The last organisation I worked for was a media company. Among a staff packed with lefties were three libertarians, including myself. Now I work for a bank, with far more staff in the building and I know of three libertarians. So, per head, the bank has fewer libertarians than the media company. I find this surprising.

Why aren’t more bankers drawn into the movement? Surely we are pro-banker? We are pro-market. We distrust most of the worst banker-bashers and to my ears at least we don’t take part ourselves. We even have useful investable economic ideas. Bankers should be paying attention and feeling welcome.

Perhaps this is not true of other bits of the libertarian movement? At Benevolent Laissez Faire our keynote speaker Yaron Brook certainly seemed to think so. He described the “hatred of bankers” as “universal” even in our community. Interesting.

The rest of Yaron’s segment on bankers, below, is refreshing and delightful. Yes bankers play an important role and as professionals engaged all day in difficult choices about confusing measurements of reality – as people engaged constantly in truth discovery – there is nothing more noble that pursuing truth, even and especially for profit. 

If we managed to separate state and banking, then this would be plain to see.