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Feb. 5, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

45:11

86 Top Ten Myths About Libertarianism

Answers to the most common objections/questions (Feel free to distribute this to those baffled by your weird beliefs..!)

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	Hi there, everybody.
	My name is Stephan Molyneux.
	I'm a libertarian writer and podcaster.
	I run a blog at freedomain.blogspot.com, and I also run a podcast called Free Domain Radio, which you can get through iTunes or Podcast Alley or any of the other sort of podcasting agencies.
	And I thought it might be worthwhile to talk about the top ten myths about libertarianism.
	If you're listening to this, you're probably not a libertarian at the moment, or at least not yet.
	Perhaps not till the end of this podcast.
	But I wanted to talk about the top ten myths about libertarians and libertarianism, so that perhaps you could have a better understanding of where it is that we're coming from.
	And also, perhaps, you can find some common ground, see what it is that we have to offer, and see how it might be able to help you understand the world and politics and the society that we live in.
	So, in no particular order, these are the top ten myths about libertarianism.
	The first is that we libertarians are crazy loners who don't care about community.
	Well, that's just not true at all.
	What is often meant by community, by those who criticize libertarianism, Actually refers to forced association so you know for instance if you are in a union and you have to join that union in order to get a job Then that's forced association.
	And if you have to pay your union dues regardless of how you feel about the union or its contribution to political causes you may disagree with and so on, that would be forced association.
	The welfare state is very much forced association in that you are forced to pay for poverty programs regardless of how effective they are in actually solving the poverty And if you don't like them or wanted to take some alternate route to helping the poor, you really are allowed to of course, but you can't do it with the money that's going to the poverty programs.
	So we're very much sort of against that.
	And basically we sort of feel that we're kind of in the mainstream in this.
	Insofar as, for instance, you probably wouldn't be that keen on something like an arranged, forced marriage between two individuals.
	You would probably say, well, marriage should be kind of a voluntary institution.
	It should be two people who get together in a romantic way because they want to spend the rest of their lives together, raise a family together, and so on.
	And that the very nature of that kind of relationship should be voluntary.
	Well, we feel exactly the same way, but we also expand that definition to include things like the government.
	So, one of the things that you will hear from libertarians is that Everything that the government does is based on coercion.
	It's based on force.
	It's based on violence.
	And we really don't believe that violence is a very effective way to solve social problems.
	In fact, we think quite the opposite.
	We think violence is about the worst way to solve social problems.
	And we have some pretty good statistics to back up what we believe, in that You know, government programs don't really work.
	They usually produce the opposite effect of what is intended.
	They become very expensive.
	They pass on massive debt to the next generation and they create, you know, this big bureaucracy that kind of gets stuck in time and stagnates and often opposes any kind of real reform.
	So we believe that violence is not a very good way to solve problems, and we don't view coercive relationships as a community.
	I mean, a community is sort of voluntary, right?
	It's sort of something that you join because it benefits you and it benefits the other person.
	So, you know, if you join a charity or you join a church or you join a community club or a sports team or, you know, your place of employment, your wife or your husband, All of those relationships are voluntary and we think that that's good.
	The areas where you're forced to associate or to pay for certain things, we consider that to be very bad.
	So our response to the criticism or to the myth that we're sort of crazy loners who don't care about community is to say that we care about community a lot more than those who advocate government programs because government programs are not communities.
	They're not people getting together to solve problems.
	There are people being forced to pay for some bureaucrat's idea of a solution.
	And if they don't want to pay for it or want to take some other approach and decide not to pay the taxes that go to support those programs, well, they'll get a letter in the mail and then they'll get another letter and then there'll be a court date and if they don't show up, at some point the government's going to show up in the form of police with guns and try and at some point the government's going to show up in the form of We don't really think that's a very good way to get social problems solved.
	We think it's actually counterproductive.
	So the second myth that you may have heard about libertarians is, boy oh boy, we just don't care about the poor.
	You know, we sort of want to get rid of the welfare state, and we want to get rid of all of the poverty programs that the government currently has in place, and we want to get rid of the minimum wage, and, you know, we just want the poor to end up in sweatshops and, you know, with capitalists exploiting them, and we just don't care about the poor.
	And, again, this is really not the case at all.
	You know, we care about the poor.
	Libertarians care about the poor so much That we actually want to give them as much opportunity as humanly possible so that they can get out of being poor if they want.
	We care so much about the poor that we want charity to be as effective and humane as possible.
	We don't think that it's very good for the poor for there to be these poverty programs that get them stuck in this endless cycle of poverty that goes on for generation after generation, where they can't get out of it.
	You know, the reason that we dislike minimum wage is not because we don't want people to get paid as much as possible, and we're like everybody else, we, you know, we want everyone to get paid as much as possible, but we recognize the sort of basic economic fact that minimum wages simply cut large segments or sections of poor people out of the economy.
