Chapter 12, “The Trial of the Century that Never Was,” p. 178.

84 Ibid., pp. 228 and 229.

85 Stalin’s purges and forced famine (1932-38) are estimated to have killed well over20 million people; see here, for example:www.flashpoints.info/issue_briefings/Genocide/Genocide_main.htm#russia86 See, for example, Charles Adams, When in the Course of Human Events: Arguing the

Case for Southern Secession. Lanham, Rowman & Littlefield, Maryland, 2000; Donald W. Livingston, “A Moral Accounting of the Union and the Confederacy,” The Journal of Libertarian Studies, Volume 16, no. 2 (Spring 2002), pp. 57–101; Thomas J. DiLorenzo, The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War, Prima GOLD, THE GOLDEN RULE, AND GOVERNMENT25

kind. Moreover, insofar as the perpetuation of the American lie has fostered the continued plunder of society, the death toll from decades of unwarranted poverty might well be in the tens of millions itself. After all, the Great Depression—which, contrary to the conventional wisdom, was both perpetrated and perpetuated by the U.S. government’s own policies87—surely caused the premature deaths of millions, to say nothing of how many lives have been needlessly foreshortened since then, or will be by time the coming HyperDepression88—also a direct result of the U.S. government’s own policies89—finally exhausts itself.

To its credit, the government of Canada did not prevent one of its constituent provinces from holding a referendum on secession. And no matter that the referendum failed, the fact that it was allowed at all is commendable.90 Ask any of the elected officials of the American state whether its citizens have this right, however, and they will be at a complete loss for words, knowing that to deny the right is to deny the principle upon which the nation was founded, while to affirm it is to open the floodgates of the government’s demise and the consequent loss of their sustenance through the political means.

Many will argue, of course, that the offenses of any particular democratic state are insufficient in themselves to deny the validity of the democratic ideal. And while the cynic might reply that just because the

Lifestyles, 2002; and DiLorenzo, Lincoln Unmasked: What You’re Not Supposed to Know About Honest Abe, Crown Forum, 2006.

87 For a thorough examination, see Murray N. Rothbard, America’s Great Depression

(Fifth Edition available online here: mises.org/rothbard/agd.pdf) and Robert P. Murphy,The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal, Regnery Publishing, 2009 (book description here:www.mises.org/store/Politically-Incorrect-Guide-to-the-Great-Depression-and-the-New-Deal-P580.aspx).

88 This term is offered on the belief that unlike the Great Depression, the even largercalamity to come will be biflationary—en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biflation—in that the U.S. will experience rampant inflation in consumer goods and commodities, on the one hand, and rampant deflation in stocks, bonds, and real estate, on the other, amid the dollar’s demise as the world’s reserve currency and its subsequent collapse.

89 See, for example, Thomas E. Woods Jr., Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Whythe Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse, Regnergy Publishing, 2009; online book description here: mises.org/store/Meltdown-P557.aspx90 While Canada’s supreme court ruled that “unilateral secession” was illegal, itgranted, conversely, that the central government “would have no basis to deny the right of the government of Quebec to pursue secession.” See Wikipedia, “Secession of Quebec, / The opinion,” here:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reference_re_Secession_of_Quebec#The_opinion 26 LIBERTARIAN PAPERS 1, 32 (2009)

democratic state doesn’t work in practice doesn’t prove that it can’t work in theory, let us eschew cynicism and simply ask the question that Thoreau asked: “Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last possible improvement in government? Is it not possible to take a step further towards recognizing and organizing the rights of man?”91

The answer is that we will never know until the democratic ideal is acknowledged to be absolute—i.e., until the powers that be acquiesce to the fact that the right of self-determination is an individual, not a collective, right and that every individual therefore has the right to decide the terms and conditions under which he will be governed. This isn’t to say that the individual, insofar as he chooses to live in society, must not be governed, for without governance of some kind—i.e., without a rule of law—civil society is impossible. It is to say, rather, that insofar as society can accommodate self-determination as an individual right, it will be vastly better off for doing so, the constant threat of secession being the only means whereby “the action of the organs of the state” can be held in check.

And once established, the absolute right of self-determination will set the stage for what would otherwise be impossible.

10. The Transition to a Free Society

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. —That to secure these rights,

Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, —That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

—Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence

The first, most fundamental, and most necessary step in the transition to a free society is the collapse of the modern “monster state.”92 And the first, most fundamental, and most necessary step in that process is the collapse of the monstrous American state. For insofar as it is the apotheosis of the democratic state, the American state’s collapse will represent, in historical

91 Henry David Thoreau, “Civil Disobedience.” Online version here:sunsite.berkeley.edu/Literature/Thoreau/CivilDisobedience.html92 Ibid., Livingston, p. 14.

terms, the demise of the state as such, and for the very reasons outlined above: What made the state unique was that it replaced the ruler with anabstract, anonymous mechanism made up of laws, rules, andregulations. The laws, rules and regulations were the main thing, thepeople who staffed them and put them into practice merelyincidental and, as Stalin once said, replaceable. If only because, beingabstract, it could not die, the state was infinitely more powerful thanany individual person (and, therefore, any previous politicalorganization) had ever been. So powerful, indeed, that it expandedin all directions and over all continents until, in 1914, seven statesshared practically the entire earth between them.93

Thus is it “no exaggeration to say that the twentieth century was an eighty years’ war between the giants created in the nineteenth century,94 and thus is it no exaggeration to say that such giants will ultimately have no place in the twenty-first century. For notwithstanding its desperate attempt to use the present crisis to extend its reach both at home95 and abroad96 (for such is the nature of the beast),97 the fact is that the American state is collapsing under its own weight and is destined to become not just the latest but the last victim of “imperial overstretch,”98 its demise igniting a worldwide devolution of power that will end where it belongs: in the individual. In fact, even as the powers that be conspire to create an EU-like super-state complete with its own euro-like currency,99 the pull in the opposite direction is well

93 Martin van Creveld, “The State: Its Rise and Decline,” excerpted here—mises.org/story/527—on October 16, 2000 from a Mises Institute lecture.

