Within libertarian and conservative vocabulary, a common term is used (usually negatively) to describe modern governments’ interference in or interruption of voluntary, cooperative social interaction or its counterproductive and costly foreign meddling—intervention. Many libertarians and conservatives—when it comes to political elites and government policies, and their interference with the free market or international relations—often prefer a default policy of non-interventionism. Is there a way that these two opposite could be coercively combined?
The Interventionist Paradigm
Often, by living under a modern, highly interventionist modern nation-state, the default paradigm of political elites and the general public is that, whenever a problem arises, the government must do something, that not doing something would be irresponsible and disastrous, that it can only help, and that the worst possible option would be doing nothing. This might be called the interventionist mindset or interventionist paradigm. In fact, many of the problems are the consequences of previous government interventions and doing nothing or rolling back previous interventionist policies would be the more effective answer, but this is never even considered. Ironically, interventionists of all political stripes rush to blame their opponents for doing nothing.
An example from American political history is Herbert Hoover. Hoover was unfairly labeled in history and popular consciousness as the “do-nothing” president who did not intervene to prevent or address the Great Depression. This historical lie—and it is a lie because it involved knowingly stating the opposite of the truth, misrepresenting Hoover’s very public position and record, and is repeated ignorantly by misled people—is almost the exact opposite of the truth. Herbert Hoover did intervene in an unprecedented way to address the Great Depression (another result of previous interventions) and his interventions—amplified by the FDR administration—were the main problem that blocked economic recovery for over a decade. In his own words (August 11, 1932),
Two courses were open to us [in dealing with the Great Depression]. We might have done nothing. That would have been utter ruin. Instead, we met the situation with proposals to private business and to the Congress of the most gigantic program of economic defense and counterattack ever evolved in the history of the Republic. We put that program in action. (emphasis added)
Mises, Rothbard, and Interventionism
Mises wrote a work titled A Critique of Interventionism. This work was originally published in 1929 as Kritik des Interventionismus and republished in 1976, incorporating the essay “Nationalization of Credit?” Rothbard likewise discussed and critiqued different types of interventionism, laying out a more comprehensive view of the categories of interventionism in chapter 12 of Man, Economy, and State: “The Economics of Violent Intervention into the Market.”
Rothbard defined “intervention” simply as “the intrusion of aggressive physical force into society; it means the substitution of coercion for voluntary actions.” Of course, intervention could take place between two individuals, in fact, interventions always ultimately and literally take place between two individuals, but Rothbard noted the significant role of political states in interventionism, “Empirically, the vast bulk of interventions are performed by States, since the State is the only organization in society legally equipped to use violence and since it is the only agency that legally derives its revenue from a compulsory levy.”
In developing economic theory, Rothbard recognized the need for a theory of interventionism. For theoretical purposes, the pure free market had been assumed for analysis, but a theory concerning human interruptions of the free market (distinguished from non-human, non-purposive interruptions like natural disasters) had to be developed. Writes Rothbard, “In order to complete the economic picture of our world, however, economic analysis must be extended to the nature and consequences of violent actions and interrelations in society, including intervention in the market and violent abolition of the market (“socialism”).” Therefore, a taxonomy of intervention was necessary that answers, “What types of intervention can an individual or group commit?”
Rothbard’s Taxonomy of Intervention
Rothbard classified interventionism into “three broad categories”—autistic, binary, and triangular. In autistic intervention, the individual or group initiates violent coercion against another individual or his property, but no forced exchange or transfer takes place (e.g., murder). In binary intervention, there is coercion or threat that forces a transfer between the victim and aggressor (e.g., mugging someone and stealing his wallet). In triangular intervention, “the invader may either compel or prohibit an exchange between a pair of subjects.”
With all that said, we ought to consider another counterintuitive category of government intervention that might even, at first glance, seem contradictory—interventionist non-interventionism. Can the government ever intervene by doing nothing?
A New Category: Interventionist Non-Intervention
What this concept entails is how modern political states monopolize certain services, coercively tax citizens, disallow or limit competitive alternatives, and then fail or refuse to provide the “paid-for” service. The element of a prior legal state monopoly is key and is what makes this argument non-contradictory. It is not just that the state elites and executors of policy do not do something, but that they claim an area as their exclusive domain, coercively require citizens pay for it through taxation, exclude it from private competition or voluntary private action, and then fail or refuse to provide the promised service. In such cases, even the government doing nothing is a coercive intervention.
Within Rothbard’s taxonomy, where does interventionist non-intervention fit (if it does fit at all)?
It seems that either interventionist non-intervention is a composite of binary and triangular intervention or in a separate and distinct category by itself. Arguably it is binary because taxes are still extracted—a forced exchange—for a service not rendered, but it is also triangular because voluntary alternatives are suppressed, preventing private society from filling the vacuum. In a sense, it is a higher-order intervention because it has the immediate appearance of non-action, but is, in actuality, intensified intervention since it involves monopolization and hampers or prevents voluntary self-help or private provision. The issue is government monopolization and private restriction followed by non-action. It is coercive control plus the absence of service.
Mises’s Bureaucracy also potentially offers some related insights. The state’s guaranteed revenues insulate it from the discipline of profit and loss. No private firm could survive by charging customers for undelivered goods and services. Yet the state—enjoying monopoly and compulsion—can even extract revenue for services never provided. This reality explains how interventionist non-interventionism is even possible: only a monopolist, exempt from market feedback, could enjoy the peculiar privilege of paid non-delivery. In fact, the incentives make total sense from a public choice perspective: if revenue is guaranteed, why even bother expending energy to provide the services?
Anarcho-Tyranny?
