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A polemical work on dispelling statist mythology. The Welfare, Warfare, and Police-States are 3 of the most common justifications for the existence of government. With a careful look, none of these institutions can possibly be justified, even going by the statist's own standards.Geared toward the Minarchist libertarian, but is hopefully still accessible to those totally unfamiliar with the topic at hand, as well as the radicals, for whom this may be old news. A large compilation of various anti-statist arguments are assembled, this may be useful as a reference-device for debate.
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Welfare, Warfare, & Police: Dispelling the MythologyWill Porter 3/30/2014
It is discouragingly frequent that libertarians have to deal with the same old rehashed statist
arguments time and time again. The proponents of government, big or small, have a seeminglyinexhaustible repertoire of absurd claims and baseless assertions which they hurl with
confidence and certainty. Such arguments are so common, and yet so fallacious, that it begins
to look as if some kind of religion is at work, a mythology of sorts. The same mantras are
repeated over the generations until they attain the status of incontestable axioms, with which
no argument is to be tolerated.
What I hope to do in the present essay is to offer a series of rebuttals and refutations of the
statist faith using both basic logical reasoning and empirical illustration through historical
examples. Primarily, I will focus on three of the most prominent aspects of state-power, theWelfare-State, the Warfare-State, and the Police-State. These manifestations of government
are, in varying degrees, defended all over the political spectrum, and so the comments herein
will not be directed toward any particular flavor of left-right statism.
Typically these issues are approached separatelyand when done so it is easier for the statist
to remain in denialbut when analyzed together the picture is painted with striking clarity.
Each of these three facets of power play into each other and one often creates the problems
that are used to justify the existence of the other two. As this state-power accrues, we will see
how society is derailed from its natural course down a different path fraught with turmoil andperil. Every measure of intervention serves to set back civilization, and as these interferences
accumulate it becomes more and more evident that the world would look radically different
were it not for government action and the religious faith that justifies it in the minds of men.
As we approach each point, a basic lesson will emerge in regard to state-power: whenever a
coercive institution extracts funds from their rightful owners and diverts them into alternative
uses, this serves to impoverish society and shape it into something which nobody would have
chosen, were they left to make the decision. Every multi-billion dollar government program
must utilize resources, not legitimately created, but stolen. Instead of generating wealth as isthe case for voluntary exchange, government activity can only rearrange wealth, and in almost
every instance, destroy it.
I should start first by addressing the nature of the state-mythology and the significant role that
fearplays within it. Fear is, and probably always has been, the single greatest motivator for
people to seek refuge under the auspices of state-power.
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Fear is itself not always irrational, as some fears are perfectly legitimate. However, the fears
which so commonly shut down the minds of statists are almost always held without good
reason. It is unclear whether such fear is a natural and ever-present mental-factor in
approaching matters of social organization, or if it is something which must be inculcated into
the masses by various institutions (media, education, etc.). Nonetheless, the fear of theunknown is the major driving-force behind the perceived legitimacy of government.
It does not at first seem unreasonable for people to want the toughest and baddest guy in
society to be on their side. The desire for a big strong protector is probably at the very core of
the government mythology. The statist, quite rationally, wishes there could be some kind of
powerful institution to keep him safe, and it is natural, of course, to want that agency to be a
good guy who always does the right thing, save theoccasional bad apples and the rare
mistakes.
In crude form, the fears which afflict most statists rest in matters of crime, poverty, and the
potential for foreign invasion. If nothing else, the typical state-advocate will assert that these
three contingencies give common-sense justification for the existence of government. Without
the Welfare-State, who would help the needy and downtrodden? Without the Warfare-State,
who would protect our nation from terrorists? Without the Police-State, who will prevent
crime, ensuring the citizenry are secure in person and property?
On the surface, these objections seem perfectly legitimate. How could somebodypossibly
believe society could do without these government-provided services? How could anyone be
such an extremistas to deny these essential functions to the state?
Such criticisms are commonplace, and often serve as sufficient for the statist to dismiss al l
arguments coming from a libertarian standpoint. But are their concerns really so well-founded?
How often does anyone actually check to ensure these arguments are logically or empirically
sound? From my own experience, it seems incredibly seldom that these assertions are backed
with evidence, but are rather quoted like passages from a holy text, taken as ultimately-given
facts. If one questions or argues against these facts, they are met almost universally with
outrage, indignation, ridicule, and personal attack.
In the eyes of the statist, anyone who would dare to contest the necessity of government-
provided welfare, warfare, and police must be some kind of criminal, nut job, or idiot,
advocating chaos and destruction, whether wittingly or in their own childish naivety. They cry,
without a centralized institution forcibly extracting funds from productive society to provide
these essential functions, civilization would surely and inevitably fall apart!
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It is of course always ignored that the libertarian argument against government-funded services
does not equate to not wanting the services in question provided at all. So for example, my
desire to not have a government police force does notmean that I dont want police of any
kind. It is a fallacy to assume otherwise, as many, if not most, statists do.
My purpose here is to demonstrate the sheer lunacy, wickedness, and confusion found in the
statist position. The social problems that necessitate government welfare, police, and military, I
will maintain, are problems directlycreatedby government itself. Everything the government
claims to fix, it actually breaks in the first place. Its as if somebodywere to smash your leg with
a hammer and then assure you that without them, you would never have been able to walk.
The basic structure of this process lies in what is called Problem-Reaction-Solution. A problem is
created by government and identified in the media, a public reaction is elicited, and a solution
is then implemented to quell the outcry. At almost every turn, from socio-economic maladieslike crime and poverty, to geo-political issues like threats of foreign aggression, this process is at
work persuading the public to surrender ever-more freedom and tax-funds to help the state
wage battle against these societal ailments. And indeed, it is highly common to hear references
to war being made; the Waron Drugs, the War on Terror, the War on Poverty.
These campaigns are waged not on real, tangible things, but on catch-all concepts which may
be ascribed to any target the government decides is politically expedient. As will be shown, not
only do these wars never reach their proclaimed goals, but they also create precisely the
problems they seek to solve. The War on Drugs, instead of reducing crime and drug use, makes
worse these problems, giving further justification to the Police-State. The War on Terror, while
it attempts to bomb and shoot every terrorist on Earth, instead actually incites radicalism,
hatred, and terrorism all around the globe. This serves to sway public opinion to favor foreign
military intervention and creates the appearance of a major threat, which must be neutralized.
The War on Poverty, while touted as the golden child of government programs, has not even
come close to eliminating or reducing poverty, has created vast amounts of government-
dependency, squanders billions of dollars to maintain bloated bureaucracies, and discourages
charitable acts in the private sector. Welfare programs exacerbate the problem of poverty and
provoke public demand for government to do more of the wrong thing. The wars on vice,
poverty and terrorism are nothing more than a politically-correct way to declare wars on
people.
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In all of these government initiatives, trillions of dollars and unfathomable resources are
extracted from the private economy. This is a major source of poverty as it wastes societys
wealth in completely futile efforts which always backfire. It cannot be stressed enough the
cumulative effect this has in shaping the destiny of nations, effectively diverting society away
from prosperity and toward increasing amounts of destruction and poverty.
Let us begin our inquiry into power with the Police-State, the system of a government-funded
police force. The first objection from the statist is that only governmentcan provide the service
of domestic police protection. A more sophisticated critic will allege that police protection is a
public good, and that market failureswill prevent it from ever arising in absence of
government and taxation. It is said that free riders will discourage anyone from actually
paying for the service, because if someone knows their neighbor has protection they might feel
less obliged to pay for it themselves. If only a few people pay for the whole neighborhoods
protection, eventually theyll get sick of this and nobody will want to pay for police. While this isa somewhat basic formulation of the public goods problem in regard to police protection, it
conveys the general claim.
The public goods argument is a fallacious one. First of all, police services do not exhaustively
account for the good of protection. Protection from aggression can come in the form of
security lights, alarms, locks, fences, guard dogs, guns, safes for valuables, even a bodyguard, as
well as signs warning criminals of any of the above. Police are only a small part of how someone
might go about protecting themselves. The good of protection is not one homogenous blob
called police.