94 Ibid., Livingston, p. 14.

95 “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” —Presidential Chief of StaffRahm Emanuel, speaking to a Wall Street Journal conference of top corporate chief executives, November 2009; see YouTube video here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mzcbXi1Tkk96 “Never waste a good crisis.” —US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, speaking tothe European Parliament, March 6, 2009; see YouTube video here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=B62igfNu-T0

97 For an examination of the state’s relentless opportunism, see Robert Higgs, Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government, Oxford University Press, USA, 1987; online book description here: www.mises.org/store/Crisis-and-Leviathan—P138C0.aspx98 See Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, Random House, 1987.

99 Plans for a so-called North American Union have been denied by governmentofficials (see Wikipedi here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Union), which of course means nothing. The same can be said of the so-called “amero”; see YouTube clip of CNBC interview of Steve Previs, Vice President of Jefferies International, LTD., November 27, 2006, here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hiPrsc9g98

underway,100 there being no law against—i.e., no Constitutional prohibition of—secession. On the contrary, The procedure for joining the Union also applied to withdrawingfrom the Union. And the Tenth Amendment, which reserved to thestates powers not delegated to the federal government, would seemto put the matter of secession with the states and the people.101

So, too, would the fact that the delegations of three states, in ratifying the Constitution, specifically reserved not only each state’s right to withdraw from the Union but the people’s right to do so. For example, The People of Virginia declare and make known that the powersgranted under the Constitution being derived from the People of the

United States may be resumed by them whosoever the same shall beperverted to their injury or oppression …102 [emphasis added]

Clearly, then, not only the state of Virginia but any number of its citizens can legally secede from the Union. But as the U.S. Supreme Court, however groundlessly, would no doubt rule against them, were they to attempt to do so, let us dispense with the U.S. government’s law altogether and appeal instead to the fact that one has no obligation to obey an immoral law but, on the contrary, a duty to break it.103 And let us imagine that the lawbreaking manifests itself in the form of a nonviolent protest, such that an initial fraction puts the “injury and oppression” of the American state to the test by standing up in defense of the right of self-determination and declaring its freedom accordingly. Moreover, let us do so by recalling the spectacle of a lone man confronting the armored emblem of the state in the capital city of a communist dictatorship.104 Glued to its television sets, the world watched in horror and fascination as the brave young man stood his ground while the mechanized monster tried in vain to outmaneuver him, the question being

100 For example, see BC Blogcritics, “State Sovereignty Movement Keeps Growing,”

here: blogcritics.org/politics/article/state-sovereignty-movement-keeps-growing101 Ibid., Adams, p. 181.

102 See Walter Williams, “Parting Company,” August 7, 2002, at WorldNetDaily here:www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=28529

103 Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Address to Citizens of Concord,” May 3, 1851: “Animmoral law makes it a man’s duty to break it, at every hazard. For virtue is the very self of every man. It is therefore a principle of law that an immoral contract is void, and that an immoral statute is void. For, as laws do not make right, and are simply declaratory of a right which already existed, it is not to be presumed that they can so stultify themselves as to command injustice.” See online version here: www.davemckay.co.uk/philosophy/ emerson/emerson.php?name=emerson.11.miscellanies.06.

104 See YouTube video clip, “1989 Tiananmen Square Protests,” here:www.davemckay.co.uk/philosophy/emerson/emerson.php?name=emerson.11.miscellanies.06.

why it tried to outmaneuver him at all. That is, why didn’t the monster simply stay its course, the better for its monstrous master to leave no question as to who controlled whom?

The answer is simple: Because the whole world was watching. And given that the Chinese government remains humiliated to this day by this otherwise minor (if heroic) incident, one can only imagine the condemnation that the U.S. government would suffer if faced with something similar. Imagine the spectacle, say, of a few thousand secessionists gathered in the same nonviolent civil disobedience that Gandhi, following Thoreau, used to “liquefy”105 the British Empire. Imagine troops rolling in and dragging off the protestors one by one, each clutching a copy of the Declaration of Independence, with cable news broadcasting the scene around the world. Can one possibly believe that in light of such a blatant act of hypocrisy the U.S. government could weather the resultant loss of whatever moral authority it still pretended to have? From his command post in the bowels of the White House, what would the president say to the nation and the world? What could he say? “We have no choice but to use military force against this unwarranted attack on America”? “We must once again preserve the Union at the expense of the principle upon which it was founded”? “If we in Washington allow these people to secede, we will soon find ourselves out of a job and will then have to survive, like them and the rest of you, on the economic means”?

But of course the American state, like any state, is inherently devoid of moral authority and so has no recourse but to the aggression that creates and sustains it, the only question being when, not whether, one or more of its constituent states calls its bluff. It is only a matter of time, that is, before one or another of them (probably Alaska or Texas) takes matters into its own hands and the third American Revolution—if the Civil War is rightly counted as the (unfortunately failed) second106—is underway.

105 See Rohan Jayetilleke, “Mahatma Gandhi, with a fistful of ‘SALT,’ liquefied theBritish Empire,” here: chilaw-and-gandhi.tripod.com/id13.html106 Not to condone slavery in any way, the fact is that ending it was never the realissue. As Donald W. Livingston writes in “A Moral Accounting of the Union and the Confederacy,” The Journal of Libertarian Studies, Volume 16, no. 2 (Spring 2002), pp. 57–101: “Had the British invasion of the colonies, or the Northern invasion of the Confederacy, been launched with the intention of eliminating slavery, they might have had some appearance of morality. But neither invaded for that purpose. The British were still engaged in the slave trade, and the Northern-dominated Congress (with Lincoln’s support) passed an ironclad amendment to the Constitution protecting slavery forever in the States where it was legal. If the Southern states had stayed in the Union, slavery would have lasted until they saw fit to abolish it.”

