PHILOSOPHER TIBOR R. MACHAN ON C-SPAN (MAY 1, 2011)

PHILOSOPHER TIBOR R. MACHAN ON C-SPAN (MAY 1, 2011)

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© May 1, 2011

Today, I was privileged to watch the three-hour interview-discourse of the prolific author and grandfatherly libertarian philosopher Tibor R. Machan on C-Span. 

What a delightful and colorful man, who has lived a full life of thought and ideas with well thought out views on most things affecting people as individuals in terms of rights and freedoms.

My mind resonated pretty much with his presentation until one viewer called in and asked if his libertarian ideas gave a pass to individual rights and freedoms in corporations, as the caller sensed his libertarian philosophy was a shell for corporations.

Dr. Tibor’s answer proved totally unsatisfactory to me, in fact a bit disingenuous as well as uninformed.  The philosopher sees draconian practices everywhere especially in government with its bureaucratic waste and nonsense, malfeasance and coercion, and political infighting as well as treating citizens as “renters” with government acting as “owners.”

After spending more than forty years in corporations, including summers as a laborer while going to university, then as a chemist, chemical sales engineer, industrial manager, international corporate executive, then as an external and internal consultant, then corporate psychologist, and finally as an international corporate executive once again, I saw a consistency in the feudal practices in the corporation to which the good professor refers to being common in government.  

In fact, I found the same practices in corporations mirroring those in government to which I refer to as “corpocracy” in my writing.  The good professor would see the corporation as the equivalent of an individual with the same rights and freedoms, which I find absurd, but he makes a clear distinction with government.    

My reason for posting this is only for my readers to never be totally taken in by anyone’s views, even one as experienced and erudite as the affable professor.  We all have massive blind spots in our understanding, often based on the limits of our experience.  The professor displays a naiveté about corporations.  He has always been an academic while ironically failing to see no industry is more feudalistic (e.g., tenure) than academia.

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