George Handlery about the week that was. The governing class, its power and wealth. State intervention and curing the market cures. Separating state and church was easier than untying the government and the economy. Is the choice between honest poverty and crooked wealth? The interests of the “state class” and the people. How neutral can the state be? Wealth, well-being and the state. Competition, uniform EU taxes and its beneficiaries.

1. We had time to get used to the devastating instinctive reflex that resorts to big, or more correctly, even bigger government. This impulse is not entirely explained by the trust of the public and of the behavior-shaping class of influence-yielders in government intervention. Much of the intuitive reaction of the governing class is caused by its subconscious wish for dependent clients. An independent entrepreneurial class might be beneficial if general wealth is to be created. Albeit productive, docile and submissive this class will not be. This disinclination will be proportional to this element’s economic success. Defiance will also be reflected in the attitude of previously depressed classes as these rise and attain relative economic well being.

2. Market cycles in their declining phase prompt the public, and those who claim to speak for it, to demand rectifying state intervention. Indeed, the result of such involvement can dull the pain of the well-organized and influential interests demanding intervention. However, the dealings of this rescue attempt will not necessarily heal the problem behind economic maladjustment. If the interference treats symptoms alone, it will tend to give selective succor only to alleviate the pain of the well represented. Such selective, and in its consequences limited-in-value help is especially then the case when it was government meddling that has unleashed the forces that brought about the crisis from which rescue is demanded.

3. One reason for the rise of the West specifically and for the success of modern society in the context of freedom generally, has been the decision to separate Church and State. To secure these achievements and to create room to be filled by continued organic improvement, another separation of what are becoming Siamese twins is needed. The challenge facing us is to separate the Economy and the State while maintaining, also in the economic realm, an order defined by consensual and constructive laws.

4. Are we perhaps inconsistent? Who would want to have his house planned by a bureaucracy? Who would buy a car designed by officialdom, and how many of us care to have their life planned by it? How come that, as soon as the problem is a bit removed from our person, so many of us are willing to believe that a bureaucrat is a better businessman than is the entrepreneur? There is more. With reason, we regard all power that is not subject to a limiting review as feeding incompetence and corruption. If so, why are the supporters of major parties that alternate in exercising government power, inclined to confer upon political professionals authority that remove these from traditional controls and limitations? Doing so only makes sense if an assumption is made. We have to believe that the political class is, regardless of the temptation inherent in its function, beyond dishonesty in its response to the force handed to it.

5. The more redistribution there is the more state we get. The more omnipresent the state -whether by invitation or invasion- the less justice. At least if measured on the scale according to which individuals might translate the abstract concept into their own practical terms. At the same time, the obese state, bloated as it will be, stands in danger of attracting and nurturing a parasitical “political class”. Ultimately, this element will develop interests that are separate from society’s. Once this becomes the case, this elite will be inclined to suck the blood of those that had empowered it.

6. After much delay, we got from a government bureau two bills for the same “service”. Both documents were identified as representing “final” demands meaning that the payment would conclude the case. The same person signed both bills that solicited remittances. Alas, even though this is reputed to be a country where everything “works”, the sums demanded were not identical. (The difference amounted to around 30+% and involved a sum of several thousand dollars.) Confused by the contradictions, we have spent two days to reach the case’ administrator at her office. Now the matter is probably closed. Not surprisingly, some thoughts emerged between the curses that accompanied the struggle. The effort to put to rest a simple problem that, to begin with, just could not happen, points at a wider ranging phenomenon. Many of us are inclined to beckon the state when we seek the solution of individual or general problems. An assumption driving this is that the state is assumed to be impartial. Supposedly, this neutrality is secured because the state, and therefore the apparatus through which it acts, is subject to democratic controls by the people. Wrong. Since it expresses the interests of its politically weighty clients, the personal of the government, therefore also the state it operates is unlikely to be impartial. In addition, the ruling machine is not fully controllable. That is because the bureaucrats through whom the state must act, are made immune to “checks” through regulations that are to guarantee their independence. An interesting correlation can be explained by this. The more state, which is the more bureaucracy you have, the stranger, logic-defying cases will result. The price paid for the laughs is society’s dependence and a growing potential for corruption.

7. Which reminds one of an interesting statistic. It is one that not only relates to the previous item but that is also amounts to a tidbit that reveals much about a crucial issue that the modern order raises. Some do not understand the mechanism behind wealth creation. Not a few who do have an ideological commitment to ignore what they surmise. This is especially the case with those who’s premise assumes that property is theft and that what is marketed as success is the result of cheating, thieving and exploitation. Let us not ignore the implications of the above.. It is that “when we grow up” we either become failed paupers mired in misery or we live high on the hog as crooks. Socialism promises that the crooks will be made to pay the beggars bills. In capitalism, according to the theory of its detractors, it is the other way around even if its praxis it reminds one of socialism’s theory. One of the countries in whose case the man made causes of success are not understood is Switzerland. One symptomatic force behind this success is that a small-to-middle-sized business spends 63 hours to do its tax-related accounting. (This must be the reason the IRS might have taught me to love the process through which my Swiss tax declaration can be filed.) The European average is 232 hours. The comparison of these factoids allows an assessment. Together they represent a competitive advantage achieved without government interference that naturally muted into collective success.

8. EU wide minimal taxes – especially on evildoers, such as the successful – are the talk of the town. Intentionally, the imposition of the concept would end tax-rate competition between states, districts and communities. At a time when people, capital and expertise have become extremely mobile, it was this difference what provided the pressure to seek competitive efficiency to prevent the flight of the able. Feared competition within Europe can be avoided if also taxation becomes centralized to punish efficient systems. Some non-European and non-EU members will be thankful for the indirect help. Cruelly, and quite regardless of the attempted enshrinement of inefficiency, international competition will not be circumnavigated by such local agreements.