What Libertarianism Gets Wrong

Remember the “New Atheists”? They were a big deal 15 or so years ago, bashing irrationality and superstition in bestselling books like “The God Delusion,” “The End of Faith” and “God Is Not Great.” Some of them ultimately ended up as believers, others turned to ayahuasca, and Richard Dawkins recently admitted to being a “cultural Christian.” He still doesn't believe in the big J.C., but acknowledges his worldview was shaped in a Christian context.

In a similar way, I've always been a cultural libertarian. A son of the Mountain West, my traditional conservatism is heavily dosed with a “leave me the hell alone” contempt for Washington, Wall Street and anyone else who dares to tell me what to do. It’s more instinct than ideology. When policy wonks argue how government can best solve a problem, I’m the guy in back muttering, “Why should government be involved at all?”

That said, I’ve never described myself as a full-blown libertarian—never joined the party, haven’t even read “Atlas Shrugged.” Despite admiring the libertarian movement, I’ve always sensed a hollowness at its core that didn’t jibe with human nature.

Many politically minded people have filled out “The World's Smallest Political Quiz” or the Political Compass. By answering a few questions, these questionnaires map your beliefs on a grid instead of a left-right continuum. The latter uses two axes: Authoritarian vs. Libertarian and Left vs. Right. You can take it here.

After taking and retaking these surveys, I always end up in the fourth quadrant: Libertarian Right. Here’s to freer markets, smaller government and individual rights. But this only covers economic and political issues while ignoring the many, many other elements of human flourishing.

Touching the Wet Paint

There are as many varieties of libertarian as there are libertarians themselves. To keep it simple, I’ll focus on the more utopian free-marketeers among them. They assert that if people are just left alone, they will make the best rational choices for themselves. This sounds great in theory … until you meet people. Humans possess reason, but they are hardly rational animals.

About 11.5% of Americans smoke cigarettes despite knowing the health risks. I knew motorcycles were more dangerous than cars; guess what my first vehicle was? And try lecturing an addict about rational choices.

We all make bad decisions and sometimes revel in them. If any leader says, “You should do X,” lots of people won’t. Why? Some folks are busy, others disorganized, some don’t care, others never get around to it. Then you have a subset that opposes X, whatever it might be.

There are also those who oppose X for no reason at all. Call it the “Wet Paint Effect.” Walk down a hallway and no one touches the wall. Tape a “Wet Paint” sign to it and it will be covered with fingerprints. Including mine.

In the face of public opposition, the incompetent leader then says, “You have to do X.” Here’s where human nature really kicks in. Many folks, especially Americans, instinctively distrust the government. For the past several decades, our “experts” have gotten damn near everything wrong, from the Iraq War to the housing bubble to bailouts to Obamacare to Russiagate to Afghanistan. The list is endless. Politicians asserting “this time we’ll get it right” without even acknowledging their disastrous track record will be laughed off the stage.

A sterling example of this was the COVID vaccines; an estimated 19% never got the jab. This outraged many who insulted the non-compliant as anti-science, snake-handling freaks. It was beyond their comprehension that millions of Americans would refuse to get vaccinated simply because the government said so. It was obvious to anyone familiar with human nature.

Weird, Wonderful Humans

Human nature continually asserts itself over rationality—however “rationality” is defined this week. This was captured well by Fyodor Dostoyevsky in “Notes from Underground”:

[Y]ou tell me again that an enlightened and developed man, such, in short, as the future man will be, cannot consciously desire anything disadvantageous to himself, that that can be proved mathematically. I thoroughly agree, it can—by mathematics. But I repeat for the hundredth time, there is one case, one only, when man may consciously, purposely, desire what is injurious to himself, what is stupid, very stupid—simply in order to have the right to desire for himself even what is very stupid and not to be bound by an obligation to desire only what is sensible.

The primary flaw with libertarianism is its basis in scientific materialism, the belief that the physical world is the only thing that exists. It shares this flaw with communism, downgrading Homo sapiens into Homo economicus. Yes, each theory can be “proved mathematically,” but people are not equations to be solved.

Granted, the policies of Karl Marx do vastly more damage to people and society, but humans cannot be reduced to economic units or confined to a spreadsheet. As Dostoyevsky put it, “the whole work of man really seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano key.”

Joseph Stalin went a step beyond Marx, denouncing the pursuit of individual well-being completely. In his view, socialism would only succeed if man was transformed into Homo sovieticus. This was the collectivist parallel to Ayn Rand’s inhumane individualism: Objectivism preached “the virtue of selfishness,” denounced any and all spiritual impulse as “superstition,” and championed reason as the “only absolute.”

Both of these materialist political and economic systems—communism and objectivism—worked perfectly on paper; all they required was to eliminate everything that makes us human. But we are neither cogs nor piano keys—we are weirdly, wonderfully human, as frustrating as that is to political and economic theorists.

What’s Measured, What Matters

Whether on the left or right, materialist ideologies are comforting due to their seeming logic. GDP and stock market performance are easy to measure, as are grain exports and five-year plans. Yet these aren’t sufficient to describe a society writ large.

Management consultants constantly warn that “what gets measured gets managed—even when it’s pointless to measure and manage it, and even if it harms the purpose of the organization to do so.” But the truth is, not everything that matters can be measured—and not everything that we can measure matters.

With admittedly insincere apologies to Rand and Marx, religion is here to stay. It was present on the plains of Anatolia more than 10 millennia ago and will continue for millennia more. America’s founders understood this well, stressing that the Constitution can only work with a virtuous people.

Art has been around at least as long as faith, revealing humanity’s need to make sense of its time and create beauty. We will sing around campfires, fall in and out of love, and dance for no reason at all—because reason is just one tool in humanity’s arsenal, even though it’s the most easily measured.

By economic calculations, life has never been better. Meanwhile, our society is losing cohesion, mental health has plummeted, and substance abuse is rampant. These facts are far more difficult to measure, let alone fix, through a government program or political ideology.

Free markets and limited government certainly improve the world. But, back to Dostoyevsky, only “beauty will save the world.”