PART III—How Do We Get There?

PART III

HOW DO WE GET THERE?

“If the revolution comes by violence, and in advance of light, the old struggle will have to be begun again.”—Benjamin R. Tucker

15

From Government to Laissez Faire

The prospect of real freedom in a laissez-faire society is a dazzling one, but how can such a society ever be brought about? Through the decades, government has silently grown and spread, thrusting insidious, intertwining tentacles into nearly every area of our lives. Our society is now so thoroughly penetrated by government bureaucracy and our economy so entangled in government controls that dissolution of the State would cause major and painful temporary dislocations. The problems of adjusting to a laissez-faire society are somewhat like those facing an alcoholic or heroin addict who is thinking of kicking the habit, and the difficulties and discomforts involved may make some people decide that we’d be better off just staying as we are.

It is naive, however, to assume that we can “just stay as we are.” America, and most of the rest of the world, is caught in a wave of economic decay and social upheaval which nothing can stop. After decades of governmental “fine tuning,” our economy is now so distorted and crippled that we have a tremendous and ever growing class of hopeless and desperate poor. These poor and dispossessed feel a very well-justified (if usually misdirected) resentment which they express in demonstrations and riots. Governmental attempts to aid them, even if such attempts could be free of bureaucratic pork-barreling and pocket-lining, merely make the situation worse. After all, government can only get its “aid” money by bleeding it from our already sick economy, thereby weakening the economy still further and creating more poor to be aided. As the poor see their lives becoming increasingly miserable in spite of all the political promises of help, their resentment must grow more violent.

Meanwhile, the bureaucrats’ attempts to save an economy dying of governmental controls by imposing more and more controls are pushing us swiftly down the path of financial ruin. If they aren’t stopped in their frantic efforts to cure our collectivist poisoning by forcing us to swallow more collectivism, they will sooner or later push us over the brink into total economic collapse—the kind of collapse where government money loses all its value and people starve to death in the streets.

The choice is not laissez-faire vs. the status quo, because we cannot possibly keep the status quo anyway. Tremendous socioeconomic forces, set in motion long ago by governmental plundering and power-grabbing, are sweeping the present order out from under our feet. We can only choose whether we will allow ourselves to be pushed into economic chaos and political tyranny or whether we will resist the bureaucratic tyrants and looters and work to set up a free society where each man can live his own life and “do his own thing.” Whichever we choose, the road ahead will probably be rough; but the important question is, “What kind of society do we want to arrive at in the end?”

How soon a laissez-faire society can be established and exactly what conditions may accompany a transition from government to freedom are impossible to predict because of two important variables—the rapidity with which the idea of freedom can be spread and how much longer our economy can withstand the effects of governmental meddling.

The economies of all the major nations are in various states of disintegration. For decades, governments have been inflating their currencies in order to siphon more money into the government treasuries than they could get by taxation alone. But the extra paper money pumped into the economy by inflation distorts the economy by causing malinvestments. This is the “boom” part of the dreaded business cycle. Governments don’t mind a boom at all, since inflation enables them to collect more revenue without antagonizing the taxpayer (the bureaucrats can always lay the blame on “the wage-price spiral” or “Big Business” or “greedy unions”). But as soon as the effects of an inflationary input wear off, people see the error of the malinvestments and abandon them and the “boom” is replaced by a “bust.” The only way a government can avoid the painful readjustment of a “bust” is to continually increase inflation, which continually decreases the value of each monetary unit in the economy. When the value of the paper dollar falls below the value of the gold dollar, the people are forbidden to own gold and the government sets an artificial “price on gold,” which eventually leads to recurring gold crises. When the value of the paper dollar falls below the value of the silver in four quarters, people hoard the quarters and the government has to put out low-value cupro-nickel coins to alleviate the “coin shortage.”

In this way the value of your money is gradually eroded until all you have in your pocket is unbacked paper and low-value cupro-nickel. (Although the dollar is nominally backed by gold, this does us no good, since the Government forbids us to own that gold!) The economy continues to operate on this fake money simply because people are used to believing that it has real value. But, as the government is forced to inflate more and more to avoid an ever more severe depression, hyper-inflation sets in and the value of the monetary unit falls with increasing speed. The resulting soaring prices force people to recognize the shrinking value of the money. Then there is a mad scramble to spend money quickly before it loses any more of its value. People rush to buy durable goods of any kind as storers-of-value in the place of the nearly worthless money. These frantic attempts to get rid of money and hold onto goods quickly reduce the trading value of the dollar to zero, and the economy is left without any medium of exchange and must fall back on barter. Since barter is completely insufficient to support an industrialized economy (how would General Motors pay its employees on a barter basis? how would your grocer pay the wholesaler from whom he buys the food?), there is mass unemployment, destitution and starvation.