	So, for instance, if the minimum wage were $100 an hour, you or I probably couldn't get jobs.
	And there are certain people whose economic productivity, either because of education or language barriers, simply isn't as high as the minimum wage requires them to get paid, and all that will happen is that those people won't be able to get jobs.
	And the minimum wage, of course, was originally put in in the 1940s to keep African-American workers out of the marketplace, particularly in the construction industry, it was very clear at that point what it was for.
	And the same thing occurs now with the minimum wage in the present, that it keeps certain people out of the marketplace, and therefore they have no choice but to sort of go underground, or live off the grid, or turn to crime, or get welfare, or so on, rely on charity, because they just can't get jobs.
	So we're very sensitive to the poor.
	We just recognize that there's more complexity to solving the problem of poverty than setting up income redistribution programs and mailing out checks to people.
	That doesn't really solve the problem of poverty at all.
	In fact, it tends to perpetuate it.
	And statistically, we're entirely correct.
	I mean, we don't sort of come up with these theories and never check the facts.
	So if you look at the facts of poverty in America, for instance, you can see that from sort of 1945 until the mid-1960s, The rate of poverty in America was declining by just about one percentage point a year, because the free market was generating jobs and income and revenue and so on, and everybody was moving up the economic ladder.
	However, under the LBJ programs in the 1960s, when you got a lot of this sort of Great Society programs put in place, the numbers of people who were escaping from poverty just ceased.
	So the poverty rate was declining by about a percentage point a year, and then it really flattened out.
	After those poverty programs went in place.
	And there's a variety of reasons for that, which we don't have to get into here, but when people say to libertarians, you don't care about the poor because you want to look at charitable alternatives to sort of coercively based state-run welfare programs, we sort of can reply, and I think legitimately so, those programs do not help the poor.
	In fact, they tend to get people trapped into poverty.
	Poverty programs like those roach motels, like you can check in, but often you just can't check out.
	For a variety of complex economic and sociological reasons.
	So we really do care about the poor.
	We want to get rid of the income tax.
	We want to get rid of the social security tax.
	We want to get rid of regulations on business that come from the government and have people be regulated by the marketplace and by the court system and by internally driven marketing associations like the Better Business Bureau and so on.
	Because government regulation does not achieve what it is that you want to achieve.
	If you look at the health and safety record of companies before and after the Occupational Health and Safety Act went in, then you will see that it really doesn't have any effect.
	It's a huge overhead for business and very expensive for them to comply with it, which of course Cuts out the numbers of jobs which they can create, but it doesn't affect safety regulations at all.
	Similarly, the environmental regulations have not improved environmentalism or environmentally sound practices by companies they were already in place beforehand.
	And if you look at just about any government program, statistically rather than ideologically, you'll see that it just doesn't achieve what it is that it wants to achieve or claims to achieve.
	And there's, again, a number of complicated reasons for that which are well explained in libertarian literature, but we don't have to get it in here.
	But, you know, if you have any doubt, about what it is that I'm saying, please by all means go and check the statistics and I think that you'll see that the libertarian questions that are raised about the validity of these state programs and the purpose and usefulness of them is quite well backed up by the evidence that you'll find about them.
	So by getting rid of excess taxation and regulation of business, we're going to free up business to create lots more new jobs for the poor.
	By getting rid of the minimum wage, we're going to have a smooth ramp from those who are very poor to those who become middle class so that they can begin to improve.
	economic position by getting those crucial first jobs where they can begin to develop their job skills and learn to save.
	So we are very concerned about the poor.
	In fact, we would say that we're a lot more concerned about the poor in a lot more practical sense than those who just advocate hurling government money at the problem and thinking that it gets solved.
	So let's talk about the third myth about libertarianism, which is that libertarians don't care about the sick.
	As you may or may not have heard, we Libertarians want to get rid of government regulation and Medicare and Medicaid, government regulation particularly around the healthcare industry.
	The government at the moment spends roughly 50 cents or a little bit more than 50 cents on the dollar of every healthcare dollar that's spent.
	The amount of regulations that affect the healthcare industry is in the tens or hundreds of thousands of statutes apiece.
	And, of course, the regulatory control of the supply of doctors through this enormous and state-sponsored union called the American Medical Association is particularly catastrophic when it comes to supply and demand for doctors.
	The regulatory control of prescription medication is also a great problem for health care costs.
	So everything that the government gets involved in from defense spending to the welfare state ends up driving costs up, again, for a number of complicated economic and sociological reasons, which, you know, we can get into another time.