In point of fact, the U.S. has a long history of secessionist movements,107 not to mention that one of the 20th century’s most prominent American diplomats108 decried the nation’s excessive size and the attendant loss of intimacy between the people and their government, stating flatly that the United States had long ago become ungovernable democratically and proposing that it be broken up into nine regional and three urban republics.109 A process that, once begun, would likely be unstoppable, it is all but inevitable that as the present crisis worsens, one or more states will vote to secede. And with the whole world watching, it will be impossible for Washington to stop them, just as it will be impossible for it to stop the rest of the states from following suit.

Moreover, while some assume that as a result of the collapse of the American state the world would “belong to Russia and China,”110 it is far more likely that the American state’s collapse will set off a worldwide “devolution revolution” that no state will be able to withstand, as emboldened bodies politic and sympathetic international spectators frustrate government efforts to suppress secessionist uprisings.

And while the aftermath of the U.S. government’s collapse will obviously be a tumultuous time (though no more so than the coming HyperDepression), comfort can be taken in the fact that what began as a federation of sovereign states can return to that sovereignty, doing so with much less socioeconomic turmoil than that which followed the Soviet collapse. For the American states are in a much better position to govern themselves than their Soviet counterparts were, the latter lacking the institutional framework to do so, while the former are sufficiently institutionalized (if overly bureaucratized) to carry on the business of government. Thus, as order returns within and among the sovereign states, the devolution of power will be able to continue such that, in Tennyson’s words, “Freedom slowly broadens down/From precedent to precedent,”111

107 See Wikipedia, “List of autonomist or secessionist movements / United States,”

here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_historical_autonomist_and_secessionist_movements #United_States.

108 See Wikipedia, “George F. Kennan,” here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_F._

Kennan.

109 George F. Kennan, Around the Cragged Hill: A Personal and Political Philosophy, W.W.

Norton and Company, 1993, Chapter 7.

110 See J. R. Nyquist, “Chaos, Confusion, and Civil War,” February 13, 2009, here:www.financialsense.com/stormwatch/geo/pastanalysis/2009/0313.html111“You Ask Me Why,” online version here:tennyson.classicauthors.net/PoemsOfAlfredLordTennyson/PoemsOfAlfredLordTennyson13.html GOLD, THE GOLDEN RULE, AND GOVERNMENT31

and free territories—consisting entirely of sovereign individuals—begin to emerge.

11. The Governance of a Free Society

That government is best which governs not at all. —Henry David Thoreau

Because the state is by its nature inimical to the social enterprise, we make a distinction between government and governance. We distinguish, that is, between an overarching entity on the one hand and an underlying process on the other, answering Thoreau’s question by saying that the next step “towards recognizing and organizing the rights of man” will be taken via the latter— i.e., via the return to a process of customary law that is self-organizing and thus precludes the positivist regimentation of a state. And as no better or more thorough examination of the subject can be found than in the extraordinary collection of essays noted here,112 it is clear that however controversial stateless governance might be, the issue cannot be resolved until the state is weakened to the point that it is unable to prevent the necessary experimentation, including that which is based on the implementation of an actual social contract.

While “the view that persons’ moral and/or political obligations are dependent upon a contract or agreement between them to form society,”113 the fact is that no such contract has ever existed. For as we have seen, even though the golden rule has formed the basis of social governance for millennia, the state has relentlessly intervened, positivizing and thus perverting it, first through conquest and subjugation, then through the systematic confiscation of taxation.114 Thus is the question raised as to whether a real social contract—i.e., one based on “an exchange of promises for the breach of which the law will provide a remedy”115—might provide the means for genuine consent to prevail and thus for the process of civilization

112 Edward P. Stringham, Editor, Anarchy and the Law: The Political Economy of Choice,Transaction Publishers, 2007; see book description here: www.mises.org/store/Anarchy—and-the-Law-P335.aspx.

113 See The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Social Contract Theory,” here:www.iep.utm.edu/s/soc-cont.htm#H2.

114 While a small fraction claims to pay its taxes voluntarily, based on the time-honored, if patently false, belief that “taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society” (see Wikipedia entry on Oliver Wendell Holmes here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Wendell_Holmes,_Jr), it is highly doubtful that such people would pay any taxes at all (see the Lysander Spooner passage referenced in footnote 84) were they indeed voluntary.

115 See Wikipedia, “Contract,” here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract.

to unfold without a state. That is, rooted in the negative golden rule, and thus the non-aggression principle, the question arises as to whether the signing of such a contract, being required of every incoming member of society, could adequately serve as the legal basis of a free society.116 If so, then free territories could advance as states receded, with no end to the process until states were completely eradicated and free territories were merged into a worldwide continuum of freedom.

As intriguing as this possibility might be, however (and again, only experimentation can make that determination), the matter of security remains

116 Here is a sample:I, (name in full), hereby affirm my agreement that all human beings are endowedwith certain absolute rights; that these rights are to life, liberty, and property;that all human beings should be equal under the law with respect to these rights;that individuals cooperate among themselves to secure them; and that they doso freely and of their own accord.

Therefore, as a mentally competent adult over the age of 18, I hereby agree tothe terms of this contract for citizenship in the Free Territory of __________ on my own behalf as well as that of my minor dependents—consenting to beguided in my affairs by the Ethic of Reciprocity, which I state as follows: I will not do to any other citizens of _______ what I would not want them to do to me. Beyondso restricting my actions, it is agreed by my fellow members of _______ that Iam free to conduct my affairs as I please, engaging in such activities with myfellow members as may be mutually agreed upon, either formally or informally.

Furthermore, insofar as I might accuse others members of violating my absoluterights or others might accuse me of violating theirs, I agree to conflict resolutionunder the auspices of a firm chosen by lot from a list of at least three such firms,each of which must be approved by the Association for Conflict Resolution. Ialso agree that should the parties enter into arbitration, the loser must pay thelegal fees of both parties; that insofar as either party refuses arbitration, theprotections afforded that party by his citizenship are forfeit; that the forfeitingparty is thereby placed in a state of nature vis-à-vis the citizens of _________,who are thereby entitled to take such actions as they deem necessary to resolvethe dispute.