In 1994, Sam Francis (with whom there may be much disagreement on many topics) originally coined a term for a somewhat similar idea: “anarcho-tyranny.” He describes this phenomenon as “the combination of oppressive government power against the innocent and the law-abiding and, simultaneously, a grotesque paralysis of the ability or the will to use that power to carry out basic public duties such as protection or public safety.” He further explains why government is not inactive, even while it neglects its monopolized duties,
You can accuse the federal leviathan of many things—corruption, incompetence, waste, bureaucratic strangulation—but mere anarchy, the lack of effective government, is not one of them. Yet at the same time, the state does not perform effectively or justly its basic duty of enforcing order and punishing criminals, and in this respect its failures do bring the country, or important parts of it, close to a state of anarchy. But that semblance of anarchy is coupled with many of the characteristics of tyranny, under which innocent and law-abiding citizens are punished by the state or suffer gross violations of their rights and liberty at the hands of the state [or other criminals the state ignores]. The result is what seems to be the first society in history in which elements of both anarchy and tyranny pertain at the same time and seem to be closely connected with each other and to constitute, more or less, opposite sides of the same coin.
Anarcho-tyranny involves tyrannical application of law to law-abiding citizens (i.e., citizens not violating the rights of others, either their persons or property), but strategically absent toward criminals, failing to uphold rights and/or punish violations of the rights of others. Both concepts—anarcho-tyranny and interventionist non-interventionism—highlight the state’s selective action: coercion where it should not act, abdication where it has monopolized responsibility. Arguably anarcho-tyranny is one political manifestation of interventionist non-interventionism. However, an important distinction has to be made.
The term anarcho-tyranny implies that the state overreaches in some cases (tyranny) and simply does nothing (anarchy; absence of government), but it misses the crucial distinction that government’s doing nothing is within the context of monopolistic ownership and exclusion over an area. It is not just that the government does nothing—that it has never intervened in the first place and just leaves a problem alone—but that it first intervenes by claiming exclusive control over some aspect of society, then selectively decides to do nothing afterward when it is the only entity legally allowed to do something. Thus, even “doing nothing” becomes coercive once the state has foreclosed all private and voluntary alternatives.
Examples of Interventionist Non-Intervention
When it comes to this topic, examples abound. The aim of this article has been to lay out the conceptual framework and the appropriate category for interventionist non-interventionism. This article cannot provide anything close to an exhaustive catalogue of examples, and I invite others to contribute them, however, below are just a few that fit within this category.
Gun control laws and penalizing protection of persons and property while police allow public disorder, property destruction, and looting—distinguished from peaceful protest—are a ready example. Gun control laws, especially in the wake of any recent criminal shooting, usually restrict the law-abiding and punish those who have not committed the crimes. In 1992, police arrested store owners defending their shops during the LA riots while letting looters run loose—illustrating anarcho-tyranny: the law heavily imposed on the innocent, yet absent where real criminality occurred. While gun ownership is not literally monopolized exclusively by the state, it is practically if the government restricts and punishes individuals for self-defense while actively refusing to stop threats and crimes against them.
St. Louis couple, Mark and Patricia McCloskey, brandished firearms at protesters entering their private street. They were subsequently charged, fined, and had their weapons seized, despite arguing they were acting in self-defense against criminals. During the unrest of the 2020 BLM protests/riots in Minneapolis-Saint Paul, roughly 1,500 properties in the Twin Cities were damaged through arson, looting, and vandalism—an estimated $500 million in losses, with many uninsured.
During the Kenosha riots of 2020, in the wake of the police shooting of Jacob Blake on August 23, widespread unrest—including arson and looting—raged through the city. The police response was notably insufficient, creating a coercive security vacuum. Kyle Rittenhouse’s actions—though we may debate the wisdom—can be understood only against that backdrop of state inaction. Even the ACLU blamed lack of police protection and inaction for the results that night. (Note: the ACLU seems to be of the position that the police should have provided cover and protection for rioters, arsonists, and looters against those who tried to stop them).
Federal courts have consistently ruled that police do not have a duty to protect citizens—but you will still have to pay taxes whether you receive protection or non-protection! In fact, were citizens successful in suing a police department, the taxpayers would pay for that too. Despite being funded and empowered to protect, police cordoned off Robb Elementary and actively prevented parents from entering—even using force—while failing to neutralize the shooter. It was reported, “As the minutes ticked by, and it became clear that the police officers were not going to intervene, some parents considered taking matters into their own hands [but were stopped]” (emphasis added). The state monopolized security, suppressed community response, and then abdicated its duty in a manner that had dire consequences.
The recent fires in California and Arizona, as well as others, provide other examples. Governments take over vast areas of land, refuse to clear brush and thin forests, and then a fire results. The government holds exclusive domain over public lands, controls fire management policy (triangular), imposes that strategy (binary), but its chosen approach—non-intervention under shifting conditions—results in disaster.
In the UK, despite an ongoing crisis of rapes largely perpetrated by Pakistani men, a comedian—Graham Linehan—was arrested for some X posts. He wrote, “The moment I stepped off the plane at Heathrow, five armed police officers were waiting. Not one, not two—five. They escorted me to a private area and told me I was under arrest for three tweets.” Elsewhere in the UK, British police released an African migrant caught sneaking into a woman’s house, allegedly stating that “trespassing is not an arrestable offense.”
Examples could be, and should be, multiplied. Unfortunately, within an interventionist mindset or paradigm, whether the state intervenes directly or withholds the service it monopolizes, coercively taxes for, and promises to provide, it seems that—whatever the negative results—people call for the state to do more.