Second, the public goods argument misconstrues the meaning of terms like efficiency and
optimality. The public goods economist ascribes these terms to some arbitrarily selected
amount of the good and anything at variance with this number is called sub-optimum, or
inefficient. But the meaning of efficiency is found in the satisfaction of consumers demand,
not the arbitrary number selected by the economist out of a socio-ethical consideration. When
the public goods economist says efficient, he means in regard to how much he has
determined that society needs of the good in question, as opposed to the real demand of
consumers.
If, in absence of government, police were provided privately and the free rider problem
occurred where only a relatively low amount of police services were in demand, how could
anyone say this was anything but optimum? The only way one could argue this would be to
select some arbitrary number which theydecided was the right amount, ignoring what
people actuallywould have chosen.
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The proposed way out of this is to have the government intervene to provide the service. But
why should anyone think that government would do any better a job in providing the optimum
amount? Indeed, public police todayare notorious for providing severely deficient amounts of
protection to the areas which need it most. The incentive structure of government, as well as
its alienation from market forces (profit and loss, competition, supply and demand) leads it toconstant squandering and misallocations of services. The inability to efficiently allocate
resources is precisely why all formsof socialism must always fail.
Socializing any industry, including police, will necessarily lead to exactly the same failures,
giving no basis whatsoever to the public goods argument. Even conceding that the market
would provide too little police, the government does not escape the problem of figuring out
what is optimum, as well as actually providing that amount of services.
But this would all be to assume the free rider problem is a legitimate concern. Does anyoneactually believe that if someones neighborhood was being devastated by street crime, they
would forego buying protection simply because they didnt want their neighbors to enjoy it
without paying for it? People would rather face frequent violence and danger than allow their
neighbors to have something for free? This seems to take an absurd stance on human behavior,
where people act based purely in monetary motivations (incidentally, this was a common error
of the Classical economists).
One could easily imagine a situation where a financially better-off neighbor pays for protection
which benefits his whole neighborhood, even if only to selfishly protect himself. Either way,
even assuming private police provision will universally discourage customers patronage, this
still ignores the fact that protection can come in many forms beyond police.
Finally, a fairly easy solution to the free rider problem is to simply fund police through
community organizations. It certainly could be the case that people could buy this service on an
individual basis, but there is no reason to think that mutual aid societies and homeowners
associations couldnt collectively purchase sucha thing as well. Private-funding of police would
also be much easier, considering the nature of government funding always moves toward
higher costs for lower-quality services.
To briefly return to government resource-allocation, prices in government industries are
typically much higher than they would be in their private counterparts. The cost to fund and
maintain a government police force is blown wildly out of proportion compared to the actual
services they provide. Instead of focusing purely on stopping violent criminals, police devote a
massive amount of their resources toward things like vicecrimes.
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A tax-funded police force, as with anygovernment program, will also seek as much funding as it
can possibly get. To do so it must also spenda lot to prove it actually needs the funding. For the
statist, everything is perpetually underfunded, ignoring the constant exponential increase in
funding over the decades for every popular agency of the state (as well as the hundreds of less-
popular ones!). Just how big does government have to be before it starts solving problems? Thestate has grown in size 4-5 times over since it initially declared, say, the Drug War, and yet stillit
can accomplish no real strides in the ill-intended direction it proclaims to be heading toward.
One might add that it is precisely because of overfundingthat government police so often
overstep their constitutional and moral boundaries. When they are allowed militarized
weapons and the legal ability/funding to arrest masses of peaceful people, their effectiveness in
fighting real crime severely diminishes.
A private police force could not possibly survive in this way; it is only government that createsthe perverse incentives to spend as much as possible. Private firms have to be competitive and
efficient, cutting their costs as low as possible while still providing a service that people will
voluntarily pay for. A system of private police would necessarily cost much less, therefore
making its private-funding less of a daunting task. And instead of pursuing trivial injunctions
and victimless crimes, its efforts would be put toward keeping people and their property safe,
further reducing the costs.
Moreover, and more importantly, a government-funded monopoly police force has no actual
contracts with the people its supposed to protect. In the 1981 court case Warren v. District of
Columbia1The court stated that official police personnel and the government employing them
owe no duty to victims of criminal acts and thus are not liable for a failure to provide adequate
police protection...
It is hard to imagine a private firm which, in their contract, said they didnt actually have to do
the exact thing youre paying them to do. In almost every way, it seemsa voluntarily-funded
private police force is more attractive than a corrupt, inefficient, and abusive one provided
through the state.
With all of this said, we have yet to address the issue of crime itself. It is oft-charged that
without public police, surely criminals would run wild in the streets, looting and pillaging
everything in sight, leaving average helpless citizens alone to deal with marauders, thugs, and
street gangs. To deal with this point, let us take the hardest case possible: the violent crime
which today plagues almost every major city in the world.
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It first should be made clear, though, that the polices primary job has never been toprevent
crime, but to catch and punish criminals ex post facto. It is much less common for police officers
to catch and stop crimes in the act, or to prevent them preemptively. Rather, police usually
hunt down and catch people after theyve already committed an offense.
In the past it was proper to call these people peace officers, because their purpose was to
keep the peace and avert violence (ignoring for the moment their brutal treatment of non-
white demographics). But shortly after the Vietnam War, when thousands of mentally-
distressed troops were coming home, the government police system began to become more
and more militarized and its ranks started to swell with former military members. Not only have
police started using SWAT teams, APCs, M-RAPs and other military weapons, but the entire
culture and purpose of the police force has changed. The polices function used to be to keep
the peace and diffuse violence, today their job is to enforce laws and to escalate violence at
every opportunity.
To protect and serve is the age-old police adage which is supposed to illustrate the noble
purpose of the profession. Now, this adage has turned into make it home.That is the purpose
of the officer. It is of course expected that anyone working a potentially dangerous job will
always be motivated to get home and see their families and friends again, but when this
becomes the only factor in the police officers judgment, he will often disregard protection and
service of the public in favor of protecting himself or his fellow officers. The police culture has
turned more towards a gang or military mentality, where the unit or the brotherhood takes
primary importance over all else, as if engaged in a war against the rest of the populace. One
often hears police officers saying I just want to make it home, and ones heart identifies with
that sentiment, but so long as officers only care about making it home, to protect and serve
will increasingly fall by the wayside.
Instead of leaving people alone in their mundane daily motions, the police actively roam the
streets searching for trouble. They look for minor infractions or misdemeanorswhich there
are many thousands ofin order to meet quotas and often simply to exercise their position of
authority over average citizens.
There are so many laws on the books that, even when one calls around to various government
agencies to ask, nobody can tell you any kind of number;2how about too many to count. There
are tens of thousands of laws, any of which you may unwittingly break and be punished for.
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The average American commits 3 felonies a day, just by being alive and going about their
everyday activities.3Even when you think you have nothing to hide, you are alwaysin danger of
being harassed, fined, or even locked away, all depending on the police officers use of
discretion in enforcing whichever laws his whims dictate.
To return to the issue of violent crime, we must ask what causes the phenomena of rampant
inner-city violence so common to large urban areas. Surely we needpolice and laws to deal
with this, right? Again, this statist-myth is completely without merit. An astounding amount of
crime is created or in some way caused by government laws. Were it not for this, the amount of
murder, assault, battery, and robbery would be much less severe, eliminating much of what
commonly justifies the ever-expanding Police-State in the first place.
A massive contributing factor to violence can be found in the worldwide War on Drugs, and
more broadly, the War on Vice. The prohibition of various drugs, along with prostitution andsome forms of gambling, alonecan account for a major portion of such crime.
