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Re: NYT Fears Cypherpunks
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[email protected] (Duncan Frissell) writes:
> The article suggested that unless people turn to the State for protection
> from "anarchy" the State will fade.
> Here is my argument (recycled from a few years ago) as to why State power is
> fading:
Fading of government power must begin with popular refusal to
gratuitously accept the favors of government. Since this looks
unlikely, it appears to me that the trend to ever-more oppressive
government will continue for a while yet. It will probably only end in
catastrophic collapse.
> I expect that State authority will continue to weaken over the next few
> years for the following reasons:
> 1) The ruled outnumber the rulers.
Big government is caused not by ``rulers'', but by the demand created by
its beneficiaries. Kill the rulers, and the beneficiaries will erect
new ones in their place. Kill the beneficiaries and the rulers will
find themselves without a job.
More useful than the rulers-ruled division is the division into those
who gratuitously accept the benefits of government (usually without even
realizing that this is why government gets so big), and those who
scrupulously avoid gratuitous involvement with government. The latter
are an infinitesimal fraction who are being overwhelmed by the former.
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