Progress Through Market Action

Lysander Spooner is most well known for his proto-Rothbardian analysis of the Constitution. While this literature is heavily cited throughout the Libertarian community (and I find it to be of the same intellectual caliber as the modern students of the Austrian School), I am not sure I consider it his crowning achievement; I remember Spooner for his ownage of the nationalized post-office (more on that later). He practiced both intellectual subversion of the state and economic subversion of the state. While intellectual subversion is very important – I highly value the literature – talk is cheap. Economic subversion actually has an effect upon our circumstances, where idle words do not. I believe that economic action is the always the most practical, often the only, way to solve any social problem.

Many methods of changing our circumstances have been employed. The Marxist approach is through indiscriminate and continuous violence. This extreme example provides a good first example of what not to do. Many historical examples show us that very little that is positive ever results from violent action. Violence is non-creative; it is pure destruction. There are only two functions which violence can perform: first, to transfer wealth between parties (this is done by government, and is prohibited to the followers of Natural Law), and second, to destroy that which is in someway destructive (this is allowed to the followers of Natural Law, as it is not “initiation of force”). Violence does not create. Societies developed along the lines of Cuba’s “eternal revolution” are like individuals stricken with anorexia, living off the fading opulence of former years. They are eaten from the inside without the stimulus of new growth. Any trace of violence within a society is like an intestinal worm, consuming the sustenance of the host. The history of violent revolution shows us that the initiation of force always leaves societies poorer, less organized, and less internally trusting and externally trusted. Those who speak in support of violence do it with the erroneous assumption that theft and compulsion can create prosperity. Prosperity my ASS!

Political entrepreneurism is a term I heard listening to lectures on mises org. It involves individuals, politicians, or lobbyists attempting to use government to realize an agenda, and it is essentially institutionalized violence. Political entrepreurism does not create anything; it accomplishes only the transfer of wealth (theft) or the suppression of competition for the well connected (an impediment to production and a drain on everyone’s quality of life). The destructiveness of it may not be overt, but political machinery is never creative.

And again, speaking and writing and appealing to the general public does not create anything either. While literature is powerful, it does not account for much until it is manifested in physical reality. The intellectual world exists purely for facilitating productive efforts in the physical world. All thought should have some functional goal in mind. I like Ayn Rand’s illustration of the faux intellectual class in her novels; it effectively illustrates this point.

Finally, the economic method of problem solving repeatedly proves itself to be creative in all circumstances. Lysander Spooner used an economic model of protest when he created his own postal service. This company was so successful that it forced the federal service to introduce the three-cent stamp. The government cannot stand hubris, so they eventually used the strong arm of the law to shut him down (robbing him of his accumulated savings). This was not before he made a point, though. He made the point that constructive action will always bring down, indirectly, those elements in our society that are not constructive.

We need only to be the best we can be, and the political entrepreneurs and the destructive wielders of violence will wither in our light. It was not any military action of the United States that brought down the Soviet Union; it was merely attrition and the steady march of freeman in doing what they do best, conduct voluntary exchange. Right now, I see companies like Ebay, Prosper, and E-Gold walking this walk. Just as monarchy and communism withered in the like of the United States, so will the United States wither at the economic subversion of a more free market enabled by technology. When it does, we will not have a power vacuum as exists in the middle-east, but we will have a flowering intellectual and economic community waiting to pick up the pieces. Have faith in voluntary exchange, and never stoop to the level of the government bureaucrats in using any other weapon against an opponent