Carte Blanche: The Virtue of Selflessness
10'000 Hours
Did you know it costs $200 to sign up to register for the LSAT? Postgraduate, broke, and unemployed I didn’t know. I mean, I did the impossible. I put myself through community college, then Columbia University and a few days after graduation I find out the LSAT costs more than pocket change. I did what anyone would do in this situation - I went to Facebook to complain. The next thing I knew, I had $200 in my PayPal account. The source? Libertarians.
I know what you're thinking. Libertarians? Giving? Aren’t they supposed to be the boogie monsters of selfishness?
Contrary to popular belief, I’d argue that Libertarians are actually the antithesis of selfishness. Above all else, they value the individual, but this doesn’t mean they value themselves over all others. It means they value the sacred individual rights and dignity of everyone. It’s why we want the government to stick to one job: protect those rights. Further, it sees the autonomy in each and every individual, our ability to care for ourselves and our people. Humble in its approach, libertarianism allows us to care in the ways that we see fit.
At the heart of libertarianism is cooperation. In our party pledge, we vow to oppose force as a means of achieving political or social goals. What is the opposite of force? Consent, approval, agreement. When these are secured you gain cooperation. Cooperation negates the need for force. Cooperation is a morally superior way to achieve our needs both as individuals and as a community.
Usually, a voluntaryist libertarian society is only theoretical, but there’s a group of Libertarians that are literally putting their money where their mouth is - Liberty Memes 5 Dollar Charity Club. At the time of writing, the group has 2,621 members. It’s mostly made up of Libertarians, but David Gay, the administrator, is sure to welcome anyone from any political background “as long as you have a heart and share our spirit for helping others.” On September 22nd, David estimated that the group has raised around $217,346 to help those in need. Needs range from rent to health concerns, and more recently COVID layoffs. Just a few weeks ago, the community raised $50,000 for a couple with five children who are facing the debilitating effects of an advanced cancer diagnosis.
The community raises money for much less drastic cases as well. Cause #13 raised $455 to gift a young musician a piano and Cause #51 raised $830 for child care expenses. David also runs a Patreon and uses the monthly donations to spread the message of liberty. As David told me during a recent phone call, “there are people who are struggling right now and if we can identify them and help them right now and say ‘hey, Libertarians are here for you’ it spreads the message.” David, a self-identified “road warrior,” drives to any event he is invited to attend or emcee so that he can use the community's money to improve the lives of others. In a recent trip to Ron and Carol Paul’s home in Texas for dinner, David left generous tips for servers and housekeeping, put gift cards on front doors of homes, and even stopped to gift the owner of a broken-down vehicle a visa gift card to help pay for a tow truck.
The recipients of David and the community's generosity need not be Libertarians. Although he does hope that these encounters will help people come around to the libertarian way of thinking. There are not many platforms that lay the groundwork to implement libertarian ideals. Libertarians argue in favor of free markets and private charities, but they tend to fail to follow through.
This group is changing that. David hopes that one-day subgroups run by community administrators will emerge. These groups will be able to embody local identities while David’s group succumbs to a national position that funds bigger causes. As David told me “right now it's kind of on a microcosmic level, but the more people that see this the more people are gonna realize that this actually does help people understand our philosophy.” But what’s their philosophy? Voluntaryism. In short, voluntaryism is the belief that every human interaction should be voluntary. The end goal is a life and a community of virtuousness. Consent = virtue. Thus, voluntaryists do not believe welfare programs are virtuous in that they lack the consent of those who fund them: the taxpayers. Liberty Memes 5 Dollar Charity Club is a solution to that problem. The group itself is a living example of using voluntaryism to achieve goals - besides the obvious goal of raising money for people in need, it promotes an idea by means of persuasion rather than by force or violence.
David leans libertarian politically, he was involved in the 2008 and 2012 Ron Paul campaigns, even serving as Ron’s Spanish translator for his press releases in 2012, and was the first New York State coordinator for the campaign for liberty, as well as the first New York State candidate for office in New York to be endorsed by Ron Paul. But the point of the group isn’t necessarily political. He mostly wants to do good for others and show people that voluntaryism can work.
So why did he pick libertarians to start this movement? I decided to ask him. “I utilize it because I find that Libertarians are the ones who most want a voluntary society in terms of our political philosophy... we’re always talking about what we could do if the government didn’t have a law or a tax about X, and so we’re the ones who are inclined to that,” I mentioned to David that many people view libertarians as selfish people to which David pointed out all of the different causes they have funded. “That does not show greedy Libertarians at all. And that's not the Libertarians I see when I go around the country and talk to people.”
Among them is Carol and Ron Paul. The group raised money to buy floral arrangements to send to their home after Ron suffered a medical episode that caused him to slur his words while on live stream video. In return, they invited David to their home for dinner. David explained that when he showed up at their front door, Carol was baffled to see David without his family. When David explained that he had left them behind at the hotel, she insisted that he bring them back the next day to swim in their pool and eat home-baked cookies. “That’s who these people are,” David said. “Ron Paul doesn’t have to give me the time of day, but they’re such charitable people”. (I can vouch for this - Ron and Carol sent me a handwritten letter thanking me for the card I gifted them that David so kindly hand-delivered for me.)
During my call with David, he kept reiterating that “[his] whole message is that it's okay for people to like Libertarians.” As I began to end the call, David asked to tell me one more story. He told me about a time he noticed footprints leading from a strip mall into the woods. He followed them, and to his surprise, he found a small structure made of plywood. David knocked on the door and asked the man who answered what he could do to help. The man, Al, gave David a list to which David used money from the community to buy all of the items on the list. David did this for a while until one day he came back to find the structure had been knocked down. Recently, David was walking through town and noticed a clean-shaven Al among a volunteer crew cleaning up trash in the neighborhood. He decided to walk up to the foreman and ask whatever happened to the man living in the woods. She replied that “you know, he told me that he realized people do care about him and so he decided to find a way to get a house.” I could hear David’s voice cracking as he told me this. He was crying! This gosh darn heartless Libertarian!
America is hurting right now. Congress isn’t stepping up to the plate and much like in 2019 during the government shutdown when they cleaned up the National Mall and other National Parks, Libertarians are taking matters into their own hands. Libertarians and voluntaryists aren’t perfect. And even David is first to admit that there are a few “crazies” among us, but the idea that Libertarians are selfish by nature is an ill-informed and intellectually idle argument. This group is indicative of that. The tenets of liberalism, whether classical or modern, set out to achieve one thing - the greatest good for the greatest number of people, we just see different ways of achieving it. The Libertarians I know are active and charitable members of society, and everyone can learn something from them and this group: Let’s look to each other to give and receive a helping hand and take the responsibility to change the world around us.