	But, you know, just so that you understand, whenever the government gets involved in something, the price of that thing goes up catastrophically, and so one of the reasons that health care is so expensive is because the government is involved in it and regulates it and subsidizes it and cross-subsidizes it so heavily.
	And so what we want to do is to clear away all of that complex rubble of state intervention and state regulation and control over the healthcare industry so that cheaper and more viable solutions can be found.
	So, for instance, it takes roughly 800 million dollars to get a drug approved by the FDA for general use.
	Well, what does that mean?
	Well, it means that the drugs become enormously more expensive than they would be under a more rational kind of testing scenario.
	It also means that a lot of drugs which otherwise would have been developed for more obscure or diseases, or those diseases which affect a smaller segment of the population, that they never do get developed because there's just no way to make a profit out of them given how much needs to be spent for FDA approval.
	Does it save lives?
	Well, yes and no.
	Perhaps on occasion it does.
	But of course, it costs a lot of lives as well, because all of the people who could have been benefited by a medicine that proves to be helpful don't get access to it, because the FDA won't let them.
	So, for instance, there are some heart medications which are available in England and in Europe for many years, which weren't available in America, because they were banned by the FDA.
	And statistically, what this means is that roughly 60,000 Americans died unnecessarily or prematurely when they could have had access to this drug and it would have saved them.
	They weren't allowed to have access to it because of the FDA.
	And that's just sort of one example among many about how government regulation costs lives rather than saving lives and raises the price of medicine and health care enormously.
	So when we say that we really do care about the sick and in a much more productive and helpful way than those who simply want more regulation and bureaucracy and overhead and taxation and so on, Well, we really mean it.
	We are going to help the poor a lot more than those who want more regulation from the government and more subsidies for Medicaid.
	We want to help the poor so much that we want to do everything that we can to improve the quality, improve the access, and lower the cost of health care for everyone.
	So I can promise you that we really do care about the sick, but we care about them in a bit more of a practical way than, hey, let's get another round of government regulation and subsidy going.
	Furthermore, and this applies to the poor as well as the sick, what is going to happen when the government simply runs out of money?
	I mean, as we know, the national debt is spiraling up and up and up.
	What is going to happen to all of the poor people who are dependent upon the welfare state and on Medicare and Medicaid?
	And what is going to happen to all the sick people who are dependent upon government transfers of wealth, and the government is going to pay the bills?
	What is going to happen to all these poor people when the government runs out of money, which it's going to do in probably not more than 10 or 20 years in the future?
	You know, it's really not very good to get people dependent on a particular social situation or a social structure.
	And then just have that vaporize or collapse one day without warning, and it probably will occur without warning.
	So that's really not such a good situation, and that's one of the reasons that we also mistrust and are negative towards state solutions to social problems.
	You get people dependent on these programs, and these programs are obviously unsustainable, and when they stop there is going to be much woe in the land, I guess you could say, and we're very concerned about that.
	So, this is the fourth top ten myth about Libertarians, which is we don't care about the aged or the old.
	As you have probably heard, Libertarians are very keen to scrap Social Security.
	And what does this mean?
	Does this mean that we want to pull an Inuit and have all of the old people put into snowbanks?
	Of course not.
	Of course we care about the old.
	Of course we care about the aged.
	Not only do many of us have parents, but many of us will end up old ourselves.
	So what could it mean to say that we want to get rid of Social Security?
	Well, Social Security is an unsustainable social contract.
	It's not even really a contract, in fact.
	Legally, it would be more like a Ponzi scheme.
	The people who are receiving money out of Social Security at the moment are not receiving it because they paid into it.
	They're getting many times more out of it than they paid into it.
	And when you and I pay into Social Security, there's no account that's set aside with our money in it.
	It's basically just given to the government and then when it comes time to collect when we get older, all that's left is an IOU because the government has spent all of the money that we've put into it.
	At 15% taxation, which is the rate that is used to support Social Security, you could get a much better deal than the government is giving you in terms of Social Security benefits if you just took that money and invested it even in low-yield bonds or in safe stock market investments.
	And the reason for that, of course, is that 15% is an enormous amount of your income to put into Social Security.
	7.5% of it is paid by you, and 7.5% is paid by your employer.
	So it directly comes out of your potential salary.
	So we are very concerned about the old for a number of reasons.
	One is that the money that they could have used to save for their retirement has been taxed away from them.
	and given to the government and spent and is now vaporized and gone and therefore what has to happen is taxes have to keep going up for social security and what that means is that a lot of money is getting transferred from the young and the relatively non-affluent people to the old and relatively affluent people I mean statistically and without a doubt the people who are old in North America at the moment or retired are by far the wealthiest generation in history
	And it doesn't seem very fair to take money from young people getting started out and transfer it to old people who generally, and as a whole, have a large amount of assets.
	So we're very concerned about the fairness of it.
