Take Comfort, Libertarians,

Bad news: Government is getting bigger and more oppressive.

Good news: As it gets bigger it also gets weaker.

Better news: Technology is making us, as individuals, stronger.

How do we know government is getting weaker?  Because it is sustained by central bank counterfeiting and debt, and the lies of state sycophants.   How long can massive fraud last?  To say that government is corrupt is saying water is wet.  The whole apparatus of government — a bandit gang writ large, in Rothbard’s famous depiction — is an affront to civilization and human dignity.  Yet it’s the absence of government — anarchy — that we’re supposed to avoid at all costs. We’re avoiding it, all right, and we’re paying dearly for it.

He also considers the progression to be in terms of price-performance, meaning that “all of these technologies quickly become so inexpensive as to become almost free.” [SIN, p. 430]  It’s not the case that only the rich will have access to them.

But what about government?  Won’t it feel threatened and impede innovation?  As Kurzweil points out, “the nature of wealth and power in the age of intelligent machines will encourage the open society. Oppressive societies will find it hard to provide the economic incentives needed to pay for computers and their development.” [p. 128]

He brings up a crucial point: The law of accelerating returns has always operated under government-controlled conditions.  Government wars, depressions, genocides, currency debauchery, regulations, etc. have not slowed it down, or at least not for long.  To repeat, the law is inexorable.

Innovation has a way of working around the limits imposed by institutions. The advent of decentralized technology empowers the individual to bypass all kinds of restrictions, and does represent a primary means for social change to accelerate.  [SIN, p. 472; my emphasis]

Technology in the hands of the government can be a nightmare.  But as it disperses into the lives of individuals it becomes empowering.  Over time it quietly undermines government power, as Gary North tells us:

Technological innovation is not going to be stopped by any local government, state government, national government, or the World Trade Organization. Technological innovation is about as close to an autonomous process as anything in history.

Technological innovation is decentralized on a scale never before seen. Because of the Internet, because of 3-D printing, and because of innovation of all kinds, technological innovation is a tsunami that is headed for all government welfare programs, all government central planning, all government regulatory agencies, every labor union, and every good old boy network. Technological innovation is simply sweeping everything before it.

This is going to change the whole shape of civilization, and it isn’t going to take three generations. It is fairly far advanced now, and another 40 years of this is going to change the political landscape entirely.

I say 20 years, but either way government is doomed, liberty is enhanced.

For libertarians, that’s a comforting thought this holiday season.

Reprinted with permission from Barbarous Relic.

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