Less Government is Stronger Government

Just some random thoughts…

So the UK government has announced £81 billion in cuts. The markets will free up, unemployed public servants with their severe lack of real world skills will find themselves struggling to impress employers – though, the free market place will provide them with many menial tasks, and prosperity may gradually flourish across the echelons.

But the state has just invested in it’s long term survival.

The investment is to some degree futile, nevertheless let’s just say it extended it’s shelf life. The right-wing is in power and it has a plan to save the ship. Even if it will “hit the poorest the hardest”. Which is by no means a given. Free markets, in principal, increase prosperity across the board. And a reduction of the state will logically lead to a larger market place  - black and legal. But this is the state taking a breather. It knows we will submit at any time to the bribery of the Bank Of England. It will have worked out a more advanced and left-friendly way of enslaving us within an election or 2, or 3, soon enough. Freeing the slaves from the cotton fields actually made them more efficient tax slaves. So the state knows it’s time to feed the pigs. Some of us are looking quite hungry now.

So this great letting off of steam offers the state a chance to look around, recoup fiscal losses, conquer some foreign resources, gain credibility and soon it will have some nice new carrots to offer us. Before marching us back into the next mind crushing labour camp and the bloodier body-blowing battlefields.

The majority of libertarians, of the Mises variety will celebrate the expansion of a resourceful, entrepreneurial and successful private sector. So confident are they that this signals the end of state oppression, never to be seen again. The smugness in those intellectual circles seems some what deluded. Minarchism is just the sleeping state. It will return reenergised and ready for action.

In an early Freedomain Radio podcast, Molyneux advocates stuffing the state to bursting point. Support all the wars, pay more taxes, employ more public servants, print more fiat paper… He compares this to the abused wife getting her husband drunk and then giving him the car keys. It’s an interesting proposition that appears to favour longer term gains for freedom.

But why should this absolutely be the case. And it seems a rather violent way of achieving ideals. The collateral damage of increasing the state could mimic the USSR. Not to mention the huge strides towards globalism undertaken accross many if not all states. Equally I still believe, the more mainstream libertarian minarchist solution is just as, in fact even more hazardous a journey to emancipation. Molyneux advocates feeding both the right wing and the left wing’s ambitions to cumulative breaking point. The libertarians advocate starving both the left and right wing.

So which solution is best? Which is more ethical? The question is, when does cyclical statist devastation end? From WW2 to the massive human exterminations of Stalin and Mao, how do we know if the world is not headed for it’s next extreme cull. If we are on the brink of the overall decline of the state then no doubt the last spasms of life will be far less catastrophic than those in the supposed apex of statism in the 20th century.  But do we know if we are at this point? How can we ever know? Until this question can be answered, we can only test the waters in small ways. The odds are too high to favour either Molyneux or the Minarchists.

So what action to take? I’m half inclined to go all out and support the left wing in Defending the Public Services, print the money off and indebt everyone. For all I complain of government regulations and projects squeezing the market, I don’t feel that that is an excuse for entrepreneurial failure in the face of adversity. So I have a stake in stuffing the beast to breaking point, supporting the populist altruistic values of the left seems enough faced with the shock-abuse caused by a militaristic right wing activity. Even if the left causes more turmoil in the home economy… it’s still no excuse for entrepreneurial failure.

Minarchists are not so far from anarchist understanding. The difference is a minarchist will always attempt to preserve the integrity of the last ditch of the state, the convincingly ethically-worded constitution, for example. And it really is a small step from there to total freedom. I agree with Molyneux, the state should get stuffed. But can we stuff it with poisonous candy instead of giving it sharp knives to play with the livestock? Surely the west is going to be more able to withstand economic turmoil better than the rest of the world can tolerate depleted uranium. Are we not in a better logistical position to develop self sufficient, crisis-averse, sustainability than in lands with less infrastructure? This is the more ethical approach. When building the house of left and right wing cards that is the state, let’s build an imbalance into the foundations of the hierarchy to encourage the collapse… and let’s favour the left over the right and finish it once and for good. I guess this depends on weather we are collectively able to achieve universal action, which I don’t think we are, in the statist paradigm.

And who knows what kind of cancer the state is. Perhaps it will eventually entirely devour us in a radioactive genetically modified soup. But if WW1 and 2 were the last great right-wing landmarks in time, and post-war USSR and China the last great left-wing landmarks in time, perhaps this is the time for the political entrepreneurs to turn their backs on the commanding heights and look towards the free market.

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