Ruled By Criminals

     First, an instructive and inspiring graphic:

     I hope that seems “obvious” to you, Gentle Reader – but not because everyone who might ever see it would say so. You see, a great many Americans have bought into the scam that “the King can do no wrong:” what jurists have called “sovereign immunity.” My hope is that anyone intelligent enough to read the drivel I post here has not yet succumbed to that fantasy.

     But the matter demands more than an off-the-cuff observation at which many people would shrug.

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     The rise of criminals to the corridors of power is inherent in the dynamic of power-seeking. There is simply no possibility of designing and implementing a government that lacks that tendency. While this cannot be mathematically proved, history tells us that the rate of confirmation is nearly 100% — and that the exceptions were all governments toppled from outside, by an invading force.

     Does that sound like an argument for anarchism? It could be read that way – but anarchism is also unstable. Sooner or later it will birth one or more governments. I’ve written to this effect before:

     [W]hereas [Which Art In Hope] was principally concerned with a moral-ethical problem an anarchic society would find supremely difficult to face, the later one moved in a somewhat different direction: an exploration of the most insidious of all the processes known to operate among men: the rise of power politics. Freedom’s Fury continues in the direction Freedom’s Scion undertook to follow.
     I shan’t attempt to deceive or misdirect you: I’m horrified by politics and all its fruits. I consider the use of coercive force against innocent men the greatest of all the evils we know. But I try, most sincerely, to be realistic about the world around us. In that world, peopled by men such as ourselves, anarchism—the complete abjuration and avoidance of the State—is unstable. In time, it will always give way to politics. Hammer it to the earth as many times as you may, you will never succeed in killing it permanently. The State will rise again.

     As Friedrich Hayek observed in The Road to Serfdom, the desire for power and the willingness to do anything to get and keep it are strongest in those who would abuse it. So with the passage of enough time, the corridors of power will be filled by criminals. Worse, let a little more time go by, and the lesser criminals will be replaced by the greater ones: strong-armers, rapists, and murderers.

     Think Ruby Ridge and Waco.

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     “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” – Eric Hoffer

     The progression of government corruption is simple enough that I feel no qualms about presenting it schematically, as a list of stages:

1. A government is formed around a set of moral-ethical principles that command overwhelming, perhaps even near-unanimous concurrence.
2. That government begins to operate.
3. Persons inside the government notice opportunities for personal enrichment, aggrandizement, or both. Some of them seek to use the powers of the State to attain those things: perhaps legally, perhaps not. Other persons, aflame with passion for some Cause, seek to use the powers of the State to advance it: again, perhaps legally, perhaps not.
4. Persons outside the government notice the above processes taking place. Some protest against it; others shrug it off as the way of the world; still others scheme to “get in on the gravy train.”
5. Persons inside and outside the government who have compatible goals eventually come together and agree on “deals.” In the deal-making, larger amounts of money will prevail over smaller ones. Those deals will almost always contravene the law and the moral-ethical principles on which the government was founded.
6. Eventually, in a process similar to blackmail, those inside the government transform their outside collaborators into servants compelled to conform to their agendas, regardless of the costs imposed on those outside. While such machinations may possess a veneer of legality and contentions about the “public good,” these become steadily less sincere and more cosmetic.
7. Over time, the less scrupulous will rise through the use of their wider arrays of means: first to displace the more scrupulous, then to make themselves immune from removal. (“When force is made the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket.” – Ayn Rand)
8. Also over time, the sense of immunity from consequences persuades the governors that they can break any law as blatantly as they like. (Cf. Ted Kennedy, Joe Biden, etc.)
9. Such a government will perpetuate itself unless and until it rots from internal strife too greatly to endure popular pressure (Cf. Ferdinand Marcos’s Philippines).

     As I’ve already said, one cannot prove that this will happen…but the sole cases in which it hasn’t have been governments toppled from outside, by an aggressive invading force.

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     I’m mainly concerned about America, of course. While we haven’t yet descended to the level of a banana republic, the process here has gone far enough that we’ve already elected a credibly-accused rapist to the presidency. Moreover, that president’s party is about to nominate another credibly accused rapist, demonstrably complicit in international corruption on a stunning scale, for the same office.

     However, other nations’ experiences should be taken into consideration. The pattern suggests that in the absence of an aggressive external force, we can expect all the following:

• If there are multiple levels of government, power and funding will be sucked upward, toward the highest – ultimately the national – level. Lower-level governments will be gradually stripped of all independent authority and autonomy, eventually to become mere administrative units of the national government.
• At every level of government, power will be drawn into the executive from the other branches. The executive can do this because it possesses greater mobility and commands the means of enforcement (that’s inherent in the nature of an executive).
• Within the executive, power will be pulled upward: within departments, toward their respective heads; overall, toward the titular head of state.

     The end result is a “strongman” state, in which a Maximum Leader is the sole source of authority. Whoever else seeks to be part of such a government must perpetually reassure the tyrant of his absolute loyalty and perfect compliance with the tyrant’s lightest wish. If that government becomes sufficiently riven by conflict among internal contenders for advancement, it can be toppled from below – i.e., by popular pressure – but this doesn’t seem inherent to the dynamic that forms such governments.

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     Anyone who has read and comprehended the above can easily see that America is not the only nation so afflicted. In this Year of Our Lord 2020, essentially the entire population of the world and its whole habitable land area are ruled by criminals. In a way, it’s comforting to recognize this. It means we’re not alone. But it’s still a problem that demands correction.

     The uber-problem is that correction, in the absolute sense, is impossible. The dynamic is without a counter-dynamic other than emigration through spatial expansion. In a closed, frontierless system – and at this time, Earth is such a system – there is no escape. The cycle of political collapse, coalescence and renewal, the encroachment of corruption, the ascent of ever more unscrupulous criminals, the “strongman” state, and ultimate collapse will continue.

     Damn it all, where’s my planetoid?

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     Highly if tangentially relevant to the above tirade is Si Graybeard’s discourse on law and unintended consequences. Don’t miss it.