Lastly, it is understood by all citizens of _________ that I have the absoluteright to cancel my citizenship at any time for any reason and that, should I infact choose to do so, I will submit my cancellation in writing, recording it so asto be available for examination and verification by the citizens of _________.

Signed this _____ day of ___________, in the year ______ of the CommonEra, as witnessed below by (name in full), who, as a citizen in good standing of________, has signed a replica of this document, both of which are available forexamination and verification by any other citizen of _________.

Signature of witness _____________________________

to be addressed, not least because, far from a continuum of freedom, the interregnum of the state must be contended with.

12. Security in a Free Society

The real choice isn’t between liberty and security; it is between our security and the state’s. —Llewellyn Rockwell117

While the state pretends to protect the people from external threats, it is in fact the instigator thereof, the more so the larger the state is. Which is to say, the state does not provide security. Rather, it creates the need for security and promptly fails to provide it, using its monopoly powers to assure that the more it spends—now over three-quarters of a trillion dollars a year in the United States118 and well over half of worldwide military spending as a whole119—the less security it provides. Thus was the finally “successful” attack on the World Trade Center mere blowback120—i.e., the all but inevitable response of those victimized by the U.S. government’s decades-long intervention in the Middle East. And not surprisingly, as a consequence of this “unprovoked” attack, the U.S. government has vastly expanded its intelligence apparatus, seeking nothing less than “Total Information Awareness”121 (since renamed following an “adverse media reaction to the program’s implications for public surveillance”),122 while making “preemptive” war a key component of its foreign policy, the rationale for which is laid out in the former Bush administration’s “National Security Strategy of the United States of America.”123 (And protestations to the

117 See Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., “The Real Meaning of Security,” atLewRockwell.com here: www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/real-security.html.

118 See Global Issues, “World Military Spending,” here:www.globalissues.org/article/75/world-military-spending#WorldMilitarySpending.

119 Ibid.

120 In his book [Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire], ChalmersJohnson wrote, “The term ‘blowback,’ which officials of the Central Intelligent Agency first invented for their own internal use, … refers to the unintended consequences of policies that were kept secret from the American people. What the daily press reports as the malign act of ‘terrorists’ or ‘drug lords’ or ‘rogue states’ or ‘illegal arms merchants’ often turn out to be blowback from earlier American operations.” —The Independent Institute’s Center on Peace & Liberty: www.onpower.org/foreign_blowback.html121 See Wikipedia, “Information Awareness Office,” here:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Awareness_Office.

122 Ibid.

123 See official online version here:www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/national/nss-020920.pdf 34 LIBERTARIAN PAPERS 1, 32 (2009)

contrary, the Obama administration has been only too willing to pick up where its predecessor left off.124) Yet such is the twisted logic of the state that the solution to the endless warring between and among them—and let us be clear, “The connection between kinship and family, between religion and church, is no closer than that between war and the State”125—is to have but one state: Thomas Hobbes, and countless political philosophers andeconomists after him, argued that in the state of nature, men wouldconstantly be at each others’ throats. Homo homini lupus est [Man is awolf to man]. Put in modern jargon, in the state of nature apermanent “underproduction” of security would prevail. Eachindividual, left to his own devices and provisions, would spend “toolittle” on his own defense, resulting in permanent interpersonalwarfare. The solution to this presumably intolerable situation,according to Hobbes and his followers, is the establishment of astate. …

… Once it is assumed that in order to institute peaceful cooperationbetween [individual] A and [individual] B it is necessary to have astate S, a twofold conclusion follows. If more than one state exists,S1, S2, S3, then, just as there can be presumably no peace among Aand B with S, so can there be no peace between S1, S2, and S3 aslong as they remain in a state of nature (anarchy) with regard to eachother. Consequently, in order to achieve universal peace, politicalcentralization, unification, and ultimately the establishment of asingle world government, are necessary.126

While a single world government—a world state—has long been and is now the even more fervent hope of both neoliberals (socialists) and neoconservatives (fascists), it should be clear from the foregoing that a world state would be the worst possible development for humanity. True, it would theoretically bring an end to the state of nature among nations and thus put an end to war. But given the nature of the state, this would in practice amount to a “final solution” for human freedom. For in the universal bureaucratization of all human action, the administrative state would be complete, and society, even more than it does now, would exist only insofar as it could generate enough wealth to keep the global apparatus of compulsion and coercion functioning. That it could not do so for long would be but the inevitable effect of the cancer devouring its host, and from

124See, for example, MSNBC World News here:www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29242187.

125 Ibid., Nisbet, p. 91.

126 Ibid., Hoppe, pp. 239 and 241.

society’s rotting corpse, warring states would inevitably reappear, if indeed they could ever be reduced to the compliant status (for now, at least) of the constituent American states.

Moreover, we must confront the further fact that collective security is a one-sided affair that is entirely at odds with the interests of those supposedly being protected. After all, “no one in his right mind would agree to a contract that allowed one’s alleged protector to determine unilaterally—without one’s consent—and irrevocably—without the possibility of exit—how much to charge for protection.”127 Yet as this is precisely what the state imposes on its subjects, it should be no surprise that the cost of security, as noted above, increases in inverse proportion to the security actually provided.

Clearly, then, security is not to be found in the state. And while some contend, as the nature and origin of the state would seem to bear out, that without a state, “stronger agents will be tempted to use force against the weak and impose government on them,”128 our contention, as outlined above, is that the collapse of the flagship American state will so discredit the state per se that the extent to which people will submit to it at all will be brought into question. For again, with the whole world watching, predatory groups will have to stand trial in the court of public opinion. And being found guilty, they will find it very difficult, if not impossible, to impose their will on others, at least for long. Thus, as the devolutionary process challenges the moral authority of smaller and smaller states—which will be constrained in direct proportion to their increasing “feebleness”129—society will turn elsewhere for security: namely, to the market.

