How to Think Like A Statist

I tell you, being an advocate for sound economics is not easy. Despite the fact that the free market can provide a million billion empirical examples that it is a superior engine of progress for civilization – generating wealth, improving technology, and promoting peaceful interaction among otherwise opposing groups of the human family – its really shocking to see the tenacity with which Statists will cling to their fantasies that we need the State to provide a firm foundation for society.

The State is a contradiction. It is violence. It is theft. It claims it exists to protect ordinary people from violence and theft, but fundamentally, it exists by these two things. But I digress.

As I’ve thought about it, I’ve come to realize that there are two bedrock principles upon which Statists will base 99% of their arguments. They are as follows:

First…As an economic principle, monopoly is more efficient than competition. Free competition among different suppliers of goods and services does NOT lead to innovation, greater output, higher quality, and lower prices. Instead, a competitive marketplace leads to a severe restriction of goods, affordable only to the super-rich, while ordinary people, "the poor", go without.

Empirically, this is laughable. Yet, it’s the argument they like to use when arguing that without a State, people on the lowest rung of the economic ladder would then be vulnerable to predation by robbers, murderers, rapists, and other thugs. They fail to explain what exactly is so magical about the provision of security that it is exempt from the basic laws of economics. Yet, that is what they believe. And their solution to protecting these people from theft and violence is to establish a monopoly organization for these services which derives its revenues by theft and threats of violence for not paying extortionary "protection money".

The second principle of Statists is that they believe – really, truly believe – that nobody (except for the Statist who happens to be speaking) actually WANTS roads…but it takes far-seeing politicians to force us to have them. If we all had our way, we’d run outside right now, rip up the pavement in front of our homes and businesses and throw the rubble in a ditch somewhere. We’d all prefer to ride horses to work through 10 foot high snowdrifts, because…well…. I’m not sure why. But we need politicians who know better than us that it would be better to have roads and cars, because ordinary people just don’t get it.

So, the argument goes, because roads lead to improved logistical possibilities for an economy, we need the State to steal half our incomes, tell us where we can smoke, interfere with our medical decisions, and wage war on dark-skinner non-Christians in third world countries halfway around the world. Without the State doing these things, we’ll all be trapped in our homes, unable to get food and supplies to live. To question the need for the State because it promotes some of the most horrendous things humankind is capable of, is to advocate the abolition of all material prosperity and return to living in caves or mud huts.

This, too, is completely absurd. The intellectual failing here is that, like the monopoly argument above, they fail to understand the most basic mechanics of how markets work. They ask, "who will pay to have a road built?", or some variant on the question about how scarce resources get allocated in an economy. It never occurs to them to rephrase the question and substitute something else for "roads". Who pays for that McDonald’s to be built? Who pays to have those cell phone towers built? The entrepreneur, that’s who. Someone who surveys the current structure of the economy, and assesses a need for certain goods or services in a certain area, and then marshals the needed resources to implement his vision.

In both cases, the Statist fails to grasp basic economic principles, and his entire worldview is informed by the outmoded and false assumptions of socialism. It is an error made by many people, so it’s not completely unexpected. But it can be tiring sometimes having to run over the same old, worn out arguments.