	We're very concerned about the morality of it, really.
	I mean, is it really right and moral and good to force people to participate in a pension scheme that is vastly underfunded, that they have almost no control over, and that is going to pay them back far less than they put in over time?
	And also, is it moral to force people to participate in a pension scheme when the money is being burned faster than it's ever being put into the system?
	That would be completely illegal in the private sector for me to say to you, hey, I'm going to force you to give me money for your retirement, and then I'm going to spend it, but don't worry, my kids or their kids will be more than happy to pay off your retirement benefits for you.
	So that's pretty bad.
	And of course when the social security system becomes bankrupt, which it will, mathematically it's inevitable, what is going to happen to all those people who never had the chance to save for their own retirement because they were being taxed so heavily and who now I know get no longer able to collect the benefits from the government?
	That's a pretty wretched moral situation and that's one of the reasons that we oppose it as well.
	Now, does that mean we want to cut off benefits and, you know, make sure that people on a fixed income have nothing?
	Of course not.
	Of course not.
	Libertarianism is not about, you know, punishing people who had no control over a state program in the first place.
	There are a number of solutions to this, and we can sort of get into that in more detail another time, but one solution would be, of course, to
	sell off vast amounts of federal property and holdings and then use the proceeds which would be more than adequate to buy annuities for people who are currently on social security which would pay them as much if not more for the rest of their lives in terms of benefits but another thing of course would be to say to everybody who's say twenty five look you're not going to get old age pension but we're also not going to tax you anymore fifteen percent so you know save for your old pension you'll do a heck of a lot better than buying into this state-run ponzi scheme
	And you'll know far enough ahead in advance that you'll be able to get your savings and get your retirement set up perfectly anyway.
	So we really do care about the old.
	In fact, we care about the old so much that we want to give them choice over their own retirement and we also want to make sure that it's a sort of sustainable old age retirement program is put in place and that can only be handled by the free market.
	So, what's the fifth of the top ten myths about libertarianism?
	Well, that libertarianism is sort of cold moralizing.
	In other words, we're sort of finger-wagging, death-by-consequences moralists.
	If you make a mistake, you must pay.
	If you fail to save for your retirement, you will be cast out into the gutter and you must live there as a warning to everyone else to think ahead.
	And, you know, if you have a child out of wedlock, well, by heavens, you must live with the consequences of that and live a wretched life of penury for all of your days to come.
	And we certainly hear some of that, you know, that it's considered to be a very cold and punitive kind of philosophy.
	And, you know, it's really just not true at all.
	We are very kind people.
	You know, we are very kind people as a whole.
	And one of the things that we're very keen on is charity.
	You know, it's fairly clear after you look at things like the 10 plus billion dollars that were given to the people in Indonesia after the tsunami of 2005, That even when people are being taxed at 40, 50 or 60 percent they still dig deep into their wallets and pocketbooks when a genuine human tragedy occurs.
	And it's very clear if you look at the statistics for charity in the 1980s that when taxes go down charitable donations go up.
	So, statistically, there's absolutely no reason to fear that people who've made mistakes, who are legitimately in need of charity and who are willing to ask for it, that they will get the help they need.
	Statistically, there's no reason whatsoever to disbelieve that people are kind and generous and will help.
	So, there's no reason to worry about that.
	But what we are concerned about is that people are forced to pay all their taxes to a sort of government-run welfare and aid schemes.
	that they won't end up giving as much to the poor, and the poor aren't going to be helped, but rather harmed, by government programs, and that just ends up with a terrible situation all around.
	So what we, I guess, oppose or object to is the idea that if you rely on private charity, that's uncertain, but if you rely on government programs, that's certain.
	I mean, that's not the case at all.
	A private charity, if you just look at the statistics, is a constant fact of life, that people are very generous and very kind in general to other people.
	But government programs are not that way at all.
	The Great Society programs have been running for 40-odd years and have almost bankrupted the country and are in the process of doing so.
	So government programs, A, do not help the poor, and B, are much less reliable than private charity.
	So we really do care about consequences, and we want to make sure that people get access to the help they need if mistakes occur, and they don't get that through the state.
	So we are very keen on charity and helping people, and the way that we think that people can be helped the most, and which we think we have good proof for, is through private charity.
	Now, number six is that we are, you know, amoralist kind of hippie commune people because we favor the legalization of drugs and therefore we're sort of amoral hippie guys who, you know, basically want drugs to be legalized because, I don't know, we want to Have easier access to hard drugs or something like that.
	And that's not really true at all.
	I'm sure that there are some libertarians who take drugs, but that's not why we are for the legalization of drugs.
	We are for the legalization of drugs because we're against violence, not because we're in favor of drugs.
	So, if you decide to smoke some marijuana in the privacy of your own home and so on, well, you're not really harming anybody else.
