The whole reason the divine right of kings had to be invented is because people could clearly see this; whereas most citizens of democratic regimes believe they have somehow consented to rule by faceless bureaucrats and that government controlled resources and property are “public” or “social” (the latter being an Orwellian word if I’ve ever seen one). – Praetyre
It is not a contract or consent to be ruled, it is a contract to imprison statists in a institutionalized framework from which they can do as little harm to civil, political and economic rights as possible.
Of course, these statists have found some fissures in the prison mortar that has enabled them to temporarily gain some coercive economic power. This must be addressed with an economic bill of rights to complement our sturdy civil and political bill of rights.
The bounty of communication is due to technology; being a monarchy evidently didn’t stop the Holy Roman Empire from inventing the printing press, nor the other medieval societies from adopting it. And how are freedoms more vigorous today? There is more legislation and more regulation of individual’s lives and liberties than in any pre-20th century society in all of human history. – Praetyre
Most of the regulations are petty, death by a thousand cuts indeed, but individually they are insignificant and overwhelmingly economic in nature. Of course, economic coercion is real and without it civil and political freedom is meaningless. But compared to the middle ages or any other era – political and civil rights equal protections under the law, living standards, life expectancy, infant mortality, upward mobility, and other societal metrics have improved markedly from the past.
Even today government in both autocratic and democratic societies is in decline. Even in the hyper-socialist Scandanavian states government regulatory and tax powers have been rolled back and will continue to decline in size and scope. It is obvious that the globe is experiencing a dramatic increase in free markets, political and civil rights unprecedented in past history. SO to say that mankind had more promise during the Middle Ages compared to the inspiring changes in both the West and developing world is an argument based on ignorance with blinders.
Take the “debate” over the financial crisis in the mainstream media. The positions held essentially vary between either “Stimulus and bailouts are good for the economy” and “Banks should have been nationalized and there needs to be more government control of the economy to prevent this ever happening again.”. There are some more minor voices that can be better in certain respects, but in others they are even worse, like the protectionist Buchananites or the crypto-Marxists who want to establish a maximum wage.-- Praetyre
Someone like Ron Paul generating the interest he does today would have been impossible a decade ago. Also, the fastest growing economic school is the Austrians. Of course, special interests are loath to surrender their ill gotten gains, but across the globe entrenched autocrats are under seige like never before in human history.
How precisely do you go about fixing these issues in a “liberal” democracy? The academic, media and political establishment are all socially democratic at their core, with minorities of neoconservatives mixed in. No career politician is going to cut subsidies or entitlements, and globalist entities like the EU make it more and more difficult to stand apart in national policy anyway (look at the attacks on Switzerland for it’s banking privacy). “Climate change” is the new cause-du-jour for massive assaults on property rights. – Praetyre
Climate change is insignificant. The public at large rejects it and the US will dramatically expand its production and use of fossil fuels going forward despite the token investment in crony capitalist schemes like alternative energy. Indeed, I have been to the Bakken field and there is enough gas to power half the nation for decades, global warming notwithstanding. As for academia, media, politicians and pop culture — circumstances and economic realities will dictate the end of statism irrespective of what they do. It is simply unsustainable as you know. As a result it will collapse under the weight of its own inefficiencies and corruption. And be grateful that you live in a liberal democracy that will weather this change far more nimbly and peacefully than under an autocratic or anarchic society.
Public anger over the recession is rarely directed in a libertarian way; it is either directed at the “greed” of speculators and other bogeymen or the corruption of the banksters. The latter is good, but is not enough on it’s own, and often the anger assumes the banksters are corrupt because of a lack of regulation and oversight, and that new forms of government control, such as higher capital gains taxes and the aforementioned wage caps, must be instituted at an international level to prevent future recessions. Anger, when it is directed at the government at all, is often directed because the public believes the government simply stood by as a “sleeping watchdog” during the recession, rather than being the very cause of it through it’s system of perverse incentives and inflationism.-- Praetyre
That outcome is certainly a possibility, but the Republic has weathered far greater difficulties without resorting to permanent absolutism. Indeed, we have seen continued increases in political and civil freedoms despite these difficulties. There is considerable consensus in society for continued protections from government overreach particularily in the global war on terror, infringement of personal freedoms, and restrictions on civil discourse. The Supreme Court has reaffirmed many individual and free speech rights recently and the Constitutional framework is in place to protect these indefinitely. Of course, statists last refuge is economic coercion and that will soon be removed from their toolkit since it is reached its zenith. Indeed, the Tea Party movement (and for that matter the increasing popularity of libertarian outlets like MIses.org) is a manifestation against government that debunks your assertion that the citizenry looks to government for support in times of need. Electronic communications insures that the truth can be uncovered and it has been my experience that the youth of this nation are some of the most fervent libertarians. In fact, I don’t think that the libertarian or classical liberal movement has had as much a future and following among the young then it has today.
If you can think of ways to solve these issues, more power to you. If being pessimistic about Western democratic (and especially Anglospheric) issues makes me a mad monarchist, well call me George III. – Praetyre
Statism will never die. It is not the result of government, it is the result of societal actors seeking to gain power by coercive means because they can’t by peaceful and voluntary means (free market). They will use whatever means they can to gain power, including the state or the market.
But the state is not necessarily evil if it is designed to imprison statist tendencies by decentralizing coercive power, balancing it, limiting it in a Constitutional Federal framework where we can all monitor it and attenuate it. Without the institutional ‘prison’ of liberal democracy, these statists could work their schemes in secrecy and without any restraint developing vertical and horizontal territorial monopolies of coercive power. Of course, statist and their cronies in the private sector have temporarily broken out of the prison and engaged in economic coercion, but an economic bill of rights is forthcoming. Perhaps a Constitutional convention that will either speed up the inevitable decline or reverse it in its tracks. But I think the change will be relatively peaceful as catacylsmic changes go.
“May you live in interesting times” – old Chinese proverb
