Falsely Called Freedom Part 2: Libertarian Understanding of Freedom

In the mind of the Virginia school, economy is a form of exchange while politics is a form of coercion.  True liberty can thus only be economic freedom.  Free markets, they argue, will create free people.  Their concern is that an electorate will elect politicians that promise to do the will of the people.  Then “the people” by majority rule will set about to tax the rich to fund projects that help the majority poor.  The way to keep the economy free, then, is to make sure only the wealthiest people vote.  Hence their first control was enslavement.  When they lost the right to enslave, their second control was the poll tax.  Ironically, when these thinkers write of their own concern to preserve freedom and resist slavery, they are not expressing concern over the poor being enslaved to the rich but the “slavery of the wealthy to the masses of the poor.”