Sunday, February 7, 2010

The Fallacy of the Misean Vision

a
Llewellyn Rockwell expresses his paleolibertarian vision in his essay Imagining Liberty: The Misean Vision. In it, he expresses a world vision that would be most beneficial to man. A vision where apparently liberty can only be achieved within a free market economy. He claims the healthcare problem is a result of intervention, as if government is responsible for humanity’s cupidity.

The kind of world I envision is significantly different from Lee Rockwell. My vision does not acknowledge a money-based economy. It’s a moneyless world where war, politics, profit, and any need for compensation would not exist. Unarguably, that is the kind of world that would be most beneficial for humankind. Arguably, the problem is how do we get there. Americans pride themselves on creativity and innovation, and over time that pride can change our perspectives, ideas and attitudes, hopefully evolving to that kind of world.

A moneyless world is an idea. But sometimes ideas become theories, and sometimes they light the way to reality.

Rockwell says in his essay, and of which I agree:

“… society contains within itself the capacity for self-management, and there is nothing that government can do to improve on the results of the voluntary association, exchange, creativity, and choices of every member of the human family.”

“… the greatest guarantor of liberty is an entire population that is a relentless and daily threat to the regime precisely because they embrace this dream of liberty.”

“Sometimes thinking the unthinkable, saying the unsayable, teaching the unteachable, is what makes the difference between bondage and sweet liberty.”

“Freedom is the greatest gift that you can give yourself, and give all of humanity.”

However, the only way to authentic freedom is to eliminate the burden and coercive power of money. This is the one criterion that Lew Rockwell, Ludwig von Mises, Murray N. Rothbard, other libertarians, and philosophers, have overlooked, and therein lays the fallacy of their advocation: money management is not a solution to humanity’s problems it is the cause.

A moneyless society, which would be a free and classless society, is what will achieve liberty. For money creates the greatest obstacle to obtaining the greatest human potential. Humanity does contain the capacity for self-management. And, neither government nor money can improve on the benefit of voluntary association and creativity.

Freeing the obstacles requires new ways of thinking -- as Lew Rockwell said, “Sometimes thinking the unthinkable.”

Philosophically, a moneyless society embodies liberalism as well as libertarianism. It would be a social arrangement that insists on civil liberties and promotes social progress. A society founded on probity and liberty. One that is tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others, and one that progressively searches for new ideas without compensation.

A moneyless society embodies libertarian thinkers like Henry David Thoreau, but rejects the objectivist libertarianism of the likes of Ayn Rand.

Moreover, in consideration of a moneyless society, liberalism and libertarianism may be arguable but nonetheless moot: they lack meaning in a moneyless society. Such a society would be an egalitarian society, yes, but not socialism; socialism, to be definable, incorporates in its meaning the exchange of money for goods and services.

Additionally, for the world’s survival, we need to achieve on the Kardashev scale a type III civilization by not being hindered by the cost of resources but only by their availability, and by employing full utilization of all those resources, which would be available to all people.

Authentic freedom, progress and prosperity, can only be achieved through self-determination and independence from the powerful influences of money. Influences that today are exemplified by political partisanship.
a