The Totalitarian Impulse vs. Two Words: "Oh, Yeah?"
Remnant Review
We say that individuals are responsible for their actions. Libertarianism teaches this. Christianity teaches this. There is no plea bargaining on judgment day. There are no corporate defenses. "The devil made me do it" will not hold up in that court.
We should explain economics in terms of individuals' decisions. We should also explain politics this way, too.
MICRO AND MACRO
We distinguish between microeconomics and macroeconomics. Microeconomics has to do with individual decision-making in a private property system. Macroeconomics has to do with how an entire economy functions.
Austrian School economics teaches that we should begin to study macroeconomics by studying microeconomics. Macroeconomics can be explained only as the outcome of microeconomics. What an individual does in a private property legal order can be explained in terms of economic theory: profit and loss. What the entire economy does can also be explained in terms of individual profit and loss. Any system of macroeconomics whose defenders assert its autonomy from microeconomics is an illusion. Cause and effect in economic theory begin with individual decision-making.
The question is this: Who holds the hammer? Who has final authority: the customer with money or the business with products? The Austrian School is clear: the customer with money, which is the most marketable commodity. Money is the hammer.
In politics, the hammer is the vote. Votes are sanctions: positive and negative. They determine in the aggregate which politician wins and which politician loses. In this sense, micro and macro are unified.
But there is a fundamental difference between market sanctions and political sanctions. This difference is best understood in terms of selling your vote. You can exercise your vote for expected future returns from the government, but you are not legally allowed to sell your vote because a particular politician pays you money. That would be illegal. The idea of "one man, one vote" is very different from "one man, one dollar." A man is allowed to collect as many dollars as he can persuade other people to give to him, by gift or exchange. This is not true of political voting. It is never the case of "one man, multiple votes" for the same candidate, except in Cook County, Illinois, where your vote counts and counts and counts (Dick Gregory).
The free market's system of positive and negative sanctions, which we call profit and loss, governs microeconomics. It does not operate in the same way in the field of politics. Politics has to do with judicial sanctions, which are mandatory: legalized violence. Market profit and loss have to do with economic sanctions, which are not mandatory. A government official can legally tell you what to do. Company CEOs cannot tell you what to do. You can take it or leave it.
So, when we look at how civil government operates, it is a mistake conceptually to go from inside the government (a bureaucrat) to outside (the masses). An individual bureaucrat can create havoc in the life of an individual citizen. To be the victim of bureaucratic action is usually very expensive. Even if you are innocent, it will cost you a small fortune to defend yourself. The bureaucrat knows this.
On the other hand, the bureaucrat also knows that if he takes on a major corporation, he is going to face the best legal talent in the world. He is likely to lose the case. Negative judicial sanctions are more likely imposed by the defendant than the plaintiff. The bureaucrat who launches the attack on a major American corporation, and then loses in a court, is going to find his career in big trouble. So, the micro decision of the bureaucrat regarding a particular individual citizen is going to be very different from the micro decision of the bureaucrat regarding a major American corporation. The risks are higher in the second case. The cost-benefit analysis favors doing nothing in this circumstance.
In a free market, there is not much coordination among sellers, and not much coordination among buyers. The outcomes are dependent upon individual decisions made by customers. Lots of customers make lots of individual decisions, and out of these decisions will come winners and losers among the sellers. But the sellers cannot determine the outcome. It is not determined in a court of law. The free market is not the same as the state.
The free market involves widely dispersed markets. A particular good may be sold in 1,000+ outlets. It is sold online: one sale, one market. It is available everywhere. The more volume of sales there is, the greater the income to the company.
This is not true of government agencies. A bureaucrat has to take a specific person to court in a specific jurisdiction. Everything has to go through one court. Then the case goes up the chain of appeals courts. One bureaucrat's decision ties up agency resources and court resources. The bureaucracy has to make its entire case in one court. All of its resources must be concentrated on this single court.
This is completely different from the free market, in which the court of public opinion is broad and decentralized. In the case of a business, the decision of one customer not to buy the product is not a life-and-death decision. In the case of a bureaucrat who brings a case against an individual, it can be a life-and-death decision with respect to his career. He can lose his career if he makes a fool of himself in a specific court in a specific case. So, the goal of the bureaucrat is to prosecute only those cases which the bureaucrat believes he is likely to win. All of the other cases, he ignores. All of the other prosecutions, he ignores. All of the other risks that he might take, he ignores. He bets it all on one case in one court.
There are multiple bureaucrats, but one bureaucrat can handle only a few cases at the time. In contrast, a corporation can make 1,000 sales a day, or 10,000 sales a day. It can ramp up production to respond to increased customer demand. It can go from micro to macro simply by adding to production. This is not true of a bureaucrat, who must win his case in a specific court. He may get a legal precedent, but this precedent applies only in a specific jurisdiction. Furthermore, if some other company decides the precedent does not apply to it, the agency has to start the entire process over again.
