by Neville Kennard, think tank veteran

The world is littered with Free Market Think Tanks, yet they seem to have little effect on government thinking and policy-making. The recent Global Financial Crisis could have been the trigger for reform along free market lines, but instead we have witnessed a return to interventionism and the discredited monetary policy ideas of stimulus of John Maynard Keynes and others.

So why is it, with the hundreds of millions of dollars spent by Think Tanks, the squiggabytes of information, zillions of words, the outstanding work by hundreds of brilliant people, the irrefutable logic and reason, the evidential research, that governments keep growing and spending and taxing? What is going on?

This essay attempts to offer a point of view that may explain the reason for the apparent failure of the Think Tanks to have significant influence.

My belief is that the Think Tanks are fundamentally “Statist” in their position and points of view. They essentially want to have the same as we now have, but just a bit less of it. They still want The State, but a smaller one. They want bureaucrats and politicians, together with the media and the education institutions to heed their words, when all these institutions are themselves part of The State. The Think Tanks cosy up to politicians and so themselves become part of the problem, part of The State.

The funding base of Think Tanks is mostly “conservative” business people and businesses who themselves are sometimes and to some degree part of The State. The Think Tanks’ (TTs) “customers” are their supporters. These are the people to whom the TTs must appeal for contributions and who they must not upset too much. The TT’s refrain from putting forward ideas that are too radical or controversial lest they lose their financial and moral support. The TT’s are timid. Either that or they themselves are unaware of the essence of the problem — The State and its very nature.

TTs do “Research” that analyses the adverse effects of this or that policy and they advocate change. Seldom if ever do they analyse the fundamental issue of the very nature of The State. Instead the TT’s tend to actually legitimise The State by pointing out its failings here and its misdirection there. The TT’s thus become part of the problem.

Were TTs to point out that it is The State itself that is the problem, that the only solution is for The State to be by-passed, ignored, de-legitimised, eliminated, then the need for the TTs would vanish too.

Can the TTs change their spots and start to challenge the legitimacy of The State? Can they orchestrate their own possible demise? Or are the TTs affected by the same imperative that affects The State itself — the imperative to survive and grow?

If the TTs can’t change their spots, if they can’t or won’t see that they are part of the problem, then some of their supporters who may now see the counter-productive work of the TT’s they have supported may withdraw their contributions and support. This money, I suggest, could perhaps more gainfully be deployed into constructing For Profit mechanisms and structures that allow people and their money to withdraw from The State. The more ways there are to Opt Out, the more competition The State will have for its “services” and the more accountable it will be.

So this is a call-to-arms to all liberty-minded and concerned libertarians to think seriously about their support of the well-meaning but ineffectual Think Tanks and whether their money and energy and entrepreneurial endeavours may be better channelled into alternative For Profit “businesses” that will serve the market and be paid accordingly.

New jurisdictions, hitherto undiscovered devices, cyber-countries, yet-to-be-created mechanisms, non-nation citizenships and more. Many things are waiting to be invented and marketed.

Recommended reading that explains the dysfunction and illegitimacy of The State and how to move beyond this outdated structure: