Executive Summary
- How the State supplanted community enterprise with an entitlement-driven economy
- Why the State's entitlement approach is unsustainable, mathematically — and is finally imploding as we watch
- What to expect at this point: more egregious abuse to keep the system working, ultimately triggering serious social unrest
- How self-reliance and local enterprise will emerge as paramount once the current State system collapses
Part I: Acknowledging the Arrival of Peak Government
If you have not yet read Part I, available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.
Part II: The End of the Free Lunch
In Part I, we examined four key drivers of Central State expansion and how they are now likely entering an era of prolonged contraction.
This historic vast expansion did not occurred in a vacuum; as our social and economic orders are not infinite, the State’s expansion largely came at the expense of community (private society) and the marketplace.
Many observers have noted that the Central State has largely replaced community within the nation’s social order. That is, the Central State now dominates the society and the economy, while community and the marketplace operate beneath its shadow.
Some see this withering of community as occurring off-camera, so to speak, for reasons that had nothing to do with the State. In other words, the decline of community left an opening that has been filled by the State. This view discounts the active encroachment by the expansionist Central State on private society and markets such as housing and equities, which have become State-managed platforms for perception management and private predation.
The primary mechanism that the State has used to supplant community is bribery via entitlements that demand political complicity. When enough of the citizenry are thus bound to support the State’s control (lest their personal share of State funds be threatened), then a citizen-supported tyranny has been established.
by pianoman