I had to re-post this article because it succinctly articulates so much of what I feel against government intervention.
Big government means no free market. They tell us that the unbridled free-market caused the 2008 financial crisis and our inability to escape it. This seems to be true since some of the biggest market players (and makers) are implicated in (and I would argue guilty of) the crimes of our time. This argument, however, fails to consider the possibility that the very government that its adherents turn to in order to solve these problems might actually be the problem in the first place. Take a closer look at some of the companies that are so reviled (for instance: Monsanto, Wall Mart, Exon Mobil, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan etc.) and you will find that all have in common ties with the government or a business strategy of fitting into a dynamic in private society created by the government (Wall Mart for instance, fits into the "globalization" dynamic created by the Fed's cheap money that encourages excessive consumption and discourages productive pursuits at the "center" [aka the USA] and moves production -at the expense of consumption- to the periphery [aka china et al.]. It also benefits from the Fed and Government because many of its patrons are also on Social Security, welfare, unemployment etc.).
Dis-empower the state and you will end the reign (and the existence) of its parasite corporations.
Big government is also a symptom and a cause of the spiritual disconnection of humanity from its own experience of itself and, through this, a disconnection with the ecology in which it lives. The transfer of risk from one's own shoulders -say, the risk of poverty and the social consequences of poverty- also transfer the face of the stranger who represents the problem (represents it as both cause and effect) -the face of the poor and the face of the cause of poverty (corrupt governments that team up with corporations and especially financiers to steal your wealth through inflation as they use the state to keep you on financial life support while they gut you and your children of your future)- from your gaze. This dynamic of appealing to the state re-enforces personal isolation and selfishness which ultimately re-asserts itself in society as something that requires more state intervention. This selfishness, meanwhile, runs rampant over people and environment as both are disregarded in the quest (which the state and parasite corporations have institutionalized) for money and power.
The only way to end this dynamic is to do it PERSONALLY. This change goes down to the essence of one's existence (an essence which I have tried to capture in poems such as
Displacement,
Dance of Silence,
Solution and
Experiment 2) as well as the concrete actions in which we engage in order to change our unfeeling and corrupt world that we live in (I have also attempted to addressed this aspect of concrete personal actions and experience with the world in poems such as
The Illusions of Progress,
The Future of an Illusion and
Dust).
This article is re-posted from
http://www.chrismartenson.com/blog/acknowledging-arrival-peak-government-part-1/75356 and was written by Charles Hugh Smith who writes on
http://www.oftwominds.com/.
I don't necessarily agree with everything in the article but it's a great place to start.
Acknowledging the Arrival of Peak Government
Most informed people are familiar with the concept of Peak Oil, but
fewer are aware that we’re also entering the era of Peak Government. The
central misconception of Peak Oil -- that it’s not about “running out
of oil,” it’s about running out of cheap, easy-to-access oil -- can also
be applied to Peak Government: It’s not about government disappearing,
it’s about government
shrinking.
Central government -- the Central State -- has been in the expansion
mode for so long that the process of contracting government is
completely alien to the nation, to those who work for the State, and to
those who are dependent on the State. Thus we have little recent
historical experience of Peak Government and few if any conceptual
guideposts to help us understand this contraction.
Peak Government is not a reflection of government services or the
millions of individuals who work in government; it is a reflection of
four key systemic forces that drove State expansion are now either
declining or reversing.
The Four Key Drivers of State Expansion
The twin peaks of oil and government are causally linked: central government's great era of expansion has been fueled by
abundant, cheap liquid fuels. As economies powered by abundant cheap energy expanded, so did tax revenues.
Demographics also aided Central States’ expansion:
as the population of working-age citizens grew, so did the work force
and the taxes paid by workers and enterprises.
The third support of Central State expansion was
debt, and more broadly, financialization,
which includes debt, leverage, and institutionalized incentives for
speculation and misallocation of capital. Not only have Central States
benefited from the higher tax revenues generated by speculative bubbles,
they now depend on debt to finance their annual spending. In the U.S.,
roughly one-third of Federal expenditures are borrowed every year. In
Japan -- which is further along on this timeline, relative to America --
tax revenues barely cover social security payments and interest on
central government debt; all other spending is funded with borrowed
money.
The fourth dynamic of Central State expansion is the State’s
ontological imperative to expand. The State has only one mode of being, expansion. It has no concept of, or mechanisms for, contraction.
In my book
Resistance, Revolution, Liberation: A Model for Positive Change,
I explain this ontological imperative in terms of risk and gain. From
the Central State’s point of view, everything outside its control poses a
risk. The best way to lower risk is to control everything that can be
controlled. Once the potential sources of risk are controlled, then risk
can be shifted to others.
Put another way, once the State controls the entire economy and
society, it can transfer systemic risk to others: to other nations, to
taxpayers, etc.
In effect, the State’s prime directive is to cut the causal
connection between risk and gain so that the State can retain the gain
and transfer the risk to others. The separation of risk from gain is
called moral hazard, and the key characteristic of moral hazard can be
stated very simply: People who are exposed to risk and consequence act
very differently than those who are not exposed to risk and consequence.
