Transcript: Does Libertarianism Need a New Theory of Government?

Controversies in Libertarianism, Podcast 1

Date of recording: June 3, 2025, The Savvy Street Show

Host: Roger Bissell. Guests: Walter Block, Vinay Kolhatkar

 

For those who prefer to watch the video, it is here.

Editor’s Note: The Savvy Street Show’s AI-generated transcripts are edited for removal of repetitions and pause terms, and for grammar and clarity. Explanatory references are added in parentheses. Material edits are advised to the reader as edits [in square brackets].

 

Summary

Explores the differences between Rothbardian and Beltway libertarians and critiques of Rothbard’s views on the state.

In this episode of The Savvy Street Show, Roger Bissell hosts a discussion on the need for a new theory of government within libertarianism, featuring guests Walter Block and Vinay Kolhatkar. The dialogue explores the differences between Rothbardian and Beltway libertarians, critiques of Rothbard’s views on the state, and the role of institutions like the Mises Institute and the Cato Institute. The guests also discuss the implications of Ayn Rand’s philosophy, the US Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, and the diversity of thought within the libertarian movement. The conversation concludes with reflections on the future of libertarianism.

 

Takeaways

1. Libertarianism faces internal controversies regarding its theory of government.
2. The Rothbardian faction emphasizes a strict anti-state philosophy.
3. Middlemen play a crucial role in free markets and should not be vilified.
4. Ayn Rand’s theory of government has both supporters and critics within libertarianism.
5. The libertarian movement is diverse and often fragmented.
6. Libertarians must navigate complex political landscapes to promote their ideals.

 

Sound Bites

1. “The state is just intrinsically evil.”
2. “Cato and Reason are classical liberals.”
3. “The libertarian movement is like herding cats.”
4. “They do want to destroy Western civilization.”

 

Roger Bissell

What are the existing libertarian theories of government? Are any of them correct in their basics?

Good evening, everyone, and welcome to The Savvy Street Show. My name is Roger Bissell, and I’m your host for this first installment of a series on controversies in libertarianism. Our topic for tonight is the question: does libertarianism need a new theory of government? Of course, that raises various other questions. What are the existing libertarian theories of government? Are any of them correct in their basics? If not, can they be fixed, or do they just need to be replaced with a new, improved libertarian theory of government? And if so, what might that be?

Here to explore this topic are my two guests. First, we have the eminent economist and libertarian theorist and author of the series, Defending the Undefendable, Walter Block. Welcome to the show, Walter.

 

Walter Block

Thanks for having me, Roger.

 

Roger Bissell

Good to have you. And second, we have my friend and frequent cohost, a novelist and screenwriter and editor of The Savvy Street and coauthor with me of Modernizing Aristotle’s Ethics, Vinay Kolhatkar. Welcome to the show, Vinay.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar

Thank you for having me.

 

Roger Bissell

You bet! Gentlemen, I’m going to ask you several questions at a time. That’s the preferred mode these days. Just barrage your guests with more than they can possibly digest. And please feel free just to take any one or more of them and weave your comments as you are comfortable to do. But do bear in mind that our main focus here is where we might find a solid theory of government in the libertarian movement, broadly speaking, if there is one, or what it might need to be, if we need a new one.

So, let’s move into the questions. To speak of the mere idea of a libertarian movement, as I found out many years ago when I first jumped into all this, it’s almost like herding cats. Nevertheless, there appear to be two main broad factions of libertarians. The Rothbardians who are organized around the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama. Their focus is not only on political philosophy and history, but also economics—free market economics. And the Beltway libertarians who are centered upon the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C. I think they’re still in Washington. Everybody keeps moving around these days.

First, let’s look at the Rothbardians and their theory of government. Murray Rothbard argues in The Ethics of Liberty—goodness, I think it’s over 40 years old at this point—and elsewhere that the state is just intrinsically evil. There are no morally redeeming qualities. Every government is essentially a criminal gang. So does the logic of the argument he gives for this view hold water, or does it need to be revised? And from a practical standpoint, this whole view about the state that Rothbard has promoted, has it helped or hindered the success of the libertarian movement? Has it helped or hindered the success of the Mises Institute? About 30 years ago, there was an Austrian economist named Stephen Horowitz. I don’t think he’s with us anymore. But he referred to the [Mises] Institute as “a fascist fist in a libertarian glove.” I’m going to start with Vinay on this. Is this a fair criticism, or does it really err in the opposite direction? What do you think?

