Why Liberalism Is Dying?

Liberalism has dwindled as a political force over the last one hundred years, partly because it won many of its battles.

The fall of the Berlin wall, free trade, free speech through the Internet, lower marginal taxes.

But it has not offered solutions to the growth of organized crime, the loss of moral and family values, the destruction of the middle class, the deterioration of education, terrorism, the growth of mediocrity rather than meritocracy.

Conservatism has occupied the political space left by the liberals.

Liberalism has restricted itself in denouncing encroachments of freedom with more of the same arguments used 200 hundred years ago.

Rather than belabor what went wrong, I would like to propose a future agenda, which by itself will give an idea of what went wrong.

Liberalism greatest mission is to point to society not the encroachments on liberty, but to point out the growth of social free riding, call it kleptocracy, social parasitism, organized crime, government.

In every society, some members will take upon themselves an evolutionary strategy of living off the work of others.

We are one of the few animal species that does that, and can get away with it for various reasons.

The whole Social Security debate can be framed as a strategy of the older generation to live off the contributions and taxes of the younger generation.

Inefficient government can be seen as a group strategy to live of taxpayers, without giving back in return the services expected.

The free rider problem has been a particular concern of game theorists economists over the last 20 years, with some very disturbing conclusions.

Every society will generate social parasites, members who will specialize in living off the work of others.

This was the great Marxist mistake, not realizing that socialism would generate a new sort of social parasitism, which it did.

Seen from this point of view, one can argue that Liberals decided to deal with the parasites they already  knew, such as monopolist cartels,  legal privileges, many of which would be eliminated simply by free competition.