>Date: Mon, 14 Aug 1995 15:27:10 -0400
>From: jnarveso@watarts.UWaterloo.ca (Jan Narveson)

Colleagues!

In a sense, the following will appear to be a wet blanket, and in a sense
that's what it is. Libertarian ideas are certainly clearer and in better
shape than those of any other political "party" or orientation today. At
the level of sheer principle, that's been true since the days of Thomas
Hobbes.

What you have not reckoned with is Democracy. It is not difficult to see
why libertarian ideas don't appeal to kings or to Ancienne Regimes. But the
optimistic are puzzled that they don't make more progress in a democracy.
The answer, unfortunately, is not far to seek (and, I have recently found,
was basically seen by Kant as well as by John Stuart Mill).

Is democracy rule by the ignorant (wrongly billed, in these exchanges,
under the heading of "stupidity")? The short answer is Yes, and necessarily
so. It is, but for two different kinds of reasons.

First off, what all of you ought to know by now: democracy is rule by the
ignorant simply because it IS "rule". Nobody is qualified to "rule": that
is the fundamental problem with socialism. (See, by the way, the stunning
book by David Ramsay Steele, From Marx to Mises, which will bring the point
home with a clarity never before even approximated). No society can be
"ruled", in the sense in which governments to this day attempt to rule
people: namely, tell them what to do with their lives, design general
structures for them, try to promote their well-being. Governments can't do
that - only people can. Each person is competent, more or less, to rule
himself or herself; but nobody is competent to rule others, and especially,
not large numbers of others.

Which brings up the second point: THAT is what the ignorant are ignorant
about, and, alas, virtually everybody is ignorant about it. The only really
rational thing for anybody in a governing position to do would be to stop
governing - but do so in such a way that nobody else could do so, either.
We would all do much better if we all let each other live his own life, and
deal with the particular people we deal with on the basis of negotiation,
agreement. But people with the power of government in their hands won't do
that, and that - as Kant pointed out - is ESPECIALLY true of democracy, of
the majority. Democracy, at last, gives ordinary people power, and they're
damn well going to use it. They'll use it the same way that kings and
aristocracies used it before: to extract wealth and submission from the
ruled, to line their own pockets (very roughly speaking). What they won't
see is that the very attempt to do that will result in those pockets being
emptier than they otherwise would, because government kills the goose that
lays the golden egg. Or rather, it hobbles it, wounds it.

The libertarian program doesn't appeal to most people because most people
"want" things they think government can give them. The fact that it can't
really do that isn't something they realize, and it certainly isn't
something that establishment policitians are going to tell them.

So the educational job needing to be done by libertarians is truly immense,
phenomenal. It isn't just what we need to tell other people, but it's also
the immense power of standing parties and governments to influence the
public mind that we have to contend with. And that's a corker.

Explaining to a small number of quite intelligent students in a classroom
why the above things are so is hard enough. Explaining it to many millions
of people who watch TV and read newspapers and absorb the chit-chat of the
day is all but impossible. It is not, after all, absolutely simple that
government oversupplies public goods (to put it in relevantly technical
language). Not until VERY recently have we seen through the familiar
arguments of a public-goods type which are thought to be arguments for the
necessity of government. Those arguments are readily persuasive to almost
everybody, persons of ordinary and above-ordinary intelligence. Explaining
what's wrong with them isn't the work of a moment. But, ladies and
gentlemen, a *moment* is ALL WE HAVE. There is no way to have  the ear of
the millions for two or three hours, let along the semester-class length
that we ideally need for this.

There isn't any way around, this, folks. We just have to keep on slogging
and hope.

__________________________________________________________________________
Jan Narveson (Professor)
Department of Philosophy, University of Waterloo;
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, N2L 3G1
(519) 888-4567-1-2780# (from touch-tone); or 885-1211, ext. 2780 (via
switchboard); FAX (519) 746-3097 Home: (519) 886-1673 (answering machine)
e-mail: jnarveso@watarts.UWaterloo.ca