Dedication, the Fourth Bottleneck

If you have your bottlenecks open sufficiently, you have a support base. That support base can then provide resources to increase awareness and credibility, or even educate other voters to change beliefs. End of story. Right?

Wrong. Most of your support base will do little. Few people contribute to political campaigns. Fewer still actually join a party and/or show up for local meetings. Many people don’t even bother voting.

For active support, there is another bottleneck: Dedication.

Here is an area where the Marxists excelled. They had bad ideas. They were hated by the authorities. Marxist writings are difficult to read. Yet they took over a third of the world’s population.

Actual Marxists were few, but incredibly dedicated. They ate and slept Marxism. They lived for the dream. The international communist conspiracy was in many ways a cult.

Meanwhile, the Libertarian Party came largely out of the Objectivist movement. People who take to heart such words as, "I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man nor ask another man to live for mine." [from Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand]

In the capitalist realm, the spirit of rational self-interest usually works (but not always!). In the political realm this is not the case. Political action is not personally profitable unless you are corrupt. Rational self-interest in politics results in handing out the pork to win votes and fancy retirements. Limited government requires self-limitation by those who govern. It requires donors to donate to the common-good candidate instead of the likely winner who is offering special privileges in return for donations. It requires voters to think of the country as a whole over the largesse brought in by their high-seniority congresscritter.

Radical libertarianism has its flaws, but it is not nearly as flawed as forcible communism. It has a literature than requires some abstract thinking, but it is still far easier to read than the works of Marx or Hegel. The bottleneck that has constrained the radical libertarian movement is Dedication.

Yes, the libertarian movement has some very dedicated people. Not all are Objectivists. And many Objectivists manage to rationalize, calling work for the common good self-interest because they derive emotional benefits from such work. This even holds for Rand’s fictional heroes. Objectivist ethics were a contradiction from the start.

But the taint of Objectivist thinking has constrained the libertarian movement. Libertarians need to read the words of America’s founders who stated from the start that the system they created would not function without morality on the part of the people. The founders were aware of the dangers of special interest and pork-barrel politics. They knew that nobility and self-sacrifice were required of the nation’s leaders in order to keep government small.

This is an area where the Green Party is stronger ideologically. Their weakness is excessive contempt for those who pursue their own self-interest. Such an attitude produces evil as well, but of a different variety.

A great deal of social good has been done by people in the pursuit of money and other personal benefits. Such good does not need the same level of celebration as works done purely for the common good, because such good works have already been rewarded. But to forget such good works entirely is a grave error.

Self-interest is plentiful. Capitalism mostly channels it towards the common good.

True altruism is rare and precious. It should not be squandered on those areas where self-interested capitalism can do the job. Use altruism where it is needed.

Previous | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | Next

Copyright 2007, Carl S. Milsted, Jr. All rights reserved.