As someone who has been a staunch libertarian for many years, I’ve had a lot of opportunities to witness dialogues about liberty, both as a participant and as an observer. I’ve noticed a recurring theme in these conversations: non-libertarians almost inevitably call libertarian ideas childish and talk down to us in a condescending tone. In a word, they become patronizing.
It’s as if there’s a Godwin’s law for libertarians. For those who aren’t familiar, Godwin’s law is an Internet adage that says, “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.” The libertarian version seems to be, “As a discussion about libertarianism increases in length, the probability that the non-libertarian will make a patronizing remark approaches one.”
If you’re a fellow libertarian, perhaps you can relate.
After being on the receiving end of these jibes for the umpteenth time, I finally got curious. What is it about libertarianism that makes people so inclined to see it as childish? Why do people so confidently talk down to libertarians?
Upon reading and listening to the condescending remarks more closely, I’ve realized there are two qualities about libertarianism that seem to be responsible for most of the patronizing rhetoric that gets thrown our way: to the non-libertarian, libertarianism comes across as naïve and self-centered.
Since naivete and self-centeredness are attributes that are often associated with children, it follows that anything that exhibits, or seems to exhibit, those attributes will come to be regarded as childlike—and in this context, childish—and will be treated accordingly.
Hence, patronizing remarks.
However, in their rush to unload their verbal firepower, the non-libertarian—or statist, if you will—has forgotten an important lesson: things are not always what they seem to be.
When libertarians say things like “We should just trust the free market,” statists often conclude that we must be oblivious to the way the Real World™ works. “Oh, you sweet summer child,” they might say. “I admire your idealism. But one day you’re going to grow up and realize the world is not that simple, that things don’t work in practice the way you’d think they do in theory. I understand you’re blinded by ideology today. But hopefully one day you’ll understand, you’ll outgrow these youthful sentiments and come to see that these ideas are simply a product of naivete.”
In the Real World™, you see, market forces don’t just magically work the way libertarians imagine they do. If you were older, if you had experience, you would know this. The fact that you are recommending freedom means you must lack this experience.
The thalidomide tragedy is a common example that illustrates this point well. In the statist mind, the narrative is very simple: once upon a time we tried freedom for drug manufacturers, trusting that the free market would “do its thing” and ensure safety. Then, tragedies like thalidomide happened, and we learned that drug companies in a free market wouldn’t do enough testing unless they were forced to. Thus, we enacted regulations to force them to, for the good of society. If we ever walked back these regulations, these tragedies would again become a regular occurrence, because greedy capitalists are always trying to cut corners. (I know this isn’t fully historically accurate—the point is that this is the general narrative that is out there in people’s minds)
Where this naivete-induced-libertarianism theory starts to break down is when statists figure out that most libertarians have actually heard of thalidomide. “Well, then, you must be some kind of ideologue,” comes the response. “Either you recognize complete deregulation will lead to tragedy and are simply so single-mindedly obsessed with freedom that you’re fine with that outcome, or you refuse to concede tragedy is inevitable because you’re a ‘market fundamentalist’ who won’t allow even blatant contrary evidence to cause you to doubt your free market dogma.”
Or maybe we know something that you don’t.
In the case of drug testing, as on many other issues, the libertarian has been trained by economists Henry Hazlitt and Frederic Bastiat to look beyond the immediate intended effects of any given law and see the unseen secondary effects. One unseen effect of strict drug regulations, for example, is that many would-be good drugs get delayed or never get developed at all. As Milton Friedman pointed out, “The FDA has done enormous harm to the health of the American public by greatly increasing the costs of pharmaceutical research, thereby reducing the supply of new and effective drugs, and by delaying the approval of such drugs as survive the tortuous FDA process.”
One might assume that regulators take this into account and try to keep testing requirements to the minimum necessary, but this isn’t what happens. This brings us to another thing that only libertarians and economists seem to understand: the incentives inherent in government.
As Professor Howard Baetjer Jr. points out, regulators could lose their jobs if a drug they approve ends up being dangerous, but they likely won’t face consequences if a drug that would have been safe and effective gets delayed or is never created thanks to stiff regulations, even though that is also a significant problem. Thus, they have an incentive to be overcautious—and the strenuous testing that modern drugs have to go through is good evidence that this incentive is real and powerful.
