Libertarianism's Evolving Path
And how a circular system incorporates the best of libertarianism, conservatism, and progressivism.
Today is a banner day for obituaries.
The headlines are filled with tributes to Jesse Jackson, the indomitable civil rights leader; Robert Duvall, the Oscar-winning actor; and, more quietly, Ed Crane, co-founder of the Cato Institute.
Crane will receive the least public attention. But for those trying to understand America’s present love–hate affair with authority, his life may be the most instructive.
The Promise of Non-Coercion
I came of age politically in the orbit of Crane’s libertarian movement. My brother Bob—who would go on to serve Presidents Clinton and Obama—and I were among the early graduates of Cato’s summer programs designed to seed libertarian ideas across America’s campuses. I was the instigator. With my entrepreneurial bent, libertarianism appealed to my instinct to rebel against rigid, top-down structures that reduce human beings to interchangeable parts in an industrial machine.
At its core, libertarianism advances a powerful moral claim: the principle of non-coercion. No person or institution should initiate force against another. Government is uniquely dangerous because it holds a legal monopoly on force—taxation, regulation, imprisonment, even war. Constrain that power, libertarians argue, and human creativity flourishes.
This insight matters. Coercion short-circuits moral growth. When people are forced to act “for their own good,” they comply—but they do not learn. Compliance breeds passivity. Liberty breeds responsibility.
But here lies the paradox.
If government retreats too far, concentrations of private power can become coercive in subtler ways. The strongest, richest, or most strategic actors capture markets, information systems, and cultural narratives. Liberty erodes not through formal law, but through leverage.
That is where my journey diverged from purist libertarianism.
When Movements Drift
In the early days, libertarianism and the progressive activism of Ralph Nader seemed like opposites. I worked in both circles. At Cato, my brother and I scribbled critiques of orthodoxy on the blackboards at night. In the public-interest movement, I helped challenge entrenched corporate abuses.
Both movements grew out of 1960s anti-war skepticism of centralized power. One trusted markets; the other trusted regulation.
Both had insight. Both had limits.
Libertarian energy later fueled the Tea Party, animated initially by figures like Ron Paul, who warned about endless war and federal overreach. But over time, many principled libertarians found themselves pushed aside. Members of Congress such as Justin Amash were marginalized. Today even Thomas Massie, one of the most philosophically consistent libertarians remaining in Congress, faces hostility from a movement that once championed decentralization and individual conscience.
How did a philosophy devoted to limiting federal power become comfortable with muscular executive authority?
How did champions of the Second Amendment—who long argued that an armed citizenry is a safeguard against federal abuse—grow tolerant of federal incursions when those incursions target people they distrust?
Human nature intrudes. Some libertarians were always more devoted to liberty for themselves than liberty for all.
But let me be equally clear about the other tribes.
Progressives understand what is wrong. They see concentrated wealth, corporate capture, environmental degradation, and structural injustice. But too often they are in denial about workable solutions. They reach reflexively for centralized, technocratic authority—believing that smarter managers can fix what power created—without acknowledging that such concentration of authority eventually reproduces the very inequities they oppose.
Conservatives understand many of the solutions. They grasp the importance of institutions that channel flawed human impulses toward productive ends. They appreciate incentives, limits, and unintended consequences. But too often they are in denial about the problems—minimizing systemic inequities, environmental risks, or market distortions because acknowledging them would require disrupting familiar alliances.
Progressives see the disease but prescribe treatments that can worsen it.
Conservatives understand the medicine but sometimes deny the diagnosis.
Libertarians champion liberty but underestimate how power reorganizes itself.
We are left arguing across silos while the machinery of concentrated economic and political power hums along.
The Machine We Built
Libertarians were right to warn that corporations would seek to capture the state. Progressives were right to warn that unregulated corporations would exploit workers, consumers, and ecosystems.
What emerged is a hybrid: a regulatory-industrial complex so intricate that only the largest actors can navigate it. The successors of the military-industrial complex stand at the toll gates of federal spending, extracting rents in the name of solving social problems—while ensuring those problems remain durable revenue streams.
It is a linear system: Extract. Consume. Manage the fallout. Repeat.
It is very good at perpetuating itself. It is not very good at learning.
A Circular Alternative
This is where I see hope—not in pure libertarianism or pure progressivism, but in a circular framework.
A circular economy resembles a free market because it relies on feedback, adaptation, experimentation, and distributed intelligence. But unlike a linear industrial economy obsessed with extraction and throughput, a circular system mimics nature.
Waste becomes input.
Diversity builds resilience.
Feedback corrects excess.
Power diffuses through networks rather than pyramids.
Nature does not operate through rigid command and control. Nor does it abandon structure. It evolves through dynamic balance—constraint and freedom intertwined.
A circular system integrates libertarian respect for voluntary exchange with progressive concern about concentrated power. It breaks apart rigid, consumptive machines. It disperses authority. It rewards innovation that enhances life rather than depletes it.
It is progressive in that it disrupts concentrations of wealth and power.
It is conservative in that it respects limits and channels incentives wisely.
It is libertarian in that it values voluntary creativity and decentralized experimentation.
But it is none of these as ideology. It is learning. It is feedback. It is culture.
The Launch of Circle America
That is why we are launching Circle America at Earthx2026 in Dallas, April 20–22.
Throughout the conference—and especially on day three, the Circle America Summit—we will weave together conversations about liberty versus authoritarianism, environment versus prosperity, markets versus mandates. Investors, entrepreneurs, environmental leaders, conservatives, libertarians, progressives, and reformers will gather not to rehearse talking points, but to explore how circular thinking can advance what is best in each tradition.
Circle America is not an ideological club. It is an affinity network committed to advancing circular law, markets, and culture—systems that learn, adapt, and gradually grow more life-friendly and prosperous over time.
If you are worried about authoritarian drift—come.
If you are worried about environmental collapse—come.
If you are worried about economic stagnation—come.
If you are simply tired of shouting past one another—come.
Ed Crane taught me to distrust coercion. Ralph Nader taught me to distrust concentrated private power. Both were right. Both were incomplete. So am I.
We are not in control of history. But we can influence its trajectory by building systems supple enough to hold competing truths in creative tension.
If this conversation resonates with you, join us at Earthx2026 in Dallas, April 20–22, as we formally launch Circle America and explore how circular thinking can reconnect American liberty, prosperity, and stewardship.
When registering, use promo code CIRCLE50 for $50 off.
Let’s see what emerges when we choose learning over dogma—and build a culture capable of sustaining freedom and flourishing over the very long term.
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