Tuesday, November 25, 2008

The Libertarian Moment: Despite all leading indicators to the contrary, America is poised to enter a new age of freedom. - Reason Magazine

Hard to read, but here is his summary in the middle.
The Libertarian Moment: Despite all leading indicators to the contrary, America is poised to enter a new age of freedom. - Reason Magazine: "The Libertarian Moment is based on a few hard-won insights that have grown into a fragile but enduring consensus in the ever-expanding free world. First is the notion that, all things being equal, markets are the best way to organize an economy and unleash the means of production (and its increasingly difficult-to-distinguish adjunct, consumption). Second is that at least vaguely representative democracy, and the political freedom it almost always strengthens, is the least worst form of government (a fact that even recalcitrant, anti-modern regimes in Islamabad, Tehran, and Berkeley grudgingly acknowledge in at least symbolic displays of pluralism). Both points seem almost banal now, but were under constant attack during the days of the Soviet Union, and are still subject to wobbly confidence any time capitalist dictatorships like China seem to grow ascendant in a time of domestic economic woe. Though every dip in the Dow makes the professional amnesiacs of cable TV and the finance pages turn in the direction of Mao, there is no going back to the Great Leap Forward.

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Understanding the Libertarian Moment is fundamental to understanding the 21st century. Power — economic, cultural, political — will accrue to those people who recognize that it’s over for existing power centers. The command economy, the command culture, and the command polity have all been replaced by a different model — that of a consultant, a docent, a fixer, a friend. The individuals and groups that will flourish in the Libertarian Moment will be those who open things up, not shut them down.

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