Ending the "Statist" Quo

A Libertarian Revolution at the End of the World...

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“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.”

~ Murray Rothbard, from On the Ethics of Liberty (Ch. 23)

Joel Bowman, with today’s Note From the End of the World...

A special note of gratitude before we begin today, dear reader. We spent a good part of yesterday afternoon dashing off thankful replies: “G’day [reader’s name]. Welcome aboard and thanks for your support. Cheers!”

After Monday’s message – Going Solo - Why we left our post at an established publication to pursue these humble Notes full time – we experienced a veritable Niagara of new members writing in with messages of goodwill and encouragement. 

Please know that your support has given these Notes a great boost to start the next leg of our journey. We’re thankful in the way only a brash entrepreneur, unsure of the viability of the ledge on which he now stands, can be. 

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Spreading the Word

As faithful readers know, we’re following along with the Greatest Political Experiment of Our Time...and we’re thrilled to report, as mentioned yesterday, that those butterfly wing flaps felt down here at the End of the World appear to be sending ripples out across the globe... from Buenos Aires to Berlin, Tierra del Fuego to Terra Australis, one end of the Americas to the other... 

We’ll get to all that in good time. But let us bring everyone up to speed... and introduce a few new concepts that will help guide us going forward. 

By now you know about the historic rise of the world’s first libertarian president, Sr. Javier Milei. Perhaps you’ve even seen a few of his speeches, either on the steps of the Congreso building down here in Buenos Aires, where he broke ranks with his political ancestors and boldly told voters “No Hay Plata” (there’s no money)... that the situation would get worse before it got better... and that the project he had in mind, that of reversing 75 years of socialist rot, would take decades, not weeks.

Or perhaps you caught him at Klauss Schwabstika’s World Economic Forum (WEF) summit in Davos, where he told the coven of vampires gathered around the cauldron, straight to their wan and warty faces:

You are not the solution... you are the problem!

Maybe you even caught our coverage of his appearance as guest speaker at the AynRandCon 2024 event a couple of weeks back (we covered the conference from our seat, front and center, for our Notes readers. Feel free to catch up on Part I and Part II). 

Ideas into Actions

But many are those who, impressed though they are at Sr. Milei’s high flown words and charismatic delivery, want to know more about the philosophy that undergirds his actions. They want to know, rightly, that the movement does not rest on the shoulders of one man, to borrow the Rand’s beloved Atlas imagery... but on sound, rational ideas capable of outliving a political cycle, a presidency, that will stand for generations to come, much the way as the revolutionary ideas of the Founding Fathers preserved the Republic... until they didn’t. 

After all, there exists no shortage of parasites in government, here as elsewhere, who benefit from the feeding time known in these Notes as the statist quo. Their very livelihood depends on not derailing the gravy train. As Milei himself observed when we saw him speak a fortnight ago...

“You hear a lot of politicians in this country who say they want change, who have politics in their mouths. But they don’t want change. Not really. They have their fingers on the markets. They depend on the system. In reality, they want to maintain the status quo, they want to maintain their privileges.”

Let’s begin with the concept of libertarianism itself, the radical notion that human beings are not the property of the state. That it is, in the end, the government that works for the people... not the other way around. It was the great American thinker – and OG of the social distancing movement – Henry David Thoreau, who dared take this line of thinking to its natural conclusion. Wrote he, at the beginning of his must read essay On the Duty of 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 I also believe – “That government is best which governs not at all”; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government they have.

~ Henry David Thoreau, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience

Rules vs Rulers

In a similar vein does Sr. Milei describe himself as an “anarcho-capitalist.” The term anarchist itself derives from the Greek αναρχία, romanized: anarkhia; where “αν” (“an”) means “without” and “αρχία” (“arkhia”) means “ruler.”

Without ruler, in plain words... but not without rules. (Yes, real anarchists still follow the agreed upon order, from royal flush down to high card, when they play poker... they just don’t force others to play their hands under threat of fine, imprisonment and/or death. Voluntary participation; it’s not that hard.)

Ah, but how does one change the “state of affairs” when one is philosophically opposed to a state at all? Short of burning its hallowed institutions to the ground and affording the ruling class the high-lamppost–short-rope treatment, what can be done without becoming, oneself, “part of the problem”? 

Tempting as that may be – during his presidential campaign, Sr. Milei more than once promised to torch Argentina’s Central Bank...a move we referred to cautiously at the time as “a good start” – surely there is a more peaceful way to usher in the kind of change voters desire. 

Astute readers will have noted above Thoreau’s dangling qualifier... men will only have that government which governs not at all “when they are prepared for it.”

How, then, to prepare not only ourselves... but the world? That modest subject we set for ourselves next time. 

Stay tuned for more Notes From the End of the World...

Cheers,

Joel Bowman

P.S. Thanks again to our dear Notes members, old and new. We’re ever grateful for your generous and ongoing support. Owing to your support, we’re now #27 in World Politics here on Substack, a mighty run having only began our little project this year!

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