Even on a superficial level, it seems obvious that when highly-demanded goods and services are
made illegal, they are forced into underground black markets, where crime and corruption
flourish. Instead of being provided by reputable vendors, drugs, gambling, and prostitution are
pushed into the hands of shady dealers, or even worse, cartels and street gangs. Whether one
believes it is moral or decent to get involved in drugs, gambling, or prostitution, it remains a
fact that many people doand willengage in these activities whether they are legal or not.
I am fairly sure that it is uncontroversial to assert that street gangs are significant contributors
to violent crime. In contrast to the relatively rare cases of violence between average, upright
citizens, the systematic and organized violence of street gangs surely wins out in regard to their
share of aggression inflicted into society. It is almost totally due to the drug trade that these
gangs can grow so large and well-funded, and become such a problem.
But drugs havent always been illegal, is there any historical parallel which can shed light on the
Drug War phenomenon? Have we seen anything similar to the drug-dealing gangs and cartels
that exist today? Has this always been such a serious problem?
From around 1920-1933, the United States instituted the 18th
Amendment, commonly known
as the prohibition of alcohol, which sought to eradicate alcoholism in a strikingly similar way to
which the War on Drugs seeks to erase the blight of substance abuse.4The results were, as well,
almost identical to the effects of the Drug War.
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Rather than reducing crime and the consumption of alcoholic beverages, the effects of the 18th
amendment included: rampant organized crime and, in some areas, an almost doublingof
violent crime rates, major corruption of law enforcement, increasedconsumption of alcohol, as
well as an epidemic of deaths related to tainted, impure, or too-potent booze, distilled in
basements and bathtubs.
5
A similar trend occurs in the contemporary drug prohibition, wherepotency keeps increasing, as it is easier to illegally traffic smaller amounts of stronger, more
expensive drugs. Due to this, street dealers are forced to cut the drug with other potentially
harmful filler substances to bulk up its weight and appearance.
The public at-large today sees the clear stupidity and insanity of such an attempted ban on
alcohol, so why is it so difficult to fathom how this might be happening again, on an
astronomically-larger scale, with the War on Drugs?
The slew of shoot-outs, massacres, bombings, racketeering, and police corruption turned thestreets of some major U.S. cities into battlegrounds during Prohibition.
6The Capones and Lucky
Lucianos of yesterday are the Bloods, Crips, Vice Lords, and MS-13s of today. This is an obvious
case of history repeating itself.7
Almost immediately after the 18th
Amendment was repealed, the spike in crime-rates reversed,
the black market gangs receded, thus returning many large American cities to relative
normalcy.
The particular myth surrounding the Drug War, then, is almost 100% nonsense. It is claimed
strict drug-enforcement reduces substance abuse, it has and does not. In fact, the use of certain
substances is at an all-time high in many countries around the globe, and continues to rise. This
is in line with Americas experience withalcohol prohibition.
It is also said that drug-laws reduce crime, they have and do not.8Crime rates are staggering in
cities like Detroit and Chicago, almost exclusively due to the criminal enterprises that operate in
the drug-gambling-prostitution trade. This, also, is almost identical to what occurred with the
ban on alcohol. The two main thrusts of the case for the Drug War are completely without
basis. The only other example of substance-prohibition in Americaalcoholbrought about
the exact same social-calamities, as well as similarly absurd arguments and justifications in its
favor.
It is also incredibly vital to point out the fact that the U.S. government, through the CIA, has in
the past been caught and proven to have smuggled thousands of pounds of hard drugs, like
cocaine, into their own country.9
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The somewhat well-known Iran-Contra scandal took place at the dawn of the U.S. crack
epidemic, and may have been a primary factor in creating it. The amount of crime and violence
that spawned from the crack-mania could, to at least some extent, be directly linked to the
CIAs extensive drug-running operation.
The CIA seems to rejoice in running drugs because the profit accrued from it allows them a
huge black-budget to fund various covert and subversive operations. Not that the CIA doesnt
already get a secret black-budget in tax-dollars, but they like to haveplentyof money to do
things like overthrowing democratically-elected leaders and founding/funding rebel-terrorist
groups, but well learn more about this below.
It is highly doubtful that the CIA, or whoever it now may be, has permanently ceased their drug-
trafficking operations, as Iran-Contra didnt involveonly one incident.10
It really is no great
mystery why they would do such a thing, the more drugs pumped into the country, the morecrime and social unrest they can create. With increased social malady comes the public demand
for more government power to control society and economy. The expansion of government
allows more tax-money to be allocated into the coffers of police officials, state-bureaucrats,
politicians, privateprison contractors, and so on.
This, as well, does not have to be a unified conspiracy. Such a thing can occur when various
factions within the state pursue their own corrupt incentives, not necessarily in concert with
one another. If the CIA were running drugs for the purpose of funding the Contras, and the
various branches of police like to keep crime around for theirown separate reasons
(retaining/increasing their funding), they dont have to conspire on a mass scale for it to benefit
them both. People follow their interests, and if various state-officials can somehow gain from
what the CIA or another branch of government is doing, so be it.
Aside from the fact that the Drug War cannot possibly accomplish its proclaimed goals, the very
same government who bans these drugs actually ships them in by the ton to ensurethey will
never succeed in meeting their target.
But that is not all; the prison system must be addressed here as well. America has the largest
prison population on the planet and it swells with millions of inmates, a large portion of which
are incarcerated for non-violent distribution or possession crimes.11
Incarceration rates
skyrocketed during the Reagan Administration12
, when crack-cocaine punishment was made
orders of magnitude more severe than powder-cocaine, at a ratio of about 100:1.13
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Some will maintain this was purposely done to harm minority demographics and the poor, but
regardless of the intentions, this certainly was the effect.14
Despite locking up hundreds of
thousands of people for non-violent offenses, crime rates nor drug use have been significantly
affected.15
The government cannot even keep drugs out of its ownprisons! Given this fact, it is quite
strange to continually encounter individuals who truly believe drugs can be eradicated from the
whole of society (if not the face of the planet). Proponents of statism often succumb to forms
of magical thinking, this is a pristine example. A prison is one of the most controlled, locked-
down, regulated places on Earth. If the state cannot prevent drug use even here, it is more than
foolish to trust in their ability to quell drug use elsewhere.
The criminal justice system today is geared primarily toward the punishment and incarceration
of offenders, as opposed to the recompense and restitution of real victims. Adding insult toinjury, not only are victims of genuine crimes not compensated, but are also forced to pay tax-
dollars to house, clothe, and feed their own tormenters. The legal-judicial and prison systems of
modern governments are highly corrupt and provide the total antithesis of justice.
To make matters even worse, a new wave of private corrections-contractors have emerged to
imprison the people the Police-State kidnaps. Similar to military-contractors, these are not truly
private institutions, as they receive most of their revenue in tax-dollars and from exclusive
contracts awarded by the statewhereas free market business actually has to compete.
Government-contractors simply get paid to do things nobody but the government wants done,
this is not genuine demand, and these firms are not really private.The profits made in such a
business come largely from the government-racket of imprisoning the innocent.
Drug offenses are referred to as victimlesscrimes, as there is no true victim. A real crime is an
activity that physically harms or damages a person or their property. There is no such thing as a
crime against society, or a crime against ones self. Victimless crimes are, in fact, not crimes at
all.16
On top of incentivizingreal crime, where person or property are actually harmed in some way,
the Drug War makes criminals out of people who havent actually done any wrong and adds a
completely unnecessary, massive burden on the already-inefficient judicial system (and, not to
mention, costs taxpayers mind-boggling sums of money).
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Do not mistake me here to be in favor of drug use, it is clear that such a thing is spiritually and
physically detrimental for the user. But the non-violent choices of individuals, personally-good
choices or not, cannot possibly justify the moral abomination left in the wake of the War on
Drugs. Many things that are legal, including tobacco, alcohol, and junk food, are also harmful to
health, and here nobody presumes the right to beat down your door and lock you in a cage toprevent you from consuming these substances.