 

Vinay Kolhatkar

Well, I have a double answer to that question. I don’t think it [Horowitz’s] is a fair criticism at all. I don’t think they were fascist at all until about a year or two ago when the incident happened with Walter Block. But conversely, [as regards] Murray’s theory, for the first time I saw a libertarian philosopher ground his theory in natural rights, and I thought that was very welcome. He did that in the book The Ethics of Liberty. After that, as you said, he predominantly concentrated on saying the state is like an institutionalized mafia. And I don’t think that went in the right direction because clearly there are state actions which he admits are good. For instance, when he was asked: “Was there ever a just war?” Murray Rothbard did not name World War II as a just war because in 1944, I think over Dresden, the Allied planes did a lot of carpet bombing. No doubt, millions of innocent German citizens were getting killed.

He uses one other example, the Leonard Read one, in terms of libertarian strategy. Leonard Read once said, if I had a button and I could press that button and bingo, you would have a libertarian utopia tomorrow, I would press it. This is not a movement that should move gradually. It should move as fast as it actually can. I will throw a question to you two gentlemen. You have three buttons, A, B and C. Button A says, in the United States of America, you will get Barack Obama as president again for the next 10 years, and he will do exactly what he did before. Button B, you will get the libertarian utopia, but only in the United States. You have no control over what the rest of the world does. So, you would have China doing what it is doing, being invasive at times, being belligerent, being arrogant. You have Russia, and Putin doing what he’s doing. Two nuclear-armed states. You have Iran doing what it is doing. So, all that happens is the United States government crumbles, we don’t even have 50 state governments like Texas and California etc. It crumbles down to like maybe 700 or 1000 communities, little communities, no nuclear weapons, we have private security agencies, and that’s your Button B.

Button C is you get the Declaration of Independence all over again. You renew your Declaration of Independence. You renew the Constitution. But I can show you ways to make the Constitution a lot stronger than it has been. So, you get this perfect, in my opinion, virtuous state and also a savvy state—two concepts I want to explore later on. So, I would press Button C, go straight to the virtuous, savvy state.

And perhaps one of you might press B, but bear in mind, I have another illustration. In the year 1700, England had a population of 5.2 million. British India, included in those nations are Sri Lanka and Bangladesh and Pakistan, had a population between 160 and 170 million, but they were composed of little princely kingdoms all over the place. So, England could conquer it literally one by one by one by one. They had better technology as well, but there was no United India front repelling this foreign invasion. So, that’s why I would press the button to go back to the Declaration of Independence. Are either of your answers different?

 

Roger Bissell

Sure. But Walter, I’m dying to hear what you would say.

 

Walter Block

Well, I understand Button C is the US Constitution as . . .

 

Vinay Kolhatkar

. . .but a much stronger constitution than we have had. Severely limiting the US. I’ll give you an example. The [new] First Amendment wouldn’t [just] say “Congress shall make no law,” but it will say Congress shall make no law nor influence by any means, including financial means or discussions, the right to free speech. Because as we know, Biden sent his goons to have a discussion with Zuckerberg and got censorship going, and Congress didn’t pass a law.

 

Walter Block

So, Button C is the Constitution, but there are no laws?

 

Vinay Kolhatkar

No, there will be laws, but we are sort of rethinking everything, and we’re saying, what did we do wrong? And I’m going to do it much, much better this time, so that it’s a lot stronger, tighter constitution. So, I have a concept here of a virtuous state, and the Second Amendment would debar the state from acting in any economic activity at all. No economic concerns or activities, not just no price ceilings. No financing of research, no meddling in education . . .

 

Roger Bissell

Right, separation of everything and state.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar

Correct, just like separation of church and state, separation of education and state, separation of economics and state. . . . So, they are very strictly limited to three functions: the police, the courts, and the army.

