The Central State Is Over

Imagine that your Uncle Willie has, for the past twenty years, indulged in the habit of drinking a quart of Scotch each day. He now suffers from what any competent doctor, after numerous tests, recognizes as cirrhosis of the liver. His doctor informs him that a liver transplant is his only hope for recovery; that such an operation would be both very risky and expensive; and would require Willie to give up his profligate habit. What would you expect Willie to do? If he was like most people, he would take his symptoms to another physician, until he found one who would offer him a remedy that didn’t require changing his lifestyle! Perhaps switching to a different brand of Scotch will be enough to save him.and, in Great Britain, the recently elected head of the Labour Party, and equally ambitious socialist, Jeremy Corbyn. “This time for sure,” the intellectually benighted assure themselves.

No longer able to bamboozle intelligent minds that insist upon factually-based, and analytically sound reasoning, the state turns to its default position: the use of whatever amount of violence is required to secure obedience to its will. Desperate men and women are immune to calm, reasoned discourse; preferring the reactive impulses of their reptilian brains. Those disinclined to burden their minds, or to interrupt the sense of haste with which they believe problems need to be confronted, may find the twentieth-century’s “strong man” approach more satisfying. Herein is to be found the attraction many have to Donald Trump, not simply as a comic figure to annoy supporters of the political process, but as the man who can do whatever needs doin’ to “get things done!” In a recent public opinion poll, 30% of those responding said they would accept a military takeover as a solution to current problems, the kind of thinking that is also reflected in a widespread indifference to militarized police forces in American towns and cities.

It being the nature of political systems to employ violence as its most reliable tool, the state has had to elevate this practice from being a last resort to its first response. The demonstrated failure of socialist and other central planning regimes to swindle men and women out of the control of their lives and other property interests, has combined with a growing popular skepticism over such surrogate “threats” as terrorism, climate change, immigration, Islamic religion, and whatever other “peril du jour” the statist chefs might cook up, to discredit efforts to foster peace, liberty, and social order. Whatever menace the statists hold up for the gullible to ingest, always has as its only means of defense an enlarged and more powerful central state. But fortunately increasing numbers of people are beginning to see through this racket.

Rothbard’s warning extends far beyond the realm of economics to include all of our thinking – and the social systems our thinking produces – about how men and women are to live decently in society. The study of chaos informs us that the more complex a society becomes, the more that institutions – particularly the state – try to control and manage the complexity, increasing the likelihood that the institutional order will end up destroying not only the informal networks that hold society together, but the institutional order itself. It is such dynamics that are also bringing about the end of Western Civilization.