Not only does it fail to prevent crime from occurring, the Drug War createsvast amounts of
crime by leaving the drug trade in the hands of gangsters and thugs. Additionally, the mass-
incarceration of drug offenders has doubtless contributed to the solidification of the criminal
underclass by sending vast amounts of otherwise peaceful people through the criminal school
of prison where they house with miscreants and malefactors of all backgrounds.
Trillionsof dollars
17
have been devoted to this effort, and the effects have been completelycontrary to its alleged goals. Every dollar which is spent on the Drug War is a dollar notspent to
protect people from real crimes, violations of person or property. When ever-more legislation,
time, effort, and resources are devoted to it, all this can do is aggravate the problem. Inner-
cities again turn into warzones where rival drug-gangs and police alike all fight for territorya
situation almost identical to alcohol prohibition, but now ongoing for many decades, allowed to
develop into serious problems.
If the Drug War had never been declared in the first place, it is highly unlikely our cities would
be so ravenously violent, and therefore the public at-large would not feel the urgent need for a
militarized Police-State to protect them.
Things havent always been this way. Crime is, of course, eternally-present in any society, but
the concentrated and organized nature of the drug trade is an altogether unique phenomenon,
created by artificial state-intervention. It did not emerge naturally and spontaneously, but
directly as a result of counter-productive, nefarious laws.
The typical justification for the Police-State is crime. But the problem of crime is made
inconceivably worse by, at bare minimum, the Drug War, giving government a blank-check to
continually feed the fire they claim to be trying to put out.
The War on Vice isnt a complete explanation, however, of the scourge of crime which afflicts
society. Crime is the daughter of desperation, and it is poverty which breeds desperation. The
drug trade is simply an outletfor crime, made highly profitable and lucrative by its illegalization.
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Destitute inner-city youths, especially, are incentivized toward a life of misdeeds which
manifests in drug-dealing street gangs and mafia cartels. We may begin to illustrate the roots of
poverty simply by pointing to the countless billions of dollars extracted from productive private
society and poured into the Police-State apparatus, including the tax-funds devoted to feeding
and clothing the millions of non-violent drug-offense inmates.
18
Every single dollar stolen from productive hands in taxes is a dollar which will notgo toward the
savings and investment, capital accumulation, and business expansion vital for alleviating
poverty in society. We cannot precisely pin down the damage done by all of this, since we
cannot see all of the businesses that didntstart up or expand because of it, but it is certain that
when vast sums of wealth are stolen and poured into destructive government-programs, this
hurts society as a whole. Every dollar wasted in the militarization of police,19
undertaken to
combat the government-created phenomenon of drug-crime, is a dollar that will not go to feed
a hungry child, or to allow a business to expand to employ an unskilled worker.
(I have deliberately left out the subject of law-provision, as it is itself a topic which deserves its
own essay, but it should suffice here to say that law is also corrupted by government influence
and would, in almost every conceivable way, be better left to the voluntary private sector.)
From the preceding discussion, wevecommenced to show how society takes shape largely as
determined by state-intervention. When government tries to eradicate crime, it ends up
creating it instead. They assert a problem, incite a public reaction, and act to solve it using
ham-fisted laws which go completely contrary to their purpose. A common theme of this essay
will be to provoke you to ask what is more important, the intentionsof a law/program, or its
actual effects. The best of intentions cannot transform a bad law into a good one, and the same
good intentions cannot reverse a lawsdestructive effects.
Because economic destitution is a primary motivator for crime, it may be said that it is really
povertythat is at the root of the crime epidemic. This brings us to our second statist mythology:
the Welfare-State. The states welfare system is made up of many agencies and programs, each
slightly varying in form and function, but none escaping the blunders of welfarism.
The common claim is that without government welfare programs, the lower classes would
suffer and starve. From the implementation of FDRs New Deal, to Lyndon Johnsons Great
Society, the governments War on Poverty hasbeen waged for the greater part of the 20th
century, and is still going strong at the dawn of the 21st
. Are these programs really working, or
do we have yet another case of a corrupt, incompetent, and utterly bungling government
creating precisely the problems it claims to solve?
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In 2005, almost 500 billiondollars was devoted toward 50 or so different welfare programs in
the U.S., amounting to about $13,000 for every poor man, woman, and child. Since the days of
the Great Society, about 9 trillion dollars in total has been thrown toward government welfare,
and yet poverty numbers remain in the millions, despairingly close to rates before LBJ stepped
in with his helping hand.
20
Part of the reason why welfare funds can never fully reach their destination is that all along the
way, thousands of bureaucrats must be employed to manage and disburse the money and
resources. It costs millions of dollarsjustto keep the lights on in every bureaucrats office, not
to mention the near-lavish benefits received by various government workers and officials.
And while the significant inefficiency and ineffectiveness of the Welfare State is indeed a
contributor to poverty, this is hardly the tip of the iceberg. For it is not only unnecessary
welfare-bureaucrats alone who must be employed and their offices kept running, but everygovernment employee and office. Millions of people live parasitically off of private society,
diverting many billions of dollars out of the hands of productive people and business owners
who might employ the poor, into the wasteful hands of bureaucrats and politicians. Even
ignoring the waste which might come from the specific activities of the Welfare-State, it is
implicitlywasteful in that it inserts an additional middle-man into the equation.
For a loose analogy, imagine if the government were to mandate that employers had to pay
their employees through a 3rd
party bureaucracy. Instead of just paying their workers, the
employer must send the money through a system of government officials, all of whom must
themselves be paid a salary and their offices kept running. It is easy to see how wasteful such a
law would be and this same issue plagues all government programs. It might not be so bad if
state-welfare actually met its goals, but they instead have the opposite effect.
Welfare programs keep people dependent and incentivize unproductivity. On a simple cost-
benefit analysis, it should be obvious why many people prefer to stay on welfare. If the options
are dont work, get paid, and work, get paid a little morethe former seems to be the
attractive choice.
This is not to say that everybody on the dole is abusing the system, but the very nature of the
Welfare-Statefree moneywill always attract unproductive people who wish for a free-ride.
Unlike the above example of free riding in regard to police, free riders of the welfare system are
literally living off of stolen funds. Voluntary unemploymentis a real thing, and it further
contributes to the burden on society that the state fosters and allows to continue.
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Along with the Welfare-States immense waste, we can add the Police-Stateswaste as well, as
discussed above, resulting in inconceivable sums of economic turmoil. Just imagine what
society might look like if all of these resources were put to productive use. Again, this cannot be
stressed enough. Even in the hands of average citizens, all of the money otherwise devoted
toward taxation could be saved in banks, allowing interest rates to (naturally) fall, and forcheaper loans to be made for startup businesses. The indirect effects of government waste are
incalculable and poverty would certainly be much less of a problem were it not for the states
reckless abandon in their use of stolen tax-dollars.
Furthermore, to add to the basic blunders of welfare, some of the specific guidelines enforced
have also been majorly destructive. For example, in many cases the conditions for welfare-
housing were that no males were allowed to live in the home. This had particular impact on the
black family,21
and its effects can now be seen with the widespread single-motherhood so
common to inner-city populations and the black demographic in particular. The black familysurvived slavery, yet it could not endure the crushing effects of the U.S. Welfare-State.
22This
only piles on top of the endless list of travesties which have plagued the inner-city underclasses,
predominately black and Latino, and only adds gasoline to the fire in regard to the rampant
urban crime considered at length above.
In conjunction with outright welfare programs, other laborlaws such as minimum wage
legislation23
also contribute to the economic oppression of the lower classes.24
Exactly the same
as the Police and Welfare-State, minimum wage laws hurt the same people they are alleged to
help!
When the price of anything, including labor, is made artificially more expensive, its demand will
fall. When an unskilled worker can only contribute 5$/hr of productivity to a company, forcing
an employer to pay him 7$/hr will do the worker no favor. Instead of lifting the unskilled up, as
if on a floor, or platform to be raised,minimum wage laws set up economic hurdlesfor
workers.25
The government can force employers to pay higher wages, but they cant stop them
from simply hiring lesspeople, and this is precisely what happens.
