Editorial

By William H. Stoddard

A quarter of a century ago, the ancient Indian idea of mantras was becoming part of American popular culture. From counterculture farmers to movie stars, people were memorizing long strings of Sanskrit syllables and making time to chant them, in search for enlightenment or salvation. lf a film character panicked because he couldn’t remember his mantra, audiences knew enough to laugh.

Many of the people who adopted mantras knew little of the intellectual and spiritual traditions behind them. Ancient Indian priests and scholars had very sophisticated knowledge of certain subjects; their mathematics was the source of many key ideas in European mathematics, from positional notation to trigonometry, and some linguists still consider their grammar of Sanskrit the most accurate description of a language ever created. Their religious and philosophical ideas go far beyond the simple recitation of memorized phrases. But many people wanted an easily learned Hinduism, one that could be summed up in a short phrase and a simple observance.

The same temptation can afflict any other system of ideas. For example, it can afflict libertarianism.

The heart of libertarianism is economic analysis, especially nonequilibrium economic analysis. Where mainstream economists focus on economies with complete information and minimal or no profits. Austrian economic theory emphasizes the scarcity of information, the dynamism of an economy that is constantly acquiring and processing new information, and the vital role of entrepreneurs and profits in making this happen. The libertarian analysis of law and politics grows out of these insights. Libertarianism provides tools for understanding what is happening in the world we now inhabit. This knowledge shows that individual rights, private property, and free markets produce a better world for most people.

But individual rights and free markets can too easily become slogans. They’re good slogans. but they don’t help us understand our situation better. and they don’t persuade anyone who doesn’t already agree with us. In effect, they’re mantras.

And sometimes they’re not even true. Many libertarians quote Heinlein’s “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.” In an equilibrium economy, that’s true. But in a dynamic economy, free lunches are everywhere, and entrepreneurs are the people who go around picking them up. If widgets sell for $5 in Los Angeles and $10 in San Francisco, the entrepreneur who buys them for $6, pays $1 each to ship them, and sells them for $9 gets a $2 free lunch from each widget—and makes other people better off in the process.

If we want no more than to contemplate our navels and dream of a better world, mantra libertarianism is good enough. If we want to live in the real world, we need more than that.