So the bureaucrats’ attempt to avoid the depression caused by their inflationary policies only succeed in making the depression far more severe when it does come. If they resort to hyper-inflation, the ensuing depression will involve the complete collapse of the monetary structure of the country, as in Germany after World War I. Germany was able to recover from its monetary collapse fairly quickly because many of the other nations still had fairly sound currencies to which Germans could turn for media of exchange. The collapse toward which we are slipping will be much harder to recover from. Most of the currencies of the world have no more actual value behind them than does America’s, and furthermore, the major currencies are all tied to each other and to the dollar, so that if the dollar goes, they all go. Such a world-wide monetary collapse would leave us without any medium of exchange except for the gold and silver which a few far-sighted individuals have horded, and even this might have to be exchanged on a black market basis due to governmental prohibitions. Before this gold and silver could become sufficiently spread through the economies of the world to lift them from barter back to a monetary basis, millions may have starved to death. Governments can’t create money out of paper, ink, and promises. Once they destroy their currencies, they can only wait for the processes of the market to re-establish a medium of exchange.

Since the state of our economy depends largely on the whims of bureaucrats and politicians, it is impossible to predict whether our currency will continue to function for several more months or for several years before going into hyper-inflation and final collapse. Similarly, it is impossible to say whether the collapse will happen rather suddenly, as in 1929-32, or whether it will come as a long-drawn-out series of fiscal crises, each worse than the last. The only thing we can say with certainty is that a day of reckoning must come for the badly inflated dollar and for all the other shaky currencies of the world, and that governments will inevitably pursue policies designed to put off that day of reckoning, thereby making it far more disastrous when it does come.

In making the transition from government control to a laissez-faire society, then, our first concern should be to minimize the effects of the inevitable economic breakdown caused by the politicians’ fiscal meddlings. There are several measures which would greatly help, all of which involve abolishing existing laws and regulations—that is, they involve a return to freedom of the market.

First and foremost, the economy should be provided with media of exchange to replace the dying dollar. Since gold and silver have proved themselves through centuries of trading to be the most acceptable monetary media, this means that we must get as much gold and silver into the hands of as many private individuals as quickly as possible. All restrictions on the ownership and importation of gold in any form whatever should be gotten rid of as soon as possible, and Americans should be encouraged to exchange their dollars for all the gold and silver left in the Treasury at whatever price ratio the free market sets. All the many restrictions on gold mining should be dispensed with so that the demand for hard money could be partially met with newly mined gold.

Along with getting monetary metals into the hands of private individuals, there should be an end to all laws preventing private coinage of money. Businessmen should be as free to manufacture coins for exchange as they are to manufacture vacuum cleaners. In both cases, the processes of the free market will encourage those with the best products and eliminate the frauds.

The monopoly of the Federal Reserve System on banking should be broken so that entrepreneurs could set up completely private banks regulated by nothing but the processes of the market. It is through the mechanism of the Federal Reserve that the Government inflates the currency, and special privilege laws permitting banks to hold only fractional reserves against their demand deposits add to the problem. Private coinage and private banking will put a permanent end to inflation, depression, and monetary crises.

Critics will object that without the restrictions preventing private individuals from owning gold and coining their own money, nearly everyone would rush to exchange their paper dollars for gold and silver coins and certificates backed by such coins. This would precipitate a crisis for governmental money and a severe de facto devaluation of the dollar. And the critics are right—this is what would happen. But an economic crisis will come anyhow; the politicians have already made it inevitable. The crisis will be far less severe, and recovery far more rapid, if it comes as a result of people deserting the dollar for a truly valuable medium of exchange than if the dollar collapses from hyper-inflation, leaving them no money commodity at all. By forcing us to use an inflated and increasingly devalued currency, the bureaucrats are denying us our only chance to rescue our economy and our own private savings from the government-created fiscal chaos. The dollar can’t be saved—it’s already dying of governmental interference. Let’s not let the bureaucrats kill the whole economy along with it in the name of trying to save their decaying, totalitarian monetary system.

The preceding discussion has assumed that the transition to a laissez-faire society can be gotten well underway before the economy collapses. If the economy collapses first, all of the above measures will still apply in order to facilitate recovery, but, of course, the recovery will be much more difficult and slower.