How?

Mostly likely via the insurance industry. For “even now insurance agencies protect private property owners upon payment of a premium against a multitude of natural and social disasters, from floods and hurricanes to theft and fraud.”130 All are forms of security, after all, so why should “defense” be any different, especially since insurance companies are very large, far-flung affairs that are

127 Ibid., Hoppe, pp. 279 and 280.

128 Ibid., Stringham, p. 373.

129 “History tells us that while small States are virtuous because of their feebleness,powerful States sustain themselves only through crime.” —Mikhail Bakunin, “Ethics: The Morality of the State,” as excerpted here—flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/bakunin/bakunin1.html—in The Political Philosophy of Bakunin, The Free Press, New York, 1953, by G. P. Maximoff.

130 Ibid., p. 281.

… in command of the resources—physical and human—necessaryto accomplish the task of dealing with the dangers, actual orimagined, of the real world. Indeed, insurers operate on a national oreven international scale, and they own substantial property holdingsdispersed over wide territories and beyond the borders of singlestates and thus have a manifest self-interest in effective protection.

Furthermore, all insurance companies are connected through acomplex network of contractual agreements on mutual assistanceand arbitration as well as a system of international reinsuranceagencies representing a combined economic power that dwarfs mostif not all contemporary governments, and they have acquired thisposition because of their reputation as effective, reliable, and honestbusinesses.131

And again, with the collapse of the monster states, the monstrous threat that they present to the world will decline proportionately, reducing security insurance to something more in line with the mundane tasks to which everyone is already accustomed, the reason being that “defense” insurance will have the same market-based advantages of other insurance:

First off, competition among insurers for paying clients will bringabout a tendency toward a continuous fall in the price of protection(per insured value), thus rendering protection more affordable.

Second, insurers will have to indemnify their clients in the case ofactual damage; hence they must operate efficiently…

Third, and most importantly, because the relationship betweeninsurers and their clients is voluntary, insurers must accept privateproperty as an ultimate “given” and private property rights asimmutable law. … Moreover, out of the steady cooperation betweendifferent insurers in mutual interagency arbitration proceedings, atendency toward the unification of the law—of a truly universal or“international” law—will emerge.132

Security, then, will ultimately be a purely individual affair, no matter if “group” insurance is the manner in which it is provided. Either way, the decision will be individual, the payment will be individual, and the benefit will be individual, with no state dictating the price of that benefit while failing to provide it.

In the meantime, the reduced threat to the American states from the collapse of their central government will allow them to make a generally

131 Ibid., p. 281.

132 Ibid., pp. 281, 282, and 283.

peaceful transition to independence. After all, the violence that is being directed at America today, even though it targets civilians, has but one objective and that is to topple the American government. That is, what al-Qaida and others want to see happen to the United States is simply what America wanted to see happen to the former Soviet Union—i.e., they want its central government to fall. And it is as ludicrous to think that al-Qaida would attack America after its central government had collapsed as it would have been to think that America would have attacked the Soviet Union after its central government had collapsed.

And thus are we left to contemplate what is really afoot as the interregnum of the state finally draws to a close.

13. The End of History

There is properly no history, only biography. —Ralph Waldo Emerson

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, it was proclaimed that what we were likely witnessing was

…not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particularperiod of postwar history, but the end of history as such; that is, theend point of mankind’s ideological evolution and theuniversalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form ofhuman government.133

In reality, however, what we are witnessing is the ideological exhaustion of Western liberal democracy and therefore the ideological exhaustion of the state per se. For in exposing the fraud of liberal democracy’s flagship American state, it is clear that such a state is fundamentally no different than any other state. No longer able to hide behind the Jeffersonian dream of constitutional freedom and order or the Lincolnian myth that the American ideal could be preserved at the expense of the principle upon which it was founded, the American state’s demise is bringing us face-to-face with the moral vacuity of Western liberal democracy and the nihilism of the lament that its universalization “will be a very sad time.”

The struggle for recognition, the willingness to risk one’s life for apurely abstract goal, the worldwide ideological struggle that calledforth daring, courage, imagination, and idealism, will be replaced by

133 Francis Fukuyama, “The End of History?” The National Interest, Number 16,Summer 1989, p. 4.

economic calculation, the endless solving of technical problems,environmental concerns, and the satisfaction of sophisticatedconsumer demands.134

How sad, in other words, that if people were in fact freed from “the worldwide ideological struggle” (though of course they have not been), they would at long last be able to live in the company of their fellows, ordering their lives through free and voluntary cooperation with them. How sad that without “the struggle for recognition,” people would not have to endure another Pharoah, Caesar, Alexander, Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin, Lincoln, Roosevelt, Clinton, Bush, or Obama and would instead be left to while away the hours in the peaceful pursuit of their own happiness. How sad that without the “purely abstract goal” of one or another statist ideology, grandparents, parents, spouses, children, and grandchildren would not know the “daring, courage, imagination, and idealism” that sends their loved ones home in body bags and prostheses. How sad that “environmental concerns” could actually be solved—through the market-based protection of life, liberty, and property135—rather than perpetrated by governments136 and perpetuated by their bloated “regulatory” agencies. And how sad that “economic calculation and the endless solving of technical problems”—i.e., the day-by-day work of an increasingly complex and thus more richly rewarding world—would not be complicated by relentless government intervention.

Yes, there is the hope that “centuries of boredom at the end of history will serve to get history started once again,”137 so that murder and mayhem can return to spice up the dreary “satisfaction of sophisticated consumer demands.”138What is a cell phone, after all, compared to a land mine? What is communication compared to mutilation? With “no struggle over ‘large’ issues and consequently no need for generals or statesmen,”139 how much attraction can life hold? What’s the use of living, in other words, if you can’t make a killing killing people?

