David Friedman has something to say about libertarian strategy

If you've been following the #anarchy tag here on Steemit, you must have seen the disagreements about how to implement the ideas of liberty between @adamkokesh and other libertarians/anarchists such as @larkenrose and @kafkanarchy84.

@adamkokesh is running for President of the United States in 2020 on the platform of dissolving the entire federal government. While this sounds like a great idea, a lot of liberty-minded people question the ways which Kokesh plans to use. Namely, there is much disagreement about the question whether becoming president via the electoral process is a legitimate way of exercising authority according to voluntaryist principles.

For example, @larkenrose explained in a Steemit post that the plans laid out on Kokesh's website...

"[are] full of mushy, vague, unprincipled, semi-statist rhetoric, and [are] all about trying to get votes, hoping (and apparently expecting) to actually get himself elected, in order to implement his plan. As such, the entire campaign is not only a waste of time, but a giant philosophical contradiction and distraction from what actually matters: getting people to give up the belief in the 'authority' of the state."

Moreover, when Graham Smith (@kafkanarchy84) writes about Kokesh and the events of the past few months, he states:

"I view [Kokesh] as a dishonest politician, fraudulently posing (whether intentionally or not) as a Voluntaryist and garnering donations under said false Voluntaryist pretense (while simultaneously peddling the force-based political system/electoral process as legitimate) via half-truths, sensationalized stunts, and their resultant hyped-up, dishonest donation drives. He is abusing this platform so many of us love and have been with through all the ups and downs, via his Steem delegation. All of this Steem-milking seems to be for almost the sole purpose of political gain."

Now, without picking a side, I'd like to share a video I recently saw of an interview with David Friedman (son of Milton Friedman). See the video at the top of this post. In this interview, Friedman was asked:

"What paths do you see as helpful to achieve a free society that you envision: through political action and even violent revolution, or through government avoidance such as Bitcoin, seasteading, etc?" (5:08)

Logically, Friedman denounces the idea of violent revolution. But the interesting part of his answer comes afterwards. At the 5:53 mark, he talks about the strategies of creating a freer society:

"[...] I don't think there is one correct strategy. [...] I think one of the mistakes, if you look at political movements, not just libertarians, they spend an afwul lot of time fighting themselves. [..] And part of that comes from the idea that the movement has some pool of resources that have to be used in the right way. And that's wrong! If you think about the real world, there aren't any libertarian resources. There are only the resources of only libertarians.

And so Friedman goes on to compare libertarians who want to bring about change through the political process and libertarians who want to to it via education. The point he makes is that, if they're all fighting each other, nobody would be doing anything at all.

Then, Friedman makes his point:

"So the right way, it seems to me, is that libertarianism itself ought to be a decentralized project, in which different libertarians propose different ways of improving the world. And some libertarians are convinced by one and some by another. And each of them does those things that seem right for them, or the think they are good at doing.

To conclude, the interviewer asks Friedman if he sees value in political action in order to bring forward liberty. He then answers:

"Yes, I see value in lots and lots of different things that you can do. That's right.

I wanted to share this short video in the hopes of nuancing the debate by giving the perspective of another prominent anarchist. So, what do you think? Is political action a legitimate way of bringing about a freer society? And if it's not, would you still support (or just leave alone) the people who are still trying it that way? Personally I think Friedman brings up an important question in this interview about whether we should let each other compete freely in our liberty-minded strategies. I would love to hear your opinions!