François-René Rideau writes another interesting article about liberty and discussion of liberty, entitled, The Enterprise of Liberty vs. The Enterprise of Politics.#

One of the main points of the article is that liberty is a resource that must be created. Nowadays there is less taking (fighting against) liberty than there is simply not an active production enterprise. Faré explains this and how libertarianism is the technology of this enterprise:#

That's where a Theory of Law such as Libertarianism comes handy: it can be a tool for the cheap mass production of such resources. Libertarian ideas are technology to build freedom — they are a Freedom Technology. But they only work when they are accepted by all people concerned. And then you need to find and use other Freedom Technologies upstream so as to convince other people of your ideas, so as to discover and spread good laws, and so as to cancel bad laws.

We are much better off than in the Middle Ages, in terms of many Rights that we have secured: freedom of thought, freedom of expression, freedom of movement, freedom of possession, freedom of trade, etc. Surely, there are many defects in the details of those rights that we do have secured, but despite these defects, there has been a global progress in the last few millenia. All in all, we have much better Freedom Technology today in western countries than anyone ever had in the Middle Ages. Yet, though they didn't a have good Freedom Technology in terms of knowing what Liberties should be, could be, and how to enforce them, people in the Middle Ages did have a much better understanding than we do of the nature of Liberties, as resources that have to be built or bought: the explicit recognition of individual rights by other people, and especially so by the people able to enforce or violate those rights.

Continuing on this idea that liberty must be created, Faré has an interesting theory about how liberty comes "not from the unconquered, but from the freed."#

In the earliest stages of mankind, the only way to parasite other people was murder and pillage: kill all who resist, take all you can — cattle, weapons, clothes, women, hunting grounds. Between predators and victims, there was no notion of rights. Liberty was still uncreated.

As agriculture was invented, the invention of sedentariness made possible a great innovation: slavery. Instead of repeatedly coming to kill and pillage, risking a lot and taken little every once in a while, the parasites could now earn more at remaining in place, becoming ``stationary bandits??, and compelling the conquered to work for them permanently. This was an immense progress for the victims as well as for the victors — a matter of life and death, really. So yes, slavery was a progress in its time 9. And paradoxically as it may seem, slavery is how liberty was initially created: ``I reckon your right to live, if you do as I tell.??

From this description of the business that a liberty enterprise is engaged in, Faré looks at the type of questions that are often asked in libertarian circles. His bottom-line: Many of these questions have erroneous assumptions and are thus irrational.#

As to the question of which is better between government intervention and no government intervention, it may be relevant as an abstract, long-term, question, but it is completely irrelevant as a question of current immediate international policy. The vast majority of people in the world today believe in the necessity and utility of States and State intervention, and as long as they do, there will be States and State intervention. There is no ``magical button?? to push, and no magic wand to wave, so as to abolish the state in the minds of all these people. Now, if you think there is such a button, well, show me. But, first and foremost, and without any further delay whatsoever, for goddess's sake, just... push it. We'll have plenty of time for your telling me about it afterwards. Until that time, stop wasting your and everyone else's time with such childish silliness as discussing such non-existent alternatives. That's wishful thinking, and when someone, even Murray Rothbard, indulges in asking and answering questions of this kind that depend on the existence of such a button, he is relapsing into the basest form of Black Magic wishful thinking. At least Rothbard had the lucidity of making this dependency explicit; but all who make decisions base on the existence of such a button are foolish, and so are those who like Rothbard spend their life desperately seeking such a non-existent button. Thus, as applies to immediate action and current policies, this question is utterly irrelevant and must be un-asked.

I think his conclusion is fabulous:#

In earlier essays, I have proposed the idea that the right approach for libertarians to spread liberty was to cure people from their static statist state of mind. In so far as the memes of statism are an illness indeed, I won't deny this earlier claim of mine. But I would like to go further.

Though there are forces that actively fight and destroy liberty, the main problem is not that there is liberty that is being destroyed; it is that liberty remains essentially unbuilt. The forces of evil prevent liberty from being built more than they destroy it when it exists. People who are victims to the influence of statism are mostly not people formerly acquainted with freedom and its technology and who suddenly forget about this freedom. They are mostly people who never learnt about freedom and its technology and are unable to use it. A few people indeed are prevented from using technology they know about; but most victims are just made to remain plain ignorant or become confused 12. They don't have an illness to cure; they have to grow a new sense of freedom, a whole organ where the System left atrophied stubs.