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Posted February 22, 2006
re: libertarianism
Libertarianism's strange roots in the arts of economic success is not, itself, a success story.
In the course of a life, one thinks many thoughts, expresses many opinions . . . not every one of which makes equal sense. Reflecting in the pages of Liberty, on the life and death of Liberty's founder, R.W. Bradford, Douglas Casey has this to say about libertarianism and wealth:
Bill was, unlike many libertarian intellectuals, financially successful. It always amused him that a class of people who, arguably, understand money and the economy better than any others (including most university professors and financial pundits), seemed to have less money than anyone else this side of the welfare lines. It was nice to see someone not only talk the talk but walk the walk.
Bill did amuse himself with these kinds of thoughts. And worse thoughts, perhaps. For example, one sometime friend of Bill's insisted that Bill really despised all wage slaves,
thought they were chumps: the only reasonable thing to be was self-employed, or an employer. Working for others is no way to live.
But I also heard Bill Bradford say very different things, things that seem to contradict such narrow-minded snobbery.
He once said that his father had begun to take pride in him only after he became successful. He thought that this was idiotic, and did not speak well of his father. If Bill had gone on to academic work, instead of life as an entrepreneur, he would never have made as much money. But Bill insisted that such a life would have been respectable. He said this, suggesting that such a life would have been worthy of love and attention, too. Bill's father's prejudice in favor of wealth did not strike Bill himself as wise or admirable.
When I informed Bill that, because our financial inequality (he being my employer and I his low-paid employee) there were several gulfs between us, he was shocked and a bit hurt. He didn't see how such things should preclude friendships from forming. I smiled and shook my head. I saw Bill as naive. As a relatively poor person, my own pride ensured that there would be at least some gulf between us. Besides, as the moral of Thoroughly Modern Millie put it, The rich can nickel and dime you to death
; I would've been a complete fool had I not kept some reservations and buffers intact. And, even if he didn't intend it, his own behavior as a wealthy eccentric further increased the natural gulf. I preferred to think of this gulf as more comic than tragic, but later on it did become a sad one, as we parted company.
Doug Casey's assumption that libertarians understand money and the economy better than any others
is more than merely arguable, however. It flies in the face of a lot of puffed-up foolishness. How many times have I witnessed libertarians take a half-baked dogma about, say, the gold standard, and proceed with whacko investment strategies?
I agree with standard free-market doctrine, preferring an international gold standard to, say, today's floating fiat standards. But from this it does not follow that gold is the best investment strategy, for instance. Bill Bradford himself said it should mainly be considered as the insurance
part of one's own investments. If all you have in investments per se is gold, you're something preciously close to a fool. Bill's standard rap was that the hard-money
portion of one's portfolio should be no more than 25 percent of one's investment holdings. (Being a dealer in gold and silver, he had more than he advised; but of course that was a different form of capital, for him. It was stock. Still, he worried about this divorce between advice and practice even in his own investment life. I assume he liquidated most of his gold holdings before he died.)
Flashback: I was talking to a libertarian, years before I met Bill, and this idealogue was describing his gold investment strategy. He was describing how he would invest in the same amount of gold every month. Not the same amount of money directed towards buying gold, but the same amount of gold. I thought this odd, and said so. We got into a weird conversation, one like I've had so many times with libertarians. Gold has been demonetized . . .
I began, but was interrupted. Do you understand anything about money?
he asked incredulously. Yes. I know that gold is not now money. And I know that you receive wages as income, in terms other than gold, and . . .
He shook his head. Poor benighted me! According to him, I had bought into
the corrupt economics of our time.
More fool he, I thought: Pretend all you want that gold is money. And make that illusion the standard upon which to secure your future. But it's FRNs and digital money readily exchangeable for FRNs that is actually used as money. As a famous economist once put it,
I explained, Money is what money does.
And libertarianism is the doctrine that liberty should be spread throughout the land, equally upon all peaceful adults. It is not a doctrine of wealth. Some people do not really care that much about making money. To expect all who love liberty to be the same as all who strive for wealth is bizarre.
R. W. Bradford, in his better moments, realized this.
This is not to say that financial wisdom is not an important part of the normative politics of liberty. This is not to say that we do not wish to encourage financial responsibility in our friends and neighbors. But assuming some deep connection between a personal economy of wealth maximization and an individualistic political ideology is more than highly suspect. It's uncalled for.
And Bill recognized something else, too. One day I caught him smiling to himself, wryly. Do you ever wonder,
he asked, if it's all worth it? You give up a better salary to work for Liberty I've invested a lot of money to start it and keep it going. Thousands of libertarians give away huge chunks of time and small fortunes to an ineffective political party. Obsessed with freedom, numerous academics divert their energies from much better-paying avenues of research and teaching. Is Liberty a bitch goddess?
Bill recognized the costs associated with keeping his magazine going. He put part of his wealth on the line for the magazine. Employees, in turn, did not get paid much, and themselves supported the magazine to work for it for lower wages than the market would otherwise prescribe. And writers (for the most part) contributed without getting paid. It was a common project of mutual sacrifice. Bill knew it. He designed it that way.
Some of Liberty's supporters and board members tried not to think of Liberty like that at all, though. They wanted it to be a business run just like any other business.
But that's not the way it worked. Not in the beginning. Not during its heyday. Not when I left. And not today. It is and was a quasi-charitable, communal enterprise. An emprise, surely. That's how most magazines of an intellectual nature are run. There are many reasons for this situation.
Of course, there are libertarians, many of them raised on the twisted philosophy of Ayn Rand, who regard all such talk as altruistic nonsense. Profit! Business! Egoism! These are supposed to be libertarianism's watchwords. Poppycock. Liberty (and I'm talking about the ideal and the potential reality, not the magazine) encompasses many goods, including shared goods that require labor without much recompense. Indeed, liberty itself requires that kind of group support, as well as the occasional sacrifice. To pretend otherwise, especially with elitist talk about financial success, is to pervert liberty itself.
The point of libertarianism is not wealth. It is freedom. You know, liberty. This should be as obvious as gold not being money.
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