The “A-Word”

Counting the cost of the state... and imagining the alternative

Joel Bowman, from up in the cheap seats in Buenos Aires, Argentina...

They shed their sense of responsibility
Long ago, when they lost their votes, and the bribes; the mob
That used to grant power, high office, the legions, everything,
Curtails its desires, and reveals its anxiety for two things only,
Bread and circuses. 

~ Juvenal, Satire X

The news hit the wires like a dead frog landing in the bottom of an abandoned well. Down here on the Pampas, annual inflation accelerated “less than expected” for the month of November. According to government data, prices rose by only 92.4% from the same month a year ago. ¡Que quilombo!

Sure, prices are rising at the fastest rate in 30 years... in a country where high double-digit inflation is as common as Messi football jerseys in Qatar... but hey, it was mercifully lower than the 94.2% median experts had projected. Small victories, no? 

But currency collapse and economic crises can wait for mañana. Today is game day, after all... the final of the Copa Mundial (The Football/Soccer World Cup). Long ago did the poor Argentines lose faith in their votes... their bribes... their hack politicos. Now, in the 35th Year of Their Lord, Lionel Messi, the long-suffering mob place their faith instead in their beloved football team, the Albicelestes.

Facing the defending champions, France’s Les Bleus, the real world-weary Argentines dream of glory and fame on the pitch, of clenching “la tercera” (their third world title), and of waking up tomorrow in a world where rampant inflation is not the only thing in which they are #1.

While we’re on the subject of lofty dreams, allow us a few paragraphs to do as that mopey Beatle once did and “Imagine all the people... with no government...” 

More in today’s feature essay, below...

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The “A-Word”

By Joel Bowman

Have you noticed, dear reader? A heretofore unspeakable word is beginning to form at the edge of polite conversation.

Long has it lingered on the margins of society... the proud and so-called "fringe." Now, thanks in no small part to the vast and increasing decentralization of information, the word is starting to find a voice.

Many voices, in fact. While the ongoing “Twitter Files” story makes clear the extent to which the previous iteration of the world’s largest digital platform censored “alternative” opinions, there is hope yet that free speech may be yanked from the grasp of bed-wetting censors and narrative toting, mainstream news apologists alike. 

But back to our word of the day. For the amateur etymologists and card-carrying logophiles among us, the term in question derives from the Greek arkhos, meaning "rulers." The critical prefix, an, simply denotes "without." 

An-arkhos - Anarchy (noun): without rulers.

Not without rules, we hasten to emphasize, just without rulers. No masters, in other words... and therefore, no slaves. Only freely contracting individuals, voluntarily interacting for the benefit of one and, by extension, the other.

Put like that... clinically, factually... academically, it almost seems as if the word itself might represent a faintly desirable concept. "A world without rulers," we muse to ourselves, "imagine..."

It almost sounds like the lyrics to a John Lennon song; as poetic as it is improbable.

Imagine all the People…

But without rulers, administrators, bureaucrats, meddlers, do-gooders, world-improvers and the rest of their irksome ilk, how would society function?

Ah... therein lies the hitch.

We're prohibited from ever finding out! (That's one of the rulers' favorite restrictions... and the real reason they don’t like people like Mr. Musk privatizing the government’s favorite media playthings, like Twitter.)

Instead, each and every year, tens of thousands of pages' worth of new regulations are added to the Federal Register, the nation’s repository of legislative “sand in the gears.” Likewise, state and local agencies enact their own brands of "Justice."

Statutes, bylaws, edicts, decrees, requirements, orders, mandates, acts, canons, caveats and the rest... all imposed by a group of insider elites claiming to represent some amorphous, esoteric concept they call "the common good."

What is this "common good," we wonder, this deliberately ambiguous entity? How is it measured? And what of the plight of the world's smallest minority: the individual?

The rulers never seem to say. And too few people bother to ask.

Elsewhere, the masses' attention remains focused on the unproven positives supposedly delivered by politicians and their weird and wacky market interventions... the Fed, the DEA, SEC, IRS, TSA, EPA, and the other 440 odd federal agencies listed in the Register. The benefits, appointed officials assure us, far outweigh the costs.

But what are those costs? How do we quantify the unrealized... the potential... the hypothetical value and experience of the road not taken?

In short, we can't. Not in any definitive manner. Still... how about a vague figure... a guestimate... a "más o menos," as the Argentines say...

The Cost of the State

It’s been almost a decade since economists John Dawson and John Seater examined the relationship between the growth in regulations (measured by the pages of federal regulations) and economic performance (measured by real GDP growth). The pair followed the paper trail back more than half a century in an attempt to gain some scope for their research.

Their results? See for yourself:

(Source: Dawson and Seater, Journal of Economic Growth, 2013)

Dawson and Seater estimate that federal regulations have potentially lowered real GDP growth by about 2% per year since 1949 and made America 72% poorer.

The professors put the figures into context in their conclusion (emphasis ours):

Regulation's overall effect on output's growth rate is negative and substantial. Federal regulations added over the past 50 years have reduced real output growth by about two percentage points on average [annually] over the period 1949-2005. That reduction in the growth rate has led to an accumulated reduction in GDP of about $38.8 trillion as of the end of 2011. That is, GDP at the end of 2011 would have been $53.9 trillion instead of $15.1 trillion if regulation had remained at its 1949 level [see chart above].

