From the White-PillBox: Part 28. Achilles Heel edition 2
A satisfying list of more of the State's Achilles Heels.
This is the second in a sub-series of the White Pill essays examining some of the State’s vulnerabilities (Achilles Heels). They are pressure points of the State; attributes or outcomes that represent weak links in the State apparatus.
These vulnerabilities differ somewhat from the State’s innate weaknesses (those that arise from its very nature). Innate weaknesses undermine the State like gravity undermines a house of cards. They need little from us to help things along, because they are structural defects.
Before the Achilles Heels, a delightful detour
Just some of the State’s innate weaknesses are:
The irrational justifications of its modern form, democracy
The shockingly small number of armed agents it can rely on to enforce obedience.
With so many inherent weaknesses, the question may arise whether libertarian activism is needed at all.
Enough to eliminate the State impediment to a free society?
It is conceivable that no activism is needed; that a stateless society would emerge naturally. The State may eventually wither away by virtue of its natural weaknesses, and as a clueless bystander in the face of advancing knowledge and technology.
But it is equally conceivable that as humanity struggles toward freedom, the State impediment grows. It may slow the process for hundreds of years or more. Or worse, the State may manage to destroy our species, or set us back to the Stone Age, by means of nuclear war, biological damage, or other horrors. A free society would have lost the race, so to speak. This means human actions could make a difference by helping to win that race by “speeding things along” 1.
The Achilles Heels
Besides the State’s destructive nature, there are its destructive methods and effects. Through and through, the State is a cancer on human civilization and prosperity. So in the same way that its structural nature equates to vulnerabilities, so does its effects.
This sub-series covers some of these destructive effects. They also make the State vulnerable, but not only to the natural course of events. Human actions can exploit those vulnerabilities.
Like Achilles Heel, a little pressure in a vulnerable place can make a big difference.
The previous essay addressed one of these, Intellectual Property. The following topics represent more of the State’s Achilles Heels.
Money
The State controls money, giving central banks a monopoly on the issuing and manipulation of legal tender currency.
The State creates and spends money at will. This empowers it more than any other factor. Nothing the State does would be possible without its fuel of money.
This also makes inflation a true friend to the State. As the first to spend it, the State and its favored recipients use that money before it causes inflated prices. Their newly created money is genuinely worth more, as compared to later, when it trickles to the rest of society. It is essentially a hidden transfer of wealth.
Achilles Heel: to be sure, government can control money. But it cannot control the public’s actions pertaining to money. As its value declines, eventually faith in government money is lost. And over the last decade, cryptocurrency has emerged as a viable alternative. Bitcoin and other cryptos are gaining institutional legitimacy with each passing year.
Control of information
The State has always managed to influence the flow and content of information. In doing so, it controls the range of acceptable thought. And it will always exert its influence to give itself the most favorable image, while demonizing others to its advantage.
For example, politics always dominates the news. This relentlessly “confirms” the legitimacy of the State.
The ideas of freedom have had an uphill struggle in this regard. At least before the information age, it simply took too long for the ideas of liberty to spread.
Achilles Heel: in the age of the Internet, information moves at the speed of light, and is democratized: anyone can have a platform that can potentially be seen across the world. This process is unfolding before our eyes. For example, we are witnessing the decline of one of the State’s key handmaidens, the major media.
It is fortunate that libertarian ideas can spread in this decentralized environment. But it is also fortunate that this environment subjects the State to enormous competition over information consumption. Their former near-monopoly on content has ended. With time their message dominates less and less.
Intrusiveness into our lives
Through law, regulation, and the influence of its power, the State manages to touch every corner of our lives. It starts from childhood, indoctrinating children in public schools, then continues this in higher academia. It impacts us in our working years by taxing us, meddling in our business choices, influencing our insurance and medical options, and so on. And it is similarly intrusive in our retirement years.
Throughout our lives it tries to put us into a mindset of dependency.
Achilles Heel: once again the Internet provides parallel options. Home schooling not only offers superior childhood development, but helps reduce State indoctrination. University-level education is available online, in many cases free of charge. People can connect across the globe for personal or business reasons in previously unimaginable ways. All of these undermine the influence of the State.
War
The State uses war to both extend its influence and solidify public support. Along the way, it destroys lives and property; it drains society’s wealth, and creates hatred where it did not exist before.
Achilles Heel: the taste for war among the public is diminishing. It is not merely a matter of expenditures (which in any case are hidden). The last centuries have seen a slow but steady increase in human compassion. War has become generally unpopular2, and thus an increasingly difficult “sell” to the public.
This means that with each new military conflict in which the State embroils itself, public support is increasingly difficult to muster. And this will only accelerate as the Internet enhances the ability of people of all cultures to interact with each other. In the past, the State could easily stir up public hatred of faceless “foreign enemies”. Today the world is a smaller place; it is harder to feel hate when the people we see and interact with in real-time are clearly just like us.
Institutional legitimacy
The State could never get out of the gate, so to speak, if it did not first claim legitimacy (it could not exist for any length of time by brute force). So it subjects the public to cult-like indoctrination from cradle to grave. As a result, the public believes the State to be morally legitimate, and therefore self-complies with the State’s rules.
So the State handily survives, persists, and grows.
Achilles Heel: in the last half century libertarian and anarchist thinking has made the State’s illegitimacy explicit. And the technologies of the Internet have helped these ideas spread more quickly. As this progresses, it has the effect of making politicians and the major media objects of ridicule (justly). We are witnessing the steady erosion of respect for “public servants” and major media.
More White Pills
The next essay in this White Pill sub-series will identify some human White Pills - people actively working to leverage these State vulnerabilities.
They are the Davids preparing the slings for Goliath.
It is a bit like dealing with a bully: we can do nothing and hope to survive, knowing eventually he’ll stop. Or, it may end sooner if we take action to deal with the problem.
This is not to say the public is against all war, the way anarchists are. But large-scale war is clearly no longer viable. Since World War II, we have seen 3/4 of a century without a similar conflict. To be sure, war has been practically continuous since then, from Korea right up to today. But these have been targeted conflicts that have not escalated into world wars. It seems the public has lost its taste for grand global conflicts, although it does tolerate (what it perceives as) wars that are more contained in scope. One can infer the truth of this by observing that the dozens of wars since WWII commonly had multi-national participants, yet none escalated globally. This is, of course, cold comfort to those who have suffered from war, as well as those who cherish peace.