WHY I AM A LIBERTARIAN

WHY I AM A LIBERTARIAN

Letter To My Friend Gabriel Boragina

By Ricardo Valenzuela

Dear Gabi:

A few days ago, you posted a question to us Mexicans: what is the situation of liberalism (classic liberalism) in Mexico? Your question made me think deeply, and I think that now I can respond to it. First of all, I can tell you that, in my opinion, in all of Latin America there does not exist another country so pro-big government and pro-socialist than Mexico. Why? It is a question that I ask myself every day. Perhaps we never cut the links to the crown of Spain, because with the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in power for almost a century, we always had a different King every six years armed with the complicity of the powerful and the total submission of the “weak ones,” for whom it was not possible to question. I think that classic liberalism in Mexico does not exist.

But I am going to try to respond by telling you my history. My father was educated in Europe, in the 1920s, when the future of Mexico still was to be carved through a revolution started by a liberal, Francisco I Madero. He returned to Mexico in the late 30s, when that future had been already defined by the group who would retain the power for more than 70 years to keep the country oppress, underdeveloped and poor. My father, until his death, every day affirmed: “I should have stayed in Europe. This is the country of irresponsibility, lack of respect, improvisation, the one of ‘give me,’ and ‘don’t worry; the government is going to take care of you.’”

I was born in one of the privileged families of Mexico. I always had everything. Since I was little, I realized that I was one of the few who had some things – bicycle, baseball glove, clothes from the US, several pairs of shoes and, of course, my cowboy boots. The majority not only did not have that, they did not have anything to eat. I did not understand it why this was so.

My father sent me to college at Monterrey Institute of Technology in the 60s. It was the place where rich people sent their boys to get ready to take over the businesses from their parents. But now I realize, in fact, they used to send us there to prepare us for the game of Capitalism-crony, mixed economy, and to learn how to play the government’s game. In all my years in that elite college, I never witnessed any kind of criticism or opposition thinkers to rebel against the status quo. And, of course, the mantra was: importing is bad, we have to consume what we produce, even though it’s of poor quality and expensive; the State is a great protector and watchman of its children; it buys wheat from the farmers for better prices than the international market; it controls the prices of commodities so that the poor people do not suffer; etc.

The economics text books were not Marx’s. No, we were getting ready to be important business men, so they were those of the Keynesian group, so fashionable at the time. I never heard the words free trade, free market, free labor market, the names of Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, Frederic Bastiat. The course of banking administration was not for the study of the international financial markets, nor the capital markets, risk management, or Wall Street. No, it was to demonstrate, like the wise government dictated, to the “private” banks how, when, to whom, and at what price, they had to lend their money on the direction of the central bank.

I made my professional debut when the worst of the executioners, Luis Echeverria, took over the presidency of the country. Playing the game of the Mexican establishment I scaled the corporate ladder until I was appointed CEO of a bank that my family controlled, and I was only 30 years old. I had the world in my hands and I started to accept my role in that puzzle of complicities that has been Mexico. But after the socialist government of Mexico expropriated our bank and I lost my job, full of disappointment, I decided to immigrate to the United States with the intention to continue studying what I love, economics.

Being a dreamer, I dreamed big. I used to dream that I was going to invent a new economic system. It would not be capitalism, like I had known it in Mexico and in which I was disappointed, nor socialism, that I had always disliked. About 15 years ago, I was getting ready to watch a political debate. The participants were the classic democrat and republican, and a new classification that, to me, sounded like communist, a libertarian. The event started and the Democrat espoused the same B.S., a big and activist government to help the poor people, spending money that was not theirs, blah, blah, blah. Then the Republican followed with something that sounded interesting, but not sufficient enough to prevent me from getting up to get another beer. It was the turn for the Libertarian; he began exposing his ideas and I became almost petrified.

He argued for the return of the power sequestered by the state back to the civil society, for free markets without government intervention, for free trade without barriers. He wanted a small government to protect life, liberty, property and contracts, and for me to live my life the way that I decide it, as long as in doing so I would not hurt others, and that I accept that everyone should have the same rights. Then he started an aggressive offensive against the expropriation of assets, high taxes, the nanny state, against the redistribution of the wealth. He pronounced the words of Thomas Jefferson, “the government is best which governs least. The price of the freedom is eternal vigilance.” A country built not on aristocracy, but on meritocracy.

At that moment I thought, this “pelotudo” – like you guys say in Argentina – stole my idea. That is what I have always wanted to invent. What is that? Liberalism, I respond to myself. At that moment, armed with my compulsive personality, I started reading all the great classic liberals: Mises, Hayek, Bastiat, Locke, Rand, Friedman, and I realized this is my way, the way that my country had never known. We have been so lost and in real black shadows for so many years. Then I questioned myself: how is it possible that with classic liberalism proven and verified, we follow the path that takes us deeper and deeper to failure every day? And, that is something that still I ask myself.

I made liberalism, in its original meaning, the focus of my life. Dignity and liberty were to be my most important values. And that is what I do right now. I am a proponent of liberalism in Mexico, because I think that we are fighting a war of ideas. We do not have to kill the enemy; we only have to educate him.

To respond to your question, liberalism in Mexico does not exist. Despite the socialism which we have imposed on ourselves over the last centuries, we have not sunk completely. This is because we are neighbors of the United States, even though people complain about the US. The Mexican illegal workers in America send us twenty billion US dollars a year. The American tourism leaves us other ten billion US dollars a year. For these many decades, the US has always been there to rescue Mexico from collapse. At this moment, the US buys from Mexico one hundred and fifty billion dollars a year, and it sells us the same amount. As Adam Smith said, the only reason to export is to have the currency to import. All this has allowed the hardliners to continue controlling the assets and the minds of the country. Underdevelopment is a state of mind.

The problem that does not allow Mexico to advance and be part of the first world is a cultural one. From the mid-nineteenth century, when the liberalism of the founders of our country took the form from the Comte’s positivism, they domesticated us. They planted a program in our minds, teaching us that progress is a deliberate process by means of which the central authorities control the development. This social engineering is coordinated by the state.

The state presents itself as responsible for progress, but in order to do that they must rest firmly on the private company. Private industry must circle around the king sun, the government. The individual must allow himself to go with the tide. To the statist, the centralization of state power and subordination of political institutions to particular interests are not an obstacle but a condition for wealth creation. Porfirio Diaz established a dictatorship, but it respected the private companies. Soon after the revolution, socialism, disguised in the style of the revolutionary nationalism, took hold. We Mexicans docilely accepted it.

The task of government and the law is not to provide unfair privilege and advantage, but rather to protect life, liberty, and property. Without that protection, the value of assets would fall bottomless in an abyss. With more capacity for businesses to control themselves, there will be less need of intervention by the government to assure a clean competition. Businesses free of regulation are best able to increase their gains, their investments, workers’ wages and working conditions, and provide better quality products and services at the best possible prices to the consumer.

In Mexico, an article was added to the constitution, in which it was described how the state would have to be the director and coordinator of the economy. We, Mexicans, accepted it with docility and just a few smart ones, learned to play the game of mercantilism. My encounter with true liberalism, the one of Mises, Hayek, Friedman, and Bastiat, was a wakeup call to a new reality. I see how it is that my country was ruined. That is why I am a libertarian.