-Caveat Lector- from: http://www.zolatimes.com/V3.9/pageone.html <A HREF="http://www.zolatimes.com/V3.9/pageone.html">Laissez Faire City Times - Volume 3 Issue 9</A> ----- The Laissez Faire City Times March 1, 1999 - Volume 3, Issue 9 Editor & Chief: Emile Zola ------------------------------------------------------------------------ History Is Nonlinear by Don L. Tiggre Recently a friend wrote to me that he didn�t see much hope for greater freedom until Libertarians start getting elected and wondered if this would happen before what he called the "Death Horizon." By this he meant the approaching point of no return one might project from the state�s various escalating wars against freedom�the point after which the state�s control will become unbreakable and the cause of liberty lost forever (or for a very long time). He wondered how I could be an optimist in the face of that escalation. I am indeed an optimist, but it�s not because I�m sticking my head in the sand about the state�s increasingly naked aggression. >From the increasingly violent wars against various so-called vices ("victimless crimes"), to the increasing hysteria aimed at disarming the people who remain capable of effective self defense, to the increasingly obvious efforts of statists to use "free trade" and the "global village" as excuses to breathe new life into failed socialist policies, there are plenty of reasons to be alarmed. If one looks only at these trends, it would seem easy to conclude that the statists will push us over the Death Horizon before we can stop them. Just look at the "asset forfeiture" policies that have been implemented and are being expanded here in the U.S. Rarely has history afforded such a clear example of a more self-serving, corrupting and counterproductive power and money grab, based on such flimsy reasoning. It would be laughable if it weren�t for the enormous destructive power of this one policy. Instead, it�s a growing, life-sucking void that could depress the most pollyannaish people, if they thought about it for too long. But if it�s true that we�re approaching an asymptote in the graph of state aggression against the people, it is also true that there is another critical point we are approaching. Understanding of, and appreciation for, the freedom philosophy seems to me to have bottomed out sometime in the early 1970s�and when you bottom out, the curve can only take you upward. Objectivists might suggest that this was a time when Rand�s writings had reached enough people that their changing ideas signaled a change in the intellectual tide. I�m not sure I�m willing to give that much credit to one thinker�Heinlein certainly reached his share of people!�but something sure did happen. Now there are more and more people who understand and seek to apply the freedom philosophy. Every year, there are more pro-market think tanks, more pro-freedom columnists in the newspapers, and even more preachers in the pulpit that understand the moral superiority of laissez faire. Freedom is an idea in ascendancy, an idea whose time, as Marshal Fritz told us some years ago would happen in our lifetimes, is rapidly coming. It was eye-opening when Ronald Reagan used libertarian rhetoric to get elected�a crystal clear sign that times had changed in the U.S., even if the necrotic zombie-like systems of the welfare state continued to accelerate their dance with death. If that was eye-opening, then how much more electric a shock for Democratic candidate Bill Clinton to announce that "the era of Big Government is over" and spout Reaganesque rhetoric in order to attract the people�s vote. Many noticed it, but few people seem to have fully grasped the significance of this turn of events, the underlying political realities it implies. And look at the world. Granted that for many it�s just new rhetoric used for seizing power�or trying desperately to hang on to it�but that doesn�t change the fact of the "stampede" toward market mechanisms (as former Coca Cola CEO Roberto C. Goizueta called it) that is occurring around the world. This last needs to be taken with a grain of salt, as from Asia to former Eastern Bloc countries, we can see that few government officials and business people around the globe truly understand, trust, and practice free market capitalism. Instead, the rigged sales of state businesses to party faithful in post-Communist countries and the wholesale propping up of so-called private industries in Asia have put the necks of the local powers-that-be squarely on the chopping block. The corrective cleaver of the market is ready to fall and discipline such foolishness and it will be ugly. However, the point is that Marxist and socialist economic notions and ideologies were shown to the whole world to be utterly bankrupt in this last decade and people by the billions have turned to look elsewhere for new ideas. They may stumble through some trial and error in their search, but they are searching, and they have the whole bloody twentieth century to remind them of what doesn�t work. This significance of this search cannot be overstated�it�s possible that a wholesale ideological shift on this massive a scale has never happened in such a short span of time in all of human history. If there is a Death Horizon, there is also an Enlightenment Horizon. Big Stuff is happening and it behooves the observer to keep the Big Picture in mind. Lesson number one has to be that history is not linear. As