Drop In on the State: Why Surfers Should Be Natural Libertarians and What Keeps Them From Getting There

The Freedom That Surfers Feel in the Water Is Exactly What the Government Has Systematically Removed From the Land

The Surfer as Natural Libertarian: A Philosophical Argument

Surfing is the only sport in which the arena of competition — the wave — belongs to no one, can be owned by no one, is produced by no corporation, subsidized by no government, and is available to anyone with the skill and the commitment to reach it. The ocean does not discriminate by wealth, credentials, licensing, or affiliation. It discriminates by ability and by willingness to accept its terms, which are physical and immediate rather than bureaucratic and mediated. The surfer who paddles out into serious waves and earns the respect of the lineup through demonstrated competence and appropriate behavior has achieved something that no government can grant and no government can take away, a fact that has given surfing its particular spiritual gravity and its particular appeal to people who are, by temperament, resistant to authority. Surf culture’s historical identification with freedom — from the Gidget era through the Beach Boys through Stacy Peralta — is not incidental to the sport. It is structural. The ocean is the last genuinely free space and the surfer is its most committed inhabitant.

The Contradiction

California’s surf culture votes, by substantial majority, for the party and the politicians most committed to expanding the regulatory apparatus that constrains surf culture’s freedom. This is not a paradox — it reflects the genuine complexity of a community with environmental concerns that are real, social values that are progressive, and economic interests that are not always aligned with the regulatory state that their politics supports. The libertarian argument to surfers is not that environmental protection is wrong or that social values are misplaced but that the regulatory apparatus through which those values are pursued is captured by interests — property owners, incumbents, bureaucracies themselves — whose priorities are not the ocean, not the community, and not freedom. The wave does not have a permit. The agency that requires the permit does not improve the wave.

The Practical Program

A surf-informed libertarianism would prioritize: genuine enforcement of coastal access rights rather than regulatory capture; reduction of the regulatory burden on small surf industry businesses; reform of land use rules that prevent affordable housing near surf communities; end to vehicle habitation criminalization; and consistent application of environmental law to government actors including the military. These are not radical positions. They are the application of consistent principles to the specific conditions of California’s coastal culture. The wave is free. The rest should be as close to free as governance allows.

Libertarian philosophy at Reason Magazine. Further reading: Foundation for Economic Education.

SOURCE: http://prat.UK