In making the transition to a laissez-faire society, many governmental institutions which have been an integral part of society for years or decades or centuries will have to be abolished. Taxes present the least problem—obviously, they should be abolished immediately. Taxation is theft, and there is never any justification for continuing theft. The abolition of all taxes would stimulate an immediate and rapid spurt of growth throughout the whole economy as money formerly drained into bureaucratic boondoggles and political pocket-books became available for productive use. Imagine what it would do for your own personal prosperity to have your real income almost doubled overnight (taxes, including all hidden taxes, take over one-third of the average man’s income). This same prosperity would be felt by the whole economy. As each productive man’s real income shot upward, there would be a sharp increase in both consumption and investment. The consumption would mean a greater demand for all products and services, and the investment would provide the capital structure necessary to meet that demand. New products would be marketed, new jobs created, and the general standard of living would rise. (It is true that government both spends and invests tax revenues, but it always allocates these revenues differently from the way their rightful owners would have allocated them, thus distorting the market. Also, government investments are notably wasteful and counterproductive. For example, the U. S. Government once formed an Abaca Production and Sales bureau to take over the growing of hemp in four Central American countries, on the theory that hemp, which is used for the manufacture of rope, was vitally strategic. But this government-produced hemp was of such inferior quality that it couldn’t be sold, even to the Government’s own rope factory. To get out of its embarrassment, Abaca Production and Sales sold the worthless hemp to another Government agency, the Strategic Stockpile. The hemp was then stored, at taxpayers’ expense, in specially built warehouses. Each year the previour year’s crop was shoveled out and destroyed to make room to store the new crop. Total loss to the taxpayers averaged $3 million a year.¹

Government employees would have to find jobs in private enterprise if they wanted to work. There are two major kinds of governmental employees—those whose services would be in demand in the free market (teachers, librarians, secretaries, firemen, etc.) and those who perform no useful function but simply keep the governmental machinery running (lawmakers, tax collectors, bureaucratic record keepers and paper shufflers, executives in the military-industrial complex, the President and the Vice President, etc.). The first kind would probably find only minor difficulties in adjusting to a free society. A forest ranger in Yellowstone National Park might find his job almost unchanged, as the Park was taken over by a private corporation to be run for profit. Those lawyers and judges whose minds were young and flexible enough to adjust to freedom instead of statutory law could sell their services to free enterprise arbitration agencies. On the other hand, men who had spent their lives as tax collectors for the Internal Revenue Service or as Federal narcotics agents would find no demand for their “services” and would have to change careers in order to survive—perhaps even to that of garbage collector or janitor (honorable work, for a change). In a sense, this would be a partial penality for having been willing to make a career of ruling over others.

Switching to a laissez-faire society would certainly require large adjustments in the lives of many people. It’s amazing, though, how swiftly and efficiently adjustments can be made in a free-market situation. When some men want to sell their services, other men want to buy services to manufacture a product, and still other men want to buy the product, nothing can stop them from getting together in a mutually beneficial exchange except the interference of government. So, while the birth of a free society would bring temporary hardships to many, the period of adjustment would be fairly brief. In the end, all would be better off than they had been when ruled by government (with the possible exception of such parasites as Presidents, White House advisors, and Pentagon Generals).

But what about government obligations such as the national debt—who will see that they are met? Those who ask this question have never stopped to analyze what is meant by “government obligations.” Morally, the government is no more than a well-organized band of robber barons. In order to maintain itself in power, it borrows money, grants special privileges, and makes promises to certain groups and individuals. But where does it get the money to pay its debts and keep its promises? By the theft of taxation. Obviously, the victims of a hoodlum gang cannot be morally required to give up their honestly earned money in order to pay debts incurred by the gang in its attempts to stay in power over them. No government obligation of any sort is morally binding on the citizen-subjects (or former citizen-subjects) of that government. Those who voluntarily loaned money to the government were at fault for sanctioning and supporting the activities of the hoodlum gang, and justice demands that they must take their losses and make the best of it.

Of course, many who have “loaned” money to the government, expecting to be paid back later, have had no choice in the matter (Social Security is the prime example of this point). Others who have never voluntarily paid into, government treasuries have been made dependent on governmental welfare payments when political meddling strangled the economy and denied them decent jobs. These people are among the most tragic victims of the power-grabbers. But to continue collecting money by force in order to make payments to them would simply be to perpetuate the system which enslaved them in the first place. In a newly born laissez-faire society, these people would have to either find jobs (which would be plentiful after the adjustment period) or depend on private charity. This may seem harsh, but it is far less terrible than what will happen to the poor, the sick, and the old if we allow government to continue in power until it brings us to economic collapse and mass starvation.

When considering the hardships which people such as Social Security recipients would undergo during the transition to a laissez-faire society, it is well to remember that most of these people are guilty of at least passively consenting to the politicians predations. If enough of them had raised a protest a few decades ago, we wouldn’t be facing this governmentally induced crisis today. People who meekly consent to wrongs because no one else is objecting to them, instead of identifying and condemning the corruptions, are filling up a reservoir of hardship. If the dam breaks and they are engulfed in the flood, they shouldn’t be too surprised. The hardships, after all, are partly due to their guilt of consent.

One of the most important considerations raised in connection with the abolition of government is what should be done with government wealth and property. As far as monetary wealth goes, this is no problem ... since the government doesn’t have any (as a look at the national debt figures will show). The government does, however, possess a tremendous amount and variety of “property” in the form of land, buildings, roads, military installations, schools, businesses such as the Post Office, Government Printing Office, and hundreds less well-known, prisons, libraries, etc., etc. Though these items are in the temporary possession of whatever bureaucrats happen to be in charge of them, they are not actually owned by anyone. “The public” is unable to own them, since nothing can be owned by a collective myth like “the people.” Politicians and bureaucrats don’t own them for the same reason that a thief doesn’t rightfully own the property he has stolen. “Public property” is actually unowned potential property.

