made things difficult. (modified business plan: pull a Vanderbilt? [1])

I think a few more examples are in order at least for the purposes of optimism for this community.

Do you think governments need more competition? Although not all may agree with this, you can certainly give “making your own” a shot [2]. Or escaping from it entirely [3].

Do you like anarcho-capitalism? Support it.[4] [5] [6]

Hate the legal system? Become an arbitrator. [7] Start a firm to advocate cases in a way to protect your ideals. [8] [9] [14]

Hate the police system? Start your own. [10] [11] Or help people defend themselves. [12] [13] [14]

Don’t like monetary inflation? Start a coin company. [15] Start an alternate currency. [16] Start an ETF in gold. [17]

In general, I feel we should literally invest in the freedom movement. [18] Start a business! Invest! “Agora, anarchy, action!” [19]

[20]

[1] Stiles, T.J., The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt (Knopf Publishing, 2009), pages 37-48. (Vanderbilt got his start fighting government-granted steamboat monopolies in New Jersey.)

[2] http://www.sealandgov.org/

[3] http://seasteading.org/

[4] http://wikitravel.org/en/Somalia

[5] http://www.freedonia.org/sovereignty2.html (always be sure to keep the culture in mind when making a business plan!)

[6] https://mises.org/donate.aspx (This is tongue-in-cheek, have some humor guys.)

[7] http://www.adr.org/

[8] http://www.spiritus-temporis.com/naacp/influential-court-cases.html

[9] http://www.aclu.org/free-speech (I understand you may disagree with some things the aclu does, but as far as a business plan goes…)

[10] http://libertarianpapers.org/articles/2009/lp-1-12.pdf

[11] http://beaprivateeye.com/

[12] http://www.remington.com/

[13] http://www.amazon.com/How-Survive-End-World-Know/dp/0452295831 (actually, writing books in general is a good thing to try)

[14] http://home.nra.org/#/home

[15] http://www.lewrockwell.com/blumert/burt-gold.html (i.e., the Camino Coin Company would be a good model)

[16] http://www.libertydollar.org/ (always be wary of the legal troubles in these things!)

[17] http://www.pecunix.com/

[18] I’d like to see a website that brings together libertarians trying to start such business with other libertarians looking to invest. Actually, starting up such a venture capital firm might not be a bad idea…any takers?

[19] http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/nlm/nlm1.html

[20] Dr. Block, someday I’ll make an article that catches up to you in the number of citations and footnotes. Someday.

Stuff we can do
2

The most libertarian thing you can do is start a low-cost for-profit private school, slowly compete and destroy the hold of public schools, and slowly use them as centers to educate children in working to make their own lives better rather hoping to vote or legislate their problems away.

3

Even if the cost for attending these schools were next to nothing I still think the majority of students would continue to attend publicly provided schools. Parents are forced pay for the upkeep of public schools so the cost of attending a private school is really the cost of attending a public school + the cost of attending the private school. This results in even the most cost effective private school being to expensive for the average American to afford.

4

I don’t think it would be unimagineable for a well-run private school to appear that would be so incredibly effective that it’s worth the double-payment.

5

Yes. I’m rather partial to Hoppe’s idea of an insurance company able to provide certain protections from certain state actions. THAT would be fucking awesome.

Imagine being pulled over by a cop, and the first thing you do is dial your insurance company. After providing them with your customer ID, they dispatch trained PDAs to deal with the cop for you. Meanwhile, you can simply drive away. :slight_smile: Beautiful!!!

Also, this is relevant: The Revolution Will Be All Business.