 

Roger Bissell

Well, I will just say real briefly, this is my two-sentence answer. I don’t believe that we . . . if we can’t be free starting from where we are right now, we don’t deserve to be free. So, a button that would make us free in one way or another . . . I think we don’t deserve that. We need to learn how and why we need to be free and to make it happen and forcing people, or even if it’s science fiction, the new improved constitution, people will find a way to screw it up. And other people need to be smarter than that and figure out how to keep it from getting screwed up. So, we just start where we are. We already know a lot. We don’t need to go back to Groundhog Day and do it over and over and over again, and this time we’ll get it right. We just need to learn and try to make things better. That’s my answer.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar

Walter, will you press A, B or C? I suspect no one will press A to get Obama again for 10 years…

 

Walter Block

Well, I suspect no one will press play to get Obama. What is choice A again?

 

Vinay Kolhatkar

You get Obama for 10 years, and choice B is the US government is disassembled, including all of the nuclear weapons, only unilaterally. It’s not like the entire world has suddenly changed to libertarians, and all the governments, Germany, Japan, Russia, China are dissolved. Only the US is getting dissolved. And to me, that’s a danger, because of the aggressiveness of Iran and China and Russia and a few others, who might get very ambitious when they see the US as weak and a bunch of princely kingdoms like India was when 5 million Englishmen ran roughshod over them.

 

Walter Block

Well, I’m a Rothbardian, so I would pick B.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar

The Ethics of Liberty is lacking is a theory of a virtuous state.

Okay, I understand. That, in my opinion, is a drawback of the Rothbardian model. There is one more. It’s like always seeing the worst in the state. Again, you have an illustration, the three of us and Rothbard are walking in Central Park, and somebody hits this stranger on the back of the head with a big rock. He dies. And the real attacker runs away, the rock falls [near Rothbard], and Rothbard is now facing a murder trial. Rothbard has a choice of using a state-appointed judge as his judge and jury, waiving his right to a jury trial. Or, being Rothbard, he might prefer a jury trial because then there are 12 of his peers: fellow men or women. But here’s the damning statistic. Juries convict 84% of the time and judges convict only 55% of the time, even though these are state-appointed judges. The reason for that is judges have to detail their reasons, and they hate being appealed against and losing. So, their standard of reasonable doubt is higher. So, you can get benefits from there being a big state. I think what, in summary, The Ethics of Liberty is lacking is a theory of a virtuous state. And I’ll come back to that other word, “savvy state,” but that’s my answer.

 

Roger Bissell

Well, what about this idea, though? Is Rothbard’s idea wrong about every state is intrinsically evil, it’s a criminal gang in essence? Walter, you’ve just said you are a Rothbardian, so what are the implications? If governments are intrinsically evil, are they always wrong? Are they always the bad guy in a particular situation?

 

Walter Block

Well, no, I don’t think they’re always the bad guy. For example, if a government cop stops a rape, that was good because rape is evil, and he stopped it. But we don’t really agree with how he’s financed through taxes.

 

Roger Bissell

That’s right, and I agree with that. There is another point here. Around the time that Murray Rothbard published his book, I think that was 1982, Mises Institute was founded, and Walter, you were there as a senior fellow for almost 25 years until just recently. What has happened there? What has happened that you would come to a parting of the ways so abruptly? Did you see this coming, or was it really out of the blue?

 

Walter Block

It was pretty much out of the blue.

It was pretty much out of the blue. I was a senior fellow, I think, for more than 25 years, maybe more like 40, but I’m not sure. Who’s counting when you’re having fun? And they took great objection to my defense of Israel. I thought Israel was fighting a defensive war against predators, terrorists, whatever, and I defended Israel. And then they said I no longer had anything to do with them. I’m not only not a senior fellow, but I’ll never be invited to give a speech there again. I even asked them, “Could I come just to be in the audience?” And they didn’t even respond. And I’ve had several friends, Lew Rockwell, Tom DiLorenzo, Hans Hoppe, who were friends of mine for 40 years, and they refuse to speak to me. And this is problematic because I think the only way to get to the truth is to have dialogue, have debate, have talk, have differences of opinion and hear them. But they refuse to do that. So, I think it’s wrong-headed on their part, and I greatly regret their decision.

 

Roger Bissell

Wow. Vinay, do you have anything to add to that?

