Stand Up for Liberty! Table of Contents
Stand Up for Liberty!
Chapter 11
Wherefrom Comes the Marketplace of Ideas?
Let's consider where you could have learned about a marketplace of ideas. In 1983 Libertarian activist Jorge Amador published a short pamphlet "Hierarchy or Market?" Amador had been active in East-coast Libertarian politics. He'd watched carefully how the Libertarian Party conducted its internal politics. He concluded that the Libertarian Party did not follow Libertarian principles in its internal structure, and suffered as a result. Amador proposed: If we transform our Party that is Libertarian in name into a Party that is libertarian in operation, we will become much more effective. Our chances for victory will greatly increase.
Amador's pamphlet is quite long. Major excerpts are found on the web at http:\\www.lp2000.com. Amador's ideas on the marketplace of ideas are a bit different than mine. To summarize his most important ideas, as they relate to Stand Up for Liberty!:
Amador first asks why Libertarian ideas have not already -- in 1983 -- won in the political sphere. He proposes that lack of promotion is an obstacle. Libertarians have limited resources for promoting libertarianism to the general public. Worse, instead of teaching the public about our ideas, we expend our resources on internal disputes. We have candidates for party office who promise to end our internal feuds, so we will focus on real politics and not internal factionalism. Amador, writing in 1983, notes that those promises had never worked. They haven't worked well since 1983, either.
Amador proposed that our real difficulty is how we are organized. Our party's structure causes our internal feuds. No change in factional beliefs can reduce our internal politicking, because at the roots our disputes are not about what Libertarians would do if elected. Our disputes are about what the Party structure should be doing in the here and now.
According to Amador, in order to focus our attention on bringing the Libertarian future to the real world, we must first change how the Libertarian Party is organized. Amador was not completely optimistic that the Libertarian Party can be reformed: If fans of parliamentary bickering and in-group politics are strong enough, he concluded, it will be more efficient to create a new Party, or a new non-Party structure, than to fight over the current Party.
Amador's alternative to the current Libertarian Party is a market model for political action. He proposes that our current party structure is impossibly cumbersome. He claims that his market model will be less wasteful. His market model is not exactly the same as model I am proposing. I believe that voluntary structures are very important; I believe that people have many motivations and ways of evaluating success other than money. In my opinion Amador over-emphasizes the importance of money. In the following I emphasize places where his ideas match mine as seen in Stand Up for Liberty!
Amador notes how much money is spent on internal politics in the Libertarian Party. He reports that the 1981 campaign for Libertarian National Chair cost more than $30,000 1981 dollars. (In contrast, in 1998 none of our Congressional candidates spent as many as 20,000 inflated 1998 dollars.) Beyond money, internal factions disputes are divisive. Recall how often Libertarian conventions have included the irreversible walk-out of supporters of a defeated cause. Finally, internal politics consume time. When activists campaign against each other, they are not campaigning against Democrats or Republicans.
Even if we had no factions, our internal operating structure costs us time and money. For each National Committee meeting, several dozen Libertarians must travel to a common site, eat, and be housed. No matter who pays travel expenses, that money and activist time is no longer available to Stand Up for Liberty! and confront the Democratic-Republicans.
Isn't the Libertarian Party a voluntary organization? Don't its members have the right to run their affairs as they choose? Amador emphasizes that "voluntary" is not a synonym for "good". People can voluntarily agree to throw away their time and money. In any event, internal politics is indeed voluntary, which means that you are not required to volunteer. Instead of putting your efforts into internal politics, you could instead willingly invest your time and money productively in organizing against the Democratic-Republican duopoly.
Amador stresses that centralized decision-making is inefficient. When a central body dispenses resources, people who want those resources will lobby, form coalitions, and strive to block other proposals, because the other proposals would take money from their pet ideas. Centralized control of resources guarantees competition for centralized resources, automatically creating internal politics. Internal politics is a fundamental reason for the failure of socialist central planning of the steel industry; internal politics will equally ensure the failure of socialist central planning of the Libertarian market of ideas.
Internal politics can be undesirable. It can waste time and money. It can drive away newcomers and activists. It can repel or amuse the general public. Shallow-minded Libertarians try to hide internal politics by demanding a false unanimity from governing boards speaking to their Libertarian constituents. Deep-thinking Libertarians harness internal competition efficiently, by replacing internal politicking with the efficiency of a market, namely the marketplace of ideas.
Amador further stresses that centralized decision making is incompatible with Libertarian philosophy. A centralized-governance structure makes the Libertarian Party behave like the government: A central body collects money nationwide and moves it to Washington D.C. In Washington, the money is given to the best string-pullers. Some people are better at Standing Up for Liberty! in the real world than at lobbying in Washington. These people end up second-best when they ask Washington for money. The money goes to the best lobbyists, not to the best people. Giving money to the best lobby is the basis of real socialism. Cash allocation based on lobbying and earmarking is seen in many Federal programs; it will equally be found for cash allocations ny Libertarian groups.
Furthermore, much of the LP's funds are raised with no specification by the donor as to how the money will be spent. Undirected fundraising minimizes feedback from the donating public to the National Committee. The National Committee has to guess how Libertarian Party members and donors, the people who own the Party, want their money invested.
Lump sum dues pay for everything at the same time, notes Amador. Dues thus give Libertarian Party officers only a minimal indication of which policies the members support, and which policies the members marginally tolerate. Dues- based support also means that Libertarian Party officers are spending other people's money, not their own, which sometimes promotes a certain casual attitude to potential risks. Dues are not our only source of income, of course.
We know why socialist planning competes poorly with a free market. Central planners have no feedback mechanism from consumers. Capitalist businessmen get feedback. The market economy is not only morally superior to socialist planning. The free market works better in the real world. Why, asks Amador, do many Libertarians think that socialist central planning will work for their Party, when they think the same planning model rapidly wrecks modern economies? There's an education gap here. Amador suggests that internal education on the superiority of capitalism over socialism remains necessary within the Libertarian Party, because many Libertarians still accept communist ideas about the organizational efficiency and central management.
What are we to do to change our party's structure? Following in part Amador's ideas, I propose that we supplement our central structure with a structure based on market relationships, in which you, the donor and volunteer, invest more directly in your choice of activities. I want you know more clearly where your money is going, how investment possibilities are evaluated, and what your time and labor is accomplishing.
I do not propose that we abolish the national Party. I do propose that the national Party should compete with alternatives. This competition is the free market of ideas, brought to the Libertarian Party. If the centralized national Party structure is the most effective, it will triumph in the marketplace of ideas, but it will be better than it is now, because it had to compete.
Some people will say that I am proposing wasteful, inefficient competition. These people may say they are Libertarians, but people who say competition is inefficient are socialists masquerading in Lady Liberty's gowns.
Some people will say that competing Libertarian groups might disagree in public about free immigration, free trade, or the non-coercion oath. These people forget: We already have these disagreements. To these people I answer: Remember the Freedom Train. We know which way we want to go. Let's not argue about whether our final destination is Chicago, Denver, or San Diego when the train is still stalled in northern Maine.