True Liberty Pt 2

By Daryl Dominic Tan

Libertarianism is a philosophy that should never be compartmentalized into the political paradigm of left or right. Liberty resides in all of us. It is an unfortunate fact however, that most of us have been brainwashed into thinking that liberty is synonymous with having the government take care of us from cradle to grave. Thomas Jefferson, 3rd president of the United States, said once “A government big enough to give you everything you want is strong enough to take everything you have.” This is exactly what has been happening - the government exercises so much authority now that it can simply destroy our lives whenever it wishes to do so. We have simply given the government so much power and authority that they blatantly enforce their policies through legislative cobbling onto our personal lives – all under the pretext of serving the majoritarian voices. What people fail to see is that civil liberties are slowly being eroded as a result.

I grew up a rebel, and I believe I will die one. However, I’m no rebel without a cause. I’ve always believed in standing up to injustice brought upon by authority. I’ve never been loud enough as a person to partake in the activities of an activist, but I prefer a more subtle approach, in the form of writing, etc. I deplore most forms of institutionalized authority and for very good reason, they serve only to protect their own interests under the guise that they are serving to protect ours – we all know that is a fallacy.

Truth is, we live in a police state where big brother constantly monitors our actions unbeknownst to us. Any little incendiary remark lands us right behind bars without any form of proper trial, and the reason why most of us continue to love this establishment is because it apparently enforces safety. This is a fallacy that many people don’t get. The only reason why we are “safe” is because we live in a police state. We might be safe from other people, but we aren’t safe from the government. I will not compromise my liberty for false security, because true security is about securing our rights to personal freedom and liberty. That is safety and that is security. The government’s role to play is to protect those liberties and not destroy them.

Some of these civil liberties that I’m talking about include the right to exercise freedom of expression and by incidental extension, freedom of speech, and to run our lives the way we see fit as long as we do not harm others. It is up to every individual how he or she wants to live his or her life free from the institutionalized bureaucracy that our government imposes upon us. If we wish to educate our children at home, what right does the government have to take them away and indoctrinate them under the standards that they draw out?

I’ve always been called an idealist and a dreamer of sorts, and many practicalists, the so-called rational and matured members of society are strongly opposed to my beliefs, chief among reasons – that they are impractical, and that we have to work together as a collective force to bring about a harmonious society. I don’t know about you, but that sure as hell sounds like socialism to me, which is of course a bad thing because socialism supports the idea of a centralized government regulating and deciding our lives for us.

What truly brings about a harmonious society, is a proper understanding of individualism, not the tainted notion that it promotes selfishness. Each and every one of us are different in our own special way. We are wired differently, and that, my friends, is a beautiful thing. The fact that we are all so different and individualistic fosters a marketplace of ideas and opinions. We learn from each other through this sharing of information and we are able to grow as a society. Clearly, the government is against that. It wants us to either be obedient sheep, or mindless robots. Take your pick.

Now, let’s look at the water-diamond paradox. Why is it that diamonds cost so much more than water, when clearly we need water to survive and not diamonds. Keynesian economists, those that support the idea of a strong centralized federal government created such a paradox because they looked at water and diamonds as an entire stock when they shouldn’t be doing so. The answer lies in individual units. A diamond is more expensive because it is sold as an individual unit, not diamondS, which are an entire stock. This is how we should put things in perspective to understand things more simply, by viewing us, people, as individual units as opposed to an entire stock of factory produce.

The public school system that we are all part of is a fallacy as well. It isn’t really education, it is indoctrination. We are being indoctrinated with government-sponsored information, re-edited in order to inculcate harebrained respect for authority. Mark Twain once said “Never let schooling get in the way of your education”, and till today, I hold this statement in high reverence. And while we are on the topic of public school system, let me also quote the great Stefan Molyneux for saying that “children are sealed up in the 18th century mental prisons for years, while their futures are sold off to the highest bidder.”

Now, the progressive practicalists will argue the case of welfare, that in the system that I strongly promote, a libertarian society, we will be poverty stricken without the welfare state. Well, contrary to popular belief, the welfare state incapacitates the poor even further by ridding their chances of ever becoming prosperous. As Peter Schiff said, “If you care about the poor, fight for their right to trade, to contract, and to keep the fruits of their labor.” The free-market, as described by Adam Smith as the invisible hand should be what regulates the economy, not a power-hungry money-making machine such as the federal government. Prices coupled with supply and demand do not lie.
When government is out of the market, more businesses spring up due to relaxed regulations and what clearly happens when there are more businesses – is that there are more jobs. The problem is that exercising a tight control over the market is doing just the opposite. When the government gets out of healthcare, more hospitals are set up, there is less regulation in the health sector and what follows is lower costs due to healthy competition in the market. This allows for formerly poor people to be able to afford private healthcare, known to man as always being much more viable than public healthcare.

It is certainly much better than dumping your tax money on the hypothetical irresponsible obese person who deliberately eats junk food every day though he knows full well the consequences of his actions. You can call me heartless, but I believe I would be doing the guy a favor. By eliminating such redistributionist programs, he has no other choice but to take responsibility of eating less, watching his diet, and keeping healthy, simply because he knows now that he is going to bear the full costs of his own healthcare.

Unfortunately, as Thomas Hobbes rightly surmises, "life is nasty, brutish and short". For the much poorer people who lead extremely unfortunate lives, I believe in a privatized welfare scheme or private charity where the act of giving and kindness is much more sincere than having a large sum of your hard-earned money taken away by the government, mismanaged, and then an amount, unbeknownst to yourself, is then taken to help “financially sustain” those unfortunate individuals. A lower tax rate or a full elimination of a personal income tax will lead to people donating their money more sincerely to charity. If you believe in liberty in the truest sense of the word, you also believe in voluntaryism – that every human action should be voluntary and not based on forceful coercion. That, my friends, is what liberty is truly about.