Carl Milsted, Bob Capozzi, and Stephan Kinsella are having an important debate on the role of the state and the possibility of anarchy as the best way to organize society. It is important for the libertarian community to challenge itself to have the best ideas it can – otherwise, it may be offering an inferior product compared to competing ideologies.
Kinsella brings an important question to the fore – should we concern ourselves with the “workability” of the ideas we promote? That is, does it matter what happens as a result of those ideas being implemented?
As Richard Weaver observed, “Ideas have consequences.” That is primarily why we care about obtaining them, using them, and improving upon them. Parents discipline their children to give them the “idea” that aggressive behavior is unacceptable in a free society. We use ideas to discern between moral options, and to navigate our day-to-day experiences. Should I walk into oncoming traffic? No, because my theory is that I will die if a speeding car hits me. Aircraft designers want to know if a new plane will be faster and stealthier than previous models. If their idea is incorrect, they can lose millions of dollars after building a series of lemon fighter jets.
Should we not include the consequences in our formulation of our political ideas? Does it matter whether we exert our intellectual energies towards ideologies which can improve the world, versus harming the world? There is no intellectual or moral difference between a car designer who markets a car that will not run and a political theorist who suggests solutions which cannot work.
I am not saying that anarchy could not work. I don’t know if it could or not. It would be quite interesting to see it tested on a small scale to give us some data to base our decisions on. But, suggesting that it does not matter what happens as a result of our ideas is dangerous. If libertarians adopt this view that it is acceptable to divorce theory from reality, it removes their moral standing to demand that policies promoted by socialists and statists provide “workable” solutions rather than needless despotism and suffering.
-- Kevin D. Rollins