If we look around, then, at the crucial problem areas of our society—the areas of crisis and failure—we find in each and every case a “red thread” marking and uniting them all: the thread of government. In every one of these cases, government either has totally run or heavily influenced the activity. — Murray N. Rothbard, For a New Liberty [emphasis mine]
As I write this wildfires are still burning around Los Angeles, and social media posts are aflame about the $770 payments government is offering to victims of the disaster. Further igniting their rage is the fact that billions of their former dollars continue to flow into contractors pockets to fight wars almost anywhere except here. Adding to this was the discovery that fire hydrants had no water, the LA fire department had ignored “extraordinary warnings of life-threatening winds,” and the reservoir in Pacific Palisades was dry.
And where was LA mayor Karen Bass? Attending a cocktail party in Ghana when the Palisades fire erupted.
Planned Chaos
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Since government collects its revenue coercively, either through direct taxation or monetary inflation, citizens have little recourse for protest beyond what they are already doing. The standard practice of marching with protest signs or disruptive sit-ins might offer some psychological relief but not much else. Government doesn’t take orders from citizens unless they’re closely connected in some nefarious way, such as through blackmail, cronyism, or lucrative campaign donations.
Anger often drives people to the polls periodically but government controls those as well. Not by coincidence is “none of the above” ever found on the ballot.
The good news is government, as it exists, with its Ponzi scheme fiscal gap of some $200 trillion in unfunded liabilities and its insatiable appetite for meddling where the public can’t see it, will likely spend itself into oblivion, while exponentially-rising technology will be available to create a better life for the rest of us.
The lust for intervention
“God is power,” wrote George Orwell in 1984, and to interventionists of all persuasions for whom economic law is flexible and uncaring, “God” finds its realization in the State. As Mises wrote in Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis,
In order to promote their plans [interventionists] flatly denied that there is any such thing as economic law. In their opinion governments are free to achieve all they aim at without being restrained by an inexorable regularity in the sequence of economic phenomena. Like the German socialist Ferdinand Lassalle, they maintain that the State is God.
Capitalism, socialism’s opposite, is a socio-economic system based on an individual’s right to life, including property rights, characterized by private ownership of the means of production, voluntary exchange, and unhampered markets governed by profit and loss. It is a system that allows people to dispose of what they earn in a manner of their choosing. It also forbids any legal claim on the public for one’s losses, since that would violate their rights.
Capitalism rightly understood is laissez-faire capitalism, a hands-off approach of government to the market. There are no government bailouts of too-big-to-fails under laissez-faire. Charity would replace welfare, and government ideally would be non-coercive, admittedly still a novel concept for most, but one deserving close attention. (See Robert P. Murphy’s Chaos Theory for starters.)
But for those who oppose it capitalism means profit-seeking by any means necessary, and to help ensure a profit firms partner with government and media allies to curtail competition and censor, ridicule or attack criticism. Recall the hysterical reaction of legacy media and government authorities to ivermectin for treating Covid-19 when numerous clinical trials demonstrated its safety and effectiveness. Whose interests were being protected then?
More government, less capitalism
A recent Joe Rogan interview with Mel Gibson on X, in which three of Gibson’s friends found ivermectin, fenbendazole, and methylene blue apparently helpful for treating cancer, ends with them wondering why this finding is not well-known. They blame the profit motive, apparently forgetting that biotech firms have close ties with government.
We hear “climate change” imposed as the reason for almost any crisis or problem, but capitalism, because renewable energy is not yet profitable, is blamed for climate change. Never mind that climate science, as with any science, is never settled, and that what is called “climate change” is a political narrative that stands for more government and less CO2, and that the name it replaced, “global warming,” was an open invitation for any high schooler to refute.
Since humans exhale, globalists and others who claim to be benefactors of humanity have made it clear that prosperity for all requires that “all” be reduced significantly first. Thus, a 2023 Scientific American article argues that Population Decline Will Change the World for the Better. The World Economic Forum, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the United Nations Population Fund, and The Club of Rome — all well-funded and all want fewer people around.
The UN’s 2030 agenda and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals, which seeks to “to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure prosperity for all,” originally lacked any strategy about population control. But according to a Population Matters 2019 report, “if this vision is to have any chance of materializing governments must now add an 18th goal: ‘Dampen population growth.’”
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Rather than speculate about how a government might “dampen” some portion of its citizens in an undisclosed manner, the report insists it’s referring to “voluntary, rights-based family planning,” which proved successful in Bangladesh from 1977-1996 when married women of reproductive age were given free contraceptives. Cynics who say anyone advocating for population reduction should be the first to volunteer, clearly are not on-board with this glorious crusade.
A cynic might also say the Pfizer Covid vaccine has done a notable job of reducing population numbers, especially among the elderly and young.
Conclusion
In his popular The Affluent Society, John Kenneth Galbraith agreed with Rothbard that government was “the focus of our social failure” — but advocated instead for more government spending. I suggest we try a different approach: Protect ourselves as best we can until government enters irrelevance then let the free market breathe.
