Sunset on the State

The law of opposites and the modern nation state's date with destiny...

(Sunset over our friend’s campo, about 5 hours west of Buenos Aires. Photo: Dear wifey.)

“What was scattered gathers, what was gathered blows away.”

~ Heraclitus (c. 6th century BC)

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

Tide comes in... tide goes out. Sun rises... sun sets. Empire rises... empire declines... and falls.

Where are we, dear reader, upon the long and winding road?

Celebrating another journey around the sun this past weekend, your editor got to thinking about revolutions... about cosmic cycles... and about the ancient concept of enantiodromia.

The theory, first floated by the pre-Socratic philosopher, Heraclitus, holds that all things are always and everywhere in the process of yielding to their opposite. Wrote the clever ol’ Ephesian (from his extant works, Fragments):

“Cold things become warm, and what is warm cools; what is wet dries, and the parched is moistened. And it is the same thing in us that is quick and dead, awake and asleep, young and old; the former are shifted and become the latter, and the latter in turn are shifted and become the former.”

We are not yet at the half century mark, flâneuring this pale blue dot, but already time’s inexorable pull makes itself known. The years pass by more quickly. The body does not recover as it once did. As Ernest Dowson mused, (channeling the great Roman poet, Horace), “They are not long, these days of wine and roses.”

Already, half the countries on the planet are known to us... but half remain hidden, “beyond the misty dream.” We have read (and reread) half of Proust’s spiraling epic, In Search of Lost Time, but there remains time enough to regain the rest.

So where does that leave us, dear reader, at this particular moment along the journey? Are we optimistic about the future? Or pessimistic? Is our copa half full, or half empty?

Hmm...

Bulls and Bears

Looking around us, we notice enantiodromia performing its silent work everywhere, turning the parched sodden and scattering what was once gathered to the eternal winds.

Markets turn from bullish to bearish... then bullish once again. Nations lurch from times of war, to moments of peace... only to take up arms anew. The government grows and grows... until somebody comes along with a chainsaw, and chops it down to size.

And what of the State of the State? With the motosierras a buzzin’ and Team DOGE going to work on the flabby underbelly of the beast, it’s fair to ask to what extent we featherless bipeds have outgrown our need for Big Daddy government.

Half a lifetime ago, we could scarcely have imagined that one of the world’s most dysfunctional States would be overhauled by a man who openly declared himself – during the election, no less! – to be an “enemy of the state.”

Or that said man, having gone on to become president of his nation, should one day gift a golden chainsaw to the richest human on the planet, who would in turn unleash it on his own unwieldy government, the most powerful and far-reaching in history.

Or that half the citizens of those nations would cheer, while the other half writhed in agony, as the multi-headed hydras squirmed and gnashed their teeth to the sound of chains ripping into tender flesh.

And yet, difficult as it may be to fathom, nation states themselves are not some permanent fixture in the cosmic firmament. In fact, the very concept is relatively new. Prior to the Treaty of Westphalia, in 1648, national borders were constantly under dispute, or as Heraclitus might prefer, in flux. (Heraclitus’s own birthplace, Ephesus, was at turns under the yoke of dozens of tribes and conquerors, including the Attics, Ionians, Greeks, Persians, Romans, Byzantines, Ottomans and, most recently, the Turks.)

Instead of fixed nation states, the Old World was divided into multi-ethnic empires. In Europe, the Austrian, Russian, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and British Empires, along with the Kingdoms of France and Hungary, vied for geographic and political supremacy, securing their claims through a complex interplay of strategic marriages and foreign conquests. In Asia, meanwhile, a similar game was played out among Islamic caliphates and, further east, Chinese and Mongol dynasties, such as the Tang, Yuan and Qing.

A Date with Destiny

That a fixed geographical claim should be governed by a group of privileged earthly mortals, claiming an authority derived from the will of the majority, to be limited by a constitution to which no living human is signatory, would have seemed as unimaginable to our ancestors as the Divine Right of Kings appears to many today.

And yet, each political system has its time in the sun, both at dawn... and dusk.

As of this writing, in the second month of the year 2025, the federal government of the United States of America employs around 3 million people. It carries a national debt of $36.5 trillion, which equals $107k per man, woman and child in the country, or $323k per taxpayer. To that staggering debt load is added $5.64 billion per day, equivalent to $234.99 million per hour, $3.92 million per minute, or $65,275 per second.

So far, the Department of Governmental Efficiency (DOGE) claims to have “saved” $65 billion from the total government outlays... which is about 11.5 days worth of spending.

Although that number amounts to a tiny percentage of the overall size of the state today, it would have been enough to pay off the entire federal debt in 1941, the year America entered WWII.

It is an incontrovertible fact that nothing lasts forever. From the mightiest ruler to the lowliest footsoldier, the greatest empire to the tiniest fiefdom, the brightest dawn to the darkest night; every end has to begin somewhere.

That the modern day nation state has a date with destiny, we have little doubt. Whether it is voluntarily dismantled... or collapses under its own weight... whether it comes to pass next year, or half a lifetime from now, we only hope to be around to see it.

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

Cheers,

Joel Bowman

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