Sixthirtyone

Issue date: 2/19/09 Section: Opinion

Often, political books are either too long for casual reading, too convoluted and theoretical to be of use, or too virulent and vitriolic to actually be read. Louis Carabini's Inclined to Liberty: The Futile Attempt to Suppress the Human Spirit is none of these, but a concise and eminently readable argument for the free exercise of the natural liberty of individuals.

The book is an exposition of a largely libertarian position, and though it does not go into specifics could be considered to be more radical even than the normal libertarian viewpoint. Its main contention is that the action of government requires that the operations of individuals be hampered in order to achieve its ends. He notes that when individuals declare that there ought to be a law prohibiting an action, and state that "we" ought to do something about it, the we being used is the "royal we" which indicates that the individuals involved will utilize force to coerce other individuals into doing what they, through the government, want.

This sort of action is the main evil that he is contending against, and the accompanying claims that the world of interpersonal interaction ought to be monitored by the state. The book itself, he declares, arose from a conversation that he had with several left-wing professors and other friends, where propositions such as "it is not fair that companies can terminate their workers just to increase profits" and "no one should be able to inherit wealth" were proposed. He counters such arguments, extending the statement about workers to all business inputs, since the termination of a flow of any input means that a stream of income is being denied to someone, and inquiring into why the state will dispose of inherited wealth in a manner preferable to the private individual.

It is interesting to note that Carabini's contentions against these interferences into the affairs of individuals are not produced by any abstract argument for individual rights. In fact, he expresses a distrust of such arguments, but through an appeal to the common sense of the reader. Some of the appeals could even be described as utilitarian rather than political. It is clear the Carabini considers liberty to be be both inherently valuable as well as the system that will provide the greatest good to humanity, in which each individual will be able to define the good which he or she wants and aspire to it through trade and free action.

The book certainly has its flaws: one of the citations, pertaining to the amount of international trade restrictions placed on U.S. producers, is inexplicably from before the passage of NAFTA. Additionally the book does not propose any remedy for the violence that could quite clearly proliferate in the absence of the state other than to claim that alternate forms of crime prevention would appear in the absence of the state. Further, the author clearly adheres to the ultra-optimistic ecological-economic school of thought championed by Julian Simon, which is a target for criticism for those who believe that population explosion and global warming pose threats to human well-being that are insurmountable through any process except group action.

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