influenced by the Austrian economists as I am, I don�t advocate trying to actually graph history and project into the future by any mathematical means, but there are a lot of people who seem to look at it as a linear phenomenon. They look at a trend and think, "if things keep on like this we�ll run out of gas by this date," or "the ice caps will melt by this time," or "meaningful human rights will cease to be recognized by the state by this time." This kind of analysis is flawed. Even if human action could be captured by an equation, its graph would be a wild and bucking thing, taking unexpected twists, turns, plunges and climbs. Consider the demise of the former Soviet Empire. Some of us predicted that it would collapse�that it had to�if it could not prop up its counter-productive policies by sucking the life out of more productive economies though warfare. But we couldn�t say when (well, maybe James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg could). I certainly had no idea, even a few months before it happened, that the collapse would happen in my lifetime. If I had tried to plot life behind the iron curtain on a graph, I would have drawn a line that showed little change from 1968 to 1988 and would have projected on-going stagnation for the next century. But that�s not what happened. History bucked that rider�tossed him completely out of the corral (or into the dustbin, if you prefer). So, what does it mean when we look forward to the Death Horizon? It means we�re thinking in mathematical terms that don�t fit the human condition well. It means we�re projecting into the future based on current values and variables�that may be the best way we�ve come up with to project into the future, but that doesn�t mean that the predictions should be thought of as certain. Any graph can take sudden turns that cannot be projected from the data points available unless there is absolute certainty that the equation accurately covers the whole of the phenomenon being graphed�something that is impossible to achieve when it comes to billions of self-aware beings with free will. It means that if we project the Death Horizon to be five, ten, or twenty-five years hence, and the Enlightenment Horizon to be farther out, we could be overlooking unforeseeable factors that completely change the picture. What factors? Well, a new Islamic leader with wide-based support and strong beliefs one way or the other about free markets could turn the whole world on its head. Or a conflict among former Eastern Bloc peoples that goes nuclear. Or a non-human change, such as a mutation of a cold virus that produces a lethal strain. All of this might suggest that I�m simply an optimist because I think the future is inherently unknowable and I choose to look on the bright side. But there�s more to it than that. In my view, the escalating aggression of the state is, in a backhanded kind of way, evidence that the other trend, the one toward enlightenment, is the stronger one, the one that will sweep over the world after whatever twists and turns it takes. Somewhere deep inside, I think the statists know they�re losing it; hence their hysteria about decentralizing forces such as the Internet. Welfare statism is an intellectually and economically bankrupt system that is about to join communism in being tossed from the corral. It is a rickety structure on the brink of collapse. As I told my friend, you can look at a steel beam holding up such a structure and not realize that it is the only thing holding the whole upright, and not realize that it is about to collapse. When the beam goes, and the whole structure comes piling down after it, we marvel at the astonishing speed with which history can make a radical change of direction. Yes, I am an optimist, but this is because I look at what�s going on and I think about the big picture. Getting libertarians elected is almost irrelevant�that will happen on its own when the trend toward enlightenment is so obvious that even boot-licking politicians will get a clue that those are the kind of noises they have to make in order to get elected (while there still are elections). As Rees-Mogg and Davidson point out in The Sovereign Individual, the trappings and institutions of the modern nation state will be rendered as useless by the information age as the feudal and chivalric codes were rendered obsolete by the inventions of firearms and the printing press. Perhaps it�s a little vengeful of me, but I take no small amount of pleasure from the realization that the days of the nation state are numbered. Whether or not you share this optimism is up to you, but remember that history is non-linear and fasten your seatbelt�whatever happens, it will be interesting! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Don L. Tiggre is the author of Y2K: The Millennium Bug, a suspenseful thriller. Tiggre can be found at the Liberty Round Table. -30- from The Laissez Faire City Times, Vol 3, No 9, March 1, 1999 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Published by Laissez Faire City Netcasting Group, Inc. Copyright 1998 - Trademark Registered with LFC Public Registrar All Rights Reserved Disclaimer The Laissez Faire City Times is a private newspaper. Although it is published by a corporation domiciled within the sovereign domain of Laissez Faire City, it is not an "official organ" of the city or its founding trust. 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