Liberty, Dicta & Force: Why Liberty Brings Out the Best in People and How Government Brings Out the Worst

The highest manifestation of life consists of this: that a being governs its own actions. A thing which is always subject to the direction of another is somewhat of a dead thing.   — Thomas Aquinas (1225–74)

A 2016 study by Chapman University asked 1,541 randomly selected Americans to rank their fears from a list of seventy-nine. Corrupt government officials were ranked the highest at 60 percent by the respondents, with terrorist attacks coming in second at 40 percent.1 In a 2016 Gallup poll that asked respondents to rate the honesty and ethical standards of people from twenty-two different fields, members of Congress ranked the lowest.2 In Canada, a 2015 poll conducted by Ipsos Reid asked people to rank their level of trust among thirty-three different professions; politicians were ranked third from the bottom at 6 percent by respondents, with rankings ranging from 77 percent to 4 percent for all professions.3 Moreover, a 2015 Pew Research Center study found that in every national poll conducted since 2007, fewer than three in ten Americans have expressed trust in their federal government.4 According to the report, this decline began in 1960, when public trust was at 73 percent.

Despite this seemingly high level of fear and distrust, most people still adhere to the notion that politics and government serve a useful purpose and provide social benefits. They can’t imagine a society without politics and government and, for the most part, believe all that is needed is for someone to “fix it.” Dicta and force are the heart and soul of governments, and as such, they are not fixable. Even some libertarians remain trapped in the political box, convinced that the US government can be fixed and does in fact serve a useful purpose, provided its use of dicta and force is limited to areas authorized by the Constitution. Such a stance begs the question as to why some matters are better off when allowed to operate in a free market, while other matters are better off when prohibited from operating in a free market. 

Those in government see solutions to problems they are certain will work. Yet they discover and rediscover that when their solutions are adopted and enforced the problems either get worse or create other problems worse than the ones for which the solution was designed. The War on Poverty (originating with President Lyndon Johnson in 1964) not only has failed, but has also left more poverty in its wake and ruined more families than if the government had simply done nothing.5 In his 1984 book Losing Ground, Charles Murray recounts the tragic consequences that followed the adoption of governmental social policies between 1950 and 1980 and explains why such consequences are predictable wherever welfare entitlement programs are instituted. The government’s “War on Drugs” (fashioned by President Richard Nixon in 1969) is an example of how using social engineering to solve one problem created another even worse by fostering more crime and havoc than if the “war” had never begun.

Simply prohibit by law an activity you don’t like and provide entitlements to those you feel need help, and we will all experience a better world! So simple, so direct, and yet so destructive!

The idea of solving problems by way of volition, where solutions evolve heuristically from the bottom up without a top-down directive, is not an easy concept to envision. In fact, there is nothing concrete to envision, since bottom-up solutions involve an evolutionary process of trial and error with the emergence of multiple, potentially viable solutions. The worthiness of any given solution is a function of the marketplace in which worthiness is determined by potential beneficiaries. In contrast, a top-down political process is a one-size-fits-all solution in which worthiness is predetermined by the designer. Chapters 6 and 8 will explore the natural bottom-up emergence of solutions to social problems and the miraculous evolutionary process in light of the fascinating new science of chaos, complexity, and spontaneous order.

It is no surprise that so many well-meaning people are trapped in the political box and never able to escape. From early childhood, we are inundated with newspapers, magazines, radio, TV, and even family members filling our heads with the notion that we need someone to run our lives and take care of us. We are encouraged to participate in the political arena and debate ideas about how government should best rule us. We memorize by rote the tenets of government and pledge our allegiance to a political regime — whatever it might stand for — with little understanding of what is said or meant. Songs are sung, books are written, and movies are made that glorify wars and battles between “us” and “them,” wherein heroes are honored for dutifully serving their country and dying while trying to kill people they have no actual grudge against. We are swept away by the notion of the virtuous “us” and the evil “them.” The history books in our schools are filled with details of every war, where political leaders of the time gain honor and recognition with statues and monuments dedicated to them. Most American children attend state schools — the very foundation of which is political — with strict, state-approved curricula. Consequently, it’s easy to see how so many become trapped for life and are unable to even consider markets, laws, justice, and societies that do not require intervention by political rulers. Ideas that challenge the utility of political intervention are mostly shrugged off with little, if any, deliberation as nonsensical or simply out of touch with reality.

