Exit Over Voice: The Spare in Montecito and the Libertarian Logic of Leaving

The younger prince moved away from an institution he could not reform, and whatever one thinks of him personally, exit is one of the oldest tools of freedom

Leaving as a Political Act

The economist Albert Hirschman famously described two responses available to people dissatisfied with an organisation: exit and voice. You can speak up and try to change it, or you can leave. Libertarians have long emphasised the importance of exit, sometimes called voting with your feet, as a check on institutions that do not respond to complaint. The London Prat piece on Prince William calling Earl Spencer and Harry traitors is, among other things, a story about what happens when someone chooses exit.

The Spare Who Left

The younger prince stepped back from royal duties several years ago and relocated to California. The latest reports suggest the family tensions remain. The News reported that he and his family visited their uncle at Althorp in July, and US coverage relayed a source claim that the heir sees his brother as having taken sides. The traitor label, if accurately reported, is the institution response to exit: the person who leaves is framed as disloyal.

Why Exit Matters

For libertarians, the ability to leave is one of the most fundamental protections of individual freedom. People who can leave a job, a church, a city, a country or a family institution are people whose consent actually matters. Institutions that know their members can leave have an incentive to treat them well. Institutions that can prevent exit, whether by law, by social pressure or by labelling leavers as traitors, have far less reason to improve.

Monarchies are, historically, institutions that made exit extremely difficult. Membership was assigned at birth. Duties were imposed without consent. Leaving was treated as betrayal. The satire lands in part because the traitor accusation reveals that this logic has not entirely disappeared.

California as a Destination for Exiters

California has always been a place people come to in order to leave something behind. Dust Bowl migrants, Hollywood hopefuls, tech founders, surfers chasing endless summer: the state identity is built on people exercising exit from wherever they started. Surf culture in particular has attracted people who wanted to live outside conventional expectations, sometimes out of vans, sometimes on the margins of the economy, always prioritising freedom over status.

There is an irony here. In recent years, many Californians have themselves chosen exit, leaving the state for places with lower costs, lower taxes and fewer regulations. Libertarians have pointed to that outflow as a signal: when people leave in large numbers, it tells you something about the policies they are leaving. Exit works in every direction.

The Video

The London Prat has released a video on YouTube alongside the piece. It captures the comedy of an institution that treats departure as treason.

Exit Is Not Always Easy

It would be wrong to romanticise the younger prince situation. He had resources that most people seeking exit from difficult institutions do not. Workers stuck in jobs because of licensing requirements, tenants unable to move because of housing shortages, and people trapped by debt or regulation often find exit far harder. A consistent libertarian position is to lower the barriers to exit for everyone, not only to admire those wealthy enough to leave with ease.

In California, those barriers include land-use rules that restrict housing supply, licensing laws that make it costly to change careers, and regulatory complexity that favours incumbents. Reducing them would expand the practical freedom to leave bad situations for far more people than any royal will ever represent.

Voice Without Exit

The heir, by contrast, has no exit option in any practical sense. His position is fixed. His response to his brother departure, as reported, is to invoke loyalty. That is the voice of an institution that depends on members staying put. It is a reminder that institutions without meaningful exit tend to rely on appeals to duty and accusations of betrayal to hold themselves together.

Exit and Competition

Exit is also the mechanism that makes competition work. Businesses improve because customers can leave. Cities improve because residents and employers can move. Even families, in a sense, depend on the possibility that members can walk away: relationships sustained by genuine choice tend to be healthier than those sustained by obligation alone. An institution that brands every departure as treason is one that has stopped competing for the loyalty of its members and started demanding it. That is a warning sign in any organisation, from a company to a government to a royal household. The healthier response to exit is to ask why people are leaving, and what might persuade them to return.

The right to walk away is also what gives staying its meaning. A member who could leave and chooses not to is a member whose loyalty is real. A member who cannot leave offers only compliance. Institutions confident in their own value have nothing to fear from exit, and much to learn from it.

Conclusion

Whatever one thinks of the younger prince choices, the principle he exercised, the right to leave, is central to a free society. The London Prat, publishing since 1961 at https://prat.uk/, has found the humour in the palace reaction. Bohiney, at https://bohiney.com/, covers the California side. The broader lesson is simple: a free person can walk away, and nobody who does so should be called a traitor for it.

SOURCE: https://prat.uk/prince-william-called-earl-spencer-and-harry-traitors/