Why libertarianism failed, fails, and will–probably–continue to fail
It is not my intent here to judge people, but to simply show logical implications of their choices. People like illusions and lies, as long as they make them feel good. Maybe some of you could succeed in getting past that trap.
I’m writing this at the culmination date of political circus. Millions of American “voters” rushed to participate in the ritual reaffirming their god, the State, as their ultimate Owner and Ruler.
This, of course, is a very contested notion, since “voting” people believe all kinds of things regarding what their actions actually mean.
Many of them believe it is their “duty” as “citizens”. This is what the State told them, and they don’t question it. How dare anyone question God?!
Others just hate “the other guy”. They know there is no “duty”, they know it is a lie, they know the State is nothing but a power of forceful domination, and they want “their guy” to be “in charge”, to enforce their preferred violations of property rights and freedoms onto “others”.
And there are those, who are “just voting for the lesser evil”. These, for the most part, have very few illusions about nature of the State (if any), but they still are under its spell. They still believe that their participation in evil ritual is validated by their intent.
What is common to all of them is that they all willingly accept immoral actions as long as they believe it is for a “good cause”.
Of course, few of them realize that position of the “guy in charge” is ritualistic, and matters very little in the apparatus, comprised of millions of actors, and founded on core believes and moral choices of hundreds of millions. Such apparatus is a multitude of individuals, bound by the network of both formal and informal connections and organizations, and there is no way in which it can be radically steered by a single individual, especially by “an outsider”, especially towards decreasing its power. There is no “magic steering wheel”. The Oval Office is a TV production set, where the High Priest (el Presidente) resides, as long as he goes along with the show. He is there for an illusion that it is will of the dupes, “the People”, which is being implemented through “policy decisions”, when in fact it is just numerous groups of robbers and murderers who fight each other for power while masquerading their actions to best of their abilities.
The only way to “steer” such apparatus is to put a whole lot of incentives in front of millions of people. But as long as the “foundation” is strong, i.e. hundreds of millions of dupes believe in “legitimacy”, “usefulness”, “inevitability”, etc., of the State, millions of robbers and murderers who comprise it will continue to rob and murder with impunity. There is no incentive for them to reduce the scope of their activities. The growth of State power is just another side of the decrease of individual sovereignty. And after a while, the destruction of capital and wealth will outpace its creation. The agony can be lasting, and will be bloody.
So the only way to “steer the apparatus” towards its reduction and ultimate demise is to destroy the “foundation”. It is not a participation in evil rituals which can bring about meaningful change, no matter how “successful” you could be there. Multitudes of individual secessions, rejections of the State and its claims for authority over everyone and everything can put strong incentives in front of participants of apparatus, and put robbers and murderers in check.
But that requires whole lot of individuals to sacrifice their illusions of “immediate change”. A lot of them would have to go hard against common perceptions and believes, and bear a whole lot of costs, for the outcome they are almost guaranteed to not be around to benefit from.
“The world” we perceive today is a result of countless multitudes of moral choices of yesterday. Choosing evil, even if “lesser”, will only bring about more evil, so it’ll become “greater”.
Picking up a responsibility to abstain from violation of property rights and denounce and oppose it in any form will not bring you happiness or wealth by itself (in fact, it will definitely make it harder for individual to achieve any of those). But it will give you meaning and purpose, and it is guaranteed to bring about at least some good in the world. Failing to do so leaves you with options of being the hapless victim, the collaborator, or joining the ranks of robbers/murderers.
And this is the main reason why libertarianism failed, fails, and will–probably–continue to fail. For the dreams of liberty in stateless society to come true, a whole lot of people have to choose to bear great costs, and maybe never even see the fruits of their sacrifices. The continuity of individual’s consistently “good” moral choices is not rewarded by immediate profit. It is not rewarded even psychologically, as entering evil collectivists’ rituals does for their participants. But it is the only way for civilization to not destroy itself.
