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It’s always fascinating to delve into different doctrines and governing philosophies around the world. People go to college and even make careers out of studying various methods of thought that are unfamiliar to their own. Liberalism, communism, socialism, fascism, capitalism and conservatism all conjure up different feelings for different people. Russ Stewart is connoisseur of isms. He’s been on all sides of the field and being a philosophy professor, validating or discussing different modes of thought is part of his passion. Aside from being a professor, he’s a former small business owner and a former Duluth city councilor . A jack of all trades if you will. Russ and I got together over beverages to talk about his time on the council, being a curmudgeon, and his recent lecture at UMD on humane libertarianism.

Reader: Talk a little bit about your time on the city council.
RS: I had never been directly involved in politics before getting on the council. When I moved back to duluth in 1992 I got involved with the Green Party at that time.  They seemed like a non-authoritarian but socially progressive party which resonated with me at that time in my blissful ignorance. And there’s a lot of good people in there. (The Green Party.) I don’t mean to insult people. I was recruited by the Green Party to run in the 3rd district against Marcia Hales. I was a little reluctant at first. I knocked on pretty much every door in the district that summer. I ended up winning by just a couple of percentage points. I went in their with real high ideals about all the things you can accomplish in politics, transform the world and make it a better place. All this pie in the sky, rose colored glasses, bullshit, basically.
 All the while my ego began to get puffed up. People that wouldn’t give me the time of day a year ago are coming up to me and they all want to talk to me now. It kind of gets in your head a little bit. At least it did with me.
After awhile I had an awakening. What’s really going on here is that i’m a schmuck. And these people are trying to use me to suck off the government teet. They all want something. You got these big developers coming for tax subsidies. And various public incentives. Everybody wanted something.  If you talk to people about my time on the council they’ll point out that there’s a point where he went from being this progressive patsy for the Duluth DFL establishment to someone who was speaking out against all the giveaways and all the bad money deals. Which didn’t make me any friends but I didn’t care anymore.
Reader: You recently did a lecture at UMD about humane libertarianism. Talk a little bit about it.
RS: Humans are social creatures and we come together and interact. And when you analyze human interaction you can categorize them into interactions where both parties come together voluntarily and walk away with benefit. You’ve got bananas, i’ve got apples, we trade and you’re happy and i’m happy. If i’m a banana farmer and you’re an apple farmer, you value bananas more than apples because you’re sick of eating apples. And the reverse is true for me. So we work out a mutually beneficial transaction and that’s where prosperity comes from. It’s very simple.
There’s also arrangements when two people come together and one person wins and the other one loses. But when that happens you have to ask, why would the loser participate in that transaction? There’s two fundamental reasons why that would happen. It’s because coercion has been used to force them by threat of violence to do something they wouldn’t otherwise do. Or they’d been deceived or lied to. What libertarianism does is try to remove coercion and deception because that’s where the lose end comes from. If everyone is engaging in mutually beneficial transactions you can know from the get-go that they’re benefitting because otherwise they wouldn’t do it.  If you want to create a happy society you want to remove coercion. Because that’s the number one way you get people to do what they wouldn’t otherwise do.
So what’s the fundamental feature of government? It’s the claim that they have a monopoly on violence. They can coerce you to pay for things you don’t want to pay for. They can coerce into engaging in behavior that you don’t want to engage in. They can coerce you into NOT engaging in behavior you do want to behave in and so on. If you remove or minimize that coercive element you return to a place where people are voluntarily transacting for mutual benefit.
Reader: How did you juggle owning a business, teaching and being on the council?
RS: They intertwined and basically destroyed my physical and mental health (laughing). I had a full time job teaching, was on the council and trying to run a small business. I figured out what my limits were when I did that much. I got really burnt out on a lot of things. With Robin Goodfellow, I ended up selling it one of my employees.
Reader: What inspires you?
RS: The great minds. People who synthesize ideas brilliantly.
Reader: What’s your greatest achievement?
RS: My job, teaching. Giving kids an opportunity to really engage their minds. I provided an opportunity to do what their culture tells them not to do; which is to critically reflect on what’s going on around them. To challenge them. I’ve been successful at getting people to think more critically.
Reader: What scares you?
RS: I think that it’s the expanding power of government. Especially the federal government.The militarization of local police forces. The increasing use of no-knock warrants for minor drug offenses. You give people power, and they will exercise it. My nightmare is that if politicians continue on their current course, which is doing essentially nothing, that there will be an economic problem, way worse than what we’ve seen. Just look at history. This is not an unprecedented story. Economist Herbert Stein once said, “If it can’t go on forever, then it will stop.” Can our current economic system go on forever?