Crisis And Leviathan Archives - Center for Individualism

Defense Production Act Coordinator Peter Navarro claimed during a live TV interview on March 29th that “we know exactly what we need” to reduce the spread of the Wuhan Virus and treat infected Americans. He continued, “We have to expand and repurpose our industrial base.” It gets even better, “We have to make sure we’re able to make the medicines we need, the medical equipment, and the supplies. That’s going to create millions of jobs for this country.”

Superficially, this makes sense. After all, the shallow surface is where most public discourse takes place, thanks to compulsory progressive education and national media nitwits. As political economist and Poetic Justice Warrior Robert Higgs explains in his vital 1987 book Crisis and Leviathan,

The most important legacy of the New Deal is the now-dominant ideology of the mixed economy, which holds that the government is an immensely useful means for achieving one’s private aspirations. That one’s resort to this reservoir of benefits is perfectly legitimate.

In the spirit of the public good, it would he helpful to give Navarro’s comments some depth. Beginning with, “we know exactly what we need,” is typical collectivist fantasy. With all due respect, he was speciously correct – for the few seconds prior to the next segment of the broadcast. It featured a new 3D printed ventilator being developed independently at Rice University. While the proper use of ventilators is very complex, this one will cost $300 to produce compared to $10,000 for Navarro’s government approved machines.

To “repurpose our industrial base” is simply authoritarian economic planning, right wing and left wing. Its only a matter of degree. Navarro’s purpose is to “make sure the components are there when we need them.” This sounds good to passive minds, but who or what is “we?”

To the progressively schooled listener it means “the public good.” To active minds, it is evidence of coercive government overreach. The tactic is merely bucolic and ambiguous language to mask the primary purpose of concentrated decision making. As Higgs continues,

To take – indirectly if not directly – other people’s property for one’s own benefit is now considered morally impeccable, provided that the taking is effected though the medium of the government.

Yet Navarro’s poorly trained economic mind claims omniscience over the manufacture and distribution of pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and protective gear for health care professionals. Never mind that it is in short supply because of legacy government intrusion in nearly every aspect of American health care finance and delivery. Combined, they show little regard for specialization, division of labor, and price discovery that are fundamental achievements of Western civilization.

As Higgs explains in his 2002 essay titled The Rise of the West,

The individualism of Western culture, and the political fragmentation of the European peoples in the high Middle Ages, fostered the institutional and technological experimentation by which entrepreneurs could discover how to make labor and capital more productive.

“Going to create millions of jobs” denies reality, government can only create government jobs or get out of the way. Yet this phrase is prized by both left-wing and right-wing political minds, and disregards the real job creators. Economic minds understand employment as Say’s Law, or the Law of Markets – production creates its own demand. It is the foundation of all rational economic theory, and Higgs’ example of economic reality,

Europe’s governments that made life difficult for traders tended to lose their business, and hence a tax base, to competing jurisdictions. Such losses motivated rulers to curb their predation and to allow businessmen room to maneuver.

As illustrated by the Atlas Society, the novel contagion fomented in bat caves in China, ferried to Wuhan’s wet markets, festered in human hosts, and was fostered by its ultimate guardian – the paranoia of China’s totalitarian regime. While Western civilization is built on the solid footings of the scientific method (reason), free markets (purpose), and self-creation (pride); for the East, not so much. As Higgs relates,

In contrast to Europe, businessmen in China suffered an inescapable clampdown. In the Islamic world, an imperial government failed to protect private-property rights. The Soviet empire likewise embraced the imposition of one big bad idea, central economic planning.

In today’s 21st century America, the Crisis is the Wuhan Virus, and the Leviathan is our political, media, and education institutions. However, it’s different this time. Pretend for a second that you’ve never heard that before. During the previous one hundred years, the Leviathan created economic crisis and prescribed economic solutions rooted in the Keynesian myth of aggregate demand, supported by its nonexistent multiplier effect.

Today however, the solution for the epidemic includes castration of supply-side of economic activity. You know, the side that prevents poverty, despair, and death. This stark reality is deeper than a health crisis solved by urgent “flattening the curve” public policy, social distancing, and hygiene. It is the suspension of Constitutional rights and human life-sustaining purpose.

What’s disturbing is the willingness of so many people to accept the repeal of their personal liberties based on projections using unreliable data sets. As Robert Higgs observed,

Few Americans know much about the history of Argentina or Venezuela. But if they wish to know how the people of the USA are ruining their own country, all they have to do is look around themselves, including, in most cases, looking in the mirror.

Media pundits are also vulnerable. Considered predominately right-wing, FOX News is pushing massive government spending to replace individual livelihoods by using the left’s own rationale for social justice: “through no fault of their own.” On the surface, this makes sense because of the government forced shutdown, but ignores the deeper economic and philosophical damage, and merely robs from past and future productivity.

A market’s price discovery mechanism is too complex to mess with, and the longer people are denied the freedom to produce, the longer it will take to rebuild supply chains. The emotional and financial damage to millions of Americans will be inestimable, and is being pumped by shows like CBS 60 Minutes who seem to take pleasure in the demise of the West. In contrast, local news outlets are reporting stories of civil disobedience in their medical and business communities against FDA hegemony, and having wonderful outcomes.