The range of decision-making for a bureaucrat is extremely limited. The range of decision-making for a corporate CEO is enormous. The CEO decides how many units of production should be attempted. This number can be huge. It can influence customer decisions in multiple markets. There will be feedback from consumers to corporate sales programs. Success in one region may not make or break a particular product line's profitability.
What I am trying to get at is this: decentralization is not a threat to businesses. They love to sell lots of products in many markets. Decentralization is a threat to a government bureaucrat, because he has jurisdiction over a limited region. Then he has to get a conviction in a specific court. All of this takes money. All of it takes time. All of this can be drawn out for months or years by deep-pocket defendants.
BOTTLENECKS AND BUREAUCRACY
This is why it is not reliable conceptually to go from an individual bureaucrat, who makes an individual decision in a specific case, to a broad range of political and governmental outcomes. When you go from micro to macro, you go from one court to another. To get macro decisions out of micro decisions, you have to do this in individual cases in individual courts. You are limited by the number of courts. You are limited by the number of cases that are pending in these courts. There is an enormous bottleneck: the legal system. This bottleneck cannot be broken under common law. It cannot be broken under any system of civil law.
The Soviet Union tried this, and it failed. For example, it was always possible for the inmates to bust the camp system by means of individual action. They could write letters of protest, and if enough of them did it, it shut down the whole bureaucracy. Vladimir Bukovsky describes this in his book, To Build a Castle. He and hundreds of inmates in a concentration camp literally shut down the whole regional operation of the camps, simply by obeying the rules, and filing specific protests in enormous numbers. This shifted power and authority from the bureaucrats who ran the prison system to the inmates. The inmates had the power, because they had the ability to protest individually. Their micro shaped the institutional macro. The government's macro did not shape the micro. The government finally capitulated. The people who ran the concentration camp system finally met the demands of the protesters. Otherwise, their careers would have been sunk by the success of the protesters, who used the official rules governing the camp system to shut it down.
The assumption of those people who keep predicting a totalitarian America is that the micro decisions inside the federal government will shape the macro decisions of the masses. But it is the other way around. The micro decisions of private individuals become the dominant macro force. They can break the individual decisions of the government. This becomes far easier than ever before because of the World Wide Web. Social media now make it even cheaper than before for lots of individual decisions, meaning micro decisions, to shape the decisions of macro politics and macro government. Authority is at the individual level, not at the top. Authority does not originate with the civil government; it originates with individuals who decide whether or not to cooperate voluntarily with the official rules.
There is an illusion that has grabbed conservatives and libertarians. They believe that the central civil government has the power to shape the micro economy, the macro economy, and macro politics. They assume that control at the top, meaning control at the center, can be implemented systematically to gain cooperation and subservience of the broad masses of the public. This is possible under day-to-day conditions, but it can be broken in a brief period of time whenever the victims decide that enough is enough. They can reverse the flow of power. The flow of power had gone from the top to the bottom, from the center to the periphery. But those who are the victims can reverse this through organized action. It is now cheaper to organize this action than ever in the history of man. Think "Facebook."
Authority goes from top to bottom only when the victims of centralized power do not resist. Individual decisions usually are such that people do not resist. But this is not true of corporate resistance. This is not true of those groups that fight the trend in the courts. Ultimately, the people can shut down the government. They do not do it very often, but they can do it.
Before Americans ever submit to totalitarianism, there is going to be a revolt. It will begin on Facebook or other social media. It does not matter where it begins; Americans at the bottom are not going to submit to this kind of tyranny. It is not in the American character. Americans have an innate distrust of bureaucrats.
The federal government can manipulate voters in a crisis situation like 9-11 or by means of the welfare state, but if you look at taxation policy in the history of the United States, the federal government never collects more than about 20% of GDP. It can spend more only by borrowing. The voters do not care about that, because they know that they are not going to pay off the loans. They know that it will not be possible for the government to collect enough taxes to pay off all the debt. The only way that the federal government can keep the process going is to borrow more money. The voters know that the government cannot get into their wallets beyond about 20% of GDP. Maybe the voters do not know this in terms of a sophisticated understanding, but they know in their guts. The federal government has never been able to extract as much as 21% of GDP in tax revenues. This is the ultimate ceiling on American government.
I do not see why people on the Right do not come to grips with what is obvious to me. What is obvious to me is that the federal government is mostly bluster. It can only extend its authority only when the public acquiesces. But when push comes to shove, which means when the federal government gets into the wallets of the people above 20%, the people cease to acquiesce. They will not tolerate it.
AN ALINSKY MOMENT
If a bunch of prisoners in the Gulag Archipelago can shut down the government of the Gulag, simply by following the rules of the Gulag, then Americans can shut down the federal government. Basically, Bukovsky adopted the same tactic that Saul Alinsky adopted. Alinsky was not a centralist. He was a localist. He had no use for federal politics. He had no use for massive protests at the top. He simply busted local private organizations by means of guerrilla tactics.
