It's A Learning Problem

Government is force. This is not the way most people view government, but it is the truth. One would think that something this obvious would be recognized and well understood, but it’s not. Stating this as a fact is seen as “radical” or “extremist” by respectable society. 

When was the last time that you saw any mainstream media mention this fact when debating whether another law passed by government was appropriate? Any funds distributed by government to any cause are funds that they obtained by force. This is simply indisputable. You would think that this would be the fundamental question anytime government does anything: is it justifiable to use force to achieve this action?

Forget the mainstream media. They’ve lost their credibility a long time ago. When was the last time you held a conversation with a friend, family member, or colleague about government and this concept came up?

Mises stated it well in his book, Omnipotent Government:

“It has been necessary to dwell upon these truisms because the mythologies and metaphysics of statism have succeeded in wrapping them in mystery. The state is a human institution, not a superhuman being. He who says “state” means coercion and compulsion. He who says: There should be a law concerning this matter, means: The armed men of the government should force people to do what they do not want to do, or not to do what they like. He who says: This law should be better enforced, means: The police should force people to obey this law. He who says: The state is God, deifies arms and prisons. The worship of the state is the worship of force. There is no more dangerous menace to civilization than a government of incompetent, corrupt, or vile men. The worst evils which mankind ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments. The state can be and has often been in the course of history the main source of mischief and disaster.”

The exercise of this force has countless negative effects on individuals and society. Jeff Deist posted something on twitter recently that illustrates some of these negative effects:

The politicization of society- insisting every aspect of human life is political- is disastrous on many levels.

Inflation degrades our financial lives but politics degrades our personal lives and makes us worse people. It elevates differences of opinion into weapons and voting into proto-war. It makes us suspicious of our neighbors, given the winner take all, zero-sum nature of Washington edicts. The costs to simple human goodwill & social cooperation are enormous.

Good people are productive and build things- businesses, wealth, institutions, families, technological and scientific advances. They generally are too busy for politics, at least until midlife. Even then they often focus on philanthropy or local matters rather than attempting to influence national affairs (we’re talking about the millionaire next door type, not billionaires or generational trust funders).

Bad people, by contrast, can only tear down and destroy. They gravitate toward politics from a young age, naturally seeking power without achievement or ability. They are insatiable in their need to exercise power over other humans, which gives them an explicit advantage over busy productive people.

Which leads us to a dilemma. Doing nothing is an attractive option. It makes sense simply to focus on one’s own life, family, and career But when too many good people do this, bad people fill the political void. The result is what we see today in hyper-political America. This is why “liberty” is not political; it’s the absence of politics. Liberty is individuals, families, markets, and civil society– i.e. life outside the state. The goal is to make politics matter less. But how do we shrink politics down to a manageable size without accepting the political framing that besets us?

He then links to another article that elaborates further on this problem. I think it’s worth a read:

The fight is on, whether we like it or not. I do not like it. I have a hundred better and sweeter things to do, and I am growing old. But you cannot win a fight unless you show up. You cannot defeat, by appeals to truth, someone who does not acknowledge truth as the ultimate arbiter. You cannot defeat, by appeals to proper procedure, someone who ditches procedure whenever it is convenient. You cannot defeat, by the evidence of beauty, someone who cultivates the hideous. You can defeat him only by finding him out, checking his advance, exposing his lies or bad faith, revealing his ignorance, holding doggedly on to what scrap of high ground you have managed to attain, and doing all you can to keep him away from any vantage of power or influence. You will be called all kinds of foul and false things. What of it? You will be called those same things anyway, even if you tried, as I did for the better part of 25 years, to mind your own business and let other people alone.”