If the state set a minimum price for, say, bananas, higher than the prevailing market price, it
would be no surprise at all when fewer bananas were purchased. Why is this simple economic
logic so difficult to grasp when assessing the minimum wage?
Highly-skilled union laborers are typically in favor of minimum wage legislation26
precisely
because it has the effect of blocking out the unskilled competition, who willingly works for
lower wages due to their current-lack of expertise or proficiency in some given trade.
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Labor unions, backed by government power, have been constant enemies of progress and the
alleviation of poverty. Their consistent push for artificially-higher wages, less innovation and
technological advancement, tariffs, as well as featherbedding practices have added to the
skewed structure of production and pricing-mechanism which result from state-intervention.
When unions use government to enforce ostensibly pro-labor legislation, the result is always
to the detriment of both the workers at-large, as well as the same people in their capacity as
consumers.27
A union can divert resources to benefit a single firm or industry, but these are
resources necessarily forced out of other areas of the economy.
This will take its form in higher prices for goods, bloated and inefficient industriesutilizing
resources that are more economically-appropriate for other lines of productionas well as an
overall reduction in the material welfare of society and technological/entrepreneurial
innovation.
Unions often take credit for the creation of the middle class, as well as the reduction of child
labor and poor working conditions, but this is a false attribution.28
Wealth in society cannot be
created by passing laws, but only through market processes and increasedproduction. When a
capitalist invests profits back into his businessfor example by purchasing new machineshe
increases worker-productivity, which is a direct determinant for wages.
When an hour of labor becomes more productive, due to new technology or capital equipment,
labor-services become more valuable. When capital accumulation takes place, wages rise, and
the material ware-withal of society to produce more stuffis amplified. This has historically led
to the enrichment of the common man and the emergence of an affluent middle class.
As the income of the average worker was boosted, families no longer had to send children off
to work; a household could now be supported by only one or two people. Working conditions
are also made more acceptable as entrepreneurs re-invest back into their own firms. By the
time unions and government stepped in with legislation, both child labor and dangerous
working conditions were well on their way to being eliminated by the market.29
Capitalists do not have to do any of this out of their own kindness or generosity, but only out a
purely selfish motivation for more profit. Adam Smith talked of the invisible hand30
which
guides society toward general prosperity through market mechanisms and profit incentives,
rather than out of the beneficent disposition of entrepreneurs. Whether we assume extreme
greed as human nature or not, this has no relevance in the way social progress occurs based on
the workings of the market economy.
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Ceteris paribus (all other things equal), both naturally-raised wages and a generally intensified
capacity for production lead to financially better-off consumers whose dollars command ever-
more resources in the economy. As goods become increasingly abundant, many of them
decrease in cost, allowing the consumers money to buy them more. So long as people use
sound money, this process enriches the lower and middle classes. In a genuine capitalistsociety, even many of the poor enjoy luxuries that kingsof pre-industrial antiquity couldnt
have dreamed of.
If the general claim is that labor laws help the workers with the least skill and experience, this is
blatantly false. Wage legislation helps only the firmly-entrenched labor unions as it outlaws
competition from the unskilled, whose only competitive edge is to work for less pay than their
skilled counterparts. If the labor unionists contention israther that such legislation prevents all
of the workers from exploitation, there is no need for theoretical insights, as empirical
experience clearly proves otherwise.
If the claim is, without a legal minimum, employers would pay onlythird-world wages, why is it
the case that they have always paid overdoublethe legal minimum wage, on average, even
with those laws in place?31
There is nobody forcing them to pay more than 7-8$/hr today, yet
they do almost universally. This has much to do with the fact that employers are not the only
side of the labor-contract; they have to make their job positions attractive, and through the
competitive process labors price can be bid even higher thanit would be due to increased-
productivity alone.
Finally, if government-backed unions are alleged to be the beacon of equality and workers
rights, why do the anomalies of government labor unionsexist? If we are supposed to seek
refuge from the evils of the private sector within the state, why would government employees
need protection from governmentexploitation?
Government is supposed to be fair and equal, a nobler system that escapes the salacious spell
of the profit-motive. If government cant even preventits own workers from feeling
exploited, it is hard to grasp how anyone can think the state is the effective remedy to all
inequality in other areas of society.
The institution of the government-backed union, with its corollary wage and labor laws, adds a
giant impediment to the economy, creating unemployment, a skewed price system, and
incentivizes the un-productivity of labor. There is absolutely a place for labor unions in society,
as the individual worker is in a worse bargaining position than is his employer, and he may not
have access to all of the relevant knowledge regarding the prevailing wages for a given industry.
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But when coupled with state-power, unions become tools for cartelizing the labor force of
various industries. From there, they can only help themselves at the expense of all others.
The Labor Union-State is often said to be in direct opposition to the Corporate-State, but in
reality each of them both have similar motivations to harm the consumer at-large. Like theunion, the large corporation has perverse incentives to lobby for government privilege as well.
The Corporate-State is bolstered by an enormous apparatus of regulations, tariffs, exclusive
contracts, tax subsidies/impositions, guaranteed credit, grants, price-fixing, as well as bail-outs
and nationalizations. We may add the cartels established by intellectual property laws like
patent, trademark, and copyright, as well as the cartels resulting from licensing, permits, and
certificationsallof these serve to help the wealthy corporate class, at the utter expense of
everyone else.
The dizzying array of collusion between business and state found in the modern American
economy has transformed a once fairly-free market into a quasi-fascist corporate-state. Fascism
has many characteristics, including nationalism and other cultural values, but politico-
economically, fascism is essentially the joint-rule of society by government and corporations.
Each of the government-measures just listed above gives an artificial benefit to some politically
well-connected firm (primarily on Wall Street) or, conversely, puts restrictions on and hampers
smaller competitors who have not curried political-favor. The cumulative effect is to centralize
wealth into the ruling class of corporate-statists, always extracting money from the lower and
middle classes and entrenching it into the network of monolith state-backed firms.
Many of these corporations actually have government officials as shareholders, or have them
sitting on their boards of directors. This is known as the infamous revolving door between
business and state, most prominent within the FDA and the military-industrial-complex.32
Corporate welfare33
is yet another cog in the machine of the state.
Strong outrage toward corporatism has been voiced by the likes of the Occupy Wall Street
movement, yet the hue and cry is almost exclusively directed toward the private sector, when
in reality government is the primary reason any of this is ever allowed to happen. Corporations
are often blamed for buyingstate-power, butif there were no power for sale in the first
place, none of this could possibly occur.
Nobody else butthe politician is in a position to grant special privilege to corporations and
banks. It must therefore be reasoned that government is the primary culprit here, not business.
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If corporations are allowedindeed, encouragedto pander to the state to change the rules of
the game, why would anybody expect them not to exploit this? The Occupy crowd call for
more regulationswhich are actually harmfulbut even assuming the best of scenarios
where they couldaccomplish what they claim to, does anybody actually believe the
government and the corporations who it sells its power to are ever going to heed any sort oflaws or regulations? Tens of thousands of regulations were on the books beforethe 2007-2008
housing crash in the United States, they did not prevent the same old scenario from playing
out, as it has consistently throughout American history. Corporate and bank collusion always
create the familiar cycle of booms and busts, but this will be addressed below.
If the easiest way to succeed in the establishment-corporate world is to lobby to the state, and
if all of the big competitors are doing the same thing, it creates a runaway-train phenomenon
where the only way to get a leg-up is to use political aggression to help yourself or harm your
adversaries.
But the corruption in regard to corporations is completely dwarfed by the outright wickedness
of the state-banking system. The American central banking cartel, the Federal Reserve, is
possibly the most destructive institution on the face of the planet.34
The legislation that would create the Fed was devised by a group of bankers, in secret, on Jekyll
Island,35
Georgia. So secret was this meeting that the conspirators traveled in a special
passenger car and used fake names to avoid attention. Apparently these men thought that
what they were doing was in some way criminal or corrupt, and if so, they were right.
