welfare, warfare, & police: dispelling the mythology

5/28/2018 Welfare, Warfare, & Police: Dispelling the Mythology

1/34

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.


2/34

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!


3/34

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.


4/34

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.


5/34

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.


6/34

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.


7/34

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.


8/34

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.


9/34

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


10/34

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


11/34

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).


12/34

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.


13/34

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?


14/34

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.


15/34

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.


16/34

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.


17/34

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.


18/34

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.


19/34

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.


20/34

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.


21/34

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.


22/34

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.


23/34

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


24/34

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.


25/34

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?


26/34

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.


27/34

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.


28/34

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.


29/34

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#Decision


30/34

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