Since valuables in the possession of government are not actually owned, it would be perfectly proper for anyone to take possession of any piece of “public property” at any time that the government became too weak or careless to prevent him from doing so. The man who took possession of a piece of former “public property,” claiming it and marking it as his own for all to see, would become the rightful owner of that property.

It has been proposed that the process of disposing of “public property” should be made orderly by selling the items to the highest bidder, rather than simply allowing them to be claimed by any comer. The money thus collected, it is held, could then be given back to the taxpayers in the form of income tax rebates, or it could simply be destroyed (assuming it to be in the form of paper currency or similar fiat money) in order to reverse the process of inflation and restore some value to the dollar.

Several objections can be raised to this plan, however. First it would be next to impossible to prevent a great deal of graft as the money from “public property” sales rolled in. Given a stream of money, a bureaucrat can always figure out a way to divert some of it into his own pocket, and who would there be to police the bureaucrats and politicians except other bureaucrats and politicians? Second, this system is definitely biased toward large firms and wealthy individuals. This would not be objectionable if the rich were rich largely because of their own merit and the poor were poor solely because of their incompetence and laziness, as would be the case in a long-established laissez-faire society. But in our governmentally controlled society, many of the poor are poor because bureaucratic regulation and taxation robbed them of a chance, and many of the rich are rich because of political pull.

Finally, selling “public property” to the highest bidder would inevitably involve a long delay before many of the items could be put to productive use. This delay would make the transition period to a laissez-faire society longer and more difficult, since a delay in production means a delay in available jobs and in produced items to consume. And if the process were not to be dragged on indefinitely, many items would have to be abandoned, to be simply claimed in the future (how many people do you know who want 100 acres ten miles from the nearest road in the middle of the Mojave Desert?). Of course the politicians would try to keep the sale business going indefinitely, in order to prolong their power and would thereby make themselves harder to get rid of.

From a moral point of view, items which aren’t owned can’t be rightfully sold, anyway. Sale is one means of disposing of property, and property is that which is owned. If something isn’t owned, it can’t be sold, and “public property” isn’t owned by anyone, either the public or the politicians.

It has been objected that if “public property” were thrown open to ownership by anyone who claimed it, there would be a welter of confusing, contradictory claims, and possibly violence and bloodshed. It is true that this might happen initially, especially if government lost its power to hold onto its possessions all at once. Societies have survived a sudden flood of claims to some particular wealth on a smaller scale (gold rushes being a notable example). While there is a great deal of confusion and some injustice in the beginning, things usually settle down in a fairly short period of time, especially when there is a large amount of desirable, potential property to be claimed, as is the case with present “public property.” And, it must be noted that such a situation of conflicting claims would certainly stimulate the growth of private enterprise services of protection, defense, and arbitration. This positive side effect would help the infant laissez-faire society get underway and gain strength quickly.

It has also been objected that if anyone could lay claim to any piece of former “public property,” many valuable items might be claimed by undeserving bums and bureaucrats. Again, it’s certainly true that this might happen in many cases. But the operations of the free market always penalize the incompetent, causing them to lose properties which they are incapable of operating effectively. If a drunken bum claimed the Chicago Main Post Office, what would he do with it? If he lacked the skill to operate the facility, he would have to simply hold on to it while someone else started a profitable private mail service in some other Chicago building, or he would have to sell it. If he sold it, it would then be put to productive use and he would be left with a sum of money to squander on liquor. Either way, the market would soon reach a condition of maximum productivity and the fate of the bum would become irrelevant to everyone but himself.

But, while incompetents would be shunted aside by the workings of the free market, those with ability and initiative would be given a chance to make their fortunes, regardless of their previous social and financial status. Not only would this wide-open claiming system at last give worthwhile opportunities to the poor and victims of discrimination, it would also help counteract the effects of eliminating welfare and government jobs.

There would certainly be difficulties and temporary dislocations involved in making the transition from government slavery to laissez-faire freedom, but they could be overcome by free men acting in a free market. And when the transition has been made, new opportunities would open up for everyone. There would be more and better jobs, better pay, a multitude of new ideas, inventions and business opportunities, and countless chances to “strike it rich.” Inflation could not threaten society, because there would be a sound monetary system. Consumer goods would multiply, living standards rise, and the hopeless and degrading poverty of today’s slums become a thing of the past. Most important of all, there would be freedom. No one would be taxed, or regulated, or forced to live his life according to someone else’s standards. No one would need to fear that his peaceful and private pastimes would bring the police with a warrant for his arrest. No one would be forced to bow to the whim of a power-hungry bureaucrat

On the other hand, if our society continues to be governmentally controlled, we can expect a steady increase in economic troubles, unemployment, inflation, crime, poverty, and, eventually, a complete collapse of the governmental monetary system, bringing widespread starvation. We can also expect a steady decrease in our government-permitted “freedoms” as more and more bureaucrats find more and more ways of taking care of us and exercising power over us.