 

Vinay Kolhatkar

The media is either deliberately framing Israel for genocide, or it’s not savvy enough to know what’s going on.

Well, I obviously don’t know the internal machinations, but as I understand it, the sequence has to do with Walter Block’s editorial in the Wall Street Journal, which Hoppe criticized. It’s okay to criticize it, but I wouldn’t have called Walter Block a bloodthirsty warmonger or monster. The problem with Gaza is that it is a very complicated problem. Everybody in the media, virtually 99% of the media, is subjecting you to a barrage of images of children dying and people starving, and [of] body counts. It’s very difficult to go inside of that and see what is really going on. That’s what I mean by a “savvy government.” The Israeli government is savvy, but the media is either deliberately framing Israel for genocide, or it’s not savvy enough to know what’s going on. I mean, there is a Muslim Brotherhood organization, there is Iran, there is what we call Islamism, which is the political ideology of Islam, and they are very sneaky—plus, that political ideology wants Israel off the map. But they’re also against other religions. And you’ve got to take context of all of that, of all of the previous wars, which Block and Futerman have done (The Classical Liberal Case for Israel). I can understand a good, well-mannered, polite disagreement with them. I can’t understand expelling. I think that’s just terribly disgusting.

 

Roger Bissell

Well, it’s nothing new, though. Vinay, you and I, and I know Walter also knows, over in the Objectivist movement, that’s one of the favorite things they do. Every five or 10 years, they have to purge somebody else for some infraction of whatever.

Let’s shift over to another controversial group here. Even before Mises Institute—I think that was 1982—about 1977, there was Cato Institute. Murray Rothbard had his fingers in many pies; he was one of its co-founders. I knew the founders of Cato, some of them anyway. Two of them at least went to Vanderbilt University right here in Nashville, and they had a Young Americans for Freedom group. We got together when the Libertarian Party was founded in the early seventies, and David Boaz and . . . I can’t remember the other fellow. At any rate, I knew some of them back when they were still wet behind the ears, just little college kids, you know? And I thought, man, these guys are smart, you know, they’re pretty darn smart.

So anyway, Ed Clark runs for president in 1980, and when I heard him talk on ABC News and he said, yes, the Libertarian Party is a party of “low-tax liberalism,” I thought, my God, this is terrible. And of course, Murray Rothbard didn’t like it very much either. I know a lot of people, principled people, who want the message as clear and unequivocal as possible, and they hear “low-tax liberal.” Shortly after that, he [Rothbard] objected to this, and they removed him, so he migrated over to Mises where that was his home for a long time. They didn’t like his objection to the presidential campaign and his telling them, you guys should work on scholarship, when they wanted to work on policy and politics. He wanted them to not be compromising, and they just wanted to work on policy tweaks and reforms that could make this or that be more free.

The question I’d like to ask is: Do they even have a core philosophy of government at Cato? Or do they just assume that we’re going to have a government, it’s legitimate, and we should just have less of it whenever we can figure out a way to do that? Vinay, what are your thoughts about Cato? You’ve probably read some of their material, and I’m sure you probably know as much about them as I do. So, go ahead.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar

Okay, I have read, as you said, only some of the material that comes out of Cato and Reason.com magazine, and I am immensely disappointed in both of those organizations, not because they pursued policy instead of philosophy, which was Rothbard’s main criterion for denouncing Cato at the time, which indeed was wrong, but I don’t think they have a comprehensive proper theory of a virtuous state and the savviness that goes with it. One of the great things about Murray Rothbard and Ayn Rand was their tremendous insight into what is happening in realpolitik, in the real world, like we spoke about Islamism. Mises Institute wrote an essay about Prime Minister Narendra Modi in India actually getting rid of the middlemen for farmers, but it was staged as though he was anti-farmers when it was the middlemen who were getting a free ride and demonstrating against him. And Cato and Reason, here they are, they’re sort of “pro” the middlemen because they want to be “anti” the strongman. Cato is not even anti-central banking. That’s just not free enterprise if you have a central bank manipulating interest rates.

