In a symposium on libertarian strategy, Jim Powell writes,
Libertarian ideas are unlikely to prevail until we get to stage three. That stage involves a peaceful mass movement to mobilize large numbers of people to pressure politicians to support liberty by enacting some laws and repealing others. A peaceful mass movement is basically what you can do in a democracy when politicians fail to respond to demands.
I am not signing that petition. To me, voice is the problem, not the solution. I prefer libertarian strategies that focus on lowering the cost of exit.
Pointer to the symposium from Alberto Mingardi, who takes a more tolerant view. He writes,
any successful strategy to change the minds of people needs different actors: pluralism, in a sense. it is not just that a “monistic” approach won’t be very libertarian, but you do actually need different kinds of people and lines of effort if you hope to have success.
Might lowering the cost of exit start with a critical mass of libertarians pressuring politicians in some locality to create a place that can in fact be a low-cost opportunity for exit? E.g., by creating critical mass in New Hampshire with the Free State Project to change that locale’s government, doesn’t it create a low-cost exit opportunity for other people in Connecticut, Massachusetts, etc.?
In any event, how do you create a system with low costs of exit without applying political pressure to the system to get it to lower that cost? It seems like you need one to get the other, unless you’re willing to set up shop on some derelict oil rig in the middle of the ocean… .
With any luck, some day they’ll have to say “you want to live in New Hampshire!?!” instead of “you want to live Somalia!?!”
I agree that “exit” would be nice, but exit to where? It seems to me that the world is becoming smaller, and that the elites of the world seem to be colluding, either consciously or implicitly, to reduce the options of exit. Given the cartelization of world governments, and the increasing links between some non governmental organizations and governments (which I think is misleading labeled crony capitalism) it isn’t clear to me that exit will be an increasingly or decreasingly possible option for dissatisfied persons
I take it, “voice” is supposed to mean “collective decision making.”
Arnold Kling’s argument works only under the assumption that a desirable social order can be achieved in the absence of collective decision making. Of course, it cannot.
Freedom, as we enjoy it in the US or Germany (my country), has emancipated all (sane and non-criminal) adults to be able to propose political institutions. policies and measures and to that purpose take part in political competition. Hence, a free society is inevitably a highly politicised society.
It never ceases to amaze me that my fellow libertarians fail to recognise this most fundamental condition of freedom. The demand for political emancipation and the possibility of political participation for everyone used to be a core concern of liberalism (European sense).
Be this as it may, here is a sketch of the broader framework of my position:
Natural inequality among human beings, the need to manage violence in and between groups and communities, the intrinsically hierarchical nature of power and other factors turn man into a political animal naturally engaged in political competition which includes the struggle for structures of maximal power which, in turn, culminates in the evolution of the modern state. Politics and the state are a natural growth of long standing, while ambivalent and capable of regression they are nonetheless indispensable. Liberty changes the conditions of politics and the state. Liberty fosters, indeed requires, the possibility of mass participation in the political processes, which involvement cannot be curtailed without curtailing liberty herself. Democratic institutions and procedures (which ought not to be reduced to the act of election alone) tend to best fulfil the requirements of political participation in a free society. Liberals who reject politics and the state thus take a position that is incompatible with the basic principles of liberty. Ultimately, they are not willing to face up to the fact that a free society is an open-ended project in which liberal principles and prospects must prove themselves in a competition involving powerful rival views. This is a natural and necessary condition of liberty, whose future is impossible to predict.
For more see my post: http://redstateeclectic.typepad.com/redstate_commentary/2014/11/herbert-spencer-1820-1903.html
Exit also has the tremendous benefit of being a good basis of a coallition.
For example, consider public education. Everyone has an opinion about how the schools should be reformed. Therefore, almost everyone is disappointed in the way the schools are going. Vouchers are an exit option that large number of people can get behind, even if we all plan to use our individual voucher money in a different way.