The good news for libertarians is that we’re right. Libertarian objective morality has been discovered and libertarian theory has been shown, empirically, to be right over and over. Normal people live their lives according to libertarian principle, even if they’ve never heard of it, because libertarianism is a feature of humanity itself. If you’ve discovered and accepted libertarianism, then good for you. You’ve uncovered one of life’s great truths.

The bad news is that libertarianism can only be understood and accepted by certain people who happen to have certain characteristics, like weak tribalist instincts and talents like curiosity, reasonability, and intellect. If you don’t have those characteristics, you aren’t going to get it and that includes the vast majority of people. Additionally, since virtually everyone lives according to libertarian principle without understanding it, the few who don’t live by it have a big advantage. If I walk into a room of normal, peaceful, cooperative people who aren’t going to use violence, for the most part, but I don’t have any problem using violence, can you guess who’s going to get their way? Once I get my way with violence, I become the de facto tribal elite and, over time, I will be accepted and followed by the normies. After that, I can pretty much do whatever I want to them with their support. Libertarianism is a part of the human genome, but so is a certain amount of psychopathy. In the hunter/gatherer times, that was manageable because tribe members could simply leave the tribe or neutralize the offenders if the psychopathy became malignant. With the advent of permanent civilization, that safeguard faded.

This seems to be an unfixable problem with humanity. It may be that our species was never meant for permanent civilization, but our intellect and drive for survival uncovered agriculture, led to permanent civilization and now we’re dealing with the friction that’s caused between our current conditions and the conditions we evolved in. I think it’s unlikely to destroy us, because successful species, like mankind, tend to self-regulate (the pendulum swings), but it seems likely that humanity will continue to be dominated by the worst of us, forever.

What to do?

I’ll warn you now that I have no good solutions. I’m no political or social strategist. However, I do know a few things. One, after accepting libertarianism, most don’t realize that libertarian principle isn’t binding. You can accept and advocate for principle and still do things that are non-libertarian, or even anti-libertarian. I can prove it. Even though I’m a staunch advocate for libertarianism, I can walk over to my neighbor’s house and set it on fire. If I decided to do that right now, no one could stop me. All that libertarian principle tells me is that it’s morally wrong to do so and that behavior like that will have negative consequences for society in general. That’s it. Libertarianism is a pretty narrow philosophy. It’s almost impossible to live strictly according to principle. In real life, no compromises must be made, but life’s going to get really tough if compromises aren’t made. It’s best to live according to principle, however, we need to realize that we’re going to do things that aren’t particularly libertarian, whether we want to or not.

The point of saying that is to raise the question of whether or not we should get on board with whatever scams the political class is running and try to benefit from their violence. Basically, you’re going to be a victim or a beneficiary. I don’t think violence against the political class is a good answer, because they’re the best at violence. That’s why they’re at the top. And, even if violence could overthrow them, it would, most likely, only establish a different, violent political class. It might be a less bad political class for a while, but violence now is an awful big risk to take for a “maybe better political class” later. Controversially, participating in the scams isn’t against libertarianism, since it doesn’t actually involve violating property. Taxation isn’t theft. It really isn’t. The political class demands money and we give it to them. Under most circumstances, they don’t actually steal it. If they do, then yes, it’s theft, but that’s rare. The decision to pay taxes is like any other decision; it’s making a tradeoff to avoid something or to gain something. What’s more, being the recipient of tax money definitely isn’t objectively immoral. It doesn’t violate property when it’s collected and it certainly doesn’t violate property when it’s distributed. So, receiving tax money isn’t objectively immoral. “…but taxation is a threat and threats are aggression!” Well, you can define aggression however you want, but the Non Aggression Principle is really about property and consent. Threats don’t violate property. What about The Fed? The Fed literally takes the value of my money from me without asking. The question, however, is whether or not I’ve consented to this taking. The answer is yes. I have consented. I know that they’re going to take the value from me, yet, I willingly participate in the Dollar monetary system. What people don’t like about that is that it’s unfair. The political class has an enormous advantage over the rest of us and they tilt the tables in their favor. People don’t like the fact that they’re on the weak side and so they want to call it immoral, when, in fact, it isn’t (at least it’s not objectively immoral. Subjective morality varies.). So, receiving money printed by the Fed isn’t objectively immoral. As odd as it seems, as far as libertarianism goes, there are no moral concerns about getting involved in political scams, as long as it doesn’t require that the libertarian actually violates others’ property.

