"Heraclitus," by Johannes Moreelse, 1630
"The Constancy of Change"
Political tension, creative destruction and the time for freedom.
by Joel Bowman
Melbourne, Australia - "Is the west ready to embrace free market capitalism? How about America? The UK? Canada? Australia? We’ll come back to that question in a moment. First, we probe a little deeper...
Darkness and light... goodness and evil... freedom and The State. The world is animated by powerful forces. Seen and unseen alike, they drive markets... politics... civilization itself... in opposing directions. A seller aims to capture the highest price for his good or service... a buyer, meanwhile, is on the hunt for bargains (and alternatives). He threatens to “take his money elsewhere” if he doesn’t get satisfaction. The market weighs, measures... and takes notes.
One candidate offers voters security, cradle to grave welfare, a “social safety net” and other unicorn treats... his opponent promises only to leave them alone, free to enjoy “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” after their own fashion. The people look, listen... and scratch their heads.
An experienced generation advises caution, patience and quiet adherence to reliable tradition... the youth have discovered a “new” way forward, a shinier trinket, a quicker, cheaper thrill. “This time is different,” they boldly declare, minds untroubled by the pangs of doubt.
Change as Constant: Occasionally, these opposing forces are evenly matched. Buyer and seller agree on a price, for example. Warring tribes broker a peace deal. A husband and wife set aside their differences... and agree to get a divorce. But stasis is not in nature’s nature. “Change is the only constant,” observed the pre-Socratic philosopher, Heraclitus (c. 535 – c. 475 BC). Everything remains in flux.
A price, for example, is settled in the moment, at the very point of exchange. But it is not eternal. Like a Polaroid snapshot, it represents the world as it is in an instant, before any number of swirling variables, both known and unknown – sentiment, momentum, volume... trends, obsolescence, regulatory interference etc. – conspire to tilt the scales, in favor of buyer or seller, from one day to the next. (Incidentally, this is why sustained price controls never... ever... ever... work: price discovery is a process, not a product. And as a process, it is particularly adept at resisting arrest.)
Similarly, over in the murky political realm, where we’ve lately been observing the Greatest Experiment of Our Age, myriad forces connive to push and pull in opposite directions. On the one side, the free market is the purest expression of the will of the people, unforced, unbound, unihbibited. A man remains at liberty to say, do and imagine whatever lunatic fantasy his heart desires... provided he does not interfere with his neighbor’s right to do likewise.
Standing guard against such rough and raw liberty, state actors relentlessly harass and harangue, corral and cajole, browbeat and bully... terrorizing one and all on the absurd pretense that civil society would collapse without their ceaseless vigilance and selfless service.
Two-Way Road: But like price discovery, politics is more “process than product.” The weight of the state under which man labors depends on whether liberty or tyranny is in the ascendency. Mostly heavy as a stone... rarely light as a feather... the burden is seldom constant. Rather, there is a tension between the two opposing forces; freedom on the one side, coercion on the other.
In dialectics, this phenomenon is known as a “unity of opposites,” wherein two antagonistic forces are considered both dependent on, and acting against, one another in a given field of tension. The nature of the political realm remains the same – the squabbling, the infighting, the politicking – even as its expression bubbles and boils, in a state of constant unrest.
Heraclitus illustrates the basic idea using the following aphorism: “The road up and the road down are the same thing.” But why is this important? And how is it relevant today, two and a half millennia after that clever ol’ Ephesian traipsed the ancient agora?
First, because change is still the only constant, all these years on... and second, because far from being cause for concern, much less lamentation, tension is not merely part of the process, but fundamentally necessary for any change at all. Indeed, it is often during periods of extreme pressure, mounting stress and unrelenting strain that we witness the most revolutionary breakthroughs.
Adversity builds character, say the old timers. No pain, no gain, coaches tell their athletes. What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, reckoned Nietzsche (himself a great admirer of Heraclitus).
Whether in the biological world (evolution through adaptation and natural selection)... in economics (Schumpeter’s creative destruction)... or in the dark arts of politics (revolutions, revolts and rebellions since time immemorial)...crises have a way of inspiring our very boldest ideas, accelerating our sharpest innovations, catalyzing the conditions required for unimaginable quantum leap. (Even if it is simply that we may begin the whole process over again.)
Pressure mounted for almost three quarters of a century down in Argentina before the citizens there finally embraced the concept of liberty. And now, folks around the world are putting their fingers to the breeze and sensing freedom, even if the winds are only faint. Which brings us all the way back, full circle, to our opening line of inquiry...
Libertarian Leanings: Given Javier Milei’s rise down in Argentina, might we begin to see a shift toward libertarian, free market principles elsewhere, in the US... the UK... across the west? US presidential candidate, RFK, Jr., is sounding dangerously libertarian of late. Here he was a couple of months back, when some were speculating he might even make his run on a libertarian ticket: “I’ve actually been aligned with the libertarians on a lot of issues for all of my career [...] My record on environmental issues going back forty years has been a market-based approach.
We don’t have free market capitalism in our country. We have corporate crony capitalism...and that’s what’s destroying the environment. True free markets promote efficiency, efficiency means the elimination of waste. Pollution is waste. In a true free market, a true free market would require us to properly value our resources. And it is the undervaluation of those resources that causes us to use them wastefully.
In a true free market you can’t make yourself rich without making your neighbors rich and without enriching your community. What polluters do is they make themselves rich by making everyone else poorer and they do that by escaping the discipline of the free market and forcing the public to pay their production cost, by externalizing their cost. On this issue and many other issues I am very aligned with libertarians.”
And now, just last week, we learned that Donald Trump has accepted an invitation – and a challenge – to appear at the Libertarian Party’s National Convention later this month. “Libertarians are some of the most independent and thoughtful thinkers in our country, and I am honored to join them in Washington, DC, later this month,” said The Donald. “We must all work together to help advance freedom and liberty for every American...”
The theme for the 2024 Libertarian National Convention is “Become Ungovernable.” According to the party’s statement: “This was chosen following the previous years of unconscionable authoritarian actions by the United States Federal and State governments, which saw citizens confined, indoctrinated, lied to, and inoculated against their will. The citizens of these United States must become ungovernable to regain their basic rights and freedoms.”
Whether or not one believes Messers. Kennedy, or Trump, whether they believe their own words, the simple fact that two of the country’s leading candidates for presidency are even addressing the “libertarian fringe” tells you something about where they sense voters are headed...and the change that is in the air."
“What was scattered
gathers.
What was gathered
blows away.”
~ Heraclitus
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