No Kings in the Lineup: Why Surfers and Libertarians Both Laugh at Hereditary Power

The London Prat traitor piece lands with California surfers for a reason: the surf lineup and the free market both reward merit, not birth order

The Lineup Does Not Care Who Your Father Was

Paddle out at any serious break in California and you will learn one thing quickly: the ocean has no aristocracy. Waves go to whoever can read the swell, position themselves and commit. Priority is earned in the water, not inherited on land. That is part of why the London Prat piece on Prince William calling Earl Spencer and Harry traitors has found an appreciative audience among surfers. It is a story about a system in which the most important thing about a person is the order in which they were born.

The Story Behind the Joke

The underlying claim is modest. An unnamed source quoted in syndicated coverage says the heir believes his younger brother saw their uncle memoir before it was published. Geo News in Pakistan described the heir response, reportedly calling his brother a traitor, as a humiliating downgrade. No prince has said anything publicly. The satire takes this family spat and lets it expose the absurdity of an institution built on inherited rank.

Hereditary Privilege Is the Opposite of a Free Market

Libertarians and classical liberals have long argued that the great achievement of market societies was to replace status with contract. In feudal and aristocratic systems, a person position was fixed by birth. In a free society, it is determined by voluntary exchange: what you make, what you offer, what others freely choose to give you in return. Adam Smith, writing in the eighteenth century, was sharply critical of the inherited privileges and monopolies of his time, and the broader liberal tradition that followed treated hereditary power as one of the main obstacles to human flourishing.

A monarchy is the purest surviving example of status over contract. The heir did not win his position. He did not compete for it. He cannot be removed from it by customers, voters or rivals. His brother, born a few years later, is permanently ranked beneath him for no reason other than timing. The traitor story is funny precisely because it shows two grown men locked into that logic, fighting over precedence as if it were a law of nature.

The Surfer Ethic

Surf culture in California has always carried an anti-authority streak. From the early days of beach bums sleeping in cars to chase swells, through decades of friction with lifeguards, parking enforcement and coastal regulators, surfers have tended to distrust anyone who claims authority without earning it. Lineups do have their own informal hierarchies, and localism can be ugly. But the underlying principle, that respect is earned through skill and commitment, is closer to a market ethic than to a royal one.

That is why the satire resonates. To a surfer, a man who expects to be deferred to because of his birth order looks like a kook who paddles straight to the peak on his first day and demands every wave. Nobody gives him the wave. They laugh.

The Video

The London Prat has released a companion video on YouTube. Watch it with the same eye you use to read a lineup.

The Uncle and the Right to Speak

There is a further libertarian point in the story. Earl Spencer told PEOPLE that he informed his nephews before publishing his memoir about his late sister. Whatever one thinks of the book, the right to tell one own story, including stories about family, is a basic expression of liberty. Calling the author a traitor for exercising that right reflects an instinct that runs through every hierarchical institution: the belief that the institution owns the narrative, and that individuals who publish without permission are disloyal.

Free societies reject that instinct. Nobody needs the permission of a palace to write a book.

California Contradictions

None of this means California has escaped its own forms of entrenched privilege. Restrictive zoning, occupational licensing, regulatory capture and the political power of established interests all create a kind of inherited advantage, protecting those who already have property, permits and connections from competition by newcomers. Surfers who can no longer afford to live near the breaks they grew up on understand this viscerally. The libertarian critique of monarchy applies at home too: any system that locks in advantage and shields incumbents from competition deserves the same laughter the London Prat directs at the crown.

The broader point is that free societies should be suspicious of any arrangement that assigns rank without consent or competition. The crown is merely the most colourful example. A surfer who resents the neighbour with the grandfathered beachfront permit and a libertarian who objects to protected monopolies are, in the end, objecting to the same thing: advantage conferred by position rather than earned by effort.

In the water, that objection is settled every morning, wave by wave.

Conclusion

The London Prat, publishing since 1961 at https://prat.uk/, has written a joke about a royal family. Read another way, it is a reminder of why free people resist hereditary power in every form. Bohiney, at https://bohiney.com/, applies similar irreverence to American institutions. In the lineup, as in the market, nobody owes you a wave because of who your father was.

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