I could give you a few more examples, but it seems to me that they are anti-conservative at all costs, and they just want to be: “We’re separate, we’re not Republicans, we’re not Democrats, we’re right here in the middle. Even in the pandemic, they didn’t see what I think you’ve got to see: when 80 to 90% of the research is financed by the state, he who pays the piper calls the tune. You are going to get very little mention of vitamin D, vitamin C. I’m not saying the vaccines were necessarily all bad, but they had adverse effects. We didn’t get a balanced view of the vaccines and did not definitely get a balanced view of any other possible remedies which were competitive but incredibly cheap, such as taking vitamin D tablets. You didn’t get the question asked by the media, why the hell do we have this kind of lab in Wuhan, even if it’s not a bioweapon lab? It’s of no practical use.

So, in all of that, they [Cato] distinguish themselves as being not savvy. And I thought Mises Institute was very savvy. For me, their only action I can condemn is the sudden ousting of Walter Block. Otherwise, they’ve been pretty consistent with their philosophy. Cato and Reason don’t have a complete philosophy of a proper virtuous government. Even though they say “limited,” you’ve got to really specify limited in exactly what sense, how we get to it, what the detailed needs of a constitution are. I think they [Cato and Reason] have both been failures in my opinion.

 

Roger Bissell

Well, Walter, do you have a take on that? We’ve got these people who are very savvy, as Vinay says, they’re deep thinkers like Rothbard and Rand, and they’re very into grounding it solidly, that whatever you’re going to have, government or institutions that provide services or whatever, and you understand the principles—whereas from the other people, they’re policy wonks, and we hear, “Libertarianism is a big tent.” My vision of the big tent is, over on one corner of the tent, there are a bunch of theory people folding their arms and glaring over at the policy people who are over here, afraid that somebody’s going to throw them in a concentration camp, you know?

 

Walter Block

Vinay, I wanted to ask you: with regard to the middlemen, were Cato and Reason in favor of the middleman or against the middleman?

 

Vinay Kolhatkar

I think they didn’t realize that this battle is between the prime minister and the middleman. He tried to get rid of the middleman. He wasn’t anti-farmers. The farmers were forced to go through middlemen, and the middleman just took some profits. And they were distributing it, the produce, as I understand it. Whereas Modi was saying, here, I’m giving you a cooperative or something where you can go direct and forget the middleman. So, the middlemen staged the rally, and there were lots of photographs, and it was all staged by the left to make it look like the prime minister is against the farmers.

And you have to be objective enough to see through all that if you’re going to publish an article in an international magazine about what exactly is going on and talk to both sides. And it seemed to me like they were just so against the strongman like Putin or Modi or Trump, they just write the anti-thing first before they think.

 

Walter Block

I favor the middleman. I favor free enterprise, and the middleman is part of free enterprise, so anyone who attacks the middleman can’t be all good.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar

I’m sorry, I should add that it was a matter of law that they were forced to go through this middleman, and that’s why it was bad. So, by all means, if you want to use a middleman who gives you bigger markets, use it, but you shouldn’t be forced to go through any particular middleman.

 

Walter Block

Right. In Canada, the farmers were not allowed to sell the product to the customer. They had to sell it to the wheat board or the chicken board or the Crown Corporation of Canada. That’s socialism or fascism or something.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar

I think that was a similar situation. They’re being forced to use these middlemen which they didn’t want to.

 

Walter Block

Right, I think we should not attack the middleman, but we shouldn’t compel people to use the middleman either. We’re moderates on that one.

 

Roger Bissell

“… and the third button of course was a new and improved US Constitution and Bill of Rights, let’s plug the loopholes and fix the flaws.

Vinay, you asked us a few minutes ago about the three buttons and which would we push, and the third button of course was a new and improved US Constitution and Bill of Rights, let’s plug the loopholes and fix the flaws. That’s what various people like Ayn Rand have tried to propose—like, that’s a great start, but we need to fix it. But what about her theory? Is her theory watertight or can some of the same criticisms be made about her view that Rothbard aimed at some of the other people—that they like laissez-faire, but they just like government too much. Is there something missing from Rand’s model or some of the other models, and what would you propose? Walter, go ahead and give us your thoughts on this.

 

Walter Block

The way I see the libertarian movement, there are really four elements.