In a free market, private, voluntary certification agencies would provide assurances of quality and safety—just like they already do in many other industries—but unlike government regulators their incentive, driven by the profit motive, would be to find the balance of safety and cost that works best for consumers.
Much more could be said to spell out the case, but the point is basically that eliminating drug regulations would, counterintuitively, probably have a net result of improving health outcomes once you consider all the relevant factors. True, tragedies like thalidomide might become more common, but the flipside is that many more good drugs would be developed—and be available much faster—and it seems probable that the upsides of that trade-off will vastly outweigh the downsides.
Thus, where the statist paints a black-and-white picture of safety-with-government versus danger-with-freedom, the libertarian recognizes that the world is not that simple, that trade-offs are inevitable, and that placing decisions in the hands of the government often leads to worse outcomes overall than the admittedly imperfect outcomes of the free market. The statist runs to the teacher to solve their problems and protect them, whereas the libertarian suggests we take personal responsibility for our own lives and choices, like adults.
I dare say, one of these views seems a great deal more mature than the other.
To recap, there is a naïve view which suggests freedom because market forces will prevent tragedies from occurring. There is a marginally less naïve view, which says tragedies will still happen, but government regulation can solve the problem. And then there is the libertarian view, which recommends freedom, not out of ignorance, but because it recognizes that freedom is the wisest way of approaching an inherently risky and complex world full of rationally self-interested individuals. We could think of these as Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3, respectively.
Similar reasoning applies to many other issues. The libertarian position appears naïve because the most well-known argument for it is a naïve one, but it’s actually more informed than the statist position—it’s just that the statist, being oblivious to what the libertarian knows, doesn’t see that, and so ironically proceeds to talk to the libertarian as if the libertarian is the one who is naïve and shortsighted.
Essentially, this is the IQ bell curve meme.
The other main quality that seems to be behind the patronizing rhetoric directed at libertarians is that libertarianism comes across as self-centered, and thus immature. Much like a child has no regard for anyone but themselves, there’s this idea that libertarians are only concerned with their own priorities and don’t believe they have any responsibilities to the community.
“It’s not all about you, you know,” a condescending statist might say. “Part of growing up is learning to think about the needs of others and not just yourself. Clearly a certain amount of freedom is important, but part of maturity is recognizing that sometimes other things need to take precedence. Sometimes you need to sacrifice some of your freedom to keep society functioning and to ensure that everyone, not just the privileged, has a shot at a good life. This egotistical attitude that says ‘I should be allowed to do whatever I want’ is exactly how children think. Grow up.”
Though accusations like these are easy to make and quite common, they strike libertarians as bizarre.
Imagine there is a mafia in town that extorts “protection money” from local establishments. One particular business owner is having none of it. “You can’t just take my money,” he says. “I worked hard for that!” But the owner of the neighboring business, which is also being extorted, has harsh words for his fellow victim. “Why the self-centered attitude?” he says. “If you were more mature, you’d see that community protection is important, and that your freedom to do what you please with your money isn’t the only thing that matters.”
Silly, right?
To a libertarian, however, this is just as silly as when the same reasoning is applied to the government, because we recognize that the government is, morally speaking, equivalent to a mafia. Wanting to keep your hard-earned money and spend it as you see fit, or wanting to make your own choices for your life and your property rather than having others make them for you, is not some unreasonable “self-centered” demand, nor is it a renunciation of responsibility. It’s simply making the eminently reasonable request that your fellow man respect your right to live your life as you see fit rather than as he sees fit.
Indeed, if anyone is being childishly self-centered, it’s the individuals who demand control over other people’s lives and finances. “Forget your personal priorities and values,” they say to those they rule over. “From now on, you will live according to my priorities and values, whether you like it or not.”
“I’m the king of the castle, and you’re the dirty rascal!”
And then they have the nerve to call us the self-centered ones because we refuse to become their serfs!
Economist Thomas Sowell put it well when he said, “I have never understood why it is ‘greed’ to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else’s money.” The same could be said for selfishness, self-centeredness, entitlement, egoism, and so on, and not only for money, but also for regulations. I have never understood, for instance, why it is “egotistical” to want to be left alone, but not egotistical to want to impose your values on others.
It makes one wonder: how did we ever end up in a world where the people who loot and coerce lecture their victims condescendingly about the egoism of resenting looting and coercion?
How is it that the naïve and self-centered statist can project their childishness so sincerely onto the only adults in the room?
