A journey into a libertarian future

Recently journalist Philip Pilkington has interviewed authors with unconventional perspectives on economic issues, including Satyajit Das and David Graeber. I thought it would be fun to interview someone too – but the man I interviewed uses a pseudonym. This is a six-part series.

ANDREW: Some people say that you represent a fringe view, and so interviewing you is a waste of time.

CODE NAME CAIN: If people obsessed with inside-the-Beltway conventional wisdom underestimate libertarians, so much the better.

ANDREW: Can you give any evidence that your ideas are taken seriously?

CNC: Well, people used to think that the financial crisis was caused by antisocial behavior in the finance sector. In September 2007, Tom DiLorenzo pointed out on the Lew Rockwell website that the crisis was actually the result of the government forcing banks to make risky loans to low-income borrowers. Although initially ignored, DiLorenzo’s thesis is now widely accepted among careful observers.

ANDREW: Is that your only convincing example?

CNC: Hardly. Did you notice how over the last year or so, everyone started to talk about how the threat of new taxes and regulations was making producers uncertain? And when producers are uncertain, the economy fails to improve? Well, the fact that worries about taxes and regulations cause uncertainty and so damage the economy is a key insight of Austrian economics that we have proclaimed for decades.

ANDREW: Wait, I thought people said that Obama was causing the uncertainty.

CNC: Obama is causing the uncertainty now. Before Obama, George W. Bush was causing the uncertainty. In general, democratic government causes uncertainty. Hans-Hermann Hoppe made all of this clear in his 2001 book “Democracy: The God That Failed.”

ANDREW: Are there things you have learned from the work of Dr. Hoppe that you had not found in the writings of other libertarians?

CNC: “Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard were great men, but they lived in a time when supporters of freedom needed to be careful about what they said. As a result, libertarians often fail to describe their ideal future society in clear detail. But, as the Cato Institute’s Patri Friedman has recognized, Hans-Hermann Hoppe is an exception to this reticence. He is willing to speak the truth, no matter how much it makes “politically correct” people squirm, and he is so logical and eloquent that I routinely quote from his classic book on the failure of democracy. Please color such quotes in red – I would never try to pass off my own ideas as if they were on his level.

ANDREW: Tell us now about the libertarian society you are working to make possible.

CNC: It will be a free society – no government, no coercion. People will have their rights respected. Everyone will be free to do whatever they want as long as it doesn’t interfere with anyone else’s rights… why are you looking at me like that?

ANDREW: I was kind of hoping for less speeches and more details.

CNC: What do you mean?

ANDREW: In our society, the government is the only organization allowed to kill people. In the libertarian society, which organizations will kill people?

CNC: There will be no government that is allowed to use force against people and kill them.

ANDREW: Some people will be very rich, right?

CNC: Of course. Some people will always be stronger and more brilliant than others.

ANDREW: Will the wealthy people still be worried about people stealing from them?

CNC: Obviously – all property… is necessarily valuable; hence, every property owner becomes a possible target of other men’s aggressive desires. [255]

ANDREW: So who will protect property owners?

CNC: Insurance companies in a competitive marketplace.

ANDREW: So in your society, insurance companies will be sort of like governments. Can we call them security GLOs (Government-Like Organizations)?

CNC: Sure, as long as we stress that the insurance companies, as security GLOs, will be very different from the statist, coercive governments we have today.

ANDREW: Will security GLOs be different from governments because they will be small family firms?

CNC: No. One reason that insurance companies will be well-suited for the role of security GLOs is that they are “big” and in command of the resources… necessary to accomplish the task of dealing with the dangers… of the real world. Indeed, insurers operate on a national or even international scale, and they own substantial property holdings dispersed over wide territories… [281]

ANDREW: Will security GLOs be different from governments because they don’t use physical force against criminals?

CNC: You gotta be kidding, right? … in cooperation with one another, insurers [will] want to expel known criminals not just from their immediate neighborhoods, but from civilization altogether, into the wilderness or open frontier of the Amazon jungle, the Sahara, or the polar regions. [262]

ANDREW: So the security GLOs will be allowed to kill people, if they are known criminals?

CNC: The security GLOs will not kill people, they will just expel them to the Sahara or polar regions. What happens then is up to the criminals.

ANDREW: Can we say that the security GLOs will effectively kill them?

CNC: I really don’t like that choice of wording. You make it sound like the security GLOs will be committing aggression against the criminals. That’s backwards – the criminal commits aggression, and security GLOs will just defend people. They won’t violate anyone’s rights.

ANDREW: Maybe you would prefer that we say: the security GLOs will effectively kill people in a rights-respecting manner.

CNC: Yeah, that’s better.

ANDREW: Will everybody be able to get insurance from the security GLOs?

CNC: Of course – in a market economy, shortages are impossible. Anyone can get anything by paying the market price.

ANDREW: What if the market price of insurance for some people is more money than they can pay?

CNC: Don’t worry, competition among insurers for paying clients will bring about a tendency toward a continuous fall in the price of protection… [281-282].

ANDREW: In the future everyone will pay less for security than they currently pay in taxes?

CNC: Well, certain government-induced distortions would be eliminated. Government taxes more in low crime and high property value areas than in high crime and low property value areas. [259] Security GLOs would do the exact opposite.

ANDREW: So in rough neighborhoods, most people might not be able to afford security insurance.

CNC: Possibly.