I remember Walter Block writing a response to someone who asked him whether a libertarian should occupy a rent-controlled apartment, and he told him that there was no way he could know what the rent of the apartment would be under market prices, and to worry about that would be like worrying about walking on government-owned pavements.
In this respect, I remember that Professor Block once forwarded to me an email address of a libertarian right here in India in the state of Gujarat. (They all take such unusual care in responding to emails of us small people!)
It turns out that she was a professor in a state-owned university. It really caught my attention. This person, as indicated by her email, was a radical, and would not settle for anything other than a truly free society. And yet, she works in a public university. Was such a choice necessarilly hypocritical?
I don’t think it is so at all. To teach at university is to do something that would likely just as well have been done in the market as well. Of course, most public universities in India still get only nominal funding from state governments and are often run on donations of private businesses and religious organizations, but even if it were not the case, I’d reckon that the worst possible wrong committed here was a redistribution of resources, which was done by another party. She here is just a person who is teaching people and acting in good faith.
(It does make me wonder though - if teachers and professors in the public school system and public university system slowly and radically transformed towards liberalism, then wow, just imagine how the state would be undermined by the very institutions it controls. I have to remark that even in my own state-controlled college, the professors make far more bitter complaints about government and taxation than anybody else.)
I recall reading something from Rothbard on this topic. Essentially, a libertarian is free to engage in any behaviour that would be acceptable in a free society. For example there isn’t anything immoral about working for the government if you’re a doctor and the government has monopolised healthcare, but it’s not ok to work as a concentration camp guard (though what if you used such a position to further liberty i.e. secretly helped inmates escape?). Of course in a free society there would be different wages and employment in all sectors, but trying to work your life around such factors is useless, as any attempt would simply be based on rather baseless speculation.
In Robert Heinlein’s ‘The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress’ one of the characters, the professor, is a self-proclaimed ‘libertarian anarchist’ (ancap, but not stated in those terms) who has made his peace with society. He accepts that his ideal world will unlikely ever exist, so he lives in and interacts with society as-is without trying to avoid or dodge things that would compromise his principles. Kind of like the ‘philosophical anarchist’ position where you have a certain worldview – but can function just as well in the current setup, too.
On the other hand, one might argue that accepting the current state of affairs is an admission that your principles are impractical; so why hold them at all?
“It does make me wonder though - if teachers and professors in the public school system and public university system slowly and radically transformed towards liberalism, then wow, just imagine how the state would be undermined by the very institutions it controls. I have to remark that even in my own state-controlled college, the professors make far more bitter complaints about government and taxation than anybody else.”
Working within the system can only slow it down, or siphon people off. (Eg. Ron Paul)
To change it, you must go outside it. (Example: this very website and the LvMI)
I don’t think working within the state makes you a sellout or anything like that. On some level, you just have to be pragmatic and work against the state from within to change things as much as you can. For example, look at Ron Paul: look at how many people he’s converted to Austrian economics and libertarianism, myself included. He’s a very necessary and good force working within the system and has done a lot of good doing it. As long as you work toward liberty in some fashion, I don’t think it matters WHAT your job is.
I think it would be unethical to my “moral code” to work in a governmental job that includes direct violence (policemen, military), or fraud (politician etc.)
I don’t know for sure, but that’s my fast opinion now. It’s impossible to be truly honest or I should say, moral, in a sociaty, which is fucked up and your honesty and “high morals” can cost you a life or at least worse living standards which will probably lead to unhappiness.
But then one can go to reductionism of my position and say: “well, then fuck it, become a politician etc. and don’t care about morality”.
I dislike these extreme reductions, I think there should be some balance and rational evaluation of consequences.
I’ve heard that if a libertarian works for the government they slowly go insane, it begins with denying that A = A and slowly progresses until they’re actually attempting performative contradictions, it usually culminates in complete insanity in the form of denial of the action axiom.
I don’t think this is as cut and dry as we sometimes think. The state is everywhere, and if you are going to live your life with dogmatic devotion to anarcho-capitalist principles, then you are very soon going to starve to death, because you would be unable to drive on the socialist roads, eat the state-regulated food, resort to the state’s enforcement of law and property rights, or even breath the state-regulated air. Certainly, one can attempt to avoid the most egregious aspects of statism by not becoming a cop or serve in the military, but it is impossible to live one’s life free from the state. If the state nationalizes the food supply, should we stop eating? What would be the solution if we were to live in a completely communist society? If we are to be “principled” libertarians, then we should refuse to work or eat and may as well end our own lives.
Anarcho-capitalism posits a society that is entirely different than the one we currently live in now, and we mustn’t lose sight of this. The “free” sectors of the economy, upon closer examination, really are not so. There is not a dichotomy between the anarcho-capitalist world and the statist world where one can choose sides and be left alone, unless you want to move to Antarctica and live with the penguins. The world we live in his hoplessly mired in statism, it’s around every corner, and it is inescapable.
That said, we still have the capacity to minimize our involvement in the state. Teaching and education is a tricky one. I used to work for the public schools until I had enough and resigned three years ago. Believe me, during that time I struggled with the question posed in this thread, but ultimately decided to stop beating myself up; the fact is that government has a near monopoly on education. But I came to the conclusion that libertarians should stay out of the public schools because they can simply do no good there because the schools are instruments of compulsion. Should compulsory laws be repealed, I might be more understanding of someone trying to infilitrate. For this reason I also see less of an issue with libertarians in state-run universities.
We need to focus on getting out of the mess we are in now. Libertarians don’t want to eradicate social welfare programs - they simply want them handled privately. They don’t want to abolish education - they want it handled privately, and they don’t want to abandon law and security - just handled privately. Ours is a better way, and that, I think, should be our approach.