A laissez-faire society is worth the thought, effort, and struggle necessary to achieve it, because liberty is the answer to all of our societal problems.

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¹For this and other examples of ridiculous government waste, listen to “Hayfoot, Straw-foot,” an LP record by Willis Stone, available from Key Records, Box 46128, Los Angeles, California.

16

The Force Which Shapes The World

But a discussion of how government could be dismantled and how free men could then build a laissez-faire society out of the pieces still doesn’t answer the question, “How do we get there?” Politicians are politicians because they enjoy wielding power over others and being honored for their “high positions.” Power and plaudits are the politician’s life, and a true politician will fight to the death (your death) if he thinks it will help him hold on to them. Even the gray, faceless bureaucrats cling to their little bits of power with the desperate tenacity of a multitude of leaches, each squirming and fighting to hold and increase his area of domination. How can we successfully oppose this vast, cancerous power structure? Where can we find a force strong enough to attack, undermine, and finally destroy its power?

Some people, gazing up at the fearsome might of the American Leviathan, have decided that our only hope lies in an eventual armed revolution. So they work to recruit revolutionaries, provoke a spirit of aggressive hostility toward The Establishment and promote violent confrontations with government representatives and police. Most of these people are quite sincere in their desire to increase liberty by overthrowing a government which insists on taxing us, regulating us, and “taking care of us” until it smothers us. Many of them even realize that we can’t have real freedom so long as we have any government at all. But few, if any, of them have thought through the necessary implications of violent revolution.

Armed revolutions, whether they occur on a massive, organized scale or as disconnected, hit-and-run confrontations, are very destructive. Quite apart from the immorality of destroying the private property or life of an individual who has not aggressed against you, destruction is foolish and short-sighted. It often takes years to build what it may take only moments to destroy; and once destroyed, an object can never again be of benefit to anyone. Destruction reduces the total amount of goods available to everyone and, hence, reduces the welfare of every individual in the society (naturally, the poor feel this welfare reduction first and worst). The destroyed object can be rebuilt, but only at the cost of much time, money, and intellectual and physical effort. It usually will not be rebuilt at all until the destruction is over so that the builders feel it will be safe. Meanwhile, the economy (which means all the individuals who try to improve their lot by trading goods and services with others) is weakened. To weaken a healthy economy would be bad enough, but to bleed our economy—which is already tottering on the brink of collapse—is suicidal folly.

Not only is violent revolutionary action destructive, it actually strengthens the government by giving it a “common enemy” to unite the people against. Violence against the government by a minority always gives the politicians an excuse to increase repressive measures in the name of “protecting the people.” In fact, the general populace usually joins the politicians’ cry for “law and order.”

But far worse than this, revolution is a very questionable way to arrive at a society without rulers, since a successful revolution must have leaders. To be successful, revolutionary action must be coordinated. To be coordinated, it must have someone in charge. And, once the revolution has succeeded, the “Someone in Charge” (or one of his lieutenants, or even one of his enemies) takes over the new power structure so conveniently built up by the revolution. He may just want to “get things going right,” but he ends up being another ruler. Something like this happened to the American Revolution, and look at us today.

Even if a revolution could manage to avoid setting up a new ruler, the great mass of people themselves would probably call for one. Revolution causes confusion and chaos, and in times of distress and disorder the first thought of the majority of people is, “We must have a leader to get us out of these troubles!” When people cry frantically for a leader, they always get one; there’s no shortage of men with power-lust. Furthermore, the leader they get will be a dictator with power to “restore law and order” in accordance with the citizens’ demands. Unless people know what laissez-faire freedom is (and that’s the only kind of freedom there is), and unless they know that it is far preferable to a system of governmental slavery, the odds are that any violent revolution will only pave the way for a new Hitler. Then we will be far worse off than we are now, because we will be saddled with physical destruction and its resultant poverty, with economic collapse, and with a dictatorial state with popular support.

Knowing the dangers and drawbacks of violent revolution, a few advocates of laissez-faire have proposed that we get “our people” into government and dismantle it from the inside. The difficulty with this proposal is that only men of integrity, who have no desire to rule over others, could be trusted to dismantle government instead of joining the power elite once they got into official positions. But men of integrity could hardly be expected to make the sacrifice of wasting their lives in government jobs, surrounded by looters. And once again, if people didn’t understand the desirability of a laissez-faire society, dismantling the government might only confuse and alarm them into calling for new leadership.