134 Ibid., p. 18.

135 See, for example, Art Carden, “Economic Calculation in the EnvironmentalistCommonwealth,” at the Social Science Research Network, here: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Papers.cfm?abstract_id=1392412

136 It should come as no surprise that the U.S. Department of Defense “is the largestpolluter in the world, producing more hazardous waste than the five largest U.S. chemical companies combined.” See CommonDreams.org here: www.commondreams.org/views05/0327-21.htm137 Ibid.

138 Ibid.

139 Ibid., p. 5.

And a twofold killing it is—over 15 billion people “since the beginning of authentic history,” at a cost of over a thousand trillion dollars140— according to the research published in a 1914 New York Times piece141 that also makes the following observation: Brilliant deeds on the battlefield are done by the man who will takethe greatest risks in support of an ideal; the man who will take thegreatest risks is, ordinarily, the best of men. So these are least likelyto escape. …

… And even though large numbers of the best of men are left,many are destroyed, and of those remaining many have beendeteriorated physically by the effort, by the wounds, by the diseases,of wartime; while the economic course of every man participating ina war is interrupted by his service, and, in the majority of cases, suchan interruption harms his industrial or professional or mercantilefuture, thus directly affecting the opportunities that he may offer tothe rising generation, which, for a time, depends upon him.

And thus does the killing of the best in war also kill “a certain portion of the incalculable social and educational effort of the ages.”142

But no matter. For as war is its very health143—first it profits from murder and mayhem, then from cleaning up the mess144—the state will have a war if it wants one, never mind how much the people, understandably, do not: Why, of course the people don’t want war. Why would some poor slobon a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can getout of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. … But after all,it’s the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it’salways a simple matter to drag the people along whether it’s a

140 Inflation-adjusted as follows: 15 billion battlefield deaths x $3,677 per death in1914 dollars (see footnote 138) x 20 to correct for the dollar’s lost purchasing power since then (see here: www.csamerican.com/stuff.asp?k=25) = $1,103,100,000,000,000.

141See photocopy of the original September 13 article here:query.nytimes.com/mem/archive—free/pdf?_r=2&res=9C04E0DC1638E633A25750C1A96F9C946596D6CF

142 Ibid.

143 See Randolph Bourne, “War Is the Health of the State,” here:flag.blackened.net/revolt/hist_texts/warhealthstate1918.html144 Yes, there are losers, but only in the sense of a corporation whose productspoison its customers, punishment for which doesn’t result in compensating the customers’ families and putting the corporation out of business. Rather, the corporation’s managers are simply replaced, there being no mechanism (no market) whereby the existence of the corporation itself—i.e., the state—can be questioned. Thus can it poison again with impunity. And so it will.

democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communistdictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought tothe bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tellthem they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack ofpatriotism and exposing the country to greater danger. It works thesame in any country.145

But why? The answer is as old as Plato’s Dorians: [I]t is immaterial for the citizens of any nation where the frontiers oftheir country are drawn. It is of no concern for anyone whether hiscountry is big or small, and whether it conquers a province or not.

The individual citizens do not derive any profit from the conquestof a territory.

It is different with the princes or ruling aristocracies. They canincrease their power and their tax revenues by expanding the size oftheir realms. They can profit from conquest. They are bellicose,while the citizenry is peace loving.146

They will object, of course, that they are not bellicose at all and only want to increase their power in order to be of greater service to society. They are “public servants,” after all, seeking only to do good on the public’s behalf. What they do not understand, however—what they dare not even contemplate—is that because “Men are cruel, but Man is kind,”147no men are more cruel than those who would do good with mankind’s money—with the proceeds, that is, of legalized theft. For as easy as it is to make theft legal, it is impossible to make it moral, the resulting corruption being all the worse for the pretence upon which it is based: that such theft is the price that must be paid for a civilized society.

And it is because of this vast charade—the biggest of all big lies148— that its perpetrators fail to realize that they are but the latest incarnation of the iniquity that has prevailed from time immemorial; that however much the forces of history have been debated over the centuries—are they blind, cyclical, progressive, eschatological, dialectical, etc.—there are actually no forces of history at all, there is only the history of force; and that, indeed, there is only history as force, the absence of which is not history but

145Nazi Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering; see WikiQuote here:en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Hermann_Göring; additional background here: answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/235519.html146 Ibid., Mises, “The Economic Causes of War,” The Freedman, 2004, p. 10, asexcerpted from a lecture given in Orange County, California, October 1944; online version here: www.fee.org/pdf/the-freeman/mises0404.pdf147 Rabindranath Tagore, “Stray Birds,” 219.

148 See Wikipedia, “Big Lie,” here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Lie GOLD, THE GOLDEN RULE, AND GOVERNMENT41

biography—the ability to graph, as it were, one’s own bio and thereby live as a full-fledged member of society.

Its perpetrators do not understand, that is, that their role in history is history, for history is nothing more than the biographies of those who have used the political means to expropriate the fruit of the economic means, the producers of which have had their biographies expropriated accordingly. As such, history is merely a chronicle of conquest, subjugation, and confiscation, and therefore of perpetual war for perpetual war. And just as war and the state are one, so, then, are the state and history one.

Therefore, the end of the state will be the end of history.

14. The Final Form of Human Government

Man is not only the most individual being on earth; he is also the most social being.

