What If They Made a State and No One Used It?
Private and public continue to exist side by side. But which is favored by the direction of history? Services that make life better last and those that do not lose energy and die, even when they are funded by government.
Government can prolong a useless function but not forever. Technology is an inexorable force. Government can slow it down but it can’t stop it. The private sector keeps getting ever more amazing while the government’s services — all over the world — keep getting worse.
In every area of life, the trend is obvious and it is intensified by the digital revolution, which opened up a new frontier for entrepreneurs to innovate outside government systems. The new innovations have become essential to our lives.
This is a much more effective path toward liberty than conventional politics. All over the world, people are suffering under the weight of central planning, regulation, high taxation, barriers to trade, and monopolies over education, banking, money, and so many other areas. People are clamoring for more room to breath, create, and serve. But how do we get from here to there? Innovation is the productive path that is making the difference.
They can build the state. But they can’t make people use it, especially not if better alternatives exist. There are thousands and millions of ways to leave leviathan today. They surround us, from Uber taxi to Bitcoin to homeschooling to private medical services to online pharmacies to private environmental preserves.
Name any seemingly essential service that government has offered in the 20th century and you can name a cheaper, more effective, more innovative, and more accessible private alternative. There is nothing that states can do that needs to be done that markets cannot do better. The current technology trajectory is proving the point, many times over.
The result is political instability. A paradigm shift. Obsolescence of the public sector. The growing irrelevance of power. Ever less dependent on, and hence loyalty to, the coercive power structure and ever more cultural, economic, and social reliance on the structures that society creates for itself. The tolerance for taxation, slavery, spying, regulation, and war begins to decline. Eventually it dies because it is unsustainable without public support. That’s the story of how human liberty prevails over tyranny. It could be the story of our near-term future.
This is a peaceful path to reform. It is not a certain path but looking around the world today, it is one that is most productive of human needs and also the one most threatening to the political elite. The ruling elite won’t go without a fight but increasingly they will be fighting people who are already discovering a better way of life than to live at others’ expense.
Read complete article by Jeffrey Tucker here: https://tucker.liberty.me/what-if-they-made-a-state-and-no-one-used-it/
Private and public continue to exist side by side. But which is favored by the direction of history? Services that make life better last and those that do not lose energy and die, even when they are funded by government.
Government can prolong a useless function but not forever. Technology is an inexorable force. Government can slow it down but it can’t stop it. The private sector keeps getting ever more amazing while the government’s services — all over the world — keep getting worse.
In every area of life, the trend is obvious and it is intensified by the digital revolution, which opened up a new frontier for entrepreneurs to innovate outside government systems. The new innovations have become essential to our lives.
This is a much more effective path toward liberty than conventional politics. All over the world, people are suffering under the weight of central planning, regulation, high taxation, barriers to trade, and monopolies over education, banking, money, and so many other areas. People are clamoring for more room to breath, create, and serve. But how do we get from here to there? Innovation is the productive path that is making the difference.
They can build the state. But they can’t make people use it, especially not if better alternatives exist. There are thousands and millions of ways to leave leviathan today. They surround us, from Uber taxi to Bitcoin to homeschooling to private medical services to online pharmacies to private environmental preserves.
Name any seemingly essential service that government has offered in the 20th century and you can name a cheaper, more effective, more innovative, and more accessible private alternative. There is nothing that states can do that needs to be done that markets cannot do better. The current technology trajectory is proving the point, many times over.
The result is political instability. A paradigm shift. Obsolescence of the public sector. The growing irrelevance of power. Ever less dependent on, and hence loyalty to, the coercive power structure and ever more cultural, economic, and social reliance on the structures that society creates for itself. The tolerance for taxation, slavery, spying, regulation, and war begins to decline. Eventually it dies because it is unsustainable without public support. That’s the story of how human liberty prevails over tyranny. It could be the story of our near-term future.
This is a peaceful path to reform. It is not a certain path but looking around the world today, it is one that is most productive of human needs and also the one most threatening to the political elite. The ruling elite won’t go without a fight but increasingly they will be fighting people who are already discovering a better way of life than to live at others’ expense.
Read complete article by Jeffrey Tucker here: https://tucker.liberty.me/what-if-they-made-a-state-and-no-one-used-it/
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