It has also been suggested that the way to win out over government in the long run is to withdraw all sanction from it and refuse to have any dealings with it; to avoid voting, accepting government subsidies, or using government services. The problem here is that government can compel us to deal with it, either by force of law or by holding a monopoly on some vital service. You may refuse to vote, but try refusing to use the government roads and mail system, to pay taxes, or to be drafted! Withdrawing our sanction from the looters by refusing to deal with them would be a very effective tactic ... if the looters would permit us to do so!

Despair has caused some to decide that the battle, at least in America, is already lost, and that our only hope of some freedom for our own lives lies in building a new society on some remote island or in retreating into a wilderness to escape “Big Brother.” Settling and industrializing a small island outside the tax-grip of any government (if such a place could be found) might be an interesting and even profitable venture, but it’s no way to defeat governments. As soon as the free island became an attractive enough prize, some government would gobble it up. Founding a free island is not a step toward victory—at best, it’s merely a postponement of defeat.

Similarly, a well-prepared wilderness retreat could be a life-saving shelter in case of a really severe socio-economic breakdown, but “opting out” is no way to defeat governments so we can have a free and secure world to live in. A retreat is just what its name implies—retreat, not victory.

The advocates of revolution, of dismantling the government from within or refusing to deal with it, or of “opting out” have failed to realize that if one wants to change society, one must first find out what makes society the way it is. Society is nothing more than a group of individuals living in the same geographical area at the same time. The values and the actions of each of these individuals are determined by the ideas he holds—by what he believes is right or wrong, beneficial or harmful for himself and others. This means that the customs, institutions, and life-style of any society are determined by the ideas held by the majority of influential people in that society. Just as the form of a man’s life is the result of the ideas he holds, so the form of a society is the result of the ideas which prevail in that society.

Ideas, even seemingly insignificant ones, can have earth-shattering results when they are widely believed in a culture. For example, in the Middle Ages, a minor religious dogma held that cats were agents of the devil. Since religion was a very important factor in almost everyone’s life at that time, almost the whole society participated in the religious duty of killing cats. As the cat population dwindled, the rodent population increased rapidly. The rats carried the fleas which carried the germs which caused the Black Death. Between one-fourth and one-third of Europe’s people died and almost one-half of the people of England died within two years, all because of one stupid, bad idea (though a seemingly harmless one)!

Good ideas can be just as powerful as bad ones. The realization that diseases are caused by micro-organisms and not by demons, the will of God, or the bad night air, has saved more lives than the Black Death destroyed. This one good idea has improved the health and increased the life-span of every one of us. The partial realization that man has rights which no government is entitled to take away led to nearly two centuries of the greatest progress and happiness men had yet known.

Mistaken ideas kept man cowering in superstitious fear of the gods ... smeared stone altars with human blood ... caused living children to be thrown into sacrificial fires. Correct ideas—the result of reason—have freed man to stand proud and erect ... to understand nature instead of fearing it ... to achieve a better life for his children instead of sacrificing them to the gods of his insane fears.

Ideas are the forces which shape our lives and our world!

But because ideas are invisible, most people think of them as unimportant (if they think of them at all). You can see a city, but you can’t see the multitude of plans that had to be drawn for each building, each street, each park. Nor can you see the millions of ideas that made possible the electricity, the automobiles, the supermarkets, the lawnmowers, the playground equipment, etc., etc. It’s easy to observe a government (the bureaucrats won’t let you ignore it), but you can’t see the idea that makes it possible—the belief in millions of minds that it’s right for some men to govern, or coercively rule over, others.

Because the forms of men’s lives and of their societies depend on what they believe, ideas are the most powerful force in the world. If you want to get a man to change his life-style, you will have to get him to change his ideas about what sort of life-style is possible to and desirable for him. Similarly, if you want to change a society, you will have to get the majority of influential people to change their ideas about what their society can and should be.

In a cannibal society, the reason men eat human flesh is that it is considered proper, or perhaps even necessary, to use human beings for food. In order to get rid of the cannibalism, it is only necessary to change the prevailing idea that eating people is proper or necessary. In a governmental society, the reason some men rule over others is that the vast majority of opinion-molders in that society consider it proper or even necessary for men to be ruled by force. In order to get rid of government it is only necessary to change the prevailing idea that men must or should be kept in some degree of slavery by their rulers. In a society dominated by the idea that no man has a right to govern anyone else, government would be impossible—no would-be ruler could muster enough gunmen to inforce his will.

Not only can a society be changed by changing the ideas which prevail in it, this is the only way it can be changed (except by enslaving, impoverishing, or killing all the members of the society in order to forcibly prevent them from living in the way their ideas dictate). Government is only the concrete expression and result of the prevailing idea that it is right for men to be governed by force. At present, the American government has the sanction and support, or at least the apathetic acceptance, of the majority of its citizen-subjects. So long as the majority of men believe that government is right and/or necessary, they will have a government. If their government is destroyed before they understand the desirability and practicality of freedom, they will rush to set up a new one, because they believe they must be governed in order to have a civilized world. Until we change this idea, we can never have a free society.