Political scams are absolutely inevitable and I’m not advocating involvement in them. I’m just trying to assess the situation realistically. If a libertarian world isn’t an option, then the question is, again, are we going to be a victims or beneficiaries? That’s something people have to decide for themselves. If your subjective morality rejects involvement in such things, then good for you. That’s probably a virtue. However, you will be a victim. Maybe, if we were to focus our energies on political scams, we could work ourselves into the elite class and, finally, have some tribal influence with the normies while gaining wealth and insulating ourselves from the otherwise inevitable victimhood. We aren’t going to be violent. It’s not in our nature, but we might be able to piggyback on the violence of the political class in order to gain the tribal sway that they maintain.

Should it be a religion?

As I mentioned, only certain people, with certain characteristics, can understand and accept libertarianism. There’s a small industry built up around libertarian awareness and persuasion. There are people out there who can be persuaded, but the number is small. That’s why, even though we win all the arguments, we aren’t a bigger constituency. The mind mine that these mind miners are mining is a lot smaller than I think they hope it is. It’s more about entertaining current libertarians than it is discovering new ones. We might be better served to just hand out a generic, libertarian essay and those who can grasp it will and those who can’t won’t and we won’t have wasted our time evangelizing to NPCs. As I pointed out in this post, normies who can’t grasp moral principles or ideas can be persuaded to follow them, through a religion. It might be worth developing a religion, like the elites did with the Covid-19 scam, or working libertarian ideas into current religions by creating a story that manipulates tribalism, provokes fear and offers security and is simple enough for average people to understand. How that might work, I have no idea, but it is a proven technique. It’s been done before to great effect, however, new religions often end up as cults. Maybe being a cult is a process that religions have to go through. Regardless, it can be done and there are people who will have a knack for it.

Are we an ethnicity? Should we act like one?

I’ve heard, anecdotally, that jews tend to be a very exclusive ethnic community who discourage marriage outside of the ethnicity and who value any jew over any non-jew. I don’t know if that’s true, but the idea is interesting. Maybe libertarians should be this way. If you are one of the few who can “get it”, then you can join the group, or maybe, more specifically, you are one of the group and we can focus on our own well-being. Some are already doing this, setting up groups of libertarians to help each other progress. That’s great, but maybe we need to be equally zealous in excluding non-libertarians from participating. I’m not suggesting only doing business with or helping/supporting libertarians, but excluding non-libertarians from our “ethnic” support groups. Ultimately, there is the violent, dominant political class, the clueless, tribalistic normies who support them and are exploited by them and us, the libertarians. Unlike the normies, we don’t have to be exploited by the political class, because we can see what the game is. The political class treats the rest of us like cattle, because that’s what we are and that’s what we’ll always be…unless you’re a libertarian and you realize that there are ways to get outside the fence that keeps the rest of the cattle in. So, if we can stick together, to the exclusion of others, maybe we can help each other avoid exploitation, or even benefit from the exploitation.

The problem with that idea is that we are, necessarily, weakly tribal. Our cohesion will be and has proven to be, tenuous, at best. I guarantee that response to this post, if there is any, will be all over the place and very contentious, maybe even nasty. I’m not sure we’re even capable of a strong ethnic affiliation. Maybe we don’t need to be organized. Maybe we should go our own ways, individually, with the goal of avoiding exploitation, teaming up when it’s beneficial.

This post has been prompted by what may be a realization that human society can never be broadly libertarian. Humans aren’t unlike any other animal in the sense that our social structures are genetically dictated and we can’t change that. The New Socialist Man can never be created, nor can the New Libertarian Man, for the same reasons. The difference is that, unlike socialism, libertarianism is in our DNA, but so is the tribalism that makes us beholden to the political class, whose personalities are pathological. The political class will always use violence against the naturally libertarian productive class, they’ll get their way and gain the support of those they’ve exploited through the tribal response. If this is true, and I’ve come to believe it is, then we need to figure out how to deal with it. We need to stop spending our time, talent and treasure on things that may be useless, like political reform and proselytizing and focus on that which will allow us to thrive – whatever that may be.