Well, I think that the way I see the libertarian movement, there are really four elements. And the best element is anarcho-capitalism of the Rothbardian variety where there’s no government and all of the services that the government provides would be privatized. And I certainly don’t think that the reason India fell to Great Britain was because they had anything like that. I think that they fell to England because England was industrialized and they were not. One case in point on this is the Israeli war of 1948. There really was no IDF, the Israeli Defense Force. It was rather the Stern Group and the Irgun Group and a whole bunch of other people which were roughly private defense agencies, and they beat five government invading armies. So, I don’t think that the US would be weak if we didn’t have a constitution. I think we’d be much stronger if we had full enterprise, the Rothbardian variety. OK, so that’s the best version of libertarianism.

The second version would be Ayn Rand and Robert Nozick.

The second version would be Ayn Rand and Robert Nozick and other people. I think Vinay fits into this group where you have armies to keep foreign bad guys off of us, not to have 800 military bases around the world. And you have courts to determine who the good guys and the bad guys are. And you have police not to stop drugs or pornography or prostitution or anything like that, but just to stop murder and rape and theft. And the people most associated with that would be Ayn Rand and Robert Nozick.

Third down on the list, where I think Vinay also fits here, it’s sort of the US Constitution as Ron Paul would interpret it. Very, very strict. The only difference between the second and this third group of Ron Paul is that the US Constitution allows for post offices and post roads in addition to armies, courts, and police. So, what the heck?

The fourth version further down, further away from the correct Rothbardian view would be classical liberalism. The people most associated with that would be Friedman and Hayek. And there, it’s armies, courts, and police and the constitution, but a few other things. Very liberal welfare for very poor people, a little bit of public goods, and a little bit more. I think Friedman once said that the ideal government of his variety would take 10% of the GDP for government, which is pretty low. And it’s the worst part of libertarianism.

I guess I am an anarcho-capitalist with the Rothbardian view, and I think that that’s the correct way to go. I think that government is intrinsically evil because it taxes people, and taxes are payments that are not contractual. If I came up to you guys with a gun, here’s my gun [gestures with a pen], and I said, give me money or I’ll shoot you, but I’m gonna use the money to protect you, I would be a protection racketeer, not a legitimate function. So, I’m a solid Rothbardian, and I also disagree with you, I think, Roger, when you said that Rothbardianism is the Mises Institute in Auburn. No, I’m a Rothbardian, and I have nothing to do with those people, and there are many other Rothbardians out there in many different countries. And by the way, there are, I think, five or six Mises Institutes in Europe and in South America, and they’re not in Auburn, and they’re Rothbardian. But I am a strict Rothbardian. That doesn’t mean I agree with him on everything, you know. Murray and I disagree on some things, but I certainly don’t disagree with him on anarcho-capitalism.

 

Roger Bissell

Sure. In Argentina, Milei is pretty much of a Rothbardian, and he’s been doing pretty darn good. Vinay, go ahead.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar

Before I go ahead: Walter, where do you place Cato and the Reason Foundation or Reason magazine? In your 1, 2, 3, 4—or outside of those four?

 

Walter Block

I think they’re both classical liberals. Their heroes are Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek. Hayek was very nice to me in my first book, Defending the Undefendable [volume 1]. He wrote this foreword comparing me to Mises, which is just ludicrous. I’m happy to have my name in the same sentence as Mises, but to compare me with Mises reminds me of this joke: There was an elephant, and on top of the elephant was a little mouse. The elephant went across a rickety bridge, and the mouse said, “We made that bridge shake as we went over it.” I’m the mouse. Mises is an elephant in terms of everything.

Who are the most successful people in promoting liberty? And my answer is, for my generation, Ayn Rand.

And in terms of promoting liberty, I don’t think there’s any one right way to do it, because I asked myself, who are the most successful people in promoting liberty? And my answer is, for my generation, Ayn Rand. She converted more people to libertarianism than anyone else of that era. And then the second in terms of time was Ron Paul. He was also very, very successful in converting people to libertarianism. Mises and Rothbard were much better libertarians than either of them, perhaps [even more] than Ron Paul. But they didn’t have as big a megaphone. I think that what I get out of this is, they were very different people. Ayn Rand was nasty. Talk about excommunicating people. Ayn Rand was the master of that. Ron Paul is a sweetie pie. Although, by the way, I also got excommunicated from the Ron Paul Institute. So, I’m not sure about that. But they had a very different persona.

