Working out Libertarianism
Working out Libertarianism
My South Tampa gym recently
enacted a rule against bringing tote bags into the workout area. On the first
day that the rule was in place, we were visited by a celebrity—frankly, a
personal hero—who broke that rule.
If you ever want to
understand why Libertarianism, the political belief that weak government and
strong markets best allocate resources and protect rights, doesn’t work in
practice, spend an hour at the gym: spend an hour at a semi-public gym with Tim
Tebow.
Here you’ll witness a cross
section of citizens—most, far more ordinary than Tim Tebow—who expect equality.
Here you’ll see members who, regardless of ideology or religion or income, represent
diverse gym-communities: meatheads, moms, wandering first-timers, lean-queens, college
kids, and earnest elderlies. Many members follow the rules of etiquette, enforcing
social norms that Libertarianism depends upon. There are those, though, who
practice something far more selfish and, sometimes, frustratingly devoid of
situational awareness.
When we opt into semi-public
gym membership, we pay dues to cover the overhead of running the business: the
greeters at the front desk who check IDs and keep the non-members out, the
maintenance staff who keep the machines clean and in working condition, the professionals
who lead the popular Rumba and Spin classes, the mid-managers who ensure that
the club runs efficiently with a reasonable return to stakeholders.
In general, our
pay-to-play—or workout—privileges are enforced by a portion of our dues that
support our collected requirements of unity, justice, defense, welfare and the
liberty to reach for personal betterment: physical perfection, one rep at a
time.
There are those on whom the
etiquettes of working out in a semi-public space are lost. Even the seemingly
pettiest breakdowns—what economists call negative externalities—of that set of
rules create ripples that undermine the common good. A bag in the workout
space, even if you’re Tim Tebow, for
instance, impinges on others’ abilities to access space or machines that are
not being used except for the storage of those bags. Failure to re-rack weights
causes trip hazards as well as frustration for those who know where to look for
the particular weights that they need; they’re available but unusable.
Bench-hoggers prevent others who should be able to work-in from meeting their
own fitness goals. Sweaty, stinking members who fail to wipe down machines after use endanger the health as well as the
comfort of others who workout behind them. Breakers of these rules grossly
undervalue the negative externalities of their selfishness and overvalue their
own personal liberties.
Where selfishness prevails
over self-regulated good citizenship, those whose actions conform to etiquettes
are relatively harmed. Either the rule-followers give up to their own selfish
proclivities—a sure devolution to anarchy—or the gym must actively enforce
explicit rules.
Dues go up for everybody.
What is, in a semi-public
space, lost on etiquette, becomes a grand metaphor for the failures in our fully
public space. Etiquettes are generally unwritten; they are dependent upon a
shared understanding that they will be passed along. Some of us learned these
rules in high school physical education classes; such classes are no longer curricular
requisites. Some of us learned these rules from trainers that advised us as we
were making our way through boot-camps or one-on-one instructions; such classes
may not be everybody’s path into individualized, self-guided training. Some of
us learned these rules through tribalism and lore; such interactions, when not
guided by official knowledge-passers, may lead to bad-acting even as best-intentions
prevail.
Libertarianism is based upon
the premise, in the absence of explicit and enforceable legislative action,
that everybody knows and respects the unwritten rules. Libertarianism requires
that our insular—selfish, as it may be—participation in the free market
provides rational inputs and reasonable outputs. Our visit to the gym reminds us that
the enforcement of etiquettes sometimes require the rules to be written and,
ultimately, enforced. Our visit to the gym reminds us that the tranquility of
human interaction needn’t be tranquil, but should be, at least, fair.
And then, there are those few
for whom there is knowledge and, arrogantly, a sense that such rules apply to
everybody else. Despite all the reasons to love Tim Tebow outside of this metaphor,
his disruption of the gym ecosystem highlights that, just like Thomas Jefferson’s
slave-run plantation, Libertarianism breaks down in the face of social and
economic hierarchies.
Where a free market doesn’t
protect the ideals of common defense, common cause, and common opportunity,
explicit rules for their protection of the common good must sometimes be
enumerated and enforced.
Justice demands, in the face
of Libertarianism, that we enforce rules that may not otherwise be respected—or
even known. If the rules are unknown, it is a breakdown of our responsibility to
educate. If the rules are known, it is a breakdown of our responsibility to
respect our neighbors. If the rules are known and we respect our neighbors, it
is a breakdown of our responsibility to respect the market in which we bring
our resources to fairly trade.
For Libertarianism to work,
either we all, including Heisman winners, follow the same rules, written and
unwritten, within the broader Politick, or we don’t. Else we find ourselves
within the same striated social order that Libertarianism argues against; else
we find ourselves crying out for more explicit legislation to protect our liberties
against those forces whose own selfish tendencies would undermine them.
My favorite university History
professor argued that the most strident anti-communists are former communists.
Apparently, this maxim applies to former fat-kids and former libertarians. How
Tim Tebow fans work-in remains up for discussion.
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