—Mikhail Bakunin

As Donne reminds us, “No man is an island,”149 at least if he would attain to the order, the harmony—that “pleasing combination of the elements”—for which he naturally yearns. Alone against those elements, man is as nothing, scratching out an existence unfit for his kind and indeed destructive of it, selfless because, in having no others with which to associate, no true self exists. But in that convivium—that “living together”—a self emerges, or at least the reflection of a self, into which he can gaze and through which he can begin not only to act but to act human, the goal of which “is always the satisfaction of the acting man’s desires.”150 And that, as we have said, is the source and sustenance of the social enterprise: Society is concerted action, cooperation … the outcome ofconscious and purposeful behavior. … Individual man is born into asocially organized environment. In this sense alone we may acceptthe saying that society is—logically and historically—antecedent tothe individual. In every other sense this dictum is either empty ornonsensical. The individual lives and acts within society. But societyis nothing but the combination of individuals for cooperativeeffort.151

149 See John Donne, “Meditation XVII,” here:www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/meditation17.php.

150 Ibid., Mises, Human Action, p. 14.

151 Ibid., p. 143.

In seeing that it was out of this cooperative effort that civil society’s central organizing principles—money and law—evolved, it is clear that in order for “the final form of human government” to indeed be final, gold and the golden rule must be reestablished as the twin pillars of civilization.152 They must be returned to their rightful owners, that is, leaving us with one last question so far as social governance is concerned. For in debunking the state, including and especially the democratic state, it would appear that we have debunked democracy as well, and that the collapse of the democratic state therefore means the death of democracy. On the contrary, however, the collapse of the democratic state will mean the birth of genuine democracy. For as the mechanism whose modus operandi is compulsion and coercion is displaced by the organism whose modus vivendi is voluntary cooperation, democracy in the form of majority rule will give way to democracy in the form of individual rule. That is, the individual, as a sovereign unto himself, will rule over himself, the devolutionary process rendering the fraud of representative democracy null and void as it gives way to a fully participatory democracy grounded in a negative—i.e., non-interventionist—rule of law.

It will be market democracy, in other words, and while everyone will not have the same number of “votes”—i.e., the same amount of purchasing power—the tendency will be in this direction, as the enormous, state-induced disparities between rich and poor narrow over time—even as vastly more wealth is created—and society moves toward a state of dynamic equilibrium that is steady not because it doesn’t change but because it changes steadily, spontaneously generating more and more order and doing so without limit.

Will it be utopia? Yes, and emphatically so, for the simple reason that “Utopianism is compatible with everything but determinism,”153 which is to say, it is compatible with everything but the state. And as the state is

152 The reestablishment of money, however, will be in technologically advancedform, such that real assets will be exchanged instantaneously and with complete financial privacy: “In the future, trade will be executed by instantaneous and simultaneous debiting and crediting to and from liquid wealth accounts, held by both banking and nonbanking institutions. Electronic digital payments technology will enable property rights claims on real assets, such as stock and bond funds, or gold, to be utilized as the medium of exchange for virtually all transactions. In sum, when businesses or individuals wish to purchase a good or service, they will provide—directly or indirectly—an electronic instruction to their bank or other financial intermediary. The instruction will state that an amount equal to the nominal value of the purchase should be transferred immediately to the account of the seller of the good or service [and]…send ‘money’ from one point to another point on the globe extraordinarily fast and anonymously.” —Richard W. Rahn, “Money: The Ultimate Privatization”: www.cipe.org/publications/ ert/e32/e32_2.pdf153 Ibid., Nisbet, p. xxxi.

eradicated, we can therefore expect utopia—”nowhere”—to appear first here, then there, in this form and that, at once experimental and experiential, until it is everywhere, evolving as one, under the direction of no one and everyone at the same time, and doing so, again, without limit: Since man is always acting, he must always be engaged in trying toattain the greatest height on his value scale, whatever the type ofchoice under consideration. There must always be room forimprovement in his value scale; otherwise all of man’s wants wouldbe perfectly satisfied, and action would disappear. Since this cannotbe the case, it means that there is always open to each actor theprospect of improving his lot, of attaining a value higher than he isgiving up, i.e., of making a psychic profit.”154

How much “psychic profit” is humanity capable of generating? If there “must always be room for improvement in his value scale,” how much room can man, in that convivium, make? Given that he does not live by bread alone, in other words, how far beyond bread can man live? How far “beyond the margin of subsistence” can he in fact go?

Let us close with an answer that could well be as probable as it is seemingly impossible.

15. Concluding Scientific Postscript155

A man said to the universe,”

“Sir, I exist!”

“However,” replied the universe,

“The fact has not created in me

A sense of obligation.”

—Stephen Crane

For all his striving, man pales in significance to the cold immensity of the universe. Our sun, after all, is but one of somewhere between 200 billion and 400 billion suns in our galaxy, a “stellar disk” that is estimated to be around 100,000 light-years across.156 Given that a single light-year is a distance of some 5.9 trillion miles,157 this means that our galaxy spans a

154 Ibid., Rothbard, Man, Economy, and State, p. 62.

155 The reference is to Soren Kierkegaard’s “Concluding Unscientific Postscript toPhilosophical Fragments.” See Wikipedia here:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concluding_Unscientific_Postscript156 See Wikipedia, “Observable universe,” here:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe157 See Wikipedia, “Light-year,” here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-year 44 LIBERTARIAN PAPERS 1, 32 (2009)

distance of nearly 600 quadrillion158 miles. Even so, it is but one of at least 125 billion galaxies in the universe (and possibly four times that amount),159 which is estimated to be 156 billion light-years wide and contain some 1080 atoms.160

The universe is also old, between 13.5 and 14 billion years,161 as is the Earth, at roughly 4.5 billion years,162 and life upon it, at around 3.7 billion years.163

Not so, however, for our species, homo sapiens, which is estimated to have made its appearance less than 200,000 years ago164—a mere 54 millionths of the time life has existed on the planet, 44 millionths of the time the planet itself has existed, and 15 millionths, at most, of the time the universe has existed.

Moreover, for the vast majority of that time, homo sapiens lived as a simple hunter-gatherer, not taking up agriculture until around 10,000 years ago165 and progressing all but imperceptibly from that point on until the onset of the Scientific Revolution around the middle of the 16th century166 and the Industrial Revolution in the late 18th century.167 Yet as a result of this recent quickening, homo sapiens now finds itself, at the beginning of the 21st century, riding a tide of technological progress that shows no signs of abating.

Before we examine it further, however, let us reconsider our statement above that “man pales in significance to the cold immensity of the universe.”

