The readers of this column probably noticed the author’s critical attitude to various activists long ago.. Activists, regardless of their goals and methods, are held under my common name “progressive public”.

This very public is constantly busy searching for disorder and trying to eliminate it, which causes the author’s disapproval of these lines..

The natural reaction to such disapproval of a person unfamiliar with libertarianism is bewilderment. How, because these people are fighting for law, order, for our interests with you! While you are cool here and criticize everything on this Internet of yours, these people at least do something! I think everyone has repeatedly heard this in his address..

Libertarian criticism of activism is often generally perceived as a demonstration that libertarians are against “law and order” and that they advocate “chaos” in which “everyone does what he wants”.

In fact, libertarians do not like activists for a simple reason - in modern conditions activists almost always do more harm than good.. Activists cry about shortcomings and abuses, but their cries are directed only in one direction - towards the state. That is, the one who should come and resolve the issue is the state. At the same time, very often there is no “question” at all.. The brightest example is “Eurobates”, all “problems” that are supposedly connected with them are contrived and caused by simple envy.. But even in cases where the problem does exist, the solution, which activists will pursue, will give the state even more authority.. And here it’s not even the ignorance and statism of the activists, but the logic of state expansion. In our theme there are two points in this logic.. The first is all the “problems” with which the activists struggle, are generated by the activities of the state, more precisely, by its previous activities. That is, a certain prohibition becomes the source of problems that are “solved” by new prohibitions and so on to infinity.. A classic example is the war on drugs.. The second, close, but nevertheless, different moment is connected with the fact that state control in any one area, inevitably, by the very logic of activity requires expansion to adjacent areas. This point was well described by Mises, who showed that it was impossible to nationalize only one industry.. The nationalization of one industry inevitably leads to the expansion of control and the creeping nationalization of everything connected with it..

People who generally support the idea of ??reducing the state usually object that activism is such a way to control the state, they say, this is normal and even effective.. Of course, it is not. Activists can stop some flagrant violations, but this can not be called "control". Activism is voluntary, it requires resources that people tear away from other areas of their activity and they will engage in activism only as long as the value of the expected result of activism is higher than other alternatives.. In contrast, the state is expanding 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and millions of people are doing it, and they are paying for it. Who will lose in this fight? Even the most egregious cases are not always able to mobilize a sufficient number of people to repel, and I’m not even saying that the most potentially dangerous activity not only doesn’t attract the attention of activists, but is often approved by them.. However, even if we imagine that all activists, without exception, are libertarians, this in no way eliminates the main problems - the gradual and imperceptible nature of state expansion and the regular nature of this expansion. When activists come to their senses, it’s usually late.

Now back to the “law and order” that activists allegedly defend and against which libertarians allegedly oppose. Here, in fact, is the root of our problem.. The state "law and order" in most cases has nothing to do with this law and order, which really needs to be protected.. Even in cases where activists are fighting "against" some things that libertarians would have opposed, they do it in such a way that, in the end, their struggle simply gives new power to the state.

Libertarians do not oppose activism as such. On the contrary, in “libertarian society”, people with a heightened sense of injustice, people willing to sacrifice their time for some higher goals from their point of view, will be very necessary. But their activities will, in general, be much more useful than the activities of current activists, because future activists will not have a nurse to whom they could complain on any occasion and from whom they could demand “decisive action”. They will have to rely only on themselves, which means that most of the issues of current activism will be removed from the agenda, future activism will be very businesslike and effective..