I’m sure there will be some shocking events in
2018, but I have no idea what they will be. There are too many
wildcards in the mix, with one big one taking center stage: States.
The civilized world, such as it
was, took a nosedive after the Sarajevo
assassinations in 1914 ignited the political tinderbox in
Europe. To pay for the massive slaughter that followed, states abandoned
gold and turned to inflationary finance and borrowing, in addition
to heavy taxation. Very importantly, as Rothbard notes, World War I also served as the
excuse for
a
"war collectivism," a totally planned economy run largely by
big-business interests through the instrumentality of the central government,
which served as the model, the precedent, and the inspiration for
state-corporate capitalism
For the big shots running things,
the war required issuing outrageous lies, suppressing dissent, and everything
else except actual combat. The nightmare of trench fighting they forced upon American
men. “You die over there while we get richer over here,” Wilson and his
gang were in effect saying to the conscripts, while peddling “Liberty” Bonds. Yet, as humanitarian
episodes throughout the war made eminently clear, especially the Christmas
Truce of 1914, the soldiers were mostly eager to fraternize not
kill one another. Ironically, they might’ve written war’s last chapter
had they refused orders to continue the killing, thereby fulfilling the prophecy of H. G. Wells that it would be “the war that
will end war.”
But when peace stands in the way
of big profits, the banker/state alliance usually wins. Quoting Ferdinand
Lundberg from America’s Sixty Families, G. Edward Griffin writes in
his masterpiece, The Creature from Jekyll Island, that
the
total wartime expenditure of the United States government from April 6, 1917,
to October 31, 1919, when the last contingent of troops returned from Europe,
was $35,413,000, 000. Net corporation profits for the period January 1, 1916,
to July, 1921, when wartime industrial activity was finally liquidated, were
$38,000,000,000, or approximately the amount of the war expenditures. More than
two-thirds of these corporation profits were taken by precisely those
enterprises which the Pujo Committee had found to be under the control of the
"Money Trust.” [ A handful of Wall Street banks, primarily those in the
Morgan ambit]
The point of bringing all this up
is that states are powerful organizations that sell their services (various
forms of coercion) to the highest bidders. If the price is right
laws will be passed, relaxed, or ignored. If a war is needed to get
the public behind some scheme, a Lusitania will sink, a Twin Tower will
collapse, with some targeted enemy taking the blame.
Rothbard had it right — states are
criminal gangs writ large.
There are times when I picture the
state as analogous to the loose cannon that broke free from its fastenings and
menaced the lives of the warship crew in Victor Hugo’s novel, Ninety-three. The crew at least
recognized the threat of a ten thousand pound cannon on the loose that “leaps
like a panther, has the weight of an elephant, the agility of a mouse,” whose
“terrible vitality is fed by the ship, the waves, the wind. . .” I can’t
imagine a crew feeling reverence for such a monster.
Failsafe projections
None of us feel comfortable without
some idea of what lies ahead, so allow me to offer a few projections that
require no crystal ball to make. I can predict with a high degree of
confidence that:
1. Most people will not take
any interest in the origin and nature of money.
2. Most people will not seek
to understand the role of money in a market economy.
3. Most people will not take
any interest in central banking or the American state’s central bank, the
Federal Reserve.
4. If questioned, most people
will agree with the “experts” that a central bank is absolutely necessary to
manage the economy, otherwise we would fall prey to financial crises or
depressions.
5. Most people will continue
to believe rising prices are a natural outcome of a market economy, with the
puzzling exception of digital gadgets.
6. Most people will continue
to believe economic and foreign interventionism is a Good Thing, if executed by
politicians of their preferred political party.
7. Most people will continue
to believe in government-provided free lunches.
8. Most people will continue
to believe in the government’s number one free lunch, public education, which like all government free lunches needs more funding.
9. Most people will continue
to believe that victims of U.S. invasions hate us for our freedoms.
10. Most people will continue
to believe we need the state, however corrupt and burdensome, because otherwise
we would have chaos and the strong would dominate the
weak.
And finally, I remain optimistic
about the future of the world, and so should you. Why? The coming
government default and the exponential pace of technology. It will be a
seemingly autonomous process of shifting power from the state to the
individual, and it’s already well underway. For a detailed discussion,
see my little book, The Fall of Tyranny, the Rise of Liberty.