	It's your own body.
	It's your own life.
	And you may be doing it for medicinal purposes.
	You may be doing it because you really like listening to Sergeant Peppers.
	We don't know.
	But we do know that it's not a violent activity and that there's just no just way that you can legitimize the use of violence in that situation.
	So, beating down somebody's door and dragging them off to jail when they are deciding to take a drug of their own choice in their own home with their own body is just not fair at all.
	And so we really don't think that it's moral to use violence against people using drugs, and drugs can have beneficial uses in terms of creativity, i.e. the aforementioned Sgt. Pepper's album was not exactly composed under the influence of Dr. Pepper, and also the fact that it can help and also the fact that it can help with certain medical situations, morphine obviously for pain relief, marijuana for glaucoma and other abuses, and therefore it is simply not just or fair to throw people in jail for the non-violent crime of using a drug.
	and therefore it is simply not just or fair to throw people in jail for the non-violent crime of using a drug.
	Similarly, it tends to corrupt the police force and our foreign policy, both through internal bribery and also, for instance, that we will napalm bomb fields of crops in Colombia for fear that they may be some sort of illicit drug that's going to be imported into the United States.
	And we consider that to be a fair approach.
	However, We would probably have some problem with the Colombian Air Force coming and bombing tobacco farms in America, although tobacco kills far more people than hard drugs do.
	We also are against drugs, the illegalization of drugs, or prohibition on drugs, because it does the same thing the prohibition on alcohol did in the 1920s.
	What it basically does is it increases and raises the profit of organized crime to the point where organized crime becomes a very significant force in society.
	In fact, there was virtually no organized crime before the prohibition of alcohol in the 1920s, which is when the Mafia, for instance, came over and began its operations in the United States.
	So, sort of what are considered moral crimes in the modern United States, which are generally, you know, gambling, prostitution and drug use, is the entire foundation of the profits of organized crime and corrupts the court system and the police system, as we've mentioned already, and we consider that to be very bad.
	Also, if it does turn out that the general moral understanding that it's wrong to throw people in jail for drug use, if it turns out to be the case, future generations will look upon us with a particular kind of horror because we have hundreds of thousands of people who have had their lives destroyed by receiving prison sentences of future generations will look upon us with a particular kind of horror because we have hundreds of thousands of people who have had their lives destroyed by receiving prison sentences of 10 years or 20 years or life for minor drug
	and that would be considered to be akin to kind of concentration camps or gulags that we see in history or in the present world where we look at particular horror for people being arrested and put in jail for things which we would not conceive to be wrong.
	Therefore, we really do have an opposition to the illegalization of drugs and also because it just plain doesn't work.
	I mean, as you may or may not have noticed, You can't even keep drugs out of prisons.
	So even if you turn all of society into a prison, you still are not going to be able to get rid of drugs.
	There's lots of complex reasons, but one simple reason being that the more you eliminate
	uh... drug imports the more you raise the profit of drugs that do get through and therefore the incentive to bring them in is higher and of course it's much cheaper for most people who run drugs simply to bribe judges and the police uh... to get their drugs through and of course then the quality on the street becomes very suspect and more people die and of course people who get involved in drugs uh... you know it's very profitable to make them addicted to drugs and then they then have to turn to a life of crime because
	The fact that drugs are illegal has made them so expensive, and there's lots of very negative things that come out of the illegalization of drugs.
	Aside from the moral problems of using violence against people who are themselves non-violent, you have the practical problem of, you know, the cost and expense and destruction of the social order that comes from excessive prison populations and organized crime and drug gangs and so on.
	So we're very very much and thoroughly against the drug war as futile and immoral and destructive to society.
	And it's not just because we're looking to get easier access to a stash or something.
	So let's turn to number seven.
	That libertarians desperately want everyone to remain enormously uneducated except for the very rich.
	So we obviously want to get rid of public schools for the same reason that we want to get rid of most government programs if not all government programs.
	Simply because it's immoral and it doesn't work.
	So why is public education immoral?
	Well, you really can't come up with good moral justifications for, you know, forcing people through the power of the state and through the guns of the police to pay for an education that they may want, may not want, may appreciate, may dislike, may find problematic, may find against their own core values, and so on.
	It's really not right to force people to have to support an educational system.
	It is only moral to allow them to choose the educational system which best suits their needs, the needs of their children, the special abilities of their children.
	Before the government education system went in place, there was a 90% literacy rate in America.
	People were getting educated.
	It was very efficient.
	It was very productive.
	And now, I think you would be very hard-pressed to find any school district with a 90% literacy rate.
	And the standards were higher back then, too.
	As you put more and more money into education, things get worse and worse and worse.
