Elevation of the Crop Region

The rise of politicized politicians is a global phenomenon. Interesting article for a bureau chief The Wall Street Journal in Germany analyzes this phenomenon by looking at the progress of last weekend’s elections of two populist parties, one on the extreme right, the other on the extreme left, in two German states (Bertrand Benoit, “European Immigrants Are Not Just About Arrivals, It’s About Diminishing Hope,” The Wall Street JournalAugust 2, 2024).

The image of Benoit and his sources draws almost the following. There are some problems, which the government cannot solve because of the checks and balances of liberal democracy. This increases dissatisfaction and mistrust of the government. As a result, voters turn to popular politicians.

This analysis raises many questions. Why are today’s democratic governments less able to find solutions than before? How can voters trust the government when they elect selfish governors who promise More the government? Populism is and has always been an intervention. And how can voters believe that nationalist governments will be able to solve all problems, for example (as Benoit says) the level of public debt—a problem caused by governments that intended to solve all problems?

I suggest that there is a better explanation, inspired by the work of economist and political philosopher Anthony de Jasay. The growing dissatisfaction with the state stems from its inherent inability to satisfy disparate people simultaneously. Otherwise, its growing power over a century would have done it already. What happens is that democratic governments and their politicians compete to respond to the demands of the majority of voters and thereby buy their support (and the support of vocal special interests). This creates discontent among those who finance the acquisition of goods or are crippled by new government interventions. Think about people who find themselves on the wrong side of legal discrimination. These angry voters put their own demands on central government, calling it “social justice.” A new discontent emerges that the government will try to mitigate the harm to other citizens.

If the government intervenes, the people will complain a lot. Like the Red Queen and Alice in Lewis Carroll’s Through the looking glassthe state has to run fast just to stay in place and even more to move forward.

We should not dismiss the common people’s voiced complaints against the brutality they have been subjected to by the political establishment in the last few decades, from licensing laws to criminalization and forced racism. Remember the legal discrimination that was instituted against smokers, most of whom came from lower positions, and private places that wanted to accommodate them—bars, fast food joints, or outdoor areas. (I would add and change a few things from my Econlib article of a quarter of a century ago on “The Economics of Smoking,” but my private property argument against the so-called “externalities” of smoking was correct.) The cause of the discontent lies in the hypocrisy and power of the intervening democratic governments. But it is a mistake to believe that a populist government can stop the decline of discontent. Populism is nothing but totalitarian democracy with a human face: that of the strongman. It creates more dirigisme, polarization, and discontent.

How will the race of the Red Queen end? Not well, de Jasay believes (see the last chapter of his tedious book The state-the following explanation is slightly different from that of de Jasay). As they are constantly asked to give and not take, to interfere and not harm, the rulers of the empire will use all their discretionary power to stay in power. They have to promise more to defeat their political rivals. That way the state will need more economic power. It will consolidate political and economic power into “state capitalism.” It will secretly nationalize the economy, using principles and integration rather than using the Marxist route. Ultimately, it will have no choice but to eliminate electoral competition and other checks and balances to effectively pursue the happiness of the people—and the power of the rulers. The empire will have unlimited power. In this brave new country, the former citizens will have become the property of the state like the slaves of their former plantation owners. The state will be a Plantation State.

We don’t have to be as optimistic as de Jasay to understand that, all over the world, that is the path our democratic leviathans are following.

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Sometimes, one has to render to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to DALL-E what is DALL-E’s. The featured image for this post was produced by DALL-E after only one prompt: “Create an image that shows the Red Queen and Alice (Lewis Carroll’s *Through the Looking-Glass*) running faster and faster just to stay in place.”