So, what I get from that is there’s no one right way to convert people to libertarianism, and we should all do it in the way that makes us the most comfortable. In addition to Reason and Cato, there are 50 state-based think tanks that are libertarian oriented or free market oriented. For example, the Pelican Institute in my home state of Louisiana. There are 50 of them. And then there’s the Free State Project trying to get everyone to move to New Hampshire. There are many, many libertarian organizations, and I support them all. They do different things. I think that the only people that are compatible with the non-aggression principle and private property rights are anarcho-capitalists, but I’m happy.

Should Reason and Cato disappear? No. I mean, if they disappeared, there’d be a lacuna, and we’d be much less powerful then. Now, it’s true if all the money they had went to other places, then I’d have to think twice about that. But they raise their money, and if they stopped raising their money and they both went bankrupt or out of business, I think the libertarian movement would be a lot weaker. Also, I don’t agree with everything the Libertarian Party stands for, and I don’t agree with every presidential candidate, but if the Libertarian Party disappeared tomorrow, I would greatly regret it because they too make a good contribution to liberty.

 

Roger Bissell

Should we be looking for more common ground?

Yes. I’d like to kind of put a ribbon on this with a sort of bonus question, and it has to do with what we’ve just been talking about. You could look at it just as you’ve described it, Walter, as there’s this really good division of labor and decentralization, just all these voices that are speaking out and kind of pushing their own perspective. On the other hand, there is an old saying, “united we stand, divided we fall,” and if there’s too much purging and excommunicating and there’s too much division—well, I don’t like that policy—then, when people hear the word “libertarian,” they’ll wonder, are they for this policy or are they against it? Because one group will say one thing, and one will say another. There seems to be no core principle, about various issues any more than there seems to be a core view of government, which is our topic here. So, I’m kind of making the question a little more general. Should we be looking for more common ground, or should everybody just keep doing what they’re doing? Should somebody be trying to organize a peace conference? In other words, a rapprochement? Or should we just say, nah, everybody just do your thing, it’s a free country, sort of, and let’s just enjoy it the best we can? So, that’s my question. Vinay?

 

Vinay Kolhatkar

I’ll take that question on, as well as my earlier comments on Cato and Reason with an illustration, and also about Ayn Rand’s theory. And one more thing: Walter Block said I belong both to the second and the third group. Apparently the third group is one where you just follow the US constitution as is like Ron Paul in a strict way. I don’t belong there. I mean, in the sense that I don’t think it is ideal. I certainly wouldn’t want public post offices. Neither the public nor the private ones will survive, I think, in the future. That’s just by-the-by.

Ayn Rand’s view is clearly in that mold, in the Declaration of Independence mold, that the governments are instituted among men to secure those rights.

I think we should be conceiving of an ideal constitution, knowing what has happened to the existing one, which is pretty good. So, Ayn Rand’s view is clearly in that mold, in the Declaration of Independence mold, that the governments are instituted among men to secure those rights, the rights to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. You can quarrel about the right to life as Murray Rothbard does, but that is the essential principle. I think there are just as many issues of private security agencies as there are issues of defense. For instance, if you do an Iron Dome over Israel—oh, wait a minute, they did it in 2011—then would that dome be done if there was no state of Israel saying, I’m going to spend the money and maybe everybody would contribute, or they could be free riders to that Iron Dome which has helped immensely? Before the Iron Dome, four-thousand Hezbollah rockets in 2006 killed about 40-odd Israelis and displaced 250,000 people. So, that’s sort of one [illustration] to the side.

This whole anarcho-capitalism [thing] hasn’t got an evidentiary hearing. We don’t have lots of data on how it’ll function. We have it on paper. But I think a lot more thinking needs to be done as to whether it can survive, and particularly if you’re surrounded by enemies that are not anarcho-capitalist themselves and they have powerful governments and powerful armies, I’m a little skeptical. I’m less skeptical of [there] being a two-tiered police service, like we have a two-tiered medical service in Canada. You get something very basic that’s kind of free, like a free Zoom [service]. So many things are offered free, but the better version you’ve got to pay for. If you want preventive police, you’ve got to pay for it, but you get some basic protection because violent criminals are a threat to all of society and not just to you.

