Beyond the Statist Quo

On life, liberty and the quiet art of minding one's own business...

“The State is a gang of thieves writ large.”

~ Murray Rothbard

Joel Bowman with today’s Note From the End of the World: Buenos Aires, Argentina…

Warfare… welfare… printing money out the wazoo and generally piling insult upon misery. What’s a government good for, anyway? And what the alternative look like?

When Benjamin Franklin emerged from Independence Hall after the Constitutional Convention in 1787, a member of the crowd gathered there supposedly called out to him, “What have we got, doctor… a monarchy or a republic?”

To which the Founding Father famously replied, “A republic… if you can keep it.”

That’s the tale, anyway, now an indelible part of American folklore. Surveying the scene from our southern perch, we wonder what Messrs. Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, et al., would make of the current bread and circuses act that passes for American-style, constitutional governance.

Most weekday mornings we scan the papers. An occupational hazard of sorts, we do not suffer the “news” in the hope of discovering some truth, the way a religious man might consult his holy book. Instead, we’re mostly in it for the entertainment value. Rarely do the popular presses disappoint.

There we find, like a pile of dirty laundry hung out for the whole neighbors to see, the usual gnashing of teeth and wringing of hands… accompanied, of course, with the hoary old charges of fraud, farce and fanaticism emanating from (and thoroughly deserved by) both sides.

One side pretends to desire a smaller government... while blowing multi-trillion dollar holes in the hull of the USS National Debt. (At over $39 trillion and counting, that steaming pile crossed the 100% of GDP mark just last week.) Meanwhile, the other side claims to be tirelessly looking out for the little guy... which is true enough, if by “little guy” you mean weapons contractors, greasy-palmed lobbyists, Big Pharma, Big Tech, Big Banking, Big Spying and the rest of the filthy rich G-men north of Richmond.

Everybody knows the game is rigged, of course… which is why, at just 10%, approval for Congress is at a near record low. (Imagine any other job where 90% of your constituents/customers disapproved of the job you were doing… and expecting to remain in business!)

And so, thinking people are apt to ask: What’s to restrain this sorry bunch of clowns and knaves, if not the Constitution itself? The Founding Fathers’ general idea, if we read our history books correctly, was to establish a government of laws, not of men. That is, for the Constitution (and the Bill of Rights) to restrain man’s will to political power.

But look around… what do you see?

Mobjority Rule

Instead of tradition… we have “progress.” In lieu of common sense and justice for all... there’s “diversity,” “inclusion” and “equity” (for some). In place of hallowed institutions… we see spineless, candidate-shaped meat bags. And in place of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”… we find strife, insecurity and a breathtaking sense of entitlement.

But could it have been otherwise? Might our better angels have protected us from the tyranny of the mobjority? Might those checks and balances, so carefully crafted, so artfully drafted, have secured us against the whims and caprices of our mere and fellow mortals?

The world watches the great American experiment with intense interest… as though we yearning masses, huddled on foreign shores, were peering into our own future. After all, where goes America, so goes “the west.”

Of course, no empire lasts forever… no currency stands eternal… just as, to quote that other great 20th century philosopher, Jim Morrison, no one here gets out alive. Four score and ten years after Mr. Franklin emerged from Independence Hall, visions of a republic still dancing in his head, the writing was already on the wall.

Lysander Spooner, in his classic pamphlet No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority, sensed as early as 1876 the rot within the system when he wrote:

But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain - that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.

Like a splinter under the cuticle, Spooner’s irrefutable logic gnaws at one’s sense of ease and comfort. There are those who will contend that it is not the Constitution itself that is imperfect, rather the errant men who fail to adhere to its directives. This argument is true enough, as far as it goes, but what good is a political document that does not take into account the nature of the body politic?

Imagine the scientist who claimed: “The medicine works perfectly in the lab...it’s only when we administer it to actual humans that the adverse effects show up. It’s not the medicine that’s the problem, therefore, but the people taking it.”

A Long Shot

In other words, what use is a document that works in theory but not in practice? Men are wont to err. Such is our nature. If there is a gun in the room, someone’s going to pick it up. And is not the State, with its claimed monopoly on violence, the biggest gun of all?

For voters laboring under the “lesser of two evils” fallacy, who see the sorry options before them and reach desperately for the Nauzene, who will cast their ballot anyway with a heavy heart, knowing full well that the illusion of choice isn’t the same as real change, there must be plenty who silently wonder... “Is this all there is?”

As usual, there’s always more to the story…

Happily, there exists plenty of real world demand for things like education, infrastructure, healthcare, dispute resolution, criminal adjudication, security, etc., along with price signals and profit incentives to help guide those willing to provide them. Is it really so bold to think that the free market could do a better job than the DMV or the USPS when it comes to satisfying the needs and desires of voluntary customers?

The market already provides hundreds, if not thousands of options when it comes to mundane things like, say, salad dressing... and yet, no man in his right mind would surrender even such a trivial responsibility to the Federal Department of Condiments and Dressings. (One shudders to imagine the bland, imitation gruel-like result.) And yet, when it comes to goods and services infinitely more important, like those mentioned above, we surrender to bloated State monopolies, run by hacks and mountebanks, with nary a flinch.

As the great Murray Rothbard once wrote:

“On the free market, it is a happy fact that the maximization of the wealth of one person or group redounds to the benefit of all; but in the political realm, the realm of the State, a maximization of income and wealth can only accrue parasitically to the State and its rulers at the expense of the rest of society.”

Anarcho-capitalists – Rothbard, Spooner, Tolstoy, and Milei, to name a few – are often decried as naive, unrealistic, out of touch. And perhaps that is true. But what then are we to make of the man who hands his most precious liberties over to the State, along with all the tanks and all the prisons, the power to make (and break) laws and to print money ad infinitum, to tax its citizens at home and make war abroad, and who then says, in the form of a document no living person has even signed: “Restrain thyself.”

Come, who is being naive now?

Out of the Darkness

Another go-to argument for apologists of the statist quo runs, “But has it ever been done before, this voluntary society of yours?”

Dear and patient reader, there is a reason our research departments and exploration teams are not brimming with such folk and why their names appear on precisely zero patents. It ought to go without saying that, just because something hasn’t happened is no reason why it can’t or won’t. There was, after all, a time before man set foot on the moon, a moment pre-Internet, an era before Prometheus stole fire from the gods. Then, the impossible happened... and people without imaginations were emancipated from a future that mirrored exactly the past.

Even so, if Argentina followed Singapore’s example, allowing the market to flourish in place of government corruption and ineptitude, if the long-suffering people of the Pampas traded coercion for cooperation, violence for voluntarism, force for freedom, statists everywhere would have to find a new reason to justify their beloved shackles.

Recall it was the great American writer (and quintessential flâneur), Henry David Thoreau, who observed at the outset of his masterful essay Civil Disobedience:

I heartily accept the motto,—“That government is best which governs least;” and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe,—“That government is best which governs not at all;” and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.

Now then, is one in a hundred men prepared? One in a thousand? A million?

Or are we condemned, like the aforementioned Titan, to have our substance eaten out, day after day? Let us know your thoughts below…

And, as always, stay tuned for more Notes From the End of the World…

Cheers,

Joel Bowman

P.S. “I’ve been reading your Notes since the beginning,” writes Edward P, a dear reader. “Thought it time to ante-up!”

Why thank you, kind sir!

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