The Creed of Permissible Irresponsibility
You’ve met him, though he doesn’t know his name. He is the man who praises liberty but shirks duty, who cloaks indulgence in the language of principle. He calls himself a libertarian when he wants to sound virtuous and independent—but what he practices isn’t liberty at all. It’s license without consequence, self-interest without honor, and moral laziness wrapped in a borrowed flag.
He is the man who sneers at corporations while filling his cart with foreign goods. The one who curses taxes but expects perfect roads. The reader who buys every book used, robs the author of royalties, and then wonders why great writers stop writing. He demands the benefits of a thriving society while refusing to feed the roots that sustain it.
The Amway Dilemma
I first heard an Amway pitch back in the 1980s. It was a miracle scheme, promising wealth for those clever enough to recruit others. It took me two days to find the hole. I was normal. I could talk about Amway’s brilliance all day, but when it came time to buy soap or cereal, I’d still go to the grocery store—because Amway’s prices were too high.
That’s the Amway Dilemma: wanting to profit from a system you don’t personally support. You want your downline to believe, to buy, to sacrifice—but not you. And that’s precisely the modern moral posture: to live off the structure you refuse to uphold.
The same person who shops for the cheapest imports will tell you he’s a “free market capitalist.” The same citizen who avoids paying into the system calls himself a “libertarian.” But words don’t sanctify behavior. Liberty without responsibility isn’t liberty—it’s parasitism with a flag pinned to its lapel.
The Counterfeit Libertarian
True libertarianism is a noble creed. It holds that free people, guided by conscience and character, can govern themselves. It trusts markets not because they are perfect, but because they reward accountability. Freedom and responsibility are inseparable halves of the same coin: one buys your rights, the other pays for them.
The counterfeit libertarian rejects that price. He uses “libertarian” as a form of virtue signaling—a way to disguise self-absorption as principle. He praises the invisible hand, but only when it serves him. He wants the moral dignity of self-reliance without the burden of actually being reliable.
This is where the oxymoron blooms. Pair that counterfeit libertarianism with the lazy entitlement of socialism, and you get the modern hybrid: the libertarian socialist. He preaches independence when he wants to be left alone and collectivism when he wants someone else to foot the bill. He’s against authority when it restricts him and for it when it benefits him.
The Used-Book Fallacy
Consider the used-book buyer. He loves literature, tells himself he’s “supporting reading,” but never pays the author a cent. He enjoys the fruit while starving the tree. Multiply that habit across every market, and you get a culture that demands excellence while refusing to fund it.
This is what happens when moral responsibility leaves the marketplace. Every transaction becomes a form of theft disguised as thrift. People consume the labor of others while congratulating themselves on “choice.”
The Bill Comes Due
A free society is not self-maintaining. The Constitution is a contract, not a coupon. Freedom survives only when citizens honor its cost—when we buy our own product, invest in our own workers, and uphold the system that allows us to live as free men and women.
Those who invoke liberty to mask irresponsibility are not defenders of freedom; they are its saboteurs. They are the ideological descendants of the Amway dreamers—selling everyone below them on a system they have no intention of living by.
The real libertarian doesn’t hide from duty; he shoulders it. He knows that the moral order, like the market, collapses the moment everyone tries to get something for nothing. Freedom without virtue is a pyramid scheme—and it always ends the same way: with the lights off, the shelves empty, and the once-free man waiting for someone else to restock them.
References
Bakunin, Mikhail. God and the State. 1882.
Kropotkin, Peter. The Conquest of Bread. 1892.
Hayek, F.A. The Road to Serfdom. University of Chicago Press, 1944.
Friedman, Milton. Capitalism and Freedom. University of Chicago Press, 1962.
Institute of Economic Affairs. “The Myth of ‘Libertarian Socialism.’” 2018.
The New Republic. “Inside the Predatory World of Multilevel Marketing.” 2021.
Drexel Law Review. “Pyramid Schemes and the American Dream.” Vol. 14 (2022).
“Amway and the Economics of Network Marketing.” Journal of Business Ethics Vol. 91 (2010).