158 See “Names for Large Numbers” here: www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/large.html159 According to a 1999 estimate by the Hubble Space Telescope; see NASAGoddard Space Flight Center here:imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/021127a.html160 See footnote 147, a number that can also be expressed as 100 quinvigintillion; seefootnote 149.

161 See Wikipedia, “Age of the universe,” here:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_universe.

162 See Wikipedia, “Age of the Earth,” here:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_Earth.

163 See Wikipedia, “Life/Origin,” here:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life#Origin_of_life.

164 See EureAlert, “The oldest homo sapiens,” here:www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-02/uou-toh021105.php.

165 See Wikipedia, “Human/Origin,” here:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human#Origin.

166 See Wikipedia, “Scientific Revolution / Emergence of the revolution,” here:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_Revolution#Emergence_of_the_revolution.

167 See Wikipedia, “Industrial Revolution,” here:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Industrial_Revolution.

According to an ancient (originally Latin) apothegm, “There is nothing greater in nature than man, and there is nothing greater in man than mind.” If so, then just how great is man’s mind, at least potentially?

If each human brain had only one synapse—corresponding to amonumental stupidity—we would be capable of only two mentalstates. If we had two synapses, then 22 = 4 states; three synapses,then 2 = 8, and, in general for N synapses, 2N states. But the humanbrain is characterized by some 1013 synapses. Thus the number ofdifferent states of a human brain is 2 raised to this power—i.e.,multiplied by itself ten trillion times. This is an unimaginably largenumber, far greater, for example, than the total number ofelementary particles (electrons and protons) in the entire universe,which is much less than 2 raised to the power 103. … [Therefore]

there must be an enormous number of mental configurations thathave never been entered or even glimpsed by any human being inthe history of mankind.168

Indeed there must, “enormous” hardly doing justice to the literally astronomical number of configurations of which the human mind is capable or the creative power that could be contained in any number of those configurations. Surely the greatest minds in human history—Confucius, Plato, Aristotle, Shakespeare, Leonardo, Newton, Beethoven, Einstein, to name an obvious few—would pale in comparison to a mind that approximated its true potential, the question being how it would do so. After all, the minds of these men are as rare today as they ever were, and there is scant evidence of vastly more powerful minds suddenly making their appearance.

Or is there? And are we poised instead on the threshold of something akin to the appearance of humanity itself, or even of life itself? With every passing day, after all, the otherwise immovable object of the state is being pushed farther aside by the irresistible force of technology—technology that is today represented most notably by the Internet: In the Internet we see our greatest hope for freedom and for thecontinual progress of humanity. In the Internet we see theanachronistic and obsolete institutions of society being pushed asidefor a new dawn of better things. In the Internet we see the key todiminishing the power and status of the state and liberatingourselves from its oppression and deception.169

168 Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of HumanIntelligence, Random House, New York, 1977, p. 42.

169 See Eric Garris, “The Internet vs. the State,” here:www.lewrockwell.com/orig/garris3.html.

Indeed we do. For it is nothing less than the great and growing power of cooperation in the form of social networking,170 the vast potential of which is only just now being tapped and against which the state will be all but powerless. And insofar as it played a role in the creation of the Internet,171 the state only helped to create a monster that, unlike itself, is overwhelmingly a force for good,172 and one that is growing exponentially.173

But it is not just the Internet, as other technologies are also empowering humanity as never before, so much so that they are bringing man and machine together in ways that boggle the mind as much as the mind’s own potential does: An analysis of the history of technology shows that technologicalchange is exponential, contrary to the commonsense ‘intuitive linear’

view. So we won’t experience 100 years of progress in the 21stcentury—it will be more like 20,000 years of progress (at today’srate). … Within a few decades, machine intelligence will surpasshuman intelligence, leading to … technological change so rapid andprofound that it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history.

The implications include the merger of biological and nonbiologicalintelligence, immortal software-based humans, and ultra-high levelsof intelligence that expand outward in the universe at the speed oflight.174

However much one might be inclined to dismiss such notions as mere fantasy, the above analysis is based on well-established trend extrapolation,175 the continuation of which all but assures that in the relatively near future, some kind of “rupture” will indeed occur. If so, then one has to wonder if Stephen Crane didn’t get it backwards and that his poem should read as follows:

170 See YouTube video clip, “Social Networking in Plain English,” here:www.youtube.com/watch?v=6a_KF7TYKVc171ARPA, let us be clear (see Wikipedia here:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet#Creation), was a competitive enterprise, however perversely so, in that it was part of early Cold War efforts to conquer—i.e., weaponize—space.

172 No technology is inherently good and can always be used for evil purposes. Butthat is the chance humanity takes with any technology, those developed by the state—e.g., nuclear weapons—tending by far to be the most dangerous.

173 See LivingInternet.com, “Internet Growth Rates,” here:www.livinginternet.com/i/ip_growth.htm.

174 See Ray Kurzweil, “The Law of Accelerating Returns,” here:www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0134.html?printable=1

175 Generally based on Moore’s Law; see Wikipedia here:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore’s_law.

The universe said to a man,

“Sir, I exist!”

“And that fact,” replied the man,

“Has created in me

A sense of obligation.”

An obligation to what? To merely do what comes natural to him, based on his intuitive knowledge that insofar as being is, it is good, and that more being is therefore better, his own being standing at the forefront of a process of becoming that he is only just now beginning to grasp. And having dwelled long enough in that convivium that he can now look back with keen eyes on whence he came, so too can he now look forward to where he might be going.

Will he indeed transform himself into “ultra-high levels of intelligence that expand outward in the universe at the speed of light”? He does not know. What he does know, however, is that no transformation can take place as long as he is shackled in body and mind by the forces of nonbeing—i.e., by that which that has no other objective than to tie him down, hold him back, and otherwise deprive him of his humanity.

And now that he has seen it for what it is, let him put an end to it.

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Title: Gold, the Golden Rule, and Government: Civil Society and the End of the State

Author: D. G. White

First published: 2009

Series: Libertarian Papers, volume 1

Licence: Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

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