Bringing about a laissez-faire society by changing the ideas which prevail in our culture may seem like a difficult, centuries-long task, but opinion-molding isn’t really that hard. In any society, only a very small minority—perhaps one or two per cent—do any original thinking. A somewhat larger percentage act as transmission belts, passing the thinkers’ ideas on to the rest of the population. The vast majority of the people simply absorb their ideas from the culture around them, accepting the word of authorities or the opinions of their social circle, with little question or thought. In order to change the ideas in a society, it is only necessary to change the ideas of the tiny minority of thinkers and then watch while they filter down through the commentators, writers, editors, teachers, and all the other “influential men,” to be echoed by everyone else. It is the thinkers who control a society’s future course—Presidents and other politicians are merely the actors who pass across the stage, mouthing the lines which they have absorbed.

Furthermore, it isn’t even necessary to change the opinions of the men who are our present thinkers. Today’s opinion molders are the remnants of a confused, exhausted, cynical past. Once, their ideas of a big, fatherly government watching over its citizens, regulating their economic affairs, protecting them from fear, want, hunger, pornography, liquor, and marijuana, and insuring their “general welfare” seemed new and promising. Now, however, the mess of poverty, slavery, and conflict resulting from their belief in forced welfare, forced socialism, and forced morality is beginning to become apparent to all. These thinkers of the past have not only failed to solve our problems, they’ve made them incalculably worse, and because the mess is beginning to stink so badly, their time is running out. They’ll have to make way for a new breed of thinkers—for the libertarians (mostly young people) who don’t have much influence yet but who will have in just a few years. Many of the thinkers of the future are already beginning to realize the meaning and necessity of freedom. When enough of them understand laissez-faire, the future is ours!

The idea we have to spread is very easy to understand—it is simply that government is an unnecessary evil and that freedom is the best and most practical way of life.

Throughout history, most men have considered government to be a given fact of life—as unavoidable as devastating storms and fatal illnesses. Of the few who thought about it at all, most concluded that, while government might be evil, it was a necessary evil because the nature of man demanded that he be ruled ... for his own good (!). And the majority of men went along with this in an unthinking way because having a leader seemed to eliminate the awful need of being responsible for their own lives and decisions in an uncertain world. So the fear of self-responsibility became a fear of freedom, and rulers encouraged this by vesting government with all the authority, legitimacy, pomp and tradition they could muster, while keeping the populace ignorant and superstitious. We can still see this fear of self-responsibility in the demands for laws to protect the people from gambling, drugs, prostitution, misleading packaging, “unfair competition,” guns, “sub-minimum” wages, monopolies, and countless other imaginary menaces.

But government means some men governing—ruling over—others by force, and this is what we must tell the people we want to convince. When some men rule over others, a condition of slavery exists, and slavery is wrong under any circumstances. To advocate limited government is to advocate limited slavery. To say that government is a necessary prerequisite for a civilized society is to say that slavery is necessary for a civilized society. To say that men cannot protect their freedom without a government is to say that men cannot protect their freedom without a system of slavery. Slavery is never either right or necessary ... and neither is that form of slavery called government. We must tell people that government isn’t a necessary evil; it’s an unnecessary one.

We must also tell them that freedom, because it is the right way for men to live, is practical. A laissez-faire society would work, and work well. The social problems that perplex almost everyone are the result, not of too much freedom, but of government meddling in our lives with its compulsions, prohibitions, and ever-growing taxes. We must tell people that a laissez-faire society wouldn’t degenerate into chaos, that instead it would solve most of our problems. And we must be ready to show just how such a society would maintain itself and why it would solve the problems.

There are an infinite number of ways to tell people about liberty—as many ways as there are individual ideas about how to do it. We can do everything from talking to friends to writing articles and giving speeches, to organizing huge street demonstrations against government injustices. Government has a great deal of power over us, but it doesn’t have any right to dictate our actions. This means that, so long as we are careful not to initiate force against the person or property of any innocent bystander, we may oppose government in any way which we consider practical and reasonably safe. If we were in Russia or China, our tactics would probably have to be quite different, but in America people are used to a large measure of freedom of speech, so such activities as the publication of this book are permitted and still safe.

Fighting government with ideas of freedom has an interesting built-in safety factor—most of our politicians and bureaucrats, like most other people, can’t see the importance of ideas. What counts with them is votes, tax money, and political deals. Such esoteric things as philosophical concepts about the nature of a free society will never become visible to them until the votes, the revenues, and the law enforcement begin to be effected; at which point it will be too late to stop the idea of freedom. If you throw a bomb, the police will come after you and the terrified public will cry for “law and order.” But if you disseminate a constructive idea, people who are receptive will catch it, understand it, and pass it on, while the power structure will blindly ignore it.

