James Hol
Australia-first paleolibertarian. Culture before politics. Reject hedonistic individualism; embrace true freedom.
Last month I confessed to the waning of my libertarian ideological purity and suggested a more commonsense approach to philosophy and politics. Over the next few months I plan to outline that in relation to specific policies. However, today I propose to paint a broader picture.
Throughout history, the ultimate political and philosophical battle has been between individualism and collectivism. And while the term collectivism will probably send shivers down the spines of libertarians, there is some space for both to coexist. Even a staunch libertarian should have no problem with a private entity choosing to structure itself as a collective: worker cooperatives and labour unions can be legitimate free-market entities. Any voluntary association which chooses to share its profits among members, whether workers or shareholders, is free to do so.
The simply stated aim of the libertarian is to maximise individual rights, but this comes at an expense: the political right to self-government. While a libertarian will claim that an individual has the right to use heroin, as it is his bodily autonomy, if a political community has expressed its distaste for such activity, and elected representatives support them, social tensions are inevitable. And extended tension is the undoing of a functioning society. The social contract breaks down.
In Australia, it feels like the government is in active opposition to the people it represents.
Ultimately, libertarians aren’t truly individual maximalists; there is a limiting factor – the non-aggression principle. Many other political philosophies employ a democratic constraint – individual rights end when the majority says otherwise. Both constraints are inadequate in isolation.
The non-aggression principle provides a bright and inflexible line, which is both its blessing and curse. Employing a democratic constraint, on the other hand, is as flexible as the society it reflects. The solution, of course, lies somewhere between the two. The great experiment of the United States explored exactly this: there are some individual rights which are inalienable, inseparable from the human experience, but most are subject to the approval – or, more accurately, disapproval – of the majority. The vision of the US Founding Fathers is the true embodiment of a classical liberal democracy: a healthy mix of individualism (liberal) and collectivism (democracy).
The purist libertarian violates the social contract. It limits the government to nothing more than a protector of individual rights, which almost every libertarian would have no hesitation to admit would be better handled by literally anyone else. At least anarcho-capitalists recognise this inherent contradiction. The government and political processes are more than a mere pantomime. They have purpose: they are our representatives who reflect the will of our communities – or at least they are supposed to. Inevitably, individual rights will be infringed: such is the cost of an ordered society.
But currently, government is broken; society is broken. And while libertarians might quietly celebrate a broken government, when government fails, society follows. The problem is simple: trust.
In Australia, it feels like the government is in active opposition to the people it represents. After the resounding failure of the Voice referendum, the obvious political tactic would be to never touch the subject again and hope the electorate forget about it by the time the general election rolls around. Instead, the government looked to state parliaments to sneak in similar bodies without the need for pesky referenda. After the misinformation bill was met with overwhelming public rejection, the government did not resign itself to the will of the people. They sought to backdoor it in under the guise of children’s overexposure to social media, a genuine concern. The government has also violated its end of the social contract.
The simply stated aim of the libertarian is to maximise individual rights, but this comes at an expense: the political right to self-government.
Libertarians are right that we must limit the size of government, particularly the ever-expanding bureaucracy which continually erodes trust, but I no longer agree that the scope necessarily be limited. Instead of holding our elected officials to an ideology they never aligned themselves with in the first place, we should hold them accountable to their own democratic pledges.
We shouldn’t pay tax because we’re scared that men with big guns will come after us if we don’t; we should pay it because we see the value in helping our fellow compatriots. We should see value in a social contract. Tax should be at a reasonable enough rate and the return on investment should be obvious enough that there is widescale social buy in. Of course there will always be some hold outs, but we shouldn’t need to be militarising our tax offices to collect it. We should want to pay tax. We should want to uphold the social contract.
The social contract is a term many libertarians detest: it was something we never got to agree to nor define. But contracts are rarely that simple: by enjoying the benefits of an ordered society you are agreeing to the terms of that society. Australia is more than an island, it is a shared set of values. A shared set of contractual terms. And in order to restore trust we need to reestablish those terms with something we all want to uphold.
This article was originally published by Liberty Itch.