Every time the Central State guarantees something, it disconnects risk from consequence and institutionalizes moral hazard.
To take but one example of many, when the Central State guarantees
mortgages so lenders and originators cannot lose and the borrower can’t
lose more than his modest 3% down payment, then everyone in the chain is
encouraged to pursue risky speculations because the State has
disconnected risk from the consequence of a potentially large loss. The
risk hasn’t vanished; it has simply been transferred to the taxpayers,
who absorb the inevitable losses that result when speculation is
encouraged.
Separating risk from gain inevitably generates systemic instability.
The entire credit-housing bubble can be seen as proof of this dynamic.
All four of the causal factors itemized above are turning against continued expansion:
- The key energy source of global transportation, liquid fuel, is no longer cheap and easy to access.
- The demographics have reversed as the population of State dependents is soaring.
- Debt has expanded to the point that servicing that debt now threatens the financial stability of the State and its currency.
- The State’s separation of risk and consequence is generating systemic instability.
There are plenty of models of State expansion -- democracy,
socialism, communism, theocracy, and so on -- and none for State
contraction. This suggests that the down slope of Peak Government will
be disorderly and rife with unintended consequences.
The Failure of Separation of Powers
The predominant Western model of governance assumes, incorrectly,
that a “separation of powers” within the State will limit the State’s
appetite for control. But rather than limit the State’s expansion, the
State’s subsystems -- the institutions of executive power, legislative
power and judicial power -- are competing to gain as much control as
possible over both the State itself and the nation’s social and
financial systems.
This competition doesn’t weaken or limit the State; rather, it lends
the State a fearsome competitive advantage, as each institution gains
power as the State expands. So even though the competition between the
three may appear to limit the power of each, in aggregate this
competition only increases the State’s expansion as each seeks to outdo
the others in reach, influence, and power.
Regardless of which institution wins or loses a particular squabble,
the State inexorably expands its control and power. And just as
inexorably, elites within the State -- systemically protected from the
risk created by their policies -- will experience a rising sense of
omnipotence as their private power rises in tandem with the State’s
expansion.
These powers also offer State elites a way to radically lower their
own risk and dramatically increase their private gain by leveraging the
State’s vast powers to their own private benefit.
In other words, not only does each agency and branch of the State
seek to expand its reach and power, so, too, does every individual
within the State who can leverage the power of the State to protect
his/her own individual gain.
The State as Protector of Private Gain
The Central State is granted unique powers of coercion by its
membership (the citizenry) to protect them from the predation of foreign
powers, individuals, and subgroups seeking monopoly. The citizens grant
the State this extraordinary power to protect their freedom of faith,
movement, expression, enterprise and association and to insure that no
subgroup can dominate the nation for their private gain.
Granting this power to the State creates a risk that the State itself
may become predatory. To counter this potential, the State has the
self-limiting mechanisms of a separation of powers such that no one
institution or agency can dominate the State and thus the nation.
But as we have seen, the separation of powers has failed to limit the
expansion of the State; rather, it has become a competitive advantage,
feeding the State’s expansion. There are no State-based limits on the
State’s concentration of wealth and power.
There is a great irony in this concentration of power in the State:
the power is concentrated to protect the citizenry from predation and
exploitation, but that concentration becomes an irresistible attractor
for all those seeking to increase their private gain via monopoly,
cartels, collusion, fraud, and other forms of predation.
The wealth that can be concentrated in private hands is not limited
or self-regulated, and so private concentrations of wealth inevitably
exceed the ethical threshold of individuals within the State (i.e.,
their resistance to bribes and self-interest). This structural imbalance
leaves the State intrinsically vulnerable to the influence of private
wealth. Once this wealth has a foothold of influence within the State,
it can then bypass the State’s internal controls and become the
financial equivalent of cancer: a blindly self-interested organism bent
solely on growth at the expense of the system as a whole.
Rather than protect the citizens from exploitation, the State’s
primary role becomes protecting the private gains of elites who have
taken effective control of the State’s vast powers.
The Death Spiral of an Expansive State
We can now see that the Central State faces an impossible
contradiction: to pursue its primary purpose of protecting the citizenry
from predation, it is granted powers that enable it to evade its own
self-limiting mechanisms. Private concentrations of wealth gain control
over the State’s machinery of governance, and the resulting partnership
of private and State elites suppress the mechanisms that were intended
to limit private influence over State power.
To enhance their own power, these elites increase the State’s reach
until it dominates the entire political, social, and economic system.
This sets up an inherently self-destructive feedback loop in which the
State’s actions to protect its self-serving elites weaken both the State
and the nation. The State’s inefficiencies pressure the nation’s
output, even as the State increases its share of the national income to
maintain its self-serving elites and quiet its potentially restive
dependents. The more the State expropriates, the less surplus is left
for productive investment, and so the nation’s output continues to
decline.
This dynamic creates a positive feedback loop (i.e., a death spiral) of higher taxes and lower investment in productive assets.