On top of fractional-reserve banking,36
which allows for artificial expansionary credit booms,
the Fed is also the federal states money-printer.37
When the U.S. government decides it wants
to debase the dollar, it calls up the Federal Reserve to do the deed. The Fed is often said to be
private, but this is absurd. Truly private banks are not created by acts of Congress, nor are
they bestowed with special rights and privileges which nobody in the private sector could ever
hope to attain.
The nominally private nature of the Fed was originally intended to keep the central bank
independent of government, a plan which has completely backfired. The Fed is highly
politically-active, and rarely engages in behavior at variance with the interests of the American
federal government.
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On top of allowing the government to finance imperial wars of aggression, the money-printing
engaged by the Fed spurs on the process of inflation.38
Inflation is socially-destructive because
it dilutes the purchasing-power of a currency. When more units of money chase a relatively
stable sum of material goods and services in the economy, prices rise.
Staple goods, like milk and gasoline, skyrocket in price over the decades as the process of
inflation is continued.
And because almost nobody in the general populace understands a thing about economics, the
ravages of inflation cause an outcry for morewelfare, higherwages, moreregulation, etc.
Instead of blaming the Fed for high prices and an inflated money supply, the common citizen
aims his anger toward the small gas station and grocery store owner.
As weve seen, all of this public demand for government counter-measures can only compoundthe problems that already exist, leading to even morepublic commands for additional
government intervention. The great economist Ludwig von Mises almost a century ago pointed
out the exponential growth of government-created problems. Their attempted solutions
complicate matters even further, and until this process is put to a halt, there is no end to the
disasters which may be brought forth.
The Feds destruction doesnt end with fractional-reserve banking and fiat money-printing,
though. Americas central bank often intervenes to artificially set interest rates. When interest
is pushed below the natural market rate, this spurs on mal-investment, primarily in the higher
stages of production, like capital goods and the mining raw materials. Interest rates play a vital
role in coordinating investments across time in any modern industrial economy.
The normal market function of the interest rate is to signal to entrepreneurs and investors that
consumers are generally saving their money, instead of spending it. When people save, they
refrain from consuming resources and this frees them up for longer-term investment projects.
The relatively greater amount of money saved also allows for banks to make cheaper loans,
because their pool of loanable-funds is more abundant. Putting this all together, the interest
rate allows an investor to gauge consumption in society and determine whether or not a long-
term project would be fruitful. When rates are low, this means credit is cheaper, and thus
makes such long term projects more attractive.
However, when the Fed arbitrarily sets the interest rate, usually very low, the signal is sent out
to investors to begin their time-consuming projects. Yet, at the same time, the populace is not
actually saving their money, nor are they using up fewer resources.
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Somewhere along the line, a cluster of errors is revealed and many entrepreneurs realize
their projects are simply unsustainable, and this can send the economy into a downturn, not to
mention causes immense waste of time and resources.
This process is known as a business cycle,
39
and every major cycle in U.S. history has beenbrought on by the various actions of a central bank. Economic depressions are the result of
government intervention, expansionary credit, money printing, and tampering with interest
rates, thus harming the whole of society and further oppressing the already downtrodden
lower and middle classes.
As already alluded to, the Federal Reserve System also gives government the impetus to wage
offensive wars against vastly out-gunned foreign nations.40
This brings us to our third, and final,
government myth: the myth of the Warfare-State.
It is oft-alleged that without a massive military-industrial-complex, hundreds of overseas bases,
and colossal defense budgets, the United States would be at the mercy of foreign invaders
and terrorists. This claim might seem valid if one has no historical context of the aggressive
posturing of the United States government and armed forces.
It is said that people across the world hate our freedoms and culture, and so seek to destroy
us. We are said to be in constant danger from extremist zealots who would gladly die for the
cause of harming America in any way possible.
The modern-day bogeyman is found in various Middle Eastern nations like Syria, Iraq, and Iran.
As the Cold War specter of Communism has proven to be incapable of offering a real threat
since the collapse of the U.S.S.R. in the 1990s, new dangers must be presented to the American
populace in order to spur on the perpetual fear which is so often the health of the state.
When people refer to the peril faced by America all around the globe, they almost never take
into consideration the fact that the United States may have createdthese threats. This
phenomenon is known as blowback,41
and it occurs when a belligerent nation provokes
unexpected retaliations from their victim. The dangers presented to America by foreign
aggressors are almost exclusively the result of blowback. The countless military occupations
and interventions of the U.S. government over the last century have fomented a radical hatred
of America and Americans.
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For example, has anyone considered the possibility that some Iranians might hate the U.S.
because once upon a time in the 1950s a CIA-backed coup overthrew the democratically-
elected Iranian Prime Minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh, and propped up the brutal42
military
dictatorship of the Shah?43
Mosaddegh sought to nationalize Irans oil industry, and the U.S.-
backed coup reversed this process to allow Western corporations continued participation in theIranian oil trade.
Not that the nationalization of an industry is usually a good thing, but the point is that rebellion
against U.S. interests is not tolerated, regardless of what country it is, and there is no hesitation
in disrupting, bombing, or somehow subverting a non-compliant country. This coup-de-tat
eventually led to the fermenting of radical-Islamic factions in Iran, which culminated in the
bloody Iranian Revolution of 1979.44
Further down the line, Iran and Iraq go to war, and the United States backs Saddam Hussein
45
with money, supplies, and bio-chemical weapons (including nerve gas,Anthrax, and the
Bubonic Plague),46
which may or may not have been used in the mass killing of Iraqi-Kurds by
Hussein during this war.
In addition, U.S. economic sanctions in the post-Gulf War period contributed to the death of
over 500,000 Iraqi children, about which U.S. diplomat Madeline Albright said on television it
was worth it.47
On top of this, strategic bombing of Iraqi sewage systemsin the most recent
Iraq war have contributed to new Cholera epidemics48
, as well as the general filth and
unsanitary conditions which result in even more death and suffering of an already-oppressed
people.
An entire series of books could be devoted to the list of moral outrages supported or directly
undertaken by the United States military apparatus, as well as other Western nations, but these
few anecdotes should begin to prove the point. Hatred for the United States, especially from
the Middle East, is perfectly reasonable and justified! In case after case, Western military
powers have continually bombed, invaded, and oppressed the populations of various Middle
Eastern nations.49
In the post-9/11 period, this hasnt changed, and in fact has drastically escalated. With new
undeclared wars and interventions ranging from Iraq and Afghanistan, to Yemen, Libya, and
Syria (to give a small sample), it seems the United States empire is nowhere near finished in its
military aggression abroad.
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The 9/11 attacks themselves (not to address here the mountains of inconsistencies within the
official 9/11 story)50
were a perfect example of blowback. Not only did the United States
provoke such an attack, but our government covered up and lied about it at almost every
conceivable turn. The majority of the population knows essentially nothing about what really
occurred on September 11
th
, or the real reasons why any terrorists would ever want to attackus in the first place.
For every government we overthrow, for every country we bomb, for every man, woman, and
child murdered at the hands of U.S. soldiers, hordes of new terrorists are created and incited
to radical hatred of the West. They dont need religion or ideology to inform their malice, all
they have to do is live in their own country for a day, a month, a year, a decade under U.S.
occupation. Im not sure what more they could ever need.
Can anyone imagine how the U.S. citizenry would react if, say, China decided we were beingoppressed and needed to be liberated (and they would be right!), and so sent thousands of
troops, tanks, and drones to occupy our country?
How many American insurgents would take to the streets to fight them off? How many
terrorists would want to take revenge againstthe invading foreigners who would be
slaughtering our people, beating down our doors in the middle of the night, torturing and
imprisoning us, all in the name of our own liberation, precisely as we do in the Mid-East today?