How will we ever achieve a free society if libertarians and anarchists don’t enter the power centers controlled by collectivists (governments, schools, media, labor unions) and generate change from within? Those without power cannot defend freedom.
How will we ever achieve a free society if libertarians and anarchists don’t enter the power centers controlled by collectivists (governments, schools, media, labor unions) and generate change from within? Those without power cannot defend freedom.
It has been demonstrated, conclusively, I think, that those power centers chew up libertarians and spit them out. We can advance towards freedom by what we are doing right now - educating in the (relatively) free market of ideas. A state-controlled system of education will never be anything other than an institution which supports the state itself. Libertarianism has grown in recent years not because we’ve entered positions of political power, but because the internet has opened up channels of communication outside of existing educational structures that are completely free of interference from the state.
With the proper support, training, and mindset I think this could change.
Unless this education is reflected in policy changes that make the world a freer place, I don’t see how we’re advancing toward freedom.
I agree, but what have been the concrete results of this growth in Libertarianism? The world is still controlled by collectivists. Ron Paul’s audit the fed bill is being watered down and rendered meaningless. We are moving closer and closer to tyranny every day as lawmakers seek to regulate every aspect of our lives.
When Neo was freed from the matrix, did he start a blog or engage in intellectual battle? No, he figure out how to defeat Agent Smith by obtaining greater power.
Just to understand better: can you pls precise if you would consider that any jobs and positions at the service of the community (and paid by the citizen) are bad by itself? If not, what would be the exceptions and why? thx
I consider myself quite a strong ancap guy and right now I’m writing this from my government job desk (ta-da!). You know what? It does force one to go slowly insane. Hypocrisy is not easy to hide form one’s self.
In my case I’m doing this because these guys are paying for a great, great course I’m taking and after that I’m leaving (I should have no trouble finding a much better private sector job after that). But will I still be a libertarian next year when the course ends? Will I have the guts to risk wage security and go into private employment? I hope I do, but its far from certain.
One think seems certain to me: every day an ancap (there are libertarian minarchists who, I think, would have no problem with state employment) work for the government, he looses some of his intellective ability to challenge it and think straight (though I hope that isn’t too visible in my posts J). So, there are no uniform answers: everyone must balance that with whatever personal gains he might make form being state employed.
I don’t see much difference between “miniarchists” and “anarcho-capitalists”, because the latter still believe in the existence of law-and-order, private property protection/recognition, and contract-enforcing institutions. You name me one traditional anarchist thinker who thinks the way the latter does. These things are plain and simple “governance”, except governance must be a basic service and not extend to being a coercive monopoly that does whatever it wants. On top of that, fraud will be and always must be proscribed under traditional liberalism, because unless these “anarcho-capitalists” believe that the law will simply be an unethical amoral set of practices which will be agreed upon by who buys off the courts the most, wrong things will still be punished as wrong things. Because if there were the power to buy off and trade in law-and-order to do whatever one wants, the result will still be the excessive and abusive interference akin to what the state does. Period. So I think you “ancaps” are just radical liberals, nothing else.
All this aside, let’s be frank. In the western world, most young educated people won’t find anything other than government jobs or government-oriented private sector jobs, because job creation in the private sector is already depressed by the enormous fiscal deficits which take away capital that could have created well paying jobs in the private sector. Businesses can not improve productivity or reinvest more capital, because the inflation, the taxation, and the further loss of fresh capital from American/British/Spanish/Italian/French fiscal deficits means that businesses end up consuming capital and never get the cash flow for replacing and increasing capital goods.
These are big things, and you are just a small person.
Minarchy is not about ‘law and order’ (whatever that might mean), rather about the belief in the moral and practical expedience of shooting people for not doing what some strange and uncontrollable entity demands of them. If you consider this idea just close to anarchy, well, I relay cannot follow.
And again, if indeed your projection about the immediate prospect of young professionals is right, than we can kiss libertarianism goodbye, for no one will be a convinced libertarian after a few year of government service. I see no way around that (perhaps his inability to find a paid university post produced Mises’s great insights).
What usually happens is that they end up surrendering to the State. However, as Ron Paul shows(Some of his fans who don’t like ancap aside), you CAN put people on the right track. The key IMHO is to resist the corrupting influence of power as much as you can.
Don’t we all “work for the government” in a way by paying taxes? If you’re a libertarian or anarchist, the only way to avoid hypocrisy would be to refuse to pay taxes. Then you would most likely end up in jail. While martyrdom is certainly honorable and admirable, it is not very useful strategically. So, we commit hypocrisy in order to put ourselves in a better position to promote the principles of liberty. I don’t see how working a government job would automatically erode your faith in liberty. As long as you actively remind yourself of the truth, like a religious person prays every day to maintain faith in God, then you should be able to stay principled at heart. And we always have the choice not to engage in any action that directly contradicts the ethics of libertarianism or anarchy.
It is true that, in paying taxes, we all work for government. But as you point out, failing to pay taxes does get you in jail, while failing to get a government job gets you…nothing. So I’m not advocating martyrdom but there is a thin line between martyrdom and pure hypocrisy. I myself am in a purely hypocritical position right now, and I accept that as I’m trying to get something out of it.
But I know for sure that if I fail to leave this job be next year, I’ll become just a loud-mouthed libertarian, not willing to take action should the chance present itself (not to mention flushing my entire plan to help as much as I can libertarianism down the toilet). So again, it’s a choice for everyone to make for himself. The price should be clear, and no amount of reading Rothbard will ever keep the government employee from loosing his libertarian ideas.
So, if you decide to try it fro whichever reason, know its not a free lunch.