	The teachers' unions have so much power that reform is almost impossible, and therefore there's just no way that new educational approaches that are productive can be taken.
	You have educational movements which are counterproductive, which last for an entire generation.
	You have problems with boys learning.
	You have enormous use of drugs like Ritalin to control students who are not enjoying the school or who are having problems.
	You have the rise of things like Attention Deficit Disorder and Dyslexia, which, you know, were fairly uncommon in the ages prior to, particularly the 1960s, when the educational unions got the right to strike and the SAT scores began declining almost right away.
	So, there's lots of problems with education from a moral standpoint.
	Practically, it really doesn't work.
	I mean, government-run educations are a complete disaster, and it's got nothing to do with the funding.
	Federal funding for education has gone up by multiples over the past 20 years.
	and correspondingly, the test scores have gone down.
	So education that is run by the state doesn't work any better than anything else that is run by the state, and therefore we are highly opposed to government-run education.
	And also we're very much opposed to the fact that in government schools, you really don't get to learn much about the real nature of the society that you live in.
	So, for instance, I mean, the fact that everything the government does is based on coercion is pretty self-evident.
	But, you know, we libertarians, whenever we talk about it with people, their eyes sort of go wide.
	They get those sort of Roger Rabbit eye pops, because it's so obvious, but people don't really notice it.
	And, of course, you're not going to get Any sort of explanation of the true nature of government from a government school.
	You're gonna get lots of sort of silly programs and environmental issues and man and society and so on and gender issues and so on.
	Not that those things are completely unimportant.
	But relative to how to function as a citizen in a democracy, by understanding the true nature of government and so on, it's not really that important.
	But that's of course what the state has to focus on, because anytime the core values get taught in education, they're going to offend large numbers of people.
	And so state education has to end up, because it's one solution for everyone, it has to end up being pretty vanilla, right?
	Pretty generic.
	It can't offend anyone, therefore it really can't teach any values, and therefore, you know, it's really going to end up with just a lot of mindless trivia that students have to learn, regurgitate, and then forget.
	So we're very much against government schools.
	In fact, if there was one thing that I as a libertarian could change, it would be allowing people to pay for their own child's education.
	Now, the standard objection you hear to that, which we won't get into more than briefly here, is that, well, you know, if everyone has to pay for their own education, then the really poor kids won't get educated.
	Again, that's not true at all.
	People will be very generous, people are very kind, people will always help, and there will be scholarships, and there will be You know, charitable schools and everything that you would naturally associate with a kind and caring human community, which is what happens when the state doesn't control and run and bully everyone.
	That is exactly what will happen and the poor children will absolutely be taken care of within the free market.
	Schooling will be that much cheaper.
	It may not need to be 14 years from sort of kindergarten to high school to get somebody educated.
	It might be just a little bit faster than that.
	And you won't probably end up with the same schools that you have in the moment.
	See, one thing that happens with government programs is whenever they get put in place, everything gets kind of frozen in time.
	So government schools came in in the 18th, in the 19th century, the late 19th century, when you had a chalkboard, a teacher, and 30 kids in the classroom.
	And lo and behold, you know, over a hundred years later, you have a chalkboard, a teacher, and 30 kids in a classroom.
	This may not be the optimum way of doing it.
	There may be very many other alternatives or possibilities that the free market will figure out that will be cheaper and more effective.
	And so we have absolutely no concern, and there's no reason to have any concern, that poor kids will be helped.
	In fact, it's one of the things that is pretty obvious when you're a libertarian how nice people are.
	Because, for instance, every time a libertarian says, we want to get rid of public schools, every single person you talk to says exactly the same thing.
	I am very concerned that the poor won't get any education.
	In fact, if libertarians asked this question and no one ever said, well, what about the poor who won't get an education, we'd probably be a little bit more concerned about this as a solution.
	But because, trust me, in 20 years of talking about this, every single person has asked the same question.
	How will the sick, who are poor, get medical care?
	And how will the old, who are poor, get pensions?
	And how will the poor, who are uneducated, get an education?
	So, it is everybody's first concern, and therefore, we know that people are kind and generous, just statistically, it will absolutely and positively and certainly be taken care of, and it will be taken care of in a productive and sustainable manner, rather than the way that the government, quote, takes care of it now, which is in a highly unproductive, highly expensive, and because of the amount of debt it generates, completely unsustainable way.
	So we're looking for a voluntary, permanent, efficient, effective solution to these problems, Not a temporary state-run coercive one.
	So, the number eight of the ten myths about libertarians.
	We are Republicans on steroids.
	Actually, I think that that metaphor is a lot more apt now with Governor Schwarzenegger in power.
	So, the idea here is that, you know, Republicans will talk about the free market and, you know, government is the problem, not the solution, and so on.