Government proponents typically have no problem imposing terror and chaos across the world,
yet never once think of how wewould like it if the very same thing were done to us, here at
home. This is the vilest and most blatant form of hypocrisy and it characterizes the myth of
American exceptional-ism.51
The utter annihilation left in the wake of the U.S. armed forces isnt the sum of the problem
here, though. As with the Welfare and Police-State, the billions of dollars dumped into military-
spending contribute to domestic poverty and crime, wasting the resources that could make
society rich. Again, if these billions were left in the hands of the productive private sector,
untold sums of wealth could be created, untold jobs could be generated, untold prosperity and
flourishing of our nation (and the rest of the world) could take place.
The private military-contractors who are now running wild abroad also add to this heap of
corruption. Ever-more billions are lost to crooked contractors, who deliberately destroy piles of
equipment in order to embellish their costs.52
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Many firms (like Dick Cheneys Halliburton-KBR or Erik Princes Blackwater)are paid on a cost-
plus53
basis, meaning that their pay is determined by how much they spend on personnel and
equipment. Examples documented in various films54
and news reports include the burning of
mounds of brand-new, in-the-box computers and blowing up trucks that simply have flat tires
in order to get new ones; the more that is spent, the more they are paidin tax-dollars.
The notion that such contractors are at all private is also a ludicrous one. A company that gets
the majority of their funding from exclusive, no-bid government contracts is not a market firm,
but a branch of government that gets to socialize their costs/risks, and privatize their profit.
But hey, the banks and prison-contractors get to do it as well, so one may suppose that this is a
fair deal.
I wish to push my argument even further here and claim that were it not for U.S. global militaryhegemony and oppression, this country wouldnt even need a government-military at all.
55
Contrary to American doctrine, the founding revolutionaries of this nation were not demi-gods,
yet they were not geo-politically ignorant either. The warnings aired about a standing-military,
as well as entangling foreign alliances (NATO), were serious and valid, and the primary reason
there is so much complexity and tension around the world today is directly due to the fact that
the U.S. and Western powers constantlyhave ignored this advice. At any point in the last 100
years at least, the U.S. has been involved in some sort of conflict, intervention, or war with
another country.56
The same hatred that is fostered in the Middle East is created anywhere else
the U.S. flag is forcibly thrust abroad.
The strongest case for the necessity of a government-run military is certainly that of World War
2. Since this topic is full of myths, ever-so-commonly touted as truth, we should address this
with due consideration.
The Axis powers were arguably one of the biggest threats to liberty that the world has ever
seen. And yet, even here it can still be effectively argued that all of this was avoidable, if only
the U.S. wouldnt have intervenedand made the problems worse at every given opportunity.
First of all, when America entered World War 1, we allowed for a much more brutal domination
of Germany. Were we to have refrained from entering the war in 1914, Europe may have
fought a long, drawn-out, bitter war. Such wars, as are historically common to Europe, tended
to tire the population of conflict and strife, and periods of peace usually followed.
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Instead, the forced unconditional surrender, resulting in the Versailles treaty,57
put Germany
under crushing war reparations, harming the German citizenry who had no choice in entering
the war in the first place. The resulting socio-economic climate in Germany58
created the
perfect conditions for a totalitarian fascist like Hitler to rise to power. This could have possibly
been prevented, but was not. You see, military contractors are not a new thing; they werearound back then too! Where there is war, there is profit. Where there is war, government can
implement temporary programs, agencies, and regulations that never go away.
In short, there is always incentive to wage war so long as a corporate-state exists, making it
highly profitable to do so. The steps that could have avoided future wars were not taken, and
seldom ever are.
This would help to explain why Franklin D. Roosevelt decided to ignore his foreknowledge of
Pearl Harbor gleaned from decoded Japanese communications.59
This gave America a
legitimate reason to enter the war (seethe rarely-mentioned McCollum memo
60
whichoutlines a strategy to provoke Japan into an overt act of war, devised by the U.S. one year
before the Pearl Harbor attack) and thus allow the U.S. government to use all of the age-old
dirty tricks of the Warfare-State.
Here also various steps could have been taken to alleviate some of the damage. Instead of
allowing a surprise attack to occur, instantly launching the U.S. intothe conflict, careful
measures could have been taken to meticulously plan a strategy for dealing with the Axis with
as little military power as possible. The situation was not as dire as it is typically made to seem,
the U.S. armed forces were not the worlds only hope and much of the perils we faced could
have been averted.
It also seems quite ridiculous to claim that America was safer with itsmilitary forces spread
all over Europe and Asia, rather than concentrated at home. Sometimes the best defense is a
good offense, but in this case it simply cost American lives as well as direly-needed resources,
as we were, at the time, in the throes of the Great Depression.
I must address an often-touted myth regarding World War 2 and the Great Depression; that our
economy was greatly helped by the war and that it was actually our sole salvation in escaping
the economic downturn.
This is possibly the most vapid, outlandish claim one could ever conjure up.61
If war can actually
get an economy out of trouble, why in the world are we just sitting here during our Great
Recession?
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I have a plan to heal the economies of the world and blast us into financial prosperity never
seen by the likes of the human race. My plan: have every nation pour all of their resources in
assembling vast fleets of ships, full of arms and weapons and resourcesof course unmanned,
no need to take lives in this process. We shall sail our fleets into the middle of the ocean and
annihilate them from above, using bombs. Thats it. Thats the plan.
All that is ever accomplishing during war is the diversion of societys resources into destruction,
how anyone could think this brings prosperity is beyond this authors scope of comprehension.
Taking tremendous amounts of material goods and obliterating them, this is supposed to be
goodfor the economy, and, by proxy, the rest of the world. Nothing could be further from the
truth. Going on this reasoning, we should be able to enrich the people of Earth by blowing up
all of their wealth with artillery shells. And as far as employment goes, employing people to do
things that nobody voluntary chooses is neither a genuine way to alleviate poverty nor a way to
elude economic standstill.
But I digress, returning to the prior point; the American government could have tried to avoid
or minimize the destruction of Europe and the mass extermination of millions of human beings
during the two World Wars, including Americans, yet the corporate-states thirst for power, of
course, did not allow this to take place.
The common catchphrase is that wed all be speaking German now was it not for our entering
WW2. It is nothing but sheer nonsense. Does anybody truly believe that Germany could have
invaded and conqueredthe United States? Japan thought about it, but concluded there would
be a gun waiting behind every blade of grass,62
and that because of this, invasion was
impossible.
They likely werenthere referring to the military, but the armed-populace of America. No
political leader is going to commit to the invasion of a country of 300 million people, where if
even 1/3rd
are armed, they are doomed.
To again lend credence to the American revolutionaries, their stress on an armed-citizenry and
private militias were serious and well thought-out ideas. Guns are not just for hunting and
sport, but to provide deterrence from crime and invasion.
The ironic, yet tragic, example of an effective armed-populace is found in Afghanistan. How
many times now has a major world superpower tried to conquer them? The Soviet Union more
than once, Britain, the U.S. now, and they simply cannot decisively win.
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Even with a vastly overpowering arsenal of bombs and technology, the fat, inefficient,
government military cannot keep up with the rag-tag bands of native guerrillas fighting for their
country. The same was true in Vietnam. I of course dont mean that the U.S. didnt/hasnt
slaughtered thousands of Afghanis (or Vietnamese for that matter), but only that no military
defeat could be conclusively attained (of course assuming for the moment that military victorywas the goal, not purely the enrichment of war-industrialists).
With an armed-public, and especially with decentralized militias, it becomes highly unattractive
for any conquering tyrant to attempt to invade a country. Differing from a centralized state-
military force, a decentralized network of militias wont all surrender at one time, as one militia
leader cant surrender for another in some remote location. An invader would likely have to go
and take over every single town, a daunting task militarily.
(And, moreover, without an existing-structure of bureaucracy and a state-mechanism fortaxation, the prospect of invasion becomes yet more discouraging. Instead of taking over a
ready-to-go tax farm, the would-be conqueror arrives at a forestwhich he must first clear
in order to build any tax-structure at all.)
