Capitalism: The Liberal Revolution

This website is about all of us–how we can maximize our individual freedom to make the most of our lives without interfering with the lives of others.

The website is intended to disseminate ideas taught by Andrew J. Galambos and his colleague Jay S. Snelson through Galambos’ company, The Free Enterprise Institute, in live and recorded lectures between 1961 and 1978. Everything on this website is either the teaching of Galambos and Snelson or material corroborative of their teaching that has come to the author’s attention.

The title of this work has been chosen because each noun–capitalism, liberal, and revolution–stands for positive concepts in the teaching of Andrew Galambos and Jay Snelson. Capitalism and liberal each stand for a society built on human freedom; and revolution stands for a turning around, a change, in attitude about the means for protecting life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Galambos espoused principles and practices of proprietary government in order to enable mankind to create a totally peaceful, stable, and durable civilization, a goal that mankind has never previously achieved. Galambos based his teaching on the principles and methods of the physical sciences and an important concept of human government advocated in the following passage from the American Declaration of Independence:

“Governments are instituted among Men [to secure Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness], deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed… [W]henever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

Avoiding the incessant wars that plagued Europe was one of the aims of the Declaration of Independence and of the founders of the United States of America. Nevertheless, the United States of America has failed to achieve this goal, having engaged in numerous wars in its still brief history.

The philosopher Karl Popper (1902-1994) recognized that political discourse centered on the age-old question “who should rule?” Should it be a king, aristocrats, priests, a dictator, a small group of dictators, or “the people,” or their delegates?

In the past, however rulers were chosen, the outcome was war and the decline and fall of  civilizations. Good governments degenerated into bad governments. Governments were replaced by force. Inspired by Popper’s ideas, physicist David Deutsch posits that the question should be not who should rule but how can we rid ourselves of bad governments without violence. ¹

This website memorializes the work of a man, Andrew J. Galambos, who said the answer to the problem of government is to establish a culture in which each person rules himself and no others; and in which human life and property, including intellectual property, the source of human progress, are protected by proprietary governmental services.

There exists already an alternative to political government: proprietary governmental services to which people may choose to subscribe in the same way they choose to avail themselves of non-governmental goods and services, by comparing the quality and price of goods and services offered by a variety of competitors.

This website was created to highlight the increasing availability of proprietary governmental services and to show how they are not only vastly superior to political government, they are supplanting it in a wide variety of activities once considered uniquely the role of political governments.

Galambos developed what he called the Science of Volition and claimed that he could demonstrate that when the function of protecting Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness is entirely removed from politics, there would be an end to war and social instability and an enormous increase in the well-being of mankind.

Galambos’ and Snelson’s lectures were heard by at least 20,000 people over the years 1961-1978 but the most original and unique aspects of these lectures have not yet become widely known. It is hoped that by disseminating these concepts on the Internet they will enter the marketplace of ideas for debate and consideration by a global audience.

 

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