Hang on a second. Only $38.8 trillion? Over 6 1/2 decades? The numbers seem a tad lenient to us...

Then again, by Dawson and Seater's own admission, they attempted only to account for the costs of federal regulations... leaving aside all those pesky local infringements and market incursions at the state level. Measuring all the rules is simply too arduous a task... like counting the number of lies during a presidential debate.

"Inclusion of state regulation would be highly desirable," the economists lamented, "but data collection is an enormous task, far beyond our resources."

And yet, with nary an eye to the spiraling costs, regulations at the local, state and federal levels nevertheless pile ever higher... page after page... promise after promise... vote after vote.

Back when Dawson and Seater set for themselves their monumental task, over 80,000 pages were appended to the Federal Register. The directory alone is enough to make the eyes bleed. The Homeland Security Department has six subdivisions. The Interior Department has 10. And the Agricultural Department (which ostensibly oversees and regulates an activity that humans have managed to do for thousands of years) boasts no fewer than 20 arms, branches, offices and agencies.

Now fast-forward to today. Imagine factoring in the brigades of hyperventilating Covidians... the teams of Diversity Inclusion and Equity (DIE) consultants... the squadrons of ESG zombies and Capital “S” Scientists drawing paychecks and “research” grants for measuring the world’s temperature half a century from now... not to mention their paymasters in Congress and lapdogs in the mainstream media, ceaselessly browbeating us all on how best we (not they, mind) should offer appropriate propitiations to Mother Gaia, making certain sacrifices in the here and now for vague promises about a nebulous, computer-modeled future. 

One Nation, Ungovernable

Of course, all this meddling should come as little surprise to anyone paying attention. After all, bureaucrats have a vested interest in conspicuously "doing something"... no matter the consequences, seen or unseen.

But again, here we are attempting to account for only the economic cost of State intervention. What about the myriad other weights lumped on the backs of individuals seeking a free and unmolested life?

It is here, in the nebulous "Cost of Empire" column, where the State is allowed (literally) to get away with murder.

To illustrate...

Imagine discovering that a "friend" routinely stole half your paycheck... but excusing him because he throws a half-decent barbecue once in a while...

Or learning that your neighbor routinely deployed Predator drones to rain Hellfire missiles down on children's birthday parties... but pardoning his curious pastime because he once gave you a good deal on your old clunker.

In no other walk of life would a reasonable person tolerate the kind of nonsense that passes for critical thinking in the political realm.

Economic historian, Robert Higgs, has written extensively on this very topic. His powerful insights are worth quoting here at length:

Anarchists did not try to carry out genocide against the Armenians in Turkey; they did not deliberately starve millions of Ukrainians; they did not create a system of death camps to kill Jews, gypsies, and Slavs in Europe; they did not fire-bomb scores of large German and Japanese cities and drop nuclear bombs on two of them; they did not carry out a "Great Leap Forward" that killed scores of millions of Chinese; they did not attempt to kill everybody with any appreciable education in Cambodia; they did not launch one aggressive war after another; they did not implement trade sanctions that killed perhaps 500,000 Iraqi children.

In debates between anarchists and statists, the burden of proof clearly should rest on those who place their trust in the state. Anarchy's mayhem is wholly conjectural; the state's mayhem is undeniably, factually horrendous.

Dropping the A-Word

By some estimates, the State (in its various machinations and vile expressions) is directly responsible for the death of some 200 million human beings over the past century alone. This figure takes into account both wartime deaths and those who perished as a result of such disastrous undertakings as Mao's "Great Leap Forward," referenced above by Mr. Higgs, which alone accounted for as many as 70 million deaths... during peacetime.

And yet, while those who eschew violence are made to wade through a torrent of hypothetical chaos and "wholly conjectural" mayhem ("But who will build the roads...?"), the basest depravities perpetrated by the State remain beyond the reach of so-called "polite" conversation.

For shame!

Day by day... dollar by dollar... death by death... the cost of feeding the State continues to mount. If peace and prosperity are ever to prevail, the alternative must become the imperative.

With that in mind, readers grown weary of counting the costs are cordially invited to drop the "A-word" into their next cocktail hour conversation.

If it sinks like a lead balloon, you'll know you're onto something good.

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And that’ll do for another Sunday Session, dear reader. Remember, if you’d like to chime in, feel free to do so in the comments section below. 

Meanwhile, we’re off to watch the big game with some dear friends. Already, as we type these words to you on the morning before the match, the crowds, draped in blue and white, gather on street corners below... cars honk up and down the boulevards... and groups of people sing and chant from their balconies. 

Win or lose, a good showing of the city’s 15 million porteños will march down to the obelisko downtown... to celebrate or commiserate.

Having lived here on and off for a dozen or so years ourselves, your weekend correspondent, ordinarily allergic to team sports, is getting into the spirit of things, too. That is, we’ll raise a glass of malbec to our adopted homeland, either way. 

¡Saludos!

Joel Bowman