Ending Statism by Giving Statists What They Want

While many gun blogs were telling people to vote one way or another I simply said that you should vote for whoever you wanted, or not. I did throw in a caveat though, I said I hoped everybody got everything their preferred candidates promised. It was actually a rather underhanded wish.

There are two solutions to an ever expanding state. First you can attempt to reduce the state’s expansion. Reducing the state’s expansion is difficult because the state, being an exploitative entity, needs to continue expanding its influence in order to gain more people from whom to rob wealth. Solution two is to allow the state to continue expanding until it inevitably collapses. History shows us that all empires eventually fall. Genghis Khan’s empire fell, Alexander the Great’s empire fell, and Rome fell. The more a state expands the more likely it is to collapse.

Statism is expensive. In order to continue expropriating wealth a state must maintain the support of public opinion. Often maintaining public opinion requires giving the public “free” stuff. The United States keeps giving people more and more stuff. Everything from welfare to Social Security to unemployment benefits to Obamacare are attempts by the state to buy the public’s favor. This is a vicious cycle though because as the public gets more and more from the state they begin to expect more and more. In this regard the public is like a child. If a child wants a toy, is denied the toy by his or her parents, screams and cries, and is gifted with the toy it reinforces the idea that screaming and crying is an effective way of getting desired things. When the state gives the public something it reinforces the idea that the political means is the way to get desired things.

Buying the public’s favor isn’t free, the state needs to obtain the wealth required to provide the stuff that buys the public’s favor from somewhere. This is where the state runs into a problem. In order to obtain more wealth the state must expropriate it but in order to expropriate wealth the state must invest more wealth into the police and military. State expropriation comes in the form of fines, taxes, and conquest. None of those are possible without a coercive force to convince people to pay fines, taxes, and tributes demanded of conquest. The more the state wants to expropriate the larger the threat of violence it must hold. This is the catch-22 of statism. A cycle occurs where the state builds a larger coercive force to expropriate more wealth so it can buy the public’s favor. Eventually the state expropriates so much that its victims will refuse to pay. When somebody is starving to death the threat of violence suddenly becomes far less intimidating. Faced with guaranteed death by starvation or possible death by the state’s gun most people will take their chances and disobey the state. This is the point where public opinion turns against the state and its power begins to wane.

Ending the state can be accomplished by giving statists exactly what they want. If statists want more welfare give them more welfare. If they want more unemployment benefits give them more unemployment benefits. If they want “free” healthcare give them “free” healthcare. The more statists receive the faster the state expands and the sooner its imminent collapse will come. When I hope that statists get everything their candidates promise I mean it because that will serve my goals as well.