Those who are not predisposed to liberty will likely find the thoughts expressed here too strange to warrant serious consideration. But equally strange is the idea that liberty is not about a consensus, since that is a political concept. Liberty is a personal affair that does not require the indulgence of others. Those inclined to liberty accept their lives as their own responsibility, take responsibility for their actions, and view those claiming to be their masters as charlatans. Being responsible for your life includes being wary of the state, just as you would be wary of any other form of intrusion. The level of state intrusion a person is willing to tolerate is an individual threshold, and the action taken when exceeded is a matter of personal judgment.

Despite the constant barrage of political indoctrination, a growing number of people have been able to escape the ideological trappings of government and engage the rational world outside the charade of politics. The booming interest in recent years in libertarian ideas and the growing disillusionment with politics and government are probably not due to any new facts, considering that history is replete with the nastiness and disasters of political intrusions into people’s lives. More likely, they are due to the discovery that there are others — many others, in fact — who share similar convictions about the disutility of government. The information age of freewheeling ideas has given those holding such convictions a sense that they are not some odd, lonely fish in a large pond. This realization has led to open discussions and a deeper understanding of human nature and nature’s laws, which provide a rationale for their inherent inclinations. Discussions about the disutility of government were rare some fifty years ago, but today they are common. In 1962, when I was first introduced to libertarian ideas via FEE, there were just a handful of such organizations. Today, there are hundreds of organizations teaching and preaching the virtues of liberty and the disutility of government.

The apparent rise of such candor about politics and government is partly attributable to the ugliness of the political process itself, irrespective of the social disasters it causes. Watching political debates, now available to everyone via television and the internet, is enough to disgust anyone — or at least make one wonder how such behavior can result in anything of value. The debates showcase mature men and women squabbling like spoiled children over who is better at ruling and running your life, who then have the chutzpah to ask for your blessing! Whether or not they mean well doesn’t matter. Nature doesn’t give a hoot about meaning or intentions; it responds to physical acts.

Over the past fifty years, there have been major scientific developments in genetics, evolutionary psychology, experimental game theory, economics of the commons, and complexity theory that demonstrate why we behave the way we do and how order emerges volitionally from simple, local rules. We will touch on each of these areas of study in chapters 3, 6, and 8. These exciting developments may give those who are enamored with political government the wherewithal to venture outside the quick and dirty world of political dicta and force.

Those enamored with government insist that we should be thankful for our government because it has allowed us greater freedom than other governments. When governments limit what they disallow, some feel that which is not disallowed is a special privilege deserving of gratitude. Allowing freedom to whatever extent government decrees requires the subjugation of some to the will of another. The issue of subjugation is not that some prefer to be subject to the will of a master, it is that those who so prefer a master require everyone else, irrespective of their preference, to be subject to the same master. As Goethe observed, “None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”6

Certainly, we learn from and respect those who are wiser and can help guide us through life, but wisdom does not reside in those who demand respect. In the political world, those who demand respect are enforcers to be dreaded, not leaders to be followed.

• 1Chapman University, “America’s Top Fears: Chapman University Survey of American Fears,” October 11, 2016, https://blogs.chapman.edu/wilkinson/2016/10/11/americas-top-fears-2016/.
• 2Gallup, “Honesty/Ethics in Professions,” https://news.gallup.com/poll/1654/honesty-ethics-professions.aspx.
• 3Daniel Tencer, “Canada’s Most and Least Trusted Professions: Sorry, CEOs and Politicians,” HuffPost, January 20, 2015, http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/01/20/most-least-trusted-professions-canada_n_6510232.html.
• 4Pew Research Center, “Beyond Distrust: How Americans View Their Government,” November 23, 2015, http://people-press.org/2015/11/23/1-trust-in-government-1958-2015/. Trend sources: Pew Research Center, National Election Studies, Gallup, ABC Washington Post, CBS New York Times, and CNN Polls.
• 5Michael Janofsky, New York Times, 9 February 1998.
• 6Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Die Wahlverwandtschaften (English: Elective Affinities), bk. 2 (1809).