Glimpses into the offices of modern financial institutions reveal dizzyingly-intricate algorithmic and computationally-driven investment strategies. Machine learning techniques and the methods of applied physics confound the layman and foster a reputation of unapproachable complexity around the realm of quantitative finance.

At a recent graduation ceremony at one of Latin America’s oldest and most prestigious law schools, young lawyers applauded a vision of authority in which law no longer operates as a limit on power, but as its instrument. This was not a trivial academic ritual or a moment of youthful enthusiasm, it was a revealing social signal. When those trained to defend due process celebrate its suspension, the problem is no longer merely legal, it is civilizational.

When President Donald Trump recently told the New York Times that he is restrained only by “my own morality” instead of by international law or treaties, people rightfully were shocked. People who feared the Trump presidency might turn authoritarian hoped (maybe against hope) that the existing constraints that came with the office of president might “moderate” his views, but so far it has been a false hope.

I have long maintained that one of the big obstacles libertarians face in the achievement of a genuinely free society is the fact that most Americans honestly believe they are free. When people are convinced they are free, they have no reason to want to join up with us libertarians in our effort to establish a genuinely free society. Instead, they simply view libertarianism as a “weird” philosophy that purports to achieve what we already have — a free society.