Anyone who predicts totalitarianism in America is predicting this on the basis of micro decisions by government bureaucrats that will be extended across the land. These decisions cannot be extended across the land. They can only be extended in specific courts in specific cases. It is only because the public voluntarily accepts the principle that it must obey a precedent set by some bureaucrat. The bureaucrat can pretend to get enforcement, but he cannot do this. He cannot really get the public to obey.
It is like the RIAA. The Recording Industry Association of America pretends that it can shut down music piracy by millions of teenagers, simply by getting a successful court case against one adult who does not have any money. This is nonsense. The music industry cannot overcome piracy. The RIAA has a few victories, but technology always enables the pirates to keep stealing the music. Almost any song you want is available on YouTube. The RIAA does not have the resources to stop this in specific courts. Every case is different. The people doing the downloading do not have any money. They are usually minors. It takes years to get a court case through a court, and meanwhile, tens of millions of teenagers around the world are downloading the music. Enforcement is all sham. It is all smoke and mirrors. It is a Potemkin Village operation. The RIAA is helpless.
So is the federal government whenever people decide not to cooperate.
The only way that the federal government can keep the game going is by spreading the illusion that the masses of Americans really are cooperating.
When they stop cooperating, there is nothing the federal government can do to enforce its collective will.
THE ANOINTED VS. THE BUREAUCRATS
For a generation, the federal government has not been legally allowed to conscript young men into the Armed Forces. The government still has the authority to collect the names of potential conscripts, and the Selective Service System still exists, but it has no authority to do draft anyone. I think it is the model of things to come.
Americans consent to government interference, but only for as long as this interference seems to extend benefits to middle-class voters. The voters do not understand the extent to which government interference operates against their interests, but that is not the question. The question is this: to what extent do voters use the ballot box to extend their interests? If these voters ever perceive that the federal government is not extending their interests, they will change the federal government.
I can tell you what the mark of this change of public opinion will be: when Washington's checks bounce.
The federal government spends a lot of money on Social Security and Medicare, both of which are favorite programs of the American middle class. The government spends a lot of money on national defense, which is also a favorite of the middle-class. But the government is incapable of extending its jurisdiction into Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and anywhere else where people wearing funny clothes take up arms against the giant bureaucracy known as the Pentagon. The Pentagon is all bluster. It is all hat and few cattle. It is "whiz-bang" from Nevada. It is shock and blah.
What is true in foreign jurisdictions is true domestically. The federal government is mostly bluster. It can push a few individuals around, but it cannot push large corporations around, except with this quid pro quo: the federal government then uses the new regulations to push around small, innovative corporations. The federal government can push the agenda of a vociferous minority, but only because the majority acquiesces. The day that the majority stops acquiescing is the day that the minority group had better stop trying to ram its political agenda down the throats of the unwilling.
The Left has prospered by means of the politics of guilt and pity. But that is only because the middle class is not forced to pay for it.
Americans do let the government push them around individually, but only because they think that this consent is in their interest. Totalitarianism is not in the interest of the typical American. The typical American lets NSA collect the data, because the typical American knows the NSA cannot do anything with that data to interfere with the lives of more than a handful of Americans. It cannot persuade Americans to change their way of life.
Ultimately, totalitarianism will never come to the United States of America because the bureaucrats who enforce the rules are risk-adverse, scared of losing their positions, and skilled at maintaining their own career safety. When push comes to shove, they stop pushing. The typical bureaucrat is protected by Civil Service rules, so he knows he cannot be fired. He knows that he cannot be pushed into action to enforce the latest fad of the most recent political victors. The latest fad of the victors will crash on the shoals of bureaucratic intransigence. The bureaucrats do not have the courage or the institutional wherewithal to impose any system (macro) on the voters that the voters are not willing to accept, based on the voters' criteria of individual self-interest (micro).
The bureaucrats can play with their digital toys and pretend that they are in control. They are not in control. They are not going to get in control. The bureaucrats can be successful only by persuading the voters that they offer a positive answer to the crucial question of the American character, namely, "what's in it for me?"
Americans have a solution for every problem: "Let's make a deal." This is central to the American character. Only to the extent that some bureaucratic agency can avoid resistance by individual Americans can it extend its jurisdiction and therefore its ability to selectively interfere in the lives of a handful of victims. An agency cannot automatically go from micro -- this decision -- to macro: widespread compliance. Americans will comply for only as long as they think it is in their self-interest to comply. When they decide that is enough is enough, they will go on Facebook and share their opinion. When their hostile opinion goes viral, the bureaucrats will pull back. They want to protect their jobs. They have no ideology.
CONCLUSION
Totalitarianism comes when a special-interest ideological group gets in control of the machinery of government. This attempt never lasts very long. Totalitarianism must be implemented by bureaucrats, and third-generation bureaucrats are not driven by a desire to change society. They are driven the desire to protect their jobs. That desire, above all other desires, will shape any government that attempts to impose the vision of the anointed on the masses of Americans.
Americans have a two-word response to all such attempts: "Oh, yeah?" They have a follow-up: "You and who else?"
If the Communists could not pull it off in the USSR, the anointed will not pull it off in America.