In order to serve their purpose properly, however, such measures must be recognized as temporary expedients by voters, and the long-range goal of a free society (with a free market) must first be widely envisioned. If this vision is not present, then these measures will merely become new layers of bureaucracy, piled atop existing programs. For example, educational vouchers should be envisioned as a temporary device for transferring the funding and control of schools from government to the more efficient and competitive private sector. As more and more students are enrolled in free-market rather than public schools, spending on the latter should be correspondingly decreased. If this understanding has not been established, then vouchers will become merely another governmental subsidy program.

Therefore we are primarily concerned here, not with such transitional measures (although these will probably play an eventual role), but rather with the long-term vision and goal of achieving a truly free society. The approaches proposed by various advocates of freedom can be divided into three broad categories, to be discussed in the remaining pages:

  1. direct political action
  2. retreatism
  3. intellectual activism      Next page
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