To understand the importance of spreading the idea of freedom, think of what would happen if a majority (or even a large minority) of the people in America came to believe that government was an unnecessary evil and that freedom was the best and most practical way of life. Already, even with the support of most people, government bureaus are beginning to creak and falter and break down under the weight of their own incompetence. The Post Office cries for help, the courts have such an incredible backlog that “the right to a speedy trial” is a mockery, jails are packed, roads are crowded, schools never have enough money, and inflation spirals. Government is inadequate to cope with the complexities of modern life, and it’s becoming apparent to all but the willfully blind. Along with this private businesses are beginning to grow in areas which were formerly the exclusive domain of government. The private mail delivery company, booming in spite of being forbidden to deliver first class mail, and private arbitration services and protection agencies are a hopeful beginning.

In a few years, government will be even more overburdened, confused, and more obviously inadequate. The progressive breakdown of many more “governmental functions” will be opening the way for daring entrepreneurs to gain a foothold and offer superior services to the public. What if, at the same time, millions of Americans lost all respect for government? What if they saw government for what it really is—an annoying and dangerous band of looters, power-mad bureaucrats, and publicity-hungry politicians? What if the government, which is supposedly founded on the consent of the governed, no longer had that consent. What if the governed by the millions refused to be guilty of consent any longer?

If millions of Americans no longer regarded government as necessary, they would revoke “the consent of the governed.” Then, with the strength of numbers, it would be quite feasible to refuse to deal with government and to openly disobey its stupid and unjust laws. What could the bureaucrats do if 50% of the population ignored all trade restrictions—including tariffs, price controls, minimum wage laws, sales taxes, and even oughtright prohibitions? What if they simply bought and sold whatever they pleased, from gold bullion to bricks, for whatever prices and under whatever conditions they wanted, regardless of political regulation? What would the Internal Revenue Service do if three million of their subjects simply didn’t bother to send in any income tax forms, and what if fifty thousand employers stopped bothering to deduct withholding taxes?¹ What could the army do with a million men who refused to be drafted? What could they do if most of the men in a regiment just quietly quit and went home, leaving their officers red-faced and screaming behind them?

Such mass scale, passive disobedience to unreasonable laws wouldn’t need to be organized if the majority of people saw government for what it is and believed in freedom. It would start secretly and quietly, with individuals doing things they felt they couldn’t be caught for. (In fact, it already has started.) But as disrespect for government increased, the practice of ignoring laws would become increasingly open and widespread. At last it would be a great, peaceful, de facto revolt, beyond any power to stop.

If faced with such a massive, peaceful revolt, the government would have only two choices—to retreat, or to try to impose a tighter police state. If the politicians decided on retreat, they would be forced to sit by and watch their powers crumble away, piece by piece, until their government collapsed from lack of money and support. If they tried to impose a police state, they would arouse not only the original revolters but most of the rest of the people as well to open rebellion. The bureaucrats would find it very hard to whip up any popular support against people who had done no damage to any innocent person but were obviously only living their own lives and minding their own business. At each new repressive measure, the looters would find their popular support ebbing away, their armies and police forces torn with dissent and bled by desertion, their jails too full to hold any more rebels.

In such a crisis, the politicians would almost certainly vacillate. They have enough trouble making up their minds in ordinary dilemmas. This policy of vacillation would shake the tottering government apart even more surely and quickly, leaving the stage open for freedom.

We can bring about a laissez-faire society, but only through the tremendous, invisible power of ideas. Ideas are the motive power of human progress, the force which shapes the world. Ideas are more powerful than armies, because it was ideas which caused the armies to be raised in the first place, and it is ideas which keep them fighting (if this weren’t true, political leaders wouldn’t have to bother with their tremendous propaganda machinery). When an idea gains popular support, all the guns in the world cannot kill it.

Throughout history, the vast majority of people have believed that government was a necessary part of human existence ... and so there have always been governments. People have believed they had to have a government because their leaders said so, because they had always had one, and most of all because they found the world unexplainable and frightening and felt a need for someone to lead them. Mankind’s fear of freedom has always been a fear of selfreliance—of being thrown on his own to face a frightening world, with no one else to tell him what to do. But we are no longer terrified savages making offerings to a lightning god or cowering Medieval serfs hiding from ghosts and witches. We have learned that man can understand and control his environment and his own life, and we have no need of high priests or kings or presidents to tell us what to do. Government is now known for what it is. It belongs in the dark past with the rest of man’s superstitions. It’s time for men to grow up so that each individual man can walk forward into the sunlight of freedom ... in full control of his own life!

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¹”In a recent conversation with an official at the Internal Revenue Service, I was amazed when he told me that, ‘if the taxpayers of this country ever discover that the Internal Revenue Service operates on 90% bluff, the entire system will collapse’.” This statement was made by U. S. Senator Henry Bellmon of Oklahoma, as quoted from the printed copy of hearings in the Senate Finance committee on October 2, 1969.