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The "barriers
to entry" have therefore been lowered spectacularly for
those who want to disseminate their points of view. There is
no longer any need for lots of start-up capital, hard-to-establish
contacts or costly distribution networks. Spreading new
ideas is now relatively easy for intellectual entrepreneurs
who care to make the effort and who are able to work with
others to create a quality product.
The Québécois Libre
has, in ten years, gone from a small site hosted by a few
friends to one of the largest independent sites in Quebec
and in the French-speaking world. It receives around 100 000
visitors every month from all over the world, has
contributors from three continents writing in two languages,
and its update message is sent to over 1200 subscribers. Its
sister site, Le
Blogue du Québécois Libre, also brings thousands of
visitors a month interested in discussions about Quebec
current affairs. Both sites have a very high Google page
ranking (thanks to the large number of links from other
sites), which ensures that they are extraordinarily visible
on the Web. It is practically impossible to research
economic, political or social issues in French on the Web
without regularly coming across QL articles.
People who would no doubt
never have discovered libertarianism without the Web can now
drink from this source and many others too. Some who were in
effect libertarians without knowing it realize it by reading
us. We regularly receive messages that say something along
the lines of: "I'm so happy to have found your site and
discovered the libertarian philosophy. I've thought this way
for a long time, but I thought I was the only one who did."
The very existence of an alternative point of view being
expressed and easily accessed completely changes the
situation by allowing individuals who have until now been
isolated to come into contact with each other, with no
geographical limits.
Now that we can compete more directly with collectivist and
statist doctrines, bypassing the mainstream media that still
speaks about us only rarely (though that too is changing,
journalists being less and less able to ignore a school of
thought that seems more and more influential), there is
every reason to believe that our ideas are going to continue
to spread.
First and foremost, this
is because when libertarian ideas find themselves on equal
footing with others in the marketplace of ideas, they have
an excellent chance of winning. Libertarian explanations
conform to reason and reality, while statist ones are
founded on myths. Those on the economically illiterate left,
for example, have no logical explanations for economic
phenomena. They do not understand how economic growth
happens; they pay no attention to notions like productivity,
price signals, or time preference; and they are too obsessed
with denouncing the horror of profit to see what role it
plays for example in allocating resources.
Every version of
centralized planning and statist interventionism has failed.
In our society, the private sector usually displays dynamism
and efficiency, while every publicly controlled sector from
health to education is in constant crisis. It is becoming
increasingly harder to deny that the free market is the one
and only system that favours prosperity. Intelligent people
who are exposed to libertarian ideas are going to realize
this more and more.
We are at the dawn of an
era of economic dynamism that is without precedent in human
history, with the continued expansion of capitalist
globalization and with the integration of China and India
into this great global market. A generation ago, Asia was
still cursed with famines. Today, hundreds of millions of
Asians are living comfortably thanks to the opening of
markets and to the gradual retreat of state planning. Only
Africa, whose economies are still largely bypassed by global
economic networks and dominated by illiberal tyrants, has
yet to understand the recipe for development.
Because they are founded
on myths, collectivist ideas also require unanimity or
consensus. The whole collectivist logic depends on "raising
the consciousness" of the masses, on a collective
mobilization aimed at attaining abstract and unattainable
goals. This mobilization is very costly in human terms and
is hard to maintain for long, and the sought-after utopia is
anyway impossible to attain. When these movements succeed in
part in attaining their political objectives, there are
always perverse consequences to their statist interventions.
The structures created never attain their desired goals, and
are always in crisis and about to fail. We either need to
bail them out with public funds or impose new coercive
measures, or they risk collapsing, as they did in the USSR
and the communist bloc. That's why statist militants are
constantly finding new reasons to be depressed, as we can
see by reading their blogs and magazines.
In contrast, to score
points, libertarians simply have to explain the logic of
human action in a context of liberty and voluntary
cooperation, and show to what extent the civilization in
which we live is based on these notions and depends on them
for its continued survival and success. There is no need to
call for collective action and mobilization. An ordinary
citizen who believes in the libertarian ideal can do many
useful things at home by himself: stop being manipulated by
the statist propaganda of politicians and pressure groups;
remain unaffected the next time a false crisis requiring the
State's urgent intervention captures newspaper headlines;
disengage from all movements that are based on collectivist
myths; refuse to participate in any action aimed at
increasing the coercive power of the State; get by as much
as possible without calling on the State; and always choose
a private alternative when there is one.
Every time someone, in
his or her daily life, takes responsibility in this way,
staying away from collectivist movements and, as far as is
possible, keeping out of reach of the statist octopus, our
movement advances. Every time one more individual exercises
his or her individual sovereignty, the State and
collectivist movements retreat. All of these little actions
have the effect of an acid dissolving the pseudo-consensus
and the false unanimity upon which our adversaries rely to
advance tyranny. Collectivist utopia (generally bloody when
it is pushed to the extreme) cannot be maintained without
the enthusiastic support of a significant proportion of the
population. By simply refusing them this support, we are
placing sticks in their spokes. And thanks to the Internet,
there are more and more of us doing it consciously and
deliberately.
The apparatchiks seek every possible avenue to control our
work, our education, our health, our culture, our food, and
practically every other aspect of our lives. It is clear
that we won't be living in a society that is truly free from
their diktats any time in the near future. States did not
stop growing during the 20th century, and it is only very
recently that their growth has at least slowed. But there is
every reason to be optimistic about the 21st century. To
borrow a bit of Marxist jargon, the "objective conditions"
are there for us to witness a revival and a radicalization
of the grand classical liberal tradition that allowed for
the emergence of civilization.
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