	And so we're just considered a little bit to the right of the Republicans, somewhere between the Republicans, say, and Mussolini.
	And it's really not true at all.
	The Republicans are almost exactly the same as the Democrats.
	The only difference being, and this is sort of a libertarian saying, that Republicans campaign like Libertarians and government like Democrats.
	There's really not a dime's worth of difference between the two parties, major parties in America at the moment.
	The Republicans talk a little bit more about the free market, but when they get in they just pass more regulations and subsidies and controls and so on.
	And the Democrats might talk a little bit more about social freedoms like maybe Possibly legalizing a drug or two, but when they get into power they end up just funding as many government programs as the Republicans would have, so there's a little bit of a seesaw about which aspects of government power increases and grows, and which bureaucracies are going to get larger, and how much debt is going to be piled up in various areas.
	But aside from that, which is like, you know, do you want to be stabbed or shot kind of choice, There's really not a dime's worth of difference between them.
	So, you know, don't really think about this as anything to do with any of the existing parties.
	Both the existing parties have no interest in reducing government.
	So, we'll get into sort of that in myth number 10, but trust us, trying to judge libertarianism with reference to either of the major political parties in the United States isn't going to get you very far in terms of understanding what libertarianism is all about.
	Now, number nine is, Libertarians, all we care about is the economy and free markets.
	We care about, you know, the capitalism and free markets and property rights and blah blah blah blah blah.
	Well, no, that's not true at all.
	We care about happiness.
	You know, we care about human happiness and productivity and joy and all the good things in life like families and children and mom and apple pie.
	We care about happiness and we believe that pointing guns at peaceful citizens makes no one happy in the long run.
	Well, I don't know, maybe unless you're a sadist who likes pointing guns at people.
	So, you know, we view freedom, the free market, property rights, voluntary associations, peaceful groups of citizens getting together to solve social problems in a productive and proactive manner.
	We view that as a source of happiness.
	We view that as a source of satisfaction.
	We fight for the free market because we oppose violence.
	I mean, we don't fight for the free market because we want the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer or anything like that.
	We fight for the free market because the free market represents the possibility of people interacting Voluntarily, rather than being forced to interact.
	And when we say the free market, we don't mean sort of what is around right now, which is a sort of small area of voluntary free market principles with a very large area of government coercion and regulation.
	So again, you're not going to have much luck comparing what we talk about in terms of the free market with what currently exists in the economy of most Western countries, which is what, you know, technically is called a mixed economy.
	It's a mixture of free market elements that are always on the retreat And state coercive power, which is always on the increase.
	So we're looking at something quite different than what we have right now.
	And everything that we focus on is with the end of happiness in mind.
	We don't believe that violence causes happiness, which is why we are particularly opposed to state power and state programs, because they do represent the most significant use of violence in the modern world.
	So, last but not least, the myth number 10.
	You libertarians don't have a chance.
	You have a snowball's chance in heck of actually getting your way, of actually getting into power, and getting rid of government bureaucracies, and getting rid of regulations, and getting rid of the income tax, and so on.
	Well, perhaps.
	You know, it certainly is the case.
	Look, libertarianism as an active political movement has been around for a couple of decades, maybe 30-40 years.
	As a theory, it's been sort of around since the 1920s.
	And, of course, there are elements of it in the founding fathers in the 18th century.
	But, you know, let's just say 40 years for a political movement.
	Well, how long did it take to get rid of slavery?
	Well, like 100 years, 150 years?
	Quite a long time.
	So, we're not too concerned about the fact that it's taking a while to get our ideas across.
	You know, we're also facing those who have been exposed to political theory through the state educational system.
	And the state educational system is all about how great the state is, rather than any of the problems, both moral and practical, that state programs naturally contain or represent.
	So, of course it's going to take some time.
	Of course we are patient.
	Of course we enjoy the conversation.
	We know that it's not going to be an overnight solution.
	But if you say, oh, you dang libertarians don't have a chance, so why would I bother having the conversation or getting involved?
	Well, you know, it's kind of like a self-fulfilling prophecy, right?
	Like if you say, well, there's just no way I'm ever going to get that job.
	And then you decide it's not, your chances are so slim you're not even going to show up for the interview.
	Well, you know, guess what?
	You're not going to get the job.
	So, you know, the issue that we would invite you to look at is not, do you think we have a chance, but is what we're saying true or false?
	You know, if what we're saying is true, then it really doesn't matter how much of a chance we have.
	You know, you're going to be happier and better off in your life supporting something that is true versus supporting something that is false.
	And if we're right about the morals of the situation, then supporting state programs is actually immoral.
	Supporting the Republicans or the Democrats is actually immoral.
	And it's not like we're these big finger-wagging moralists who are like, tut-tut-tut, you should never do anything wrong.