As poetic justice would have it, this pandemic is a lesson in the proper role of government for defending individuals from the clear and present danger of epidemic disease. It is also shining a bright light on the superiority of free-market health care delivery, the generosity of a society rooted in personal liberty, and the ability of minds unleashed by economic freedom to solve any problem. Here, Higgs invokes the combined genius of Enlightenment philosopher John Locke and Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises,

Like all who inherit the Lockean tradition, Mises believed that a strong but limited government, far from suffocating its citizens, allows them to be productive and free.

The popular Western interpretation of ‘crisis’ in the Chinese language means opportunity. Will the breakdown of health care regulations wake America up to their disastrous effects, or we will ratchet up a more powerful Leviathan? Teacher Lisa VanDamme gives us the principled answer, “Extensive knowledge of the consequences of history’s ideas and actions; of the great discoveries of science and what they made possible. These are the raw material from which rational moral principles are drawn.” As Poetic Justice Warrior Robert Higgs advises,

The two issues call forth moral considerations. They involve not questions of what is technically better or worse. Rather, they involve good and evil. Those who propose to deal pragmatically with such questions are doomed to fail.

Since a few things became clear to me last year, I’ve consistently forecasted a significant worsening in U.S.-China relations and remained adamant that all the happy talk of trade deals and breakthroughs is just a lot of hot air.

What first appeared to be a unique quirk of Donald Trump has morphed into bipartisan consensus in Congress, and clear signs have emerged that the general public has likewise become alarmed at China’s growing global clout.

Due to this, as well as a litany of other factors outlined in prior posts, it’s highly unlikely the current trajectory will reverse course and result in a return to what had been business as usual. Instead, we’re probably headed toward a serious and historically meaningful escalation of tensions between the U.S. and China, with what we’ve seen thus far simply a prelude to the main drama. If I’m correct and the ship has already sailed, we should focus our attention on how we respond to what could quickly become a very dicey scenario filled with heightened emotions and nefarious agendas. There’s a good way to respond and a bad way.

In our individual lives, we face various daily challenges, but every now and again something really big hits us, a personal crisis of sorts, and how we respond to these major events determines much of our future. The same thing happens to nation-states, particularly in the current world where virtually all human governance is structured in a highly centralized and statist manner. When such an event hits nation-states the public tends to be easily manipulated into a state of terror and coerced into granting more centralized power to the state, an unfortunate state of affairs that accurately summarizes the reality of 21st century America. With each crisis, the empire has grown stronger, the public weaker, and two decades later we find ourselves in a neo-feudal oligarchy where one half of the public is at the other half’s throat for no good reason. This is what happens when you respond poorly.

Three major crisis events have rocked the U.S. this century, and much of the public has embraced, or at least accepted, the worst possible response in all cases.

The first was the attacks of 9/11, which officially ushered in the modern national security surveillance state and all but obliterated the 4th amendment.
The second was the financial crisis, where the response from Bush/Obama was to bail-out the criminals, destroy any semblance of the rule of law by jailing zero Wall Street executives, and to ensure the Federal Reserve (and mega-banking institutions in general) became stronger and more powerful than ever.
Finally, there was the shock election of Donald Trump. Rather than take his ascendance as a warning about centralized power, the faux “resistance” has been obsessed with removing him, celebrating intelligence agencies/military aggression, bemoaning free speech, and rehabilitating George W. Bush.

Three crises, three horribly destructive responses. This entire century has been an unmitigated march in the direction of stupidity.

I’ve become convinced the next major event that will be used to further centralize power and escalate domestic authoritarianism will center around U.S.-China tensions. We haven’t witnessed this “event” yet, but there’s a good chance it’ll occur within the next year or two. Currently, the front runner appears to be a major aggressive move by China into Hong Kong, but it could be anything really. Taiwan, the South China Sea, currency, economic or cyber warfare; the flash points are numerous and growing by the day. Something is going to snap and when it does we better be prepared to not act like mindless imbeciles for the fourth time this century.

When that day arrives, and it’s likely not too far off, certain factions will try to sell you on the monstrous idea that we must become more like China to defeat China. We’ll be told we need more centralization, more authoritarianism, and less freedom and civil liberties or China will win. Such talk is total nonsense and the wise way to respond is to reject the worst aspects of the Chinese system and head the other way.

If you’re horrified by China’s human rights abuses, then push for an end to murderous U.S. wars abroad based on lies. If the Chinese surveillance panopticon concerns you, we should move in the exact opposite direction with less corporate and state surveillance, not more. If China launches a state-sanctioned digital currency system designed to monitor, and if desired, restrict transactions, we should reject this approach and embrace open, decentralized and permissionless systems like Bitcoin. We should fight lack of freedom with more freedom.

Given our track record this century, I’m skeptical Americans will respond in a positive and productive way to increased tensions with China,although perhaps I’ll be pleasantly surprised. I hope we can finally face a challenge without cowering in fear and surrendering more freedom in order to feel safe and powerful. I hope we can recognize that empire is not an asset, but a liability. That empire strengthens the state and weakens the public. I hope we can be wise enough not to embrace further authoritarianism to defeat authoritarianism. For once this century, I hope we can respond in a thoughtful and intelligent manner.

Posts

Crisis and Leviathan is Why We Need Modern Poetic Justice Warriors Like Robert Higgs

The Next Stupid Move Of Our Political Class Will Be To Tell Us We Must Become More Like China.

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