I’ve recently finished an early ms of Gerald Gaus’s next book, The Tyranny of the Ideal, which argues, among other things, that we need to know the shape of the “terrain” of feasibility spaces before we can make productive progress towards realizing a just society. Imagine a terrain that is a description of states of social institutions, with close coordinates demarcating social worlds that are close to one another and far coordinates demarcating far away social worlds. Altitude on the terrain correlates with the justice of the social state. High altitude positions are highly just social states and low altitude positions are relatively unjust social states.

First imagine that the terrain is smooth. The path from here, our present social state, to Mt. Justice (some libertarians name it Mt. Market Anarchy), contains no peaks or valleys. Also assume that we know what the path looks like. In that case, so long as Mt. Justice is Mt. Market Anarchy, then we should simply push to organize our social order in a libertarian fashion, as doing so will impose relatively few costs on us.

Next let’s imagine that the terrain is rugged. There are peaks and valleys all over the place. Many paths from here to Mt. Market Anarchy lead into deep ravines from which we must pay great costs to extricate ourselves. Thus, there are some ways of pursuing justice that are self-frustrating. Some paths from here to justice will, for various reasons, get us stuck in a less just social state. We can also imagine a similar, but less extreme terrain, where we could settle on a local peak (call it Mt. Minarchy) that is fairly just or we could press on, for longer, to Mt. Market Anarchy. That means we would spend more time at low justice altitudes than if we settled for Mt. Minarchy, but we will eventually reach Mt. Market Anarchy, and hopefully will stay there. We can see from the topographical analogy that the path to justice could be extremely complicated and could involve making severe trade-offs.

Now let’s imagine you have very limited knowledge of the shape of the terrain. Cue fog that covers low altitudes. You can see the peak of Mt. Market Anarchy far away, tempting you to come near. But you cannot see a path from Mt. Market Anarchy from here. However, for the sake of argument, suppose you can see a path to Mt. Minarchy. It is not an easy path, but it is a sure one.

In this case, we can see that the cost of transition to Mt. Market Anarchy is unknown. So even if we think that market anarchy is the correct account of justice, we may have strong reason not to seek it, if for no other reason than the risk of walking off a cliff.

Libertarians have spent a lot of time arguing about altitudes. The market anarchy arguments largely claim that Mt. Market Anarchy is very tall, the highest peak in all the Land of Justice. But libertarians have a very poor theory of the terrain, not to mention the theory of illuminating it. Libertarians deeply disagree about strategy choice, about who to ally with, about which policies will push us towards liberty and which will get us stuck. This only compounds the worry that the cost of Mt. Market Anarchy isn’t worth paying. Because libertarians disagree so much, we’re bound to get in a fight on the long road ahead and die of dysentery or something. Should libertarians vote or not? Should they vote for the Libertarian Party? Or the GOP? Or should they vote Democrat? Should they support small secession movements, sea-steading, or what? Are conservatives friends of ours? Are progressives?

And note that libertarians are in an epistemic position not unlike other radicals. Unlike most people on the political spectrum, our Mt. Market Anarchy is so far away. Progressives and conservatives find their peaks much closer and the path, accordingly, a bit easier to illuminate.

I don’t think many other political views have good theories of the terrain either. Part of Gaus’s argument in The Tyranny of the Ideal will be that we need an Open Society of experimentation with many forms of life in order to clear the fog for anyone to see the terrain of justice for what it is. Of course, we will still have different maps and will find ourselves at cross-purposes in many cases. Perhaps some paths lead to war with other roving bands. But at least we will be in reality about the costs and benefits of our views and so not attempt to impose an ideal on society that, even if it is the highest peak in the land of justice, is surrounded by death traps.

Our present situation leaves libertarians with a potentially awful choice: do we start down the road to Mt. Market Anarchy, and deal with the terrain as we find it? Who do we drag along (obviously our institutional recommendations will change the lives of many non-libertarians)? And are we justified in doing so?

The case for libertarianism in a world with a potentially unknown and dangerous terrain is to experiment with libertarian institutions on a small scale first, and out of respect for non-libertarians. With respect to national policies, we should support modest, sure thing improvements that have altitude increases with clear paths. This means that libertarians should have a two-pronged strategy: global gradualism and local radicalism.

Both must be pursued with care. Gradualism could get us stuck in local pits, and local radicalism could ruin us. We know so little!