If it werent for American intervention, provocation,exploitation, and outright war with other
nations, it is unlikely we would have to worry about foreign terrorism or attack. At one time in
American history, we were relatively non-interventionist, both domestically and abroad.
During this time we became known as the global bastion of human liberty, free trade, and
opportunity. When your country creates wealth and prosperity for the whole world to enjoy, it
is not the case that everybody wants to kill and invade you.
Only when your country makes strides toward Empire and constantly bangs their war drums
does the rest of the world begin to hate you. Only when your country bombs and murders the
children and elderly of foreign countries do such foreigners learn to despise you.
Empire is not, of course, unique to the United States alone; this country has just been the
modern exemplification. From the Romans, to the Spanish, to the Dutch, to the Chinese and the
British, over the centuries governments everywhere have collectively dominated the planet and
murdered hundreds of millions of their own citizens, in an act called democide.63
This doesnt
include war, only governments killing their own people. Combining with democide the lives lost
to armed conflict, and the ravages of poverty manufactured by political regimes, this equates to
an amount of crime, of suffering and death, which the human mind fails to sufficiently grapple
with.
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With the advent of the nuclear bomb, not only are various nations and regions in dire jeopardy,
but the entirety of the human race. Even if we trust our current leaders here and now, it is
the most extreme form of irresponsibility to leave even thepossibilityof nuclear warfare
squarely in their hands. Reflection on the past offers a plethora of evidence which should, but
rarely does, encourage individuals to view this institution with extreme skepticism, if notoutright disgust and hatred. Instead of fearing the absence of government, the greatest terror
which confronts man today is, indeed, its presence.
The sprawling black record of the state reaches back into the eons. There has simply never
been a government which has kept itself limited. Those who proclaim to write the laws are
never bound by them, and never can be. One thing which the U.S. A., the U.S.S.R., Maos China,
and Nazi Germany all have in common is the fact that each of them was a Constitutional
Republic. It is hopelessly nave to think that a piece of paper could ever restrain the most
corrupt, villainous gang that has ever plagued society.
The history of government is the Earthly manifestation of evil wrought through the bayonet,
the gendarme, the concentration camp, and the hangman. The greatest crimes of bygone days
have been carried out by societysrulers, its kings, its political classes and the hordes of police,
soldiers, and bureaucrats who serve them.
Every population eventually learns to accept, even enjoy, their servitude to some extent. Cults
of State emerge, and mythologies are devised by the ruled to justify their own enslavement.
Rather than face the fact that one is helpless at the hands of a tyrant, it is much more
convenient to pretend that we control government, or even worse, that we are
government, and that this institution helps the people in ways which ordinary human beings
cannot. We must understand that we are notgovernment, and they are not us.
The Divine Right of Kings has never departed from the basis of all government, yet only
transforms over the generations until it is barely recognizable. Social institutions and
technology change, but the superstitions never go away. The myths are still there, the
supernatural power still remains. The people are made to grant glory and praise to the rulers,
yet among their ranks are, at best, incompetent and bungling dilettantes, and at worst the
vilest, lowest breed of jackals, wolves, snakes, and dogs.
The state faith is the most dangerous ideology known to mankind. It compels the virtuous to act
at variance with their conscience. It turns morality on its head and infects the body politic with
ignorance and corruption.
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Its creed bestows power and sway that no man should ever have access to; it bestows the right
to expropriate, to coerce, to imprison the lowly class of the ruled to favor the high-priests of
the Sacra Ordo ex Statum. No man fails to abuse it.
Government mythology has become so common that it has altogether replaced rationalthought with low slogans and cheap platitudes. It is high time that somebody thought clearly
about these issues and rebutted the empty arguments of government proponents everywhere.
No progress can be made until the minds of men have been changed. The only way to victory is
to actively fight the prevailing wisdom of the age. The existing structure of power will always
act to maintain itself; only with a strong voice of intellectual opposition can it be defeated and
finally destroyed. The state is truly too dangerous to be tolerated. Together we must smash its
mythos into 1000 fragments and scatter them to the winds of history.
Note: Many of the references provided are simply to help illustrate the various points made in the essay and to
direct the reader toward additional relevant information. It is always encouraged that the reader does their own
research. Do not take these citations as themselves authoritative.
1Warren v. District of Columbia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia#Decision
2Number of laws on the books:
http://blogs.loc.gov/law/2013/03/frequent-reference-question-how-many-federal-laws-are-there/
3Three Felonies a day:http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052748704471504574438900830760842
4The 18
thAmendment:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eighteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
5Effects of alcohol prohibition:
http://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa157.pdf
6Crime & prohibition:
http://www.albany.edu/~wm731882/organized_crime1_final.html
7
More on organized crime & prohibition:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_the_United_States#Organized_crime
8Failures of the Drug War:
A)http://www.drugwardistortions.org/distortion13.htm
B)http://www.drugpolicy.org/drug-war-statistics
C)http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1828&context=fss_papers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia#Decisionhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia#Decisionhttp://blogs.loc.gov/law/2013/03/frequent-reference-question-how-many-federal-laws-are-there/http://blogs.loc.gov/law/2013/03/frequent-reference-question-how-many-federal-laws-are-there/http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052748704471504574438900830760842http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052748704471504574438900830760842http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eighteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitutionhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eighteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitutionhttp://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa157.pdfhttp://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa157.pdfhttp://www.albany.edu/~wm731882/organized_crime1_final.htmlhttp://www.albany.edu/~wm731882/organized_crime1_final.htmlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_the_United_States%23Organized_crimehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_the_United_States%23Organized_crimehttp://www.drugwardistortions.org/distortion13.htmhttp://www.drugwardistortions.org/distortion13.htmhttp://www.drugwardistortions.org/distortion13.htmhttp://www.drugpolicy.org/drug-war-statisticshttp://www.drugpolicy.org/drug-war-statisticshttp://www.drugpolicy.org/drug-war-statisticshttp://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1828&context=fss_papershttp://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1828&context=fss_papershttp://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1828&context=fss_papershttp://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1828&context=fss_papershttp://www.drugpolicy.org/drug-war-statisticshttp://www.drugwardistortions.org/distortion13.htmhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_the_United_States%23Organized_crimehttp://www.albany.edu/~wm731882/organized_crime1_final.htmlhttp://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa157.pdfhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eighteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitutionhttp://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052748704471504574438900830760842http://blogs.loc.gov/law/2013/03/frequent-reference-question-how-many-federal-laws-are-there/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia#Decision5/28/2018 Welfare, Warfare, & Police: Dispelling the Mythology
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9Iran-Contra scandal:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_and_Contras_cocaine_trafficking_in_the_US
More on U.S. drug-running:
http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB2/nsaebb2.htm
10Bill Clinton & drug trafficking:
http://whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/MENA/mena.php
11Adult prison population (1980-2009):
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/U.S._adult_correctional_population_timeline.gif
12Incarceration during Reagan Administration up from 50,000 to 400,000 (1980-1997):
http://www.drugpolicy.org/new-solutions-drug-policy/brief-history-drug-war
More on prison populations:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States#Prison_population
13Crack-to-Powder cocaine punishment ratio:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Sentencing_Act#Background
14Race & the Drug War:
http://www.drugpolicy.org/race-and-drug-war
15Incarceration rates graph (1925-2008):
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/U.S._incarceration_rates_1925_onwards.png
16Vices Are Not CrimesLysander Spooner:
http://mises.org/daily/3867
172.5 Trillion spent on drug war since 1971:http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/06/07/wood.failed.war.on.drugs/
Drug War clock:
http://www.drugsense.org/cms/wodclock
18Money spent on incarceration:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/03/14/states-spend-times-incarcerating-educating-studies-say-
464156987/
19Militarized police:
A)http://agovernmentofwolves.com/2013/05/09/on-target-pressure-points-militarized-police/
B)https://www.aclu.org/blog/tag/militarization-police20
Failures of the Welfare-State:
http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/more-welfare-more-poverty
21E