Milsted starts by correctly recognizing that government is the cause of most of society’s problems and that the current state of affairs is one where even more government is used to try to remediate the problems. He then asks "What should libertarians do? Do we simply attack every tax, every social program, and every regulation that is not needed in a free society? I say no."
No? Let's see how Milsted reaches this conclusion. He posits that we must proceed in small, atomic steps. These steps would cause a net benefit to society because they would be put in place in a certain order. These are some of the conjectures that Milsted makes:
This simplistic atomic stance on libertarianism makes no sense. He claims that we must adopt this model of small but significant reductions in government so that society does not collapse if all of government is immediately reduced. At first glance this seems reasonable. There is a problem with this atomism. It goes against non-aggression and private property rights. By saying that we must at first only favor small reductions in government and not worry about government itself is like saying that we should favor a reduction in murder and not murder itself. Or that it is justified to steal some money but not all. Surely this is not a principled approach. Delaying liberty means prolonging aggression by the state.
One also need not be an anarcho-capitalist to appreciate the errors in this atomic libertarianism. Even from a minarchist and classical liberal position, it is clear that Milsted lacks logical scrutiny. He claims that "The U.S. Constitution prevents drastic changes, for good or ill. The checks and balances put in place two centuries ago are still mostly working." The Constitution at some point did indeed prevent drastic changes, but contrary to what Milsted says, those checks and balances are no longer working. If we as minarchists and classical liberals claim that the central government must abide by the Constitution, then proceeding atomically negates the purpose of the Constitution and minimal government. A small amount of law breaking in the form of unconstitutional federal activities is still illicit. Milsted favors a "somewhere in between" approach in which only parts of the Constitution are ignored. The way to return to (constitutionally) limited government is to end any and all activities that it is prohibited from doing. Milsted prefers to accept a small amount of unconstitutional activities so that in some future we will be in a better position to strike the final blow.
His is the path of political complacency. Libertarians favor private property rights and the non-aggression principle. Milsted prefers to postpone efforts against government invasions. A postponement libertarian is an oxymoron. By deferring the installment of freedom, he is also condoning state violence in its many forms: taxation, war, fiat currency, prohibition of self-defense, economic regulation, fascism, subsidies, mercantilism, socialism, and everything else. If we apply libertarian atomism to, for example, a group of people being robbed, we would have to say "save only one of them, since the rest are not yet ready to handle their own resources peacefully." No, we must aim to help all of them, regardless of our outcome!
A case can be made where one can set up strategies and priorities on how to bring about liberty, such as academic scholarship, popular support, and yes, political activism. But to say that one must concentrate on these atomic issues constitutes not only a failure to uphold libertarian values, but is also an acknowledgement that government still needs first be reduced before full libertarianism can take place. What Milsted does not recognize is that every reduction in government interference is a step in the right direction. One need not defer liberty. Mislted implies that there must exist an optimum level of government before we can embark on a "second wave of liberation." Why should we be limited to just two waves? We need as many waves as it takes and as quickly as possible. For a libertarian, the optimum level of government is zero (or near zero for the minarchist, but even then, we are still far from minarchy).
"Do we simply attack every tax, every social program, and every regulation?" I say yes.
