Responsible Rulers

September 27, 2018 Robert Higgs

I have often heard people charge libertarian anarchists with being irresponsible for wishing to get rid of the current system of government and replace it with genuine self-governance. It’s as if — however difficult it may be to believe — these critics actually believe that rulers in the current setup are responsible. Responsible! These rulers, however, preside over domestic murder and foreign mass murder that never ends; they plunder the society of its private wealth in countless ways and in amounts that the mind can scarcely grasp; they bully and oppress everyone outside the ruling precincts in thousands of distinct ways. Yet these rulers are presumed to act responsibly! In the name of God, what are these deaf and dumb critics of libertarian anarchism thinking?

Written by Robert Higgs

Robert Higgs is Senior Fellow in Political Economy at the Independent Institute and Editor at Large of the Institute’s quarterly journal The Independent Review. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Johns Hopkins University, and he has taught at the University of Washington, Lafayette College, Seattle University, the University of Economics, Prague, and George Mason University. He has been a visiting scholar at Oxford University and Stanford University, and a fellow at the Hoover Institution and the National Science Foundation.