Libertarian Hope: A new year approaches

How many times must the busy hands of state meddle in the affairs of a free and creative people, with all the improved, enlightened methods of regulation, before it's finally accepted that central control is a tired idea that should be put to a final rest?

All the brilliant young minds from around the world, from India, China, Europe, Japan, South America, North America,  are starting at a level of complexity that even within my lifetime is incrediblly difficult to fathom. The world-wide cooperative efforts fueled by technological advances are so interdependent with dazzling, surreal connections, when I think of politicians sitting around making their little plans to engineer all this activity to some pre-determined ends -- job creation, economic stability, justice as fairness, etc. -- it's pathetically silly, yet they (government) have managed through pomp and illusion, and by power consolidation, to still present the appearance they are viable and needed.

Obama and the new gang of selected engineers are busy making plans to regulate this wonderful array of creativty and productivity in order to design our future and make history -- a grand plan along the lines of  a New Deal. But our world has changed so much that the bad ideas of the New Deal are mild next to the ludricrous propostions we must now consider of politicians engineering our modern complex, globally connected economy. Our advances, and the spontaneous order that has struggled against political engineering, are far ahead of our understanding. Our nation is still thinking with a 1930s' mindset, expecting government to plan a recovery and put the nation to work again.

Our media fosters this obsolete mindset and bolsters the illusion of enlightened central control -- if only we plan correctly! Because our understanding is far removed from the reality that morphs and grows and becomes more complex, we'll fumble through another four years or so of politicians piddling at the cusp of the magnificent, organic creation quickly evolving with a life of its own.

What we have created, unconsciously for the most part on an individual basis, is so much larger, unknowable and more complex than the puny designs of a temporary administration or gaggle of congress people, it won't be long before it's apparent we live in a new and different world, one that's resistant in a much more comprehensive way to central control, or global management. We're at a point where great changes can take place in an instant, where advances obliterate old ways of thinking about society and community, and the edge is a constant reality. Conservativism will be shattered as a holistic approach and progressivism, politically speaking, will be an intellectual, critical, bench-warmer forever watching the game but never playing.

Even libertarianism will have to become more open and creative in the sense of it's splintered associations with outmoded political doctrines. Right and left will become meaningless because the political realm will not be the center. The center will not hold and the falcon will be free of the falconer. Government will be needed to keep the old tyrants from interfering with the new spontaneous order and anyone with a conservative or reactionary bone left will be lost in the new world. Anyone, or group, attempting to mangage the new order will be seen as an unneeded and useless obstacle.

It's my opinion we have advanced so far that central control will soon look ridiculously inept. We have grown to think of technology as a means to solve our problems and when government interferes it's likely to create more serious unintended consequences as the complexity increases -- and as our expectations of progress increase, so will our impatience for freedom. The multitude of opportunites that a new generation of learners will have before them will be much greater than we've known and they'll be impatient with any clumsy government attempts at management which appear to be obstacles, conservative or paternalistic. In a sense the political progressives/liberals may be seen as the new conservatives, and the old conservatives will realize that they never conserved anything at all. What we've had from the beginning of our country is government interference and varying degrees of central control.

I believe free market principles will be vital, and demanded, in the not too distant future, and conservatives, progressives and libertarians will have to think about these priniciples in new, creative ways. It's hard to imagine government giving way to this new future without a fight, but I think the wave of change will be too great and the advances too helpful for people to allow government control to hold them back.

I can't help but envision a world so complex and technologically advanced that government will fail in it's attempt to stem the tide and engineer the progress to political ends. Just by increasing intelligence in specialized ways this will place government on the outside looking in, and as people become more educated and self-sufficient, and they have more freedom of movement, they'll need government to do less and less. The demands of technology will first have to overtake public education, then it's only a matter of time before the changes make most government responsibilites obsolete. We might have an under-educated under-class, although even this class will be needed in service, but the majority of people will be trained in specialized areas which aren't amenable to central control and political engineering.

Our standard of living and our comfort, leisure and entertainment needs will increase -- production will become much more efficient and prices will fall for goods that improve people's lives in major ways. The market will be seen as the giver of good things and government will be seen as a service-provider with certain limited responsibilities. We could have been further down the road to this new future if governments around the world did not still have the power they have at present -- but this will change as our awareness catches up with the change and the possibilities on a larger scale.