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Nonprofit Institutions as a Libertarian are organizations which provide assistance to people, such as the homeless, who don’t have the means to pay, arts which Resource don’t have a broad enough popularity to be self-supporting in by Barry V. Smith a market, and organizations which fund research to find cures for “orphan diseases” that don’t have enough victims to fund research otherwise. We as libertarians don’t want government The spring issue of The to fund these goals. Nevertheless, many of us do want Independent Review (journal of someone to fund them. And the general public, whose support the libertarian Independent we depend on for success, would probably insist that someone Institute) features a thought- has to do this work. If the market can’t do that job to suit the provoking six-article symposium public, then we have to turn to private nonprofit institutions. I on philanthropy. We as libertarians think the success of libertarianism depends in part on a healthy want to replace the coerciveness of and large private, nonprofit sector. The Independent Institute government with voluntary private seems to believe that, too. institutions as much as possible. A key fact driving the symposium is This is easier said than done. The symposium goes into a that of the two major private number of problems. One, of course, is finding enough people institutions competing with to donate. Since there is not a clear money-for-product government, the market and nonprofits, nonprofits have exchange, nonprofits have to deal with a free-rider problem. In received much less study and need more attention from the case of nonprofits (libertarian nonprofits, for example), libertarians. commitment to an ideal may or may not be an adequate motivation. Much of the symposium is devoted to various Both nonprofits and the market have advantages over ways to motivate providers of both money and volunteer government. They are free and do not rely on force. They are services. decentralized, and therefore more open to local and individual needs, to innovation, and to spontaneous order. They are also important simply because they provide a competitive challenge and check to centralized government power. However, within the private sector, nonprofits have some advantages over markets for some purposes. Nonprofits can pursue goals that might not be supportable in a purely market framework that requires every enterprise to generate a profit. To give a notable example, Another serious problem is that nonprofits often turn to organizations that pursue a government grants and the government control that follows. social cause (such as the Sometimes it’s hard to tell where the nonprofit stops and Libertarian Party, The government starts. That largely eliminates the value of Cato Institution, The nonprofits to us. Independent Institute, and the Reason Foundation) Finally, as the symposium implies, we simply don’t know how probably could not survive well nonprofits function. Someone, possibly libertarian- without donations, which oriented academic institutions, needs to look into this. Unlike themselves are not a direct Mises, I (as a social scientist) think empirical study of society, individual exchange of though difficult, is possible and useful. I also think we’ll never money for a product or persuade those whose support we need unless we can show service. Other examples them hard evidence that non-governmental solutions such as Page 1 Libertarian Party of Dallas County, Texas June 2019 nonprofit institutions work. Free Lunch.” (As a footnote, I also recommend a recent edition of After holding a “2020 Libertarian national Convention Theme McCuistion discussing the future of nonprofits.) Contest” for the hopefully obvious purpose of picking a theme for the party’s national convention to be staged in Austin, Texas in year 2020 the LP theme-pickers decided to go retro with TANSTAAFL. Want to help with local LP activities? The Marketing, Outreach, Fundraising, and Candidate The acronym “TANSTAAFL” for “There Ain’t No Such Recruitment Committees are looking for more warm Thing As A Free Lunch” was an ever-present catchphrase for bodies to help with their efforts to build our party. There the first eight years of the LP’s existence. It’s being are a lot of ideas to work on, but we need your help! Click resurrected now because, according to the official email from on the link for the committee you're interested in to e-mail the LP, “This theme is just as relevant now as it was 50 years the committee chair! ago. Governments continue to promise ‘free stuff’ at the expense of your liberty.” LPDC Membership Program! Taxpayer Funded “Free Stuff” “Free Stuff” is continually being offered by the Alt-Left Want to help out the LPDC and at the same time get some Democratic Socialism wing of the Democratic Party with cool libertarian swag? Check out our contributor people like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and membership program! other “free ride” advocates. Millionaire presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, for one, has long been pushing for—according to Inside Higher Ed—“free Libertarian Reality: No Such Thing as a tuition and fees at public universities for all students with family income up to $125,000 and would cut student loan Free Lunch! interest rates in half.” by Garry Reed But if we tax the “rich” like he wants to do no family’s income will reach $125,000 so that means free tuition for everyone— Commentary From which will cheapen every diploma just like monetary inflation Your Libertarian cheapens every dollar. But then, who cares, he just wants to get elected. Opinionizer The Libertarian Party is So what do you think “free education” really means? That seeing 20/20 in 2020. By that professors, lecturers, advisors, coaches, teachers, teachers is meant that they have aides, deans, counselors, administrators, crossing guards, perfect vision when it comes custodians and everyone else associated with schools will to understanding that “There work for free? Or will millionaire Sanders pay their salaries? Ain’t No Such Thing as a Or will every taxpayer pay their salaries? Page 2 Libertarian Party of Dallas County, Texas June 2019 And further, is anyone telling naïve Millennials that once they Relearning TANSTAAFL step into their first job it will be the higher-than-ever tax bite from their paychecks paying everyone else’s salaries and “free" tuition? Book Break: Your Libertarian Opinionizer’s Pick TANSTAAFL (There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch) - A Libertarian Perspective on Environmental Policy Just as there is no such The acronym TANSTAAFL should be changed to thing as a free lunch in TANSTAAFA to mean “There Ain’t No Such Thing As A every other sector of Free Anything." economics so too is there no free lunch in the Green New According to Wikipedia the specific quote “There ain’t no Deal. Someone has to pay such thing as a free lunch” and similar closely related and that someone will wordings have been used since the 1930s. They all seem to always be the people with the least political power, the stem from Nineteenth century bar owners who included the least money and the least crony connections to the big cost of cheap food in the price of a glass of beer and then Government-Corporatist Complex. disingenuously advertised a “free lunch” with a mug of their (cheap flat bitter brackish barrel-bottom) beer. That someone is known universally as “Taxpayer.” Those with the power, wealth and connections will always live One of the earliest known uses of "There ain't no such thing as at the expense of everyone else and Global Warming, free lunch" appeared as the punchline of a joke in the June 27, Climate Change and the Green New Deal are no 1938 El Paso Herald-Post entitled "Economics in Eight exceptions. Words." Funny how all environmental solutions exactly fit the In 1945 the phrase appeared in the Columbia Law Review. In progressive political agenda. 1949 one Walter Morrow used it in a San Francisco News article and Pierre Dos Utt wrote a monograph titled B uy Now TANSTAAFL: A Plan for a New Economic World Order in which he describes, according to one report, “an oligarchic political system based on his conclusions from ‘no free lunch’ principles.” Whatever that means. Libertarians and TANSTAAFL Page 3 Libertarian Party of Dallas County, Texas June 2019 The two sources best known to libertarians are Robert A. unlimited number of times for their favorite slogan—58 Heinlein and free-market economist Milton Friedman. were originally submitted—but every vote had to be accompanied by one dollar, translating the contest into The “no free lunch” quote was used by science fiction writer “There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Vote—or a Free Robert A. Heinlein in his most libertarian novel The Moon is a Convention.” Harsh Mistress—sometimes referred to as “A manifesto for a libertarian revolution”—first published in 1966, in which a Yes, while the Reps and Dems accuse each other of former Lunar prison colony seeks freedom from its dictatorial warden-and-penal-system style government known simply as “buying votes” while each pretends that they themselves “Authority.” In the book, Mannie, the story’s protagonist, would never do such a thing the Libertarians do it openly explains the acronym’s meaning to a newly arrived Lunar and proudly. tourist. The result was that the official “2020 Pay-to-Play When the Libertarian Party was formed in 1972 the Libertarian National Convention Theme Contest” raised TANSTAAFL abbreviation was not only taken directly from a total of $24,007 toward convention expenses. The Heinlein’s book and adopted as the LP’s first official slogan Torch Eagle party, after all, doesn’t syphon money from but it also became a part of its first official logo known as the taxpayer pockets to fund their conventions like the "Libersign" consisting of an arrow pointing upward and to the Donkey and Elephant beasts do.

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