Going back to my point about being savvy, both Cato and Reason, as I understand it, are not criticizing climate alarmism, which in my opinion is completely unscientific “bullshit”—it’s the word I’m going to use. There is a lot of evidence to show that, and Mises has done that. Again, it’s he who pays the piper calls the tune. If 70 to 95 percent of the research is controlled by the government, they will get the conclusions they want. There is a neo-Marxist philosophical movement going on since the 1930s. They do want to destroy Western civilization. Part of the aim is to get people to destroy fossil fuels, which is one way to destroy civilization. To me, those libertarian organizations that are not cognizant of that do more harm than good. I would rather, for instance, work for or liaise with a conservative institute like Heartland Institute or the American Institute for Economic Research, AIER. They are much more on the ball on these things than I think some of the naivete, if I can say that, that I see in Cato and in Reason.

Is Rand’s theory watertight? No, it doesn’t tell you how to get [tax] money voluntarily.

Now, is Rand’s theory watertight? No, it doesn’t tell you how to get [tax] money voluntarily. She tried to see if she can get tax voluntarily out of contract duty. But no one has come down and said these are the set of numbers. These are your little freebies that you’re getting from the police, and everything else you’ve got to pay for. This is the way it will work. The armed forces are definitely the most complex. But we are allowed to go to independent arbitration, and if the courts are clogged up, and if two [adversaries] agree, just like Rothbard said, they like this jurist, and they can just go there and agree to have that resolution binding. I think that already occurs, but if the courts are more clogged up, you would have [more] arbitrators who you pay for. So, I don’t think of it as an insurmountable problem that permanently puts the state in the position of an institutionalized mafia. Yes, Rand’s theory has lacunae, but I think if we all work towards it, I think some of them will be overcome, and you’d get something that’s about 90% right.

 

Roger Bissell

Well, Walter, from my perspective, for maybe the last 18–20 years, we’ve been on a tipping point between pushing things all the way over into the DEI, the woke, the climate stuff, more and more stacked-up government versus trying to disrupt that and to untangle things and deregulate, and it just keeps kind of swinging back and forth. The libertarian role in that and how it sees government, as far as you can tell, is it going to play any substantial significant role in tipping it in the better way? Is there a better way? What does your crystal ball tell you about what’s going to happen with government, and what is libertarianism going to have to do with that maybe in the next five or 10 years? What do you see coming just ahead?

 

Walter Block

We are divergent on anarchism versus minarchism. We’re divergent on Israel. We’re divergent on abortion.

Well, let me answer that plus another question or two. While we’re mentioning other institutes, I wanted to mention the Independent Institute and also the Acton Institute. I’m a fan of both of them. In terms of, should we get a peace group where we all get saying the same things, where we’re more in conformity with each other—as you said, libertarians are like herding cats and it’s very difficult to do that—we are divergent on anarchism versus minarchism. We’re divergent on Israel. We’re divergent on abortion. Ron Paul is pro-life. Murray Rothbard is pro-choice. We can’t get much further apart than those two. And I remember one time the head of the Libertarian Party of Canada asked me for advice as to what he should do when people ask, what’s the libertarian view on abortion? And my advice to him was to say that “We, the Libertarian Party, are just about as diverse on abortion as is the general public, and I’m now speaking as the head of the Libertarian Party of Canada. All I can say is, we’re divided. However, if you want my own personal views, I’ll talk to you after I get off the stage and we can talk afterward.”

 

Roger Bissell

Yes, absolutely. In just two weeks, in fact, two weeks from yesterday, on June 16th, we’re going to have our second discussion, and we’re going to look right at this issue, and I’m going to swap places with Vinay. He’ll moderate. Walter and I will, and Vinay will jump in too, we’ll explore possible cases for some kind of middle ground of a libertarian sort between last-second abortions on the one hand and the never-ever position on the other hand. I want to thank both of you for all of your good comments tonight and everyone out there viewing this for being part of the growing audience of people who want to stay savvy. Good night and good luck.

 

Walter Block

Thanks. It was a lovely discussion.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar

Thank you. Nice to be here.

 

Roger Bissell

Thank you very much.