The End of the (Unfree) World

Argentina celebrates victory over violence and incivility...

“The larger the government, the less efficient and productive is the economy. Slaves don’t produce with the enthusiasm, incentive, and imagination that free people do. Bureaucratic programs just don’t work as intended.”

~ Harry Browne, How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World: A Handbook for Personal Liberty (1973)

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

“They almost burned the guy to death in his car...”

Our amigo’s message sounded serious. More on the situation down in Argentina (and the Greatest Political Experiment of Our Time) in a second. But first...

We’ve been working on a personal project, dear reader. Perhaps you’ve noticed. Our goal, eloquently addressed by the above-quoted Harry Browne, is finding freedom in an unfree world. Spoiler alert: it ain’t easy!

This little (some might say “obsessive”) vocation has taken your editor all over the world... for more than decades. From nanny welfare states to squabbling theocracies have we roamed, faux democracies to geriatric republics, narcocracies to socialist dystopias to perennial ineptocracies and plenty more besides. Wherever we go, we examine the system, talk to the people, and try to figure out what works and (more commonly) what doesn’t. 

The answers are almost never simple... and typically we leave with more questions that we arrived with. But still we wander...and wonder. 

Born Free…

Here in Thailand, where we are holed up for the present, the locals are deservedly proud of their long history. Theirs is the only Southeast Asian state never to have been colonized by a Western power, for example...partly because Britain and France agreed to make the Chao Phraya valley a “buffer state” back in 1896...but we digress. 

Indeed, the word “Thai” actually means “free people” in the local language, though some etymologists insist that the term simply means “human beings,” and that the “free” part is implied (naturally). Either way, “born free” is not a bad place to start... if freedom is one’s ultimate goal. 

And yet... still the country is not without carnage and bloodshed, including palace revolts, lefty communist insurgencies, righty coup d'état’s, abusive military rule, student massacres and various other lamentable acts of demagoguery and oppression. We were surprised to discover, during our travels last year, a sizable Thai diaspora in Tbilisi, Georgia... apparently taking advantage of the latter’s lenient visa program to escape an unfavorable political situation here at home. 

Is there no place in this “unfree world” where man can be free?

Even as the search continues, we are forced to consider a very real possibility: Perhaps it is the journey itself, the “process” of thinking through freedom and its myriad implications that is important, and not the destination, which may well prove an unattainable mirage. Hmm. Let us reckon a little further still...

…Everywhere in Chains

“Man is born free,” Rousseau reminds us, “and everywhere he is in chains.” 

The exiled Genevan’s point, if we grasp it correctly, is that our natural state is one of liberty... of rights unalienable... of freedom. It is the world we make, held he, that makes us unfree. 

How does Rousseau, himself a scalawag of the highest order, resolve this conundrum? By supposing a “social contract,” of course, the deus ex machina of the Gordian philosophical knot, in which everyone is beholden to everyone else because of something Rousseau calls the “general will.”

“Each of us puts his person ... under the supreme direction of the general will.” 

Rousseau posits the body politic as a single entity, composed of each participating individual, in which the “common good” outweighs the rights of the component parts. Collectivism, in other words. 

“Let us set equal terms for the truce” Rousseau begins his treatise (quoting from Virgil’s epic poem, Aeneid). Departing from Hobbes’s cynical assertion that, without the civilizing agent of government, man would be left in a state in which existed “No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” Rousseau holds that force alone (such as exerted by the State) does not itself create right. 

Allow us to preempt your next question, dear and incisive reader: “Then why create a state in the first place?”

Perhaps it is useful here to consider the State not as a civilizing agent, as Hobbes had it, but as an expression of the many, varied and reliable ways in which man is uncivilized. This would be the inverse of what the much overpraised eugenics enthusiast, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, argued: “Taxation is the price we pay for civilization.”

Properly considered, civilization is the price we surrender when permitting the gang of thieves calling itself the State to rob, coerce and enslave us, to deny us our individual sovereignty. Which brings us back to the goings on down at the End of the Unfree World, where what we’ve been calling the “Greatest Political Experiment of Our Time” proceeds apace...

The End of the (Unfree) World

News overnight is that the Argentine senate approved (37-36) Javier Milei’s massive “Ley de Bases” reform bill. The sprawling package, which has been debated for months in congress, is key to Sr. Milei’s libertarian platform and includes measures for large scale privatization of the economy, something union mobsters and corrupted members of the “political caste” are none-too-sanguine about. Hence the violent protests, which the bloodlusting media were (shocker!) quick to beat up for the sake of cheap entertainment. 

And yet, the widening chasm between those who would resort to violence to get their way and those who choose civilized debate and discussion, appears to be working in Milei’s favor. 

“Today there are two Argentinas,” announced Vice President Victoria Villarruel, as she cast the deciding vote in favor of the reform. “A violent Argentina that sets a car on fire, throws rocks and debates the exercise of democracy, and another Argentina with workers waiting with great pain and sacrifice for the change that they voted for.” 

Ahead of the vote, Milei recognized its importance in a post on X: 

“If we achieve this it will not be a triumph for us but for society as a whole, which will have left behind 100 years of statism and decadence.”

A sentiment echoed by his mate, Elon Musk:

“If they don't stop Milei, Argentina will have growth and prosperity like it hasn't had in the last 100 years.”

And here’s Milei again, after the vote:

“Tonight is a triumph for the Argentine people and the first step toward the recovery of our greatness.”

¡Viva la libertad, carajo!

In the end, the idea is not to privilege the collective will of the body politic, general or otherwise, but to advance the cause of individual freedom in our lifetimes. “Paso a paso,” as they say in Argentina, the journey continues. 

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

Cheers,

Joel Bowman

P.S. It’s happening, dear reader. At this unique moment in history, we have access to tools that can spread the idea of liberty like never before.

State media outlets… government propaganda mills… bloviating presstitutes in the mainstream press… all are falling out of favor with common sense readers, who are turning to independent sources – like these humble Notes – for their information and ideas.

As such, we are especially grateful for the generous support of our dear members, who understand the importance of promoting free markets… free minds… and free people.

If you are not yet a member but would like to support the work we are doing here, please consider joining our growing community of critical thinkers, free market advocates and spiritual anarchists today.

The evolution is here. Join us today and share the news…