	But, you know, it generally seems to be the case in life that if you do something that's immoral, you're not going to be happy.
	That's just the way that human nature is.
	It's the way that we're built as a species.
	So, you know, if we're right, then supporting existing parties and existing social programs is actually going to make you unhappy at a very sort of fundamental moral level.
	So we're sort of saying that if you want to be happy, maybe this is the way to look at the world.
	That violence is not the way to solve problems and that voluntary cooperation is a much better way to do things and so on.
	So, yeah, we might not have much of a chance, but, you know, what if it just made you happier to be against violence than for peaceful cooperation among men and women?
	I mean, wouldn't that make you happier in general?
	So, it really doesn't matter whether or not we get in power.
	If we're right, and it's better to be peaceful than violent, and it's not going to make you happy to support violence, but it's going to make you happy to support peaceful solutions, you know, then it's great for you to believe in it, even if we never get in power.
	So, it really is up to you to find the value in what it is that we're saying, and to find a way to bring it into your life, and we think, of course, that it's going to make you happier.
	The other thing that we get, which is sort of related to this, is like, oh yeah, well, it sounds great, but, you know, do you have any examples of a libertarian society, so I can evaluate it and see whether it works or not?
	And the only thing that I would say about that is, well, sure, you know, get up and go look in the mirror.
	You know, I'm betting that you yourself didn't force your wife to marry you, or didn't force your husband to marry you, and that you didn't force your employer to give you your job, and that you don't force your friends, you don't sort of send out the attack dogs to go and round up your friends when you want to party.
	You just phone them and say, hey you want to come to a barbecue?
	And so your life is probably not violent in nature.
	You probably didn't steal your house, You probably didn't force someone to give you their car.
	You probably haven't forced people to join your church or your charity or your social group.
	And so when people say to us, oh yeah, well, you show me a libertarian society, we'll say, well, it's kind of you.
	It's kind of your life.
	You live your life peacefully.
	You ask people to be involved in what it is that you're doing.
	You don't take guns to people and force them to do things.
	So, if you want to look at a successful libertarian society, look at everyone you know.
	Your circle of friends, your children, your spouse, your church, your community.
	Everything that's going on in your life is voluntary cooperation.
	The one thing that's not voluntary cooperation for you is things like the income tax.
	Because we really do want to give The power of the government back to the citizens, and there's just no way that that can happen with the income tax in place.
	We don't just like coming up with radical solutions that are difficult for people to listen to.
	You know, there's a real thought behind what it is that we're advocating.
	So for instance, if you have an income tax, the government can do anything that it wants, and there's really nothing that you can do about it, especially if it's deducting that tax from the source of your paycheck.
	So in the past, like before the income tax, which is still less than a hundred years old, the government funded itself through, you know, tariffs and excise taxes and so on, and so if you didn't like what the government was doing, you could just stop buying whatever good it was they were taxing, and then the government would sort of have to listen and change its course.
	Once the income tax comes in, though, there's nothing you can do, right?
	I mean, you can't stop working if you disagree with something the government's doing, because, you know, you gotta eat, you gotta feed your kids, you gotta pay your mortgage.
	So, we are very keen on getting rid of the income tax in order to put the power of the government back in the hands of the people.
	Government is supposed to be by and for the people.
	As soon as it taxes you, then it sort of has the same relationship to you that a farmer does to a cow that it's milking.
	It doesn't really care about the cow's feelings or whether the cow approves or disapproves.
	And so we really want to get the power of the government back from the bureaucrats and the politicians, put it back in the hands of the people.
	And that's one of the reasons why we're against the income tax.
	I mean, not only is it wrong to point guns at people and say, give me your money or else, I mean, it's wrong for a highwayman and it's wrong for a bureaucrat, but it's also impractical in that what it does is it ends up giving the government completely free reign to do whatever it wants, and generally what governments always want to do throughout history is to surmount all of the restraints of things like the Constitution and spend themselves and their whole societies into economic oblivion, which we don't consider to be a very good outcome to something like a republic or a democracy.
	So those are the top 10 myths about libertarians and libertarianism.
	I hope, hope, hope that they've been helpful in helping you to understand where it is that we're coming from and why it is that we're so passionate about this.
	It really is a moral cause for us.
	The economics are secondary.
	What we are very concerned in is trying to reduce the amount of violence within human society because we really think that's going to make everybody happier and healthier and better off, both psychologically and economically.
	So thanks as always for listening.
	Just as I mentioned at the beginning, my name is Stephan Molyneux.
	I do run a libertarian blog at freedomain.blogspot.com, and if you have any questions or comments, please email me.
	I'd be more than happy to help you out.
	My email is s.m-o-l-y-n-e-u-x at rogers, r-o-g-e-r-s dot com.

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