This is the time of year when people make wishes.They beseech mankind to end war, eliminate poverty, and cure dangerous diseases.Almost no one does anything beyond making the wish or writing a check to some charity, but even that little bit makes them feel better.
If I were to make a wish, I would wish for people to re-examine their state indoctrination — or as Ayn Rand used to put it, to check their premises. War, poverty, and dangerous diseases can be overcome, and the means to their cure is right in front of us, which is why most people don’t see it. Most people think the means to the cure is more and better government programs. It is not more and better government programs.
What is the means? Freedom.
Turn loose the ultimate resource, as Julian Simon termed it. Let human ingenuity flourish. Get the state out of our lives. Get rid of the government bureaucracies that drain our wealth and sap our energy. Get rid of the income tax, the federal reserve, get rid of the spooks and the growing police state. We don’t need a monopoly enforcer of laws that violates property rights for the alleged purpose of defending property rights. Repudiate egalitarianism. The state’s imposition of favors means some group is forcibly sacrificed to provide those favors, on net.
Human freedom has never flourished under a state because a state by its nature is in the business of abridging that freedom for its own security. Let the voluntary arrangements of the market be the expression of our release from domination. Let the voluntary arrangements of the market select the medium we use to facilitate trade, which for centuries has been gold and silver coins.
Ron Paul calls for ending the Fed. I like Ron Paul but we don’t need to end the Fed. It will die on its own without the support of the state. So will every other state-privileged organization. It took government as we’ve known it to create the Fed. Let’s end government as we’ve known it so it can’t create a second Fed, as it did with the Bank of the United States. Ending government as we’ve known it will put an end to the cartelized aspects of our economy. No more protection from competitive forces. Ending government as we’ve known it will put an end to the institution responsible for initiating war. Ending the threats to our liberty is a matter of ending the predatory state.
Where is the evidence that the market cannot provide for all our needs, when providing for our wants and needs through voluntary exchange is exactly its nature? Where is the proof that we need coercion to establish a free society? Let adult humans act like grown-ups and take responsibility for their lives and the lives of their children, and if they choose to do so, responsibility for the lives of others who are incapacitated in some way. The human spirit is self-interested but it is also highly charitable.
Traditional patriotism is allegiance to a state that has worked tirelessly over the years to take control of our lives in myriad ways, usually in the name of some high-sounding but corrupted virtue. What is virtuous about pledging allegiance to our masters? We do not want or need masters. What do Marxists, socialists, Republicans, Democrats, Independents, Greens, and every other interventionist group have in common? They all seek control of the state’s levers of power to force their views on the rest of us. When we’re implored to be patriotic, we’re being urged to swear allegiance to those levers. Allegiance to power is the only constant of our history, not some intransigent set of principles. Let’s remove those levers. Let’s resolve to deal with people voluntarily instead of through state force.
The cure to our problems is to eliminate that which prevents us from solving them. The culprit is the state. Let’s work to end it.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!
P.S. The title of this essay is a dedication to a good friend of mine.
