Incompressible

P.T. Leeson, an economist of the Austrian bent, wrote an article a few years ago titled, "Better Off Stateless: Somalia Before and After Government Collapse" where he presents a persuasive case that much of the world would be better off without a government, judging from the case of Somalia. Since the time he wrote this article, things have changed a great deal. The existence of even one government, especially a democratic government, is a threat to freedom everywhere. Hoppe says something to the effect that, in a private law society, crime insurance agencies would charge higher premiums in areas that are next to government-controlled territory. He reasons that government employees would likely be categorized, for crime insurance purposes, the same as other criminals... it would be difficult for a government employee to live in a decent neighborhood in free territory because no one would want to be neighbors with him because their premiums would go up. What's amazing is t...

In this awesome mises.org daily (excerpted from Journal of Libertarian Studies), Hans Hoppe makes the case that the state's predation has increased inexorably under democracy vis-a-vis the levels of State predation which prevailed under monarchy. I think Hoppe's case is historically and logically sound. However, there is another interpretation of the increasing invasion of the State into everyday life which I think deserves some consideration. If we go back to the origins of the State, it began with simple robbery ... plunder and tribute collected from tribes by war raiders. These war raiders, through one means or another, eventually transmuted into "steady-state" plunderers, extracting regular payments from a subject population rather than running one-off raids. In the beginning, the State existed without apology. Might did make right. There was no other reason to obey the State than that they could put a spear through you. As time went on, however, alliances between...